The Witch's Tongue

by James D. Doss

  “Because I am not a moron. I am well aware that it is a common practice for a person who has no connection to a burglary to cook up a scheme to collect the reward. This being so, I demanded proof that the presumed burglar was actually in possession of the Cassidy valuables.” The antiquarian folded his handkerchief into a perfect square, pocketed it. “The caller described one of the coins burgled from the Cassidy collection. And the list of stolen coins was not made public until several days after he made the call.”

  “Aha—now we’re getting somewhere. What did he describe?”

  “A cent. More particularly, a large Liberty Cap cent.”

  The Ute was mildly disappointed. “A penny?”

  Briggs snapped irritably. “This ‘penny,’ as you call it, was one of approximately one hundred and twelve thousand copper cents minted in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-three. And the condition of the Cassidy cent is Very Fine.”

  The Ute was unmoved. “So what’s the very fine cent worth in common greenbacks?”

  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of seven thousand.”

  “That is a pretty nice neighborhood. And there’s no way anybody but the burglar or one of his pals could have known this particular Liberty Cap was part of the loot?”

  “It is possible, but quite unlikely. The caller would have needed immediate access to the confidential list that was provided to local law-enforcement authorities.” Briggs inspected his reflection in the display-case glazing, adjusted his bow tie. “Now are you satisfied that this is a rock-solid deal?”

  “Nailing this guy who ruffled your feathers—this is really important to you?”

  “Extremely. I will be quite satisfied if the snake ends up in the clink. Or severely injured. Or stone-cold dead, if the need for self-defense should require you to see to his demise.” He enjoyed a dramatic pause. “So what say you, stalwart defender of truth and justice?”

  “I say who is this guy who called you?”

  “Not so fast, my crafty Indian friend. First, we shake hands to seal the deal.”

  This sounds too good to be completely on the level. But I can’t see a hole in it. And Miss James will like the engagement ring. Charlie Moon grasped the white man’s extended hand.

  “Done,” the antiquarian said, and gave him the emerald ring.

  Moon reached into his pocket, paid the man with four shiny new quarter dollars.

  Ralph Briggs beamed, stacked the quarters on the display case. “You know, when you first started sniffing around this display, I naturally assumed you were lusting after Chief Ouray’s pistol.”

  The Ute eyed the .45-caliber Colt Peacemaker. “How do you know it was really his?”

  “There is a rather unusual marking Ouray carved on the left grip,” Briggs said. “Here, let me show you.” He removed the heavy, single-action revolver from the display shelf, was passing it barrel-first to Charlie Moon when several things happened.

  From outside, a terrified scream.

  A splitting, cracking sound.

  A bright red spot appeared on Ralph Briggs’s shirt.

  As the Peacemaker slipped from the antiquarian’s hand, the tribal investigator went into a crouch, turned toward the window, instinctively reached for a pistol that was not strapped to his side. One thought flashed like lightning in his mind: She’s out there.

  THE PLATE glass exploded into ten thousand shards as the dark form of the Ute shattered the window.

  The shooter was momentarily transfixed. The revolver slipped from cold fingers, clattered onto the ground.

  COMING SO abruptly from the bright display room into the outer darkness, Charlie Moon was effectively blind. He took a few uncertain strides, bumped headlong into a porch pillar, stumbled down the steps. He attempted to shake off the effect of the encounter. The buzzing in his ears was gradually replaced with another sound. Whimpering. Now he could see the outlines of a grove of aspens, the peaked roof of the antique shop—and the form of someone on the gravel driveway only yards away.

  In an instant, Charlie Moon was at her side.

  She refused the comfort of his arms, fell into a fit of uncontrolled sobbing. Ignoring her protests, Moon scooped the woman up, carried her to his Expedition, deposited her on the rear seat. Having placed Miss James in the relative safety of the heavy automobile, he snatched his revolver and cell phone from the glove compartment, cocked the hammer, dialed 911.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DUTY CALLS

  The Granite Creek chief of police was enjoying a delightful dinner with a charming lady. And so far, it had been—by Scott Parris’s method of calibrating such encounters—a 100 percent perfect evening. Which is to say that he had not dribbled clam chowder onto his new silk tie, or said anything to offend the damsel’s delicate sensibilities, or belched. Being quite satisfied with his faultless behavior, the sandy-haired, broad-shouldered man smiled across the linen-covered table at the fetching woman who had a master’s degree in something or other—and the bluest blue eyes that sparkled like she knew a wonderful secret.

