The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

John M. Floyd GUN WORK ^{from Coast to Coast}

Will Parker sat alone on the wooden platform beside the pulpit in the empty church. He was watching, through one of the side windows, the bay horse he’d tied to the hitching rail half an hour ago and the rippling rust-colored leaves of the trees in the distance. It was a sunny October morning, bright enough to light up every corner of the little sanctuary, and the breeze through the open windows was cool but not cold.

Parker crossed his legs, took off his hat, and balanced it on one knee. The pews facing him were as empty as the church, but he had chosen this seat—which wasn’t really a seat—because it offered a clear view of the front door. Whenever possible he sat this way, facing a room with his back to a wall. He remembered what had happened to Bill Hickok.

For the tenth time, Parker checked his pocket watch. He’d been intentionally early, but it was now twenty minutes past the time his client had set for this meeting.

His client. That still sounded strange to him, even after several years as a private investigator. But Parker liked the job, and the agency he and his brother had founded in San Francisco had been surprisingly successful. Granted, most of his recent work was dull—checking backgrounds, locating beneficiaries of a will, uncovering shady deals and/or relationships, etc. (unlike the tough assignments he’d had during his short time with the Pinkerton Agency years ago)—but occasionally he was given something interesting and challenging. He had a feeling this case might be both. After all, he wasn’t often instructed to meet a client at a church in the middle of the week, in the middle of nowhere.

“Mr. Parker?” a voice said.

He looked up to see a tall man in a brown hat and vest standing in the front doorway. Parker had heard no hoofbeats, no footsteps. A quick glance confirmed that his own horse, rented from the livery stable in Dodge early this morning, was still alone at the hitch rail. So much for being watchful.

“Who else would I be?” he said. “We’re probably the only two people within miles.”

“Sorry I’m late,” the tall man said.

Parker stayed seated, watching him. “How’d you get here?”

“Quietly. My horse is tied some distance away.” A smile touched the man’s lips, but only for a moment, there and gone. “The cautious, I have found, live longer.”

“Cautious of what?”

“Of everything.”

With that, the man strode casually down the aisle and extended his hand. “Cole Bennett.”

They shook hands and Bennett took a seat in the front pew, facing Parker from a distance of eight feet or so. Cole Bennett appeared to be in his late fifties, maybe ten years older than Parker. But he looked strong and fit, and had what Parker’s wife, Bitsy, would call a world-weary face. Bennett took off his hat and set it down beside him. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

“You paid for my transportation,” Parker reminded him. “I arrived on last night’s stage.”

“But not from San Francisco. Your brother wired me that you were already fairly close to here at the moment. Redemption, he said?”

“Yes—my wife lived there when I met her. We’re visiting her parents.”

“That was convenient for me.”

“Convenient for me, actually. Less expensive for you.” Parker hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt. “How can I help you, Mr. Bennett?”

Bennett blew out a long sigh. “First I need to tell you a story.”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you remember the Ford brothers? Jesse and Dalton?”

“Barely.”

Again Bennett hesitated, obviously choosing his words. “Some time ago,” he began, “a U.S. marshal, Sam Ewing, shot Dalton Ford during what was said to be the robbery of a bank up in Hays City. The marshal lived here in Dodge but was in Hays the day this happened. Anyhow, Marshal Ewing shot Ford and killed him. Afterward one of the witnesses said Ford was in the bank, sure enough, but wasn’t robbing it—he said Ford was chatting with one of the tellers. Whichever way it happened, the marshal got word he was there, entered the bank, and Dalton Ford—a man wanted for multiple crimes—wound up dead as a pine knot. Dalton’s brother Jesse, who was in prison at the time, heard about the killing, and when he was released a year later he showed up at Ewing’s house just outside Dodge with two of his buddies.”

“Looking for revenge.”

“Yes,” Bennett said. He paused and studied his folded hands.

Will Parker waited, saying nothing.

