C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX
Drugo Odell sat in his hotel room and seethed. He'd had a clear shot and that damn meddler Frank Cobb had robbed him of the kill. Because of Cobb, Kate Kerrigan was alive and well instead of lying on an undertaker's table with embalming fluid feeding into her body.
Odell poured himself a whiskey from the bottle on the dresser and stepped to the window, where rain still tapped on the glass. Outside, Front Street was deserted, everyone having taken refuge from the downpour, but the saloon crowds were raucous and pianos, banjos, and the few trumpets played unceasingly. The sheriff's office was in darkness. Shuttered, its door was closed and padlocked tight as an orphanage matron's mouth.
Odell turned as someone thumped on his door. He laid down his glass and picked up a Colt from the nightstand. “Who's there?”
“Me.”
It was the voice of the big man, no doubt there to find out why his thousand-dollar investment had been so uselessly spent. Odell turned the key in the lock and stepped back, his revolver up and ready.
The big man barged inside and got right to the point. “You missed.”
“Frank Cobb meddled.” Odell studied his client and wondered how many shots it would take to drop a man that size. More than a few, probably.
The big man looked around and sat on the corner of the brass bed that shrieked under his weight.
“I won't miss the next time,” Odell said.
“Shut the hell up and give me some of that whiskey.” The big man grimaced, grabbed the front of his shirt, and wadded it into a wrinkled ball. He watched Odell pour bourbon into a glass and said, “Fill it, damn you.”
The big man's bearded face was ashen and his bloodshot eyes revealed his pain. He reached into his shirt pocket, took out a small tin box, and removed a white pill that he shoved into his mouth with a trembling hand. Odell handed him the whiskey and the man emptied the glass in a gulp.
After a while some color returned to his face and his breathing became easier. He tapped his chest. “Bad ticker.”
“You should see a doctor,” Odell said.
“I have a doctor. Every time he comes to the ranch my houseplants die.” The big man's eyes got mean. “I'll feel a sight better when Kate Kerrigan is dead.”
“I won't miss the next time,” Odell said again. “Why do you hate her so much?”
The man worked his left arm, bending and straightening it and then he flexed his fingers. “She made me look small in front of my hired hands. Cut me down to size, you might say. She forced me to eat her dust all along the trail from Texas and then got a better price for her cattle than I did. Sure I hate her, but I want something from her. I want her land, and I can claim it real easy when she's under the ground.”
Odell refilled the rancher's glass. “What's your name, mister? I like to know who I'm working for.”
“Name's Ezra Raven out of the West Texas Pecos River country. And I ain't going home until the Kerrigan witch is dead.” Raven grimaced and rubbed his arm, his face black with anger. “Even if I have to kill her myself.”
Odell shook his head. “Mr. Raven, you're a sick man. I suggest you catch a train and ride the cushions back to Texas. I'll let you know when the job is done.”
“I'm staying right where I am,” Raven said. “I'll head back to my ranch after I see Kate Kerrigan's dead face in the dirt. You do what I paid you to do Odell. If you fail me again . . . well, I hired one killer and I can hire another.”
“Are you threatening me, Mr. Raven? I don't like to be threatened.”
“Damn right I'm threatening you, Odell. When I pay a man for a job, I expect that job to get done.”
“It will get done,” Odell said, his face stiff.
Raven got wearily to his feet. “See that you don't miss again.”
The rank smell of Raven's sweat lingered after he left and Odell opened the window wide. He brought up a chair, sat down, and stared into the relentless rain.
During the next hour, he left his place by the window only once . . . to refill his whiskey glass. For the rest of the time he sat deep in thought. Finally, as the grandfather clock in the lobby struck midnight, he rose to his feet, grinning, and raised his hands above his head in triumph.
It was all too simple . . . a foolproof plan that would make him a hero and end the black cloud of suspicion that hung over his head. Damn it all, he was a genius. One more killing, that's all it would take. Just one more useless life to end with a bang. Drugo Odell smiled.
End with a bang
... “Damn, that was funny.”
