The Chase ib-1

by Clive Cussler

  “Jack Daniel’s from Tennessee,” said the bartender without hesitation. “It won the Gold Medal at the St. Louis Fair as the best whiskey in the world.”

  Bell smiled. “I’ve enjoyed it, on occasion. Let me have a double shot glass.”

  While the bartender poured, Bell turned around, leaned his elbows behind him on the bar, and gazed around the busy saloon. Like most watering holes in the West, a large section of the room was given over to gambling. Bell’s eyes went from table to table, looking for the right mix of poker players. He found what he had hoped to find, a table with men dressed in fancier clothes than the large number of miners. They appeared to be businessmen, merchants, or mining officials. Best of all, there were four of them, one short of a fifth player.

  Bell paid for his whiskey and walked over to the table. “May I join you gentlemen?” he asked.

  A heavyset man with a red face nodded and motioned toward an empty chair. “You’re quite welcome to sit in,” he said.

  A man directly across the table shuffled the cards, looked across at Bell as he sat down, and began dealing. “I’m Frank Calloway. The others are Pat O’Leery, Clay Crum, and Lewis Latour.”

  “Isaac Bell.”

  “You new in town, Mr. Bell?” asked O’Leery, a big, brawny Irishman.

  “Yes, I arrived on the six-thirty train from Phoenix.”

  “Business or pleasure?” O’Leery probed.

  “Business. I’m an agent with the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

  They all looked up from their cards and stared at Bell with inquisitive interest.

  “Let me guess,” said Crum, folding his hands over a rotund belly. “You’re looking into the bank robbery and murders that took place four months ago.”

  Bell nodded as he fanned his hand and examined his cards. “You are correct, sir.”

  Latour spoke in a French accent as he lit a cigar. “A little late, aren’t you? The trail is cold.”

  “No colder than it was five minutes after the crime,” Bell countered. “I’ll take two cards.”

  Calloway dealt as the players called out the number of cards they hoped would give them a winning hand. “A mystery, that one,” he said. “No trace of the bandit was ever found.”

  “Uncanny,” O’Leery said as he inspected his hand, his expression revealing he had nothing worth betting on. “I fold.” His eyes briefly met Bell’s. “Uncanny that he could escape into thin air.”

  “The sheriff found no sign of his trail,” muttered Crum. “The posse returned to town looking as if their wives had run off with a band of traveling salesmen.” He paused. “I’ll bet two dollars.”

  “I’ll raise you three dollars,” offered Calloway.

  Latour threw his hand toward the dealer. “I’m out.”

  “And you, Mr. Bell,” inquired Calloway, “are you still in?”

  Bell was amused that the stakes were not high, but not penny-ante either. “I’ll call.”

  “Two queens,” announced Crum.

  “Two tens,” said Calloway. “You beat me.” He turned. “Mr. Bell?”

  “Two eights,” Bell said, passing his cards facedown to Calloway. Bell had not lost. He held three jacks, but he thought that losing would bring him closer to the other men’s confidence. “Was there any clue to how the robber escaped?”

  “Nothing I ever heard of,” replied O’Leery. “Last time I talked to the sheriff, he was baffled.”

  “That would be Sheriff Hunter?” Bell inquired, recalling what he read in the agency report.

  “Joe Hunter died from a bad heart two months after the murders,” answered Latour. “The new sheriff is Stan Murphy, who was Hunter’s chief deputy. He knows what went on as well as anybody.”

  “As nice as they come, if he likes you,” Crum said. “But get on his bad side and he’ll chew you to bits.”

  “I’d like to talk with him, but I doubt if he’ll be in his office on the Sabbath,” said Bell, not mentioning the discouraging comments of Murphy’s deputy. “Where might I find him?”

  “We had a bad flood through town two weeks ago,” replied Calloway. “His house was badly damaged. I suspect you’ll find him up to his neck in repairs.”

  “Can you give me directions to his house?”

  O’Leery waved a hand toward the north. “Just go up to the end of Howland Street and take the stairs. The house is painted green and has a small grove of orange trees alongside.”

  The talk moved to politics and whether Teddy Roosevelt could run for a third term in 1908 and, if not, whom he would pick as his successor. Bell lost three hands for every hand he won, easily putting the other men at ease as they realized the stranger was no gambling cardsharp. He swung the conversation back to the bank murders.

  “Seems strange that no one saw the robber leaving the bank or riding out of town,” said Bell idly as he played his cards.

  “Nobody came forward,” said O’Leery.

  “And none saw the bandit enter or leave the bank,” Latour added.

  “There was an old drunken miner that hung around across the street from the bank,” answered Calloway, “but he disappeared soon afterward.”

  “Sheriff Hunter did not consider him a suspect?”

  Latour had no luck. He folded for the fifth time since Bell sat down at the table. “An old miner who was all played out and looked like he wasn’t long for this world? He was the last one the townspeople thought had anything to do with the crime.”

