The Shotgun Arcana (13 page)

Again, Jim saw Lottie, his little sister. Saw her bleeding from a bullet wound he’d inflicted in his mad race to avenge his father’s murder. Molly may have had a brother somewhere, a family. He hated the thought of them ever seeing her like this, as the killer had left her. Jim swallowed hard and turned in his chair, away from Molly’s ghastly surgical grin to Clay.

“Mr. Turlough,” Jim said, ice in his voice. “Sorry to interrupt, but did you find anything that will help us catch him, sir?”

Clay, Jon and Mutt all grew silent.

“I have made some observations on the subject, yes, Jim,” Clay said.

“Molly,” Jim said. “She ain’t no subject, sir. Her name was Molly James.”

Clay looked at Jim, the tufts of his wild hair like smoke in the bright lantern light. He nodded. “Yes, of course, Jim,” Clay said. “I think I have.”

“Well, let’s have it, Clay,” Highfather said. Clay walked away from the occuscope. He began to pace the room as if he were teaching a class, the murder scene painting him at every angle as he walked.

“I am certainly no lawman,” Clay began. “However, I must confess a certain fanaticism for the romance of the adventures of the late Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional investigator, C. Auguste Dupin. I read and reread ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ many times, and ‘The Purloined Letter’ is one of my favorite pieces of fiction. I had the privilege of meeting Poe in Richmond, Virginia, before his death and assisting him with a most delicate and macabre matter. The man was brilliant.”

The sheriff and his deputies remained silent, even as Mutt gave Highfather a questioning glance. Clay continued, as he paced.

“The basis of Dupin’s method of investigating a crime,” Clay said, “was a process Poe called ‘ratiocination.’ In short, it is the use of intellect along with imagination to build the commission of the crime in one’s mind, to even attempt to think as the criminal thinks. Dupin was such a master at this as to be considered a mind reader.”

“This is ‘in short’?” Mutt whispered to Highfather.

“I have not fully had time to assemble all the particulars of the crime in my head,” Clay said, as matter-of-fact as if he were discussing chores in the stable. “However, I have made some observations that may be of help in catching the villain.”

Clay walked over to the part of the projection that showed the strands of the girl’s insides nailed to the rickety fences.

“I took the liberty of examining the scene today in full daylight,” Clay said. “These divots on the fence where he missed the nail with the hammer and a closer examination of the nails themselves turned up some interesting bits of data. One: The murderer had planned out what he was going to do to the girl in some detail, including bringing the proper materials and figuring out a way to mask his labors.”

“How’s that?” Highfather said. “I know this alley and he’s not more than fifteen feet from the Roost’s side door and not more than twenty-five or thirty feet from the front porch. Even drunk and horny as a bull, someone on that porch should have heard all that banging of the hammer.”

“I found fibers embedded in the divots and tangled in the nails,” Clay said.

“Fibers?” Jim said.

“Threads,” Clay responded, “strands of cloth. I think our killer wrapped the head of the hammer in cloth to muffle its noise.”

“What good does thread do in helping us track him, Clay?” Mutt said.

“I examined the threads and they were brownish gray and there were some black threads. The material was poor quality and coarse.”

Highfather snapped his fingers. “A blanket,” he said. “An army blanket. A Union army blanket. They have a black stripe and they are that color exactly.”

“Very good, Jonathan.” Clay nodded. “I examined some of the materials we have here in Golgotha and came to a similar conclusion.”

“Well, hell, Clay,” Mutt said. “That don’t exactly narrow it down, army blankets are all over the place, and lots of folks got them.”

“True,” Clay said. “But few will have one cut up to cover a hammer and fewer still will be originally from back east, so that will help narrow it down.”

“How can you know that he’s from back east?” Jim asked.

“The military commissioned the Mission and Pacific Mills of San Francisco to create new blankets for the troops stationed out west,” Clay said. “This was not a California blanket. It came with its owner from back east.”

“You think he’s a soldier?” Highfather said.

Clay shook his head. “No,” he said. “He has too fine a shoe. He’s a gentleman. Plus I’d wager most soldiers know their way around a hammer and nail. I’d make inquiries to Mr. Benham, the cobbler, and see if he recalls making or repairing shoes of that size and with similar wear on the sole as the prints we discovered in the alley. You can compare them to the drawings I took of the print details.”

