Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  “But Bill?”

  Guerney rubbed the palms of his hands together, and it appeared to Early he was stalling, perhaps trying to decide how much detail he wanted to share.

  “Couple weeks ago,” Guerney said, “someone cashed in some of the missing bonds at a Goodland bank—seven thousand dollars worth.”

  “Bill?”

  “He was out there at the time, though the teller and the bank officer couldn't give a description that would allow me to arrest anyone less than half the population of Kansas. . . . I'm thinking if I could find Bill, I could haul his butt out west, stand him up in front of the bank people, and they're gonna know it was him or it wasn't him.” Guerney pushed the toe of his boot around the dust that coated the porch floor. After a moment, he glanced up at Early. “So you're looking for him for the murder of his wife?”

  An elderly Chevy coupe came around the barns and stopped at the end of the dirt walk that led to the house. Mose Dickerson leaned out the window.

  “Jimmy,” he said, “Bill's gone, and the boy with him.”

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  September 21—Wednesday Morning

  Wakeeney

  Early made his way through the side entrance of the courthouse and on down to his office, his tan trousers wrinkled from the long ride in. Before he could park his hat, Hutch Tolliver glanced up from his morning coffee and the report left by the night deputy.

  “You look tuckered,” he said.

  “I guess,” Early said.

  “So?”

  “Walter and I spent yesterday afternoon till dark fixing fence. Lord, his place is run-down. To top that, we found one of his cows down with the bloat, got in that dab of alfalfa his neighbor has.”

  “That can be bad,” Tolliver said.

  “I had to stab a knife through the old girl's side, into her stomach. All that gas and mess blasts out all over me. Gad.”

  Gladys, Early's secretary—her hair in a new permanent that had a faint emerald coloration—snorted as she opened the mail. “Least you did something useful. Beats sitting on your fanny listening to Tom Mix.”

  That pained Early, but he ignored it and went to his desk. “Anything on Bill?” he asked Tolliver.

  “No sightings. Mose goes by his place every couple hours on the off chance he's come home.”

  The telephone set to jangling. The dispatcher picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, then turned to Early. “You'll want to take this, sheriff.”

  “Who?”

  “Mister Dodds at the bank.”

  Early took the receiver from his phone. “How can I help you, Hi?” he said as he pressed the receiver to his ear.

  “You told me to call if anything happened concerning Bill Smitts's house.”

  “He's gonna sell it?”

  “No, paid off the loan and then some. I got twelve five-hundred-dollar bills in the morning mail from him.”

  Early came forward, pulling a pencil from his pocket, about to write on the back of a wanted circular. “Still got the envelope? What's the postmark?”

  “Ahhh, could be Wakeeney. Can't be sure, it's kind of messed up. This help you?”

  “It's possible. You call me if anything more happens.”

  “Right.”

  Before Early could free himself of his telephone, Gladys came to his desk with a letter, deep concern having replaced her sniggering smile. “You need to read this, Jimmy.”

  He took the letter. Early leaned back in his chair and placed the crook of his arm over the top of his head as he scanned down the lines of pencil scratch on paper torn from a Big Chief tablet.

  “Sumbitch.”

  Tolliver peered up from his report, and the dispatcher twisted away from her radio monitor.

  “Bill did it.” Early spit the words out as if he were spitting grains of sand. “He told his dad.”

  Tolliver hustled away from his desk. He read over Early's shoulder. “Dated Thursday,” he said.

  Early pulled the envelope from behind the letter. He glanced at the postmark. “Mailed the next day.”

  “You think this is for real?”

  “It's a Wakeeney postmark. That's where Bill's family is.”

  “You think he's still there?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Early sailed the envelope to Gladys. “Get the dad on the line for me. Howdy Smitts, probably Howard. Could be Harold.”

  She turned to her telephone.

  “Now all we have to do is catch him,” Tolliver said.

  “Not going to be easy. If Bill's got half a brain left, he'll keep going west. He could be out of the state already. Time we conflabbed with the county attorney.” Early went to the office closet. He brought out a broom and, grinning like a raccoon fresh from a field of sweet corn, banged the handle against the ceiling.

