by J. M. Hayes
“I checked all his pockets,” the sheriff said. “You want to do a quick external exam before I have to leave and you open him up? See if there are any scars or moles or other identifying marks that might help you recognize our murderer?”
“Sure,” Doc said. “Only that reminds me. I’m not sure he is a murderer.”
“Oh, I know. We’ve got no proof he’s the one who shot Michael Ramsey at Catfish Creek. But how many bikers are running around Benteen County with traditional Cheyenne bows?”
“No,” Doc paused midway in his effort to cut off a pant leg and turned to look at the sheriff. “Ramsey. He didn’t die from that arrow. Not immediately. I think he passed out from shock. The girl went for help and left his face in the mud and he couldn’t breathe. The arrow didn’t pierce his heart while he was alive.”
“Jesus. You saying he suffocated?”
Doc shrugged, the corners of his mouth drooping even more than usual.
“What are the chances?” the sheriff wondered. He remembered what Bud Stone had said. The old man hadn’t thought anyone wanted to kill the boy. Apparently, no one actually had, though a jury might have been convinced to hold the archer responsible.
The sheriff was considering how to come to terms with this philosophical conundrum when his cell phone rang. Only his office, his deputies, and his family had its number. Judy and the Heathers were forbidden to use it except for emergencies. That was why he was so surprised to hear Judy’s voice. “Englishman,” she said, “it’s almost eleven-thirty. Our flight leaves at four-forty. It takes a couple of hours to drive to Wichita and they want you checked in at least two hours early because of all the extra security. That means we need to leave here around noon.”
“Judy, I can’t…”
“You can,” she said. “Whether you will or not, that’s up to you. Your bags are packed. All you need to do is get home in time to change into what you want to wear on the plane. If you aren’t here, I’m going anyway.”
“I’ve got two bodies, a terrorist, a bank robbery…”
She interrupted him again. “The bank robbery, that was me,” she said. “It’s a long story, a comedy of errors, really. You’ll laugh.”
He wasn’t laughing yet. “You?”
“I went there to make a withdrawal, Englishman. Five thousand dollars—spending money for Paris. I thought that envelope was somebody else’s deposit. I mean, it was all wrapped up with tape and someone had tried to stuff it in the night deposit box and…”
“In the deposit box?” The sheriff tried to process what she was telling him.
“I’ll explain on the way to the airport,” she said. “In the meantime, that’s one less crime you have to solve. You may have bodies and bombs, but you don’t have a bank robbery. So, hurry and wrap things up. I’ll wait for you until noon. Then I’m outta here.”
“Judy…” She didn’t interrupt him this time. She hung up on him.
“How is Judy?” Doc asked, looking concerned.
The sheriff shook his head. He wasn’t sure how to answer that just now. He started punching their home number into the key pad when the cell phone rang again.
“Don’t hang up on me again,” the sheriff commanded.
“Not to worry,” Mrs. Kraus said, “but you ain’t got time to chat right now. Somebody just blew up the Texaco.”
***
“What can I getcha?” Mad Dog and Janie were adjusting to the darkness inside the Bisonte Bar. The bartender was one shadow among many. He leaned muscled shoulders over the polished mahogany surface and pointed and said, “Aw, Mad Dog. You know Mr. Finfrock don’t want no pets comin’ in here, much less your wolf. There’s health regulations. ’Sides, she scares off some customers.”
“She’s a service wolf,” Mad Dog responded. “Haven’t you read the Americans with Disabilities Act? You can’t deny me the right to bring her in here. I mean, you wouldn’t keep out somebody’s seeing-eye dog, would you?”
“Well, course not. Service wolf. See, you never told me that before. Service wolves are fine.”
“I’d like a cup of coffee, black please,” Janie said.
“Dr. Pepper for me,” Mad Dog told him. “And a couple of hard boiled eggs and a bowl of water for Hailey.”
“My pleasure,” the bartender muttered. “Times are tough when nobody day drinks anymore.”
