Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) (24 page)

“Mrs. Todd was offered an even more substantial sum than her husband had refused. Knowing she had no support within the community, as well as no husband to feed and clothe and house herself or her child, she took it and left.”

“And you took custody of Sarah?”

“Yes. It was my name on the papers, but my sister Linda and I assumed joint responsibility for her. I supplied the home. Linda provided the financial support that made it possible. It was clear Sarah could never go back to Buffalo Springs. Clear, too, that Annie would always blame her for what had happened. Annie was glad to be rid of her troublesome daughter, glad to let her sisters protect her from what she didn’t want to face one more time. Elmer just wanted Annie happy and I believe he thought it was for the best and, for once, he was right.

“Sarah did well here in Wichita, and on her visits with Linda in Santa Fe. Once she was out of the hospital, though, she was inappropriately sexually active, promiscuous really. We always hoped she would out grow that. Perhaps she has.”

“Ms. Chandler,” Doc interrupted. He thought he had his killer now. Her motive was certainly clear. Still, there was another contestant for the role of murderer. “Can you think of any reason why Sarah’s former husband might want to harm any member of the Simms family?”

“Oh my,” Mary Ellen breathed. “I haven’t gotten to that part yet. You see, Doctor, that’s who she married. That’s when we knew she wasn’t really cured, nor him either for that matter. They met again at college right here in Wichita. My sister Linda and I, we tried to dissuade them but Sarah just wouldn’t listen and he couldn’t stay away from her. Before we knew it, she’d gone and married the boy. She was Mrs. Benjamin Todd. And Benjamin, just like Sarah, who started calling herself Ellen in my honor, had been sexually abused by her brothers and was at her side when that abuse resulted in his father’s death. Oh my, Doctor. I thought you knew who Benjamin Todd was.”

***

Getting off the roof of the Strand was simpler than Ellen Lane probably expected. The sheriff’s handcuffs were more for show than use. He employed them rarely. Occasionally they went around a teenager’s wrists just long enough to get his attention, and even more infrequently they helped him control a local citizen who was drunk and violent. They weren’t meant to contain hardened criminals. That was part of the reason he had obliged Mrs. Lane’s request and snapped them on and given her his keys and his radio. The minute her head disappeared below the roof line he was pulling his pocket knife out of his Levis and jimmying the locks. You didn’t need a key to open these handcuffs. Anything pointed enough to stick in the lock would do.

The sheriff wasn’t thrilled about giving up his revolver, but he did like the idea of following her. He thought she was being honest about the elevator, but she’d lied about so many things before. If he followed her unseen, she’d take him where she was going.

The sheriff gave her enough time to get off the ladder and onto the stage before he started down. He moved with all the stealth Mad Dog seemed to think their ancestry should make natural. As soon as he passed the weight-damaged rung and was certain the rest could be found at regular intervals, he turned his descent into a controlled fall. It was dark on the stage now, but for the occasional dim flash of lightning coming through shattered windows far above. The sheriff knew there was a clear path to the back door near the rear wall, though, and he followed it quickly and quietly. He was just in time to see her shoes exit into the alley. He dropped to the floor beside the door and peered carefully after her. She had seen his truck blocking her Volvo, and the shadow that was Wynn sitting in the passenger’s seat. She paused at the edge of a collection of discarded cartons and considered the problem for a moment. A brilliant stroke of lightning lit the alley like a flash bulb. Wynn’s head was turned to watch the approaching storm. She did what the sheriff had expected. She sprinted across the alley and slipped into a narrow vacant lot across the way.

The sheriff followed her as far as the next street. She was walking south, straight toward the Co-op store and the massive row of concrete silos behind it. The sheriff took two seconds to decide.

Wynn practically tried to claw his way through the roof of the cab when the sheriff pulled open his door. “Lord Jesus, Sheriff, you pretty near made me a candidate for diapers again.”

The sheriff didn’t answer. He just popped open the glove compartment and pulled out the 9 mm he’d taken out of Ellen Lane’s purse at the courthouse. He dropped the magazine and checked to be sure it was loaded, then worked the slide and chambered a round while Wynn asked him what he was doing.

“Give me your radio,” the sheriff answered.

“Where’s yours?” Wynn complained, but he obeyed, handing over the spare the Sheriff had supplied him just before they left the courthouse.

