Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) (16 page)

***

“She should be in a hospital,” Doc Jones complained as he helped the sheriff maneuver Heather Lane out of the back of his Buick on a stretcher that had seen too much use that day. At least this occupant didn’t require a body bag. In fact, physically, there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with her. Psychologically could be another matter. From the time Doc Jones got to her she’d been catatonic or unconscious. It hadn’t been long, only a few minutes after Heather English was seized, thanks to a quick call from Mrs. Kraus and the fact that he’d only been a few blocks away, still in the back of Klausen’s writing up his notes from Old Man Simms’ autopsy.

“I need her here, Doc,” the sheriff said. “She may be able to tell me something that will help. And, more important, I need her mother here. She’ll come for her daughter even if she’d prefer to avoid seeing me about now. Besides, just at the moment I can’t think of a safer place for her. We’re too undermanned to send anyone along to guard her on the way to a hospital at Great Bend or Larned, and the maniac that has my daughter will come after her if he realizes he’s grabbed the wrong Heather. We’ll have a lot of people here until we find him. It’s the best I can manage, Doc.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Doc said. “It’s not her physical health I’m concerned with. I don’t think she was even touched. But I’m just an old country Doctor. I don’t know a Freudian slip from a Jungian petticoat. This girl may need someone with skills I don’t have.”

“What did you give her, Doc?” the sheriff asked as they maneuvered the stretcher up the steep front steps and through the doors that an unfamiliar black man had stepped forward to hold open for them.

“Just a shot of Valium to calm her some, and not a strong one at that. Certainly not strong enough to account for her doing this sleeping beauty number on me. That worries me, Sheriff.”

“Tell you what, Doc. She doesn’t come around once her mother’s here, we’ll call for an ambulance and a highway patrol escort. But I need some time with Ellen Lane. There’s got to be stuff she hasn’t told me.”

They wheeled Heather Lane into County Commission Chairman Wynn’s office, since it was the only one with a full sized sofa, and made her as comfortable as possible. Doc Jones checked her pulse and blood pressure and reassured himself that her vital signs were still normal. The sheriff started across the foyer to his own office.

“Hold on a minute,” Doc said. “There’s something you need to know about.”

The sheriff was clearly impatient to be elsewhere. Doc wondered how to put it, then decided quick and to the point was best.

“Sheriff, the Reverend had a peculiar tattoo on his tush.”

“What?” The sheriff was as taken aback by the idea as Doc Jones had been.

“He’s got a Mickey Mouse on his right cheek, but not just any Mickey. This one’s got a penis that’s almost as big as he is, and is clearly in the process of practicing the safest kind of sex available. We used to call it self-abuse.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Now, like I said, I’m no expert on matters psychological, but that tattoo indicates to me that the Reverend probably was involved in what folks around here would call perversions. You ever hear of him dating any of the local women?”

“No, can’t say that I have.”

“I don’t know of any men folk he hung around with that much either, but that particular tattoo tends to make me wonder about homosexuality or….”

“Or what Doc?”.

“Or pedophilia. God help me, Sheriff, but I think that tattoo might have been aimed at interesting kids. I’ve never had much to do with Simms or his church, but all of a sudden I’m remembering families with kids who suddenly stopped going there, a couple who even just up and moved out of town.”

“Jesus, Doc. If you’re right it could sure expand my list of suspects, but how would Old Man Simms fit in, and what about this maniac who grabbed Heather?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff, but I needed to tell you. You go on now, do what you have to. I’ll keep an eye on this one.”

The sheriff was hardly through the door to his office when Mrs. Kraus started filling him in. “The highway patrol has dispatched units to cover the east-west and north-south blacktops and they promise to send us some help as soon as they can free it up. French is only about five miles out on his way back from Crawford and should be here in minutes. Don’t know where Wynn is but he’s due back any time. I did like you said and called Sourdough and the Starks are home. They promised to stay around the phone in case you still need to talk to them. They said they’d get word to Mrs. Lane that her daughter is here and ask her if she can maybe come into town to pick her up. I told them Judy had car trouble and had dropped the girl off here and was sorry but just couldn’t manage to deliver her back to the farm.”

