“You haven’t read about it in the newspapers? Really?”
“Read ‘bout what, Maddy?”
“My husband, Custis. Gary Lee Bell.”
“Him? Jeez, Maddy. How’d you get hooked up with somebody like him?”
Maddy looked Longarm square in the eye and in a much stronger voice said, “Just lucky, I guess, Custis. Just very, very lucky.”
Gary Lee Bell, as anyone who’d read a newspaper over the past four or five months would likely know, was scheduled to hang soon—Monday morning according to Maddy, and she should damn sure know—after being convicted of murder.
Longarm remembered the notorious case fairly well. Bell was a drifter and ne’er-do-well. He’d shown up at a mine in the north of Wyoming Territory somewhere with a hardluck story and a hand out. The miner had taken him in. At least that was what the newspapers said. What the papers implied was that there was a daughter involved too. Maddy, of course. The papers had made a great show of how circumspect and restrained they were being in refusing to give details of the relationship with the miner’s daughter. At the same time they managed to imply all manner of sordid and unsavory possibilities. Then … Longarm’s eyes widened a bit as it belatedly occurred to him that if Madelyn was involved in this story, so was her father.
“Damn, Maddy. I’m sorry about your pa. When I read the stories in the papers … Williams isn’t that uncommon a name. I never thought about it being him.”
“Everybody knew him as Windy most all his life, Custis. The newspapers used his real name of Rupert.”
“Yeah, well, I’m mighty sorry for your loss. Your pa was a likable cuss. I always got along well with him.” Longarm shook his head. “Most everybody did, I think.”
In the newspaper accounts it was this Bell fellow’s boss who’d turned up dead, first going missing, and then finally discovered at the bottom of a flooded prospect shaft. By then Bell had married the mine owner’s daughter. And with her father gone, the mine and the girl both belonged exclusively to Gary Lee Bell.
Until, that is, a freak of circumstance disclosed the body and formal charges of murder were placed. There was a trial and conviction, an appeal … and now on Monday there would be an execution to put an end to it.
Except …
“Gary didn’t do the things they said, Custis. I swear to you he didn’t. I just … can’t prove that he is innocent.” She slid down the length of the bed until she was beside him, her body warm and close against his. She gripped his elbow in both her small hands. “I don’t have much money, Custis, but I really will do anything to prove Gary’s innocence. Anything, dear. And you can save him, Custis. I just know you can.” Her right hand left his elbow and nestled warm and inviting in his crotch.
Chapter 14
Longarm bent and kissed Maddy very lightly on the forehead. With a sad smile he gently lifted her hand away from his body and placed it firmly into her own lap. “I’ll be glad t’ listen to anything you have to say, Maddy. But not because o’ that. All right?”
Madelyn Williams Bell nibbled at her lower lip for a moment in thoughtful contemplation. Then she nodded and squared her shoulders. “Thank you, Custis. You’re a dear friend.”
“We’ll see ‘bout that, Maddy. We will see.”
She patted his knee, not in invitation but as an acknowledgment of sorts, then left his side and crossed the tack room to the shelf where she had placed her clutch purse. She carried it back and sat, not so close to him this time, while she opened the bag and brought out a tattered scrap of paper.
The back of the single sheet bore a three-cent stamp and a crudely scrawled address directing the letter—for that was what it seemed to be—to “M. Bell, Talkin Watter, W.T.” The note had been folded and mailed without the formality of being enclosed within a separate envelope. Longarm was frankly amazed that it had ever reached Maddy.
If, that is, it really had. There was only a dark smear where a postmark should have been, making it impossible for anyone to read where or when it was alleged to have been mailed.
In lettering just as crude as the address, the letter said: “Seen Windy Medcin Boz 2 daz gone. Live. Tell A.T.” Few though the words were, their scrawl took up most of the sheet.
Longarm could get most of it easily enough. The letter—and it was not signed—purported to come from someone who claimed to have seen Windy Williams alive within two days of his mailing the letter. Whenever that might have been. Certainly, though, it was after Williams’s body was discovered or the incident would not have been deemed noteworthy.
