Power in the Blood (64 page)

He drank again, and again, until half the bottle was gone, before becoming aware that the clientele were staring at him. If he wished to avoid a reputation as a drinking man, he had to stop. Clay stood and walked in a straight line to the bar. He handed the bartender his bottle and said, “Put my name on that.” Clay was aware of every eye as he left. The night outside was like a welcoming blanket.

By the time he returned to the office he was staggering. He had left the door unlocked, an assortment of oiled weaponry on the desk for anyone to steal. He was ashamed to have done that. He was not himself. Tomorrow he would be the person he was supposed to be, and everything would be all right.

“Marshal Dugan?”

He turned to the cell room door. A face was looking at him from the small barred window there.

“You have locked me in here, Marshal.”

“Oh … Miss Clifton … I’m sorry as hell. I didn’t mean to … Wait now, where’s the keys …?”

“They’re on the peg over there.”

“Peg … Yes, ma’am.”

He fetched them and fumbled to insert the correct key, then yanked the door open to let her out.

“I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t, just walked out and left you there without thinking.”

“No harm done. Dr. Maxwell is asleep.”

“Well, fine … fine. I expect you’ll need payment.”

“Not right this minute, Mr. Dugan. You may bring me the money at any time. I trust you.”

“That’s … how much?”

“Dr. Maxwell is a condemned man. I couldn’t accept more than five dollars. I only request that because I have a sick mother to tend, Mr. Dugan. She needs medicine. It sounds like a very sad plot in some play, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”

“Please call me Madge. Good night.”

“’Night. Will you be needing someone to walk you home?”

“I know the way, thank you.”

“Just asking.”

“Thank you anyway.”

She left, winding the shawl around herself. It was a green shawl, with many tassels, a fine and wonderful shawl. Clay wished he could have given it to her for a present, but she already had it. He was thinking like a fool, an idiot, and behaving like one too. It had to stop. He stepped through to the cells and watched Maxwell sleeping on his bunk. How could the man do that when he had only a few more hours to live? Clay felt he understood nothing about life, or death either. He had killed many men, yet had no idea where he had sent them, or how they had felt as the thing called living was taken from them and became the thing called dying, then the thing called death. He knew nothing. Dismayed by his own ignorance, Clay dragged himself upstairs to the quarters he was obliged to occupy whenever there was someone in the cells, then dragged himself downstairs again in his long johns to lock the front door. He would never go back to claim the other half of that bottle in the saloon. Lurching toward his bed, he pictured Madge Clifton drinking wine. Clay had never drunk wine, nor known anyone who had.

Maxwell was prepared for the hanging. Clay could not help but admire the man’s calm demeanor as he ate his pork chops with a side dish of hashed browns. He wanted to ask Maxwell many things, among them his opinion of the woman with whom he had shared part of his final night of life, but that subject would not have been proper, even between men. He paced the office and fretted about things, and shouted at the preacher who came to comfort the prisoner, then apologized.

“Sorry, Reverend, but he’s an atheist, he told me so himself. Excuse me for being rude like that. This is the first time I’ve had to be responsible for hanging a man.”

“That is Mr. Quick’s concern, Marshal, not yours. I should like to speak with Mr. Maxwell anyway, if you please.”

“Dr. Maxwell, not mister. He’s a genuine dentist.”

“And a Christian beneath his atheistic pose, I’m sure.”

“Oh, you are? Step right on through, Reverend.” They went to the cells. “Dr. Maxwell? Got a man here insists you want to see him this morning.”

Clay lingered by the door to listen while Maxwell informed the preacher he was a lowly toad, a pimple on the buttock of a creature called superstition, a purveyor of knowledge without foundation in fact, and an unoriginal thinker masquerading as the conscience of the community.

“Told you,” said Clay as the preacher departed.

“Allow no one else in here, please,” Maxwell said.

“All right.”

“Incidentally, how have your false teeth served you, Dugan? I ask out of professional curiosity.”

“They’re fine, once you get used to them. It took a while.”

“I’m gratified. What time is it?”

“Coming up to eight forty-nine.”

“I have one hour and eleven minutes left to me. Dugan, please leave me alone for the time remaining.”

“I’ll do it, and no one else gets near you either.”

“Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

“You won’t go and kill yourself in there, will you?”

“I couldn’t deny the populace their pleasure. I’m mindful of your position here now, Dugan. You want this to go smoothly, don’t you?”

“I’d appreciate it, frankly.”

“Then I won’t spoil things for you. Go away now.”

Clay closed the door. Inexplicably, he felt like weeping. There was something wrong inside his head, but he didn’t know what.

Another visitor arrived at the jail. This was Mr. Quick, mentioned in passing by the preacher, and Mr. Quick explained to Clay that while most folk considered it a heinous task, dispatching the wicked to their just reward, Mr. Quick saw things differently. “It’s an opportunity,” he said, “to send these fellers that’s done wrong to the other side, where they’ll get judgment a damn sight more powerful than they got here. God Almighty, that’s the gentleman I’ll be sending this one to, just like the rest it’s been my privilege to send to the great beyond. God’ll give them what’s rightfully or wrongfully theirs, mark my word on it, and that’s why I’m content to do the work I do, see, because it’s all a part of the divine plan for apportionment of punishment among the wicked in this world and the next. I play my part, and play it with pride, because if it weren’t me as did it, then some fool that don’t know how to would come along and not be aware of just exactly what it is he’s doing and mess up the job, and that’d be a shame, is my way of looking at it.”

Clay could think of no suitable comment.

Maxwell was brought forth at the appointed hour. Dry Wash being located in arid country, it did not have any trees of sufficient height or strength to serve as a gallows. The permanent gallows built under Mr. Quick’s supervision had been destroyed by fire almost six months before, deliberately doused with kerosene and set alight by the widow of the last man to be hanged there, and the county treasury had not yet advanced any cash to replace it. Mr. Quick was not about to be cheated of his holy work, and so contrived a device utilizing the hay bale hoisting beam that projected from the loft of Monoghan’s livery stable. “Nice and high off the ground, so his boots won’t touch the dust,” Mr. Quick explained to Clay, “and the livery owner only wants a dollar for the use of it.”

The dentist was taken up to the loft and told he must launch himself into the air, to plummet twenty-five feet or so before the noose around his neck should bring him up short and snap or dislocate his vertebrae, causing instantaneous death. He was assured of this by Mr. Quick. “It’s a darn sight better than getting hoisted slow and being strangulated gradual,” said the hangman, and Maxwell nodded to indicate his understanding of what was required.

He stood in the large square opening through which hay was lifted into the loft, and addressed the crowd below, many of whom had left their outlying farms well before dawn to witness the hanging. “People,” he said, his voice carrying well from that elevation, “I do not deserve this fate, but I am resigned to it. You must have blood in requital for blood. I do see this, and yet I hate you. Yes, I hate you, and I place my curse upon you, every man and woman and child gathered here. You will all suffer terribly from dental decay from this day on, and your newborn children will have the fangs of wolves and will eat the hearts of their elders. Aah, I see you squirm in discomfort at my words, even though I do not myself believe in them. Only a fool gives credence to curses, and that, citizens of Sillytown, is the measure of your intellect. My last words will be to Marshal Dugan. Marshal?”

Clay stepped forward, made nervous by his proximity to the edge of the opening high up in the livery stable’s wall. He could sense the anger of the crowd milling below. “Closer,” Maxwell told him, and Clay placed his head beside the mouth of the dentist. “Marry her,” whispered Maxwell. “She’s too fine to be what she is. You’ll see it in her eyes, if you have the courage to look.”

Having said these words, he flung himself out from the opening, and just three seconds later met the limits of Mr. Quick’s hemp. Mr. Quick had apparently miscalculated either the distance of drop or the differing strength of individual bodies, for Maxwell’s head separated from his neck with an audible crack. His body continued to plummet earthward with barely a pause, to raise a cloud of dust there, while his head, with wildly staring eyes, was catapulted, by a twanging of the suddenly unburdened noose, high into the air, then came down in a leisurely arc to bounce among the spectators, whose screaming rose to twine about Clay’s ears.

Mr. Quick was on hands and knees at the opening’s edge, aghast at the mayhem wrought below by his bungling. “It shouldn’t have.…” he said, time after time, as if repetition would wind back the moment and allow for a second chance at success. Clay watched the head that suddenly was at the center of a widening circle of fleeing people. He could swear Maxwell was looking up at him, staring directly into his eyes, the opened mouth repeating its final message.

