Weak Flesh

by Jo Robertson

  "I've come to help you out, Marshal," he said without preamble. "Sent down by Judge Carver up in New York."

  Ah, that explained it. Harold Carver had an older brother who was a judge of some notoriety and no little influence in upstate New York. "We're grateful for any help we can get," he said cautiously.

  "I'll set my dogs at the river after they've gotten a whiff of something belonging to the girl," Thompson explained. "You've heard of me and my dogs, of course."

  He paused, an expression of jovial modesty on his broad face. "We get good results. Wherever that gal's been, my bloods'll find her trail and lead you to her killer."

  Gage didn't expect much from Thompson or his bloodhounds since the river had long ago washed away any evidence, but he nodded judiciously. He wasn't so territorial that he'd refuse any assistance, however suspect.

  He'd known some Indian trackers during his military stint and the best ones were pretty damned accurate. With the body now found, he didn't see the point of Thompson's service, but he'd allow anything that might lead to answers about what really happened to Nell Carver.

  "Let's go then," Gage said. "The sooner you start the better."

  Thompson looked surprised. "You don't consider it interfering?"

  "Hell, no." Gage smiled gamely. "If you can help, that's not interference, now is it?"

  Chapter 10

  Meghan couldn't wait to tell Gage about the dance card. Would he even know what a dance card was?

  Well, of course, he would. He'd been a cadet at West Point for three years. She'd heard of debutante balls and their smashing success if a cadre of cadets attended. Even at Watauga Academy where she'd studied to be a teacher and matriculated June before last, the girls knew of those stories.

  From the dry goods store where she'd picked up a few yards of muslin, she hurried along the boardwalk to the Station House. By the time she climbed the stairs to the second level where the police reception and jail were, she had to stop and catch her breath.

  Will Pruitt leaned against the counter, his back towards her. His attention was fully engaged on the conversation going on in Tucker Gage's office although he surely couldn't hear through the closed door.

  Will and Meghan were the same age, but the similarities between them stopped there. Will had tormented her mercilessly when they were in grammar school.

  She'd understood that was typical behavior for a second-grade male who had a crush on a girl. But she grew weary of it early on. Finally, in fourth grade before he'd gotten his height and she outweighed him a few pounds and towered over him an inch, she'd bloodied his nose so badly he'd never bothered her again.

  Now they were fast friends and though Will wasn't the brightest boy in the classroom, he was well suited to police work for he was industrious, conscientious, and dogged. She sneaked up behind him to give him a start, and when she poked a finger into his rib, he jumped and darted around as if stung by a bee.

  She laughed. "That maneuver still works on you, Will."

  "Dang it, Meg, quit that! You scared the tar out of me!" He glanced over his shoulder to meet the hard gray eyes of the Marshal through the glass window. "You're gonna get me in trouble," he warned.

  "Pooh! Sometimes Tucker Gage is too full of himself." She dismissed the complaint easily enough for she'd known Gage since she was an infant, even if he'd grown into a man and headed off to West Point when she was still a child.

  But he'd returned a cold, distant ex-soldier, she mused. Maybe she didn't know him at all.

  From the corner of her eye she saw Gage rise and usher his guest through the door. The other man was accompanied by two of the hugest dogs she'd ever seen. Gage wasn't inclined to make introductions, apparently, for he walked the man and his hounds down the stairs, their claws clattering on the wooden stairs like dry bones in the wind.

  "What's going on, Will? Who's that with the Marshal?" Meg asked curiously.

  Pruitt frowned. "Police business, Meg, I can't talk about it."

  "Oh, come on," she wheedled, jabbing him with her elbow. "You know you can't keep a secret from me. I won't tell."

  "Meg," he warned, drawing her name out on a frustrated sound and swiping his hand over his mouth.

  At that moment Gage returned, stared hard at the two of them, and walked toward his office. "A moment, Pruitt?"

  "Yes sir," Will replied, jumping away from Meghan.

  Gage's serious gray eyes lighted on her. "And you, Bailey, what now?"

