Riding Shotgun

by William W. Johnstone

  Red felt fear ice his belly. My God, how many days of torture must I endure?

  But this proved not to be the case, and his fears were unfounded.

  The old Apache ordered the bonds removed from Red’s wrists, and then he pointed to the grave and spoke. “My son Nascha lies in yonder grave. He was a great warrior.” The old man turned his head and spat.

  “You have my deepest sympathy,” Red said, since he could think of nothing better.

  “Red Ryan, you wished to bury my son with honor and fought the man who tried to stop you,” the old man said. “We are in your debt.” He spat again.

  “But . . . but how do you know all this?” Red said.

  The old warrior managed a thin smile. “The little people the white men don’t notice, the ones that build your iron roads across the land. Like the Apache they are hated and not seen, and they come and go, and the Apache welcome them to our lodges for the news they bring.” He spat.

  “You mean the Chinese? They talk with you?” Red said.

  “Does that surprise you so much? Have the little people not suffered much at your hands?” the old man said. He spat.

  Now that torture seemed less likely, Red found his voice. “I don’t think any Chinese have suffered at my hands,” he said. “I assure you, if a Chinese or any other Oriental person wishes to be a passenger on a Patterson and Son Stage and Express coach, I will assure him that his safety and comfort would be the company’s only concern.”

  The old Apache stared hard at Red and then said, “I no longer wish to talk with you, Red Ryan. The white man’s language tastes as bitter as wormwood on my tongue.” He spat and then walked away.

  A moment later a young warrior emerged from the gloom leading a grulla mare wearing a cavalry saddle and bridle. “For you,” he said. “Go now, and never come near the Apache again.”

  Red said, “Well, good luck to all of you.”

  But the fire was already extinguished and the Apaches were gone and he spoke only to the hollow darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  After the trials of the night, Red Ryan was still asleep in bed when Stella Morgan decided to take a morning promenade around El Paso on the arm of Lucian Carter. That decision, made on the spur of the moment, would set in motion events that would result in the deaths of two people and put Red on a collision course with destiny.

  Stella was dressed in rustling black silk. Her bustle was even larger than those worn by the fashionable El Paso belles, her veiled hat smaller, and her milk-white décolletage more spectacular, a state of affairs that drew frowns from the respectable matrons of the town and furtive, appreciative looks from their husbands.

  The West was then very much a Victorian society, and it was not proper for a recently widowed woman to flaunt herself in that way, but Stella, counting the hours until she could leave the godforsaken burg, didn’t give a damn.

  Then fate, in the form of an unloading brewer’s dray that blocked the boardwalk, forced Stella and Carter to cross the street. They passed an alley where a sign hung above a narrow, wooden store that proclaimed:

  ISAK RABINOVICH

  JEWELER TO THE GENTRY

  Masonic Watch Fobs

  Always in Stock

  Stella stopped, read the sign and said, “Oh, Lucian, let’s go in.”

  Carter shrugged. “Sure, but don’t expect too much. This is El Paso, remember, not New York.”

  “I know that, silly, but it could be amusing, and I might pick up something nice.”

  “Whatever you say.” Carter smiled and bowed. “After you.”

  * * *

  Isak Rabinovich’s store was small, dingy, and dusty and that description also fit its owner, who was saved from being completely nondescript by a pair of bright blue eyes that were large and prominent, as though everything he saw startled him. His wife Raisa, at least twenty years younger than her husband, was small and plump with a mane of beautiful black hair that she piled on top of her head and held in place with pins.

  Both had fled the Russian pogroms, settled for a while in Austin, and then moved to newly booming El Paso. Together they scratched out a living from the store because, childless, their needs were few. Raisa’s feet had been frostbitten when, as a child, she’d hid under a farm wagon in the dead of winter as Cossacks pillaged her village. Never strong, she and Isak agreed that moving farther west had greatly improved her health. The couple was well liked in the town, and Raisa had a growing reputation as a cook, her bubliki, delicious little round breads, the stuff of legend.

  When Stella Morgan and Lucian Carter stepped inside, Isak smiled and said, “And what can I do for such a beautiful lady?”

