Doom Weapon (11 page)

K
nut stopped me halfway to the livery. “There’s gonna be a town council meeting tonight about the sheriff. This is something that just sorta happened on its own. There’s enough steam in this town right now that it’s going to take place even if Swarthout or anybody tries to block it. They say it’s gonna be a kind of referendum on how Sheriff Terhurne runs this office.”

“One of his opponents probably drummed this up.”

“Absolutely.” He paused. “He asked me if I’d ask you to do him a favor.”

“Aw, shit.”

“You wouldn’t have to say much, Noah. Just that things sorta happen sometimes and that Terhurne has fired Hayden for dereliction of duty and that as far as you can tell, Terhurne is a pretty good sheriff.”

“I get paid for this?”

He didn’t smile. He looked, in fact, sort of amazed.

“I was kidding, Knut.”

The smile came wide then.

“You got to remember I’m not used to big-city humor. And you seem like such an honest person, I was really surprised.”

“Well, I guess I can do that but I don’t see that it’ll
matter much. Federal men aren’t all that popular. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Well, he’d appreciate you givin’ it a try. Six-thirty in the little building next to the post office. Thanks, Noah.”

Twenty minutes later I was on my horse. I rode out to where Dobbs’s body had been found.

I was grateful to be back outdoors and alone. The snow on the mountain peaks, the green of the pines on the low hills, the smell of river and grass soothed me.

The islet turned out to be nothing more than a spit of sand with a few tangles of weeds to give it a more solid look than it deserved. It must have been underwater at least three or four times a year. This was where Dobbs’s body had washed up.

I spent half an hour working that spit. Aside from a few pieces of branches, a couple of rusty tin cans, an ancient shoe that various animals had taken turns gnawing on, there wasn’t much to see.

A couple of times I knelt next to the water and dragged my hands through it to see if I could find anything that the lawmen might have overlooked. All I got was some oily residue. There must have been a factory on the river somewhere nearby, I thought. This was a political battle in many territories. Industry was all well and good but there were problems with it that nobody had foreseen.

I went back to my horse and took my field glasses from my saddlebag.

Far in the distance I could see the unused railroad tracks shining. These would lead to the resort. I was tempted to follow them but it was late in the day by then.

I mounted up and started back, disappointed that nothing had turned up where the fisherman had found the body.

On the way back to town I glimpsed the mansion that Swarthout had let Grieves use. I eased on over there.

It was antebellum by way of Colonial. Sitting on an unending sea of green grass, properly kept to the blade, it had the sort of storybook appeal that Molly Kincaid would have loved. Inside you’d expect to find Cinderella or at least a princess or two.

The sun had started to turn bloody and the blood shone on the numerous windows of the place. The bird feeders were busy with at least a dozen kinds of birds. The gazebo was big enough for a hoedown.

I dismounted and just stood there, taking in the sounds and scents of the dying day.

I walked the grounds. The plot was extensive, leading to two massive garages in the rear. The property at the back was defined by an endless line of forest.

I walked around inside the barn and stables. No animals and the turds I found were hard and dry.

A crow sat on a wagon watching me. There was something spectral about him, like a portent of monstrous deeds. Very different feel to the back of the place—one of desertion, I guess, as if something terrible had passed through there and would soon pass through again—and so I headed back to the front.

I went up the front steps, used my reliable burglary tools, and opened the massive double doors with their intricate carvings and enormous brass fittings. Gargoyles peered at me from both doors.

Inside, my steps began to echo. The dying day darkened the huge vestibule in which I stood. Empty and dark, it had the feeling of a cathedral that God had fled. Or maybe my definition of God was wrong. Maybe the
people who’d come here had a different kind of God than mine. They worshipped money. I remembered once seeing a man in expensive shoes slapping the head of the shoeshine boy who was working on his shoes. The boy was doing a fine job but not fine enough for the man in the top hat and enormous cigar. I needed my own boots shined and was waiting my turn. But the harder the man slapped the boy on the head, the less I could control myself, until finally I lunged at the man, grabbed the hand he was slapping with, and hurled him down to the floor. I made him tip the boy ten times what he normally would and then I chased his ass out the door. I imagined that this mansion had been filled with men like him.

I walked deeper inside. I stood beneath a chandelier wide enough to cover the ceilings of most of the rooms I stayed in. From here I saw the outline of the grand staircase that twisted and turned upward into a darkness that brought back the image of the crow and the secrets in his fierce dark unknowable eyes.

I stood still for long moments, listening. Wind in trees; spring limbs scraping windows; one of the outbuilding doors banging in the wind; creaks and ghostly groans of the house.

