Prairie Gothic

by J. M. Hayes

  Love! One & Two

  ***

  “Five-hundred to 501,” Mrs. Kraus said into her walkie-talkie from her desk in the Benteen County Sheriff’s Office. She spoke with dulcet tones, something similar to a metal file taking a burr off a plowshare.

  A particular file was most likely to come to mind if you wished to describe Mrs. Kraus—the rat-tailed bastard file, named for its long, narrow shape, and its medium coarseness. Both were apt descriptions. Not that she was tall. She wasn’t, she just seemed tall because she was so slender—roughly the same dimensions from top to bottom. And no one would accuse her of being either too coarse, or insufficiently so, at least not for an employee of the sheriff’s department for nearly forty years.

  The phone started ringing again and Mrs. Kraus reached over and took it out of its cradle and told it to hold on a minute before setting it down to repeat her numerical mantra into the radio. The office was five hundred. The sheriff was 501. Deputies ranked on down to 510, based on the assumption, untrue during her tenure, that the department was fully staffed.

  “I read you five hundred.”

  “I hate to intrude,” she informed the radio. “I know you’re a busy man, but your office—that being me—could use a briefing about what’s going on out there. We’re swamped with calls wanting to know about that dead baby, and a missing body, and I don’t know what to tell folks.”

  She had taken the original call about the baby and he’d told her about Mad Dog and Tommie Irons, so she knew he wasn’t exaggerating much when he replied, “You know almost as much as I do.”

  She looked across the counter at the small crowd gathered in the office. “Well, sir, there’s a county supervisor down here who’d like to be filled in. He’s suggesting maybe you should drop everything and come over and make him happy. Pretty much otherwise ignore public safety and well being for his convenience.”

  Supervisor Bontrager had the good sense to look embarrassed, but not enough to hold his tongue. “Supervisor Hornbaker is handling a small emergency, but he and I have constituents who want to know about this baby. Mr. Hornbaker heard rumors it was a late term abortion. He’s going to look into that. It’s the kind of horrendous criminal act we aren’t about to tolerate here.”

  “I heard,” the sheriff said. “I haven’t got time to care what anybody wants just now. The supervisors get in your way, Mrs. Kraus, use your Glock. You find me any spare deputies?”

  “Hank Wilson is coming from over by Cottonwood Corners. It’s gonna take him some time to navigate his way to the plowed roads, he says, but he’s coming. No luck otherwise. If you’re looking for Wynn, I don’t know where he is. The manager of the secondhand store at Main and Monroe called earlier about him trying to confiscate all their dolls. When they wouldn’t turn them over, he left. I’ve tried calling him on the radio and his cellular. No luck. He most likely forgot to turn them on.”

  The radio caught the tail end of an expletive. “If you hear from him, send him home. Hank or I’ll deal with the missing doll. Now, is that all? I’ve got problems I need to deal with.”

  “I’m not just trying to pass the time, Sheriff. Amongst the fifty or so calls I’ve answered in the last hour, there’s two you might want to know about. Some of Tommie Irons’ kin are over at the Sunshine Towers. They say Tommie isn’t the only thing missing from his room. They say there was an heirloom, something valuable, and they want to know what’s become of it. Seemed a lot more upset about it than about Tommie.”

  “I’ll head back over.”

  “You might want to make a stop on your way. Doc called, says he’s got your autopsy results. Said he wouldn’t give them over the phone and you should come by and talk to him when you got time.”

  “I’ll do that. Tell our supervisors to go on about their business. I don’t want any volunteers getting in the way. Five-oh-one out.”

  Mrs. Kraus smiled pleasantly at the crowd on the other side of the counter, set down her radio, reached into her desk drawer and extracted her Glock. She put it on top of her desk.

  “You all heard what the sheriff said. Get on out of here and keep out of the way. I’ve been authorized to use this.”

  Bontrager sputtered, pounded his fist on the counter a couple of times, then spun on his heel and stomped out, followed by an angry retinue.