“According to the official report,” Bennett continued, “Jesse Ford—I’ll just call him Jesse from now on—and his friends arrived one day in July to find Ewing and his twelve-year-old son, Andrew, home in their farmhouse north of town. Not far from here, actually. Mrs. Ewing had died three months earlier, some kind of fever, and Ewing had retired as marshal and took to raising crops and some cattle. Apparently Jesse and his men surprised them. They struck Ewing in the head in the kitchen, held him and the boy at gunpoint, and Jesse ordered his two men to go outside and wait. Five minutes later Ewing got the jump on Jesse and shot him dead, then went out and killed one of Jesse’s friends as well. The other one got away.”

Parker thought that over. “The official report, you said?”

“Yes. It’s what Ewing told the sheriff afterward.”

“Go on.”

“No more to tell. That’s the background,” Bennett said. “The current situation is, I received word recently that things didn’t happen the way everyone thought they did that day at Ewing’s house. I’ve been told that Jesse Ford was shot in the back. One of his two companions was killed with an entry wound in the chest, just like Ewing reported, but—again—Jesse’s wound showed that he was shot from behind.”

“And how did you find all this out?”

“From an old friend of mine. He’d been a sheriff’s deputy in Dodge, back when the incident took place, and saw the two bodies the sheriff brought in. He told me this a few weeks ago, on his deathbed. A week or so after that, I noticed an ad in the newspaper about your agency and sent the wire requesting your services.”

Parker waited for more. When it didn’t come, he asked, “So what is it that you need?”

Bennett turned to look out the window at the small stand of oaks Parker had been watching earlier. The wind had died; the leaves were still. Like Bennett’s expression.

“I need to know what happened that day,” Bennett said. “What really happened.”

“Why don’t you just ask the sheriff?”

“Because the sheriff is dead. So is former marshal Sam Ewing, and even his son, Andrew. The son died young, from an accident on a cattle drive, south of here. They’re all gone now.”

Parker studied Cole Bennett for a moment. “What haven’t you told me, Mr. Bennett?”

“I haven’t told you when all this happened.”

“When did it happen?”

Bennett let out a lungful of air. “Sam Ewing shot Jesse Ford twenty-two years ago.”

“What?”

“My friend—the deputy—said he kept the secret all those years because the sheriff asked him to. Said everybody in town loved Sam Ewing, all the Ewings. Said the sheriff figured what good would it do to tell the whole story? Jesse Ford was dead, along with one of his cutthroat friends, and the world was better off for it. Why complicate things? The deputy said he and the sheriff, and of course Ewing and his son, were the only people who knew Jesse was back-shot. And that only the two Ewings knew how it happened.”

Bennett went quiet then, staring down at his boots as if in deep thought.

Parker let the silence drag out, then said, “I think we have a problem here, Mr. Bennett. If this took place more than twenty years ago and everyone involved is deceased, why do you think I could find out any more than what you just told me?”

Bennett raised his head. “Because I don’t think they’re all deceased.”

“You just said—”

“I said the deputy told me Sam Ewing and his son were the only people who saw exactly what happened. But I think there’s someone else.” He leaned forward in his seat, his eyes locked on Parker’s. “I heard Sam Ewing’s son, Andrew, had a childhood friend his own age, and I heard that in the summers they were inseparable, those two boys, especially in the months after Sam’s wife passed. Way I heard it, this kid was at little Andrew Ewing’s house most every day.” Bennett paused, drew a breath, and said, “I’d be willing to bet—in fact, I guess I am betting, by hiring you—that whoever this boy was, he was probably there with Andrew the day Jesse Ford and his men came to call. I’m betting he never got mentioned because everyone involved was trying to protect him. Again, why make a simple matter complicated?”

Parker gave this some thought. “Do you have a name?”

“No. But I have confidence you’ll come up with one. And when you do…” Bennett paused again, his face solemn. “When you find him, maybe he has what I need to know.”