  Moments later, a rotund man clattered down the stairs and into Early's office—coatless, his necktie, hand-painted with a fish jumping from a stream, pulled loose, plaid suspenders keeping his trousers around his girth. Carl Wieland's right sleeve hung empty, the cuff pinned at the shoulder.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Cactus,” he said, “can't you pick up the telephone like anybody else?”

  “Broom handle never fails.”

  Wieland mopped his forehead with a handkerchief as Early handed him the letter.

  “Hold on, man, I only got one hand,” Wieland said. He stuffed the handkerchief into his back pocket and recovered his spectacles. After he hooked the bows over his ears, he squinted at the letter.

  “Sonuvabitch.” Wieland raised the letter to his lips. “You probably said that already, didn't you?”

  “Can we use it?”

  “The letter? Got to authenticate it, either get an affidavit from the old man or call him to testify. But I tell you, there's nothing I like better than a confession, even if it's secondhand.”

  Early went back to his desk. He sat down and swung his boot-clad feet up on top of the morning mail Gladys had placed there. “Let's think about this a minute. Listen to me, Carl, what if Bill denies ever saying this? Then it's his dad's word against his—it's a standoff.”

  “Was Bill's mother in the room at the time?”

  “Don't know.”

  “If she was and she heard it, then, boom, Bill's off to Leavenworth and the gallows.”

  “Well, now think about this. If she heard it, do you really believe she's going to let her only son be convicted?”

  Gladys turned from her desk, her hand over the mouthpiece of her telephone's receiver. “Jimmy, I've got the Wakeeney operator. She doesn't have a listing for a Howard or a Harold Smitts.”

  Early aimed his finger as if it were a pistol. “Get the sheriff for me.”

  Wieland parked his bulk in a side chair, the chair's joints stressed, squalling under his weight. “Where are you on catching the bastard?” he asked.

  “As I was telling Hutch, if Bill's smart, he kept going west. He's left the state. But it's amazing how many dumb criminals there are. We might find him.”

  “Better get out some wanted circulars. You got a picture?”

  “The only picture I know of was Bill and Judith at their wedding . . . stolen from their house.”

  “Well, isn't that convenient? Parents might have a picture.”

  “I intend to find out.”

  Gladys again turned back, her hand once more over her telephone's mouthpiece. “Pick up, Jimmy. The sheriff is Adam Clark.”

  Early winked at Wieland. “Adam, the first man.” He pressed his desk phone's receiver to his ear. “Sheriff Clark? Sheriff Early.”

  “How can I help you, sheriff?” The voice sounded as distant as Wakeeney was from Manhattan—half the length of the state away.

  “You know Howdy Smitts?”

  “I do.”

  “What's that?”

  “Yes, I know Howdy. Lives about twenty miles south, down in the Smoky Hill River country. Got a nice little ranch out there.”

  “He got a te
lephone?”

  “Oh, I'm sorry on that one.”

  “We haven't got the best line. Would you say that again?”

  “Maybe you want me to shout?”

  “Would help.”

  “I said the phone line doesn't get any closer'n about seven miles to Howdy's property. We got a dozen ranchers down that way don't have phones. Don't have 'lectricity either unless they got wind generators. Why you ask?”

  “Got a letter from him. Got some information I got to check out.”

  “This got something to do with the murder of his daughter-in-law?”

  “You know about that?”

  “We read the papers.”

  “Say again?”

  “I said we read the papers. You think his boy did it?”

  “It appears so.” Early rummaged in the center drawer of his desk, then the side drawer. He brought out a railroad timetable and paged into it. “Sheriff, if I were to come out there, would you drive me down to his place?”

  “Always glad to help. Know you'd do the same for me.”

  “My timetable says we got a hot train coming through in twenty minutes. That would put me in Wakeeney at twelve-oh-eight.”

  “I'll be at the depot.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I said I'll be at the depot.”

