Clay Hand

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “Why wouldn’t I? I’ve lived here sixty years of my life and not all of them crippled.” She cocked her head. “Do you know, Sam, there’s nary a thing you can hold this one on?” She nodded at Margaret. “She’s clear as a bird in a winter sky.”

  “That makes two of you, don’t it?” he said contemptuously. “Come on, McGovern. Leave them. And may the devil take them before we get back.”

  The widow’s laughter followed them out the door.

  Chapter 37

  THEY RETURNED TO KRANCOW’S. No word had come from the West Coast, but Krancow was pacing the floor with a telegram addressed to Fields. The constable was sweating profusely. Three deputies waited with him.

  “Open it, man,” Fields said. He went directly to the phone and called Father Joyce. He asked him to ring the church bell. As Phil learned later, the tolling of the church bell was a signal to the townspeople—most times of disaster. They would go to the union hall. But this day they would know the reason they were summoned.

  Fields made another call. He hung up, hearing the voice at the other end. To one of the deputies he said then: “Pekarik, I want you and Daniels to go up to Jerry Whelan’s house. He’s there now. I want you to see that he stays there for the next two hours. Understand?”

  He swung around to Phil. “Where’s your car?”

  “Outside here.”

  Fields nodded and took the telegram from Krancow. He read it, handed it to Phil. It was from Chicago.

  QUESTIONED PAROLED LARCENIST LEONARD COLEMAN ON RENDEZVOUS HERE WITH RICHARD COFFEE DECEMBER THREE, FOUR, AND FIVE. CLAIMS COFFEE OFFERED HIM FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR INFORMATION ON PRISON BREAK LOS ALTOS PENITENTIARY 1947. COFFEE AND WIFE RESIDENTS IN WARDENS HOUSE. COFFEE ABSENT AT TIME. WIFE INTIMATE WITH WARDEN ACCORDING TO COLEMAN.

  TWO ESCAPEES STILL AT LARGE. KENNETH MCLAUGHLIN, LOS ANGELES. SERVED FOUR YEARS OF TWELVE YEAR SENTENCE, ATTEMPTED MURDER. JEROME GOW. SERVED ONE YEAR OF LIFE SENTENCE. WATERFRONT RACKET MURDER. CONTACT U. S. MARSHAL …

  Phil read no more, for Fields was on his way. “Read Laughlin and Glasgow,” the sheriff said.

  As they reached the parlor steps, the church bell started ringing. Fields checked it with his watch. The men came from their houses, the stores and taverns, women and children watching from behind thinly curtained windows. At the hall, McNamara was waiting, as were Riordon, Cavanaugh, Randy Nichols, their faces tense. Several deputies stood clutching rifles some of them must have thought never to use again, having laid them by after the war to pick up a miner’s pick or drill.

  As Fields and Phil stepped from the car, Father Joyce drove up, a weeping Anna Whelan in the car beside him. The priest got out and brought the girl to the sheriff.

  “I lied,” the words tumbled from her loose mouth. “The old lady laughed. She sent me up to spy and …”

  Fields stemmed her flow of words and tears. “You’ll tell me the rest later, Anna. This is no place for a girl now. Go back to Mrs. O’Grady’s and wait for me.”

  He stood on the hall steps and told the crowd briefly that he wanted the men to fan out from the station past the loading tracks. They were to do nothing unless Glasgow tried to leave the train before it stopped.

  “How do you know he’ll be on it, Sheriff?”

  “He was on it when it pulled out of Louisville at one-thirty.”

  “What do you want him for?”

  “I just want him. And I want him in one piece. You’ll get your explanation then.”

  With Fields driving ahead, the men walked through the street in a body, each man moving with determined pace. If this were all, they would go back to Number Three in the morning.

  Phil walked down among the men with Nichols. “I was right about the wife, wasn’t I?”

  “Yeah,” Phil said. He felt as though nothing was left in him but the numb will to see the rotten business finished.

