Guilt was the reason. And fear. He’d put her body down the well with the idea that it’d soon be hidden by the winter snows, that it might not be discovered until the Crockett farm was finally sold and by then it’d be a skeleton and he’d be long gone from Peaceful Valley. When Jeb Barrett’s boys found it by accident after only three days, it must’ve thrown him into a panic. He didn’t dare pull up stakes right away; would’ve amounted to an admission of guilt if he had. All he could do was wait, and drink, and sweat, and hang on to the false hope that I wasn’t smart enough to catch him.
The only thing still in doubt was the homicide motive. Pretty safe assumption that he’d strangled Charity Axthelm in a fit of rage, but what had set him off? Her planning to run away with James Rainey? The revelation that she was pregnant, if she’d even known it yet herself? Some other trigger? Well, I’d know soon enough.
The Fix place loomed ahead. Carse turned in, rattled us into the farmyard. No lights showed inside the house, at least none you could see from out where we were. The house and the outbuildings had a deserted look under their splotchy dusting of white.
Carse yanked on the brake and shut off the headlamps, but left the motor running. We climbed out. Nothing moved anywhere except the stinging snow, and there were no sounds other than the wind and the flivver’s engine. If Tyler was inside, he’d sure have heard us coming. And just as sure, there’d be a rifle or two and maybe a handgun in the house. I hadn’t drawn my weapon when we walked in on Harriet Greenley yesterday, a mistake I wasn’t about to repeat again. Just no telling what a desperate criminal will do, drunk or sober—that was a lesson learned and learned well. I opened my mackinaw, worked off my right-hand glove, then transferred the Colt from holster to coat pocket. I kept my hand in there on the handle so my fingers wouldn’t numb. Carse did the same with his sidearm. He doesn’t usually go armed, but I’d insisted this time.
We eased up onto the porch. From there I could hear a steady clattering somewhere at the rear—sounded like a loose screen door banging in the wind. Front door wasn’t locked; the knob turned under my hand. I motioned Carse to stand aside, then stood aside myself and reached out to shove the door open. Nothing happened. I let a few seconds slide away before I gestured to him and we entered, cautious.
The front room was empty. We moved slow through the rest of the house. Tyler wasn’t anywhere to be found. In what I took to be his bedroom—near-empty whiskey bottle on the nightstand—the bedclothes were half off the mattress and wadded up on the floor. I opened the wardrobe for a quick look inside. No rust-brown coat. Even if he hadn’t noticed the missing button, he’d have gotten rid of it sure with the shoulder and sleeve ripped open by the blackberry tangles.
The house was icebox cold. Grover must’ve lighted the kitchen stove before he left, but the fire had gone out long since. The reason was that the back door stood wide open, and each flap of the screen door blew chill air and swirls of snowflakes inside.
Carse said, “Looks like Tyler flew the coop in a hurry.”
“If he did, it was by wagon or on horseback.”
“Have to be bad spooked to do either in weather like this.”
“We’ll have a look out back.”
We went outside, shutting both doors after us. The stubbled grass in back showed what might’ve been man tracks here and there, but it was hard to tell on account of the sifting of snow. Head down into the wind, boots crunching on thin skins of ice, I led the way past the well and the wire-fenced chicken run. At the barn I tugged one door half open, peered into the hay-and-manure-spiced gloom. First thing I saw was the shape of what figured to be the only other conveyance on the farm besides the mercantile wagon, an unharnessed buckboard.
Carse said when he saw it, “Guess that leaves horseback.”
“Seems like.”
I widened the door gap enough for us to pass through. And once I was inside, with the moan of the wind muffled some at my back, I heard what sounded like a nicker. When my eyes adjusted, I spotted a lantern hanging from a hook to one side of the door; I took it down, fumbled around in my pants pocket for the matches I carry, found and used one to light the lantern. Held it up high so the flickery glow chased away shadows and let me see all the way back.
Horse in one of the stalls, all right, a ewe-necked dun. The other stalls were empty.