Another question was nagging at Parker. An important question.

“Why do you need to know?”

Cole Bennett settled back into the pew. “My wife,” he said, “was a Ford. Jesse and Dalton, as worthless as they were, were her nephews. Her brother’s sons. I told her what my deputy friend, before he died, told me about Jesse’s death, and it’s driving her crazy. She says she has to know what really happened in that kitchen that day.”

Parker mulled that over. “All due respect,” he said, “why do you need me? Why couldn’t you ask the same kinds of questions you want me to ask?”

“Because you’re the expert. I checked out the references your brother gave me.” Bennett picked up his hat and stood. “I’m trusting you to solve this for me, Mr. Parker.”

Parker, who had spent a lot of time doing this kind of work, knew a lie when he heard it. He knew Cole Bennett didn’t want to ask around about this matter for the same reason Bennett had picked a remote spot for their meeting today: he couldn’t afford to be connected to all this. What are you hiding, Mr. Bennett?

Parker rose to his feet also, and the two men stood facing each other.

“Your brother told me your name’s Will,” Bennett said.

“That’s right.”

“It occurred to me that you bear some resemblance to another Parker, well known in this part of the country years ago. By reputation, at least.”

“What kind of reputation?”

“He was a gunman. A killer, I’m told.”

“Is that so.”

Bennett tilted his head, narrowed his eyes. “This man’s name was Charlie Parker.”

Parker felt himself shrug. “Sorry. No relation.”

Bennett studied him a moment more, nodded, and left. Parker remained standing where he was. This time he did hear hoofbeats, moments later, receding into the distance.

Parker sighed. All God’s chillun got secrets, he thought.

After another minute or so, Charles William Parker walked outside to the hitching rail, mounted the bay, and headed back to town.

It took Parker less than six hours to narrow things down a bit. Unlike the procedures he’d followed to gather information the last time he’d visited these parts—a missing-person case in the small town of Redemption—he didn’t bother with the saloons and the stables and the blacksmith and the stockyards. This time he concentrated on places where he could find and talk with the womenfolk. After several hours of visiting the general store, a dress shop, the schoolhouse, and a church—this one with more pews and more windows than the one this morning—he’d discovered that young Andrew Ewing was well remembered by some of the older teachers and ladies. One, a widow with the unfortunate name of Ophelia Reardon, recalled that Andrew had indeed made one especially close friend during his long-ago school years.

“Truitt,” Mrs. Reardon said, smiling at the memory. “Can’t recall his first name, but little Andrew Ewing played a lot with Daisy Truitt’s boy. Never saw one of them without the other.”

“When exactly was that?” Parker asked. “When they were teenagers?”

“Earlier. When they were eleven or twelve, probably.” A thought seemed to come to her, and Mrs. Reardon’s smile faded a bit. “Around the time Andrew’s mama died, and that outlaw Ford came and tried to kill Marshal Ewing,” she said.

Which was exactly what Parker wanted to hear.

“Is Mrs. Truitt still here in Dodge?” he asked, holding his breath.

“Sure is. Husband died five years ago. She and her son live on the other end of town.” Ophelia Reardon pointed toward the reddening sunset. “You turn left there at the stage office, their place is about a mile south, on the right side of the road. White house with a tall barn.”

Parker thanked her and set out in that direction. Five minutes later he climbed the front steps of a white-painted home and rapped on the front door. The small woman who answered the knock looked about as old as Cole Bennett was, which made sense. Twenty-two years ago she would’ve been about the right age to have a twelve-year-old child. She was holding what looked like a damp washcloth.

Mentally crossing his fingers, Parker identified himself and, without giving a reason, asked if he might meet her son and ask him a few questions.

She stared at Parker a long time before answering. “You can certainly meet him,” she said at last. “But I’m afraid questions won’t do any good.”

“Excuse me?”