“Stay here!” the sheriff said. “Don’t leave the truck until I come tell you it’s OK.”

“Where you going? How long you gonna be?”

The sheriff wasn’t there to answer. He was running down the alley, pounding toward Poplar Street and the dogleg that would take him over to Van Buren and put him back on her trail. The sky was filled with a celestial light show with sound effects that rumbled down the shallow man-made canyons of Buffalo Springs. A cool gust of wind reached out and teased his face and scattered leaves and crumpled paper. She was there, a block away, head raised as she studied the base of the concrete cliff. She was going to her secret place. She was going to where her husband had almost certainly taken Heather, and, unknown to her, she wasn’t going alone.

***

“Then they seemed to have made such a positive adjustment. They were leading what appeared to be the most normal of lives. Benjamin was working for Bauman Aircraft and doing advanced studies at the University. Sarah—she was Ellen by then—was a counselor with a local mental health agency.”

Judy English was taking notes like mad and Doc Jones was trying to stay with the conversation while he worked out the permutations of these convoluted relationships in his head.

“But it didn’t work out, did it Ms. Chandler? Not after the baby arrived.”

“No, Doctor. No, it certainly didn’t. Oh, it seemed to at first and then we began to detect an over-protectiveness in Ellen, and some frustrations in Benjamin. It was like she was cutting him out of their life, hers and Heather’s.”

“Did he assault the child?”

There was silence for a moment as Mary Ellen Chandler considered how to answer the question.

“A court of law convicted him of the crime, then another court overturned that conviction. I don’t honestly know, Doctor. If I had to choose, I’d say no. Not that she made it up, mind you. I think she firmly believes he did it, but she has a predisposition to expect betrayal or abuse from the men in her life. He was a victim too, and victims often become victimizers, but I’m afraid I think it’s my niece who is the less stable of the two, or was the less stable at the time. I’ve no idea what a decade in jail may have done to poor Benjamin.”

“So Ellen and Ben would have equal cause to blame Peter and Tommy Simms?”

“Equal, I don’t know, but they certainly both despised her brothers.”

“And what about her father?”

“My, does that mean something has happened to Elmer? Never mind. I don’t suppose you can tell me. That’s a harder question. Elmer tried to maintain a relationship with his daughter, though hardly a close one. He sent her cards and checks for her birthdays and holidays. Eventually, she stopped cashing the checks or even opening the cards. I don’t think she hated him the way she hates her brothers, but there is an anger there, a sense of betrayal. In a way, I think she’s angry with all of us. My sister has…health problems. When it was clear Benjamin would be released she let Ellen move into and manage her quite successful art gallery in Santa Fe,
Galería de la Jolla
. We thought it would be a good place for her in case Benjamin did come looking for her with revenge on his mind. I’m afraid Ellen took advantage of the situation. She left Santa Fe with Linda’s car and quite a lot of money that doesn’t rightly belong to her and without a word to my sister or me. As for Benjamin and Elmer, I never heard the boy say anything about my brother-in-law, but he must have felt that Elmer was at least partially responsible for what happened to him, and worse, what happened to his father.”

“So it could be either of them,” Doc muttered, “or maybe even both.” Judy had stopped writing. She had her hand to her mouth and was biting the end of the pen she’d been using, a far away look in her eyes.

“De la Jolla?” Judy muttered. “Did she say her sister, Linda, is a de la Jolla?” Doc was so wrapped in thought he didn’t appear to notice.

“I’m sorry,” Mary Ellen Chandler said. “I couldn’t quite understand.”

And that was the problem, Doc decided. Even with all this new information, you couldn’t quite understand what had happened, or which of them might have done it.

***

“Mrs. Kraus,” the sheriff said to the radio. He knew Ellen Lane couldn’t hear him over the wind and thunder, and she wouldn’t hear him on the radio she’d taken either. He’d thumbed it to another frequency before he climbed out onto the Strand’s roof. “I think he’s got Heather somewhere in the elevator, probably on the delivery floor or in the head house. Do you copy?”

“In the where? You’re signal’s breaking up real bad,” she said around a jumble of static of her own.

“The elevator, the co-op,” he repeated.

“The elevator, the grain elevator? That what you’re saying Sheriff?”

“Roger, Mrs. Kraus. Get Frenchy over here to back me up. Tell him no flashing lights or siren. I don’t want anyone up there to know we’re coming.”

