Plains Crazy

by J. M. Hayes

  “Janie!” he croaked, suddenly knowing whose voice had been on his answering machine. “Janie Jorgenson.”

  It had been more than forty years since the two of them were voted most perfect couple by their classmates at Buffalo Springs High—football hero and head cheerleader, best athlete and best student. Jesus, how could she still look so good. She had hardly changed at all. Still had that gorgeous blond hair, that elfin face that hinted you were in for fun and trouble. He hadn’t seen her since she gave him back his ring—threw it back, actually, on that summer night in 1962. He wanted to open his arms and see if she would come into them.

  She just stood there and looked perplexed.

  “I’m Jack,” she said, “or Jackie. Janie Jorgenson is my grandmother.”

  ***

  The sheriff was slick with sweat. A small, fatuous smile hung on his face, unrecognized and not easily removed.

  Judy sighed, deep and satisfied. She bent and kissed his bruised lips, gently this time, rolled off, and went across the room to the window, backlit by the rising sun.

  It was hard to believe she was midway between forty and fifty. He knew he saw her through a lover’s eyes, but he also knew she really was still spectacular. It didn’t matter whether it took hard work and careful diet these days, instead of youth and luck. Judy could turn heads in any crowd.

  “Wow!” the sheriff breathed. He almost tacked on a “What brought that on?” but he wasn’t sure he wanted this wild and lusty moment to end just yet. He knew his wife well enough to understand asking why was not the thing to do.

  Not that they didn’t make love anymore. They did, and pretty regularly. Perhaps too regularly, as the years and their schedules increasingly forced their intimacies into whatever time slots were open. But they didn’t make love like this, not usually. The sheriff couldn’t remember the last time he’d hit the trifecta. Hell, even doubles had become rare. This had been like when they were first married and desire and availability had suddenly been evenly matched. He had wakened from a sound sleep to gentle but insistent caresses. Then once was not enough, nor was twice. They couldn’t get enough of each other. He sighed and wondered whether he would have the strength to get through his day…and how he might lure her back for more.

  “God I love you, Englishman,” she said. Judy was one of the few people who got away with calling him Englishman. He had the misfortune of having a brother whose nickname, as high school football hero, had been Mad Dog. Once you had a Mad Dog, and a last name like English, you naturally became Englishman.

  Their school days were long past, and their nicknames might have vanished as well, except that Mad Dog had taken their mother’s claim to be a half-breed Cheyenne seriously enough to commit himself to that culture, and to legally adopt the alias. Now, everyone in Benteen County knew Mad Dog and Englishman, but only a select few called Mad Dog’s little brother anything other than Sheriff English to his face.

  He realized, suddenly, that Judy was standing in an open window and presenting the neighbors with a viewing opportunity more likely on certain streets in Amsterdam than Buffalo Springs. If anyone saw her, they might complain to the school board. Not many people in Benteen County, Kansas, would think the Vice Principal of Buffalo Springs High should be offering sex education visual aids to anyone passing down Cherry Street this morning. The sheriff thought about telling her, but he was enjoying his view of her delightful bottom too much, and he didn’t have the energy to spare. Not while there was a chance she might come back to their bed again.

  “I want to go to Paris,” Judy said.

  The sheriff smiled. “Why would anyone want to go to Texas?” he teased.

  She swung around, closing her hands into fists and planting them on the hips with which she might now be mooning their neighbors. The view from this side was even better, he decided, though it was plain she wasn’t thinking about jumping his bones anymore.

  “I’m not kidding, Englishman.”

  He knew she wasn’t. She’d wanted to go to Paris—the one in France—for as long as he could remember.

  “You promised you’d take me.”

  That was also true. Though he’d convinced himself that the fulfillment of that promise could be put off until their girls were on their own and he and Judy had achieved those golden years that would mark their retirement.

  “Well…”

  “A well is a hole in the ground,” Judy said. “As I’m constantly telling my students who’d like to find one to hide in because they can’t give me the answer I want.”

  “This isn’t a good time. I mean, what with our relations with the French over Iraq.”

  “And terrorist threats, and we can’t really afford it, and I’ll bet you can come up with at least a hundred other reasons. You always have. I’m starting to think you always will. That’s why I went online this morning and made reservations. Sometimes you can get astounding deals at the last minute. I did. We fly out of Wichita this afternoon.”

  The sheriff sat up in bed. He was relieved to see that the nearest neighbor’s windows were tightly closed and the blinds secured. He was less relieved by what he saw in Judy’s eyes.

  “Say what?”

  She stalked across the room to the dresser and picked up a couple of sheets of paper—computer printout. “Here they are, Wichita to Atlanta to Paris. I’ve got us booked into a little hotel for a couple of nights while we get a feel for the city.”

  “Judy, I can’t just walk away from my job.” He was going to tell her that she couldn’t either, only he realized it was the end of May. Classes at Buffalo Springs High were over. She’d finished grading all her tests and papers. No one would put up much of a fuss if she didn’t show for graduation.

  “Why not? You haven’t taken a real day off in years. It’s not like we’re in the middle of a crime wave. Nothing serious has happened in Benteen County in more than two years.

