by J. M. Hayes
“Should we try to call Mom or Dad?” Heather whispered to her sister as Becky rattled pots and pans in the kitchen and Wynn kneeled to blow on the coals and raised a fine cloud of ash that settled over his face and hair.
“Yeah, you go ahead,” Two of Two replied, suddenly finding a need to busy herself rearranging cushions onto furniture. Heather had been hoping for a reason not to make the call, or for her sister to volunteer for the hazardous duty. Mom had sounded seriously pissed on the radio. She must have discovered they weren’t home. They were going to be in big trouble for skipping school, and then skipping out without telling anyone where they’d gone. Deputy Wynn’s involvement might have some mollifying effect, but Heather thought they were probably grounded for life, and maybe about to be packed off to a nunnery. Still, the longer their parents worried, the angrier they’d be. There was a phone by the recliner and Heather went over and picked it up. She managed to dial her mother’s office and let it ring twice before it occurred to her that Dad was the softhearted one. If she could explain to him first, find a way to make it sound like a teen-age adventure instead of the crime of the century, Dad might calm Mom before she handed out penalties she’d have a hard time backing away from. Heather put the phone back in its cradle and went over to whisper in the other Heather’s ear.
“I think I’ll call Dad first. You got any ideas how to minimize this so he doesn’t lock us in our rooms until we’re thirty?”
Two didn’t get a chance to answer. The fire ignited with a poof and smoke began to billow into the room from under the mantel as Wynn frantically tried to wave it back inside the chimney. Becky Hornbaker came through the door with a tray of steaming mugs and a plate filled with cookies, set them calmly on an end table, and stepped over to adjust the flue. The chimney immediately began to draw properly.
“Oh my, that’s a lovely fire, dears,” she said, passing around steaming mugs of coffee and chocolate. “And a good thing, too. I think we should stay here for a little. That storm’s getting nasty and our old Power Wagon has seen better days. I’d hate to find us stranded somewhere between here and town. Simon and Levi should be back any time. They’re in a more reliable vehicle, and roomier too. ”
“Oh, and I’m so sorry, dears,” she said, turning to the Heathers. “But we won’t be able to call your parents. My cell phone’s not working and now the regular phone is out too. A line probably blew down or a tree limb fell and knocked us off.”
Heather’s jaw dropped before she managed to catch it and stick it back where it belonged. Becky Hornbaker and Deputy Wynn didn’t seem to notice but Two gave her the raised eyebrows.
The phone had been working only moments before. Would Becky lie about that?
***
Mrs. Kraus was on the line to Bertha’s trying to talk someone into bringing a sandwich and a piece of butterscotch pie across the park to the courthouse when the phone went dead. All of a sudden there was only silence, not even a dial tone.
Mrs. Kraus buttoned another button on her outer sweater. She was wearing two. In weather like this, it never got much above sixty in the courthouse. Too much space for the old furnace, and too many cracks between the bricks that let cold in and heat out. The place would have been condemned years ago if the county could afford a replacement.
It looked fine from the outside—quaint, kind of picturesque. It was one of those old red-brick Victorian-era courthouses that sprouted all over the United States around the turn of the preceding century and looked, but for variations in gingerbread, pretty much alike. Two extra-tall stories were set atop a six-foot-above-ground “ground floor.” Above that, peaked roofs filled with cracked dormer windows and chimneys that were long since clogged and dysfunctional covered an unfinished attic. And finally, like the figures atop a wedding cake, a tower, built for sightseeing and now only occasionally used by adventurous couples willing to ignore DANGER and NO TRESPASSING signs to admire the view.
The building looked romantic. Lost tourists were known to stop and take photos. Sitting at the west end of Veteran’s Memorial Park, it had the comforting look of a place where government and justice would be meted out in the idyllic fashion the founding fathers had in mind—until you got close enough to see the flaws.