  They waited at the center of the splayed tracks, the empty coal cars on either side forming a hollow cordon. The sun, near setting, was warm still, the only kindness of the day. Each minute was as measured as the breathing of the watchers.

  …Never the twain shall meet…the silly phrase ran through his head over and over again like words at night when over-weariness wards off sleep. In the distance, riding from one valley to another, the train whistle sounded. The waiting men stiffened. An occasional crow swooped over them, crying noisily, the only other sound the slowly rising churgle of the train.

  The long black line of cars hove into sight, and seemed to crawl warily forward. The engineer and fireman looked curiously among the tense-faced watchers, but there was no other human movement along the slackening train. The sheriff headed down the track toward the caboose, the men falling in with him, and those who lay in the wake of the train closed in from behind. There was still no brakeman as the cars jarred to a noisy halt, a lurch forward, and another halt.

  Phil watched the faces of the men who passed him, Riordon, Cavanaugh, Pekarik… He was jolted into some remembrance, seeing the deputy. Pekarik had been charged with watching Whelan.

  “Pekarik?”

  The deputy turned at his name. Phil ran to him. “Does the sheriff know you left Whelan?”

  “He was called to Mrs. O’Grady’s,” Pekarik said, “to bring her to the union hall.”

  “She has no phone. Go down to the end quick and tell the sheriff.”

  Phil ran, leaping across the tracks to the station and past it, cursing himself for leaving the car at the parlor. Nichols followed him, and McNamara. But he was already far ahead of them. He was gasping for breath as he reached Lavery’s, and there was not a car moving in the town. Only the startled eyes moved from behind curtained windows—darting after the wild-running man. He could see the taxi sitting in the widow’s driveway, already passengered, and a man flying across the field, twice as close to the house as he himself. Glasgow had jumped the train at the beginning of its hairpin turn around Winston.

  The gate was flung open, and a panic-maddened Anna plunged down the road and threw herself on Phil. He could not shake her off. She dragged after him, wailing.

  “She’s took leave of her mind,” the girl cried. “She split Pa’s head with the stick…”

  Glasgow was almost across the field. Even without Anna, Phil knew he could not reach him. Mrs. O’Grady had split the seconds in her timing. Then, from behind him, a single shot rang out, and the echo flung its sound among the hills. Glasgow stumbled a few feet further and fell. McNamara’s aim was unerring.

  Phil lifted the grappling girl from her feet and swept her off the road to the ditch. For out of the driveway, screeching like a wild beast, came the Winston taxi. The Widow O’Grady was at the wheel, her stiffened body flexing with the vibrant car. Phil clung to the road until the machine was almost on him. No fear of hell or damnation would halt her now. She drove like the avenging Maeve her chariot. For an instant before he leaped, Phil saw the terror-frozen face of Margaret Coffee. And he heard a tuneless music. The mad woman was singing.

  “For the love of God,” he shouted at McNamara, “get the tires! Shoot them out!”

  But McNamara stood where he was. He bowed, hat in hand, sweeping the ground with it as the widow passed, the revolver dangling from his other hand.

  The car screamed around Lavery’s corner and through the deserted town. Phil stumbled down the hill as Fields turned out of the station. He picked him up, and drove in the direction Phil motioned.

  “It’s no use,” Fields said, although he pushed the accelerator to the floor. “She as much as told us when she said there was nothing to hold the wife on.”

  “It’s O’Grady driving,” Phil rasped.

  “I know. That’s why it’s no use. She’s got her own vengeance all planned.”

  He was right. They saw the car far ahead of them careening through the valley to the south and then begin the climb of one last mountain. At the peak of the ascent, the taxi splintered the road fence and soared an instant before plummeting downwar
d like a stricken bird.

  Chapter 38

  GLASGOW WAS TAKEN TO the Corteau County Hospital, McNamara’s bullet lodged in his hip. Confirmation of his criminal record had come from Los Angeles, and Fields carried it with him as he went about one grim duty after another waiting for word from the hospital that he could talk with the convict.

