Plains Crazy (3 page)

“Yours?” the sheriff asked as Deputy Parker came to meet him. Parker had a body that was made for a uniform. She was tall, broad shouldered, trim hipped. The sheriff found himself wondering if the woman's legs might not be as perfectly pleated as the crease in her slacks.

“Mine?”

“The tape,” the sheriff said, gesturing to the yellow line that ran from the corner of the bridge to a pair of nearby trees before circling off to disappear in the verdant underbrush.

“Yes, sir. Sorry. Hope that's all right. I picked some up when I was over in Wichita.”

The sheriff tried to remember the last time one of his deputies had dipped into their meager pay to supplement the department's resources out of their own pockets. Unable to do so, he asked, “What've you got?”

“No more, really, than I told you on the phone.” She flipped open a notebook. “Victim is one Michael ‘Spotted Elk' Ramsey, age sixteen.”

“One of the people in that PBS Cheyenne-village thing they're filming here?”

“Right.” She gestured, “The encampment is just a few hundred yards over in the pasture. We've got a positive ID from the victim's parents. Sorry. I'm afraid the crime scene was pretty well trampled by the time I got here. The girl the vic was with naturally went back to the camp for help, then pretty much everybody there tried to give it. They pulled the arrow out. Did CPR, wandered all through the brush down here, even searched along the edge of the road for the shooter. Generally made a mess of things.”

“But he
is
dead?”

“Oh yeah. Stone cold. Doctor Jones is having a look at him now. And I had Deputy Wynn herd everybody back to the encampment. Wynn's taking statements, but you'll probably want to talk to them again yourself.”

She was right there. Deputy Wynn was an example of just how hard it normally was to fill law enforcement positions in Benteen County. He was a foul-up whose regular misadventures had christened him Wynn Some, Lose Some. Deputy Wynn wouldn't have passed muster for the county's force but for the fact that his father was Chairman of the Board of Supervisors. The kid's tendency to offset regular screw-ups with occasional acts approaching the heroic helped a little too.

“Nobody else was available?” The sheriff was virtually sure nobody was. He did the scheduling, and it was tough to keep even one officer on duty twenty-four/seven.

“No, sir. That's what Wynn tells me, and I haven't been able to reach anybody at the office. It's just turned eight. Mrs. Kraus isn't in yet.”

The sheriff rolled his eyes, but not before turning his head so Parker couldn't see. Wynn had been assigned to the office and told not to leave it for anything until Mrs. Kraus came. With Wynn out and Mrs. Kraus not yet on duty, there would be nobody to field calls at the sheriff's office. Armed robbers could be knocking over the Texaco or the Dillons. A latter day Dillinger could be blasting his way into the Farmers & Merchants Bank. Terrorists could be invading the town and taking hostages. There would be no way for the sheriff to know, not unless someone happened to contact Judy and she called his cell phone. Well, there was nothing he could do about that now.

“You got a feel for what happened?”

She shrugged, but she snapped it off as if she'd already prepared her testimony for cross examination. “Kid's naked. Girl was, too, when she got back to the village. Out for a predawn quickie, I suppose. She says some guy with a dog jogged by, then the arrow came from their direction. Be a hell of a shot, and there doesn't seem to be any motive, but she's convinced he's the one who did it.”

The sheriff nodded. “She have any idea who the runner was?”

“Well, sir…” She paused for a minute. “When I asked for descriptions, the girl said the dog looked like a wolf. And the guy had a shaved head. I guess you know who that would be?”

The sheriff did. That would be his brother, Mad Dog.

***

Mrs. Kraus didn't believe in cell phones. She did believe in her Glock 19. She pulled it from her purse before the echo of the blast began to fade. No terrorists appeared, ready to charge the courthouse doors and seize the building, or give her the opportunity to defend it at the cost of their lives. In fact, no one else seemed to have noticed. Even the Mexican laborers were going about their business, apparently unaware that the seat of government for Benteen County had just been attacked. Their lawn mower had roared to life at the same moment as the bomb detonated, and they were concentrating, now, on a thick stand of weeds at the edge of Oak Street.

