Plains Crazy (29 page)

In the end, she let it go. With all these real law-enforcement types around, she decided she might be better off if Jud Haines didn't spot her.

***

The sheriff looked around the lobby and didn't see Judy or his daughters anywhere. Not Haines or Davis either. He didn't know Mid-Continent Airport well. He'd only been there once since Nine-Eleven, a favor, picking up Doc Jones when he returned from a family funeral. The last time the sheriff had flown into Wichita himself was when he came home from that military hospital in Hawaii. In those days, you climbed down stairs from the plane and your friends and family could come out and greet you on the tarmac, just like his mom and Mad Dog had.

Even though he'd known he should expect additional security, the reality had stunned him. He'd felt like he was in an alien place. Maybe you needed security like this at airports in LA and Washington and New York, but in the heartland's heart? He'd felt then like he'd felt in Buffalo Springs this morning. Like home wasn't really home anymore.

He had a badge and he had ID proving he was in law enforcement, but he was out of his jurisdiction here. He wasn't sure they'd let him through to the gates without a lengthy clearance process he didn't have time for. But, it occurred to him, maybe he wouldn't need to do that. He was ticketed for a seat on Judy's plane.

He used his badge to bypass the line waiting to check in at the airline's counter. “I'm supposed to be on a flight that's leaving for Atlanta in a few minutes,” he told the clerk.

The clerk started entering his name from his ID onto her computer and agreed, not letting him finish. “I'll say you are. Why are you here? You're checked in. You're supposed to be at your gate. They're boarding right now.”

She looked at him accusingly and he said, “Well, I need a pass.”

“Oh my, you lost it.” She punched more keys and a printer buzzed and she handed him a ticket and a boarding pass. “You better hurry,” she said. “I can't ask them to hold the flight for you.”

Since Nine-Eleven, it's not a good idea to run in an airport. But if you do, having a badge pinned to your shirt makes it a lot more acceptable. They even waved him around the line waiting at the metal detector. He almost bypassed security completely. Almost. He would have but for the man doing random checks with a wand.

“I passed Sheriff English through here a few minutes ago,” the man said. “You're not him.” That was when the armed security guard stepped between the sheriff and the concourse and things got seriously complicated.

***

I love what you've done to your hair.”

Judy was in the waiting area, hunkered down behind a magazine where she'd been sure Jud Haines would never notice her.

“Oh, thanks, Jud.” She reached up, flustered, trying to comb her fingers through her curls. There weren't enough left. “What are you doing here?” She also wanted to ask why he was using her husband's name, but Judy had other concerns on her mind, too. Haines might connect her with the robbery of the Farmers & Merchants and prevent her from flying to Paris. Paris had become an obsession.

“Family emergency,” he said, turning off his perpetual smile and looking briefly solemn. “I've got to make an international connection in Atlanta, same as you.”

“You know about my trip?” That surprised her.

“Yeah, Englishman told me. You know, you're a lucky woman. He's a really special guy.”

Judy didn't understand and said so.

“I just found out I had to make this trip this afternoon. No problem with reservations out of Atlanta, but I couldn't find a flight from Wichita. So Englishman offered me his ticket. Since he's in the middle of a full-fledged crime spree, he couldn't use it.”

Judy's heart froze. It no longer mattered how perfect the day outside the windows might be, or that a regional jet waited to whisk her to an Air France connection. “Oh,” she said. It was hard to believe Englishman would do that without telling her first. And hurtful. Of course, her cell phone had been turned off since she left home—avoiding calls from Englishman and the Heathers. Still, it didn't seem right.

“Englishman wouldn't do that,” she said, though she wasn't sure that was true. The ticket was in his name and you couldn't transfer it. Given the current security level at airports, Jud was taking quite a chance flying under a false identity. Englishman might even get in trouble for helping him. “I don't think it's legal.”

“You're right,” Haines said, eyes flashing sincerely beneath his blond thatch. “But since it was an emergency, Englishman made me this ID card.” He flipped open the leather case. His picture stared at her above Englishman's name on a Benteen County Sheriff's Department identity card. “And he loaned me one of his badges,” Haines said, indicating the five pointed star on the opposite flap.

