“Yes, sir, I was there that day. I saw what little was left of your rig.”
Lewis shook his head. “All I saw was the aftermath. That was bad enough.”
“Yes, sir.” Longarm crossed his legs and ground out the coal of his cheroot on the sole of his boot, then tucked what was left of the smoke into a pocket. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Lewis. If I have more questions later …”
“You are welcome here any time, Marshal. Always glad to help the law, you know.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“As for Boatwright, talk to him all you need. If you want him for the afternoon, just say so and I will get someone else to take his place this afternoon.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir, but I appreciate your help. It won’t go unnoticed.”
“Any time, Marshal. Any time at all.”
“Thank you, sir. Good day now.” Longarm touched the brim of his Stetson and left the young man to his ledgers.
Chapter 29
“Remember it, mister? God, I reckon. I’ll be able to call that day back to mind for the rest of my life, believe me,” John Boatwright—“just call me Boats”—said when Longarm posed his question. “Who’d you say you are again, mister?”
Longarm dragged out his badge to flash, and repeated his name.
“I been expecting someone to ask me about it, of course,” Boats said once he was satisfied that Longarm had an official right to be doing the asking.
“No one else has talked to you yet?” Longarm asked.
“A couple newspaper reporters. Snotty sons of bitches, they were. I didn’t give them the time of day. Mr. Lewis, he said I didn’t have to talk to them if I didn’t want to. I asked him about that, see. He said it was all right.”
“They came here to interview you?” Longarm asked, wondering why young Lewis hadn’t mentioned the visit.
“No, they found me at home one evening. Same evening Beamon was killed, actually. They came by my place that night.”
“Together?” Longarm asked. “More than one of them, that is?”
“That’s right. Two of them.”
“From the same newspaper?”
Boats shrugged. “I don’t recall what paper they said they was from. If they said at all. I just don’t remember about that. Is it important?”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t. It’s just that you never really know what will turn out to be of interest when you get into something like this. It’s just better to ask everything that pops into mind and sort it all out afterward.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“So you talked to these two reporters but not to any police or other investigators,” Longarm said.
“That’s right. Until now.”
“Can you describe these reporters?”
Boats proceeded to do so.
“Do you know if Carl Beamon was interviewed?” Longarm asked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t know a thing like that, Marshal. Me and Beamon worked together sometimes, but we wasn’t close. We wasn’t what you’d call friends. Just coworkers. Me, I wouldn’t have wanted to be seen in public dressed in a silly outfit like that rig Beamon used to dress up in, but he thought it made him look like somebody special. I thought it was stupid.”
Longarm remembered the outfit. Livery, they called it. If pushed on the subject he would have had to throw in with Boatwright about it, though. It looked stupid, and would have been damn-all embarrassing to have to wear out in public. Kind of like a party costume but worse, since nobody else would be dressed up too.
“Are you willing to tell me what you remember about that day?” Longarm asked.
“Oh, sure. For whatever it’s worth, which I guess wouldn’t be much. I was sitting on top of the driving box holding the lines. Not that I expected any trouble from the horses. That was a real fine team until the explosion ruined them. But when you’re dealing with rich folks you don’t want to take any chances, if you know what I mean. Most people that pay for real fancy service want extra good service too. They don’t want the team dragging the carriage out of place when they’re trying to get aboard, nothing like that.”
Longarm nodded encouragement for Boats to continue.
“Beamon had got down to put out the steps and help the passengers in. That was his job, see. Mine was to drive and keep the horses nice and quiet. His was to coddle the paying passengers and make them feel the hire was worth what they paid for it. Pamper them. You know?”
Longarm nodded again.
“Anyway, Beamon was standing down there beside the rig. I was up top, just sitting there looking around. Mostly I was paying attention to my team’s ears. That’s the first thing you notice if there’s gonna be trouble. They’ll lay their ears flat, maybe switch their tails some. So mostly I was watching for that. Not close, mind. The team was steady. But I was looking in that direction, not back toward the carriage. Didn’t have to look down to see that everyone was on, you understand. That would be clear enough when Beamon put the steps away and got back onto the box with me. I wouldn’t take up the slack in my lines until then, so there wasn’t need for me to look back at my passengers. Besides, some of them don’t like being gawked at by workingmen like me and Beamon. Some of them are pretty snooty.”
“I’m sure,” Longarm agreed.
“The first I knew anything was wrong was when I heard a scream. I suppose that’s what you would call it. A yelp. An alarm, sort of. Then, before there was time for that to hardly sink in, there was the sound of the explosion. My seat was lifted up underneath me like I was sitting on a horse that was bucking, not at all like I was on something solid and secure like a seat bench. It was like the whole damn rig was being tossed into the air, and then the team bolted. Can’t say that I blamed them for that.
“They were running practically before the sound of the explosion stopped, and I was trying to get them under control. I knew something bad had happened to the carriage. I mean, I wasn’t sitting straight and level like I ought to be. The ass end of the carriage was slumped down. I didn’t know until later that the whole back half of the thing was blown off and that the frame was dragging on the ground. All I knew at the time was that I would’ve fallen off the back of the seat if there hadn’t been a backrest behind me. I was leaning so far backward, I had to hunch forward and try to get the team back under control.
“It was … I don’t know how long before I managed that. Sort of. Got them stopped anyway, mostly by running them into some bushes. It wasn’t so much that they were responding to my lines as that they didn’t have no place else to run. Anyway, it got them stopped. It was only after that that I saw what damage had been done to the carriage. And to those passengers. God, that was awful. Just awful.”
Longarm certainly had to agree with that. He too remembered all too clearly. “Were all the passengers dead at that time?” he asked, particularly interested in hearing how Boatwright would respond to that one.
“No, sir, they weren’t. The one man had his leg blowed off, and he was bleeding like I wouldn’t have thought any one human person could. I think he was already dead by the time the ambulance got there, but I couldn’t swear to that. I think the other two men was still alive at the time. The woman, I never saw her body. I don’t know where it was. Blown all apart so there wasn’t enough left to look like a body maybe. I wouldn’t know.”
“But two of the men, at least, were still alive?”
Boats shrugged. “Like I said, I couldn’t swear to it. It’s the impression I got. The papers said they died at the hospital, I think. I can believe it. That was a terrible strong explosion. A bomb, the papers said the next day.”
“But you didn’t see the bomb itself nor who threw it?” Longarm asked.
“No, sir. Like I told you, I was looking toward the front, toward my horses. I never seen what happened down behind me.”