Longarm sighed and said, “You found me. What’s UP?”
“Two federal agents down. The federal building is closed at this hour and the sarge thinks someone working for Uncle Sam may have something to say about the shooting.”
“Nolan thought right. You say a couple of deputy marshals lost a shootout? That’s odd. I don’t recall Billy Vail mentioning anything about us picking anyone up tonight.”
The copper badge shook his head. “It wasn’t any of you boys. Couple of gents from the provost marshal’s office. Went to pick up an army deserter at the address he’d given on his enlistment papers and got lucky about the address and unlucky about him. Right now they’re spread out on the rug over there. It ain’t all that far. Are You coming?”
Longarm shot a wistful glance at the blonde down the bar and said, “Let’s go get it over with. As the nearest federal officer still sober enough to function, it looks like it could be my case for now.”
As they elbowed their way toward the batwing doors, Longarm asked if they’d made any arrests yet, The cOpper badge told him, “No. The kid they was after threw down on them, right in his front parlor, and drilled ‘em both through their hearts like a real pro. Time the roundsman on the beat responded to the sound of gunfire on a normally quiet street, the moody cuss was long gone. He might not get far, though. Witnesses gave us a mighty good description to go on.”
As they got outside, the copper badge added, “He’s a little runt dressed cow, even if he was a townee boy raised right here in the city. Worse yet, he was last seen running in wooly chaps and a hat big enough for a family of Arapaho to move into.”
Longarm looked incredulous. “That can’t be right! Do we have a name to go with this pint-sized pistoleer?”
The copper badge nodded. “Sure. His name is Joseph, but he makes everyone call him Jack. Jack Slade. What’s so funny?”
Longarm said, “It ain’t funny. It’s just awful. I figured he had to be crazy, but not that crazy!”
Copper badges got to walk more than Longarm had to, so their notion of not far was over a quarter-mile, across Broadway and up the lower slopes of Capitol Hill as far as Lincoln Avenue. Longarm had the house figured before they got to it. There was a considerable crowd out front and Sergeant Nolan was standing on the front porch of the modest but neatly painted two-story frame structure.
As they joined him on the porch, Nolan told Longarm, “We got a statement from the only other person in the house, the killer’s older sister. Some neighbor women are comforting her in her sewing room. Poor thing’s hysterical.”
As he followed Nolan in, Longarm asked, “Did his kin see the killing?”
“No,” Nolan replied. “She didn’t even know he’d deserted, riding his commanding officer’s horse with the saddlebags full of stuff the army never issued him. When they showed up to ask if he might possibly be home she went to fetch him from his quarters over the carriage house out back. She didn’t find him there. As she was coming back she heard two shots, ran into her parlor where she’d left the army agents, and I’m about to show you what she found.”
They stepped into the well kept, if cheaply furnished parlor. It was occupied by a handful of other lawmen on their feet and two more stretched side by side on the floor. Both were dressed in civilian riding duds. Longarm saw no need to comment on this. In a peacetime army no soldier off-post was required to wear a uniform, and a man who got gigged for every stain or missing button seldom did. Getting close to deserters was tough enough.
Nolan said, “We’ve already patted them down for I.D. The older one would be Staff Sergeant Flint. The younger one with the big moustache was Sergeant Hughes.”
Longarm didn’t answer. He stared soberly down at the dead men, feeling embarrassed for them as he noted how dumb and helpless they looked, staring up through him. They were both wearing gun rigs under their coats. He bent to draw Flint’s and sniff it.
Nolan said, “Neither gun’s been fired, or drawed, for that matter. As we put it together, they were just standing there like big-ass birds when the kid stepped through that doorway, yonder, and simply blowed them away. He must have had his gun out already, don’t you reckon?”
“He had two, Longarm said. “He fired both at once. In the time it takes to drill one man and recock a single-action ‘74 the one left would have at least tried. And you’re right, neither made a move to defend him self. Look at how their boot heels line up so neat. They went down together, dead before they hit the rug.”
Nolan nodded. “A slug that size through the heart can blow your lights out sudden indeed. But who says they had to be shot with single-action?” he asked.
Longarm said, “Me. I met a sass who couldn’t be anyone but the killer no more than an hour or ago in the Parthenon saloon. He worn a brace of army-issue ‘74s, and to think I took him for a drunk kid on the prod!”
He went on to bring the others up to date on the one and original Black Jack Slade. They agreed that was crazy, too.
“The punk’s last name is Slade,” Nolan said. “After that he was full of pure bull. We’ve been canvassing the neighborhood. The killer turned twenty-two this June and looked younger. He went to Evans Grammar School less than a mile from here, but left in the fifth grade after losing some school time to the scarlet fever. He’s described by those who know him, including some as went to school with him, as a sickly, feeble-minded runt who’s never been able to hold a job. He was sponging off his kin here until about a year or more ago, when his sister’s husband told him it was time he supported himself and threw him out.”
“That sounds sensible. Where’s the brother-in-law right now?”
“Dead. Died last winter whilst the boy was in the army, trying to hold down the only job he could get, with the depression over. We figure he heard his big sister had become a widow and decided to move back in with her. The army must have figured the same way and, as you see, they’d have been better off calling it good riddance to bad rubbish.”
Longarm nodded and said, “Some officers can be sort of possessive about their favorite mounts. But you say the neighbors say he left the premises on his own two feet?”
Nolan looked uncomfortable. “One did. An old lady down near the corner who spends a lot of time leaning out her back window, watching out for apple-stealing kids or whatever. She spotted young Joe Slade in the alley out back earlier this evening. She knew who it was because not even the neighborhood kids who steal her apples dress so silly.”
“A neighbor would likely know him on sight, even in an alley,” Longarm said. “The question now is whether he left for that saloon before or after the shooting. What time did that old lady say she spotted him all dressed up for a Wild West show?”
Nolan looked pained. “Longarm, you know how hard it is for a witness to recall the exact time they witnessed something when they didn’t know it was important. All she knows is that she saw him leaving the neighborhood for parts unknown, any time you want her to swear to, as long as it was after sundown. What damn difference can it make?”
Longarm said, “If he gunned two men and then went to drink and pester folk in a nearby saloon, on foot, dressed wild as well, I fail to see how he could still be running loose.”
Nolan started to ask what Longarm meant. Then he said, “Yeah, we do have all our men looking for him and he’s said to have few if any friends in town. But what if that wild act he put on for you was a slicker? What if he wanted everyone to remember him all decked out like Buffalo Bill so’s that would be what we all went looking for?”
“That works, if we assume young Slade has just now grown more brains than he’s ever shown evidence of having before,” Longarm said. “We’d better have a look at his quarters. I, for one, will feel dumb as hell if we find a pair of goat-hair chaps hanging on a bed post. Do we need permission from the lady of the house?”