“You recollect how many horses the Fixes own?” I asked Carse.
“Can’t say I ever knew.”
“I don’t believe more’n two.” And Grover had hitched one to the store wagon for the ride into town this morning. “But we best have a look in the tack room, see if there’s a saddle missing.”
The tack room was a cubicle next to the rear doors. We tramped down the runway to it, the dun nickering again and shuffling around in his stall, looking to be fed, as we passed by. The door was open a few inches, and when I stepped up close I made out a faint sound inside, a funny kind of slow, rhythmic creaking. I pushed the door all the way inward with my left hand, holding the lantern up with my right.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
That was Carse, coming up next to me. What we stood looking at in there froze my voice box, brought the taste of bile into my mouth.
Tyler Fix, hanging from a rope looped over a thick crossbeam.
Wind drafts coming through chinks in the wallboards made the body move, the rope creak. The boy’s face was the color of spoiled liver, eyes popped and tongue showing at a mouth corner, but that wasn’t all there was to see. Pinned to the nightshirt he wore was a piece of writing paper with a loose smear of words scrawled on it.
I killed Charity Axthelm.
TWENTY-THREE
I MOVED FIRST, inside for a closer look at the body. Carse followed and I handed him the lantern, then worked off one of my gloves and felt a dangling wrist with two fingers. Not hunting for a pulse, wasn’t any use in that, but to test the body temperature.
“He don’t appear to be stiff,” Carse observed.
“Cold and still limp. Dead no more than a few hours.”
“Must’ve come out right after his brother left for town. Fixed the rope, climbed up on that little stool over there, and jumped off.”
“Looks that way.”
“Couldn’t live with his guilt, so he saved the county the expense of a trial and did the hangman’s job himself. Lordy.”
I didn’t say anything. I felt bad about this, real bad, because I could have prevented it. Would have, if it hadn’t taken me so damn long to put the finger on Tyler.
“Cut him down now?” Carse asked.
“No. I want Doc Olsen to have a look first.”
“Don’t seem right to just leave the kid hanging there.”
“He wouldn’t be any deader or more pitiful laid out on the ground.”
I gloved my hand again, took the lantern back, and lifted it up as high as I could reach. All Tyler’s shell had on it was the nightshirt, a half-buttoned pair of jeans, and scuffed boots. The note on his shirtfront was fastened on with a safety pin. Close up, the four smeared words appeared to have been written with a piece of charcoal—likely a cold ember from a fireplace or stove. Looked to be some kind of contusion on the side of his neck, but in the flickery lantern light I couldn’t tell just what it was. Rope burn, maybe.
Wasn’t much to see in the room except for the short three-legged stool Carse had mentioned. It lay upended against the inner wall a distance from the body, one of the legs loose and crooked. Nothing else in there—two worn saddles, saddle blankets, bridles, hackamores, another harness, some tools on a bench—appeared to’ve been disturbed.
“All right,” I said, “let’s move out.”
Carse hesitated. “I can stay here and keep watch while you drive in and fetch Doc.”
“No need for either of us to freeze our asses here and the house is just as cold. Tyler’s not going anywhere. And you know you handle the flivver better than I do when it’s snowing.”
We left the barn—the dun horse ha
d to be fed, but that could be tended to later—and tramped out to the Model T. Carse said as we climbed in, “We going to tell Grover about his brother right away?”
“Not until after Doc examines the body.”
We rode back to town in silence, the snowfall now just a light, steady sifting of flakes. I sat with my feet braced against the floorboards, hanging on to the strap and gnawing on my mustache. Seemed to take longer than it had coming out to travel the three-quarters of a mile, maybe because I wasn’t paying attention to the road.
Carse stayed in the flivver while I went upstairs to Doc Olsen’s office. Doc was in, fortunately, saving us the trouble of having to go hunting for him. He took one look at me and said, “You look all het up, Lucas. Bad for your blood pressure.”
“Good reason. You wanted to be the first to know if anything happened, you got your wish. Tyler Fix is dead.”