  “Mrs. Kraus,” a tiny voice whispered.

  She remembered the phone. “What can I do for you?” she inquired.

  “Mrs. Kraus,” the phone told her. “This is Mad Dog. I got a problem. Englishman isn’t there?”

  “You got a problem all right, and no, he’s not.”

  “I tried his cellular but it reads out of service. Can you get in touch with him?”

  “Course I can, if it’s important.”

  “I think this qualifies. I found a body.”

  “Mad Dog, the whole damn town knows about the body you found, and just where you found it.”

  “No ma’am. I mean another. Maybe more.”

  ***

  “Englishman, I told you before. I won’t give you a list of our school’s sluts.” Judy had exactly that list in front of her and was checking them off against today’s attendance. No way she would admit that to Englishman, though.

  “The car’s not at the house,” he said. “You drove to work this morning, right?”

  “You having trouble with the Chevy? You can have the station wagon if you want. I can walk, or get a ride home if the weather gets worse. You need me to come pick you up?”

  “So you drove?”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  Only three of the girls had been missing from school this morning. She thought she would start with phone calls. A little cautious inquiry to eliminate suspects and she could tell Englishman to leave them alone. If she happened on something troubling, maybe she would point him, discreetly, in the right direction.

  “No, you didn’t tell me. And you still haven’t. Is the station wagon at the school?”

  “Yes, of course. I was late. I was lazy. It was cold and windy, and I wanted to be able to run home if the girls needed me. But you can have it if you want it.”

  “You’re sure it’s there? You’re sure nobody’s borrowed it?”

  Judy shoved aside her list. This was turning into one of those conversations that felt like they were speaking alien languages at each other. They had so many of those she sometimes wondered if this second try at marriage had been a mistake. And she still wanted to live somewhere other than Englishman’s beloved Plains.

  “Who would borrow it?”

  “Can you see it from your window?”

  “Sure. You know where my parking space is.”

  “No, I mean can you see it from your window right now?”

  “Englishman, what are you doing to me? Is this some kind of test-your-wife’s-patience exercise from the morning paper?” There was no morning paper in Benteen County, but they subscribed to a rural edition of The Wichita Eagle.

  “Humor me, Judy. Just look.”

  Judy leaned back in her chair and rubbed at the condensation that frosted her window. A fine hail of snow crystals peppered it from the other side. The Taurus huddled in a forlorn row of vehicles behind the school. It seemed to peer at her with an accusing look, wondering why it had to give up its warm space in the garage to save her three blocks of exercise she probably needed anyway.

  “OK,” Judy told the phone.

  “OK, what?”

  “It’s there, Englishman. It’s in the lot, right where I left it. Are you satisfied? Is there anything else you want? Should I double check the location of our school buses for you?” The school buses were returning students home in advance of what the weather bureau had decided might be a major storm after all. “Why do you want to know where our car is?”

  “Tell you later.”

  “Englishman!” she howled, startling a couple of nearby administrators. The sheriff didn’t hear her though. He’d hung up.

  ***r />
  Aside from the new addition to the Texaco, Klausen’s Mortuary was far and away the most prosperous piece of real estate in Buffalo Springs. It stood, perfectly manicured, freshly painted, and flawlessly maintained at the corner of Washington and Main. It blended into the neighborhood, among those businesses that were still occupied and not verging on bankruptcy, like a peacock among sparrows.

  The sheriff parked his Chevy in the lot at the side of the building. Even though the lot was almost empty, he avoided the main entry. It was all soft carpets and dark woods, soothing paintings that hinted at a gentle eternity, vases of fresh flowers, or now, in the dead of winter, the finest silk blossoms. If you lived in Benteen County, you could hardly avoid going through those doors for many rites of passage. Too many. Your last would probably be here as well. He followed a neatly shoveled walk around to the rear and let himself in the back door.

