The Book of Murdock (18 page)

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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The Book of Murdock
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“Anything for me?” Jordan asked.
“I don't know yet. It takes time to work out. I'll get word to you if there is.”
“What you fixing to do now, fort up here and wait?”
“I'd just as soon post my plans on the church bulletin board. The biggest day in the Christian year is coming up; I expect a full house Sunday, and I have to get ready for it.”
“I was you, I'd sling a skillet around my neck front and back. So far the Lord God Jesus is the only one ever clumb back up out of the grave come Easter.”
“Well, I died up north and here I sit. Maybe He's got another miracle for me in His pocket.”
The lamp was
guttering when I left off translating the Judge's response to my question about Freemason and turned in. I finished in the morning, but by then I'd already learned enough to piece together the rest. The old bastard behind the bench had been wise to wait until I was a thousand miles away before he opened Pandora's box.
I worked on my Easter sermon over coffee, ate noon dinner at the Pan Handle, where Charlie Sweet was too busy waiting tables to exchange more than a couple of friendly words, and made my first two missionary stops, to the Alamo and the Old Granada saloons, where the cowhands and the sheep hands did their respective drinking.
In the Alamo the bartender, a stove-up old waddie with a rolling limp and a permanent squint, gave me a look intended for a natural enemy, and my collar made the customers nervous, anticipating a weekday sermon, but I put them all back on their heels by buying drinks for the men I stood
with at the bar while ordering well water for myself. On the second round I moved my glass, leaving a wet ring on the glossy cherrywood, and traced a pair of intersecting triangles with my finger. I asked the men at my right and left if they'd seen a brand that looked like it. Each man looked closely, traded his position with the others to give them a view, and shook his head. The bartender finished drawing a beer, came over, and wiped away the symbol with his rag, muttering something that sounded like Hebrew. That threw me a little.
I drew the same blank at the Old Granada, where a pastoral engraving of a bearded shepherd and his flock hung above the bottles of busthead. Two of the sheep hands there saw the mark's resemblance to the Star of David, but no one had seen it in the flesh.
By then the local meeting place of the Texas Stock-Raisers Association, which occupied the second floor of the Elks Lodge, had opened its doors for dinner. The gatekeeper, a Prussian in a cutthroat collar with a straight back and military whiskers, sat me on a hard bench inside the entryway and kept me waiting for a half hour while he checked in diners, then as the flow ebbed sent a waiter to the little club library for a brand book. I spread it open on my knees, turned page after page of crudely drawn insignia, and found exactly what I'd expected: Nothing. For whatever reason—possibly one as harmless as its owner hadn't registered in time to make that year's record—the spread where the bandits' horses were raised didn't appear to exist in the eyes of the ranching establishment. That left
me as heavy as ever on suspicion but as light as usual on evidence.
 
 
The First Unitarian
was packed for the second Sunday in a row, which I attributed more to the holiness of the day than to my skills as a spellbinder, although I flattered myself that I hadn't driven anyone into the arms of the Methodists. Richard and Colleen Freemason were in their customary pew up front; a brass plate on the end of the backrest bore witness to their contribution in its construction, as did the others celebrating other donors, but in their case the Masonic compass and square took the place of a name. I saw other familiar faces as well as some new ones among the worshippers standing in back. The lay volunteer circulating the collection plate had to dump his load in the old Wells, Fargo box on the platform behind the pulpit and go back for seconds. There was a new coat of paint there and roof repairs. I never was in a house of God that wasn't stumping for a new roof: Church shingles take a double beating, from rain above and prayers below.
I'd gone through the portfolio of sermons Eldred Griffin had placed in my charge and made a risky choice. The text rejected the common view of Judas' betrayal of Jesus as villainy, transforming him into a kind of flawed, tragic hero, who when he realized the enormity of his transgression had chosen to take his own life rather than to confess and repent, thus sentencing himself to an eternity in hell without parole. It fell short of expiating his guilt, but it hinted at personal
redemption. As originally written, the sermon bordered on heresy; I was next to certain that Griffin had composed it after his own fall from grace, with no intention of ever reading it in public, and as such it required editing to avoid having myself nailed to the sorry crooked wooden sticks that West Texas had to offer in the way of a cross. I laid in the conventional condemnation of Iscariot and powdered it lightly with the defrocked priest's mercy, leavening out the sardonic quality with which it was drenched.
