The Empire of Shadows

by Richard E. Crabbe

  Owens slammed her down onto the woodpile. Mary felt him pressing hard between her legs. A hard hand felt for her sex, pulling her underclothes away.

  “Fuck you like I did that little maid,” Owens growled in her ear. “See how you like that. Stuck her in one end then stuck her in the other.” He pressed the bayonet against her temple. A trickle of blood ran down her face, dripping off her chin into the wood.

  “Shoulda seen her squirm,” he said, chuckling.

  Mary gagged in horror. Bile rose in her throat.

  “Get away from my mommy,” Rebecca said. Mary felt a rush of water on her legs and back.

  Owens jumped off, turning on ’Becca, who stood defiantly with a bucket in her hand. Owens kicked it away, sending it bouncing across the room. He raised a fist, but before he could strike, Mary grabbed a length of firewood and with both hands swung it against Owens’s skull.

  It was a glancing blow, but it opened a gash that fountained blood as Owens staggered to his left. Mary swung again but missed, the wood whistling inches from his face. Owens struck out with his bayonet. It went through Mary’s left arm, just above the elbow and punched into her side, grating on a rib.

  Mary stared, frozen in shock, looking at the length of steel skewering her flesh. Owens grinned through the blood streaming off his head. He twisted the blade. Mary screamed and dropped the wood.

  “That’s right. Scream!” Owens yelled, his eyes bulging and the veins standing out on his neck like blue wires. He brought his face close to hers. Blood from his head wound dripped off his nose, falling between her breasts. “Nobody’s gonna hear you,” he whispered. Mary felt the room wobble and her vision swirl with tiny lights and moving shadows. The floor came up to meet her face.

  “Be here any time now,” was the first thing Mary heard. She woke looking at her knees, her head hanging down. She tried to focus. “Won’t they be surprised,” Owens was saying to himself.

  “What was it about the shirt?” Owens said when he saw Mary coming to. She was bound to a chair, her arms tied tight. “Huh? Why the shirt? You know, if you hadn’t sent that telegram, I’d have been done with it. So, tell me,” he said, tilting her head up to give her some water. Mary was dizzy and her arm felt like a bolt of fire had been shot through it. She looked at Owens through the screen of her hanging, black hair. He looked ghastly. Blood was smeared all over his face and the scalp wound continued to trickle.

  “Go fuck yourself,” she mumbled once she saw that Rebecca was still all right.

  “Hmm. Well, we’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

  Owens fished in his pocket. “Like to see what your Tommy wrote back? It says STAY IN YOUR ROOM, STOP. THERE IN TWO HOURS, STOP.” Owens looked at his watch. “That would make it any minute now.” Owens smiled but clucked at Mary.

  “You know, you really did complicate matters with your little telegram. Forced me to change plans rather drastically. Now I’ll have to get rid of your Tommy, too. Very inconvenient, Mary.” Owens shook his head almost regretfully. “I’m afraid you’ll be paying rather dearly for that.”

  Mary, looking about, thought the room had changed, then noticed the light in the ceiling was shining in one direction. Some sort of shield had been rigged on it so it left half the room in shadow. Owens had what she thought was a towel in one hand, the bayonet in the other. When she looked closer she saw that the towel was wrapped around a pistol. “Only question,” Owens continued, “is who gets here first.”

  Mary frowned and Owens smiled at her confusion.

  “Tupper’s on his way to our little party, too. Thought I killed him, but I guess I didn’t. Friend o’ mine saw him stealin’ a boat over ta Long Lake,” Owens said with a frown. “So, you see, this will all work out very nicely. Tupper was headin’ this way. Guess he thinks he’ll get even.”

  Owens chuckled at that and shook his head as if the notion was unbelievably stupid. “So, Tupper will kill you and little Rebecca here,” he said, running a hand through Rebecca’s golden curls, “and of course, poor, noble Tom. Happily, I will be able to dispatch the obviously insane Tupper. He really is crazy, you know,” Owens whispered as if confiding some great secret, “and then all will be well.”

  Owens beamed at the simple genius of his plan, then just as quickly his mouth turned down in a pouting parody of a frown.

