CENSUS_What Lurks Beneath

  What Lurks Beneath

  What Lurks Beneath

  Census - Book One Marshall Cobb

  Cerro Plano Press

  Copyright © 2016 Marshall Cobb

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Published by Cerro Plano Press ISBN: 978-1-9778-5144-4

  Typesetting services by bookow.com

  To everyone who has put up with me–at least thus far.

  Acknowledgments

  Other than the fact that I have, on occasion, had a question or two about my own sanity, nothing that follows is true.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE: Ants?1

  CHAPTER TWO: The Window15

  CHAPTER THREE: Getting Some Use Out of It25

  CHAPTER FOUR: Bill Jennings29

  CHAPTER FIVE: Game Camera37

  CHAPTER SIX: The Deputy51

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Birds63

  CHAPTER EIGHT: To Report or Not to Report75

  CHAPTER NINE: Huisache77

  CHAPTER TEN: Grasshoppers87

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Transplant97

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Gas Station107

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Willis111

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Man Time123

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Deputy House Call133

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Post Holes143

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Rasberry Crazy…149

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Regional Medical153

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Family Dinner165

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Real Property177

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Johnny the Bulldozer Guy183

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Asleep at The Laptop187

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Cat Fishing191

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Investigations201

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Exterminator205

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Floaters211

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: A Deputy’s Work is Never Done217 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Slippage 219

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MRI223

  CHAPTER THIRTY: Legal Work229

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Extra Baggage233

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Fishy243

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Heavy Work249

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: No Response253

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Post Mortem261

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: One Year Later269

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Full Disclosure279

  viii

  CHAPTER ONE: Ants?

  “Ants?” Dave Reynolds asked, confused as to what he’d heard, as he leaned down in the cramped utility shed and peered over the shoulder of Bobby Higgins. The act of leaning over aggravated Dave’s now constant headache, and he absently rubbed his right temple.

  Bobby, weathered well beyond his fifty years, was down on one knee fac- ing the pressure switch in front of him. Bobby leaned slightly to his right and grunted, using his left hand, which still clutched the gray cover to the switch, to direct Dave’s attention to the switch, which was mounted on the line that fed water from the well. Dave was distracted by Bobby’s index finger which bore evidence of many an incidental cut, and his fin- ger nail, which was yellowed, cracked.

  Dave, dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, leaned in a bit farther and saw what appeared to be a mound of reddish sawdust covering the pressure switch. Bobby dropped the cover and scratched his mostly gray hair through his sweat-stained, Houston Astros ball cap before rummag- ing through the tool bag in front of him. Dave, who understood the fact that his farm house had no water—but little else regarding the large tank and the pipes in front of him—waited for a more thorough explanation.

  Bobby, who’d already decided that the city boy behind him likely wouldn’t grasp anything beyond the obvious, repeated himself, “Ants.” He then used the large paint brush he’d found in his bag in a gentle sweeping

  motion over the reddish mound. A few brush strokes later the majority of the pressure switch was once again visible.

  Dave leaned down even farther, trying hard not to sweat on Bobby. The reddish mound was now sprinkled over the concrete floor. It did indeed look like the crisped bodies of thousands of ants.

  Bobby deftly poked and prodded at the guts of the switch with the brush and, without looking up, pointed towards the wall of the shed behind Dave. “Throw that switch there Mr. Reynolds and let’s see what we got.”

  Dave followed Bobby’s hand, trying hard to ignore Bobby’s fingers, and stared at several different electrical boxes mounted on the interior wall of the shed. All of them had switches, but he didn’t want to further advertise the fact that he, a product of the big city, had no idea which one he was supposed to touch. He moved closer, sweat now dripping off his nose, and noticed that only one was in the “off ” position. He cautiously flicked that switch and the well system sprang to life—electricity once again flowing to the pump located a couple of hundred feet below them.

  Bobby grunted his approval and slowly got to his feet, brushing some of the ant carcasses from his jeans. “Well, that did it.” In truth, Bobby wasn’t a whole lot taller standing up than sitting down.

  Bobby leaned back down and picked up his utility bag and the cover to the switch, then stood and gently put the cover back on the once-again working pressure switch. “You’re going to need to get some ant bait Mr. Reynolds.” He used his dirty boot to scuff at the pile of ants on the ground. “A lot of it. Put it all around in here and check every month or so to make sure that there’s still plenty of it.”

  Dave looked around the small shed which, in addition to the well-tank also held rakes, shovels, fishing rods and an aged washer-dryer set. “I’ve sprayed out here before but that doesn’t seem to do much.”

  Bobby shook his head. “Not the spray. You need to put down poison bait that the ants will take back to their nest. If you don’t kill the queen they’ll come right back.”

  “Why did the ants get into the switch in the first place?”

  Bobby shrugged. “I have no idea Mr. Reynolds,” Bobby said as he squeezed past to get out of the hot shed, “but they seem to like electric- ity.”

