Robert B. Parker's Blackjack

by Robert Knott

  60.

  It was a full moon out as I climbed the stairs to my room above the survey office. It was hot and the two windows to my small room were open, but there was little breeze.

  I took off my clothes and lay back on the bed. I thought about the last few days and how it was all coming together. About the Denver contingent, as Valentine referred to them. I thought about Black and how adamant he was, how demanding he was about the fact he was not the killer.

  How Juniper was upset that he did not have a chance to fully cross-examine LaCroix. Juniper pleaded with the judge, but his request was denied. I agreed with Juniper’s appeal, but it would be hard to fulfill his demand, given the fact that LaCroix’s jaw was broken and he was not able to even open his mouth to speak.

  Juniper appealed with the judge, insisting, saying LaCroix could respond with written word, but the judge would hear no more, not after Black’s outburst, and Black was headed for the gallows.

  I kept wondering about all of it, the trial, about the Denver men, about Roger and Ruth Ann Messenger and Boston Bill Black, about Daphne actually being engaged to Black in the past, and I thought about the painter, Lawrence LaCroix, and what he testified he saw that day.

  I sat up, wondered if sleep was going to happen. At half midnight I got tired of lying there so I got up. I put on my trousers, poured a whiskey, then opened the door and stepped out on the balcony. From somewhere in the evening I heard some music from one of the saloons on 5th Street. Then I looked down at the bottom of the steps and saw a figure in the dark.

  “Everett?” she said. “It’s me . . .”

  “Daphne?”

  “Yes. May I come up?”

  “Sure.”

  I thought for a moment how she found me, then I remembered we walked by and I pointed the place out to her the night we were out on our walk. When she got to the top of the steps she practically fell into my arms.

  “Oh, Everett.”

  “Come in.”

  I closed the door behind her and she reached up and pulled my head down and kissed me.

  She kissed me hard. Then she kissed me on my cheeks and neck as if she were starving. I was without my shirt and she kissed my chest over and over, then looked up to me.

  “I was sorry not to take you in when you came,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” I said.

  “For the most part,” she said, “I have been consoling Mr. Pritchard.”

  “I understand.”

  “Oh my God, Everett,” she said.

  “I know this is difficult,” I said.

  “What is so alarming for us is to learn that he . . . he . . . actually did this,” she said. “That he in fact actually murdered that woman, that he is a murderer.”

  “I know.”

  “Is there anything we can do for him?” she said.

  “Not that I can see,” I said. “No.”

  She shook her head and turned away from me.

  “It’s like . . . like this is just a bad dream,” she said. “But it is not, it’s just a living nightmare.”

  She turned back to me.

  “Do you have anything to drink?” she said. “Any alcohol, whiskey or something?”

  “I do.”

  “Please, thank you,” she said. “I have been nothing but a ball of nerves.”

  I poured her some whiskey and she drank it down in one gulp. She held out her glass and I poured her another one.

  “Easy,” I said.

  She sipped the whiskey a little, then looked to my bed.

  “May I sit, please?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I removed my shirt from the bed and she sat. She looked down at the glass clutched in her hand, then she drank the whiskey as if she were trying to kill something inside.

  I started to put on my shirt, but she reached out and stopped me.

  “No,” she said. “Please . . .”

  She removed the shirt from my grip, tossed it on the floor, and pulled me close to her. She kissed my stomach gently, from one side to the other. Then she looked up to me and undid the buttons on my trousers.

  61.

  I rode Ajax by the Gallows Door Cantina and Eloise stepped out from the shadows of the three-sided lean-to and waved to me as I passed. I continued on toward the gallows where the crowd was gathered to watch the hanging of Boston Bill Black. I did not see Virgil, Valentine, or Allie, or Chastain or Book, but the Denver contingent was there: Detective Lieutenant Banes, Detective Sergeant King, Captain McPherson, District Attorney Payne, and Roger Messenger’s father, Chief Brady. They were all present, expectant, and waiting.

  Everyone watched me as I rode up, dismounted, tied off Ajax, and climbed the gallows steps. The executioner was atop the structure, wearing a black hood along with two local ministers. Both I recognized, but I didn’t know either one’s name. We all said our how-do-you-dos and I stepped up to the noose and gave it a tug. I looked up to the rope draped over the gallows’ top beam and turned to the executioner.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said.

  The executioner nodded his head slowly, walked over to me, and put the noose around my neck. I looked into his eyes; all I could see were his eyes. He slipped the noose around my neck, then walked to the lever and pulled it. But it did not work. He kept working the lever back and forth, then . . . the rhythm of the lever was replaced by a knock on my door . . . followed by . . .

  “Everett?”

  I sat up in my bed . . .

  “Everett?”

  I looked around and could tell by the light it was the earliest part of daybreak. Daphne was sound asleep under my arm, and I eased myself out of the bed so as not to wake her and opened the door.

