Prairie Gothic (13 page)

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.

Wynn, on the other hand, was completely absorbed by the movie. “This is a good part,” he told them, often enough to establish his familiarity with the latter-day Disney classic. He had a kindergartner at home as an excuse, but Heather was willing to bet the deputy was more addicted to the movie than was his progeny.

Maybe she should be protesting the delay, doing something about getting them pointed back toward Buffalo Springs or finding a way to communicate with Mom and Dad. Two appeared equally concerned, but Becky Hornbaker's presumption of absolute authority was more than a pair of sixteen-year-olds was prepared to challenge.

The back door crashed opened and, though the door between the living room and the kitchen was closed, a breath of frozen air licked the back of their necks.

“You all stay put,” Becky told them, halfway to the kitchen. “I'll see what Judah's found.”

Heather wasn't interested in sharing Judah's discoveries, but Judah picked the moment to turn loudly informative.

“Nobody here,” he shouted. “Simon's truck's gone. So's Uncle Tommie's Blazer, and Mary along with it.”

“Who's Mary?” Two of Two whispered, receiving a puzzled shrug of One's shoulders in return.

The instant Becky disappeared through the kitchen door, Heather grabbed the telephone. There was no dial tone. Had the line really gone down? Could Becky have known that when she said so, or had she simply pulled a plug somewhere to make it so?

“What now?” One inquired of her companions. Wynn was the only one to offer a suggestion.

“Wait for this part. This is great.”

***

It was hard to tell where the parking lot and the driveway were anymore, though Mad Dog decided it probably didn't matter much. Street, park, yard—they were all flat and they were all covered with snow. Mad Dog drove around the north side of Veteran's Memorial Park. The trees and shrubs there were farther from the edge of the street so the drifts weren't quite so deep. He decided he'd made a good decision when he glanced across the park and saw someone trying to maneuver a Taurus station wagon out of a drift across from Bertha's. It looked like Judy's car, but Mad Dog didn't turn down the street to help. Judy wasn't someone he wanted to run into just now. Besides, she could get plenty of volunteers to push from Bertha's lunch crowd.

He almost collided with the Cadillac Escalade that came plowing through a drift and skidded wide through the turn from Adams onto Cherry. Fortunately, he'd been slowing to make the turn south when the Chairman of the Benteen County Board of Supervisors missed his front fender by a distance that could be measured in snowflakes. Wynn Senior whipped over into his tracks and sped toward the courthouse. If Supervisor Bontrager had managed to persuade Chairman Wynn to come in on a day like this, Mad Dog thought, both he and Englishman would be better off somewhere far away. And, if Zeke Hornbaker showed up again, they would have a quorum and present a threat to every resident of the county. Mad Dog had signs in the trunk of his Saab stating his opinion of the current board.
BENTEEN BOARD OF SUPERVISORS: OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR RENT!