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Back in Tulla City, things had slowed down to normal. Everyone was back to doing what they always did, which wasn’t much. Ann still wondered just what a detective third grade was supposed to do. She asked Tom Shelton when he was going to teach her what a detective was supposed to do and he said he already had; he had left her to her own resources. That was the best thing he could do for her, he told her. Ann wondered if Tom, also, was at some kind of loss as to what the difference in being a uniform and a detective was. No, she told herself, he was too self-assured to not know what he should do as a detective. After a while, she, like Tom, just quit worrying about it.

It had been a long day, mainly because not much had happened. Ann went to bed around ten o’clock and at two o’clock, was sleeping deeply when her phone rang. She didn’t hear it for several rings and when she did answer it, she sounded fuzzy with sleep.
“Hello,” she muttered, “ Who is it?”
“Ann,” a familiar voice said tentatively.
“This is Ann,” she said, now fully awake. “ Who is this?”
“This is Sheriff Perkins, Detective,” the voice said.
His voice sounded strangely strained and Ann hesitated a second before she spoke again.
“Sheriff Perkins, what’s wrong? It’s two o’clock. What’s happened?”
“I’m at the mayor’s house, Ann. I need you to come on down here as soon as you can.”
“Sure, Sheriff, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Said Ann.

When Ann arrived at the mayor’s house, several squad cars were already there casting their whirling, multicolored lights on the surrounding area, almost like a carnival atmosphere.
She stopped a ways from the house and walked up to the scene. Everyone was gathered around a car. Ann could see it was the mayor’s Ford.
The sheriff stopped her before she got to the car.
“ What’s up, Sheriff,” Ann asked? “ Is something wrong with the mayor?”
“He’s dead,” said Sheriff Perkins, “shot to death.”
Ann couldn’t say anything. She was stunned.
“Have a look,” the sheriff said.

Ann approached the car and Charlie Ford and Billy Thompson stepped aside for her. She could see the mayor’s figure drooped over the steering wheel, his arms hanging down on either side of the steering column. Billy was shining his flashlight on the figure of the Mayor and Ann could see blood on the windshield and the steering wheel. Ann stepped closer and could see in the light a small hole just behind and below the mayor’s left ear. The bullet had gone through his head and exited out the windshield in an upward angle.
“ I can’t believe it,” said Ann. “I can’t believe it.” She started to say,” What happened,” but checked herself. It was pretty obvious what had happened.
Ann looked around the area. “Where is Tom,” she asked?
Sheriff Perkins said,” He’s coming. He was on his way to Cincy. I got him on his cell phone.”
“Who found the body,” asked Ann?
Billy spoke up. “I did,” he said, “I’m on tonight and was on my rounds and saw the car just sitting here. At first I didn’t think anything was wrong then I remembered, the mayor always parks his Ford in his garage. He never leaves it on the street. When I turned around and drove back the headlights were in his windshield and I could see him hunched over the wheel. Then it was easy to see what had happened. I called the sheriff then got out and looked things over. The window was already down. I didn’t touch anything except to feel his neck for a pulse. I almost threw up.”
Lights were coming on in houses all along the street now. People were beginning to come out to see what was going on. Billy still looked pale so Charlie Ford and Mel Vernon eased off in either direction to discourage people from coming too close to the crime scene.

“Stay back, folks,” said Charlie, “You don’t want to step on any clues. Stay back of the tape.” Mel did the same at the other end of the tape. They were very efficient at their jobs.
Charlie Ford and Mel Vernon were good friends as well as good cops. They were both natives of Tulla City and lived on the same street, in houses that sat side by side. They had been friends all the way through school. They had even dated the Colson sisters for a while. Mel, barely out of his teens, married one of the sisters but Charlie never married.
The last fight he had was when some guy suggested that he was married to Mel. Charlie and Mel were always close and rarely disagreed on anything. Charlie liked Mel’s wife, Lois, and she liked him. He was like a big brother to her and he spent a lot of time at Mel’s house.
The coroner, who, also, had a medical practice in town, finished his investigation and took some pictures and told the Sheriff he was through. He estimated the time of death to be around two o’clock, a m. It was now six o’clock. The sheriff decided to keep the area taped off the rest of the day so he could have daylight to once again inspect the area. Ann, Billy and Mel began knocking on doors and asking questions of the people who lived within a block of the crime scene.
A lady who lived at the house next to the mayors’ house said she might have heard something very early that morning. She said she awoke for just an instant but wasn’t sure what woke her. She said she might have heard a loud noise. She said she thought it was a dream. She didn’t know what time it was because she didn’t fully waken.
Tom Shelton got there at around six thirty and was filled in on what had happened. He, too, began questioning the neighbors of the mayor.
A man across the street told Tom that he saw a strange car very late but didn’t think much about it and couldn’t remember what kind or color the car was. He said it was moving slowly along the street and when he started to look more closely, the TV distracted him and he returned to the program. The program was Johnny Carson so it must have been around one o’clock.