  She was saying that she had been rereading Lilie Lala.

  With a disarmingly earnest expression, Parris informed her that the story was one of his favorites. Why do I say things like that?

  The pretty woman seemed surprised. “You are an admirer of de Maupassant?”

  He had gone too far to back down. “You bet your boots. I buy all his new books—soon as they hit the street.”

  She leaned across the table, touched his hairy hand. “Scott—you are just precious.”

  She likes me! His happy smile slipped away when he felt the urgent vibration of the cell phone in his vest pocket. Hoping it would be a wrong number, Parris smiled apologetically at his date, stuck the plastic thing against his ear, snapped, “Parris.”

  The GCPD dispatcher was abrupt and to the point: “Sir, we have a shooting.”

  The chief felt the expensive meal churn under his belt buckle. “Where?”

  “That antique store out on Blackthorn Road.”

  Parris’s hands went ice-cold. “Yeah, I know the place.” Please, God—don’t let it be Ralph. “What’s the situation?”

  “One down, male. The vic is the owner of the business, a Mr. Ralph Briggs. According to our caller, his condition is not good.”

  He closed his eyes. Please, God—don’t let Ralph die.

  “A male reported the shooting; there’s also a female at the scene. Far as we can tell, neither suffered serious injury.”

  “Do we have the shooter?” Or shooters?

  “No, sir.”

  “Do we have a description of the shooter?”

  “Negative on that, sir.”

  Scott Parris shouted, “Well what in blue blazes do we have?”

  His startled date dropped her dessert spoon.

  The dispatcher’s reply was delivered in a sullen monotone: “We have a gun, sir.”

  “Well at least there’s some good news.” He grinned reassuringly at the lady across the table. “Sorry, dispatch. Didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  No response from the harassed dispatcher.

  “Uh—who do we have on scene?”

  “Whole evening shift. Officers Martin, Knox, Slocum. Plus some state cops. Captain Leggett is on the way, ETA about five minutes. An ambulance and two EMTs are already there.”

  Parris avoided looking directly at the attractive woman, who was twisting a napkin in her hands. “Tell Leggett I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  PUSHING THE aged red Volvo to its limit, the chief of police roared down Blackthorn Road just ahead of a spray of blue-gray exhaust that soaked up moonlight. A half mile away, he saw an alarming number of red and blue lights flashing. As he drew closer, Scott Parris estimated five units. Looks like three of ours, couple of the state Smokeys. He made a hard right, aimed the Volvo hood ornament up the long gravel driveway leading to The Compleate Antiquarian, where, according to the elegant sign, merchandise was SHOWN BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. The ambulance had
already departed for Snyder Memorial. I wonder if Ralph Briggs made it to the hospital alive. He prayed for the twentieth time that the peppery little man would survive.

  Scott Parris launched himself out of the Volvo, stalked past a pair of grim-faced state troopers. He likewise ignored officers “Rocks” Knox and “Piggy” Slocum. Knox, who lurched about on a wooden leg, was an absolutely fearless cop who could pass as a borderline lunatic six days out of seven. Piggy had a heart of pure gold and the mind of a slow ten-year-old. Lieutenant Alicia Martin, one of his ablest officers, was in a black-and-white with a dark-haired woman who was huddled in a blanket. The citizen did not appear to be injured, but Parris thought her face looked vaguely familiar. The chief was relieved to see Captain Bill Leggett, his second in command. Though Leggett was not gifted with an excess of imagination, he was a by-the-book cop who knew every page by heart. In addition to a flawless memory and an unflappable manner, the man had an IQ in the high 180s. “What’ve we got, Bill?”