She heaved a sigh and motioned him inside. The house was old but neatly kept. Parker followed her down a dark hallway and through a door to a room containing nothing but a bed and two small tables on each side. Propped up on pillows in the bed was a pale, thin-faced man in his thirties, with sandy hair. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and peaceful. His forehead and cheeks looked wet. Parker now understood the washcloth.

When Parker turned to look at her, Daisy Truitt gave him a sad smile. “My poor boy Wilson. He’s been that way six months now,” she said. “Got kicked by a mare while he was trying to shoe her. Doc says it caught him square in the left temple, at just the wrong place. When his brother got here he went out and shot the horse dead, not that that did anybody any good.” She studied her visitor again and added, “He can’t speak, Mr. Parker—he can’t even hear us. Could I be of some help instead, with your questions?”

Parker, stunned, shook his head. “I doubt it, ma’am. Unless he might possibly have told you something—anything—about the day Jesse Ford was killed, up at the Ewing place.”

She looked shocked. “Wilson? No, I’m afraid not. I doubt he knew anything about that.”

“Well, then, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“No bother at all.”

They retraced their steps to the front door, but Parker was barely aware of it. His legs felt heavy, like chunks of firewood. What a disappointing way to end his search. And his assignment.

Parker thanked Mrs. Truitt again at the door and was turning to leave when it hit him. He stopped and looked at her in the gathering twilight. “You said his brother shot the horse?”

“That’s right. My second son.”

“You have another son?”

“Two years younger,” she said. “His name’s Tommy.”

Parker swallowed. “Could he have known Andrew Ewing? The marshal’s boy?”

“Oh my, yes. Those two were best friends.”

Tommy Truitt, it turned out, lived in the town of Hopeful, about half a day’s ride from Dodge. Will Parker, hopeful now also, sent a wire that night to his wife and another to his brother, Robert, at the agency’s home office. He assured Bitsy he’d try to be back by the end of the week and informed his brother that he had met with Cole Bennett and was making progress. He rewarded himself with a thick steak at a café called Delmonico’s and a beer at the Long Branch, and after that retired to his hotel to sleep the sleep of the weary and guiltless.

Or at least the weary.

It was hard, Parker had decided, to escape the past. Years ago, young and reckless, he had chosen all the wrong friends and all the wrong endeavors, and his steely nerves and uncanny skill with firearms soon found him steady employment and built him a reputation from Fort Smith to Deadwood. Inevitably, many who heard about Charlie Parker wanted to challenge him, and those who did died. When maturity and self-preservation finally convinced him to give up gun work, he went East, started using his middle name instead, and landed a job with the Pinkertons in Washington, one that required brains over bravado. Since then he’d done some security work, even a stint as a deputy, before joining his brother at Parker Investigations in San Francisco.

Even now, though, after all this time, a lot of people remembered the name Charlie Parker. When that happened he usually pled ignorance, which occasionally worked. He doubted that it had worked with Cole Bennett.

What a career change, Parker thought. He’d gone from being a hired gun to being a liar.

He fell asleep wondering which was worse.

Will Parker got up early, had a leisurely breakfast, and rode into Hopeful just past noon. The town was appropriately named, he decided; there seemed to be nowhere for it to go but up. He counted a dozen dreary houses and half-a-dozen dreary stores, all clustered around the intersection of a sluggish creek and a muddy road. He hoped Tommy Truitt lived on this side of the creek. The wooden bridge looked too rickety to support a man, much less a man on a horse.

At one of the buildings—a sort of combination saloon and dry-goods store—he was told that Truitt owned a small ranch west of town. There was no real road out that way, but the directions Parker received seemed simple enough. An hour later he found the spread.

He also found Tommy Truitt, on his knees in the doorway of a barn, shoeing a gray horse. Given the family history, Parker figured it to be a scary task. The horseshoer looked up as Parker rode in and eased the gray’s foreleg to the ground. Something about the man’s eyes verified that he was the son of the woman Parker had spoken to the night before.