  It was Deputy Book. He saw Daphne behind me in the bed and kind of lowered his head and took a step back.

  “Sorry,” he said with a whisper.

  “Give me a sec,” I said.

  I put on my trousers, then stepped out the door.

  “What is it?” I said, closing the door behind me.

  “Bill Black,” he said. “He escaped and took Truitt Shirley with him.”

  “Are you . . . what?”

  “They are out, Everett,” Book said.

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “No,” Book said.

  “How the hell did this happen?” I said.

  “Looks like Black pried the bars from the window,” Book said.

  “What?”

  Book nodded sharply.

  “The strong sonofabitch pulled up the iron railings of his bunk that were bolted to the floor.”

  “You sure he didn’t have help?” I said.

  “Don’t know for a fact, but it does not seem like it, Everett,” Book said. “You just have to see for yourself.”

  “I’ll be goddamn.”

  “I know,” Book said. “I could not believe it. Just up and gone like that.”

  “Chastain and Virgil know?” I said.

  “I came to get you first,” Book said.

  “When was this?”

  “Well, I just this minute found out, so I’m not sure, no idea, really,” Book said. “When I got in they were gone.”

  “How the hell did Truitt get out?”

  “Looks like the bars were bent out on the backside of Truitt’s, Black helping him, after he was free . . . Did the same thing but from the backside. Both are gone.”

  “What about the damn night watch?” I said. “Can’t tell me they didn’t hear anything.”

  Book shook his head.

  “They did not hear a damn thing. We even had four guards on last night,” Book said. “Two outside on the porch just in case of any shenanigans, someone trying to break Bill out, and two deputies inside. With the thickness of the door separating the office from the
cells, they . . . well, apparently, they did not hear anything.”

  “Apparently,” I said.

  “Secure the outsides of this town. Get a man on each trail and road out of town, tell them to stay out of sight and to only try and stop them if they know for certain they can get the drop on them. Last thing we need is to lose one or some more of ours.”

  “What about Marshal Cole and Sheriff Chastain?”

  “Send someone to get Chastain, I’ll get Virgil, but get the deputies out now . . . right now, and get Virgil’s horse and my horse saddled and ready. Get supplies, too, in case we are on the chase again, just need to be prepared.”

  Book nodded and turned to go.

  “And Book,” I said stopping him to look back at me, “just make sure nobody is on their heels.”

  “You got it,” Book said, then descended the stairs.

  I stepped back in the room and Daphne was still sound asleep. She looked like her namesake, an angel.

  I sat on the bed next to her.

  “Daphne,” I said. “Daphne?”

  I put a hand to each side of her shoulders.

  “Daphne.”

  Her eyes snapped open, wide, full of fear. She reached up with both hands around my neck and choked me, staring at me in terror, as if she had no clue who I was.

  62.

  Daphne.”

  I pulled her hands from my neck, but she remained tense and continued to fight with me.

  “Daphne,” I said, struggling with her tense arms. “Daphne, it’s okay, it’s me.”

  She stared at me for a moment, then slowly relaxed, letting go. The fearful expression on her face slowly softened when she realized she was not in danger.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s me, Everett. You’re just having a bad dream.”

  She remained staring at me then she softened some more and recessed back into the bed.

  “Everett . . .”

  “I’m here,” I said.

  She looked around and shook her head a little.

  “My gosh,” she said. “I’m sorry . . .”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You were obviously having a nightmare.”

  She nodded.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh my God . . . Ugh . . . someone was after me, I don’t know who . . . It was Bill, I think. I was being chased through the woods . . . and . . . I don’t, can’t remember everything, but . . . so awful . . . I was running, but I could not move quickly, you know, and I could not get away, then I was caught, he caught me, Bill caught me, and then you woke me up, thank God.”

  “I was right there with you,” I said. “I woke in a bit of a fret myself.”

  She held her head.

  “I drank your whiskey,” she said. “I . . . I’m afraid I am not much of a drinker.”

  “Probably need some water?”

  She sat up some and nodded, and I poured her a glass of water.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Your dream,” I said, “was not without some kind of foreshadowing, it seems.”

  “How so, Everett?”

  I put on my shirt and buttoned it as she waited for me to answer her.

  “It’s Bill Black,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “He escaped last night.”

  She blinked at me a few times.

  “What?”

  I nodded.

  “My God,” she said, sitting up with a shocked look on her face. “What? How on earth . . . my God.”

  I sat in the corner chair and slipped on my boots.

  “He’s out and on the loose,” I said. “Got out with Truitt Shirley.”

  “The man he was on the run with before?”

  “Yep.”

  “My gosh. I just can’t believe it.”

  “It happened,” I said.

  “How do you— How did you find out?”

