Prairie Gothic (7 page)

“You remember what Wynn had to say about the baby being Jewish?” Doc asked. It seemed a strange segue, and this time it was the sheriff who exploded.

“When I have time, I will explain about circumcision to my deputy. Meanwhile, I've confiscated his weapon and sent him home. I know, as a law enforcement officer, he's an embarrassment. If I didn't need this job so badly, or wasn't always winning re-election by such narrow margins, I'd probably fire his ass and tell his father what to do with my department's budget. I might even try to run Wynn Senior out of office, only he's the most popular political figure in this county and about the only one on the board who knows what he's doing. Folks around here are fond of Deputy Wynn. They find him an amusement, as long as he isn't screwing up their cases or ignoring their legal rights. And, damn it, he means well.”

“Guess I'm not the only one who's a little touchy this morning,” Doc said. For the first time there was a hint of warmth, evidence of their close friendship in his voice. “That's not what I meant either. Come over here. Take a look.”

Doc reached down and gently brushed thick black hair off the child's forehead. There was a mark there. The sheriff bent closer.

“You see it,” Doc asked, and the sheriff did.

In the center of his forehead, just below the hairline, someone had drawn a tiny swastika.

***

The weather was deteriorating. By the time Mad Dog and Hailey got back to the Saab, all his extremities were numb. His face was raw from the stinging snow that had begun falling, driven by the wind so that it blew almost parallel to the ground. He couldn't get a cellular signal and had to step back out of the Saab to try his phone in the open. Hailey refused to follow. If a tundra wolf preferred to snuggle near the heater vent on the seat of an aging Saab Turbo instead of sniffing about for bunnies—or more skeletons—it was definitely turning unpleasant out.

Mad Dog finally got the phone to work. The connection was weak, but he discovered his brother's cell phone was turned off. When he punched in the number for the sheriff's office next, it actually rang. Of course Mrs. Kraus didn't really answer, she just told him to hold while she dealt with something. It sounded like a madhouse there, only his signal was so poor that he couldn't make out much. Could all that be because of Tommie Irons?

Just as he was about to abandon hope, Mrs. Kraus came back on the line. For a moment, her voice was crystal clear. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

Englishman wasn't there and it was clear folks were pissed that he'd helped Tommie Irons on his journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Englishman needed to know what Hailey had discovered, though, so Mad Dog swallowed his pride and began trying to explain to Mrs. Kraus.

“I found a body,” he told her.

“Mad Dog, the whole damn town knows about the body you found, and just where you found it.”

“No ma'am. I mean another. Maybe more.”

He stomped his feet to try to get some feeling, and then there was way too much feeling on the left side of his face and when he turned to look for the phone it wasn't there anymore, just some wires and shattered plastic hanging over his bare, bloody hand. Moments before that hand had held a cell phone and been enclosed in a thick mitten.

Mad Dog hadn't thought the Saab could get through the drifted snow just downhill of the slough, but it did, and faster than he would have dreamed. The plastic had nicked his hand, but it was his ear doing most of the bleeding. He couldn't hear out of it quite right, not that he was complaining. Right now it was about putting distance between himself and the white pickup truck that had followed him down the road by the slough. If, when he found time to check, he resembled Vincent Van Gogh in the ear department, he would still count himself lucky. The shooter with the white truck had put a bullet through his phone. The Nokia was dead. He wasn't. If the Saab proved better at negotiating snowdrifts than the shooter's truck, he would keep it that way.

***

“I don't think I can do it,” Two of Two said.

“Spread your legs a little. Put your left foot up there and push.”

“Don't forget to breathe,” One of Two suggested.

“OK,” Wynn said, shifting his butt around nervously and wringing his hands. The deputy leaned forward and looked out the windshield, checking the street ahead. It was empty, just as it almost always was. “Your foot on the floor?”

“My left one?” Two wondered. “Yeah. Pedal's all the way down.”

“All right, now. Take ahold of the shifter here and shove it to the left and forward so's you're in first gear.” Two did as instructed. “Now, gently, push your right foot down on the accelerator as you lift your other foot off the clutch.”