Nothing much ruffles the old bird. One thick eyebrow hoisted, his only reaction. “The hell you say. Don’t tell me you had to shoot him?”
“Hell, no. Found him hanging in the tack room out at the Fix farm. Note pinned to his shirt saying he killed Charity Axthelm.”
“So. Suicide.”
“Appears to be. Get your bag, Doc. Carse is waiting downstairs in the flivver.”
He didn’t waste any time. Couple of minutes later the three of us were headed back out to the north road, and ten minutes after that we were in the Fix barn. I relighted the lantern we’d used before, and a second one I’d spotted on a bench on the way out earlier so we’d have plenty of light. Then we crowded into the tack room.
Doc peered up at the corpse. “Never a pretty sight,” he said, sour.
“You seen many other hanged men?” I asked him.
“A couple, and I don’t care to see any more after this one. Go ahead and cut him down.”
I fetched the three-legged stool. The loose leg made it wobbly, but it held my weight when I stepped up and sliced through the rope with my Barlow knife. Carse had hold of the body, lowered it and stretched it out. Tyler had soiled himself when he died; the odor hadn’t been too bad before, cold and drafty as it was, but with him laid down it was stronger. The dun horse had stamped around and let loose with a couple of mournful whinnies when we passed by his stall, and he started in again now. I told Carse to go fork some fresh hay for the animal. No use in all three of us being in the tack room with the body and the smell.
While Doc was doing his examining, I cut the hang rope off the stanchion it was knotted around and pulled it down slow and easy. Ran an ungloved hand along the section that had been curled around the beam.
“Hard to tell in this weather how long he’s been dead,” Doc said, straightening up. “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. Three to four hours, at a guess.”
“That was mine, too.”
“His neck’s not broken. Strangled, from the look of his face.”
“Uh-huh.” I unpinned the note from the nightshirt, folded it careful, and tucked it into my coat pocket. Then I bent to squint at the contusion I’d noticed earlier. “What do you think caused that?”
“Hard to tell. Light’s too poor.”
“Blow of some kind, fist or hard object?”
“Could be. Why?”
“That stool there,” I said, pointing. “You saw where it was lying before, over by the wall—a good seven feet from where he was hanging. Could he have kicked it over that far in his death struggles?”
“Must have.”
“Doesn’t strike me as likely. One stool leg’s loose. Kicked hard, I’d say. Hard and angry.”
Doc conjured up one of his scowls. “What’re you getting at?”
“Take a look at the rope, the fibers where it was looped around the crossbeam.”
Carse came back just then. He picked up the rope, looked at it first, then held it out for Doc’s inspection. “Rubbed up, not down,” he said.
“The wrong direction. Tyler didn’t climb up on the stool and jump off, he was strung up and the stool kicked away afterwards.”
Doc said, “Good Christ, Lucas. You’re saying he was murdered.”
“Afraid so. Hauled out of his bed, slugged, carried out here, and hanged. I don’t like it any more than you do, but the evidence doesn’t lie.”
“But the suicide note—”
“Anybody could’ve written it, the way it’s scrawled.”
“Anybody who? I thought you were convinced Tyler killed the Axthelm girl.”
“Still am,” I said. “It’s possible somebody else did it, murdered Tyler and framed him to throw off suspicion. Then again, framing doesn’t have to be the motive.”
“No? What the devil is, then?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’ll find out.”
He wagged his head. “Another murder. My God, that’s the last thing we need right now.”
The last thing, yes—another murder. And now not just four crimes in this goddamn epidemic, but five.
Five!
* * *
I HAD CARSE drop me at the mercantile, take Doc to the Bedford Funeral Parlor, tell Titus to come pick up Grover on his way to the Fix farm, and then come back to fetch me. Doc could ride out to the farm with Titus to collect Tyler’s body, if he was of a mind to.
Main Street was mostly deserted and there wasn’t anybody in the mercantile except Grover, listlessly stocking the canned food shelves. He came hurrying over as soon as he saw me walk in.
