Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) (20 page)

“Sorry, Sheriff. I was only aiming for a near miss. Still, I wouldn’t have dropped the first one if I’d known that was you. On the other hand, I can’t just let you come up here either. In doing so, you understand, you’d put the girl’s life at risk. We’ve nothing more to lose, she and I. We won’t be taken. I won’t go back to jail again.”

“You won’t hurt the girl,” the sheriff said. He hoped it was true. He was pretty sure it was true if the man still thought he had his own daughter. If he knew he had the sheriff’s instead, all bets were off. He might be willing to let her go, or he might be willing to kill her or turn her into a real hostage.

The voice was quiet for a minute. “No,” it mused. “You’re right, Sheriff. I won’t hurt my daughter. Nor will I hurt you for that matter, though I still won’t let you up here. It’s my wife I want to see. When you speak to her, tell her there’s something we need to discuss face to face. Tell her if she wants her daughter, she’ll have to come find me and we’ll have a nice long chat. Tell her, after that, Heather can go anywhere she wants, anytime, and I won’t interfere. OK Sheriff?”

“Sure. I’ll tell her, but let me come see that the girl’s all right first.”

“Sorry, Sheriff, I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust to a father’s love on that one. No point coming up anyway. I’ve seen enough of your operation here to feel pretty confident that whoever’s with you is neither a sharpshooter nor equipped with any sophisticated night vision equipment. I also have my doubts that we’re surrounded and trapped, though I suppose, if I waited around long enough, you could find the volunteers to do it. That’s why I’m afraid we’ll be leaving now. Please pass my message along to my darling wife. Tell her she’ll know where to look, if she thinks about it. Heather and I’ll be waiting, but she’s got to come by herself next time so we can, one way or the other, finish this.”

There was a loud crash above and the sheriff felt himself go cold inside as he saw the faint light that must be the entry to the catwalk darken. He was sure the man was about to drop another weight down the ladder and there was no place to go hide. Nothing more deadly than a sifting of dust fell out of the darkness. The crash was followed by some brief scuffling noises and a sound like a muffled thump. The sheriff was suddenly sure he was alone up here. The other Heather’s father must have gone through the exit to the roof. But where did he expect to go from there? A vacant lot hugged the north side of the Strand. There was an alley in the rear. The front of the theater and a single story building next door offered adjoining roofs, but both were at least forty feet below the Strand’s summit.

“Wynn,” the sheriff shouted. “Get outside, check for a fire escape or some way down from the roof. Don’t take a chance on him hurting Heather, but don’t let him get out of your sight.”

“Right,” Wynn’s voice echoed up from beneath him as the sheriff began to ascend the ladder again, more rapidly now that he was so close behind. Too rapidly, almost, he discovered, as his hand grabbed for the rung that was no longer where it should be because of its encounter with the weight. Somehow, the sheriff not only held on, he kept from dropping his pistol as well, then, more cautiously, continued into the darkness.

It was a catwalk, all right, and the ladder went through a narrow opening in its latticed surface. Or, rather, had gone through. The man had found a piece of plywood that nearly filled the space and, judging by the sheriff’s inability to budge it, had piled counter weights on top.

The sheriff smothered a heartfelt curse, holstered his gun, gathered himself on the rungs immediately below the blocked opening, and applied his back to the obstruction. The angle was awkward and the plywood, heavily weighted, but the sheriff brought a father’s desperation to the task. Gradually, the plywood began to slide, the weights to shift. The sheriff nearly fell again when it gave way, spilling two weights over the edge and into the darkness.

But for more stacks of weights and another row of ropes and brakes and pulleys, the catwalk was empty. At the far end, additional rungs led to a skylight, most of its panels missing. Gun back in hand, the sheriff sprinted for it.

At the top of this ladder, the sheriff briefly considered the impossibility of raising his head for a look in all directions at once, and the danger of encountering a bullet, a two-by-four, or even a solid kick. Still, he had to go on.

