Relentless (8 page)

    “Well, it would look better if we had somebody charged with it and in jail,” Toomey said. They were both too stout to wear the kind of sharply cut suits they did, but that didn’t deter them, of course. They wore matching pearl-colored derbies, too.

    “And you could always let him go free after the lieutenant governor left,” Grice said.

    I laughed. Couldn’t help it. “I’m glad law and order means so much to you. Murder isn’t much more than an inconvenience to you, is it?”

    “Is it wrong to have civic pride?” Grice said.

    “Some hayseed kills a visitor,” Toomey said. “How does that look to important people, do you think?”

    “A ‘visitor’? You two know anything about David Stanton?”

    “He came into the taproom several nights,” Grice said.

    “He was a well-traveled man. He had a lot of wonderful stones.”

    “I’ll bet he did. And I’ll bet at least half of them were true, too.”

    “He was an educated man,” Grice said. “He talked about how either Phil or I could become governor if we wanted to.”

    You couldn’t go wrong buttering up two pampered blowhards like these two. Easy enough to imagine Stanton painting them pictures of themselves as great national leaders rising up to lead the masses to the promised land.

    “You sure he didn’t mention anything about the presidency?”

    Grice said, “I’m going to ignore that, Marshal. You’ve obviously come to the conclusion that you should have arrested Ken Adams. And now you’re going to try to make yourself look better by belittling us.”

    Deke Newton, my senior night deputy, came in. “There’s somebody up front who says he’s got information about the murder. Says he saw something he wants to report. You want me to handle it or you want to?”

    Toomey said, “I don’t mean to be rude here, Deke, but when you’ve got two members of the town council talking to the high marshal, isn’t it obvious that you should handle this yourself?”

    Deke started to say something, and then stopped. What was the point of trying to be reasonable with two legendary national leaders like these?

    “You handle it, Deke. I’ll talk to you later.”

    Deke nodded and left.

    “I’m sort of surprised he couldn’t have figured that one out for himself,” Grice said.

    I usually saw these two only at town council meetings, the other two members of which acted as my protection.

    They kept Grice and Toomey from doing their pompous worst, and interrupted their orating whenever it looked as if I might jump up and do sizable damage to their sizable frames.

    “Now,” Grice said, “where were we?”

    “I think you were asking me to arrest somebody before the lieutenant governor gets here so we can tell him that the murder is solved and the kingdom of Skylar is safe again.”

    “You don’t have to take that tone with us,” Toomey said. This would have been something for all the schoolkids to overhear. There were too many towns where the law would give in to two showboats like these and jail a possibly innocent man just to make things look good.

    “I do when you’re asking me to do something this shoddy. I admit he’s a strong suspect. And he admits he was in the room and had seriously thought of killing Stanton. But he said Stanton was dead when he got there. I have to weigh what he said against his wife committing suicide. There’s at least as good a possibility that she killed Stanton. I wanted to give
him
at least a little while with his kids. Their lives have just come apart. They need their father. I’m looking to ride out there tomorrow noon and talk to him some more. If he looks any better for it, I’ll arrest and bring him back here.”

    “Well,” Grice said, “why didn’t you say so?”

    “I didn’t say so”-keeping my temper in check-“because I didn’t want to give you the impression that I was going along with your scheme to throw somebody in jail before the lieutenant governor gets here. What I’m doing tomorrow is what I would do under any circumstances, whether you’d come in here tonight or not.”

    They looked happy. Fat and sleek and happy. Despite what I’d just said, they were obviously convinced that they’d talked me into cooperating with them.

    “You say noon?” Grice said.

    “Yes,” I said. “ Noon. Why?”

    “I was wondering if you couldn’t make it earlier,” Grice said.

    “Can’t. I have to be in court tomorrow morning. Trent Webley’s trial.”

    Toomey glanced at Grice and then at me. “You mean you didn’t hear?”

    “Hear what?”

    “About the trial tomorrow.”

