The Big Mitt (A Detective Harm Queen Novel Book 1) (45 page)

Gottschalk took the lighter and tossed it onto the woodpile, and with a burst of light, the fire began anew. He lifted his hands into the sky and faced his pyre.

“Once this life ends, a new one begins. I am the man who will entwine with my partner in sacred alliance, and enter the dawn of a new world!”

He laughed, a dark, rumbling laugh that seemed to catch wind in time with the flames, and then rose in pitch to something maniacal and otherworldly.

Queen gasped and then mustered his strength. He tried desperately to pull the box that held Tom out from under the burning pile. He could feel the fire’s heat now, growing in intensity, and heaved with all of his might. But still, nothing.

Gottschalk seemed in a trance. He turned, ignoring Queen, and looked toward the house, raising his eyes to meet the upstairs window. Son of a bitch, Queen thought, he’s got someone up there. That’s where he’s going, and someone else is in danger. Gottschalk took a single step forward, mesmerized at what lay inside the bedroom. Queen lurched forward, stumbling onto his bad knee but somehow forcing himself back up, and grabbed the man’s legs. The fishy-lipped man looked down at Queen, as a sadistic child with a stick might look at an injured dog, and hit him again. Queen tried to hold on but the pain was too great, and the man simply stepped through the detective’s locked arms.

Oh, hell, no, Queen thought frantically. Tom is about to burn to death, and this man is readying to do God knows what to whoever is in that upstairs room. He felt a tear stream down his cheek from pure frustration. He couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t see straight. He had no way to stop him.

“Don’t move a muscle,” came a voice from the black night. Queen strained his neck towards the sound, and watched Sheriff Anderson step into the firelight, arms hanging loose at his sides, the very image of an old West gunfighter.

A blast of cold wind suddenly swept through the yard, lashing the hems of Anderson’s long Mackinaw coat, which whipped behind him like a cape. Gottschalk turned to look, awestruck by the sight of the old sheriff. The wide hat pulled over his eyes didn’t hide his grim expression, long and drawn.

“It is harsh in the world,” Gottschalk croaked with a broad, horrible smile. “Whoredom rife, an axe age, a sword age, shields are riven, a wind age, a wolf age. Are you here to stand beside me, before the world goes headlong?” He held out his hands, open, to embrace the man before him.

“I told you not to move,” Sheriff Anderson said, and in an instant a revolver was in his hand, its barrel glinting against the flames. And it blazed.

Queen counted six shots, with Anderson pulling the hammer back faster than he could follow with his eyes. Six bullets peppered Gottschalk’s body almost simultaneously, throwing him back and into the flaming pyre. He shrieked with a hellish reverberation, writhing and shaking as the fire engulfed him. Queen watched, transfixed and aghast as Gottschalk’s skin blackened and crackled, until Anderson’s voice snapped him back to reality.

“Detective Queen. Let’s get him out.”

Anderson sheathed his weapon and his lanky outline withered into something hunched and old. He grabbed at his ribcage and hobbled toward Queen, and together the two silently gathered their fortitude. With all their battered might, they pulled at the trough that held Cahill. The scalding heat blasted their faces and Queen knew Anderson was in as much agony as he was, but still they tore at the wood like men possessed, until finally it gave.

They stumbled back as the trough slipped out and Cahill kicked at the boards from inside. Queen and Anderson yanked from the outside until he had enough room to slip through and escape. Cahill toppled out, landing in a heap, cradling his mangled hand. The three lawmen sat, panting and looking at each other, under the roaring fire’s brilliant light.

“My god,” mouthed Queen. “That was something.”

Anderson had difficulty rising. He could feel the bandages around his side slipping off, and the throbbing ache from the cracked ribs. It hurt like the dickens to breathe in and out, and Anderson rubbed his side in a futile effort to erase the pain. The night was cold, and the air in his lungs felt like fire as he marched towards the house.

Queen limped, groaning, behind him, using Cahill for support. The three struggled up onto the veranda, past benches and chairs overlooking the river, and through the door.

