Chupacabra: A Novella Read online

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  The telephone jangled at quarter past eight the next morning, a late ‘60s surplus model turned lengthwise on its cradle. It was a leftover from his recently retired predecessor, who never used it enough to find a need to replace it. Startled out of a pleasant dream of lounging on a tropical beach, half-Cajun born Roth Jacobs dropped his polished boots to the floor from where he crossed them on the desk. The rollaway chair creaked in protest as he reached for the offensive telephone, no less upset than if he'd been awakened at two in the morning. So little happened in the sleepy little town.

  This had better be good.

  "Jefferson Sheriff's Office, Deputy Jacobs here. Can I help you?" The baritone voice, with just a hint of the distinctive French dialect, crept in to betray the lanky, dark-haired man's upbringing in nearby Shreveport, Louisiana, fifty-five miles due east across the Texas state line. In spite of the proximity, there was a world of difference in the influences of their underlying cultures. Jacobs hadn't long been on the force, quitting the horseback patrol of the French Quarter in New Orleans for a quieter lifestyle not three months earlier.

  Why Jefferson?

  He asked himself that very question. The panicked cattle rancher on the other end of the line demanded a second time that Jacobs put the sheriff on the telephone, immediately. "Hold on just a moment, now. Slow it down and catch your breath. Who is this, anyway? You had a what?"

  "…My prize Brahma bull, Percy, was attacked last night in his stall. I locked the barn and it doesn't look as if anyone could have gotten in or out. I didn't go back until I opened it this morning and there weren't even any footprints in the sawdust and meal on the floor. No offense, deputy, but this is an emergency. For the last time, this is Olin Sykes out near Caddo Lake and I need Sheriff Crawley right now!"

  "I'm sorry. He's not here, Mr. Sykes. In fact, he's in Dallas this week for re-certification in legal search and seizure, for all the good that will in Jefferson. Suppose you tell me what happened from the beginning and let's see where we go from here. Okay?" The voice on the other end of the line fell silent, discouraged and resigned. Roth had heard the same dead space on the telephone several times before since arriving in town and filling the vacated deputy’s position, although he'd come highly recommended. It was the sound of an unspoken request to be handed over to anyone else there in a uniform.

  Not this time.

  "Better I show you. Do you remember how to get out here to the edge of bayou country?"

  Jacobs bristled at Olin's remark. It was an invitation to leave if he'd somehow forgotten the way back to the boggy swamps of Louisiana. After all, what other reason was there for a Cajun to stick around in the dry flatlands so close to home? Ignoring the insult and maintaining a demeanor reserved for the drunken revelers of Mardi Gras, Deputy Roth Jacobs asked for directions. He had been out to the old Sykes place when Sheriff Gerald Crawley had taken him there on a routine call during his first week on the force. Unlike that empty-handed search for trespassers, the deputy hoped it wouldn't be just another false alarm.

  Driving southeast along the two-lane asphalt of Highway 134, Jacobs followed signs to Caddo Lake, which straddled the state lines bordering Texas and Louisiana. The lake was northeast of Marshall to the 26,000-acre Big Cypress Bayou in Harrison and Marion counties. Just under a third of that area was Caddo, 7,681 acres of primarily bald cypress swamp and flooded bottomland hardwoods. He had been there often growing up, the first time shortly after the original dam impounding the lake in 1914 was replaced in 1971. Sure, it dated him, and he should probably be a sheriff in his own right by now. He'd turned down a detective's badge in downtown New Orleans for a peaceful life in the country, so why ruin a good thing?

  The Sykes T-Bar Ranch was partially annexed by the Caddo Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA), owned by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) and managed as a part of the TPWD Public Hunting Program. Naturally, old man Sykes was paranoid that anyone without a gun was a surveyor trying to parcel up another chunk of his land. Hunters weren't allowed to stray over onto his property, either. A poacher had probably sent an errant round into Olin's barn and accidentally hit the stud bull by mistake. No big deal. Roth would file a report and resume his nap after lunch. Sheriff and deputy had found nothing on their last visit, and there was no reason, at this point, to think otherwise of this one.

