Broken Heartland (23 page)

The guy in the suit didn't comply. He just shouted back.

“Lieutenant Greer. Newt Neuhauser. Haven't seen you guys since Ramadi. Good to have you aboard. Go inside and report to Delta. I've got an intruder to neutralize.”

The blond loped off toward the metal warehouses and left Greer and Neuhauser standing by the Chevy.

“What the hell is a private security contractor from Iraq doing in the middle of Kansas?” Neuhauser asked, even if the question might be asked of him as well. “And who's Delta?

Greer shook his head and wished he hadn't. “One way to find out,” he said.

***

Deputy Heather almost climbed through the roof when her cell rang. Vibrated, actually, since she'd had the good sense to turn off the ringer before entering one of Galen Siegrist's metal warehouses. The bullet holes in her sister's trunk, and the fact that the man in the field had aimed some kind of weapon at her, had persuaded her to duck the Taurus between warehouses, well out of view of the man with the gun. Then she'd abandoned the car in search of an inconspicuous spot from which a girl with a badge and handcuffs and a can of pepper spray could decide how to take on gunmen in suits, rescue her sister and her uncle, keep Dad safe, and otherwise save the day.

She fumbled the phone out of her pocket without taking time to see who was calling.

“Hello,” she whispered, ducking between a dump truck and a small tractor.

“Something really weird is going on at the Siegrist place.” It was Heather, Two of Two.

“You're all right? I saw your car.”

“You saw my car? Where are you?”

Heather explained, then the other Heather did the same.

“Maybe you should call that highway patrol captain,” Heather Lane suggested.

Heather English, with recent memories of having her own car shot at by one of those highway patrolmen, wasn't so sure. But Englishman would hear about Mad Dog and the Siegrist place very soon. He was almost certain to put in an appearance right after that. Englishman would come armed, but he'd be seriously outgunned by the guy in that field. Heather One told her sister she'd make the call.

Heather Two, sounding more like an identical twin instead of an adopted one, read One's mind. “You're going to look around, first, aren't you? Maybe I should slip out of here and help.”

It was hard to suggest that what was good for One would be stupid for Two. “You're right,” Deputy Heather said. “I'll hole up and call the captain and we'll let the professionals take care of this.”

“That's smart,” Two said.

One guessed her sister wasn't planning to stay put any more than she was. “I'll get back to you as soon as I talk to the troopers,” she said, “and then call Daddy and try to make sure he gets here
after
they do.”

The girls promised each other they'd stay someplace safe until the state officers arrived. Then they disconnected. Heather English stuck the phone back in her pocket and pulled out her pepper spray and peeked around the dump truck.

She was near the middle of the warehouse, a big, dusky expanse of parked machinery with occasional work benches and tool boxes where things got repaired.

She wanted to get nearer to the house. Actually, she wanted to get inside the house to search for Uncle Mad Dog and figure out what was going on here, so she'd know if outside help was really needed. A blown-out rear window and the news that Chucky Williams was still armed and had stolen Mrs. Kraus' car didn't do much for her confidence in the state boys. Maybe she could find out where these guys in the suits kept their armaments, get the drop on them, and have everything nicely sewn up before Englishman or the troopers got here.

She found Mad Dog's Mini Cooper in the warehouse. She recognized the license number, not that there were any other Minis in the county, especially red ones with bumper stickers that read, “It's a good day to be Indigenous,” and “Jesus would use his turn signals.” So, Two was right. That was Mad Dog she'd seen being led into the house at gunpoint.

Deputy Heather angled for the window across the building, the one nearest the house. Her path took her past a small office. She thought about investigating it, then decided to put it off until later. She had just passed the door when it opened and the blond guy with the suit and the gun came out.

“How'd you get out of that field and into that Taurus?” He seemed more puzzled about that than concerned she might be a threat. The pepper spray was already in her hand and he was close enough for it to be effective.

The mist caught him by surprise and square in the face. And then she realized he was wearing wrap-around sunglasses and thought she maybe should have called the highway patrol after all.