It was a curious house, for certain. Anderson had never imagined he’d enter the home of such a famous man, and despite his exhaustion and pain, he was intrigued. The rooms, he noticed, were cluttered with oddities, what appeared to be treasures from far-flung places in every corner of the world. African masks, carved animals, pottery and other rarities dotted tables and shelves. It all gave the house the feel of a charming museum, one where things were left out to touch instead of being locked away behind glass.

Anderson looked through each room on the main floor, finding each empty, before climbing the staircase. In the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, he found Petey.

The boy was dressed in a white silk nightgown and sleeping peacefully on his side, his little hands tucked under his cheek. Candles burned on the bureau, table, and along the headboard, wax dripping over the wood, but what made Anderson grimace was the candy. Candy was strewn across the linen sheets. Chocolate creams, cocoa balls, burnt peanuts, toasted marshmallows, almond nougat and lemon buttercups, and a dozen other varieties the sheriff didn’t recognize, lay around the little boy in a sugar heaven.

He heard Queen struggle up the stairs behind him and say something foul when he entered the room. Anderson laid a hand on Petey’s shoulder and gently shook him until he awoke, a big smile spreading across his drowsy face at the sight of the sheriff.

“The man with the strawberry gun!”

Anderson helped the boy to sit up.

“You’ll be with your mother soon, young man.”

Petey’s cheek was still red with the bed’s warmth, and his blueberry eyes looked solemnly into Anderson’s. “Did you get that man? The one that took me and Ollie?”

Queen sniffed and turned his head away. Anderson ran his fingers through the boy’s hair and tickled his ear. “I got him, son. I got him.”

The old man looked bushed. He labored past them and towards the door, almost staggering, as if the weight of his burden might buckle his knees and drag him to the floor. Queen wasn’t ready to tell him what he had learned about Maisy yet. Better to let the sheriff sit and rest for a while. He waited for Anderson to step outside, and then motioned to Cahill to take a seat. This would be hot conversation, he knew, but a necessary one.

“I saw Ollie as I rode in here. Your friend from Dander’s place.”

The kid winced, as though he were dodging a clout to his face. He looked at the wall, deathly quiet.

“Listen, I know what you’re all about. You’re a goddamn snipper-snapper, Tom. A prancing
molly
. And while I personally don’t give a flying rat’s ass whose rump you slap around, it is bad for the police force. Bad for
business
.”

Cahill looked horrified. He started to speak, stopped, and then opened his mouth again. Words stuck in his throat.

“Do your parents know?” Queen demanded.

He shook his head.

“Who else have you tried to mash with besides the boy?”

Another shake. Cahill shaped the words with his mouth, barely squeaking them out. “No one.”

“He’s fifteen goddamn years old, Tom. You’re twenty-three.”

“He told me he was older. Said he was eighteen.” Cahill’s eyes pled to Queen, desperate and honest. He’s telling the truth, Queen thought, and frankly he wasn’t completely surprised. Gottschalk had dealt Ollie a bad, bad hand. He’d not only raped the boy but he’d also scrambled his brain. Ollie had no doubt learned how to use his handsome, boyish looks to get what he wanted on the open road, and had plenty of experience fending off rough-handed sex fiends. Cahill didn’t fit that bill, though. He was just miserably confused.

“Of all the stink holes in Minneapolis, why were you bumming around that one? Hell’s Half Acre? What kind of an addled dolt are you?”

“It was a poor choice, but that’s where Ollie was.” He wiped his eye with his sleeve. “Mr. Queen, I’m so sorry. For everything. Bringing you out here, wasting your time. I’m not fit to carry a badge, I know. I’m better off just going back home. You won’t say anything about any of this, will you? About Ollie and I? I really didn’t know he was so young. I never meant to cause this trouble.”

“Just shut your pie hole, Tom,” Queen said, exasperated. “You’ve got the police superintendant behind you, and he already knows everything. Go find a fresh bandage for that hand. You need a rest, kid.”