  A few sweaty minutes later, Dave stood next to Bobby’s battered white truck parked out in front of his small farm house. A variety of PVC pipes were strapped to a long metal rack mounted above the bed of the truck. Bobby used the hood as a desk to write up the bill on a tattered invoice booklet.

  The booming bark of Dave’s dog, Sampson, came through the windows of the old farm house. The curtains were shut, but moved about as Samp- son tried to press his nose against the glass to get a better look at who was ignoring him. Sampson sounded like he weighed 100 pounds, with 80 of those being teeth, but in reality he was less than half that size with a slobbery tongue as his primary weapon. They continued to ignore him.

  “I sure appreciate you coming out so quickly Bobby. It’s not much fun without water.”

  Bobby almost smiled as he finished scribbling, tore the sheet out of the receipt book, and handed Dave the bill. “No problem Mr. Reynolds. Glad to help.”

  Dave took the bill, which was for the minimum service charge of $60. “Cash good?”

  Bobby took his cap off and wiped sweat off his wrinkled forehead with the back of his meaty hand. “Cash is always good Mr. Reynolds. Just

  make sure you put that ant bait out there as soon as you can. Once they get a taste for something they just keep coming back.”<
br />
  A few minutes later Dave waved at Bobby’s truck as it exited the gate about a quarter-mile away and turned right onto the county road. Dave stood there for a moment, staring out over the pasture between him and the road, sweating in the afternoon sun, as he tried to remember what it was he was doing before he’d discovered that he was without water. As if on cue, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket, indicating yet another email from one of his many clients.

  He didn’t like to talk about his day job, primarily because no one un- derstood it and filled in the blanks however their imagination saw fit (his mother-in-law, who had never liked him, had started a rumor the past Thanksgiving that he was a drug dealer, based on the fact that he was gone a lot but seemed to have a good income). Anyone who truly understood how he spent his days in extensive conversations with ac- countants and financial analysts was someone he probably didn’t want to hang around with in his personal time.

  When pushed for an explanation as to what he did—which was to act as a financial “fixer” akin to an external CFO—he found that the other party immediately lost all interest. How do you explain that your particular gift, or affliction, was the ability to wade through mountains of data and reports and find an issue that no one else could see? There was also the reality that he’d been working in this realm for half of his forty-seven years—talking about it with regular people just reminded him of his age, and in particular, his own mortality.

  Dave fought the impulse to immediately check his emails and instead walked back over to the shed, which sat just past a small covered patio to the right of the farm house. It occurred to him that he should probably mark the switch for the pump so he’d know which one to shut off should the ants return. A $3 paintbrush sounded like a much better option than another service call fee, but electricity made him nervous.

  He walked the short distance to the metal shed and, as he opened the creaky screen door, he noticed something he hadn’t seen earlier—a small collection of cigarette butts sitting in the tall grass just outside the door. Dave, who already felt every bit of his age and didn’t need any help feeling worse, didn’t smoke. The only other person who’d been out here recently was Bobby. Bobby oft-times had a large amount of Skoal squeezed into a weathered cheek, but Bobby didn’t smoke and Dave was the only one with a key to the one-and-only gate.

  Dave kicked at one of the butts with his shoe, then bent down and picked it up. The word Camel was printed in gold just above the brown filter. He threw the butt back down into the grass and scanned the woods be- hind him, the pasture in front of him and, finally, the farm house itself. Nothing else seemed out of place. Had these been out here for a while and he’d just failed to notice them? Dave was known, for better or worse, as a stickler for detail. But, then again, he hadn’t noticed them earlier. Maybe he was just getting old.

  Several hours later, after pushing through the pile of emails that had col- lected in his inbox, Dave took a break from his day job and returned to the ongoing maintenance required by his combination “fortress of soli- tude” and recreational escape (the former at all times except when his son was present, and recreational activities ruled). Clad now in boots and jeans, he stood next to one of the trees on his property, fumbling through his jangling, overcrowded key ring. He tried yet another key in the cable lock that secured a game camera to a post oak tree that stood near the old RV cover at the back edge of his property. This spot, which was about 100 yards from the front porch, generally produced a lot of pictures of deer, and having a camera here also helped to keep an eye on his tractor nestled under the RV cover. That effort unrewarded, he pulled the key out and tried the next one on the ring. He’d promised himself on several occasions to bring an etcher with him to mark each of the keys as he made his rounds. But his mind, on every prior visit, had been forced elsewhere.

  The next key—which looked identical to all the others—did the trick, and Dave put the lock and cable down on the ground in front of him and undid the thick plastic tabs on the side of the game camera. They clicked loudly upon release, and he then fumbled for the spot at the bottom where the slim SD memory card was housed.

  With only a modest amount of effort, the memory card came free, and Dave quickly stowed it in the small change pocket on his jeans. Drop- ping the SD card in the mess of vegetation below was something he’d done once before—and something that required him to go out and buy another SD card. With the card secured, Dave trudged back through the tall grass that yet again needed to be mowed, making his way to the old farmhouse and the laptop within waiting to receive the photos.

