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“I'm guessing you won't have to. Looks like the blast woke everyone in Benteen County.”

His cell chirped and he pulled it out of a pocket and told it who he was.

“I haven't found Mad Dog,” Heather said, “but I may have met that killer of his.”

Jesus! The blast and this body had driven Fig Zit's threat right out of his head. It was way too late to ask, but he did anyway.

“Are you all right?”

It was what the crowd arriving at the courthouse wanted to know of him and Mrs. Kraus. And in both Buffalo Springs and Tucson, “yes” was far too simple an answer.

***

Emergency room personnel separated Mad Dog from the girl in short order. That didn't surprise him, really, since she was the one having the baby. But the way they did it made him think they suspected he'd abused her. She did have that bump on her head. And her nails had drawn blood when she squeezed his hand. To say nothing of the smudges of black paint on his skin here and there. They resembled bruising. His solid black left hand, the one she hadn't gotten to yet, just looked weird until they let him use a restroom and wash it and the rest of the paint off at last.

Mad Dog thought it might be time to leave. There were a couple of cops there with a shooting victim and he had the feeling the hospital people had asked them to talk to him when they got a moment. But he didn't quite make it to the exit before someone in scrubs intercepted him.

“Mr. Maddox,” the man said, “your wife wants you with her for the delivery.”

Mad Dog had had enough trouble with people accepting his IDs, checks and credit cards, that he'd kept one card in his original name, Harvey Edward Maddox. That was what he'd given them when they asked what insurance the young lady had. The young lady didn't have insurance. Mad Dog knew that. And when he'd said they should charge his card, they'd suddenly begun to treat him less like vermin.

“My wife?”

“Or whatever your relationship may be. And we'd like your help filling out some forms. The lady made it very clear she'd like you to be with her. Other than that, we can't seem to get much out of her.”

The man opened a door that led back to the treatment rooms. Mad Dog glanced over his shoulder and saw that one of the cops had moved near the exit. Mad Dog followed the nurse, doctor, or whatever he was, and felt much better when the door swung shut behind them.

“Can you tell me Esperanza's date of birth?” the man said, ushering Mad Dog past a couple of gurneys, one occupied by someone quietly moaning an old Bob Dylan song instead of the prayer Mad Dog had expected.

“Esperanza?” Was that the girl's name? Mad Dog realized they hadn't gotten around to introductions.

“The woman you brought in, Mr. Maddox.” The man gave him a funny look.

“Esperanza means Hope,” Mad Dog said, improvising. He didn't want the hospital people to start thinking about involving the police again. “I usually call her Hope.” This was the first time he'd associated any name with her, so he supposed “usually” qualified. “And, you know, some people don't think it's polite to ask a woman's age.”

The guy in the scrubs continued to give Mad Dog a peculiar look, but it was a different kind of peculiar now.

“I see. How about blood type, allergies, medical conditions, anything that could help us with the treatment we provide?”

“We Cheyenne mostly stick to traditional medicine.”

The man stopped in the middle of a hallway. “You don't really know this woman at all, do you? What are you, the coyote who smuggled her in?”

Two men passed a cross-hall, well down the corridor. Another figure in scrubs led a small, trim man cradling his left hand with his right. The guy with the injury didn't have braids or a beaded head band, nor was he wearing silver and turquoise jewelry. Nothing about him looked faintly Native American, but Mad Dog recognized him instantly—Fig Zit. Or, if not the character from the game, then the man who'd started the night's insanity when he knifed a Sewa Tribal Policeman a few hours ago.

“Answer me. Are you her coyote?”

“No coyote. Right now I'm Madwulf, and you'll have to excuse me. I've got a demon to exorcise.”

***

Heather pulled Matus' 4Runner into a lot across from the emergency room entrance. The captain had done a lot of recovering on the drive to the hospital. She opened a door and he reached over and put a hand on her arm before she could get out.

“I'm not going in there,” he said.

“Why not? You're here, already. You don't know exactly what he did to you.”

“I don't even know who did something to me. I was running beside the street and then you were helping me back to my car. Everything in between is a blank.”

