The McHenry Inheritance (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  “I’ve never liked wearing a necktie,” Gordon replied.

  “A comedian, huh?” grunted Bowen.

  Two horses were led up to the tree and put in position under the branches, then the prisoners were helped into the saddle. The nooses were pulled tightly enough around their necks that they had to sit unnaturally high to keep from choking slightly. The other ends of the ropes were fastened to the sides of the pickup truck. Gordon hadn’t believed Radio at first, but there was little doubting the seriousness of the situation now. With the horses out from under them, Gordon and Sam would be left dangling a foot and a half off the ground as they slowly choked to death. Only a few words stood between a horrible end for him and Sam, and Gordon hoped he had chosen those words well.

  Radio stepped up in front of them.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “Summit County just won’t be the same without you. You’ve been a great nuisance to me, but I’m sorry it had to end like this. Do you have any last words?”

  “I hope they do this to you,” Sam said.

  “Right you are, my friend, and we’ll be meeting in hell later on. But the law can’t catch me and the devil doesn’t want me. How about you, Gordon?”

  “You’re making a mistake, Radio.”

  “I said last words. Sermons don’t count. All right, gentlemen. On the count of three, let’s tell these horses to giddy-up back where they came from and let our guests enjoy some neck-stretching exercise. One.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Radio.” Gordon shouted. He was desperately trying to keep the fear out of his voice. “Ellen McHenry didn’t kill her brother. The motive for that killing wasn’t greed or defense of family. It was love.”

  “Two.”

  “Radio! The gun that killed Dan McHenry is in this camp.”

  Radio had just begun the downward motion of his hand to accompany the third count, but froze the gesture instantly. For thirty seconds that seemed to last forever, he looked hard at Gordon, making a mental calculation.

  “On second thought, perhaps we shouldn’t be so hasty,” Radio said. “Our visitors may still be worth something to us alive. Untie those ropes and get the handcuffs off for a minute.” This was done, and Gordon and Sam quickly removed the ropes around their necks. “Why don’t you get down off your high horse and let’s talk.”

  They dismounted, and Gordon looked around. They were surrounded, but at least not bound. He felt certain that if he could stall for another hour, maybe an hour and a half at the outside, help would arrive.

  “All right,” Radio said. “Where’s the gun.”

  “Not so fast. I have information that’s going to be very valuable to you, and I want to set some terms for letting you have it.”

  “If it comes right down to it, we can make you tell.”

  “Maybe, but it would take time and cause legal problems. You’d be better off dealing than trying any rough stuff.”

  Radio stroked his chin for a few seconds. “I need a few minutes to think about this,” he said. “Jerry, Hart Lee! Take these gentlemen back to my tent. There’s a folding table in it, where the legs are joined at the bottom. Handcuff them, one hand each, around a table leg so they can’t go anywhere without taking the table with them. Then keep watch on them until I get there. Got that?”

  Bowen smiled. “Can I put Mortimer in with them?” he asked.

  “Mortimer?” said Sam.

  “His pet rattlesnake,” said Radio. “Not right now, Hart Lee, but we’ll keep the option open for phase two of the negotiations. Go on. And if they look like they’re even thinking of escaping, shoot to kill.”

  Bowen smiled wickedly. “I like shooting to kill,” he said.

  They started back to the camp, four abreast. Bowen was to Gordon’s left, holding an arm with his right hand and a revolver in his left hand. Sam was to Gordon’s right, being held by Jerry’s left hand, while Jerry carried a lantern in his right hand. Gordon was pleased. Time was going by, and time was his ally. With each passing minute, Ellen was getting closer to help and help was getting closer to them.

  “You ever been bitten by a rattlesnake?” Bowen asked conversationally.

  “Not that I can remember,” Gordon replied.

  “You’d remember,” Bowen continued. “The pain is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It feels like someone’s standing inside your blood vessels with a flamethrower. Your leg or arm or wherever you got bit swells up something nasty, and even if you’re lucky enough to live, there can be a permanent loss of feeling. Yes sir, I surely would like to introduce you to Mortimer tonight.”

