Discoveries

 “Shotgun!” yelled Jeremy. “I called it first.”

Wade had to laugh at Jeremy’s impish behavior as he loaded the young lovers’ luggage into the back of the pickup. Oh, at 25, Jeremy was hardly a child. In fact, since his parents died in that car accident when he was in college, Jeremy—already a young man with a solid head on his shoulders—had matured into a very capable ranch owner and businessman. Still, Wade hadn’t seen Jeremy this happy in quite some time.

As Wade drove the pickup down the long dirt driveway, Jeremy alternated between surveying the large ranch that he had inherited and admiring the beautiful young woman sitting between him and Wade. Soon they would be at the airport and then in New Orleans. Life is good, he concluded. Life is good.

Jeremy Travis had been quite content to continue living in sin with his girlfriend Amy on his 16,000-acre ranch outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming, but after almost a year of shacking up together, she really wanted to get married, and he loved her too much to lose her, so he consented. In fact, he loved her so much that he was even willing to have the wedding on Labor Day in her hometown of New Orleans. Why not? He had no family left, and he had never been to New Orleans. Hell, he had never really been outside of Wyoming—except for a few trips to cattle auctions in Denver with his dad. So, when Amy suggested that they fly down on the Thursday before Labor Day, he readily agreed. While she took care of some last-minute details, he would get to enjoy a mini-vacation in the Big Easy.

Though Jeremy was not looking forward to a formal wedding (what man does?), he was excited about seeing New Orleans. And enjoying the subsequent honeymoon in the Bahamas, of course. He assumed that he and Amy would both stay in her parents’ home in New Orleans’ historic Garden District—hell, from all she had said, it was certainly big enough—but Amy had protested that seeing each other so soon before the wedding would be unlucky. She was certainly a traditionalist, if not actually superstitious. So, she made arrangements for Jeremy to stay with her brother Ford in his apartment in the French Quarter.

Ford was one of New Orleans’ finest, a rookie police officer, and the two men shared a pleasant conversation over the phone about a week before the big event. Ford explained that he would be working the late shift on Thursday but that he could leave the apartment unlocked for Jeremy.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Jeremy insisted. “I’d really like to take the time to explore the French Quarter. Why don’t you give me a ring on my cell phone when you get off duty, and I’ll tell you where I am so you can pick me up.”

It was early evening when their plane arrived and they were met at the airport by Mr. and Mrs. Leveque, Amy’s parents, who took them for a nice, leisurely dinner at Commander’s Palace. The Leveques pleaded with Jeremy to wait at their house until Ford got off duty, but Jeremy explained the arrangements that the two young men had made.

“The French Quarter?” protested Mrs. Leveque. “But this is Southern Decadence Weekend!”

Southern Decadence? It sounded intriguing to Jeremy, but he didn’t want to appear licentious in front of his new in-laws-to-be, so he asked innocently, “What’s that?”

“That’s when the ho...the gays...take over the Quarter,” cautioned Mrs. Leveque. “It’s not a good time for a fine young man such as you to be walking the streets alone at night down there.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Mother. Jeremy is gorgeous,” Amy interceded, squeezing her lover’s bulging  biceps and smiling adoringly into his crystal blue eyes, “so I wouldn’t be surprised if he got hit on—more than once—but he’s a big boy; he can take care of himself. Besides, he’s mine, and all he has to do is say ‘thank you, not available,’ and they won’t bother him. They’re gay, Mother; they’re not criminals.”

The strain on Mrs. Leveque’s face betrayed her desire to protest, but she knew better than to fight with her obstinate daughter—especially on the weekend before her wedding.

The oppressive Louisiana heat and humidity got the better of Jeremy, so when the Leveques dropped him off at the corner of Canal Street and Bourbon Street, he left his coat and tie with Amy and made arrangements to get his luggage in the morning. As her parents left to take Amy home with them, Jeremy unbuttoned his shirt half way and ventured into the famous Vieux Carré.

Yes, Jeremy Travis was about to enter a very different world. Little did he know just how different it would be.