Jim looked at Mutt. The Indian shook his head. “That is a scary noggin, Clay,” Mutt said. “Glad you don’t have any desire to be murdering anyone. We’d never catch you.”

Clay scratched his head. “The man who did this is disgusting, Mutt. To have this kind of imagination and use it for … this. Pathetic.”

“It’s like magic, like a fortune-teller, all this” Jim said.

“Nonsense, m’boy,” Clay said. “It’s rational thought. Trumps superstition every day of the week.”

“Anything else, Clay?” Highfather asked.

“The nails,” Clay said. “He bought them at Bick’s company store up on Argent. Auggie’s store has never carried this fashion of nail. Our local blacksmith, Wayland Smith, didn’t make these nails. Bick’s store has ones just like it in stock presently.

“The girl had some dust on her,” Clay continued. “Most likely from rock. May have been up near the mines or her killer was. The stars, the moon or numerology may play a part in his madness. He despises women, I’d wager he’ll strike at Dutch gals—prostitutes—again, but in a pinch, any woman will do for him. No woman in Golgotha is safe until he’s caught. Oh, and Jonathan … he’s not going to stop, not until he’s ready to, or has completed whatever ghastly work he is about, or you catch him, or kill him.”

“Why?” Highfather asked.

“Because he knows he’s smart enough to keep getting away with it and crazy enough to want to keep the game going with you, with the forces of order. Because if it was me, I’d keep going too.”

The iron door creaked and blinding light flooded the jail. Everyone who had been in the darkness groaned. A figure swaggered into the dark room, his shadow, cast from the doorway, blotting out much of the washed-out crime scene on the walls.

“Why in damnation are you people sitting about in the dark?” Dr. Francis Tumblety bellowed. “Queerer than a Virginia fence, I declare!”

“Oh!” Highfather said. “Come on in, doc. Shut the door, will you. Clay was just showing us something.”

Tumblety slammed the door with a crash and the darkness swallowed the room again. “Ah, yes,” Tumblety said, “Mr. Turlough and his mechanical amusements. How droll. Surely, Jonathan, you are not relying on children’s toys now to aid you in your endeavors?”

Tumblety was the closest thing Golgotha had to a doctor, though his credentials were questionable at best. He had coal black hair and a large drooping horseshoe-style mustache. His eyes reminded Highfather of coal someone had spit on, in both color and content.

He wore a large, frayed and smelly black military-style bang-up with numerous medals and commendations pinned to it. Highfather had tried a few times to discuss the good doctor’s military service and how the odd mishmash of service ribbons from so many different services, nations and, in the case of the War Between the States, sides, all came to be on the doctor’s chest. Tumblety blustered and thundered through such conversations with little information and much noise.

The doctor took a chair from the wall and dragged it over to sit beside Jim. He placed a filthy-looking hand on Jim’s knee.

“There’s a good fella, Jim. When you going to come see old Dr. Tumblety for a checkup? A strapping lad your age, in the flower of his golden youth, needs to make sure everything is in proper order, yes?”

Mutt leaned across Jim and glared at Tumblety. “You take that hand off that boy’s knee right now, doc, or all your equipment is gonna be broke.”

Tumblety sputtered and began to redden in anger. Highfather tried to head it off as quickly as he could.

“So, Doctor, you had a chance to take a gander at the girl’s body yet?”

“I most certainly have not!” Tumblety said. “Why you saw fit to summon a common horse groomer to the scene of the whore’s demise instead of a learned man of letters is beyond me, Jonathan. Why you leave your boy, that savagerous, dirt-worshiping half-breed, in charge of making decisions while you are indisposed is also a mystery to me.”

“Hey!” Jim said, standing. “Nobody talks that way about Mutt!”

“Jim,” Highfather said. “Sit down, and hush.” Jim did, but his cheeks and ears were flushed with anger.

“You see,” Tumblety said. “The savage is a poor influence on this callow youth.”

Highfather walked around to the front of his desk and put his hand on Clay’s shoulder while Clay was opening windows, deactivating and packing up his invention.

“Much obliged, Clay. If you think of anything else that might help, I’d like to hear it.”

“I’m still trying to figure out how he got her there,” Clay said. “I checked on the other side of that fence and there are wagon tracks back there, right up to the fence. I think he came and went by way of a wagon and I don’t think he initially grabbed her in the alley. I think he grabbed her, restrained her and then took her by wagon to the alley to finish his work.”