The sheriff, cheeks flush and frozen, tapped his boots steadily on the plank floor, keeping time with his heartbeat. His hands held pieces from his pistol, the cylinder in one and the frame in the other. It was still again, and as he looked at the curve of the land in front of him, barely visible in the night, the rolling gray bluffs and scattered skeleton trees, momentary peace consumed him. The rhythm from his boots reminded him of a song, and it rose to his rusty throat as the words came to him, forlorn and soothing.

Oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’,
Oh my darlin’, Clementine,
You are lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

He croaked out the melody and while it reminded him of his granddaughter, it comforted him, too. Someone else, at some moment in time, had written the song over the loss of a loved one, the same as him.

He wanted to keep singing, to clear the dust from his pipes, and fought hard to remember the words to the verse. Then he stopped, forgetting the song, and looked up.

Anderson first saw an orange glow in the distance, moving like a fat firefly in the darkness, and as it got closer he saw that it was attached to a man. He was dressed well, his derby rakishly cocked, and he sauntered towards the front porch, finally stopping to toss his cigar into the snow.

Anderson raised an eyebrow in surprise. The man tipped his hat and put his finger to his mouth, cocking his ear towards the door.

“Shall we keep our conversation quiet?” he asked the sheriff.

“Depends on what it’s about, son.”

“Well, a beautiful night, for one. The temperature is dropping precipitously, but I can still feel my fingers and toes.” He wriggled the fingers on the hand that wasn’t pointing the pistol at Anderson’s head. “Thank heavens for fingers and toes,” the man said. He smiled a little smile, and glanced up to the sky reverently.

“Are you lost?”

The man’s eyes twinkled, reflecting the yellow light from the veranda windows. “Quite an evening you’ve had.” He looked past the well to the smoldering pile of blackened wood. Anderson followed his gaze, and could make out the German’s charred remains, contorted in a mound of soot.

“Somebody had a bad night,” the sheriff said.

“I can see that,” the man said, with a wincing grin.

“So you’re here for Detective Queen, then?”

The man nodded. “If you left right now, I wouldn’t care. I saw your horse tied to a tree back towards the road. You can take it. No ill will.” He took a step forward and Anderson could make out his short-nosed companion. The Bulldog was a gambler’s weapon, five shots, but good enough, especially at close range. It had felled President Garfield, and he was special. Nothing special about Anderson, and at ten paces it might easily be over soon if he wasn’t careful here.

“You don’t know my name,” the man continued, “and we can part ways without any unpleasant attachments, sheriff.”

There. He said it. Anderson wasn’t wearing his star, and not dressed like any city law in his wild Mackinaw coat. “You know who I am.”

The man cleared his throat and his eyes almost imperceptibly narrowed. “I read the newspaper,” he said.

If he knows who I am, why would he think to let me ride away? Anderson answered that himself, as soon as he thought it. He wouldn’t. Anyone familiar with Anderson’s dogged personality already understood that letting the sheriff walk would be one hell of a bad idea. Perhaps it was a ruse to draw him away from the house, to kill him out of sight before taking Queen and Cahill by surprise. Maybe he was simply a coward and preferred a man’s back as his target. The man was dressed fancy for a common killer, and acted affable, although the gleam in his eyes told Anderson’s gut something different. There was something too natural about him. Too cool to be believed.

“You don’t seem particularly surprised that I’m here,” Anderson said. “I would think it strange if I stumbled upon someone like me in the middle of nowhere, sitting on a porch on a winter’s evening while a German burned in the background. You take it in like it’s all part of a day’s work.”

“Well,” the man laughed softly. “If you only knew the work I do.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“No more questions, friend, or you’ll be in a bad box.”

“I think I already am.”

The man sighed. “You’re right. You are.”

“So why don’t you tell me why you’re here, then?”

“Don’t press me, I said.” His voice strained, and Anderson could make out a hint of displeasure. An idea came to him. Perhaps if he pushed a little more, he could get the dude flustered. Put him off balance, and somehow get a pull on him with the one good Colt in his left holster.