Journey into Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  “I can’t say it. I think Lowery is a cold-blooded murderer. He proved it at Longdale. Anyone who’s capable of killing an old man for no reason can kill a young girl who maybe said a cross word to him.”

  “I’m sorry you think that way, Frank,” Lowery said. “You’re badly mistaken about Levi Fry.”

  “No, Lowery. Killing Levi was your mistake and now you’re paying for it.”

  “I didn’t kill Fry and I didn’t kill Sarah Hollis.”

  “Then both times, who did?”

  “The girl, I don’t know. Fry, well, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “No, I guess I wouldn’t.”

  “I’ll tell you anyway. A stray bullet killed Levi Fry, and it was fired by one of his own men.” Lowery’s knuckles were white on the cell bars. Bloated blue flies from the stock pens buzzed in the shaft of light from a high rectangular window.

  “That’s not how I heard it.” Frank said.

  “You’re hearing the right of it now. The truth,” Lowery said.

  “You’re a damned liar.”

  “Frank! Please go and wait outside,” Kate said. “You need some fresh air. Trace, go with him.”

  Without another word, Frank turned and walked away and Trace Kerrigan followed him.

  Kate and Lowery watched them leave.

  “Mrs. Kerrigan, the mechanical man—”

  “Under the circumstances, please call me Kate.”

  “You’re my boss. I’d prefer to call you Mrs. Kerrigan,” Lowery said.

  “As you wish. What about the mechanical man?”

  “He’s a kind of carnival sideshow, a man made of metal who will bow to the ladies and talk pretties.”

  “Better mannered than some human men I’ve known,” Kate said.

  Lowery allowed himself a smile and then said, “His name is Golem, and if you give him fifty cents he’ll tell your fortune. He told me mine.”

  “The mechanical man did?”

  “Yes. He said just one word. Death. Did he mean the death of Sarah Hollis or the death of me for a crime I didn’t commit?”

  Kate said, “Hank, the word golem appears in the Old Testament, in Psalms I believe. In Biblical times it meant a strange creature that was not quite human in the eyes of God. Today, in these modern times, it describes a person who is not too clever. And, Hank, you’d be a golem to believe a word a clockwork man said. Where was this wonder may I ask?”

  “Here, in Dodge, at a vacant lot off Front Street. I think he’s powered by steam, but I’m not sure.”

  “And he was operated by a pair of hucksters, I’m sure.”

  “Yes. How did you know that?”

  “Because hucksters always operate in pairs, one to bring in the mark and the other to work the swindle. I watched bunco artists do the hundred-dollar prize in the soap wrapper scam many times in New York when I was a child. A fortune-telling mechanical man is no different, even if he’s powered by steam.”

  “Golem said ‘Death’ only to me, Mrs. Kerrigan, not to anyone else. It could mean I’m going to hang.”

  “It means no such thing. I will not permit it. I plan to investigate this murder and bring the real culprit to justice. Now, is there anything you need?”

  “Cigars and something to read to take my mind off things. A bottle of bourbon would be good if Sheriff Hinkle will allow it.”

  “He might, but I won’t, Hank. You need to keep your wits about you. You’re fighting for your life and your brain can’t be befuddled by alcohol.”

  Kate left the jail area and swept into Sheriff Hinkle’s office like a forty-gun frigate on the prod. The lawman was sitting back in his chair reading a newspaper, his feet on the desk.

  When he saw Kate, he quickly scrambled to his feet. “You had a nice talk with the condemned, Mrs. Kerrigan?”

  “Condemned, Sheriff Hinkle? Surely you mean accused?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Hinkle said, intimidated by Kate’s frown. “Just a slip of the tongue, you understand.”

  “I understand perfectly, Sheriff. Let’s not allow such a slip to happen again, shall we? Now, first, do you have any wholesome reading material for Mr. Lowery? I would prefer that he not have novels of the more risqué sort since the last thing a prisoner needs is his dormant ardor inflamed.” Kate looked around the small office. “Of course anything by Mr. Dickens or Sir Walter Scott would be quite acceptable.”

  “Mrs. Kerrigan, all I have is the 1879 edition of the Revised Statutes of Texas, and it makes for some mighty ponderous reading,” Hinkle said. “A man spends an hour trying to make sense of that book and all he gets for it is a headache.”

