Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) (5 page)

“Yeah,” Mad Dog’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Trading buffalo for White Men, that would do for starters.”

“OK, Mad Dog, whatever you say. Just don’t try to sell me any ghost shirts.”

“My little brother, it would seem, remains a rationalist.”

The sheriff put his face in his hands for a minute, rubbing his temples with his fingers and massaging the bridge of his nose. He was tired. He should have gotten more sleep last night. He put his hands back on his knees and drummed the fingers of his right hand. “OK. Believe whatever you want to. Exercise your freedom of religion however you see fit, just so you aren’t doing human sacrifices or smoking something illegal. All I want from you right now is what put you in the park across the street from the church before dawn this morning. And, since you were probably there about the time the Reverend Simms got himself scalped and butchered, what or who you might have seen that could give me some clue where to start looking for somebody, besides you, to put on death row for this.”

Mad Dog looked sheepish. “Well, since universal power is everywhere, and since spirits can be too, I decided the place didn’t matter. And, hell, you know how I liked to tweak Simms’ pompous evangelical ass. The costume, the special effects, it was all to cause Simms a conniption and get a few more people wondering what I’m doing. I figure once enough folks realize how the world really works, maybe we can hold a
Massaum
, the sacred earth renewal ceremony, get right with
Maheo
, the All Father, and start taking care of acid rain and ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect.”

“Great. Now what did you see out there? What did you hear? Where do I start?”.

“I only saw one person, Englishman. You. I heard some dogs howling. I saw some headlights a few blocks north, but that’s it. No chilling screams, no hacking sounds, no blood-soaked folks out for a morning stroll.”

Mad Dog’s recital was interrupted by the sound of the jail door swinging open. Mrs. Kraus stood in the passage. A telephone was ringing in the distance behind her.

“I found Wynn,” she said. “Not that I spoke to him by phone or radio, you understand. Just folks living over in Reverend Simms’ neighborhood have started calling, complaining that Wynn’s gone nutso. Apparently he’s driving the patrol car across people’s yards and taking pot shots at kids’ toys. The consensus seems to be that you should go out there and stop him before a mob forms and takes after him with shotguns and pitchforks. I thought you might want to know. Now I got to go answer another complaint. I’ll tell you if somebody saves you the trouble and kills him for you. I know you’re a busy man.”

The jail door swung closed behind her and the sheriff felt a sudden wave of doubt. Maybe he didn’t want to get re-elected after all. “Shit,” he said to no one in particular.

“He’s your deputy, Charlie Brown,” Mad Dog offered, helpfully.

“And you’re my brother,” the sheriff smiled wryly. “What more can a man ask?”

***

The sheriff tried his radio again as he walked out of the courthouse and headed for his truck. No luck, of course. He climbed behind the wheel, fumbled with the shoulder belt and the ignition switch. He was normally faster, but, being in a hurry and dealing with what were still unfamiliar mechanisms….

The fuel injected 350 roared to life, revving a little higher than he liked. He found reverse, nearly killed it because he’d forgotten to disengage the emergency brake, then backed away from the building so he’d have room to make the turn into the driveway and avoid Mrs. Kraus’ Toyota. He was going a little faster than he should have, but he was still yards from the rose bushes when the truck stopped dead, snapping his head back almost far enough to put it through the sliding rear glass. The sheriff searched all three rearview mirrors for evidence of what he’d hit. Nothing. He did the same with his memory and knew there shouldn’t be anything but empty lot back there.

He threw open the door, ripped off the seat belt, and ran to the rear. A metal pipe, painted a bright silver and yellow and filled with drying concrete had been buried six feet in front of the nearest rosebush. Mr. York appeared to have made a stealthy advance on the rose front while the sheriff was in the courthouse. This new salient was undamaged by the sheriff’s unintended counter attack, except for a slight scrape where its fresh paint had contacted the truck’s chrome rear step bumper. The bumper had looked solid and massive. Now it looked a little bent and some of it’s chrome plating was threatening to peel off. Chrome step bumpers were evidently not designed to survive five-mile-an-hour collisions.

