Plains Crazy (11 page)

“What happened to him?” the sheriff said, trying to check everywhere at once. His truck had stopped crossways in the road, enfolded by a cloud of dust.

“Over there,” Stone said. The sheriff looked where the Cheyenne's eyes pointed. A tangle of bloody rags lay at the base of one of the cottonwoods. It no longer resembled clothing. Nor did what was inside it resemble a human being.

“Oh God, I've killed somebody out for an innocent ride.”

“More his fault than yours,” Stone observed, “and not so innocent, I think.” He nodded a few yards back up the road to where a broken pile of sticks and feathers lay bound together by a piece of cord.

“That was a Cheyenne bow and he had it slung across his shoulder.”

***

“You haven't changed,” Mad Dog said. She had, of course. She'd changed so much that he hadn't recognized her, and then his first thought was of her mother. But, when he said it now, he was being absolutely honest. He'd looked into her eyes and found her there. This fifty-seven-year-old woman sitting in the street beside him had miraculously shed more than forty years in an instant. Knowing her, he would never again see her as anything but young and vivacious and stunningly beautiful, just as she'd been when they were teenagers exploring the uncharted territories of lust and romance.

She shook her head and smiled and he recognized the smile and adored it, just as he always had.

“You still say the most outrageous things, and almost make me believe them. But even with that moonstruck look in your eyes, that's too much. I'm four decades older, thirty pounds heavier, and look about as much like the head cheerleader of the Buffalo Springs Bisons as you do.” Her eyes twinkled. “But thank you for lying about it anyway.”

“No, really…” Mad Dog began, but he didn't know how to explain it.

“I won't be quite so generous, Mad Dog, but I will say the years have been kind to you. And I'd go on with more of that lovely chit-chat, except I believe a building just blew up down the street. Don't you think we should go see if anyone needs help?”

Fallout was beginning to drift across Main Street. It consisted of a bit of smoke, a lot of dust, an assortment of paper, and a couple of twenty dollar bills. Mad Dog got up and collected them. They were crisp and new and clean, until he touched them. He had blood on his hand. He had forgotten he was hurt again. He wiped his hands on his Levis.

“Looks like it might have been the Farmers & Merchants,” he said. One of his hands was reasonably clean. No blood anyway. He offered it to Janie. “I'll go check it out with you as long as you promise not to run out on me again. Not before we have a chance to talk.”

“Maybe one of the things we should talk about,” she said, taking his hand and climbing back to her feet, “is who ran out on whom.”

Mad Dog looked surprised. “Me? I'm still here. I live in the same house I did when you left. And I tried hard to find out where you'd gone…at least for a while.”

“Oh sure. I left and you didn't. And I knew you tried to find me. You always were a bit of a stalker. But who left the relationship? That's what I mean.”

Mad Dog grabbed a stray five dollar bill and the two of them crossed Main and headed south on Jackson. They could hear people calling each other, marveling that no one had been hurt.

“Stalker?”

“Sure. Don't you remember that time I went on a date with Fred Hendershot and you trailed us all the way to the Cinerama in Wichita and back?”

Mad Dog looked sheepish. “I was only…”

“Or when we had the fight and I thought we broke up and you decided not to call me for a few days to teach me a lesson. Then Stan Bowser asked me to go roller skating and you came and kidnapped me right out of the rink.”

“I thought I was doing what John Wayne would do. Or Bogart. You and I were only kids and I…Well, I suppose you're right. Your mother never forgave me for that one.”

“She was your confirmed enemy long before that. She knew you wanted in her little girl's pants, and were making significant progress toward getting there. Actually, I've never been quite sure whether that kidnapping was a terrible male-chauvinist act of dominance, or the most romantic thing that ever happened to me. But they'd call you a stalker these days, or worse, and my mother would get a restraining order and maybe put you in jail.”

Mad Dog laughed as he reached down and rumpled Hailey's ears. She was sticking unusually close to him, a little jealous maybe. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time,” he said. “But it sure caused a commotion in Buffalo Springs that summer.”

