by Dani Amore
The man sighed, set the carving down on his desk, and laid the knife next to a leather blotter.
“You found him,” the man said without enthusiasm, as if he were admitting to something he wasn’t proud of.
“Name’s Mike Tower, and this is Bird Hitchcock,” Tower said. The man glanced past Tower at Bird. She knew he recognized the name. The sheriff’s face was like the rest of his body—long and sad.
“How can I help you?” he asked. And then he realized he hadn’t said his name, so added as an afterthought. “My name’s Chesser. Sheriff Howard Chesser.”
He stood, brushed wood shavings off his pant legs, and put his hands on his hips. Bird noticed he wasn’t wearing a gun.
Chesser was a tall man but shaped like a pear. His shoulders seemed to cave in on his neck and the pressure had pushed his hips out to extreme measures. Big, but soft, Bird thought.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about the murder of Bertram Egans,” Tower said.
The sheriff visibly stiffened, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He looked off to the side, then back at Tower. A few errant wood shavings fell from Chesser, as if they wanted to escape from what he was about to say.
“What is it you’d like to know?” he asked, attempting an aggressive tone that came off instead as weak and hollow.
Then, before Tower could answer, Sheriff Chesser added, “The case is currently under investigation, though. So I can’t say much, if anything at all.”
“Well, you answered my first question,” Tower said. “Whether the case was closed or not. So, my second question is, Do you have any suspects? Any idea who did it?”
Chesser looked down at the carving on his desk. Bird could tell he wanted to pick it up and get back to carving instead of answering Tower’s questions. There was safety in the predictable.
The sheriff looked up at Bird. He seemed to be searching for something that he could be confident in and wasn’t finding it in himself. “I know who you are,” he said. There was a bit of smug satisfaction in his tone.
“Give that man a dollar,” Bird said. “Or a wooden fish.”
The sheriff plowed on. “But I don’t know who you are,” he said, looking at Tower. “Why are you so interested in what happened? And why should I share any details?”
Tower sighed. Bird discerned that he wasn’t happy with the conversation.
“Egans was a preacher, just like me,” he finally said. “Some folks with the church asked me to look into what happened out here. You’re not under any legal obligation to talk to me about the killing, but I sure would appreciate it.”
Bird thought Tower sounded very reasonable. Maybe just a smidgen of condescension in his voice, but only she would notice it, knowing him so well and all.
“Let me think about it,” Chesser said brightly, indicating that the idea appealed to him. “Where can I find you?”
“We’ll be around,” Tower said. He turned and walked past Bird.
“I like your fish,” Bird said.
“Thank you.” Chesser seemed uncertain about the acknowledgment, but also tentatively proud.
“You can find me at the best saloon in town,” Bird said. “As soon as you tell me which one that would be.”
Five
The place was called Big Horn Brewery, but according to the fish-carving sheriff, in addition to its famed beer, the watering hole also had the best selection of liquor in town. A drinker’s saloon, the sheriff had said. Bird liked the sound of that.
The structure itself was a large wood-frame building, freshly painted white with red trim and featuring an elaborate sign above the entrance that read BIG HORN BEER. The words had been painted with bright gold paint that Bird supposed was meant to look like beer.
Needs a second coat, she thought.
Bird opened the doors, walked inside, and immediately liked the place. It was her kind of drinking environment: all business. The main floor was a wide-open space that held nothing but tables and chairs. Along the left wall was the bar: a forty-foot-long oak slab complete with an impeccably polished brass rail. A mirror ran the same length, interrupted in sections by glass shelves filled with bottles. Beer taps were spaced sequentially down the length of the bar, each with an ivory handle.
Bird strode to the end of the bar farthest from the door and put a boot on the brass rail.
The bartender, an older man with a bald head, came over to her. He had a huge, gray moustache with neat little twists at each end.
“What can I get you, miss?” he asked.
“A reintroduction to my two best friends. Their names are beer and whiskey,” she said.
He nodded, pulled a glass mug from one of the shelves, and poured her a thick draft. With a flourish, he set it on the bar and slid it to her, the glass coming to a stop directly in front of her.
“I would have been upset if you’d spilled any,” she said, hoisting the mug and tasting the beverage. The flavor was rich, with enough body to settle nicely into her stomach.
The bartender brought her a shot glass and a bottle. He pulled the cork from the bottle and filled the shot to the rim.
Bird put some money on the bar and said to the bartender, “What do you put in this stuff? It’s probably the best beer I’ve ever had.”
The man smiled, and Bird noticed his cheeks were just as pink as his bald dome.
“I’m afraid that’s a trade secret, ma’am,” he said. “But I can guarantee you it’s the best beer this side of the Mississippi.”
She drank the rest of the beer with one long pull, then slid the mug back to him. “Let me try another one, see if it’s as good as the first. Call it research to see if your claim would stand up in a court of law.”
“They get better with each one,” he said. The beer came back at her, again sliding down the polished surface of the bar. She tossed down the shot of whiskey and easily caught the beer mug as it came to rest in front of her. She hoisted it and tasted. The bartender looked at her, waiting for her judgment.