Mad Dog led the ladies back to a booth in the corner, discovering along the way what the bartender was complaining about. They were the only customers. Well, it was only half past eleven on a Friday with a special event about to compete for business and wheat harvest looming. Still, Mad Dog was surprised the place was completely empty. He would have expected a couple of pool players and maybe a citizen who was desperate for some hair of the dog or a bartender’s wisdom. But that was all he’d expected, and why he’d chosen the Bisonte. It was close and Janie had said she wanted to talk to him privately.
After they settled in the booth and got their order—Hailey was pleased with the eggs—Mad Dog asked for an explanation. “What’s this all about? Why couldn’t we talk in front of Doc?”
“You like him, don’t you? You always were loyal to your friends.”
“I like him and I’m loyal. What’s that got to do with why you aren’t surprised someone is trying to kill me?”
“There was a time I was mad enough to kill you myself.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” Mad Dog said. “I was just a kid, but that’s no excuse. So were you. When we discovered you were pregnant…Well, I know better now. Abortion is unacceptable. I’ve been studying the Cheyenne Way. I’ve learned that every embryo has the potential to house a spirit from the moment of conception. I would never have been part of letting you get an abortion if I’d understood.”
Janie’s jaw dropped. “What? Have you become one of those pro-life nuts who run around and harass women and blow up abortion clinics?”
“No, no, you don’t understand. I wouldn’t interfere with another person’s decision. I’d just try to tell them what they might be doing.”
“Well, that’s one you’re going to have a tough time making me understand.” She sat and steamed along with her coffee for a minute.
“You don’t support infanticide,” Mad Dog asked, “do you?”
She wasn’t about to be pinned down. “I don’t know, Mad Dog. In certain circumstances, maybe. Not as a general rule, I suppose.”
He’d forgotten how much they used to fight over things. Stupid things, most of them, but big issues too, like politics and the war—another war then—and now, abortion.
“You remember I’m Cheyenne? That Mom was a half breed?” Janie nodded. “Well, the last few years I’ve begun to take my heritage seriously. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on. I won’t try to explain the whole Cheyenne belief system to you.” He saw her starting to color and added, “Not because you can’t understand it. It’s just too much to get into when we’re here to talk about something else. But you need to know I’m serious about it. It’s my religion now. It’s what I believe in, and one of the things Cheyenne philosophy teaches is that our people recycle. Not everyone in the world is a person. Most of them, they don’t have spirits. But every person has a spirit and has lived before. After they die, they get to come back again, and that happens at the moment of conception. So, when you abort a fetus, you could be killing a full blown person, not some microscopic potential for life.”
She reached out and put a hand on his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to disparage your beliefs. I went off half cocked there.”
He recalled, too, how their fights had never bothered him that much because of the way they made up afterward. A touch, in those days, had regularly led to much more—in fact, in one case, the very thing they were talking about.
“I wasn’t mad because you let me get an abortion,” she said. “It was because you just gave me the money and then let me go alone.”
“I should have been there with you
,” he agreed. “I knew it even then. Only I had a visit scheduled with a football recruiter for the Wheat Shockers that day and I wasn’t sure you wanted me there.” He paused and waved a hand at her. “No, that’s not right. I didn’t know what you wanted. And I was scared. It was easy to convince myself we needed me to get that scholarship and you’d rather handle it on your own.”
She laughed. “You were scared. I was terrified. And you know what happened?”
“Did you try to get it done here in Benteen County?” She nodded. “Then you went to my mother, didn’t you?”
“You knew she did illegal abortions?”
“Not then. But I know now. Mom might have been Cheyenne, but she didn’t know anything about being Cheyenne. She grew up without anyone to teach her. Otherwise, she never would have…Wait a minute. I thought she never let her clients know who she was. She made them wear a big hood the whole time. How’d you find out it was her?”