I don't know why I made the selection, except I was already out on a limb holding an anvil and an ounce this way or that didn't matter. Whatever happened, I'd presided over my last service in Owen.
There was a short silence after I finished, but no murmurs, and when I called for “Lead, Kindly Light,” everyone in the congregation joined in.
“A bold piece.” Freemason took my hand at the door. He looked puzzled. “Do you always fly this close to the flame?”
“The man who wrote it showed me how close is too close.” There was now no reason to pretend authorship.
“You must tell me about him sometime.”
“He wouldn't like it. He's bent on disappearance.”
“Fugitive?”
“Yes, I think that describes him.”
We were speaking low, but he leaned in close and dropped his voice almost to a whisper. “What luck tracing that brand?”
“It's not in the book, and none of the ranch hands I talked to remember seeing it.”
“It must be a pirate outfit. They comb other spreads for
mares with foals too young for branding, pare the mares' hooves to the quick so they can't wander far, and when the foals are ready to wean they rustle them and burn their own mark. It's as if the animals never existed. A fully grown unbranded horse invites investigation, but registering the brand involves answering too many questions. No one knows just how many such ranches exist. It's an impossible quest.”
“Those are the ones I usually get.”
“You're not dissuaded?”
I looked at him, but he was a hard man to read. “Do you want me to be?”
“I think it's too much for one man. Your death would weigh heavily on my conscience.”
“Jordan and his Rangers are working on that brand, but they're spread thin themselves. I'm thinking of asking Judge Blackthorne to lean on the governor to put every available company on the job.”
“That's wise, but why go so far around the barn? I'm sure I can persuade Ireland to see reason. That brand is the first thing we've found that can provide a link to the man responsible for these raids.”
“With you applying pressure from below and Blackthorne applying it from above, I don't see how he can refuse the accommodation.”
“At least let me send a rider to Wichita Falls with your message. The Overland proceeds at its own pace.”
“I'll use both, in case one or the other is waylaid.”
We regarded each other. It was the biggest time-waster anyone could imagine, even on a Sunday: Two men talking circles around the thing they both knew.
Colleen interrupted the game. In honor of the day she wore a purple velvet dress with a hat to match, trailing a broad yellow ribbon down her back to her waist. In one kid glove she clutched a closed parasol, yellow with purple trim. “Once again, Richard, you're holding up the line.” She offered me her free hand. “Another intriguing sermon. A bit cosmopolitan for Owen, don't you think? The people around here prefer their badmen painted in black with thick strokes.”
I met her blue gaze, harder than Jordan's, more opaque than Freemason's. “I like purple.”
She smiled. “What a pretty compliment.”
They moved on. The friendly freight office clerk shook my hand, wrenching me from my reflections. His face was troubled. “I was raised to love Jesus and hate Judas. Now I don't know what to think.”
“Hate is the devil's seed,” I said. That seemed to lift his spirits.
My reviews were mixed; I could tell by the silences as well as by the remarks. The man who had snored through most of my first services wrung my palm and gave me high marks for preaching against sin; plainly he'd awakened just in time to join the exodus for the door. Some people who'd stopped to greet me last Sunday swept on past the line without pausing. I didn't expect them back even if I thought I'd be back myself. I made mental note of everything to report to Griffin, who might be interested to know the reaction, even though I was sure it wouldn't surprise him.
I felt an indifference bordering on atheism. It had been important that my debut was positive enough to assure me some time in the community. Whether I left it with a sour
taste in its mouth signified nothing. One way or the other, my time in Owen was growing short.
