Sheriff Charles Matthews

Crawford County, Texas, hadn't had a deliberate homicide in 80 years, and Sheriff Charles Matthews liked that statistic just fine, particularly since his department wasn't generously endowed with manpower. He had one deputy who took pride in how far he could spit tobacco and another one who couldn't tell his backside from his elbow. Neither of these deputies bothered Crawford County because folks understood them. They didn't altogether understand Charles Matthews. It wasn't his law degree- lots of folks had law degrees and were still respectable-and it wasn't the fact he was from Dallas. It wasn't even because he never told anybody why he left Dallas. It was because Charles had no nickname in an area where nicknames were as common as sagebrush. Still, Crawford County took Charles at face value as a good man until he proved otherwise. When Billy Joe Williams was murdered on a lonely county road, Charles knew that someone else counted on being taken at face value.

When cowboy artist Willie Russell is murdered on the Branding Iron Ranch, Sheriff Charles Matthews faces a mystery that seems built on the bones of the past. Willie Russell leaves behind sketches that illustrate a century-old legend of a brutal outlaw, a beautiful young woman, and the lost Santiago Crucifix, a three-foot-tall cross of solid gold. With only the sketches, the footprints of Johnny Brentwood, and very little else, Charles focuses on the eerie links between past and present events. Were Willie's sketches the story of the past, or a portent of the future?

Enrique Armijo, archaeologist, and in his own mind, the world's authority on the Folsom Man culture, is spying on a ritual performed by the so-called Skin People in the crater of Capulin Mountain, an extinct volcano in northern New Mexico. He doesn't expect to be murdered. He certainly doesn't expect the weapon to be a prehistoric atl-atl. Back in Crawford County, Texas, Sheriff Charles Matthews doesn't expect a call from his deputy, Raul Trujillo, about the archaeologist's murder and the bizarre weapon used. He certainly doesn't expect to hear that the atl-atl has been found in his deputy's hotel room and that Raul is charged with murder. Knowing that no matter what the evidence says, Raul didn't murder anyone, Charles leaves his badge behind in Texas and steps into New Mexican Sheriff Kit Lindman's territory to prove his deputy and friend innocent.

Eight thousand hunters descend on Crawford County, Texas, for the annual pheasant season. To Sheriff Charles Matthews that's eight thousand chances for a gun-related accident. But when the most hated man in the county, banker Rich Hansford, turns up with his face removed by a shotgun blast, it's no accident; it's murder. To Crawford County folk, it's a public service killing, and no one, not even the sheriff's staff, are much interested in seeing anyone arrested. Certainly no one will inform on his neighbor; in fact, no one will talk at all. It's up to the sheriff to break through the wall of silence and arrest the murderer.

When the mummified remains of a World War II G.I. are unearthed in the sub-basement of the Crawford County Courthouse, the residents, well-known for their nonstop gossip, are suddenly as quiet as the soldier's grave. Sheriff Charles Matthews is frustrated by the town's silence. He isn't planning to arrest anyone for a murder more than fifty years old, but he does want to bury the soldier's remains with a name other than John Doe. One of the local oldsters must know that name, but no one, not even his spinster dispatcher, Miss Poole, will talk. Whoever John Doe was, he still frightens Crawford County's senior citizens fifty years after his death.