DangerousPassion (18 page)

Chapter Twelve

Edgar Patterson eased back on the reins and the big sorrel gelding stopped the carriage fifty yards from the front gate to Sarah Miller’s home. To the east, the sun was just coming up over the horizon, a big yellow ball of color smiling brightly on what might prove to be a very dark day for some of the fine citizens of Deadwood. Something that might have been a smile pulled at the corners of Edgar’s mouth.

Edgar understood that Sarah had no idea at all how valuable her property could be once the right landscaping was done; she held onto the land because it had been in her family, and now it was almost all that was left of her family. Emotion—not cold logic—kept her anchored to the land and the drafty old shack of a house. Edger had been taught by his father that emotion was a weakness that must be avoided.

It won’t be long before her land is mine. Then I can tell my goddamned father to shut his stinking mouth.

But even as the vengeful thought registered in his consciousness, Edgar knew that he would never find the courage to tell Jerome to shut up. Edgar was too frightened of his father. He knew from experience what happened to people who stood up to Jerome. How many times, when Edgar had been a child (and even later when he was a young man) had he felt the lash of his father’s black leather belt? He got his whippings across the back and shoulders, or across the buttocks. Most of the time, anyway. On one particularly memorable occasion, Jerome took his belt to Edgar’s face—and he did that for just looking angrily at Jerome.

So Edgar would keep his opinions to himself even when he was insulted, and his hatred would grow and fester and become more acidic with each nasty comment, with every withering glance, with every aspersion to his manliness.

“Come on, boy,” Edgar said, flicking the reins lightly against the gelding’s back. “Let’s go see if my pretty fiancée is ready for work.”

He hadn’t quite reached the front porch when the door opened and Sarah, looking as fresh and lovely as ever in her gray skirt of lightweight wool with the white cotton blouse and the matching gray jacket. She would have been lovelier had she not had a countenance that held such unguarded suspicion in it that Edgar had no doubt in his mind—despite the decidedly self-flattering imagine of himself he maintained—that there wasn’t a thing about seeing him unexpectedly on that morning that appealed to Sarah.

“Good morning, darling lady!” Edgar announced theatrically, taking off his hat and issuing a pretend bow while never actually getting up out of the seat of his two-person Coriman-designed carriage. “Your chariot has arrived to take you upon your journey!”

Though caught off guard initially, Sarah quickly regained her wits and asked, “Edgar Patterson, what on earth do you think you’re doing here at this time of the morning? You know I’ve got a perfectly fine mare and carriage to get me to work at your old bank every morning by eight.”

“That’s right, you do. I know that you’re a very independent woman and I respect that. But I am, after all, your fiancé…and I don’t get to see you away from the bank nearly as much as I’d like.” He smiled, hoping it seemed a sincere expression that carried not a whit of mischief or menace in it, and was rather pleased with his success. But then, Edgar was regularly pleased with himself. “So please, come to my carriage and let me take you to the bank. And on the way we can discuss our upcoming marriage, and other things of notable interest.”

Sarah, still standing on the porch of her home, put her hands on her hips and looked around, as though she expected people, now in hiding, to suddenly jump up and make their presence known while shouting “surprise!”

But there was no one hiding anywhere near Sarah’s house, and the only surprise for her was the arrival of Edgar Patterson at her home at sunrise.

“You’ve really shocked me this time,” Sarah muttered after a moment, stepping off the porch as she stepped slowly toward her fiancé’s carriage. She looked at him, and with a smile that was only slightly strained, added more loudly, “I never expected something like this from you.”

In a low, ambiguous tone, Edgar replied, “Give me a chance and I’ll show you a lot more surprises.”

He couldn’t say for certain, but he thought a shiver had gone through Sarah at his comment. Was it a shiver of anticipation, or fear? Or, perhaps, a combination of both emotions? Edgar strongly suspected that Sarah’s seemingly unending delays in setting a date for their wedding was motivated by a fear of sex. The thought made him grin. Edgar had no intentions of remaining faithful to his matrimonial vows, though he did intend to fuck Sarah regularly, and in whatever fashion his whims of the moment dictated. He was tired to the bone of Sarah’s prissy attitude toward sex…but the minute she said “I do” then Edgar could do with her whatever the hell he wanted to in their matrimonial bed, and there wasn’t a damn thing she or anyone else could say or do to stop him.

Sarah stepped up into the carriage and sat beside Edgar. She muttered, “A gentleman would have helped me into the carriage.”

Edgar’s eyes were cold,
You cunt, once you’re my wife I’ll slap you silly if you ever talk to me in that tone of voice.

“Hee-yah!” Edgar called out, slapping the reins more firmly than necessary to the gelding’s back. The horse flinched and then put his shoulders to the harness, turning the carriage around to head back to Deadwood. “So tell me, Sarah, what’s on your gentle mind on this fine morning?” As he smiled at her.
Not that I give a shit.

