The Big Showdown

Chapter Thirteen

The explosive reports of his .44 were still echoing and reverberating in the high-ceilinged saloon when — still several steps up from the man he’d just shot — Caleb York said, “Damn.”

He went down those last few steps and knelt by Gil Willart, knowing the man would be dead but checking anyway. Rita was making her way slowly down the stairs, leaning a hand on the banister all the way down. Her face was white as a lace hanky.

She paused on the step from which York had fired, asking, “Did you have to kill him?”

Slowly, York got to his feet. “I wish to hell I hadn’t. He died knowing things I need to.”

The dark eyes were big and round. “Why did you then? You shot him twice, Sheriff. If you wanted him alive...”

“A man pulls on me, I put him down.” He glanced at her. “That’s how I can be standing here jawing about it with you.”

She drew in a breath, nodded. But she stayed where she was on the stairs, the garish beauty of her dance-hall attire at odds with the crumpled shot-to-hell cowboy at its foot.

York asked the woman, “Were any of the other rooms up there occupied?”

She shook her head. “No. None of the girls was doing any... entertaining this evening.”

“Well, we need to clear this place out,” the sheriff said, but when he turned to look, the clientele had already skedaddled. All that remained were one bartender and the dealer at the poker table, as well as the girls at the table back near the empty dance floor and unmanned piano. The doves looked ashen and afraid, and one was crying. They’d clearly seen Willart die, and even in a room this size, the bouquet of gunpowder lingered.

Finally getting around to holstering his .44, York went over to the bar and told Hub to stand guard at the batwing doors. For now, the Victory was closed. The big bartender did this without comment or question.

Then York went over to the poker table and told the gambling man who dealt there to go fetch Doc Miller.

The dealer, Yancy Cole, wore a white round-brim black-banded hat, a gray suit, and a ruffled shirt. It was the kind of outfit that got you killed if you weren’t a gambler, and sometimes got you killed, anyway.

In a Southern accent that might have been real, Cole said, “Perhaps the unduh-take-ah might be the bettah party to bring around.”

“We won’t have to send for the undertaker,” York said. “He should be here anytime now.”

The sheriff had barely spoken those words when the bartender at the doors let in a little man all in black — did Perkins sleep in those mourner’s duds? — and came over in a solemn one-man procession. He had his black beaver high hat in hand, revealing a head bald as an egg, and he was skeleton skinny under that frock coat.

Perkins stood near the corpse and said to York, “Has the deceased any family?”

“Not that I know of. Likely be the usual two dollars paid by the city.”

The undertaker nodded. Such bad news was as inevitable as death itself.

“But there’s another two dollars upstairs,” York said encouragingly. “One of the girls here. Murdered.”

“By this gentleman?”

“I don’t believe so. But I don’t want any of the bodies dragged off just yet. I have some detective work to do here first.”

Hub was letting Doc Miller in. Based upon the rumpled state of his brown suit, and his uncombed white hair, the stubby little medic probably did sleep in his clothes.

The doc, Gladstone bag in hand, trundled over and raised a white eyebrow at the corpse, then turned his gaze to the undertaker and raised the other one.

“Mr. Perkins here has the right idea,” Miller said. “There appears to be nothing more to be done for this poor creature but to bury him.”

“Agreed,” York said, then gestured a thumb at the ceiling. “And you’ve lost another patient upstairs.”

York filled the doctor in.

Having absorbed it all, Miller nodded toward the undertaker. “That also sounds more like this gentleman’s purview than my own.”

“No, Doc, I want you to bring your medical eye to the murder room.”

That seemed reasonable to Miller, who followed the sheriff up the stairs, Rita having already gone back up to the landing, where she paced a small area, arms folded.

As the two men stood poised at the doorway of Pearl’s little room, the doc said, “Well, our dead friend downstairs didn’t do this.”

“I know he didn’t.”

“Then my medical eye may not be needed. How did you come up with that diagnosis, Caleb?”

York gestured. “Headboard’s against the wall. The girl’s killer faced her. Left side of the bed, I’d say. A throat slashed like that bleeds all to hell. Willart would have been covered in the stuff.”