  “I suppose it will have to do for now,” Kate said. “See that Mr. Lowery gets it. Do you have any cigars, Sheriff Hinkle?”

  “For the prisoner?”

  “For Mr. Lowery.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Then get him some. A box of the best kind, mind. I’ll reimburse you later.”

  “Mrs. Kerrigan, Lowery is my prisoner. I’m not his servant,” Hinkle said.

  “And now on to the second thing, Sheriff,” Kate said as though she hadn’t heard. “I want to see the cabin where Sarah Hollis died. My son Trace and my segundo Mr. Frank Cobb will accompany me.”

  “All right. I can tell you how to get there.”

  “No. You will also accompany me. I want you to be there.”

  “Mrs. Kerrigan, I—”

  “I will brook no refusal, Sheriff. You said you’re not Mr. Lowery’s servant, but you are indeed a public servant. Now come along with me and start serving.”

  “Ma’am, have you been sent to Dodge to be a trial and tribulation to me?”

  “Possibly,” Kate said. “God works in mysterious ways.”

  His shoulders slumped in defeat, Hinkle said, “Now God is on your side. All right. Let’s go.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, Sheriff?” Kate asked.

  “Now what?”

  “The law book for Mr. Lowery. Please give it to him and tell him he will get more suitable reading material and a box of cigars as soon as possible.”

  “When do you plan to return to Texas, Mrs. Kerrigan?” Hinkle said.

  “Quite soon, I hope.”

  “Not soon enough for me, lady.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “She didn’t have much room, did she?” Trace Kerrigan said, looking around the tiny cabin furnished only with a cot, a dresser, and a pole nailed into a wall to hang clothes.

  “Gals who work the line don’t live in palaces, young feller,” Sheriff George Hinkle said. “This place is a sight better than some I’ve seen.”

  “This is where the body was found.” Kate used her arms to indicate the space. “Her back on the cot and her legs on the floor.”

  “That’s right, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Hinkle said. “Seems to me she was stabbed and then fell backward.”

  Kate shook her head. “She didn’t fall. Her killer held her and let her down on the bed gently.”

  “How do you figure that?” the sheriff said.

  “The cot is several inches from the wall,” Kate said. “If she’d fallen, her weight would have driven it against the partition.”

  “Maybe,” Hinkle said. “What does that tell us?”

  “It tells me that her killer cared for her enough to support her as she collapsed backwards.” Kate stared at the lawman. “I think Sarah Hollis knew the man who murdered her, perhaps knew him very well.”

  “Mighty flimsy, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Hinkle said. “He could have held her because he didn’t want the noise of her falling on the cot to carry next door.”

  “Yes, the shack next door was being used at the time by the black lady and a cowboy,” Kate said. “Sarah’s murderer would have known that.”

  “And Hank Lowery would have known that as well,” Hinkle said. “He was new in town, remember. He wouldn’t have cared about someone he didn’t know. After he stabbed her, he let her down gently so not to alarm Alva Cranley
and her cowboy.”

  “I still think the girl and her murderer had some kind of close relationship,” Kate said. “A strange one though it may be. The back door, Sheriff, where does it lead?”

  “A couple outhouses back there, that’s all.”

  “Was the door locked the night Sarah Hollis was killed?”

  Hinkle shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You mean you didn’t try it?”

  “I didn’t have to. I had my killer.”

  Kate stepped to the door and tried the handle. “It’s unlocked.” She opened the door, stuck her head outside and looked around. “Frank, come and take a look at this.”

  When Frank Cobb stepped beside her, she said, “It rained a little the night Sarah Hollis was killed.” She pointed to tracks in the thin mud outside the door. “What do you make of those?”

  Frank kneeled and studied the ground for a while and then rose to his feet.

  “Well?” Kate said, trying to read his face.

  “The prints are of a man’s shoe who left the shack sometime after the rain ended. He has small feet and judging by the depth of the tracks, he is not heavy.”

  Kate turned to Hinkle. “Well, Sheriff, are those the tracks of the man who murdered Sarah Hollis and then left when he heard Hank Lowery’s steps crunching on the gravel outside?”

