Week 24 : Breakfast, INTERRUPTED

Sunday mornings were usually pretty quiet in Black Grass until around 10am, when Sunday School started at the Baptist and Presbyterian Churches. The Speedy Quick out on the bypass would see some business, and The Super Center always felt busy. But downtown was pretty peaceful this time of the week, with little activity to speak of. 

Sheriff Higgins sat in the corner booth at the Dairy Cheer, sipping coffee and eating a breakfast sandwich, noting the few cars that passed by on the main stretch of road. A newspaper sat in front of him, still folded. He was coming off of an overnight, but the thought of going home to an empty house didn’t sound too appealing. He was too tired to sleep, anyway. 

“Warm that up for ya?”

He looked up to see Brittani, a round-faced server at the Dairy Cheer holding a pot of coffee. “Sure,” he replied. 

“You need anything, jus’ give me a holler,” she said with a smile that caused the sheriff to blush a little. The job didn’t leave him a ton of time for a social life and, truth be told, since the divorce, he’s not been putting himself out on the market.

He finished his biscuit and took another swig of coffee. He looked up to see a petite woman in her fifties coming through the door with purpose. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. She scanned the room and locked eyes with the sheriff before bounding in his direction. 

“I thought that was your truck in the lot,” she said aggressively. Her voice was gruff and hoarse. Sheriff Higgins noticed her eyes were swollen and bloodshot. “You know who I am?” 

The sheriff was a little embarrassed that he didn’t. As an elected official, he was proud of the fact that he had been to every house listing in the county during his campaign. But he couldn’t quite remember where he knew this woman from. “‘Fraid I don’t ma’am. What can I do for you?” 

“They’s a lot you can do for me. For a lot of us.” She sat down on the stool across from Higgins without being invited. “That this week’s paper?” Her hand slapped the top of the folded paper as she pulled it closer to where she sat. 

Higgins was confused. The woman didn’t seem to be impaired, but she was clearly upset about something. “Ma’am, is something wrong? Can I help you?”

Her icy stare shifted from the paper to his face and back again. “You seen this week’s obituary, sheriff?”

He shook his head. “Naw, I haven’t. Did you loose someone?” 

“I didn’t loose no one. Stolt more like it.” She slammed the paper down in front of the sheriff. “See this here? This is Reggie Wayne Turner. My only son. Died Tuesday from an overdose of Fentanyl and meth.”

The sheriff shifted, uncomfortable in his seat.

“I fount him, covered in his own vomit. Eyes rolled back into his head, barely breathin’. Ambulance took twenty five minutes to get to my house in Wallins. He was dead in ten.” Her hand stayed on the picture of her son, looking healthy and happy. But her eyes were locked onto the sheriff. 

“He’s gonna turn twenty in August. Wanted to go get his CDL and do lineman training like his cousin Teddy. Now, he’s gonna be planted in the Turner family cemetery over in Oak Knob next to his paw. He’s got a youngin’ on the way that ain’t never gonna know her daddy. So, what I want to know from you, Mr. High Sheriff, is why in the hell do you get to sit here and drink your coffee while my son is down at Fredrickson’s Funeral Home?” She had worked herself into a frenzy, her eyes were blazing as she glared at the sheriff.

Higgins shifted again in his seat. “Ma’am, first, let me say that I am truly sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child and want you to know that my heart goes out to you. Now, I didn’t get your name.”

“Jessie. Jessie Watkins-Turner.” She stared, unblinking, at the sheriff.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, Ms. Jesse?” Sheriff Higgins broke from her gaze and looked to the front of the shop, trying to get Brittani’s attention. She was helping a customer at the counter and wasn’t paying attention. 

“I don’t want no damn coffee, sheriff. I want some answers. I want to know why lowlife drug dealers like Sam Anderson or Ash Jenkins are walkin’ the streets. Pill pushin’ sons-a-bitches like Wally Helton and Gus Morgan get to go on peddlin’ their shit while my boy is at the funeral home.” She was hyperventilating, trying to force her breathing to keep up with her words. 

The sheriff felt terrible for her. She was grieving and in pain. But he wasn’t about to jeopardize months of work just to let this mother know that her son’s dealer is on their radar. “Ma’am, I’m not at liberty to discuss active investigations, but I assure you, my deputy’s and I are committed to fighting the drug problem in this community. We have a narcotics officer specially trained to work with the task-force that deals with those issues. We have a K9 unit. We get special training on field awareness and observation for determining if a person is under the influence and what suspicious substances may or may not be. We are not perfect, ma’am. Not by a long shot. But I promise you, we’re trying.”

Jesse wadded up the newspaper into a ball. “You can take your ‘tryin’ and wrap it up in this newspaper and shove ‘em both up your ass!” She threw the paper into the sheriff's face before storming out of the Dairy Cheer. 