  It opened on an antiseptic white hallway. The building embraced you back here in a way that was less friendly but more honest. Englishman’s boots echoed reassuringly, an indication that he hadn’t left his body behind when he passed into this lifeless place of light and silence. The third door on the left was rented by the county at a minimal rate. The sheriff knocked and Doc Jones told him to come in.

  Doc was alone. His desk was uncharacteristically cleared of papers. It appeared that he’d just been sitting there in the dim light that filtered through the small high window behind him, eyes lost in the thousand-mile stare of someone contemplating the mysteries of life and death. This place must lend itself to such considerations. The sheriff resolved to spend as little time here as possible.

  “Been waiting for you,” Doc said, shoving himself up from his chair. “Come on, let’s go have a look at our uninvited guest.”

  “That necessary?” The sheriff had been in the mortician’s room that doubled as autopsy lab too many times. “Can’t you just tell me what you found?”

  Doc kept moving. He made his way down the hall to the first door on the opposite side. The sheriff felt like Doc was punishing him. Not because he was to blame, most likely, but just because he was available to take the abuse. A dead baby was hard on everyone.

  Doc’s office held some personality. He’d hung a couple of paintings, stuck some photographs on his desk, added shelves of heavily thumbed texts that gave the room a lived-in feel. The lab was the opposite. It felt died-in, but that wasn’t the case. People didn’t die here. They came to be embalmed, repaired, and groomed for open-casket funerals, boxed and tagged for transport to a crematory, or to lie on that cold steel table and wait for the coroner’s unwelcome intrusions. No, not people, the sheriff amended. Their shells. Whatever made them people was gone by the time they came to Klausen’s workrooms.

  Against the south wall was a door that looked a lot like the one to the meat locker down at the Dillon’s. Not without reason. Doc opened it and disappeared into the refrigerated interior for a moment. He came back carrying a little zippered bag. The sheriff had stuffed buddies into similar versions when he was in Vietnam. He’d come close to needing one himself.

  Doc laid it on the stainless-steel table and worked the zipper. The baby looked like it had been fitted with zippers of its own. It had been sliced open, examined and then closed back up. The scars were neat enough, but they lacked the sort of precise small stitches reserved for flesh that might heal. The sheriff wanted to look somewhere else, but he couldn’t. He found himself staring at the child’s face, seeking resemblance to his family and hoping not to find it.

  Where were the Heathers? Where could they have gone without the car? Or had they gone in someone else’s car? He wanted to be outside this room, searching for them in the land of the living, not back here worrying in the land of the dead.

  “Stillborn, full-term boy. That’s what my report will say.”

  “Stillborn, can that be true?” That might take some of the heat off from the outraged locals, but it sure didn’t take away the heat Doc suddenly radiated.

  “You think I’d file a false report?” Doc was steaming.

  “No. That’s not what I…”

  “You ever know me to lie? You ever know me to falsify anything? As Coroner, I won’t do that even to make it easier for those who’re left behind.”

  “Doc, calm down. What’s with you and this case? You’ve had a burr up your ass from the moment you found out about it. You know I think you’re the least likely public official in Benteen County to play other than by the rules. But you’re making me think there’s something about this that you aren’t telling me.”

  Doc got himself back under control. “I’m sorry.” His voice was calm again, but he was still stiff and anything but relaxed. “There’s just something about a baby that didn’t have to end up this way that angers me.”

  “Are you implying this was a wrongful death?”

  Doc turned back to the task of removing the little corpse from the body bag. “I don’t know. This child might have lived if it had been delivered in a hospital, if the mother had seen fit to consult with a physician through the course of her pregnancy. But that’s not what happened. It never drew a breath. That’s what I’ll say in my report. The lungs never inflated. All kinds of maybes, but the result’s the same. This baby’s dead.”

  Neither Doc nor the sheriff referred to the baby as “he” or “him.” Maybe using “it” kept this impersonal, distancing them from the pain.

  “And you couldn’t have just told me that?” The sheriff was a little pissed now too. It wasn’t like finding dead babies was a cause of good cheer for him either. He still had to find a mother, determine how and why this little body had ended up where an old woman with Alzheimer’s could find it.

