Plains Crazy

by J. M. Hayes

  Considering his brother’s obsession with that very thing, the sheriff would have guessed otherwise.

  “You were planning to have them shoot a stuffed buffalo full of holes?”

  “It’s a moth-eaten old exhibit from a small-town museum that went out of business. Turned out to be cheaper than the wheeled one our prop department would have built. And it’s not like our would-be Cheyenne are showing much aptitude for archery.”

  “Somebody has. Maybe your subjects would do better if you supplied them with authentic hand-made bows and arrows like the real Cheyenne carried.”

  “I planned to. I sent some staff down to Oklahoma to pick up half a dozen bows and sixty arrows.”

  “Don’t tell me,” the sheriff said. “You mean the real things, legitimate Cheyenne stuff like the one that ended up killing that boy? I heard you didn’t have anything like that.”

  “We didn’t until yesterday. And no one knew. I was going to make it a surprise. I locked it all up in storage last night.”

  “But it’s not all there now, is it?”

  “Well…” Davis wasn’t happy admitting it. “I checked after we came back to camp this morning. Most of it’s still there.”

  “Except one bow and arrow?”

  “Right,” the director said. “Just one bow. But ten arrows are missing. Nine now.”

  ***

  Mad Dog knew where the janitor kept his cleaning supplies. By the time he came out of the courthouse restroom he was relatively free of dirt and grime. The knees of his jeans would probably never be presentable again, and his shirt sleeve bore a fresh swoosh a Nike representative might have claimed as trademark infringement. Otherwise, he sparkled from toe to shaven crown. His grin slipped when he realized the woman waiting for him in the hallway was not Janie Jorgenson.

  “How far you run this morning, Mad Dog?” Deputy Parker looked up from the burst piece of water pipe she was examining and examined him instead.

  “Six miles,” he said, always pleased to be able to discuss running with a fellow enthusiast. “Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep and decided to run over by that mock Cheyenne village in Lancaster’s pasture. How about you, Deputy?”

  “Haven’t run yet,” she said. “Maybe after my shift. You see anything interesting over at This Old Tepee?”

  “Sun wasn’t up yet. Nobody about. But that ring of lodges looked pretty impressive in the moonlight. Sent a chill up the back of my neck. You know, they’ve got a real Cheyenne shaman over there. They promised they’d introduce me to him after they wrap things up if I let them do some filming in my buffalo herd.”

  “A buffalo hunt?”

  “Hey, no way. I’m raising breeding stock, not hamburger.”

  “I heard they were going to stage a buffalo hunt, bows and arrows, the whole works.” She stopped turning the pipe over in her hands and he noticed, for the first time, that she was wearing a pair of surgical gloves, as if she didn’t want to contaminate a piece of evidence. “What’s…”

  She didn’t let him finish the question. “Ever do any bow and arrow hunting, Mad Dog?”

  “No. I don’t hunt,” then Mad Dog choked back a half laugh. “Well, not since I was a kid. Bunch of us decided to get a buck during archery season when I was in high school. One of the guys scooted into the back seat where we’d tossed our equipment and impaled himself on an arrow. By the time we got him to the hospital over in Hutchinson, and the doctors and nurses stopped laughing at his predicament and were able to do something about it, there wasn’t enough daylight left. After that, none of us could bend a bow without busting a gut.”

  “How about Cheyenne bows and arrows? Haven’t you ever been curious what shooting one of those would be like?”

  “Sure,” Mad Dog said. “You know where I can find one?” He’d love to savor the feel of a real Cheyenne bow, test its pull, see whether he was a natural archer the way he sometimes thought he was a natural shaman. Except that he didn’t think Parker could find him one. Besides, he was curious why she kept fooling with that piece of pipe and treating it like it could be some sort of critical evidence.

  “Actually,” she said, “I do.”

  ***

  It felt more like stepping inside a luxury suite at a resort hotel instead of into a glorified Greyhound. There was a door to the driver’s compartment, closed at the moment. It appeared to be made of carved mahogany and was flanked by papered walls on which hung a pair of original oils. Modern in style, they resisted the sheriff’s efforts to determine whether they were erotic nudes, as he first thought, or, on second glance, whether they were even human.

