A Dangerous Man (18 page)

“He's not going to pull through, Mr. Sullivan. The punishment he took was just too severe for such a frail little body.” Dr. Peter Harvey put his hand on Sullivan's shoulder and looked into his eyes. “I'm real sorry.”

Sullivan wanted to say that the little runt meant nothing to him and that all Posey had ever done was to deny him his reward money. But he couldn't say those things, not with any sincerity. Instead, he found himself saying, “He's a Butterfield man, you know.”

Harvey nodded. “Yes, he is, and a genuine frontier hero. The whole town will mourn his passing.”

“Can I see him?” Sullivan asked.

“Yes, you can. But he won't know you're there.”

Sullivan stepped into the bedroom.

Because of the somberness of the morning, a single oil lamp burned and cast shadows, as deep and dark as those that pooled in Ebenezer Posey's face. The little man's breathing was so quiet it was lost in the greater sound of the lamenting wind.

“Ebenezer, can you hear me? It's Sullivan.”

Posey lay still, his face like chiseled stone.

“He's far gone,” Harvey said. “He's probably already made the acquaintance of the death angel.”

Sullivan turned and looked at the doc. “How long?”

“He'll be dead before sundown.”

Sullivan smiled slightly. “There's no sun to go down, Doc.” He took off his glove and laid the backs of his fingers on Posey's forehead. “He's cold.”

“Yes. It's a step along his way,” Harvey said.

Sullivan stood in silence for a few moments, staring down at Posey. “I'll come back.” Then, after thinking about it, added, “Before sundown.”

On Sullivan's way out the door, Dr. Harvey stopped him and dropped the key of Posey's hotel room into his hand. “You'll need that. He has no kin or friends in town.”

“I'll take care of his stuff.” Sullivan thought about the money. There was a lot of it.

“My wife said Ebenezer cried out last night,” Harvey said. “I didn't hear him, but she told me he clearly said the word
monstrous
. What on earth did he mean?”

“I guess it was his opinion on what happened to him,” Sullivan said. “Posey used words like that. Hell, maybe he was talking about me.”

Harvey didn't contradict that last. “I suppose such could be the case. But it's strange all the same.”

Sullivan nodded. “Sometimes I think the whole world is strange and getting stranger all the time, Doc.”

Tam Sullivan returned to the hotel and went directly to Posey's room. The maid had neatly folded the little man's nightgown and sleeping cap and laid them at the bottom of the bed. The gloomy morning cast feeble light into the room, but the air was chilly and damp, and smelled musty, a cold welcome for any visitor.

Sullivan picked up Posey's carpetbag and returned to his own room. As he'd expected, his thirty-six hundred dollar reward was there, stuffed under a clean shirt, socks, and underwear. The stack of bills was bound with a paper band that bore the Butterfield Stage Co. stamp.

Sullivan riffled through the bills, money that was rightfully his. He could take it and the money left from the stage robbery and hell, even the gold watch.

“You've earned it, Tam,” whispered the devil on his shoulder. “Let Posey take the blame. He's a dead man, anyway.”

Sullivan let the money drop into the bag. He'd pushed Ebenezer beyond his limits and in the end was responsible for his death.

He thought about destroying the man's memory, leaving his wife only a legacy of shame. Once the word got around that her husband was a thief, how many pairs of bloomers would she sell?

Sullivan shook his head. There was only one trail to take. “Damn it, Ebenezer, you've destroyed me. I'll never be the same man again.”

He took what was left of the stage robbery money and the gold watch from his saddlebags, put them in the carpetbag, and buckled the straps, vowing to himself that he wouldn't see it open again until he carried it into the Butterfield stage office in Santa Fe.

As he toed the carpetbag under the bed, a timid knock on his door startled Sullivan. His hand instinctively dropped to his gun. “Who is it?”

A slight pause for breath, then, “It's Polly York. The mayor's wife.”