The sheriff caressed the butt of his .38 police special and wondered whether any jury, on seeing the bumper, would convict him if he went over and turned Lanny York into fodder for his roses. Instead, he walked calmly back to the cab, buckled up, put the truck in low, pushed the throttle down to about four grand, and popped the clutch. The truck jerked, but not really forward, more down and sideways as the engine’s torque transferred itself to the rear wheels and they started digging at the dry soil behind the courthouse. Twin streams of rocks and dirt exploded from beneath tire treads, doing no good to his undercoat and those patches of body work that curved under the fenders, but shredding every rosebush within thirty feet with his shrapnel. By the time he hit the street, the sheriff was proceeding with normal caution. Only the cloud of dust that hung behind the courthouse in the abnormally still air, and the rippled bumper on his new Chevy, remained as evidence of the latest battle fought there. There was a small smile on his face. He was remembering the dynamite Wynn had confiscated from some kids planning an over-zealous Fourth of July and imagining what it could do to York’s post and the rest of the roses.

***

The alley between Peach and Plum streets doubled as a kind of slough. When it rained, water flowed down it into Kastleman’s field where it bordered the edge of Buffalo Springs. About a hundred yards of brush extended into the field because it had been wet when Kastleman plowed his frost-damaged wheat under. As the sheriff’s Chevy became a casualty of the War of the Roses, the black man took advantage of the cover to gain a head start across the tilled field.

Wynn almost missed him altogether because one of the property owners from the neighborhood had come out to inquire what the hell Wynn thought he was doing and who was going to replant his flower bed or smooth out the ruts across his front yard. Wynn had felt inclined to stay and argue until he noticed other doors opening and more irate citizens headed his way. The sight prompted him to recall that his first duty lay in finding the murderer, not soothing the public temper, and so he went careening back down the street in the way he happened to be pointed.

Between glances at the rearview mirror to keep track of the people pouring into the street, the deputy happened to look up in time to see a small, dark figure. It was at least two hundred yards beyond the end of the slough and hightailing it toward the distant row of trees and brush that bordered on Calf Creek. The man already had a considerable lead, and the crowd in the street behind looked capable of gaining on Wynn if he chose to pursue on foot. Without a second thought he floored the accelerator, leaped the shallow ditch that separated the intersection of Peach and Madison from Kastleman’s field, tore through the rusty fence that served more as a boundary marker than a deterrent to passage, and left the remains of the patrol car’s defective exhaust system behind. He bounced across the furrows, skewing this way and that as the wheels encountered clods too large to give way even to the irresistible force of the cruiser’s unmuffled 454 cubic inches.

The black man never looked back. His progress, though less dramatic, was not much slower than Wynn’s. The deputy considered aiming a warning shot out the window but he needed both hands to control the ferocious efforts of the steering wheel to carry him somewhere other than where he wanted to go. Besides, his .357 had bounced off the seat and was down on the floorboards, hopping about like some barefoot swimmer forced to hot foot it across blazing sands en route from water to bath towel. Wynn hoped he hadn’t left the gun cocked.

***

The black man was in good shape for his age, but he’d had to push himself a lot harder than he was used to. He still had a hundred yards on the police car when he hit the screen of weeds, saplings, and underbrush at the edge of Calf Creek. Kastleman wasn’t a farmer who willingly let land go to waste. He’d plowed as close to the stream bed as he could get, a lot closer than the black man expected. He hit the brush and the bank at the same time and went plunging face first down the slope into a few inches of muddy water. He sprawled there, what clothes hadn’t been soaked by perspiration, now soaked by the creek. The trickle of hot water felt good against the abused muscles in his legs. He would have loved to lie there and soak and catch his breath, but the howl of the police car’s exhaust was getting close. He glanced frantically around, scrambled to his feet, and began slogging upstream. No particular reason for his choice of direction except to get away. Somewhere, deep in his subconscious, Deputy Wynn had been transformed into a full-fledged man hunt complete with bloodhounds that would have more trouble tracking him if he disguised his trail by sticking to the stream.

