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Janz County by Richard Eaton 362 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0885; ISBN 1-4120-0516-7; US$28.50, C$32.50, EUR23.50, £16.50 Murder mystery set in the Colorado Rockies with intensely shifting and twisting clues that nearly get Sheriff Janz killed. The culminating finale is anything but your normal old ending.
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About the Book
About the Author
Sample Excerpts
Catalogue Info
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About the Book
Deep in the mountainous wilderness of Colorado, a group pursues Conservation efforts. If asked, most would have answered, "Doin' the good work, ya know." And for the rank and file, that would be an accurate description. There is, however, a small cadre of leadership whose purpose is quite different. Different and infinitely dangerous and devious.
For Sheriff Janz the most brutal crime he's ever seen is intensified by a close personal relationship with the victim. Following clues that have the substance of a puff of smoke in the wind, Janz follows treacherous trails that eventually bring him into contact with a world he never suspected existed in his sparsely populated county. In the course of this investigation, comrades are killed and Janz himself is put at great personal risk. The culmination brings something Janz had never dreamed, threatening an existence he'd taken a lifetime to build.
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About the Author
Richard Eaton was born in Durango Colorado, the town described in this
book. A lifelong resident, he has hiked, hunted and fished extensively in
the area. A licenced pilot, he has flown his own plane over the mountains
and knows them from that perspective too.
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Sample Excerpts
He'd heard the call on the radio as he'd headed for Durango that morning. Durango was the county seat and the office of the Sheriff was in the county court house there. He generally got to the office by seven but he had a court appearance today and planned to go over his testimony for a couple of hours before the day shift came on with all its distractions.
The police radio came on with, "Jogger has reported a dead body off county road two fifteen." Car fourteen responded that he was about fifteen minutes away and responding.
Janz debated with himself. He really needed to go over the testimony he'd be called upon to give today. It was a burglary case against old man Pena. Pena had been a thorn in the side of the law of La Plata County for at least as long as Janz had been here. The old man was an outlaw in every sense of the word. That having been said, he was a likeable old pirate. You couldn't depend on his word any more than you could fly without wings but he could look you right in the eye and lie about the things he did and make you like him enough to almost believe it.
There was really no contest to the debate though, about going on to the office or diverting to the site of the reported body. While dead bodies were not unheard of here, they were at least rare enough to be of supreme interest to the sheriff.
County road two fifteen was a relatively short forest service access road that ran east off the main highway approximately twenty miles north of Durango. He was just entering the west side of the town and without hesitation, he turned north on route twenty five.
This early, there was virtually no traffic to contend with but he used his police lights so a chance meeting with a highway patrol wouldn't become a hassle. He was there in fifteen minutes. The dust of the graded dirt road raised by the deputies car was still in the air as he pulled in. He parked behind the other police car and as he moved down over the brow of the hill at the roads edge, he saw that in addition to the deputy, there was a man dressed in some kind of sweat clothes. Janz surmised that this must be the 'jogger'.
The deputies name was Richard Sanchez. Seeing the sheriff, he deferred to him. "Looks like a mean one, sheriff." He gestured to a blanket covered form behind him. The sun had cleared the ridge to the east but the gloomy shadows cast by the aspens still hid most details.
Janz turned to the jogger. "You found him?"
The man was tall and slender. His face was thin with a hooked nose and a thin slash of a mouth. The hood of the sweat jacket was up over his head and it hid his hair. As he turned his face to Janz, it seemed that he was quite pale. Janz figured that he couldn't blame him for that.
The Jogger had to clear his throat before he could respond. Finally , "It's not a he. And yeah, I found her." He shook his head as his eyes seemed to go blank with introspection. "It's a terrible thing." He seemed to search for a more descriptive phrase and not to find it. He shook his head again. "terrible."
"How'd you happen to be here?"
This question seemed to steady the man. "I live down here 'bout a mile an' a half." He gestured vaguely south. "I always jog for a couple a miles in the mornin' . Been comin' this way since the snow went off. I know the country pretty well, I mean how the sides of the road looks and all that. I noticed this morning that a car had pulled way over to the side. 'Bout near far enough to run up on the bank up there. Looked like a good place for a breather, so I went over to the side of the road to see if they might of threw somethin' out."