  “And you are in mourning,” Raisa said. Then, putting two and two together, “Why, you must be the lady wife of the officer who was murdered at the fort.”

  “Yes, I am,” Stella said.

  “Major Morgan was a fine man,” Isak said. “I repaired a watch for him once, and he was a perfect gentleman.”

  “Yes, he was,” Stella said. Then, with a straight face, “A perfect gentleman and a fine officer.”

  “We have a large selection of mourning jewelry,” Isak said. “In the glass case here.” Stella briefly glanced at some black-enameled rings, bracelets, and necklaces, and Isak said, “All are suitable for the first two to three years of the deep mourning period, Mrs. Morgan. I can change the black stones in the rings to jade, pearl, and then ruby over the course of the next ten years of half-mourning.”

  Stella felt a laugh bubbling to the surface and coughed it away before she looked over the shelves and said, “You have a great many clocks, Mr. ah . . .”

  “Rabinovich. Yes, clock repair is a specialty of mine, and I get broken watches up and running in no time at all. Can I interest you in the rings in this case, Mrs. Morgan?” Isak said, moving to his left. “Perhaps one that can hold a lock of the deceased loved one’s hair? These are German made and of high quality.” He smiled. “I stock them mainly because Germany is so much kinder to Jews than my native Russia.”

  Stella wasn’t listening, her eyes fixed on an oval cameo brooch of a goddess with a bow in her hand and stags at her feet. “Let me see that,” she said, pointing at the glass dome that covered the piece. “Oh, I must have it.”

  “Ah, that is Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt,” Isak said. “It’s made of onyx and gold, and it belonged to my wife’s grandmother. It’s the only thing of value we managed to smuggle out of Russia.”

  “Let me see,” Stella said.

  Isak brought the dome to the counter and removed the brooch. He didn’t pass it to Stella but held it up where she could see it, and Raisa explained, “My grandmother was a midwife, and she delivered the baby of a Russian noblewoman whose name was Countess Isolda Mamatova. The delivery was a difficult one, and afterward the countess was so grateful that she’d given birth to a healthy son, she presented my grandmother with the brooch. It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Stella said. “It’s exquisite, and I must have it. Name your price.”

  Raisa smiled. “I’m afraid it’s not for sale. It’s the only connection that Isak and I have with our family and our former lives. To us it’s priceless.”

  Stella’s face flashed annoyance. “Five hundred for the brooch, and that’s more than you’ll earn from this place in years.”

  Isak shook his head. “As my wife says, the goddess brooch is not for sale.” He brightened. “But I do have another cameo, Italian made, that might interest you.”

  Stella glared at the little man and then turned on her heel and barged through the door. Carter lingered a moment and said, ice in his eyes, “Better for you two if you’d sold her the brooch.”

  * * *

  “Since when did killing become such an easy thing, Lucian?” Stella Morgan said, smiling. “I mean when you want a thing, say, like the death of a husband, you just make it happen and in an instant all your problems are solved.”

  “Not getti
ng caught is the hard part,” Carter said.

  “Only the stupid are caught, Lucian.”

  The man smiled, “Then it’s just as well that we’re smart.”

  Stella held the Diana cameo up to the hotel room’s gas lamp. “This is beautiful. I can wear it for afternoon tea in Washington. It will set off a white blouse very nicely.”

  “They didn’t want to part with it,” Carter.

  “But you convinced them otherwise.”

  “I stabbed the old man and then the woman. They didn’t put up much of a fight.”

  “So, as I said, the killing was easy,” Stella said.

  “You could say that.”

  “Thank you for getting the cameo for me, Lucian. You’re such a dear.”

  “It’s easy to kill and get away with it in El Paso,” Carter said. “Washington will be different.”

  “In what way?”

  “It has an efficient police force and a detective division. Murders still happen quite frequently, but usually among the lower classes.”

  “We’ll become selective, Lucian, specialists if you will. Rich husbands who meet unfortunate accidents or fatal illnesses . . . you and Seth Roper must make it look good.”

  “Convincing, you mean?”