“Oh, Mad Dog. When she discovered who I was, she knew who the baby’s father had to be. And she couldn’t go through with it. Couldn’t kill her baby’s baby. She told me I should marry you and have the child and she’d help us with the bills and the babysitting.”
Mad Dog shook his head in disbelief. “She never said a word to me. Never hinted. Why?”
“Probably, because she just made me more determined. I wasn’t going to end up like my mom, stuck in some hick town with a kid to bring up on my own. I knew you were going to college on a football scholarship. I wanted an education too. I wanted to take on the world and get rich and maybe be president. And, you know, I got a lot closer than you might think. I knew I couldn’t do those things and be responsible for a new life, no matter how much help your mother gave us. I told her, if she wouldn’t do it, I’d go to Wichita. Find somebody there, or Kansas City, or St. Louis. Whatever it took. Your mom, she finally told me who to go to, and gave me the rest of the money it would take.”
“I didn’t know.”
“And you didn’t ask me. Remember that Friday night after I was supposed to have had it done. You never said a thing about it. Never touched me, either, like I was suddenly unclean. That’s why, when I left, I didn’t come back.”
“So you had the abortion. Then you kept going, running from me?”
“No. I just ran, and then I had the baby. Talk about a justification for abortion, Mad Dog. Your son, he’ll kill you in a heartbeat if he ever gets the chance.”
***
Judy wouldn’t answer the phone. Not her cell phone, either. The sheriff figured she wanted him to come home and talk to her in person about the bank. Then she’d try to persuade him not to leave again, except to catch the plane in Wichita.
He got an answer when he dialed a third number, though.
“Parker,” his deputy said.
“You still at the bank?”
“Just leaving. Headed for the Texaco.”
“I’m pulling out of Klausen’s,” the sheriff said. “I’ll be right behind you.” He flipped the switch and activated his light bar and siren. But not before he heard the black and white’s wail echoing down Buffalo Springs’ empty streets. He couldn’t remember the last time two emergency vehicles had responded to anything in this peaceful little community.
There were no flames visible as he turned onto Main. No billowing cloud of smoke to indicate that Buffalo Springs might have lost one of its few successful businesses.
Five blocks didn’t take long. He found the black and white, half in the Texaco, half still in the street. Its light bar strobed the crowd surrounding it, including Deputy Parker. The Chevy drew a crowd too, the moment he pulled in. People were shouting, too many and too confused for him to pick up more than “bomb” and “hero.”
He shouldered the door open and fought his way out of the truck and into the miniature mob, reaching out to grab the first of its members who might know what had happened and be able to tell it accurately. Chairman Wynn was already trying to fill him in, but so were half a dozen others.
“Quiet!” the sheriff shouted. “One at a time. Mr. Chairman, what happened here?”
Parker elbowed her way over so she could hear too. She’d obviously been getting the same incomprehensible multitude of stories.
“Heroic! Magnificent! Saved dozens of lives, maybe more,” Chairman Wynn said, so excited he was throwing his arms around as wildly as his praise. Kansans didn’t do that, not in public for all the world to see. “I’ve never witnessed anything like it. I mean, Haines just reached down and picked that bomb up like a soldier in a foxhole grabbing an enemy grenade. He didn’t stop to think about what could happen to him. He just snatched the thing and came up throwing. Hurled it clean across the highway toward that vacant lot. And just in time, too, ’cause that thing no sooner hit that ditch than it blew. Threw mud and grass and muck all the hell and gone.” He spread his arms to display the muddy splotches on his slacks and short-sleeved shirt. “That bomb, it was right at the base of a working gas pump. Imagine…”
Chairman Wynn obviously had. So had the rest of the people who’d been there. Now Parker and the sheriff could as well.
“We might’ve lost half this town,” Supervisor Finfrock said. He pointed toward where Jud Haines hung near the back of the crowd wearing an aw-shucks, tweren’t-nothin’ grin. “This boy deserves a medal. A statue, maybe.”
