So he ambled on over to Doc Forbes to find the doc had gone out on a call but left those carbon copies for Longarm in care of his wife—who wanted to coffee and cake Longarm as well.
Longarm thanked her for the invitation, but said he had other pressing chores. So she let him go, and he went over to the smaller saloon a few doors up from the Red Rooster to order a beer, carry it over to a corner table, and sip suds on his own as he went over the testimony taken down at the inquest that had started all this bullshit.
Longarm had been told more than once about those two cowhands hearing screams from the cellar of First Calvinist as they were on their way into town. Neither claimed to have seen Bubblehead Burnside do it, or even run past them. They just told the same pathetic tale of a pretty gal lying there with her skirts up around her hips and blood all around. Rafe Jennings was the one who claimed she’d told him “Howard” had done her so dirty. Nick Olsen had been riding hard for help as the poor gal gurgled her last in Rafe’s arms.
Longarm lit a thoughtful cheroot as he muttered, “So that’s just one man’s word as to the words of a dying woman.”
Then he got down to the testimony of Timmy Sears, aged seven and hence just within the limits of lawful testimony, who’d been crossing the churchyard on the far side as the two cowhands reined in. Timmy allowed a “big boy called Howard” had dashed out a cellar door on his side of the building when he’d heard Miss Mildred crying real loud.
Longarm wouldn’t have questioned the kid any closer than one of the members of the panel had, once Timmy was asked if he meant he’d seen that half-wit Howard they called Bubblehead. Timmy’s exact words were: “Miss Mildred told us not to call Howard Bubblehead. She said it wasn’t his fault he looked like that.”
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring and muttered, “It seems the missionaries most anxious to help wind up in the Pot. Folks who won’t associate with anyone out of the ordinary hardly ever have anything extraordinary happen to them.”
He sipped some suds and told the carbon papers spread out in front of him, “All right, despite what Dr. Langdon Down and others say about kids like Bubblehead Burnside being gentle-natured and innocent of horny notions, a dying woman’s accusations work better than some diabolical plot involving two cowhands who didn’t attend her church and a Sunday school kid who did. Those syndrome studies say that there’s no sharp line betwixt them and the rest of us. Some look more Mongol than others. Some are drooling idiots, whilst others may be smart enough to leave home and support themselves. So who’s to say some ain’t as innocent as babies about sex whilst others might at least wonder what those hogs, dogs, and bigger kids are up to? Doc Forbes allows in this autopsy report that it didn’t seem as if the Sunday school teacher had been thoroughly raped. He never said nobody could have tried!”
By now it was getting on toward dinnertime, and Miss Mavis had said something about a roast in the oven. But Longarm saw they’d just laid out a tolerable free lunch at one end of the bar. So he decided to stay put and read over the damned carbons until he saw what he was missing.
On the face of things, he wasn’t missing anything. It was far easier to believe Timmy Sears had seen Howard Burnside fleeing from the scene of the crime than it was to picture a seven-year-old boy as a murder-rapist, with a cowhand who hadn’t raped anybody seriously lying to cover up for the kid. But damn it, Bubblehead Burnside had been playing in the dirt like an even younger kid when the posse had ridden out to his sister’s hog farm.
Longarm got up to go pay for another beer and help himself to a salami on rye and some boiled eggs as he muttered, “Sure. Bubblehead Burnside was a fiendishly cunning criminal who was only pretending to be a Mongoloid idiot so that nobody would suspect him of being a sex maniac. The way they decided at the hearing was the most sensible way it works and that’s that, dad blast it!”
Then he carried his beer and free lunch back to the table to go over it all some more, dad blast it.
Chapter 12
The inquest that afternoon was just a formality, and would have been over sooner if it hadn’t been for Longarm. Doc Forbes congratulated him on his marksmanship, and the county prosecutor, who turned out to be that older cuss in the stylish white deerskin jacket and Buffalo Bill face hair, declared there was no call to present a fair fight the loser had started before the circuit court, even if it had been in session.
Everyone seemed satisfied except Longarm, who got to his feet when the coroner asked if there were any objections to quitting while they were ahead.
Longarm said, “I’ve been going over the transcript of that earlier inquest, Doc, and no offense, that young Timmy Sears was questioned once over lightly when you consider how serious his testimony was.”
There came a confused murmur from the panel, and their audience as well. Doc Forbes asked, “What in thunder might Timmy Sears know about the late Porky Shaw slapping leather on a federal lawman with a rep? The child was fast asleep on the far side of town at the time!”
Longarm nodded, but pointed out, “He was crossing the churchyard the day Mildred Powell was assaulted and murdered. On the face of it, his few recorded words back the tales told by the grown men who say they found her lying in a pool of blood and accusing that retarded boy. But I’d feel better if I could have a few words with young Timmy as well.”
The county prosecutor snapped, “Thunderation and Sweet Jesus, the case of the People versus Howard Burnside is moot! Whether Bubblehead done the deed or not, the Minute Men strung him up. So what else might there be to say about it?”
“Who done it if Howard Burnside didn’t,” Longarm replied in a voice of calm reason. “That’s the trouble with lynching folks before they can stand trial. I agree it looks as if that retarded boy made a play for his Sunday school teacher, stabbed her when she told him not to be silly, and ran out the cellar door the way Timmy Sears seems to say he did. I still want to talk to Timmy Sears.”
The town law, Pronto Cross, called out from the back, “It’s almost supper time. What say I rustle young Timmy and his folks up in the morning and have them over to my office for you to interview around nine or ten?”
Longarm allowed that sounded fair. The county prosecutor gussied up like a cavalry scout said he’d be switched with snakes if Longarm could show him anything they’d done wrong the last time they’d questioned the kid.
Longarm said, “I just said I’d read over every word you all took down. The first time you read over it he seems to be certain a boy he knew as Howard because you weren’t supposed to call him Bubblehead came out of that church cellar about the time Timmy heard Miss Mildred screaming for help. But when you read it over more than once … Let’s just say I’d like to go over it one more time with the boy, hear?”
Pronto Cross said they had a deal, and Doc Forbes declared his inquest into the death of Porky Shaw closed. So all rose to get on home or over to the Red Rooster before supper time.
As he was waiting for the crowd to clear, a mighty handsome gal brushed past him wearing her red hair in braids under a black Spanish hat, with a Schofield .45 in a tooled leather holster on either seam of her whipcord riding skirt. He couldn’t tell if she noticed him or not. No man could have. Gals who carried their noses that high in the sky could pass between a train wreck and a Roman orgy without letting on they noticed either.
Longarm turned down an invitation to supper from Doc Forbes, and told the county prosecutor and town marshal he might see them over at the Red Rooster later. So they left together without pestering him further. He was about to leave when one of those gents he’d seen the other day in the barbershop sidled up to him to say, “Before you cloud up and rain all over me, Deputy Long, I am only passing on a message from a cuss who said he was in too much of a hurry to talk to you personal.”