***

“Don't be alarmed,” the doctor said. “You've just received a dose of an extraordinarily effective neuromuscular blocking agent. A little something I developed myself. The drug causes paralysis without interfering with your level of consciousness.”

And I shouldn't be alarmed, Mad Dog thought. He was lying on the floor and he couldn't move. Paralysis seemed to be an accurate description. Hell, he couldn't even make his eyes look at anything but the tiles immediately in front of his face.

“You're not a young man,” the doctor continued. “But you're quite large and I was disinclined to join you in a wrestling match. Besides, if we get back on schedule, you're due for surgery before long.”

This wasn't any more reassuring than the first statement. If he could have done anything other than quietly drool on the floor, he would have asked for more details about that surgery. Was he to be a liver donor the way the nurse had hinted? Or heart and lungs? Either way, he'd really like the chance to do a little wrestling with this man. Or pummeling, maybe. Or just plain beating the fellow to death.

“I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you on the floor for now. You've got our security team running in circles looking for you and that girl, and now I understand we have some other visitors.”

Mad Dog felt hands on his right shoulder. His view of the world shifted as the doctor turned him face up. Well, face sideways, since his head lolled in the direction from which it had come.

Out of the corner of the eyes he couldn't move, he saw the man attaching a plastic bag to one of the stands beside Reverend Goodfellow's bed. Mad Dog felt a prick in his right arm as the doctor started a drip.

“This should preserve you in your current state until we're ready to get on with things.”

Hands took hold of Mad Dog's face and turned it and he was suddenly looking straight into the surgeon's eyes. The doctor produced a light and examined them. He made small humming sounds as he applied a stethoscope and then a blood-pressure cuff.

The man chatted quietly while he worked. “Did you recognize our famous guest? You should feel honored. In your small way, you may help me keep this man alive forever. How, you may ask? By aiding my personal innovations in gene and stem-cell therapies, of course.”

He opened Mad Dog's mouth and explored it with his flashlight. Mad Dog desperately willed his jaw to snap shut and bite those fingers off. Nothing happened.

“Perhaps you're concerned with the ethics of this endeavor. You will be pleased to know that I have come to my own accommodation with that question. Until now, everyone died. If a few more have to die sooner than they might have in order to make immortality available for those who deserve it—or, I will admit, those who can afford it—oh well. There is a saying. One cannot make an egg without breaking omelets.

“You have an athlete's pulse, and excellent blood pressure. You will make a superb subject for this afternoon's procedure.”

He patted Mad Dog affectionately on the cheek. “You must excuse me now. I have other preparations to make. I promise to get back to you as soon as possible. I hope you won't find the floor too uncomfortable.”

The man's hands reached for Mad Dog's eyes and gently closed them. “There, now. We can't have your lovely eyes drying out, can we?”

Mad Dog wanted to grab those hands and break them. Smash that smiling face. Bash that aquiline nose until it was flat. He couldn't move. He couldn't even scream.

Except inside his head….

***

“Can you believe it? Somebody stole my damn car.” Mrs. Kraus was steaming. When she'd noticed Ex-Chairman Wynn, she must have decided he was the perfect target to dump on. “I can't even report it because we got no deputies and all my phone lines have been appropriated 'cause of this shooting over at the high school. And those state boys won't pay me no attention. Then there was that voter fraud this morning and…I swear. It makes you wonder what the world's coming to.”

The former chairman was slumped in the front seat of his Cadillac SUV, trying to pretend that would make him invisible even though his Escalade was the only one of its kind in Benteen County. People picking up their kids at the courthouse kept honking and waving to him.

“I'm sorry,” Mrs. Kraus said, getting closer to his window and forcing him to look her in the eye. “That was thoughtless of me, that comment about us having no deputies. What's the news on your boy? Is he much improved? Is that why you're back in Benteen County? But why are you all scrunched down in your seat like that?”