  “Well, enough to convince the police,” Stella said.

  “My father trained me well in the ways of murder,” Carter said. “Poison, carefully applied, is the weapon of the gentlewoman or gentleman. Seth Roper is a blunt instrument, a violent man who knows the gun and the garrote and little else. He will be of limited use in Washington.”

  Stella’s laugh rang like a silver bell. “A blunt instrument, says the man who just used a knife to kill a couple of doddering old Jews.”

  “Two gunshots would have alerted everyone in the street. The job had to be done silently,” Carter said. “The blade considerably lowers the risk of being caught in the act.” He was silent for a while, and then said, “Stella, when we live in Washington the stakes must be higher, a lot higher. We don’t murder someone for a five-hundred-dollar cameo.”

  “Leave that to me, Lucian,” Stella said. “I’ll raise the stakes high enough that we’ll both be rich. As for Roper, he’s a bodyguard, nothing more.” She studied Carter and said, “Your jacket is torn and your pants are bloodstained. Get rid of them.”

  “Yes, I’ll dump them somewhere,” Carter said. “The old fool’s struggles ruined my new tweed suit.”

  Stella smiled. “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. Macbeth, act five, scene one.”

  “You know your Shakespeare, Stella. I’m surprised.”

  “Thanks to the stupidity of men, an education in art and literature is all a woman is allowed these days.” She rose from her chair. “Ah, well . . .”

  Stella crossed the floor and lay on her back in the bed. “Come, Lucian, you did something nice for me, now let me do something nice for you.”

  “I love you, Stella,” Carter said. “At first, I didn’t think I did, but I do now.”

  “How sweet,” Stella said. She opened her arms. “Come get your reward, my dearest boy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Why are you telling me all this, Sheriff ?” Red Ryan said, his fork poised over his plate in the steamy interior of Ma’s Kitchen. “You said yourself that I’m not a lawman.”

  T. C. Lyons took time to order coffee before he answered with a question of his own. “Ryan, you know how many cuttings there’s been in this town since I took over as Marshal?”

  Chewing on bacon, Red shook his head.

  “None,” Lyons said. “El Paso is not a cutting town. Hell, even the whores use guns. Now, in the space of . . . what? . . . three days, three people have been stabbed to death. Don’t you think that’s a little unusual?”

  “You don’t think Major Morgan was killed by the Apache?” Red said.

  “No, I don’t, not any longer. And I think the same person that murdered Isak and Raisa Rabinovich did for the major.”

  Not that he was finished with his steak and eggs, Buttons Muldoon spoke up for the first time. “Stretching it, ain’t you, Lyons?”

  “Maybe. But I have a feeling in my gut that I’m right.”

  “Tell me again what happened,” Red said. “Just bear in mind that the murdered people were never passengers on a Patterson and Son stage and therefore not really my concern.”

  “All right, shotgun guard, then I’ll talk to you only in your capacity as an unconcerned citizen,” Lyons said.

  “Then let’s hear it,” Buttons said.

  “I never met them, but I’m told the Rabinovich couple were well liked in this town,” Lyons said.

  “No enemies of any kind?” Red said.

  “None that I know of, but I’ll get to a possible motive later. As far as I can tell from the bodies, they were killed sometime last night. Mr. Rabinovich always closed his shop at seven every evening, but last night it seems he opened the door to someone, their killer, after business hours.”

  “They live on the premises?” Red said.

  “Yes, they have a small apartment in the back of the store.”

  “Who found the bodies?”

  “A man named Harry Mandelbaum. Mrs. Rabinovich baked some kind of bread rolls for him that he picked up every morning when the store opened at eight.”

  “Does he have a good alibi?” Red said.

  “The best. He’s ninety years old and in poor health.” Lyons set down his coffee when a man threaded his way through the crowded restaurant then bent over and whispered something in the sheriff’s ear. Lyons nodded and the man left.

  “Harry Mandelbaum is dead,” he said. “He was frail and I guess the shock of seeing his friends murdered was too much for his old ticker. Fifteen minutes ago, he keeled over and died in the Addams Apothecary store, where he was buying something for the ague. The undertaker is on the way.” Lyons looked at Red. “As far as I’m concerned, Harry is the killer’s third murder victim.”

