Dead Time

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Yes, boss,” Fallon said, keeping his head down, staring at his miserable shoes.

  “Visitation be a privilege. Ya gets that? The superintendent says yes or no. I don’t know why he said yes to a scumbag like ya. Well, maybe I do. Most mothers an’ aunts an’ sisters an’ nuns an’ wives who comes here looks like the back side of a heifer. Yers don’t.”

  He pulled a watch out of his pants pocket. “Fifteen minutes. Startin’ now.”

  Fallon stared at the watch. He saw his dead wife again.

  “A watch,” the Swiss man had said, “is not a hammer, sir. It should be treated with respect, and gentle hands.”

  Fallon nodded. “The whiskey runner I was arresting in the Winding Stair Mountains didn’t know that. Can you fix it?”

  The watchmaker sighed. Fallon never could remember the old man’s hands, and the way his hands shook, how he still had to squint behind the very thick lenses of his spectacles, gave Fallon pause about trusting the old silver watch to the ancient Swiss watchmaker.

  “Miss DeSmet.”

  Renee DeSmet came out of the back room, and Fallon forgot all about the old man. She had black hair that gleamed in the small office that sounded of hundreds of clocks and watches ticking. That noise had pricked every nerve in Fallon’s body. Now he forgot all about it.

  The old man slid the busted watch to the woman, whose blue eyes shone as she grabbed tweezers and a magnifying lens.

  Fallon did not move. He just watched as the old watchmaker told the beautiful woman what to do. They spoke in French. Fallon scarcely breathed.

  When it was over, the Swiss man looked up. He muttered something in his own language, then squinted behind his thick eyeglasses. “You are still here?”

  Fallon must have nodded.

  The old man looked at the nearest clocks.

  “You wait two hours and sixteen minutes for . . . this cheap watch?”

  Renee DeSmet laughed.

  He had walked her back to the boardinghouse.

  At some point, Fallon realized he had seen her before. But he had been so dumbstruck, he did not even realize where until she stopped at the boardinghouse in Van Buren.

  “This is where I live,” she told him.

  “Oh.” He was sad the walk had ended, even if they had barely said five words to each other on the trip out of Fort Smith.

  She opened the door, and he grimaced that he had somehow forgotten to open the damned door for her.

  Once Renee DeSmet stepped inside, she looked back. “Aren’t you coming in, too?”

  Fallon straightened and stepped back. His lips parted and he thought he might have even blushed when he recognized the sign above the door.

  MA TALLEY’S HOUSE

  Rooms For God-Fearing People

  Good Food: 15¢ Boarders, 25¢ Visitors

  “Oh yeah, I . . .” He entered The widow Rita Talley’s two-story boardinghouse. He lived here, too, in fact, three doors down from Renee DeSmet.

  That’s how it started.

  He walked her to work, even though, as a former working cowhand, he hated walking, but he made himself do it, even boarding his horse at a Fort Smith livery. They didn’t talk a whole lot that first week, even at the widow’s dining room table over breakfast and supper. He learned that her grandparents came from France, that they had settled first in New Orleans, then followed the river to Memphis, Tennessee, and later St. Louis. Renee DeSmet had answered an advertisement and taken a job with the watchmaker in Fort Smith.

  Renee didn’t like the gun Fallon wore. She certainly didn’t care much for him risking his life as a federal lawman, but she must have liked him. Three months later, she had agreed to be his wife. A month and a half after that, they were married and living in a rented apartment in Van Buren but with a shorter commute to the watchmaker’s shop and the district court in Fort Smith.

  Most deputies hated having to appear in court. It surprised Fallon, who had spent time on cattle trails and hunting buffalo in the wide-open countries of Texas and Kansas, how much the legal system fascinated him. He learned from prosecutors and the defense attorneys, and he respected both sides. The average deputy marshal for Judge Parker’s court thought every defense attorney belonged on the gallows. Not Fallon.

  After Renee became pregnant and gave birth to Rachel, six pounds of everything adorable in the universe, Fallon started reading with Chris Ehrlander.

