Down in the Holler: The Sheriff

Episode III

This is Down in the Holler, a serial speculative mystery novella featuring Judith Temple, psychic detective.

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← In Episode II: The Family, Judith visited the family of a young woman at the center of a missing persons case and saw more than she bargained for.

Sheriff Tim Morrissey rubbed his hands over his eyes and tried to comb out the dent his hat had left in his hair. First he couldn’t connect to the internet, and now, with the internet signal as close to full strength as it could get in the middle of nowhere Appalachia, he still couldn’t get onto the private network. When Lexington’s IT office had said they’d set him up with a laptop, he thought surely they’d set it up. But no. They gave him a slip of paper with muddled instructions.

He just wanted to do his job. Just his job. But this job required far more time spent sitting in front of a screen than he had expected when he’d run for county sheriff two bright-eyed years ago. Even lying in wait along a winding county road, checking passing cars for speeding, was better than sitting in his tiny office in front of this screen that reduced every criminal record and piece of evidence to bits and bytes.

He ought to call Lexington. It would be the responsible thing to do, the professional thing, to just call the Lexington sheriff’s IT specialist and ask for help.

But the prospect of a halting conversation with the waspish IT guy, who made no effort to hide his surprised disdain that someone as young as Tim could be so technologically inept, deflated his lungs. Tim Morrissey, the idiot backwoods sheriff who couldn’t tell a VPN from the back end of a cow.

Maybe he could give Sheriff Quinn, over in Bayton County, a call. Ask him if he’d made any headway on the fentanyl investigation. Work by proxy was better than no work at all, even if Quinn called him kid and cycled through the same three stories in every conversation.

Tim let out a heavy breath and turned his eyes toward the growing collage of photos on his wall. Young faces, most of them – so young. Bored young Kentucky kids killed by poison pills handed out like candy.

It wasn’t Oxy that was rural Kentucky’s biggest problem anymore, though it still caused plenty of death and heartache. No, it was fentanyl now – deadlier and faster and harder to catch. He could shut down the Oxy pill mills, but that wouldn’t stop the high schoolers dying from fentanyl overdoses at parties.

For a rural sheriff, it was a constant game of catch-up, changing strategies and procedures to get dealers behind bars and drugs off the listless streets, always trying not to step on the toes of the FBI or the DEA while falling ten steps behind the people pushing the drugs. One step forward, two miles back.

A sharp rap at his door startled him back to attention. “Come in,” he called.

The door swung open, and, like a blast of cold air, a young woman strode into his office.

“You’re Sheriff Morrissey.” It wasn’t a question, was barely a greeting.

Tim stood quickly and shook her outstretched hand.

The woman nodded. “Judith Temple. I want to talk to you about a cold case. Autumn Hanson. Disappeared a little over twenty years ago.”

A weary awkwardness tugged at Tim. In coal country, cold cases were piled as deep as the rolling hills. People, many of them young women, vanished, forgotten. Armchair detectives and gung-ho volunteers came and went, hoping to champion a case, to solve a mystery, to win a victory for justice. But there was no winner in a murder case. “I have to be at the courthouse soon, but I guess I have a few minutes.”

Not entirely true – he wasn’t expected at the courthouse until three. But it wasn’t an outright lie; three was was soon-ish. Tim gestured to the worn chair opposite his desk. “You said twenty years ago? A case that old might not be in our online system yet. Not all the old files have been scanned. Do you have new information to add to the file?”

“The family has asked me to look into the case, and I would like to keep you apprised,” she said, her tone as crisp as her blazer. “I’d also like to have your professional cooperation dealing with any new leads that might turn up.”

“The family hired you? You’re what, a private investigator?”

“That is correct.”

Tim leaned forward. He didn’t know exactly why, but he felt it, that familiar twinge, the cue that something was off. “What kind of private investigator?”

A minute flash of frustration crossed the woman’s almost-impassive face. “I’m a psychic detective.”

Tim stifled the laugh that tried to erupt from him and looked more closely at the woman across his desk. Small and neat, put-together if not exactly pretty, her hair and makeup calculated and precise. He would’ve pegged her as a young businesswoman or a well-dressed engineer, but a whimsical, hand-wavy psychic? No. “You’re welcome to take a look at the files, Miss – ?”

“Temple.”

“Miss Temple. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with some technical difficulties. I can’t go searching for files right at the moment, and Cathy, my clerk, is out sick today. Maybe you can come back another time.”

Miss Temple cocked her head. “I’m getting the sense that you’re skeptical.”

It didn’t take a psychic to figure that out.

Tim cleared his throat. “As I said, you’re more than welcome to take a look at the files.” He made a show of checking the calendar on his wall. “If you’re free on Friday, you can come back at –”

“Technical difficulties?”

“What?”

She leaned over the desk to glance at his computer. “You’re trying to connect to a VPN?”

“Um – yes.”

“So what’s your technical difficulty?”

