Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (4 page)

‘After?’

‘Did something happen to make you so certain this wasn’t an accident? Or that Billy didn’t do away with himself?’

Childs shook his head. ‘I just can’t bring myself to believe he committed suicide, Ethan. Not Billy. He was so young and had so much to live for. Happy enough, except for those quiet moods he went into every now and then recently. But I’m sure he never got so depressed he’d go sit on the track and wait for a train to kill him. That just couldn’t happen, I know it!’

‘And you’re just as hard set against it being an accident?’

‘I sure am.’

‘Why is that, Charlie?’

‘Because of where and when it happened, Ethan. Billy had no good reason to be out there, especially the kind of night it was. Nobody would. There’s nothing except open prairie between Eternity and Dodge. I reckon the only men who ever set foot on that piece of country were Plains Indians and the construction crews who build the railroad. There’s just nothing out there except for scrub grass and the track.’

‘I know you don’t figure a woman was involved, but is it the kind of country where a couple would maybe go to if – ‘

Childs shook his head adamantly. ‘No! It was pouring with rain and blowing a blue norther, remember? No, Ethan, that piece of country on that particular night was good for only one thing, believe me.’

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‘Murder?’

Childs grimaced. ‘That’s right, if he was lured or forced to go out there. Or it could be Billy was killed in town and his body taken out there and left on the track for the train to run over him. Or tossed in front of the locomotive.’

‘Could have been,’ Shelby allowed without conviction. ‘But what about some evidence that’s what happened? You say the rain washed out all the sign?’

Childs looked even more pathetically helpless now as a simmering anger of frustration showed on his angular features: in his tightened mouth line and how his dark brown eyes glittered. And he clenched his bony hands into white knuckled fists.

‘They wouldn’t let me do the post mortem, Ethan. And I have to allow they were probably right to spare me that kind of anguish. But I did see Billy’s remains at Joel Gannon’s place - Joel’s the Eternity undertaker. And I read the report of the medical examiner from Dodge who – ‘ He broke off and again came close to losing control of himself. Then he was locked in a frozen attitude, staring into space for stretched seconds, his face pallid.

‘Charlie, I think . . . ‘

Childs unclenched his fists and held up both hands. ‘Where are you staying?’

Shelby shrugged. ‘I hadn’t given it any thought. But I noticed there’s a hotel across the street.’

‘You’ll come to the house and stay with me. And we can continue this discussion there. Or tomorrow, if you’ve about had your fill tonight of listening to me do so much talking and saying so little of any substance?’

‘That’ll be fine with me. But I wouldn’t accuse you of doing that. If you really believe Billy was murdered, I’ll sure do all I can to help you prove it.’

‘I sure want you to look into it for me, Ethan.’ It was more emphatic than anything he had said so far. And his knuckles were white again as he gripped the arms of the chair and pushed himself upright.

‘But you have to realise that even if I was still on the force I wouldn’t have the authority around here to – ‘

‘You used to be a big city detective. Now you’re out of work. Ward Flynt does a pretty good job with his routine law keeping duties in Eternity, but I think even he would agree he’s no great analytical brain.’ He started toward where the bartender stood behind the counter and said over his shoulder: ‘I’m a long way from being rich, but I can afford to cover your living expenses while you take the time to look into how Billy died, Ethan.’ He paid Segal what was owed, turned too quickly and swayed: which was the first sign in a 19

long time he still felt the effects of drinking too much liquor tonight. ‘Where’s your baggage?’

‘It’s down at the depot. I just have a couple of small pieces and – ‘

‘We’ll go get them. Then you’ll stay the night with me. Come the cold light of a new day we’ll talk it through again. And you can tell me yes or no.’

Shelby rose from the table. ‘Whatever you say, Charlie.’

‘Good, that’s very good.’

Childs moved unsteadily toward the doorway and at one point Shelby reached out to support him. But he remained on his feet unaided, called goodnight to Segal and Edge then pushed open the doors and complained without rancour about the fast falling, wind driven rain. Shelby went out behind him without acknowledging the bartender and the lone customer still left in the saloon.

Then in the silence within the Second Chance, Edge rolled and lit a cigarette, returned the newspaper to its original folds and re-read the front page account of the violent death of William C. Childs. While Segal cleared away used glasses and washed them, wiped down tables and the counter top, finished his chores and said ruefully: ‘You’ve just got to feel sorry for Doc Childs. He’s so dead set in his mind that Billy was murdered. Yet there ain’t a single thing come to light to prove that was so. And not one soul in Eternity believes it except him.’

Edge abandoned his newspaper, rose and stretched to ease his muscles that were stiffened from being seated for so long. He had paid for each beer when he got it so had no need to detour to the counter on his way to the doors.

‘The feller sure is broke up about it.’ He put on his Stetson, half opened one door and scowled out into the stormy night, not relishing the walk of a quarter mile or so around the curve of Main Street to the Quinn and Son store.

Segal answered as the salon’s final customer shrugged into his slicker: ‘Bound to be, mister. We can all understand that, him being the grieving father he is. But if that New York detective buddy of his tries to stir up trouble hereabouts and pin a murder on somebody who didn’t do it, folks won’t be so easy as they have been on the doc, I reckon.’