* * *
Kate Kerrigan lay in bed on her back and let the pain of her bruises melt into the down mattress. She was sleepless, her open eyes staring at the shadowed ceiling and its dark corners where the spiders lived. Frank had asked her if she knew anyone who hated her enough to kill her, but try as she might, she could think of no one. All Kate's enemies were dead, some of them buried on the rise behind her cabin. She tried harder, remembering angry faces, shouted threats, vile curses . . . but still came up with no living enemy.
She closed her eyes, inviting sleep. She'd think on this again tomorrow.
* * *
Frank's only suspect was Drugo Odell. There could be no other. But why did he want to kill her so badly? All he needed to do was saddleâ
“My God!” Frank sat upright in bed. What about Ezra Raven? Was he still in Dodge? Did he hate Kate for the humiliation she'd forced on him back in Texas? Was Raven a vindictive man? He wanted the KK grazing land. Was that reason enough to kill? It had been for others of his breed. That's why range wars were fought. Greedy and power-hungry men going to the gun over land or water rights.
Frank made a decision. Tomorrow he'd find out if Raven had not yet left Dodge and talk to him if he hadn't. And if Raven were the one, he'd kill him.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SEVEN
The Golden Garter cathouse was located in a dim area between two warehouses in a narrow rectangular space that had forced the brothel to build upward. It had two stories plus an attic for the three housemaids and the same number of maintenance workers. The place was high-priced, discreet, and stocked only the best champagne, booze, and cigars. The girls were prettier than the norm, and they lasted about two years before their looks began to fade and they were shown the door.
The proprietress was a large-bosomed woman with white, store-bought teeth who called herself Dolly Mop, the current slang for a lady of loose morals. She ruled the Golden Garter with an iron hand and the girls were terrified of her, but toward her customers Dolly was as solicitous as a fond mama and listened to every problem with the undivided attention of a priest in a confessional . . . as long as they had money, of course.
“Poor Mr. Raven. She needs cut down to size, that strumpet,” Dolly said.
“She shamed me,” Ezra Raven said, his head on the woman's plump shoulder. “And in front of my men. I can't forgive her for that.”
“Nor should you.” Dolly was feeling poorly. Just three weeks before a disgruntled customer had put three .22 short rounds into her back from a Remington Elliot Pepperbox revolver. A doctor had dug out the bullets from Dolly's fat like buckshot, but for a woman who'd spent most of her working life lying flat on her back, sleeping on her side was proving to be a chore. “What you need is a nice girl and a bottle of champagne to make you feel better, Ezra.”
Raven had a catch in his voice as he said, “I have a weak ticker, Dolly. Kate Kerrigan brought it on me.”
“Then Caddy Moods is who you need,” Dolly said with an air of great finality. “She's a quiet girl, not given to strenuous exertions in bed. She's a perfect match. And don't forget the champagne. It can be had from the bartender at just ten dollars a bottle. It's genuine French, you know.”
Raven rose to his feet, looking enormous in Dolly's small parlor. “I plan to kill her,” Raven said. “Kate Kerrigan, I mean.”
In the lamplight, a stuffed bobcat watched with beady eyes from its glass dome and a woman's ribald laugh rang from a room upstairs.
“And no wonder, after what you've suffered at her hands,” Dolly said. “Now stop by the bar and buy the champagne and then go upstairs to room eight, the Presidential Suite. I'll send Caddy up by and by. At the moment she's helping an elderly gentleman”âDolly smiled sweetlyâ“with a little problem.”
* * *
The desk clerk at the Alamo Hotel looked up and shook his head as Drugo Odell stepped through the door. “We're full. Not a room to be had for love nor money.”
Odell smiled, playing it nice. “I don't need a room. I'm here to visit Mr. Ezra Raven.”
“I saw Mr. Raven go out. I don't think he's returned yet.”
“Then I'll wait for him. I'm one of his friends up from Texas and he told me he'd keep his door unlocked.”
“Room twenty at the top of the stairs,” the clerk said.
“Every room occupied, huh?” Odell said as though making small talk. He really didn't have much interest.
“They sure are. And apart from Mr. Raven, I think all our guests are in bed. Seems like the rain drove everybody inside.” The man smiled. “Good for the farmers though.”
“Get many farmers in Dodge?” Odell asked. As he knew it would, that opened up a conversation about farms and farming.
