Plains Crazy (12 page)

But, once through the front door, she'd realized how dramatically different she looked, and that Englishman's deputies might be watching for someone who fitted her description. Wynn Some had been known to shoot first and ask questions later, so she'd ducked into the restroom instead of the sheriff's office. She peered into the mirror at what she increasingly thought of as an ultimate bad-hair choice. She couldn't let anyone see her like this. Not before she explained to Englishman.

She rummaged through her fanny pack again. She kept a bandana in there, one of Englishman's. He never used it. She'd appropriated it as something colorful to tie up her hair. There was nothing to tie up anymore, but she found she could wrap the cloth around her head and bunch it to cover the blond. With the cap back in place, it looked like she was hiding her hair instead of no longer in possession of it.

The ruse seemed to work on Mrs. Kraus. “Hi, Judy,” the little woman with the Marianne Faithful rasp said. “Englishman's not here. I just got off the line with him. He might be awhile. Seems he just killed a prime suspect in that bow-and-arrow murder this morning.”

“Oh good,” Judy responded, causing Mrs. Kraus to raise a shocked eyebrow. “Not that somebody's dead,” Judy clarified. “Just that one crime may be solved. He's leaving on vacation today. Did he tell you?”

The second eyebrow followed. “Vacation?” Pole axed would be a good way to describe her reaction. “While a terrorist runs around bombing Buffalo Springs?”

“That's what I wanted to talk to him about. Could I maybe borrow one of your phones? I could cover the office while you run get yourself something over at Bertha's if you want.”

“This might not be a good time,” Mrs. Kraus said. “Englishman's got his hands full with that new body just now, and I've got to stay here to direct the citywide search that's going on.”

“Oh.” So much for that plan. Judy smiled and started backing toward the door. “Well, when you talk to him again, just tell him I was kind of a witness at the bank and he should call me as soon as he can.”

“Might not be soon,” Mrs. Kraus said. One of her phones rang and she turned to answer it.

Coming here had been a really bad idea and Judy punished herself with a quick smack to the forehead, inadvertently knocking her cap and bandanna to the floor of the foyer. She bent and picked them up and sprinted for the front door, restoring her disguise as she went to retrieve her bicycle.

She was quick, but not quick enough to prevent Mrs. Kraus from turning to see that Judy had disappeared, but the blond terrorist who'd hit the bank was darting past her door. Judy would have been impressed at how fast two bombs, and Mrs. Kraus' panic, resulted in the evacuation of the courthouse.

***

The sheriff began by checking for a pulse. Since the motorcyclist's skull was about half the size it had been before encountering the tree trunk, he wasn't surprised when he didn't find one. No point in trying CPR. Not on a rib cage that had been smashed to a pulp filled with jagged bone fragments.

After a quick call to Mrs. Kraus to let her know why he would be delayed, he pulled out his digital camera and recorded the scene, the skid marks, the motorcycle, and the position of the body before he moved it more than his preliminary examination had required. He considered asking Doc to come pick up another one, then decided there wasn't time. Not with a bomber running around Buffalo Springs, assaulting the courthouse and now robbing the city's only financial institution. He had to get to town and quick.

He removed a pair of surgical gloves and some plastic bags from the truck. Traffic accidents were the most common form of violent death in Benteen County. He had handled too many.

“Mr. Stone. I hate to ask, but I need a witness. Would you step out of the truck and watch while I examine the body.”

The old man opened the door and walked across the road. The sheriff gently peeled the crumpled form off the cottonwood's trunk. Some of its teeth and a piece of cheekbone remained behind, imbedded in the bark until the sheriff removed and bagged them.

There would be no recognizing this face. Its features now conformed to the shape of the tree trunk, no longer remotely human. You should have worn a helmet, he thought, instead of that stocking cap, now stained with blood and brain matter like the curly blond locks that protruded from underneath.

The sheriff straightened the body on the grass at the edge of the road. It wasn't hard to do. It bent easily, too easily, and in places humans did not normally bend.

“I'm going to go through his pockets,” the sheriff told Bud Stone. “That's what I want you to witness. Especially if I find anything of value, or something that might be incriminating.”

