The answer, to tell the truth, was not much. I was trying to think like a madman who would make detailed plans to kill people wholesale. And while he could in no conceivable way be the smallish figure Stu Burkhart and Gloria Simpkins had seen coming out of the medicine show wagon, perhaps being cut out of a rich father’s will might be enough of a motive for a madman to want to kill that father so much that he didn’t care how many others he destroyed at the same time. I found it rather hard to believe, but I found the whole business nearly impossible to believe. If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be the law in Le Four, conversing with a blue man, sleeping with an Egyptian princess from Oklahoma, and looking for the cold-blooded cowardly murderer of fourteen people (to say nothing of the revenge-bent outlaw who’d taken his son’s name from me), I would have suggested one of us be committed. So I wasn’t going to let my incredulity stand in the way of what I had to do.
Junior was delighted to oblige. He was staying at Mrs. Cranmer’s rooming house, the most respectable place in town. Jenkins was less than enthusiastic, said he couldn’t imagine what I wanted to talk to him about, and I told him I’d think of something.
He grumbled something and said he’d probably be playing checkers with Blacke in that case. I said it was fine with me.
I tipped my hat, and let them make their way to the west end of town where Warwick Ploset practiced law, usually in the furtherance of the interests of Lucius Jenkins.
As I walked in the opposite direction, toward Railroad Street, I was trying to think of something to ask Jenkins. I knew what I wanted to find out—how he was reacting to the almost certainty that Paul Muller was somewhere around town. I just didn’t know, yet, how to elicit that information without tipping him off that Blacke suspected him of masterminding the man’s crimes.
I wanted to know the same things from Jennie Murdo. It was possible that Muller had communicated with her somehow. It was something I should find out.
I should have, but I didn’t. Because when I got to the little cottage at the head of Railroad Street, I found the door ajar, the interior a wreck, and the place deserted.
24
WARWICK PLOSET’S OFFICE WAS above the dry-goods store, but it had its own stairway and entrance. I took the stairs two at a time and burst into the office.
Ploset’s clerk tried to stop me, but I didn’t even stop to bother to point out my badge. Since he was twice my age and half my size, I simply lifted him up and carried him in with me.
“Mr. Ploset, I’m sorry,” the clerk piped up. “I couldn’t stop him. He’s a madman.”
“Just a man in a hurry,” I said. I put the clerk down.
Gloria Simpkins, in her best schoolmarm voice, said, “This is most unseemly, Mr. Booker.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I apologize for the interruption. To you, too, Mr. Ploset. To all of you.”
Ploset was a white-haired man who was convinced he should have been a judge. At least, he always pursed his lips judiciously before he said anything.
It cost him the chance to say anything.
“We were done here anyway,” Lucius Jenkins said. “Weren’t we, Ploset?”
He pursed his lips, and I thought Jenkins was going to strike him.
“That’s right,” he said at last. “There was just the signature of the testator and the witnesses to read.”
“Let’s just call that done, all right?” Jenkins turned to me. “What do you want, Booker?”
“I’d like to talk to you outside.”
“Fine.” Jenkins slapped the disreputable hat on his bald head. “Ploset, you can go ahead and read those signatures. You don’t need me. Mrs. Simpkins,” he said, touching the brim of the hat. “Junior.”
Down on the street, Jenkins turned and looked up at me. “I don’t as a rule, Booker, appreciate my business being horned in on like that.”
“Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t really sorry at all. As Lobo Blacke had said when I’d popped in to tell him about Jennie Murdo’s disappearance, now I had an excuse to ask Jenkins all the questions I wanted.
“Well, I’ll let it go this time, because when I spend ten minutes in a room with Wick Ploset, I end up wanting to kill him. He’s always making complications where there aren’t any. If you wanted to leave your son a thousand dollars and all the rest of your money and property to your wife, couldn’t you just say that?”
“I suppose so.”
“Yeah, well, it took the lawyer a half hour.” His face looked sour.
“So how about you,” he barked. “What’s your question?”
“Oh, I’ve got many more than one.”
“Dammit, Booker, I don’t have time for many more than one. I’m a busy man. I’ve got a ranch to run, and you’ve stolen my top kick to be a deputy’s deputy or some such foolishness. I’ve got to get back to Bellevue.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll ride back with you and ask you on the way.”
“You will, will you?”
“Sure. My horse is tied up right outside the Witness.”
I’d anticipated the move on his part, and had Merton bring Posy around the front while I pushed on to the lawyer’s office.
Jenkins narrowed his eyes at me. “And you want to come out to the ranch. My daughter’s not there, you know.”
I met his gaze. I wondered how much he knew, and I wondered how much he minded what he did know. This was not, however, the time to force the issue.
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Jenkins,” I said. “If you recall, I was at the station to see Mrs. Jenkins and your daughter off. Have you heard from them?”
“Sure,” he said. “Got a wire yesterday saying they’d arrived in New York and send more money.”
I tried to suppress a laugh, and failed. Jenkins tried to give me one of his fierce, deadly scowls, but he, too, burst into laughter, and just for a second, I had an inkling into the camaraderie that Blacke must have shared with this man in times long past.
