Relentless

by Ed Gorman

  As she began to dry herself off, I couldn’t hold back any longer. I walked over to her and held her face to mine and kissed her in a gentle way that stirred both of us nonetheless.

  She decided to bathe me, too. Was I going to say no? Thus, a lot cleaner than we’d been, we slipped into bed and proceeded to make the sort of love that would make twenty-year-olds envious. The second time through, slower now, a little talk here and there now, she started to cry. She said it wasn’t for any particular reason; that it was just an expiation of sorts. The way coming was an expiation sometimes-not simply heady pleasure but a cleansing, too, a rebirth.

  And then we fell asleep in a position so awkward that one of us would have ordinarily untwisted ourself out of it. But not tonight. Awkward or not, we remained in that position until well after every rooster, dog, cat, bird, and horse in the valley was up and making its own particular kind of racket.

  I had to get up and head to town. I let her sleep.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BY THE TIME I reached the town marshal’s office, the word about Laura Webley had apparently been spread around pretty well. Just about everybody I saw waved and grinned at me. Even a couple of old foes waved. They didn’t like me but on the other hand, they probably hadn’t wanted to believe I was a killer either.

  Tom Ryan was holding his morning meeting with the deputies. I could hear his voice all the way up the hall from his office. He sounded pretty damned authoritative. I sure hadn’t sounded that confident when I was his age. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to wait up front.

  At first I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I recognized the voice before the words took on meaning. What would he be doing here?

  But soon enough what he was doing here was clear. He said, “I got the town council out of bed early this morning and they’ve assured me that I’m right on this matter. They’re going to back me completely. And I told them that I’d talk to Tom here and that I was sure Tom’s men would go along with it, too.”

  “But Morgan’s a friend of ours,” somebody said.

  “He hired every one of us. Taught us everything we know.”

  “It’s time for Morgan to move on,” the voice of Webley said. Webley, the man I’d left grieving over the dead body of his wife, had recovered remarkably. And was plotting to get me out of town permanently so that neither his son Trent nor himself would be charged for anything. The fact that Tom Ryan hadn’t spoken up in my behalf-Well, even the best friendships end. Tom had a family to feed. And he’d always wanted to be marshal.

  I started thinking about what Callie had said and it started making sense. Given Laura’s mental condition, it had probably been easy enough to convince her that she’d killed Stanton. Easy enough for her husband anyway. She’d written out the letter and killed herself. He probably hadn’t even helped her with it. Given her unstable mind, she hadn’t needed any help.

  Webley had murdered Stanton and managed to have his wife die for what he’d done. I was his last obstacle in town. With his money and influence, he’d now run the town council and the marshal’s office and be a happy man. Likely there’d be another young, delicate woman in his life in a seemly time. He’d want people to think that he was mourning Laura before he brought another rare flower home. And Trent wouldn’t be doing even a day of jail time. Tom would drop the charges. And if the county attorney got fussy about it, well, county attorneys could be replaced just like town marshals.

  I finished off my coffee and went outside. I leaned against the hitching post and rolled myself a cigarette.

  The town made me lonesome. I’d gotten used to the slant of sunlight on the peaked roof of the Lutheran church; and the cry of pigeons echoing off the underside of the roof of the bandstand in the park; and watching the angle of horse necks as the shiny animals dipped their heads to drink from the trough.

  I was lonesome for the way the town had been a few years ago when it seemed that there was a true desire to lessen the influence of both the Webleys and the Grices. But it had stalled somehow. Maybe I hadn’t pushed hard enough. Or maybe I’d pushed too hard and spooked people away. Nobody could relish an open battle with Webley.

  I heard the door open and them talking, the two of them, and then their boots on the boardwalk. They must have recognized me from my back because they suddenly stopped talking. They’d sounded so hearty just then, too, talking about the way things would be around here from now on.

  I turned around and looked at them. That’s all. Just looked. And that’s all it took. Ryan froze. Embarrassed. His mouth opened but nothing came out.

  Webley just shook his head. “If you came to town to cause trouble, Morgan, you’re too late.” He’d never looked smaller or more nervous. He’d bought himself a new town marshal and he was still afraid. It didn’t say much for being the most powerful man in the valley.

  “You should look a lot happier,” I said to Webley. “You’re back in control.”

  “How could I look happy? My wife just died.”

  “Maybe you wanted her to,” I said.

  “And just what the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Then he put a halting hand up in the air. “No, don’t tell me. I’m sick of your theories. My wife was a disturbed woman. She shot and killed the man she’d taken up with. I have to live with that the rest of my life. I’ll be damned if I let you punish me any worse with your lies.”

  Gently, Ryan said, “Maybe you’d better go have yourself some coffee, Morgan.”

  “He buy you pretty cheap, did he?” I said to Ryan. The words came hard. We’d been good friends once. “He offered me five hundred dollars a month when I came to town. If I kept things favorable to him. You’re a lot younger than I am, Ryan. You should be getting more money than that.”

  "Too bad you can’t arrest a man for insolence, Ryan,” Webley said.

  Ryan still looked embarrassed.