For a time after the last carriage creaked away, I stood at the pulpit pretending to make corrections in the margins of my notes while Mrs. McIlvaine's broom swished relentlessly in the corners. My pencil drew meaningless coils on the foolscap, unconsciously imitating the patterns of dust turning in the shortening shafts of sunlight coming through the windows. They circled patiently, killing time as they waited for the bristles to stop moving so they could settle. It seemed God's plan that there should be dust, and that any attempt to banish it from His place on earth was doomed from the start; but housekeepers, too, have a patron saint, so their efforts carry some kind of endorsement. Everyone seemed to have one, except lawmen posing as ministers of the faith. I knew, because I'd looked it up. Nomads of the desert have one, so do nurses and the sick, innkeepers, storytellers, the desperate, fishermen, even thieves. Impostors alone are without representation. What did it matter what miracles you accomplished for the United States District Court if they condemned you in the court of heaven?
The assignment had gotten under my skin worse than all the others. I'd flogged whiskey and mucked out stalls for cover, been a Cheyenne slave and shared a cell with a matricide—rotten work, but you can scrub off the stink of sour mash, recover from prison food, and a good laundress can boil the manure stains out of your clothes. In time, exposure to other peoples and their ways can even restore your belief in the basic humanity of every race. Everything was reversible, except Moses and Ezekiel and Ruth and Solomon
and Matthew. Once they burrowed under your skin they were there to stay, like the heads of chiggers. There wasn't a miserable deed or an act of charity in the Good Book that didn't resemble something I'd witnessed and had sometimes been part of. The words of those drifters and cobblers and drones and harlots and the odd bearded king were more accurate than
The Farmer's Almanack
.
At length the swishing stopped, a door thudded into its frame, and I was alone. Still I didn't stir from the pulpit, although I folded my pages and poked them into my breast pocket near the revolver in its rig. I stood gazing at the empty pews, feeling the reflected warmth from the squares of daylight creeping toward the east windows, smelling candle wax and walnut stain and the eternal dust, the dust of the Eternal, the presence of the Lord in every restless grain, searching for a place to lay His head and not finding it for more than a moment.
I brought up the Bible from its shelf beneath the lectern, rested it on its loose spine, and let go. It fell open to Second Kings, chapter twenty:
In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.
I found that unsatisfactory. I was riffling through the pages for something more encouraging when a window flew apart and I fell over backward with what felt like the entire church resting on my chest.
I'd had my
fill of being shot at, whether I was part of the plan or not. When I realized I hadn't been hit, that when the bullet came through the window I'd gripped the edges of the pulpit from instinct and brought it down with me, landing on my chest and knocking out my wind, I got mad and shoved it off with strength I didn't have under ordinary circumstances. The Deane-Adams was in my hand now and I made my way on knees and elbows to the broken pane, wheezing as I did so; I couldn't seem to take in enough air to satisfy my need. It was like swimming in deep water without having gulped in enough oxygen first.
I raised my head just high enough to see out, resting the barrel of the revolver on the sill, strewn with glass fragments and shards of molding. Out in the street the driver of a wagon loaded with furniture was straining at the lines, trying to keep his brace of wall-eyed, pawing grays from plunging, and townsmen were leaning out through doors and around the sides of porch posts, looking toward the church
or turning their heads toward the rooftops across the street. That meant a rifle or carbine, discharging loudly enough in the open air to alert the town. When the gawkers ventured out from cover and started churchward, I knew the shooter was long gone. I stood.
Too fast. A swarm of bats flew off their perches inside my head, blocking out the light. I fell into the middle of them.
 
 
The crack in
the plaster ceiling looked familiar. The first time I'd seen it I thought it looked like the bad map I'd followed into Murfreesboro with General Rosecrans. It was directly above the iron-framed bed in the parsonage.
Something tinkled. I thought of pieces of glass falling out of the window frame in the church and reached for my suspender scabbard, but I wasn't wearing it, or a shirt. I lay stripped to my waist on the top sheet. I took a tentative breath, then a deeper one. The air was as sweet as sugar. I gulped in a bellyful and let it out in a whoosh.
“It's amazing, is it not, how grateful one can be for the things he takes for granted, once he's been deprived of them? But then I shouldn't have to tell a minister that.”
