Relentless (12 page)

    Callahan’s was the miner’s saloon. It had the least business during the daylight hours of any of the saloons. Its customers were all down in mine shafts. I went there for a beer. I took it to a table and rolled myself a cigarette.

    I was just finishing up the beer when Paul Dodson came in. He was the local Realtor. He’d made a lot of money from rich Easterners who liked the idea of having a home in the Wild Wild West. It made for great stories in the drawing rooms as the waiters were serving aperitifs.

    “Hey,” he said to the bartender. He sounded agitated. “Look outside. They’re bringing Callie Morgan in.”

    He started to say more, but the bartender nodded in my direction. Dodson looked over and said, “Aw, hell, Lane, I didn’t see you over there. I didn’t mean anything-”

    But I was already up and walking toward the batwing doors.

    I wanted to see just who was bringing Callie in, and why.

    

    

    I'D HAD A picture of Callie sitting her horse, her wrists handcuffed, a couple of my former deputies toting shotguns as they rode next to her.

    Tom Ryan had brought her in. He rode, without a shotgun, next to our old buggy, which Callie drove slowly down the dusty street to the jailhouse.

    If Tom had been showboating, there would have been a crowd. But obviously he had told nobody what he was doing. The only person standing in front of the jail when I got there was Horace Thurman, the county attorney.

    He looked embarrassed to see me, which told me a lot. He was another one who had dreams of being a power in the state legislature. I’d done him a favor by resigning. He’d look like a man among men to the lieutenant governor tomorrow. Here was the man who’d seen to it that the murderer was arrested, even though it meant bringing in the former marshal’s wife. Surely the lieutenant governor would tell this tale when he once again strode the echoing halls of power. And surely the voters would remember it when it came time to choose their next slate of legislators.

    He said, “I’m sorry about this, Lane.”

    “Paul got to you, did he?” I wasn’t in any mood for his slick, empty words.

    “You’re under a lot of pressure, Lane. I realize that. But that was still uncalled for. I’m my own man.”

    I sighed, angry as much at myself as at him for the moment. He was many things-overly ambitious, duplicitous, cynical-but he didn’t do anybody’s bidding but his own. Not even Paul’s. Maybe especially Paul’s. He seemed to make a point over the years to offend Webley in various ways. Just to prove his independence.

    “You’re right, Horace. You are your own man. But you shouldn’t have brought Callie in.”

    “You would have brought Callie in. If she wasn’t your wife, I mean.”

    I started to object. But then I realized he was right. I was a long ways from being the perfect lawman, but I did try to do an honest job most of the time. And he was right. If Callie wasn’t my wife, she would probably have been my number one suspect.

    “What about Sylvia Adams?” I said.

    He smiled. “Hard to interrogate dead people, Lane. Maybe you know how to do it, but I guess I never learned.”

    “Or Ken Adams.”

    “Tom brought him in earlier. Tom and I questioned him for nearly two hours.”

    “And decided what?”

    “Decided that he was a suspect. But he had a gun on him when he went up to Stanton ’s room.”

    “He couldn’t have brought a knife?”

    “Could have. But unlikely. I asked a few people around town if they could ever remember Ken Adams carrying a knife. They couldn’t.”

    “That’s still not very conclusive.”

    “No, it’s not. But the case is a long way from being resolved.”

    “So now you spend a couple of hours with Callie.”

    His full face, hidden beneath a trim graying beard, became grim. It was a theater move, one he used frequently in court when he wanted to make an especially serious point to the jury. That didn’t necessarily mean he was being insincere. You never know about attorneys and actors. "This isn’t pleasant for me.”

    “She didn’t kill him.”

    “I’m hoping you’re right. But if you’re not-” His face remained grim. “If I begin to think she really did do it, I’m asking the judge if I can bring in another prosecutor.”

    “What?”

    “We’ve worked together a good number of years now, Lane. And we’ve gotten to know each other socially. Callie and my wife are friends. Not intimates, but friends. I just couldn’t go after her in court. I like her too much. And in the back of my mind, I wouldn’t blame her if she had done it. Stanton was scum. I got a wire from the Cook County District Attorney’s office this morning. Stanton was quite a boy. He was even suspected though never charged in three homicides. If Callie did do it, as far as I’m concerned she did civilized society a favor.”