“Like this?” The sheriff's cruiser spun its back wheels, then the tires chirped and grabbed and the car jumped forward like a dragster coming off the line.

“It would be good if you stayed on the street,” One observed from the back seat. Wynn wasn't saying anything because he was too busy cringing as they climbed the curb. The front bumper avoided an oak by inches. Heather Lane got them back in the street as the engine approached red line on the tach. She took her foot off the accelerator half a moment before she put her other foot back on the clutch. Everyone jerked forward until she shifted gears and popped the clutch again. This was executed even less smoothly than her initial effort, but there were so many cubic inches of ancient Detroit iron under the hood that it was almost impossible to stall, even when you managed to miss a couple of gears and go directly into fourth.

“How was that?” Two wondered, proud of the success she'd managed on her very first try.

“I think she's getting the hang of it, don't you, Deputy?” One said.

Wynn couldn't find his voice to answer. They accelerated out of town, headed south along Adams Street, racing the wind and beginning to win.

“You are such a sweetheart, agreeing to teach us how to drive a manual transmission,” Two told him, taking her eyes off the road just long enough to bring the tires on Wynn's side to the edge of an especially deep ditch.

“Ulp!” Wynn responded graciously. He couldn't get enough breath for a terrified scream.

***

Judy English studied the names on her list and remembered their faces, figures, and characters. The sophomore had to be too skinny. No way she could have hidden a pregnancy in that scrawny body of hers, and yet…Judy remembered noticing a bit of a tummy on her last week. She'd thought it might be evidence of malnutrition. The other two, the seniors, seemed more likely. One of them was Marilyn Monroe voluptuous. Lots of room in those ample curves to hide an extra bulge. The other was a strikingly beautiful girl with a weight problem. She had trouble saying no to food—or sex. Self-esteem issues, Judy decided.

She probably ought to tell Englishman, Judy thought, but she was still pissed at him for that bizarre call about the car. She reached out and picked up a picture from her desk. Englishman stood in the front yard, a Heather at either shoulder and an explosion of morning glories erupting behind them. He could make her so angry…or so horny.

He still looked good at forty-seven. His face was more weathered; the crinkles around his amazingly blue eyes were deeper than she remembered all those years ago when she was a teen and he was a wounded war hero. She'd looked across the gym at a Bison's basketball game and decided he was the one. His hairline was a little higher, just a hint of gray dusted his temples, but he still had that calm, noble look that had turned her on. The Cheyenne heritage Englishman and Mad Dog's mother had claimed, and Judy's genealogical research appeared to confirm, was evident in his high cheekbones, his Roman nose, and his dark complexion. She, and plenty of other girls, had thought he looked exotic and dreamy. Hot!

Judy smiled. They'd been right. He was hot. He certainly lit her romantic fires. There'd never been any shortage of passion in their relationship, either when they loved or when they fought. He'd told her, once, that was what first intrigued him about her. She was feisty. If she didn't agree with him, and she usually didn't, she let him know. And fighting with him was fun because it was so much more fun making up afterwards. Though, for a while there, it hadn't looked like there would be an afterwards. They'd gotten divorced. Even then, they'd gone right on fighting…and loving.

But damn Englishman. What was that call about the car really about? It wasn't like him to try to annoy her. Not on purpose. These days, when she got mad, he seldom showed his own temper. He usually just backed off and let her have the last say. He was trying hard to make it work this time. She loved him even more for that.

Why would he care where the Taurus was if he didn't want to use it? She glanced back down at her list of potential sex kittens and suddenly knew.

She was breathing hard when she picked up the phone. She fumbled, punching in their home number. Had to do it twice to get it right. The answering machine clicked in after the first ring.

“Hi!” One of Two greeted her. It wasn't their usual message. Englishman was on that one. “We're ill. We're trying to nap. Please call later, or leave a message and we'll return your call when we can.” Judy thought she could hear Two talking to someone in the background. And just the hint of a masculine reply before the recording stopped and the machine beeped at her.