  “Mrs. Kerrigan, Sarah was a prostitute,” Hinkle said. “All kinds of men came here and some, especially married ones, might leave by the back door so they wouldn’t be seen. The tracks prove nothing.”

  “Frank, what do you think?” Kate said.

  “Kate, I have to agree with the sheriff. Anyone could have left those shoeprints.”

  “Not anyone,” Kate said. “The real killer of Sarah Hollis left them.”

  Hinkle sighed. “Can I go now, Mrs. Kerrigan?”

  “Not yet, Sheriff. There’s one more thing you can do for me.”

  “And what’s that, may I ask?” Hinkle managed to make himself look like a martyred saint, like St. Sebastian pierced by arrows.

  “We will interview a mechanical man and his cohorts and you will throw all of them out of Dodge City,” Kate said.

  Hinkle and Frank Cobb’s eyes met and Frank gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

  Hinkle said, “What if the mechanical man gives me sass, Mrs. Kerrigan? You want me to arrest him?”

  Kate frowned. “Now you’re giving me sass, Sheriff. Come, let me take your arm. We have police work to do, you and I.”

  * * *

  Sheriff George Hinkle said, “And you claim this . . . whatever it is . . . said, Breath, not Death.”

  “As sure as my name is Charlie Finch, Sheriff. Finch by name, Finch by nature I always say. A man bred to the truth, that’s me.” The barker looked at Professor Woodmancey. “Have Golem say howdy to the lady, Professor.”

  Woodmancey placed his hand on the automaton’s back and it bowed, lifted its top hat, and said, “How do you do, ma’am?”

  “Now tell the nice lady her fortune, Golem,” Finch said.

  The mechanical man’s meshed eyes glowed red but its round, startled mouth remained silent.

  “Tell the lady her fortune,” Finch said again. “Come now, Golem, be a sport.”

  The automaton said nothing, but its eyes continued to glow.

  “That thing is an abomination,” Kate said. “It already upset poor Mr. Lowery, who’s now rotting in the city jail, and it’s trying to do the same to me. Frank, your revolver, if you please.”

  Frank Cobb, knowing how Kate was when her mind was set on a thing, passed over his Colt without a word.

  Professor Woodmancey looked alarmed and Charlie Finch took a step back.

  “Hey, be careful with that hogleg, lady.”

  Kate raised the Colt and pumped three fast shots into the mechanical man. The automaton shrieked an unearthly squeal like pressurized steam escaping from a boiler. It staggered around like a drunken man, its arms flailing, and then it collapsed, twitched like a dying insect, and then lay still.

  “My God, was that thing alive?” Hinkle said, his face shocked.

  “Yes, it was, Sheriff.” Kate handed Frank his Colt and then pushed out her hands. “Now do your duty and manacle me, Sheriff. Throw me into your darkest dungeon.”

  “Finch,” Hinkle said, alarmed, “was a real man inside that damn tin suit?”

  Woodmancey answered for Finch. “No, Sheriff. Golem is an automaton, a machine powered by steam and electric coils. He’s the future, Sheriff, a sign of things to come, but he’s not alive. He’s not a man. Not yet.”

  “Well, if he ain’t a man I can’t charge you with murder, Mrs. Kerrigan. Can I?”

  “You’ve already charged a man with murder on even less evidence, Sheriff,” Kate said.

  Hinkle shook his head. “Mrs. Kerrigan, I’m leaving now. My business with you is finished.”

  “Only for today, Sheriff. You will hear from me very soon.” Kate noticed a tiny animal nearby. “Oh dear, what is that?”

  Charlie Finch said, “It’s been hanging around here for a few days. I plan to get rid of it.”

  Kate shook her head. “You’ll do no such thing. The poor little thing is probably starving.”

  “Nothing skinnier than a lizard-eating cat,” Finch said.

  “She’s only a kitten.” Kate scooped up the little calico and held her close in her arms. The kitten mewed. “Hear that? She really is hungry. Frank, Trace, we’ll take her back to Texas with us.”

  “Cats make me sneeze,” Frank said.

