Colorado Clash (17 page)

“You don’t sound real sure about Lenihan, Fargo,” the bartender said.

“I’m not. He might be guilty and he might not.”

“Well, you arrested him, didn’t you?” The man was chunky but powerful-looking with angry dark eyes and a black beard. “That’s good enough for me. Far as I’m concerned he’s the one who killed my cousin Clete.”

“This is Dave Teale, Fargo. He’s only a shirttail kin of Clete but he makes it sound like they was brothers.”

The men around him laughed.

“You think it’s funny, do you?” There was real peril in his voice—peril for the bartender. And the bartender knew it. He moved back a few steps. Dave Teale had the floor. “You arrest a man and you’re not sure he’s guilty? Meaning what—that you could let him go?”

“That’s how it works sometimes. You arrest a man but then later you find out he wasn’t guilty so you let him go.”

“Well, I say he’s guilty.” He shouted at all the men in the saloon, men now paying close attention because they thought there might be a fight about to happen. And who wanted to turn down a good old fight?

In every town, burg, city there were Dave Teales. Hell, even in Washington, D.C., there were Dave Teales. Men who weren’t satisfied unless they were rattling sabers and stirring up trouble. Here was a man who was Clete Byrnes’ shirttail kin—if that—and he was talking like the boy had been his blood brother. And the men listening to him, genuinely angry over the events of the past weeks but also bored and looking for relief from their everyday lives, heard in Teale the voice of the righteous and reasonable. A man was arrested therefore the man was guilty. Later, after more alcohol had been consumed, Teale would push for his real purpose—to demand that Cain let Teale and his men take care of Lenihan themselves. In every town, burg, city there were Dave Teales.

Since Teale had been addressing the men, Fargo took a turn at it. “Maybe Teale here’s right. Maybe Lenihan is guilty. But he’s behind bars and you can bet that Cain won’t let him go. So there’s nothing to worry about. If you think Lenihan is guilty then you can rest easy because there won’t be any more killings. You and your families can rest easy.”

The men were still sober enough that Fargo won them to his side—temporarily at least. He could see in their faces that his words had made sense to them. For now, anyway, they realized that the situation was well in hand. But a long night was ahead and Fargo wondered how long they’d stay reasonable.

Teale shook his head. “It ain’t right. Why should he draw even one more breath when them three boys are dead?”

“Well, if you’re right, Teale, I imagine Lenihan won’t be drawing a breath as soon as his trial’s over.”

“Trial? You sound like you’re on his side, Fargo.”

“Teale, you’re starting to piss me off.”

Teale snorted his disdain for the Trailsman but he didn’t say anything.

Fargo looked directly at Teale. “I’ll be headed back this way real soon and I don’t want to see you trying to start any trouble. You hear me?”

To emphasize his point he thumped Teale on the chest with his knuckles. Then he nodded to the bartender and left.

 

The words came in torrents, in gushes. And they were good words, fine words, the best words since O’Malley had been working in Chicago before he turned into a human whiskey bottle. He sat at his wobbly desk in his cell-like hotel room, a lantern at hand, his pen scratching out a steady rhythm. He had within reach not a whiskey bottle but a cup of steaming coffee. His moment had come at last and he wanted nothing to spoil it.

The story began with the revelation of the killer’s name. After that was a recap of everything that had taken place over the past weeks. He noted how Lenihan was set up by whispers as the guilty man. The story read like a piece concocted by Edgar Allan Poe.

There in the golden glow of the lantern a rebirth was taking place. Maybe he’d be drinking again very soon. Maybe the old ways were just too difficult to change. What would the world look like through sober eyes? he wondered. He smiled to himself. Maybe it would be like staring directly into the sun—blinding him. He’d always told himself that in the bottle was truth. Maybe he’d been wrong—maybe in the bottle were lies, self lies.

He laughed out loud. Hell, here he was carrying on when he didn’t know if he could go as long as eight hours without a drink and he was planning a dry future for himself.

