Cold-Blooded, page 11
“Mrs. Lynch!”
The woman’s crying stopped for a moment then began again.
Jess had seen no sign of another man in the cemetery and he reckoned he’d been correct when he told Mrs. Baggerly the fellow she’d seen had probably been making his way home. He decided to check on Flora Lynch anyway. Maybe he could convince her to call it a night.
When he finally saw her, he walked close to the woman and stopped. She kneeled in front of a single headstone, her head bowed. Mrs. Lynch’s black mourning dress was soaked and her hair spilled over her shoulders and ashen face in lank, brown tendrils. Her long, thin fingers clutched a soaked Bible and her wedding ring gleamed dully in the dim lantern light. Jess thought she may have been pretty but in the rain and darkness it was impossible to tell.
“I’m Sheriff Casey, ma’am,” Jess said. He waited for a response, got none and said, “I was worried about you, Mrs. Lynch. Mrs. Baggerly said she saw a man following you.”
The woman’s head turned slowly to Jess. Her eyes were hidden in shadow and her lips were white as chalk. “He did,” she said. She pointed into darkness. “He’s over there.”
Jess drew his gun and followed the woman’s pointing finger. He passed a grave and saw the man stretched out across another. He lay on his back and the handle of a knife stuck out of his chest. Jess holstered his Colt and took a knee beside the man. The look of horror frozen on the dead man’s face distorted his features but Jess recognized him. He was Adam “Gorilla” Gavin, one of the three ex-convicts Jess had arrested for the attack on Joselita Juarez.
The ground around the grave was torn up, as though there had been a violent struggle before somebody had summed it up with a knife.
Jess stepped back to the woman. For a moment he and Flora Lynch were wrapped in silence and rain and then Jess said, “Who killed him, Mrs. Lynch?”
“I did,” the woman said. “He grabbed me and tried to drag me to the ground.” Her fingers strayed to her cheek. “He struck me here and then I used my husband’s bowie knife on him.” Her smile was one of incredible sweetness. “I was going to use the knife to free my husband and the children from the grave, but I can’t, can I? They are buried too deep and that’s why they will never, ever, come home, will they, Sheriff?”
“I’m afraid not, Mrs. Lynch,” Jess said. “I reckon they’re with God now. Let me take you away from here and I’ll get someone to look after you.”
Flora got to her feet and then surprised Jess. She spun away from him and performed a strange, leaping, dervish dance as she chanted, “Never coming home . . . never coming home . . . never coming . . .”
Jess stepped to the woman and put his right arm around her shoulder. “Easy, Mrs. Lynch, easy.” He opened his slicker and tried to share its meager shelter. That’s when he discovered that Flora Lynch was left-handed.
* * *
She did it so easily, so effortlessly, so thoughtlessly.
Her hand went down to Jess’s holstered Colt, she pulled it free of the holster and then she danced away from him. “If my family can’t come to me, I will go to them,” she said.
She put the muzzle of the Colt to her temple, thumbed back the hammer and pulled the trigger. She dropped like a rag doll.
“No!” Jess yelled. “No, no, no.”
He kneeled beside Flora Lynch’s dead body. Rain fell on her upturned face. She was smiling like a bride in church.
* * *
Jess Casey kneeled by the woman’s body for the rest of the long night. Come dawn the rain stopped and two of the cemetery’s workers arrived. They said soothing words to Jess, lifted him to his feet and helped him back to the sheriff’s office.
Jess slumped into his chair, still wearing his wet slicker, and buried his face in his hands. He was done. All used up. After a while he removed the star from his shirt and threw it across the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Where the hell have you been, Sam?” Jess said. He tightened the saddle cinch then slapped the neck of his horse.
“Been on a drunk, Sheriff,” Sam Waters said. “It happens to me now and again. I start, then can’t stop drinking and nothing on God’s earth can stop me until I decide it’s over.”
“You look like hell,” Jess said.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sonny, but so do you,” Waters said. “Where you headed?”
“Sam, pick a direction and I’ll take it. North, south, east or west, I don’t particularly care so long as it’s out of Fort Worth.”
“It’s gonna look bad, Sheriff. The word is out all over town and lawyer Tull says you done it.”