  Early slumped in his seat, reading a paperback, his hat on the next seat, when the conductor leaned down to him.

  “Know you're in a hurry to get to Wakeeney,” he said, “but we're going to make a stop at Dorrance to pick up some express freight. We shouldn't lose more than five minutes.”

  Early mumbled and turned a page.

  “What you reading?” the conductor asked, his face leathery, showing age.

  “Zane Grey.” Early closed the book, with his finger serving as his place marker. He held the cover out.

  The conductor nodded as he read the title. “Yup, my dad's favorite, Riders of the Purple Sage. He got every book Grey ever wrote through the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. I have to read that one sometime.”

  The conductor went forward. Early felt the train slowing, so he dog-eared a page and put the book in his valise on the aisle seat. Early leaned to the window. He gazed ahead—wheat country close to the tracks, grazing land on the slopes and in the draws that led up to the flat land of the high plains that extended to the Colorado border, dry country that depended on windmills to lift water from wells. The Saline River to the north and the Smoky Hill to the south provided for a little irrigation—darn little, Early knew—and none further west where the headwaters were hardly a trickle. A tree out here was a rare thing and only grew in a creek bottom.

  Early saw the Dorrance sign hanging askew on a telegraph pole and felt the brakes grab, dropping the train's speed to a slow coast. Ahead he saw a grain elevator, then a depot, and a water tank destined to be abandoned as progressively fewer steam locomotives made the runs on this long line. Early would miss it, the lonely wail of a steam whistle drifting across the plains. Call it nostalgia. Call it romance. The bleat of a diesel's horn just wasn't the same thing.

  Lost in his reverie, he failed to notice the train had stopped until he found himself staring at a parking lot beside the depot. A car drew his attention, a well-dusted Mercury, one of its rear tires flat. Early pulled his notepad from his shirt pocket. He opened it and paged back to July, and there it was—a license number. Early peered again at the Mercury. He read the license plate, and the numbers matched.

  Early jumped out of his seat. He hustled toward the front of the railcar and the steps down to the gravel ballast beside the tracks. There Early ran to the lot and the automobile. How long had it been here?

  He glanced around until he saw a man with a sheaf of papers talking with the weary conductor. “Hey, fella!” he called out.

  The man, a nebbish, turned to Early. “Yeah.”

  “You the stationmaster?”

  “That's right.”

  Early held up his badge. “Sheriff of Riley County. How long's this car been here?”

  The stationmaster, in jeans and a checked shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, gave a paper to the conductor, said something, and came over. “Couple months,” he said.

  “That didn't concern you?”

  “Not particularly. We got a rancher leaves his pickup here all winter when he goes to California to see his daughter and twin grandkids.”

  With the heel of his hand, Early rubbed a hole in the dust of one of the side windows. He peered inside. “Know who left the car?”

  “ 'Fraid not. Think I was off the day it showed up.”

  “You got a constable? I want this car impounded.”

  The nebbish grinned as he folded his arms across his chest. “The constable would be me. Dorrance is a real small town. As for impounding, nobody's going to drive that car away with that tire flat.”

  The diesel's horn sounded and sounded again. The conductor came trotting over. “Sheriff, we have to go,” he said.

  “Look, I'm not going anywhere and that train's not going anywhere. This car belongs to a man who murdered someone in my county. I want to get inside it before we leave.”

  The horn sounded a third time.

  The conductor kicked at the gravel. “I'm sorry, sheriff, the railroad doesn't wait for anyone. We're leaving.”

  Early caught hold of the man's lapel. “You leave me and I'll have the next sheriff up the line pull you and your engineer off, and jail you both for hindering an investigation. How's that going to make you look with the railroad?”

  The conductor's face went from gray to ash. He stepped away and wigwagged his arms over his head in an all-stop gesture to his engineer.

  Early gripped the Mercury's door handle. He pulled on it, but the door refused to yield. “Who locks a car?” he asked as he tried the handle again.

  “One person, I guess,” the stationmaster said.