There was a crowd with one of those flaws down the hall in the supervisors’ offices, arguing about what should be done. Their raised voices echoed through the building all the way into the sheriff’s office. Mrs. Kraus gathered removing the sheriff was foremost on their agenda. That probably meant they intended to sweep her out the door with the same broom. She considered her Glock and wondered if she had the authority to accuse them of plotting a mutiny, and what would happen if she went down and arrested everybody and stuck them back behind the wall to the jail where it was more than ten degrees colder and she wouldn’t have to listen to them anymore.
She tried the cell phone. No signal, it told her. The damn transmitter up by the interstate in the next county was probably down again. It could be counted on to fail whenever it got real windy. In central Kansas, that happened about fifty-one weeks out of the year. It was the reason Mrs. Kraus hadn’t let herself be conned into getting one of the fool contraptions yet. Neither had most county residents. Cell phones were more status symbols than reliable forms of communication around Buffalo Springs.
That left the radio. She wasn’t sure whether she should bother Englishman. No question he had his hands full out there, but it had been a long time since he’d checked in. She was having trouble containing her curiosity. It hadn’t been a problem when the phone was ringing off the hook and the office was filled with critics and gossips. Now, with phones out and a band of revolutionaries down the hall, she felt abandoned. She wanted to know what had been going on over at the Sunshine Towers. She wondered what Doc had told Englishman. She wondered if Judy had found Englishman yet, and just how much that might have complicated his life. And, most of all, she wondered if there was any reason for her to sit here and keep an office open that nobody but the sheriff and any deputies within radio range were likely to contact in the midst of a full-fledged blizzard. Maybe Englishman could use her help in the field. Maybe he wouldn’t mind if she stopped by Bertha’s for some lunch on the way…
And then she wasn’t alone anymore. He came in the door, bundled in a snowsuit that made him look like the Michelin Man. Only he was covered in mud and blood, and even his friendly smile wasn’t enough to keep her from picking up her Glock and putting a couple of extra steps between herself and the apparition on the far side of the counter.
“Hey, Mrs. Kraus. It’s only me,” Mad Dog said.
***
“Judy, Doc reassured me our girls have nothing to do with that baby. Even so, you have to go home and wait for them, just in case.”
“In case of what? The phones are out, both regular and cellular. The girls can’t get in touch with me there, no matter how hard they try.”
“No, but they can come home. They might even be there now. And we don’t know why they left. They might need us. But I’ve got things I have to do. Now! I don’t have time to sit here in Klausen’s parking lot arguing with you.”
“Then take me along. You need a deputy and can’t find one. Use me.”
“You can help most by waiting at home so I know the girls have a safe place to go.”
The wind rocked the Taurus and momentarily hid his Chevy, only a couple of spaces away, behind a billowing curtain of snow.
“Englishman. If I go home and wait by myself, I’ll go crazy. If the girls are there or they turn up and we need you, we aren’t going to be able to get in touch with you. Sticking me at home, out of the way, doesn’t make sense. Use me like you would a deputy. You know I’d be better than Wynn Some.”
“I sent Wynn home.”
“Look. I can go to the courthouse and pick up a couple of spare radios. I can take one home and check to see if they’re there. I’ll let you know either way. If they aren’t, I’ll leave a radio with a note to call us
the minute they come in the door. Then you can use me. I know which girls might be worth checking on about the abandoned baby. They’re more likely to tell me than you, if there’s anything to tell. And I can look for our daughters. Ask at their friends’ homes, at least the ones in town. That would free you up to look for Mad Dog or arrest some Hornbakers. What do you say?”
“Weather like this, I’m not even sure we can count on the radios,” the sheriff said. Only they could.
“Five-hundred to 501,” Mrs. Kraus muttered from under the sheriff’s coat.
***
“Five-oh-one.” Englishman’s voice sounded like he was speaking into a Geiger counter just downwind of Chernobyl, but for all the clicks and pops, he was easy enough to understand.