We reached the Witness office; I climbed aboard Posy, and we headed out of town, east toward Jenkins’s spread.
“Now, Booker, what is your question? Or at least the first of them.”
I had decided that the first of them would be very basic. “Your wife’s dressmaker, Jennie Murdo. Do you know that she’s gone?”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“I went to the house you rent to her, to ask her a question or two, and she wasn’t there.”
“Hell, maybe she stepped out for a few minutes.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “The door was standing open and the place was a mess. I think—Blacke thinks so, too—that she either left in a big hurry or that she was dragged out of there.”
We were past the edge of the town now, but so far away from it that if we looked over our right shoulders we couldn’t see the cottage at the far end of Railroad Street.
Jenkins, however, did not look back. He didn’t even look at me, just kept his eyes squinted and on the trail. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Jenkins should give up the checker games with Blacke and switch to poker. There was nothing to be learned from that man’s face.
Or from his voice either. He might have been talking about the weather when he said, “Well, now you’ve made a legend of him, nobody can contradict him, but Louis was always a bit apt to jump to conclusions, you know.”
I asked him what he meant.
“A woman’s just lost her only child in a terrible way, she might do anything. Brooding for a couple of days, you know, and then just running away from her grief.”
“She might have run away,” I conceded. “But if she did, I’ll bet she was running away from something other than her grief.”
Now Jenkins asked me what I meant.
“Her husband,” I said. “He might blame her for what happened to the boy.”
“Husband? It was my understanding when she came to live up here that she was a widow.”
Inside, I was kicking myself for
a fool. I had telegraphed my punch with the word “husband.” I should have just sprung the name “Muller” on him and seen what happened. My only consolation was that he probably would have poker-faced that one, too.
Still, I couldn’t just wheel Posy around and go home. I had to press on with it, no matter how hopeless.
“That’s what she lets on,” I said, “but she’s married to Paul Muller.”
Jenkins nodded as though he were thinking it over.
“That does change things.”
“Yeah, it sure does. I assume you’ve heard about that body that was dumped in front of the sheriff’s office last night.”
“I’ve heard about it, but not much.”
I took that with about a hogshead of salt. You don’t get to be a man in Lucius Jenkins’s position without knowing everything that happens in your town.
“The corpse was one of the medicine show people, the one that got away. He was strangled, and there was a note promising revenge ‘for my son.’ ”
“This situation is getting out of hand,” Jenkins said sourly, and for once, I believe the words and tone expressed an honest emotion.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said. “That’s why I want to ask you this: You don’t have Mrs. Murdo out there at Bellevue, do you?”
And just like that, I got another honest emotion out of the man. He turned his head to me so fast and hard that his horse started to wheel in that direction. His face was red and dangerous.
“Just what is that supposed to mean, Booker?” he demanded, and he wanted to know right now.
The vehemence of his action surprised me. One panicky brain cell wanted me to go for my gun, a move that would have certainly gotten me killed.
Then I remembered that the one person on earth whom Lucius Jenkins was afraid of was his wife, and I understood the reaction.
I managed a smile and a calm voice.
“Nothing untoward, Mr. Jenkins. Nothing like that ever crossed my mind.”
“See,” he said, “that it don’t.”
“I was just wondering if Mrs. Murdo, remembering your previous kindnesses, had asked you for sanctuary, with or without telling you about her husband. I’ve never met Paul Muller, but from what I’ve heard of him, he’s perfectly capable of blaming his wife as much as anyone for the boy’s death. In the servants’ quarters at Bellevue alone, you’d have plenty of room for her, and ample chaperonage, too, if anyone were to find out she were there. Not that I’d spread it around, of course.”
Jenkins had gone back to looking straight down the trail.
“Don’t try to snow me, Booker. You and Blacke would splash it in ink all over that newspaper of yours.”
“The Witness is the sole property of Mr. Blacke,” I corrected. “And sure, we’d print it, but only after Muller was safely locked up.”
“Or dead,” he said. “You can’t ever say somebody like Muller is safely locked up.”
“That’s the point,” I conceded. “Anyway, you haven’t answered my question.”
“I haven’t?”
“No. Have you given Jennie Murdo sanctuary out at Bellevue?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Thank you,” I said. “What is that?”
Jenkins had murmured something. I thought I’d caught it, but I wasn’t quite sure.”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
I let it go, at least for now. What I thought he’d said was “I wish I had,” but that didn’t make any sense to me.
“Is that it?” he asked. “You can go back to town now, if you’re finished.”
It was tempting. We’d come quite a distance from town, and the landscape had begun to rise from the flat monotony of the area in and around Le Four. There still weren’t any trees to speak of, but there were the occasional undulation to the landscape, some rocks, and even a defile or two along the route, including one we were heading toward now.
I knew I wasn’t going to get any more out of Jenkins on this trip—it was only luck that I’d gotten anything at all—and God knew I had more to do back in town.