The clerk had obviously been raised on a farm, and he talked at length about seed and plowing and other stuff that didn't interest Odell in the least. When the clock in the hallway struck three he called a halt. “Well, I'd better get upstairs and wait for ol' Ezra. Do you have a spare key? He's a crackerjack fellow, but he can be forgetful by timesâcattleman, you know.”
The clerk smiled, already pleased that the little man in the bowler hat was obviously sympathetic to the plight of the Kansas farmer. “Yes, I have a spare. Do you want me to tell Mr. Raven that you're waiting?”
“No, I'd like to surprise him.”
The clerk smiled again. “I thought that might be the case. Don't you just love it when old friends drop in out of the blue?”
Odell smiled back. “Oh yes, I do. I surely do.”
* * *
Drugo Odell sat in darkness but rose to his feet when he heard the heavy fall of boots on the stairs. He pulled his Colt and stood to the side of the door. It had to be Ezra Raven. It was after four in the morning and the big rancher was finally seeking his bed with the rest of the sporting crowd.
Rain ticked on the window as a key rattled in the lock and the huge bulk of Ezra Raven stepped inside. Odell waited until the man closed the door behind him before he shoved the muzzle of his revolver into Raven's temple. “Do as I say, Ezra, or I'll scatter your brains.”
“What is this?” Raven said, his voice edged with anger, but he stood stock still, ground-hitched to the floor.
“Throw your gun on the bed,” Odell said.
“I'm not carrying a pistol.”
Odell reached out and felt around the man's waist. “You've been lying with a woman. I can smell her on you.”
“Is that you, Odell? Mind your own damn business.”
“That's hardly the way to greet a friend, Ezra.”
“Why do you have a gun pointed at my head?”
“Because we need to talk.”
“You don't need a gun to talk.”
“In this case I do,” Odell said. “Now light the lamp. Slowly.” He stepped back.
Raven crossed the floor, thumbed a match into flame and lit the oil lamp, bathing the hotel room in a mustard yellow light.
“Sit on the chair over there by the corner, Ezra,” Odell said.
“Damn you, Odell, is this a robbery?”
“Sit.” Odell's eyes looked like chipped flints.
“What the hell are you doing?” Raven said.
“Shut up and let me handle this. Where's your pistol?”
“I don't have one.”
Odell waved his gun around. “Where's your pistol?”
Raven said, “In the carpetbag in the corner.”
Odell found a long-barreled Colt in the bag and tossed it onto the bed. He smiled. “Ezra, have you ever done any acting, you know, on stage like Edwin Booth and Billy Chatterley and them?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Odell? Damn you, you're giving me chest pains. I want my money back and then to get the hell out of here.”
“No to both, Ezra. But I will give you an acting lesson. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”
Odell backed to the door and pulled it open a few inches. And then he took a deep breath and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“No! I will not kill a woman for you! That's a terrible thing to ask of a friend!”
He smiled and asked in a whisper, “You like that? Good acting, huh?”
Raven was too thunderstruck to speak, mouth open, eyes popping out of his head.
“You've already murdered two women in cold blood, Raven. I won't let you murder another. Get back! Get back or I'll shoot!!”
A whisper again. “So long, Ezra.” Odell pumped three shots into Raven's chest. The big man didn't even have time to cry out before death took him and he slumped back in the chair.
“No, Ezra, not that.” Odell quickly crossed the room, dragged the dead man out of the chair, and left him sprawled on the floor. He got the revolver from the bed and dropped it beside the body.
The door slammed open and a small, skinny man in a white gown and tasseled nightcap barged inside, half a dozen other residents, their faces concerned, crowding after him.
“Here, this won't do,” the small man said. “Christian people are sleeping.” His eyes went to the body on the floor. “My God, what happened?”
Odell managed to make himself look shaken. “He already murdered two women and he planned on murdering me if I didn't do what he wanted.”
“We heard every word, didn't we, Mabel?” The woman was well past middle age with wispy gray hair, her breasts slack and flat under her nightgown.
Mabel, her spitting image, said, “Yes we did. My sister and I heard him threaten you if you didn't kill a woman.”
“You heard him say that?” Odell said, surprised. “Oh, you poor ladies.”
