Dead Time

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  He pointed the LeMat’s barrel toward the northwest—at the exact moment explosions and flashes of light erupted from that direction.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  When Fallon and Christina reached dry land, the sounds of battle intensified. General Justice stood several yards ahead, where the pebbly sand ended and brush and grass began. Distance muffled the pops of pistols and rifles and the faint calls from bugles as Justice yelled out:

  “What is the meaning of this? I gave no order to attack. I have not sounded a retreat.”

  Feet splashed in the bay, and Fallon looked back. One of the lifeboats had reached the Texas shore, and men were running down the beach, away from General Justice. Two . . . no, three . . . other boats were making their way, but two pointed farther toward the east, farther from the raving lunatic who had thought he could start and win another Civil War. The third was steering off to the southwest, also moving as far away from General Josiah Jonathan Justice as feasible.

  The flames from the ship were almost out. Then they were. And the Gulf of Mexico took the C.S.S. Justice to the bottom.

  Fallon knelt beside Christina Whitney, who sat staring at the sea.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  Her head nodded ever so slightly.

  General Josiah Jonathan Justice marched back and forth, one hand holding the LeMat, the other scratching his head. His hat had blown across the beach. He muttered and mumbled as he walked, little that Fallon could understand, little that made any sense. Waves broke and splashed gently on the shore, and the moon rose higher, brighter now. The gunfire to the northwest and the sounds of bugles, of shouts, slowly died.

  Fallon felt Christina Whitney standing beside him.

  “I guess,” she whispered, “Dan found the camp.”

  “Indianola?” Fallon asked.

  She shrugged. “I’ve never been there, but it makes sense. It has to be.”

  So the American Detective Agency had managed to foil General Justice and his treason. Sean MacGregor would be proud of his son. No, that wasn’t right. Sean MacGregor would be happy that he had finally topped the Pinkertons. Sean MacGregor would take credit for everything and might not even mention Dan MacGregor—and certainly not Christina Whitney or Harry Fallon—to all the newspaper reporters.

  “What’s he doing?” Christina nodded at Justice.

  “I don’t know. I doubt if he does.”

  “Do we stop him?”

  “Let him walk,” Fallon said, shaking his head. “He’s not going anywhere. But he still has that big grapeshot revolver. And we don’t have any guns.”

  So they settled on the beach, listened to the waves, watched the stars, and kept their eyes on General Josiah Jonathan Justice as he marched back and forth, back and forth, until finally dawn broke, and Justice sat in the sand, buried his head in his hands, and sobbed like a child.

  Justice stopped and made a beeline for the water. Fallon nudged Christina awake. They had been sitting, backs against a mound of sand. Fallon likely had fallen asleep, too, but he was wide awake as the insane fiend moved past them, didn’t even notice them. Briefly, Fallon thought Justice planned to walk into the Gulf and start swimming, planning to drown himself after his far-fetched dreams of a new Confederacy had been destroyed.

  Now he knew that wasn’t the General’s intention—yet.

  “On your feet, lads!” Justice snapped as waves, now gentle, splashed across his boots and trousers. “The war is not lost. I dare say that we have it won. On your feet. We march. We march in fifteen minutes. We march to VICTORY !”

  “My . . . God . . .” Christina whispered.

  “Trooper, find my horse. You will follow me. Hurrah, boys! Hurrah for Dixie! Hurrah for the Confederacy! Down with Yankee tyranny!”

  He kept addressing soldiers . . . and the sight sickened both Fallon and Christina. The soldiers, the remnants of Justice’s New Confederate Army for Justice, would not be following the General anywhere. The Gulf of Mexico had washed them from the sunken C.S.S. Justice to the shores near what once had been a thriving port town called Indianola.

  Fallon could tell that at least one of the bodies had been ravaged by sharks. Only his upper torso had made it to the beach, yet Justice saluted him, and said, “Lieutenant. Find your sergeant, mister, and have your company fall in.”

  Whirling, he spun around, came out of the water, and had taken about a dozen steps on the rough sand when the gunshot roared just behind Fallon and to his right. Justice twisted, and he tried to raise the LeMat when another bullet slammed into his abdomen and sent him flying back in the sand.