  A shot rang out, and the lantern in Jerry’s hand shattered, throwing them into the fading moonlight illuminating the meadow.

  Gordon reacted instantaneously. Bowen had instinctively let go of him and looked to see where the shot came from. Gordon threw his left elbow upward as hard as he could and caught Bowen directly under the chin. His head snapped backward, and he crumpled to the ground unconscious. Gordon took the revolver from his hand.

  Another shot was fired, and this time it sounded as if the bullet hit metal. A second later, the pickup to which Gordon and Sam had been tied burst into a ball of flame. Sam and Jerry were grappling with each other. Men were running in all directions, looking for cover. Gordon moved behind Jerry, grabbed a shoulder for ballast, then brought the butt of Bowen’s gun down hard on the back of his head. He dropped like a lead weight.

  “This way,” Gordon said.

  The third and fourth shots came as he and Sam raced across the meadow. Chaos reigned, and for an instant the prisoners had been forgotten. They jumped across the creek in two bounds, reached the shelter of the woods and looked back. No one was following them.

  “The lady can shoot, can’t she?” Gordon said.

  “She might have hit me,” Sam gasped.

  “No time to worry about that. We need to get out of here.” They began working back toward the road along the edge of the forest, the way they had originally come. It seemed to be taking five times as long to get out as it had to come in. There were no more gunshots, and after a few moments of calm, just as Gordon and Sam reached the point where the forest met the road, three men with flashlights began to move toward the trees where they had been a few moments earlier. By the light of the flaming truck, which was gradually burning down, the two fugitives could see that Bowen was just beginning to sit up groggily. Gordon finally exhaled, but no sooner had he done that than he heard a sound that made him shiver with fear.

  An engine started in the meadow below them, and the lights of one of the pickups came on.

  Gordon turned to Sam. “They’re coming after us. I hope you can run a quarter of a mile in a minute,” he said, “because your life might depend on it.”

  They raced down the road as fast as they could. The moon had moved lower and was more behind the trees, so the visibility was worse than it had been on the way in. At any second, they expected to be caught in the glare of the pickup’s headlights, which would be fatal. Gordon tried to visualize himself sprinting toward the basket on a fast break.

  His foot hit something, maybe a rut in the road, and his ankle turned. Shouting involuntarily from the pain, he flew through the air head first, letting go of the gun, which clattered into the darkness. He landed hard on the earth and gravel, scraping the palms of his hands and the front of his body as he skidded forward. Sam stopped.

  “Keep going!” Gordon screamed. He got to his feet, ankle throbbing, and looked for the gun, but couldn’t see it. He began to run again, willing himself to do it through the pain. Even with the injury, he was able to keep pace with Sam, who was about a hundred feet ahead.

  Ellen was standing by the Cherokee, rifle in hand. The moment it was in sight, Gordon shouted, “They’re coming after us.” At the same instant, the headlights of the pickup came into sight over the rise behind him. Ellen set her rifle in the back seat, leaped behind the wheel, and started the engine as Sam arrived and dived into the passenger’s seat in
front. Gordon pulled up seconds later and climbed into the back. Ellen stepped on the accelerator as he was closing the door, and the car shot forward.

  The pickup was less than a hundred yards behind them when they pulled on to the road and closed to 75 yards before they were able to match its speed. Ellen drove without fear. They were going 45 to 50 miles an hour on a narrow, winding dirt road that was never meant to be driven faster than 25. The bouncing and jostling from the rough surface of the road would have made Gordon nauseous if not for the fact that he was too frightened to be sick.

  “Are we gaining?” asked Ellen.

  “No, but we’re not losing.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No, but just keep driving.”