The mayors’ body was taken away and, after it had been checked for fingerprints, the car was towed to the police station parking lot. The sheriff and his officers spent a couple more hours looking over the crime scene and asking questions but got no results.


The rest of the day added no more clues to the case. The local paper put out an extra edition so it could feature the murder. The Tulla City Crier went to press at seven o’clock and hit the streets at ten. BJ Lassiter stood in front of his office and sold papers the old-fashioned way, shouting, “Read all about the murdered mayor! Special edition, get it right here!” He quickly sold out the five hundred copies he had run so he went in and ran five hundred more. He was at his glory! “Just like the old days,” he said.
Back at the station the sheriff and the rest discussed the murder. They tried to think of a reason that anyone would have to kill old man Rafton. No one could come up with one. The only thing the mayor had done of any importance in a year was the presentation ceremony for Ann. There had been nothing else of any importance that had happened at Tulla City for as long as any of them could remember.
Tom suggested they check to see if the mayor had made any trips out of town lately. After a few calls to various people who were close to the mayor, they decided he hadn’t been out of town for quite some time. They ran out of questions to ask. There were no answers. They were at a dead end.
Mel said,” I hope to hell this doesn’t take another four years to solve.”
“ Yeah,” said Billy, “ There’d be no one to make a presentation for solving this one.”
Ann reddened slightly but said nothing.

“ Billy,” said the sheriff, “ You and Tom go on home and get some sleep. The rest of us will stay and see if anything turns up.”

An old Ford rolled quietly along Main Street. Driving it was a smallish young man. He was about as inconspicuous as anyone you would ever see. His name was Buck Pearly. He worked at the local filling station pumping gas and doing an occasional brake or lube job. His full name was Buckley Earl Pearly but he liked ‘Buck.’ He thought it sounded ‘manly.’
Buck was about as inconspicuous as anyone could be. It was possible for him to attend a party or barbecue and not even be remembered as having been there. He was a loner, without friend or relative. He lived alone in a single room at a local rooming house. He had a hot plate, an electric coffeepot and a microwave oven he used to cook and heat his food. Mostly, though, he ate at a fast food place. His room was neat and tidy with nothing ever out of place. If anyone ever wondered when Buck came to town, they would be hard pressed to name a date. He just wandered in one day, liked what he saw and stayed.
He started working at the service station within a week of arriving. As a result of working at the station, he was somewhat acquainted with most of the people of driving age in town. Some he knew better than others. Detective Ann Barton he knew as well as he knew anyone. She came in regularly to gas up or to have her car serviced. The patrol cars, also, fueled at his station.
Buck’s favorite pastime was cruising around town in his car. Sometimes he would drive to other towns and just drive around looking at the sights. There was very little about the county Buck did not know. He knew all of the city streets as well as all of the country roads that branched off the highway. Buck was a veritable road atlas. He could give accurate directions to anywhere in the area if anyone ever asked him. But no one ever asked him. No one ever asked him anything except,” Whatta I owe you for the gas?”
But Buck was satisfied with his place in life. He was a man who was happy and satisfied to stand by and watch the world do whatever the world wished to do. He had little to say to anyone about anything.

The mayor’s funeral was held on the next Sunday. That was four days after he had been killed. The autopsy hadn’t revealed any more than was evident at the scene. It looked like the whole town showed up for the service. The cemetery was barely big enough to hold everyone. There was no open casket viewing because of the nature of the Mayor’s wound. Several people said words over his grave. The mayor would have been proud of the fine things people said about him. It was surprising how well liked Old man Rafton was now that he was dead several persons were heard to remark what a shame it was everyone hadn’t shown him how much he was liked when he was still living.
Buck wore his best (and only) suit to Old man Rafton’s funeral. He shed real tears for the mayor.

