Plains Crazy (13 page)

“Run for your lives,” he shouted, pushing through the door to the food mart and the cashier's counter. The customers all turned and looked at him, but nobody ran—he was blocking the exit. Back out toward the bomb and pumps wasn't where the deputy had intended to go, but he needed to move. He turned and considered his choices. He didn't get time. Jud Haines bent and picked the thing up.

“Don't touch it,” the deputy's father shouted, too late.

Haines took two steps toward the intersection. Like an outfielder trying to pick off a batter with plans to stretch a single into extra bases, he put everything into his throw. The lot across the highway was empty but for high weeds and a drainage ditch that fed into nearby Calf Creek. Wynn Some didn't hear the splash when the bomb landed, but he did see the geyser of mud and grass and water that erupted the moment it exploded. Little chunks of slime and mulch plastered the window of the Texaco.

“Jesus,” Finfrock said, grabbing hold of a customer as if he would have otherwise been forced to sit right down on the concrete. “If you hadn't grabbed that just then…”

“There wouldn't be a Texaco anymore,” Wynn's daddy continued. “And we'd all be dead.”

It was a concept that penetrated even Wynn Some's imagination. He stumbled out of the Texaco's doorway and left his breakfast in the nearest waste bin.

***

Deputy Parker could tell the Heathers were getting a kick out of this. Adults who, all their lives, had treated them like little kids—ignored them or done pat-on-the-head, isn't-she-cute stuff—were suddenly listening to and obeying them. They were Englishman's daughters. Somebody had to take charge. Parker was the power behind their thrones, but she'd been interviewing witnesses, none of whom had proved of much value yet. That left the Heathers to handle crowd control.

“What a kick,” she heard one Heather tell the other. “I just sent our old chemistry teacher home and told him it was because he didn't know anything.”

So far, only two people had actually seen the bomber: the teller, who was convinced it had been Osama bin Laden in drag, and the farmer who'd driven by just minutes before the blast.

“I sure didn't see no Osama,” he said. The figure he'd seen was some hot young babe decked out in come-fuck-me clothes, though that wasn't how he phrased it. “Tight-ass jeans and a clingy tee shirt,” he said. He hadn't recognized her, but she'd known him well enough to shout an insult that named his wife. Or so he claimed.

“Anybody left?” Deputy Parker asked a Heather. The deputy was through with the farmer whose recollection was of an under-dressed Jezebel instead of a cross-dressed zealot.

“Just Millie. She runs the beauty parlor down the block. She didn't see the bank robber, but she says Mom was in this morning and planning to go to the bank. Millie thinks Mom might have seen something, since she left the beauty shop just before the blast.”

Parker shook her head. “Doesn't seem likely, does it? If your mother were a witness, she'd have stuck around, or been in touch with your father right away. Still, I suppose I better talk to this Millie person. Where is she?”

Heather English looked around. Thanks to the girls' efficiency, there was no longer a crowd concealing Millie. “There she is,” Heather said, pointing across the street at the beauty parlor.

Millie was standing, looking at her place of business from just beyond the curb. Her body language indicated she was seeing it in a different light than before. She looked cowed, overwhelmed, as if she'd suddenly realized this ugly converted barbershop was not the key to the beachfront retirement which she'd planned.

“Excuse me,” Heather called. “Deputy Parker is ready for you now.” Millie took a couple of steps toward them, but she was backing up, paying no attention to Heather's summons.

Parker considered calling out herself, but she was reluctant to address the woman by her first name and she didn't know Millie's last. The sign over the front door just said MILLIE'S PAVILION OF BEAUTY. Under that, the pale outline of one of the barbershop's former offerings could be made out through the fading paint—FLATTOPS, OUR SPECIALTY.

“Uhh, Millie, the deputy wants you.”

Millie finally turned. There was such a look of horror in her eyes that Parker immediately put her hand on the butt of her weapon and half crouched.

“Help,” Millie squeaked. “There's another one, right in my front door.”

Heather took a step into the street, angling for a better look. That was where she ran into Parker's arm.

