by J. M. Hayes
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.
He sighed and slumped across the room to
have a look and consider how to arrange them so they would all fit. There was more room in the converted meat locker than he’d expected. And not because it was bigger than his memory told him.
“Hey, Doc.” It was the youngest Klausen. “I hear you’ve been out drumming up business.”
Normally, Doc would have laughed. To survive in this business, or Klausen’s, you had to develop a macabre sense of humor. But not today, not under these circumstances.
“Where’s the boy?” Doc asked.
Klausen’s brows furrowed. “What boy?”
“The kid who died in the accident this morning,” Doc said.
“Isn’t he in there?”
He wasn’t. Neither were the containers into which Doc had placed his vital organs, after careful removal, measurement, and recording. “No,” Doc said. “He’s gone. Everything is gone.”
***
The blond guy in the suit was quick to back out of the cloud of pepper spray. “What did you want to go and do that for?” he coughed.
Deputy Heather considered a mad dash for safety, but he had already swept the sunglasses aside and centered his weapon on her chest. His watering eyes were in the open for her pepper spray now, but she’d never get the can close to his face again.
“Drop it,” he said, as if he were reading her mind. “I don’t want to shoot you. I’m just supposed to bring you in for questioning.”
The pepper spray can rang as it hit the floor and rolled behind her.
“Why?” It seemed like a reasonable thing to ask. Your sister’s car didn’t get shot up in Benteen County every day, and guys with suits and guns and, damn it, sunglasses, didn’t hunt you down. “What do you want with me?”
He shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was a little hoarse from the spray. “Hey, missy. I’m just hired muscle. You’ll have to ask the boss. Or he’ll have to ask you.”
“Who’s the boss? This is Galen Siegrist’s place. Galen doesn’t hire armed security to patrol his farm. He’s raising seed crops here, not cocaine.”
“Galen? That wimpy kid. He’s not my boss. And this sure ain’t about drugs. It’s about maintaining security. You kept driving by, checking the place out. I’m guessing they want to know if you’re just a nosey neighbor or if we’ve got a security breach.”
Driving by. Ah, he thought she was her sister. The good side of that was they wouldn’t be looking for Two anymore. The bad side was they had her. And she didn’t like the sound of that last part. Breached security? What, was the government holding secret prisoners here for questioning? Was some sort of terror cell in the county about to get busted? This was so over the top for Benteen County, and Galen Siegrist, that it boggled the mind.
Galen was a smart, ambitious, and obnoxious kid from a few classes ahead of hers. She’d pretty much known him all her life, and disliked but not despised him. He’d always been a religious fanatic and a bigot and he had a way of looking at girls that made her uncomfortable, no matter how often he preached about the evils of the flesh. He’d asked her out a couple of times, but she’d found excuses. So had her sister. They both agreed the human race would simply have to end if Galen should turn out to be the last man on earth.
But Galen was small-minded and greedy, not evil. And he’d rushed off and finished his agronomy degree in three years so he could take over this farm. He wasn’t political, or no more so than any of the rest of the zealots in the neighborhood. She had to admit there were a few. She could picture Galen plotting to make abortions illegal, replace evolution with creationism, even working to install Christianity as America’s official religion. But not getting involved with secret medical operations and a private army. Heather had always thought Galen would opt for profits over prophecy if he had to make a choice.
“Yeah, I got her,” the blond guy said. No one had joined them. He was talking into a little microphone attached to something in his ear that she hadn’t noticed before.
He gestured with his weapon toward a door across from the office. “Come on, girly. They want you at the house.”
She was pretty sure she didn’t want to go there with him, but like, what were her choices?
“Is this some kind of government thing?” She started backing away, going slow, delaying the inevitable. “Are you Homeland Security?”
That brought a smile to his face. “Oh yeah,” he said. “We’re anxious to talk to you about your liberal outlook. Unless the CIA has decided to pull a rendition and ship you to a black site for questioning.”
He was teasing her, and he thought she was a dweeb. But that could be useful.
She let her eyes get wide. “Oh yeah. Really. ’Cause I’m no liberal.” Actually, she supposed she was, though mostly because it was liberals who so outraged the neoconservatives she thought were madly rushing about destroying the world. “You’re in Kansas, after all.”
“As if I hadn’t noticed.” So, he was the dweeb, too feeble to realize there were Democrats and liberals and even the occasional pacifist among the white Christians right here in the heartland’s heart.