He bent and plucked a couple of ones from a clump of Bermuda that was making good use of a crack in the pavement. The bills came up bloody, like the twenties. His hand had stopped bleeding. He started checking his arm for a wound.

“Oh dear,” Janie said, interrupting their reminiscences and his self examination, focusing his train of thought, quite thoroughly, elsewhere. “You're not bleeding. It's your dog.”

***

Chaos. Deputy Parker didn't like chaos. It reminded her of that bleak day in Tucson.

She parked the Benteen County black and white in front of the bank and stepped out into a street filled with citizens who wanted to tell her what had happened, and didn't really know.

Someone handed her a shoe box and told her, “I think we've found most of it.” It was one of the Heathers, the sheriff's daughters. Parker never could tell which was which. Not that it mattered, since she only had to remember one name. “But you'll want to count it.”

What she didn't like about the Heathers was the way they seemed to think their father's employees were incapable of making competent decisions without direction. Of course, considering the rest of Englishman's deputies, they were right.

“Thanks, Heather,” she said. “Have you counted it?”

“Sure. $4,878. Mr. Brown, the manager, said they only had ten thousand out of the vault and the robber said she wanted exactly five, all in hundreds. They had seven thousand in hundreds, the rest in smaller bills. We've found all but one of the hundreds. Mr. Brown thinks we're only missing that and a twenty and two ones. We've got people looking.”

Parker popped the lid and glanced inside. The box was filled with cash. Some of it looked singed, some crisp and new. At least one bill was blood soaked.

“Mad Dog found that one,” the Heather said. “Hailey was hurt. You know, his wolf. He gave Heather the money, then took off to get Hailey's wound looked at.”

Parker nodded. She wasn't done with Mad Dog, but she didn't have time to go looking for him now. She jotted the dollar amount Heather had given her on top of the box, along with the date and time, and the name, Heather English.

“Lane, actually,” Heather corrected her. That would make this Heather number Two, the sheriff's adopted daughter. Parker made the correction, popped the trunk, and locked the box of money in the black and white. She took out her roll of crime-scene tape and began boxing off the front of the bank. The walls seemed faintly bowed out and the front door hung ajar. Its safety glass, checkered with cracks, lay on the steps and sidewalk.

“Were you a witness?”

“No,” Heather Two said. “We were headed for the Buffalo Burger Drive In for breakfast when we heard the explosion. We came back to look, then got involved in picking up cash.”

“I need to talk to witnesses.”

Two understood. She nodded to where several people huddled, comforting each other, on the curb just down the block. “There's Mr. Brown and his tellers. I can finish stringing this tape if you want to talk to them.”

That wasn't the way it was supposed to work, but Parker, with no other deputies available, could use the help. And the Heathers probably knew more about police procedures than anyone else she was likely to find.

“Good,” Parker told her. “Just surround the building, or, if you can't, block the entrances and exits. Then, you and your sister can start sorting through this crowd for me. Find out who actually saw something and who's just here rubbernecking. Send the sightseers home.”

“Sure,” Heather agreed. The idea of helping seemed to appeal to her. And following reasonable instructions instead of delivering them didn't appear to be a problem either. Maybe, Parker reassured herself as she went to where the bank's employees clustered, the sheriff's daughters had helped handle crises like this before. Only this was Buffalo Springs, she remembered, where nothing ever happened. It was why she had taken a job here.

Mr. Brown was drawn to her uniform. He left the group and came to meet her. “I'm the manager,” he told her, establishing his importance. “Have you caught her yet?”

“Were you a witness to the robbery, sir?” she countered. She'd discovered that men like Brown were used to bullying the sheriff's deputies, and they weren't used to deferring to women as authority figures, except maybe their mothers. Bullying right back was usually the best way to establish who was in charge.

“Uhh, well, no, but I know what happened and the bank is my responsibility.”

“Good. Then you'll want to help me deal with this as efficiently as possible. Mrs. Kraus said you read her a note. Do you have it?”

He reached into the pocket of his sports coat. “That I do,” he said, unfolding it.

