Occult Detective

by Emby Press

  Some believed that Lone Crow was the fastest gun west of the Mississippi, and whether that was true or not, that belief was not without reason. Crow moved with lightning speed, shunting aside Dr. Watson’s pistol even as he whirled away. The contact of his elbow with the side of the Beaumont-Adams revolver caused Watson to pull the trigger and his barrel spat a bullet which resulted in a bottle of whiskey upon the bar top exploding in a spray of alcohol.

  Holmes sprang into action the moment that Crow did, lifting the makeshift table and forcing it into Crow, but the Indian had already spun away, so that Holmes succeeded only in knocking over his associate. Both he and Dr. Watson fell sprawling into the wall of the tent, and the support poles leaned as the two men tangled themselves in the canvas wall. Crow took this moment to thread the astonished crowd and disappear through the front flap of the tent.

  Scowling, Holmes untangled himself from the canvas. “That was a rather poor display of marksmanship, Watson.”

  Watson scowled back at the English detective. “I wasn’t the one who slammed my partner with a table.”

  Holmes rose to his feet. “I must say he moves more quickly than I anticipated. I will take that into account the next time we meet, so that we shan’t be outplayed again.”

  “It seems to me he outplayed us more than physically,” commented Watson as he tossed aside the broken remnants of the table. “He pierced your carefully wrought disguise just as easily as … well, as you might have seen through a clever foe’s disguise.”

  Holmes didn’t like the sound of his associate’s implications. “He is a wily murderer, is he not? I shall not underestimate his craftiness in the future.”

  “In the future?” questioned Watson.

  “Oh, yes,” said Holmes. “Now, we must be going. The game is afoot!”

  *

  Holmes rode a sturdy bay and Watson a dapple grey as they worked their way through the rugged Oklahoma wilderness.

  The aquiline-featured detective brought his horse to a standstill for the hundredth time and climbed down from his saddle, extricated his foot from the stirrup and examined the markings upon the ground. As he did, he tamped some tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

  “Are we still on the trail?” asked Watson, who had some experience in tracking Afghan warriors, himself, with the unfortunate result of catching a bullet from a jezail rifle in both his shoulder and leg, the former accounting for his persistent limp.

  “Very much so,” said Holmes as he fired up his pipe. “Though, judging by the decay of the tracks, he is gaining distance between us.”

  “Well, perhaps if we didn’t pause every hundred feet to examine the tracks we might not fall so far behind,” suggested Watson. He wrinkled his nose as he caught the scent of Holmes’ tobacco smoke. “What in the blazes are you drawing on, Holmes?”

  “It’s kinnikinic,” replied Holmes, “a mixture of dried sumac leaves and dogwood bark that the native American Indians smoke.”

  “It throws up an awful hogo,” replied Watson. “Hardly a substitute for tobacco.”

  “I find the taste rather bracing.” Holmes stared off into the distance. “I believe I know where our quarry is heading.”

  Watson leaned forward on his saddle horn. “Oh? And would you care to impart that information to me?”

  Holmes placed his foot into his stirrup and swung back into the saddle of his bay. “Despite his savage aspect, the criminal mentality transcends boundaries of class, education, and ethnicity.”

  “What are you hinting at, Holmes?”

  Holmes kicked his horse into a trot, clots of grass-tufted earth kicking into the air. “I am hinting at nothing. I was being quite precise.”

  Watson’s lips tightened beneath his mustache and he urged his dappled grey alongside of Holmes’s horse. “Oh, alright then. I’ll play the game. What commonality do criminals of all races, creeds, and education have in common?”

  “I should think it quite plain,” chided Holmes. “Criminals of all stripes have a deep-seated psychological urge to return to the scene of their criminal act. Sometimes it is relive the moment, or guilt, or even a obsessive paranoia that causes them to return in the case that there might be some piece of evidence which might convict them if it should be uncovered—invariably, I find the latter to be the case. No crime is so perfect there is not some detail that, if given scrutiny with the clarity of a properly deductive mind, will reveal the perpetrator.”

