by Ed Gorman
***
After an hour or so, the first stars gleaming in the clear night sky, I went inside and sliced off two pieces of bread and spread them with butter and jam, and sat down and had the sort of meal I used to enjoy when I was a kid.
I took the time, as I often did, to see how well she’d fixed up the cabin, everything from the bright cotton material that hid the open shelves that were packed with canned goods, to the crisp white curtains, to the colorful quilt she’d made for our bed, to the pie safe she’d constructed herself from wood and tin scraps, the safe plenty tight to store fresh food and pies in. She always laughed and said she wanted to make our home look as much like New England as possible.
I felt so many things and yet I felt-nothing. There was a deadness inside me. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m one of those men who cry sometimes when they’re particularly frustrated or angry. Tears would have been a relief. But tears wouldn’t come. There was just this emptiness-this coldness-that I knew foreshadowed a great rage. It was one thing for Webley to make a move on me. That was part of the game powerful men always play. Moving on my wife was completely different, however.
I ended up in the rocking chair in the doorway. I wanted the smell of Indian summer flowers, and the last September light of fireflies, and that smoky aroma that rolled down from the fir-lined slopes every fall.
What I wanted most of all was my wife.
If I’d had any sense of where she might have gone, I would’ve ridden there and tried to find her.
But I didn’t. I can deal with just about anything except the feeling of helplessness. We were pretty much a pair. No close friends; no real social life; nobody we turned to-except each other-to confide in. There was no place to go.
***
Around seven, weary mentally and physically, I surprised myself by drifting into an uneasy sleep on top of the bed, Conner right next to me. He’d started making deep whining noises halfway up his windpipe. As if he knew what was going on and missed her, too. He laid his head on my bed. He smelled of heat and dog.
Something startled me awake.
In a single motion, I rolled over, yanking my six-gun free and pointing it at the open doorway.
“God, Marshal, don’t shoot.” Win Evans came inside. “She said you’d probably be here.”
“Who did?”
“Why, Callie. Your wife.”
“Oh.” I rolled over so that I was sitting up. I rubbed my face and fired up the last of the hand-rolled cigarettes I’d been smoking when I went to sleep. “Where is she?”
“The town park.”
“How’d she look?”
He shrugged, his eyes evasive. “Guess I didn’t get a good look at her.”
I stood up. “C’mon, Win. Don’t bullshit me. How’d she look?”
“Scared.”
“She say why?”
“No, she just asked me if I’d go get you and tell you to come back to town.”
“That’s all she said?”
He nodded. “I s’pose I could’ve asked her some questions, Lane. But you’re my boss and all. It wouldn’t have been right.”
“You did fine, Win. Just fine.”
I was already pumping fresh water into the washbasin. I needed to start reviving myself.
“Anyhow, I wanted to get you the message.”
“I appreciate it, Win,” I said, toweling my face dry.
On the way back to town, he said, “I was wondering if this had anything to do with the trial tomorrow.”
“That’s what I was wondering, too.”
He shrugged. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough.”
“Yeah, I guess I will.”
When we reached town, he said, “I got to get back to my rounds, Lane. I’ll see you later.”
***
She wasn’t at the park.
I walked every inch of it and couldn’t find her. I sat down on a bench and rolled a cigarette and tried to make sense of it all. We both got letters that day, special letters packed with material Webley’s Pinkertons had given him. She promised she’d explain everything tonight. But when I got there she wasn’t home. And now she’d had me summoned to the park and she was nowhere to be found.
The Indian summer night was sweet with birdsong and river rush and the gleam of snow-peaked mountains in the moonlight. Far too precious a night to waste on the griefs of human beings, including my own.
But griefs I had, and the worst kind. I wasn’t even sure what they were all about.
People strolled by on the boardwalk. The ones who recognized me waved and I waved back. I was glad they didn’t come over to talk. Saloon music. Saloon laughter. Crack of billiard balls from down the street.
I was on my third cigarette when I saw her peek out of the alley down the block. Even from here, the furtive way she moved told me she was in trouble.
I ground out my smoke with the heel of my boot and waved to her. She waved in return, then vanished back into the shadow of the alley.
I was down there in moments. She came into my arms more desperately than she ever had before. We didn’t say anything at first, just held each other. Her body was damp from exertion in the heat. Her breasts felt wonderful pushing against me. I traced the elegant bones of her face with my long fingers.
I led her down the alley to a small loading dock. There was a buckboard used for delivery sitting there. I lifted her up so she could sit on the edge of its bed.
“I got a letter, too,” I said.
“I thought you would.” Then: “You know why he did it, of course.”
“Sure.”
“He wants you to drop the charges against Trent.”
“And that’s what I’m going to do.”
“What? Oh, no, Lane. No, you’re not.”
“I thought you liked it here. I thought you wanted me to drop charges.”
“But not this way. Not now that he’s resorted to something like this.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. Then she said: “Somebody’s following me, I think.”
“You sure?”
“The man-the man the letter told you about-the man I was married to-he left a note for me at school. He wanted me to meet him tonight. That’s where I’ve been.”
