“And what is it that he needs, Willy?” Braxton asked in return.
The young copper quite obviously had been given no instructions regarding Longarm—if indeed he had any inkling who this other man at the table was—or he probably would not have responded so freely. “There’s been another murder, sergeant. Just like the other ones.”
Other ones? Longarm’s interest was definitely aroused once he heard that most unexpected term. What damned other “ones”—plural, as in more than one other, eh?
“Right away,” Braxton agreed, and the kid cop spun on his heels and trotted quickly away, presumably to alert Police Chief Bender that help was on its way in the form of the ever vigilant Texas Rangers.
“Reckon I’ll follow along if you don’t mind,” Longarm drawled as he reached into a pocket for change to leave on the table in payment of his meal and Braxton’s.
“I don’t think …”
“Just so you can ask the chief t’ let me see those records about Colton. Like you promised. Right?”
Braxton frowned. But there really was little he could say in response except that of course the request was a reasonable one. After all, the federal man was making no claims about jurisdiction here; he was merely asking for information about his own case. And never mind that it was plain the Ranger sergeant would have much preferred for Long to stay right where he was and eat another stack of hotcakes or something.
The two peace officers stood, and Longarm followed Brass Braxton out onto the street while off in a far corner the man who called himself Lester Colton was finishing a breakfast of his own.
“it was Pete Nare, George. Shot down sometime during the night. Nobody seems to have heard the shot fired so we don’t know when it happened. Pete lived in an apartment above the store, you know. Far as I can learn, he closed at his usual time last night. Don’t know if he went out after that or not. I’ll ask around, of course, to see if he got into any arguments. But you know Pete. He wasn’t the kind to look for trouble. Never has been. He was wearing his nightshirt and carpet slippers. Went downstairs, I suppose to answer a knock at the door. What he got was a bullet smack between the eyes. Just like …” Glancing at Longarm, who was pretending no interest in the conversation but was certainly hanging close enough to hear every word, Chief Bender suppressed whatever it was he might have been about to say. He cleared his throat and shifted directions. “Small-caliber bullet, it was. Fired at real close range. There are powder burns around the wound. My guess would be the gun was fired point blank, from a foot away or less.”
“So someone came in the middle of the night and knocked on the door, then shot Pete down in cold blood when he opened up.”
“That’s what it looks like. Pete dropped right on the spot. Didn’t even bleed much. He was lying there beside the door when old Jimmy Donovan came in this morning. Jimmy sweeps up … that is, he used to … for Pete before Pete opened for business each morning. Pete let Jimmy use his shed to sleep in and sometimes gave Jimmy a little money too.”
“And Donovan didn’t hear anything during the night, Mike? Are you sure?”
“Dammit, George, you know Donovan. He hasn’t spent a sober evening … not outside a jail cell, he hasn’t … in fifteen, twenty years. Not if he could help it. Jimmy was passed out cold last night just like always. He wouldn’t have heard it if somebody decided to hold artillery firing drills on the town square last night.”
“No, I suppose not. And Pete? Do you think he knew his killer? Or did he just respond to the knock thinking there was a customer who needed something in the middle of the night?”
“No way to tell that, is there?” Chief Bender asked rhetorically. After yet another glance toward Longarm.
Braxton saw the direction the chief’s look was going and quickly responded, “No, of course not. No way to tell that at all.”
Longarm was commencing to find their circumspection damn near amusing. “About those records, sergeant?”
“Oh, yeah. Mike, I told the deputy here that I’d ask you to help him out with something. In the interest of a speedy investigation. If, um, you know what I mean.”
Five minutes later, Longarm and the Addington police department’s file on the murder of Norman Colton were comfortably settled at a desk in the police chief’s own private office.
While, unfortunately, the murder of shopkeeper Pete Nare was discussed outside of Longarm’s hearing.
Other murders, Longarm kept thinking. Plural. Meaning there now had been at least three recent killings in Addington. Or possibly even more. Yet no one, dammit, wanted to talk to him. With luck, though, the file on Norman Colton might help.
Chapter 11
Longarm tried to be fair about it. Shit, he hated paperwork himself and avoided that drudgery whenever possible. It could be that Chief Bender felt the same. Or it was also possible that there was some other reason why the case file on the murder of the town’s postmaster was so skimpy.
Whatever the reason, though, the information provided by Bender was not likely to result in a shouted “aha.” Longarm learned damned little from it beyond the bare-bones facts. Postmaster Colton had been alone in the post office after closing for the day. Party or parties unknown apparently knocked at the back door. When Colton opened the door he was shot in the forehead at very close range. The bullet recovered from his brain was a pipsqueak .32-caliber slug. No one remembered hearing a gunshot at the time, but then that afternoon there were a good many muted explosions in the streets and alleys of the town as small boys set off firecrackers. The relatively soft report of a .32-caliber revolver would have been lost in the rest of the noise. Colton’s body was discovered that evening when he failed to show up at his customary Wednesday-night card game, and some of his friends went looking so as to remind him that it was time to start playing.
For the third time Longarm read the file through, end to end, without learning anything new, then closed the file and placed it carefully on the center of the chief’s desk top before stepping out to thank the chief and the Ranger sergeant for all their help and cooperation. Hoping, of course, that they would both choke on the sentiment.
He was disappointed, though. The outer office was empty, everyone presumably having traipsed off to look into this latest of Addington’s murders.
Longarm hesitated for half a moment, then with a grunt and a shrug went back into the chief’s office.
Another half a moment and he grunted again. Damn police chief wasn’t a very trusting soul. His file cabinet and desk were both locked, and with good locks at that. Longarm could open them. But not without leaving visible traces of the burglary. Dammit. And since he wasn’t real sure Chief Bender would accept a claim that he was only breaking into the files in order to return the Colton folder to its proper place, Longarm decided to leave things as he found them. But it was a pity to waste the opportunity.
Accepting fate as he found it, Longarm lighted a cheroot and ambled out of the police station and headed back in the direction of his hotel.
Chapter 12
“Buy me a drink, cowboy?”
The woman asking the question—or making the offer, which was somewhat more accurate—was one damned fine-looking filly. Twenty or thirty years ago. By now she was more than a little shopworn and bedraggled. She had copper-colored hair that looked like it was beginning to tarnish from over-exposure to the elements, streaks of dirt caked in the folds of flesh under her chin, and tits that might once have been magnificent but which now were drooping toward her kneecaps … and damn near completing the journey.