Here he paused and looked at Janz. "Ya see, I find a lot of places where folks just pull off the road an' throw their trash right out. Makes me mad that they do it but all I can do is try to pick it up if it's not too bad. This time, I couldn't see any trash at all but I could see right away that something had been drug down the slope there. I could see it in the grass. I guess the blades a grass was bent down or maybe it was just they'd drug the dew off. Anyway, I figured they'd put some trash off down in the trees so it wouldn't be obvious. I followed along an'... I ...." He seemed to lose his train of thought and looked around blankly.
Figuring that he'd probably got all the man had to give, Janz gave a kind "Thanks", and moved off toward the body. Someone had covered it up with a blanket. It appeared to be a thick blanket but it was sodden with something that appeared to be black. Janz knew what that was. Blood soaked material, whether a blanket or clothes, after a while appeared black. Janz knew that he wouldn't like what he was going to see.
Up closer, the smell of blood was sickening. He'd never liked that smell, seldom hunted because of that dislike. He noticed that a foot protruded from the bottom of the blanket. It was dirty with mud, or maybe just more blood.
Curious to see if it was indeed blood on the foot, he took a corner of the blanket that was relatively clean and lifting it, exposed the lower body to the waist. He sucked in his breath. He'd never seen anything like this. Someone had slashed the legs to pieces. There was shreds of cloth tangled in and mixed with the flesh until the body resembled a kind of crazy patchwork. It was impossible for him to tell if she had been wearing pants or a dress. Whoever had done this must have been in a frenzy.
The smell was making him feel nauseous. He let the blanket drop and moved back to breath deeply. Deputy Sanchez was returning from his vehicle. "Coroners on the way." He announced. The coroner was the owner and operator of the 'Chanis Mortuary' in Durango.
They couldn't afford a full time coroner here, had no need for one with their average of only one point seventy seven homicides a year. Someone at the office had computed that statistic one time. Janz had no idea if it was a true figure but they clearly had no need for a full time coroner. There was only a small fee to be had for the service and the duty had passed around between the town doctors for a while. They did it out of feeling of civic duty but they clearly had no interest in it.
Bob Chanis, on the other hand, seemed to think it lent him stature. Janz thought that Bob badly needed a boost in his ego. If there was a stigma attached to undertaking, and Janz supposed that there was, Bob was acutely aware of it. Asked what his profession was, Bob never failed to boost his coroner position, seldom mentioning the mortuary that was his real profession. Curiously, the mortuary that he seemed to be ashamed of brought him more than just a living. Janz figured that Bob was probably one of the richest men in the county.
Briefly considering the facts about Bob gave Janz the excuse to get his mind off the mutilated thing behind him. Now though, he needed to get back to it. Where most law enforcement offices in the country today had specialists in crime detection that were responsible for intensively checking a crime scene, here in La Plata county, the sheriff's department was all that was available.
To keep from having to look at the body again right away, Janz circled out , looking for anything at all out of the ordinary . After ten minutes, he was ready to concede that whoever had done this had not left any sign that would be obvious enough to hit him in the eye. He'd let deputy Sanchez do the really painstaking work of looking the site over. He had the excuse that he had to get back to the office and his testimony for the court appearance.
For appearance sake, he went back to the body and studied the area directly around it. There were several scuffed places but nothing that he could see that would be much help. Reluctantly and almost as an afterthought, he lifted the blanket from the victims head.
He would ever after remember that instant. He'd thought he'd see nothing except more of the slashed and unrecognizable flesh like that of the body down below. He'd always wonder why, but the head was unscathed. The dark brown hair, nearly black, was spread around the face in a cloud. The features were composed, the eyes closed with the mouth turned slightly up in what could be termed a whimsical smile. If it were possible to ignore the devastation of the body below, it would almost be possible to believe the girl was sleeping.
He must have gasped. Deputy Sanchez was suddenly there. "You OK, sheriff?" At that point, he saw the face himself . A hissed "Ohh..." emanated from him. "Sorry sheriff. I never really looked at the face and didn't know. I just threw the blanket on without looking at her face much." This was offered in a low voice.
Janz was vaguely aware that the other was talking but he didn't catch the words. This girl laying here on the ground, cold and dead, was Susan. Susan Heath. His neighbor. A girl who had become very nearly the daughter that he'd never had. It was suddenly too much. Although he wasn't aware that he did it, he dropped the blanket and turning, stumbled up the hill to his car.
Catalogue Information