  “Deputy was by here just now.”

  “My God . . . what now?”

  “Catch him.”

  Daphne’s eyes were wide.

  “I . . . what should I do?”

  “You?” I said. “You don’t do anything.”

  “But . . . I . . . I’m frightened.”

  “Nothing for you to be frightened about.”

  “But . . . I am, I . . .”

  Her eyes darted around the room, as if she was thinking intently about something or imagining how he might get in or where she might hide.

  “You need not be,” I said.

  She looked down and stared at the floor, shaking her head.

  “This is not good,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

  “It all seems so cruel,” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself.

  “Murder is cruel,” I said.

  She pulled her knees up to her chest and looked at me as I continued to dress.

  “How did he escape?”

  “Not real sure,” I said.

  “My God . . .” she said.

  “We have some kind of idea . . . but the fact is, however he got out, whenever he got out, he’s out.”

  She gathered the sheet and sat to the edge of the bed holding the fabric in front of her nakedness.

  “Everett . . . I’m . . .”

  “What?”

  “Just scared is all.”

  “Why should you be scared?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “This has nothing to do with you, Daphne,” I said. “He’s out and he’s running.”

  She stared at the floor long and hard, then looked up to me. Her eyes were wet.

  “You must be careful,” she said.

  She looked like a spooked child holding the sheet in front of her.

  “You don’t need to worry about anything.”

  “But I do . . .”

  “Don’t. Besides, I always am careful,” I said. “Part of my job description.”

  Like every morning, out of habit and correctness, I checked the cylinder of my Colt, then put it back in my holster and strapped the belt around my hip.

  “You saw what he did to that man that witnessed him murdering that poor woman,” she said. “He almost killed him right before our eyes.”

  “I did.”

  “He’s an animal,” she said.

  “This is what I do, Daphne,” I said. “What I have to do. It’s my job to enforce the law. And it is against the law for a criminal to break out of jail where they have been incarcerated for a crime they have been charged and convicted of.”

  “But he’s different, Everett,” she said. “Very different.”

  “I thought you and Pritchard were on his side. Thought he was an innocent man?”

  “We were . . . until this witness came forward and described what he did. Now my insecurities about what I thought might be real, could be real, are very real . . . I am scared to know the man I was once engaged to be married to is a cold-blooded vicious murderer. How could I have been so blind?”

  “Not about being blind,” I said. “People have good in them and people have bad in them, and in some people the bad . . . takes over and wins out.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I do,” I said.

  I tied my bandanna around my neck, then picked up my eight-gauge.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I’m just so fearful.”

  “No reason to be sorry,” I said. “But there is nothing for you to be concerned with, just go back and stay put in your room.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to go back there, not right now.”

  “Stay here, then.”

  “I . . . I don’t want to be alone,” she said
. “He’s a dangerous man.”

  I broke open the double barrel, confirmed there was a shell in each cylinder as I left them, then snapped it shut.

  “So am I,” I said.

  She got to her feet and let the sheet fall to the floor and stood naked in front of me. Then she moved to me and put her arms around my neck and kissed me.

  “I like that,” she said.

  63.

  When I knocked on the door Virgil was already up and dressed. He answered the door in his stocking feet and holding a cup of coffee as he looked back and forth between Daphne and me.

  “Bill Black is on the loose,” I said. “Truitt, too.”

  Virgil reacted almost as if he had expected the news, but Allie came up behind him, throwing open the door wider, with a shocked look on her face.

  “What?” she said. “Are you serious?”

  “I am, Allie,” I said.

  “Be right with you, Everett,” Virgil said, then drifted back into the house, leaving Allie standing in her sleeping gown with a look of complete disbelief on her face.

  “Be all right for Daphne to stay here with you, Allie, until we get this settled, until she feels safe.”

  “Why, of course,” Allie said.

  “I’m so sorry, Allie,” Daphne said. “I hope this is not an inconvenience.”

  “My God, are you serious? Come in this house this instant,” Allie said as she practically jerked Daphne over the threshold. “Of course it’s no inconvenience. What kind of silly comment is that? You poor, poor dear.”

  When I followed Allie and Daphne into the house, Virgil was coming back up the hall, carrying his gun belt and boots.

  I quickly explained to Virgil all I knew about the escape, which prompted Allie to expound.

  “This is just awful,” she said. “How could Sheriff Chastain and his deputies let something like this happen?”

  “They did nothing,” Virgil said.

  “Letting the killers go is not nothing.”

  “They got out, Allie, they escaped, you heard Everett,” Virgil said as he sat on the piano bench and put on one of his boots. “They were not let out.”

  “It’s lackadaisical and unprofessional, to say the least.”

  “Before you go accusing the sheriff’s department, Allie,” Virgil said as he pulled on his second boot, “why not let us sort this out and do our job.”