“No complaints here,” she said, licking a trace of foam from her upper lip. “Except my whiskey glass is empty and I need an answer to a question.”
He filled her glass and used a towel to wipe down the already spotless bar. He had his sleeves rolled up, and Bird noted the thick forearms. This was a man who’d spent a long time on that side of the bar, and clearly took pride in his profession. Her idea of heaven was a bar like this, and her notion of a deity very much resembled a skilled server of alcoholic beverages.
“Ask away, I’ll do my best to give you an answer.”
Bird sipped from her whiskey glass. “Other than the sheriff, who in town might be able to tell me about what happened to that murdered preacher?”
The pink on the bartender’s face and head turned nearly crimson as he looked at Bird suspiciously.
“Why would anyone know more than the sheriff?” he asked.
“Just wondering.”
“We keep to ourselves here in Big River,” the bartender said, his voice thin and flat. “I suggest you do the same.”
He walked away from Bird.
She looked at her empty beer mug and empty shot glass. Such a sad, tragic sight. Bird silently berated herself for breaking one of her most important rules.
Never piss off a bartender.
Six
Tower closed the bible and set it on the table next to his bed. He breathed deeply, looking for the calm that always followed his reading. Today, it didn’t happen for him. He stood, feeling unsettled.
At least he knew why. Silas had not given him a congregation following the conclusion of his circuit ride, which had been the original plan. Much of the reason why had to do with Bird Hitchcock, but he couldn’t put all of the blame on her. The violence had followed them, and not all of it had been because of his escort’s gunfighter past. Part of it was his own past, too.
And now, Silas had asked them to look into a murder. Tower crossed the room and shrugged on hi
s black jacket. Maybe this would be his life. Maybe he had been foolish to think that a man like himself, a man who had seen more death and crime and awful things than most, could ever become a preacher.
The thought was simultaneously disappointing and oddly comforting. It was a life he knew, one he had become accustomed to over the years. A life to which many of his skills applied.
He left the hotel and started toward the saloon, and met Bird on her way out.
“Heading in for a drink?” she asked him, with a straight face but also the odd twinkle in her eye that he knew signaled she was having fun with him.
“A bit early for me, Bird,” he said. She nodded. A man and woman passed them by, and they both looked at Bird with a curious expression. Tower understood why. He looked at her, the way she stood with a quiet grace, but two guns tied down, the smell of whiskey on her, and a beautiful face that oftentimes looked utterly without, maybe even incapable of, compassion. However, he knew otherwise.
“No,” he continued. “I think we should ride out to the scene of Bertram Egans’ murder and see what we can figure out ourselves. The sheriff doesn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to share any information with us.”
She produced a bottle of whiskey and nodded to him.
“I’m ready when you are,” she said.
They walked back to the hotel, mounted their horses, and headed out of town.
“So, where exactly was he killed?” Bird asked, once they’d cleared the edges of Big River. They were riding along the flat pan of the valley floor, toward the western mountains.
“Lovely little place the locals call Killer’s Draw,” Tower said.
“Why is it called that?” Bird asked.
Tower shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, but we’re going to need to find out,” he said.
The sun was nearly touching the horizon, and the sky that had been a vivid deep blue all day long was now tinged with reds and burnt orange. Thin lines of distant clouds streaked between the tops of the mountains, fading into the background along with the last bit of glow from the sun. The tall prairie grass bent like brush strokes toward the sky’s open canvas.
As they rode, Tower appreciated the vastness of the land, and wondered about Bertram Egans. What had he been doing out here? Was he traveling from town, and if so, where had he been going? If he had been going to see someone, who could it have been?
Tower also had to consider whether Egans had been killed out in this area or whether his body had been brought out to this stark but lovely valley to create distance from the murder.
The papers Silas had given him told Tower the rough location of where Egans’ body had been found, but it took them nearly a half hour of riding in circles before they spotted a stake that someone had pounded into the ground with a white handkerchief tied to its tip.
Bird and Tower drew their horses to a stop and looked at the stake.
“Strange place for a preacher to be holding a sermon,” Bird said. Tower realized Bird Hitchcock was thinking the same thing he was.
“Maybe he was killed somewhere else and brought here,” Tower said.
“Could be,” Bird acknowledged. “We need to talk to the person who found him. Or at least, what was left of him. They might have been able to tell if he’d been killed here.”
Tower dismounted and walked the area around the stake. The grass was matted and clumps had been torn up, leaving mounds of dirt and exposed rocks. He saw that it was, in fact, a draw, with a thin stream of river shooting off from the main branch of the river, nearly a quarter mile away.
Tower spotted animal tracks near the center of the spot with most of the grass missing. If the murder had occurred at that spot, it had most likely rained since then because he saw no signs of blood. He glanced eastward, estimated the river was probably less than a quarter mile away, then looked back to Bird.
She had begun walking the perimeter of the site in ever-widening circles, hoping to cut sign.