Wynn watched the man disappear into the green curtain along the creek. The steering was getting harder, probably because of what he and the plowed field had done to the tie rods. Wynn kept his hands locked to the wheel and his foot to the floor as he closed the last few yards. At the final moment, he jammed the brakes on and threw the wheel to the side, a combination of moves designed to bring the cruiser to a dramatic broadside stop at the edge of the vegetation, leaving him ready to scoop up his .357 magnum and plunge into the underbrush in hot pursuit. There was a brief moment for Wynn to recognize that the wheel should turn further and the brake pedal was not supposed to go clear to the floor. The pedal should have stopped about half way down, and the car should have stopped as well. Hydraulic brake lines at every wheel having been torn out by contact with rock-hard clods of earth, neither pedal nor brakes functioned as expected. Long before Wynn could consider applying the parking brake instead, he was through the wall of vegetation and buried up to the nose of the police cruiser in sand and mud and water. The radiator jammed back into the fan and the engine stalled. The seat belts and shoulder harness the sheriff insisted his deputies use on penalty of extra night duty kept Wynn from cracking a few ribs against the steering wheel. He sat there for a moment, watching steam rise from the buckled hood of the only Benteen County patrol car and began to imagine what the sheriff was going to say when he saw it. Wynn realized he’d better come in with the murderer, or seriously consider not coming in at all. Failure and an alternative career track suddenly seemed synonymous.

When the door wouldn’t open, he crawled out the window and dropped into the stream. There was no indication which way the murderer might have run. Wynn crawled up the opposite bank and examined the pasture beyond. Nothing moved out there except a flock of recently shorn sheep.

Calf Creek flowed, except in especially dry seasons, gently toward the North Fork of the Kansaw. If you went downstream you’d soon reach the highway, about a half-mile before the creek swept past the edge of Buffalo Springs. In the opposite direction were only farms and occasional back roads. Upstream seemed the only logical way to run, but a man could make up a lot of distance by cutting across the pasture with the sheep, thereby avoiding a gentle curve the creek made before slithering behind an abandoned farm house about a quarter of a mile away. Wynn slipped through the thick grass and weeds, avoided contact with the electric fence, and began trotting toward his distant goal.

***

It took the sheriff a little time to disperse the mob, especially because he hadn’t the slightest idea what Wynn thought he was doing. Fortunately, they knew there’d been a murder in their midst and, even as angry as several of them were, they felt inclined to forgive and forget—for the time being—though a couple suggested Wynn as a likely suspect considering the way he was acting.

The sheriff pulled into the Reverend Simms’ driveway, though there was no longer any reason to protect the truck from its first scratch. The weathered frame structure was in need of a visit from
This Old House
, as well as a new occupant. The curbside mail box still proclaimed that Peter Simms lived there, but it was probably the only resident of the street, and maybe even of Buffalo Springs, that didn’t know better.

A sagging front porch held an old swing that looked incapable of supporting itself, let alone Simms’ portly form. The front door was locked and the blinds were drawn. The sheriff walked around back, conscious of the curious eyes that followed his every move from behind neighboring curtains.

The back porch was screened, its mesh so fine and rusty that he could only make out vague, malevolent forms within. Its door was unlatched, however, and there proved to be nothing more threatening inside than a couple of ratty chairs and an old, round-topped refrigerator beside a dusty row of shelves filled with antique garden tools. The sheriff gave it a cursory look, then tried the back door. It opened without protest on an unlit hall leading into a gloomy interior.

It probably wasn’t any hotter in the house than outside, but, as the sheriff traversed the hall he realized he was sweating. The feel of the cool metal and the cross-hatched plastic grip of his .38 Smith & Wesson Police Special helped a little, but not enough.