Jeremy could not have left his sprawling ranch in better hands than those of his foreman, Wade Dawkins. Looking like he had just stepped out of a Bill Gollings painting, Wade was the quintessential cowboy. He had worked for Jeremy’s parents for years and had become a trusted family friend as well as a very dependable employee. Strong, confident, and very capable, the 40-year-old foreman was like an uncle to Jeremy, especially after his parents died. Of course, the situation with Randy did complicate matters, but Jeremy felt very confident that Wade could manage that situation along with everything else.

Randy, Wade’s 17-year-old son, was indeed a handful. Wade’s wife Cindy had taken Randy with her to Chicago when she walked out several years before. Cindy was a city girl, and Wade had always been a country boy. No matter how hard he tried, Wade just couldn’t do anything right by Cindy. That didn’t stop her, though, from dumping Randy on him when the kid got to be too much for her to handle.

Randy had become increasingly rebellious. He had fallen in with the wrong crowd and gotten into drugs. He’d also gotten into trouble so many times at school that the principal finally drew the line in the sand and told Cindy that Randy would not be allowed back at the school in the fall. At her wit’s end, she finally shipped the kid back to his father in Wyoming. “Maybe you can straighten him out,” she ranted.

Jeremy, realizing that Wade had his hands full and knowing that he would be away for at least a week, had authorized Wade to hire a couple more ranch hands, which he had done at the beginning of the month.

Despite all these extra stresses, when Jeremy got on the plane to New Orleans, he knew that he could focus on his upcoming wedding and not have to worry at all about the ranch.

It had been an unusually busy week for Laramie County Sheriff Nick Scarpelli, and today was no exception. In addition to the usual traffic accidents, domestic violence calls, and assorted petty crimes and misdemeanors, there had been that bank robbery in Cheyenne just that afternoon, and even though that incident fell under the jurisdiction of the city police, his department had been called upon to keep an eye out for the robbers beyond the city limits.

“Damn,” mumbled the sheriff at his car radio when it squawked obnoxiously as he pulled into his driveway after an especially long day. “I left St. Louis to get away from shit like this.”

Nick Scarpelli had grown up on the streets of St. Louis. He had been a decent kid, but trouble just seemed to follow him around. Like the time he was out joyriding with some of the neighbor kids when they decided to hold up a liquor store. Though Nick was unaware of their intentions and took no direct part in the robbery, he was arrested along with the others. Fortunately for Nick, his public defender was able to get the charges against him dismissed…on one condition: he had to agree to join the Army. “Maybe they can straighten you out,” said the judge.

Actually, Nick was glad for the opportunity to make a fresh start, and he responded well to the Army regimen, rising to the rank of lieutenant. Though he liked the military life, he had discovered that he really could make a decent life for himself, so he spent his spare time completing his G.E.D., and when he left the Army, he signed up for the Army Reserves and then went on to get a degree in criminal justice. With his college degree, he joined the St. Louis Police Department and worked his way up to detective captain. After nearly 20 years, the job was starting to get old, but then something dramatic happened. Abuja.

Nick survived “the accident” overseas, but it left him with more than a few scars—emotional as well as physical. So much for returning to the police department. No big deal. Nick had had enough of wars, urban ones as well as foreign ones. In rehab, Nick heard another patient telling stories of growing up in Wyoming. That’s what I need—some place remote and peaceful.

“No problem,” said the Wyoming lad when Nick asked him about getting a job in Wyoming. “I’ve got connections.” And, man, did he ever. His father was no less than the governor of the state. The governor, in fact, offered Nick a position as commandant of the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy in the town of Douglas, about 125 miles north of Cheyenne. The job involved more administration than criminology, but it seemed like a reasonable alternative to Nick at the time.

Then, politics intervened. A routine audit of the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department uncovered “irregularities.” It remained to be seen whether someone was stealing money from the public coffers or whether the problem was just shitty management, but either way, the cancer seemed to be widespread and was affecting not only the sheriff’s office, but the entire political establishment. Just as the scandal was about to boil over, the sheriff suffered a fatal heart attack, and the county commissioners, now in complete disarray, could not agree on a successor to fill the position until the next election. Civic and business leaders pleaded with the governor to intervene.

“It’ll just be a temporary assignment,” the governor assured Nick when he asked him to take the appointment. “Just for a few weeks until we can arrange a special election.” A few weeks, however, soon stretched into several months. What’s more, even though the governor had promised Nick that the job would be mostly administrative, the scandal had touched more employees in the department than just the sheriff, and Nick quickly found himself understaffed, which meant that he had to spend far more time in the field than in his temporary office.