“You think he’s a part of it, Callie?”
“Of course. The Pinkertons were looking into my background. They turned David up. And he’s been cooperating with them.”
“Meaning that when all this gets out about you, he’ll be here to confirm it.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Just the way Webley wants him to.” Then: “I probably shouldn’t have gone to his room. I’m sorry if that bothers you. Nothing-happened. I just asked him to leave town. We were married once-it was a terrible marriage and I was awfully young and naive-but he doesn’t care about that. He’s still bitter that I divorced him. And he’s still working all his confidence games and doing a lot of riverboat gambling. He’ll never amount to anything. He’ll be on Webley’s payroll for a while and then when
Webley’s through with him, he’ll find some other crooked way of making a living.”
Visiting a man’s hotel room. A former husband yet. Usually the jealousy I tried to control would have risen up and taken me over. All sorts of troubling images would have filled my mind. Images that would have been difficult to get rid of.
But not in this circumstance. It was pretty clear she hated him. He had the power to destroy her, and that seemed to be exactly what he had in mind.
“You said you thought somebody was following you?”
She nodded. “I got that sense when I went to his room. I didn’t see anybody, but somehow I knew he was behind me. I don’t think I’m making it up. In fact-he may be watching us right now.”
Ghost stories when you’re a kid. Campfire nights. The boogeyman out there somewhere lurking in the unforgiving dark. I had that kind of moment now. My forearms were rough with gooseflesh. I touched my Colt for reassurance. I wasn’t a kid anymore, and boogeyme
n now came in the shape of rich men who wanted you to do their bidding.
“Why don’t we get out of here?” I said.
She nodded.
This time when I grabbed her waist, lifting her down from the bed of the buckboard, my fingers went higher. This time, on her right side, they contacted something wet. And, in the moonlight, dark. And for the first time I noticed that the front of her shirtwaist blouse was spattered with dark spots that glistened.
I thought of what she said about somebody following her.
As much as I wanted to ask her about the dark spots on her dress, I suddenly wanted out of this alley.
I grabbed her hand and we started moving quickly toward the head of the alley.
All I could think of was those dark stains on her dress- stains that grew even more ominous in the lamplight- stains that I instinctively didn’t want anybody else to see. “Where’re we going?” she said.
“The livery. I’ll get us a wagon to take home.”
“Are you all right?”
“People keep asking me that,” I said, and there were many things in my voice at that second-anger, fear, dread-“and to be honest, no, no, I’m not all right. I’m not all right at all.”
She started to say something and stopped. I didn’t feel like talking either, had no idea what to say. Just wanted to walk, hard, fast, walk to the end of the world if I needed to.
And then someone was shouting my name. And I turned around and Tom Ryan was running after us, shouting "There’s trouble, Lane! There’s trouble!”
SIX
THIS WAS UNLIKE Ryan, shouting marshal business so that others in the street could hear him. He was usually discreet to the point of secrecy. Something must have shaken him. This was a night for surprises.
As he approached, his boots slamming against the wood of the boardwalk, I angled myself in front of Callie so that he could not see the heavy stains on the right side of her dress. “Don’t move,” I whispered. “I don’t want him to see those stains.”
She seemed about to explain, or maybe object, when he drew up to us. He took a moment to gather himself, taking several deep breaths, before he said, “They just came and told me.”
“I’m afraid you lost me, Tom.”
He shook his head in self-recrimination. He gulped a big breath of air, expelled it, touched his chest, and said, “At the church. Marie and I were helping build a few new pews when somebody from the hotel came over and told me about the dead man. I was on my way there now. Thought maybe you wanted to go along.” He took another deep breath and said, “Evening, Callie.”
“Evening, Tom.” Was she suddenly pale or was it my imagination?
Back to me. “Figured if it’s foul play, Lane, you ought to be there. You’ll be in charge of it anyway. You and the doctor.”
One of the things I changed immediately when I took over the town marshal’s office was the sloppy way homicides were handled in this county. Doctors were brought in to give a medical opinion only at the end of the process. I made sure they were on the actual scene itself. I also made sure that they gave precise, written, articulate opinions as to how a person actually died. Homicides can be damned tricky. You think a man was clubbed to death, then you find out he’d actually had a stroke. These things make a big difference when you’re charging somebody with a degree of murder and preparing to take him to trial.
I looked at Callie. “You want to just go on home, honey?”
It was important that Tom think that everything was all right between Callie and me. I was thinking ahead without realizing I was thinking ahead.
“Sure. I’ll get supper on for us.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. I made sure Tom didn’t get a chance to see her stains. And I turned her back around immediately, in the direction of the livery.
“See you in a while,” I said.
***
Tom and I walked to the Excelsior Hotel. There was already a small crowd out front. Doesn’t take long for word to spread. And murder is cheap entertainment. County fairs charge an admittance fee and you have to get yourself all spruced up. Murder is free and nobody cares how you look.
