Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) (2 page)

***

Buffalo Springs was the Benteen County seat. Veteran’s Memorial Park adorned the square just east of the courthouse and north of Simms’ church. The county had never been very populous and so had few veterans to memorialize. A generic hero in bronze stood atop a concrete pedestal from which the plaque listing names and conflicts had long since been stolen, probably a prank by kids from a neighboring town. Since it was no longer certain whom the place honored, and since the citizenry providing the tax base for projects like park maintenance and beautification had been steadily shrinking for decades, the park had been allowed to return to something approaching natural prairie. Of course it was home to too many trees. No matter how often the town was visited by Dutch Elm disease, a few always managed to survive, usually near where the park’s fountain used to be. The valve to the fountain had been turned off long ago, shortly after the fountain, like the plaque, had vanished. Old valves have a way of seeping, and the lush state of the grasses, saplings, and weeds made that end of the park Eden-like in comparison to any part of Benteen County not adjacent to the North Fork of the Kansaw or one of its tributaries, or land which was regularly irrigated. And then there were the evergreens that must have been imported from some especially desolate climate, since they were surviving quite nicely in fitful clusters throughout the park, their spacing ideal as a windbreak for winter storms behind which massive drifts of snow could build to block the street at the south side of the square.

***

Peter Simms normally skirted the park and its hazards unless he was in a hurry. Fantasies of moving several large fans from the church auditorium back into his small office and testing their potential to turn the sweat that was already drenching him into the evaporative cooling system nature designed prompted him to the direct approach. Oblivious to the seeds and burrs that began attaching themselves to his pants legs, he entered the park on what had once been the north promenade. There was a path of sorts that led toward his church.

He heard the jogger before he’d gone more than a few steps. There weren’t many joggers in Buffalo Springs, and fewer, to the best of his knowledge, who chose such an early hour to test the treacherous footing of Veteran’s Memorial Park. Reverend Simms peered curiously behind him. The runner was following the same route he’d chosen so he stepped aside to avoid blocking the narrow track.

It was very dark among the saplings and evergreens. The moon did little more than turn some distant clouds opalescent around the edges and the heavy atmosphere blocked out all but the most determined starlight. Street lights didn’t help much. The county had given up replacing the bulbs that were regularly shot out by customers leaving The Bisonte Bar or The Road House after exchanging bets about their respective marksmanship with the rifles that hung in the window racks of their pickups. County revenues were off—so were most of the lights.

The jogger was a trim figure moving with an easy rhythm that Simms envied. As the runner approached, the Reverend tried to guess who it could be.

“Good morning,” he said. The jogger just reached out, slapped Simms lightly on the cheek, and disappeared into a thick copse of trees.

“One,” a voice whispered from where the jogger had gone.

Peter Simms was taken aback. “Who is that?” he demanded of the darkness, ready to join the joke that was being played on him as soon as he understood it.

Just a little afraid, he stepped back out on the path and peeked around the trees. A hand flashed out of nowhere and slapped him lightly on the other cheek.

“Two,” the soft voice said.

“Two what?” Simms inquired in a voice a couple of ranges higher and tighter than normal. No answer. No sound.

Peter Simms decided to leave the park, get back out in the open where his tormenter would be more visible, where it was just possible the sheriff or one of his deputies might drive by on some mysterious nightly errand. Back on the street, logic and reason might again prevail, and, if not, there were houses nearby where he could seek help.

He only managed a couple of steps before the night runner passed him again, this time swatting him hard on the seat of his trousers.

“That’s three,” the jogger said.

“What are you doing?” Simms asked, his voice leaking hysteria.

To his surprise, this time he got an answer. “Counting.”

The sound seemed to come from somewhere behind Simms even though the darkly clad figure had just disappeared into the shadows ahead.

“Counting what?” Simms voice was a little more under control this time, now that the joke was apparently moving to its climax.

“Counting coup,” came the reply, just over his shoulder. He turned and saw something flash out of the night and felt it flick the back of his left arm. It wasn’t a hand this time. The touch was cool and almost unnoticeable, but Peter Simms felt a sudden flow of moisture. He reached with his other hand and touched the spot. It came away dark and damp and he realized he was bleeding.