    I’d been wrong again. All I’d seen when I’d first seen him standing in front of the marshal’s office was the ambitious prosecutor about to wade into one of the most notorious trials of his career. But now, if that trial involved my wife, he was stepping aside.

    “You want some advice, Lane?”

    “I’d appreciate it,” I said, barely able to speak after what he’d just said. He was a hell of a lot better friend than I’d ever expected.

    “Go up the street and tell Old Sam Bowen you want him to represent Callie in all this. And then get him to come down here right away. I’ll let him sit in on the interrogation. He can make any objections he wants, and then he can spend some time with Callie afterward.”

    I put my hand out. We shook.

    “Since when did you become my favorite person, Horace?”

    “You became mine a long time ago. The two of us are the only two who’ve ever really stood up to Paul in this whole county.” He glanced back at the front door I’d walked through so many times. “Well, I guess I’d better get in there. I need to start the questions. And get Toni to buck up a little. He almost handed in his badge when I asked him to go out and bring Callie in. I think it gave
him
serious doubts about taking the job.”

    “I’ll talk to him. But right now I’ll go see Old Sam Bowen.”

    

    

    Bowen, who’d been the county’s first attorney, stood out on the boardwalk going through his morning’s mail in the sunlight. He was a wiry, bald, nearsighted little man who wore a large Union Army pin on the lapels of all his suit coats. He’d earned several decorations in the war.

    I wasn’t sure he saw me approach, but without looking up from a letter he was reading, he said, “You did the right thing, Lane.”

    “I did?”

    “Sure. How the hell could you have stayed on as town marshal with your wife under suspicion that way.”

    “I guess I did. But some people think I should’ve stayed.” He laughed. “That’s what they say to your face. But behind your back’s another matter. If you’d have stayed on,

    you would have turned just about everybody in town against you.”

    “You mean people say one thing to my face and another thing behind my back? That kind of shocks me, Old Sam.” That was his name and he liked it. Not Sam. Old Sam. He smiled. “I don’t want to hear what people say about me behind my back.”

    My humor was short-lived. “I need you to be her attorney, Old Sam.”

    “Where is she?”

    "Tom just brought her in. Horace invited you to sit in on the questioning. They’re starting any minute now.”

    He shoved his mail in the pocket of his suit coat. “Then I’d best be getting at it, hadn’t I?”

    I walked him down to the town marshal’s office. He went inside and I went over to where Edgar Bayard had his office. The hitching post outside held the reins of two horses, one of them his. In the street Lem Johnson was scooping up road apples. He was the town’s all-purpose hand. “Sorry to hear you quit, Marshal.”

    “Thanks, Lem.” I thought of what Old Sam had said about what people said behind my back.

    Bayard’s various business interests were run out of a modest office that was hidden among several modest offices on the ground floor of a building that always smelled sweetly of floor-cleaning compound. Nobody else in town used this compound, which was too bad. It had a friendly smell.

    I opened the door and went in and nodded to Bayard’s secretary, a middle-aged woman whose race had long been a subject of speculation. Though her husband was clearly white, she had a complexion and features that hinted at Negro blood. Some people just assumed that she had brazenly “passed” in white society. I wasn’t sure and I didn’t particularly give a damn. She was pleasant and efficient. “Morning, Ruth.”

    She’d been riffling through a stack of letters. When she looked up, surprise played in her eyes. The surprise was that

    I was the man of the moment in our small town. A former lawman whose wife, innocent or not, was involved in a scandal. Ruth, a plump woman given to matronly business attire, radiated sympathy for me. She knew what it was like when the gossips focused on you. “Morning, Marshal.”

    “I saw Edgar’s horse outside. I thought maybe I could see him.”

    “Of course.” She stood up. About this time, she’d usually be telling me how good a teacher Callie was. She had a boy enrolled in Callie’s classes. This time, she didn’t say anything. She knocked gently on the door, opened it, peeked inside, told Bayard that I was here to see him. She stood aside for me. I walked in.

