A Dark and Lonely Place (35 page)

T. W. grinned and stroked his mustache. “The woman likes me well enough. She’d never lie to my face. If you coulda heard ’er, Sheriff, you’d believe ’er. Couldn’t wait to spill the news.”

Baker paused at his desk, shoulders hunched. He shook his head, his thin lips pursed. “Ashley knows I’m running for election. He’d never leave without trying to kill me first.”

“Not so sure ’bout that,” T. W. said mildly. “Despite all his bullets, bad jokes, and threats, you and me both know he coulda kilt us all a dozen times or more. But he didn’t. The man finds no joy in killin’. He’s more a good old boy who wisecracks to get your goat, then has a good laugh when he does.”

“Tell that to my brother’s widow and the kin of that dead Indian,” Baker snapped.

“But Ashley didn’t shoot your brother Fred till after you kilt his daddy,” T. W. said reasonably, “and they dropped the charge that he kilt the Indian a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it!” Baker shouted. “Judges and juries can be plain stupid or on the take! You know how that goes!” He tried to light a cigar, but his hands shook too much to keep the match alive. The flame trembled and died.

Convinced his information was solid, T. W. didn’t quarrel with Baker, who was obviously afraid of Ashley. Instead, he said, “Sure, this whole deal could be an ambush, one that
we
set up.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Only route north from Sebastian by car is acrost that bridge at the inlet. After dark it’s like the bottom of a well out there,
with plenty of cover for us to set up and wait. It’s our last chance. Once they’re outta Florida, they’re like the wind. Could be anywhere. But you know John Ashley, we all do. This here’s his turf. Sooner or later, he’ll be back, like a homin’ pigeon. But we’ll have no clue when or where he’ll turn up like a bad penny. You really want to spend the resta your life feelin’ your blood run cold, your heart beating faster, every time you hear a quiet footstep behind you?”

Baker chewed his lower lip and jingled his change. The sound seemed to comfort him. “Trouble is nobody hears Ashley’s footstep till it’s too late. The man’s a goddamn ghost! What I hate the most,” Baker said, his face reddening, “is every time we lock up somea his gang, the ones we didn’t get never stop till they bust ’em out. They’ve escaped from jails in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach, from chain gangs, from Raiford Penitentiary, and every convict camp in this godforsaken state.” His eyes narrowed. “If we could just git ’em all in at the same time, we could shoot ’em, hang ’em, or lock ’em behind bars till they’re too old to stand, much less lift a pistol. That stinking swamp rat’s a public menace and will be till the day we put him in the ground. You know the rule my daddy lived by: ‘Your enemy is your enemy until he is dead.’ “

He paused to relish the words.

“Well, we can make that happen sooner rather than later,” T. W. said. “Maybe tomorrow night.”

Suddenly galvanized, Baker strode across the room and snatched his hat off the hook by the door. “Let’s go, T. W.”

“Where to?”

“Sebastian Bridge is in Saint Lucie County, Sheriff Merritt’s jurisdiction. J. R. Merritt is a tough old bird, an old-school son of a bitch. If we play ’im right, we can get him to handle it for us. I’m headed to the telegraph office. You round up Clyde Padgett and Dan Nelson. Send ’em over to the National Guard armory to borrow some big guns, tell ’em we need the best they got, and lots of ammo. While they pick up the hardware, you spread word around town that I’m gone, left to visit kin upstate.”

Baker swore the telegraph operator to secrecy, then wired Merritt that he had urgent, immediate information to divulge. The two talked for an hour by telephone.

“Thought John Ashley and his gang were your problem,” Merritt drawled. “He don’t bother us much up here.” The slow-talking lawman seemed to lack any interest in taking action.

Baker insisted his source was impeccable, and one hundred percent accurate. He’d send help, of course, his best deputies, men who knew Ashley and his companions on sight.

“The lawman who ends John Ashley’s reign of terror’ll win more than a feather in his cap,” Baker said. “He’ll be a household word. Newspaper coverage alone will be enough to launch him right into the governor’s mansion, if that’s what he wants. It’s all in your hands now, Merritt. I’d do it myself, but he’ll be on your turf, and I ain’t the kind to intrude on another man’s jurisdiction. You wouldn’t appreciate that, neither would I. Ashley’s a menace; he and his gang have to be stopped. Permanently.” Baker paused. “We don’t need no more games, no more trials, appeals, or prison breaks. You know what I mean, Merritt. This needs doing. It’d be a favor to me, to the governor, and the public. They demand it. We all need it, bad.”