  “So, you are saying that this Lone Crow is returning to the scene of the crime …”

  “That is precisely what I said, Watson. Haven’t you been listening? By exhuming the body of his victim, Lord Kinsey of Cornwall, we have upset the tenuous balance of his irrational mind.”

  Watson scanned the windswept horizon and the waving fronds of yellow grass, wondering if Lone Crow might have doubled back and be setting an ambush for them even now. He’d seen it happen often enough in Afghanistan. “Irrational mind? You think that our quarry is deranged?”

  “Naturally. Any person that has bent himself to such a heinous crime as murder cannot be considered wholly sane. And further consider the fact that this Indian brave dismembered his victim before burying him, and then further evaluate his mental state by the fact that he buried his victim precisely thirteen feet deep and placed seven large stones atop the grave.”

  “I well recall those stones and the thirteen feet of earth,” said Watson. “If my memory serves me correctly, I was the one who removed them while you spent your time analyzing the ‘clues’ that Crow had left behind. I’ve still got earth in my boots to show for it.”

  Holmes ignored the complaint. “These actions exhibit such a high degree of pedantic obsession that it is clear that Crow has ritualized his murders and the burial of his victims. By upsetting the balance of the grave site which Crow has imagined he has attained, we have unbalanced our murderer as well. We’ll use that instability to set a trap for him. Instead of following his trail, we’ll cut a straighter course for the grave site and plan our apprehension of Lone Crow.”

  “But this Crow,” suggested Watson, “what if he is not what he seems? In our investigations many we spoke to considered him a gunfighter and a killer—but no murderer.”

  “And there were those we spoke with that considered him a murderer, Doctor Watson,” Holmes reminded his partner. “The evidence that he dismembered Lord Kinsey is incontrovertible.”

  They fell into silence, Holmes pulling at his pipe as they traveled across the countryside, leaving a trail of kinnikinick smoke wafting on the wind. As the sun began to sink behind the horizon they arrived at the butte where they had discovered Lord Kinsey’s body and their horses climbed the shale strewn paths which wound up the rear of the butte. On a terrace that grew with a thin copse and tufts of grass, they tied their horses and climbed the rest of the way on foot.

  It was at the top where they found the pile of seven stones which Watson had cast aside, as well as the mound of earth which had covered Lord Kinsey’s body. Holmes shuffled to the edge of the exhumed grave and frowned. “Most curious.”

  “Most curious?” repeated Watson. “What do you find most curious?”

  “It appears that the body of Lord Kinsey has been removed from his grave.”

  “Then, you are correct in your estimation that Lone Crow was headed back to the scene of the crime, but incorrect in your estimation that we might be able to beat him here if we cut across the countryside.”

  “I was not incorrect on either account,” replied Holmes with a touch of sharpness. “The footprints here are our own, and there are no other footprints approaching from either the west or east entrances.”

  “Wild animals, perhaps?” suggested Watson.

  “There are no animal prints that support such a hypothesis, Dr. Watson. However, there are footprints ascending from the grave, and they are the marks of English riding boots. The same English riding boots that Lord Kinsey was wearing in the grave.” He pointed to the mark of the sole in the l
oose earth on the terraces that ascended from the deep grave, and at the ball of the footprint was a notch where the leather of the boot had been damaged. “I recall seeing this notch in the sole of his right boot after you exhumed him.”

  Watson was flummoxed by this suggestion and took a moment to examine the blisters and calluses on his palms. “Holmes, you do recall that Lord Kinsey was dead as a stone when we—I should say, I—dug him out of the ground? You also might recall that his legs and arms had been hacked from his body by the same tomahawk that was resting in his heart? Do you propose that Lord Kinsey’s legs, of their own accord, stood up and climbed from the grave? And if they did, where are Kinsey’s body and arms?”

  An amused smile crossed Holmes’s long visage. “The facts pose an interesting conundrum, do they not?”

  Watson threw his hands out in a gesture of defeat. “I would say the facts defy all probability and logic. Perhaps we have the facts wrong.”

  “Ah, my dear Watson, the facts are always the facts. That they defy your logic does not make them any less so.”

  “Then explain to me how a dead man with severed arms and legs hoisted himself out of the earth and is now gallivanting free around the countryside!”

