Broken Heartland (14 page)

He pushed the first desk aside. Wood and metal complained as they scraped across ancient tiles. Two pair of unmoving feet lay in a pool of blood just beyond. The sheriff slipped through the gap and bent beside the bodies. Boys, but he couldn't tell who they were. Both faces had been blown away. Bits of bone and blood and brain matter were what covered that chalkboard. The eternal question—Why?—written up there as two Buffalo Springs teens perhaps learned the answer.

Another pair of feet protruded from behind the teacher's desk. There was nothing the sheriff could do for the faceless pair, so he proceeded to the third body. It was Mr. Gamble, would-be choir director and Darwin critic. He had been shot, too, but not in the face. Exit wounds had exploded from his belly and chest. He must have been trying to get away. The sheriff thought it was a waste of time, but he put his fingers to the man's throat. No pulse. The skin was already cooling. Gamble must have died before Greer tried to make his grand entrance.

Bad. Three bodies. The pair without faces… kids, not yet men, shot to pieces in a building that should have been absolutely safe for them. And their teacher…. But why had Gamble brought these kids down here? What were they doing in an abandoned basement? Could this secret “choir” have somehow caused Chucky Williams to begin his killing spree? No one in the room could answer. Chucky and his hostages were gone, leaving three bodies and an infinite quantity of spent brass and bullet holes.

“Englishman?” Doc's voice was made distant by the stairwell and the soft moan of the ever-present Kansas wind. “Need help?”

“No, Doc. Three here. All beyond your abilities, until you go back to being coroner. Otherwise, this room is empty. I'm going to check out the rest of the basement. Wait there in case he gets by me.”

Getting by would probably mean the sheriff was dead, but he didn't mention that. Doing your duty…there were worse ways to go. He'd watched as cancer stole his wife. He'd rather let Chucky Williams empty a clip in him any day.

The sheriff stepped over to the classroom door, the one that led to the staircase where two old men had been sent to block an exit. He entered the dark hallway beyond.

“Chucky,” the sheriff said, closing the door behind him. “I'm coming for you.”

***

“Mark,” Pam said. “What's wrong?”

“Water,” Mark rasped. “No water since yesterday.”

“I'll find some,” Mad Dog said. There was a bathroom next to Galen's office. Besides, he needed to check whether Galen was still there. He didn't think so, because Hailey would have let him know. But maybe he'd find their clothes and cell phones and they could make contact with the outside world. Start to find out what was happening here.

Mad Dog glanced around. Where was Hailey, anyway? She'd been there to show them the grain bin Mark had been imprisoned in. Mad Dog had helped release Mark and now….Amazing, the way she kept appearing and disappearing, almost as if she could slip in and out of this world whenever she wanted.

Water. Galen Siegrist irrigated every acre he farmed. Water shouldn't be hard to find.

It was as dark in the warehouse as in the corridor at the base of the grain bins. None of the overhead lights were on and there weren't that many windows. None of the outside doors were open, either—the big ones for machinery or the little ones for people. Mad Dog examined the building from just inside the opening to the corridor, listening. The wind teased metal joints and rattled a loose panel somewhere. Otherwise, it was quiet. He couldn't see anyone. The lights were off in Galen's office. But Mad Dog's Mini Cooper had been moved in and parked behind Mark's truck. So it wouldn't be visible from the road, he supposed.

The Mini was closer than the office, so Mad Dog went there first. It was locked. There was nothing in it, anyway, except John Stewart CDs, and the new Neko Case he'd picked up the last time he was in Wichita.

Galen's office wasn't locked. Too bad. Mad Dog would have enjoyed breaking through one of its windows. Still, there could be an advantage to not making it obvious that they were on the loose again.

It was darker still in the office. Mad Dog was sure no one was in the warehouse. He took a chance and flipped the lights on. A computer sat, quietly powered down, on an inexpensive desk. Stacks of paper were neatly arranged and there was a lot of clear space on which to work. Compulsive, Mad Dog decided. He hadn't seen the top of his own desk in ages.