  Brad Davis led the way between a plush sofa and a pair of easy chairs across carpet thick and green enough to mow. He was followed by the sheriff and a young man who, but for costume, was so athletic and sun bronzed he might have stepped right off the set of Baywatch. Davis had introduced him as his associate producer, Sean, and the man who’d provided such heroic efforts in trying to get Michael Ramsey’s heart restarted that morning.

  “I hope you don’t think PBS is paying for accommodations like this,” Davis said as they exited the living room and entered the kitchenette. There were two ovens, in case you needed a multi-course dinner. “But it is a benefit of working for PBS. We have some wealthy and generous benefactors. The use of this RV was donated to us for the duration of our filming here. And as director, well, I got first choice.”

  Just past the kitchenette was a hall that ran along the starboard side of the vehicle, off which a number of equally ornate doors led to what might include a master bath, or even a formal dining room. Davis stopped at the second one and pulled out a set of keys.

  “Closet,” he said, before selecting the key he wanted. He turned to his associate. “Sean, you took them from the guy who picked up the bows and arrows and brought them in last night, right?”

  “Must have been about nine,” the man said. “I brought them here and we locked them in this closet.”

  Davis opened the door. It was a walk-in closet with cedar walls that perfumed the air, further evidence that the director of This Old Tepee was living in very different circumstances than the subjects of his program. The garments within, though, including plenty of furs, appeared to belong in the encampment instead of the RV.

  “Space is at a real premium,” Sean explained. “So Mr. Davis let us appropriate this as a spare wardrobe. Since we aren’t going to have our subjects actually go out and kill anything to make their own clothing, we’ve got at least one back-up costume for everyone. One of the ladies has already discovered you can’t launder a leather dress the way you would fabric.”

  A stack of bows lay on a shelf across from the furs and leathers. Several bundles of arrows were layered on the shelf just above. Below stood an assortment of moccasins. Shoe shelves, the sheriff guessed, with nearly enough space to have satisfied Imelda Marcos.

  “This is where we left them,” Sean said.

  “Yeah,” Davis agreed. “They don’t look disturbed. I might never have noticed any were missing unless we needed all six bows.”

  The sheriff counted. There were only five. “Then one of the arrows ended up in Michael Ramsey’s back and you came to check?”

  “Right,” Davis said. “Just got to it a few minutes before you drove in. I was trying to decide what I should do about it. Frankly, your deputy didn’t seem like the guy I’d admit something like that to, not unless I’d already contacted my attorney.”

  The sheriff had to concede that Davis’ judgment was sound. Wynn Some, Lose Some had known Mad Dog all his life, yet he’d been ready to lock up the sheriff’s brother a few minutes ago without a second thought.

  “The closet was still locked when you checked?”

  “Uhh, actually, no.”

  “You sure you locked it?”

  Davis shrugged. “I was, now I’m not. But I locked it before I left again. Didn’t want any more of these to go missing.”

  The sheriff sighed. “Kind of lik
e locking the barn door after your horse has been stolen,” he observed—a favorite Benteen County expression, even if it had been decades since a horse had gone missing here.

  “No, he locked it,” Sean said. “I remember. Because of the Sharps…”

  Davis’ assistant’s voice trailed off and he pointed at a spot by the door next to where a buffalo hide robe hung inside a plastic drycleaner’s bag.

  “What?” the sheriff was puzzled. There didn’t seem to be anything there.

  “It’s gone!” Davis’ voice was outraged.

  “What’s gone?” The sheriff felt half a step behind the world. Maybe three times had been too much of a good thing.

  “A Sharps fifty-caliber buffalo gun,” Davis said. “And a box of ammunition. It was right there by the door. Fuck your horse and barn door. That gun’s an antique and worth a fortune. Sucker’ll bowl over an ox at close to a mile.”

  It wouldn’t do a human being much good either, the sheriff thought. Especially if it was now in the hands of the person who had the bow and arrows.

