The Heaviest Rock (An Ozark Mountain Series Book 3)

by Alan Black

  Zeke said, “Shut up, you fool. That’s a sheriff’s office. They got more guns and ammo in there than we have out here.”

  Grace said, “I do have enough guns to hold you all off, but I don’t need to shoot you all. I just need to shoot Abe to make my point and I don’t even need to get wet to do it.”

  Trance said, “She’s a woman, Uncle Zeke. She won’t shoot a prisoner all locked up. She’s just bluffing and won’t even shoot at us-”

  A rifle shot interrupted him.

  Grace heard Trance yowling in pain. “My ear!”

  LillieBeth shouted through the rain. “Mr. Thomas Ransom Braunawall, this is Elizabeth O’Brien Hazkit. You know me and you know I am not bluffing. I am sorry about your ear. I was aiming for your brains, but you do not have enough brains to make a decent sized target in this rain.”

  Trance shouted, “You shot my ear again. You shot me in the same ear you shot me in afore.”

  LillieBeth’s rifle barked again. “I missed again,” she shouted.

  Trance said, “You didn’t even get close, LillieBeth.”

  LillieBeth shouted back, “I was aiming at Bobby John McDonald across the street. Mr. McDonald?”

  There wasn’t an answer.

  LillieBeth said, “Maybe I did not miss.”

  Zeke said, “Trance, you keep that woman busy. I’ll get Abe.”

  Grace said, “You’ll die trying, but you’ll still live longer than your boy.”

  Zeke said, “You send Abe out or I’ll burn you out.”

  She saw the flare of a match reflecting off the building next door. Zeke was hiding between the buildings. A crash and a flare of light lit up the alley.

  She rushed to the back door, threw it open and fired both barrels at a fleeting shadow running from between the buildings through the pouring rain. She knew she missed. The kick from the shotgun was more than she expected. She was sure both barrels sent their buckshot into the clouds.

  The blast of the shotgun was enough to send the fleeing shadow diving into a water-filled ditch.

  A fluttering fire shot up between the buildings. She smelled smoke as she slammed the door closed and threw the bolt into the metal brackets. She pulled the spent shells from the shotgun and reloaded it.

  Abe’s eyes were wide with fear. “We have to get out of here. You’re going to get us burned to death.”

  Grace shrugged, “I’m not doing anything. Your Pa set that fire.” She picked up the cell keys from the desk, jangled them in front of Abe and dropped them in her pocket. “I may just get out the front door, but you escaped this jail once. It won’t happen again.”

  Abe shouted, “Pa! She’s crazy. She’s going to let me burn to death in here.”

  Grace heard running boots on the board sidewalk. They were followed by a large splash. She went to the front door and looked out the crack.

  “LillieBeth?” she called.

  “Trance ran,” the young girl replied, her voice muffled by the torrents of rain. “He decided to take his chances in the flood waters down Main Street rather than take his chances on me or that fire if it spreads.”

  Another voice came out of the rain, “Sheriff Grissom, this is Mayor Cummings. We have to put that fire out.”

  Grace shouted, “Hurry. I have no desire to burn to death. You should be safe, the shooters have pulled back. My deputy and I can cover you and the fire brigade. Right, LillieBeth?”

  There wasn’t any answer from her young friend. She wanted to rush out and look for the young woman, but she would not even know where to look. The shots from LillieBeth’s rifle had been an indication that they had Trance between them, but the young woman could be anywhere by now.

  Grace rushed out the front of the building heading toward the fire. She wanted to rush the other way. Art and Clare Hazkit would never forgive her if she got their daughter hurt. She would never forgive herself. But, first things were first. Fire was a priority.

  She looked down the alley. Zeke had missed with the fire. The wall to the dress shop next to the jail was on fire. She could see scorch marks on the wall to the sheriff’s office and she could smell coal oil. Once the oil burned away, the fire did not take hold. The wooden frame building was so wet it was like trying to set fire to a bucket of water. The rain slapping against the office wall did not give the fire a chance.