I found a candle and lighted it and then walked around the ground floor. A grand piano dominated the living room. The couches and divans were in the current English style, spare and uncomfortable looking. The den was packed with books, maps, an enormous globe, and an open space that might be used for a string quartet. You could roast a couple of cows in the fireplace. A fancy French restaurateur would have envied the enormous stoves, ovens, cabinetry, chopping blocks, and jungle of pots and pans hanging from a device suspended from the ceiling. Two long windows looked out upon a section of lawn where croquet pieces stood
in place, awaiting players. Easy to imagine smartly dressed men and women on a mild June Sunday playing the game and laughing oh so civilly when one of them missed a shot.

The upstairs was as lavish as the downstairs. Four bedrooms, two of them suites, each furnished in taste more French than British and a hell of a lot more comfortable looking.

I was back to looking through drawers again. Nothing. Nor in the closets. Grieves might have stayed there for some time but he certainly didn’t leave anything behind.

I started to leave the largest of the bedrooms when my eyes went to a wastebasket by a small desk. I didn’t find anything in that one but I decided to check back through all the wastebaskets in the house.

And in the den downstairs, shoved under the opening in the massive desk, I found the wastebasket that yielded a partially written letter.

Here the ink smudged and that was when he’d balled up the paper and fired it into the wastebasket.

I’d never seen an example of Grieves’s writing before but I was assuming this was his letter.

I had two thoughts almost simultaneously. One, that he was asking for one ticket. Two, that his partner Dobbs had been hauled from the river with a pair of bullets in his head.

Traveling light. Whatever “it” was, and it likely had to be one of the hand-carried weapons referred to in the articles I’d seen, Grieves had decided to keep the money for himself when Nan and Glen bought the material from him.

I smoothed out the letter, folded it small, and then headed back to town.

I
t wasn’t as much a town meeting as a prelude to a lynching.

There was a desk in front and maybe twenty chairs for the fifty or so people who had crowded in the small, narrow room that had been sloppily painted lime green and hung with photographs of territorial bigwigs, one of whom looked familiar to me. I sat in one of the two chairs facing the crowd. Sheriff Terhurne sat in the other.

“You been at this job too long.”

“It’s an embarrassment, havin’ a prisoner killed like that.”

“If you were the right kind, you’d hand in your badge, somethin’ like this happening.”

Easy to see that these were the minions of one Sy Compkins Rafferty, the tall, woodsman-like man who stood in the back of the room with his arms folded and a smirk on his carefully mustached face. He was enjoying seeing the opposition wince and stammer and flounder every time he was asked a question.

Much as I didn’t want to, I felt sorry for Terhurne. Nobody in the law enforcement business is without flaw. For all his arrogance, he seemed a reasonably competent sheriff to me.

On a soft spring night like that one, people should have been out for a stroll, not packed into that mean little room watching a man like Terhurne humiliated.

Rafferty, I assumed, was hoping that Terhurne would be forced to resign on the spot. Or to say something so arrogant or stupid that Rafferty would win the election.

He’d prepared them well. A full hour went by. Terhurne looked more and more beleaguered until he finally said, somewhat pathetically, “I saved your dog from drowning, Mrs. Whitman, don’t that mean anything?”

“Saved a dog from drowning!” somebody laughed. “He’s a regular good Samaritan.”

An elderly man stood up and said, “I think we owe you an apology for this evening, Sheriff. Rafferty back there put a lot of people up to makin’ fun of you tonight. But I just come because I think maybe it’s time we had ourselves a new sheriff, that’s all. I think you done a real good job, Sheriff Terhurne, but with this young gal getting killed right in the jail and your nephew—Well, four, five years ago you wouldn’t have hired your nephew. You woulda been smarter than that. It’s a matter of judgment. Any time a man hires a relative in a public position like you got—well, that’s just askin’ for trouble.” His arthritic hands came together almost in prayer. “So what I’m proposing here—and I don’t give a hang if Rafferty likes it or not—is that the town council gives you a bonus of $500 and then gives a monthly stipend for your retirement. This town owes you a lot—” He turned then and cast a scolding eye on his fellow townsmen. Even Rafferty looked embarrassed by the trick he’d tried to pull there at that gathering. “And I plan to bring it up tomorrow at the official town council meeting.”

Whoever the old man was, he was three times as smart and four times as articulate as most of the pompous bastards in the national Congress. And he obviously had an effect on his fellows. Man and woman alike looked chastened by his words. A man sitting in front of Rafferty spoke up and said, “That’s a very wise speech you give, Nick. And I’m all for it.”