Sullivan opened the door. “Come in . . . if you don't mind entering a gentleman's quarters unaccompanied.”

Polly's face was cool and composed. “I'm sure I will face no impropriety, Mr. Sullivan.” The woman walked past him into the room. Her bonnet and cape were damp from sleet and her ankle boots left traces of mud on the floor.

Sullivan saw concern in her eyes as he provided her with a chair. He sat on the corner of the bed and waited for her to speak.

When she did, her voice was firm and calm, but the fingers of the gloved hands on her lap tied themselves in knots. “Earlier this morning, a most singular event disturbed the tranquility of my home, Mr. Sullivan, when my daughter received a most alarming communication. This was no
billet-doux
, but a warning that the life of my husband was in the greatest danger.”

“Who sent it?” Sullivan asked immediately.

“We don't know. It came from a gentleman, the delivery boy told Lisa, and it was signed CMW.”

Sullivan shook his head. “Doesn't strike a chord with me,” he said, wondering why the hell the woman had come to see him, of all people.

Polly untangled her fingers and opened her purse. She passed a piece of folded paper to him. “Please read it.”

He scanned the note, meticulously penned in schoolboy copperplate, nodded and passed it back to the woman. “Mrs. York, I don't see—”

“What you can do to help me?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Lisa insists on meeting CMW alone,” Polly said. “She doesn't want to unnecessarily alarm her father, and as for Sheriff Bowman, well . . . his very, dare I say,
large
presence might scare off the informant.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Sullivan questioned, surprised.

“Guard my daughter with your gun, at a discreet distance of course.”

Sullivan smiled, genuinely puzzled. “I don't get it, Mrs. York. Why me?”

“Because you have the reputation of being a skilled and experienced gunman and as far as I can tell you have a trustworthy face.”

Sullivan took the double-barreled compliment in silence. Then he said, “Mrs. York, do you figure I owe you a favor?”

“You owe me nothing, Mr. Sullivan. Or my daughter.”

“So why ask me?”

“Because you are the only one who can change what this town has become. Men murdered, bodies ripped from their graves, notorious outlaws pressing their suit on my daughter, and talk of murderous savages in the hills.” Mrs. York composed herself. “Comanche Crossing used to be a nice place to live, Mr. Sullivan. No longer. My daughter can't go alone to that meeting tonight. It's just not safe.”

“If he choses, Buck Bowman can be discreet, I fancy,” Sullivan said.

Polly York rose to her feet. “I'm sorry I wasted your time, Mr. Sullivan.”

Sullivan opened the door for the woman and she left, stiff-backed as she stepped into the hallway.

Closing the door, he stepped to the window and stared into the day, stores, houses, and the surrounding hills shadowed as though draped in mourning for the death of the light.

 

 

Ebenezer Posey was dead when Tam Sullivan returned at the noon hour to the doctor's office.

“He took his last breath ten minutes ago,” Dr. Peter Harvey said. “To the very end, he fought a gallant fight.”

“I hardly knew him.” Sullivan pulled up the sheet over the little man's head and smiled. “I liked him though.”

“He's in a better place.”

“No, he isn't. His place was beside his wife in Santa Fe.” Sullivan stared into the physician's eyes. “The dead are quiet, aren't they? Look at him lying there, very still, very silent, like he's in a deep sleep.”

“I've stood in the presence of the dead many times, Mr. Sullivan,” Harvey said. “Yet I still can't find the words.”

“Not much to say, is there?”

“I guess not.”

“I'll take his body back to Santa Fe,” Sullivan said. “The dead don't rest easy in this town. His wife should bury him.”

Harvey's face took on a stricken look, like a man who's suddenly remembered a mortal sin from his past. “Come into the parlor, Mr. Sullivan. I'd like to talk to you.”

“Seems like everybody wants to talk to me this morning. I guess I'm a real popular feller, huh?”

A faint smiled touched the doctor's lips. “I wouldn't say that, Mr. Sullivan.”