“All right then,” whispered Clay, “I will. See if I don’t.”

29

The highest echelon of Big Circle preferred that suicide be listed as the official cause of death in the case of Walter Morrow. Big Circle requested of the police commissioner that the one thing supporting a theory of murder—the missing key to one of the French windows—be ignored. The commissioner was not reluctant to accommodate the anonymous request, since it came with an envelope containing one thousand dollars. Big Circle wanted to investigate the death of one of its own.

Initial suspicion fell on the well-coiffed head of Jared, since he was the immediate heir to Morrow’s millions, but he did seem an unlikely murderer. Jared’s sexual proclivities were known to several members of Big Circle, but they had never embarrassed Walter by mentioning the subject in his presence. Inquiries made by Melvin Hodge, a private detective employed on occasion by Big Circle, proved Jared had been at a notorious haunt of homosexuals on the far side of Denver on the night of the murder. Suggestions that Jared might have hired someone to perform the killing on his behalf were considered farfetched, yet there seemed to be no other motive for Walter’s death. Not a single article was missing from the study except for the window key. Hodge was instructed by a gentleman he knew simply as “Mr. Jones” to pursue the case and discover the identity of the killer, however long it might take.

Hodge began shadowing Jared Morrow. Jared had been exhibiting signs of great distress since the death of his father, but Hodge did not necessarily believe the young man’s emotion was genuine. One night, while standing near the entrance to Jared’s hotel suite (Hodge had bribed the hotel’s own detective to allow him onto the premises for extended periods), Hodge witnessed the arrival of a smooth-faced fellow with a waistline Hodge could have spanned with his two meaty hands. The hotel detective informed Hodge the visitor was called Tatum, and seemed to be a favorite of young Mr. Morrow’s. Hodge waited all night for Tatum to emerge, then followed him to a restaurant where both ate ham and eggs and bacon, then continued on to what presumably was Tatum’s home, a room in a cheap hotel near the railroad station. Hodge slipped the desk clerk five dollars for the number of Tatum’s room and information concerning his comings and goings. He then made arrangements with the clerk to revisit the hotel at night, when Tatum was in the habit of rising from his bed to gamble and otherwise entertain himself until the hours just before dawn.

Hodge waited that evening until he saw Tatum leave the hotel, then picked up a key from the desk clerk and climbed the stairs to Tatum’s room. He found it bare of any but the most meager possessions, although Tatum did appear to be something of a dandy in matters of dress. Hodge searched thoroughly, and was appalled to come across some illustrated volumes of an erotic nature that shocked him greatly, since the couples depicted in contorted embraces of one kind or another were exclusively male. Hodge knew Jared Morrow was a man-fancier, and Tatum was just too smooth of skin to be a genuine male, so Hodge was not surprised to find such stuff; what did distress him was the arousal he felt within himself as he studied the pictures. Hodge was a married man with two children, and his reaction to the volume was inexplicable.

He hurriedly replaced the book as he had found it, and tried to rally his professional instincts to continue with the job at hand. He went carefully through every drawer, examined the underside of the mattress, and found nothing to indicate Tatum might have killed Walter Morrow for Jared. There was no gun, not so much as a pocket knife to indicate that Tatum bore the least propensity for violence.

Becoming a little despondent by then, Hodge sat on a chair and allowed his gaze to drift without particular purpose around Tatum’s lowly room. He had found nothing. It was likely Tatum was no more than Jared’s boyfriend. Mr. Jones would not be pleased that Hodge could unearth no clue at all to the mystery. Mr. Jones was himself a mystery to Hodge. He had used Hodge’s services several times, but never discussed his own identity or revealed his precise connection with the individuals Hodge was hired to investigate. Hodge suspected that Mr. Jones was working for someone higher up the ladder of wealth that grew out of Denver like a stairway to heaven. There were too many rich people controlling too much money, in Hodge’s opinion, but he had never breached professional etiquette by asking Mr. Jones to explain himself or the office in which they met. It might have been a lawyer’s office, or a businessman’s; there was no name on the door, just a silent bookkeeper in an outer room scratching at his accounts, or pretending to.