“Done what?” Jess said.
“You left it too late. You should’ve saddled on your hoss and rode out hours ago afore sunup.”
“Done what, Sam?”
“Word is that you shot the widder woman Flora Lynch and stabbed some feller who was with her,” Waters said. “Lawyer Tull says you were jealous that the widder was seeing another man so you done fer them both.”
“The lovers met after midnight at a graveyard in a pouring rain, is that it?” Jess said.
“That’s the word, Sheriff,” Sam said. He looked down at his feet. “I heard about what happened to Joselita. I’m right sorry about that.”
“What’s done is done, Sam, and it doesn’t matter a damn any longer.” Jess swung into the saddle. “I’m getting the hell out of here.”
“Can’t say as I blame you, Sheriff, but I wish you’d change your mind,” Sam said.
“I’m not the sheriff here any longer,” Jess said. He looked down at Sam. “As to Flora Lynch, yeah, I killed her. I killed her by my own carelessness because I’ve learned nothing a lawman should know. She was left-handed, Sam. I should have been ready for that.” He touched his hat. “So long, Sam.”
Jess kneed his horse into motion and rode through the alley beside the sheriff’s office. When he reached the street Kurt Koenig greeted him with a scowl and a Greener shotgun.
“Going somewhere, Jess?” he said.
“Away from here, Kurt. It’s all yours.”
“That’s not going to happen, Jess. Harry sent me to arrest you.”
“You really think I murdered Adam Gavin and Flora Lynch?” Jess said.
“Of course not,” Koenig said. “You’re not the kind to kill a woman and why stick a man when you can shoot him? It doesn’t make much sense.”
“I’m riding out of here, Kurt,” Jess said.
“I can’t let you do that,” Koenig said. “I like you, Jess, but if I have to I’ll blow you right out of the saddle.”
Jess looked into Koenig’s eyes. The man meant exactly what he said.
“Don’t even think about it, Jess,” Koenig said. “You can’t outdraw a finger on a trigger. Pull the Colt with your left hand and let it drop.”
“Do as he says, Sheriff,” Sam Waters said. His face was worried as he stood beside Jess’s horse. “Mr. Koenig is a determined man and quick on the shoot.”
“The old coot speaks sense,” Koenig said.
“Take my gun, Sam,” Jess said. “It’s easy enough to do.”
* * *
“Where do you want me, Kurt? In the cell?” Jess Casey said.
“I won’t subject you to the indignity of that,” Koenig said. He tossed the star onto the desk. “And pin that to your shirt. You’re still sheriff of Hell’s Half Acre.”
Jess picked up the badge, stared at it for a few moments, then said, “I couldn’t even stop Flora Lynch killing herself. I wasn’t lawman enough to figure that she was left-handed.”
“You’re not a Pinkerton, you’re a lawman in a mighty rough town,” Koenig said. “Left hand, right hand, it doesn’t matter a damn. If the woman wanted to blow her brains out she would have found some way to do it.”
“Could you have prevented it, Kurt?” Jess said.
“After I found Gavin’s body I would have grabbed the grieving widow by the hair and dragged her kicking and screaming all the way to the sheriff’s office,” Koenig said. “Does that answer your question?”
Jess managed a smile. “You’re a hard man, Kurt.”
“Damn right I am. Pin on the star, Jess. Here comes the hanging posse.”
* * *
Led by the rotund Harry Stout, who smelled of his morning bourbon, three men barged into the office. With His Honor were Professor James Carnes and the shifty-eyed Jethro Tull.
Stout’s gaze immediately fell on Koenig and he said, “Glad to see you here, Marshal.” He shook his head. “A dastardly deed, yes, I say dastardly, has been perpetrated in our fair city.” He didn’t look at Jess.
“Come now, Marshal Koenig, has he confessed?” Tull said.
“Are you talking about me?” Jess said.
“Yes, you. And I’m also talking about an honorable young man cut down in his prime and the savage murder of a grieving young widow.”
“Mrs. Lynch stabbed Gorilla Gavin when he tried to force himself on her,” Jess said. “Then she shot herself.”