I recognized the voice without knowing why. I turned my head and watched a man with a spray of beard to the third button of his waistcoat returning instruments to his case. That was the tinkling I'd heard, and I knew him now for Dr. Littlejohn, one of the town's practitioners and a man who'd approved of both my sermons at the church door. He was sitting in the straightback from the sitting room, wearing a Masonic medal on his watch chain. He had the same insignia
in brass on the latch of his black leather bag. I wondered if he was a creature of Freemason's or just a member of the brotherhood.
I used my tongue to clear the cobwebs from my mouth. “I had a horse squatting on my chest.” My voice still sounded like cornhusks rustling.
“I thought at first you had a collapsed lung, but by the time I had your shirt off you'd begun to breathe normally, so it must have been temporary paralysis brought on by physical trauma. Pulpits are meant to stand behind, not used as counterpanes. You blacked out because you weren't taking in enough oxygen to feed your brain cells. I was afraid I'd have to crack your chest and insert a rubber tube to draw off the pressure.”
“Have you ever done that?”
“No. I confess I was a little disappointed not to have the opportunity.”
“Are you always this honest with your patients?”
“My practice would be more successful if I weren't. You're rather an unusual man in your profession yourself.”
“Men of God have been shot at before.”
“Not many react in kind or so quickly. That piece of furniture that fell on you is solid hickory. Most men would still be struggling to get out from under it when help arrived. You tossed it aside like a match and threw down on the enemy.”
I turned my head the other way, and was relieved to see the Deane-Adams on the nightstand. “It's the second time in a week I had a bullet pass close to me. You get mad.”
“Wrath isn't necessarily a sin. In this case it may have
saved your life. You could have suffocated under the constriction.”
“Who—?”
“Mrs. Freemason. She was on her way here for a visit when the shot rang out. She found you passed out on the floor and sent for me. By the time I got here, she'd recruited volunteers to carry you in here. I told her that was unwise; for all she knew, you had a broken back, and moving you might have been fatal. She said she knew a broken back when she saw one. How do you suppose she knew that?” He sat back with the bag on his lap, his hands resting on his thighs.
“She's a woman of many parts. Where is she?”
“In your sitting room. She's been waiting twenty minutes. I told her she should go home, but she demurred.”
“Demurred.”
He frowned in his impressive whiskers. “I agree the term seems inadequate. However, she has a way of slamming the door soundly on an argument with the air of someone declining an invitation to badminton.”
“She's a well-bred jenny. What do I owe you?”
“I have my soul to consider. A day and a night in that bed will suffice, for what my counsel is worth. I've an idea you're a mule from the same paddock.”
“I always heard the Masons were honest men.”
He fingered the engraving on his bag. “The clergy hasn't always been so charitable toward the order. When Father Cress sees me coming he crosses himself as if I were the Prince of Lies in person.”
“Is it true your founders claimed to have removed the body of Christ from its tomb?”
“That's a canard,” he said, reddening. “Catholic fanatics have been repeating it since before the Inquisition. We are a benevolent foundation, and as such represent competition with the Church. There's the source of these centuries of black blood.”
The emotion in his voice assured me of his affiliation. I said I'd pray for him.
His color paled to normal. He rose, rested his bag on the chair, and drew the blanket up from the foot of the bed to cover me to the collarbone. “The proprieties, don't you know. I'll send her in now, but she can't stay long. I want to check your ribs while you're conscious to make sure they're not cracked and pinching. I'll bind them if they are. You bled a bit through the knees of your trousers, probably from lacerations when you were crawling through broken glass. They'll need cleaning and sticking plaster.”
“I can see to that, and the ribs. This isn't the first spill I've taken.”
“I didn't realize preaching the gospel was so dangerous.”
I'd forgotten myself. The brain is slowest to recover when you've stepped back from the stony edge. “I was an awkward child.”
“All the same,” he said after a tense moment, “I'll stay and complete the examination. We can't have you surviving an attempt on your life only to pierce a lung with the end of a broken rib.”
“You haven't asked why I was shot at.”
“I assumed it was because of the subject of your sermon this morning. Judas is somewhat less popular in the State of Texas than General Santa Anna.”