“That sounds like a good reason to see a doctor,” she said, but she didn't pull away from him or climb out of the SUV.

“It could have been you that knocked me out,” he said, “except you were ahead of me, not behind. I do remember that.”

“So…?”

“So close the door and tell me why I shouldn't arrest you and turn you back over to TPD.”

She pulled it shut. “Well, I went back for you and brought you here.”

“There's that,” he admitted. “But your uncle still killed my officer. I've got to bring him in, but it doesn't have to be dead. Take me to him, persuade him to give himself up. I promise you he'll get his day in court.”

“I don't know where he is,” she said. “Besides, who do you think knocked you out back there? That wasn't Uncle Mad Dog. If it had been, and I was trying to help him get away with murder, he and I would be a long way from here right now.”

He nodded, thinking about it.

“I think the man who took you out and attacked me was the guy who killed your officer. He looked a lot different than the way he was described at the ceremony, but I'll bet it was the same guy. This one knew my name and he had another switchblade he told me he'd use to do some elaborate carving. That fits with him knowing Mad Dog would be at Pascua. It fits with him setting up a murder and then framing my uncle.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe. But it's a hell of a stretch. Your uncle's a thousand miles from home and hardly anybody knew you invited him to come here. What you're proposing requires someone not only know that, but go to the trouble of setting up a kill, and then not even killing his target, just framing him for the job. It's going to take one fine lawyer to sell that to a jury.”

“Normally,” Heather said. “But someone blew up Mad Dog's house in Kansas. And just now, someone tried to do the same to my father and his office. Your jury isn't going to buy all that as coincidence. There's your reasonable doubt.”

Matus shook his head. “It's just so bizarre.”

“But even you, you're starting to have doubts, aren't you?”

A siren had been getting louder and louder as they talked. Suddenly, it was deafening as the emergency vehicle appeared on the street behind them. Its lights strobed, turning cars and buildings and bushes alternating shades of red and white and blue. Heather watched the vehicle swing around to the side of the building.

“Oh my God!” she said. “That's him.”

Matus didn't understand. “That's who? You talking about the ambulance?”

“No. Along the side of the hospital. I just saw him in their headlights.”

“I can't see anyone,” Matus said.

“There,” Heather pointed. “The little guy holding his arm. That's the man who knocked you out and tried to hurt me. That's your killer.”

Matus still couldn't see him. “Where?”

And then a door opened and a man in scrubs ushered a smaller man into the hospital.

“Quick!” Matus threw his door open and stumbled into the parking lot.

Heather was right behind him. Ahead, actually, since it took Matus a moment to regain his balance. She sprinted for the door, grabbed the handle, and yanked.

“Locked,” she said. “How do we get in?”

Matus was reaching for his belt. “Damn,” he said. “Bastard stole my gun.”

Heather felt herself blush. At least it was too dark for him to notice. She pulled the gun from under her jacket and put it in his hands. “Sorry. I borrowed it while you weren't at your best. In case he came back.”

He slammed the butt against the door, three times. “This is how we get in,” he said. “This and my badge.”

“Careful. I put a round in the chamber.”

“Good,” Matus said. “Because if someone doesn't answer this door in about thirty seconds, I'm going to blow a hole in the lock.”

Heather didn't think shooting at a hospital was a good idea. She started to say so but then the door opened and Uncle Mad Dog was standing there.

She watched Matus' jaw drop as Mad Dog said, “Somehow I knew that was you. Hurry, I'll show you where Fig Zit went.”

***

Sheriff English removed his jacket and draped it over the charred ruin of what had once been a face. It would be too easily visible to the small crowd that had gathered in front of the courthouse. The distant street and porch lights weren't enough to illuminate the scene, but a gibbous moon was. That and the flashlight beams that were beginning to duel like low-wattage light sabers over the lawn and the seared body. The explosion had taken down the power and phone lines to the courthouse. The former arced and sputtered like an electric serpent, writhing at the south end of the building. The row of streetlights that should have lit the front of the courthouse was entering its third year of waiting for someone to get around to that county repair order.

