Plains Crazy (20 page)

Her little pep talk put some starch in the supervisor's spine. He wandered over to where the front windows opened on the park and gave the office some much needed aromatherapy. The sounds of happy people enjoying mountains of frozen cholesterol wafted in. He bent and smelled the honeysuckle vines that bracketed the windows and took a long look at the glorious day outside. When he turned back into the room, he seemed pretty much himself again.

That was when Haines and Finfrock came in. And when the second phone line rang. “Sheriff's office,” she said.

“Finfrock there?” Englishman's voice was weak and interrupted by enough popping sounds to remind her she wanted to pick up some Orville Redenbacher's at the Dillons.

“That you, Englishman? You're breaking up bad.”

“We're all set,” Finfrock told the chairman. “Got airline reservations to put Haines in Denver in time to meet with Windreapers. We could still pull this off.”

Haines wandered over by the sheriff's desk and leafed through the faxes that had come in this afternoon. Junk faxing was a fine art that cost the county lots of waste paper. Mrs. Kraus hadn't gotten to them on a busy day like this.

“We damn well better pull it off,” the chairman said.

“Finfrock?” the sheriff asked Mrs. Kraus. “Where is Supervisor Finfrock?”

“Finfrock's right here. Wanna speak to him?”

The supervisors caught her reference and their own conversation switched topics. “That the sheriff?” the chairman asked.

“He want me?” Finfrock said. “Give me the phone.”

“Got my confirmation,” Haines said, folding some faxes and stuffing them in a jacket pocket. He started edging toward the door. “Look, I've got a long drive and they want you to check in early these days. I'll call, soon as the deal is signed. Wish me luck.”

“No,” the sheriff told Mrs. Kraus. “I don't want to speak to Finfrock. Just keep him there. I'll be right over.” Or that's what Mrs. Kraus thought he said. She hated cell phones. Their batteries were always giving out or they constantly slipped in and out of spots where they got good reception. She wouldn't have one of the fool things.

Finfrock came around the counter and tried to take the phone out of her hand.

“Hang on,” she told him, yanking it away.

“Wait,” the chairman said to Supervisor Haines, grabbing his arm before he could get to the door. “We'll give you a ride.”

“No need,” Haines said, trying to draw free. “You've got to stay here for the festivities and in case there's more trouble. I'll just use long term parking. Then my car will be there when I get back.”

“I thought Englishman wanted to talk to me,” Finfrock said, grabbing for the phone again.

“You let go now.” Mrs. Kraus curled over the phone like it was a football and Finfrock was trying to cause a fumble. She lowered her head and swung around and popped him in the nose, not entirely by accident.

“I really need to get outta here,” Haines told the chairman, pulling toward the foyer.

“Stop that,” the chairman said, though Mrs. Kraus wasn't sure which of them he was addressing.

“Pop, pop, hiss,” said the line the sheriff had been on.

Finfrock confined himself to a succinct “Ouch.” He stumbled back against the counter and knocked over a stack of papers, a cup filled with pens and pencils, and the hand grenade Mad Dog and Janie Jorgenson had brought to the sheriff's office from Finfrock's bar.

“What's that doing here?” Finfrock's voice had turned suddenly nasal.

The chairman echoed him, and Supervisor Haines bent and picked the grenade up and said, “Just what we need.”

“Careful with that,” Mrs. Kraus said. She put the phone back to her ear to tell the sheriff what was going on only there wasn't even static there anymore.

Haines turned it over in his hands, looking at it closely. “It really is a hand grenade, isn't it? Like the ones in those World War II movies.”

“Set it down,” the chairman said. “Don't touch a thing on it. The pin might come out.”

“Oh hell, that pin's not gonna come out,” Finfrock said. “Been in there for sixty years. Won't just pop out now.”

Haines touched it with a finger, as if to test the theory. The pin dropped free and bounced across the worn linoleum.

“Uh oh,” someone said.

Mrs. Kraus thought the comment failed to do the situation justice.

***

“Daddy, where are you?” Heather asked her cell phone. “Call me. Mommy's gone.”

