Longarm #399 : Longarm and the Grand Canyon Murders (9781101554401) (14 page)

Heidi screamed, probably not because of a sexual climax, but out of shock and surprise. The attacker screamed and crashed facedown on the bed, but Longarm was already rolling onto the floor.

“Holy shit!” Heidi yelled, struggling to get out from under Longarm. “What happened!”

“Some asshole with a big knife just tried to kill us,” Longarm said, climbing off his naked companion and then standing over the body on the bed. “And I think we’re going to have to have the bedsheets changed right away.”

Heidi scrambled erect, heavy breasts wet with perspiration and chest heaving from way too much excitement. “What…”

“It’s that man, Al Hunt,” Longarm told her as he tore the attacker’s mask from his face then turned back to Heidi. “Are you all right?”

There was just enough moonlight coming through the curtain for him to see that she was
not
all right. Her bare legs were shaking and her mouth was hanging open as she struggled for her breath.

“What did he do that for!”

“I’m not sure,” Longarm replied. “But I expect this room will be full of people in about thirty more seconds, so you might want to get dressed.”

“You’re the one that’s standing there naked and stiff. Maybe you ought to take your own damned advice!”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said agreeably.

Longarm placed his gun back on the bedside table and in some pain pulled on his pants and shrugged into a shirt. “Here they come,” he said, picking the gun back up because he was still uncertain about what this attempted murder was all about.

Frankie Virden and Seth burst into the room with pistols clenched in their fists.

“Don’t shoot,” Longarm warned, cocking back the hammer of his six-gun. “The excitement is over for tonight.”

Frankie had matches, and when he lit one, the room suddenly revealed the shocking sight of Al Hunt lying facedown on the bed with a red stain rapidly spreading on the sheets.

“It’s a bloody mess and we’ll need another room for the rest of this night,” Longarm told the man.

“What the hell is going on!” Virden shouted.

Longarm’s gun was pointed at the gambler and hotel owner. “I think
you
might have the answer to your own question.”

“What!”

“You heard me. I can’t yet prove it, but I suspect that you knew Hunt was coming in here to stab us to death and then rob us.”

“Are you insane!” Virden cried with feigned outrage. “This is
my hotel
. Why the hell would I want someone to be murdered here? Do you have any idea what this will do for my hotel business!”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. All I’m sure of is that our room was locked and Hunt had a key.”

“Then he stole it from behind the desk. All the keys are right out there hanging on a peg.”

“I’d suggest you change that,” Longarm snapped. “
And if I find anything to tie you into his second attempt in less than five days to kill me, then I’ll make sure you hang. You too, Seth.”

“Fuck off, Marshal. I don’t know anything about this and neither does the boss. Hunt was a crazy bastard who thought he could rob you both, and he made a big mistake.”

“Yeah,” Longarm said, “he did. Now both of you get out of this room while my wife and I get fully dressed and I see if Hunt has anything I need to know about in his pockets.”

Virden swore viciously then said, “I knew that I shouldn’t have let that man stay at my hotel. I’ll admit that I’m partly to blame for this, but I had no idea that—”

“Stow it,” Longarm said impatiently. “Just close the door on your way out.”

“But…”

“I’ll join you in a few minutes and pick up that new room key,” Longarm told the pair. He consulted his pocket watch. “Still enough time to get some sleep before a long day tomorrow.”

Elmer Potter, wearing a long nightshirt and with his eyes wide and staring pushed through the doorway. “My god!” he cried. “What happened! That man is…is dead.”

“Go back to your room, Mr. Potter,” Longarm commanded. “We’ve a long day ahead tomorrow and you and your wife need your sleep.”

“Sleep?” Potter couldn’t seem to tear his eyes off the dead man sprawled in a spreading pool of blood. “How can we sleep when a man just got shot to death not twenty feet from our room!”

Longarm didn’t have an answer to that, but Frankie Virden shoved the older man into the hallway. “Marshal,
I’ll be waiting in the lobby when you’re finished here,” he said gravely.

“Yeah.”

When they were alone, Heidi collapsed in the chair and buried her head in her hands. She was trembling, and when Longarm tried to console her, she sobbed, “I’m not sure that I’m up to all this killing that seems to follow you around, Custis!”

