Broken Heartland (4 page)

There never was much traffic on Main these days. The street was empty of cars, but littered with the first dead leaves of fall. That and the black walnuts kids liked to roll out in front of motorists. When you ran over them, they exploded with a sound like the crack of a rifle. The sheriff recalled strewing a few walnuts in his own youth. He and his friends had thought it was great fun to watch people duck and start searching for snipers. Since 9/11, the prank had a new edge to it. Not that that had stopped anyone.

There hadn't been a hard enough frost to bring down all the leaves yet. Bright yellow and red, they clung to the tops of the mature trees that lined the street. Lower down and nearer the trunks, they were still a tired green. The condemned, awaiting execution.

The sheriff ran over a couple of walnuts and finished his call before he turned in at the high school. The first of its buildings had been erected on the east edge of town back before the Great Depression. The school was still on the east edge, since the city had pretty much stopped growing soon after. The sheriff found a spot in the parking lot, not far from the signs that indicated the gym was a polling place today.

A single crow sat on a ledge above the entrance to the high school. It watched him silently as he passed through those familiar doors. The bird looked like it wanted to tell him something. Since this was Election Day and the evangelical right had targeted him, “nevermore” would be appropriate.

The sheriff turned down the hall toward the principal's office before he remembered the cotton Doc had packed in his nose. He wasn't about to walk in there sounding like Elmer Fudd. Instead, he stepped into the boys' room and carefully removed the packing from each nostril. The right one started bleeding again. The dispenser was out of paper towels, so he stepped into a booth to look for toilet paper.

The restroom door opened and someone entered.

“Are you crazy?” a cracking adolescent voice asked. “What if someone finds us in here?”

The sheriff could remember sneaking into this very room several times when he should have been in class. Secretly making plans to raid a girls' slumber party, for instance. In his day, those raids had been pretty innocent. Boyfriends stole a kiss from their girls, would-be boyfriends tried to get attention by setting off firecrackers or sneaking up to windows and holding a flashlight under their chins to look spooky. No one ever got hurt. Except when one of his buddies had run from an angry chaperoning father, an impressive burst of speed that was spoiled by the clothesline in his path. And then, it was mostly hurt pride, though his friend had spoken with a peculiar squeaky voice for a few weeks afterward.

“Don't worry about it,” another voice said. “Worry about what happens if you talk about last night.”

That got the sheriff's attention. Wynn had run into a school bus during that night. But that wasn't necessarily what the boys were talking about. The sheriff decided his nose could use a bit more quiet pressure here in the stall.

“I won't say anything,” the younger one whined.

“Swear to God,” the other demanded.

Whatever it was, it was serious to these two.

“I swear.”

“And I condemn my soul to eternal damnation if I break my word,” the older prompted. “Say that, too.”

Everyone in the sheriff's class had been Christians. Everyone in the county was, with the exception of Mad Dog, a couple of Jews, a converted Buddhist, the Muslims who ran the hardware store over in Cottonwood Corners, and a few closet agnostics and atheists. But English and his classmates hadn't worried much about eternal damnation. That was something new. The sheriff didn't like it much. English didn't like anything that required everyone to believe the same as everyone else. When you had a brother like his, you tended to be aware of stuff like that.

“I….” The first voice didn't care for that version of the oath.

“Swear it,” the second boy said. “Swear you'll never tell anybody where you were last night, Chucky, or I'm gonna personally shove you through the gates of hell myself.”

Chucky. That must be Chucky Williams—his old man had only been a couple of classes behind the sheriff. English was pretty sure there wasn't another Chucky in the county, though there were several Chucks.

How many times had he heard lives threatened in these hallowed halls while he was growing up? None of those had been serious threats. This probably wasn't either, but it did seem to be getting out of hand. He dropped the bloody toilet paper in the bowl and took hold of the handle of the stall. The door stuck and he had to yank a couple of times to get it open.

“Holy shit,” Chucky said.

“Somebody's in here,” the other finished.

