Prairie Gothic (14 page)

The Blazer did more than its share of slipping, but he kept it slow and easy and steered for the shallowest part of every drift. He glanced down Oak as he headed south. Sure enough, that was Englishman out there, jumping up and down on the bumper of the Taurus, trying to give it a little extra traction. That meant Judy was most likely at the wheel and both of them were probably stressed, by events and by each other. Mad Dog kept going.

He put the Blazer in a parking spot behind the Bisonte Bar, just down the street from Klausen's. He carried the girl and she hugged her naked doll. She wasn't much of a burden and she seemed too weak to wade through drifts. Hailey reluctantly followed them out of the Blazer. It had a good heater and the passenger seat fit her better than the one in his Saab. They made an interesting procession, had there been anyone to see them, like something out of one of those old Hollywood B movies—the monster, the werewolf, and their innocent victim. They followed the alley south of Main and crossed Klausen's parking lot to the funeral parlor. It seemed an appropriate destination.

Mad Dog had to scrape snow away from the back door with his foot in order to get it open. The long white hall was surprisingly quiet once the door closed behind them.

“I don't like this place,” Mary complained. Hailey whined agreement. Mad Dog knew how they felt, but he needed a medical opinion.

Doc's office was empty. Mad Dog put the girl on a sofa and helped her rearrange her blankets. Hailey joined her, resting her head in the girl's lap and competing for attention with her battered dolly.

“I'll be right back,” Mad Dog promised.

“Yes please.” she seemed frightened, but she took courage from the presence of her new friend with the big teeth.

Doc wasn't in the embalming lab. That surprised Mad Dog since Doc's Buick was still in the parking lot and it didn't seem likely he'd gone for a walk. Mad Dog followed the hall toward the front of the building, exchanging antiseptic simplicity for plush elegance at a pair of swinging doors wide enough for even the most luxurious coffin. Dull light streamed through the stained glass windows that flanked the front doors and transmogrified a dull beige carpet into something magically Persian, perhaps, and surely capable of flight. Whether by design or by accident, the pattern thus applied to the carpet led to the mortuary chapel. Mad Dog followed. Only a few wall sconces, tastefully hidden behind lush bouquets of silk flowers, glowed dully in the chapel, along with the spotlights that highlighted a simple wooden cross on the back wall. The cross could come down to be replaced with a menorah for those few residents of Benteen County whose messiah was yet to come. Or the wall could be left empty for the rare atheist brave enough to face eternity without hedging a few bets. So far as Mad Dog knew, no symbols of other religious creeds had ever been requested here.

Doc sat in one of the pews about midway down the aisle. It was hardly a place Mad Dog would have expected to find someone so adamantly agnostic. Mad Dog hated to interrupt anyone who might be communicating with their god, or goddess, or even just contemplating their spiritual navel. All the same, someone had tried to blow his ear off today. And someone still prowled the streets of Buffalo Springs, seemingly more intent on introducing Mad Dog to eternity than letting him consider it. That played hell with his patience.

He cleared his throat, and Doc cleared the bench and whirled toward the entry. “Christ!” he said. It almost sounded like a question.

***

“This is too weird,” Heather English told her sibling. They were peering through the drapes of the living room's north window into the teeth of the storm. Becky Hornbaker was out there, crawling behind the wheel of her old Dodge Powerwagon while her grandson, Judah, rode shotgun.

“Yeah, this part is kind of scary,” Wynn agreed from where he sat on the rug with his nose glued to the TV.

“What's going on?” Heather Lane wondered. “If it's safe enough for them to drive over to the highway, why can't they take us along?”

“Yeah, and what's all this about staying in the living room or the kitchen? I mean, what does she think we are, some kind of snoops?”

The truck pulled slowly out of the back yard and disappeared behind a building that stood between the house and the barn. The girls followed it, going through the door to the kitchen so they could see it dig its way to the road and turn cautiously into an alien landscape of undulating white that reshaped itself and continued a southward migration while the girls watched.