  Renee liked that a lot. She even liked Ehrlander. Then she had a baby, and when Fallon held the tiny, pink-skinned six-pound loaf wrapped in swaddling cloth, Fallon felt his life change.

  “You’re livin’ the dream,” a jailer told him after he had deposited four criminals and one corpse at the courthouse. “Gonna be a rich lawyer. With a beautiful wife and even prettier baby gal. And not have to get shot at or stabbed or kicked or whipped no more.”

  And then . . .

  The door opened. Fallon heard the guard say:

  “It’d be a shame for that pretty girl to see me bash yer head in. Remember that. The clock’s tickin’.”

  Fallon walked into the room to see his new wife.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She sat at the table, wringing her hands, wearing a dress of pink gingham, and a white bonnet covering her blond hair, pinned up in the back into a bun. She wore eyeglasses. Her eyesight was better than Fallon’s.

  “Hello, honey,” he said, and sat into the uncomfortable chair across from her.

  “Harry.” Christina Whitney had been smiling, but when she saw Fallon, she paled, her lips flattened, and her eyes soon hardened. “What happened?”

  Fallon shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  “All right.”

  She had to know. Aaron Holderman would have gotten word that he had busted Fallon’s nose, that Josh Ryker had recognized him, even that Barney Drexel might remember Fallon. Christina was putting on an act for the eavesdropping guards. She could have made a fine actress, if she had not become a detective for Sean MacGregor’s Chicago-based outfit.

  “Would you like me to tell the Reverend Ulysses anything?” she asked.

  That was one of the codes. In the eyes of Sean MacGregor, and probably even MacGregor’s son, Dan, and certainly Aaron Holderman, Christina Whitney was a minor player in this spy business, but Fallon would never rate her that way. She held the affidavit signed by Texas Attorney General Malcolm Maxwell. If Fallon said he wanted to see the Reverend Ulysses or get word to the preacher, Christina would produce the affidavit and get Fallon the hell out of Huntsville before it was too late.

  “No,” Fallon said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You pray for me, honey.”

  It felt strange. Fallon was no actor. He could count on one hand the times he had been inside an opera house to watch some stage production. Christina Whitney? She was good at it. They had spent months together in Chicago, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas, she trying to teach him how to be a thespian because his life could depend on it. Fallon had offered to teach her how to shoot, but he soon learned that she was more than fair with a rifle, revolver, and even a shotgun. The woman could take care of herself.

  The best thing of all: not one thing about her reminded him of Renee.

  He even liked her, which he could not say about most members of the American Detective Agency.

  Fallon touched his bandaged nose. “I met a man my first day here,” he told her. “Josh Ryker.”

  “Did he do that to you?” Christina asked.

  “He tried to, but the nose is courtesy of a guard. I ought to thank him.”

  She shook her head and sighed.

  “Don’t worry about Ryker,” he told her. “They put me in solitary for seventeen days after my brawl. Prison rules, you see. And I guess they transferred Ryker to another prison.” He laughed without humor. “To protect me, maybe.”

  “I see.”

  “I wish they hadn’t done that. I could make things hard on Ryker.”

  Meaning: that might make things m
ore difficult for me.

  “Yes.” She agreed. So she had nothing to do with the transfer of Josh Ryker to Rusk.

  “But it’s spilt milk now.”

  Meaning: Don’t correct that mistake. That would just complicate more things if Ryker suddenly got sent back to The Walls.

  “I met another man here,” he told her. “John Wesley Hardin.”

  She sat up.

  He smiled. “So you’ve heard of him, too.”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “That’s a fact. What do you know about him?”

  Her head shook. “What every Christian knows. That he’s a notorious killer. Should have hanged. He was a rough sort, but I’ve heard that he has lately been studying for the bar. Can you believe that? He wants to become a lawyer.”

  Now Fallon wished he knew how a man like Booth or a woman like Lillie Langtry did that acting thing. Because he thought again of Renee, and Rachel, and him studying for the bar in Arkansas. He thought of the life that might have been.

