A Mammoth Murder — Bill Crider

It starts when Blacklin County, Texas, oddball tough-guy Bud Turley asks Sheriff Dan Rhodes to guard an enormous tooth Bud found, which he claims belonged to Bigfoot. Shortly thereafter, the body of Bud's friend Larry is found in the vicinity of the "discovery." Bigfoot enthusiasts are convinced it's the creature's handiwork, especially when an elderly woman who ran a feedstore nearby is found with a broken neck. Rhodes suspects a monster of the more human variety.

Though feral pigs, copperheads and other dangers roam the area, Rhodes thinks both deaths are connected to the disappearance of a local boy a decade earlier. With Bigfoot mania running amok at his crime scene, Rhodes quietly pursues the trail of a killer with a deadly reputation of his own that he wants to keep buried.

One hot summer morning, big, tough Bud Turley brings an enormous tooth into the Blacklin County police station and asks Sheriff Dan Rhodes to keep it for him until the paleontologist from the community college comes up to examine it. Turley insists that the tooth is proof that Bigfoot roams the woods---unless it is from a prehistoric animal, which Rhodes thinks is more likely. But Turley's buddy Larry Colley has maintained for years that he's seen Bigfoot. Most inhabitants of Blacklin County have avoided those woods, but Colley and Bud are at home there, and Turley is ready to crow over his find. However, the next day his body is found in the forest, leaving Larry Colley more certain than ever that a monster is lurking there.

Dan Rhodes is not sure that Bud's death is the work of an "ordinary" criminal. And he wouldn't be too surprised if somehow feral hogs were involved; Rhodes knows what many Texans don't---it is estimated that at least a million and a half feral hogs roam the state; many believe it could be twice that many. But when the sheriff is faced with the murder of an elderly woman in the small store she ran at the edge of the woods, he knows he has a human killer on his hands.