Showdown (23 page)

"You took my money, Tolan. What the hell else could I do?"

"I thought you said I was too smart to go for queering the drink."

The icy smile. "Well, you didn't go for it, did you? But I still thought I'd give it a try anyway."

Tolan was about to say something when they heard heavy footsteps in the hall. And then a heavy knock.

Tolan and Rooney glanced at each other.

"Who is it?" Tolan said, not moving from the bed.

"Sheriff's office. Deputy McBride."

This time when they glanced at each, there was tension in their eyes. Somebody from the sheriff's office wasn't what they needed with less than two hours to go until train time.

"What is it you need?" Rooney said.

"Sheriff wants me to ask you a couple questions. This won't take long."

Tolan started up from the bed, his gun aimed directly at the door. He holstered that and picked up a sawed-off.

Rooney half-leapt at Tolan, grabbing the man's gun wrist, pushing against the sawed-off.

Rooney whispered: "We sure as hell don't want a shootout. Let's just see what he wants. Maybe they just like to hassle strangers here."

With that, Rooney shrugged and tugged his suit into proper fitting position, slicked back his hair with the palms of both hands, and then wiped a heavy finger across his lips, in case he'd left some crumbs there.

He looked back at Tolan. Tolan was ready to reenact the Civil War right here and right now. That was all he knew how to do.

But this situation called for a civilized man of intelligence and self-control. One who could, through charm and subterfuge, make short order of a hick deputy sheriff.

He opened the door, and Richard Neville hit him in the face with the butt of a Sharps buffalo rifle.

Rooney—not a tough man, not a tough man at all—went wheeling backward, a womanly sound emitting from his lips.

Tolan tried to reach his sawed-off, but it was too late for that now, wasn't it?

Neville closed the door behind him and said, "You two were supposed to be on a steamboat two days ago. God knows I paid you two enough money to take care of my sister and then get away from here. What the hell happened?"

T
here was a lot of disagreement from people in the hotel—staff and guests alike—as to which came first: the sound of the Colt or the sound of the sawed-off. Opinion seemed to divide right down the middle.

The sheriff's name was Walt Naismith. He was tall, sinewy, and carried a wad of chaw that made his cheek look eight months pregnant. He wore a dusty suit and a suspicious expression.

He checked it all out upstairs, where the killings had taken place, meanwhile keeping Neville in the temporary custody of a lone deputy in the lobby.

The gunfire hadn't been difficult to hear. Prine had been less than a block away when it came. He knew who was involved. What he didn't know then was who had survived.

Now he sat next to Neville in the hotel café, across the table from Naismith, who had dragged a spittoon over to his chair.

"These the men killed your sister?" Naismith said.

"Yes, sir, they are," Neville said.

"And you're sure of that?"

"Yes, I am, Sheriff. And the deputy here will vouch for me."

"Is that true, son? You'll vouch for him?"

"If you're asking me were these the men who killed his sister, yes. I believe they were."

"And you don't have any reason
not
to believe they were?"

"I guess I don't follow."

Naismith smiled around his chaw.

"Not fun when you're the one being asked the questions. You're too used to bein' the asker instead of the askee."

"That's probably right. Hadn't thought of it that way."

"What I'm getting at here, son, is do you have any major doubt about them bein' the killers?"

"None that I can think of."

"Good, son. Now back to you, Mr. Neville. And let me say that I'm well aware of who you are and who your pop was. But I treat all people fair and square—at least most of them—so I'm not gonna go too easy on you or too hard. You understand?"

"I do, sir. But it's actually pretty simple, you see—"

"One thing I learned in thirty years of bein' a lawman, nothin' is pretty simple. Not even the simple stuff is simple."

Neville sighed impatiently, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms like a man whose wife had dragged him to a ballet.

"I'm glad to answer any of your questions," he told Naismith.

"Very good. That's the way we need to handle this. That way we can speed things right along." He sipped his coffee. Then spat. "Now, did you ever see Tolan and Rooney before today?"

"No, I didn't."

"How did you know they were in those rooms?" Neville explained how he'd worked all the saloons and hotels.

"Did the deputy warn you about getting violent with them?"

"Yes, he did. He was very explicit about it. He said that just because they'd killed my sister didn't give me any right to kill them unless it was in self-defense."

"And you're saying that it was self-defense?"

"Oh, absolutely it was. Tolan—that's the dark one, that's the only way I can keep them apart in my head—Tolan let me in, but then he only gave me about a minute before he brought up the sawed-off and fired at me."

"Two bullets, from what I can see, Mr. Neville."

"That's right, he fired twice."

"Did Rooney shoot at you?"

"He certainly did. Twice also, I believe. It looked like an old Colt to me."

Naismith looked at Prine.

"You ever hear of that, son? A man with a six-shooter like Mr. Neville's here holding off a man with a sawed-off and another man with a six-shooter?"

Prine shrugged his shoulders.

"In my experience, you can never predict how a shootout like that is going to go. There're a lot things involved. Speed, accuracy, courage—you just can't predict."

Naismith turned back to Neville.

"So there you were and you were facing two armed men. And what did you do?"

"About the only thing I could. I threw myself in front of the bed and crouched down. There wasn't a lot of space."

"You fired from that position?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember who you fired at first?"

"I'm pretty sure it was Rooney. He was closest to me."

"Do you remember where you hit him?"

"It's all a blur. But I remember afterward—when he was down on the floor, I mean—I remember seeing this large dark hole in his forehead."

"How did you come to shoot Tolan?"

"He had to reload. And I heard him. I told him I wouldn't fire on him if he gave himself up."

"So you warned him?"

"Yes. I thought of what Prine here told me. About how I could fire only in self-defense."

"So there is he reloading, and you shot him?"

"He had a pistol underneath his blanket. He pulled it on me and . . ."

"And you shot him."

"Yes."

"Do you remember where you wounded him?"

"The chest, I believe."

"The chest and the face."

"Yes. Then I just got out of the room as soon as I could. I needed to get out in the hallway. Fresh air. I was getting sick to my stomach. Maybe I did hit him in the face, too."

"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."

B
y 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.

A
n 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.

A
s 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.