Deputy Parker looked up from an abandoned cardboard box that had been left between a pair of ice cream-stained tables. It contained dirty paper plates and wadded napkins and no explosive devices. She'd been through so many boxes and bags in the park that she was no longer expecting each to erupt in flame and fire and splatter her over several blocks of downtown Buffalo Springs.

Daddy. That meant this was Heather English. Number One. Two was just behind her and both of them looked upset. Parker had begun to notice some differences in the girls. One was a little shorter than Two, her cheekbones a bit more pronounced, her complexion just a bit darker. And One was dressed in shorts and a bare midriff blouse while Two had styled herself as a cowgirl.

Daddy. From her own experience, Parker knew girls in their late teens seldom called their parents Mommy and Daddy anymore. Later, they might go back to it. But at the border to adulthood, teenagers consciously put away childish mannerisms. It was Mom and Dad at this stage, or sometimes even their parents' first names. Childish endearments were reserved for moments when a bit of begging might get something they wanted that their parents still controlled. Like when Parker just had to have that convertible she couldn't afford yet. Or, when things went awry. Badly, and the incipient adult was ready to return control to parents and let them fix everything. From the tone of Heather English's voice, that seemed to be the cause of her reversion. Something had gone wrong.

“Heather,” Parker said. And then again, “Heather,” because there were two of them. “Is there a problem?”

One composed herself. “Yeah. I can't get Dad on the phone. First his cell was busy, now he's not answering. I keep getting his voice mail and he doesn't call back.”

“Is it something I can help with?” Parker asked. Food and ice cream were nearly exhausted in the park. As a result, people were forming clumps around a variety of class and family reunions, or gradually beginning to drift away. The park wasn't as attractive a target for terrorists as it had been. Parker longed to be relieved of this duty and get back into the investigation. Maybe this was an excuse.

“Have you tried the office?”

“A minute ago. Got a busy signal.”

That meant both lines were tied up. And if the sheriff was too involved to answer his cell phone, maybe things were happening out there. Maybe she was needed.

“What's up? Why do you need to get in touch with your dad?”

One hesitated, but Two didn't. “Mom's acting really weird,” she said. Clearly, both girls were upset. Two usually called her new mother Judy, not Mom. “She's cut off all her hair and bleached what's left and she's packed her bags and taken the Taurus and headed for Wichita.”

Short blond hair. Parker knew that was what the Osama look-alike had been wearing when he robbed the bank this morning. And the hussy the farmer in the truck claimed to have seen about the same time had a platinum bob. Could one of them have been Judy?

“Wichita?” Parker asked. If Judy English had flipped out and robbed the bank, why would she head for Wichita?

“To catch a plane,” One said. “To Paris. I mean, she's always wanted to go. But now she's doing it out of the blue. And she never said a word to us till just this afternoon when she was throwing bags in the car.”

“Paris.” Parker thought that made more sense. Rob a bank and blow the country. But she would have picked another country. France would extradite, ship her right back to face charges. Not, Parker thought, that Judy seemed the type to go off the deep end, or do anything without careful planning. Nor, more to the point, had Judy struck her as someone who would rob or lie or steal under any circumstances. Make trouble for her husband, oh yeah, but not this kind of trouble. Not rob a bank in the town where he was sheriff.

“She's always dreamed about going,” One said. “Now she's doing it.”

“And she said she might not come back unless Englishman gets off his butt and goes with her,” Two added.

Whoa, Parker thought. If their marriage was so troubled that Judy English was ready to run off to Europe and never come back, that could put a different twist on things. An angry wife might want to do something wild and crazy to hurt her husband before she went. But Judy…rob a bank?

Parker pulled her own cell phone off her belt. The sheriff's office buzzed an angry busy signal at her. The sheriff's cell got voice mail, just like the Heathers had said. Deputy Wynn's cell got an “unavailable” message that meant his phone must be turned off. “Let's go to the courthouse,” Parker said.

