Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I hear you, only I don’t understand any of this, I really don’t, ma’am.”

  “And tell him to send someone of intelligence to negotiate in good faith, not some operetta buffoon.”

  Tatum knew then that his usual delights would have to be augmented for this woman. She had insulted him openly, and would pay with a slower death than any he had heretofore orchestrated. The slowest death he had conducted at the behest of Mr. Jones had been a rancher in northern New Mexico who refused to join his spread to that belonging to his neighbor, presumably an associate of Mr. Jones. Tatum never concerned himself with the details of why a murder had to be committed, and often did not adhere to the sparse instructions given to him before such an undertaking. He had been encouraged of late to indulge his fancy for protracted death, especially in that region, by the convenient presence of Slade, the Colorado Cannibal. Tatum knew his torture of the rancher had been considered the work of that elusive man-beast, and had been glad of it, even if Mr. Jones was not fooled and had censured him for embellishing an otherwise straightforward murder.

  “Ma’am, I just don’t know what any of this means. You won’t hurt me, will you?”

  Zoe made a sound of frustration and disgust, another good sign. The party whose head was cool was the party who generally survived any kind of showdown, in Tatum’s experience. His own head felt as cool as it did when he snorted cocaine into his nasal passages. Tatum had given up liquor when he discovered the white dust; nothing compared to its glacial thundering in his veins. Cocaine took him to distant mountaintops, where he breathed the chill atmosphere of ultimate aloneness and satisfaction. He often snorted the dust, and obliged his partners to share the experience before making brutal love to them. Nothing so enhanced his self-aware performances as stud-bugger extraordinaire. The heavenly powder was both opiate and stimulant, and Tatum accorded it the reverence other men gave to money.

  Omie reappeared on the porch. “Everything, Mama? The big trunk too?”

  “No, leave that. Just the small bags. Hurry!”

  Omie went back inside the house. Tatum thought about how best to employ his alternative weapon. Zoe Dugan was still too far away.

  “I won’t be so easy to find next time. You tell him that.”

  “Tell who, ma’am?”

  “Don’t talk to me in that idiotic fashion! Talk like the man that you are!” Zoe took several breaths to calm herself. “Tell him he has disappointed me. I thought him above such practices. Tell him he has become a lesser man than the one I knew. The one I thought I knew. Can you remember that?”

  “I don’t know what to say, ma’am. I believe I’m too confused to remember anything.…”

  “Stop it!”

  He was stoking her agitation with professional aplomb. Another few degrees of anger and she would be incapable of good judgment and split-second reaction. Tatum was backing his prey into the corner Zoe had elected to occupy, a kind of slaughtering pen his intended victims always built around themselves without being aware that they did so. Tatum was fascinated by the responses of people to imminent danger; so very few of them actually believed they would come to harm. He could not understand why they made this assumption, but was glad their minds worked so contrarily, since it gave him the advantage every time. Tatum saw death everywhere, and was always prepared for it, day or night, like a creature of the jungle. Even as he killed them, his targets expressed disbelief in their eyes, and he scorned them for their naive weakness, their pathetic belief in physical immortality. They deserved to die solely on account of that, in his opinion.

  Time was passing. He had to turn around and kill the woman while her daughter with the dangerous eyes was inside. Tatum asked, “May I remove my hat and wig?” He used his male voice.

  “You may. I should like to see how you look.”

  Tatum lifted both arms and unpinned the hat from the wig, then dropped both behind him, knowing Zoe’s eyes would follow whatever moved. During her few seconds of distraction, he palmed the hatpin.

  “There,” he said. “I’ll have to turn if you want to see my face, ma’am.”

  “Then do so, very slowly.”

  Tatum shuffled himself around to face Zoe.

  “What is your name?”

  “David Mulrooney.”

  “Have you done this many times before?”