“I heard him, too,” the nightcap man said. “I heard you tell him to get back, but it did no good.”
“He told me he'd murdered two unfortunate women of loose morals,” Odell said.
“Yes, we heard him say that as well. Isn't that so. Lily?” Mabel said. “What a beast. Those poor girls.”
Drugo Odell almost laughed out loud. This was going even better than he'd hoped. The two crazy old ladies and the man in the nightcap with the bare feet and long toenails would back his story all the way.
When Sheriff George Hinkle arrived, bleary-eyed and irritated at being wakened from sleep, that proved to be the case.
Mabel, Lily, and Nightcap Man maneuvered Hinkle into a corner and cut loose with a hand-waving torrent of talk. They said they were asleep in the adjoining rooms and were wakened by a man yelling at dear Mr. Odell, ordering him to kill a woman. Mr. Odell yelled back that he would do no such thing and then the horrible man said he'd already killed two women and, with a terrible curse, he said he would kill Mr. Odell. And then Mr. Odell said he would not let the man murder another woman, and then he told the killer to step back.
“Step back! Step back! He must have called out three or four times and then came the shots. At first we thought Mr. Odell had been killed and we were so relieved to see that it was the murderer,” Lily said.
Nightcap Man, warming to the idea of presenting evidence, went further, stating that the dead man, always in a considerable state of drunkenness, often cursed at him when they met on the stairs and would brandish a “murderous revolver” in his face, leaving him afraid and trembling and him under the care of a doctor.
Several more people testified that they heard Mr. Odell yelling at the man to get away from him before they heard the shots and they advised Hinkle that the killing was a clear-cut case of self-defense.
Hinkle listened to what everybody had to say. One timid lady declared the possibility that the dead man was in fact the notorious Jack the Ripper come from London to terrorize Dodge City. Mabel and Lily and the others went back to bed in a considerable state of nervous fear over that.
* * *
Sheriff Hinkle waited until the undertaker and his assistants had removed Raven's body before he sat at the end of Odell's bed and accepted the whiskey the man handed him.
“Well, Sheriff, you heard what the folks said. Ezra Raven murdered Sarah Hollis and Alva Cranley and he conspired to have Kate Kerrigan murdered.” Odell waited until he lit a cigar then said, “I guess now I'm on nobody's list of suspects.”
Hinkle stared at Odell for a long time and then said, “You planned it well, Drugo, and carried it off with style. It took a lot of sand.”
“You don't believe Raven wanted to kill me?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“It could have happened that way. Who says it didn't happen that way?”
“But it didn't.” With the whiskey taste sweet and smoky in his mouth, Hinkle added, “Drugo, you murdered Sarah Hollis and Alva Cranley, and tonight you murdered Ezra Raven, a Texas rancher. You had some kind of a relationship with Raven. Maybe he paid you to kill Kate Kerrigan. How am I doing?”
“Fine. But you couldn't prove all that before, and you sure as hell can't prove it now.”
“But look on the good side, Drugo. I don't have to hang an innocent man for your crimes.”
“Whoopee, Sheriff. What is he? A drover? Who cares if a drover lives or dies?”
“I do . . . and I guess he does. Maybe I can prove that you tried to kill Mrs. Kerrigan. In Dodge City, that's a hanging offense.”
“Good luck with that, Hinkle. You'll never prove that, either, especially after my heroics of tonight. And now, if you'll excuse me. The events of this busy evening have quite tired me out.”
The bed creaked as Hinkle rose to his feet. “Know what I think of you, Drugo?”
The little gunman smiled. “No. But do tell.”
“You're a piece of human filth. You should live in an outhouse with the rats.”
“I've killed men for saying less.”
“You won't kill me, not tonight. Another murder, especially of a lawman, would be hard to explain.”
“Just don't push me any further, Hinkle.” Odell smiled. “But here's more good news. I'm blowing this burg on the noon train tomorrow, going where my gun talent will be appreciated. Up Montana way maybe. I hear they're looking for range detectives to rid the range of nesters.”
Hinkle stepped to the door. “This world will be a better place when your shadow no longer falls on the ground, Drugo. I hope I'm still around to hear where you're buried so I can piss on your grave.”
“Trust me, Hinkle, you won't live that long.”