  Early stepped to the side. He picked up a whitewashed rock from among those that bordered the parking lot. He hefted the rock and found it a good fit for his hand.

  “What you going to do?” the stationmaster asked.

  Early came back to the car. He whanged the rock into the wing window on the driver's side, shattering the glass, releasing a rush of dry, musty air seeking escape from its long captivity. Early reached inside. He lifted the lock and opened the door. “Always a way,” he said as he climbed in. Early rifled the glove box and found nothing more than an Esso highway map, a railroad timetable like the one in his desk, only several months out of date, and a melted Hershey bar.

  He got out. Early pulled the driver's seatback forward and clambered into the backseat. There, kneeling on the cushion, he got a grip on each side of the rear seatback. Early wrenched at it and pulled, and the back popped free of the clips that held it. He set the back aside and peered into the dark of the trunk. Early decided to feel around.

  “Spare,” he said and pounded his fist on the tire. “Well aired-up . . . tire tools, a jack. That's it.” Early backed his way out of the car.

  “Nuthin', huh?” the stationmaster asked.

  “Just a minute here.” Early got down on his knees. He leaned inside the driver's side of the car and, with his hat brim and his ear pressed against the grit on the floor, peered under the front seat. “Of course.”

  He reached under and drew out an empty whiskey fifth—Wild Turkey—and a booklet. Early opened the latter. He scanned the first page, recognized the writing. He had one of Judith Smitts's diaries in his hand. Early pushed himself up, slapping the dust from the knees of his tans. “Constable,” he said to the stationmaster, “I want you to do two things for me.”

  He held up an index finger. “Give an affidavit to your judge telling him what you know about this car, how long you believe it's been here, and what you saw me do today.”

  Then Early raised a second finger. “Next flatcar you get in here, put this car on it, and rail it to me in Manhattan. Put the affidavit in the glove box.”

  The
train slowed as it approached Wakeeney.

  Early stood in the doorway of the passenger car, his hat on and his valise in hand, watching the depot grow in the distance.

  “You're gonna have to jump,” the conductor said. “You got the engineer mad at you, and he's not gonna stop.”

  “And if I break my leg?”

  “I'll make Henry send you a get-well card.”

  “Thanks.”

  Early aimed himself forward. He pushed off and out, and when his boots hit the gravel ballast, he ran, ran hard and ran out his momentum, the train picking up speed, the last car passing him and leaving him in silence, the only sound the crunch of stones beneath his boots as he strolled on to the depot's platform, a cricket sawing away in the dry twitch grass that bordered the ballast.

  A woman in denims and a straw cowboy hat came out onto the platform. She called to Early, “Wouldn't happen to be the Riley County sheriff, would you?”

  Early touched the brim of his hat in response.

  “They throw you off?” she asked.

  “Something like that. ”When he came close, he saw the badge pinned to the woman's shirt. “I was expecting an Adam Clark.”

  “I'm Evelyn Clark—Eve—Adam's wife and this term his deputy.” She laughed. “Last term, I was sheriff and Adam was my deputy. Understand you need a lift down to Howdy's place.”

  “That's right.”

  “I'll take that,” Eve Clark said, and she relieved Early of his valise as he stepped up onto the platform. “My pickup's out front. Adam and I both got one. Cars aren't too practical out here when the bottoms go out of the roads in the spring.”

  “We drive Jeeps,” Early said as he humped along to keep up with Clark, she sweeping like a dust devil through the depot and outside.

  “They'll getcha anywhere,” she said as she flung a hand out toward a flame-red Studebaker. “Whaddaya think of her?”

  “You ever go to Topeka, you'll never lose it in a parking lot.”

  “I like it.” Clark opened the door. She threw Early's valise in and followed it, settling behind the steering wheel.

  Early eased onto the passenger seat. The back of his hat bumped against a gun rack, and he twisted around and took note of a Savage Thirty-ought-Six with a mammoth scope on it, twenty power, he guessed. Below the rifle a pump shotgun, a Remington.