“I mean, like, I’d vote for Mr. Bush today if I were old enough.” She was old enough, but this was a mid-term election and the younger Mr. Bush would be constitutionally ineligible to run again. But a little Kansas hayseed wouldn’t know that.
She sidestepped a little and gave him a big smile. “So are you like CIA?”
The pepper spray can was just off to the side a little, just short of a stack of seed bags. She edged toward it.
“Licensed to kill. Double-Oh number and all.” That was James Bond and a fictional British secret service. He must think the turnip truck had dumped its load right here. She felt for the spray can with her foot, found it, stepped on it and went over backward into the bags of grain. He reached for her and she rebounded off the sacks and put all her weight into the kick she aimed at his groin.
His face turned pasty and she grabbed his gun with one hand and ripped his communications device out of his ear with the other. She put a hand over the mouthpiece and kicked the less than efficient pepper spray across the building. He slowly folded onto the floor, holding himself more tenderly than Elvis had suggested in that song her mother used to love.
She pointed the gun at him, though she had not the slightest clue whether it had a safety or if it was on, and said, “I’m licensed to kill, too. But I’m just Benteen County Deputy Heather English. Now, I expect you know this part. You have the right to remain silent….”
***
The sheriff answered his cell, “English.” He’d been surprised, but hardly disappointed, that his phone remained quiet while he investigated the Williams place, then drove across the county. He’d been hoping to hear that the state troopers had rounded up Chucky, though he wasn’t surprised they hadn’t. And he’d been expecting updates from his daughters and his office, or maybe from Doc.
“That you, Sheriff?” It was Mrs. Kraus. No one else had such a whiskey-and-cigarettes voice. It didn’t matter that she only had a little wine on special occasions these days, or that she’d given up her multi-pack-a-day habit nearly a decade ago. She sounded more like she should be welcoming you to a New Orleans bordello than a central Kansas sheriff’s office.
“How are things at the courthouse, Mrs. Kraus?”
“Damned if I know,” she said.
Her answer shocked him. Mrs. Kraus was not someone who would abandon her post.
“Things are insane over there, what with parents picking up kids and confiscating my phones and those troopers treating everybody like terror suspects. Then my damn car got stole. By your murderer, no less, Chucky Williams himself.”
“Chucky stole your car? You know where he is?”
“Nah. He was long gone by the time I got over to where I’d parked. That’s when I ran into Chairman Wynn. He and Heather, that would be Two if you’re keeping score, were scouting out Galen Siegrist’s place, where, by the way, they think Mad Dog might have got taken hostage.”
�
�So, Heather and the chairman, they’re with you now? Where are you, Mrs. Kraus? Is my other daughter keeping an eye on the office for you?”
“I’m at Klausen’s. The chairman, he left Two to watch the farm while he followed a car to town. Then lost the car when it left the church. We were driving around, trying to find it, when we saw Doc pacing up and down on the sidewalk in front of the funeral parlor like he misplaced something. Which, it turns out, he has. In a manner of speaking. That boy. The one who died in the accident this morning. Doc says someone stole his body.”
“You’re kidding.” The sheriff knew she wasn’t, but this thing was getting weirder by the minute. Still, the missing body made a kind of terrible sense if what he’d learned from that video at the Williams place was for real. Maybe there really was an organ transplant waiting to happen. And, with Chucky on the rampage, maybe someone had decided to go back for the original donor. Unreal. This was like some bad horror movie. Where would you do an organ transplant? The county didn’t even have a hospital.
“Doc with you?”
“He’s here.”
“Ask him if that boy’s organs would still be good to transplant.”
A whitetail deer came bounding out of one pasture, crossed the road, and leaped the fence into another. Hell of a time to look for greener grass, the sheriff thought. He barely managed to keep his truck out of a ditch. Doc’s voice was on the phone when he got it back to his ear. “…not my area of expertise,” he was saying.
“Sorry, Doc. I missed that. Any part of that kid still useful for a transplant?”
“I said I don’t know, Englishman. Some of him, probably. But I didn’t harvest his organs the way they do for transplants. And it’s been half a day now since he died. His heart won’t restart. Lungs, kidneys, liver—hell, I can’t imagine any of them would still be good.”
“Do you know who stole him? Or when?”
“He don’t know jack shit.” Mrs. Kraus’ rasping voice cut into his ear as gently as a chainsaw. “But the chairman and I, we think it was probably that car from Galen’s farm. And them men from the church he picked up. Even Doc thinks he might of saw it when he pulled in with his load from the school.”