  “Regrettably, I’ll be too late to save you from the same fate as the unfortunate Lettie Burman. Such a sweet thing. I really could not resist, not after I saw her with your son, the lucky dog.”

  Mary spat at him. Owens looked at the bloody, pink spit with blank eyes as it slid down his leg. “I take it you approve of the plan.”

  He bent down and forced a wadded-up kerchief into her mouth, tying another over it and knotting that one at the back of her head. “Not too tight now, is it?” Owens asked when he was done. Mary just glared at him.

  Rebecca was already bound and gagged in the chair next to her. Owens walked to the other side of the boiler then and waited, facing the door. The room thumped and hummed. The world outside crashed and flickered. Rain beat on the roof and rattled at the windows that Owens had covered with blankets.

  Minutes crawled by while Mary fought to stay conscious, stay focused, keep thinking of what she might do. Here eyes locked with ’Becca’s. Mary did her best to comfort her with only her eyes. For the longest time, longer than Mary could remember since Rebecca was just an infant, she held her with her eyes. Rebecca looked back and, despite their red rims, the tears, the fear, Mary saw there was still strength there.

  A click of the latch brought their heads around.

  The sudden movement had Mary’s vision swimming. A wave of nausea swept over her. She felt her stomach rise in her throat. In a panic, she fought it back, fearing she’d drown behind her gag. She locked her eyes on the door and tried to concentrate as the room wobbled and rolled. The door, which Owens had apparently unlocked, swung slowly open. The night shouldered it aside, a solid, black wall streaked with rain. Nothing stirred. The door swung until it bounced softly off the wall. The rain hissed and splattered on the threshold.

  Tupper had been watching the hotel for hours. He’d seen Mary and Rebecca go back and forth to the telegraph office, though he had no idea who they were. He watched as Owens crept into the office, too. He saw how Owens had watched the woman and girl. The hill behind the hotel was a perfect vantage point, and the field glasses Tupper had taken from the sheriff’s pack were excellent. Tupper had seen Owens go into the small building behind the hotel perhaps an hour before.

  He wondered why the man had changed clothes inside. He’d been tempted to shoot him then, had peered down the barrel of the Winchester, nestling the front blade sight on Owens’s chest. His finger had caressed the trigger for a moment, but he had not fired.

  Putting a bullet through the man was not enough, no matter how good it might have felt to do it. He’d put the rifle down then, and settled in to wait and watch. He knew there would be an opportunity, knew that, like the sky in the west, things were coming to a boil. The rain had started a little while later as he lay under a bush on the hilltop. He’d watched as Owens disappeared back into the hotel.

  It had almost been too dark to see. The rain and the black night had nearly made them invisible. He saw them though, Owens and the woman, the little girl, running for the door of the building through the rain as lightning lit them, froze them as if in a photographer’s studio. As the door had slammed shut, Tupper gathered up his things. He had no choice now.

  It was clear from Owens’s actions that the woman and girl were a part of his plan. Tupper felt, rather than knew, it was not a good part. There was no good reason for Owens to be spiriting them into an outbuilding in the rain. Tupper wished he’d taken the shot, grumbling under his breath at his foolishness.

  “You cannot unmake the past, Jim,” his grandfather said at his side. “You chose well with what you knew.”

  “But now I must go in after him. He’s going to kill them,
I can feel it. He has the advantage now. All I have is this,” he said, knocking his knuckles against his chest, making a hard, hollow sound.

  “You have more, Jim. Much more. The future is not given to me. I do not see it. But his advantage may only be in your head.”

  It had been his grandfather who’d pushed open the door. “He is in the corner, behind the machine,” he said. “You must be careful.”

  With a whoop, Tupper burst in, a pistol in one hand, the rifle in the other, tucked against his hip. He fired blindly, the light throwing off his aim. The bullet clanged off the Long-waisted Maryann, throwing off sparks. Thud, thud, thud, thud.

  They didn’t sound like shots at first. Mary wasn’t sure what had happened, only that the man who must have been Tupper was now on his back and blood was on the wall.

  Owens came out of the shadows. The towel-wrapped pistol smoked in his hand. He stood over Tupper for a moment, then kicked his foot aside, closed the door, and threw the bolt once more.