  The road was running through deep forest, and the surrounding trees shut out the moon, leaving them in almost total darkness. Even with the bright headlights on, it was hard to see much ahead. Gordon was impressed with Ellen’s fearlessness and thought some of it might have to do with knowing the road well. Even so, as he looked back and saw the lights of the pursuing pickup, he realized it might not be enough. Once they reached the state highway, with its longer stretches of straight, well-paved road, the pickup, with its more powerful engine, would probably overtake them.

  “Is there any place we can get off this road and hide?” he asked.

  “Not that I know of,” she said. “Why?”

  “Never mind.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “We found the rifle.”

  “Where?”

  “George Horton has it on a rack in his pickup truck.”

  “George?”

  “Don’t slow down!”

  “Sorry.”

  They screeched around a curve and came to a long, straight piece of road that ran for about two hundred yards, with forest on their left and an open patch of meadow on the right. As Ellen gunned the car forward, Gordon looked behind. Was it his imagination, or was the pickup a little closer than it had been?

  “Oh my God!” cried Ellen, as a large doe bounded out of the woods in front of the Cherokee. It was past them in an instant, but its rear hooves could not have missed the front headlight by more than inches. She slammed on the brakes by instinct, and the pickup drew closer.

  “Don’t stop!” screamed Gordon.

  “I hope her boyfriend’s coming behind her,” said Sam.

  He was, and he landed on the road a second later, directly in front of the pursuing pickup. Its driver flinched left, but the vehicle struck the large buck a fatal blow in the midsection, then skidded to the left and crashed into a pine tree. The last thing Gordon noticed as Ellen turned the corner that ended the straightaway, was that both its lights were out, making pursuit hopeless even if the truck could still run.

  “You can slow down now,” he said.

  “What happened?” asked Sam.

  “Just what you hoped for. They hit a deer and skidded into a tree.”

  “People can get killed that way,” Ellen said.

  “It was a pretty big truck, so they may be all right,” Gordon said, but I don’t think they’re driving any farther tonight.”

  They reached the bottom of the dirt road, turned right, crossed the cattle guard, and drove in silence for several minutes.

  “This has been a night,” Sam finally said.

  “It’s only the beginning,” Gordon said.

  Friday September 17

  It was two thirty in the morning, and Gordon, Ellen and Sam were sitting before the fire in the living room of the main house at the ranch. It had taken them very little time to decide to call Baca at home, never mind the hour. When he heard that Gordon had found Dan McHenry’s gun at Radio’s encampment, the sheriff said he’d be over promptly. Gordon, aching all over, was partially reclined on the couch, with Ellen snuggled against him and a scotch and soda in hand. Sam was pacing nervously in front of the fire.

  “I can’t believe you found the rifle,” Ellen said. “This is the first good news I’ve had in six months.”

  “And I can’t believe your shooting and driving,” said Gordon. “It took real presence of mind to wait until you did to shoot out that lantern.”

  “What I can’t believe,” said Sam, “is that we were crazy enough to go up there in the first place. I’m sorry, but Rex Radio is not playing with a full deck, and he hasn’t exactly surrounded himself with nice people. Mortimer, indeed.”

  “I couldn’t hear what was being said down there,” Ellen said, “but it gave me the willies when they played the national anthem before going to bed. It just — it was wrong, somehow.”

  “It was creepy,” said Gordon, “no doubt about it. But so’s everything having to do with them. The weapons, the snakes, the paranoia.” He leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek. “The worst is over now.”

  Baca drove up shortly before three o’clock and walked through the door, unshaven but in uniform, with a black case in his hand. Ellen made a pot of coffee, and Gordon described the evening’s events in complete detail as Baca listened intently, saying nothing until the story was over. Then he spoke.

  “You know, don’t you, that what you did was unbelievably foolhardy. By all rights, you and your friend should be dead right now. Think about it. And you,” he turned to Ellen, “are lucky you didn’t start a forest fire by shooting at that pickup.”

