"I'll be honest with you here, Mr. Neville," Naismith said. "We're not a rich county, and you could put up one hell of a fight that we'd probably lose anyway. Prine here knows what I'm talking about."
"You're not saying what you mean, Naismith," Prine said.
"I'm not saying he's guilty."
"But you're not saying he's innocent, either."
Naismith sighed and shrugged. "My boys talked to the people staying in the room next to Tolan's room. They heard the shooting, but they didn't hear anything else. And that might mean that they actually didn't hear anything or that they know who your friend Neville is and they don't want to get involved. Either way, all they heard was the shots. They don't know who started the fight or who fired first. We checked all the guests on that floor to see if anybody was walking past the door and heard anybody in Tolan's room talking. There were five people on the floor at that time, or so they say, and not one of them heard anything. Or so they say."
"So you'll have to take Neville's word for it," Prine said.
"This isn't the old days," Naismith said. "We're all legaled up now, or like to think we are. You get two men dead and you're talking to the man who killed them, you hope you can get some kind of corroboration for what he's saying."
"I guess his word's about all you've got."
"Then I can go? I want to get back home, Sheriff."
Naismith smiled. "I needed to put a little fear in you, Neville, feel like I was doin' my job at least a little bit."
Neville's smile was one of those big public smiles that politicians hand out like promises.
"Well, for what it's worth, you got my stomach in knots for a few minutes there, Sheriff."
"Good," Naismith said, offering a large, worn, liver-spotted chunk of hand. "Now I'll sleep better tonight."
Chapter Twenty-two
By the time they reached the town limits of Claybank, mist and fog had turned them into cold, unspeaking wraiths. They'd each nodded off from time to time. Hard to say who was more tired, the men or their horses.
"I'll be turning off here," Neville said. His face was slick with moisture. He stank of grime and sleep and dampness. "You're going to say no to this, Prine. But I don't want you to. I'll consider it an insult if you do, in fact. I'm drawing a check for a thousand dollars for you and having somebody from the bank run it over to the sheriff's office tomorrow."
"I wish you wouldn't."
"After all we went through? You sure as hell earned it."
"I was doing my job is all."
"You need more satisfaction than that."
"What sort've satisfaction will you get? Cassie's dead."
Even through the mist, Neville's smile was clear and clean.
"I got the satisfaction of killing them."
"Nasmith's right," Prine said. "I guess you're the only one who'll ever know if you killed those two in cold blood."
"For what it's worth, Prine, I didn't."
"I'm glad to know that." He cinched his hat lower on his head and said, "Well, good night, then."
"Good night, Prine. And remember, you're to cash that check." Neville swung away and disappeared into the murk.
An hour later, Prine, in long johns, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, sat in his bed feeling that the past couple days just might have been a dream. Or nightmare, actually.
Everything had happened too quickly to be understood in any comprehensible way. A girl was kidnapped, murdered, he and Neville had pursued the killers, and the killers had died trying to kill Neville, or they had died when Neville executed them. At this moment, Prine really didn't give much of a damn which way it had happened.
He'd sent Sheriff Daly a long telegram ahead indicating that Tolan and Rooney's bodies would be shipped back to Claybank by train in a day or so and that both he and Neville were tired but otherwise all right.
Now all he needed to do was relax and sleep.
When he realized that he was going over and over everything as a means of not facing what really worried him—telling Daly the truth about his plan to take advantage of the kidnapping and play the hero—he stubbed out his smoke and set his coffee on the floor next to the bed.
If he was going to brood on that, it might as well be in the dark, where he just might have a chance of getting tired enough to sleep.
As he walked to work in the morning, still tired from the past couple of days, Prine worked on the way he would approach Daly this morning. Bob Carlyle generally went to the café first, and that was around ten. He took fifteen, twenty minutes. This would be all the time Prine would have alone with Daly—if Daly wasn't called away or some unexpected trouble didn't take both of them from the office.
He'd say, I made a bad mistake, Sheriff. And I need to talk to you about it. He half-smiled about this. It would be like going to confession. That's exactly what he'd be doing this morning. He'd say the rest the same way—straight out. He wouldn't make any excuses. There were no excuses to be made. Then it would be up to Daly.
Just before Prine reached the sheriff's office, his stomach curdled and the rolling jitters passed up and down his arms. This sure as hell wasn't going to be easy.
"There he is now," Daly's voice said before Prine had even crossed the threshold.
A city man in a homburg and a dark blue suit stood, holding a briefcase. He was a formal, stiff-looking man of forty years or so. If he'd ever laughed, you couldn't prove it by his narrow, severe face or hard blue judgmental eyes.
Bob Carlyle was grabbing his hat. Daly walked over and yanked his off the peg, too. "Prine, this is Mr. Silas Beaumont. Remember Al Woodward, who was here investigating the Pentacle fire? Well, he still hasn't turned up. So Mr. Beaumont here, who's a vice president of the insurance company Woodward hired out to, is here to find Woodward and carry on with the arson investigation. I told him that you'd talked to Aaron Duncan and that you'd be glad to help him. Meanwhile, Carlyle here and I thought we'd grab us a cup of coffee."
It was almost comical, the way Daly and Carlyle were rushing out the door. The Mr. Silas Beaumonts of the world were difficult to deal with. They just assumed, you being small-town, you were stupid and probably corrupt.
"See you soon, Mr. Beaumont," Daly said as he half-dove through the door, slamming it hard shut behind him.
"Coffee, Mr. Beaumont?"
"I'm not here for a chat, Mr. Prine. At this moment, I should be in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the stockholders of our company are holding their annual meeting. Instead, I'm in your little burg trying to find out what happened to one of our freelance investigators. There's a train out of here this evening, and I hope to be on it. So no—no coffee, no chat, nothing extraneous. If I can get on that train this evening, then I can be in Lincoln in a day and a half. Still time to pay my respects to our stockholders."
No coffee? How about a cob to shove up your ass? Prine thought. He'd gone from a reasonably good mood—hoping Daly would understand and forgive him—to a dour one thanks to this pale, mannequin-like intruder who was as imperious as a well-connected politician.
Prine said, "Well, I'll have a cup for myself, if you don't mind."
As he was pouring his coffee, he said, "When's the last time you heard from Woodward?"
"Last week."
"He pretty reliable, is he?"
"We check our freelancers out thoroughly."
Prine, steaming coffee in hand, angled his bottom onto the edge of his desk. He kicked a chair with rollers on it over to Beaumont. Beaumont's bloodless lips pinched up in displeasure. He wasn't going to give this office a very good grade. Not that Prine gave a damn.