Favorite Sons by Robin Yocum

and yelping.
    When she called up the morning after the body of Petey Sanchez had been discovered, I was already awake and awaiting her call. Spread on the kitchen table was the morning Wheeling Intelligencer. I was anxious to see what had been written about Petey, but I stuck to my morning routine and poured a bowl of raisin bran cereal and snagged the sports page. I feigned interest in the baseball box scores until she put fifteen dollars on the table with a list printed on an index card of groceries she wanted from Connell’s Market, reminded me to clean the gutters, and headed out the door. When I heard the front door close, I waited a few minutes, then began flipping through the Intelligencer ’s local news section. The story was on page five, a four-paragraph brief under a one-column headline:
    Boy’s Body Found;
Foul Play Suspected
    The body of a 17-year-old mentally retarded boy was discovered in a wooded area west of Crystalton yesterday afternoon by a woman picking berries, according to Jefferson County Sheriff Sky Kelso.
    Kelso identified the boy as Peter Eugene Sanchez of 117 River Street, Crystalton. Kelso said relatives had not seen the boy since late Sunday, but had not reported him missing.
    Kelso said Sanchez died of head trauma and “not the type you receive from a fall.” When asked if Sanchez had been murdered, Kelso said, “It’s not much of a stretch to suspect foul play,” but he would not release further details. The boy appeared to have been dead “at least 24 hours, but we’ll know more after the autopsy,” Kelso said.
    The body was sent to the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office in Pittsburgh for the autopsy. Kelso said the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department is working on the case in conjunction with the Crystalton Police Department.
    My ass puckered at the thought of the sheriff’s department investigating the case. The Crystalton Police Department consisted of Errol Durkin and two full-time patrolmen—Errol’s brother Flip and Bobby Joe Wyatt—and seven or eight auxiliary officers who worked a couple shifts a month. The thought of them solving a murder case was laughable, but I didn’t find the sheriff’s department as humorous. Sky Kelso was a former U.S. Army military policeman who liked to see his photograph in the paper and personally showed up at every big crime scene in the county. Kelso had a capable staff and full-time detectives that he would turn loose and ride herd over, because he knew that solved crimes made for happy voters.
    Connell’s Market opened at eight. Before I left the house I reminded myself that just because someone looked at me didn’t mean they were thinking that I was part of a murder conspiracy. I walked into the store about twenty after eight to find my third-grade teacher, Florence “Bulldog” Kearns, standing at the checkout counter with her usual scowl, from which she earned her nickname,chatting with Jewel Connell. As I neared the counter, Miss Kearns halted her conversation with Jewel in mid-sentence and zeroed in on me with the cold, gray eyes that had terrified Crystalton third-graders for generations. “What do you know about this affair with Pete Sanchez?” she asked.
    I was prepared. This was little Crystalton, and I knew that all anyone would be talking about was Petey’s death. I had steeled myself against acting paranoid. I shrugged and said, “I guess he died of some kind of head injury.”
    â€œWell, I know that much,” Miss Kearns said. “Have you heard anything else?”
    â€œJust what I read in the morning paper.”
    When it was apparent that I could contribute no additional information about Petey, she dismissed me as quickly as she had in the third grade when I became stumped on a multiplication problem.
    I had Artie Connell slice me a half-pound of turkey breast and an equal amount of mild cheddar at the deli counter,