  There wasn’t much point staying here. We could trade insults all morning, but that wouldn’t change anything. Webley had his town back.

  I glanced at them and then walked away. Ryan broke with Webley and hurried up to me. “I’m sorry about how things turned out.”

  The hell of it was, I supposed he really was sorry. We’d been friends. But he had a family and responsibilities, and he had to do what he needed to to survive.

  “Be careful of him, Ryan. He looks like a mild little man. But he’s as ruthless as his old man was. He just doesn’t make as much noise about it.” I took a few steps ahead, then stopped and glanced back at him. “There’s a good chance Webley himself killed Stanton and then convinced his wife she did it.”

  I didn’t wait for his reaction. I just walked over to the cafe, where I spent a good hour pouring coffee down myself and looking out the window at the town I’d soon be leaving. A number of people stopped by my table to say hello. I appreciated that. I’d have good memories of them and apparently they’d have good memories of me.

  When I saw him come in the door, my hand automatically dropped to my gun. He was still the same, but not the same. The hair had been cut short, the beard stubble had been shaved off, the gunny duds had been exchanged for a plain blue cotton shirt and blue trousers. And the cockiness was nowhere to be found in the eyes or on the mouth. He saw me, too, and came straight over.

  “I thought I put you on a stagecoach,” I said.

  “You did, Marshal,” he said. “And that Ned Hastings kept right on going. He’s probably got himself in a gunfight already. He may already be dead. I hope so because I sure don’t want to run into him again.”

  He sat down without being asked.

  “I came back to town to apologize. And to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For saving my life. I really thought I was a gunny. Then you put on that little demonstration in my hotel room and when I sobered up, I realized how much I’d been kidding myself. I could shoot the hell out of cans down by a crick. But as for an actual gunfight- So I came back here and cleaned myself u
p and got me a job over to the lumberyard. I start tomorrow morning.”

  You hear that people don’t change. But they do. I’ve seen it dozens of time. Sometimes the changes don’t last. But sometimes they do. Looked like the kid here was going to give it a real good try.

  He said, “Ryan’s the marshal now, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He seems like a decent enough sort.”

  “He is.”

  “I always felt sorry for him the nights we played cards.”

  “Cards?”

  “Sure. At the hotel. The ones in Sanderson’s room.”

  “He played cards there?”

  “He did the two nights I did anyway.”

  His family. His debts. His trap. Why would he add to it by gambling? But the answer was easy enough. Desperate men do desperate things. He’d pay his way out of debt by gambling.

  “How much he lose?”

  “About a hundred.”

  That was nearly half his monthly paycheck. “Who’d he lose to?”

  Hastings shrugged. “Me, for one. But the big winner was Stanton. That’s who he owed the most to.”

  “Stanton was there?”

  Hastings grinned. “He didn’t have no woman that night, I guess, so he sat in on the game. Ryan owed Stanton plenty. We all had to take his IOUs. Nobody liked it, but him bein’ the deputy marshal and all- But he paid me back right before I left town.”

  The woman came over and put some more tar in my cup. Hastings gazed out the window. “Figure I’ll make a little money here and then head back to Arizona. I’ve got a gal back there.”

  “Quit reading those dime novels.”

  He laughed. “Bad influence on me?”

  “Definitely. They’re a bad influence on everybody who reads them.”

  He said, “So what happens to you now?”

  “Good question. I’ll get one of the regional newspapers and see who needs an experienced town marshal. ‘Experienced’ meaning old.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “I’m old compared to most men who’re town marshals.”

  “Well, you were young enough to scare the shit out of me, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Well, I’m glad I could do that much for you.”

  ***

  We talked some more, maybe twenty minutes, idle and somewhat strained conversation between strangers, but I was there in body only. I had an idea and it was a terrible idea, an idea I wanted to cut out of my brain with a very sharp knife, but an idea I needed to follow down or it would torment me the rest of my life.

  The first place I needed to go was the hotel. I was trying to remember exactly a conversation I’d had with Gunderson. He’d said something that didn’t jibe with my memory of things the afternoon Stanton died.

  He didn’t wake easy. I did everything except start kicking the door in. He’d likely had one of his all-night poker sessions.

  He answered in a pair of trousers and an undershirt. And an old Navy Colt that looked as if it could leave quite a hole in anything it was fired at.

  “I don’t have to talk to you. Get out of here.”

  The first thing I did was slap him. The second thing I did was grab his wrist and wrench the Colt away. The third thing I did was shove him back inside his room. The poker table he dragged out for a game was covered with cigarette and cigar butts, two empty whiskey bottles, and a pack of playing cards that had photographs of nude women on them. “You’re not the marshal anymore.”

  “I’m sorry I slapped you.” And I was. A couple days of frustration had gone into that slap. There were others I should have used it on first.

  My apology seemed to startle him. “What the hell’s going on, Morgan? I was asleep.”

  “I need you to remember something.”

  “Oh, shit,” he said. “You mean about Stanton?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s over, Morgan. In case you hadn’t heard, I mean. It was Laura Webley who killed him. I got the word early this morning when the game was still going on.”

  “I need you to think, Gunderson. Remember something you said to me.”