  It was late that night when Phil and the sheriff went to see Jerry Whelan at his home. He was sprawled on a couch in the living room. His first words were: “Jasus, what did she do to my taxi?”

  “To hell with your taxi,” Fields said. “You’re lucky she didn’t take you along.”

  “I am. She said it herself before crowning me.”

  His wife stared at them from the kitchen, the two smallest children clutching at her skirt. Anna, on seeing the two men, fled to the back of the house.

  “It was you and the old lady started the bootlegging, wasn’t it, Jerry?”

  “It was.”

  “When did you start?”

  “Away during prohibition. She was working it herself in them days, and she’d run it herself, driving like the devil in a nightmare just before dawn. We made but a moderate drop of late, the market being what it is today. I was all for pulling out myself till she bought me the taxi.”

  “And the distribution, Jerry, she didn’t trust you with that?”

  “Well, it wasn’t her not trusting me as much as her liking the company now and then of her traveling men. And it was a sight safer. We’d keep the makings in her attic, you see…”

  The mice, Phil thought. It was all theirs now, for the kitten would never grow to a cat in that house.

  Whelan raised his hand to his head. “It’s throbbing something fierce.”

  “It ought to with what’s in it,” Fields said. “When did Glasgow cut himself in, Jerry?”

  “He came in on me working there one night. He was living in there at the time. He was a rum-runner once on the coast from Mexico. He’d wonderful notions of expanding our trade.”

  “You’d of had grander notions if you’d banished the Clausons. Was it you set off the dynamite?”

  “I only touched the match to the fuse, Sheriff. It was him laid it all out. I near died when I found you were down there. I’d no notion of harm. After you went down there he wanted the still destroyed.”

  “And Laughlin?” Fields said, interrupting.

  “I swear to God, Sheriff. He was no more than a nuisance, moaning after his poor lost wife.”

  “But he was more than a nuisance to Glasgow when Coffee came.”

  “I don’t know that at all. I cleared out the night before the old man died, for I saw the ghost as plain as you’re sitting there. I thought she’d come for him and might be taking me for good measure.”

  Fields got up wearily. “What did the old woman say to taking in Glasgow?”

  “She took his measure,” Whelan said. “She wasn’t a particular woman.”

  Looking at him, Phil thought that was obvious.

  Fields nodded. “She must of known from the day Coffee came. I don’t think she thought he’d be killed. Maybe she didn’t care till it was too late for her to do anything about it. But she laid out her vengeance like needlework, and it included herself. Lord God Almighty, what you don’t know about people.”

  “I’ll behave myself after this if you go easy on me, Sheriff,” Whelan whimpered. “It was getting myself beholden to the old woman I went astray.”

  “You’re beholden to your wife and kids, Jerry Whelan. If you get out of this, get yourself a decent job. And don’t be hiring Anna out till she’s the chance of growing and a bit of learning. Good night to you.” Then he called out: “And to you, Anna, and you, Mrs. Whelan.”

  The haggard woman smiled wordlessly, and smoothed the heads of the youngsters at her knees.

  Whelan motioned to Anna when she had come to the door. “She’ll hire out no more. She’s my darling girl.”

  Of a darling father, Phil thought.

  In the small hours of the morning Fields was permitted a few minutes with Glasgow. Confronted with his prison record, he listened to the sheriff recapitulate the events in Winston, nodding his head now and then in confirmation. His mouth twisted into a smile when he heard of the fate which had overtaken Margaret Coffee. He knew that it was intended for him as well. The widow had promised them a retreat in the hills where they might stay until the carrion birds found them.

  It was Fields who shuddered at the meaning she had concealed in the words.

