Prairie Gothic (12 page)

Doc paused to suck on the ballpoint. He didn't smoke, but he must have once. The sheriff recognized the signs. Doc was stressed and in need of something to occupy his hands, something to put in his mouth. Freud would have had some interesting things to say about that. Wrong, maybe, but interesting.

“The family didn't want anyone to know about the pregnancy. They hid it. They wouldn't take her to a hospital for the delivery. They intended to handle it themselves, only there were complications. They called me early this morning. It sounded like a breech birth. I told them to meet me at the clinic, only they wouldn't because the community might notice. They wanted to come to my house, but that would have taken too long. We compromised. They were supposed to meet me here. ”

“When I arrived, I found bloodstains and a plastic doll on the back porch. No sign of anybody. I brought the doll inside and tried calling them. No answer. I almost called you. Then one of them came and knocked on the door. Said the baby was born dead. They were afraid they would be discovered because people were wandering around near here. Some teenagers and some old folks. They got nervous. They left the baby by the back door, knowing I'd be here soon, and drove off until things settled down. I persuaded them to let me check the mother. She was in remarkably good shape for what she'd been through.

“That's it, Sheriff. I don't think I can tell you more.”

“You've just added rape and incest to the list of things I should be looking into and you can't tell me more? Doc, what's to keep it from happening again?”

The ballpoint snapped between Doc's fingers. “Don't appoint yourself my conscience, and don't think that doesn't worry me. But I took a vow, and I renewed it quite specifically to these people so I could treat that girl. Besides, I don't know for sure who the father is, and I'm not sure she could tell you.”

The sheriff shook his head. “I don't know if that's enough. Can you guarantee the girl is safe? Not just from whoever did this to her, but from the crazies in this community who will want to punish her for intentionally disposing of her baby?”

“I don't guarantee sunrises, let alone human behavior. But I doubt they'll find her. I can't tell you why, because that would help you figure out who she is.”

“Well, I've got plenty to occupy myself, but you and I have more to talk about. This isn't over, Doc.”

“Yes it is,” Doc said.

The argument ended there. The back door to Klausen's flew opened on howling winds, then crashed shut. Both men turned in its direction.

“Englishman!” Judy shouted. “Where are my daughters?”

***

Mad Dog decided not to wait for Uncle Simon's Dodge Ram. He put the Blazer back in gear and floored it. Even with four-wheel drive it went all squirrely getting back onto the blacktop, extensive patches of which were now frosted and white.

Mad Dog flashed his headlights and made all sorts of waving motions, like he was indicating something important somewhere behind him as he went past the Dodge. Simon wasn't behind the wheel. It was one of his boys—Levi, Mad Dog thought. It looked like a hand and a foot were sticking up out of the back seat of the crew cab, just in front of the gun rack in the back window. The guns persuaded Mad Dog to keep his foot on the Blazer's accelerator in spite of the windshield wipers' inability to clear the front glass of snow and his capacity to be sure where the edges of the highway had gone.

The Dodge pulled over at the intersection where Mad Dog had been parked and a puzzled face turned to watch them fly into the teeth of the storm. It didn't take long for swirling snow to swallow the glow of the Dodge's brake lights.

Mad Dog didn't think they were following him. He let the speedometer drop back to something that was merely irrational instead of insane.

About two miles south of Buffalo Springs, the highway and Adams forked, each jogging away from the other to become two avenues into town. Mad Dog took Adams, but just far enough to realize how hard it was going to be to follow the street. He felt less likely to run into another Hornbaker this way, but it also looked like it might be tricky to navigate, even in a four-wheel drive.

Mad Dog stopped to consider his options while Hailey fogged the passenger's window and the girl in the back seat leaned forward and peered over his shoulder.

“Where we going, Mr. Mad Dog?”

And that, Mad Dog realized, was exactly the question. Where did you go in a stolen car with a kidnapped child? To jail, his conscience answered, and most likely for a very long time.

The Dodge Ram streaked through his rearview mirrors and passed the intersection with Adams going even faster than Mad Dog had been willing to risk. Too fast to stop when the driver saw the Blazer. The Ram's brake lights came on as it disappeared behind a stand of evergreens that separated the roads.

Where no longer mattered so much as going. If the Dodge didn't end up in a ditch it would be back, bringing an armed and angry Hornbaker, with maybe a rope necktie to offer him a similar fate to Uncle Tommie. The Blazer went, and, to his surprise, Mad Dog decided he finally knew where.

***

But for the sound of the wind ripping at shutters, testing windows, and banging on doors, the big house was silent.

“Hello?” Becky called again, and again her echo was the only response.

Judah, Deputy Wynn, and the Heathers crowded the dim kitchen. It had a simple, functional look to it. A man's kitchen, Heather English thought. A stack of dirty dishes in the sink indicated heavy use.

“That's peculiar,” Becky said. “I thought Simon and Levi would be here. Judah, didn't I tell them to hurry on home?”

Judah wasn't chatty. He just blinked piggy little eyes and nodded.

“Deputy, you take these children into the living room. We left a fire in the hearth. Even if it's gone out, you can toss some fresh logs on the coals and warm yourselves. I'll heat up a pot of coffee, and make some hot chocolate for the girls. Judah, you go check the barn and the garage. See if someone's out there.”

Heather English was tired of being called a child. She and Heather were both sixteen. Two of Two was only three months shy of her seventeenth birthday, though One would have to wait till fall. Still, they were both too old to be referred to as children. She looked over her shoulder at Mrs. Hornbaker as they paraded through a swinging door and into the living room. Judah shuffled back outside with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

Heather wasn't good at estimating the ages of old people. Once they got gray and their skin began to crinkle, they were just old. Becky Hornbaker qualified, though she didn't look nearly as ancient as her brother, Tommie Irons, had the last time Heather saw him. In spite of gray hair and weathered skin that had faced into lots of years of Kansas wind, the woman was handsome in a rugged kind of way. She was tall and the lean-hard cut of her was especially noticeable as she shed her coat and reached up into a cupboard for cups and saucers. She couldn't compete with the Heathers for perky, but she sure didn't have the traditional old lady figure.

The living room was a mess. Someone had taken books off of shelves and stacked them at random on the floor. Cushions were tossed helter-skelter from the sofa and the easy chair. Only the TV and the recliner—remote control sitting on its arm—looked to be where they belonged. The fireplace held nothing but coals. Heather thought that was just as well since an occasional gust whistled down the chimney and might have scattered sparks onto the worn carpet or the combustible piles of books and cushions lying too near a screen that looked anything but effective. Wynn selected some logs from a pile that had been stacked right on the carpet, without even putting down something to catch the bark and sawdust. A man, she figured again, though probably not Mr. Irons. He'd been in the nursing home for months.

“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…