“I understand,” Merritt said slowly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

C
lyde Padgett, Dan Nelson, and T. W. Stone returned to the sheriff’s office at midnight, heavily armed and ready to drive north to cut Ashley off before he could leave the state.

“We got the firepower,” T. W. informed Sheriff Baker outside his office.

“Good work.” Baker leaned into the open driver’s side door. “Sheriff Merritt’s waiting on you,” he said heartily. “Good luck.” He closed the door and stepped back.

The three deputies waited.

“You ain’t coming?” T. W. finally asked.

“It’s me Ashley’s after. It’d just complicate things if I went up there,” he whined. The whites beneath his eyes glinted in the dark as he took another step back.

“Do what Merritt says. He’s the man in charge, not me. It’s his jurisdiction. But don’t you boys forget John Ashley’s glass eye. You bring it to me. That’s my trophy. I made that outlaw a promise, and I owe it to myself and the people of this county to keep it. I said I’d wear his eye on my watch fob someday. That day is here.” His voice rose. “And don’t you come back here without it!” He stuck out his chin, took out his pocket watch, and checked the time in the yellow light of a streetlamp. “You best get moving now, while ya still have a good head start.”

“Son of a bitch,” T. W. blurted, after they drove off. “That little man is sending us to do his dirty work.”

“Ya see his crazy eyes?” Clyde said.

“He’s scared shitless of John Ashley,” Dan Nelson said. “He’s a goddamn coward.”

“Always has been,” T. W. said. “Sure don’t take after his daddy. That old man must be turning in his grave.”

John and Laura fought, made love, then fought again throughout the night. He finally dozed fitfully as Laura lay beside him and stared into the dark. She never closed her eyes.

Hanford and the others arrived before dawn. In the privacy of their room, Laura begged John once more to take her with him.

He refused.

“Then we’ll never see each other again.”

“Don’t talk foolish. You can’t shut me off so easy.” He flashed his killer grin. “We’ll be together again before you know it, darlin’.”

Unconvinced, she refused see him off, to kiss him goodbye in front of the others, to appear with swollen eyes, her face haggard from lack of sleep. Nothing she could do or say would stop him, and if she went out there, she knew she’d make a scene.

“Will you come out to wish me and the boys good luck?” he asked.

She did not answer and refused to look at him, just sat and stared at the wall.

Hating to leave her like that, he paused hopefully at the door. But she had no change of heart, her profile etched in stone.

“I promise to send for you and Ma as quick as I can,” he finally said, with a sigh, then closed the door behind him.

When she heard the front door slam, she sprang to the window and watched Leugenia carry her food-laden picnic hamper to the car. Bill had come to say goodbye as well.

“Where’s Laura?” Hanford asked, as John started the car.

“Inside,” John said tersely. His passengers exchanged glances. “She’s upset,” John acknowledged.

“Woman always wants her way,” Ray Lynn said, as the car moved down the lane to the main road. “They’re all like that.”

Laura gasped as they drove away. How could she let him go without saying goodbye? Heart in her throat, she burst barefoot from the room in the silk kimono he’d bought her in Miami. She rushed by Leugenia and Bill, who planned to stay for breakfast. They called her name but
she did not look back as she darted through the vegetable garden, cut through an adjacent field of sweet corn, and heard the car again.

Morning mists rose toward a pink dawn as she scrambled up the stony embankment of an open drainage ditch just as John’s car passed on the other side. Breathless, she waved her handkerchief over her head, just as the blazing sun pierced the cloud-strewn horizon.

“Hey,” Hanford cried. “There’s Laura!”

John saw the morning sunlight and a brisk breeze play in her hair, tapped the brake, slowed down, hit the horn three times, and waved back.

I love you,
she mouthed, and blew kisses. She felt the warmth of his grin even at that distance and continued to wave until the car was out of sight and sound. Then she walked numbly back to the house.

“Did ya see him?” Leugenia asked.

She nodded. Leugenia reached out to comfort her as Bill scooped up a stash of breakfast biscuits to take with him and left.

“John has always been our most intelligent and loving child, our golden boy,” Leugenia said, after Bill left. “We need to trust in his judgment—and in God Almighty.”

“I’m scared I’ll never see him again,” Laura whispered.