Mrs. Kraus was holding the radio in her left hand. She wasn’t ready to put down her Glock yet.
“Thought you might want to know your wacky brother is here at the courthouse. He just came in the office, all covered with blood, wanting to know where he could find you. Went over and stole a candy bar from out of your desk, then said he’d go clean up some, but for me not to go nowhere. Says he’s got some questions for me.”
“Has he got Tommie Irons with him, or this other body he called you about?”
“He don’t seem to be carting any carcasses around. But he had enough blood on him to double donate if he happens on a Red Cross blood drive.”
“Is he hurt?”
“Don’t know if any of that blood was his. If he’s hurt, it can’t be serious. But he’s got opportunities to remedy that. Some hotheads are down the hall making plans with Bontrager to run you out of town on a rail. I’m sure they’d be proud to practice on Mad Dog.”
“Keep him away from the supervisors and their friends. I’ll be right over. Don’t let Mad Dog leave before I get there.”
Mrs. Kraus glanced at her pistol. “That mean I can wing him if I need to?”
***
Mad Dog was delighted. His ear was still there. All of it, so far as he could tell from the mirror in the courthouse restroom. He’d caught some shrapnel in it, and in his hand when the bullet disintegrated his cell phone, but none of his ear seemed to be missing or even badly shredded. He picked out a couple of pieces of plastic and that set the ear to bleeding again. No big deal. He held a paper towel to it as he went back across the foyer and into the sheriff’s office.
Mrs. Kraus was sitting at her desk. Its top was cleared of paperwork and her pistol occupied the place of honor between her phone and one of the department’s walkie-talkies.
Mad Dog nodded his head back toward the voices that echoed down the hallway. “What’s going on?”
“Some fans of yours are discussing this morning’s events and deciding what to do about them. I’d say they’re about equally split between tar and feathers or a hemp necktie.”
“What’s everybody so upset about? Becky Hornbaker and her family never visited Tommie at the Towers. Why make a big deal of him after he’s dead?”
“Rumor is Tommie had something valuable and it’s missing too.”
“I don’t know about that. I took him out of this world the way he came into it—naked. Whatever they’re looking for, Tommie didn’t have it and neither do I.”
“Well, that’s not what most folks are all het up about. It’s the dead baby, and the way Englishman and Judy have failed to placate some egos.”
“Dead baby?” Mad Dog didn’t know about the baby so Mrs. Kraus filled him in.
“Well, at least that’s not something they can blame on me.”
Mrs. Kraus shook her head. “Plenty of folks in Benteen County would believe someone crazy enough to steal and dispose of an old man’s body might be capable of doing the same with an infant’s.”
Mad Dog sighed. He was used to being misunderstood. Besides, he had problems of his own to solve, including a little girl who was eating Englishman’s candy bar and waiting for him back in the jail.
“Mrs. Kraus, you’ve lived in Benteen County all your life. Can you help me understand all this?”
Mrs. Kraus watched him like she expected he might reach in his jacket and start pulling out dead babies, which, Mad Dog recalled, he could do. He still had the skull in a pocket.
“Come on. Help me here. What happened to sour relations between Tommie and Becky? Or don’t you know either?”
That turned the trick. Mrs. Kraus prided herself on knowing everything that went on in Benteen County.
“Well, you know about the murders?”
“Yeah. That kid when they were little, then their uncle, just before they came home.”
“The kid died when the Reverend Irons arranged a picnic for the children at his Sunday School.”
“Reverend Irons?” Mad Dog said. “That’s right. The old man was some kind of preacher, wasn’t he? I’d forgotten.”
“Fundamentalist fanatic kind. Church of Christ Coming Now. Never had much following. What few there were abandoned him after that boy died when Becky and Tommie christened him in Calf Creek. Full immersion, baptized to death.”
“Intentional?”
“Sure, only…Well, Momma always said they were too young to understand what they were doing. Others said they were too smart not to know.”