Parker stopped ten feet away and propped both arms on his saddle horn. “I’ve come a ways to find you, Mr. Truitt. Can I interrupt your work for a while?”

Truitt put down his tools, stood, and sleeved sweat from his brow. “Don’t know. I’m having an awful good time here.”

Both of them smiled.

“Help yourself to water for you and your horse,” Truitt said, pointing to a well and bucket. “I’ll be right with you.”

Fifteen minutes later introductions were made and Parker’s task was explained. The two of them sat in rockers on the front porch of the house. Truitt’s wife and daughter, he said, were visiting his wife’s mother, in town. Chickens pecked and strutted in the dusty yard, and small white clouds cast moving pools of shade across the flatlands. The wind was chilly.

Tommy Truitt exhaled a deep sigh. “Yes, I was there that day,” he answered. “And no, I’ve never spoken of it to anybody, not even my ma and pa.”

“You didn’t tell your brother?”

“So you know about Wilson? A sad thing, that horse kicking him. I go over as often as I can, help Ma with chores…” Truitt paused, adrift in his thoughts. Then he blinked and said, “No, I never told him. Wilson was a bit older, and for some reason we never got along. Guess that’s why I played so much with Andrew.”

Parker, wondering how to proceed, decided to be direct. “Do you remember what happened that day?”

“I’ll never forget it,” Tommy Truitt murmured.

A silence fell, during which Parker had the good sense to keep quiet. After a full minute or more, Truitt took a long breath and said, “We’d been playing in a patch of woods behind his house, with a bow and arrow we’d made out of sticks and a springy branch. We were trying to shoot a rabbit, and Andrew kept saying we needed that old eight-gauge shotgun his pa had, not a homemade bow and a little stick with an arrowhead tied to the end. He said his pa had put away all his weapons when he retired, but Andrew knew where the shotgun was stored. He said we ought to sneak it out and shoot that rabbit. Said there wouldn’t be nothing left but a cotton tail.”

He stopped for a beat, and Parker saw him smiling a little at the memory. The smile didn’t last long.

“That was when we heard hoofbeats, coming down the road from town,” Truitt said. “By the time we got back to the house—”

—three horses were tied to the porch rail. Tommy Truitt didn’t recognize any of them.

He and Andrew climbed the steps, crept inside, and found three men in the kitchen with guns drawn and Andrew’s father sprawled on the floor with blood on his forehead. Greenish white peas were scattered on the floor, some still in their hulls, along with a broken bowl and an overturned chair. Tommy figured the intruders must’ve caught the marshal shelling peas and hit him with a gun barrel. “Pa?” Andrew cried.

When Marshal Ewing saw them—Andrew’s pa would always be Marshal Ewing to Tommy—he propped himself up on one elbow and groaned, “Run, boys. Get outta here.”

One of the three men told him, in a bored voice, to shut up. This was the ringleader, Tommy could see that. He was the oldest and the meanest-looking too. He had dragged one of the kitchen chairs over to the wall beside the spot where Andrew’s father was lying and was sitting in it, leaning back against the wall. The glare he gave the two boys sent chills up Tommy’s spine. The man said to one of his friends, ‘Get rid of ’em, Dixon.”

For just a second Tommy wondered what he meant, and then understood. The man the leader had spoken to seemed to understand too. “No,” he said.

The leader turned to face Dixon. “What did you say?”

“I said no. I’m not shootin’ any kids, Jesse.”

It was then that Tommy knew who the leader was. Jesse Ford. He’d heard the name mentioned in town. Tommy had thought Ford was in jail.

But he wasn’t. He was here, in Andrew’s house, sitting in a chair against the wall and pointing a gun at Andrew’s pa, lying at his feet. It felt like a dream, a scary one. But it was real.

“Then I guess I’ll have to,” Jesse Ford said.

“No.” Dixon shook his head. “Nobody’s shootin’ a kid.”