“Let’s get on our knees right now and pray to God you’re wrong,” Leugenia said.

Unable to rest, despite her exhaustion, Laura drove off that afternoon. She ran a few errands, then took a long, solitary walk, grateful for the cool, quiet air.

“If she was mine, I’da brung her,” Ray said after they passed Laura.

Middleton agreed. “Ain’t nothing like the comfort a good woman can bring on a long, cold night.”

“You done with her, Uncle John?” Hanford asked.

“Hell, no.” John glared at all three. “She’s my woman. I’m protecting her, keeping her safe, and when we’re together again, I’ll treat her like a queen. Give her everything she wants and more. I broke promises in the past, but I’ll make it up to her. I can,” he added. “Never had a problem making an honest living. Now let’s quit jawing about my personal life.”

Hanford mentioned that Sheriff Baker was traveling north as well, to visit kin in Tallahassee.

John frowned. “When’d you hear that?”

“Pa came home late last night, said he heard it at the barbershop and at the trading post. So it must be true. Hope we don’t cross his path.”

“Unlikely. But I wish to hell we would.” John smacked his palm against the steering wheel. “I’d love to sit down face-to-face, man-toman, pour us a drink and try to piece together, for my own peace of mind, how this whole mess got started. I believe Baker and his father always knew I didn’t murder that Indian, but if he thinks I did, I’d make him understand that it ain’t true!”

“Then you’d shoot him?” Middleton sounded eager.

“Hell, no!” John sounded exasperated. “You ever listen to anything I say?
No more killing.
How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“He’d never talk to you,” Middleton said. “You’d need to shoot him in the foot, take his gun, and tie ’im to a tree afore he’d ever listen.”

“So be it,” John said grimly.

“Who cares what he thinks?” Hanford said. “He’s just a little man who hates us. Let’s leave him be.”

John sighed. “That’s what we’re doing.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

T
he deputies made excellent time on the first leg of their mission. But then, without warning, the leaves on the trees began to shudder. Branches swayed violently in wind so wild that leaves, foliage, and other debris pelted the windshield.

“Confound it! What new hell is this?” T. W. grumbled.

Dan Nelson, next to him, squinted through the windshield into the darkness.

A flash of forked lightning and an earsplitting crash of thunder startled Clyde Padgett awake in the back seat. “The hell’s happening?”

“Storm come up,” T. W. drawled.

“Jesus, sounded like cannon fire. Thought we drove onto a battlefield.”

The wind whistled, screamed, and howled. Treetops roiled wildly. “Hell, it’s like onea them nasty summer storms we never get this timea year,” Nelson said.

“Pull over till it passes,” Padgett said.

“No damn way,” T. W. said. “My job is to get us there. We don’t keep moving, we’ll wind up caught in a flash flood or stuck in the mud.” He slowed down, as rain began to pound the car as though with a vengeance.

“The wrath of God,” Padgett whispered, his face pale in the dark. “Never liked this whole damn deal from the start. Has a bad feeling, a rotten smell. If Baker’s so damn hot to git Ashley, why ain’t he here with us?”

“And if we do get him,” Nelson said, “Baker’ll steal the glory for his-self somehow. Don’t like that little sumbitch, never did. How the hell did he get to be sheriff?”

“Inherited the badge from his daddy,” T. W. said. “Everybody knows that. When the old man died in office, his buddy, the governor, appointed Baker’s little rat-faced son to finish his term. But now he’s facing election, next week. That should be interesting.”

“Don’t everybody know he’s a crazy-eyed coward who still sucks his thumb and wets the bed?” Padgett said.

Nelson hooted, his laugh lost in a crash of thunder and a blinding explosion of light that turned night into day.

T. W. hit the brake. The others cursed and cringed.

“What the hell?” Nelson blinked, temporarily blinded.

“Back up! Back up! Hit the gas!” Padgett shouted.

T. W. responded without question. The car hurtled in reverse as an immense live oak toppled toward them, its leaves on fire. The huge tree narrowly missed the car’s passenger compartment and slammed onto the roadway directly in front of them. The uppermost branches grazed the hood and cracked the windshield.

“Was we hit by lightning?” T. W. asked.

“Damn close! Hit the tree instead.” Padgett’s voice dropped again. “His terrible swift sword. I knew it from the start. Ashley don’t need to kill us, God’s on his side. This storm’ll do it for ’im. “