Before the crowd could stand up and make it unanimous, I stood up and faced them.

Rafferty, sensing what might be coming said, “You don’t have no say in this, federal man. Sit down. We all know you threw in with Terhurne here.”

“I didn’t throw in with anybody. I’m just doing my job. And Terhurne is helping me.”

Terhurne said: “Folks, I admit that I’m responsible for what happened in my own jail. And I know I need help to find out who killed Molly Kincaid. I know you think I’m arrogant sometimes—and sometimes I guess I am—but I’m not so arrogant that I don’t know a superior lawman when I see one. And that’s why I’m happy that Mr. Ford here is in charge of the investigation. I’m doing all I can to help him.”

Rafferty: “I wouldn’t need no help if I was runnin’ this investigation. I’d have the killer in jail or strung up by now.”

A few followers remained loyal and made some minor noises in Rafferty’s favor. But most seemed to see that even if they didn’t like Terhurne, he was asking for their sympathy and help. Apparently just admitting that he’d made a mistake was enough to shock most people at the meeting that night.

I said: “There’s an election coming up, folks. And I’m assuming there’ll be a couple of debates between the candidates. That’s the time to decide who you want to vote for. And I’d ask you to consider their histories
and experience. Terhurne isn’t young anymore but from what I can see he’s got a very good deputy in Knut Jagland. And Knut’s getting a good grounding in law enforcement from Terhurne. I’d keep those things in mind.”

Rafferty: “I thought you weren’t takin’ any sides in this?”

“I’m not much for lynch mobs, Rafferty. And I don’t appreciate the way you called for this meeting tonight. You just wanted to embarrass Terhurne and nothing else. I don’t think that’s a good start for a man who wants to be a lawman. Stirring people up is always dangerous, no matter who does it.”

I glimpsed Liz Thayer sticking her head in the door, notebook and pencil in hand. She must have been covering things from the hall. No room to squeeze in. She’d want a dramatic finish for the evening but she wasn’t getting one. Nobody stood up and speechified. Reasonable people are usually quiet people. Terhurne hadn’t converted them back to his side. But I think they’d had a close look at Rafferty and now had doubts about him as anything more than a mouth without a brain.

Nobody said goodnight. Nobody came up to offer a hand. Nobody even nodded at us. They just filed silently out the door. Rafferty had disappeared.

Liz came into the room and walked up to us. “Going to be a close election, Sheriff.”

“I wonder if I even want it anymore.”

“Sure you do. Or your pride does, anyway. You might quit after you win. But you want to win first.”

“Damned pride,” Terhurne said. “And nobody’s got more pride than a mick like me.”

“Rafferty makes you look like a great statesman,” I said. “He’s doing you a favor by being in the race.”

“Where’s Knut tonight?” Liz asked.

Terhurne nodded to me. “Noah here thought it’d be good to make Knut night sheriff. Not have a kid at night. But a real sheriff. That’s his title now. Night sheriff.”

That had been the only way I could see to bring the younger, smarter Knut into prominence without damaging Terhurne any more than I had to. Day sheriff and night sheriff. It had worked for a while in Kansas City. No reason it wouldn’t work in Junction City.

“I’ve got to get back to the newspaper. You going back to your hotel, Noah?”

“Be my pleasure to escort such a fine-looking lady.”

Terhurne smiled. “I used to talk fancy like that. But it doesn’t work when you’re old. You just look silly.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, Terhurne, she’s always telling me how old I am.”

He studied me. “Well, I think she might have a point there.”

Liz laughed but I wasn’t so sure he was kidding.

“You know, he really shouldn’t be reelected,” Liz said as we walked down the street.

“I know. But look at who’s running against him.”

“That’s always been his saving grace. He’s never had any real competition.” Then: “God, wish I could put this night in a bottle and keep it with me all the time. Smell the apple blossoms. But you have to go back to your stuffy little hotel room and I have to go back to my newspaper.”

“We could always have a meal and talk.”

“You know what that means, Noah, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Too old, eh?”

“You know it’s not just that. I just can’t do things that way. Soon as you figure out what’s going on here, you’ll be gone. Then I’d be left feeling sort of—loose. I don’t like feeling that way about myself. A lot of the town women are already suspicious of me. Now that I’m divorced they think I’ve got my eyes on their husbands. I don’t want to give them the wrong impression by being loose.”

“Well, I guess that’s the way it’ll have to be.”

When she hugged me, the top of her head came right to the middle of my chest. Her breasts, her warmth, and woman scent of her made me lonelier than I cared to feel so I pushed her gently away.

“I’m kind of restless, I guess,” I said. “Think I’ll go have a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.”

