"I know what you were trying to do," the plump and motherly gal said. "Few men would know how to be that comforting to a dying woman. It was very gallant of you, Deputy Long."
CHAPTER 4
Longarm had lived through a war or more. So unlike some peace officers, he was inclined to let less-than-lethal confusion simply pile up while he tried to grasp the overall pattern and watch for snipers. So as soon as the ship's surgeon, red-eyed and three sheets to the wind, joined them in his stateroom, Longarm left the dead Lenore to a drunk who couldn't hurt her and that nursing sister or whatever as he joined the search for her surviving killer--if the son of a bitch was still on board.
The purser led Longarm down to the cargo deck, where an officer had his deckhands poking about with bull's-eye lanterns. The officer was called a supercargo because he supervised the cargo, the way the purser supervised the passengers.
The partly open-sided cargo deck, like those of most coastal steamers and all riverboats, lay just above the waterline over the hollow-egg-crate construction of the shallow-draft hull. The supercargo said they'd already swept the mostly empty barn-like space. Longarm wanted to make certain, having found a life preserver missing. Longarm's first impression of the bulkhead further aft was that the steamer's boilers and machinery lay just beyond. But as the supercargo's gang went through the motions forward, Longarm paced from port to starboard and saw he was right about that companionway near his stateroom being longer. So he rejoined the gruff and somewhat older supercargo and said, "As big as this open cargo deck may seem, this vessel gets wider back behind that bulkhead, meaning you got more than half this level all filled up with coal bins and machinery?"
The supercargo shook his head, billed cap and all. "We've already checked the coal bins, and there's no way he could have gotten into the boiler room or engine compartment without the black gang noticing. There's not as much space for him to work with aft as you seem to imagine. Less than a third of this level holds anything besides cargo. More than a quarter of our length, beyond that bulkhead, is cold storage. We have what amounts to a swamping ice house, refrigerated with those newfangled ammonia and brine pipes. Didn't you know we picked up lots of fresh meat and produce along the way that would never make it to New Orleans or even Galveston in this heat without spoiling?"
Longarm said, "I do now. How do you get inside with, say, a lantern as well as a six-gun?"
The supercargo looked surprised, but pointed at a sort of icebox door off to one side. "That's the only inspection port at this end. Cargo's loaded into the refrigerated hold from the side, from the docks. So there's no way he could have-"
"You just said that smaller entrance allowed an inspector to get through," Longarm noted. "I'd surely be obliged if someone would lend me a lantern and show me how to open that latch. I got my own gun."
The supercargo insisted, even as he was leading the way over with his bull's-eye beam on the oaken port and its stout brass fittings, "Nobody could hide in there with the half-frozen fruit and crates of salad greens we've already cooled to just above zero centigrade."
Longarm shrugged and said, "I've been in colder places, in just my shirtsleeves, and it never killed me. Zero centigrade is a lot hotter than zero Fahrenheit. How come you keep your cold-storage cargo just above freezing?"
The supercargo handed Longarm his lantern. "Hold the beam on the latch while I unlock her, will you? If you freeze meat or produce all the way, the ice needles forming inside turn it all mushy and sooty-looking as it thaws. But ice don't form and stuff don't rot too much just above the freezing point of water."
Longarm nodded. "Some railroad men told me about freeze burn. For now I'm more interested in that fucking Hamp Godwynn, if that was his name."
The supercargo opened the port and let Longarm go ahead with the bull's-eye beam and six-gun as he observed, "We found no certain identification for either when we searched the stateroom they were sharing. They'd told the purser they were cattlemen. Their baggage neither proved it nor made liars out of them. They'd brought along stock saddles with their personal baggage lashed to them."
Longarm swept the beam ahead through the clearing fog stirred up by their entrance along with a blast of warm air. The mostly empty space was about the size of a dance hall, although with a far lower ceiling, but he'd never been to a dance where they had ice-frosted pipes running the length of the two longer walls. He didn't ask a dumb question about the ice on the refrigeration pipes. He knew the air next to ice could be somewhat warmer than freezing. The air in a plain old icebox felt about this cold. It was already raising a gooseflesh under Longarm's shirt as he asked the supercargo what sort of stock saddles they were talking about.
The seagoing Texican replied, "One was a Panhandle double rig, and the other was one of them Mex ropers with the exposed wooden swells and dally horn. You're talking to a man who loads a heap of beef along his weary way."
Longarm swept the beam up at the long rows of empty meat hooks as he thoughtfully mused, "They told me they were from other parts and just looking for work down by the border. They both packed their guns in border buscadero rigs as well. I sure wish folks wouldn't lie to the law so much."
He aimed his gun at some produce crates further back as he moved in on them, the supercargo trailing with his own gun out. But they only found citrus fruit and a fancy breed of salad greens for the New Orleans French-style of cooking back there. When Longarm asked, the supercargo explained that the little they had aboard up to now came from the Mexican farms around the mouth of the Rio Grande. He said the state and federal health authorities made such a fuss over meat out of Mexico, or anywhere near it, that the shipping company didn't want the bother.
Longarm said he'd heard about the current outbreak of hoof-and-mouth down Mexico way. "You were right about Hamp Godwynn not being refrigerated too. Let's get out of here before we almost freeze our own asses to zero centigrade!"
They ducked back outside. It was the first time since he'd been south of the Texas line that he welcomed the muggy heat of the gulf.
On the way back topside the supercargo admitted they hadn't been able to search any other staterooms because the rest of the passengers had retired for the night.
Longarm said they'd see about that, and proceeded to knock politely but firmly on doors. They found, as he'd hoped, that most law-abiding folks with nothing to hide but their privates were willing to let the law have a look around as long as they got to cover their privates first. The only couple who flatly refused to let Longarm in without a search warrant were the Hades-bound honeymooners he'd heard earlier. Longarm decided not to bend the U.S. Constitution all out of shape just to see what the woman looked like. It was almost bound to be a disappointment, and it was tough to picture them letting Godwynn in to watch.
The son of a bitch wasn't anywhere else on board that Longarm could come up with. So he drifted back to his own stateroom to see how they were doing with poor Lenore.
They'd done better than he'd expected. Somebody had stripped the ruined bloody bedding off the top berth, and the dead blonde was now reposing on the bar springs. That only seemed cruel till you noticed how someone had washed her off, smoothed her hair, and struggled her into a modest ivory flannel nightgown from her own baggage. Longarm felt sure the motherly nurse or whatever had done most of the work, although the boozy ship's surgeon was the one going on about how his company would wire home for her at the next port of call, and then carry her on to the end of the line on ice so someone of her own could meet or have the body met with there.
The motherly gal, a bit older and fatter than Longarm, said she'd drained such blood as those bullets had left in the dead gal and emptied her basin over the rail just outside. That was the first Longarm had noticed, in the soft lantern light, how someone had used face powder and rouge to keep Lenore's face from going that pallid beeswax shade dead faces got before they turned really funny colors. When Longarm asked where she'd learned so much about undertaking, she explained she'd been a Union army nurse in the war. She looked away as she added, "Making them look presentable before their dear ones saw them was the least we could do. Lord knows there was neither the medicine nor the medical skills to save a third of them."