Mrs. Kraus marched down the walk and examined the crater. It wasn't large, nor was there much of a hole in the edge of the concrete where the walk bridged a drain pipe that allowed water to flow freely in the direction of Calf Creek. Still, the damage was sufficient to engage Mrs. Kraus' imagination. The manner in which the thing might have vaporized her legs, had it gone off moments earlier, was clearly etched in her mind.

She entered the courthouse, Glock preceding her. Either no one was about or they were remarkably hard of hearing.

Wynn was supposed to be manning the radio and the phones in the sheriff's office. She wasn't surprised to find him missing. In her experience, Deputy Wynn more often botched his duties than fulfilled them.

She headed straight for her desk. The sheriff needed to know about this immediately. She stopped well short of her goal when she realized another piece of pipe was standing on the counter. After one heart-stopping moment in which she was sure she'd found a second bomb, she realized this was only a perfectly normal, and hollow, piece of one-inch galvanized pipe. She could tell because someone had stuffed a piece of rolled up paper inside and it protruded for several inches from either end.

Mrs. Kraus double checked the rest of the office for additional bombs, foreign objects, or foreign invaders, before she bent and extracted the paper from the pipe. She kept the Glock firmly in one hand as she did so. She used a clothespin to grab the note. She kept a few in her desk drawer for the stacks of paperwork that were too big for paper clips. She didn't want to contaminate evidence. Benteen County didn't have forensic experts, but they might be able to lift fingerprints.

It was an unremarkable eight-and-one-half-by-eleven sheet of paper, suitable for typing, copying, or computer printout. She couldn't see any watermarks, just the text that covered the top third of the page.

government buildings are legitimate targets in a war. our device was timed to minimize collateral damage, but, should deaths occur, we are prepared to accept them, as has your nation. while the united states occupies the sovereign territory of iraq—in the name of democracy but for purposes of imperialism and to possess oil resources—we shall counterstrike at the heartland of our enemy. this is the first. those to follow shall escalate.

prepare to experience your own shock and awe. fear us. we are the holy
J
udgment against
I
nfidels,
H
eresy
A
nd global
D
omination.

Even Mrs. Kraus was quick to note that the only capitalized letters contained in the message spelled
JIHAD
.

***

“He's over here,” Doc said, waving toward a path above the creek.

Doctor Jones was Benteen County Coroner. He was nearing retirement age, though few would guess it. Most days. More and more, however, the sheriff had observed that the years weighed on Doc when he had to preside over rites of passage involving violent deaths of the young. Not that Benteen County had many of those, and virtually none of a criminal nature. But it had accidents—too much booze and too many horsepower, too little attention paid to sharp and powerful farm machinery, too much certainty that the gun wasn't loaded. Occasionally, too much despair.

“You okay, Englishman?” Doc asked, indicating Doc wasn't the only one the worse for wear this morning. “Things all right at home?” The sheriff was glad his dark complexion disguised the flush he felt wash across his face.

“Just the usual,” he grossly exaggerated.

Doc didn't press it. “Your crime scene's been stomped all to hell and gone, but when I heard you were on the way I decided I'd leave him where he died until you got a look.”

The sheriff nodded. He and Deputy Parker followed as Doc led the way up from the creek and into the trees and foliage that hugged its banks. The body lay in a muddy clearing beneath a thick cottonwood. It was under a plastic sheet that Doc bent and pulled aside. The soil was rust-colored, softened and tinted by a considerable quantity of blood. The boy was pale from the loss.

This clearing was more apparent than real. A trail of sorts passed through here, but had been widened by the frenzied footprints of those who crowded around and tried to save this boy.

The corpse lay on its back, naked. In death, it seemed too young and innocent to have been enjoying vigorous sex when it died.

“What can you tell me, Doc?”

Doc sighed and tugged on one of his big, protruding ears for a moment. He pulled a notebook out of his pocket, but he didn't bother to refer to it.