“A bowie knife?” Tull looked from Carnes to the mayor and both men smiled knowingly. “Are you trying to tell us, Casey, that Mrs. Lynch’s frail hand had the strength to thrust that instrument of destruction into the brawny chest of a grown man?”
“It’s amazing how much strength a woman can muster when she’s fighting for her life,” Koenig said. “Or her honor.”
“And you are an expert on such things, Marshal?” Tull said.
“Yes,” Koenig said.
Tull stared at him, expecting more, but when Koenig added nothing further he again turned on Jess. “Explain the murder of Mrs. Lynch, at least your version of the facts.”
“I wanted to share my slicker with Mrs. Lynch because it was raining so hard,” Jess said.
“Very gallant of you, I’m sure,” Tull said. “And an ideal way to get close to a shapely young woman.”
Jess didn’t rise to the bait. “Mrs. Lynch was left-handed and she easily grabbed my gun from the holster. Then she stepped back and shot herself. If you’ve examined the body you’ve seen the wound is in her left temple. I should have been able to stop her, but I could not.”
“That’s a small admission of guilt, at least,” Tull said. “It still doesn’t explain how a woman could kill a grown man with a bowie knife.”
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “I wasn’t there.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Koenig said. “Tull, your case is so thin it’s transparent. I think it’s an obvious ploy to get Sheriff Casey out of the way.”
“A serious accusation, sir,” Carnes said. “Be wary how you tread. Mr. Gavin was under my personal protection and it’s well known that Sheriff Casey hates all convicts, even those who have reformed. I can bring great senatorial power to bear on Fort Worth.” Then a barb. “Mr. Mayor, I trust that you are fully aware of that fact.”
“Indeed I am, sir,” Stout said. Then to Jess’s surprise Harry showed game. “But I will not be threatened, sir, nor hear threats leveled at my city.”
“Merely a statement of fact,” Carnes said. He looked as shocked as Jess had been.
“Then perhaps they should be left unsaid,” Stout said. He glared at Koenig. “Why are you so sure Sheriff Casey was not the one who killed this . . . what’s his name?”
“Gorilla Gavin,” Jess said, to Tull’s obvious irritation.
“Yes, him,” Stout said.
“A respectable lady of this town named Mrs. Edith Baggerly approached me this morning as I was walking here,” Koenig said. “She said she was deeply distressed when she heard that Sheriff Casey was being accused of a double murder.”
“How could she possibly know that?” Tull said. “I didn’t know until this morning and I at once informed the mayor.”
“Fort Worth is a small, close-knit community,” Koenig said. “If City Hall knows it, a minute later so does the whole town.”
Stout harrumphed, but said nothing. Then he placed his open hands across his great belly and nodded, as though Koenig had fairly stated the case.
“Mrs. Baggerly says she was the one who told Jess Casey that Flora Lynch was being followed by a man,” Koenig said. “That was at least fifteen minutes after she first spotted him. And answer me this, Tull—why was Gorilla in the cemetery in the first place? I mean, well after midnight, in pouring rain?”
Tull was a seasoned lawyer and seldom lost for an answer. “Mr. Gavin went there to protect . . . to save . . .” His voice petered out. Even he couldn’t bring himself to say that Gorilla Gavin had Flora Lynch’s well-being in mind.
“All this changes nothing,” Professor Carnes said. “One of my charges has been brutally murdered and I want to get to the bottom of this.”
“You heard the sheriff,” Harry Stout said. “He was killed by Mrs. Lynch. As far as I’m concerned that is where the matter will rest, pending further inquiry. Now, gentlemen, it is almost noon and I am a man who needs his lunch. I bid you good-day.”
The mayor stopped at the door and said to Jess, “Under the circumstance you did all a man could do, Sheriff. I had not heard your side of the story until I got here. Mrs. Lynch, God rest her soul, was a crazy woman who killed Adam Gavin and then took her own life. For the time being, there’s an end to it.”
After the mayor huffed and puffed his way onto the boardwalk, Carnes said, “You have not heard the end of this, Sheriff Casey. You are trying to kill off my convicts one by one.”
“Professor, I think they’re doing a good job of that all by themselves,” Jess said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
In the long-shadowed late afternoon, Gideon Thurgood and his shadow, Gabe Steel, stood on the platform of the Texas and Pacific railroad depot awaiting the arrival of a package and a person.