My indecision must have communicated itself to Posy, because she slowed down, actually coming to a stop for a moment to lower her head and bite off a piece of scrub. Jenkins, as usual, looked neither back nor to the side, but kept riding at a steady pace, just as glad, I was sure, to be rid of me.
It was that certainty that made up my mind for me. If he didn’t want me around, I wanted to be around him, if only to see if I could irritate him out of that deadpan once more.
I gave Posy a little flick with the reins and urged her forward, following Jenkins at a distance of about twenty-five or thirty yards.
I was just about to enter the defile when the avalanche started.
I suppose to a dweller of the Black Hills, or of any serious mountains, that rock slide was a pretty trumpery affair to be called an avalanche. The walls of the defile, after all, had to be less than thirty-five feet high, and the rocks raining down on us—on me, but especially on Jenkins—were no bigger than my head.
But they were as big as my head. And they were falling thirty-five feet, and this was enough to frighten me as much as any avalanche ever need do.
That frightened Posy, too, and she whinnied and reared, and I showed my horsemanship by immediately being thrown.
I scrambled out of the defile until the rocks stopped falling, and when they did, I heard a weird laugh.
“For my son, Jenkins! For my son, you lying bastard!”
Echoes made the voice impossible to locate, and equally untraceable hoofbeats followed, but I knew as I stood there that for the first time, I had heard the voice of Paul Muller.
25
I DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER to look for Posy. When she calmed down, she’d be eating a plant somewhere nearby and would come when she was called.
Instead, I scrambled on foot into the defile, across shifting piles of stones, calling for Jenkins.
For a long time, I got no answer other than the clatter of rocks sliding away under my boots. I fell down a couple of times and earned a couple of bruises, but I don’t think they slowed me down much.
I found Jenkins’s horse half covered in stones, with a huge, bloody dent in its skull.
Reasoning that he probably hadn’t fallen too far from the animal, I stood there for a few seconds and listened hard, then started scrabbling through the rocks.
After I’d removed five or six, I thought I heard a groan. I followed the source of the noise, and after what seemed a long time, my battered fingers touched something that wasn’t rock. I dug faster now, uncovering what turned out to be the man’s chest. I put my hand there for a few seconds and felt a good strong heartbeat, so I worked my way up the body and got the head free.
Jenkins was bleeding from a nasty gash in his skull. I made a hasty bandage out of my handkerchief and tied it around his head with my tie. Then I uncovered the rest of him, and, after making sure there were no broken bones, I dragged him clear of the rocks, out the other side of the defile.
He groaned again as I put him down on a patch of grass. I took it for a good sign. Dead and moribund men don’t groan.
I felt him for a while, went to the other end of the defile again, called Posy, and led her the long way round to where I’d left Jenkins. It took a long time, but if I tried to take that horse through that jumble of rock, she’d be sure to break a leg. Then, not only would I have to shoot Lobo Blacke’s horse, I’d have left myself horseless halfway between town and ranch with an injured man on my hands.
Jenkins was conscious by the time I got back to him. Not happy, but conscious. He was confused, the way people with head injuries so frequently are, but instead of asking, “Where am I?” he wanted to know, “What happened?”
That was easy to answer, at least superficially. “Rock slide,” I said.
I got the canteen off my saddle and gave him some water to drink. Then I used some to wash some of the blood off his face, and by
the time I finished, he looked as if he actually might live.
“What happened?” Jenkins murmured again.
“Shut up,” I replied cordially. “I’ll tell you when we get you to Bellevue. I’m going to lift you up now and get you on the horse.”
He made no protest, and I went to work.
He didn’t weigh anything. Everybody in Le Four spent so much time talking and thinking of Lucius Jenkins as the “biggest man in town,” we tended to forget that that was a figure of speech. Right now, he was a small, thin, and injured old man.
I’m not entirely sure how I did it, but I somehow managed to get Jenkins on the saddle, upright, in front of me. I think he helped a little, which was another good sign.
In any case, I had my arms around him, holding the reins and keeping him upright, and his head reclined against my chest. I remembered embracing his daughter in a similar, if more energetic, manner, although not on horseback. It had been a lot more fun with Abigail.
I set Posy off at a slow walk, and we made our way to that incongruous mansion on the prairie. Once there, I couldn’t figure out how to get him down off the saddle, or dismount myself without dropping him on his head again, so I sat there outside the building and yelled for help.
It eventually came in the form of Pierre and several of the maids. We got him into the parlor and onto a chaise longue, pulled off his boots, and covered him with a sheet. A rider was dispatched to town to fetch Dr. Mayhew.
By this time, Jenkins had recovered sufficiently to call for some whiskey and to get downright cantankerous when I vetoed it.
“Damn you, Booker, this is my house.”
“You’ve had a head injury,” I said. “No booze until the doctor says so.”
“I’m all right. Just a little beat up.”
“Why take chances?” I said.
Jenkins eyed me narrowly and grumbled into his moustache. At last, he gave that up and said, “You promised you were going to tell me what happened.”
“That’s right, I did.” So I told him, all of it, including the faceless taunting from above.
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