  He’d have taken the laptop with him to save a little time, but it was an old Dell with a flaky battery. The battery lasted anywhere from three to twenty minutes with absolutely no predictability, and several of the cam- eras routinely took several hundred pictures of waving grass—requiring over half-an-hour to download the pictures from a single camera and to clean up the memory card.

  He could have saved some time and effort by using his fully-functional work laptop, but ever since the day his screensaver program had decided

  —in the midst of a break during a PowerPoint presentation for a client— to use pictures he’d saved on the hard drive as an impromptu slide show, he’d firmly ruled out the notion of mixing business with pleasure.

  He downloaded photos from this camera, as well as seven others on the property, every month or so. The process, particularly the downloading of the photos, wasn’t quick—or fun—but the reward was further proof of wildlife activity on his property, which he could turn in to the county tax assessor at year’s end as part of a census of the wildlife on his property. The rules varied from county to county, but in this one, Dave received the same substantial tax break for cultivating and counting the wildlife that he could otherwise receive only by raising cattle.

  Dave did not eat cows. It was not a position he’d taken on religious or ethical grounds; it was an aftereffect of having spent one long stint in a slaughterhouse, back in July of 1980. He’d been in high school, and he had needed the money for reasons he no longer remembered, but it probably had something to do with appeasing his then-girlfriend. On the un-air-conditioned killing floor the only happy life form was the swarm of flies that nestled on the bloody rain gear that Dave and his coworkers wore. No matter how hard they scrubbed the yellow rain jackets at the end of each shift, some amount of blood remained as a permanent stain. Dave left the facility each day with less interest in beef than he’d arrived with, and he’d had the chance to ponder this every evening when the slaughterhouse security guard searched his trunk to ensure that Dave wasn’t trying to leave with half a cow.

  He did not steal any meat, and, from the end of that week forward, his only involvement with cows came via dress shoes he was forced to purchase, the milk he served his son, and the interior of his car. Any “real vegetarian” in his company quickly pointed out his hypocrisy. Dave tried hard to avoid real vegetarians.

  Back on his porch, the light of the sun already fading, he stomped his feet a few times to shake off any large detritus, and then gingerly removed his boots. There was no sense tracking in more dirt, which he’d just have to turn around and clean up the next day.

  He opened the door, and was nearly run over by Sampson, on his per- petual quest to never be left alone. He stared at the wagging Sampson in annoyance and held out a clenched fist. Sampson was supposed to rec- ognize this as a command to sit, but since no one else in the household attempted to enforce this rule, or any other involving Sampson, there was no reaction. Dave growled a little. The dog trainer had insisted that growling was a useful nudge when the other commands fell short. Dave was dubious about its potential impact on Sampson, but confident that it

  would elicit no end of reactions from the neighbors. “Isn’t that the fella that walks around growling at his dog?”

  Surprisingly, Sampson sat down. Caught off guard by the obedience, Dave gave him a quick pat on the head and, walking to his couch, fished the SD
card out of his pocket. He plopped down and moved the already plugged-in laptop from the cushions to the coffee table in front of him. As he slid in the SD card, he heard a gentle whine from Sampson, whom Dave couldn’t see behind the love seat, but remained seated by the front door.

  “OK, boy. Release.”

  Sampson immediately ran over and sat next to him. As Dave pressed “enter” a couple of times to begin uploading the files, Sampson sought attention the only way he knew, by first licking Dave’s hand, and then licking the screen of the laptop.

  Thumbnails of each photo taken by the game camera appeared on the screen as the download continued. The thumbnails were typically too small to see any details, forcing a closer inspection of each picture once the download was complete. This particular time the long splatter of dog slobber covering the screen made viewing the thumbnails impossible.

  Dave sighed and went to the kitchen to get a paper towel, which he dampened with a shot of hot water from the kitchen sink. Sampson, no longer paranoid about being abandoned and exhausted from prior worrying, was already sleeping in the space between the coffee table and the couch. Dave gingerly stepped between the outstretched legs of the dog and sat back down. As the thumbnails continued to whiz by, he used the wet paper towel to clean the dirty screen.

  As he wiped he noted that the camera had caught him numerous times as he passed in the midst of one chore or another. He was also treated to a smaller quantity of thumbnails of Marilyn and Adam, his wife and

  their son. He absently touched the screen when a shot of Adam, carrying what appeared to be an oversized stick, flew by. Their “regular” home was in The Woodlands, a suburb of sorts north of Houston. As the name implied this master-planned community was heavily wooded—at least, it was until the outfit managing the community spent the better part of the past twenty years developing commercial property and thousands of houses. Dave’s personal master-plan was to get the hell out of the paved gridlock that was The Woodlands, but Marilyn had grown substantial roots and had no interest in leaving. Hence, Dave bought this small farm and used it as his escape whenever possible. With his meeting schedule, it was never hard to find a reason to overnight out here, closer to many of his clients who were located in and around central Texas.