“We don’t have anyone. Hate to ask, I know you needed this vacation, but...”

“I’m on my way.”

Ralph dropped his fork, packed his bags and left the beach house and a half-eaten Maine pounder behind. He figured six hours of “police chief allowed speed driving” if the traffic wasn’t too bad would get him back to Piseco Lake. Seven hours if other vacationers were also leaving abruptly.

When he walked into the log cabin style lodge, several people were barking out what they had found, their suspicions of who the killer was, and apologies for him losing his vacation.

Ralph Fox was a lawman who had seen too much during his twenty-plus years in the business. As a Detective in Dallas, Texas, Ralph had seen what he thought to be everything there was to see.  The stress of his Texas job caused him a heart attack at age forty-four, as well as two divorces, three weeks on probation for excessive force, an ability to drink massive quantities of beer, a bulging stomach, and a need to get out of Texas. While he was visiting a high school friend who lived in Staten Island, Ralph learned that there was an opening for police chief for the small, upstate town. Without hesitation, he quit his job in Texas, submitted his resume for the position and moved to Speculator, New York, a small town nine miles north of Piseco Lake.

Ralph was offered the position of Chief of Police and took office two weeks later.  He made no drastic changes with the office or to his staff, which consisted of four part-time officers, one full-time sergeant, an office manager and an eighty-four-year-old custodian. He immediately enjoyed the slowed-down pace of his new law position and never imagined that he would walk into a big city style murder.

As he walked behind Officer Wayne White through the lodge and into the dorm-like structure attached to the rear of the lodge, Ralph’s keen eyes searched the scene for anything that could be considered a clue. When he passed the fireplace and saw that there were ashes in it, he stopped walking.

“Anyone have the sense to go through that fireplace?” he gently said to Wayne White, who hadn’t realized that the chief had stopped following him and was still talking about how he felt when he first walked into the room with the bodies.

“Yes sir. Looks like someone burned papers in there,” Wayne said.

“Anything left in that pile of ashes?” Ralph asked, in a slow, patient voice.

“All looks pretty burned up to me.”

“Do you carry a comb or a brush on yourself, officer?” he asked with his eyes fixed on the fireplace.

“Huh?” the officer answered, still unsure of Ralph’s question.

“What do you carry, comb or brush?”

“Neither.  I got a crew cut.”

“Well then go and find a bathroom and see if you can’t find yourself a comb in there.”

“Is my hair out of place?” Wayne asked, bewildered by the chief’s order.

“Nope. Not at all. I just want you to go get a comb, bring it back here, and go through this fireplace with it. I don’t like to assume that there ain’t no clues left anywhere’s. Make sure the comb is a fine-toothed one. I’ll find my way to the bodies. You come and get me when you either find something or are damn sure there ain’t nothing to find.  You hear?”

“Yes, sir,” Wayne answered. “Uh, sir?  I don’t really have to go find a comb, do I?”

“Get on your knees and start digging through that pile of ashes,” Ralph ordered, overemphasizing his Texas drawl.

Ralph needed to steel himself before walking into the room with the victims. He had seen gruesome murder scenes before but realized that he was not fully ready to see another. As he entered the room, filled with four officers, the county coroner, a photographer, and three lifeless bodies, Ralph felt his heart skip an important beat. His back found a wall to lean against as he calmed himself by whispering to himself a song he wrote when he was sixteen.

“Texas women are all the same

Ain’t got no need to have a name.

Just give me one to call my own

And my broken heart will finally be sewn.”

As he finished his song, Ralph found his legs again. He walked around the bodies as the deputies started with their questions.

“What do you think, chief?” an officer asked.

“We ain’t never seen anything like this before up here,” another one added.

“I guess that you have seen stuff like this before, huh, chief?”

“Yes boys, I have seen this before,” Ralph replied, thankful that his voice was operational. “And this is what I need everyone to do. Everyone leave the room and wait outside until I call you in here. Everyone but the coroner, whose name I cannot remember.”

“Germane Tamorssi. Nice to meet you again, chief. I only wish we could be meeting at a fund raiser instead of here.”

“Me, too. Okay, everyone else out and don’t go out of hearing range.”

As the room emptied, Ralph was alone with Germane Tamorssi and the three dead bodies. He turned to the coroner while staring at each body individually. He learned from his days in Texas that emotions have no place in an investigation. He stared at the bodies as if they were clues and nothing more.

“Okay, tell me about this one,” Ralph said as he pointed to the hat donor.

“His name is Roger Fay. He’s a yearly.”

“What’s that? A yearly?” Ralph asked, puzzled by both the term and the coroners Northern accent.

“That’s what we call people who live up here year round. We got the summersets and the yearly’s. His name is Roger Fay. Lives over in a trailer near Higgins Bay.”

“Y’all have some strange terms up here,” Ralph said.

The rumors that Ralph was crazy were well known in the town of Arietta. Someone heard that he had snapped while down in Texas and probably brought his insanity up north with him. Despite that possibility, the folks in the town were glad to have Ralph on their side. So after Ralph’s comment, Germane Tamorssi took a small step back and peered at him quizzically.

“They’re only strange if you’re not a local. Anyway, cause of death is obviously a knife wound to the neck. He was killed outside against a tree and then carried in here. His neighbors said that Roger used to walk down this street every day. He was probably just walking past the center when the killer was doing his deeds. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Where are his shoes?” Ralph asked, noticing that Roger Fay was dead in blood-soaked socks.

“Neighbors tell us that they saw him wearing a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots. Both are missing.”