  Roth drove the brown and gold Plymouth squad car through the open gate and down the quarter mile of unpaved road overhung with Spanish moss to the ranch. The deputy parked and switched off the engine next to a rusted out, sea foam green pickup with aluminum rails and dead California tags. He'd look into that next, but first things first. Taking up his hat and club from the passenger seat, he donned them both as he got out and yelled for Sykes. On his first call, he got no answer. The 63-year-old rancher interrupted him on the second attempt and stepped out, waving his arm from the barn door for the deputy to follow. Olin disappeared back inside as Jacobs trotted across the barnyard.

  The officer hesitated at the sliding door, looking at the lever that would be lowered across the threshold to prevent it from opening. A heavy padlock was looped through the oversized hinge. It could not have fallen off or been anything but raised from the inside or out by lifting the steel handle and disengaging the bar, much the same way as the latch on a trailer. No doubt about it, Sykes had gone to great lengths to protect his property from vandals. Leaning back, Roth checked for bullet holes on the door or barn wall to either side. Nothing. Jacobs then looked up. The gable block hung loose but the rope on the tackle was pulled into the open loft. No access there.

  "Deputy? I need you in here, now!"

  The air inside the barn was thick with the musty smell of feed and livestock. Sunlight filtered down through narrow slats to form columns of dust and early morning haze, but otherwise most of the interior was unlit. He could distinguish the shapes of farm equipment and hay bales in the near dark as he made his way along the row of split rail stalls to where Sykes knelt with Jorge Ramirez, a migrant worker from Juarez, Mexico. He came cheap, with no family in tow, asking only room and board until harvest season began. Standing at the gate was Olin's daughter Miranda, a recently divorced single mother with designs on the deputy. She smiled through a face stretched too taut without flattering contours.

  Tipping the brim of his hat slightly towards her with the obligatory "Ma'am," Roth stepped past the dishwater blonde, through the stall gate and stood, hands draped on gun belt, at the foot of the dead Brahma bull. It lay on its side, the lids of its normally big dark eyes closed and sunken. The large, drooping ears were not torn off, but shredded. There was a series of triple lacerations on the darker brown of its knotted hump, just above the massive shoulders. On the rest of its roan hide were smaller abrasions, probably self-inflicted, as if the animal struggled briefly to escape its attacker. From the size of the hole just at the base of its skull, it appeared that the half-ton blue ribbon stud was shot at point blank range with a large caliber weapon. There was no exit wound and no blood splatter, on the wall or anywhere else, for that matter.

  "Did you hear anything, Mr. Sykes? Did you see anything? Whether or not this animal was dropped where it stood or thrashed about before it died, there should have been some kind of a ruckus. Nobody would bother putting on a silencer to kill a bull. This is wanton destruction of property, not a mob hit." Jacobs pulled a report book from his back pocket as Olin protested that he was not aware of any noise during the night.

  During the night?

  In spite of his present circumstances, Jacobs knew rigor mortis when he saw it. In this climate, setting in should have taken much longer. The hoofed legs were already straight out and stiff, the lips and tongue distended, discolored and swollen. It always begins with the face, extending outward to the extremities. In this animal, all except the belly, which appeared much thinner than he would have expected in the death of a bovine. With Sykes' permission, he pressed down on the stomach and relie
ved what little bloat of methane had built up in the bull's four stomachs. He was not a cattleman familiar with large animals, so he had Olin check as well. Something was wrong. There were no cuts and yet it appeared as if one or more organs of this animal had been removed.

  Along with its livelihood as a stud.

  "Well, I'll be damned," Sykes replied, trading confused looks with the deputy, his daughter and finally his suddenly alarmed farm hand, who bolted upright with terror filled eyes. "Ramirez, what's gotten into you?" The migrant worker inexplicably turned and ran from the barn as Olin shouted after him to come back. The frightened man cried in warning over his shoulder but lapsed into his native language out of fear. Jacobs understood only enough Spanish to realize that ‘no trabajo’ meant Jorge was quitting without notice. Another unrecognizable phrase was uttered repeatedly during the apologetic raving as the transient Mexican jumped into his old Dodge pickup truck and left for good in a cloud of dust.

  El Chupacabra.

  THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

  "Now, what do you suppose got into him?" Miranda Sykes asked distractedly as she looked for the Mexican's truck through the cloud of dust it left in its wake. The