Bird stopped at her horse, retrieved from her bag the bottle she’d bought at the Big Horn, and took a swig. She corked the bottle. Tower went and stood next to her.
“Killer’s Draw, huh?” she said.
Tower studied the way the draw came down from a higher meadow and cut through the valley floor. A deep gash in an otherwise faultless landscape.
He eyed the horizon and saw that the sun was now almost completely gone, the shadows from the mountains steadily racing toward them.
And that was when they heard the voice behind them. It was thin and hollow-sounding. The word was drawn out and sounded like “bbbaaccckkkerrrrrr …”
Tower turned, a little jolt of electricity raced up the back of his neck.
There was no one there.
He looked at Bird. The bottle of whiskey was gone, and a gun was in her hand.
“You heard that, too?”
She nodded.
“Sounded like someone was saying ‘back here,’” she said.
Tower looked in the opposite direction, wondering if the location of the voice had been distorted by the shallow ravine. He knew sounds often echoed off water and rocks.
But there was no one there, either.
Where had the voice come from?
Bird slid the six-gun back into her holster, popped the cork from the whiskey bottle, and took another drink.
“Very strange,” she said.
Tower looked up at the sky. The clouds were growing in size, and darkening.
One thing he knew with certainty.
The voice he’d heard.
It had been a woman’s.
Seven
They rode back to Big River without speaking, each lost in their own thoughts. For Tower, the analysis of where Egans had been killed yielded nothing in terms of information, but the emotion the place had conveyed had been vivid and real.
He felt compassion for the young preacher, tortured and murdered in the middle of nowhere. No one should have to die like that.
Tower and Bird parted ways at the edge of town, she heading for the saloon, he going to the Elk Café for coffee.
He entered the small restaurant and sat at a table by the window. A thick woman with flaming red hair brought over a slip of paper and a coffee pot. Tower turned over his cup; she poured him a coffee and handed him the menu.
“Special today is three eggs and three strips of bacon,” she said. “Don’t ask me why it’s a breakfast special at dinner time, I just work here.” The woman smiled, and Tower immediately liked her.
Even though he had only planned to drink coffee, the smell of frying bacon and fresh bread changed his mind.
“The special sounds good to me,” he said. “No harm in having breakfast for dinner, maybe I’ll fool myself into doing a day’s work tonight.”
“It could happen,” she smiled, walking back toward the kitchen.
From town, whatever storm had appeared at the edge of the mountains was nowhere to be seen. The evening looked to be clear and a little bit cold. The lights from the café illuminated the edge of the walk just a few feet into the street. Inside, there was just enough light for Tower to read.
He had brought along the papers Silas had given him back in San Francisco—the background information on Egans’ murder. Back when he’d been working for the private investigation firm in Missouri after the war, it would have been called the case briefing.
Tower shook his head. He felt like he’d come full circle from that time.
Well, he thought, no one ever really knew what life was going to throw at them. It was part of what made life interesting. Sometimes, a bit too interesting.
Included in the thick sheaf was a separate batch of letters. Judging by one of the return addresses, they appeared to have been written by a woman in Boston named Evelyn Egans. After a quick scan of the first couple of letters, it seemed clear to Tower that she was Bertram’s mother.
The letters were addressed to Silas and frequently referenced Bertram’s application to join the
church out West. Tower flipped forward and found the young man’s original application at the bottom of the stack of letters.
Mrs. Egans made a solid case to Silas about why he should accept Bertram into his organization. She wrote at great length about Bertram’s troubles growing up. About how his stepfather had beaten the young boy, terrible acts of violence for which his mother felt guilty. Eventually, it appeared, Mrs. Egans kicked the abusive man out of the household.
But the damage had been done.
According to the longest letter, Bertram had become violent himself. Getting into fights, committing petty crimes, and drinking alcohol. It was the last letter in which Mrs. Egans described how finally it had been the church that had saved her son. Bertram had had a spiritual revelation and his acceptance into the church as a minister was all her son wanted in life.
Tower put the letters down when his food arrived. As he ate and drank from his freshly refilled cup of coffee, he reflected on what he’d read.
It was an old investigator’s technique—get to know the victim, and in doing so, ideas and theories would surface about why they had become the victim of a crime.
But Egans’ story was an all-too-familiar tale. Tower had known plenty of people who sought refuge in the church due to unfortunate circumstances in their lives.
He himself was one of those people.
The stepfather angle intrigued Tower. Could it be that the man who had beaten his stepson for an extended period of time had come all the way out from Boston to finish the job? Tower had known plenty of men like that, controlling personalities who refused to let anyone ever escape their sphere of influence.
Even so, he figured it was a long shot. He made a mental note to send a telegram to Mrs. Egans and find out where Bertram’s stepfather was now. If he was in jail, or dead, Tower could rule him out. But if he could determine that the man had left Boston and possibly come West, that would put him squarely in the territory of being a prime suspect.
Tower finished his meal, pushed the plate away, and declined a third cup of coffee.