  "You won't say 'What now?' in such a condescending tone when I tell you what I found in Nell's bedroom," she said triumphantly.

  A curious look passed over Gage's face, so Meghan knew she'd piqued his interest, but he only said, "It'll have to wait. I've got trackers and drunken medical students and God knows what else all waiting for my attention."

  "But – but," she sputtered.

  "Later, Bailey," he snapped, turning toward Pruitt who stood in the door frame. "Send a man down to the Carvers to be sure Tracker Thompson doesn't make too big a mess of things. He's not going to find anything, but I want a deputy present anyway."

  "Yes sir." Will smiled at Meghan, a mere lifting of one corner of his mouth as if he were sorry for her.

  Gage spun around on his heels and entered his office where he shut the door with a resounding thwack.

  Fine, Meghan fumed silently, they'd see how far Mr. High and Mighty Tucker Gage got without her help. She stormed down the stairs after Will with nearly the same click of boot heels on wood as the dogs had made with their claws.

  #

  A half hour later, the insistent growling of his stomach reminded Gage he hadn't eaten since breakfast. "What did Bailey want?" he asked Pruitt.

  His deputy's young face reddened. "Something important about the case. She claims she has some evidence."

  He'd see her later, Gage promised, as he walked down to Bea's Kitchen on Pool Town Road for a bite to eat before dealing with Tracker Thompson and his bloodhounds.

  Bea Miller's place was warm and homey, a hub of activity and friendliness where half the town gathered at one time or another to catch up on gossip. Not the likes of the Carvers or Nolans, of course. Those folks dined at home with their servants and chefs and threw fancy dinner parties like Gage's own parents had.

  But he liked the crowd that congregated at Bea's even if he seldom took part in the good-natured chatter. He was a man who held himself apart from others, aloof, reserved. Many of the patrons of Bea's Kitchen were new enough to the area not to remember a time when Tucker Gage had been a different sort of man, a much friendlier chap.

  Bea herself brought his usual Thursday fare of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and string beans. "Marshal," she greeted him, clattering the laden plate on the bare, wooden tabletop. "What's the word about the town?"

  Bea asked the same question every time Gage dined at her establishment and he always answered the same. "Nothing newsworthy."

  He sipped his coffee and watched the plumply rounded proprietor over the rim of his mug, thinking of what Hayes had said about meeting Nell at the Narrows.

  "Just wondered," Bea said, reflecting his thoughts. "Folks are chattering about Nell Carver."

  "Oh, and what are folks saying?"

  She hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms over her ample bosom. "The usual nonsense – ghosts and demons and God knows what else done something awful to poor Nell's body."

  She looked around to see if any customers needed her, then set the coffee pot on the wooden table and took a seat opposite Gage. "Lots of yammering about Jim Wade hanging around Nell too much, feelings running high in that direction."

  "Folks will talk when they've nothing better to do," Gage murmured, continued to eat. "Best to ignore gossip since most of it comes to nothing."

  Gage suspected Bea had been a pretty woman in her youth. She still had a smooth creamy complexion and a pleasant, lively mouth. Right now that mouth was turned down in concentration.

  "You might talk to the father," she said a
t last.

  "What?" Gage looked up, startled by the intensity of her voice.

  "Mr. Carver. He might not be all he pretends."

  Gage lowered his voice. "What do you mean?"

  Bea looked uncomfortable and stared down at her rough hands folded on the table top. "You might be too young to understand this, Marshal, but some men – well, let's just say some men don't look on their daughters in such a fatherly way."

  From the sarcasm in Bea's voice Gage understood immediately. "That's a serious charge, Mrs. Miller," he warned sternly. "How do you come by such speculation?"

  She shrugged. "There's always some kind of talk, here and there. I hear most of the talk running around Tuscarora, but it mayn't mean anything."

  She stood and picked up the coffee pot, her eyes steady on his. "I 'spect you'll sort it all out soon enough," the woman said, patting Gage's shoulder.

  God, he hoped so. His words were more optimistic than he felt. "That I will, Bea. Eventually."

