Colorado Clash

8

O’Malley had learned how to pick door locks back in Chicago. A colored man who’d given him information on another story had idly boasted that he could open any door lock presented him in under sixty seconds. O’Malley had been amused by the bragging and offered the man money if he could open four doors of O’Malley’s choosing. And damned if the man hadn’t been able to do it. One thing that O’Malley had noticed was how the thief always kept his back to O’Malley so the reporter couldn’t see what he was doing exactly. Later, when they were drinking beer in a colored bar, the man had laid out several small picks on the table. A few of them looked like things a dentist would use. These, the man explained, were burglary tools. He also explained that for the right price he’d sell these same tools to O’Malley. The reporter didn’t need to be convinced. He emptied his pockets and took them home. The business of reporting was a competitive one. To get a better story than another reporter you needed all the help you could get. And what if you had the power to get into any house, any flat, any business office? What kind of reporter would that make you?

Unfortunately, O’Malley’s skills with burglary tools conflicted with his skills as a drinker. In both Chicago and St. Lou he’d managed to get into many a home and many a business office. One of the problems he had was that he got so drunk after looking around that he lost his notebook or forgot what he’d learned. And in both cities the burglary tools led to similar incidents that got him fired. One incident was in a fancy Chicago hotel room. After he’d been inside for a time, trying to find evidence that the girl who lived there was the mistress of a powerful alderman, he discovered the liquor cabinet and drank himself into unconsciousness and passed out on the floor. He was discovered and the paper fired him. Pretty much the same thing in St. Lou except that this was the home of a corrupt banker who found him sleeping peacefully on the couch. The banker threatened to sue the newspaper if O’Malley wasn’t fired.

All these memories came flooding back as O’Malley stood in front of this door in this town now. His plan was to make certain that he could gather enough evidence on the killer. And then he would go to Parrish and tell the bastard only one thing—that he could break the story here or that he could sell it to a Denver paper. The folks in Denver lived every day to find out what was going on in Cawthorne. These murders were more intriguing than any murders presently happening in Denver. And papers large and small thrived on murder stories, didn’t they?

He was just bending down to begin trial and error with his burglary tools when he heard somebody coming. Jamming the tools in the small leather case he carried for them, he hurried down to the end of the hall that opened on another hallway. He could hide there to see who was coming.

The killer. Or the person he was pretty sure was the killer.

He pressed himself flat against the wall. No sense peeking around the edge of the wall. He knew who it was and knew where the person was going. Key in lock. Door being pushed inward. Footsteps going inside. The door closing.

O’Malley had a sudden need for a smoke but wondered if it would be foolish to roll one and enjoy it. To help him think through this problem he reached in his hip pocket and retrieved his metal flask. God bless his metal flask. In the good old days when he was just starting out in Chicago his lady fair of the moment—and fair she’d been indeed—had given it to him for Christmas. Inscribed: With Love, Sharon. Somehow through all the turbulence of his life he’d managed to hang on to it. He’d never lost it or hocked it, though the latter had come to mind many times in the course of the years. It was real silver and pawnshops would pay a fair price for it.

The whiskey felt good going down, even better as it began to burn up into his chest and throat. Salvation and nothing less. Then he checked the railroad watch he’d bought a week ago. Railroad watches he lost frequently. He’d give the person fifteen minutes to walk out of the building and go away. If this didn’t happen O’Malley would come back later.

He rolled a cigarette and lighted it up. As he started fanning away the smoke he heard the door open in the other hall. What if the person decided to use his hall as a way of leaving? O’Malley cursed himself for his stupidity. What would he say? What could he say? I just happen to be standing in this hall smoking a cigarette for no particular reason? If the person really was the killer, O’Malley’s excuse would sound ridiculous and the killer would be on to him immediately.

But luck was with O’Malley for once. The door was closed, the key turned to lock it. And the footsteps led away, taking the same path they’d taken before.