“Oh my God,” he whispered. He jerked his head left and right, looking for the blade wielder, looking for a place to run or hide. Surely this was only a nightmare. At any moment he must wake up in his bed to the beep of his alarm. Something bit him on the other arm and he saw that his sleeve had been slashed and his shirt was acquiring a dark wet stripe that lengthened and widened as he watched.

“Oh Jesus!” he screamed. “Don’t hurt me!” It was as fervent as any prayer he’d ever uttered.

***

A deputy sat behind a desk in the old county courthouse about a hundred yards away, reading a commentary from the preceding day’s Wichita
Eagle-Beacon
that argued the Dow could never sustain its inflated value at seven thousand and listening to the static that occasionally crackled from his departmental radio. He was undisturbed by the Reverend’s plea.

Boris, in his yard at the east edge of town, heard. He barked a couple of times, and, when the sound changed, tried to match the agony of that distant howl. A few canines responded, but no humans. They soon ceased, as had the voice they echoed. Boris silently patrolled his territory, troubled by the presence of a danger he sensed but was unable to challenge.

***

He looked more like Jason, or Freddy Krueger—or some other not-quite-human murderer in one of those dead-teenager movies—than a man. Since his hair had been way too short to braid in the foreseeable future, he’d shaved it off. He wore a thin strip of leather as a head band, one he’d dyed black with shoe polish, and, in the band at the back of his skull, a single raven feather—well, actually crow, but it would take an ornithologist to know. His body was clad only in a pair of black Speedo swim trunks, since he hadn’t been able to come up with satisfactory makings for a breech cloth, and he’d covered himself from head to toe with black, licorice-flavored body paint he’d bought in a sex paraphernalia shop in Wichita. There were ragged white strokes of vanilla lightning artfully arcing down each arm and leg and across each of his cheeks. He’d managed to incorporate the Speedo logo into the stroke on his right leg. He was just setting out the leather bags of painted sand and the cow skull that would have to make do in place of a buffalo skull when a pickup came down the street on the south side of Veteran’s Memorial Park and pulled up where the curb would have been if one of those bond elections had passed.

“What the hell are you doing, Mad Dog?” a familiar voice asked over the strains of a John Stewart CD turned up high enough to test the truck’s sound system.

Mad Dog was disappointed. He hadn’t thought anyone would recognize him in his elaborate costume, not even his half-brother, the sheriff.

“That your new truck?” He walked up to the window, careful not to touch anything in case his body paint might stain the Chevy. “See you got a good stereo with it. Nice.”

Without the body paint, Mad Dog looked a lot more Anglo than his brother, even though they shared their equal but slim claim to Cheyenneness through their common mother. His hair wasn’t a very dark brown and it tended to sun streak and curl as it lengthened, two of the reasons he hadn’t managed to let it grow long enough for braids before getting disgusted and chopping it off.

Mad Dog was his real name. He’d been born Harvey Edward Maddox. His father ran off shortly after his conception, and, fueled by his long held disgust at distantly related Lester Maddox’s unheroic rise to racist infamy, Harvey Edward had legally adopted the nickname he’d earned as a high school football star in Buffalo Springs. It had more to do with emerging ethnic pride than nostalgia for lost youth, though. Somewhere about the time he began to contemplate his own mortality, Harvey Edward Maddox became Harvey Edward Mad Dog, born-again Cheyenne.

“How’d you know it was me?” Mad Dog asked the shadow in the truck’s cab.

“Who else would do something this silly? Besides, I recognized your Saab parked down at the corner. Which brings me back to my original question. What the hell are you doing?”

“Vision quest.”

“Say what?”

“Vision quest. You got a problem with that? This is a public park and I’m a member of the public. You gonna tell me I need a permit to sit here and fast and pray for a vision?”

John Stewart finished explaining why you can’t go back to Kansas and the sheriff thought he had a point as he reached over and turned the CD off. The only sounds that remained were the smooth idle of the pickup’s 350 cubic inch V-8 and the stirring of gentler than usual morning breezes through the park’s trees.