‘I got no need to hear how people feel about strangers in a place like Eternity,’ Edge muttered as he recalled another small town where violent death had triggered the series of events that brought him to this one. The words were soft spoken as he watched the sodden suited Childs and Shelby, each toting a carpetbag, trudge out of sight around the bend in the street. And his sardonic comment was masked by the thudding hooves of a horse cantering up from the depot end of the street. The rider was enveloped in a

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billowing, dark hued slicker with a hood that made him an ethereal, constantly changing form in the lashing rain.

Edge turned up the collar of his own slicker, took a deep breath and stepped out on to the porch alongside the stretch of street that was deserted now. For the rider had gone around the curve beyond the two story, false fronted Washington Memorial Theatre. Then he came to an abrupt halt. And let out his breath in a resigned sigh, the soft sound lost behind a raucous barrage of six fast shots exploded from about the point where the rider had reached.

‘What the hell!’ Buck Segal vaulted over his counter, dashed between the tables and crashed through the doors. Skidded to an awkward halt just before he would have collided forcefully with Edge. ‘That sounded like shooting to me!’

The big blond haired man held back in the shelter of the saloon’s porch and peered cautiously to left and right, his eyes narrowed as he tried to penetrate the curtain of teeming rain. ‘I don’t see a thing! But that was gunfire I heard, wasn’t it, mister?’

Edge spit his cigarette butt into the street and stepped down off the porch as he replied sardonically: ‘I reckon, feller. Either that or forty five calibre thunder.’

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CHAPTER • 3

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EDGE TOOK long strides through the quagmire of Main Street with the beating
rain needling into his face as his narrowed eyes peered through the lashing curtain. Then he heard hoof beats again and came to a tense halt before the Gothic styled false front of the theatre. It was the same horse as earlier – dark with a white blaze – which was spurred into a gallop back around the curve of the street. But Edge could not know if it was the same revolver clutched in the rider’s hand. The gun that had already exploded six shots and was empty? So, as the rider drew close and aimed the weapon at him, he re-acted with a well-practised instinct for self-preservation.

He hurled himself to the side and cursed through gritted teeth as he misjudged the distance. And a boot heel caught on the lip of the lowest step of a flight of three and he crashed down hard: slammed a shoulder against the top step. But despite the pain he was able to slide his Colt clear of the holster, thumb back the hammer and draw a bead on the fast retreating rider who now faced forward, hunched low in the saddle. Then Edge was suddenly bathed in a splash of bright light that streamed from the flung open double doors of the theatre and a man threatened harshly:

‘Pull that trigger and you’re dead, mister!’

Edge instantly froze, the walnut butted revolver still aimed along the street as the rider galloped his mount from sight around the curve.

‘I warn you fair and square! I damn well mean what I say, mister!’

Edge slowly lowered the revolver as the boarding of the porch behind him creaked and a man whose grim toned voice he now recognised stepped out from the theatre. And a gun muzzle pressed against his neck between his upturned collar and Stetson brim.

‘No sweat.’ He pushed the Colt far out to the side so the man behind him could clearly see as he eased the hammer forward. ‘I know your word is law in this town.’

‘Edge?’ Ward Flynt sounded incredulous.

‘You got something right, marshal.’ Edge turned his head to look up at the figure stooped over him and the lawman removed the threat of the gun, straightened and stepped back.

Flynt was wearing what was surely his best suit for a night at the theatre. He was a year or two over fifty, tall and heavily built with a round, ruddy complexioned face decorated by a thick black moustache that like his hair showed not a trace of grey. He had 22

soft brown eyes that seemed incapable of expressing rancour, but his mouth line looked like it could more than compensate for this when he needed to convey displeasure. Now, as he backed off another half pace, glanced to left and right and over his shoulder to where questioning voices were raised, he expressed embarrassment.

‘What happened out here?’

He lowered the revolver to his side as Edge rose gingerly to his feet, holstered his Colt, grimaced, massaged his pained shoulder and started to explain:

‘I figure some bad trouble, marshal. A feller just rode up the – ‘

Raucous disembodied voices babbled from out of the wet darkness beyond the curve of the street.

‘Hey, somebody better get the marshal!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Two guys have just been gunned down, Goddamnit!’

Flynt came off the porch fast and snarled a curse when his expensively shod feet sank into the sucking mud.

‘Hey, one of them is . . . Yeah, it’s Doc Childs! Looks like the poor bastard’s done for!’

The grim pronouncement abruptly silenced the raised voices beyond the curve as some two dozen people spilled out from the theatre. A few of them were men who were as formally garbed as Flynt. More were women, attired in their finest gowns. Some men lunged immediately out into the rain and mud without pause, while all the women held back in the shelter of the porch as they hurriedly donned topcoats and raised umbrellas. Edge began to move off in the same direction as everyone else, until somebody in the crowd darted up alongside him and tugged at his slicker.

‘It’s Mr Edge, isn’t it?’ she asked tentatively.

He touched a forefinger to the brim of his sodden Stetson. ‘That’s right, Miss Spencer.’

She was a slimly built, forty years old woman with slightly concave cheeks and deepset pale blue eyes. She had a wide mouth with perfect teeth, her nose was almost aquiline and her brown hair was short cut and sculpted to her head with bangs. Maybe her ears stuck out a little over much but Edge had liked the way they did that from the first time he saw her at the railroad depot when he arrived in town.

She swallowed hard and looked on the point of tears. ‘That’s what I thought I heard the marshal call you. And did I hear somebody say Doctor Childs had been – ‘