Words came easily to Tim, always had, but suddenly he fumbled over them, grasping for a legitimate reason that he couldn’t follow the instructions that the scowling IT guy claimed were so simple.

She squinted at the instruction sheet. “May I?”

“May you what?”

“Take a look.”

“I’m about to give my IT guy a call.”

“Psychic detective work is my hobby, sheriff,” she said in her pert, clipped voice. “I work full-time as a software developer. I can have this connected in less time than it would take you to get someone on the phone.”

A software developer – so he was right. Sort of.

Tim hesitated. “I can’t let you go poking around on my computer. There’s private information on that network about victims, families, crimes being investigated. Emails with other counties and government agencies.”

“I have no interest in infiltrating your very important and sensitive emails,” Miss Temple said. “But I do have expertise you seem to need.” Standing, she strode around his desk, sidestepped him, and pulled his keyboard and mouse closer to her.

She clicked through his computer settings and the app that housed the sheriff department’s intranet without once glancing at the little sheet of paper he’d been struggling over for twenty minutes. Then she straightened up and stood back. “Username and password.”

“How did – ? Yeah, I’ll type those in.”

“I figured you didn’t want me poking around on the network.”

Tim leaned over to type in his credentials, and Judith picked up the Lexington IT department’s paper.

She frowned and shook her head. “It’s not your fault, really. These are terrible instructions.”

“That’s good to hear,” Tim said, a smile creeping back into his voice. “I thought I was the one with the problem.”

With one click, the Sheriff’s department database popped into view on his screen. Tim sat back down in his desk chair. “Wow. Thank you. Really.”

“Does that mean you’ll find me that file now?”

“Sorry?”

“The file. Autumn Hanson’s file. I took care of your technical difficulty, so presumably that frees up some of your time.”

A laugh burst from Tim before he could stop it. “Fair enough.”

Judith’s face didn’t lose its stony expression as Tim strode, still chuckling, to the wall of filing cabinets that housed the dozens and dozens of old files still waiting to be scanned into the database.

“It’s all public information, so you’re welcome to come back and take a look whenever you need to,” he said as he opened the H drawer.

“Before you pull out Autumn’s file, I have another request.”

“Yeah?”

“In the past, when I’ve worked with law enforcement, the officer in charge did a performance test of sorts. To see if my psychic impressions were accurate.”

“Okay. And were they?”

“Based on my calculations of the number of total psychic impressions compared to the number that have later been confirmed as accurate, I have an accuracy ratio of approximately 67%. While that is significantly below the 90-95% confidence interval I would prefer, it is still a significant improvement over random chance. And the accuracy of psychic impressions is particularly difficult to quantify due to their sometimes symbolic nature. If I included the more symbolic impressions in my calculations, I am certain that my accuracy ratio would be higher.”

“You – uh – absolutely. Sure.”

A stilted silence stretched as Judith stared at him.

“Usually,” she said, “the officer chooses a few files at random, has me do a reading, and then compares my results with the contents of the file. I find that it helps to build confidence between myself and law enforcement.”

“Sure. Yes. Let’s do that.” Tim rifled through the file cabinets, the drawers creaking open and bumping shut as he collected half a dozen random files.

At least I’ll have a story to tell, he thought. But I sure am glad Cathy’s not here to see this.

Tim opened one of the files and skimmed the summary at the top of the page – DUI, multiple priors, suspect taken into custody.

He raised his eyebrows at Judith.

Unhurried, she closed her eyes.

Tim fiddled with the brittle folder in his hands and smothered the smile threatening to crack across his face. This was like one of those cheesy early-2000s cop shows, where the psychic shows up for one episode, acts kooky, and says one off-handed thing that leads the detectives right to the culprit. Except this story would never get past the kooky psychic bit.

“I’m seeing trees,” she said. “At night. And a pickup truck.”

Tim glanced down and scanned through more of the details of the report. Sure enough, the driver had been pulled over at 11:29pm out on the country highway between Salt Fork and Potters Well. In a beat-up Ford pickup truck.

“Bottles on the floor, mostly cheap beer.” Judith opened her eyes and looked up. “How much of that was accurate?”

Tim cleared his throat. “There are a lot of DUIs out here. Trees are everywhere, and almost everybody has a pickup.”

Judith pulled a small notebook from her bag, flipped it open, and started scribbling in it. “So each of those statements was correct?”

“You could say that.”

She set the notebook down on his desk and fixed him with a skeptical look. “Would it give you more peace of mind to do a double blind test?”

“A what?”

“You don’t look at the file until after I do my reading. That way you can be sure I didn’t somehow sneak a look.”

Tim grabbed an empty cardboard box from the corner and dropped the remaining files into it.

“Make sure you select a file first,” Judith said. “I don’t want to do my reading on the wrong one.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Tim said with a smirk. Shielding the box from Judith’s view, he removed one of the files and set it behind the box, out of sight. “All right, I picked one. Do your thing.”