“No. Especially not until somebody complains, which they may well do when they start arriving for services at the church just across the street here. I’m not gonna give a damn what you do in this park. You know me, Mad Dog. I’ve got a strong commitment to individual liberties, so long as they don’t interfere with anybody else’s.”

“Well then, Englishman, you’ll excuse me if I get back to setting up my stuff. I want to get started long before sunrise.”

The sheriff hated being called Englishman, which was one of the reasons Mad Dog so consistently used the nickname. Given his own name, English, and his relationship to Mad Dog, it was a natural. Folks all over Benteen County knew who you were talking about if you mentioned Englishman.

“Mad Dog, you are about the contrariest person I ever knew.”

The sheriff didn’t see the big smile that lit his older brother’s face. The Cheyenne were known for their Contraries. They were the fiercest warriors, men who chose the difficult task of living their lives backwards, doing the opposite of what they were asked, always fighting alone on the flanks of battle and taking the biggest risks. Being a Contrary was an awesome responsibility and a tremendous honor. Mad Dog was delighted with his little brother’s comment, regardless of how he’d meant it.

“Vision quest,” the sheriff muttered as he reached over to punch John Stewart’s
Phoenix Concerts
back into stereophonic life. He put the truck in gear and headed down the street toward the Benteen County Courthouse.

***

A magnificent sunrise was followed, shortly, by the arrival of a goodly portion of the citizens of greater Buffalo Springs. Parking was haphazard around the town square, there being no marked spaces. Some folks preferred parallel, others pulled in straight, but most favored an angle related to the direction from which they’d arrived or in which they intended to depart.

The area in front of the Buffalo Springs Non-Denominational Community Church, and, across the street, bordering the Veteran’s Memorial Park in which Mad Dog was conducting his first annual summer vision quest, drew a heavy crowd—thanks to Mad Dog, one heavier than usual. At the opposite end of the square, the immediate vicinity of Bertha’s Diner drew a slightly larger multitude, evidence that feeding the soul ranked behind feeding the body in Benteen County.

Mad Dog’s modified lotus position behind the cow skull drew the curious, but he maintained his solemn and unresponsive vigil, despite a disconcerting tendency for residents to recognize him in what he had expected would be, if not a disguise, at least major camouflage. He drew a larger crowd than he might have since the Reverend Simms failed to show for services, but, as the sun began to beat the dusty square instead of merely illuminate it and the usual stiff breeze failed to materialize, the Reverend’s contingent headed either for home or Bertha’s. By late morning, Mad Dog was alone with the universal forces from whom he sought enlightenment.

Mad Dog had left his watch in the Saab, feeling that a digital Japanese time piece was out of place with the rest of his costume as well as with the timelessness of his intent. Still, from the shadows, the ever thickening crowds at the diner, and the way he was sweating, he guessed it must be after eleven. It might be a little early for him to expect a vision, especially since he’d cheated a bit on the fasting when he started out that morning, helping himself to a couple of cups of coffee and a pair of cream-filled cupcakes that proved almost as tasteless as they’d looked. Still, relatively fresh calories were being processed by his digestive system so he was surprised when he noticed a blurring of his vision and a humming in his ears. He’d been staring vacantly at the out-of-order Veteran’s Memorial Park restroom. It was a small structure that, in its day, had discriminated against users neither for race, creed, nor even sex, since it contained plumbing to accommodate only one visitor at a time. The door, which should have been padlocked, seemed to be ajar. Just in front of it the air was filled with dancing spots, almost as if someone was about to beam down to the park from the Starship
Enterprise
. All this was accompanied by a faint buzzing in Mad Dog’s ears. He sat there, patiently waiting for the vision to solidify into something recognizable or for the sound to take on meaning. Neither happened. Nothing, in fact happened, except the morning’s coffee worked its way through Mad Dog’s kidneys to his bladder, making concentrating on the impending vision increasingly difficult. This wasn’t something he’d planned for. He’d expected the sun to sweat the coffee out of him—it was certainly sweating something out of him—but the coffee had taken its normal course and expected to exit by the usual route.