“Thanks for understanding, Noah.”

She went inside the lighted newspaper office. Somebody was using the press. Looked like the same man I’d seen there earlier.

I wanted coffee but I also wanted a walk. Liz hadn’t been kidding about bottling that night. It was one of the soft warm nights when you’d sleep with the window cracked open and you’d feel good about things in a way you hadn’t for a long time. One of God’s small but indispensable blessings. Especially those apple blossoms.

I ended up downline from the depot where the railroad line kept a large garage for repairs. The smell of engine oil brought back boyhood. I’d been around the big trains long before they’d been able to call themselves transcontinental. I’d doted on trains the way other boys doted on hitting home runs. Trains were magical.

A small diner. A horse at the hitching post. The aroma of strong coffee and some kind of pie, probably apple.

The only other customer was a geezer at the end of the counter. He had set his teeth out next to his coffee
cup and was pulling his mouth back into fake smiles. The storeboughts must have been giving him some pain. Old age sure didn’t look all that appealing.

A wiry bald man took my order and laid out my coffee and pie within a minute of my planting my ass on the counter stool.

Just after he set my coffee down, he glanced over my shoulder to the window. He must have seen something out there because his expression got tight and nervous.

He leaned in so Toothless down the way couldn’t hear. “I ain’t getting involved in this but there’s a couple fellas out there that I’m pretty sure are waitin’ for you.”

“You know them?”

“Like I said, I don’t want to get involved.”

The counterman went away. Toothless put his teeth back in, tossed some money on the counter, and left.

The counterman stayed away from me. I glanced over my shoulder only once. I got a ghostlike glimpse of a large man peering out from behind a tree to see if I was still in there. Another man peeked out moments later. They both wore the latest in bandana fashion for stagecoach robbers. Even in a glance one of the face-covering bandanas looked crusted with something. I didn’t like to speculate on just what that might be.

For the time, I was safe where I was. But I didn’t plan to be for long.

To the counterman, I said: “There a back door?”

“Please don’t get me involved, mister. I got a sick wife.”

“All I asked was if you had a back door?”

“Yeah, but I should tell you it sticks pretty bad. Don’t tell ’em I told you that.”

I decided to make them wait a while. I read a page of a very old newspaper. I drank a second cup of coffee. And then I strolled over to pay my bill. You always
want the person you’re watching to do something interesting. I made sure not to do a single thing interesting.

I would have to move fast. I drew my Colt and then made quickly for the back door to the right of the stove.

I could have run but I wanted to find out who they were working for. I had enough enemies in this town to be curious.

The counterman hadn’t been kidding about the door sticking. The kitchen had been scrubbed down and cleaned up for the night. Everything looked orderly. Except the door. You could see where weather had warped it along the edge and that it bloated out enough that it didn’t quite fit into the frame in places.

All this gave the thugs watching me the impression that I was going to run out the back door. I hoped they’d be tricked.

I managed to get the door kicked open and then I turned around and headed out the front way. By now the thug I’d seen running from the tree would be waiting for me in the back.

I stood just at the edge of the front of the building. He came racing around from the back. Running, he was off balance. All I needed to do was kick his legs out from under him.

He was a heavyset man in a red plaid shirt and dungarees. In the moonlight his bandana looked blue. His black wide-brimmed hat flew off when he slammed face first into the ground.

He hit hard enough that he let go of the club he’d been carrying. But the other hand still clutched the six-shooter. That was easily enough taken care of. Before he could even think of using it, I walked over and brought the heel of my boot down hard right on his knuckles. He lost his grip. I kicked his gun into the darkness.

He expressed his pain in curses. He knew some good ones. He’d been going to use his club on me, if not his gun. I didn’t owe him being gentle. I kicked him hard in the ribs.

His mask started to slip and he grabbed it with his good hand, pulled it all the way up to his eyes.

“Get up.”

He kept his face flat to the ground. He didn’t want me to see it. He didn’t look in any way familiar.

Curious then, I reached down and started to grab his mask. I was still aware that there was another punk lurking around somewhere.

That was when I heard the footsteps. Only afterward did I realize that whoever it was wanted me to hear the footsteps. He wanted me standing up so he could aim true.

And true it was. He threw a sizable rock at me. The force knocked me to the ground. He wasn’t finished. He must have realized how much he’d hurt me. All it took was one solid punch and I fell flat on the ground.

All I had time to see was a second at most of the masked thug grappling to his feet.

The one standing above me said: “You stay out of our business in town here.”

If either of them put more pain on me, I wasn’t conscious to hear it or feel it.

I was long gone.