Windy Williams. Alive. “Tell A.T.” It took Longarm a moment to work that out. Then he recalled that Sheriff Dillmore went by the initials A.T. Tell A.T. Tell the sheriff. Windy Williams was alive and therefore Gary Lee Bell could not have murdered him, should not hang by the neck until dead come the dawning Monday.
“Where’d you get this, Maddy?”
“I … is that important?”
He gave her a hard look. And waited for her to answer.
“Somebody left it at my house. Inside, on the table. I was out … I don’t remember where, down inside the mine probably looking for a little high-grade I could turn into cash to pay Tyler with …”
“Excuse me, that’s twice you’ve mentioned somebody named Tyler. Who is he?”
“Our lawyer. Tyler Overton. I owe him … I don’t know how I will ever be able to pay him all of it. If I ever can.”
“Sorry for the interruption. You were telling me about how you came by this letter.”
“Yes. Like I said, I was out of the house. When I came in, the letter was lying on the table. I never saw who left it there. I suppose it was misdirected somehow and eventually someone realized where it was supposed to go and just … brought it by as a kindness. Something like that.”
“But you didn’t get it from the postmaster here like you normally would.”
“No. In fact I asked afterward if it had come to somebody else through the regular mail. He said he didn’t remember seeing it before. Not that that necessarily means anything.”
“Why’d you ask him about it to begin with if you didn’t think it was important?”
“Tyler said I should. He thought it could be important, I think.”
Longarm grunted. Tyler was right. “And this was how long ago?” he asked.
“Last Thursday, I think.” She paused, reflected, and then nodded firmly. “Yes, it was definitely on Thursday. I came into town Friday to let Tyler see the letter, but he was away. I saw him Saturday morning. That’s when he told me to take the letter to Mr. Burnette, and we did. Tyler wanted to know as much as he could before he went down to Cheyenne to ask for the stay of execution. He went—I forget if it was Sunday or Monday that he left, Sunday I think—but he told me he wasn’t really very hopeful. He felt he had to try, but he didn’t think the letter would do much good. It didn’t, of course. He gave it back to me this afternoon. He came back on the same stage you did, actually. That was why I was in town today, to see Tyler and see if he had good news for me.”
“So he’s already taken the letter to Cheyenne and showed it to whoever needed t’ see it?”
Maddy nodded. She sighed and looked off into a far corner of the small room, her thoughts and her gaze quite obviously going far beyond these confining walls. “Tyler said the courts wouldn’t consider this to be evidence. Not without a signature or—I forget what he called it—something to back up what it says.” She turned to look at Longarm. Her eyes were huge and moist, pleading. “You can make them listen, Custis. I know you can.”
“Not t’ this, I can’t. Your lawyer is right in what he told you about that. This paper here isn’t anything close t’ being the sort o’ evidence that a court of law would need. And believe me, Maddy, it takes a heap o’ proving before any court will back up an’ reverse the decision of another. In order for this note t’ do any good for your husband, Maddy, the court would pretty much have t’ see your pa himself. Or at the very least see real proof that he’s still alive. Not some note from somebody claiming to’ve seen Windy but Windy himself. Why, even if this letter is true—an’ you can understand how anybody much less a judge would be skeptical when it’s the condemned man’s wife that claims to’ve found such a proof—but even if it’s true, Maddy, the court would have t’ think it could be a case o’ simple mistaken identity. Just like what brought me here t’ Talking Water now. We got a tip from a fella who honestly believed he’d seen a wanted man. Turned out to be somebody unlucky enough to look a whole lot like this murderer but innocent as could be. Well, this could be that same sorta deal. So no, I can’t imagine a court agreeing to block an execution on the basis o’ this here letter. I’m sorry, Maddy, but the only way a court or the governor is likely t’ believe Gary Bell didn’t kill your pa would be for somebody to produce your pa for them alive an’ well.”