  He pushed the worries aside and tucked into his food with a relish that surprised him. He wouldn't have thought he'd be so ravished after the incident with Hayes.

  Bea Miller was an excellent cook. The Nolans and Carvers and their like hardly knew what they were missing.

  He was ready to dismiss Bea's words as malicious rumor until he stopped by his room at Mrs. Church's Boarding House on his way back to the Station.

  The paper lay on the floor, folded in half, its stark white corner barely showing from the outside of the door. He looked around the empty hallway, wondering if anyone had seen the messenger. Opening the door, he slipped inside his room.

  A warning bell clanged gently in his head. Someone had shoved the note under his specific door, someone who knew him and where he lived. That could be most of the town and may mean nothing.

  He opened the note.

  Look to the unnatural father. Leviticus 18:17.

  What did it mean, if anything? And surely an odd coincidence after Bea Miller's earlier remarks. Had someone overheard them conversing? Or perhaps it didn't refer at all to Nell or her father, but something or someone else.

  Gage hadn't intended to join Tracker Thompson and his dogs at the Carver home. Let Pruitt take care of that idle chore. But now he figured he needed to have a private conversation with Nell Carver's father.

  #

  Harold Carver was thrilled his older brother, a judge in New York, and an important man, had sent Tracker Thompson to help find out what happened to his sweet Nellie.

  The bloodhounds were impressive. Thompson requested an article of Nell's underclothing, and to tell the truth, it nearly ripped the heart out of Carver to see those monstrous dogs nosing at her garments.

  After a moment the dogs took off, raced around the house, through the turnip patch and across the river road, ending up at the summer house down by the river. Then they raced back and started the cycle all over again.

  It made no sense to any of them, not to his family nor the several dozen folks who'd gathered to see the carnival-like antics of the bloodhounds. With Nell's body lying in the funeral home, what did Thompson expect to find with his eager hounds racing about?

  "I'll need something else," Thompson said after the third go round with the hounds. "Gloves or a scarf."

  Carver retrieved the items, glancing up at the tower section of the house where he could see his wife. She sat in her rocking chair, staring out the window and keeping a macabre vigil on the river that'd taken their Nellie.

  "This something she wore recently?" asked Thompson, letting the dogs sniff a few minutes at a fine pair of kid gloves.

  "Yes, Sunday, she wore them to church on the Sunday before she disappeared."

  Thompson grunted and let the dogs loose.

  When dusk arrived and the crowd had waned, Tucker Gage arrived at the Carver house. The bloodhounds were tied up on the long front porch, lying down, but their black eyes watched his every move as he rapped on the front door.

  The Negro maid Bessie answered his knock and ushered him into the front sitting room, where Mr. Carver sat with his daughter Susan and Tracker Thompson.

  "About time you showed up," Carver complained.

  Gage let the rebuke go because he understood about loss and grief and the different outlets those emotions took. "Let's step outside, sir. We need to talk."

  Resentment flushed Carver's face to a bronzed red. Gage imagined he thought of his beautiful daughter with her smooth, clear face and her flawless form and longed to wrap his big hands around Jim Wade's scrawny neck and squeeze the life out of him. Gage couldn't say he blamed the father.

  If Wade was Nell's murderer.

  But all Carver said was, "Why?"

  "Mr. Carver," Gage said, feeling the edge of impatience overriding his sympathy for the man's loss, "we can talk here at the quiet comfort of your property or at the Station House."

  He paused and placed his hand on the man's shoulder, feeling the fight leak out of him like air from a balloon. "I think here's best, don't you?"

  Carver looked around the room at Thompson's curious face and Susan's bland, impassive one. "Let's go into the parlor," he said at last, leading the way across the foyer into the more formal room.

  Pouring tea and passing a plate of home-baked cookies, Mrs. Carver fluttered around them as they sat on fancy, uncomfortable chairs. Gage wished she'd leave. What he had to say to Mr. Carver was best said in private.

  Finally Mr. Carver spoke sharply to his wife as he rose from the chair he was sitting in and batted at his wife's hands. "Mabel, quit fussing. Leave that stuff!"