A week had passed since the murder of Old man Rafton and the police weren’t any closer to knowing who did the killing than they were on the night it happened. The sheriff regularly called the officers together to get a report from them about any possible clues or ideas they may have. Calls began to come in suggesting different people who might be responsible; who might be the ‘perp’.
A lady called the station to say she thought her husband was the killer. She said he hadn’t come home that night and refused to say where he had been. Tom called him and asked him to come to the station. He took a taxi to the station and Tom asked him where he was on the night in question. He wanted to know why Tom was asking him these questions and Tom told him that it was just routine. He refused to answer any questions unless Tom told him why he wanted to know and why he was asking him specifically.
Tom said someone suggested that he might know about the killing of the Mayor and the man said,” It was my wife, wasn’t it,” and Tom said it might have been. The man said, “Boy, what a bitch. I can believe it. She thinks I am supposed to clear everything with her before I do it. She wants to treat me like I am a child. I was at an all night poker game with a few friends.” Then he gave their names to Tom.
“I used to play poker with my friends every week before I got married. She knew that and didn’t object to it before we married. After I said,” I do,” she changed. At first she asked me to tell her when I planned to play poker. Then she asked me not to play so often. Then she wanted to go with me and I said OK. She didn’t like it because some of my friends smoked cigarettes so she wouldn’t go again. Then she said I shouldn’t play, it was too expensive and, if we ever had children, it would set a bad example for them. I stopped going for a while then thought, ‘What the hell! I need some kind of entertainment.’ We never went anywhere because she said we couldn’t afford it. I got tired of sitting home every night and that is all she wanted to do. She said that if we have each other, that should be enough. Frankly, she’s not that great.”
While he was talking to Tom, Billy called a couple of his poker buddies and confirmed his story. Tom asked if he needed a ride home. Tom said he was satisfied and sorry he had bothered him. The man said he could use a ride so Tom took him home.
When they got there, the man asked Tom to wait for just a minute. Tom thought he would bring his wife out to verify everything. Instead, in a few minutes, the man came out carrying a suitcase. His wife followed him out, crying. The man didn’t look back. He asked Tom to take him to the bus station. Tom said all right, he would, and on the way, the man told Tom that his brother owned a store in another town and he thought working in a hardware store would be more satisfying than being married to his wife. Tom let him out at the bus station and went back to the police station.
When he walked in, Billy asked him what had happened. Tom said,” Not much,” and sat at his desk, grinning.

For the next week or so more calls came in with ‘clues’. They were all checked out and found to be false. One small voice said the killer was a math teacher who worked at the local grammar school. Ann took the call. When the small voice made the accusation, Ann said,” How old are you?” The voice said,” Twenty, twenty.” Ann asked, “Are you nervous?” The voice said,” Yes.” Ann asked why and the voice said she had never done anything like this before. Ann asked the voice if she knew she could be arrested for making a false statement to a police officer. The voice hung up.
At 1:00 PM Ann walked into the station. Billy was sitting at his desk scribbling on a sheet of paper. Ann asked if anything interesting had happened while she had been out to lunch. Billy said, “ There was some kind of screwball who called a few minutes ago. What a yo-yo!”
Ann asked what he had said and Billy told her, “He spoke so softly I could barely hear what he was saying.”
“What did he say,” asked Ann?
“He said he could tell me who killed the mayor. I believed him at first then he went off on some sort of astro something or other; he got signals from something or someone, I couldn’t tell which he meant, something or someone.”
I asked him who he was and he said he couldn’t tell me that. I asked him how we could communicate if I didn’t know who he was. He said, “It has to be a secret and you can’t tell anyone, ever.” He sounded like a dingbat and I said, “Hold on, I’ll be right back,” and I asked Mel to check and see where this call was coming from. When I went back to the phone, he had hung up.”
“Where did the call come from,” asked Ann?
“A phone booth over in Fowler,” said Billy.


Then Ann was strangely quiet for several moments. Then she asked Billy if he had told anyone else about the call and he said no, he hadn’t.
Ann said,” Would you like to have a cup of coffee?”
Billy did a double take. He couldn’t believe he had heard right.
“What,” he asked, “You mean with you, now, with you?”
“Yes, with me, right now, with me,” she said.
Billy called over his shoulder to Mel, “Mel, cover for me for a while.”
Mel said, “I’ll try to handle it until you get back; we’re so busy!”