Miller nodded. “Well-reasoned. He’d have been sprayed head to thigh. Whoever did this went out dripping.”

“Good point. Keep lookin’, Doc, I’ll be back right quick.”

York moved out onto the narrow strip of landing between wall and railing. The flooring had a runner of carpet, dark red, and on close inspection, drops of similar red indeed could be made out. They led to the doorway onto the rear stairs that emptied out into the alley where not so long ago Tulley had found the body of Pearl’s bank-clerk fiancé.

Those stairs were bare wood and all the way down a trail of red drops, tiny splashes where they hit, led to the door and then out into the alley. There the killer had mocked York by dumping something between those two garbage barrels, right where Upton had been found.

A duster, the front of the tan light-linen coat drenched in Pearl’s blood, still shimmering with it, lay crumpled, discarded, like a skin a snake crawled out of.

Well, hadn’t one?

A tossed handkerchief was covered in blood — the killer had wiped his face off, since that much flesh at least had been exposed to the scarlet spray.

York could see where somebody had scraped the bottom of their shoes the way you would deal with muddy soles before heading inside. Smears of blood were dug into the wavy, heavy shoe marks, and no droplets led away from the alley at all.

A cold-blooded killing had taken place in the very building where — and while — York had been questioning Gil Willart. That is, the killer’s blood had been cold — Pearl’s was still warm. But the sheriff had no doubt that when Willart left Pearl, she’d still been breathing.

This had just happened.

And the killer had slipped away, out the back door, like a cheating husband.

Right under York’s damn nose.

Heaving a sigh of self-disapproval, York trudged up those back stairs and soon was with the doctor in the murder room again.

“She died quick,” the doc said. “Horribly, but quick. One of those small favors we’re expected to thank God for.”

“What else can you tell me?”

The doc pointed to the floor near the bed. “Look under there. That’s the murder weapon.”

York nodded. “I spotted that, but haven’t had a close look yet.”

“Take one.”

York did.

The knife was small, the kind usually tucked into a boot or belt or sleeve, five inches of pointed blade with a jigged bone handle and double brass guard — dagger-style, its gleaming double-edged blade looking razor sharp. One side of the blade bore tiny tears of blood.

“Smoky Mountain toothpick,” York said, rising.

“So sharp,” the doc said, “it made its cut and took just a little blood away with it.”

York pointed at the dead girl. “What does the wound tell you, Doc?”

“That’s a right-to-left wound, judgin’ by the messy exit point. Probably a right-handed man, but that’s nothing you can take to a jury. That kind of blade? You can swing backhanded, if you’ve a mind.”

York nodded. “Step into the hall, would you, Doc?”

They spoke just outside the murder room. The sheriff told the doctor of the bloody trail down the steps and the blood-spattered duster they led to.

“I could use some help gatherin’ the evidence, Doc. Grab a sheet off of one of these beds and go down and wrap that bloody duster up for me, and keep it at your office till I need it.”

The doc gave him half a humorless smile. “You figure that’s a good place for it, do you? Since I get more blood splashed around in my surgery than you do in your office.”

York gave him a grim smile. “I knew you’d understand.”

The doc nodded toward the murder room. “You want me to secure that weapon?”

“No, I’ll get it.”

York went back in, picked up the Smoky Mountain toothpick, wiped what little blood there was off on the bedsheet, and stuck it in his boot, where there was a place for such a weapon.

Then, standing tall, he looked down at the poor dead girl, her mouth frowning, her wound grinning, the skinny thing all blister pale.

“I’ll get the son of a bitch, Pearl,” he told her quietly. “Don’t you worry a hair on your pretty little head about it.”

York returned to the main floor of the saloon, where near the bottom of the stairs the undertaker stood guarding his two dollars.

“Go on and get your wicker baskets, Mr. Perkins,” York said. “They’re all yours, upstairs and down.”

Perkins gave him a ghastly smile. “You’re a good man, Sheriff.”

“One thing, Mr. Perkins.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Those outlaws comin’ to town after my hide?”

“Uh... what about that, sir?”