  Fallon spun at the first shot, saw the smoke and flame spit from the barrel of a Colt, and he took a quick step, then stopped. The Colt was aimed at him now, the hammer had been eared back, and the finger was on the trigger.

  Chris Ehrlander grinned. “Hank,” he said. “Christina. Good to see you.”

  Fallon said nothing, but Christina said questioningly, “Chris?”

  “Don’t take another step, sweetheart,” Ehrlander said. He looked back at Fallon and shook his head. “You’re a tough man to kill, Hank.”

  Only my friends call me Hank.

  “I’m still alive,” Fallon said.

  “For a moment.”

  Fallon’s head bobbed. “You never told Dan, Christina, or anyone else that Barney Drexel rode with Parker’s court at the same time I did.” It all made sense now. “You figured he’d recognize me.”

  “My mistake. I forgot just how stupid and blind Barney was.”

  Fallon felt that rage returning. He had it figured out, but Christina had convinced him that he was wrong. Not that Fallon could blame her. Hell, Fallon hadn’t seen it back when he should have—before he even set foot in Joliet. Now he could picture how the attorney looked at Fallon’s wife. It was Chris Ehrlander who had set Fallon up, maybe with Drexel’s help, but probably not. It didn’t matter. Ehrlander figured with Fallon locked up in prison, Renee would eventually fall for a moneymaking, handsome solicitor. And when he realized that she’d never let Fallon go...

  The hands turned into fists. Chris Ehrlander wasn’t stupid enough to talk too much. The soldiers, Rangers, detectives who had wiped out Justice’s Texas base camp would be coming soon, to investigate those shots. Fallon and Christina should be dead now, but Ehrlander hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  “The money,” the crooked lawyer said.

  “Money?” Fallon asked.

  “Don’t stall, Hank. You know what I mean. Two hundred thousand dollars being transported in the Houston-Victoria-Laredo train. You were in the express car, and since Drexel’s remains were found stretched out for about a mile along the tracks, he didn’t get it. Neither did Ryker. Or that asshole Hansen. That leaves you.”

  “Or Holderman,” Fallon said.

  Those eyes revealed doubt now. If Holderman had taken part in the raid on the Indianola camp, Ehrlander would have known Fallon was lying. The look told Fallon that Aaron Holderman wasn’t around.

  “You’re lying,” Ehrlander said, and trained the Colt’s long barrel on Christina’s chest. “Tell me. Or she dies.”

  “You tell me,” Fallon said. “How and why you had my wife killed. My child. And how you set everything up with Sean MacGregor.”

  Ehrlander shook his head. “I don’t have time,” he said.

  He was right. He just didn’t know it. The shot rang out, and Chris Ehrlander spun around, discharging the Colt that spit up sand against his legs as he dropped to his knees, clutching his stomach, trying to straighten, and then falling to his back.

  Fallon swung around, looked down the beach to see General Josiah Jonathan Justice sitting up, legs spread out in front of him, holding the smoking LeMat with both hands. The big pistol fell between his legs, and he tried to rise, but fell back. Blood trickled from his mouth, and his eyes found Christina Whitney.

  “Sic semper tyrannis! ” Justice shouted. “The South is avenged.” He toppled back onto the beach
, dead.

  A moment later, Christina Whitney and Harry Fallon knelt beside Chris Ehrlander. His face was already pale, and his eyes began glassing over. He wouldn’t be telling Fallon anything now, so Fallon spoke to him.

  “I might not know everything right, but here’s what I think. You contacted Sean MacGregor as soon as you heard I was being paroled,” Fallon said. Christina looked away from the dying lawyer and murderer and locked her pretty eyes on Fallon. “Because you knew I’d come looking, and eventually, I’d come to see you. I don’t think you’d be stupid enough to tell MacGregor that you were a woman-and-child murderer. He—or his detectives—might have figured that out. Anyway, they sent me to Yuma. You figured I’d get killed there. But I didn’t.