O’Malley was so delighted with his luck he decided there was only one way to congratulate himself for his cunning. He took one, two more swigs—and big swigs they were—from the silver flask and then he peeked around the corner.

All clear.

Straightening his suit coat and shirt, pulling down his vest, O’Malley strode down the hall to the just-vacated room. He had to caution himself to be careful. Somebody else could come along.

He took out his burglary tools and set to work. It took him three tries to get the door open and then, just as it opened, he heard somebody else entering the hall just as the possible killer had. What to do? He hurried inside and closed the door as quietly as possible. Then he once again flattened himself against the wall. What if something had been forgotten and the footsteps meant the person was coming back? Not even an implausible excuse would work for this one. He could be jailed for breaking and entering, the great danger of doing your reporting this way.

The footsteps came closer. O’Malley’s desire was to have another go with the flask but what if in his nervous state he dropped it?

O’Malley held his breath as the footsteps reached the door. People died of heart attacks, didn’t they? Would this be his time? And then the steps went on by.

He proceeded to go through the room. He had been here once before and that was when he found the coat with the silver button. Unfortunately, he’d heard somebody coming down the hall and panicked. He raced from the room before he had time to go through everything. Today he planned to look at everything carefully.

He’d done enough police reporting to know how coppers went through rooms. How they not only lifted up cushions and pillows but felt inside them to see if anything had been hidden in them. The same with clothes in closets. The same with rugs that needed to be lifted to see what might be hidden under them.

He found a number of things under the couch cushions. Coins, combs, halves of opry house tickets, even a magazine. But none of these told him anything. The same with the cardboard wardrobe in the corner. Nothing special about the clothes at all. And nothing special in their pockets. He went through shoes and boots. Nothing inside them either. Frustrated, he went to a stack of magazines and started turning them upside down to see if something might drop out. Pieces of tobacco, a candy wrapper, another opry house ticket stub.

There were only three framed paintings on the wall. All frontier depictions. He took them down, felt along the backs, found nothing. It was while he was looking at the last painting that his eye settled on the bottom of the armchair and the space underneath. He’d checked the armchair along with everything else but what he hadn’t done was look under the armchair. Shouldn’t be difficult, just push it aside.

The chair was covered in a red-and-black design. He nudged against one arm of it and pushed it back far enough so that he could see the floor. Nothing to see but some dust devils and a few magazine pages that had been torn out and collected under the chair. He looked at the pages for some sort of clue to prove his theory but if they had some significance he couldn’t find it.

The failure was getting to him so he stopped for another drink. He thought of smoking in here but that would be too dangerous. What if he accidentally burned something? A telltale sign that somebody had been in here.

He capped the flask and shoved it in his back pocket. And this time his gaze fell on the couch. He didn’t hold out much hope—this whole excursion felt now like a total failure—but what the hell. He’d leave after this and try to think of another way to prove his suspicions.

He walked over to the couch. This took more effort to move than a simple nudge. He bent down and began pushing it out of its position. It was heavier than it looked, the claw feet and all the wood in the structure giving it real weight. He had only turned the couch halfway beyond its previous point when he saw it. A shallow box about the size of a magazine. A feminine blue lid with a lighter blue bottom. He reached down and picked it up. Given the room’s dust, he had to blow a coat of gray from the lid. He took the flask from his pocket, dropped it on the couch and then seated himself to open the box and examine its contents.

The rather stiffly posed photograph on top told him that his suspicions had been correct. There had been a link between the robbery of the woman’s house and the killer. He looked through a trove of illicit obsessions. More posed photographs, two locks of hair, a fine handkerchief, a delicate comb and three or four newspaper articles. But the letters were what held his interest. They were love letters that had never been sent. Their passion, their yearning, their blunt vulnerability—who would suspect any of this in the person O’Malley now knew to be the killer? He went through the unsent letters twice, practically memorizing one of them. He could imagine them on the front page of a newspaper. One per issue. He could imagine how they would be talked about.