It was just the kind of selfless thing Englishman would do if someone needed his help—and it got him out of going to Paris. She sighed. Somehow, she'd known all along he'd find a way not to go with her.

“You look surprised,” Jud said. “I'm sorry. I figured Englishman would let you know.”

“My cell's off,” Judy explained. She felt a rush of embarrassment. It was bad enough for Englishman to abandon her, worse for him to give his ticket away and let the recipient come tell her about it. Couldn't he have gotten word to her somehow?

“Probably a good idea,” Haines said, turning his smile back on. “Leaving your cell phone off,” he explained when she showed her puzzlement. She'd lost the thread of their conversation.

“Long goodbyes and all that,” he said, “and they'll make you turn it off during the flight anyway.”

Judy nodded. She just wanted him to go away so she could feel sorry for herself without interruptions. He didn't do that, though. He dropped into the adjacent chair.

“This'll be nice,” he said. “We can look out for each other, chat and keep our minds off our troubles, all the way to Atlanta.”

“Yeah, great,” Judy muttered. She'd just decided Paris was probably a better place than most in which to die.

***

The breeze was no longer soft, nor the sun gentle—not for Deputy Parker. In her head, it had turned hot and arid and the asphalt beneath her feet had been transformed from a parking lot on the outskirts of Wichita to a street in the middle of a Tucson summer. The Buick wasn't a dirty old Chevy truck, but she was certain it contained the same demon. There was a bomb in there, with two girls, this time, instead of one. Her mistake had cost a life in Tucson. Here, the price would double.

“What should I do?” Mad Dog asked.

She didn't know. Hell, she wanted to turn around and run until she'd gone far enough that she wouldn't hear the explosion. She couldn't face the responsibility. It was too much.

“Don't touch it,” she said. “Don't touch a thing.”

“There's a bomb in there with the girls, isn't there? Can you defuse it?”

“No,” she said, but not loud enough for him to hear. Her feet were stuck to the pavement. She couldn't run and she couldn't help. She couldn't do a thing but wait for the eruption that would be followed by a rain of wreckage and shredded body parts.

“I'll go look for Haines and Davis,” Mad Dog said. “One of them's my son, I know it, and it's me he wants, not them.” She heard him. She'd heard everything they'd discussed about the events of the day as they slipped between eighteen-wheelers at a hundred miles an hour. Mad Dog's comment might have made sense to her if she'd been able to concentrate, to think of anything but the look in that woman's eyes in the moment before she died on that blistering hot street in Arizona.

Mad Dog turned. “I'm going after them,” he said. “Get the girls out of there.”

“Be careful,” she said, loud enough for him to hear this time. “There might be a remote detonator.”

“Right,” he called over his shoulder. “So it'd probably be good if you get them out before I find anyone.” Hailey spun and followed him.

Mad Dog was right, she supposed. But first she'd have to make herself move.

***

It finally hit the sheriff. The woman at the airline counter, she'd told him he was already checked in. She'd assumed he'd lost his gate pass and ticket and issued him new ones. Now, this guy at the security gate said a Sheriff English had already gone through. Probably Jud Haines, he supposed, considering what Mrs. Kraus found when she was searching the supervisor's desk.

“You sure about that other guy,” one security guard asked another. There were four of them, now, gathered around discussing his fate. “This fellow's got all the right IDs to go with that badge. He's even got a membership card to the Kansas Peace Officer's Association. He looks legit to me.”

“I am legit,” the sheriff said, looking around for his daughters. “The other guy, I think he's the one who's been setting off bombs and leaving terrorist threats all over my county today. Robbed the bank, too.”

“Aw jeez,” the ranking officer said. “If this guy's for real, we gotta shut this place down, clear the terminal, and sweep it for explosives. I don't wanna do that unless I'm damn sure. Last false alarm I know of cost the man who called it his job.”

“Why don't we just phone this guy's office,” the one with his hand on the butt of his gun said. “They can tell us whether he's who he says he is.”