    Bayard’s office was like the man. Spare and without fuss. A long way from the quietly imposing chambers of Paul’s. The pleasant scent of pipe tobacco filled the air. I sat in a plain wood chair across from his plain pine desk. The walls held maps and charts relating to his various businesses.

    “I’ll bet I can guess why you’re here,” he said, drawing on his briar pipe. “I just heard they brought Callie in.”

    “Supposedly just for questioning. She’s not under arrest.”

    “It’s that damned Grice and Toomey. And I’m sure that Paul’s behind them.”

    “I don’t have any doubt.”

    He laughed. “We sure wouldn’t want the lieutenant governor to think that Skylar had ever had an unsolved murder, now would we?”

    “We’ve got a perfect town here. We wouldn’t want to go and spoil it.”

    He sat back, hooked a thumb in a vest pocket. The pipe stayed stuck in the right comer of his mouth. He talked around it. “So now you want to know what I know-or suspect.”

    “When you told me about it out at the rail site, there wasn’t this much of a hurry. But now that Calllie’s been brought in-”

    “I understand, Lane.” He hesitated. “One of my employees saw this. Or thinks he saw it. He was some distance away. And he made me promise that I wouldn’t get him involved. All I can tell you is what he told me. It’s not proof of any kind. But maybe it would start you looking in a fresh direction.”

    “That’s what I need now. A fresh direction.”

    He leaned forward. Took the pipe from his mouth. The last wraiths of his last inhalation wriggled from his nostrils. “You know where Phil Chesney has his cabin?”

    “The one he uses for hunting?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Sure.”

    “Well, you know that Chesney likes the women.”

    “Everybody seems to know that except for his poor wife,” I said.

    “Well, he and Stanton got to be drinking cronies. Stanton got a couple of young gals from town here to go out to Chesney’s cabin for a few parties. Stanton gave Chesney a perfect cover. If Chesney’s wife heard about the parties, all Phil had to say was that he’d let Stanton use the cabin and that the girls were all Stanton’s idea.”

    “And Phil of course would be blameless?”

    Bayard snorted. “Well, Letty Chesney’s been buying those stories of his for years. So why wouldn’t she buy this one?” The pipe went back into his mouth. He dragged on it, but it was already dead. He took a lucifer and struck it underneath his desk. When he got the pipe going again, he said, “One afternoon, this employee of mine is out hunting near the cabin, and he sees Stanton standing on the front porch. And Stanton isn’t alone. Laura Webley is with him.” It sounded right. Maybe it was just because I wanted to believe it. But still and all, it sounded right. “Callie said Stanton used to love to seduce the wives of powerful men. It gave him a sense of power, too. You know, having something like that over them.”

    “He comes to town and offers all this stuff on Callie to Paul. Webley pays him and asks him to hang around to verify everything if and when it comes out-just in case you didn’t back off Trent the way he wanted you to-and so Stanton decides to have a little fun while he’s hanging around. He sees that Webley’s wife is a beauty and he goes after her. Everybody knows how much she hates this town, thinks we’re all a bunch of hayseeds and ruffians, and so when she sees a sharpie like Stanton, she decides to have a little fun for herself.” He paused and then said it for me: “What if Paul found out about it? What do you think he’d do?”

    “Kill Stanton.”

    “Right-as far as it goes. But you’ve got to put yourself in Paul’s mind. He’s a very devious little man. I admit I hate him because of what he did to the Utes-but I still can’t take anything away from him. He plans everything out very thoroughly.”

    “So,” I said, “he kills Stanton, but he also has somebody ready to take the blame.”

    “And who better than Callie? As I say, you know how much I hate the man, Lane. So my opinion of all this is prejudiced. But I think it’s something you should look into.”

    “Hell, yes, it’s something I should look into.”

    “I don’t want to see him get away with this-if he’s involved. I’m not going to be alive and kicking too many more years. I’d sure hate to go out with Webley getting away with a murder he’d committed.”