The three of them began threading their way through the remnants of Buffalo Springs Day celebrants. The courthouse dominated the street across from the park, a Victorian brick promise of stability and calm. A promise broken as Supervisor Haines came flying through the screen over the window to the sheriff's office, grabbing honeysuckle and letting it slow his drop to the lawn. He hit the ground running as Chairman Wynn and Supervisor Finfrock bolted out the front doors, moving as if the hounds of hell were on their trail. It was like the scene had suddenly morphed from tranquil bucolic bliss to Keystone Kops absurd.

Wynn and Finfrock, shouting something unintelligible, flew down the steps and sprinted across the grass and dove into the ditch at the edge of Madison. Haines had already disappeared around the south side of the building. The sheriff's truck came slewing around the corner down by Bertha's, light bar blazing. It skidded to a stop in front of the courthouse and began drawing a crowd, all of them watching the building as if something even more dramatic must occur there at any moment.

And it did. Light and smoke and sound erupted from the windows to the sheriff's office.

Parker sprinted toward the sheriff's pickup. She was a little slower than the Heathers.

“What…” she began, but there was such a confusion of voices that the only word she caught that mattered was the one Finfrock and Chairman Wynn were shouting. “Grenade!”

The word brought her up short and silenced everybody else.

The front door to the courthouse opened again. More slowly this time. Mrs. Kraus, hair wild and her body covered in soot, advanced onto the top step—center stage before the audience this madness had drawn.

“Whatcha gawking at?” she demanded. She held up her hand. The grenade was in it, a trickle of smoke still rising from a neatly drilled hole in its bottom. “Nothing to see. Thing was a dud.” And then she sat on the top step and the grenade slipped from her fingers and bounced down to the sidewalk, and rolled off into the grass.

The courthouse still stood. No one was dead. Apparently, Parker decided, Mrs. Kraus was right.

***

“You are a man with many questions,” Bud Stone said. Mad Dog silently agreed. “I may be able to help you,” the Cheyenne continued from across the picnic bench, “but I have no simple answers and your attention is required here for now. Besides, my daughter and granddaughter wait for me. We have a long drive home. This is not the time for us to speak.”

“No?” Mad Dog said. His voice was heavy with regret. He'd been dreaming of a moment like this, a chance to seriously discuss Cheyenne beliefs with a man who understood them intimately, ever since mild curiosity about his mother's heritage turned into an obsession to know who and what he really was.

“It is an old man's duty, when a young man asks, to try to answer his questions. I will do that. When you are ready, come to Oklahoma. I live just outside Clinton. Anyone can tell you how to find me. Then, you and I will sit and smoke again. And we will discuss the things which need to be considered.”

“That would be great,” Mad Dog said. “But I was down there a couple of times. I kind of felt like I got blown off. Like people didn't take me seriously. The only ones who would talk to me, they didn't know as much as I did, just from reading books.”

“And those who talked to you, they didn't understand the little they knew,” the old man said. “Yes, I am sorry. Few come to us honestly wishing to learn. Especially from those who are not clearly of our people. I heard of you when you were there. And I avoided you. Then I began to dream of you and wonder if that might not have been a mistake. It is why I looked for you before I left.”

“Thanks for that,” Mad Dog said. “I'll come visit as soon as I can.”

“I know you will.” The old man reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small yellow buckskin sack about the size of Mad Dog's thumb. He drew the leather thong that secured it over his head and offered the sack to Mad Dog. “You should keep this with you until you come. It is a good thing for a Cheyenne to have. Inside, there is red earth. It is from Bear Butte in South Dakota. A holy place.”

Ochre, Mad Dog thought, accepting it as reverently as a Christian might take communion. “I can't thank you enough,” he said. He couldn't imagine a more precious gift.

Bud Stone climbed to his feet and brushed cigarette ashes from his Levis. “And now,” he said, “we must each go about our business.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Mad Dog reluctantly agreed.

“Besides,” Stone said, “you don't need me as much as you think. Not when a
nisimon
has adopted you.”

“
Nisimon
?” Mad Dog didn't know the Cheyenne word.

“A guardian spirit, what the White Men call a familiar.”