She reached in a pocket of her own and removed a plastic bag. “Put it directly in here, please. Don't let it touch me.” He recoiled a little, but he did what she asked. The good thing about combining a uniform with no-nonsense commands was that people generally did what you told them.

“Has anyone else touched this? Has it been anywhere other than in your pocket?”

“Lucy touched it. My teller. She was the one who picked it up in the first place, and let that woman in to rob us. But nobody else. She gave it to me and I've kept ahold of it since.”

“Good,” she said. “We'll probably need to get your fingerprints, and hers, and DNA samples. And I'll take that coat of yours now, too, if you don't mind.”

Paper was notoriously bad about yielding fingerprints. As for the rest of it, they had no DNA test equipment and no one to analyze fibers from the letter or the jacket, but he seemed steadily less inclined to argue, and more convinced that the Benteen County Sheriff's Department knew what it was doing. She glanced at the note through the plastic. It was just one of those freezer bags with the strip that changes color when it's properly sealed, but he didn't know that.

The note said what Mrs. Kraus had told her it would, and nothing more. She transferred it, and Brown's coat, to the trunk of the black and white beside the money. “That's all I need from you for now, Mr. Brown. Would you please send Lucy over to talk to me? Just Lucy. Thank you for your cooperation.” And sign the traffic ticket and have a nice day.

Brown retreated and his teller replaced him. Parker opened the front door of the black and white for her. Lucy looked doubtful, like she thought maybe Parker was going to haul her to jail and charge her with aiding and abetting the crime.

“I thought you might like to sit somewhere other than on the curb for a few minutes,” the deputy explained. “And we can have a little privacy.”

Lucy nodded and sat and Parker closed the door and went around and slipped behind the wheel. She pulled out her notebook and pen.

“I've been thinking,” Lucy said. “That face. I mean, right from the beginning I thought it seemed familiar. For a minute, I thought it might have been one of my daughter's teachers from back when she was in school here, but that's crazy. And so's this, I suppose, but I believe I know who it was.”

“Really?” That would be a break. They could use one after two bombs, one murder, and another attempt.

“Yes,” she said. “I didn't tell anyone because I was afraid they'd laugh at me.”

“I understand,” Parker said, not understanding at all but trying to cut to the important part. “Who was it?”

“Well, anybody can disguise their voice, right? And cut their hair real short. And bleach it blond.”

“Yes?”

“I mean, it was the eyes, really. They were so intense.”

“You recognized the eyes?”

“Right. I mean, it makes sense. An al Qaeda terrorist would want to be disguised. Speak in falsetto, cut your hair short and bleach it blond, get rid of the turban and the beard, and it could be him.”

“Beard? Turban?”

“Don't you see? Our bank robber, I think he was Osama bin Laden.”

***

Judy would not have been flattered to know the teller had confused her with Osama bin Laden. Though maybe there was something about the eyes…She might have thought so if she'd bothered to study them just then. She was too busy examining her platinum crew cut.

Judy had ridden a couple of blocks from the bank before she realized she couldn't let Englishman get bogged down searching for a blond bank robber. She checked her fanny pack for her cell phone, then remembered it was plugged in at home, getting charged so it would be ready when she left for Paris.

Home was where she wanted to go, but then she wanted the Heathers up and involved in their own plans before she broke the news about Paris. Considering Englishman#8217;s response, she thought later rather than sooner would be the best time to tell them about her sudden vacation plans. It was after ten, now. The girls had probably left the house, but they were teenagers and might lounge about on a morning without school. She didn't want them overhearing her conversation with their father, especially if it didn't go well. And Judy could see how it might not go well, since she still expected him to be with her on that Paris flight, in spite of a murder and the bomb in the Farmers & Merchants. Paris was a must. She didn't care how many things he needed to deal with.

That was why she detoured to the courthouse. She'd hoped Englishman might be back from the murder site. Maybe she could explain, and make him understand, face to face in his office, especially if Mrs. Kraus could be persuaded to take a coffee break and give them some privacy.