The truck disappeared behind a row of lilac bushes. It was impossible to tell whether it emerged on the other side because the horizon no longer extended that far.

“That wasn't very polite of her. ‘You all just wait here while we go see to our family and when we get back we'll see about your family.' Ours is as important as hers. And then telling us not to stray from the living room and the kitchen because the rest of the place is such a mess and it's all locked up besides.”

“Yeah, who'd want to look around their old house anyway?” There was a little hall at the south end of the kitchen with a small bathroom on the side. One of those doors they'd been prohibited to pass through stood at the end of it.

“You think it's really locked?” One wondered.

“Of course,” Two replied, testing her opinion. It was an old door in an old house and it was solid and sealed, but the lock was one of those keyhole shaped things through which some dim light could be seen, especially if you got down on your hands and knees and put your eyeball right to the opening.

“Anything?”

“Not really,” Two admitted, “but I bet this would be easy to open.”

“Looks pretty stout to me.”

“I didn't mean we should break it down.” Heather Lane fished through her pockets. She didn't produce a skeleton key, but she did find a paper clip which she inserted in the keyhole and began twisting experimentally.

“You're gonna get it now, Scar,” Wynn howled from the living room. The wind was louder, but both were behind walls and too busy to notice a bit of teen-age testing of limits.

“We shouldn't do this,” One of Two objected, so she could say she'd warned her sister if it ended up getting them in trouble.

“I'm just showing you how easy it would be. It's not like I care what's on the other side,” Two protested, and then they were.

It was a man's den, wood paneled with most of its shelves empty of anything but dust. An unoccupied gun rack stood against one wall. A desk was beneath the room's only window, its drawers having been dumped on the floor. Evidently there hadn't been much in them, and what was apparently hadn't mattered to whoever searched them.

“The movie's almost over. Wynn's gonna come looking for us in a minute,” One cautioned. There were two other doors leading from the room. The other Heather was trying the one opposite the window. It wasn't locked. The door swung open on a staircase that climbed to a dimly lit hall above.

“You don't suppose they have something to hide, do you?” Two offered a justification for further exploration. A chorus of animals were singing something cheerful in the living room and Wynn had joined in.

“I don't think we should go up there,” One said. “The way my day's going…”

“Hey,” Two gave her sister a quick hug. “It's no big deal. We got called on account of weather. We'll just try again tomorrow.”

One wasn't sure they'd get the chance, but something else was competing for her attention. “What's that?” she asked.

A soft voice tumbled down the stairs. A breathy
a capella
, hardly understandable. The tune sounded familiar. There was a sad, lonely quality to it, and it drew the Heathers up the stairs like tourists to the world's largest ball of twine, to be found just a few counties away.

The words grew clearer as they advanced.

“Somewhere, over the rainbow…”

***

“Geez. I'm sorry, Doc, I didn't mean to startle you.”

Doc smiled and did a kind of a self-deprecating shrug. “Not your fault, Mad Dog. I was a million miles away. I spend too much time around this place. And it's been one of those days that leads me to wonder how I'll be judged when my own time comes, if there's anybody to do the judging. Or, perhaps worse yet, how I'll judge myself.”

“You'll come out fine,” Mad Dog reassured. “You're one of maybe half a dozen folks in this county who can be trusted with anything.”

Doc tried to brush the compliment off. “That's about how many people still live here.”

His attempt at humor sounded forced. “Sorry, guess I'm trying to laugh my way out of a personal graveyard and,” he waved, a gesture that encompassed Klausen's Funeral Parlor, “I picked the right place for it.”

“Doc, I hate to bother you but I've got a problem.”

Doc stepped out of the pew and gestured for Mad Dog to lead the way. As they turned toward the back of the building, Doc threw an arm around Mad Dog's shoulder. It was an uncharacteristic act between men in Benteen County, but it made Mad Dog feel good. Kansans didn't go in for the touchy-feely stuff. Men shook each other's hands, but they didn't hold on long and seldom hugged and never shed a public tear. Mad Dog had cut through Doc's shell with his remark about trust. But it was true. Otherwise he wouldn't be here.