The voice squawking and scratching its way out of the black box in Nick’s car demanded his attention: “Ambulance sent to Travis Ranch. Possible homicide.”

It wasn’t long before Jeremy understood why Mrs. Leveque had objected to dropping him off at the French Quarter. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Men were dancing in the streets, many of them half naked—or worse—groping and kissing each other in broad daylight. Well, not exactly broad daylight, but since it was Daylight Saving Time and not yet September, there was still enough light to witness the debauchery playing out before him.

Amy was right, too. He did get propositioned more than once. Why not? At 25 years of age and 6’2” he had developed a well-toned, muscular body from working on the ranch, and he was damn good looking. His brownish blond hair hung in a short bang over his forehead, and then, of course, there were those sparking blue eyes that had melted Amy’s heart. Even the way he walked commanded attention—self-assured without being arrogant. He had been extremely popular with the girls in high school and college, so why wouldn’t gay men find him attractive as well?

With each proposition, he followed Amy’s suggestion (or was it an order?) and simply thanked the admirer and proclaimed that he was already spoken for. Still, more than one man who had had too much to drink threw himself at the cowboy and groped his pecs, ass, or crotch. His first instinct was to punch them out, but he remembered what Amy had said: they’re gay, they’re not criminals. Besides, he had seen plenty of straight guys get a little out of hand at the college beer busts he had attended, and this was really no different.

If he was unprepared for his introduction to Bourbon Street, he was completely shocked with what he saw when he turned and walked a few blocks up St. Ann. There, between two cars across the street, he saw a man down on his knees servicing another man. Then, they switched places, and the “blower” became the “blowee.” Instinctively, Jeremy felt disgusted, but for some reason, he could not keep his eyes off of them. He had never seen anything like it before.

When a police officer patrolling the beat walked toward him, he averted his attention, but the cop paused beside him, looked in the direction of Jeremy’s prior gaze, spotted the two men in action, grunted, and walked on. Jeremy could not believe that the cop had witnessed the public sex and done nothing to stop it.

When the two men had finished their business, they glanced over at Jeremy and smiled. One winked at him, and the other licked his lips, and then they started to walk toward him. Not wanting to be accosted, Jeremy veered briskly in the opposite direction. He turned at the first corner and quickly ducked into the first bar that he came to. It all happened so fast that he did not notice the nameplate, The Talon, or the rainbow flag flying above the door, but it would not have made any difference; he would not have understood the significance anyway.

A Stygian sky loomed heavy over the Travis Ranch when Sheriff Scarpelli pulled up, the ambulance close on his tail. Before he had even turned off the ignition, he saw Wade Dawkins burst out of the barn toward him—toward the ambulance, to be more precise.

“Help him! Help him!” screamed Wade.

“Whoa, sir. Calm down. Tell me what’s happened.”

Out of breath, Wade simply motioned toward the barn. “Follow me,” Scarpelli instructed the EMTs, “but wait outside the barn until I give the all clear. And you,” he commanded Wade, “stay put.”

With his gun drawn, the sheriff entered the dimly lit barn cautiously. In the far corner, he spotted two bodies lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Scarpelli signaled the two deputies who had arrived just behind him to fan out and search the barn for any other bodies, dead or alive.

Ignoring Scarpelli’s earlier warnings, Wade Dawkins rushed past the sheriff and threw himself onto the ground beside one of the two bodies. “He’s alive!” he screamed. “Help him!”

“Clear,” shouted one of the deputies. “Clear,” echoed the other.

Sheriff Scarpelli knelt by the body that Wade was now holding. Feeling a pulse, he hollered for the EMTs. By the time they reached the body, the sheriff had checked the pulse of the other man and verified that he was, in fact, dead—not surprising, considering the amount of blood that had spewed from his chest. When the EMTs lifted the one who was still alive onto the gurney, they exposed a knife lying on the ground.

“Do you know this man?” Scarpelli asked Dawson, pointing to the bloody corpse.

“Yes,” Wade replied. “He’s Carl Pipkins, one of the two ranch hands I hired earlier this month.”

“And the other one?” asked Sheriff Scarpelli.

“He...he’s...” stammered Wade. “He’s my son.”