Dave Schwinghammer

Soldier's Gap Dave Schwinghammer

When high school principal Jerry Egge sets out on his morning jog, he spots a red scrawl on the water tower, suggesting he go screw himself.

Fifteen minutes later, Jerry is dead, bludgeoned to death by a Louisville Slugger with a Wayne Terwilliger endorsement.

Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins arrives on the scene, suffering from a hangover. He's not all that thrilled about dealing with blood and a dead body.

But he hasn't seen anything yet. When he touches the band of Egge's baseball cap, he sees Egge's life pass before his eyes. He thinks he must be in shock.

Mingo Jones, the night deputy and a Mescalero Apache, wants to hold a ghost medicine ceremony for his former friend to insure that Egge is not caught between the Shadow World and the Land of Ever Summer.

Faced with more hoodoo than a kabbala scholar, the cynical Jenkins begins to track Egge's killer. The suspects are as legion as those in a William Peter Blatty novel. The superintendent of schools is romancing Egge's wife. One of Egge's students was expelled for bringing a gun to school and had been making threatening phone calls. A farmer, who is the closest thing to an eyewitness, has a son who's acting awfully guilty. And there's a beautiful young girl who confesses to having painted the obscenity on the tower.

Will the haunted Jenkins hunt down the killer, or will he, too, wind up trapped between the Shadow World and the Land of Ever Summer?