  “Never. I have considerable debt. Your husband offered me the work for ten thousand dollars. He didn’t say you were his wife. He said your name was Dugan. If I had known … He said you were blackmailing him, but gave me no details. He said you were … excuse me, ma’am, but he said you were an ex-whore who gave nothing but trouble to the world. I suppose that was to make everything more acceptable to me. I failed, of course, and now that I have, I’m glad. You aren’t what he described at all, I can see. Ma’am, I don’t know what grudge your husband may hold against you, but I want no part in erasing it. I’ve been deceived by him, as I imagine you have been. I humbly beg your pardon.”

  His tone was haltingly sincere. Zoe began to wonder if she had been wrong to treat him with such caution.

  “They told me to bring a gun,” he said, “but I couldn’t shoot someone. I bought the other thing instead, like a fool who doesn’t know what’s best. What kind of killer arms himself with a pigsticker, ma’am, I ask you? It was all doomed to fail, even if your little girl hadn’t been so clever as to see through this … this ridiculous disguise. I feel so humiliated.… Ma’am, I urge you to hide yourself away from him, because as soon as he learns how badly I’ve bungled the task, he’ll dispatch someone who knows what he’s doing, someone who won’t be so clumsy as myself.”

  “I shall certainly do that, Mr. Mulrooney, and you may tell him so yourself.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, I don’t dare face him now, not after failing. He’d have me punished, I just know he would. No, ma’am, I can’t go back there.…”

  “I have sympathy for you, but very little. You have allowed yourself to be drawn into this horrible situation, and you must get yourself out.”

  “Yes, ma’am … but …” He fell to his knees and held his clenched hands out toward her. “Ma’am, if you could just let me have ten dollars for a train ticket and,… and take me with you to the station, ma’am, so I can get on a train and try to hide from him … oh, ma’am, please …”

  His face was twisted with the effort of imploring. He shuffled several feet toward Zoe on his knees, sobbing now, the tears squeezing from his eyes. “Please, ma’am, I’m begging you.…”

  “You must look after yourself, Mr. Mulrooney. I have my daughter to take care of. You’re a grown man, and must take the responsibility.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I suppose …,” he blubbered, then said, “May I get up, ma’am, please?”

  “Of course you may.”

  The gun had dragged her hand down so far now it was aimed at the area around her feet; a small woman like her, Tatum thought, should have got herself a smaller-caliber weapon, not a heavy .45. He levered himself clumsily up from his knees, seeming to tangle himself in the folds of his dress, but when he was halfway upright, and his legs were bent to spring, the hatpin appeared in his hand, and he lunged upward at Zoe. The pin penetrated her upper arm as she tried to lift the pistol, and Zoe cried out. Tatum was drawing back the pin again to strike at her chest, his other hand clutching at the pistol barrel to keep it aimed away from himself. The hatpin was already moving forward again, and Zoe’s stumped arm was thrashing uselessly inside its tucked sleeve in an effort to ward off the blow that appeared certain to find its mark and be driven deep.

  Then he was gone, knocked sideways clean off the porch, removed so suddenly from proximity to her that the pin had fallen from his fingers and struck the boards while he was still flying through the air. Omie was rushing past Zoe, her hair literally standing on end with the effort of moving a full-grown man across the yard against his will. His boots struck the ground, and he fell, but
was picked up immediately and dragged as if being hauled on wires across to the water pump, and delivered so hard against the iron stand that the sound of his head meeting metal was clearly heard. Blood began to run from his temple. His body slumped into an untidy heap where he lay, and his mouth fell open, slackened by unconsciousness.

  Omie ran to him, her head entirely hidden from behind by the writhing and beribboned tentacles of her rage. Zoe was reminded of Medusa, and the man Omie had attacked did seem to have been turned to stone, so still did he lie beside the pump. Omie picked up the gun that lay halfway across the yard, dragged from Zoe’s hand as Tatum was flung away from her. It was far too large for Omie’s hands, but she raised it and aimed the barrel.

  “Omie! No!”

  She turned to look at her mother, and the waving tangle of her hair began to subside. The gun fell with a thud into the dust. Omie’s expression suddenly was blank, the look of a sleepwalker awakened in an unfamiliar room.