  Not until Fields described the killing of Laughlin did Glasgow contradict him. “Take it easy, Sheriff. Take it easy. What in hell would I kill that old goat for? I took a chance with him in the first place because nobody gave a damn whether he lived or died. There was nothing in his record pointing to Winston. He was always talking about the mines, but anybody who thought about him at all thought he meant a silver mine out there. That’s where he went after the foreman. Laughlin was the easiest guy in the world to put away—in the pen or in the grave.”

  The truth of that was proven in Winston. Only when Richard Coffee grubbed his story out of history did it come to light. And only when Coffee died did it seem to matter. One more sordid thing he had learned about the ways of men and justice, Fields thought, and he had to learn it from the enemy of both.

  “It was Coffee I had to get,” Glasgow said, gritting his teeth. “When Margaret couldn’t get him out of here, I knew I had to get him. And I knew it meant a stink. If he got it in the mine it was somebody else’s stink. When Whelan’s kid saw him and Becky over there I got the notion of how I could do it. I knew there was gas there. It nearly put me out one night. I just got out in time. It turns out Coffee knew about the gas too, but I didn’t know that. And I’d been watching them. I knew he was looking for me. I thought I’d get him in there when I wanted him, using that magic doll. I figured he’d go after it, connecting it with Becky or even me. I grooved a notch in the wall all the way to that room so’s I could feel my way in the dark and lead him in there. I was going to give him a touch of chloroform and let the gas do the rest. I wasn’t in any hurry. He got interested in Becky. He wanted to let her down easy.”

  He winced with pain. “Damn McNamara’s soul. What right’s he got carrying a rod?”

  “Laughlin was caught in the trap you intended for Coffee,” Fields prompted.

  “Godalmighty, I led him down that passage like he didn’t know it better than me that night. He was in the room after the magic piece before I knew what I had, and clear off his head. I couldn’t get him out and I couldn’t get the doll away from him. I had to get out myself…”

  “All right. We’ll get that later,” Fields said, for Glasgow was getting weak. “What about the night Coffee died?”

  “It was him or me after the Laughlin business. I was scared of the mine myself. There was just one thing I wanted to get out of it—the magic doll. I hid it after Laughlin was dead and I didn’t know Coffee found it. I went in after it that night. I thought using that other entry I could make it. I made it in all right, but he was waiting for me. I led him a crazy chase out that way. He almost got me once. It must have been then he turned his ankle. When I got out I was fuzzy myself. I heard the train whistles and I knew my directions. He didn’t and it was dark. I was lucky stopping right there. I saw him come out and listen and then start rushing up the hill. I knew what happened. He was climbing to hell on an echo. I shouted a couple of times: ‘You won’t make it, Coffee!’ He didn’t answer but I knew where my voice was hitting him. Dead ahead…”

  Glasgow stopped. Then he repeated the words as though his mind and tongue were stuck on them: “Dead ahead, dead ahead…”

  “Did you see him fall?”

  The criminal’s eyes were glassy. “I didn’t see him. I heard him. He didn’t make much noise…” He closed his eyes. “Where’s Becky?”

  Fields got up. “She isn’t here, Glasgow.”

  “Did she send any word?”

  �
�She didn’t send any word to anybody. The house is locked up tight. They got all the blinds pulled.”

  Glasgow turned his head away. “Wouldn’t I give something if I was going to be as unwelcome where I’m going as I was in that house.”

  Chapter 39

  THE SHERIFF DROVE PHIL up the hill a last time, and waited with a padlock for the kitchen door while he packed his bag in the quiet house. The boarders were gone in search of another, kinder landlady. The placid O’Grady smiled wanly from the wall as Phil moved through the room. The only sound was the kitten mewing beneath the stove. He picked it up. He stopped a moment and felt the earth in one of the widow’s many plants. She had watered them that day.

  “Whatever’s bad in them, there’s a bit of kindness in all gardeners,” she said to him once. She had said then the most there was to say of herself.

  About the Author

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Series and the Julie Hayes Series; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.

  Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.

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