  “More than once, I saw him sprawled on a sidewalk, drunk out of his mind,” said O’Leery. “He couldn’t have robbed a bank and murdered three people any more than I could become governor. I still think it was an inside job pulled off by someone we all know.”

  “It might have been a stranger,” Bell said.

  Calloway shrugged negatively. “Bisbee has twenty thousand inhabitants. Who’s to recognize a stranger?”

  “What about that fellow on a motorcycle?” Crum asked no one in particular.

  “There was a motorcycle in town?” asked Bell, his interest aroused.

  “Jack Carson said he saw a dandy riding one.” Crum threw down a winning hand with a flush.

  Latour took a long puff on his cigar. “Jack said the rider was well dressed, when he saw him pass through an alley. He couldn’t figure out how someone riding one of those contraptions could wear clothes so clean and unsoiled.”

  “Did your friend get a look at the rider’s face?”

  “All Jack could tell was that the rider was clean-shaven,” Calloway responded.

  “What about hair color?”

  “According to Jack, the fellow wore a bowler. Jack wasn’t sure, as he didn’t get a good look because the motorcycle went by too fast, but he thought the hair might have been red. At least, that’s what he thought, from a glimpse of the sideburns.”

  For the second time that week, Bell found excitement coursing through his veins. A resident of Eagle City, Utah, another mining town where the Butcher Bandit left four residents dead, mentioned that he had seen a stranger riding a motorcycle on the day of the killing.

  “Where can I find this Jack Carson?”

  “Not in Bisbee,” replied Crum. “The last I heard, he went back to his home in Kentucky.”

  Bell made a mental note to ask Van Dorn to try and find Carson.

  O’Leery made another sour face at seeing his hand. “Whoever rode that motorcycle must have hung around town for a few days after the robbery.”

  “Why do you say that?” Bell probed.

  “Because the sheriff and his posse would have spotted the motorcycle’s tire tracks if the killer had ridden out of town immediately after the robbery.”

  “You’d think he would have been spotted if he stayed in town until the posse gave up the hunt.”

  “You would think so,” said Calloway, “but he was never seen again.”

  “Was Carson a reliable witness?” Bell laid five dollars on the table. “I raise.”

  “Jack was a former
mayor of Bisbee, an attorney highly regarded as an honorable man,” Latour explained. “If he said he saw a man on a motorcycle, he saw a man on a motorcycle. I have no reason to doubt his word.”

  “You going to see Sheriff Murphy tomorrow?” Crum inquired, finally winning a hand.

  Bell nodded. “First thing in the morning. But, after talking with you gentlemen, I fear there is little of importance he can tell me.”

  After nursing his drink during two hours of play, Bell was even, almost. He was only four dollars in the hole, and none of the other players minded when he bid them good night and walked back to his hotel.

  THE ROAD that wound up to the street toward the sheriff’s house was long, and muddy after a rainstorm that struck Bisbee in the middle of the night. Coming to a dead end, Bell mounted the steep stairway that seemed to go on forever. Despite being in excellent physical shape, he was panting when he reached the top.

  Bell was in a happy mood. He had yet to learn what Irvine and Curtis turned up, if anything. But he was dead certain the man seen on the motorcycle was the Butcher Bandit after he removed his disguise as the old intoxicated miner. A missing finger and a hint of red hair was hardly a triumph. Even the hair color glimpsed by Jack Carson was a long shot. It was the motorcycle that intrigued Bell, not because the bandit owned one but because it fit that a shrewd and calculating mind would use the latest technology in transportation.

  The primary question was, how did the bandit ride it out of town without being seen again?

  Sheriff Murphy’s house was only a few steps from the top of the stairway. It was small, and looked more like a shed than a house. The flood had pushed it off its foundation, and Bell saw that Murphy was busily engaged in propping it up in its new location, ten feet from where it had sat before. True to O’Leery’s description, it was painted green, but the flood had devastated the orange grove.

  Murphy was furiously wielding a hammer and didn’t hear Bell approach. A great torrent of dark brown hair flowed around his neck and shoulders. Most of the lawmen in the West were not fat but lean and angular. Murphy had the body of a blacksmith rather than a sheriff. The muscles in his arms looked like tree trunks, and he had the neck of an ox.

  “Sheriff Murphy!” Bell shouted over the pounding of the hammer against nails.

  Murphy stopped with his hammer in midair and turned. He stared at Bell as he might stare at a coyote. “Yes, I’m Murphy. But, as you can see, I’m busy.”

  “You can keep working,” said Bell. “I’m with the Van Dorn Detective Agency and would like to ask you a few questions about the bank robbery and murders a few months ago.”

  The name Van Dorn was respected among law enforcement circles, and Murphy laid down the hammer and pointed inside the little house. “Come inside. The place is a bit of a mess, but I have coffee on the stove.”

  “After that climb up the hill, a cup of water would be nice.”

  “Sorry, the well got befouled by the flood and isn’t fit to drink, but I carried a gallon up from a horse trough in town.”

  “Coffee it is,” said Bell with a measure of trepidation.