The sheriff used his walker to steady himself as he went to one knee and felt for a billfold. Its leather was blackened and steaming. The driver's license had begun to weld itself to a credit card, but the picture and identity on its face were still recognizable. Not that there would be any matching this picture with this face. Both, however, apparently belonged to the Edward Miller whose pickup waited on the edge of Veterans' Memorial Park across the way.

“You all keep back now,” Mrs. Kraus told the curious crowd, “and stop bothering us with your questions. You know we can't reveal stuff in the middle of an active investigation.”

An aging Buick station wagon eased around the corner and nosed through the crowd. Its color was obscured, even when the occasional flashlight swept across the caked mud and layers of dust that covered its paint. The sheriff remembered a time when it had shone, back when Doc Jones, Benteen County Coroner, first brought home his converted ambulance. Sadly, it had carried far more dead than injured. And the sheriff could tell Doc was realizing it was about to perform that unhappy task yet again as he parked and climbed from behind the wheel. Doc's perpetually glum face sagged into a still more forlorn expression. The sheriff pulled himself to his feet and went to meet the coroner.

“When that explosion woke me, I figured I was needed,” Doc said. “Though I hoped it wasn't in my official capacity. What happened?”

“Mrs. Kraus and I were in the office. Then bang, and we're in the dark and the windows are all blown in and someone's running around the lawn, burning to death. Mad Dog's house got blown up earlier tonight. Luckily, Mad Dog is out of town.”

And in a hell of a mess down in Tucson, the sheriff might have added. It was just too complicated to get into, though. “I'm guessing this is the same fellow who was responsible for that. And that it's Ed Miller, since that's his truck over there and our corpse was carrying his wallet and driver's license.”

Doc's face made the transition from sad to puzzled. “Ed Miller?” he said. “Why on earth would Ed want to blow up you and Mrs. Kraus?”

If he knew that, the sheriff thought, he'd have something to go on and, maybe, a way to help Mad Dog and Heather in far off Tucson. Maybe even, some hint that could lead him to Fig Zit.

“I haven't got a clue, Doc.”

“Bombing you and Mrs. Kraus doesn't make any sense,” Doc said. “Though Mad Dog, I can kind of understand.”

“Really?” The sheriff was surprised.

“Yeah. Ed told me he finally got himself a decent paying job. He just started with the people planning that ethanol outfit your brother's been trying to keep out of Benteen County.”

***

Heather wasn't surprised when Mad Dog didn't wait to see how she and Captain Matus reacted to Mad Dog's surprising announcement.

“Follow me,” her uncle told them. He whirled and went pounding down the hall like a fullback into an off-tackle hole his linemen had just opened.

She was even more surprised that Matus didn't seem to consider shooting Mad Dog in the back. The much-smaller Sewa followed on Mad Dog's heels, gun out, badge up. Not that there were any people trying to impede their progress. Heather found herself trailing the pack, and tossing an apology to a terrified nurse trying to climb the wall rather than deal with any of the wild bunch invading her hospital.

“One of these doors along here,” Mad Dog called over his shoulder. “They were going in just as you knocked.” He reached out and tried a knob and it turned.

“This one, I think,” Mad Dog said. And then, just before Heather got to it, “Oh yeah. This one for sure.”

Matus stopped dead in the middle of the doorway and Heather nearly ran over him. Then she saw why. Mad Dog stood in front of a desk heaped with papers and photographs of smiling people. Two other men were in the room with him. They both wore scrubs. One sat on the floor with his back to the desk and a surprised look in already cloudy eyes that stared at the syringe protruding from his torso, angling up, just under the sternum. The other man was lying against the far wall and he seemed to be having a seizure. He thrashed about madly, clawing at his neck and making strangled noises even though no one was doing any strangling.

Mad Dog bent and rolled him over. Heather could see that the man's neck was red and bleeding. With the way he was tearing at his throat, she wasn't sure he hadn't made those wounds to his own flesh. But his eyes were bugged out and his face had gone unnaturally pale.