  Captain Leggett raised a rubber-gloved hand to display a revolver sealed in a tagged plastic bag. “One shot fired.”

  “Smith and Wesson?”

  “That it is. Twenty-two caliber, two-inch barrel. And it’s a fairly old one. May be a hard piece to trace.”

  Parris stared at the weapon. The standard-issue grips had been replaced with polished wood. Not walnut, though. And the custom grips, which were not checkered, looked to be relatively new.

  Leggett looked toward the unit where Officer Martin was attending to the woman. “I guess you already know we’ve got a man shot. Mr. Briggs—owner of the establishment—took one in the chest. He’s been transported to Snyder Memorial ER. The woman…” Leggett seemed to blush, though it was impossible to tell in the garish mixture of moonlight, headlights, and red and blue flashes, “uh—we got us a small problem with the female, who is a potential witness.”

  Parris squinted painfully at his subordinate. “What kind of problem?” I hate problems.

  “The witness is almost incoherent. From what we’ve been able to get out of her, she can’t ID the shooter. But she was scared out of her wits—apparently thought her boyfriend was going to be shot.”

  The chief of police struggled to keep an even voice. “Who’s the woman?”

  The embarrassed lieutenant avoided the boss’s stare. “She hasn’t given us a name.”

  “Where’s her boyfriend?”

  Leggett pointed his flashlight at a vehicle. “Over there.”

  Parris glanced at the trees, saw the Expedition, the tall, slender man. “Captain Leggett—is that who I think it is?”

  “Yes, sir. I would say so.”

  The chief of police approached the Ute. “Charlie, you all right?”

  Moon nodded.

  “What happened here, partner?”

  “Miss James wasn’t hit.” Charlie Moon’s face flashed red and blue. “Ralph wasn’t so lucky.”

  “I know.” The chief of police clapped his hand on the Ute’s back. “He’s at Snyder Memorial.”

  Moon heard the dreaded question come out of his mouth: “Will he make it?”

  Scott Parris looked up to the heavens. Summed up his total knowledge of the universe. “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE CONUNDRUM

  Hunched forward in an uncomfortable swivel chair, Charlie Moon looked across Scott Parris’s desk at the Granite Creek chief of police. “I went to the hospital to see Ralph. He’s still in intensive care. Surgeon took the slug out, but he’s got a collapsed lung and a couple of blood vessels severed. Floor nurse says he’s in critical condition.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Parris pressed the Hold All Calls button on his desktop telephone console. “He’s been in a coma since the surgery.”

  Moon clasped his hands together, making a massive fist. “So what’ve we got on the shooting?”

  Parris waved his arms in a gesture of futility. “I could talk for hours about what we haven’t got.” The sandy-haired man turned his head to look out a second-story window at the rocky creek whence the silver-mining settlement had taken its name in the early 1870s. “We haven’t got a suspect. Despite Ralph telling you that he got a call from an unknown person who claimed to have the Cassidy Museum loot, I don’t have a motive I can hang my hat on. And between you and Miss James, we don’t have a witness who saw enough of the shooter to tell me whether the suspect is fat or thin, tall or short, male or…” He picked up a massive glass paperweight, turned it in his hands, stared at the object without seeing his distorted reflection on the curved surface. “Nobody even saw the perp drive away.”

  Charlie Moon stared at his scuffed boots. “Which would suggest that he was on foot. Or maybe he had his wheels parked a couple of hundred yards away—probably in that grove of pines down by the highway.”

  “Yeah,” Parris said. “He could’ve cranked the engine, drove off without turning his lights on.”

  This wasn’t going anywhere. “What about the weapon?”

  Parris reached into a desk drawer, laid a transparent plastic bag on the polished oak surface. Hermetically sealed and tagged—along with the flattened slug recovered from Ralph Briggs’s chest—this was the only significant piece of physical evidence in the shooting of the antiquarian.

  Moon got up from the chair, leaned to study the deadly instrument. It was a .22-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. Blued steel, custom rosewood grips. Two-inch barrel. Small enough for a man to drop into his hip pocket.