“I've already heard a little about your problem. Come on back to my office and we'll talk about it. But first, humor me. I've got a question for a long-time resident.”

“What's that, Doc?”

“There are some brass plaques on the pews. I was sitting there, staring at one.
LOUIS HENRY SILVERSTEIN, GUARDIAN OF THE WORDS
. I don't think I've heard of him. Who was Silverstein? What words did he guard?”

“He was a librarian, Doc. That abandoned sandstone building just down the street—you know the one—it used to be the Benteen County Public Library. Silverstein was a scholar from somewhere back east, Ivy League school I think. He was headed west to retire, only he happened through Buffalo Springs on a day they were having a book sale, culling the collections to raise enough money to keep the place open. Silverstein bought every book and donated them all back to the library. Then he stuck around and started volunteering his time. Before long, he and his retirement funds were all that kept the library going. Somewhere along the line he acquired an old printing press and started putting out a weekly newspaper. Only paper we've had since the Depression.
The Times of Buffalo Springs
. Both the paper and the library closed when he died. Would have been a better memorial if folks found a way to keep them going, but all they managed was that plaque.”

“Somebody cared, though. Thanks, Mad Dog. Silverstein meant enough for them to put up that little monument. Sitting there, I came to think I owed it to him, and me, to find out who he was. I hope one day someone cares enough to ask a similar question about me.”

Doc pushed through the double doors that separated the public portion of Klausen's from the work area, two very different sides of one universal coin. “Excuse me. I don't know why I'm being so maudlin. What brought you here?”

Mad Dog reached in his pocket and removed the answer, setting the skull gently into Doc's outstretched palms.

Doc's head rocked slowly from side to side. Mad Dog thought it was out of sadness more than denial.

“You're in luck, old friend,” Doc said, shell suddenly back in place as he hid behind the cynical humor for which he was known. “Seems I'm having a special on dead babies today.”

***

When Judy's Taurus slid past the drive to the parking lot behind the courthouse and went nose first into the shallow ditch, the sheriff decided that was as good a parking spot for it as any. He pulled his Chevy up beside her and left it on more solid footing. Even with the bags of concrete he was carting in the bed to weigh down the rear end and give it traction, the truck was proving to be marginal transportation. Better, he decided, not to pit it against the drifts building up in the lot, even if there were fresh tracks through them.

He helped Judy from the Taurus and, together, they waded across the lawn and up the steps to the front doors. They were hard to open under the best of circumstances. Damned near impossible on icy footing as gale-force winds threatened to give free hang-gliding lessons. The sheriff wedged the south door open an inch or two, then the wind shifted and slammed it open the rest of the way. He reached back and pulled Judy in after him. She continued through the inner doors on her own as he tried, without success, to close what had been nearly impossible to open. When he gave up and followed her, Judy was just inside. Not far beyond her, near the foot of the staircase that led to the courtrooms on the second floor, stood a small crowd of spectators. They included Supervisors Wynn, Hornbaker, and Bontrager. Mad Dog wasn't there.

“Mrs. Kraus?” the sheriff called, making a raised eyebrow do in place of what he wanted to ask her about Mad Dog.

She stuck her head around the corner of the door to his office, read the eyebrow and answered it with a shrug. “Communications are all out, Sheriff,” she told him. “Not much goin' on here, 'cept this lynch mob.”

Mad Dog was gone, or out of the way someplace. The sheriff wanted to talk to his brother, but not in front of this crowd.

“Something I can do for you?” They didn't show any signs of going on about their business. That probably mean he was their business. Just what he needed. One more impediment to finding his daughters, the body of Tommie Irons, and the mother of the baby at Klausen's.

Supervisor Bontrager decided to act as spokesman. That didn't surprise the sheriff much.

“You're just in time, Sheriff. Supervisor Hornbaker was just explaining what he's discovered about this morning's events. I was about to suggest that we discuss relieving you of your duties, pending an investigation into the manner in which your office has operated, or failed to operate, during this crisis.”