  “I mean, really, Englishman. Why not? The girls are in college. They’re old enough to take care of themselves and they’re headed for summer school. You’ve finally got competent help. You said this Deputy Parker is the real thing—the first legitimate law enforcement officer you’ve ever had. Put Parker in charge. Things won’t fall apart in two weeks. Please, Englishman. This is important to me.”

  The sheriff felt like he’d been trapped in a room to which all the exits were sealed. He really didn’t want to go to Paris, of all places. Well, actually, he didn’t want to go anywhere. He was one of those people for whom the favorite part of travel was coming home. But he had promised, and he did love Judy. There wasn’t really anything going on in Benteen County just now. Except the sound of their phone ringing.

  Maybe that would be a good excuse. He picked it up and it was.

  ***

  Mrs. Kraus stepped out of Bertha’s Café into the most beautiful morning she could imagine. It was time for her to clock in behind the reception desk over at the sheriff’s office in the courthouse, but not before she took a moment to appreciate the glory of this rare and perfect spring day. Weather in Benteen County tended to extremes of heat and cold, punctuated by storms that seemed like the personal wrath of God, but in between…like just now, this morning. She took a breath and knew why she lived here, and would never dream of living anywhere else.

  The rising sun turned the streets of Buffalo Springs into swaths of gold. They gleamed, resembling the fabled pavement for which Coronado had once come searching. Or maybe not, since the sun was also highlighting verdant clumps of Bermuda that pushed through cracks in the pavement, and a profusion of wildflowers that most folks would call weeds, blooming in Veterans Memorial Park across the street.

  Mrs. Kraus was pleasantly bloated after a Bertha’s breakfast special. She would have been drowsy if she hadn’t accompanied it with several cups of Bertha’s coffee, strong enough, it had been rumored, to dissolve an occasional spoon. The combination of cholesterol and caffeine induced a heightened awareness in her, an almost drugged state of well-be
ing and alertness. She was acutely conscious of meadowlarks flirting in the park and the overwhelmingly bawdy perfume with which spring’s flowers tantalized the gentle breeze. A honey bee buzzed her, briefly considered whether her flowered smock was sluttish enough for a stop, then rushed to the welcoming embrace of a clump of sunflowers between the sidewalk and the curb.

  Fecund, that’s what the morning was. Fecund wasn’t a word Mrs. Kraus had found much use for in recent years, especially not since her beloved Floyd had passed on. But fecund, she realized, was the only appropriate description for this soft spring morning. Kansas, it seemed, was in the mood to procreate.

  She stepped across the street and strolled toward the county courthouse. From a block away, and in this spectacular lighting, it looked like something out of a picture postcard. Up close, she knew, the building and the government it housed were in serious need of repair.

  She passed a pair of young Mexican men trying to start the county’s mower so they could wade into those weeds across the street from the church. She wondered if they were illegals. Surely not, if they were working for the county—though some of the supervisors were cheap enough to hire off the books and pay below minimum wage. Then she stopped worrying about it because the men were peeling off their shirts and their lean, bronze bodies rippled with youthful muscle. Firm butts did nice things for their blue jeans, too.

  Mrs. Kraus mentally slapped herself upside the head. Fecund, she decided, might not be putting it strongly enough. She glanced at her cheap Chinese wristwatch—8:09—and lengthened her stride, heading for the courthouse’s front doors. For the first time she could remember, she was going to be late for work.

  The doors weren’t locked. They were warped too badly for the bolt to match the hole in which it was supposed to seat. Besides, they didn’t guard anything of value, other than official records stored in the building. And there was nearly always someone in the sheriff’s office to keep an eye on things. Usually, that would be her, working the phones and radios and holding down the reception desk.

  Locked or not, she had trouble getting the doors open. Then she noticed why. Someone had jammed a short piece of pipe so that it was stuck against the base of the doors. It was so obvious and out of place that she couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t noticed before. Odd, she thought, that someone would block the entry. Kids, maybe. She didn’t know. She kicked at the thing so she could go relieve Deputy Wynn and start earning her less than satisfactory hourly wage.

  The pipe was really jammed in there. She had to kick the thing half a dozen times before it popped loose and began to roll down the steps and onto the walk that sloped to the street and the park beyond. She pulled the door open and started to go inside. The pipe rolled off the edge of the walk and disappeared into the ditch that drained the courthouse lawn. Then part of the ditch disappeared, along with a chunk of sidewalk, some of which rained down around her. What she’d been kicking the hell out of, Mrs. Kraus realized, had been a pipe bomb.

  ***

  It wasn’t hard for the sheriff to locate the murder scene. There were close to a dozen vehicles lined up on either side of the road. A little crowd of people clustered along the bridge and hung out near the edge of a strip of bright yellow crime scene tape. He hadn’t expected so many people, but the tape was a bigger surprise. The department hadn’t supplied it. Every time the sheriff tried to get things like that included in his budget, the supervisors turned him down.

  The sheriff parked his truck behind the county coroner’s beige Buick station wagon and let himself out. A couple of rubberneckers came to greet him, asking questions he couldn’t have answered yet even if he had wanted to. He told them so, politely, then ducked under the tape and followed the path down through a profusion of sunflowers and other blooming weeds to the sandbar at the edge of the creek.

  “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 a
t 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.