The package was a first shipment of the new drug, from Germany, since Thurgood’s manufacturing plant west of the Mississippi had hit delays and was not yet in operation. The person was Hiram Hartline, better known to lawmen in Texas and the New Mexico Territory as the Second Horseman.
Thurgood welcomed both his acquisitions with enthusiasm, but the Horseman most of all. Though he knew Hartline only by reputation and had hired him sight unseen, he was most impressed by his visitor. Hartline was a tall man, well over six feet, and lean as a lobo wolf. He habitually wore the costume of the frontier gambler, black frock coat and pants, frilled white shirt and string tie. His long face was adorned by a well-cared-for imperial and a patch made of red silk covered his left eye. Like Wild Bill Hickok he carried a pair of ivory-handled Colts tucked into a scarlet sash around his middle, the fringed ends falling to his knees. A black, low-crowned hat completed his apparel and he wore an ornate silver ring on his left hand, the mark of the professional gambler. Hiram Hartline had killed ninety-three men and had always gone out of his way to piss on their graves. He always sent red roses to the widows.
“I can’t tell you what an honor it is to meet you, Mr. Hartline,” Thurgood said. The gunman had refused his proffered hand. Hartline never shook hands with anyone. “You and I are destined for great things.”
Hartline acted as though he hadn’t listened. His cold gray eyes were fixed on Gabe Steel, the man he pegged as a gun. Hartline looked Steel up and down for long moments then dismissed him.
“My horse,” he said.
A black porter was passing and Thurgood said, “Boy, bring this gentleman his horse from the boxcar.”
“No,” Hartline said. He stared at Steel. “You get it. Big red sorrel.”
Steel, already irritated that Thurgood had hired another gun without his knowledge, was taken aback. Then his anger flared. “You go to hell,” he said.
Hartline was fast, faster than any mortal man should be. He pulled a Colt and slammed the barrel across Steel’s face. Blood erupting from his right cheekbone, Steel dropped, but his hand clawed for his holstered gun. He froze as the muzzle of Hartline’s Colt pushed into the bridge of his nose. “Try it,” the gunman said. “You’re a twitch of my finger away from death.”
Gideon Thurgood was stunned. The assault on Steel had happened so quickly and without warning. The porter saved the situation and possibly Steel’s life. “Should I get the hoss?” he said.
Thurgood nodded then helped the unsteady Steel to his feet. “That was unnecessary, Mr. Hartline,” he said.
The gunman turned eyes to Thurgood that had a hundred different kinds of hell in their depths. “When I tell a man to do something, he jumps to it,” he said. Then a viper smile. “Or I shoot him.”
Hartline shoved his Colt back into the sash. “Now you can buy me a steak, Thurgood,” he said. “And I eat it bloody.”
In that moment Thurgood realized he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d not hired a man . . . he’d hired a monster.
* * *
Luke Short brought the word to Kurt Koenig.
“Why would Hiram Hartline be in town?” he said.
“He isn’t.” Koenig pushed a glass of bourbon across the bar to Luke. “He isn’t because he doesn’t exist. He’s a boogerman parents use to scare naughty children.”
Luke reached into his pocket and tossed a cardboard label tag onto the bar. “It says ‘Property of H. Hartline’ and it was attached to a silver saddle that came down in the afternoon train. That and a big red stud.”
“Some rooster pretending to be Hartline, probably,” Koenig said.
“He buffaloed a man on the depot platform and then was going to kill him until another feller intervened,” Luke said.
“All kinds of men get buffaloed in this town,” Koenig said. He watched a couple of punchers who were playing cards and getting loud.
“They say Hartline sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a fast draw,” Luke said. “They say he’s killed a hundred men.”
“Folks say lots of things,” Koenig said. He took his eyes off the card players and went back to polishing glasses. “Who told you all this?”
“A railroad porter who comes into my place. He says he saw Hartline with his own eyes, a big man who carried two guns in a red sash.”
Koenig smiled. “Like Hickok did. I tell you, Luke, whoever he is he’s a would-be badman. If he comes in here on the boast, all horns and rattles, I’ll take care of him.”