The two men stared at each other for what seemed a long time. Sam Ewing was still propped on one elbow, opening and closing his eyes and breathing hard. Finally Ford said, “What do you suggest, then? We can’t let ’em go—they done seen us, and can tell the Law.”

“So can that woman we saw in the field a few miles back. She got a good look at us.”

“We shoulda killed her too,” Ford muttered.

“Jesse’s right, Dixon,” the other man said, a short guy with a face like a weasel’s. “I’ll do it if you won’t.”

Ignoring him, Dixon said, “We don’t have to kill ’em. We could tie ’em up. Or lock ’em up someplace. All we need is time to get this done and get far enough away.”

“You could lock us in the pantry,” young Andrew said, speaking for the first time. Tommy turned in surprise to look at him, and so did everyone else. Even Marshal Ewing’s eyes were open now, and watching.

“It’s right there,” Andrew added, his voice shaky, and pointed to the wall against which Jesse Ford’s chair was leaning. “The only door’s just around the corner, and it locks.”

“Who in the hell would put a lock on a pantry?” Ford growled.

“My ma, years ago. She kept stuff in there, kerosene and poison and such, that I wasn’t supposed to get into.”

Dixon walked to the corner, then came back. “It has a latch, with an open padlock on it.”

Jesse Ford sighed and nodded. “Get ’em in there, then.”

Within seconds the two boys found themselves inside the long, dim pantry. Dixon had steered them through the door, and afterward Tommy heard the lock snap shut. Narrow bars of light seeped in under the door and through the spaces between the wall boards.

The first thing Tommy heard, from the other side of the shared wall, was Jesse Ford’s voice: “You men go outside, you and Dixon both. Bring the horses round to the back door here and wait for me. I won’t be long.”

“You gonna kill him?” Weasel Face said.

“That’s what I came here for. Now get out, both of you.”

Tommy, who had been listening and peering into the kitchen through the tiny slits between the boards, heard Andrew moving around in the back of the pantry. “What are you doing?” he whispered. Andrew didn’t answer.

On the other side of the wall—Tommy could see the dark outline of Jesse Ford’s back as he sat in the chair only inches away—Ford said, “Well, well, Marshal. Here we are, just you and me. You beginning to be sorry you killed my brother?”

Weakly, Sam Ewing said, “Wish I’d had a chance to kill you too.”

Ford cackled a laugh. “I got news for you, Marshal. Them two boys of yours are gonna die too, soon as I finish with you. I’ll just shoot the lock off the door and take care of ’em both. Might have to shoot Dixon too, afterwards. Looks like he ain’t got the grit I thought he had.”

All of a sudden Tommy felt Andrew pushing him aside. Andrew had something in his hands, but Tommy couldn’t make it out. He was about to whisper a question when Andrew placed one end of whatever he was holding—a long stick?—against the wall Ford was leaning back on and squatted down behind it.

“Ain’t no use wastin’ time,” Ford’s voice said. Tommy heard the click of a pistol being cocked. “This is for Dalt—”

Jesse Ford never finished the sentence. Tommy heard an explosion—it sounded like a blast of dynamite only inches from his right ear—and suddenly there was a fist-sized hole in the pantry wall. Light poured in from the kitchen, smoky gray light, and then he saw Andrew standing beside him. Andrew was saying something to him, shouting it, his lips moving, but Tommy could hear nothing. Finally he saw Andrew motion to him to get down. Tommy ducked and heard yet another explosion, above his head. He looked up to see that the pantry door was open, the wood splintered in a huge circle around the spot where the lock had been. Andrew stormed past him and out the door, holding his pa’s double-barreled eight-gauge, and Tommy stumbled after him, ears ringing. Andrew was reloading as he ran, stuffing in fresh shells.

There was no need. They rounded the corner to find the kitchen empty. Jesse Ford’s body was lying in the middle of the floor, lying where Andrew had blown him out of the chair and forward six or seven feet. Marshal Ewing was nowhere to be seen. Blood was everywhere.