“Why the alley?” Jim asked. “It was so close to people.”

“Exactly, Jim” Clay said. “To show us his craft. I made sketches of the wear on the wagon wheels, Jon. Hopefully we can locate the owner of the conveyance.”

“I concur with Turlough’s findings in that respect,” Tumblety said. “However, I, too, examined the scene and I surmise that it is much more likely that it was a group of individuals instead of single man.”

“But we got only one set of prints in the alley,” Jim said.

“Exactly,” Tumblety said. “One man aided by his fellows into the alleyway to dispose of the slag’s body and then helped back over the fence from the bed of the wagon.”

“That is plausible,” Clay said. “There’s nothing to dismiss it and it clears up a few bits of confusion. I think the doctor may be on to something there.”

“So we got a crew of killers, not jist one?” Mutt said. “I don’t care for it.”

“Me either,” Jim said. “Everything Mr. Turlough said about how this crazy sumbitch is, he sounds like he’s too stuck on himself to have help. Thinks he’s a huckleberry above a persimmon, y’ask me.”

“Well, there you go,” Tumblety said with a rough guffaw. “The ignorant half-breed and the doe-eyed child think they’ve solved the crime. I don’t envy you your job, Jonathan. I shall be in touch with my results of the examination of the whore’s body. Turlough, be a good fellow and deliver it over to me before you get back to shoveling manure.”

Tumblety departed without a backward glance.

“I miss him already,” Mutt said.

Clay finished packing up his equipment. He headed toward the door with his bag.

“Few more tests I’d like to run on the girl if you don’t mind, Jon,” Clay said. “After the good doctor there gets ahold of her, she’ll look more like a Thanksgiving turkey than a body.”

“Take your time, Clay,” Highfather said. “And thanks again. You did good. I may have to read this Poe fellow myself.”

Clay departed and Highfather sat down again behind his desk and exhaled with a whoosh.

“So, with all that said, where is everything else at right now in our happy little town?” Highfather asked. “You tend the salt circle at the old cemetery?”

“Yep,” Mutt said. “Every day. Place makes my hackles jump, but I took care of it. Don’t need that kind of trouble crawling back up right now.”

“Good,” Highfather said. “What else?”

“Widow Stonehouse says the people in the paintings on her walls are moving about again, but no sign of the Marquis of Stain or his knights in any of the pictures yet, so hopefully it’s just weird with a little ‘w,’ and not something we have to tend to for a spell.”

“Okay,” Highfather said. “Anything normal, ordinary sheriffs have to tend to? Please say yes.”

“I hear tell Bick and Ch’eng Huang have a new shipment of dope headed into town in the next few days from back east,” Mutt said. “If I can squeeze the delivery point out of one of my people, we can crash the ball, if you want?”

“My invitation must have been lost in the post,” Highfather said. “Let’s. Anything else?”

“Got a lead on the horse thief that cleaned out Bertrand Knox’s stable. I was going to follow it up,” Mutt said.

“Sounds square,” Highfather said. “Well, I got something I need to chase down tomorrow for Charley Pegg, the sheriff over in Washoe County. Got a lead on that train robbery that happened a few weeks back. Told him I’d follow it up.”

“Need any help?” Mutt said.

Highfather sighed.

“I wish,” he said. “If what Charley told me is square, Nikos Vellas might be mixed up in this, too, but we’re stretched too thin as it is. I’ll manage. Harry keeps promising more money to hire deputies.”

“Who’s Nikos Vellas?” Jim asked.

“Gypsy,” Mutt said. “Greek I think. Showed up in town a few months back and has been making himself indispensable to most of the criminal bosses up at the mining camp. He’s gotten a very bad reputation, very quick.” Mutt turned back to the sheriff. “You be careful, Jonathan,” Mutt said. “Even your luck has got to go bust sooner or later.”

Jim cleared his throat. “Um, Sheriff, Mutt. What are we doin’ about Molly? About what Mr. Turlough said?”

Highfather nodded. “It was pretty ugly last night, wasn’t it, Jim?”

“The most horrible thing I’ve ever seen, sir,” Jim said. “Whoever did that needs to be put down, ’fore he hurts someone else.”

“Yes,” Highfather said, “he does, but we only have so many hands to do the work and I have to prioritize what gets dealt with first. We’ll make the inquiries to the merchants like Clay said when we get a second to catch our breath. We’ll keep our eyes open.”