  “Omie … come here.”

  She came with awkward steps, frowning slightly, and Zoe went to her. She held her daughter tightly, then asked, “Is everything ready?” Omie nodded slowly.

  Zoe picked up the gun. They loaded their baggage into the surrey. Tatum lay as before. Zoe chided herself for having relaxed her guard enough to allow his attempt with the hatpin. She would never again be so foolish. Leo wanted her dead, but Zoe was equally determined to remain alive.

  Tatum’s surrey was returned to the livery stable in Durango. Zoe told the proprietor that her “sister who came to visit” was too tired after her journey to accompany them. Their baggage had already been unloaded at the station, and they waited there for nineteen long minutes before catching the first train that came.

  Zoe watched through the open window until they had drawn completely away from the platform, to be sure that the killer sent by Leo did not make a last-moment appearance and board the train, but he did not. She closed the window and sat beside Omie. They had the seat to themselves, and the seat opposite was vacant.

  “Mama, I heard him say Papa … I mean, Leo … sent him to hurt us. Did he?”

  “Yes.”

  “He really wants to hurt us?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what did we do?”

  “We have done nothing to hurt him.”

  “Then why, Mama …?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “I feel sick.…”

  “Place your head between your knees. Go on, Omie, no one is watching. Now breathe slowly and steadily, and try not to think of what has happened.”

  Omie lifted her head. “I don’t like that. Mama, may I go to sleep now? I feel so tired.…”

  “Yes, you may, my darling. I’ll stay right here while you do, so nothing bad will happen.”

  Omie succumbed almost immediately, and lay against her mother’s side with all her young weight. The train had gone many miles before Zoe thought to read the letter that had been delivered by so macabre a messenger. She plucked it carefully from the front pocket of Omie’s pinafore. The envelope was addressed in the now familiar scrawl, and contained nothing but a clipping from the Glory Hole Sentinel.

  Murder of a disturbing kind was committed in the town last night, by persons as yet unknown. The victim, new to these environs, was declared by Sheriff Simms to be Bryce Aspinall, registered at the Great Divide Hotel and not one to discuss his business among us. The victim was found before dawn along Welsh Lane by an inebriant, who sobered himself and raised the alarm. The wound to Aspinall’s back was deep enough to reach the heart, and likely caused his instantaneous demise. The wound was unusual in that it was inflicted by a blade of triangular configuration. Any citizen having knowledge relating to this grisly event is asked to step forward.

  Zoe crumpled the clipping into a ball, and sat gazing at the passing scenery. The place in her upper arm where the hatpin had jabbed her was extremely painful.

  43

  “I have your spies, Leo.”

  Rowland Price wore an expression of satisfaction.

  “Spies? More than one?”

  “Does the name Garfinkle strike a chord with you?”

  “It does not.”

  “He works for your attorney.”

  “Aha! Who paid the fellow to do it?”

  “No one, he says. He simply doesn’t like you, nor does his wife. She was his compatriot in crime.”

  “Someone must have paid him. What connection is there between these Garfinkles and my ex-wife?”

  “No connection at all that I can see, but there is a connection between them and your mistress.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Miss Starr used to board with the Garfinkles. Mrs. Garfinkle runs a respectable house on Mason Street. Miss Starr lived there until you bought the place for her on Bowman.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mr. Garfinkle insists they did what they did because you’re a despicable fellow for having rid yourself of your crippled wife and stepdaughter. The Garfinkles maintain extremely high standards of human behavior, and are somewhat judgmental. I suspect Mrs. Garfinkle did not approve of your taking Miss Starr out of her house to be installed elsewhere as your paramour. Women tend to view that kind of arrangement with less favor than men.”

  “Indeed they do.”

  “I assume she passed on her ill will to Mr. Garfinkle, who was already indisposed toward you over the nature of the work your attorney assigned him. He knows the details of the green file, Leo, so he was in a position to inform Zoe that your generous settlement was not so generous after all. He says he gave her no details, merely hints and clues to pursue.”

  “You believe him?”