“Get back,” Parker said, voice strained. “Get everyone off the street and under cover. Do it now.”

There really wasn't anyone other than the Heathers in need of doing what Parker asked. The people from the Farmers & Merchants hid behind cars and buildings. The other business owners from the neighborhood were similarly hunkered down.

“Come on,” the other Heather urged. The sheriff's daughter let her sister drag her behind the black and white. Parker shifted her attention to Millie's entry. Something stood on the concrete next to a screen door that kept out flies, but not this morning's glorious spring breeze.

Parker edged to Millie's side. Millie was pointing. “You see it?”

“Looks like an ordinary paper bag,” Parker said. It did. A plain brown paper bag, about the size that would hold a double-cheese buffalo burger and an order of freedom fries from the nearby drive in.

“It buzzed at me,” Millie said.

“Get across the street, Ma'am,” Parker said. “Get behind something. Let me check this out.”

Millie did, but not before leaving a plea in the Deputy's ear. “Please,” she said. “I'm not insured.”

Parker advanced on the sack. She was sweating profusely now, her heart pounding so hard it felt like it might tear through her Kevlar vest. She wanted to run, she wanted to hide. Hell, she thought she had—all the way to a rural county in Kansas where nothing ever happened. Halfway across the country from where an afternoon in Tucson stole her nerve.

On the Buffalo Springs sidewalk, it was all Parker could do to make herself approach the bag. She took each step with exaggerated care. The slightest disturbance might be enough to set the thing off. She had been foolish enough to look at what that bomb had done in Tucson. Afterward, she'd filled out paperwork, and when she was through, filled out one more sheet—her resignation.

It was deathly still on the street. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Parker was in mid-step when the bag buzzed again. She closed her eyes, balanced precariously on one foot for a moment, then opened them to reassure herself she wasn't dead yet.

The buzzing stopped. Parker gently set her foot down and bent over the bag and tried to peer inside. “Fucking A,” she said, and reached out and stretched the opening wider. She never used profanity, but she said it again. She lowered her face to within inches of the bag's mouth.

The explosion rattled windows up and down the street. Deputy Parker fell back on her butt and grabbed her heart and the contents of the bag went flying. But the explosion had come from elsewhere, maybe over toward the Texaco.

Parker was slow getting up. She stooped and picked up the thing that had been in the bag and went back across the street. She held out the object she'd retrieved for everyone to see. Parker's face was tight and pinched with anger. So was her voice.

“When I find the joker who stuck this pager in a bag and left it on vibrate…”

She didn't have to complete the sentence. Whatever Parker did to the perpetrator, her witnesses would have suggested worse.

***

“Good,” Doc said, looking up from his desk as the sheriff knocked on the door and stuck his head in. “I was about to call you with the autopsy results.”

“Can we get a bulk discount?” the sheriff asked, holding the door open. “Come help me find a gurney so you can start on our latest victim.”

“This another casualty of your mad archer?” Doc led the way down the antiseptic white hall in the back of Klausen's Funeral Parlor where they took deliveries. The Benteen County Coroner's office opened off that corridor. “Who is it?” He pulled a wheeled gurney out of the mortuary lab and trailed the sheriff toward the back door.

“That's what I'm hoping you'll tell me. He came off a motorcycle at speed and ended up face first against a tree. No helmet. Now, no face. He wasn't carrying any ID. I don't need you to tell me how or when this one died, just who he was.”

“So, a vehicular mortality, not another crime victim?” Doc pushed the back door open, maneuvered the cart down the ramp, and followed the sheriff to the parking lot.

“Doc, I think this is our archer. He had a bow with him. Someone riding a motorcycle took a couple of shots at Mad Dog over at the courthouse a little while before this guy ran into the tree.”

“Yeah,” Doc said. “I heard about that. Hailey had a notch taken out of her ear and Mad Dog brought her over here for veterinary repairs.”