  “All in good time, Watson. All in good time. At the moment, we must prepare ourselves for the arrival of our Indian murderer. This time, do not allow yourself to be taken unawares by his sudden actions. Our foe is a wily and quick one.”

  “Perhaps we should, instead, be following the bootprints of our dead man, to see just where and how his disembodied legs are carrying the rest of him.”

  “I have the feeling that is a mystery that will be answered shortly and that we will be able to take a satisfactory answer back to our benefactors in England as to who is the rightful heir to the Kinsey estates and fortune.”

  “If you would have asked me an hour ago,” said Watson, “I would have been sure that it was not Lord Reginald Kinsey, considering we found him dismembered in a very deep grave—but perhaps Reginald Kinsey is more alive and more mobile than one would expect for a man with no arms and legs and a tomahawk piercing his heart.”

  “Sarcasm, my dear Watson, is the last refuge for the witless. Do not stoop so low as to demean yourself by the lowest form of language.”

  “I can think of a lower form of language,” replied Watson. “Perhaps you’d like me to share a few choice words which spring to my mind?”

  “That is hardly necessary, Watson. Now take up position behind that outcropping of stone and I will crouch behind this pile of seven stones which you have conveniently stacked nearby the grave. If my ears are as keen as usual, I should say that our quarry will be here within ten minutes time.”

  The setting sun painted the sky in brilliant hues of orange and purple, filling the drifting clouds with celestial light as Lone Crow rode up the butte on a dun-colored horse—different from the one he had escaped from the rail encampment upon. He slipped from his saddle and tethered his horse to a gnarled scrub tree—one hardly capable of restraining the horse if it truly had the desire to leave. Watson peered at him from around the corner of the outcropping, not daring to breathe too loudly, in the case that the Indian might hear his inhalations.

  Crow took a half-dozen steps away from his horse then stopped in his tracks, looking across the shadowed crags, the faces of which were illumined in roseate light. Apparently satisfied that he was alone, he continued to the edge of the grave side. His face tightened when he saw that it was empty, and he descended into the depths of the earth until he had disappeared from sight.

  “Now!” cried Holmes from his hiding spot behind the pile of stones. As Watson rushed out from hiding, his Beaumont-Adams in hand, Holmes threw his back against the pile of stone, exerting all his musculature, weight, and leverage against the shifting stack. The rock rumbled as it cascaded into the deep grave where Crow was hidden in the dank shadow.

  Watson thought that perhaps Crow might have been buried in the avalanche of stone, but a dark shadow leaped up the terraced side of the grave, loose dirt and shale spitting from beneath its boots. Crow’s savage face came into view, lit by the last rays of the dying sun.

  Without hesitation, Watson thrust out his pistol. “Stop!”

  Amazingly enough, Crow did exactly that. At the grave’s edge and without saying a word he slowly began to raise his hands. Holmes triumphantly rushed from the spot where he had caused the avalanche of stone, brandishing his short-barreled Webley revolver, which had been a gift of his Scotland Yard associates. “Stand fast, fiend. You’ll not escape us this time!”

  Crow looked slowly from Holmes to Watson, recognizing them as the men who had assailed him at the rail camp, and his brow furrowed.

  “I suppose you are wondering just how we managed to beat you here,” said Holmes. “It was a simple matter of deduction and prediction based on the psychological profile I composed of your criminal tendencies.”

  “I am curious,” said Crow. “I switched horses and sent my other on in the wrong direction with a saddlebag of rocks so that the hoof prints would remain the correct depth.”

  “A clever ploy,” conceded Holmes, “but not clever enough to fool a man who was able to predict where you were going, and strike directly for the grave site. While you were switching horses we were able to beat you here, so as to set and spring our trap!”

  Watson removed the pistol from Crow’s holster and examined the ivory grips, which were carved with an eagle, then he pulled loose the tomahawk. “This is very similar to the tomahawk with which Lord Kinsey was slain and dismembered.”

  “That,” said Holmes, “is because our perpetrator fashioned the hafts of both weapons himself, is that not correct Mr. Crow?”

