51: The Beginning Chapter 3 Part 2

“How did that call to Ms. Johnson’s house go last night? I heard it was you and Andy. Why were you with Andy, anyway?” Little Bob fired off without pausing in his work.

“How did you know about that call?” Lindsay asked.

“I could tell you that it's because I take my job seriously and keep informed about everything so that I can pass it on to you. However, the real reason is that my mother called me this morning. She and Ms. Johnson go to church together. You seem to have made quite the impression on her, and she is hard to impress,” Little Bob answered.

“Well, thankfully, she was fine, but something damaged her phone box at the back of her house. As far as why I was with Andy, it was because Andy came to my house yesterday evening. It seems as though Big Bob had told him that if he did not come to talk to me, I would fire him. The call came in while Andy was still at my house. He wasn’t familiar with that area, so I went with him and drove,” Lindsay said. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

Little Bob was still taking things off the walls as he asked, “Why did Big Bob tell him that? I mean, besides the fact he wanted to mess with the poor guy.”

“I think that was his only reason. I have to say that Andy surprised me. He did pretty well. He was able to answer my questions and even ask me a few of his own. We do need to work on him getting better at interacting with women, but we need to be nice about it. The last thing we need is for him to have a nervous breakdown,” Lindsay told him.

Little Bob stepped off the ladder again, walked over to a chair in front of her desk, and sat down. He looked like he was trying to figure out how to say something.

“Lindsay, my mother told me what the call was. Was one of those things out there?” Little Bob asked.

“I don’t know. We didn’t see anything,” Lindsay said, staring at her desk. “I can tell you that it smelled the same. Andy smelled it too, and so did Ms. Johnson.”

“Why would it rip out her phone?”

“I don’t know. I doubt that it was actually trying to prevent Ms. Johnson from calling anyone, even though it appeared that way. I think it was just a random act,” Lindsay replied.

Little Bob stood up and walked back over to the wall where he had been removing things. Lindsay was thankful he did not push things further. He was among the few people who believed her and had been on her side when she was fired. She heard the click of Cat’s high heels and saw her approaching her office.

“So, what attacked the old lady’s house last night?” Cat asked as she walked back over to where Little Bob was working.

“Seriously, that is how you ask?” Lindsay asked, shocked at how blunt Cat had been.

“Sorry, but I figured it was easier to get it out there than to beat around the bush,” Cat said.

“One, please refer to her as Ms. Johnson or even Rita. Next, I don’t know what it was. It was an animal of some kind. That is all I know. Which reminds me, I need to call the conservation department about what happened last night,” Lindsay told her.

“I called the conservation department last night after you asked me to call the phone company for her. The game warden was the one who just called. He went out there this morning and had no idea what it was. He said there was still a strong smell of something, but he couldn’t say what it was,” Cat informed her and Little Bob.

“Sounds like it was one of them again,” Little Bob said without turning from what he was doing.

“Them?” Cat asked, confused.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lindsay told her.

Little Bob and Cat continued to remove the trophies from the walls as Lindsay continued with her paperwork. She was trying to focus on it, but was having difficulty doing so. She knew that people would be asking her all kinds of questions. What happened to the old sheriff? Why was she fired? Why was she asked to be the interim sheriff? She knew she needed to have diplomatic answers to any questions. Quite frankly, a diplomatic explanation for what happened to the old sheriff was starting to look like that would be the hard one. 

As she went through the stacks of reports and information that should have been filed months earlier, she found things that did not make sense. There were far more discrepancies than could be written off to human error, simple mistakes, or even blatant carelessness.

“Cat,” Lindsay said, looking up from her paperwork, “Where is our chief deputy? I have not seen him since I took over.”

Cat turned toward her. “He is on vacation for the next three weeks. The sheriff approved his vacation request just minutes before he resigned.”

“Why would the sheriff give the chief deputy three weeks of vacation, then resign minutes later?” Lindsay said as she rubbed her forehead.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t make sense of that either,” Cat answered.

“Bob, do you know anything about it?” Lindsay asked Little Bob.

“I have no idea, but that definitely sounds wrong. You want me to call Big Bob and see if he knows anything about it?” he asked Lindsay.

“That would be great. Would you do that now? I keep looking at all of this, and things are not adding up,” Lindsay said as she motioned to all the stacks of paper on her desk.

“Not a problem,” Little Bob said as he took the last trophy, a stuffed squirrel, off the wall and handed it to Cat to put in a box.

Little Bob and Cat gathered up the boxes and ladder and left Lindsay’s office. Lindsay knew she was lucky to have them working there during the day. Even if Lindsay was not there for some reason, things were in good hands. She continued going through the forms and reports that were piled around her. The numbers were off on everything. Some of the reports had been completed but had not been submitted to the state. Other reports did not match the calls received by the department or the reports that had been taken. The number of crimes, the types of crimes, the number of tickets, and the demographic to which tickets had been issued were all incorrect. Now, she was wondering if any of the previous ones were correct. How long had this been going on? Why was the better question? Just then, a knock on her open door interrupted her train of thought. Cat was standing there.