Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (5 page)

She curtailed the tensely spoken query as an answer was unwittingly supplied from further away than Edge. When a woman screamed above the babble of talk along the 23

street: the shrill cry silencing the many other voices before she shrieked: ‘It’s the doc, sure enough! And he’s dead!’

Now a half sob exploded from deep within Sue Ellen Spencer and she lunged forward, hoisting the hem of her long skirt to keep herself from tripping as she ran toward the people gathered into a loose-knit group on the centre of the street out front of Paine’s Livery Stables.

The crowd parted to allow her through and she dropped to her knees between the two slumped forms, uncaring about the mud as she reached out to search for a pulse at the neck of one of them.

A man rose from squatting beside the other inert figure and announced morosely:

‘And this one, marshal. He’s a goner as well.’

‘That’s a guy named Shelby,’ the solidly built, grey moustached John Dickens revealed. ‘He was a buddy of the doc’s from way back. Used to be a police detective in New York City I heard him say in the saloon.’

‘Ain’t much that you and the colonel don’t hear about what goes on around Eternity!’

a woman accused caustically.

For stretched seconds just a soft sobbing from the kneeling woman who had assisted Childs in his medical practise and the hiss of steadily falling rain disturbed the melancholy silence that gripped the group of shocked people. Then there was a surge of talk that the lawman sought to quell as Edge moved off up the street, beyond a vacant lot, a hardware store and a meat market to the double fronted premises of Quinn and Son. He let himself in through a glass panelled door under the newly painted sign, locked it and went across the store that was still stocked as a haberdashery and into the living quarters out back without need to light a lamp. For after two days of living here he well knew the layout of the place. Then he lit a kerosene lamp in the small, ill-furnished parlour, took off his damp top clothing and his gunbelt and squatted before the stove to stir flames from the dying embers.

Recalled with a grimace that in those two days he had convinced himself he had no desire to remain in Eternity for longer than he had to: as a store owner or anything else. It was not much of a town and when he got off the train Sunday he was surprised that such an intelligent, go-getting businessman as Nicholas Quinn had wanted to open a branch of his high class tailoring chain in a place like this. But during the time he had been here, with a prominent
FOR SALE
sign on the door, he had been told how Eternity’s leading citizens had once nurtured high ambitions for their community.

Several years ago all had looked set for the recently established settlement to develop into a boomtown. Back then, just after the end of the War Between the States, the 24

hearts and minds of local people were filled with enthusiastic dreams. And everyone was convinced the town could be much more than a cluster of houses, a church, a handful of stores, a saloon, a railroad depot and the stockyards: the business enterprises then only fully utilised once a year when the Texas herds were driven north for shipment east. They constructed the large hotel, the Washington Memorial Theatre, more stores to supply a greater range of merchandise and a larger railroad station that was planned as the junction for a spur line to run up to Wyoming. And houses were built for those settlers who came to Eternity on their westward trek and decided to remain here. To farm the surrounding well-watered prairie, or to work at the slaughterhouse and canning plant that was envisaged.

But the grandiose scheme did not materialise.

People heading westward by way of Eternity were not persuaded to stay. And as time went by, the town’s attractions became less alluring even to the local population as decay from neglect took a hold on the community. Eternity became too large for the number of people living there and as much property was left empty to deteriorate as was occupied by people who lacked civic pride and were mostly little interested in the future of their town.

Edge heard of Eternity’s ambitious beginnings and people’s faded dreams from Roy Sims, the first owner of the store. Who had run it as a haberdashery from the days when hopes were high and he made a good living for a single man in his line of business in a country town over fifty miles from the nearest competition. But he was getting on in years, eager to retire and receptive to a reasonable offer from Nicholas Quinn when the clothing entrepreneur came through the mid-West looking to expand the chain of establishments he inherited from his father.

Quinn purchased the business on the understanding that Sims continued to run the place until another manager could be employed and some new stock shipped in. But the old man was still there at the time Quinn blew out his brains in the Texas town undertaking parlour where the bodies of his murdered wife and daughter were still awaiting burial. When Edge showed up Sunday afternoon, Sims had reluctantly consented to run the store for a further month at the most: encouraged to do so when the unlikely new owner promised he could keep every dollar of profit that was made. Since the man lived away from the premises, in one of the line of houses on the California Trail, Edge was able to temporarily settle himself in reasonable comfort in the cramped accommodation behind the store.

He had almost finished the cup of coffee poured from the reheated pot and was lighting a freshly rolled cigarette when a fist thudded at the store doorway. He left the 25

connecting door open to spill lamp light across the man who stood under the sidewalk roof, sheltered from the rain that fell with less intensity on a street that was quiet again and deserted except for his caller.

‘Marshal,’ he greeted as he opened the door.

‘Mr Edge, I’d like to talk with you for a minute. Is it all right if I come in?’ He blew into his cupped hands and hunched his shoulders within the sheepskin coat he now wore over his Sunday best suit.

Edge turned and led the way, leaving the anxiously frowning lawman to close the door and follow him.

‘I guess I ought to apologise? The way I pulled my weapon on you? But I heard the shots from inside the theatre. And the first thing I saw when I came blundering out the way I did was a guy aiming a pistol up the street. We don’t get a lot of gunplay in Eternity as a rule.’

‘No sweat, feller. It doesn’t bother me so much as it used to. You want coffee?’

‘That sounds real good.’ Flynt blew again into his cupped hands. ‘Cuts clean through to my bones, this kind of cold and wet weather. It never used to.’