When he did, he found the roof was empty. The sheriff hurried to the nearest edge. The distant top of the theater’s auditorium was also unoccupied. He checked the wall facing the vacant lot next, thinking it was the most likely to have a fire escape. He clearly remembered the alley wall was nothing but bricks and a weathered suggestion that he chew Redman, the irony of which he might have enjoyed at another time. No one there. No one in the alley either. That only left one wall and one adjoining roof. The sheriff reached it just in time to see a tiny figure coil a rope and sling it over one shoulder as he bent to lift a curled human figure over the other.

The man looked up. “It’s called rappelling.” His voice was faint but distinct. “You should try it, but I’m afraid I haven’t left you a rope.”

The figure touched a hand to his head in mock salute, then turned and trotted to where a stairwell opened into the adjacent building. He was gone from view before the sheriff could scream for the deputy he feared was having as much trouble getting out of the Strand as he’d had getting in.

“Wynn!” Only the pigeons wheeling in tight formation above the theater appeared to hear him.

***

Shadows in the Benteen County Veteran’s Memorial Park had lengthened, giving the place a deceptively cool and gentle look. Mad Dog left his Saab parked across from the Buffalo Springs Non-Denominational Church and wandered slowly across the parched grass to the spot where he’d begun his day. His talk with Professor Bowen had done wonders for his confidence. He realized Bowen, though he’d been kind enough to answer and answer honestly, probably thought that he, Mad Dog, was as nutty as his years of outrageous behavior had made him in the eyes of the community. It didn’t bother Mad Dog. He marched to the beat of his own drummer. Always had, always would, experiencing only an occasional passing pang over what others thought of him.

Mad Dog found the spot where he’d begun his vision quest. His cow skull was still right where he’d left it, along with the blanket he’d spread to sit on and a bundle of odds and ends he’d brought in case he needed them. It probably should have been a medicine bundle, he reflected, though, in a way it was. There was a bottle of Aspirin in there, along with some insect repellent, salt tablets, a bottle of water, and assorted tubes of body paint. He gathered everything and folded the blanket around them, slinging it over his shoulder.

This is where it started, he thought, glancing across at the restroom, swaddled now in yellow crime scene tape. At least it had been hosed out and the flies were gone. This was where he’d sat when he’d somehow contacted evil, provided a channel for it to reach out and touch his world.

The Reverend Simms’ butchered body was probably already stuffed in that toilet when he arrived and began to set things up here. The thought hit him like a semi encountering a jack rabbit whose concentration had been on the curious properties of asphalt instead of approaching headlights.

If Simms was dead before Mad Dog began his attempt to contact the spirit world, then how could he be responsible for raising the evil that acted here. Uncertainty paralyzed him, but only for a moment. The timing didn’t matter, he realized. While in spirit form, the thing he’d loosed upon the world wasn’t confined to time and space as he knew it. Once unleashed, it could go where and when it wanted to begin its terrible crusade. Slipping back in time a few minutes to plant a corpse was nothing.

Mad Dog sighed and his confidence flooded back. Uncertainty, that was the danger to him in this conflict. He mustn’t allow himself to doubt.

Who was his adversary, he wondered, or what? Was this the soul of some long departed evil shaman, killed by his tribe and exiled to eternity until Mad Dog happened along with his immense but previously unrecognized powers? Or might these be the tortured shades of the Ketchums, who’d taken a shotgun and their perversions to their neighbors almost a century ago. Weren’t the Ketchums supposed to have been half-breeds, part Indians? Wasn’t that why, in retrospect, nobody was surprised at the unspeakable things they’d done to the man’s wife and children before slaughtering them, too? Mad Dog thought he remembered hearing that all the Campbells had been scalped, though those had been among the least of their injuries. There was something about the Ketchums—murderers, brutalizers, and suicides—that felt right to Mad Dog, but it probably didn’t matter. The Ketchums could have simply been another manifestation of an evil that originated long before.

What did matter was where his opponent was now, and where and how he should seek it out and meet it in order to send it back into the invisible world until it mended its ways and learned to exist in harmony with the universe. Mad Dog looked around the park, searching for a sign, an answer. He wasn’t particularly surprised when he found one.

