The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave

by Bill Pronzini

  “But once you had the statue and cut into it,” I said, “you realized it was a solid hunk of wood and that it’d take days, maybe weeks, to halve and hollow it and there wasn’t enough time for that, either. I won’t ask would you have gone ahead anyway if Chief Victor hadn’t died when he did. Doesn’t matter now. After the burial ceremony was over, you and Charlie did a careful repair job on the cut—”

  “No. We did that before Chief Victor died, when we realized we could not honor his last wish.”

  “Must’ve been a real hard time for you. Point is, that night you went to wherever you had the statue hid, loaded it on your wagon, and took it back where you got it.”

  “It was only right that we do so.”

  “No argument there. But you know taking it in the first place was a crime, compounded by the saw-cut damage. Henry Bandelier has every legal right to press charges against you both. And he surely will, the minute he’s notified that you’ve confessed.”

  Tom nodded, solemn. Charlie said, “Have you come to take us to jail, Sheriff Monk?”

  “No need for that. I know you’re not going to run off.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Well, I can put a word in on your behalf with the county attorney, and I don’t doubt he’d agree to let you stay free until the date of your trial. Don’t doubt, either, that I could trust you to appear in court on the specified day and time.”

  Nods from both this time.

  “Problem with that is,” I said, “it might not be in your best interest. If I know Judge Peterson, he’d find you guilty on both counts and fine you each a minimum of fifty dollars and/or sentence you to thirty days on the county work farm. I don’t suppose you could raise a hundred dollars between you?”

  Tom said, “No.”

  Charlie said, “Not half that much.”

  “Either way, the felony convictions would be on your records, make jobs harder to come by. How much money you reckon you have between you? In your pockets right now, I mean.”

  “Very little,” Tom said.

  “Very little,” Charlie said, like an echo.

  “Have a look-see.”

  They rummaged through their pockets without question, Indians being used to obeying orders from white men in positions of authority. Tom had three rumpled dollar bills and a two-bit piece. Charlie had one dollar and nine cents, all in coins.

  “Four dollars and thirty-two cents, total,” I said. I held out my hand, palm up. “Let’s have it, boys.”

  Again they obeyed, Charlie stoic, Tom with a puzzled side tilt of his head.

  “This’ll do. And if you’re thinking the four bucks and change is a bribe, you’re wrong. As sheriff, I’m entitled to set an alternate fine in any amount I choose, if in my discretion it’s warranted, in order to save the county the expense of a trial. I don’t have to notify Bandelier or Mr. Rademacher, or even file a report.” All of which was hogwash, and Tom, at least, knew it. Seemed to me he came as close to smiling as an Indian ever does. “Your fines for the charges involving the theft and damage of that wooden Indian are a combined four dollars and thirty-two cents, payment of which amount closes the case permanent. Now we’ll go inside and I’ll write you out a receipt.”

  * * *

  WHEN I GOT back to town, I took the $4.32 over to the Methodist church and put it in Reverend Noakes’ feed-and-clothe-the-needy box.

  Case resolved and closed.

  Five cases resolved and closed, the crime wave now over and done with … I hoped.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE HOPE TURNED out to be true. The crime wave was over, all right.

  For a while I couldn’t help worrying that it wasn’t, that something else bad would happen all of a sudden. But nothing did. Things soon settled back to what we considered “normal,” meaning the way they were before the sudden spate of trouble started.

  Winter came, and 1915, and the spate of long, cold, white months that ended with the spring thaw in April, and a short, dry summer, and all too quick the leaves on the cottonwoods and willows turned gold and the days cool and frosty again. Plenty happened during that year, of course. The war in Europe kept escalating and there was talk that President Wilson would soon have the U.S. joining the fight on the side of the Allies, but in rural Montana folks as usual were more concerned with what was taking place here at home. The big state news came less than a month after the crime wave ended, when the legislature finally passed a law giving women equal voting rights. Armed troops once again occupied Butte in response to labor unrest in the copper mines. The WCTU and other prohibitionists were pushing hard for a state referendum to make it illegal to drink, serve, or manufacture alcoholic beverages, a prospect which worried and angered more than half the male populace.

  Harriet Greenley was tried and convicted of first-degree murder in Kansas City, the authorities there having won the jurisdictional squabble, but judges and juries are hard put to give a woman the death penalty even when she deserves it. She got a long prison sentence instead, and word was that the Denver authorities would extradite her back to Colorado and try her again there as soon as she was released. Here in Peaceful Valley, Bob Axthelm was convicted of willful manslaughter with a recommendation of leniency, Judge Peterson surprising everybody by agreeing with the recommendation and handing down a reasonably short sentence in Deer Lodge prison.

