Longarm stared down at the short but stocky accused killer as he declared, “Once would be more than enough if the victim was caught by total surprise.”
Doc Forbes said, “Seeing Nurse Calder’s arrived, I’d as soon start the autopsies now. You might as well leave now, Deputy Long. We’ll present all our findings at the hearing in writing, and from here on this is likely to seem unpleasant to a layperson.”
Longarm said, “I ain’t no layperson. I’m the law. So you all just slice away and I’ll stick around, if it’s all the same with you.”
Chapter 5
Like many a self-educated man, Longarm read more than he let on, and he took interest in almost anything scientific. But he was just as glad he’d never been pals with either of the dead men by the time the doc and Nurse Calder got through taking them apart. The gaping Y-shaped incisions from nipples to pubic bones were bad enough. The way they peeled the foreheads down to saw open the skulls could set a man’s teeth on edge the way fingernails on a blackboard might.
The only interesting details they dug out of the late Dancing Dave were a couple of encysted bullets he’d been packing under his hide with no apparent ill effects. Nurse Calder seemed disappointed to discover Bubblehead Burnside’s heart and lungs had been just about the same as a regular young gent’s. She said Mongoloid idiots seldom made it to middle age. But that Bubblehead might have, had they let him. She was less surprised than Doc Forbes after they had both their brains bobbing in pickle jars of preservative. She said what she called the gross anatomy of most idiots’ brains wasn’t all that different to the naked eye. She said another doc named P. P. Broca, over in France, had been poking about in human brains enough to notice some few mental defects seemed to be caused by bumps and bruises you could see. But after that it was tough to tell how smart anyone had been, or even what race they’d been, just from looking at their brains.
She wanted to take the Mongoloid’s brain home with her anyhow, to compare it with some Indian brains. Doc Forbes said she’d have to get permission from the next of kin, the dead boy having been white and hence entitled to less casual disposal than your average Indian.
Longarm figured he could excuse himself without looking girlish by the time they’d started sewing the first body back up with stout butcher’s twine. So he went upstairs to see if lighting a cheroot out on the back porch might get his saliva to tasting better.
But when he got to the top of the stairs the doc’s motherly old wife headed him off to allow they had a problem. He said he’d help if he could. So she led him through the kitchen and pointed out back through the lace curtains.
A one-horse hearse was parked in the alley by the doc’s back gate. A couple of gents dressed in black, with crepe hanging down from the back brims of their stovepipe hats, lounged awkwardly just inside the open gate. A feminine figure in a veiled hat and rusty black dress was seated bolt upright on the front seat of the graveyard transport.
“Family?” asked Longarm quietly.
Mrs. Forbes said, “Rose Burnside, the only family the poor idiot had. She insisted on riding along to pick up the body. The boys from the undertaker’s only brought the usual wicker hamper, and you must have just seen the present state of the remains.”
Longarm nodded in understanding and said, “The problem is how they get old Bubblehead past her until they can make him a tad presentable. What if we could lure her into your front parlor long enough for the pick-up crew to nip in and out with their corpse hamper?”
The coroner’s wife said, “I’ve already tried. She refused my cake and coffee just now. The poor thing’s dreadfully upset and hardly in the mood for socializing this afternoon.”
Longarm nodded thoughtfully. Then he brightened and said, “I ain’t paid to socialize. I’m the law. So there may be another way to slice these onions.”
He opened the back door, strode boldly down the brick path to the hearse parked out back, barely nodding at its two man crew, and ticked the brim of his Stetson to the small dark figure perched up on its leather-padded seat, declaring in a no-nonsense tone, “I’d be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I’m sorry to intrude on your grief at a time like this, Miss Burnside. But I have some official questions to ask you, if you’d be good enough to come inside with me right now.”
It was hard to make out the veiled gal’s expression, but she gasped in dismay before she asked if she was under arrest.
Longarm held out a hand to help her down as he replied in a firm tone, “That’s for me to decide after we’ve had us a serious talk, Miss Rose.” He shot a meaningful glance at the confused undertaking crew as he added in a more brotherly tone, “Some things are best discussed in private, ma’am.”
That did it. In no time at all Longarm had Rose Burnside seated on a horsehair sofa in the Forbes front parlor with Mrs. Forbes serving that cake and coffee in spite of all protests. Then she left the two of them alone, so they could talk in private and so she could signal the boys out back to get a move on as soon as her husband and Nurse Calder were ready for them.
With the cake and coffee in front of her on the rosewood coffee table between her sofa and Longarm’s casual chair, Rose Burnside had to lift her veil up out of the way. As she draped it atop her black straw hat, Longarm saw a slight family resemblance in the complexion and hair coloring. Otherwise, she seemed just a blandly nice-looking woman of around thirty, give or take a lot of recent tears. Her eyes were red where they weren’t blue, but they didn’t slant worth mentioning. Her nose had more bridge to it than her kid brother’s. As if she could read his mind, Rose Burnside said, “We had another brother who seemed normal too. He was killed fighting Comanche with the Texas Rangers years ago. You had to show common sense before the Rangers would enlist you, right?”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “Neither the mental capacity of yourself or anyone else in your family is at issue, Miss Rose. I wish there was a kinder way to put it, but … You were told what your younger brother was accused of when they arrested him, right?”
She put her coffee cup back down untasted, but didn’t blubber up on him as she replied in a dead certain tone, “Howard didn’t do it. He loved Mildred Powell. I mean he loved her in a pure childlike way. He told me so himself.”
She looked past him at a fern in the bay window as she added in a sort of peevish way, “He had this way of telling you the same thing, over and over, no matter how many times you told him that was enough. I’m sure I’d have known had he been hankering after any woman in the way they accused him of hankering after that Sunday school teacher.”
“Somebody more than hankered for her,” Longarm pointed out, gently adding, “You don’t sound as if you thought too highly of the victim, no offense.”
Rose Burnside grimaced and said, “If she led poor Howard on enough to drive him that wild, she might have had what happened to her coming! Have you any idea what it’s like to be teased and teased all the time you were growing up?”
Longarm said, “I can imagine it some. We ain’t talking about your kid brother’s teasings, are we, Miss Rose?”
She started to cry some more. Longarm moved over beside her to put a comforting arm around her heaving shoulders as she sobbed, “Look at the Chinaman’s big sister! Has your mother’s Chinee got around to you yet, Rose, Rose, everybody knows?”
Longarm gently assured her, “I have it on good authority that the condition ain’t caused by Oriental ancestry, Miss Rose.”