He opened one of the plastic bags and set it beside the corpse. The remains of the bow were already in a larger bag. No arrows though. Either the man had fired the last of them or he'd lost them before encountering the sheriff…and a cottonwood, and eternity.

The sheriff got down on hands and knees on the opposite side of the body from where Stone stood and began going through pockets. He was glad for the gloves. There was a lot of blood and occasional bits of tissue that didn't belong on this side of skin. There was also nothing in any of the pockets. No change, no billfold, no driver's license. And the corpse wore no watch or any other jewelry. The sheriff was surprised. He had assumed this was someone local. If so, why bother removing things by which you could be identified, since one look at your face was normally all it would take? Too bad there was no longer a face.

“Nothing,” he said. Stone nodded. And there hadn't been anything on the motorcycle either, including license plates. Could this guy be an outside professional? Or somehow related to their terrorist?

The only way to identify him might be through Doc Jones. Doc could take fingerprints—the sheriff had examined the man's hands and been relieved to see that there were normal looking ridges and swirls there. After everything else, he'd half expected to find them etched off or surgically removed. Or Doc might get what he needed for identification purposes from the teeth.

The sheriff took his evidence bags back to the truck and stored them. He emerged with a larger bag—a fancier version of what he'd seen too many buddies put into during his brief stint in Vietnam.

The man wasn't big and the sheriff managed to roll him into the body bag without much difficulty. Lifting him into the truck bed might be another matter. The sheriff didn't want to add post-mortem injuries by manhandling the corpse.

“Can you give me a hand with him?” the sheriff asked Stone.

“Sure,” the old man said. The sheriff thought he detected some reluctance.

“Look, if you'd rather not…”

“No. It's all right,” Stone said. “Do you have some sage?”

“Sage?” The sheriff didn't get it.

“Never mind. Shall I take his feet?”

The sheriff told him that would be great. They maneuvered their awkward package into the back of the pickup and placed it there, as gently as possible. Then the sheriff went back to move the motorcycle out of the road. It would have to wait.

When he turned back, Bud Stone was moving his arms from over his head, crossing them, and touching the ground. The man had crouched with his eyes closed, speaking words in a language the sheriff didn't understand.

“Are you all right, Mr. Stone?” he asked, when the Cheyenne finished.

“I am now,” Stone said. “I purified myself, but sage would have helped.”

“Uhh, right,” the sheriff said, climbing behind the wheel.

Stone joined him in the cab. “You should do the same, you know.”

The sheriff wondered if that might not be true.

***

“Damn it, Mad Dog. I'm a medical doctor, not a veterinarian,” Doc Jones said, rising from behind his desk in the coroner's office. “Excuse my language, ma'am.” He directed that at Janie Jorgenson, who crowded into the little room behind Mad Dog and Hailey.

“I've heard worse.” She smiled and offered her hand. “I'm Jane, Jane Jorgenson, Dr. Jones. Mad Dog tells me you're the best doctor in the state. I get the impression second best wouldn't be good enough for Hailey.”

Doc smiled, straightening his perpetual scowl. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Jorgenson. I shouldn't be surprised by this visit. Mad Dog has kindly let me tend to Hailey a time or two before, though he doesn't trust me to diagnose his own ills.”

“I don't have any,” Mad Dog said. He gestured toward Hailey's blood-soaked coat. “Can't you please…”

Doc knelt and examined Hailey's matted fur. He was gentle and she trusted him enough to put up with it. “What's happened to you?” he crooned, putting on the bedside manner he assumed for children, wolves, and similarly dangerous creatures.

“An arrow, I think,” Mad Dog explained.

“Arrow?” Doc's brows furrowed and the scowl came back full force. “That's odd.”

“Not really,” Mad Dog explained. “That kid you've got down the hall. I think maybe I was the one that arrow was supposed to hit. At least, somebody had a couple of shots at me when I was over at the courthouse a few minutes ago. Hailey didn't take kindly to it. She chased him, got her teeth in his pant leg, I think. I'm guessing he shot her as well.”