  He sighed. He was scarecrow-skinny. He looked tubercular. “All right. What is it?”

  “The evening Stanton was killed. You said that Tom Ryan told you that he was up on the second floor looking for Conroy.”

  “Yeah, Conroy. The con man. That’s what he told me.”

  “You’re sure he said Conroy?”

  He thought about it. “Pretty sure. Sure as I can recall anyway.”

  “And what time was this?”

  “Right before six.”

  “How many times did Ryan play cards with you?”

  “That isn’t any of your business.”

  “He told you not to tell me about his gambling, didn’t he?”

  “He’s entitled to a personal life, isn’t he?”

  “How much did he lose altogether playing cards?”

  “He’s a nice fella, Morgan. I promised I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “How much?”

  The sigh again. “You always were a pushy sonofabitch.”

  “How much, Gunderson?”

  “Eight, nine hundred.”

  “In how long a time?”

  He looked miserable. At least betraying a trust made him feel bad. “A couple of weeks.”

  “You trusted him for that?”

  “He said he was coming into some money. Besides, he was a deputy marshal. He could make things bad for me if he wanted to.”

  “He ever pay you?”

  “Yeah, he did. And for what it’s worth, he swore off gambling right then and there.”

  “He paid you after Stanton died, didn’t he?”

  “Say, what the hell you getting at, Morgan? Ryan didn’t kill Stanton. Laura Webley did.”

  I pitched his gun back to where he sat on the edge of his rumpled bed.

  ***

  The next two hours went slowly. I ground-tied my horse and waited in the pines on a small hill in back of the place. She played with two of her little girls as she hung laundry in the backyard. She hid in the wind-blown sheets and the two girls would have to find her. Then they’d all laugh and giggle in voices as pure as mountain water.

  Just before eleven-thirty she left, one little girl toddling along on either side of her, a wicker shopping basket hanging from the crook of her elbow. Shopping.

  I moved quickly. The inside of the house was a tribute to her industry and frugality. She bought most things secondhand, and yet the place had a hard, stubborn pride about it. There was even a homely beauty to the way the mismatched pieces of furnishings sat next to each other. The cotton curtains were yellow as May sunlight. There was even an old upright piano. She had a nice voice.

  Sadly, it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. He’d probably thought that everything would be nice and safe here. Nothing at all to fear. I found a sack for it and carried it back to my horse and stuffed it into my saddlebag.

  Then I headed back to town to find the killer.

  TWENTY-SIX

  HE WAS SITTING in my old chair in my old office. Paul Webley was sitting in the chair on the customer side of the desk.

  Webley said, “I know a lot of people, Morgan. I can probably find you a job somewhere.”

  “I appreciate that, Paul. But I guess I’ll be staying around here for a while. You never know when my old job just might open up again.”

  “Now what the hell’s that supposed to mean?" Webley said.

  I looked at Tom Ryan. He was suddenly gulping, as if swallowing was hard. His eyes started moving this way and that.

  “You’re saying I can’t be here?” Webley said.

  “This won’t take long,” Ryan said. He cleared his throat. “We just need to settle a few things.”

  Webley seemed to sense the undercurrent here. The eyes narrowed, the jaw muscles bunched. He studied Ryan’s face and then he studied mine. “I don’t like this.”

  �
�I don’t much give a shit what you like, Webley. This is between me and Ryan. Now get out.”

  “You’re not the marshal,” he said.

  “Neither are you.”

  He got red. Made his face ugly. He was probably thinking of how his old man would’ve handled this. Brought in some hard boys and pounded on me for a while.

  He walked to the door. He walked heavy. He wanted me to know he was somebody important. But I’d known that for too long anyway.

  I picked up his Stetson and sailed it to him. “You forgot it.” He cinched it on his head and said, “I’ll be up front, Tom, you need anything.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  I was making a fifty-fifty bet with myself. Whether he’d slam the door or not. He didn’t. I owed myself a cup of coffee. But he made up for not slamming the door by walking real heavy down the hall. No spurs. Just loud thudding footsteps like a giant would make.

  “I didn’t want to say it in front of Webley,” I said.

  “I’m afraid this is all kind’ve mysterious to me, Lane.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Tom. Don’t make this any rougher than it needs to be. You might get manslaughter-involuntary, even-if you come up with the right story. He pulled that knife on you and you fought- You know how that one goes. You ought to. You’ve heard it enough in court.”

  He went back and sat behind his desk. He put his face in his hands. He started crying. Nothing theatrical. He wasn’t good at it. He was embarrassed and he was laughing, too. He took his hands from his face. “God, man, don’t ever tell anybody I was crying, all right?”

  “You stupid sonofabitch,” I said. “You make me feel like crying, too. Tell me you didn’t plan to kill him when you went up there.”

  He reached into his desk drawer and brought out a pint of rye. Then he reached into another desk drawer and brought out two glasses. “I added this since I took over. I have to have a belt every hour or I start shaking so bad people start to notice. And that’s no shit. Look at this.”

  He wasn’t kidding. His hand was caught in a spasm. “You didn’t answer my question. You didn’t go up there to kill him, did you?”