How they would be mocked by some, secretly cherished by others. He could imagine the editors of powerful newspapers saying that they must get in touch with the man who wrote these stories. They must have him on staff. And they would agree to just about any salary he asked for. Yes, what a great element these letters would make when the killer had been unmasked and these letters were quoted in O’Malley’s stories about the strange and sad events in little Cawthorne, Colorado. This story had everything that readers wanted.

He sat back and lifted the flask to his mouth. As he was closing the box, he saw the edge of something he had somehow missed in the corner of a group of recipes and church bulletins he had not bothered to look through. There’d been enough of them that he hadn’t noticed it till now.

He lifted the papers and there it was. He stared at it as if he’d discovered one of those mythic treasures writers so loved to write about—pirates’ gold or a lost work of art. But in this case it was more valuable than either.

A posed photograph of Ned Lenihan with his face slashed several times.

He closed the box and left quickly, more excited than he’d been since his days in St. Lou.

At one o’clock in the afternoon the Gold Mine was only half full. Instead of the gamblers who collected here at night the card players were older men playing not poker but pinochle. There were sandwiches of beef and bread on the bar. The piano was quiet and there was no sign of girls. Fargo didn’t have trouble spotting Kenny Raines. He sat at a table with a glass of beer in front of him glaring at Fargo. His gun hand was bandaged. The younger man sitting next to him, with the same bulbous nose and freckled face, was obviously his younger brother. He glared too but he couldn’t summon the same intensity as his brother.

The day bartender, a beanpole of a man in a vivid yellow shirt and red arm garters, took it all in and reached beneath the bar. Fargo saw the move and said, “There won’t be any trouble.”

“The hell there won’t,” Kenny Raines shouted. He started to stand but his brother reached up and yanked him back down.

“You don’t have a gun hand, Kenny,” Sam said, reminding Kenny of the obvious. But it was clear to Fargo that Kenny had been doing a lot of drinking for this time of day.

The card players had stopped to watch. Not only were they interested in the possible gunplay—they wanted to scatter if they needed to. One curious thing about saloon shoot-outs was that the victims often had nothing to do with the fight itself. They just hadn’t been able to get out of the way fast enough.

Fargo walked over to the table where the brothers sat. He grabbed a chair and sat down.

“This hand’s gonna get healed, Fargo. And then I’m comin’ after you.”

Fargo looked at Sam. “Tell your brother by the time this hand heals I’ll be long gone. Also tell him that all I want to do is ask you a few questions. Both of you.”

“You shot his hand.”

“I shot his hand because he was drunk and started a fight with me.”

“Me and him and Clete were good friends.”

“Then I’m talking to the right people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t talk to that son of a bitch, Sam,” Kenny said, waving his white-wrapped hand as if willing Fargo out of existence.

“It means two things. It means that because you knew in advance about that money shipment, you’re both suspects.”

“That’s a damned lie. We didn’t have nothing to do with it!” Now Fargo had riled Sam, too.

“And it also means that since you were such good friends with Clete, maybe you can tell me if he said anything to you after the robbery. And how he was acting. If he’d changed a lot all of a sudden.”

Sam looked at Kenny. “I guess it won’t hurt to talk, Kenny.” Then back to Fargo. “But we didn’t have nothing to do with it, like I said, so there’s no point in even askin’ about it.”

“You talk to the bastard. I sure as hell won’t.” Kenny was at the stage of drunkenness where he was capable only of slurring the same sentiments over and over again.

“When was the last time you saw Clete Byrnes, Sam?”

“Two days before he died.”

“Where?”

“He stopped by our little cabin in back of the stage line.”

“What did he talk about?”

“He said he was thinking of movin’ on. Real fast-like.”

“So he was nervous.”

“Real nervous.”

The sound of snoring cut through the conversation like a saw. Kenny’s head rested on his chest. He was fast asleep.

“You shouldn’t of shot his hand that way.”

“Well, he shouldn’t ought to have attacked me.”

Sam shrugged. “He was scared, real scared. Clete was, I mean. I would’ve been, too. Two of them were dead. He had to know he was next in line. He said he was going to hide out somewhere.”

