Plains Crazy Read Online Free

records stored in the building. And there was nearly always someone in the sheriff’s office to keep an eye on things. Usually, that would be her, working the phones and radios and holding down the reception desk.
    Locked or not, she had trouble getting the doors open. Then she noticed why. Someone had jammed a short piece of pipe so that it was stuck against the base of the doors. It was so obvious and out of place that she couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t noticed before. Odd, she thought, that someone would block the entry. Kids, maybe. She didn’t know. She kicked at the thing so she could go relieve Deputy Wynn and start earning her less than satisfactory hourly wage.
    The pipe was really jammed in there. She had to kick the thing half a dozen times before it popped loose and began to roll down the steps and onto the walk that sloped to the street and the park beyond. She pulled the door open and started to go inside. The pipe rolled off the edge of the walk and disappeared into the ditch that drained the courthouse lawn. Then part of the ditch disappeared, along with a chunk of sidewalk, some of which rained down around her. What she’d been kicking the hell out of, Mrs. Kraus realized, had been a pipe bomb.
    ***
    It wasn’t hard for the sheriff to locate the murder scene. There were close to a dozen vehicles lined up on either side of the road. A little crowd of people clustered along the bridge and hung out near the edge of a strip of bright yellow crime scene tape. He hadn’t expected so many people, but the tape was a bigger surprise. The department hadn’t supplied it. Every time the sheriff tried to get things like that included in his budget, the supervisors turned him down.
    The sheriff parked his truck behind the county coroner’s beige Buick station wagon and let himself out. A couple of rubberneckers came to greet him, asking questions he couldn’t have answered yet even if he had wanted to. He told them so, politely, then ducked under the tape and followed the path down through a profusion of sunflowers and other blooming weeds to the sandbar at the edge of the creek.
    â€œYours?” the sheriff asked as Deputy Parker came to meet him. Parker had a body that was made for a uniform. She was tall, broad shouldered, trim hipped. The sheriff found himself wondering if the woman’s legs might not be as perfectly pleated as the crease in her slacks.
    â€œMine?”
    â€œThe tape,” the sheriff said, gesturing to the yellow line that ran from the corner of the bridge to a pair of nearby trees before circling off to disappear in the verdant underbrush.
    â€œYes, sir. Sorry. Hope that’s all right. I picked some up when I was over in Wichita.”
    The sheriff tried to remember the last time one of his deputies had dipped into their meager pay to supplement the department’s resources out of their own pockets. Unable to do so, he asked, “What’ve you got?”
    â€œNo more, really, than I told you on the phone.” She flipped open a notebook. “Victim is one Michael ‘Spotted Elk’ Ramsey, age sixteen.”
    â€œOne of the people in that PBS Cheyenne-village thing they’re filming here?”
    â€œRight.” She gestured, “The encampment is just a few hundred yards over in the pasture. We’ve got a positive ID from the victim’s parents. Sorry. I’m afraid the crime scene was pretty well trampled by the time I got here. The girl the vic was with naturally went back to the camp for help, then pretty much everybody there tried to give it. They pulled the arrow out. Did CPR, wandered all through the brush down here, even searched along the edge of the road for the shooter. Generally made a mess of things.”
    â€œBut he
is
dead?”
    â€œOh yeah. Stone cold. Doctor Jones is having a look at him now. And I had Deputy Wynn herd everybody back to the encampment. Wynn’s taking statements,