“Good,” the sheriff said, forcing himself to concentrate on what she was saying and not what he wanted to be doing. It might all be important. Any of it could affect his daughter’s life. “Have you heard from Judy.”

He’d found the best way to relieve his ex-wife’s panic was to put her to work. What the sheriff lacked most was manpower. Judy could be a legitimate help. He’d asked her to go question people along Main Street, find out if they’d seen the motorcycle and which way it had gone. She could talk to people at the Texaco or the Buffalo Burger Drive Inn, check if they’d maybe seen the bike and its passengers as it made its getaway.

The strange black man wandered in and plopped himself down in one of the chairs across from Mrs. Kraus’ desk. Mrs. Kraus didn’t pay him the least attention as she continued updating the sheriff.

“Yeah, she called. Said she talked to a couple of the baggers at the Dillon’s store. They said the bike went past them quick as a bank foreclosing on a farm loan. They never got a look at it, but they heard it slow down and turn south somewhere, they thought before the highway, maybe about Jackson or Van Buren. Judy was gonna head over that way and see if she could find any more witnesses.”

Mad Dog came clumping down the steps from the second floor. He’d abandoned his lookout post in the tower when he saw Doc Jones and the sheriff pull up in front of the building.

“Englishman!” Mad Dog burst into the Sheriff’s Office. “I know you aren’t going to want to hear this but I think you and I need to talk about evil spirits.”

Mad Dog was right. “Jesus, Mad Dog,” the sheriff said. “I’ve got two dead people, one murdered and both scalped, and the murderer might be the lunatic who kidnapped my daughter and carried her off in the last half hour. I got no time to listen to your drug-induced, expanded-consciousness, lamebrain theories. You want to help, get out of here and go find out where that motorcycle went, figure out who killed one Simms and mutilated the corpse of the other. Just leave me the hell alone.”

Mad Dog stopped like he’d taken a punch. From the sick look on his face, a low one at that.

“Tell him, Professor,” Mad Dog said, not much above a whisper. “Maybe you can make him see.”

“Oh no,” Professor Bowen said, waving his hands in denial. “I said I agree. You’ve raised a reasonable philosophical interpretation of events within the
Tsistsistas
world view. I do not, however, believe it is one whose understanding is likely to do your brother much good in solving his current dilemmas. What you argue is fascinating, Mad Dog, but I’m not sure even I, who am moderately well versed in that world view, would accept your interpretation. I’m sorry. I can hardly suggest that the sheriff take time from his investigations to familiarize himself with an ideology of which he is unlikely to be able to make use in order to solve these crimes.”

Mad Dog looked crushed. The sheriff looked at the little black man and finally succumbed to his curiosity. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m an historian, an accidental guest in your office while Deputy Wynn helps retrieve my stalled automobile. I apologize for any inconvenience I may cause you and offer any aid that I might render. Best, I suppose, I can offer to stay out of your way.”

“Good idea,” the sheriff agreed before heading down the hall in search of an open phone line to call the Starks. Mad Dog turned and watched him go like a man who’s lost his best friend, or his only brother.

***

The sheriff sat behind County Commissioner Bontrager’s desk and watched Mrs. Kraus usher in Ellen Lane. She swept in with an air of cool formality in stark contrast to the way she’d looked when they first met. Despite the afternoon’s oppressive heat, she looked crisp and comfortable, very much the antithesis of the way the sheriff felt. There were a couple of chairs on the other side of the desk, and some privacy here, luxuries to which the sheriff was unaccustomed without making use of the jail.

“Where’s my daughter?” Ellen Lane asked. It wasn’t quite a demand, but it was obvious her patience had been stretched a trifle thin. Whether she’d been upset by Mrs. Kraus’ insistence that she’d have to see Sheriff English first or the hassle of driving all the way to Buffalo Springs he couldn’t tell, but it was clear she expected a quick answer.