  Some of the oil must have splashed on the dress shop wall. With the wind blowing the driving rain in a slant, the overhang to the flat roof protected part of the wall from the water. The fire was starting to catch and spread up toward the roof.

  A group of men and women quickly gathered. Water was plentiful. The bucket brigade did not have farther to go for water than Main Street. Buckets were handed down the line of people and water sloshed against the damp wood. The men threw the water high, aiming for the roof, letting the water flow downward against the creeping flames, sluicing away any burning coal oil and soaking the already damp building.

  The fire sputtered and died. It did not go quietly or without effort, but it did fizzle against the dampness. At the first opportunity, Grace raced through the alley. She looked into the darkness, but could not see Zeke. Her night vision was ruined by the fire and she did not expect to see the man.

  She walked back to the Main Street sidewalk, stopping only to pick up pieces of a broken bottle. They smelled of coal oil and were black with soot. She picked them up carefully, touching the edges. She smiled to herself. Normally a person avoided the edges of a broken bottle. Touching the broken edges is how a person gets cut.

  Mayor Cummings held a lantern high, patting people on the back, thanking everyone for their effort in saving the town from fire. It was common knowledge that many a town had burned to ashes and had to rebuild after fire swept from building to building.

  Grace was not sure this fire would have spread from the dress shop. Every one, every place and everything were so wet from a week of rain that Zeke Braunawall had been lucky to even get a match lit.

  She held the broken glass up to the light of a lantern. There it was; a clear fingerprint. Clayton had talked about fingerprints often enough. There hadn’t been any cases in Missouri using fingerprints as evidence, but there was a big case in Leavenworth, Kansas that should set enough precedence. All she had to do was catch Zeke to compare his fingers against the print on the glass.

  Cummings approached Grace and asked, “What are you looking at, Mrs. Grissom?”

  She pointed at the swirls, whirls, and loops on the fingerprint. “See that smudge there? That is where Zeke Braunawall touched this glass when he set this fire.”

  “So?”

  “Look at your own fingers in a good light and you’ll see your own fingerprints. Everybody has different fingerprints.”

  Cummings asked, “Is that a new police technique?”

  Grace shook her head. “Not really new. Mark Twain wrote about identifying a murder using fingerprints in his book ‘Life on the Mississippi’ back in 1883 or there abouts.”

  “Mark Twain? We are getting police tips from a fiction writer?”

  Grace said, “That book’s not as much fiction as it’s his memoir. There’s more truth in it than not. I believe we can check this print against Zeke Braunawall’s fingers. We can convict him of arson if we can show this smudge matches one of his fingers; that is, if we can catch him.”

  Grace heard LillieBeth behind her. The young woman said, “How about the fact that he smells like coal oil?”

  Grace spun about. LillieBeth stood there. Her lever action rifle rested comfortably, pressing against the base of an older man’s spine.

  “This would be Zeke Braunawall?” Grace asked.

  The older man did not speak.

  LillieBeth said, “I found him hiding in a drainage ditch out behind the bank. A full grown man should know better than to try and hide from a hide and seek champion like me, even on a night like this.”

  The man still did not speak.

  LillieBeth said, “Oh, I told him if he
opened his yap even to breathe I would shoot him.” She looked at Grace. “What say we go ahead and put him in jail with Abe?”

  Grace led the way back into the sheriff’s office. She pushed the older man in front of her with enough force it caused him to stumble going in through the door. Mayor Cummings followed them into the office, leaving the front door open behind him.

  Abe shouted, “Pa!”

  Grace said, “That should be good enough identification, Mr. Zeke Braunawall.” She unlocked the jail cell door. Abe looked as if he would make a break for it, but he hesitated at the sight of LillieBeth’s rifle resting easily in the crook of her arm.

  Grace slammed the jail door shut, locked it tight and reached through the bars grabbing Zeke’s arm. She yanked, slamming him into the bars. She held his arm in an iron grip while she tossed the jail keys onto the desk across the room.

  “LillieBeth, please bring me an ink pad and a clean piece of paper. Look in the center desk drawer for the pad. It is a small flat metal box. Good.”

