Blood Trail - C. J. Box [46]
Frank Urman’s severed head was spiked into the wall where the elk head mount had been that morning.
13
IN HER third-hour social studies class at Saddlestring High School, Sheridan Pickett idly drew sketches of smiling faces, flowers, and falcons in the margin of her notebook while waiting for class to begin. Her teacher, Mrs. Whaling, an attractive, doe-eyed blonde from the Northeast who, to Sheridan, infused the mountain West where she now lived with too much Disneyfied romance, had announced earlier with breathless glee that there would be a “very special guest speaker” that morning. When she did, several boys including Jason Kiner and Sheridan’s on-again-off-again boyfriend Jarrod Haynes (a dream to look at but a nightmare to have a conversation with) moaned with audible disdain and their reaction was met with an icy glare from their teacher. Sheridan kept her head down.
Mrs. Whaling was fond of guest speakers. She was also fond of showing movies during classtime that stretched over several days, silent reading, and hour-long forays into topics that had nothing to do with the curriculum. Sheridan found the class a waste of time, but couldn’t transfer out because she needed the requirement. She did her best to feign interest, read the textbook even though she wasn’t sure Mrs. Whaling had looked at it in years, and try not to laugh at Jarrod’s mumbled stupid jokes. He could be funny in an irreverent, sophomoric way, she had to admit.
Today was worse than most days already, though, because of what had happened at home the night before and that morning. A sense of dread had enveloped her before she entered the building that morning and she had trouble shedding it or pushing it aside. She’d not been able to concentrate on anything at school because her head and heart were at home, with her mom, with her dad.
She almost didn’t notice when Mrs. Whaling opened the door to the hallway. A big man with flowing blond hair and a barrel chest and a thousand-megawatt smile came in trailing a dark, pretty woman pushing a stroller.
“Kids,” Mrs. Whaling said beaming, grasping her hands together in thrall in front of her bosom, “this is Klamath Moore.”
“Save the wildlife!” Klamath Moore boomed, thrusting his arms into the air as if signaling a touchdown.
SHERIDAN HAD been awakened by the telephone ringing at five-thirty that morning, a sound she normally would have slept right through. But it was the way her mother answered it out in the hall and talked—with such emotional earnestness and gravity—that connected with Sheridan’s semiconsciousness in a primal mother-daughter way and jerked her awake. She lay there for a few moments in the darkness, hearing snatches of conversation as her mother paced up and down the hall the way she did when a situation was serious:
“Not Robey? Oh my God, Joe . . .”
“. . . hospital . . .”
“Three people shot and the other two dead . . .”
“Are you sure you’re okay? . . .”
“How could this happen?”
“Why did this Lothar guy start shooting? Why didn’t he identify himself? He put both of you in danger . . .”
“Another poker chip?”
“This is awful, Joe, just awful...”
Sheridan wrapped herself in her robe and found her mother sitting at the kitchen table looking pale, her eyes hollow and staring at nothing at all, her hands and the cordless phone on her lap as the coffeemaker percolated on the counter.
“Mom?”
Her mother jumped at the greeting, and quickly tried to assume her usual confident look of parental authority. Sheridan appreciated the attempt although it was a failure.
“Are you okay? Is Dad okay?”
“Okay is not the word for it,” her mom said. “I just talked to him. He’s at the hospital. Our friend Robey Hersig is in critical condition and not expected to last the morning.” Her mom took a deep breath, fighting back tears of frustration, and when she did so Sheridan felt a sympathetic welling in her own eyes even though she didn’t yet know what