“Girls. It's me. Pick up the phone please.” No one did, not even when Judy repeated her plea a couple of times in an increasingly higher register.

Before the machine beeped to tell her she'd run out of time, Judy was slinging on her coat and digging in her purse for her keys, already out of the office and on her way to the parking lot.

***

“Where have you been?”

Stan Deffenbach was hopping around the lobby of the Sunshine Towers like a child in desperate need of a potty break. Lucille Martin took Deffenbach by the shoulder and gently pushed him aside. She looked older than she had earlier.

“We do have a problem, Sheriff,” Mrs. Martin said. “Tommie Irons' family came shortly after you left. Becky Hornbaker's son, Simon, and one of his young brutes.”

Becky Hornbaker was Tommie Irons' sister and Supervisor Hornbaker's wife. Simon was their only child, and his twin sons, Judah and Levi, were a pair of hulking bullies.

“Apparently there's some family heirloom missing and they're upset about it. Simon went so far as to accuse poor Mr. Deffenbach and the Sunshine Towers staff of stealing it. Simon and Levi are still up there looking. They've terrified most of the residents. Perhaps you can make them leave and stop disassembling furniture and searching people's rooms.”

“What are they searching for? What's missing?”

“They won't say.”

“They won't tell you what's missing, but they want you to give it back?” The sheriff found such lack of logic hard to imagine, except of Hornbakers. It was also hard to picture Lucille Martin not getting a satisfactory answer or being disobeyed by anyone, even if she was currently without a ruler.

“Precisely. It's something small, I think, from some of the places they've looked for it. And from the energy they're bringing to the search, it must be valuable. I told them they would have to leave, but they ignored me.”

Was ignoring Lucille Martin permitted?

“Please stop them,” Stan Deffenbach whined. “They're ruining my business.”

***

“Why did I let you talk me into this?” Wynn complained.

“'Cause we blackmailed you,” One of Two said.

“'Cause when you caught Gloria Ramirez on the street after midnight and accused her of being the phantom snowballer, you searched her,” Two added from behind the wheel. “Too thoroughly. I mean, who's going to hide snowballs inside her bra?”

“Now listen,” Wynn swiveled in his seat to fix his most severe look on both Heathers. His seat belt stopped him about halfway and the gesture came off more like petulant. “Nothing inappropriate about it at all. I been watchin' them reality cop shows on my satellite dish. You'd be surprised where perpetrators hide things.”

“Snowballs? In her brassiere?” Two accused.

“Well, hey. It's not like I strip searched her. I just patted her down.”

“Nah. You copped a feel, and since she was out after hours and didn't want her folks to know, she didn't say anything because you let her sneak in her house afterwards. She didn't tell her pa, who would likely come after you with an ax handle. And she didn't tell her boyfriend, who would probably punch your lights out and then get arrested for assaulting a law officer.”

“So she told us,” the Heather in the back seat continued, “'cause she thought we might hint to Dad that one of his deputies needed to learn to keep his hands to himself.”

“Which we will, if we ever hear about you doing anything like that again,” Two resumed. “Or might, anyway, if you don't keep your promise and teach us how to drive a standard shift.”

“But why today?” Wynn complained.

Two practiced downshifting to third again, then back up to fourth. “'Cause Englishman says he'll start driving this cruiser more and leaving his truck for us once we learn how to handle a standard transmission. Only he's never got the time to teach us. And, 'cause you're actually a pretty sweet guy and would probably have done this out of the goodness of your heart if we'd only asked you nicely in the first place. Right, Heather?”

“Right, Heather.”

“OK, OK. Only let's pull off on some back roads where you won't have to pass any more semis. And let's slow down, pretend there's a thirty mile speed limit.”

“Sure,” Two of Two agreed, swinging onto the first crossroad to the west. There was just enough patch ice in the intersection to let the back end go loose on her, only she steered into the skid and kept it on the road, managing a pretty smooth downshift into second in the process. “Is this better?”