    A deep and terrible sickness began to form somewhere in my stomach. “What about it?”

    Toomey said, “It’s been called off. The judge came down with a terrible case of the gout. Trial’s been postponed at least a week.”

    “So you can go out to Adams ’ place bright and early tomorrow morning,” Grice said.

    They said some other things, too, but I didn’t hear them, or if I did they didn’t register. All I could think about was the judge and what Paul had used on him to get the trial called off.

    I needed to get out of the office, get home, before I confronted Webley and made even more trouble for myself.

    

    

    SHE WAS GONE when I got home.

    A lamp burned on the table. A meal of cold beef and a boiled potato and a slice of pumpkin pie had been set out for me. I had a drink instead.

    I sat in the squeaky hardwood rocking chair my grandfather had brought with him from Kilamey and tried to sort through everything that had happened today and tonight.

    All I knew for sure was that Paul had lied to me about hiring Pinkertons and I was pretty sure why. He’d wanted to impress me, intimidate me with his sweeping powers to counter anything I might do. And that way I’d give in to him. A seedy blackmailer coming to him was much less impressive.

    David Stanton was dead. I had three suspects, two I was willing to talk about, Ken and Sylvia Adams. The third suspect was my wife.

    I knew one other thing as well: I’d been bushwhacked. I hadn’t thought of Paul getting to Judge Pickett. Pickett was a fusty old bastard, and we’d never been friends, but his rectitude was beyond question. But he was human, meaning that sometime, somewhere he’d committed an indiscretion that Paul had been able to find out about.

    My world tonight was a very different one from my world this morning, when I’d been happy to play the role of the middle-aged lawman to a brood of schoolkids eager to hear dime-novel tales of derring-do.

    I wondered if Callie had killed him.

    I was still wondering this when she came in the door, carrying a wicker basket she used to carry things down to the creek for a sturdy washing. Most of our things she washed in the galvanized tub. But things that got stained badly needed a pounding and scraping against wet, coarse rock.

    She set the basket down and said, “I couldn’t get the blood out.”

    She sounded and looked weary. She came over to the table and sat down across from me. The bourbon bottle sat in front of her. She poured herself a drink in a glass she’d used earlier. I’d never seen her take a drink before.

    She said, “I didn’t kill him.”

    “Then what was the blood?”

    “I-was trying to make sure he was dead. I'm sure I was hysterical. He-he’d been my husband once. As much as I hated him, I still didn’t want him dead.”

    “Be careful you don’t make me cry.”

    She glared at me. “So you’re going to be jealous? That’s all you can think of at a time like this? To be jealous?”

    All the jealousy I hadn’t felt earlier tonight in the park when she’d given me a partial version of the truth-now it was upon me. I was at my cold worst. “How many times did you see him?”

    She shrugged, looked away. “Four, I guess.”

    “You guess?”

    “I didn’t keep track. It wasn’t anything I wanted to remember.”

    “Why’d you see him?”

    “You’re treating me like one of your suspects.”

    “You
are
one of my suspects.”

    “Oh, great, Lane. Just great.”

    “Answer my question.”

    “Quit talking to me that way.” Then: “He said if I didn’t see him he’d tell people about me-about us.”

    “But you didn’t think to tell me?”

    ‘Tell you that I was a wanted felon with a reward on my head?”

    “I deserved the truth.”

    She stared at me. The anger faded in her blue eyes. “Yes, you did,” she said softly.

    “Sylvia Adams killed herself tonight.”

    “Oh, my God.”

    “She was seeing him, too.”

    The anger was back. “Oh, no, you don’t, Lane. You don’t make it sound like I was seeing him for the same reason she was. She was going to bed with him. I wasn’t.”

    “He didn’t try and get you in bed?”

    “Of course he did. But I wouldn’t go. All I was doing was trying to stall him, figure out how to handle him before he put the word out about me.”

    “That’s why you were there tonight?”

    “I was there tonight,” she said, the anger still cold and hard in her voice, “because I wanted to see if he was the one who’d sent me that envelope.”