* * * *

Three hours later, Edgar stood outside the homestead of Amanda Nichols. Amanda, a widow in her very early thirties, shared her homestead with Susan Murchison, a spinster not quite thirty, Susan had declined one too many marriage offers and, in consequence, had been summarily booted out of her home by her father, who could find no good reason why any woman wouldn’t want to be married once attaining the age of sixteen. It mattered little to him if the intended groom was penniless, shiftless, and utterly without the means of supporting a family, much less a wife. What mattered to Susan’s father was that he himself was no longer obligated to feed, clothe, and shelter a daughter. Susan’s father was nothing if not a practical man when it came to matters of money.

“Listen to me carefully, Amanda,” Edgar said, his tone patrician and condescending. “I’m offering you eight hundred dollars for your land and buildings. Sign the papers and the money is yours.”

Amanda glanced nervously at the men standing behind Edgar. They were gunmen. That much was obvious about their bearing and demeanor. And they were vile human beings. That much was obvious in the way they looked at Amanda and Susan, undressing them with their eyes, ravaging them visually. Had Amanda been able to accurately read the minds of the men standing behind Edgar, she would have fainted dead away in fear and revulsion.

“Last month you offered one thousand.”

Edgar could hear the undercurrent of fear in Amanda’s tone. It triggered in his brain sensors that responded favorably to fear, to weakness, to increased profits. These were the narcotics that intoxicated Edgar Patterson. In a flash he wondered whether Amanda’s fear of him, combined with her need for money, would compel her to her knees. Edgar had experienced only a few blowjobs in his life—a fact which caused no small amount of consternation to him during his moments of self-reflection. All the oral sex he had ever received had been administered professionally, with more tactile stimulation provided by the hand than the mouth, and always with a steady eye on the profit to be made at the culmination of the occasion.

Could Amanda be coerced to her knees? And if she could, could he pretend that she was there willingly? That might make the occasion infinitely more entertaining. Particularly if she didn’t cry. There had been a young prostitute in Fargo who had cried the entire time she sucked him. It rankled Edgar’s nerves that her whimpering dissatisfaction with her station in life had disrupted the pleasure he was experiencing. The fact that she was crying and should probably be shown some measure of sympathy never quite entered into Edgar’s thought processes. The question of why she was crying was of even less significance to him, and in fact never even entered into that part of his brain relegated to serious thoughts.

Edgar Patterson was a man who had never lost a minute’s sleep worrying about the people who might be displeased with his behavior.

Not one minute.

To Amanda, he said, “That was last month. You decided to be obstinate and in consequence the price for your property has gone down. Delay some more and it will go down even farther.”

Amanda shook her head slowly. “No…no, you can’t do that.”

Edgar tossed his head back and uttered a short, obscene laugh. Then his face transformed into a savage scowl as he asked, “Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can or can’t do?” His lip curled in an ugly sneer of unalloyed contempt. “Be smart. Take the eight hundred. Make me wait to buy your property, and you’ll get even less.”

Without giving her time for a response, he turned on his heel and kicked his foot up into the stirrup of his saddle. With some effort he pulled himself up onto the palomino. Never once did he meet eyes with Amanda or Susan. He did take a moment to look at Tookie Smithers, the man he had hired to take Derek’s place, and said, “Come with me. We’ll give this cunt twenty-four hours to think about it.”

* * * *

Edgar reined over his palomino, and with a tilting of his head indicated he wanted to speak privately to Tookie Smithers. Though by no means an intelligent or crafty man, Tookie was still bright enough to understand that ingratiating himself to a man like Edgar Patterson might be a very profitable professional move to make. He reined his own horse closer to the banker’s.

“Do you know who Sarah Miller is?” Edgar asked, keeping his voice low enough that the other riders couldn’t hear.

Tookie nodded. “She’s your gal.”

Edgar showed no indication that he’d even heard what his latest hired gunman had said. He asked, “Do you know where she lives?”

Tookie nodded. “Got a place outside town a couple miles. Nice little place.”

What an idiot! That drafty old shack disgusts me!
He stared into the yellowed and slightly blood-shot eyes of the man he had just employed to be his hired muscle. A whole host of insults danced on the tip of his tongue, but Edgar kept them all silent. Tookie’s presence was repulsive, but for the time being, quite necessary.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Edgar said once he’d regained thorough control over his senses. “I want you to ride there right now. Take the men with you. Don’t be seen going there, if it can at all be helped. Once you’re there, I want you to burn the house and the barn to the ground.”

Tookie’s eyes widened. “But Mr. Patterson, she’s your—“

“Quiet!” Edgar snapped. “I want the house and barn completely demolished. Nothing can be left standing.”

Tookie’s shook his head slowly. “Mr. Patterson, what’s you want to burn down your own lady’s house for?” Tookie was by no means bright, and he was a man easily confused—so this behavior on the part of his employer made no sense to him at all.

“My reasons are good enough for me.” The thought of having to explain himself and his actions to a man like Tookie was appalling to Edgar. “If you want to keep putting Patterson gold in your pockets, you’ll have to learn to do what you’re told and not ask stupid questions.” Edgar paused a moment to look at the other three men in the group. There wasn’t a man in the group who didn’t need a bath and a shave, but Edgar knew that they were killers who didn’t really mind who they killed so long as they got paid afterward—and that was all that truly mattered to Edgar. To Tookie, Edgar said, “She’s got a horse in that small barn of hers. A horse and a carriage. Burn the horse inside the barn. I want nothing left.”