“He give you any hint of where that was?”

“He didn’t say. Don’t blame him for that, either. You want to hide out, you don’t want anybody else to know where you are.”

“He mention who might be doing the killing?”

“No. And I asked him. I said that he must know something. But all he said was that I’d be surprised.”

“When Sheriff Cain talked to you, did you tell him what Clete said?”

Irritation in the voice and eyes. “I didn’t tell that sheriff jack shit. He’s always treated me and Kenny like we was scum. I wouldn’t help him if he was drowning.”

“You telling me everything you know?”

Sullen now. “Yeah. But I probably shouldn’t after what you done to Kenny’s hand.”

“Don’t you want to find who killed Clete?”

“Yeah, and that’s the only reason I’m talkin’ to you.”

“You have any opinion about who it was?”

“Hell, yes, I do. Ned Lenihan. And everybody knows it. He knew them three boys all their lives. They used to hang around the stage line all the time they were growin’ up. They worshipped him. They’d do whatever he asked them to. And that includes robbing a stage and splitting the money with him.”

“You have any proof of that?”

“Don’t need no more proof than the fact that he needs money bad for that farm of his. He don’t want to look bad for his lady. She’s another one I don’t like. Kenny asked her to dance one Saturday night and she claimed he held her too tight and took some liberties. Everybody takes some liberties when they dance. A little feel here and there. Who does she think she is anyway?”

Kenny’s snoring was louder now. Fargo decided he’d probably outstayed his welcome with the Raines boys. They weren’t exactly the kind of company he cared to keep.

“Maybe you better put his head down on the table before he falls out of the chair,” Fargo said as he stood up.

“Yeah,” Sam snarled, “and maybe you shouldn’t ought to have shot his gun hand.”

The troubled feeling was still with Amy Peters as she stood near the counter where Ned Lenihan was helping a customer finish wrapping up a small box. In addition to selling tickets, overseeing the welfare of coaches and horses and paying salaries, Ned was also responsible for all the shipping. Cawthorne was getting big enough that this represented a significant portion of the small company’s profits. Ned liked to joke that he had nightmares about never being able to speak any words but those of the cautions he gave people shipping things that might break. “You realize that the company can’t take responsibility.” He always said this in the self-mocking way that made her smile.

She hadn’t intended to stop by today. She needed to get home. There was cooking, washing, sewing to do. But after her encounter with Tom Cain she felt a need to see Ned. The past few times she’d seen Cain there’d been a certain edge in his voice, almost a threat. And today’s words—and maybe she was wrong, maybe she was hearing something that he really wasn’t saying—today’s words seemed to carry a warning of some kind.

“Your quilt’ll be fine, Mrs. Swanson,” Ned said to the older lady who had reached into the pocket of her long skirt to dig out her coins. “Now that we’ve got the string tightened up and everything.”

Her clawlike right hand showed why she hadn’t been able to wrap the package properly. Arthritis. The knuckles swollen, the fingers twisted. “You sure do take care of people nice, Ned. That’s why everybody likes you.”

“And here I thought they liked me because of my good looks.”

A sweet smile on Mrs. Swanson’s face. “And you make me laugh.”

When the transaction was done, the old lady, picking her way with her cane, looked up and saw Amy standing there. “I sure wouldn’t let him get away, Amy. He’s the best man in this whole town.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Mrs. Swanson.”

She went on out, leaving them alone in the small office. Schedules and promotional material cluttered the walls in front of the counter. Behind were two desks and five filing cabinets. The back door led to the corral and barn where the vehicles were worked on.

“Well, you’re looking more beautiful than ever, Amy.”

“A touch of the blarney in all Irishmen, as my aunt Mae used to say.”

“Well, remembering her husband, she married a man with more than a touch of it.”

They often joked about Amy’s uncle Dick. He was a decent man but a poor one. This didn’t stop him from always giving other poor people advice on how they could become wealthy. People always told him that if his advice was good he should take it himself.