  She took Zeke’s fingers. She pushed them into the ink and pressed them against the paper. “Give me your other hand, Mr. Braunawall.”

  Zeke said, “No.”

  Grace sighed. “Mr. Braunawall. I’m tired and I’m in no mood to be nice. Stick you other arm through the bars or I’ll break this one.” She pressed his arm backwards across the bars.

  “Alright, stop!” He shoved his other hand through the bars.

  Grace shoved his fingers onto the inkpad and pressed them against the paper. She placed her hand through the bars against Zeke’s chest and shoved. The man crashed against his son, sending both of them sprawling to the floor. She turned her back, unconcerned if they were damaged.

  Cummings said, “What about those other men out there?”

  LillieBeth said, “I will start looking for them at first light.”

  Cummings looked at his vest watch. “That’s still two hours away. They could be halfway to Reeds Springs by then.”

  Grace said, “Even if LillieBeth is a hide and seek champion, there are two grown men out there with guns. There may be more men for all we know. But the two men we do know about have killed before. Trance murdered my Clayton and he killed Fletcher Marlowe. McDonald tortured and killed Odie Washington. I’m not going after them if I can’t see them and neither is my deputy.”

  Cummings frowned. “Maybe I should have hired a man for sheriff.”

  Grace’s voice took on a hard edge, rising in anger. “You’re welcome to replace me anytime, but do not question the bravery of my deputy again.”

  Cummings continued to frown, “My apologies to both of you. I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t brave. It’s just that a man might go out into the dark after those killers.”

  Grace barely controlled her temper. “You’re welcome to go after them yourself. But even if I had a man for a deputy, he’d have to be a stupid man to go into the dark after armed killers.”

  Cummings said, “Maybe so, but if we give them too much time they’ll head for Texas and we’ll never see them again.”

  Grace said, “I’ll plaster their faces on wanted posters from here to California and back. Every lawman this side of the Pacific Ocean will be looking for those two.”

  LillieBeth held up a gun. “Look what I found on Mr. Zeke Braunawall.”

  Grace and Mayor Cummings looked at the semi-automatic pistol without recognition. It was a well used gun for being only eight or nine years old. However, it looked like a hundred other guns carried by a hundred other men.

  LillieBeth said. “This is my Daddy’s gun. The only way Zeke got it was for Dangle to give it to him after Dangle shot Daddy.”

  Grace said, “Are you sure it’s Art’s gun?”

  LillieBeth nodded. “I have cleaned it often enough to know. Daddy called it Lucy. It is his Army gun, a 1911 Springfield .45 caliber.”

  Cummings said, “A lot of men came home from the war with those. They all look alike.”

  LillieBeth dropped the clip from its nesting place in the handle. It clattered onto the desk. She pulled the slide and ejected a cartridge from the chamber. A quick flick of her thumb put the safety on. She pulled a small knife from a pocket and unscrewed one of the handgrips on the handle. She pointed at the ‘AH’ scratched into the butt plate.

  “AH is for Art Hazkit. This is my Daddy’s gun.” She put the grips back on, reloaded the gun, and stuck it in a pocket.

  Grace said, “That’s evidence against Zeke Braunawall. It helps prove the statements you got from Carver and Buckner about his involvement.”

  Cummings nodded. “I’m sorry for my earlier statements. You two are fine lawmen. I can see we might want to get you a man deputy, but…”

  Grace laughed, “But, you doubt you’ll find a man willing to work for a woman boss?”

  Cummings said, “Well, I suppose I can remind them they all had mothers telling them what to do at one time in their life.” He scratched his head at the dilemma.

  LillieBeth said, “I am going to go up on the roof. I will see if I see Trance and McDonald from there. I do not think they will leave with family in here, no matter how much safer Texas sounds.” She climbed the built in ladder up the wall of the office and slipped through the trapdoor to the flat roof.

  Grace called after her, “You keep your head down. Our mayor will never get elected again if he allows a young twelve-year-old woman to get shot while working as a deputy.” Cummings sputtered, but Grace smiled at him to take the sting out of her words. Both knew there was more truth to her jest than joke.