Again Judith closed her eyes, and a few minutes ticked awkwardly by.

“A needle,” she said. “Blood, a lot of blood, on a sidewalk and grass. Tire marks on the road.”

Tim opened the file and did a cursory reading of it. “Well, you’re not completely wrong.”

“Completely?”

“It was a hit-and-run. Don’t know what needles have to do with anything, though.”

“Not needles. One needle.”

“Right. Well, let me get that file for you. Autumn Hanson, was it?”

“I’d like to do at least one more,” Judith said. “The more data points we have, the better.”

Tim shrugged. “If you like.” He pulled another file from the box and hid it from her sight.

Judith closed her eyes and sat, longer this time, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “There’s a broken clock; the glass of its face is shattered. Thorns. Broken dishes on the floor. A very tall man. Children hiding in the bedroom.”

When Tim opened the file, he read a brief, dry description.

“Well?” Judith said.

“Domestic violence call, and sure, there were children in the home at the time,” Tim said. “But there’s no way to corroborate that you’re doing any woo-woo psychic stuff.”

“‘Woo-woo psychic stuff?’”

“You could be taking a wild guess with domestic violence and spewing out whatever you’d expect to see in a situation like that.”

“But I’m not.”

“But that’s the whole point of this, isn’t it?” Tim said. “To prove something to me. I’m not seeing enough evidence that you’re not just getting lucky. I mean, needles, thorns, broken clocks. I’m seeing as many misses as home runs.”

A consternated shadow passed over Judith’s face. “I’ve gotten the nature of the report correct on every single one.”

“I’d have to do a whole lot more of these tests before I’d be convinced that there’s anything supernatural going on here.”

“Technically, it’s not supernatural. It’s paranormal. There’s a difference.” Judith straightened her blouse. “But this doesn’t seem to be a very fruitful line of conversation. If you wouldn’t mind getting me that file, I’ll take a look at it and be on my way.”

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From his desk, where he sat using his now perfectly-functioning VPN, Tim looked up occasionally at Judith, scribbling notes in the corner as she thumbed through Autumn Hanson’s file.

A sticky, heavy knot twisted in his stomach. He wasn’t usually such a jerk. It was just something about this woman, how he couldn’t write her off quite as easily as he’d hoped. Her guesses, and her misses, had been just close enough to give him a faint, nagging doubt.

But no, it was luck. She’d gotten lucky.

Or she was trying to con him.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, Tim’s own memories popped up to challenge it.

She had asked him to test her. She had suggested that he pick random files, that he hide them from her, that he do a double-blind test to prevent himself from unwittingly giving away clues. Every step of the way, she’d been pushing for more transparency, not less.

No, it wasn’t a con. Just dumb luck.

Glancing up to make sure Judith wasn’t watching him, Tim pulled the files, which he’d left splayed across his desk, closer to him.

The first file – that had been eerily correct, down to the time of day. But really, most DUIs out here in the middle of nowhere happened at night, when people were heading home after an evening of drinking. Nothing too amazing about a DUI at night.

Moving on to the second file, the hit-and-run, he read through it more carefully this time, noting that the boy who’d been hit had been on the sidewalk at the time. Blood on the sidewalk, just as she’d said. And tire marks.

Then his eyes caught something they hadn’t before.

At the time of his death, the boy had been high on meth, a pinprick in his arm.

EMTs had found a dirty needle in his pocket.

Tim sucked in his breath and snatched the third file.

On the first page was the report of the domestic violence call – nothing about a clock or dishes, though the officer noted that the house was in bad shape and plenty of things were broken or out of place.

On the second page, which Tim hadn’t even bothered to check before, was a mug shot of the husband.

He was a big man, his head smooth as a bowling ball and his beard unkempt and long as though to make up for the lack of hair above. With glazed eyes, he frowned at the camera, his hambone arms clutching the placard inscribed with his name and the date.

His arms –

Tim’s heart pounded so hard he could hear it in his ears.

Up the man’s arms wound tattoos – intricate, interwoven designs, winding like veins from his wrist to his shoulder, all held together by twisted thorns.

Thorns. All over this man, the perpetrator.

Suddenly cold and breathless, Tim leaned back in his chair.

One by one, each of these were strange coincidences. He could call them lucky. He could shrug them off.

But all of these guesses, from one woman, in one test of random samples?

Judith suddenly stood, startling Tim from his thoughts.

“Here’s the file back,” she said, dropping it on his desk. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

She started for the door, and Tim lurched to his feet. “Miss Temple?”

Judith paused and turned, her hand on the door and an irritated tightness in her mouth.

“I need you to see this.” Tim held out the third file, opened to the mug shot of the tattooed man. “I owe you an apology.”

She blinked, the wariness slipping from her face. “Oh.”

“If you have a few minutes,” Tim said, “maybe we can talk a little more about this Autumn Hanson case.”

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Keep reading! Episode IV: The Witnesses →

← Read Episode II: The Family

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