Doc was thorough. “There's a slash through one ear,” he said. “It's a clean wound and it doesn't look like she's hurt anywhere else. Ears, they bleed a lot.”

“Can you help her, Doc?” Mad Dog pleaded.

“I don't think so,” Doc replied. Mad Dog blanched and Doc hurried to explain. “This looks worse than it is. I can knock her out and stitch it up, but we'd probably have to stick her in one of those cone collars to keep her from scratching the stitches right out. I don't think you want to put her through that, Mad Dog. She's nearly quit bleeding already and she's leaving it alone. We'll just apply a little antiseptic and let her get on with life with a notch in her ear. It'll bother you more than it does her. And it'll bother both of you less than turning her into a conehead for a couple of weeks. Those things are bad enough for dogs. Impossible for wolves, I expect.”

“Right,” Mad Dog agreed. “I can't see putting her in one of those things, but what about the blood she's lost?”

“She's got plenty left,” Doc reassured him. “Just make sure she gets to drink all the water she wants, and maybe feed her a little extra protein the next few days. She'll be fine, long as you keep yourselves away from this mad archer. Why on earth would someone want to shoot you, Mad Dog?”

“I can't think of a single reason.”

Janie cleared her throat. “Well I sure can,” she told them.

***

“This is a waste of time,” Supervisor Haines said. Deputy Wynn was inclined to agree. They had canvassed all the houses behind the courthouse and north of Main. All they'd found were a few people who'd heard a motorcycle leaving the area in a hurry. None of them had seen it. A couple had seen Mad Dog cutting through the neighborhood. One had seen Deputy Parker.

“We should be over at the Farmers & Merchants, where the action is,” Finfrock said. Wynn Some agreed again, but his daddy didn't.

“No such thing,” the chairman protested. “This had to be done and there aren't enough deputies for an emergency like this. Those of us without law enforcement skills, we've got to lend a hand now and then.”

“Hey, I got law enforcement skills,” Wynn Some complained.

His father glanced at him and continued. “Like I said. Besides, what could we do at the bank? I'm sure Deputy Parker has things under control. We'd just be in her way. Anyway, that's over. What we gotta do now is figure out how to stop this terrorist's next attack.”

“Wouldn't hurt to go to the bank, though,” Finfrock said. They had finished knocking on doors and were at the corner of Main and Van Buren, only about four blocks from the crime scene. “Folks like to know their supervisors care what's happened to them and their money.”

“I'm with Finfrock,” Haines said, “only let's take a minute and walk down to the Texaco. A motorcycle runs on gas. Maybe the guy stopped to fill up before he started turning the back of the courthouse into a pin cushion.”

“Makes sense,” the chairman said.

“And we could get us a soda,” Wynn Some agreed, suddenly enthusiastic again. All that door to door effort had worked up a thirst.

The Texaco and the Buffalo Burger Drive In dominated the corner at Harrison and Main. The intersection was Buffalo Springs' busiest, since both streets were part of the Kansas State Highway system. Unlike other streets in town, these continued well beyond the municipal boundaries, and stayed paved. Both blacktops stretched straight and flat toward the edge of the world, or so it seemed from where a four-way stop and blinking red lights marked it.

The Texaco was the only place within twenty miles that was open twenty-four/seven. With people coming to town early because of Buffalo Springs Day, there were a couple of cars drawn up at the pumps and several more in the parking lot. A mechanic was finishing an oil change in the attached garage—all that remained after a shiny new food mart and self-serve gas pumps had replaced the original station.

“I'm thinking I want a root beer,” Deputy Wynn told the supervisors.

“Iced tea would be good,” Finfrock said.

They threaded their way around the cars by the pumps, exchanged greetings with the customers, and made their way toward the entrance. Wynn Some had his hand on the door when Haines' voice stopped them all in their tracks.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Here's another one.”

Wynn Some knew what he meant.

“Where?” his daddy asked.

“Right here, leaning against this pump.” The pump in question was attached by a hose to a Ford F-250. The pump's digital display was flashing an ever increasing dollar and gallon total. A bomb and gas vapors didn't sound like a good combination to Deputy Wynn. He knew what he had to do.