Sheriff Higgins sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, puffing out his cheeks like a trumpet player. The commotion had caught Brandi’s attention, and she made her way over to his table. “Everything ok, Sheriff? She sure seemed mad.” 

He took a sip of his now half cold coffee. “She’s upset. Can’t say as I blame her. Just lookin’ for somewhere to direct her pain that ain’t herself, I guess.” He plopped a $5 bill down on the table and stood. “Always a pleasure, Ms. Brandi.” He put on his hat and tipped it slightly at her. 

Brandi swayed a bit and smiled. “Good seein’ you too, Sheriff.” 

Sheriff Higgins drove down the main stretch of road in Black Grass toward his home, but instead of turning up Old Highway 40, he kept barreling toward town and pulled into the courthouse parking lot. Something about what Jesse Watkins-Turner had said resonated with the lawman, and it was sticking in his craw. He pulled out old case files and began scanning them, looking for a connection to Reggie Wayne and the dealers his office had been working so hard to build cases against. 

After a couple hours of scanning, he came up empty. Nothing in the case files, or the database came back on Reggie Wayne Turner. Higgins went into the back office and unlocked the carbon fiber vault mounted against the wall. Inside, evidence from several cases sat safely tucked away, along with a single cell phone. He picked up the phone and typed a message into it. 

Raoul, call your mama!

A few moments later, the cell phone rang. “Jerry’s Bait Shop,” the sheriff answered. 

“I need a pound of crickets,” a scratchy voice said on the other end of the line. 

“You secure?” 

“10-4. What’s goin’ on?” 

The Sheriff sat back in his office chair and sat his hat on the desk. “You ever run across a Reggie Wayne Turner? ‘Round twenty. From ‘round Wallins?” 

There was a moment of silence. “Sounds familiar. Wasn’t no dealer we ever targeted. Think he might have been around Sam Anderson’s place a few times when we set up buys. We never caught him on camera with anything. Why you askin’?”

“His mama joined me for breakfast this mornin’ to inform me he OD’d on Tuesday. Wanted to know why we were lettin’ dope dealers walk the streets while her baby was in the morgue.” He felt defeated as he said this. With all the good he had done: the many drug busts, the reduction of drunk driving and increase in drug awareness in schools, he knew there was so much more to be done. 

“Hate you had to deal with that. Kid falls in with the wrong bunch. Get’s hooked. Only a few ways that’s gonna go.” Raoul sounded pretty defeated himself. 

Higgins ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Don’t forget your report is due tomorrow.”

“I ain’t missed one yet, sir,” he said with a chuckle. 

“Stay safe out there.”

“Will do.” 

The soft click of the phone let Sheriff Higgins know that Raoul had hung up. He sat there, listening to the hum of the AC unit blowing cold air into his office. Reggie Wayne Turner wasn’t a dealer, he was a user. It didn’t matter how many dealers they locked up, if folks were willing to pay for drugs, someone out there is gonna take the chance to sell them. Maybe the entire system is doomed to fail. Maybe he had devoted his life to a failed experiment. The realization hit him like a shotgun blast. 

The squawking of his radio jarred him to attention. “Dispatch to Unit One. Dispatch to Unit One, come in Sheriff. Over.”

He sat up and reached for the switch on the radio attached to the front of his shirt. “This is Higgins. Over.”

“Sheriff, I know you’re off duty, but we have a situation in Wallins that needs your attention. Over.”

Hearing Wallins, Higgins was unsure of what the issue was, but his instincts told him it wasn’t going to be good. He hopped into his truck and drove to the address Dispatch had given him. One of his deputies had set up a perimeter and a few neighborhood folks were standing around watching. As he approached the scene, Deputy Collins met him.

“Sheriff, I hated to call you out. But I figured you’d wanna see this. And I didn’t want it goin’ out over the radio.” He was clearly a bit shaken.

The two started walking toward a parked vehicle on the side of the road. “Sir, I don’t know the situation. But I just wanted you to make a decision on what to do next.”

Higgins approached the vehicle. Fly’s were buzzing around the open window on the driver’s side. A siren from the county’s coroner’s official vehicle startled both men as it pulled along side. Rob Osborne stepped out of the white Town Car. “Give us just a minute, Mr. Osborne,” Deputy Collins called out. 

The Sheriff and his deputy approached the parked vehicle and Higgins noticed that there was a body in the drivers seat, along with something on the windshield. As he got closer, he realized the driver was Jessie Watkins-Turner, the mother he had met just hours before. She was clearly dead, gray and lifeless sitting in the car. A quick look inside showed that she had slit her wrists vertically. Her hands were also smeared with blood. 

“Look at this, sir,” Deputy Collins said, pointing to the front of the vehicle. 

Higgins had noticed something on the windshield, but had been paying more attention to the driver. He walked to the front of the car where he saw it. Jessie Watkins-Turner’s last words. Written in her own blood across the windshield of the car she died in.

-Higgins is a Murderer-