“I wanted you to stay in Flagstaff and wait for me. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“But you wouldn’t do it. Would you like to return to Flagstaff when John Wallace comes back?”

“I think I would,” she replied. “I…I don’t want to leave you, but I’ve seen more bloodshed since we left on that stagecoach than I’ve seen in my entire life.”

“I’m sorry. And do you know what the worst of it is?”

“There’s
worse
!”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I have a feeling there is much worse to come down at Lees Ferry and on the Colorado River.”

“I really miss Denver,” she whispered, starting to cry. “I really do.”

“Then take the first train back,” he urged.

“But what about us? What about…”

Longarm knelt in front of the woman, who was fighting off hysteria. “Heidi, there’s nothing wrong with being scared and wanting some peace and safety in your life. Nothing wrong at all.”

“I’m ashamed of myself for admitting that I just want to leave.”

“Don’t be,” he told her. “I’ll return to Denver, and when I do, I’ll look you up. I think you should take that job offer and then start your own jewelry business.”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh. You’d be amazingly successful.”

“But what about
us
!”

“We can talk about us when I return.”

“
If
you return. Custis, why can’t you and I just leave and go back to Colorado? There must be others who can do this bloody work. We could get married and live—”

Longarm placed a finger over her lips. “This isn’t the time to be talking about that. I came to do a job and I’m staying until it’s finished.”

“Do you think that man lying on our bed is tied to anything else or that he just saw my jewelry and figured he could rob and kill us?”

“I don’t have the answer to that…yet. But if I had to answer your question based on my instincts and past experience, I’d say that Al Hunt wasn’t acting alone and that he might be the ambusher that got away.”

“I wonder.”

“I’ll search him and his room,” Longarm told her. “There may be some clues that tie the man to either the ambush or to Frankie Virden. I’ll just have to see how that plays out.”

“All right.”

“Heidi, just pack your things and I’ll go get a new room,” he said, standing up and tucking his shirt into his pants, then reaching for his socks and boots. “We both need to get some sleep before I leave in the morning.”

She nodded and began moving. That was good because packing her things in a bag, getting fully dressed, just going through the motions, might keep her mind off the dead man that lay sprawled out on their bed with a long hunting knife still clenched in his lifeless fist.

Longarm was in a bad and dangerous mood when he
picked up another room key. “I’m going to tell you something, Frankie, just so we understand each other.”

“And that would be?”

“It’s obvious that Al Hunt would have had easy access to the spare key to our room…but what is less obvious to me is why you or someone at the desk didn’t notice the key was missing.”

Frankie Virden managed a smile. “Al Hunt must have grabbed it off the hook after we all had dinner. We were very busy and apparently no one noticed that your spare room key was missing.”

“I see.”

“An unfortunate mistake,” Virden assured him. “I should never have allowed a man like Hunt to stay in this hotel. Word of his attempt on your life will certainly filter back to Flagstaff and hurt my hotel business.”

“How sad,” Longarm said without sympathy.

“Yes, it is sad. But at least you and Mrs. Long are unharmed and Hunt is dead. I say good riddance to the man.”

Longarm had a strong suspicion that Frankie Virden and Seth had given Al Hunt the key to his room after dinner, but that couldn’t be proved, so he said, “Make sure that those keys aren’t sitting out in the open when my wife and I get up in the morning.”

“Is that an
order
, Marshal?”

“Yeah, it is,” Longarm said, marching off to open up the new room.

“Marshal?”

Longarm turned in the dim hallway to see Carrie Blue standing in her nightgown. “What is it?”

“I just wanted to tell you that Al Hunt and Carl Whitfield were cousins.”

“Is that a fact!”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if Frankie and Seth were in on the attempt just made on my life and that of my wife?”

“I…I couldn’t say. All I can tell you is that they were all together talking around the poker table last evening in low voices.”

“Thank you for telling me this,” Longarm said. “Now, you’d better get back to your bed. I assume that Frankie would not be pleased if he caught you with me.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

Longarm squeezed her arm. “You’re better than this, Carrie.”