  Christina reached out for his hand, but stopped when one of the guards pounded the wall with his billy club.

  The hand withdrew, and she kept on talking. “John Wesley Hardin’s an unreconstructed rebel.”

  She said it loud enough that the guards didn’t have to strain their ears.

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Fallon said. “I’ve been called one, too. And I’ve never denied it.”

  “That’s why you’re here,” she snapped. “We could still be back home. Or in Louisiana, maybe Alabama. Everyone said you knew sugarcane and cotton better than anyone in the county. You were good at anything once you set your mind to it.”

  “That’s enough.” He tried to sound angry at her, tried to remember how he had acted when Renee had made him angry. “I . . .”

  This was all for the benefit of the guards. “Do you know how hard it is for me to be outside, and all my friends, all the neighbors, everyone knows that you’re in prison? For life.”

  “You’re supposed to be working with that lawyer. You know I don’t deserve a life sentence.”

  They had gone over that exchange countless times in Chicago and the hideaway shack in Childress, Texas—too far for anyone with connections to The Walls to learn about. Fallon thought he sounded halfway convincing.

  “I am working on it.”

  Their shoulders sagged simultaneously.

  “I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time.

  “I know it’s stressful,” he told her.

  “I know it’s hard on you, too.”

  “Maybe I’ll get out of here.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Time’s up,” one of the guards said, but Fallon didn’t believe fifteen minutes had passed.

  “Anything else?” Christina stood.

  “Yeah. I’m supping tonight with Hardin.”

  She looked shocked, and that probably wasn’t an act.

  “Be careful,” she told him.

  “He should be careful around me,” he said.

  He backed away from the chair and table and was heading for the door. A redheaded guard walked past him to Christina, and as Fallon reached the wall, he heard the brute say, “I gotta search ya, sweetie.”

  Fallon spun, but the other guard clamped both massive clawlike hands on his shoulders and pulled him into an embrace.

  “Most wives that come into this place don’t look nothin’ like your sweetie pie,” the guard holding Fallon whispered.

  “Don’t touch me,” Christina said, and her voice trembled. “Please,” she begged.

  The redhead reached for her blouse.

  Then he was doubled over, vomiting, clutching his groin with both hands, sinking to the floor as Christina walked past him.

  The man holding Fallon laughed heartily.

  “You got spunk, missy,” he told her as she slipped through the open door. Fallon heard her banging on the other door, which slid open, and closed as Christina Whitney walked away.

  The guard shoved Fallon toward the table, which Fallon had to catch to keep from falling.

  “When Warren’s done pukin’ his guts out and makin’ sure ain’t none of his valuables is ruptured beyond repair,” the foul-breathed guard said, “clean up his mess. Then find Blackbeard the Pirate and have him get you to the mill. Time you earned your keep, Mr. Harry Alexander.”

  The guard laughed. The other one groaned.

  * * *

  “How long were you in the sweatbox?” Hardin asked.

  Fallon stared at his supper: biscuits, broiled beef, soup, dried apples sweetened with molasses. He sat at a table alone with John Wesley Hardin. The other inmates sat eight to a table, eating rancid bacon and corn bread that was stale two days back.

  Fallon looked up, chewing on his apples. He glanced at the guards.

  “You can talk at my table,” Hardin said. “I’m John Wesley Hardin.” The killer laughed and turned to the nearest guard. “Isn’t that right, Johnson?”

  The guard glared, but said nothing.

  Fallon knew the prison rules. You did not talk in the dining room. There were signals with utensils or hands that meant more coffee, another piece of bread, a second helping of vegetables—whenever they actually served vegetables—but Hardin got special treatment.

  “I asked you a question, Alexander,” the killer said.

  Fallon swallowed. “Seventeen days.”

  “Drexel’s doing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t sir me, Alexander. I ain’t boss, I ain’t sir, I’m Wes.”

  “All right,” Fallon said.