Before Tommy could get his mind around all this, he heard—through his left ear—a pistol shot, and followed Andrew out the back door. Standing there in the yard were two men: Dixon and Marshal Ewing. Dixon had his hands raised, and Ewing was leaning against a tree, his smoking revolver pointed and rock-steady. At first Tommy wondered where Ewing had found a pistol, then realized it must’ve been Jesse Ford’s, picked up off the kitchen floor after Andrew had shot him. A short distance away, lying at the feet of one of the three horses, was the motionless body of Weasel Face. His shirt was bloody and a gun lay in the dust beside him.

For a long moment no one said a word. The boys gawked at the two men and the two men stared at each other. Somewhere nearby a crow cawed.

With the back of his hand Andrew’s father wiped blood from his eyes. He was covered with it, from head to toe, and Tommy realized most of it was Jesse Ford’s.

“Give me a reason I shouldn’t kill you,” Marshal Ewing said.

Dixon shook his head. He looked sad, and strangely unafraid. “I can’t.”

Ewing cast a quick glance at his son and Tommy, then said to Dixon, “You don’t seem the same kind of man as those other two were. What are you doing in this bunch?”

“I’m more like them than not,” Dixon said. “But there’s some things I won’t do.”

“Like murder a child.”

“Yes.”

Another long silence passed.

“Get out of here, Mr. Dixon. And don’t come back.”

Without a word, Dixon lowered his hands, walked to his horse, mounted up, and rode away. Tommy and the two Ewings watched until he disappeared around the curve of the trail.

Then Andrew put the shotgun down and ran to his father. Tommy did too. Marshal Ewing scooped both of them into his arms, then stopped when his son cried out in pain. As it turned out, Andrew’s right shoulder was badly sprained from the kick of the eight-gauge. And he had even fired it a second time, Tommy remembered, to blow away the door lock.

All three of them, as if at a signal, turned to look at the shotgun lying in the dirt.

“Guess I won’t bother hiding it anymore,” Ewing said.

“And that’s what happened.” Tommy Truitt looked at Parker and shrugged. “They’re all gone now. Marshal Ewing, Andrew, everybody. Except me.”

Parker nodded. He had started out taking notes but had soon quit and just listened. “You all agreed, I guess, never to talk about it.”

“That’s right. To anybody. And the marshal insisted on hiding the fact that Andrew was the one who killed Jesse Ford and that I was even there at all. If anyone else ever showed up looking for revenge, he said, simpler was better. Three men came, two died, one got away.”

Parker wondered what it would feel like to live through that and never tell anyone about it. Maybe telling it, at long last, had helped a little.

“Andrew was a tough kid,” Truitt said. “And smart. He talked a bunch of killers into locking us in a room that had a gun hidden in it.”

Parker nodded. “Smart and lucky. Lucky two of the three men were outside, lucky that Jesse Ford sat where he did, lucky that Sam Ewing was on the floor, underneath the line of fire.”

Truitt didn’t reply. He just sat, slowly rocking, looking out at the flat plains and his memories. After a while he blinked and studied Parker’s face. “You said you came a long way for this. Did you get what you needed?”

“I got what my client needed. You cleared up a lot of things.”

“Now I plan to forget about it,” Truitt said.

He rose to his feet, and Parker followed.

“You’re welcome to stay for supper,” Truitt said. “My family’ll be home soon.”

“Much obliged, but I need to go.” Parker turned to leave, then paused. “One question. You said you’d heard the name Jesse Ford before all this happened.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, he wasn’t the only one did gun work back then. Ever hear of Pete Lawson, or Merrill Smith, or Charlie Parker?”

Truitt thought a moment, then shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

“Good,” Parker said.