  “I didn’t, and put Sheriff Simms and a burly deputy to work on him, but Mr. Garfinkle did not change his story. I believe him now. This was no organized plot against you. We have two rather naive idealists who have poked and prodded to no great effect, no lasting hurt. The little they told Zoe will do her no good at all, even if she attempts to win a case against you in court. The green file has been destroyed, and the Garfinkles are both in Simms’s custody.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Murder. They’re jointly responsible, you see, for the slaying of one Bryce Aspinall.”

  “This will never do, Rowland.”

  “Hear me out. Bryce was lured to their home by Mrs. Garfinkle, who posed as a woman of ill repute, with the intention of lifting his extensive bankroll. Husband and wife both took part in the fatal stabbing. Bryce was done away with in the cellar, where bloodstains have been placed by yours truly—sheep’s blood, as a matter of fact—then he was taken to the alleyway and dumped. The distance between these two points is conveniently short. Do you admire my creativity so far?”

  “Go on.”

  “The money—Bryce’s money, provided by yourself—has been found in the Garfinkles’ attic. The murder weapon was an unusual one, a stiletto, and this also has been found in the attic by Sheriff Simms, after I showed him where to look.”

  “How did you get hold of it?”

  “Our assassin provided it on my request. He failed to locate your ex-wife in Durango, unfortunately. She fled the day before he arrived, probably warned off by the Garfinkles. I suspect the lady will run far and lie low.”

  “That isn’t good enough, Rowland.”

  “Our man of the blade will follow, be assured of that. He’ll find her, no matter how long it may take, but the Garfinkle incident will be closed within twenty-four hours.”

  “How so?”

  “They’ll be stricken, shall we say, with an extreme case of guilty conscience. There’ll be no public outcry. The Sentinel will editorialize on the subject of the devious criminal mind and its capacity to manifest itself even in seemingly decent types such as the Garfinkles. There’ll be no link to you, nothing to excite the public imagination or the secretive fellows of Big Circle, nor the Praetorians. You needn’t fear any repercussion, Leo, I guarantee it.”

/>   “I need to be very sure about that.”

  “And you may be.”

  When Price had left him, Leo began striding about the room. The Garfinkles were the least of his problems. He had ordered by indirect means the murder of his ex-wife, a woman he once had loved. How was it possible that he could do this, and yet feel nothing other than a consuming worry that the job would not be taken care of in time? Had he become a monster? Leo felt much as he always had; he certainly did not feel evil or deranged. It was simply a question of business taking precedence over emotion and sentiment, he supposed, and the consequences could not be helped. He had given Zoe a fortune, but she was not satisfied with that, and so he had taken other measures to protect himself. It was not his fault.

  He was beset by other difficulties also. A payroll train had been robbed, reportedly by the outlaw known as Lodi, the entire shipment of cash made off with, and not a robber had so much as been wounded. There had been no word of Slade’s capture, despite the length of time since his escape and the growing numbers of violated bodies being found in remote parts of the southwest. And then there was Imogen. She wanted marriage, and was becoming quite insistent, referring to herself as “a kept woman” and adopting a mournful expression whenever he told her she must wait until certain problems to do with Brannan Mining had been taken care of. She had also been badgering him about a dead Indian some fools had pickled in a rain barrel with a view to exhibiting the corpse beneath a glass case, like some fairy tale princess. The very idea repulsed him, and he had told Imogen so. “I will not involve myself with sideshows. Kindly refrain from mentioning this monstrosity to me again.”

  Imogen had wept prettily, obliging him to beg for love later in the evening. “All you need to do,” she had said, following a brief but satisfying act, “is say in your newspaper you believe the thing is an Indian from ancient times, not one that died last week.” Her imploring tone eventually won him over, and he had instructed the Sentinel’s editor to arrange a story on the so-called Sleeping Savage. Imogen had proven herself suitably grateful by allowing Leo a certain liberty she was not often inclined to participate in. Still there remained his other vexations. The life of a rich man was indeed no bed of roses.