Both of them were out the door before the sheriff could get a look at them. And no one was in the hall when he exited the restroom. He knew how many potential escape routes they had. He'd never catch them, but Chucky should be easy to find. And he'd recognize the other voice if he heard it again.

Could something else have happened last night that required such a solemn oath of secrecy? It could when you were in your teens, he decided. But when he looked across the hall at the windows facing Main Street, the crow was sitting on the sill. It was staring in, watching the sheriff and turning its head from side to side as if it couldn't believe he'd let a clue like that get away.

***

Heather answered the line Mrs. Kraus wasn't on. “Benteen County Sheriff's Office.”

“Who's this?” The brusque voice was an older man's.

“My name's English,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Oh, sorry, Sheriff,” the man at the other end of the line said. “I wasn't expecting a woman.”

He thought she was Sheriff English. What a kick. She should tell him, but he still hadn't identified himself.

“And you are?”

“Sorry. Hell of a morning here in Hays. Can't remember the last time we had to expend so much energy doing some other jurisdiction's work for them.”

This guy had an attitude. She hadn't told him she was the sheriff. His mistake. Let him live with it. She didn't say anything and he correctly interpreted her silence.

“Okay. I know. Little county like yours hasn't got much manpower, but we don't exactly have a generous budget either. I'm Under-Sheriff Pugh. Sheriff passed your request on to me, not that I ain't got more open cases than Carter's got liver pills.”

Carter? Liver pills? And
man
power? This Pugh must be a serious coot with a tint of misogyny.

“And?” Heather said.

“Yeah, I'm getting to it.” He paused and she heard him thumb through a notepad. “I questioned everyone who was on that bus your deputy rammed. A couple are gonna be kept for more treatment. Rest should be released by this evening.” He recited a brief litany of their injuries.

“They all say they were coming from choir practice at Bible camp,” he continued. “Kinda early for choir practice, if you ask me, which you didn't. Your bus driver didn't end up here. You'll have to check, see where another ambulance might of took him.”

“Names?” Heather kept it short and sweet. She didn't trust him not to recognize how young she was. Twenty-two, now, but she didn't feel like a full-scale grownup. Not most of the time, anyway.

“You mean the kids? I didn't ask who was driving the bus. Figured you would of established that at the scene.”

“Yeah, kids,” she agreed. He read off the list and she wrote them down on a sheet of scratch paper. She didn't have to ask him how to spell them. She knew them all. She and her sister had been babysitters for every single one.

“Anything else?”

He sighed, like she'd demanded he give up the rest of his precious day. “Well, they all agreed your deputy was running without lights until just before he rammed them. Why'd he do that, Englishman? Why'd…?” He paused a moment. “Say,” he said, “if you're a woman, why do they call you Englishman?”

“Inside joke,” she said. “You got anything else for me?”

“Ain't that enough?”

“Thanks for your generous cooperation.” Heather hit the disconnect button. Beyond his rudeness and attitude, there was something about their conversation that bothered her.

“Mrs. Kraus.” The woman had just hung up her own line. “Didn't you tell me everyone from the accident but the driver of the Dodge and Wynn-Some were transported to Hays?”

“That's right.” Mrs. Kraus was making notes of her own and the phone had just started ringing again. “Why?”

“Then where's the bus driver?”

Mrs. Kraus raised an eyebrow and shook her head. Then she raised her phone and answered it.

So who was the bus driver? And what was this crap about choir practice at Bible camp? The county's only Bible camp was never open except in summer, and a church choir shouldn't have anything to do with Buffalo Springs High. You couldn't use a school bus to transport a church choir, could you? Wasn't that mixing church and state?

Then, what Mrs. Kraus said destroyed her train of thought.

“Mad Dog. Calm down. What d'ya mean, attempted murder?”

***

The sense of impending doom that had brought Mad Dog speeding down from the Black Hills was nearly forgotten by the time he got off the phone with Mrs. Kraus. His brother, Englishman, she'd assured him, was alive and well and out there trying to solve the mystery behind this morning's accident. When Mad Dog told her he might check in with Englishman on the sheriff's cell, Mrs. Kraus advised against it. Englishman needed a free line so he could get updates from the office and the localities to which the injured had been transported. And he needed to be left alone to do his job since he was a one-man department this morning.