The eagle sat near the top of one of the elm trees. There was a lot more wildlife in Kansas than there had been when Mad Dog was a boy. In those days, you could hunt for quail and pheasant and rabbit with some success. You might even bag the occasional duck, and if you had the patience for it, there were deer to be found along a few rivers and creeks and in the desolate sand hills near the county’s northern border. With economic collapse and a continually declining human population, however, Benteen County’s wildlife was returning. Oh, you still wouldn’t find herds of buffalo to darken the horizon, but deer were common now, and turkeys were back, and bobcats, and now here, right in the heart of downtown Buffalo Springs, a Golden Eagle.

Mad Dog began to walk toward the elm. There was no doubt in his mind that this raptor was a messenger to him. The question still remained, though, could he decipher the message? Would he understand?

The eagle ignored him. It let Mad Dog come almost directly beneath its perch. The bird casually groomed himself, and as Mad Dog stopped, dropped a single golden feather that Mad Dog was able to reach out and pluck from the air.

The bird screamed. It was not a cry of fear or defiance, just the voicing of its pleasure in being here and now, of accepting its place in the visible world. It spread its wings and soared, rising steadily until it was out of sight.

Mad Dog bowed his head and looked at the feather he’d captured. It was perfect and holy. He was about to offer up a prayer of thanks when he noticed that something gleamed at his feet. He bent and found a broken razor blade, its shiny metal surface partially obscured by a crust of dried blood. Only a few yards away, not far from one of the paths that crossed the park, the grass was bent and trampled, and worse, spattered with a prodigious amount of dried gore, too dry for flies, though every ant in the park seemed to have discovered it and come to reap the unusual harvest. The eagle, he decided, had given him more than a message and a token. It had given him a reminder. Dr. Bowen was right. The spirit he fought had taken on physical form. If he was to meet and defeat it, he would have to do so on both physical and spiritual levels.

The rest of the message also seemed clear. The spirit he’d released would have spent its imprisonment in the underworld, away from the joys of physical being, far from the great blue vault of the upper world. If Mad Dog wished to seek it out, he should remember that it would shun the underworld as it sought its pleasures or its vengeance. Mad Dog wasn’t certain, but he thought he knew what that meant. He turned and started back across the park toward his Saab.

As he emerged from the trees he became aware, for the first time, of the distant black line that stretched across the southwestern horizon, flickering as it teased the earth with tongues of lightning. Another sign, Mad Dog decided. They would not fight this fight alone. The spirits of his ancestors, of the three levels, and of worlds visible and invisible, would join with him. The spirits of Cheyenne Contraries would ride the thunderheads into battle. The evil one would call on its own friends, random violence and fear and rage. Like the eagle, Mad Dog let out a scream at the joy of being what and where he was, of knowing the challenge he faced and the certainty that he would do his best to answer it.

The dinner crowd at Bertha’s looked through her windows and across the park. They spotted a tall man emerging from the trees, bald head thrown back, howling at the sky.

“Whatdaya think, Bertha?” one asked. “Mad Dog our murderer, returnin’ to the scene of his crime?”

***

Student records were private. They weren’t meant to be available, even to teachers. That was why current ones were kept in locked files next door to the principal’s office. Of course, everyone knew where the keys were kept and faculty and staff took unauthorized peeks when they felt the need.

Old records were harder to access, not because there was even the semblance of security surrounding them anymore, but because they’d been shoved into boxes and transported to the basement where they were stacked in a haphazard fashion. Doc and Judy got lucky. The boxes they wanted were near the surface of a pile in the back corner.

“Look at this, Doc,” Judy said, apparently meaning only to get his attention since she didn’t offer him the document in question. She was calmer now that she felt like she was accomplishing something useful. It was a third grade report from Sarah Ann Simms’ teacher to the principal. “Even then she was acting out sexually. There are all kinds of indicators of abuse here. Someone should have followed up on this.”