It was a thoroughly boring room—desk, file cabinets, a couple of cheap chairs for visitors, no ashtrays. The only decorations were a seed company calendar, displaying an ear of corn that reclined erotically, and two pictures that were all too familiar. They were duplicates of the watch-your-every-move Jesus and the scowling Aldus P. Goodfellow that hung in the room where he'd found Pam playing piano.

Mad Dog rifled the desk drawers and the file cabinets. Their clothes and his keys weren't in any of them. The closet didn't have a door and was empty except for another pair of coveralls. These had Galen's name embroidered on the pocket.

He didn't have to get water from the bathroom because the office contained a small refrigerator behind the desk. There were a couple of cans of generic cola and several bottles of designer water inside. Mad Dog filled his pockets. He was about to rush it all back to Pam and Mark when he realized there was something else of interest on the desk—a phone.

He picked it up, got a dial tone, and started punching buttons.

“Benteen County Sheriff's Office,” Mrs. Kraus said, “please hold.”

“Emergency,” Mad Dog said, but she was gone before he got it out. He could hold or try his brother's cell. He held. Nothing ever happened in Benteen County. Mrs. Kraus would be right back.

Something clicked in his ear. Someone, somewhere, began pushing buttons. Time to hang up, Mad Dog decided, but then Mrs. Kraus was back on the line.

“Can I help you?” She didn't sound like she wanted to.

“Send the next donor,” a man said.

“Beg pardon?” Mrs. Kraus replied. Her voice had gone beyond sounding male or female. It was more like listening to a steel girder under too much stress.

The other voice paused a moment. “With whom am I speaking?” he asked.

“Who are you?” Mrs. Kraus countered.

“I believe I have reached an incorrect number.” The guy who wanted another donor spoke with the crisp perfection of someone whose native language wasn't English.

“You calling the Benteen County Sheriff's Office?”

“No, I am not.”

“Then you're wasting your time and mine,” Mrs. Kraus said. “Yours, I don't care about.” There was another click when, Mad Dog was sure, she slammed down her phone.

More clicks followed, as the foreigner tried for a dial tone.

“Strange,” the voice said to someone else. “How could I dial Gamble and get the sheriff's office?” The clicks started again and Mad Dog took advantage of them to put Galen's phone back in its receiver.

***

Annie Gustafson didn't want to talk to anyone. But her father did.

“What do you think we elect your dad for?” he asked Heather English. “He's the law in Benteen County. We expect him and his deputies, you included I guess, to protect innocent children from bizarre situations like this.”

Gus Gustafson was a retired Navy man. He claimed he'd wanted to get as far from the ocean as possible, and Benteen County qualified. The former seaman had gathered his retirement papers and his family and moved here to raise kids and organic vegetables. Their truck farm paid its way, with the help of his retirement checks, but the kids had all grown up and returned to coastlines—all but Annie, sixteen, the only one still too young to leave home.

“Dad's been kind of shorthanded,” Deputy Heather said, “and I just got my badge this morning. But if you'll tell me what I need to protect Annie from, I'll do my best.”

Gustafson sputtered a moment before confessing. “That's why Annie's grounded until she's thirty. She won't tell me why she was out here last night, or on that bus. She says she was doing God's work.”

“Is that so, Annie?” The girl didn't answer or meet Heather's eyes.

Gustafson wasn't through, though. “Things haven't been the same since Goodfellow and these political Christians moved in over there across from the courthouse. If you ask me, the man's as wacky as his televangelist father.”

That opened Annie's mouth. “Pastor Goodfellow was chosen by the Lord, Daddy, and his father's a living saint.”

“What kind of God's work gets done by a pack of kids on a stolen school bus in the middle of the night?” Gus Gustafson was having none of it.

Annie opened her mouth and then shut it. “I can't say. I swore to Jesus I wouldn't tell.”

“Why would you promise not to talk about taking medical examinations?” Heather asked. Chairman Wynn had come along with her and he'd brought the notebooks. Heather took one and opened it to a page on which
Annie G.
was prominently displayed.

That brought Mrs. Gustafson into the conversation. “Annie. You couldn't. We raised you to know and live according to the tenets of Christian Science. That's why we brought you right home from that hospital. God will take care of any healing you need. Doctors aren't necessary. You said so yourself, to the people in that emergency room. How could you betray your trust in God by seeing some other doctors?”

