Perkins stood near the corpse and said to York, “Has the deceased any family?”
“Not that I know of. Likely be the usual two dollars paid by the city.”
The undertaker nodded. Such bad news was as inevitable as death itself.
“But there’s another two dollars upstairs,” York said encouragingly. “One of the girls here. Murdered.”
“By this gentleman?”
“I don’t believe so. But I don’t want any of the bodies dragged off just yet. I have some detective work to do here first.”
Hub was letting Doc Miller in. Based upon the rumpled state of his brown suit, and his uncombed white hair, the stubby little medic probably did sleep in his clothes.
The doc, Gladstone bag in hand, trundled over and raised a white eyebrow at the corpse, then turned his gaze to the undertaker and raised the other one.
“Mr. Perkins here has the right idea,” Miller said. “There appears to be nothing more to be done for this poor creature but to bury him.”
“Agreed,” York said, then gestured a thumb at the ceiling. “And you’ve lost another patient upstairs.”
York filled the doctor in.
Having absorbed it all, Miller nodded toward the undertaker. “That also sounds more like this gentleman’s purview than my own.”
“No, Doc, I want you to bring your medical eye to the murder room.”
That seemed reasonable to Miller, who followed the sheriff up the stairs, Rita having already gone back up to the landing, where she paced a small area, arms folded.
As the two men stood poised at the doorway of Pearl’s little room, the doc said, “Well, our dead friend downstairs didn’t do this.”
“I know he didn’t.”
“Then my medical eye may not be needed. How did you come up with that diagnosis, Caleb?”
York gestured. “Headboard’s against the wall. The girl’s killer faced her. Left side of the bed, I’d say. A throat slashed like that bleeds all to hell. Willart would have been covered in the stuff.”
Miller nodded. “Well-reasoned. He’d have been sprayed head to thigh. Whoever did this went out dripping.”
“Good point. Keep lookin’, Doc, I’ll be back right quick.”
York moved out onto the narrow strip of landing between wall and railing. The flooring had a runner of carpet, dark red, and on close inspection, drops of similar red indeed could be made out. They led to the doorway onto the rear stairs that emptied out into the alley where not so long ago Tulley had found the body of Pearl’s bank-clerk fiancé.
Those stairs were bare wood and all the way down a trail of red drops, tiny splashes where they hit, led to the door and then out into the alley. There the killer had mocked York by dumping something between those two garbage barrels, right where Upton had been found.
A duster, the front of the tan light-linen coat drenched in Pearl’s blood, still shimmering with it, lay crumpled, discarded, like a skin a snake crawled out of.
Well, hadn’t one?
A tossed handkerchief was covered in blood — the killer had wiped his face off, since that much flesh at least had been exposed to the scarlet spray.
York could see where somebody had scraped the bottom of their shoes the way you would deal with muddy soles before heading inside. Smears of blood were dug into the wavy, heavy shoe marks, and no droplets led away from the alley at all.
A cold-blooded killing had taken place in the very building where — and while — York had been questioning Gil Willart. That is, the killer’s blood had been cold — Pearl’s was still warm. But the sheriff had no doubt that when Willart left Pearl, she’d still been breathing.
This had just happened.
And the killer had slipped away, out the back door, like a cheating husband.
Right under York’s damn nose.
Heaving a sigh of self-disapproval, York trudged up those back stairs and soon was with the doctor in the murder room again.
“She died quick,” the doc said. “Horribly, but quick. One of those small favors we’re expected to thank God for.”
“What else can you tell me?”
The doc pointed to the floor near the bed. “Look under there. That’s the murder weapon.”
York nodded. “I spotted that, but haven’t had a close look yet.”
“Take one.”
York did.
The knife was small, the kind usually tucked into a boot or belt or sleeve, five inches of pointed blade with a jigged bone handle and double brass guard — dagger-style, its gleaming double-edged blade looking razor sharp. One side of the blade bore tiny tears of blood.
“Smoky Mountain toothpick,” York said, rising.
“So sharp,” the doc said, “it made its cut and took just a little blood away with it.”
York pointed at the dead girl. “What does the wound tell you, Doc?”
“That’s a right-to-left wound, judgin’ by the messy exit point. Probably a right-handed man, but that’s nothing you can take to a jury. That kind of blade? You can swing backhanded, if you’ve a mind.”
York nodded. “Step into the hall, would you, Doc?”
They spoke just outside the murder room. The sheriff told the doctor of the bloody trail down the steps and the blood-spattered duster they led to.
“I could use some help gatherin’ the evidence, Doc. Grab a sheet off of one of these beds and go down and wrap that bloody duster up for me, and keep it at your office till I need it.”
The doc gave him half a humorless smile. “You figure that’s a good place for it, do you? Since I get more blood splashed around in my surgery than you do in your office.”
York gave him a grim smile. “I knew you’d understand.”
The doc nodded toward the murder room. “You want me to secure that weapon?”
“No, I’ll get it.”
York went back in, picked up the Smoky Mountain toothpick, wiped what little blood there was off on the bedsheet, and stuck it in his boot, where there was a place for such a weapon.
Then, standing tall, he looked down at the poor dead girl, her mouth frowning, her wound grinning, the skinny thing all blister pale.
“I’ll get the son of a bitch, Pearl,” he told her quietly. “Don’t you worry a hair on your pretty little head about it.”
York returned to the main floor of the saloon, where near the bottom of the stairs the undertaker stood guarding his two dollars.
“Go on and get your wicker baskets, Mr. Perkins,” York said. “They’re all yours, upstairs and down.”
Perkins gave him a ghastly smile. “You’re a good man, Sheriff.”
“One thing, Mr. Perkins.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Those outlaws comin’ to town after my hide?”
“Uh... what about that, sir?”
“If things don’t go my way, and you put me in your window? I will haunt your skinny backside till Judgment Day.”
Perkins gulped and turned as white as the dead girl upstairs. “Sir, I would never...”
But York, smiling darkly to himself, had moved on to where Rita was keeping her upset girls company at their table toward the back.
He took her aside. “Honey, you need to pack a bag.”
She frowned, startled by the suggestion. “What?”
“Not everything you own. Just enough to hold you over for two or three days.”
“What for?”
He brushed a tendril of dark hair from her face. “I aim to protect that girl I saw in the lamp glow the other night.”
That stopped her. She smiled just a little. “So you do care?”
“A sheriff cares about every citizen. Some a little more than others.”
Smiling, she nodded, but as she was going off, he called, “Put on your Levi’s like the other morning. Leave your work clothes behind.”
She nodded and disappeared up the stairs, skirting a corpse and an undertaker.