  “You remember what Wynn had to say about the baby being Jewish?” Doc asked. It seemed a strange segue, and this time it was the sheriff who exploded.

  “When I have time, I will explain about circumcision to my deputy. Meanwhile, I’ve confiscated his weapon and sent him home. I know, as a law enforcement officer, he’s an embarrassment. If I didn’t need this job so badly, or wasn’t always winning re-election by such narrow margins, I’d probably fire his ass and tell his father what to do with my department’s budget. I might even try to run Wynn Senior out of office, only he’s the most popular political figure in this county and about the only one on the board who knows what he’s doing. Folks around here are fond of Deputy Wynn. They find him an amusement, as long as he isn’t screwing up their cases or ignoring their legal rights. And, damn it, he means well.”

  “Guess I’m not the only one who’s a little touchy this morning,” Doc said. For the first time there was a hint of warmth, evidence of their close friendship in his voice. “That’s not what I meant either. Come over here. Take a look.”

  Doc reached down and gently brushed thick black hair off the child’s forehead. There was a mark there. The sheriff bent closer.

  “You see it,” Doc asked, and the sheriff did.

  In the center of his forehead, just below the hairline, someone had drawn a tiny swastika.

  ***

  The weather was deteriorating. By the time Mad Dog and Hailey got back to the Saab, all his extremities were numb. His face was raw from the stinging snow that had begun falling, driven by the wind so that it blew almost parallel to the ground. He couldn’t get a cellular signal and had to step back out of the Saab to try his phone in the open. Hailey refused to follow. If a tundra wolf preferred to snuggle near the heater vent on the seat of an aging Saab Turbo instead of sniffing about for bunnies—or more skeletons—it was definitely turning unpleasant out.

  Mad Dog finally got the phone to work. The connection was weak, but he discovered his brother’s cell phone was turned off. When he punched in the number for the sheriff’s office next, it actually rang. Of course Mrs. Kraus didn’t really answer, she just told him to hold while she dealt with something. It sounded like a madhouse there, only his signal was so poor that he couldn’t make out much. Could all tha
t be because of Tommie Irons?

  Just as he was about to abandon hope, Mrs. Kraus came back on the line. For a moment, her voice was crystal clear. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  Englishman wasn’t there and it was clear folks were pissed that he’d helped Tommie Irons on his journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Englishman needed to know what Hailey had discovered, though, so Mad Dog swallowed his pride and began trying to explain to Mrs. Kraus.

  “I found a body,” he told her.

  “Mad Dog, the whole damn town knows about the body you found, and just where you found it.”

  “No ma’am. I mean another. Maybe more.”

  He stomped his feet to try to get some feeling, and then there was way too much feeling on the left side of his face and when he turned to look for the phone it wasn’t there anymore, just some wires and shattered plastic hanging over his bare, bloody hand. Moments before that hand had held a cell phone and been enclosed in a thick mitten.

  Mad Dog hadn’t thought the Saab could get through the drifted snow just downhill of the slough, but it did, and faster than he would have dreamed. The plastic had nicked his hand, but it was his ear doing most of the bleeding. He couldn’t hear out of it quite right, not that he was complaining. Right now it was about putting distance between himself and the white pickup truck that had followed him down the road by the slough. If, when he found time to check, he resembled Vincent Van Gogh in the ear department, he would still count himself lucky. The shooter with the white truck had put a bullet through his phone. The Nokia was dead. He wasn’t. If the Saab proved better at negotiating snowdrifts than the shooter’s truck, he would keep it that way.

  ***

  “I don’t think I can do it,” Two of Two said.

  “Spread your legs a little. Put your left foot up there and push.”

  “Don’t forget to breathe,” One of Two suggested.

  “OK,” Wynn said, shifting his butt around nervously and wringing his hands. The deputy leaned forward and looked out the windshield, checking the street ahead. It was empty, just as it almost always was. “Your foot on the floor?”