He sat back in his chair and looked at the pages in front of him. He felt pride. The same kind of pride he’d had as a young man getting scoops in Chicago.

He was so absorbed in reading his words that he didn’t hear the door open behind him. Wasn’t aware of another presence in the room until the killer had taken two steps across the threshold.

Then, shocked, O’Malley turned and met the eyes of the person he’d been writing about. They seemed to gleam in the shadows beyond the glow of the lantern.

“You dropped something when you paid me a visit.”

O’Malley was unarmed. No reason to carry a gun when he was in his own room. Unarmed—and there could be only one reason the killer had come here.

The killer came up to the edge of the light. He held a business card in his hand. The card identified the paper and the owner Parrish. Parrish didn’t think enough of O’Malley to have his name printed on them.

“I doubt it was Parrish who was there. So that leaves you.”

O’Malley’s eyes began searching the darkness for some way to avoid the inevitable. The killer had not yet shown a gun but it was certain he had one. Inevitable. What could O’Malley do? All he could think of was diving at the killer’s legs, surprising him, knocking him over and then running to the door and the hall and shouting for help. There were people around at this hour. People with guns. People who might not care for him but who would protect him on general principle.

But the body had been abused for so long, what if he tried to make a dive and did nothing more than land at the killer’s feet? His situation would be hopeless then. But then, he thought, what was it now?

“How did you figure it out?”

“I saw you one day and got curious. How you handled something.” What was the point of pretending anymore?

“How I handled what?”

So O’Malley told him. How the killer’s behavior had made him curious about the break-in at the woman’s house. How the man had watched the woman.

And then how O’Malley had begun studying the man every chance he got. In the old days when he’d worked on the big-city papers he’d begun making a study of people arrested for crimes. A lot of them would never be suspected. Nice normal ordinary people. Or so they seemed. But at their trials O’Malley began to see what they’d kept hidden about themselves. And how clever their masks were.

“I’m impressed, O’Malley. I figured you were just one more drunken reporter. It seems your kind always like the bottle too much. But you must be a lot smarter than I realized. How long have you suspected me?”

“Ever since the break-in. But I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t prove it. I didn’t have any real evidence until I found that box under your couch. It’s kind of funny, keeping all those things of hers. Sort of sad, too.”

“Shut up. I don’t want you talking about her. Somebody like you shouldn’t even mention her name.”

He’s crazy, O’Malley thought. He’s crazy as a loon.

“I want the box, O’Malley.”

“I imagine you do. But I can’t give it to you. I’ve already given it to Fargo.”

“Fargo? You’re lying.”

O’Malley supposed it was a pretty pathetic lie. The box was sitting on the nightstand by his bed. The darkness hid it.

The killer brushed past him then. The room was so small that he was able to reach the bed and the nightstand in seconds. His harsh laugh told O’Malley that he’d found the box.

“So Fargo has it, huh?”

O’Malley was turning around in his chair as the killer cinched on his black leather gloves and stepped forward. O’Malley didn’t even have a chance of defending himself. The killer’s hands were so powerful that they snapped the trachea instantly. There was no problem then in finishing the job.

After he was sure O’Malley was dead, Deputy Pete Rule tucked the box under his arm and hurried from O’Malley’s hotel room.

As soon as Helen Hardesty heard a horse approaching her cabin, she ran for the rifle she had left leaning against the large oak that stood near the garden she had been tending. At age sixty-four, Helen had survived two husbands and the death of three of her nine children. She lived alone now by choice because in her later years she no longer wanted the complications of human relationships. Even when you loved someone, he or she could be burdensome. Her intimates now were her pinto, her wolfhound and her four cats. She had birdsong for music and magnificent mountain sunsets for beauty.

And until recently she’d had safety and comfort.

