by Charles West
There was a dead body in the tractor shed. It had to wait, however, until the Friant Police Department and the Friant County Sheriff’s Department figured out who it belonged to. The tractor shed was at the center of a small fig orchard. No one was sure if the property, and therefore, jurisdiction belonged to the city or the county. Unlike television and movie law enforcement officers, actual police do not engage in turf battles over dead bodies. No one wants another potentially unsolved murder case damaging their statistics.
by Ron Van Sweringen
She was tired of being robbed every morning. I could tell by the way she looked at me with those blinking eyes when I entered the chicken coop. She was the only white hen in my grandmother’s flock of twelve hens and one large, very mean, red rooster.
by Bill Butler
A knock on the door. I put down my bowl of oatmeal. Through the glass I saw my neighbor, Cam Farley.
“Come on in Cam, get out of the cold.” It was an unusually chilly February morning. The bright sunlight didn’t put a dent on the ground frost. The frozen scrub grass didn’t move in the breeze.