He flushed and sat up a little and told her how Deputy Wynn was in an induced coma and likely to stay that way for a few days. He told her, too, how he hadn't been able to sit around and pace the halls under those circumstances, so he'd come home to try to solve the mystery of this morning's bus wreck.

“The reason I'm keeping a low profile here is because I'm trying not to be obvious while I follow that white Ford over by the church. I think the guy who came to town in it had something to do with the school bus being out there this morning.”

Mrs. Kraus turned and looked and asked, “Which guy?”

He sat up real straight now, peering over her shoulder. A truck went by, further blocking his view for a minute, and then he saw it. The Ford had backed out while Mrs. Kraus was at his window and now it was heading down the street toward Main. The driver wasn't alone in there anymore, either. He had two passengers.

“Who's in there with him?” the chairman asked, reaching down and starting the Cadillac.

“Don't know. Never got me a good look at 'em.”

“You got to excuse me,” Wynn said. “I need to follow that car.”

“Then you'll need to get out of this park,” Mrs. Kraus said. “Can you run me back over to the courthouse so I can get my Glock?”

He just wanted her out of his way. And he needed the parade of cars that were suddenly coming and going to the courthouse to pause long enough for him to back into the street.

“I don't have time to wait for you,” he said. “Or for all this damn traffic. They're getting away.”

Mrs. Kraus yanked his door open and shoved him toward the passenger seat. “You let me behind the wheel. I'll get us clear.”

He could sit there and argue with her while the Ford disappeared, or he could do what she asked and let her drive. Neither one seemed to offer much of a chance, but talking Mrs. Kraus out of anything was likely to take longer. He crawled into the passenger's seat as she slammed the door behind her.

“How are you gonna break into that traffic?” he said.

She put the Cadillac in drive and floored it, throwing up chunks of sod from Veteran's Memorial Park and bouncing over any shrubs and bushes that happened to be in the way. She tore a giant circular divot in the park's grass and came barreling back toward the line of cars and trucks, horn blaring. They made room for her, though only just.

The chairman thought he might be the second member of the Wynn family to be in a vehicle that injured the county's citizens today. Even after they managed to get across the street, a cluster of pedestrians had to flush like a covey of quail to clear the way for Mrs. Kraus.

He closed his eyes to avoid seeing people get plastered to his grill like summer's grasshoppers. When there were no sickening thuds, he risked peeking. He was just in time to confirm Mrs. Kraus' observation.

“Damn,” she said. “Now where's that Ford got to?”

***

In all his years in Benteen County, Doc had never brought a load of six bodies back to Klausen's funeral parlor at one time. A trooper had helped him load them. He was getting too old for toting bodies out of basements. Hell, he was getting too old for carting in murder victims by the half-dozen. Maybe it was time to retire. He'd only taken the coroner's job in the first place because Benteen County never had violent deaths other than traffic accidents, or farmers who forgot the uncaring power of the machinery they used every day.

Doc glanced over his shoulder as he maneuvered the Buick into Klausen's parking lot and backed it up near the “delivery” entrance. The stack of body bags was in the way, so he had to use the rearview mirrors on his doors. There was a white Ford near where he wanted to be, but it got out of his way before he began swinging his Buick into place. A car full, maybe relatives who'd come to begin making arrangements before their children's bodies had even arrived. He didn't pay attention. He was focused on the grim task ahead, six autopsies. More, if what he'd heard about Chucky's parents was true. And Chucky was still out there.

He felt the weight of his years as he let himself out of the Buick—his occasional ambulance and current meat wagon. It was all he could do to drag himself to the back door. He punched the buzzer that would alert a Klausen brother, or one of their employees, that he needed help. He opened the door and trudged down that sterile white hallway, leaving what had started as a perfect autumn day far behind. For him, its perfection had been ruined by that first body he'd brought in earlier this morning.

He passed his office and proceeded straight to the work room. There were two stainless steel surfaces inside. He'd have to find something to do with the other four while they waited their turns. Then it occurred to him that the refrigerator, where they would end up after his indelicate attentions, might not hold as many bodies as he was going to need to store in there.