The temperature dropped like a stone that night, and the following afternoon was windy and cold and overcast. The orange, yellow, and red leaves of the trees outside the small country church seemed to be struggling to stay on the branches, and many of them failed. Parker arrived just before three o’clock. This time Bennett was early; Parker found him standing at the head of the center aisle. They shook hands and settled again into the same seats they’d taken earlier.

“Let’s hear it,” Bennett said.

Twenty minutes later the story had been told. Parker left nothing out. Using many of Tommy Truitt’s own words, he told Bennett about the intrusion, the spoken threat to the two boys, Dixon’s challenge to Jesse Ford’s order, the locking of the boys in the pantry, the shotgun blast through the wall, the shootout in the back yard, the departure of the third attacker.

“I believe every word he said,” Parker concluded. “That’s the way it happened.”

For a long time Bennett sat there in silence, fingering the buttons of his overcoat. At last he said, “It makes sense. I couldn’t see Sam Ewing as a back-shooter. But I had to know.” He stood up. “You’ve done good work, Mr. Parker. I’ll be sending full payment to your office tomorrow morning.” He turned and moved away toward the front of the church.

“Give my best wishes to Mrs. Dixon,” Parker said.

Bennett stopped in his tracks. For several seconds he stood motionless, then turned again and locked eyes with Parker. Parker hadn’t moved. He was still sitting there, on the platform beside the pulpit.

Very slowly Bennett walked back to the first pew. It was so quiet in the church Parker could hear the wood creak as Bennett sagged into the seat. His face was blank.

“Are you even married?” Parker asked him. “Or was that a lie too?”

“I’m married. But my wife wasn’t a Ford. And she has no nephews.” Bennett paused for a beat, then said, “How did you know?”

“That you were the third man?” Parker sighed. “I’m not sure. Maybe it takes somebody with a guilty conscience to recognize it in someone else. Besides, you were so certain that Andrew had a playmate who would’ve been there at the time. Why were you so sure? And something else that bothered me from the start was that you felt you couldn’t pursue this on your own. I finally realized that if you had, if you’d discovered the identity of Andrew’s friend and approached him yourself to ask him questions—”

“He might’ve recognized me. From that day.”

“Right,” Parker said. “And I assumed you had a reason why you’d rather not call attention to your past.”

“My reason is I’m an elected official now. A mayor. Back East a ways.”

“I know. And I know where. My brother checked, and contacted me this morning.”

Bennett stayed quiet a minute, gazing out the window.

“You think anyone’ll find out?” he asked.

“About your former life? That you rode with Jesse Ford? No. Even if they do, so what? You’re a changed man.”

“What about Tommy Truitt?”

“The two of you live far apart. I doubt you’ll ever meet.”

Bennett rubbed his face wearily. “Maybe we should.” He looked Parker in the eye and said, “I went there that day to help murder an innocent man. What I did got two people killed.”

“What you did saved three people too.”

Bennett gave that some thought, and nodded. This time both of them stood. “Thank you, Mr. Parker.”

“What should I call you?”

“My name’s Morris Dixon.”

They shook hands. “Have a safe journey home, Mr. Mayor.”

“You too.”

Parker watched through the window as Dixon rode away, then he pulled up the collar of his coat and stomped outside to his own horse. He had already swung into the saddle when he saw a grizzled old man in a fur hat and a bearskin trudging up the road toward him. Parker loped over to the man and reined in.

The old-timer looked up and patted the shotgun he held in the crook of his arm. “Good day for squirrel huntin’,” he said.

Parker burrowed deeper into his coat. “If you say so.”

The old man chuckled, then frowned. He leaned forward and squinted. Parker knew what was coming.

“I know you from someplace,” the hunter said. “Ain’t you Charlie Parker?”

Parker raised his head a moment, gazed up at the trees and the falling leaves and then at the woods and the straight, flat road that led to his wife and his brother and the rest of his life. He thought about past deeds and past decisions, and about Cole Bennett, also known as Morris Dixon. Then he looked back down at the old-timer.

“I used to be,” Parker said.