  ***

  “Mad Dog’s not guilty,” Wynn Some said as he came clomping down the hall from the back door that led to the parking lot behind the courthouse. Most people who had business here parked there, though the streets, except where they were crowded with Bertha’s customers, offered plenty of options.

  “What?” Parker and Mad Dog chorused.

  “You sure?” Parker demanded.

  Mad Dog, more seriously confused, asked, “Not guilty of what?” His question was ignored, since, not guilty, he was no longer of much interest to either deputy.

  “Got us a witness,” Wynn Some told Parker. “Daphne, the girl who was at the scene when the crime was perpetrated. She says Mad Dog was there, too, but not armed. He was only wearing running shorts and obviously not packing a bow and arrow.”

  “Did somebody get shot with an arrow?” Mad Dog wanted in.

  “You’re absolutely sure of this?” Parker asked Wynn.

  “Course. Englishman sent me back to help you investigate the pipe bomb, or do it myself so you can head back out to the Indian camp and help him. Call him if you don’t believe me.”

  Mad Dog could see from Parker’s eyes that she intended to do just that. Double checking anything Wynn said was a good idea…then the rest of what Wynn had said registered. “Pipe bomb?”

  “We should still question him,” Wynn continued, as if Mad Dog weren’t standing right there. “If Daphne saw him only moments before the shooting, he may know something.” He turned on Mad Dog like a terrier suddenly discovering the stranger in his house didn’t intend to feed him. “How about it, Mad Dog? What did you see?”

  Mad Dog was still stuck on what he’d suddenly realized Deputy Parker had been examining. “Is that a pipe bomb?”

  “It’s been a busy morning,” Parker confessed. “What about it, Mad Dog? Did you notice anything unusual when you ran by the PBS site this morning?”

  “Was there a bombing out there or something? What should I have noticed?”

  Parker told him about Michael Spotted Elk. Wynn tried to help, but mostly he just described Daphne. Mad Dog gathered she must be quite a dish.

  He chewed his lower lip and thought about it.

  “Well, there were a couple of things. I was pretty sure there was somebody ahead of me on the road as I ran by Lancaster’s pasture. He was far enough away I never actually spotted him in the moonlight and he didn’t have any lights on. By the time I got to the bridge over Catfish Creek, I thought he was gone. Or she. And I didn’t see or hear those kids.

  “The other peculiar thing was that Hailey knocked me down just after we passed the bridge. That’s the only time she’s ever done that on one of our runs. Then a motorcycle blasted out of the brush just ahead of us.”

  “Damn,” Wynn exclaimed. “I’ll bet the biker was the killer and Hailey saved you from getting hit by that arrow. That wolf is smart enough to be human.”

  Smarter, in Mad Dog’s opinion. Certainly smarter than Wynn, who had just leaped to yet another in a string of ill-considered conclusions. Of course, leap often enough and sooner or later you might get one right. Mad Dog had thought he heard something whoosh by, but the pain of the road burn had erased that memory until now.

  “You saying I might have been the target?” Wynn and Parker turned and looked at him with fresh appraisal in their eyes, making it clear neither had considered the point until he’d been foolish enough to suggest it.

  “It was a Cheyenne arrow,” Parker said. “Aside from those pretend Indians in that pasture, how many Cheyenne live in this county?”

  She had a point. Mad Dog knew there were people he annoyed, what with his vociferous opinions on local and national issues. International too, since he’d been ranting against America’s new foreign policy adventure, the conquest of Iraq. But no one was angry enough to want to attack him. At least he didn’t think so. Still, it made him wonder—and it reminded him Hailey was out back in the Mini. If somebody wanted to hurt him, they might be willing to do it through her.

  “Be right back.” He startled the deputies by sprinting down the hall to the back door.

  The Cooper sat there with its windows open, empty. “Hailey,” he shouted. A mockingbird made indecent suggestions from a nearby elm. A gentle breeze rippled through its leaves and ruffled flowerbeds in the back yards behind the courthouse. Hailey didn’t respond. Mad Dog stepped back into the hall as the pair of deputies arrived behind him, Wynn with his pistol drawn, apparently worried that Mad Dog was attempting to escape.