  Murphy led Bell into the house and offered him a chair at the kitchen table. There was no sign of the presence of a woman, so Bell assumed that Murphy was a bachelor. The sheriff poured two coffees in tin cups from an enamel pot that sat on the wood-burning stove.

  “I don’t know how I can help you, Mr. Bell. I sent a copy of my findings to your agency in Chicago.”

  “You neglected to mention Jack Carson’s sighting.”

  Murphy laughed. “The guy on a motorcycle? I don’t believe what Jack said he saw. The description didn’t fit anyone I knew in town.”

  “The bandit could have changed his disguise,” Bell suggested.

  “There was no time for him to completely alter his appearance, retrieve his motorcycle, and ride off into the blue.”

  “The rider and his machine were never seen again?”

  Murphy shrugged. “Strikes me odd that nobody else saw him except Jack. A man on the only motorcycle in town is bound to be noticed. And how could he ride out of town without leaving a trail?”

  “I admit it sounds a bit far-fetched,” said Bell, not wanting to discard the sighting.

  “Jack Carson was an upstanding citizen not noted for being a hard drinker or a teller of tall tales. But I believe he was hallucinating.”

  “Was there any other evidence discovered that wasn’t in your report?”

  “There was something found after I sent the report to Chicago. Murphy rose from the kitchen table and pulled open a drawer of a rolltop desk. He passed Bell a brass shell casing. “This was found two weeks later, by a young boy playing on the floor of the bank while his father made a deposit. It was under a carpet. The bandit must have missed it.”

  Bell studied the cartridge. “Thirty-eight caliber. If it was ejected, it must have come from an automatic weapon, probably a Colt.”

  “That was my guess, too.”

  “May I keep it?” asked Bell.

  “Sure. But I doubt you’ll learn anything from it, except knowing it came from the bandit’s gun. And even that is not cold, hard evidence.”

  “If not the bandit, then where did it come from?”

  Murphy held up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I can’t begin to guess.”

  Bell carefully held the cartridge in the palm of his hand. “Hopefully, we can obtain the bandit’s fingerprints.”

  Murphy grinned. “You’ll find mine as well as the young boy’s and two of my deputies’.”

  “Still,” said Bell optimistically, “our experts may be able to pull a print. We won’t need a sample of the boy who found it. His print would be small. But I would like sample prints of you and your deputies. You can send them to my Chicago office.”

  “I’ve never taken a fingerprint,” said Murphy. “I’m not at all sure how it’s done.”

  “The science has been around for centuries, but only in the past few years is it catching on with law enforcement. The impressions on an object—in this case, the cartridge—are created by the ridges on the skin. When the object is handled, the perspiration and oils are transferred to it, leaving an impression of the fingertip-ridge pattern. To record the prints, a fine powder like ground-up graphite from a pencil is dusted on the surface. Then a piece of tape is used to lift the print for study.”

  Murphy sipped at his coffee. “I’ll give it a try.”

  Bell thanked the sheriff and walked down the stairway. Three hours later, he was on a train back to Denver.

  15

  CROMWELL’S CHAUFFEUR DROVE THE 1906 ROLLS Royce Brougham, made by the London coach maker Barker, with its six-cylinder, thirty-horsepower engine, from the garage to the front of the palatial Nob Hill mansion Cromwell had designed himself and constructed from white marble blocks cut and hauled by railroad from a quarry in Colorado. The front end had the appearance of a Greek temple, with high fluted columns, while the rest of the house was more simply designed, with arched windows, and a cornice that crowned the walls.

  While the chauffeur, Abner Weed, a stony-faced Irishman whom Cromwell hired more for his experience as a wrestler than his expertise behind the wheel of an automobile, stood patiently by the Rolls out front, Cromwell waited for his sister in his study, sprawled comfortably on a leather sofa, listening to Strauss waltzes on an Edison cylinder phonograph. He was conservatively dressed in a dark wool suit. After listening to “Voices of Spring,” he changed cylinders and played Tales from the Vienna Wood. The cylinders played two minutes of music each.

  Cromwell glanced up from the machine as his sister came into the room wearing a doeskin dress that fell around her nicely curved calves.

  “A bit risqué, aren’t we?” he said, eyeing her exposed flesh.

  She spun around, swirling the skirt and showing off her legs up to midthigh. “Since we’re going slumming on the Barbary Coast, I thought I’d dress like a soiled dove.”

  “Just be sure you
don’t act like one.”

  He rose from the sofa, turned off the phonograph, and held up her coat so she could slip into it. Even with his shoe lifts, he stood the same height as his sister. Then he followed her through the large, intricately carved front doors to the drive and the waiting Rolls-Royce. Abner, attired in his liveried uniform with shiny black boots, stood at attention, holding open the rear door. The Rolls was a town car, with an enclosed passenger compartment, the chauffeur in the open air with nothing but the windshield to protect him. As soon as Cromwell’s sister was settled, he instructed the driver where to go. Abner shifted gears and the big car rolled silently over the granite stones laid in the street.