  “Why would someone murder a harmless old couple?” Red said. “I mean, it doesn’t make any sense, unless robbery was the motive.”

  “And robbery was the motive, Ryan. After Harry found the bodies he noticed something was missing, a cameo brooch, the kind women wear, that the Rabinovich couple kept under a glass dome.”

  “They were killed for a brooch?” Red said.

  “Apparently,” Lyons said. “The brooch was quite valuable, and it was Raisa Rabinovich’s treasured possession. She said it once belonged to a Russian empress or some such.” He drained his coffee cup. “Ryan, I want this killer found, and I want to see him hang.”

  “And for some reason I can’t figure, you want my help,” Red said.

  “Then figure this . . . I trust you, and I believe you stand for law and order. Those are reasons enough, and here’s another, I think you want to see this killer caught as badly as I do.”

  “Sheriff, just so you know, I stand for the Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company,” Red said. “Buttons and me will be moving on in a few days.”

  Buttons said, “I’m right glad to hear that, Red. For a spell there, I thought you were thinking of settling down in El Paso, working in a mercantile maybe.”

  Lyons said, “I can’t see you working in a mercantile, Ryan, or doing any kind of honest work. Listen up, the man who killed the old couple had some knife training. Isak Rabinovich was a tough old coot, and he fought for his life. It took five stab wounds to bring him down, all in the chest and belly. The man who killed him had used a knife before, and he took time to wash his hands at the pump, I noticed that from the blood splashes in the sink. He was a cool customer.”

  “And you think this same cool customer stabbed Major Morgan?” Red said.

  “I think it’s possible, and that’s all I’m saying,” Lyons said. “It’s possible, no more than that.”

  Now Red Ryan did some thinking of his own. The death of Major Morgan benefited his wife enormously and Ste
lla was a suspect in his mind . . . but would she have an old couple murdered for a trinket? No, it was unthinkable. Cold and calculating she may be, but Stella Morgan knew where to draw the line.

  “Of course, could be I’m barking up the wrong tree,” Lyons said. “Maybe the killer saw the brooch and figured it would make a nice present for a lady friend.”

  “There you go, Sheriff,” Buttons said. “Find the lady, or maybe a whore, wearing the brooch and she’ll lead you right to the killer.” He smiled. “Case closed . . . and now it’s high time me and Red lit a shuck out of this burg.”

  T. C. Lyons, an isolated man marooned in a sea of lawlessness, made one last plea for Red’s help. “Ryan, give me a week. Your accommodation and grub will be provided at city expense. Help me find the killer of Isak and Raisa Rabinovich.”

  “Hell, Sheriff, what can I do that you can’t do your ownself ?” Red said, frowning as a portly gent bumped into the back of his chair and made him spill coffee on his shirt. He wiped the coffee away with his napkin and said, “Besides, I’ve never been too keen on helping the law.”

  “Ryan, maybe you can do nothing, maybe everything. I’m the law in this town and a marked man, but you can go where I can’t, talk to people, make inquiries. Also, if you get into a tight corner, you’re handy with your dukes and a gun and I am not.”

  It came as a surprise to Lyons that Buttons Muldoon favored the idea.

  “Free hotel and free grub right here at Ma’s Kitchen for seven days,” he said. “And a hundred dollars in gold when the murderer is caught. Those are Mr. Ryan’s terms.”

  “Done and done,” Lyons said.

  Red said, “I don’t think—”

  “Red, we got to fatten up before we head back east,” Buttons said. “A week will pass in no time. And besides, we can’t leave a mad killer running loose in the streets. It just wouldn’t be decent.”

  “Buttons, I hope you know what you’re doing,” Red said.

  Buttons grinned. “You would have agreed to help anyway. I just negotiated better terms.”

  “Ryan, just to make things legal, I hereby deputize you as deputy sheriff,” Lyons said. “I won’t give you a star since you’ll be working in secret as a detective.”