  “Well, that went well, don’t you think?” Owens said, grinning, not talking to Mary so much as himself. He grabbed Tupper’s boots and dragged him across the room.

  “Crazy, murdering Indian, running about, leaving bodies wherever he goes.” Owens made a whoop like an Indian and hopped once or twice in a mock war dance. Tupper’s legs jiggled in Owens’s grip.

  “Scared shit outa the tourists. Cost the Durants a bloody fortune, but not near enough yet. Fucking William stole my land,” Owens said as he dropped Tupper’s boots with a thud on the floor.

  “My family’s land since before I was born, my island, right smack in Raquette Lake.” Owens kicked at Tupper’s legs. “Forced me off.” He booted him again. The body flopped and jiggled. “Goddamn sheriff came with a shotgun.” Owens’s foot thumped into Tupper again. “Cleared me outa my own island!”

  Mary was shaking her head. None of this made sense to her. Rebecca was silent, her eyes wide and red.

  “Heard his sister was gonna sue him, how he cheated her like he cheated me.” Owens walked back and picked up Tupper’s pistol and tucked it in his belt. The rifle he held in the crook of one arm. “That lawyer, he’s a crazy old coot, crazier than me, maybe. He had some millionaire about to buy a camp from Durant, lot o’ land, too.

  “‘Drive the price down, son,’” Owens said, imitating the gravely voice of an old man and sticking out his gut. “‘Hurt William West in the bargain, you can name your price.’”

  Switching back to his own voice, Owens said, “Didn’t give a shit how I got it done. Didn’t want details. So I don’t give him no details,” he went on in a sing-song tone.

  Mary still wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or not. He seemed to be in a trance. His eyes were unseeing. Blood dripped down his face, yet he made no move to wipe it away. “Just luck Jim here decided to stick his foreman,” he said, kicking a leg again.

  “Shoulda seen the headlines: MURDERING INDIAN ESCAPES POLICE,” Owens chuckled with a wave of his hand. “Didn’t have an idea till I heard about him. It all fell into place after that. Like a sign from the Great God Almighty himself, a big ol’ finger from on high, saying this here is your instrument, Ex, use him any way you like.”

  Owens looked at Mary, who wore an uncomprehending expression. For an instant, he seemed to falter. He looked from her to Rebecca and his eyes flickered and a deep crease stole across his forehead.

  “The first one was the hardest,” he said. “After that it got easier, till I got to liking it, especially that little maid.” Owens seemed to catch himself, as if he saw what he’d become and didn’t much like it.

  “Sorry you had to get caught in this,” he said softly. “But hell, what’s done is done.” He shrugged, his turn of conscience seemingly gone as quickly as it had come. Then he added, “What I said before about doing you like I did Lettie, well, I won’t do that, I guess. Kill you quick. No pain or nothing. Once your husband gets here we’ll get this all done an’ put behind us.”

  Twenty-Nine

  If you die for Right that fact is your dearest requital, But you find it disturbing when others die who simply haven’t the right.

  —ROBERT PENN WARREN

  Tom rode hard from Long Lake, as hard as his plow horse could go. That turned out to be not very fast; still, he managed to keep the animal at a trot most of the way. Once night fell, he had to slow for fear of having the horse fall over a rock or root in the darkness. The rain had started maybe a half hour before he got to the hotel. Exhausted, drenched, and muddy, he bounded through the lobby and took the stairs up to their floor. Tom knocked on his door, then tried the knob, surprised to find it was open.

  “Mary? ’Becca?” he called. Looking around he saw they were not there and went to the connecting door. He saw Mike was asleep on the bed. The light was off and he flicked the switch with a loud click that woke the boy.

  “Dad!”

  “Mike. You all right?”

  “Sure. You got him? You got him, right?”

  “No. Where’s your mother? She’s not in the room, ’Becca either. I sent a telegram, told them to stay put,” Tom said, his tone worried enough to bring a frown to Mike’s face.

  “What’s wrong, Dad? What is it? I was sleeping. I don’t know where they went.”

  “It was Owens all along, Mike. Not Tupper, but Owens who killed Lettie, Busher, and the rest.” Tom hesitated for a moment before adding, “And Chowder, too.”