Then Ned said, “Something wrong, Amy?” Studying her face now.

She put her hand out and he took it. She knew she was making a fool of herself but she couldn’t help it. She needed to reassure herself that everything in her little world was all right, safe. That Ned and she would finally get married and live out their lives together.

“I just got sentimental I guess, is all.” What she wanted to tell him was how much she feared for him. The whispers she was hearing. Her continuing distrust of Tom Cain.

He leaned across the counter and she met him halfway. They kissed.

“Well, stop in any time you get sentimental, Mrs. Peters. I’ll be happy to oblige you.”

Door opened. Bell above it rang. She felt color in her cheeks. Had Mrs. Riley, a professional gossip, seen them kissing? Apparently not, because Mrs. Riley’s scowl wasn’t nearly as deep as usual.

“Hope you’re having a good day, Mrs. Riley,” Amy said.

“I’ve had better ones,” Mrs. Riley said.

She was always such good company, Amy thought. If you liked complainers.

Mrs. Riley was one of those tall women who got too close to you when you talked so that you had to look up to her. She also tended to shout rather than simply speak. Apparently she had only two dresses she was willing to wear in public. A dark blue one and a black one. Shoulders and cuffs were white lace and they were belted in the middle. Today she wore the black one.

She set a small, carefully wrapped package on the counter.

“Now, Ned, I’m not necessarily blaming you for this but the last time I gave you a package to send, the wrapping string came loose. I would prefer that not happen this time.”

Even from the opposite end of the counter Amy could see that the white string around the box was already loose.

“I’ll be sure to take care of that for you, Mrs. Riley.”

Mrs. Riley glanced at Amy. “I consider you a very lucky woman to be engaged to Ned here, Amy. And I defend him every chance I get. As far as I know he didn’t have anything to do with that robbery or these terrible killings.”

Amy felt her face burn. Anger and embarrassment. “Well, that’s very nice of you, Mrs. Riley.” Wanting to spare Ned any further talk of the matter.

But Mrs. Riley wasn’t finished. “I know you need money for that farm of yours you should’ve given up a long time ago. If you had, Ned, people wouldn’t be so suspicious of you. That’s one thing. And as for the killings—I always say that Ned is a sweet little man. Some of my friends always wondered why Amy here didn’t take up with Sheriff Cain. He’s so handsome and strong and—well, manly—but I always say that Ned is a comfort. And maybe that’s what Amy needs at this time in her life.”

“That’s so sweet of you, Mrs. Riley,” Amy said, now more amused than angry. “And when people speak up against you, I’m always the first to say that just because she gossips and tells lies doesn’t mean that deep down she isn’t a very pleasant woman.”

Now it was Mrs. Riley’s face that flushed red. The blue gaze scorched Amy’s face. “I see. A decent woman offers her support to a man the whole town thinks set up that robbery and killed those three poor boys and you think it’s all right to mock her? Are you going to let her insult me this way, Ned?”

“Well, if she hadn’t, Mrs. Riley, I would have.” Ned picked up her small box. “The string is already loose. Just as it was on the last box. But this time I’m going to do you the favor of retying it for you.”

She snatched the box from his hands. “I’ll mail it. Ralph at the post office would never let anybody mock me.”

Lenihan’s Irish eyes twinkled with malice. “Maybe you don’t know what he says about you after you’ve gone.”

She stormed to the door. “Now I know that what people say about you is true. And I hope they hang you.”

She slammed the door so hard the glass shivered.

Amy took Ned’s hands in hers. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just couldn’t help it. That old crone.”

“Don’t worry about it. Ralph called her out a couple of years ago just the way you did. That’s why she started using the stage.” He smiled. “I feel sorry for Ralph.”

Amy laughed. “She’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”

But for all the humor of the moment, Mrs. Riley’s words worried Amy. The town was beginning to see Ned as the number one suspect. In a situation as volatile as this one, that was a frightening realization.