  The chief of police smiled at the sidearm. “Pretty little thing, ain’t it?”

  “I guess it’d be too much to hope for some prints.”

  “There were some smudges. Nothing useful.”

  Moon grasped at another straw: “Any chance of tracing the owner?”

  “State crime lab’s working on it. FBI forensics also has a complete set of photographic data, serial number, and some sample slugs we shot into a barrel of water.” Turning again to the window, the chief of police watched a small boy dangle a fishing line into Granite Creek. The ardent angler wished he were down there on the bank, casting one of his handmade mayfly lures onto the rolling waters. “This six-shooter was manufactured about sixty-five years ago. There have probably been at least a half-dozen owners over the years.” He sighed. “But sooner or later, we’ll turn up something.” And sooner or later, the Cubs will win the World Series.

  The tribal investigator reached out to touch the plastic bag, feel the steel surface of the precision machine beneath the 3-mil polyethylene film. “It’s hard to believe this shooting was premeditated.”

  Parris replied, without taking his gaze off the stream, “Yeah, I know what you mean. If I was going somewhere intending to pop lead at a fella I wanted dead—this little peashooter would not be my weapon of choice. Not even if I could stick the barrel in the guy’s ear.” He swiveled his chair to face the Ute. “So what does that suggest?”

  Moon thought about it. “Try this on for size. What we’re dealing with is a break-and-enter artist, like the guy who carted off the Cassidy valuables. The .22 is the burglar’s pocket gun. It’s not intended for any serious shooting—he packs it because it gives him a feeling of security. He shows up at Ralph Briggs’s antique store after dark, hoping to conduct some business. The small windows on the porch are open. He comes close, hears Ralph telling me all about how some lowlife had called him about unloading the loot from the Cassidy burglary, how Ralph wants me to set up an ambush, put the arm on the felon when the stolen goods are exchanged for cash. The burglar took a dim view of this.”

  The chief of police propped his elbows on the desk, stared at his hands, made a peaked roof with his fingers. “But this shooter only plugged Ralph.” He looked up at the Ute. “He never even takes a pop at you.”

  Moon wondered what was bothering his moody friend. “Bad guy knows Ralph can ID him, so Ralph is naturally his first priority. Burglar’s first shot gets Ralph in the chest. I would’ve been his second target, but my sweet
heart is screaming bloody murder, so he decides to call it a day.”

  The lawman allowed himself a thin smile. “I can imagine when you came crashing though that plate-glass window like a mountain gorilla on steroids, it must’ve unnerved the shooter some little bit. So he scrams without firing a second shot.” Parris allowed his finger tent to collapse. “But aren’t we lucky that he drops his piece.”

  “Fits with the burglar personality,” the tribal investigator said. “The guy’s a sneak thief—not a professional assassin. He panics, drops his pistol when things get out of hand.” Moon frowned at the chief of police. “Scott, would you feel better if he’d shot me, then carried the gun away with him?”

  Parris considered the last half of the question with some care.

  The Ute assumed a hurt look. “I was hoping you’d speak up right away and say, ‘No, pardner—why, I’d feel real bad if things had turned out that way.’”

  “How’s Miss James doing?” The chief of police played with a ballpoint pen. “She remember anything yet?”

  “There’s nothing to remember,” Moon said. “I figure she heard the shot, yelled, got out of the car to come help me.”

  “Right. How is she holding up?”

  “Under the circumstances, pretty good, I guess.”

  I guess? Parris grabbed this little thread, pulled on it. “You haven’t seen her lately?”

  Being of the firm opinion that this was no one’s business but his own, the tribal investigator avoided a direct answer. “I’m having dinner with her tonight.”

  “Where? Sugar Bowl? Blue Light?”

  Moon grinned. “None of your business.”

  “Well, I was only asking as a matter of—”

  “Last thing I want is for the local chief of police to just happen to drop by our table, invite himself to a seat, start telling my lady long-winded lies about his many harrowing adventures as a Chicago cop in the pursuit of preserving law and order.”