    “He wasn’t.”

    “What?”

    “Paul was.”

    “Webley-”

    “ Stanton tracked you down somehow. There weren’t any

    Pinkertons. He went to Webley directly. He was in town twice.”

    ‘Twice? That I didn’t know.”

    “Well, he sure knew about you. And he must’ve picked up that Webley was looking for some sort of weapon to use against me so I’d drop the charges against Trent.”

    “But you’re not going to.”

    “That’s sort of a moot point now.” I told her about Judge Pickett.

    “Oh, Lane, I’m sorry.” Then: “Oh, my Lord, what a mess.”

    She came over and sat in my lap the way she did sometimes, and we rocked in the noisy chair. I listened to the night and watched the play of a shaft of moonlight on a boulder near the front of our land. There was so much to say and nothing to say. She was woman and child at this moment; and I felt like man and boy. Both of us were undone by it all.

    And then we were in bed and conjoined as much in spirit as in body, solace as much as sex being what we were after, the gentility of it being exactly what I needed. I didn’t doubt her then, not at all, and told her so and told her I was sorry for how I’d interrogated her. And then I remembered that Deke had brought a witness in, a witness I’d forgotten to check out myself.

    But then she was holding me and we made love for the second time and I forgot all about Deke and the witness, forgot everything as we brought the covers up over us, the night suddenly chill, and cuddled like children, her falling asleep in my arms the way she used to long, long ago when we’d first been married.

    I slept too, hard and deep and long, and when I woke up I heard ridiculously happy morning birds and saw a ridiculously beautiful slant of sunlight through our window. I then slipped in and out of sleep for a time, knowing I needed to get up but not wanting to, purposely keeping certain thoughts at bay for a time, just enjoying the texture of her sleep-warm skin and the distinct sweet scent of her hair.

    And then it was all gone, ruined, smashed by a fist meeting our door several times, a knocking sound that bore no good.

    My first word of the day-a word that would later seem appropriate to the entire day-was “Hell.”

    “I wonder who it is.”

    “Nobody I want to see, that’s for sure.”

    I got up, snagging my Colt from the holster on the floor, dragging myself to the door in the butternuts I struggled into.

    Tom Ryan stood there. He looked both sleepy and upset. His horse was ground-tied on the edge of our property.

    “I’m sorry about this.”

    “What’s wrong?”

    “I thought I’d better warn you.”

    “Warn me about what?”

    He told me in his usual manner. Carefully, thoroughly, and as objectively as possible. He waited till the end to make his personal comment. “I don’t believe the sonofabitch, of course. But some people might.”

    It was a day for the fishing hole. Take a pipe and a good book along. Even if you didn’t catch anything, the day would be its own reward, the lazy sunlight on the lazy river and all the forest creatures that came to the bank to give you a quick inspection. And then heading home just as the sunset was streaking that rose color particular to Indian summer dusks. A damned good day.

    Unlike the day I was facing now.

    “Where is he?”

    “Deke let him go. Didn’t have any reason to hold him.”

    I shook my head, trying to clear it. “I need to get to the office. I’ll be there in half an hour or so. Put on some fresh coffee, will you?”

    “Sure.” He put his hand out and touched my shoulder. “I feel like shit telling you about this, Lane.”

    “Thanks.”

    I went back inside. Callie was already up, making coffee. I went to the sink and pumped some water and started cleaning up. I gave myself a spit bath, shaved, put on clean clothes.

    When I was sitting at the table tugging on my Texas boots, Callie said, “You going to tell me, or do I have to find out for myself?”

    “A punk named Hastings,” I said. And paused. I wasn’t sure how to say the rest of it.

    She came over and sat down across from me. “You going to finish that sentence about a punk named Hastings?”

    “He’s a gunny. Or thinks he is. Or wants to be. Just some punk drifter. Anyway, he’s been reading too many dime novels. He thought I killed Sansom so he wanted to have a gun-fight with me.”