If only she hadn’t been tramping through the thin stand of jack pines. . . . She hadn’t meant to see him or what he was doing. In fact she tried to run and hurry away from what he was about to do to the terrified young man she recognized as Clete Byrnes. She had seen him around town when she went in for supplies. He was now tied to a slender oak. She also knew the man holding the gun on him. She knew she could not get involved. He would kill her for sure. She would have to pretend that she didn’t know anything about it. And so be it. She probably didn’t have that many years left and she wanted to live them out peacefully. With her mountain sunsets and her animals.

But as she started away her foot found a hole and threw her into the bushes. The noise alerted the man with the gun. He came for her. He slapped her over and over again until her knees buckled and he had to drag her to her cabin.

“I’m going to take care of some business here, Helen. It’s business that don’t concern you. And it’s business you’d damned well better keep to yourself or I’ll kill you. You understand me, Helen? I’ll kill you and I’ll get away with it, too. And you know I will.”

The funny thing was he didn’t even sound angry when he said all this. He was just stating a fact.

“Now you just sit here and I’ll do it quick and get it over with. And you stay away from that spot by those trees down by the creek. No need for you to see what I done. You understand, Helen?”

“Yes.”

“Somebody’ll come by soon enough and find him. And they’ll come and ask you if you know anything about it and you know what to say. You understand, Helen?”

“Yes.”

“You tell them you don’t know anything about it.”

“No.”

“Because if you did tell them anything, I’d have to kill you. And I think you know me well enough that I wouldn’t want to do that. You know me that well, don’t you, Helen?”

“Yes, I do, Pete.”

And then sitting there when he went away. And five minutes later the explosion of three gunshots. And then a terrible mountain silence.

And now, three days later, nervous every time she heard a horse on the trail that angled by her land.

By the time she could see the rider, she had her rifle up and aimed and ready to fire.

Fargo his name was. The man on the big Ovaro stallion. The man with those striking lake blue eyes. A good man, she’d sensed the other day, but a man who asked too many questions. A man who could get her in trouble. He was golden in the moonlight, a creature of myth as in some of the books she’d read as a little girl.

She shouted, “You better stop right there!”

This was pretty much the same situation Fargo had faced when he’d first laid eyes on Helen Hardesty. The harsh shout. The belligerent face. The rifle.

She whistled. From the shadows next to the house the wolfhound came running, lean and purposeful. He stood next to her. “He’ll kill you if I tell him to.”

“I don’t have much time, Helen.” He walked toward her.

“You stop right there.”

“There could be a lynching in town tonight. An innocent man could die unless you tell me who you saw murder the Byrnes boy.”

“Who said I saw anything?”

“The way you’re acting, Helen. You’re hiding something. Something you’re scared about. My guess is that the killer has threatened you. And you don’t scare easy. So that means he must have some kind of power. He thinks—and you think—that he can kill you and get away with it.”

The night winds soughed in the trees and filled the air with the scent of pine and the snow that had fallen on the lower parts of the mountains. A good night for sleeping in a warm bed. Sounded pretty good to Fargo.

“Who’s the man they’re going to lynch?”

“Ned Lenihan.”

“Ned Lenihan!” she said. “Why, he’s one of the most decent people I’ve ever known. He’s a good man. He was friends with both of my husbands.”

“Well, there’s some evidence against him so I had to bring him in. Now I’m wondering if I should have.”

He moved closer to her. A deep growl sounded in the wolfhound’s throat but it remained still.

“Three men are dead, Helen. Their families deserve some answers.”

“Well, I’m sorry for the families, Fargo. But I don’t have no answers to give.”

An owl flew downwind, elegant against the moonlight sky.

“Maybe you’re trusting the wrong people, Helen.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe you’re scared to tell the truth because somebody threatened you.”

“You’re wrong there, Fargo. I’m not scared of nobody. I didn’t know that body was anywhere near here.”

“Look, Helen, you’ve lived out West a long time—maybe all your life. You know how animals respond to something like a human body. You’ve got a dog and cats and you probably get around your land pretty much every day. Kind of hard to believe that Clete Byrnes could have laid out there without you knowing anything about it. Unless you stayed inside your house for a couple days.”