Mad Dog decided he'd found what he dreaded. What pulled him off that mountain must be that obscene political muck in his front yard and on his door, and the attempt on the life of his beloved Hailey. If Englishman was too busy to help him solve those crimes, Mad Dog would do it himself.

Armed with his own cell phone, so he wouldn't have to drive back to the house to contact Englishman or Mrs. Kraus, he and Hailey started back to the Mini Cooper. Halfway across the front yard, Mad Dog changed his mind. He sprinted back past the house toward the barn and a view of the pasture beyond. Antifreeze in Hailey's water could as easily be duplicated in the cattle tank where his small buffalo herd drank.

The water in the trough also looked green, but just from the moss that lined it. The liquid itself was as clear and pure as always. There weren't any dead bison lying around, either. The ones he could see all looked reassuringly fat and sassy. He couldn't see all of them, of course. They had a full section to graze on.

Mark Brown was the kid he'd hired to keep an eye on the place and do chores while he was gone. Mad Dog wanted a word with him. The assault on his home hadn't taken place this morning. The dead squirrel and poisoned animals were too desiccated for that. Mark should have dumped the poison, disposed of the dead animals, hosed off his front door, and taken down the offensive sign. Mad Dog wanted an explanation and an apology.

“Kid” wasn't quite the right word for Mark. He was in his mid-twenties. Mark had gone off to major in agronomy after Buffalo Springs High. Apparently he'd been better at parties than studies. He hadn't brought home a degree. He'd been helping his folks farm these last few years—a bit on the lazy side but with a good heart. Or so Mad Dog thought when he left his farm and buffalo herd in the young man's care.

Mark would probably be at his folk's place. Farmers didn't get out much, except to pick up supplies or deliver crops. And there wasn't much entertainment to be found in Buffalo Springs. The Browns' farm was on the next section north, surrounded by acres of winter wheat that stretched from the road like an immense treeless lawn. A cluster of evergreens and a couple of rusty maples marked the Browns' homestead, a sprawling ranch-style house surrounded by modern metal outbuildings. But the house was empty and the buildings were closed up and silent. Mad Dog wandered about and shouted a few hellos, without effect.

He got back in the Mini Cooper and went north another section. The Browns farmed that one, too. And, sure enough, there was a tractor tilling some low ground near the creek. Mad Dog pulled up beside the fence, got out, waded through a weed-filled ditch, and waved.

Mark's dad finished the row he was working, then parked his rig and walked over to join Mad Dog at the edge of the field. Hailey ignored Brown, checking the ditch for quail, pheasant, bunnies, or grizzly bears for all Mad Dog knew.

“Didn't expect you home so soon,” Brown said, keeping a wary eye on Hailey's bushy tail. Brown knew Hailey well enough and he liked dogs and all, but he'd never quite warmed to the idea of a wolf-hybrid. Hailey knew him, too, which was probably why she was staying busy elsewhere. She didn't dislike him so she didn't go out of her way to make him nervous the way she did with some folks.

“Just got back,” Mad Dog said. “I was looking for Mark.”

“Figured,” Brown said. “Thought he'd be at your place. Me and his ma haven't seen him since you asked him to sleep over at your house while you were gone.”

Mad Dog hadn't asked Mark to do that. In fact, he hadn't even left Mark a key. All he'd asked was that Mark check on the place and the buffalo every day, feed them some alfalfa and grain, and call Englishman if there were any problems. Still, maybe the lie Mark told his parents was a white one. Maybe he had something going with a young lady or…. Mad Dog couldn't imagine an “or,” not in Benteen County.

“No, I missed him. He might be running an errand in town. Mark doesn't have a cell phone, does he?”

“Nope,” the farmer said. “Not unless he's found himself a job that pays a lot better than I do.”