“Drink, Mr. Sullivan?” Dr. Peter Harvey asked.

“I could use one,” Tam Sullivan acknowledged.

“Hennessey brandy to your taste? A gift from a patient.”

“Suits me just fine.”

After Sullivan and the physician were settled, glasses in hand, on either side of the parlor fire, Harvey said, “I need to get something off my chest. It troubles me.”

“I love listening to other people's troubles, Doc,” Sullivan said with a straight face. “Lay it on me.”

“Let me say this first. You understand the need for ongoing medical research? The study of the human anatomy and the brain in particular?”

Sullivan quickly jumped to a conclusion. “Are you talking about body snatching?”

Harvey nodded. “There is a particular shortage of available bodies, and it's been going on since the 1830s when a great many people of all ages were executed for petty crimes. You have, of course, heard of Burke and Hare who supplied bodies to physicians in Scotland?”

“Ebenezer mentioned them, then wished he hadn't.”

“At first, Burke and Hare were grave robbers, but when the bodies of executed criminals became harder to find, they turned to murder.”

“Ebenezer told me that, too.”

“After committing eighteen murders Burke was hanged and Hare died in poverty, a hopeless drunk.”

“I'm not catching your drift, Doc,” Sullivan said.

“I don't condone what they did, but I don't condemn the doctors who accepted the bodies for study, either. Who knows? A hundred years from now, Burke and Hare might be hailed as heroes.”

“Is that what you wanted to get off your chest, Doc?”

“No. But I wanted you to know that I have dissected cadavers myself.”

“Here? In Comanche Crossing?”

“Yes. I was present at Lady Wainright's home the night Crow Wallace's body was opened.”

“Where is it?” Sullivan asked quickly.

“Buried where you'll never find it. By this time, nothing human of Crow Wallace will remain or be recognizable.”

“You cost me twenty-five hundred dollars,” Sullivan said.

“And I may have helped cause the death of Ebenezer Posey,” Harvey said.

Tam Sullivan looked like he'd just been punched in the gut.

“You know, I've never shot a doctor before, but there's a first time for everything.” He carefully laid the brandy glass at his feet. “If I was you, I'd choose my next words very carefully.”

If Harvey was scared, he didn't let it show. “I made the decision to never attend another autopsy after that one. The way so many graves are being desecrated and bodies stolen repels me. I begged the doctor to stop, but he is a man obsessed. I had nothing to do with what happened last night at the undertakers when Ebenezer was wounded.”

“Who is the doctor?” Sullivan gritted out.

Harvey saw a hundred different kinds of hell in the big man's eyes.

“His motives are pure, even honorable, but his methods are reprehensible. He believes the scalpel can cure a tumor of the brain, but the problem is to remove the tumor while leaving the brain undamaged. Given our present state of medical knowledge, it's an almost impossible feat.” Harvey picked up Sullivan's glass and handed it back to him. “Of necessity, the doctor disposes of many cadavers until he finds one with a tumor advanced enough to hone his skill with the knife and improve his surgical technique.”

For a moment Harvey watched scarlet and yellow flames blossom between the logs in the fire. Then he continued. “Once the doctor believes he's skilled enough to operate on any cancer, in any part of the body but especially the brain, only then will he feel qualified to treat living patients.”

Sullivan rose to his feet. “I won't ask this a third time. Who is he?” His gun was level with Harvey's eyes.

The doctor saw the gleam of blued steel, the brassy glint of percussion caps, the beautiful sweep of the walnut handle. He knew little of guns and Texas draw fighters but had no doubt that Tam Sullivan was prepared to use the revolver. “Dr. Cheng Lian,” he said in a whisper.

“Clotilde Wainright's hired man?” Sullivan frowned.

“Her husband,” Harvey said.

Sullivan was surprised. “Since when?”

“As far as I know, since soon after the death of her first husband.”

“Who killed Ebenezer and Hogan Strike?”

“I don't know.”

“Why did Ebenezer say
monstrous
?”