“If things don’t go my way, and you put me in your window? I will haunt your skinny backside till Judgment Day.”

Perkins gulped and turned as white as the dead girl upstairs. “Sir, I would never...”

But York, smiling darkly to himself, had moved on to where Rita was keeping her upset girls company at their table toward the back.

He took her aside. “Honey, you need to pack a bag.”

She frowned, startled by the suggestion. “What?”

“Not everything you own. Just enough to hold you over for two or three days.”

“What for?”

He brushed a tendril of dark hair from her face. “I aim to protect that girl I saw in the lamp glow the other night.”

That stopped her. She smiled just a little. “So you do care?”

“A sheriff cares about every citizen. Some a little more than others.”

Smiling, she nodded, but as she was going off, he called, “Put on your Levi’s like the other morning. Leave your work clothes behind.”

She nodded and disappeared up the stairs, skirting a corpse and an undertaker.

Rita had barely gone when Tulley burst in, scattergun raised in a fist, attack-style, that and the badge on his shirt allowing him to bull right past Hub at the batwings.

For a moment, York thought the Rhomers had arrived after dark, after all.

But that wasn’t it — Tulley had just heard about the excitement down to the Victory.

The eyes in the white-bearded face were wild. “I hate to ’bandon my post, Sheriff, but I thought mebbe you might need your ol’ deputy.”

York put a hand on the man’s shoulder, while using his other hand to pull down the shotgun-waving arm.

“You did right, Tulley. I can use you right about now. And, anyway, smart money is on the Rhomers hitting town in sunlight.”

He filled Tulley in on what had happened here. The undertaker was heading out, going after his wicker baskets, and the deputy took everything in with big eyes.

“Now,” York said, “in just a short while, Miss Rita will be comin’ down those steps with a travelin’ bag in hand.”

“She goin’ somewheres?”

“She’s going to a jail cell down at our office. You’re going to accompany her there. And we’ll leave your post at the stable untended for tonight. Just before sunup, you’ll head over with your scattergun. Till then, Miss Rita is in your charge.”

Tulley was frowning. “The gal know she’s headin’ for a jail cell?”

“Possibly not. Make her as comfortable as you can. Give her that large cell, way on the end. If she needs a meal, run down to the hotel restaurant and have them bring one up. And let her know all she has to do is call out and you’ll walk her to the privy. Got all that?”

Tulley was shaking his head doubtfully. “This may not all be to her likin’.”

“It may not. Be firm. You have a gun.”

The deputy goggled at the sheriff. “Well, sir, ladies like Miss Rita, they has guns, too, sometimes.”

“Little ones, Tulley. Not a great big one like you.”

That made Tulley smile. He seemed mollified. And the thing was, York hoped Rita would have a gun amongst her things. If somebody got past him and Tulley, she might need to defend herself.

Because she was behaving very much like the kind of loose end this killer was tying off.

At the doors, York told Hub that if Rita wanted to reopen the Victory, that was fine — once the undertaker had hauled both corpses away.

“Might want to do some work with a mop first,” York advised.

“Sheriff,” Hub said dryly, “you have a good feel for business.”

Out in front of the saloon, York emptied the two spent shells onto the boardwalk and reloaded with fresh bullets from his gun belt. He really didn’t think the Rhomers would be dumb enough to attack at night. But the one Rhomer he’d had experience with turned out pretty damn dumb. So you never knew.

Right now he was on his way to talk to that bank president. It was time. The banker could wrap himself up in respectability all he wanted, but if he was also wrapping himself up in a duster and slashing the throats of young females, well, York would have to take exception.

Thomas Carter lived on the third floor of the brick bank building, above Doc Miller’s surgery and sharing the same outdoor stairway, just up another landing. And Carter appeared to be home, several windows glowing with light. York climbed the two flights and knocked on the banker’s door.

When he got no response, the sheriff knocked again, louder and more insistent; but still nothing.

He tried the door and found it unlocked. A lot of doors were left unlocked in a town this size, but for a man like Carter, that seemed surprising.