  She looked at the paper prints and back at the glass prints. She turned up the lantern on the desk and smoothed the paper. Cummings was about to leave, but he stopped when Grace said, “Well, I’ll be! It works.”

  The mayor came around the desk. He looked at the glass and at the print Grace pointed to on the paper. “By gosh, that is a match to one finger and none of the others match at all. I’ve never seen the like.”

  Grace said, “Now we can charge Zeke Braunawall with arson as well as murder.”

  Cummings said, “You mean attempted arson and aiding a murder.”

  Grace said, “No. I mean arson and murder. He did start the fire; that is arson. It’s his bad luck you kept the fire from spreading. And you should be commended for taking such quick action, even though there were killers with guns on the loose. That was a mighty brave thing.”

  Cummings nodded, swelling up with pride.

  Grace continued. “Zeke Braunawall was breaking Trance and Dangle out of Clayton’s custody when Clayton was murdered. That is felony jailbreak and as far as I understand the law, if someone dies during a felony, whether the criminal pulls the trigger or not, it’s first degree murder. I’m going to charge him with it, but we can leave it up to the judge.”

  Cummings nodded. “I think the city needs to look into hiring a lawyer as this is all too complicated for me, but what you say certainly sounds right. You fill out any warrants you want and I’ll countersign them for you.” He held up a hand in surrender at Grace’s scowl. “Not because you’re a woman, but as mayor we can add the weight of my position, for what it’s worth.”

  Zeke spoke up from the cell, “You said you were going to speak for me to the judge.”

  Grace snorted. “That was only if you gave yourself up. You didn’t give yourself up, did you? You let yourself be captured by a twelve-year-old girl. I imagine if they don’t hang you, the other men in prison will get a chuckle out of that.”

  Zeke said, “You won’t get me to jail and if you do, then how’re the other prisoners gonna hear about how I was captured?”

  Grace laughed. “Because, I’ll make it my mission in life to let every other prisoner know.”

  A shot rang out from across the street; a bullet dug a short furrow into the desk next to Grace’s hand. Four answering shots banged out in response from LillieBeth’s rifle on the roof.

  Grace pushed Cummings to the floor and lay on top of him. Sh
e looked down into his face. “That pretty much tells me Trance Braunawall and Bobby John McDonald didn’t high-tail it to Texas.”

  FRIDAY – DAWN

  Grace called up the ladder to the roof. “LillieBeth, any sign of Braunawall or McDonald?”

  LillieBeth peered down through the hole in the roof. “Not since one of them took a shot through the office door a couple of hours ago.”

  Grace said, “It’s getting light enough out for us to start looking around for them.”

  LillieBeth came down the ladder, slamming the trap door to the roof shut and slipped the heavy bolt through the iron loops. She skinned down the ladder as if it was as comfortable a climb as any tree in her own backyard.

  The young woman said, “The rain is not letting up a bit. The river has come up some since we rode into town last night.”

  Grace said, “That’s good. It should limit the number of places Trance and Bobby John can hide.”

  “What about the two men in the cell?”

  “We lock the front door behind us and just keep an eye on the office while we look around. I have the keys in my pocket, so even if they try to get Zeke and Abe out, they won’t get through those bars.” She glanced at the cell; both men were sound asleep as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Or at least they appeared to be sleeping.

  She wished she and LillieBeth had been able to get some sleep. She had napped for about twenty minutes and felt much refreshed from it. She did not know if or how much LillieBeth had slept. She slurped down a cup of hot coffee and gave a cup to LillieBeth. The girl was cold and wet, any hot drink would be a help.

  Grace said. “Let’s stick together as much as we can. I’ll walk along first; you walk a ways behind me and watch for Trance and Bobby John. That way you may be able to keep one of them from shooting me in the back.”

  LillieBeth said, “The flood water is moving pretty fast. They are grown men and might be able to walk back and forth across the street if they are careful, but I would just get washed away.”