Let's begin with the "investigation" by the Sheriff's Office::

In an interview, Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas III said Charles Kirk, one of his captains, informed him of an "accidental shooting" about 5:30 p.m. Central time Saturday. Kirk told him that he had been summoned to the ranch to escort an ambulance to a hospital in nearby Kingsville.

About 10 minutes later, Salinas said, a Secret Service agent traveling with Cheney called him on his cell phone to say there had been a hunting accident involving the vice president; he did not name the victim.

When Kirk arrived at the ranch, the ambulance had already left...

Actually, this initial report leaves several questions unanswered; Was Salinas saying that Kirk informed him of the shooting at 5:30 or that the shooting took place at 5:30? And who had "summoned" Kirk, and what time did the call come in?  So far the investigation seems to be at a dead end, but then:

Salinas said he called a worker he knew lived on the ranch and asked him for information. The ranch hand, a former county sheriff, called back and described the incident as a hunting accident. Salinas said he decided to send an investigator in the morning because he knew the victim was being hospitalized and he felt assured that it was an accident.

So this was what passed for the initial investigation by the Kenedy County Sheriff's office.  He called a man that he knew, who went and talked to someone he knew.  So of course fourteen hours later, he could say with confidence that his investigation showed no sign of alcohol as a factor in the shooting.  What a relief for everyone involved.

But perhaps realizing that conducting an investigation by phone might be perceived by some as rather lazy and sloppy, Chief Deputy Gilbert San Miguel Jr. rushed to the ranch the next morning to interview Vice President Cheney, where:

Cheney "just explained to me what happened," he said, adding that the vice president characterized the incident as a "hunting accident."

"After what [Cheney] told us, we concluded it was an accident," Salinas said. "All [San Miguel] had left to do was talk to the victim." San Miguel and another sheriff's deputy spoke to Whittington in the hospital Monday morning.

"He did inform me this was an accident," said San Miguel

And of course no one would question the word of the victim, even if:

"Sally (Whittington) May said her father does not recall a lot of the incident, nor was he involved in how or whether information about the incident was released:  `He didn't know at the time if he was going to the hospital or the mortuary.'"

Sheriff Salinas further explained his actions to the Dallas News and gave (another) rather extraordinary example of his unique investigative skills :

"If I wanted to go in there, we would have gone in there," said Mr. Salinas. "If someone called and told me there was a shooting and they didn't think it was an accident, I'd have five or six people on the ranch."

And while we have statements from both the Sheriff's Office and the White House that the sheriff was called  sometime on Saturday evening (more on that later), they apparently weren't admitting it to a lot of people.  For example, from the newspaper that originally broke the story:

Driving back to Corpus Christi, Powell talked to Armstrong in detail, and Garcia reported the story fully. She confirmed the shooting with the White House, checked on Whittington's condition at the hospital and called the Kenedy County Sheriff's Office, who said at the time that they had no record of a shooting incident at the Armstrong Ranch.

And from a rival Corpus Christi newspaper:

Francesco, at the Corpus Christi paper, said she felt it was a bit odd that her newsroom had not received any information about the shooting since "we often call law enforcement in the area, even on weekends. We checked in and didn't hear anything about it."

And when the Dallas Morning News called for a comment:

"There was no immediate reason given as to why the incident wasn't reported until Sunday," the Dallas Morning News observed. "The sheriff's office in Kenedy County did not respond to phone calls Sunday."

One wonders why the Sheriff's office wasn't more forthcoming with information...assuming they had it.

There are also these varying accounts of the police being turned away from the Armstrong ranch after the shooting...we go from this:

The Secret Service said it had turned away one sheriff's deputy at the ranch the night of the accident because arrangements had been made for Cheney to be interviewed the following morning, Associated Press said.

To this:

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said at least one deputy was turned away shortly after the shooting because security personnel at the ranch were not aware of the agreement between the sheriff and the Secret Service.

And finally, to this:

While there were reports, some from the sheriff himself, that a deputy had been dispatched to the ranch on Saturday night and been turned away, Mr. Zahren said that some local police officers had heard about the shooting on a scanner when an ambulance was sent to pick up Mr. Whittington. They showed up at the ranch unsolicited. Private guards, not Secret Service agents, Mr. Zahren said, turned the police away because they did not know anything had occurred.

And for a moment forget how the story changed, and consider this...the police came to the ranch "unsolicited" and were turned away.  From earlier reports, we know that the Sheriff knows there had been a shooting.  Somehow I think that if the police showed up at my door under those circumstances, turning them away would not be an option.

And what time did the shooting take place?  But all accounts, from the White House, from the Sheriff's Office and even as noted on the accident report, the shooting occurred at 5:30 pm.  But today the Secret Service has clarified
their timeline:

Eric Zahren, a Secret Service spokesman, said the shooting occurred at 5:50 p.m. Central time, slightly later than the White House had said at first.

As I said, the official accident report said 5:30, and the Sheriff had announced that a Chief Deputy had gotten a call saying it happened at 5:30...certainly neither of them had gotten their information from the White House, they received their information from the witnesses...Dick Cheney and Katharine Armstrong.  Presumably there is a reason for suddenly changing the time "slightly," but I won't engage in speculation.

 
And finally, I'll end with the question of exactly how far away Whittington was when Vice President Dick Cheney shot him in the face?  At this point, all reports claim that Whittington was "about 30 yards" behind Cheney.  But even Whittington's friends and supporters are having trouble believing that:

Hunters at the Vaughn Building are skeptical. The hunt took place on a cold, windy afternoon. Whittington and his fellow hunters were probably wearing warm clothing--say, a jacket and a flannel shirt. Cheney was using a 28-gauge shotgun, a smaller-diameter firearm with pellets smaller than BBs. Whittington's friends question whether the pellets could have penetrated his layers of clothing and skin at that range. Yet two pellets lodged against his larynx, another was in his liver, and another migrated into the heart muscle, causing the heart attack. The pattern of wounds was between the lower chest and the forehead, a pretty tight zone for shot of 30 yards. If the range was considerably less than 30 yards, then it is likely that Whittington's injuries were worse than the initial statement by Katharine Armstrong indicated. (The blast "knocked him silly," but "he was fine.")

And from the New York Times, a doctor's point of view:

Dr. O. Wayne Isom, the chairman of heart and chest surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College, said it was unlikely that a pellet would migrate to the heart through the bloodstream, as some have assumed from the account of the Texas doctors. [...]

A more likely explanation, Dr. Isom said, is that the pellet lodged in or touched the heart when Mr. Whittington was shot.

This story has moved into the realm of "a riddle inside a mystery, wrapped in an enigma."  And each day of clarification simply raises more questions.  

And I see it's nearly time for Cheney's mea culpa to the world, so perhaps Part III is coming soon.