  “But then I wound up in Jefferson City. And I met The Mole. The Mole killed Rachel and Renee. And that makes sense, too. You arranged for those hired assassins to kill my family—because you knew you could never have Renee for your own. The chances of me coming out of that operation weren’t good, either, but I fooled you and Sean MacGregor.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “I think Sean MacGregor had more faith in me than you did. Or even I did. I should’ve given him more credit. But by then the Texas attorney general had approached MacGregor’s company, and this was a case too big. You worked with MacGregor, still hoping I’d get killed. But Drexel didn’t recognize me. Ryker got transferred to Rusk. What I can’t figure out is why you just didn’t tell Justice that I was an operative for a Chicago detective agency.”

  “How would he have known that?” Christina said. “That would have aroused Justice’s suspicion of him.” She nodded at the dying man. “He wanted the money. He wanted you dead, Hank. But the money would get him out of the country. Away from a hangman’s rope.”

  “Right. The money. That’s why he told you where to find us in Mexico. He might get you killed, but he had to have Justice’s army destroyed somehow.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Hank. He had me fooled.”

  “No,” Fallon said. “He was just too close. To you. To me. I should’ve seen him for what he was, a skunk, all those years ago.”

  Dan MacGregor and others began coming out of the brush. MacGregor and a cavalry officer barked orders, and several men moved toward the body of Justice and the drowned and mutilated corpses on the beach.

  Ehrlander tried to say something, but began choking, spitting out blood, and fear registered in his eyes. Fallon stood and pulled Christina to her feet.

  “Come on,” he told her, and led her away, toward Dan MacGregor, letting Chris Ehrlander choke to death on his own blood.

  Dan MacGregor was walking toward them. A bullet had grazed the left side of his head, which had been wrapped with a strip of cotton, now bloodstained. He looked completely exhausted. “Ehrlander?”

  “Dying,” Fallon said. “Probably dead by now.”

  “You?” MacGregor asked, staring hard at Fallon.

  Christina shook her head. “Justice.”

  The detective looked back at the General’s body, then sighed and faced Fallon and Christina again. “What happened to the guns?”

  Fallon nodded at the Gulf. “Blown to pieces and sunk.”

  MacGregor sighed.

  “Rufus Conley?” Fallon asked.

  “As dead as Indianola,” MacGregor said. “Along with, by our first count, thirty-two others, fifteen arrested, most of those wounded. The rest running for Mexico. We lost five dead, ten wounded.”

  “What the hell happened? The ship? Justice? Ehrlander? What . . . ?”

  Fallon raised his hand to stop the detective. He had a question of his own.

  “Have you seen Aaron Holderman?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Walter Wilkinson, superintendent at The Walls, stepped back in total shock when Harry Fallon came through the double doors and into the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. His jaw dropped agape and he looked for his guards to come to his protection. Dan MacGregor, Christina Whitney, and two Texas Rangers followed him.

  Fallon walked by the petrified man, tipped his hat, said, “Good afternoon, Warden,” and walked toward the prison infirmary.

  He found Dr. Abel Crouch sitting in his office, staring at a framed photograph. He looked up at Fallon and smiled.

  “Mr. Fallon,” he said. Not Alexander. Fallon.

  “Doc.”

  “Solve your case, Detective?”

  Fallon shrugged. “Juanito Gomez solved it for me.”

  The old man’s head bobbed. He went back to studying the photograph.

  “We had the warden pegged,” Fallon said.

  “Superintendent,” Doc Crouch corrected.

  “The warden had managed the operation in Jefferson City. We just went with the theory that Wilkinson would’ve been in charge here, too.” Fallon sighed. “But you had to sign the death certificates. Hansen’s. And Gomez’s. You also had to sign off on any inmate to be sent to a work camp. And Christina Whitney did some checking. Years ago, you were the doctor at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Under another name, of course.”

  “Gene Wadsworth,” Doc Crouch said. “My mother’s maiden name. Only it was Eugena.”

  “Which made it easier to identify you.”

  “My purpose all along, Fallon.” The doctor looked up again, grinned, and let his gaze fall again to the picture he caressed.

  “So when you came here,” Fallon said, “you just scrapped the murder-for-hire scheme used in Missouri and saw the chance to start the Civil War again with Justice.”

  “For which I was to be well paid.”

  “It didn’t work out.”