  With a shocked look she stopped abruptly, stared at her husband in confusion, and then scuttled out of the room, looking over her shoulder at Gage, an apprehensive expression on her face.

  What was she worried about, Gage thought? Had she some inkling of the discussion Gage needed to broach with her husband? Was this why she'd come downstairs to prepare the tea herself? Did a mother always know of such things?

  He closed his eyes briefly and wished again he'd not taken the position of Marshal of Tuscarora City. If he'd any notion of what would happen during his first year of tenure, he'd never have ...

  No, that wasn't quite true. Gage had come home from the Army with a desperate sense of making wrong things right again. God knew how being Marshal would atone for what he'd done, but he couldn't think of what else to do.

  Chapter 11

  Captain Butler jerked the Springfield rifle from Lieutenant Gage's hands and before he could react, fired off a neat little shot that hit the center of the Chippewa woman's forehead. She crumpled forward, the infant crushed beneath her.

  "Get four men to gather up these bodies before the stench is unbearable." Butler gestured toward the tent where the dead woman lay, the infant squalling under her. "Stack them up in there. Plenty of fodder for a nice bonfire."

  Shock rippled through Gage like a venomous reptile snaking through his veins and muscles.

  Sergeant Jackson uttered the question Gage's tongue couldn't untangle long enough to ask. "What about that?" Jackson drawled, a mask of boredom on his weathered face. He pointed to where only the infant's limbs flailed about.

  "The fucking thing'll be dead before the fire gets roaring," Butler answered. "If not, just toss it on in there. We got no time for niceties, Sergeant. This is a fucking war against filthy heathens!"

  #

  "What's wrong with you, Marshal?" Carver asked, leaning forward and frowning into Tucker's face.

  Gage realized several moments had passed since Mrs. Carver had left the room. "What? Oh, nothing."

  He cleared his throat on a cough before speaking. "I have to broach a rather uncomfortable topic, Mr. Carver. I will need your complete cooperation."

  A wash of mild panic crept over Carver's visage as he held his hand over his chest. "What do you mean? What topic?"

  Gage looked down at his large hands resting lightly on his knees and wished to God he hadn't listened to Bea's words ear
lier even though Bea Miller seemed to have her fingers on the pulse of the community and she wasn't a woman for light gossip.

  Was the talk malicious chatter or grounded in fact? And who would know to speak of such goings on?

  The message left beneath his door, however, was another matter. He could not ignore that.

  Talking to a man about his relationship with his daughter was a delicate issue, and Gage must ask the correct questions. He knew many men ignored their female offspring or at best patronized them. But Carver had four daughters, and by most accounts he was affectionate and close to all of them.

  He was particularly fond of Nell, his eldest. Perhaps too fond? Too loving?

  "I've had a complaint and have no choice but to follow up on the allegations."

  The wording was a bit strong, but Gage wanted to see the man's reaction. If this current missive was another nasty joke like the first note about Nell's disappearance, then he expected Carver to react, act confused, perhaps hurt.

  "Allegations? What the hell are you talking about, Marshal?"

  Gage examined the man carefully. To no end, he'd looked to Carver with suspicion when Nell first disappeared. With this new information he needed to be blunt.

  "Someone approached me suggesting that you and your daughter Nell were engaged in – in unseemly conduct." Not exactly true, but close enough.

  Carver blanched, his mouth worked soundlessly, and his eyes widened in shock or fear. But something in the abject grief on his face bore the unmistakable shade of truth.

  The truth or something close to it, Gage thought.

  He'd wager that Carver had feelings toward his daughter that skirted propriety, something more than the natural affection of a parent for his child. But whether or not the man had acted on those feelings, or if it had anything to do with Nell's death, Gage couldn't say.

  A single strangled word came from Carver's throat. "God!" He sank to the chair and clutched his chest again. "God," he repeated. "Dear God."

  Carver seemed incapable of saying anything more, and Gage waited an uncomfortably long minute for him to regain his composure.