  “Nonetheless, we can’t leave her here,” Kate said. “I swear, she’d starve to death or”—her eyes moved to Finch—“get murdered by some ruffian. And speaking of ruffians, Professor Woodmancey, can your mechanical man be repaired?”

  “He can, but it will take time.”

  “Then let’s hope it will take until after the cattle season,” Kate said.

  “Will you be gone by then, ma’am?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  Professor Woodmancey nodded. “Then that’s how long it will take.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “What did they talk about when they were in Sarah Hollis’s shack,” Drugo Odell said. “What are you worried about? You can talk to me.”

  Alva Cranley, her mahogany face shiny with sweat from the afternoon heat trapped inside her own tiny cabin, shook her head. “I don’t know what they talked about, sugar. I wasn’t there.”

  “But you saw them leave, huh? I got a man says you watched them leave.”

  “Yeah, a real pretty woman with two young men and Sheriff Hinkle.”

  “Did they stay in the shack long?”

  “Long enough, sugar. Why you asking a poor black lady all these questions? You a detective of some kind?”

  “No. Just call me an interested party. You scared of me?”

  “Hell, no. Should I be?”

  “Yeah, you should,” Drugo said. “I’m down on people like you.”

  “Man in a ditto suit and a celluloid collar got to be a preacher,” Alva said. “You come here to preach to me or screw a black woman?”

  “Neither. I don’t preach and I’d rather screw a rat than a black woman.”

  Alva rose from the edge of her cot, a large imposing woman with a massive bust and a broad face with high cheekbones. “Get out of here. I don’t want you in my house.”

  “House? You call this hovel a house?”

  “Will you get out of here or do I have to yell for help?”

  “Try that and I’ll kill you,” Odell said.

  Alva Cranley smiled, showing fine white teeth. One of the central incisors was crowned with gold. “I’ve beaten up bigger men than you, little feller.”

  Odell reached under his high-button coat and suddenly a short-barreled Colt was in his hand. Alva’s eyes opened wide. The motion had been quick, so amazingly rapid it defied reality. No one could move that fast . . . like a lightning strike. The triple click of the Colt’s cocking hammer sou
nded like a death knell.

  The big woman collapsed onto the rusty iron cot and it squealed under her like a piglet caught under a gate. “What do you want from me, mister?”

  Odell pointed the gun at her head. “Who killed Sarah Hollis?”

  “Not the man Hinkle arrested,” Alva said.

  “Who do you think killed her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t think it was the man the sheriff arrested?”

  “Maybe I don’t.”

  “You pretended you’d never seen me before.”

  Alva said, “I never seen you before. I figured you come here to lie with a black woman.”

  “Why don’t you tell me the truth? Are white men rough with you?” Drugo Odell waited.

  “Sometimes. All right. Maybe I seen you here. Sarah had all kinds of gentleman callers.”

  “She tell you about any of them, what they wanted, what they did to her?”

  “Sometimes she’d tell me things.”

  “She ever speak about me? Drugo Odell. She ever mention that name?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Could be she did one time. I don’t remember.”

  “Remember this, I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me.” Sweat beaded on Odell’s forehead under the rim of his bowler hat and a mad light filled his feline eyes

  Alva was scared, very afraid. Sarah had told her about Drugo Odell, what he did to her and she’d said, “One day he’ll kill me or I’ll kill him.” And Alva had seen the little gunman before, on the night Sarah had died. That fact scared her most of all.

  Alma took a deep breath. “She said you beat her, stuffed her mouth with cotton, and whipped her with a leather belt.”

  “And what else?”

  “She said you always held a knife to her throat when you screwed her. She said you told her that one time you’d use the knife, but she’d never know when. You said you’d ram it between her tits and hold her so you could watch her die. She said you were loco, wrong in the head, and that she’d bought a .32 for protection. She said you scared her worse than the devil himself and that after this cattle season she was going to run away, head out on a train for Chicago. I asked her to leave right then, but she needed money for her fare and to live in Chicago for a while. She said the Colt she’d bought would protect her if you cut up rough again. I told her that if she shot you, I’d help her dump the body somewhere. And Sarah said, ‘Alva, maybe it won’t come to that. I know a gentleman who’ll protect me from Drugo.’ Well, I guess when the chips were down that gentleman didn’t protect her worth a damn.”