  Crouch shrugged. “It didn’t work out for me in the Second Mississippi, either. More than thirty years ago.”

  “Will you walk down these steps with me, Doc?” Fallon asked. “I left some Texas Rangers by the gate.”

  Youth shone in the old man’s eyes. He nodded appreciatively at Fallon, pushed himself from his chair, and handed the photograph to Fallon. “Do you recognize him, Mr. Fallon?”

  Fallon looked at the photograph of an Indian, a fairly big Indian, wearing the striped uniform of an inmate in The Walls. Fallon shook his head.

  “His name was Satanta. A Kiowa chief. Convicted, if you can believe this, of murder—murder committed against teamsters in a raid up in the northwestern counties of the Lone Star State. Probably before you were born. He was up here, on this floor, when he was told that he would never get out of prison alive. Unlike Juanito Gomez, Cole Hansen, and a few others, he is actually buried on Peckerwood Hill. After dying a death befitting a warrior.”

  With that, the old man ran. Fallon reached for him, missed, turned, and watched Dr. Able Crouch, alias Dr. Gene Wadsworth, dive through the window.

  Fallon moved slowly, pulled out a curtain from the broken edges of glass, and stared down as the blood pooled around the dead man’s body. Guards and a few inmates had rushed to the old man. A few looked up. One of the guards said, “He must’ve pushed ol’ Doc. Murdered him!”

  But an inmate said, “Don’t be a blasted fool, George. The old reprobate killed himself. Like ol’ Satanta!” The inmate, John Wesley Hardin, raised his head. “You want me?” he called up.

  Fallon shook his head. There had been too many deaths already. Hell, maybe Hardin would get paroled. Texas could use a good lawyer.

  After offering a lame salute, Hardin turned, plucked a cigarette from one of the guards’ fingers, and moved toward his wall, where court was about to be called to order.

  * * *

  On the top floor of the flatiron building in Chicago, Illinois, the little man in the extremely large—and very brown—office opened a drawer, withdrew a sheet of paper, and slid it across the desk.

  Fallon leaned forward and looked at it.

  “I didn’t realize that you had the power to grant full pardons,” Fallon said, sliding the sheet back toward Sean MacGregor.

  “It will be signed,” the old Scot said. “You’ve done a go
od job for me, and a fine service to your country.”

  The ringleaders in Texas were all dead or out of the country. A prison board member, with strong connections to the governor, had killed himself. A parole board member had bought a ticket on a steamer for some country Fallon had never heard of.

  “I did three jobs for you,” Fallon corrected.

  “I will see that you are well paid.”

  Fallon laughed. “With what?”

  “I can afford to be generous, Fallon. The U.S. government will be paying me quite handsomely. We prevented a terrible war. We put a stop to traitors.”

  “Yeah.” Fallon stood.

  The little man glared. “You forget your place, Fallon. I got you out of Joliet.”

  “You damned near got me killed more times than I can count. You almost got Christina Whitney killed. You wouldn’t have cared had your own son died.” Fallon shook his head and walked toward the curtains. “I didn’t trust Dan for a while. He even went a little crazy in Missouri, but, hell, we all go a little crazy. Prisons do that to people. But Dan’s a good egg. He’ll do a nice job running the American Detective Agency while you’re in prison.”

  “Prison! Sir, I’ll—”

  Fallon jerked open the shades, and light—brilliant summer Chicago sunlight—bathed the office of Sean MacGregor for the first time in eons. Fallon saw dust motes filling the room like snow. The man screamed, turned, and shielded his eyes.

  The doors opened, and Aaron Holderman staggered inside, the chains around his wrists and ankles clattering on the office’s brown, ugly floor. Dan MacGregor followed. So did Christina Whitney. And several deputy U.S. marshals, a handful of Chicago newspapermen, and—at Fallon’s insistence, just for spite—three Pinkerton detectives.

  “Sean MacGregor,” one of the marshals said as he withdrew a writ from his coat pocket. “You are under arrest for the robbery of the Houston-Victoria-Laredo Railroad, for defrauding the United States government, for . . .”

  “Holderman!” The tiny man looked even smaller. “You damned fool.”

  “Boss . . .” the brute began, “they jumped me. I . . .”