Heather's interrogation skills might need honing, but she knew when to keep her mouth shut and just listen.

Annie was on the verge of tears. “But Mom,” she said. “I didn't do it for me. I just let them test me so I could be part of it, stay with the group. All I was going to do was pray for him. Sing for him.”

“For who?” Mr. Gustafson demanded.

The tears were flowing now. Annie's voice broke when she answered. “I can't say,” she hiccupped. “I swore I wouldn't tell.”

“The people on that bus were just part of a choir?” Heather said.

Annie nodded.

Heather took the notebook from Chairman Wynn and flipped pages. “Look at this, Annie,” she said. “This seems to be a list of people who would make the best transplant donors for someone. All the closest matches but Chucky seem to have been in your choir and on that bus this morning.”

Annie was nearly hysterical. “Chucky was with us. He ran….” She stopped. “I can't say anything. I can't.”

“They didn't tell you about maybe being a donor, did they?” Heather said.

Annie just sobbed.

“If they lied to you to get you to swear that oath, Jesus wouldn't want you to stay silent.” Heather wasn't sure about that. She knew she was right, legally, but when you got to faith, that was another matter.

Annie wasn't sure either, though both her parents spoke up and agreed with Heather's interpretation. “I don't know what to do,” the girl moaned.

Heather decided to explore escape clauses. “Did you promise not to tell where you were going?”

Annie nodded. That one wouldn't work. “How about who asked you to go?” Heather was getting desperate. “Or who was driving the bus?”

Annie seized on the last one. “The bus driver—that was Galen Siegrist.”

***

Most of the basement of Buffalo Springs High had once been the floor of a gymnasium. When the new gym was built in the fifties, the old one had been converted into more classrooms and a theater that doubled for assemblies. The hall the sheriff followed led almost straight down what had once been center court. The doors on his right opened on what remained of the gym, a half court of scarred wood floor with a raised stage. On the left were the new classrooms, abandoned now, including the one where Chucky had taken three lives. Every door along the hall was locked, handles still covered with dust.

At the far end, behind the staircase, was the old furnace room. Chucky Williams was probably in there. There was no dust on that knob. Just in case, though, the sheriff climbed the stairs that led to the door the principal hadn't been able to open earlier. On the other side, presumably, two elderly make-do deputies guarded this exit. The door required a key from either side. It was still locked and dusty. Just as well, since the sheriff was likely to take a load of buckshot in the face if he stuck his head out to check on the farmers.

Back at the door to the furnace room, the sheriff paused. If he was wrong about access to those ducts, Chucky would be waiting for him in here. The sheriff put one hand on the knob, keeping his .38 in front of him. He allowed himself a couple of deep breaths, then threw open the door and stepped into the room.

It was dusky, though far brighter than in the hall. High, narrow, pebbled-glass windows proved it was still light outside, but that was about all.

The room was crowded with junk—stacks of old desks, boxes of files, antique band uniforms. Dust hung in the air, recently disturbed, and yet the floor was clean and shining. It shouldn't be shining. He slipped further into the room, got to the place where he could see around that stack of desks, and found the bodies.

It wasn't the floor that shone. It was the fresh blood on it.

Three girls lay in a circle. Their arms were bound with duct tape. Their mouths and eyes had been taped, too. Chucky must have brought them here, then realized he couldn't take them with him into the tunnels. Not three of them. And so he hadn't taken any. It appeared he'd made them kneel, each facing away from where he'd stood in their center. And then he'd used a knife. A hand in the hair to pull the head back, expose the neck, then one quick slash. None of them seemed to have struggled. The sheriff thought…hoped…they hadn't known what was happening to them.

Of course he knew them all. One of the girls looked a little like his beloved Judy. She had been about this age when he first noticed her at a basketball game in the adjacent gym, then married her shortly thereafter. The memories caused his eyes to tear up, although what he'd found here should have been enough. He'd been hiding his emotions, way down where no one knew about them, not even himself. He swiped a sleeve across his eyes, pushed his feelings aside again, and forced himself back to the business at hand.