“She’s here,” the sheriff said. “She’s with the doctor and she seems to be coming around fine, recovering from the shock. She’s not been physically hurt in any way.”

Ellen Lane suddenly looked scared and angry. “What’s all this about? What happened? Why would she need a doctor? I want to see her now.”

“No,” the sheriff said. There was a no nonsense tone to his voice that commanded attention even from an angry parent who didn’t know him. Ellen Lane controlled her wrath and sat forward, listening expectantly.

“You’ll talk to me first. You can see her after. She’s doing fine and she wasn’t hurt, but she could have been. It was a very close thing. She was almost kidnapped by your former husband, Mrs. Lane, but she wasn’t. Instead, he took my daughter, and that’s who may or may not be all right and may or may not be in grave danger. That happened, at least in part, because you weren’t entirely open with me when we talked before. Now, with my daughter’s life at stake, I expect you to tell me everything I need to know. If you don’t, I’ll lock you up until this is over and then I’ll charge you as an accessory to whatever happens to my Heather. Do you understand me, Mrs. Lane?”

Ellen Lane was good at controlling her emotions in the presence of an angry man. Considering the relationship she’d come from, that wasn’t surprising. “You didn’t know our daughters looked so much alike, did you?”

“No,” the sheriff said. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’m sorry. I thought he would back off for a while. After coming face to face with a sheriff, I didn’t think he’d try again. And I never thought he’d be able to tie her to your wife and daughter. That was stupid. I should have thought that he could be flashing pictures, and, if he was, people might point him toward your Heather.”

“Good,” the sheriff remarked. “That’s a start, but I want more. I want it all.”

“All being what, Sheriff? I don’t know where he is.”

“Are you sure, Mrs. Lane? Don’t you even have a guess?”

“Look, Sheriff. When I heard his conviction had been overturned, that he was facing a new trial and would be out on bail, I grabbed Heather and we ran and hid.”

“From where?”

“We live in Santa Fe. I own a gallery. It’s been pretty successful. I left it in the hands of a manager and cashed out some investments and bought enough traveler’s checks for us to live on for a while, long enough, I hoped, for him to do something stupid and violate his bond and get thrown back in jail so we could come out of hiding.”

“Why here?”

“I don’t know. Because Heather likes horses, I guess, and so do I. Because I thought central Kansas was the last place on Earth he’d think to look for us.”

“And why would this be such an unlikely place for him to look? You met and lived in Wichita. You’ve spent time at the Stark’s regularly over the years. If he might trace you to Santa Fe, why couldn’t he trace you here.”

“I gather you’ve talked to the Starks then, or someone who’s seen us there before.”

The sheriff nodded. The Starks hadn’t taken the call from the Reverend Simms and had no idea of why he might have called their ranch, but they’d been helpful in other ways. “Minnie Stark say’s you’ve been spending a week here nearly every fall, usually by yourself, for the last six years.”

“I’m disappointed in Minnie,” Ellen Lane said. “I told her what our situation was and she assured me she’d be discreet.”

“We’re a little past the time for discreet here, Mrs. Lane. In 1905, a brother and sister named Ketchum walked across the road to their neighbors’, the Campbells. When Mr. Campbell opened the door they blew him apart with a shotgun. Then they entered the house and proceeded to execute Mr. Campbell’s wife and three children. It was never clear whether it was before or after they died, but the Ketchums took sexual liberties with them. The children ranged in age from eleven down to five. That happened about half a mile the other side of the Benteen County line, but, for some reason, the Ketchums chose to come to Buffalo Springs to turn themselves in. Three days later, the family, friends, and neighbors of the Campbells followed. They planned to take the Ketchums out of their cells and string them up on a telephone poll at the end of the block. When they broke into the jail in the back of the courthouse they found the pair had beaten them to it. They’d torn blankets into strips and hung themselves from the bars on the top of their cells. Until this morning, that’s the closest we ever came to having a murder in this county.