“He’s got my vote from now till eternity,” a middle-aged farmer in coveralls and a feed company cap told them. “But for him, I’da been a dead man for sure. I was right next to that thing, filling my truck. I swear I never saw it till Jud picked it up. Been a snake, it’a bit me.”
“I didn’t think. I just acted,” Haines explained. “But we got to do both now—think and act. This bomb was meant to kill people. Lots of people.”
“Might have been the impact that set it off,” the sheriff said. “The other explosions, bad as they were, seemed aimed to scare folks rather than hurt them.”
“Not this time,” Haines said. The crowd agreed with him.
“How can you be sure?” the sheriff asked.
“Because that’s what the bomber says,” Haines replied. He held up a sheet of paper. “Here’s the note. Read it yourself.”
***
“What’s goin’ on out there?” the bartender asked. “That’s the second explosion I’ve heard, and now there’s sirens.” He didn’t seem to expect an answer. He came around the bar and strolled over to the front door, pushed it open, and left Janie and Mad Dog and Hailey in complete privacy.
Mad Dog got a funny little smile on his face. “Me, a father. I’ve got a baby.” His eyes went from unfocused and sentimental to intense, staring directly into her own. “You know, Janie, I always dreamed you and I would have kids.”
“You don’t have a baby,” she said, exasperated. “He’s all grown up—forty years old, middle-aged.”
Mad Dog shook himself. “What’s his name? What does he look like? Do you have pictures? Can I meet him? But you said he’d want to hurt me. Is that because of what I did to you?”
Janie twisted uncomfortably in her seat, making the vinyl complain. How did you explain forty missing years in a couple of sentences? She’d thought she knew how she wanted to do this, but now, face to face with those adoring eyes on her…
“You have a granddaughter, too, working for PBS. She’s here in Benteen County this very minute.”
“Jackie. She’s mine? I met her,” Mad Dog said. “This morning, on my way to town, there was a truck with a flat tire and this beautiful girl crawled out from under where she was looking for the spare and I thought she was you. And Jesus, now you’re telling me she’s my granddaughter?”
“You met Jackie? Oh dear, I should have come and told you all this sooner. I’ve always been afraid one or the other might want to investigate the place I ran away from. And that they might somehow discover you. Especially Sam.”
“Sam? That’s a great name.”
“Samuel, actually. It was my father’s n
ame. You know he ran out on my mother and me, left her to bring up an illegitimate daughter in a community that never let either of us forget what we were. But I liked to pretend my father wasn’t really like that. That he would come back and rescue us one day. So I named our son for him—another mistake.” She paused for a moment, trying to think how to put it.
“Mad Dog, you said the Cheyenne don’t believe everyone has a soul, a spirit. Did I get that right?”
Mad Dog nodded.
“Meat, you said. People without souls, they’re just meat.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re Cheyenne and I’m not. Maybe it’s because one of us has some genetic flaw. Hell, I don’t know. But what we got was an animal, not a person. I couldn’t have found a better way to put it. Sam’s meat. It’s like he was born without a soul.”
***
The sheriff read it for himself.
you were warned and did not obey. you call civilian deaths collateral damage. what will you call these? shut down all oil and gas pipelines and filling stations in your county. if you do not, we will call these deaths the beginning.
we are the Original Sentinals of the Laws of MuhhAmed
The sheriff put it in a plastic envelope, then showed it to Deputies Parker and Wynn, and the other two supervisors.
“Is that how you spell Muhhamed?” Chairman Wynn wondered.
“It’s one way,” the sheriff said. “Where did you find this, Supervisor Haines?”
“Under the bomb.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Parker said. “If the bomb was supposed to go off in the Texaco, the message would have been destroyed along with the service station.”
“Hey,” Haines said, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “What do I know? Maybe it wasn’t supposed to go off unless some idiot like me came along and tried to throw it a safe distance from the gas pumps. Whatever, we’ve got to do something. It was a bomb and I found it where there were gas fumes. That’s a bad combination.”