“I don't know.”

“I think you know more than you're telling me, Doc.” Tall, grim-faced, and angry, Tam Sullivan was an intimidating figure.

“I don't know,” Harvey said, slanting his eyes away from him. “You said he was outraged over what happened to him and we agreed on that, didn't we?”

“That's what I thought, but I don't think it any longer. I know Ebenezer was trying to tell me something.”

“He was in pain and he wasn't thinking straight,” Harvey explained.

“No, Peter, that's not true, and you know it. Now tell him. If you won't, I will.” The doctor's wife stood in the doorway. Her face was pale but set in a stubborn expression.

“Jane, I don't know what to think,” Harvey said.

“Yes, you do, Peter. Tell Mr. Sullivan about Hong-li.”

“You've been listening, Jane,” Harvey accused.

“I couldn't help but overhear. Now tell him.”

“I think . . . God, I told you, I don't know what to think,” Harvey said, a man in pain.

“Tell him,” his wife said.

“Hong-li was probably the—I can't call him a man—the creature who murdered Ebenezer Posey and Hogan Strike.”

“There is no
probably
about it, Mr. Sullivan,” Jane Harvey said.

“How can you say that with so much certainty, Mrs. Harvey?” Sullivan asked.

“Peter said you were at the undertaker's place the night Ebenezer was killed. Did you see a dog?”

“I didn't see it, but I heard it snarling. I fired a couple shots but don't think I hit it.” Sullivan tried a wan smile. “I was too scared I guess.”

“And with good reason, Mr. Sullivan,” Jane said. “The dog is evil because Hong-li made it that way. He himself is as evil as he is deformed. To this day, the slaughter of the White family has never been explained.”

Sullivan directed his attention to her husband.

“The Whites had a cabin to the west of town on La Jara Creek,” the physician explained. “Abe White lost a leg at Gettysburg and was trying to make a living as a trapper. His wife was called Martha and they had three kids, all of them girls. Daisy, the oldest, was about sixteen and a tomboy. I once treated her for a broken arm after she fell out of a wild oak. She was real pretty. All three White girls were real pretty.”

“The family was slaughtered,” Jane said. “Sheriff Harm said it looked like they'd been hacked to death with a bladed weapon, maybe an axe.”

“Their killer was never found,” Dr. Harvey said.

“That was just a month after Lady Clotilde Wainright moved into Comanche Crossing and brought Hong-li with her,” Jane said. “Coincidence? I think not.”

“Mrs. Harvey, are you aware that your husband cut apart cadavers at Clotilde Wainright's house?” Sullivan asked.

“Only once, Mr. Sullivan. After that, Dr. Cheng was out of control, demanding more and more bodies. His wish is to return to China as a famous brain surgeon.”

“Did you know that Cheng and Clotilde are man and wife?” Sullivan asked.

Jane looked genuinely surprised. “I had no idea. Did you, Peter?”

“Yes. I knew.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“My dear, I don't traffic in idle gossip.”

“Only in bodies, huh?” Sullivan stepped to the door and stopped. “I'm going to end this. I aim to kill the man, or whatever it is, that murdered Ebenezer Posey and if Clotilde Wainright and her husband were involved, well, I'll deal with them, too.”

“More killing and violence never solved anything, Mr. Sullivan,” Dr. Harvey said.

“Maybe not, but it's my way. It's the only way I know.” Sullivan hesitated at the door, his expression hard and inflexible. “Was Bill Longley involved in Ebenezer's death?”

Harvey shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”

“You, Mrs. Harvey?”

“I know nothing of the man except that he's a killer and that everyone in this town is afraid of him,” Jane said. “But Longley kills with a gun, not a sword.”

“One more thing before I go, Doc,” Sullivan said. “Think yourself damned lucky you're still alive. When I lose control of myself bad things happen and I came real close to losing it this morning.”

Peter Harvey said nothing, but his face was ashen. He knew.