  Mike’s eyes went wide. Chowder was one of the men Mike had always thought of as being indestructible, a tough-as-nails cop whose nightstick had bruised half the male population below Houston Street.

  “Uncle Chowder?” Mike said in disbelief.

  “Yeah. He’s gone, Mike. Don’t believe it myself. Where’s the deputy? We have to get you out of those irons. Owens is here. Your mother wired me. I don’t know where he is, but we can’t have you cuffed, not now.”

  “The deputy’s just down the hall, room two twenty-three,” Mike said.

  Tom was out the door before Mike had finished. Mike heard him pounding on the door.

  “Keep yer britches on, goddamnit,” Tom heard the deputy call. “I’m comin’.”

  When the door opened, Tom pushed it aside and barged in.

  “Hey!” the deputy said.

  “Listen, the sheriff’s dead, the other deputy and Chowder, too. Ambushed! All of them! Tupper didn’t do it. It’s been Owens, Exeter Owens all along. Man named Zion Smith was with him. He confessed to it. Now, give me the key to Mike’s cuffs. Owens is here at the hotel and I think he might be after my family.”

  “What the—?” the deputy said. “I can’t. I can’t do that. How do I know you’re tellin’ the truth?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Tom said through gritted teeth “Give me the fucking key!”

  “Well, You got no right to get—”

  Tom didn’t let him finish. He chopped at the man’s neck and he went down like the legs had been cut from under him. Tom picked him up by the shirt and looked into his fluttering eyes.

  “The key, goddamnit!”

  The deputy waved a hand toward a chair where his pants hung.

  “Thanks,” Tom said before smashing a fist into the man’s temple. A quick search of the pants yielded the key. Tom took his pistol and locked the door behind him, leaving the deputy unconscious on the floor.

  “Listen, Mitchell is not far behind me,” Tom told Mike as he unlocked him. “Take this pistol. Tuck it in your belt under your shirt, just in case.”

  They went into the other room with Tom mumbling about having told Mary to stay behind closed doors. He did a quick search, finding nothing until he looked under the bed. There was nothing there, but as he got to his feet Tom noticed two small splotches of blood on the carpet. They had blended in with the reds and yellows of the weave so as not to be visible from more than a few feet away.

  “Shit! Look at this.”

  Mike bent down to look.

  “You sure you didn’t hear
anything?” Tom asked Mike.

  Mike’s face screwed into a worried frown, but he shook his head.

  “Damn! No. I should have been more careful, I—”

  “Not your fault,” Tom said, putting a hand on his shoulder, half to steady himself. When he stood, a wave of dizziness swept over him. He rubbed his eyes and blinked to clear his head, but he still felt strange.

  “Listen, go down to the lobby. Keep an eye out for Mitchell. When he comes, start searching. Don’t go on your own, you hear me?”

  Mike nodded as they opened the door and headed out.

  “I’m going down to the bunkhouse first. Maybe get lucky and find Owens asleep in his bed,” Tom said with a sarcastic twist of the mouth.

  They split up then, Mike heading for the elevator, Tom trotting off in the opposite direction. It took a minute or so for the elevator to arrive. Mike paced back and forth as he listened to the clunk and whirr of machinery as the contraption arrived. The door opened and the brass gate was slid aside by the sleepy operator.

  Mike had taken one step inside when he heard a rush of feet behind. He was only half turned when he was hit, tackled and hurled into the elevator. He crashed into the opposite wall, his broken ribs screaming, robbing him of all breath as they stabbed deep into his side. He crumpled to the floor as he heard the operator say, “What the hell? You can’t do—”

  Mike heard an impact and saw the operator go down, holding his head.

  “You killed my sister, you goddamn, bloody bastard!” Mike heard a voice say above his head. “Swore I’d ’venge her. You got this comin’!”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Mike managed to say. “I loved her.”

  He earned a vicious kick for that.

  “Don’t you say that! Don’t you say a goddamn word, you! I’m doin’ the talking! You’re a fuckin’ murderer, you weasely bastard, an’ you ain’t getting away with it.”

  Mike looked up and saw a knife, large and red with blood. He realized then that he’d been stabbed.