Entering a small kitchen, York announced himself, loudly, but again was not acknowledged. He moved into a living room arrayed with expensive-looking furniture in the Victorian style, button-back sofa, wingback chairs, marble-top tables, Oriental carpet. A bedroom with more heavy furnishings and striped wallpaper was uninhabited, as well, and so was a guest room.

“Mr. Carter! Sheriff York. Are you here?”

He was there, all right. In a study at a rolltop desk, where he was slumped, arms slack and hanging down, his head to one side, resting in a drying, darkening pool of blood. Carter was still attired in the same dark brown suit with embroidered vest he’d worn at the Citizens Committee meeting early this evening.

The side of the banker’s head that was up had a small black hole in it, edged with red, dark red turned black. The one eye showing was blank, the mouth yawning open expressionlessly. The scorched smell of gunpowder was in the air.

Carter’s right hand, at the end of a dangling arm, hung limp over a .45 Colt that rested on the floor, where he might have dropped it.

Might have dropped it, if this were a real suicide.

But York knew it wasn’t.

Half an hour later, York was back at his office, where he dragged the chair from behind his desk back into the cell block. Tulley was seated outside the first cell, scattergun across his lap, his snoring no worse than a mountain rockslide.

York pulled the chair up and sat as Rita, seated on the edge of her cot, in a light blue shirt and Levi’s and riding boots, glared at him.

“Lock me up,” she said, “and put that old fool in charge of my safety? I can’t even sleep with him sawing logs.”

“You’re not under arrest,” he told her. “You can leave. But I believe, if you do, you stand to be killed.”

“Locked in here, somebody could kill me.”

Her traveling bag was on the floor next to her. He smiled. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Your derringer.”

She huffed a laugh, smiled, and reached under the flat-looking pillow. She showed him the small, pearl-handled, silver gun.

“Your sister had one like that,” he said.

She returned it to its hiding place. “This is my sister’s. It was returned to me after she passed.”

He had used that gun. He had killed Sheriff Harry Gauge with it. Thanks to Lola.

“We don’t usually allow our prisoners,” he said, “to hold on to their firearms.”

“You said I wasn’t a ‘prisoner.’”

“Make that ‘guest.’ But you need to be on your own guard while you’re here. I’m just one man.”

Disgusted, she nodded toward the slumbering Tulley down the cell block. “And that desert rat isn’t even one man.”

“He might surprise you. Thomas Carter is dead, by the way.”

“What?”

“Killed himself. At least that’s what I’m supposed to think.” He told her how he’d found the body, just a short while ago.

“Why isn’t it a suicide?” she asked. “Maybe Carter killed that bank clerk and it wasn’t so hard, but when he used a knife on poor Pearl, it made him realize what he’d done. What he’d become.”

“Yeah, that’s what somebody wants me to think.”

“But you don’t.”

“No. And neither do you.”

A dark eyebrow arched. “Don’t I? What if I told you that Pearl shared with me what Upton told her — that Thomas Carter had embezzled funds and set up the robbery of his own bank to cover it up. What then?”

“Then I’d thank you for the information, and say you’re right, but that only goes so far.”

She got up and came over to the bars and stared through them at him, frowning. “It goes all the way, Caleb! You hounded that man into a terrible act with Pearl, and then into a state of mind where he took his own life.”

York shook his head. “No, there’s more to this than that. And I think you know what it is. Would you care to tell me?”

She folded her arms. “I don’t have anything more to say.”

He gestured with open palms. “Then you’re not a guest. You are a prisoner.”

She grabbed the bars and tried to shake them. “Damn you, Caleb York! Your killer killed himself! Can’t you be satisfied with that?”

“I would have been,” he said, standing, getting ready to haul his chair away from here, “if Doc Miller hadn’t agreed with my diagnosis.”

“What diagnosis?”

He sauntered off. “Good night, Rita. Sleep well. Let us know if you need the privy. Or you can make use of that chamber pot.”

“What diagnosis?”

With a glance over his shoulder, he said, “That a man who shot himself in the head ought to have powder burns at the wound.”

York left her stewing there.

In the meantime, he needed to catch some sleep, across the street in that pueblo, where a pallet awaited him. Morning would come soon enough, and with it the Rhomers.