That was a bald lie, the assumption part, and he could see I knew it, but I didn't press the point. If there's a man who can keep a secret as well as a minister, he has
Doctor
in front of his name. Nevertheless, here was one more recruit to the side of the doubters. In a little while, that shot would be heard throughout the panhandle. My sheep's clothing was falling away in great bloody patches.
 
 
She came in
with none of the hesitation of a respectable woman entering a man's bedroom, as if she were walking into her own. I'd seen her do that, with me following, but that wasn't going to happen ever again. She had on the velvet dress she'd worn to church, without the hat. The sunlight coming in through the front windows made a copper-colored aura around her pinned-up hair. Black as it comes, there is always red in it.
I gathered myself into a sitting position. I was careful about it, but a phantom blow struck my chest as if the pulpit had taken a second crack at me. I leaned back against the bedstead, breathing with my mouth open. No pinches, at least, so maybe no cracked ribs. I'd cracked my share, all right, falling off horses and grappling with unarmed fugitives, which made me something of an expert.
“Nasty bruise,” she said, glancing at my chest.
“Call it divine retribution. It could've been worse. A Spencer packs a hell of a wallop inside its range.”
“You saw it?”
“I didn't have to. I was expecting it.”
“Evidently.”
I lifted a hand and let it drop to the blanket. “I thought it would happen out in the open. I fell into the sanctuary trap. That isn't a mistake I'd have made a few weeks ago. When the disguise assumes you, it's time to take it off and pin the badge back on.”
“You never pin it on.”
“That's what I was saying. That collar cuts off the blood flow to the brain. My instincts of self-preservation went with it.”
She transferred the doctor's bag to the floor, inspected the seat of the chair for dust, and sat, resting her reticule in her lap. “I was certain you were dead.”
“I disappoint a lot of people.”
“I'm the one who sent for the doctor.”
“There wasn't any reason not to, once you saw I hadn't been shot.”
“I'm many things, Page, but a murderess isn't one of them.”
I let that blow in the damn Texas wind. “What were you coming to see me about?”
“You're welcome. I should have known you wouldn't fall all over yourself with gratitude.”
“Thanks. What were you coming to see me about?”
“I came to warn you.”
“You came late.”
“I was late finding out. You're behaving as if you wished it were anyone else.”
“It wouldn't be the first time, when it was you.”
“We weren't always enemies, you know.”
I said nothing, watching her.
She shook her head infinitesimally. “Don't pretend. You never did know when I was bluffing.”
The reticule was purple trimmed with yellow to match the rest of her kit. Colleen Bower was capable of letting her house burn down around her while she selected just the right ensemble for flight. She untied the bag and brought out a small rectangular envelope with the initials
C.B.
embossed in one corner; the
B
standing for either Bower or Baronet, her most recent married name but one. She wasn't the kind to let a powerful man like Freemason slap his brand on her.
The word
brand
echoed in my head, for any number of reasons. It turned a lingering trace of cold fire, like incendiaries on Independence Day. My mind was still moving at a dead walk.
I took the envelope from her gloved hand. “Your hole card?”
“A note. I couldn't be sure I'd find you in. God alone knows where a minister goes after the last ‘Amen.'”
I lifted the flap, took out the matching letterhead, and snapped it open:
You're in greater danger than you know.
It was unsigned, but I knew her hand. I ran my thumb over the indentations the pen had made in the soft rag stock. There was a pale spot in the lower loop of the
d
, where the ink had run out and she'd paused to redip. She couldn't have manufactured it in my sitting room, and twenty minutes weren't enough to make the round trip to her house and back. A woman of her standing in the community couldn't
afford to carry around a pot of ink and risk a stain on her handbag. A pencil and coarse paper were the only writing paraphernalia in the parsonage.
She was telling the truth. I waited for the earth to slip off its axis, but it went on creaking around, one miracle at a time.
I stuck the note back in its envelope and returned it. In that moment I knew my brain had been trying to tell me something. “I saw the brand on Freemason's buggy horse,” I said.
“He puts it on everything. He doesn't belong, but he's obsessed with it because of his name. He wouldn't have the patience to go through initiation.”
Her husband's brand was a stylized version of the Masonic compass and square:

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