“Boy's sixteen, a perfectly normal adolescent male. Evidence of recent sexual activity. Got a wound in his back just below his left shoulder blade. An arrow, I'm told. I'll know more when I get him back to Klausen's Funeral Parlor for an autopsy, but I don't think we're gonna find any surprises. From what they tell me, they pulled the arrow out and didn't get the tip. I expect it's still in there, and it perforated the heart or one of the main arteries. Kid probably died in seconds. If not, they sure worked that point around in him while they were doing CPR. I may have a hell of a time figuring out what got damaged first. Fellow who did the CPR, he's a trained med-tech for the PBS people. Says he couldn't find a pulse when he got here. Still, didn't think he had any choice but to try. Looks to me like all he managed was to pump a lot of blood out of the wound and into the ground.”

The sheriff grunted in agreement.

“When you're through, you and Parker can help me load him in a body bag and tote him to my Buick.”

“I can't think of anything he can tell me,” the sheriff said. “Let's get him ready to go.” He turned to Deputy Parker. “Where's the arrow?”

It was in a plastic bag at the base of the cottonwood. It didn't look at all like what the sheriff had expected. “This come from a museum?” he frowned. “Shit! Don't tell me. It's Cheyenne, right?”

Parker nodded. “That's what the one legitimate Cheyenne who's here says. The man took one look and pointed at those four grooves that circle the shaft and the turkey feathers it's fletched with and said it was the kind his tribe used to make.”

“One more reason to talk to my brother,” the sheriff observed.

“Maybe,” Parker said, “but don't forget, this PBS thing is supposed to recreate an 1860s Cheyenne village. All the participants have been issued bows and quivers.”

“Like this one?” The sheriff's cell phone went off and he answered and almost missed her response beneath the frantic voice of Mrs. Kraus.

“No,” Parker said. “That old man—the real Cheyenne—he told us none of the others are authentic.”

***

Deputy Wynn was questioning suspects. It wasn't going quite the way he'd pictured it. Part of the problem was that everybody was a suspect, and thus, not to be let out of his sight. And part of it was that questioning required a level of individual privacy you couldn't achieve while guarding the whole bunch.

It didn't help that he wasn't sure where some of them had gone. He hadn't even been able to get an accurate count, but he was sure there'd been more witnesses as he herded them back from the crime site at Deputy Parker's suggestion.

He hadn't been enthusiastic about that at first. Then she'd offered to begin the investigation while he stayed behind and kept anyone else from disturbing evidence until Doc Jones and Englishman got there. Wynn had been quick to see which was the interesting job and jump on it.

Wynn decided right off not to take them back to the fake Indian encampment. Tents didn't appeal to him. They brought back unpleasant memories of his Boy Scout days—frogs and insects in his sleeping bag and, once, most of a can of pressurized whipped cream.

What did he have? Maybe twenty, maybe more. Four families of “Indians,” the people attempting to recreate the lifestyle of the Cheyenne, numbered more than a dozen all by themselves. Being around the “Indians” made him feel awkward. First, they were all clothed in funny robes and dresses. Most of the men wore embarrassing breechcloths and leggings and not much else. And the Ramseys, the parents of the naked kid lying in the mud down by the creek, were demanding to know what happened and what was going to be done about it. Craving reassurance that everything would be all right, including the hideous truth. Hell, their kid was dead. Things were definitely not going to be all right. Wynn was relieved when some of the film crew and a couple of women from the other families led them away to console them elsewhere. Well, he would get around to suspecting the immediate family later, when they weren't so obviously upset.

Part of the film crew wasn't at the site. He'd gotten that from the producer, a big man with prematurely graying hair who seemed more concerned about what the death was going to do to his schedule than the grief visited upon the Ramseys. The rest, another dozen or so, went about putting together coffee and food for everyone. They had the disturbing habit of disappearing into the cluster of big recreational vehicles that made up their offices and living quarters. He couldn't keep track of them, but, by setting up his investigation under an awning attached to one of those vehicles, he kept a clear view of the road into the pasture. He contented himself with being sure no one was making a break for it in the variety of cars and trucks associated with the project.