“Hell, yes.”
Archer shook a pair out, lit one up and passed it to Shaw, and then did the same for himself.
Shaw rolled down his window and blew his smoke out. “Anyway, I spoke with my buddy and he recalled the case. He phoned a friend of his in the Amarillo Police Department and put me in touch with him. I drove over to Amarillo yesterday shortly after I left you, and I’m just getting back now, like I said. They had a tornado come through there a few a months ago, wrecked half the damn town. Felt like I was back in the war.”
“Damn. So what’d you find out?”
“Carson Crabtree was a fine police officer who everybody liked and respected.”
“Except for the fact that he killed three people.”
“Hold on, I’m getting to that.” He puffed on his cigarette. “Thing is, those three men? They did have one thing in common.”
“What was that?”
“They all knew Ernestine.”
“And that never came out?”
“It did, but only after Carson was executed.”
“Why only then? Didn’t people investigate?”
“Why would they, Archer? Carson Crabtree confessed to the killings. What was there to investigate?”
“Right.”
“Anyway, it did come out later when a curious reporter down there did a little digging. One of the men had been caught peeping on women.”
“That was in that article I told you about.”
“What you don’t know is that he’d definitely been caught peeping on Ernestine.”
“Okay. But how does that tie into what happened?”
“You know young men, Archer, being one yourself. Some think they can do what they want with the fairer sex. They start by peeping, then move on to something a lot worse.”
Archer shot him a hard look. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“The policeman I was talking to believed that the three men, well, they did things to Ernestine.”
“You mean...?”
“They raped her, Archer, or so the man believed. And more than once.”
“And that’s why Carson Crabtree killed them?”
“Hell, if somebody did that to my little girl? I know I’m a lawman and all, but so was Carson Crabtree. I might just do what he did.”
“But if he killed those men, he must’ve known what they did to her. He could have used that to not get electrocuted. Hell, he probably could’ve gotten off completely. You said that yourself.”
“Now, there’s the interesting part. The theory the man had is that Carson was guilt-ridden because, in his mind, he had failed to protect his daughter. And on top of that, if he used what they had done to his daughter as a defense, it would have to all come out. He probably thought the shame would have ruined her. So he confessed and went to the chair. For her sake.”
Archer sat back. “I think the man might be right. Remember the letter in the scrapbook?”
Shaw nodded and said, “You think her mother knew and she was telling Ernestine not to dwell on it, not to blame herself for what her father did?”
“I think so. But then Ernestine’s mother killed herself. I guess she couldn’t heed her own advice.” Archer rubbed his brow, tossed his cigarette out the window, and said, “Damn, I need a stiff drink.”
“I’m with you there, son. Maybe more than one.”
They drove on to Poca City.
Chapter 45
“Who do you think killed Lucas Tuttle, then?” asked Shaw, over a glass of Rebel in Archer’s hotel room. “You have any opinions?”
Archer refilled their tumblers he’d gotten from the hotel to replace the ones Shaw had taken to fingerprint. They’d purchased a cluster of roast beef sandwiches and pickles from a deli and brought them up as their dinner.
“Ernestine knows her way around a gun. But as far as I know Tuttle didn’t know her. And I don’t want to think she’d do something like that. She’s a sweet gal. But I saw her turn the tables on a parolee coming after her. The lady has a spine of steel.”
“And she’s done a runner, too,” said Shaw. “Innocent folks don’t tend to do that.”
“But what I don’t get is, on the tape Tuttle is clearly intending on seeing Jackie that night. Only Jackie said he never showed up at her house.”
“She could be lying,” noted Shaw.
“The thing is, Jackie suggested that I go collect the debt. And then she said she’d agree to meet with her father, as a way, I thought, to help me get the money paid. But now I see it was a way for her to get her father out of the house, so she could get what was in that safe.”
“But how’d she even know it was in there? You only told her after the fact. Remember? She was mad at you for withholding that.”
Archer eyed the lawman in an amused fashion. “You’re forgetting your own rule.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t believe anybody without corroboration. But I think I know how. Same way she knew that she’d been cut out of the will.”
Shaw’s eyes lit up. “The secretary, Desiree, could have told her.”
“Right. She typed up all his letters. She’d sure as hell know what was going on with the man’s business.”
“You think Jackie promised her some of the loot in return for helping?”
“Could be. Hey, you think Desiree could’ve shot him?”
Shaw finished a sandwich, balled up the wax paper, and tossed it into the trash can. “I checked. She had an alibi. But that was a nice piece of deduction on your part, Archer.”
Archer bit into his sandwich and took a swallow of his drink. “How’d you even come to be in the detective business?”
“My old man was a beat cop for forty years over in Kansas. I got married there and started a family, then moved out this way, became a patrolman, and later got promoted to detective for the state police. I was doing real well, had a knack for it and all. Then I volunteered for the war and flew planes. After I got out of uniform, I got my old job back.”
“You obviously like the work. And you’re good at it.”
“Well, I see the utility in punishing bad folks. It preserves civilization as we know it. And both of us have seen the other side of that equation, when civilization gets shown the door, and the rule of law don’t matter for shit, and the whole damn world gets set on fire. It’s always closer than you think.”
“So you got a family then? You mentioned a daughter?”
“Got me three kids. Two boys and a girl. Oldest is my son Johnny, near to grown now. He’s going to join the Army. Serve his country.”
“I wish him luck and that he gets to serve during peacetime. We don’t need any more wars.”
“Amen to that, brother.”
They clinked glasses.
“I checked on you. You got no family left. Never married.”
“That’s right.”
“Never found the right gal?” asked Shaw.
“I used to think that. No more.”
“What changed?”
“Well, since I got here, I think maybe for all the ladies I met along the way, I wasn’t the right man for them.”
“That’s pretty enlightened of you, Archer. But you must’ve wanted to settle down at some point.”
“Can’t say yay or nay on that. I grew up in a small slice of a big city and decided to see the country for a bit and then went on to college. Then they bombed Pearl Harbor, and I did my bit and came back. And took up my wandering ways again. Then Carderock Prison became my new home for a while. Hell, I’m not all that shy of thirty and part of me feels like I haven’t started to even live my life yet.”
“Maybe your day is coming.”
Archer nodded, but he didn’t really believe this was a viable possibility. He was thinking if he managed to survive Poca City, it would be a miracle.