  “That is correct,” confirmed Crow. “But there is something about Lord Reginald Kinsey that you don’t comprehend.”

  Holmes was in a magnanimous mood now that Crow had been disarmed. “Really! Well, praytell enlighten me of what I’ve been failing to comprehend.”

  “Kinsey is no longer what you think …”

  “I think he is murdered,” said Holmes. “That one thing is beyond disputation by any sane individual.”

  Crow frowned. “Kinsey was murdered, surely, but not by me. He was infected by a supernatural entity in London and driven out of England by members of the Diogenes Club, who contacted me and warned me of his coming. By the time I received the message Kinsey was already on American shores and had committed three murders.”

  Holmes snorted in derision. “Clearly you seek to perpetrate your own derangement upon my associate and I, but I can assure you that we see things with a mental clarity that your fogged mind cannot.”

  Crow peered into the lengthening shadows. “The only thing that can keep a creature like the one that inhabits Kinsey’s body in its grave is cutting off the limbs and putting a piece of steel through its heart. Even this is no sure thing, and so I placed two safety wards on the grave by burying him thirteen feet deep and putting seven stones atop.”

  Watson glanced at Holmes. “I removed the stones, dug out the earth, and pulled loose the tomahawk in Kinsey’s heart.”

  Holmes shook his head in disdain. “Dr. Watson, don’t tell me that a medical man such as yourself is tossing aside fact and logic and falling for such hokum as our murderer is spewing? I’m beginning to think that Crow may well have deluded himself into believing such an unlikely story, but you shouldn’t let a madman’s certainty fuel your uncertainty, Watson. Now, I’ll keep my pistol trained upon Crow while you bind his limbs. I’m sure the authorities will be glad to take Crow into custody once we deliver proof that he killed Lord Kinsey.”

  “I’m afraid that my length of rope is hanging on the horn of my saddle,” said Watson. “And just how are we going to prove that Crow killed Lord Kinsey if there is no body to show the authorities?”

  “I am certain,” said Holmes, “that if we apply a bit of deductive reasoning to this most peculiar case we will be able to locate the body. A
dismembered corpse does not walk off by itself, despite Mr. Crow’s most ludicrous assertions. Now, I do believe that I spied a coil of rope on Mr. Crow’s saddle.”

  Watson cast a glance back toward the dun horse that Crow had ridden to the desolate grave and saw Holmes, of course, was correct.

  “Please, Dr. Watson, if you would be so kind as to retrieve that rope, while I keep my pistol attentively trained upon our captured quarry?”

  Watson obliged Holmes’s request and backpedaled to the horse, but found it a most disagreeable steed. It snorted and snapped at him, managing to grab the sleeve of his coat in its teeth. When Watson wrenched away a strip of cloth remained in the horse’s mouth. “I say, something seems to have irritated this horse!”

  “Do stay clear of its hind legs, Dr. Watson,” suggested Holmes. “A swift kick might stave in your ribs if you’re so unwary!”

  “Yes,” grumbled Watson, who had far more experience with horses, irritable or otherwise, in Afghanistan than any military man might desire. He had removed the rope when a shrill animal scream resounded up the hillside, upsetting the dun so that he reared up, front legs flailing and nostrils flaring.

  Crow was the first to speak, even as the screams continued. “Did you leave your horses tethered on the hillside? Kinsey’s hunger is not limited to human flesh …”

  For a moment Watson appeared confounded. “What?!”

  The stomping of hooves and the clatter of shale spilling down the steep slopes of the butte reached their ears and Holmes called out to Watson. “You stay and guard our prisoner and I’ll see what’s disturbing our horses.”

  However, before Holmes could finish speaking Crow darted past the detective and down the slope toward the sound of the terrified horses. In the dusk he made a difficult target and it was but a matter of a few moments before he had swung around the bole of a twisted tree and descended out of sight. Holmes sent a shot speeding from his Webley, but given the speed of his target, the poor lighting, and the shortness of the pistol’s barrel, which made it less accurate than it’s longer-barreled cousins, the snap shot ricocheted off some shale and cut past Crow’s shoulder.