Billy followed Ann to her car and got in the passenger side.
“When did you get interested in me,” he asked?”
She said,” When I heard about that call you got.”
“He was a yo-yo,” Billy said.
Ann turned off onto a side street, pulled down two blocks to where there were no houses, and stopped.
Billy, looking puzzled, waited to see what was about to happen.
After a second, he asked, “Why are we stopping here?”
Ann studied him for a moment then said,” Billy, I need to get a promise from you.”
Billy asked,” What kind of promise?”
Ann said, “I want to talk to you about something but I want you to promise, on your honor, never to repeat to anyone, anyone at all, what we talk about.”
Billy said,” What are we talking about?”
“Unless you make me that promise, we aren’t talking about anything,” replied Ann.
“All right,” said Billy, “I guess I promise.”

Ann reddened and started the car.
“What are you doing,” asked Billy,” I thought we were going to talk?”
“ I didn’t ask for any,’ I guess’, bullshit from you,” said Ann, “You either promise or you don’t!”
“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” Billy said.
“You’re damn right I am!” said Ann.
“O K, O K!” said Billy, “I promise, on my honor as a policeman!”
“You’d better mean it!” said Ann. “I mean, you’d better mean it!”
“I do,” said Billy, “Now what’s going on?”

“When the call from this guy came in, did you take the call yourself?”
“No,” said Billy, “Mel took it but I guess the guy asked for me.”
“He asked for you by name,” asked Ann?
“Yeah. So what?” said Billy.
“Why would he ask for you by name if you didn’t know who he was?” asked Ann. “Doesn’t that seem a little strange, that he would ask for you by name? Why wouldn’t he just talk to anyone who answered the phone?”
Billy thought about that for a minute.
“I guess it is a little strange,” he said. “ Maybe he heard I was the one who found the body, you know, the first on the scene.”
“That’s not it,” Said Ann. “Now listen, I’m going to tell you something. Something you’re going to keep to yourself. Something you won’t understand. I’m going to give you some instructions and you have to follow them to the T! You have to do exactly as I say, without question, no matter how strange you think it is. Do you understand?”
“I guess so,” said Billy. “I mean, yes, I understand!”
“I can only say a little. It won’t sound like much but when the time comes, you’ll know what it all means. That same man will call you again, probably at home when you are alone.”
“That’s about anytime,” said Billy with a grin.
“When he calls you, listen to what he has to say and don’t ridicule him or badmouth him. Just listen and consider what he tells you. I can’t say what that will be but I can tell you he will know what he is talking about.”
Billy was puzzled. “What is it he’ll say?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Ann said. ”It’ll sound weird but you have to follow his instructions. You have to do exactly as he tells you no matter how ridiculous it seems. Whatever you do, do not tell him you spoke to me. If he asks you if you talked to me about him, say you didn’t. Say you didn’t think he was serious when he called so you said nothing about the call to anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll tell you that if you tell anyone about him, bad things will happen to you. He’ll say it isn’t a threat but it just will happen. He’ll say he doesn’t know what will happen to you until after it happens. Believe him and don’t argue with him.”
Ann stopped talking and Billy asked her if that was all she was going to tell him. Ann said it was and she started the car.
Billy started to question her and she put a hand up and told him not to ask anymore questions. She couldn’t say anymore and, as far as she was concerned, she knew nothing about the call he got or the man who made it and this talk never happened.
Billy was quiet and, in a few minutes, they pulled up in front of the station. When they parked the car, the sheriff was standing on the curb watching them.
Before Ann got out of the car, she reached over and shoved Billy roughly and said, “ You little Bastard, that’d better not ever happen again! Get out!”
Billy blanched under her assault and looked stunned. Then his face reddened and he stammered, trying to speak to her. She told him to just shut up and stay away from her or else!
Ann stormed by the sheriff and stomped into the station where she sat at her desk. The sheriff asked Billy what he had done and Billy mumbled, “Nothing I care to talk about,” and quickly walked away, leaving the sheriff scratching his head. The sheriff started to pursue it but thought better of it and went inside to his office. ‘I’ll find out later,’ he told himself.