“What’s that you say?” Mrs. Kraus crackled and popped.

“Break, break,” French’s voice interrupted. “Sheriff, I copied that. No flashing lights, no siren. I’m on my way, about seven miles out, but I just hit a wall of dust and visibility’s down to almost nothing. I’m not gonna be available to you quick. You copy?”

French’s voice came through with surprising clarity.

“Got you Frenchy.”

“Sheriff,” Mrs. Kraus said. “I heard French. You need to know, Doc just called. It’s too involved for me to try to explain, but either of them, Ellen Lane or her former husband, could be your killer. They both have motives. He said you should know that and take no chances with either one. Did you copy?”

The sheriff got enough to understand. He’d love to know what those motives were. They might help him figure out how to deal with the mutually hostile pair, but Mrs. Kraus was right. No time for explanations now. Ellen Lane had just disappeared into the elevator’s loading shed.

“Right, I understand,” the sheriff said. “I’m going in now, and that means I’m going off the air. Frenchy, they could be armed. When you come in, come in careful.”

French copied but the sheriff had already shut his unit off and was sprinting for the gaping cavern of the loading shed. A wall of water hit him ten yards short of his goal.

***

This guy was as weird as one of those psycho serial killers the good guys were always trying to track down on TV, Heather decided. Worse, the bad guys on TV were scary, but they weren’t real. This guy was both.

He had talked to her virtually non-stop from the moment she woke up. Talked, but not listened. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that this dork had grabbed the wrong Heather. She had explained it to him quite calmly.

“You’ve made a mistake, sir. I’m sorry, but I’m not your daughter. That was her with me on the porch. You see, we’re both named Heather. That’s why I answered when you said our name. I think maybe she recognized you and was afraid and didn’t say anything. Now, if you’ll just let me go, maybe I can help you find her. Or maybe my father can. You see, he’s the sheriff here. He might be pretty upset that you took me instead of her and this is the wild west, you know, we still string people up around here, but if you just let me go I can fix it with him and then we won’t lynch you and maybe he’ll help you find your daughter.”

If he heard a word, he hadn’t given a sign. He’d gone right on with his monologue while she was talking. Hadn’t even paused when she’d tried screaming at him.

“Hey! Excuse me! Would you just listen a minute? You’ve got the wrong person!”

He was almost impossible to hear now over the cacophony of rain beating against the roof, the wind tearing at windows, and the constant grumble of thunder. It didn’t matter. Heather had heard it from start to finish several times now.

“I wouldn’t hurt you, honey” he’d said. “I loved you and your mother. I just didn’t want to get shut out, and that’s what she was doing. After you were born, there wasn’t any room for me anymore. And I don’t blame you for that, Heather. It was your mother. There were things that happened to her a long time ago. Things that happened to both of us, and seeing you, so little and helpless and all, it brought it back to her. I could tell. It was like she was shielding you from me and that wasn’t necessary. I wanted to protect you too, but she wouldn’t let me. God, honey, can you imagine how that hurt me, that she thought I was a danger to you. But she wouldn’t leave you alone with me. If I was around, she was always there, plucking you out of my arms and finding some excuse to get you away from me. I couldn’t stand it. That’s why I sneaked home that time when she thought I was at work. I thought if I just once showed her I could be trusted. I crept into the house and up to your room and you had just woken up from your nap. You needed changing. I thought if I did that, got you cleaned up and dressed all neat and pretty and carried you down to where she was resting on the sofa, I could prove to her that you weren’t hurt and I could be relied on and maybe we could start to be a family like we were supposed to. Only I’d never been allowed to change you before, not that it’s hard or anything. It’s just I hadn’t seen you naked and the wonder of it all kind of swept over me and I admired you for a moment before I took a wash cloth and some soapy water and began to clean you. That’s when she came in. I was trying to be so gentle and cautious but it may have looked strange or maybe it just looked strange to your mommy because of what happened to her when she was little. Maybe I shouldn’t have been using that cloth I bought you with the Mickey Mouse face. She started screaming and I tried to tell her it was OK. I wasn’t doing anything but changing your diaper and cleaning you up but she yelled and yelled and she picked up an iron and clubbed me with it. The next thing I knew there were policemen there and they were saying the most awful things about me. And she was telling them things I’d done to you before and how she’d been afraid of me and afraid to tell and it wasn’t true, not any of it.”