Clay Hand (28 page)

It was Fields who shuddered at the meaning she had concealed in the words.

Not until Fields described the killing of Laughlin did Glasgow contradict him. “Take it easy, Sheriff. Take it easy. What in hell would I kill that old goat for? I took a chance with him in the first place because nobody gave a damn whether he lived or died. There was nothing in his record pointing to Winston. He was always talking about the mines, but anybody who thought about him at all thought he meant a silver mine out there. That’s where he went after the foreman. Laughlin was the easiest guy in the world to put away—in the pen or in the grave.”

The truth of that was proven in Winston. Only when Richard Coffee grubbed his story out of history did it come to light. And only when Coffee died did it seem to matter. One more sordid thing he had learned about the ways of men and justice, Fields thought, and he had to learn it from the enemy of both.

“It was Coffee I had to get,” Glasgow said, gritting his teeth. “When Margaret couldn’t get him out of here, I knew I had to get him. And I knew it meant a stink. If he got it in the mine it was somebody else’s stink. When Whelan’s kid saw him and Becky over there I got the notion of how I could do it. I knew there was gas there. It nearly put me out one night. I just got out in time. It turns out Coffee knew about the gas too, but I didn’t know that. And I’d been watching them. I knew he was looking for me. I thought I’d get him in there when I wanted him, using that magic doll. I figured he’d go after it, connecting it with Becky or even me. I grooved a notch in the wall all the way to that room so’s I could feel my way in the dark and lead him in there. I was going to give him a touch of chloroform and let the gas do the rest. I wasn’t in any hurry. He got interested in Becky. He wanted to let her down easy.”

He winced with pain. “Damn McNamara’s soul. What right’s he got carrying a rod?”

“Laughlin was caught in the trap you intended for Coffee,” Fields prompted.

“Godalmighty, I led him down that passage like he didn’t know it better than me that night. He was in the room after the magic piece before I knew what I had, and clear off his head. I couldn’t get him out and I couldn’t get the doll away from him. I had to get out myself…”

“All right. We’ll get that later,” Fields said, for Glasgow was getting weak. “What about the night Coffee died?”

“It was him or me after the Laughlin business. I was scared of the mine myself. There was just one thing I wanted to get out of it—the magic doll. I hid it after Laughlin was dead and I didn’t know Coffee found it. I went in after it that night. I thought using that other entry I could make it. I made it in all right, but he was waiting for me. I led him a crazy chase out that way. He almost got me once. It must have been then he turned his ankle. When I got out I was fuzzy myself. I heard the train whistles and I knew my directions. He didn’t and it was dark. I was lucky stopping right there. I saw him come out and listen and then start rushing up the hill. I knew what happened. He was climbing to hell on an echo. I shouted a couple of times: ‘You won’t make it, Coffee!’ He didn’t answer but I knew where my voice was hitting him. Dead ahead…”

Glasgow stopped. Then he repeated the words as though his mind and tongue were stuck on them: “Dead ahead, dead ahead…”

“Did you see him fall?”

The criminal’s eyes were glassy. “I didn’t see him. I heard him. He didn’t make much noise…” He closed his eyes. “Where’s Becky?”

Fields got up. “She isn’t here, Glasgow.”

“Did she send any word?”

“She didn’t send any word to anybody. The house is locked up tight. They got all the blinds pulled.”

Glasgow turned his head away. “Wouldn’t I give something if I was going to be as unwelcome where I’m going as I was in that house.”

T
HE SHERIFF DROVE PHIL
up the hill a last time, and waited with a padlock for the kitchen door while he packed his bag in the quiet house. The boarders were gone in search of another, kinder landlady. The placid O’Grady smiled wanly from the wall as Phil moved through the room. The only sound was the kitten mewing beneath the stove. He picked it up. He stopped a moment and felt the earth in one of the widow’s many plants. She had watered them that day.

“Whatever’s bad in them, there’s a bit of kindness in all gardeners,” she said to him once. She had said then the most there was to say of herself.

Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Series and the Julie Hayes Series; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.

Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1950 by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

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