Unholy
Shepherd
ONE
Detective Manny Benitez took his last sip of beer and set the bottle on the bar. The crowd at Smokey’s was changing over from the usual after-work crew to the after-dinner drinkers, and soon the air in the bar would reflect the bar’s name. He wanted to be out before that happened. Smokey’s was one of the few places in town that he actually liked to stop in to, as it was only a block south of Main Street and less than a five-minute walk from work, but he usually didn’t stay past nine.
Manny got up from the bar, turned, and scanned the dining room. A small group of officers from the precinct had taken a table in a corner to his right and had begun their socializing. Manny didn’t want to be spotted as he left if he could help it; the way he felt about his coworkers was complicated. They were all brothers-in-arms as civil servants, but he’d never really assimilated into the rest of the fraternity. He chose a longer path to the exit, around the tables to his left, hoping to get by unnoticed. He’d just reached the door and was about to push it open when a familiar, gravelly voice rose above the rest of the noise.
“Hey, Benny!” It rang out, and the rest of the patrons seemed to lower their voices in response. “Where the hell d’ya think you’re going?”
Manny tried to hide the cringe that came to his face as he turned. The voice had come from Sergeant Sam Wentworth, seated in the middle of a semi-circle of four other officers. Around him were the men who could usually be found with him when out on the town: Alan Scottsdale, Mike McKeegan, and the Henderson twins—Lance and Todd. These five had all been high school friends and came through the academy together. It was clear to all, even to the grade schoolers of the mid-80s like Manny, that Wentworth had always been the group’s leader. Everyone knew the Wentworth Gang.
“Heading home, Sarge,” he said, trying to sound as casual as possible. “I got an early morning.”
“Yeah,” Wentworth snickered, “huge day of pushing those six papers from one side of your desk to the other!” The entire table burst into laughter. Manny couldn’t tell if it was sincere, or if they were just humoring their king. He figured it was probably fifty-fifty. He smiled along, gave a wave of his hand and, leaving them to their merriment, turned around and headed out into the night.
It felt strangely warm and muggy, even for the middle of August. Manny sighed as he walked to his car. Wentworth and the others weren’t wrong. There was a reason that there was only one detective in the Sycamore Hills Police Department. It was a small town in the middle of nowhere, and there were very few crimes that were committed that needed much more investigation than talking to some of the locals or making a few phone calls. He sometimes thought about going back to school.
Manny reached his truck, and the driver’s seat groaned slightly as he sat down. The truck was nearly a decade and a half old, but it was the one thing in his life that he counted as a truly prized possession. He could still remember the day he bought it during his junior year of college. It had nearly one hundred thousand miles on it then, and its frame and body were starting to go, but he kept the engine running as well as ever. It was a point of pride for him to be able to work on his own vehicle; a little bit of his father rubbing off on him. He started the truck, rolled down his window to let in the night air, and drove off toward home.
It would take less than ten minutes to get from Smokey’s to the house he rented on the northern end of town, and there were very few other cars out on the road after nine on a Wednesday. In a town of barely four thousand, the only ones out and about were civil servants and maybe some students from the local junior college. Manny switched on the truck’s radio and turned right off Main Street onto the road that would take him home. He’d been listening to public radio on his way to work that morning, but switched to FM for his Top 40 for the ride home. With the strong bass beats of the latest release playing, he retreated into his thoughts.
Thus far, in his eighteen months on the force, his toughest case had been tracking down the culprits of a graffiti spree last fall. The only reason the department had even given it as much attention as they did was because the teens responsible had tagged the county courthouse, which stands within the municipal borders of Sycamore Hills. It had been a sneaker footprint preserved in mud