Great idea, the sheriff thought, but not this afternoon. Not after Mrs. Kraus had found a bomb in the courthouse and cleared the building. If nobody answered at the number on his business card, they were going to get more suspicious. It would take even longer to persuade them that the other Sheriff English had to be prevented from boarding a plane. And he wasn't going to get a chance to talk to Judy. By the time he persuaded them to check with the Highway Patrol and he cleared things up, her plane would be gone. Hell, he wasn't even sure he could convince anyone who mattered before they got to Atlanta. Then Haines could disappear under another assumed identity and stopping Judy would require the sort of actions he'd promised the Heathers wouldn't happen. And where the hell were the girls, anyway?

Some of the security people around the sheriff had been working the line through the metal detectors and carry-on x-ray and things there had slowed to a crawl. More than a couple of loud grumbles had been raised in complaint, but one voice, with a serious Panhandle twang, turned suddenly threatening. It drew the attention of the men around him and the sheriff seized the opportunity. An incoming flight must have just disembarked, because the concourse leading to the gate he wanted was suddenly flooded with humanity.

One step, two steps; he was in the crowd and the guards still hadn't noticed. He turned and ducked and sprinted toward Judy's gate. “Hey!” somebody shouted behind him, and then he was around the corner and in no danger, for the moment, of taking a round in the back. They would sound the alarm, and stop him soon enough, but not, he hoped, before he found Judy and the Heathers. And best of all, once they sounded that alarm, no commercial flights would leave this airport for hours.

He spared a moment to wonder how long he might cool his heels in a cell, victim of the Patriot Act and some seriously pissed security people. They wouldn't even have to charge him, or bother letting anyone know where he was for a few months, since he was about to cost the government and the airlines a lot of money. But then he saw her, and recognized her in spite of the hair, just as she was ducking through the gate to board her flight. Jud Haines was right behind her. No sign of the Heathers, but he had to deal with Judy right now, persuade her not to go. Getting her cured, that was worth any price.

***

“Mmmm!” Parker could hear one of the girls trying to talk through the duct tape and closed windows of the car. And then, though her feet wanted to flee, they began carrying her toward the Heathers and the bomb instead. Slow and awkward—like wadding through the mucky bottom of a farm pond—but she got there.

One Heather lay stretched across the front seats. The other was in the back. A cat's cradle of wires linked them and the Buick's four doors. They weren't bundled with duct tape like the woman in Tucson. Each had a strip wrapped over her mouth. Other strips bound their ankles and held their hands behind their backs. The rest tied them to the seat belts, fastened to keep them below window level so it was unlikely they'd be discovered in this empty corner of the parking lot.

Parker had to put her hand on the roof of the car to keep from falling over. She was hyperventilating, she thought, but she didn't have any paper bags to breathe into, or time to pause for a panic attack. If there was a remote on the device, Mad Dog might encounter the bomber any second.

She had to start this. She knew it and it terrified her. But she could get help. There'd be a bomb squad at the main terminal. They could take over as soon as they arrived. She grabbed the cell phone off her belt and fumbled it with the leather gauntlets she'd forgot she was wearing. It hit the parking lot and came apart in a hundred pieces.

She was alone, now. There would be no help. She had to do this by herself. If she made a mistake they might die like that woman in Tucson. But they'd die anyway, if she waited.

Before she could spend too much time thinking about it, she stepped back and put a fist through the driver's door window and pulled the honeycomb of shattered glass back out onto the pavement by her feet.

They were still alive. That meant he hadn't used a trigger that was sensitive enough to be set off by her blow to the window. None of the wires were attached to glass. It had been a chance, but…Well, she didn't have time to think about it or not take chances.

She peeled off the gauntlets and doffed the catcher's mask and stuck her head in the window above the Heather in the front seat. Big eyes locked onto hers and, for a moment, she almost froze as they transformed into the ones from Tucson. She shook it off. She reached in, carefully avoiding the wires that led to the doors and to something under a patch of tape on the girl's bare midriff. She worried the strip of tape over the Heather's mouth—Heather English, she knew which was which by now—until it was clear.