  “I was just looking for Hailey,” Mad Dog explained. Something thumped against the door as he closed it. “Maybe that’s her now.” He opened the door again but the lot behind the courthouse remained empty of wolves or people. There was another thump, however, as he again pulled it closed.

  Deputy Parker pushed by him. “Let me look,” she told him, hand on her own sidearm. When she got like that, Mad Dog knew there was no point in arguing.

  She inched the door open and peered around its edge. Mad Dog watched her check out the parking lot, then scan the environment beyond. When she was satisfied, she slipped her head out and took a look at the outside face of the door. She pulled her head back and looked at him with wide eyes and a puzzled expression. Mad Dog brushed past, and checked out the back of the door for himself, before she grabbed his belt and yanked him back in.

  There were two arrows embedded in the door’s hardwood surface. Cheyenne arrows. Apparently, Mad Dog decided, he was the target.

  ***

  What Judy had in mind was sort of a Meg Ryan look. Like she’d seen in that movie on the dish the other night, the one where Meg went off to Paris chasing her old flame and fell in love for real. Judy wanted to take her old flame to Paris and fall in love with him all over again. And look young and cute and perky in the process.

  Instead, she looked like an extreme version of the girl who did bit parts on Xena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and played the title role in Cleopatra 2525. The look might be okay for one of her daughters, if either had dared it, but Judy didn’t think your average forty-five-year-old could carry it off. She was stuck with it, though, so she would try. But she didn’t leave Millie much of a tip for making her look more campy than cute, even if the cut was pretty much what she’d asked for.

  But for a pickup truck coming from the direction of the grain elevator, the street outside Millie’s was deserted. No surprise there. The streets were nearly always deserted in Buffalo Springs.

  There were a couple of cars in the lot behind the Farmers & Merchants. People were at work over there now. She glanced at her watch and found she still had five minutes until they were due to open. But people didn’t stand on ceremony much in Buffalo Springs. She jaywalked across the street and went up and peered through the glass door. A teller glanced at her, then pointedly looked away. The pickup went by behind Judy and someone wolf whistled. She turned to see who was making fun of her. The only per
son nearby was a farmer in the pickup. She knew him slightly, too slightly for such teasing familiarity. He had slowed way down and was leaning out the window.

  “Want to go for a ride, honey?” He was fifty-something, and so was his wife. He had three grandchildren that Judy knew of, maybe more by now.

  “Sure, Fred,” Judy called. “Let’s you and me go get Pauline and do just that.” Pauline was his wife of more than thirty years. Fred’s jaw dropped and he pulled his head back inside the truck and accelerated hard toward Main.

  That was weird, Judy thought. She went up and tapped on the front door of the bank and the teller looked at her and glared. Judy pointed at her watch and shrugged her shoulders. The teller waved at the clock on the wall behind her. It was still three minutes short of ten. There would be no favors done for Judy English this morning.

  Judy leaned against the wall and tapped her fingers impatiently against its surface. There was a night deposit box just next to her. The flap over its slot wasn’t fully closed. Curious, she thought. She reached over and lifted it and found that someone had tried to stuff a thick envelope in the opening. It hadn’t fit, maybe because it was wrapped in duct tape that outlined several odd shapes inside. She reached over and picked it up and wondered what it contained—rolls of coins maybe?

  Mrs. Kraus, over at the courthouse and freshly aware of the danger of finding strange things in unusual places, could have made a better guess.

  ***

  Judy and the sheriff had two eighteen-year-old daughters, one by the normal method, the other by adoption. Both were named Heather. They might not be confused by their shared name, but others were, occasionally even their parents, who could easily distinguish one from the other. Most folks couldn’t do that. Though their blood tie was distant, their height, coloring, and features were enough alike to make strangers think they were twins.

  Two Heathers in one house should have been enough to prompt a name change. But giving up a name neither had especially liked, until the prospect of doing without it arose, proved an unsatisfactory option. So, Heather Lane had kept her last name. It worked as far as formal listings, like school, were concerned, to distinguish her from Heather English. But it didn’t work for people dealing with both of them at the same time. That’s where their nicknames, One of Two and Two of Two, came in.