In the end, the pointing fingers just went in a circle—victims-killers-victims-killers—and nobody wanted to widen the loop beyond that. Circles are closed in on themselves, tidy, and San Marcos needed to see itself as a tidy town.
So at last, Old Red and I got the okay to hobble on our way. Just where we’d hobble to remained a thorny thicket, though, and it was decided—by Lottie, and nobody felt up to opposing her—that we would complete our recuperations as guests of the Lucky Two.
Milford Bales himself helped my brother into the back of Bob and Lottie’s (freshly whitewashed) wagon.
“Thanks for all you did, Gus,” he said, “and…I’m sorry for what I did.”
Gustav turned his face toward Bales, though he’d gotten in the habit of keeping his eyes closed at all times.
“You already made your apologies good enough, Milford. And then some.”
“Anyway,” I threw in as I climbed up next to my brother, “what’s a lynchin’ or two between friends?”
Bales grimaced. “Is there anything you won’t crack a joke about, Otto?”
I thought for a moment.
“Nope.”
Bales smiled and shook his head. “If Rucker gives you any trouble,” he said as he closed the gate on the bed, “just let me know.”
There was no tremble in his voice, no strain, no extra effort at all. The words came to him naturally, easily.
He still dressed like a banker but for his brass star. Yet somehow he looked like a lawman now.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Yeah,” Gustav replied. Just that and no more: “Yeah.”
We didn’t head straight south to the ranch after that. We went north first, just a mile or so, to a little cemetery on a hill overlooking town.
We could have had quite the day visiting up there. Our old friends Big Bess and Pete Ragsdale and Gil Bock were all fresh-planted thereabouts, as were the four girls dug up from the Kriegers’ cellar.
The Kriegers themselves were elsewhere—as in nowhere and everywhere. They’d been completely consumed in the fire, and now every time the wind kicked up, ashes from their house—and from them—went swirling through the streets. Mortimer and Martha Krieger would have no gravestones, no monuments. They were just dust to be swept off porches and wiped from windowsills and breathed in and sneezed out and forgotten.
But it wasn’t any of these recent, not-so-dearly departed we’d come to call on, anyway. The grave we were looking for was five years old.
Bob and Lottie hung back by the graveyard’s black iron gates, giving Gustav as much privacy as could be had. Which wasn’t much. He had to trudge out to the plot with a hand on my shoulder, giving directions even with eyes squeezed tight.
“It’s over in the southwest corner. On the other side of a toothache tree. You see it?”
“I see the tree.”
Old Red’s grip tightened, his fingers digging in so hard it hurt.
“Should be a row of markers just beyond. Ain’t they there?”
“I don’t…hold on.”
I spied a line of small, brown humps barely visible through thick grass.
“Yeah. I see ’em.”
That the undergrowth had sprouted so tall proved fortuitous, actually, for the flimsy wooden grave markers I found in the grass were decayed and faded. If they’d been out in the open entirely, nothing would’ve remained but rotting stumps.
The third one I uncovered had just two things written on it: ADELINE and 1888.
Old Red shuffled forward, arms out before him.
“Help me,” he said.
I guided him down to his knees by the marker, and he groped around till he had his hands on it. He seemed shocked by the feel of it, at first—that this crumbling, pathetic little thing was all he could touch of the woman he’d known.
He bent forward, face pointed down at the ground. I thought maybe he was going to cry, but he just stayed like that a moment, and his eyes remained closed, and no tears came.
“We only figured out the half of it, you know,” he said. “We got the who but never the why.”
“You said yourself over and over, Brother: There wasn’t any why. Not with a feller like Krieger.”
“I don’t mean why he did it. I mean why her?”
I shrugged. A useless gesture, of course, considering my brother couldn’t even see it, but it felt like it had to be done. It was the truest answer I knew.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” I said. “That’s as close to a why as we’ll ever get.”
“Feh,” Old Red said listlessly. He didn’t even have the heart left for spite.
I groped around for a silver lining.
“Hey, at least Mr. Holmes came through for us. You can’t deny the Method worked in the end.”
“Did it?” Gustav said. “Seems to me it was luck as much as anything. If we hadn’t stirred up all kinds of shit, we never would’ve had no clues at all.”
“So? Maybe it wasn’t all magnifyin’ glasses and deducifyin’, but it worked. Who knows? Could be we’re comin’ up with a method of our own.”
Old Red grunted. “Stir shit up. That’s quite a method.”
“We do seem to have a talent for it.”
My brother said nothing for a while. Did nothing, too. He just stayed crouched beside the grave, head bowed.
“You wanna be alone?” I asked him after a minute or so.
“No. I’m ready to go. Ain’t nothing here but a piece of old wood.”
He steadied himself against the marker as he stood, and for a moment I feared it would snap in half.
“I’m sure she loved you, Gustav,” I said.
I don’t know where it came from. I certainly hadn’t thought it through beforehand. If I had, I wouldn’t have said it.
“How would you know?” “Shut the hell up!” Yet another “Feh.” That’s what I expected in reply. Instead, “It don’t matter now” is what my brother said to me. “That’s all done.”
He turned his back to the grave, then just stood there. Yet as I stepped up beside him, I saw he wasn’t waiting for me to guide him away to the wagon again. He was gazing off at the horizon.
He’d opened his eyes.
It was midmorning still, and the sun was shining warm and bright to the east—the way Old Red was facing.
“Clear day today? No clouds?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Can you see the light?”
“I…I don’t know. I can’t tell if I see it or just feel it.”
He stretched out a hand and found my shoulder, and from the trembling of his lips I could tell he was trying to smile.
“Don’t you worry, though, Brother,” he said, eyes still open wide. “I ain’t never gonna give up lookin’ for it.”
Also by Steve Hockensmith
Holmes on the Range
On the Wrong Track
The Black Dove
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank:
Jim Thompson and Bernard Herrmann—for inspiration.
Crafty Keith Kahla, editor and Texan—for pointing the way.
Elyse Cheney, agent and New Yorker—for cracking the whip.
Andy Martin, Hector DeJean, Kathleen Conn, and everyone else at Minotaur Books—for keeping this crazy cattle drive moving.
Big Red’s Posse (you know who you are)—for giving me a reason to saddle up.
Sandra E. Cortez and the San Marcos Public Library—for helping me get my facts straight and forgiving me (I hope) when I chose to bend the truth.
India Cooper—for the sharpest eyes this side of Old Red himself.
Sophie Littlefield, Steven Sidor, and Ben Sevier—for timely words of wisdom and encouragement.
Everyone I’m forgetting to thank—for not hitting me the next time I see you.
Mark and Alyssa Nickell—for sweet relief.
Kate and Mojo and Mar—for the whole schmear.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,
and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE CRACK IN THE LENS. Copyright © 2009 by Steve Hockensmith. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hockensmith, Steve.
The crack in the lens / Steve Hockensmith.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(Holmes on the range mystery series; 4)
ISBN: 978-0-312-37942-1
1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Cowboys—Fiction. 3. Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir. 1859–1930—Influence—Fiction. 4. Texas—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.O29C73 2009
813'.6—dc22
2009007910
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