4 - Stranger Room: Ike Schwartz Mystery 4 by Frederick Ramsay

tired of the hours and the danger and find something easier to do. Second, you don’t know how you’ll react to the academy. Not everyone is cut out for this work and the training is designed to find that out. Finally, I haven’t asked Karl and I’m not convinced he’d say yes even if I did. He’s committed to his career at the Bureau. So, just stay on your course and see what happens.”
    Ike returned to the report. Essie hesitated.
    “Something else?”
    “Ike, you know I don’t like to gossip…”
    “What’s on your mind?” he asked, avoiding the opportunity to comment on that bit of off-the-mark self-assessment.
    “I came in this office before you did, you know.” He did. For the first weeks of his tenure, cronies of his predecessor had tried to make his job impossible. Only a clean sweep of most of the entrenched personnel had kept the sheriff’s office from becoming a war zone. Essie had flirted with the dissidents but had been won over. “Ike, they’re at it again.”
    “Who?”
    “The deputies you let go and some of the boys down at the feed store. The deputies signed on with a security firm up in Staunton. It’s gone out of business and now those guys want to fix it so you can’t operate and they get back to the way things were.”
    “Our late sheriff, Loyal Parker, can’t very well hire them back. He’s dead.”
    “Yeah, I know, but they’re saying you’re responsible for that on account of he’d be alive if you didn’t take his place.”
    “That makes no sense, Essie. What in the world are they thinking?”
    “I don’t know, but, like, I hear things. They want me to, you know, spy on you and then maybe help them plant some stuff that can be found by the State Police.”
    “You’re kidding. Who’re they?”
    “God’s truth, I wished I was. Like, have you noticed anything where it shouldn’t be lately?”
    Ike’s reputation for being disorganized was legendary. He had a sign over his cluttered desk that read, I’m not disorganized. I’m creative . The odds he’d notice anything out of place ran from slim to none.
    “Where? Lord, Essie, you know I don’t keep track of stuff.”
    “See, that’s what they’re counting on, like, what’s in your car?”
    “Um…” he tried to think about the cruiser. Did anything seem different, out of place? “Nothing…well, there were the coffee cups in the trunk. I don’t remember putting them in there. Come to think of it, I never put trash in the trunk of the car.”
    “Maybe you’d better check it.”
    “If what you’re telling me is straight, I’ll need a witness. You said you liked police work…okay, let us check it out.”
    He walked Essie to the car and popped the trunk. The paper cups were scattered in untidy batches. He stared at them for a moment. Essie reached in to gather them up.
    “Don’t touch,” he snapped. “Sorry. Run in and get me a few of the big evidence bags. And a couple of small ones, too.”
    The two of them, latex gloved, picked up the cups and bagged them. Then Ike removed his spare clothes and emptied the pockets. He bagged three powder filled glycine envelopes and some slips of paper, which had what appeared to be phone numbers scrawled on them with area codes he did not recognize. He made sure Essie signed the tags next to his signature and then had Charlie Picket photograph the trunk and the interior of the car. He directed Charlie to take it, the cups, and papers to the county crime lab.
    “Okay, who?” he asked. Essie averted her eyes. “Essie, time to stand up. This town is changing and can’t go back to the days when the sheriff’s office was the enemy. Who?”
    “I don’t know for sure, but Daryll, down at the garage where the cars is worked on…he’s kin to George LeBrun. You remember him.”
    Ike did. LeBrun at one time served as second in charge, and acted as the former sheriff’s bag man.
    “Pull both their prints and send them along with the other stuff. If there’s