The interior of the Excelsior, the town’s second-nicest hotel, was likewise packed. There’s a taproom on the first floor and it had pretty much emptied into the lobby.
Mike Bryant, the burly owner and manager of the Excelsior, stood on the steps to the second floor, a Sharps cradled in his arms. “I locked the exit door from the outside, Lane. And I’m not letting anybody up or down.”
“Appreciate it, Mike.”
“You can bet your ass Morrissey’s having himself a couple of good laughs on me tonight.”
Morrissey ran The Chandler Arms, the first-nicest place in Skylar. The men loathed each other. Bryant had a point. Murder was rarely good for hotel business.
Bryant let us pass. “Room fourteen, Lane.”
There were four doors on each side of the second-floor hallway. All but one of them were open.
“When the hell can we go get some supper?” a drummer in suspenders and white shirt and checkered pants said from Room 10.
“Sorry about the inconvenience,” I said. “But Mike did the right thing holding you folks here. My deputy Tom here’ll be back to ask some questions.”
The other rooms also held complainers. I’d probably be a little irritated if I had to sit and wait out the law, too. Especially if I was innocent.
***
He looked, this man named David Stanton, like the wax figure of a prominent stage actor. He was, or had been, a tall, somewhat fleshy man with dramatic good looks and a taste for the kind of expensive clothes-the dark suit, ruffled shirt, string tie, gold brocaded vest-that I always associate with large casinos and theaters. His face was frozen in an expression of surprise rather than fear, indicating that whoever had stabbed him-and the area around his heart was soaking wet with blood that had also soaked his right side and his lap-had done so quickly and with no warning. I thought of the blood staining Callie’s dress, the spatters of it on her sleeves.
There was no murder weapon in sight. Tom began a thorough examination of the room, as did I. I’d taken him along to the last seminar I’d attended. The speakers spent a good deal of time discussing the methods used by British and French detectives working what they called “the crime scene.” Previously, peace officers had spent only a brief amount of time going over the place where the victim was found. The French got down on their hands and knees with small rakelike objects, going over every inch of what they’d designated “the scene.”
Tom took the west side of the room, I took the east. And thank God, too. That’s where I found the button I recognized immediately. The button from the sleeve of Callie’s shirtwaist blouse. I recognized it because I’d bought her that blouse with its triangular-shaped buttons for her last birthday.
I hesitated before stooping down and picking it up. What if Tom saw me? And what if he then saw me pocket it?
But what choice did I have?
I glanced over my shoulder, stooped, picked it up, pocketed it.
Thankfully, Tom was searching the closet while I did all this.
Dick Zane from the undertaker’s came then; and then Dr. Calendar, whom I used for most of the homicides; and then a youngster from the newspaper. He had a cigarette in his mouth and a derby on his head. The smoke from his cigarette kept twisting upward to his eyes and making him tear up. It kind of spoiled the hard-boiled impression he was hoping to make.
I held them all at bay in the hallway. It took us a good half hour to go over the room. Everybody was impatient. I didn’t care. I wanted to do my job.
Every once in a while, I’d look at Stanton. I hated him and feared him and was jealous of him. He’d tried to destroy Callie in life but had failed; maybe he’d succeed in destroying her in death. I thought of how innocent and yielding she would have been back then; and of how cynically he’d taken her. That was the jealousy part, I guess. The hatred was for the way he’d
made her part of his con games. And the fear was for what he’d dragged her into through Webley.
The one thing I didn’t find was money. Stanton should have had a lot of it, given his friendship with Webley. But he had only a few coins.
***
I spent the next hour talking with the guests on the second floor. I took half, Tom took half. They were cooperative but, if they were telling the truth, they were no help at all.
They hadn’t heard an argument. They hadn’t heard a scuffle. They hadn’t seen Stanton enter or leave his room. They hadn’t heard him call out for help. Most of them had been in their rooms.
I went downstairs to the staff.
The man on the night desk said that Stanton hadn’t had any announced visitors. He said it was always possible that somebody had come in through the back door or even the fire escape. He brought the bellman over. He hadn’t seen or heard anything, either. He had been on the second floor only once, though. The last time he’d talked to Stanton was around four o’clock. Stanton was in his room, having a drink of what appeared to be bourbon. He’d asked the bellman for two fresh towels.
The man behind the bar in the taproom hadn’t come on until six o’clock. He worked a seven-hour shift. He knew who Stanton was but hadn’t seen him all evening. He had two customers who’d been sitting there since five o’clock or so. They hadn’t seen Stanton either.
Back upstairs, the crowd had dispersed. They were getting ready to carry the body down on a stretcher. There was a blanket over Stanton now. Blood soaked through from his wound.
Tom was busy doing another sweep of the room. A couple of times I heard his knees crack when he bent down. He’d given up a good job with a local wheel manufacturer to become a deputy. His wife hadn’t been all that happy about his decision, seeing it as a lark rather than a real job. He was forty, and a deputy’s salary wasn’t all that much when you could hear the arthritis cracking in your limbs when you got up and down. But he had a little boy’s enthusiasm for his job, and I was glad he did.