  Grover Fix sold the mercantile and his farm at bargain prices and moved away, I never did find out where. J. T. Axthelm and his wife stayed, but he put up a TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT sign to protect their privacy, and they did their trading elsewhere for I never saw either of them in Peaceful Bend again after the trial.

  Lester Smithfield accepted a job as a crime reporter and columnist on the Denver Post, thanks to his exclusive scoop and a boost from his friend Jordan Unger, and sold the Sentinel to a young eager beaver from Bismarck, North Dakota. Tom Black Wolf went up to the college in Saskatchewan to pursue his dream of being an agronomist. Henry Bandelier chained his wooden Indian to a wall bolt to keep anybody else from stealing it, not that anybody ever would again, thereby making the thing even more of a public eyesore. Doc Olsen concluded he’d had enough of slicing up dead bodies and resigned as coroner, the job going to a new doctor who had moved his practice down from Bigfork. Laura Peabody got herself married to a ladies apparel salesman from Missoula. Ellie Rademacher kept trying to convince Clyde Senior to run for the legislature and Clyde Junior to study law at the university, and not having much luck in either case. Monahan’s Saloon caught fire late of a summer night, nobody knew just how, and burned to the ground, which made the Ladies Aid Society and the WCTU happy, if not the railroad workers, farmhands, and young sports like Jack Vanner.

  As for me, it was a good year. I expected poor old Buster to give up the ghost, but he went right on keeping me company and passing gas no matter what I fed him. Reba Purvis decided I wasn’t suitable husband material after all, terminated her campaign to make me hubby number three, and once more set her cap for Titus Bedford. Hadn’t succeeded in trapping him yet, but he was showing signs of weakening. I was reelected sheriff by the widest margin ever, and without having to do much stumping for votes. The worst crime I had to contend with was another attempt by the halfwit Hovey brothers to sell bootleg hooch to the Indians. A raid on their property by Carse and Boone and me led to the discovery and destruction of their hidden still—something else that made the WCTU happy—and a year for each of them on the county work farm. And best of all, Katherine wrote from Bozeman that she and Jim were expecting their first and I’d be a proud granddaddy along about next Easter.

  Peaceful Bend, Peaceful Valley.

  Places living up to their names again.

  BOOKS BY BILL PRONZINI

  THE NAMELESS DETECTIVE NOVELS

  Endgame

  Zigzag (collection)

  Vixen

  Strangers

  Nemesis

  Hellbox

  Camouflage

  Betrayers />
  Schemers

  Fever

  Savages

  Mourners

  Nightcrawlers

  Scenarios (collection)

  Spook

  Bleeders

  Crazy Bone

  Boobytrap

  Illusions

  Sentinels

  Spadework (collection)

  Hardcase

  Demons

  Epitaphs

  Quarry

  Breakdown

  Jackpot

  Shackles

  Deadfall

  Bones

  Double (with Marcia Muller)

  Nightshades

  Quicksilver

  Case File (collection)

  Bindlestiff

  Dragonfire

  Scattershot

  Hoodwink

  Labyrinth

  Twospot (with Collin Wilcox)

  Blowback

  Undercurrent

  The Vanished

  The Snatch

  CARPENTER AND QUINCANNON MYSTERIES

  BY MARCIA MULLER AND BILL PRONZINI

  The Bughouse Affair

  The Spook Lights Affair

  The Body Snatchers Affair

  The Plague of Thieves Affair

  The Dangerous Ladies Affair

  BY BILL PRONZINI

  The Bags of Tricks Affair

  The Flimflam Affair

  STAND-ALONE NOVELS

  Give-a-Damn Jones

  The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BILL PRONZINI has been nominated for, or won, every prize offered to crime fiction writers, including the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Detroit Free Press said of him, “It’s always nice to see masters at work. Pronzini’s clear style seamlessly weaves [story lines] together, turning them into a quick, compelling read.” He lives and writes in California, with his wife, crime novelist Marcia Muller. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Books by Bill Pronzini

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE PEACEFUL VALLEY CRIME WAVE

  Copyright © 2019 by Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Michael Koelsch

  Title page image: © iStockphoto / dasuan

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9441-5 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9442-2 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765394422

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  First Edition: August 2019