  He opened the black case and took out a laptop computer. “However,” he said, “I guess God watches over fools. And we now have what may be the first break in the murder of Dan McHenry. At any rate, if you can give me a statement, I have something to take to the judge and get a search warrant.” He tapped and clicked on the computer. “Budget, schedule, here we are — warrant.” He looked up. “I have a standard form for all these things.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Gordon said, “how much money do the taxpayers of Summit County spend on your computer systems?”

  “Whatever I ask them to,” Baca said. “Now let’s get on with it. All right, I the undersigned do solemnly affirm, etcetera, etcetera, that at approximately eleven o’clock on the night of September 16th — no, take out the time; the night of September 16th — I visited an encampment at the area commonly known as Sullivan Meadows on the West Fork of the Buchanan River.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Gordon said.

  “In this case, it’s best to leave out the details. Trust me.” He began typing again, “Among the persons present who were known to me were Rex Radio, Hart Lee Bowen, and George Horton.”

  “Don’t you want me to give a statement?”

  “No. It’s faster this way. Did your friend see the gun?”

  “Just me.”

  “Fine. In the course of the visit, I was able to see several high-caliber rifles of the type used for hunting …”

  “Numerous would be a more descriptive word than several.”

  Baca changed the word and continued, “Openly displayed on racks in vehicles parked in the vicinity of the campsite. At one point in the visit, I chanced to be near one of those vehicles …”

  “Chanced? I risked my neck to get up close to it.”

  Baca glared at him. “Do you want me to get this search warrant or not? If I tell the judge you went up there after dark and sneaked around the campsite with a flashlight and a confederate, he might start asking some embarrassing questions and bring the proceedings to a halt. Like I said, let’s keep it basic.”

  “Write what you want. I’ll sign anything.”

  “That’s more like it. All right, and was able to get a close look at the three guns in its rack. One of those guns was a rifle that had the initials D.M. carved into its butt in what appeared to be a childish hand. Because of previous conversations with Ellen McHenry, I knew that a gun matching that description had disappeared from her house and was being sought as evidence in the death of her brother, Daniel. Recognizing the importance of my discovery, I left the encampment as hastily as possible …”

  Gordon, Sam, and Ellen broke into laughter. �
��You could say that again,” Gordon said.

  “And promptly notified the authorities of the existence of this weapon at this location. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That sound okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Baca put a floppy disk in the laptop, copied the document to it, and handed it to Ellen. “Can you run that off for me?” he asked.

  She nodded and went off.

  “So what happens now?” Sam asked.

  Baca looked at his watch. “It’s a little after three thirty right now. The judge gets up at five thirty, so I’ll call him then. He can probably get to the courthouse by six thirty. Figure half an hour to an hour for me to make my case and get the warrant signed. After that, we serve it.”

  “You’re not going up there by yourself?” asked Gordon.

  The sheriff gave him a hard stare. “I’m trying to figure out what I’ve done that’s dumb enough to make you ask a question like that. Of course I’m not going up there alone, you idiot!” he bellowed. “There are twelve sheriff’s deputies in Summit County, and every last man jack of them is going to be with me. And a couple of Highway Patrol units, too. And before I even go to the judge, I’m calling Boyd at ATF and telling him to be on stand-by. It may not be necessary, but I don’t want anybody — anybody! — to be able to say that I served a warrant on Rex Radio and underestimated him.”

  They greeted his outburst with silence, which Gordon finally broke.

  “I want to come, too,” he said, quietly.

  Baca paused and stroked his chin. His fingers rasped over the stubble.

  “According to Hoyle, I should say no. On the other hand, you found the gun we’ve been looking for and the cache of weapons in that mine, so I probably owe you the right to see this through. All right, you can come. But on two conditions. You have to stay out of sight when we get there, and you have to do whatever I tell you. I can’t have you getting underfoot.”

  “Fair enough,” Gordon replied. “Are you up for it, Sam?”

  “I’m in too far to quit now,” Sam said.

  Ellen came back with the printout of the affidavit, and Gordon signed it after only a cursory reading. Baca put it in his case and prepared to leave.