The sheriff dropped the rear gate on his pickup, climbed in, and hauled the body bag back to where he and Doc could ease it onto the gurney. “Mad Dog was here? When? Do you know where he went? Every time stuff like this happens and I need to find him, he disappears on me.” The sheriff stopped and looked around. “And, damn it, I seem to have lost another Cheyenne. I had a live passenger with me when I got here, now he's gone too.”

“I don't know where Mad Dog went,” Doc admitted. “They just left a few minutes ago. He and an attractive woman. Not young, but still a knockout. She seemed to know why your archer was after Mad Dog, but she wanted to talk about it in private.”

They pushed the body back toward Klausen's. The back entrance was surrounded by lush flower beds containing a profusion of spring blossoms. Klausen's gardener was a wizard, but the sheriff always felt there was something vaguely inappropriate about this floral opulence—like scented toilet paper. The guy in the body bag had no use for the ornamentation. Those who accompanied the bodies that came through this door were in the death business. They didn't need artificial cheer either.

A bumblebee staggered out of a hollyhock and went looking for another romance. The sheriff shrugged. Mother Nature didn't care. Life, death—two sides of the same coin.

“The woman with Mad Dog. You know who she was?”

“She introduced herself,” Doc said. “Jane, I think. And some Swedish last name. Hell, I can't remember already, but she had the most beautiful eyes.”

“What's this, Doc. Are you smitten?”

“Must be this weather,” Doc said. “Or a reaction to all the tragedies I'm forced to be around.”

They pushed the body down the long sterile hallway. There was something appropriate about the transition, the sheriff thought. This corridor fit his view of what purgatory should be like. And the next door they opened would do for hell. The funerary lab was antiseptically clean and mostly white, but there were stainless-steel tables designed to drain bodily fluids, and embalming machines trailing tubes and needles. Doc's collection of autopsy tools, freshly washed after their recent duty, lay on a drain board beside an industrial sink.

“Let's have a look,” Doc said as soon as they transferred the body from its bag onto one of the steel tables. He pulled a smock on over his clothing and stuck his hands in a pair of gloves before he stuck them into the ruined face. “I see what you mean.”

The sheriff felt like turning away. He knew the disaster that had been a face too well. It was likely to turn up in his nightmares for weeks to come.

“The missing teeth and facial bones, what I could find anyway, they're in that plastic bag I put on the gurney.”

“Another young one,” Doc commented. “Wisdom teeth were just coming in and hardly any wear on the teeth that are left.”

The sheriff needed to check on Parker's investigation at the bank, but he also had to know who this guy was. Since Mrs. Kraus hadn't called back after he told her he was bringing Doc a body, he figured the bank was under Deputy Parker's competent control.

“I checked all his pockets,” the sheriff said. “You want to do a quick external exam before I have to leave and you open him up? See if there are any scars or moles or other identifying marks that might help you recognize our murderer?”

“Sure,” Doc said. “Only that reminds me. I'm not sure he is a murderer.”

“Oh, I know. We've got no proof he's the one who shot Michael Ramsey at Catfish Creek. But how many bikers are running around Benteen County with traditional Cheyenne bows?”

“No,” Doc paused midway in his effort to cut off a pant leg and turned to look at the sheriff. “Ramsey. He didn't die from that arrow. Not immediately. I think he passed out from shock. The girl went for help and left his face in the mud and he couldn't breathe. The arrow didn't pierce his heart while he was alive.”

“Jesus. You saying he suffocated?”

Doc shrugged, the corners of his mouth drooping even more than usual.

“What are the chances?” the sheriff wondered. He remembered what Bud Stone had said. The old man hadn't thought anyone wanted to kill the boy. Apparently, no one actually had, though a jury might have been convinced to hold the archer responsible.

The sheriff was considering how to come to terms with this philosophical conundrum when his cell phone rang. Only his office, his deputies, and his family had its number. Judy and the Heathers were forbidden to use it except for emergencies. That was why he was so surprised to hear Judy's voice. “Englishman,” she said, “it's almost eleven-thirty. Our flight leaves at four-forty. It takes a couple of hours to drive to Wichita and they want you checked in at least two hours early because of all the extra security. That means we need to leave here around noon.”

“Judy, I can't…”