Broken Heartland Read Online Free PDF

woman said, “only someone told me the most disturbing rumor. Maybe you can help.”
    That phone needed attention, but Heather had been taught to be polite. “Yes?”
    â€œThat person told me Englishman is an atheist. Is that true?”
    Heather tried to decide how to answer that. Englishman wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with God. She’d once heard him say he and God shared mutual doubts. And that was before Mom died. The God Englishman believed in wasn’t much interested in tracking the flight of every sparrow, or even humanity in general. In this woman’s world, that was atheism.
    â€œUh, no,” Heather said. She thought that was technically accurate. “Daddy’s no atheist. My sister and I were raised as Episcopalians, if that helps.”
    The woman’s face turned prune-like. “Oh my,” she said. “Isn’t that pretty much the same thing?”
    ***
    The sheriff pulled his Chevy out of Klausen’s parking lot and turned right on Main Street. It was too warm for fall. Indian summer, he supposed. Mother Nature teasing you with what she was about to take away.
    There wasn’t much traffic on Main. Good thing, since he was working his cell phone as he drove. He hated people who did that, but he needed to do several hundred things at the moment, among them making sure the authorities in Hutch realized the driver of the Dodge was probably a kidnapper.
    There never was much traffic on Main these days. The street was empty of cars, but littered with the first dead leaves of fall. That and the black walnuts kids liked to roll out in front of motorists. When you ran over them, they exploded with a sound like the crack of a rifle. The sheriff recalled strewing a few walnuts in his own youth. He and his friends had thought it was great fun to watch people duck and start searching for snipers. Since 9/11, the prank had a new edge to it. Not that that had stopped anyone.
    There hadn’t been a hard enough frost to bring down all the leaves yet. Bright yellow and red, they clung to the tops of the mature trees that lined the street. Lower down and nearer the trunks, they were still a tired green. The condemned, awaiting execution.
    The sheriff ran over a couple of walnuts and finished his call before he turned in at the high school. The first of its buildings had been erected on the east edge of town back before the Great Depression. The school was still on the east edge, since the city had pretty much stopped growing soon after. The sheriff found a spot in the parking lot, not far from the signs that indicated the gym was a polling place today.
    A single crow sat on a ledge above the entrance to the high school. It watched him silently as he passed through those familiar doors. The bird looked like it wanted to tell him something. Since this was Election Day and the evangelical right had targeted him, “nevermore” would be appropriate.
    The sheriff turned down the hall toward the principal’s office before he remembered the cotton Doc had packed in his nose. He wasn’t about to walk in there sounding like Elmer Fudd. Instead, he stepped into the boys’ room and carefully removed the packing from each nostril. The right one started bleeding again. The dispenser was out of paper towels, so he stepped into a booth to look for toilet paper.
    The restroom door opened and someone entered.
    â€œAre you crazy?” a cracking adolescent voice asked. “What if someone finds us in here?”
    The sheriff could remember sneaking into this very room several times when he should have been in class. Secretly making plans to raid a girls’ slumber party, for instance. In his day, those raids had been pretty innocent. Boyfriends stole a kiss from their girls, would-be boyfriends tried to get attention by setting off firecrackers or sneaking up to windows and holding a flashlight under their chins to look spooky. No one ever got hurt. Except