‘I know what you mean.’ Edge gestured toward the less comfortable armchair on the other side of the stove from his own and went into the kitchen to bring a second cup and filled it from the pot. Then, after he had performed his duty as host, he sat down, sipped at his own coffee and eyed the discontented Ward Flynt quizzically.

‘Buck Segal told me he thinks you maybe got a good look at the guy that shot Doc Childs and his buddy?’

‘Had a better view of the feller’s horse.’

‘Uh?’

‘The killer was wrapped head to toe in a black slicker. His horse was dark, too. A bay or a chestnut, I’d guess.’ He ran three fingers down his forehead and nose. ‘With a white blaze.’

Flynt’s ruddy face expressed disappointment. ‘Is that really all you saw? There must be dozens of horses around here match that description. It ain’t much to go on.’

‘I could’ve stopped him if you hadn’t stuck a gun in the back of my neck. The lawman sighed, shrugged and acknowledged miserably. ‘Yeah, okay. It turned out my move wasn’t so smart.’

Edge asked: ‘Nobody else got a better look than me, I guess?’

Grimacing disappointment became resignation in Flynt’s brown eyes and hard set mouth line before he swallowed some coffee, the cup gripped tightly in both cold hands.

‘No one except you was outside until the shots brought folks running. But by then the killer 26

was high-tailing it down the street. Looking like some kind of big bird is how one guy told it. I guess that fits in with him wearing dark oilskins. They would have billowed out each side of him. Like a pair of wings?’

Edge said nothing and remained impassively at ease as he smoked the cigarette while Flynt spent the time sipping his coffee, clearly even tenser than before. Then the lawman became pensive. ‘Buck Segal, Walt Benson and John Dickens: they all said as how Doc Childs’ buddy was a police detective from New York City. Guess you heard the same thing? While the doc and him were talking over old times in the Second Chance?’

‘I can tell you as much as the bartender, marshal. And a little more than the two old timers on account of they left awhile before me. Same as the Colbert brother and sister did.’

‘Art and Olivia were in the saloon?’ The lawman was surprised and a little irritated. Edge blew out tobacco smoke between pursed lips. ‘Seems the lady started to feel ill during the play and they left to get her a brandy at the saloon. They headed for home instead of back to the theatre when she felt better.’

Flynt pondered this for a few moments, then asked: ‘You overheard everything the doc and this New York lawman said to each other?’

‘It seemed to me that Childs was eager to have an audience. Like he’d have been happy to yell it from the rooftops, I reckon. I have some kind of interest in the killing of his boy so I listened.’

‘Segal reckons the doc was planning to have the New York guy try to prove Billy was murdered. That how you heard it?’

‘The bartender told it right.’

Flynt finished his coffee, shook his head reflectively and made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth. ‘This New York guy wasn’t with the police any more? He quit, ain’t that right?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘How Buck Segal heard it, he threw in his job after stirring up some dirt on a bunch of other detectives in the city?’

Edge nodded and leaned forward to open the stove lid and drop his cigarette butt inside. Then Flynt rose suddenly, set down his empty cup and said:

‘Thanks for the coffee. It’s much appreciated by these old bones of mine.’

‘Sorry that getting warm from the cold is all I can help you with, marshal: that I can’t tell you anything else about the new murder.’

27

Flynt halted abruptly on the threshold between the parlour and the store, did a grimacing double take at Edge and growled: ‘As far as I’m concerned, Billy Childs either killed himself or his death was an accident, mister.’

‘You’re the expert,’ Edge allowed evenly.

The lawman made to step into the store, but held back again. ‘And as for what happened tonight, that seems pretty cut and dried to me. Shelby stirred up too much trouble for his own good back in New York. So somebody was put on his trail and paid to keep him from doing any more damage. It was just damn bad luck for Charlie Childs that he happened to be in the line of fire when the hired gun caught up with Shelby. Goodnight to you.’

The disgruntled lawman crossed the darkened store quickly, the door opened and closed behind him and for a while Edge sat listening to the subdued sounds of rain on the windows and the crackle of flames in the stove. Then he finished his coffee, picked up the cup Flynt had used, carried it with his own into the kitchen, rinsed them both in a basin of water and turned them upside down to drain and dry. Returned to the parlour, took the coffeepot from the stove and went back into the kitchen. Stepped out through the rear door into the lightly falling rain, moved to a corner of the fenced yard and upended the pot to tip the sodden grounds into a hole dug for household garbage. During the time these chores took, he was unable to decide whether Ward Flynt truly believed what he had said concerning the motive for the double shooting in Eternity tonight. Then he straightened up and cursed softly: annoyed at himself for dwelling on a problem that was none of his business. And remained chagrined as he turned his mind to reflecting bitterly that disposing of domestic waste behind a tailor’s store in a Kansas town on a rainy night was not how he had ever visualised any part of his future. A horse whinnied behind the six feet high solid rear fence at the side of the communal stable and he glanced in that direction. And in a sudden bright splash of yellow lamplight from a door opened by one of his immediate neighbours he saw the familiar white marking on the head of a dark coloured horse. He instinctively reached for his revolver and cursed when the heel of his clawed right hand slid off his thigh – where the Colt would have been holstered had he not been taking his ease in his temporary home, his gunbelt hung from a peg behind the parlour door.

He glimpsed astride the mount a figure attired in an all-enveloping rain slicker: both the rider’s arms upraised to aim a rifle at him. A shot rang out as Edge powered face down on to the muddy surface of the yard, the report followed by the sound of splintering wood as the bullet blasted through a panel of the fence. It missed its intended target and ricocheted off the discarded coffeepot. Next there was a shriek of fear from a woman who