“Smart? Tommie wasn’t any dim bulb, but I never thought of him as having any extra wattage.”
“More Becky,” Mrs. Kraus said. “And maybe they seemed brighter because the Ironses had another daughter who wasn’t right. The Reverend probably wasn’t all there either. Momma said he fell straight off the turnip truck. Sure didn’t have no common sense, and there ain’t hardly been a Hornbaker who wasn’t a little dull. Only one in the family showed any brains, before Tommie and Becky, was their mother. She was something else, what they used to call a witchy woman. She was a healer who, some said, made a pact with the devil and paid it with the souls of her children. That was supposed to be why they killed that boy.”
“They’ve been close to a lot of violent death.”
“Real close. Becky had an alibi for when their uncle, Abel Hornbaker, was murdered, but Tommie didn’t. He was a prime suspect for a while, until he turned himself in up here. Proved his fingerprints didn’t match those on the murder weapon.”
“That was just days after their parents and sister died in that terrible wreck. Car hit a bridge abutment and ended up in the Kansaw. Not much left of the car, or the Ironses.”
Mad Dog remembered seeing the crumpled remains after the car was pulled from the river. “Tommie and Becky stayed on the farm after,” he said. “I guess they were still close then.”
“Who knows. Becky never tolerated visitors. Had to guess, I’d say they were going their own routes already, or not long after.”
“So why’d both stay on the home place?”
“Well, the inheritance for one. Abel Hornbaker left everything to Becky. Not that his boys would have got it anyway. Two of them convicted of his murder, and the other missing and presumed guilty. And not Tommie, either. Just Becky. Tommie inherited half their family’s farm after the wreck, but Becky got the other half and she had the money to keep it going, and probably needed help raising that worthless Simon.”
“Then Supervisor Hornbaker got pardoned,” Mad Dog said.
“Fifteen years later. Freed because he was impregnating somebody else when his father was murdered. Always surprised me Becky took Zeke back. Especially since he brought that woman and his daughter along when he first turned up. But Becky had the money. Maybe that made the difference. He does like spending it. His other family was into some kind of radical politics. Not hardly our Zeke’s style. I think he preferred rich and conservative, and Becky maybe thought her boy needed a daddy.”
“Didn’t Zeke’s truck blow up?” Mad Dog reached into his pocket and fingered the ID he’d found with the bones. “Were any of them hurt?”
“No. Zeke and them had engine trouble. Left the truck where they’d been camped out and borrowed Tommie’s car. They were gone,
long before the explosion. About a month later Zeke came back, alone this time, and patched things up with Becky. After that, Tommie seemed to stay out of the house as much as he could. But he was the one made that farm work. So, I guess Becky and Tommie put up with each other on account of convenience. And Becky with Zeke, on account of Simon. There’s more’n a few relationships based on less that go on for years.”
Too many possibilities, Mad Dog thought. And there was still the question of who Mary was. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the battered ID card he’d found with the bones. Mrs. Kraus raised a curious eyebrow. He would have shown it to her but Supervisor Bontrager burst through the door, a busy man in too much of a hurry to pay attention to what was happening around him. He went right past Mad Dog without noticing.
“My phone’s out of order, Ms. Kraus. I’m gonna have to borrow one of yours.”
Mad Dog put a finger to his lips and slipped silently out the door behind the supervisor as Mrs. Kraus’ second eyebrow rushed to join the first.
***
They were watching The Lion King. Becky Hornbaker had selected the tape and fed it into the VCR after discovering nearly as much snow on the regular channels as was falling outside. The wind must have twisted the satellite dish, she explained. She didn’t ask what any of them wanted to watch, apparently choosing something appropriate for the “children,” Heather English thought. It had been a favorite for her and Two only a few years ago, and remained a staple they used when babysitting. She and her sister were paying more attention to what was going on outside the windows, and to Becky Hornbaker’s distracted tapping of her steepled fingers as she sat in the chair nearest the phone.