  “Seventeen days.” Hardin’s head shook and he sipped coffee out of his tin cup. His coffee had been sweetened from a pitcher of goat’s milk. Every other prisoner drank their coffee black, and their coffee was lukewarm at best, usually cold. Hardin’s steamed.

  “Seventeen days?” Hardin asked again. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Fallon answered, and added, “Wes.”

  That made the gunman smile.

  “A man can go out of sorts when he’s in the sweatbox. Loses track of time. Five days might feel like seventeen.”

  “I counted the slices of bread,” Fallon said. “Seventeen. I counted them more than once.”

  “Not your first time in stir,” Hardin said after he whistled his admiration at Fallon’s answer, and toughness.

  Fallon shrugged. “First time in Texas,” he said softly. “Under this name.”

  Again, Wes Hardin grinned. He turned again, looked up at the guard, and said, “Johnson, do you know the maximum number of days a prisoner can be confined in a dark cell?”

  The guard glared, but did not answer.

  “Seven days, Johnson.” Hardin sipped his coffee and set the cup on a napkin. “Not seventeen. No more than seven days, at one time.” He glanced at Fallon. “They didn’t let you out, say, break things up, give you one day to clean up, then put you back in the box?”

  “They opened the lid to see if I were still alive. Sometimes they gave me a new slop bucket. They refilled the pitcher, until they conveniently forgot about me for three days. And they tossed in a slice of bread that was harder than the iron door.”

  “Well, Harry Alexander. That’ll come in handy for us.”

  “Us?”

  Hardin raised his right hand toward the guard named Johnson. The cold-blooded killer snapped his finger, and Johnson, that hard frown turning into a hate-filled grimace, stepped forward as Hardin lifted his coffee cup. The guard produced a flask, twisted the pewter cap off, and splashed a finger or two of amber liquid into the coffee. Hardin nodded, and the guard moved toward Fallon’s coffee, but Fallon covered his cup with his left hand. “No thanks,” he told Johnson.

  Johnson moved back, made sure no one was looking, and took a fast swallow of whiskey before tightening the lid and slipping the flask back into the rear pocket of his pants.

  “No liquor?” Hardin asked.

  “You don’t want to see me dru
nk.”

  “I’m not sure I trust someone who doesn’t drink,” Hardin said.

  “Then I’m likely the only person in The Walls you don’t trust.”

  Hardin laughed, drank some more of his sweetened coffee, and leaned back.

  “Do you have an attorney?” he asked.

  “My wife found one,” he said.

  That caused Hardin’s eyes to close. The laughter left his face. The hands came back to the table, now balled into fists.

  “You got a wife?” Hardin asked.

  Fallon nodded.

  “Pretty, too,” Johnson said. “And heller with her knees. Ask Perkinson.”

  Hardin’s face did not relax. “Shut up,” he told Johnson. He looked coldly now at Fallon. “I had a wife, too.” Bitterness filled his cold eyes. “She died.” The killer’s head shook. “Jane. That was my wife’s name.”

  Mine was named Renee, Fallon thought.

  “Went to her Maker a year ago November.”

  There might have been a kinship, but Fallon wasn’t going to let a murderer like Hardin know about Renee. Still, he knew how Hardin must have felt. To hear that your wife had died, that you could not go to her funeral, because you were behind bars.

  “She was a fine Christian woman,” Hardin said.

  So was Renee, Fallon thought.

  “Consumption killed her.”

  At least she wasn’t murdered, along with her daughter.

  Hardin lifted the tin cup, drank more whiskey-flavored coffee, and sighed. “I’m going to do some checking on you first, Alexander. I’ll let you know if I decide to take your case. If I do, there’s a good chance I can get that sentence reduced. How would twenty years sound to you? Rather than life?”

  “Ten would be better,” Fallon said, adding, “Wes,” with a smile.

  Hardin laughed again, putting the memory of his dead wife behind him. He drank more coffee and wiped his lips with a napkin. “I’m sure it would.”