“That’s what Mr. Wallace says. He’s going to help me find some honest work in Flagstaff and take me back with him when he returns on his stagecoach.”

“What will Frankie do?”

“I don’t know. I’m…I’m terrified that he or Seth will kill Mr. Wallace.”

“Let me think about this,” Longarm told her. “Now, go back to your room.”

Carrie looked as if she was about to burst into tears, but she left anyway. Longarm did a quick inspection of their replacement room and then he went back to the original room and got Heidi. He took her to their new room and said, “Lock the door and I’ll be back in ten minutes or less.”

“But where are you going!”

“I’m going to search Al Hunt’s body and see if it turns up anything of interest.”

Heidi looked pale and scared, but she did as he asked. Ten minutes later, Longarm had finished his examination of the body and found nothing remarkable. But he was still thinking about what Carrie Blue had told him.

And, even more important, the sobering fact that neither Frankie Virden nor Seth had told him that Al Hunt had been Carl Whitfield’s cousin. To Longarm’s way of thinking, it was as good as proof that they were the two men who had ambushed him after he left the Cameron Trading Post.

Longarm and the older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Potter, were packed and anxious to leave the Rimrock Hotel the next day at noon on rented horses. The Potters appeared to have aged considerably since the attempt on Longarm’s life shortly after midnight. Longarm had said his good-bye to Heidi and she was still sleeping. In another day or two, she’d return to Flagstaff with John Wallace and Carrie Blue.

“I can’t wait to get leave of this place,” Mrs. Potter confided. “There is something very evil here, and Elmer and I have decided we will not be staying at this hotel after we’ve seen Lees Ferry and the Grand Canyon.”

“Where will you go?”

“We’re not sure yet,” the older woman confided. “But we certainly don’t feel safe here!”

Longarm happened to get a fleeting glimpse of Carrie Blue out of the corner of his eye. She had been peering through the window of her hotel room, and there was
something about her expression and looks that stopped him in his tracks.

“We’ll be looking forward to your return,” Virden was saying. “Marshal, be careful down there in the canyon. And I hope you find out what happened to those people that went missing.”

Carrie Blue suddenly bent her head, cupped her face in her hands, and disappeared from Longarm’s sight.

“Hold on just a minute,” Longarm said, turning and marching back into the hotel.

“Hey!” Frankie Virden called. “What…”

But Longarm wasn’t listening to the man as he strode through the lobby and down a hallway to Frankie Virden’s room. And he didn’t listen when Carrie cried out for him to go away and leave her alone. Instead, Longarm opened the door and stepped into the room and then he came to an abrupt stop.

“Carrie! What happened!”

Her beautiful face had been viciously battered. The former black eye that she’d been trying to hide was now swollen completely shut and her lips were puffy and crusted with dried blood.

Longarm closed the door behind him and approached the cringing young woman. “Did Frankie do this last night after you told me about Al Hunt and Carl Whitfield being cousins?”

“Yes, and Seth,” she managed to say. “But…”

Longarm collected the frightened young woman into his arms. “He isn’t going to hurt you ever again. And neither is Seth. I can promise you that much.”

“Not even you can help me out here, and when you leave…”

“I can’t leave you or Heidi alone with that pair. Not for one single hour.”

The door burst open, and both Virden and Seth bulled their way inside the room. Frankie was in the front and blocking the doorway, “What is going on!”

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Longarm said, his rage bubbling so near the surface that he was ready to explode. “Miss Blue says that you both had a turn at her last night after she and I talked in the hallway.”

“She’s lying.”

“Carrie is telling the truth, and I’m convinced that you both sent Al Hunt into my room last night to stab me to death while I was asleep.”

“You can’t prove that!” Virden shouted.

“His knife came out of your kitchen.” Longarm glanced to Carrie. “I’m sure she’ll recognize it, won’t you, Carrie?”

She managed to whisper. “They put Al up to stabbing you to death and then they planned to steal—”

“The whoring bitch is lying!” Seth bellowed.

“No, she isn’t, and both you and Frankie are going to prison. I think you’ll find that the Yuma Territorial Prison is the closest thing to hell you can find on earth.”