“Did you see Tyler? What did he say?”
“I saw him and he didn’t have anything to say. Afraid I got some bad news for you, Grover. Your brother’s dead.”
“Dead? Tyler’s dead? You didn’t—?”
“No.”
“Then how? What happened?”
“Close up shop and get your coat. Then I’ll tell you.”
He put a CLOSED sign in the door, locked it, and turned off the lights. When he came back buttoning into his coat, I laid it out for him, terse. Tyler’d been a boy, Grover was a man. He took it with just a couple of flinches.
“I guess I can understand how Tyler could’ve lost control and murdered that poor girl,” he said, “but to go and hang himself? That’s even harder for me to believe.”
“He didn’t hang himself. Somebody strung him up.”
Another flinch. “Who’d do a thing like that? Why?”
“Don’t know yet. You have any ideas?”
“No. My God, no.”
I took the false suicide note from my pocket, unfolded it. “Recognize the handwriting?”
“No.”
“Couldn’t be Tyler’s, done in a hurry?”
“No. Everything he wrote was back-slanted. Where’d you get this?”
“It was pinned to his nightshirt.”
“Damn whoever did this. Damn him!”
“Was Tyler home last night?”
“No. He came in late, drunk. I don’t know where he’d been.”
“Talk to him then?”
“I heard him stagger in, that’s all.”
“Anybody come around looking for him last night or this morning?”
“No.”
“Where was he when you left the farm?”
“In his bed. Sleeping.”
“Sure he was asleep?”
“I tried to wake him up, but he called me a dirty name, shoved me away, and started snoring again. That’s the last thing he said to me, that dirty name. His final farewell.” Trace of bitterness in the way Grover said that last.
He turned to look out past the drawn window shade. “You said Titus Bedford was coming. What’s keeping him?”
“Hasn’t been that long. He’ll be here pretty soon.”
Carse rumbled up in the flivver first, the Cunningham hearse two or three minutes later. Grover unlocked the door as soon as he heard it, relocked it after we stepped out onto the boardwalk. Just Titus in the hearse; Doc must’ve decided to stay in town. Grover got in with them and I waved Titus on before depositing myself in the flivve
r.
“Where to?” Carse said. “Garage?”
“How much gas left in this rattletrap?”
He checked the gauge. “Half a tankful.”
“More than enough. No need to stop at the garage.”
“Where, then?”
“Tyler Fix was no lightweight,” I said. “Took a strong man with good balance to carry him into the barn, then hang him from that beam. The way I see it, the motive has to be vengeance—an eye for an eye, a neck for a neck. Only three men could’ve found out it was Tyler strangled the girl. Grover’s one, but he’s not powerful enough or filled with enough rage and hate. The other two are named Axthelm. And J.T.’s got that bad leg from the war.”
“Which leaves Bob.”
“Which leaves Bob. Young, strong, hotheaded Bob Axthelm.”
TWENTY-FOUR
IT HAD STOPPED snowing by the time we reached the Axthelm farm. The thin frosting on the ground was already melting off. Tree branches, fence posts, power poles and lines were still decorated in white, but unless we had another freeze tonight the last of it would be gone by morning.
The jouncing and sputtering noises the Model T made brought J. T. Axthelm and his wife out into the farmyard as they had before, both from the house this time. The woman stayed on the porch while he hobbled down to the foot of the steps. There was no sign of Bob. Just the same, I unbuttoned my coat and pulled the skirt back over the Colt’s handle before I opened the passenger door and stepped out.
Carse got out, too, and came around to my side. I motioned him to stay put there, went ahead to where Axthelm stood. Same stoic look on the weather-brown face as on our last visit. Occurred to me for the first time that he might have Indian blood. Well, so what if he did? His wife wasn’t anywhere near as good at hiding her feelings. There was worry in her careworn face, tension in the tight clasp of her hands on the collars of a sheepskin draped over her thin shoulders.
The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave Page 16