skeletons (21 page)

“Ride with him. Or he’ll lose you and we may lose her.”

“All right. You stay in the room till the next shift shows, understand?” He checked his watch. “It’s a quarter of ten —you’ll have protection by a quarter of eleven. But whatever you do, don’t leave the room. If the door won’t lock, use furniture. Keep that Airweight ready—I know you’ve got one—and use it if you have to. Guarantee you won’t leave?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Okay, give me a minute to radio, then I’ll come around inside.”

I pulled back into the room. Pingo Chavez leaned against the door, polishing his manicure on a sleeve and noting with disdain the cheap print on a wall. Harley the deputy stood intimidating Helene Vaught, still crouched like a child behind the chair.

I went to her. “There, Mrs. Vaught. Everything’s fine now, Mr. Davis will see you safely home. He’s a friend of mine.”

The poor woman couldn’t or wouldn’t speak, couldn’t or wouldn’t move. I raised her gently. “You said you trust me, Mrs. Vaught. Please trust me now. Let Mr. Davis take you home.”

No response. To reassure her, I put my hand, fisted around whatever it was she had given me, against her hand. Hers closed around it. Something told me I would never see her again.

“Dear lady,” I said. “On the way home, remember the Chautauquas. Remember the old songs, the beautiful singing on the porches.”

The cloud lifted. Her gray eyes, so much like Tyler’s, cleared. “Please love her,” she whispered.

“I’ll try.”

“Pity her, too,” she whispered.

“I do.”

“Try to understand.”

“I don’t yet.”

She smiled. And as she kissed me on the cheek, she squeezed my fisted hand.

“You will now,” she whispered.

Davis entered via the door. “Ready when you are, Mr. Butters.”

He came to Mrs. Vaught, offered his arm. To my enormous relief, she took it. Chavez and his deputy stepped aside, let them pass, followed. But before I could reach and slam and lock the door and open my hand, Pingo returned.

“You are back again, Mr. Butters.”

“The bad penny.”

He couldn’t kill me now. A public place, an open door, witnesses.

“And with the Border Patrol.”

“Protection.”

“Protection?”

“Your climate is unhealthy for writers.”

“I enjoy your sense of humor.”

“So do I.”

“Leaving soon?”

“Crack of dawn.”

“Did you ever drive down to see La Casa de la Justicia?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Respect for the dead.”

“How sensitive you are, Mr. Butters.” How much dared I let him know I knew?

How much dared I sweat the slaughterous little son of a bitch? “Sheriff, you’ve been around here a long time. Why did Mrs. Vaught go off her rocker?”

“Bad blood, I think.”

“Seems to be a lot of that in Harding.”

“No, no. We are
muy contento
here.”

“That how you got your limp?”

Me and my mighty mouth. The look Pingo Chavez threw me was a rope.

The instant he was gone I opened my hand.

A madwoman had fled her madhouse, and come all those long, lonely, demented miles to give me a large iron KEY.

TO WHAT?

I barricaded the door with a chair and the TV. I pushed the table to the shattered window, tipped it on end, piled three dresser drawers on top. I found the damned .38 in its holster on the closet floor, placed it by me on the bed. If I were attacked now, like the proverbial Boy Scout I was prepared.

I checked my watch. In fifty minutes, the Border Patrol would have another guardian angel outside.

These things done, I sat. And sat. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t watch television, nothing to read. Paced. Stopped, listened to the wind. Paced. Thought about how little I had achieved on my second time around in Harding. True, I had passed on a couple of pertinent items to Snackenberg and his SIU, but those belatedly and inadvertently. As to my other two reasons for the trek—avenging Crossworth and Sansom by getting the homicidal goods on Pingo Chavez and assisting Tyler to find out who the hell she was and so make her marriageable—zip. All I had to show for another day and a half in the trenches was some old yarns knit by an old lady, a bum’s rush out of a bank, and a key to what. Nothingsville.

Paced again. This was how Helene Vaught must have been today at Tamarisk. Until a high fence and meshed windows could no longer cage her. Then it hit me. Unlike her, I had made my own prison. Out of fear and a few pieces of furniture.

I stopped pacing. I had an absolutely brilliant brainstorm.

Why should I rattle around a room in a Ramada Inn all night when I had only one more errand to run? Run it, and I could be free at last to burn rubber for El Paso and Tyler and East Seventy-third Street. I had promised dear Davis to stay put—promises, promises. He was on his way to San Carlos with Chavez—a two-hour trip—and while Pingo was away, this mouse could play. I had two hours. I could pack up, load up, finish up, and be gone before the sheriff returned—with luck, even before Davis’ replacement arrived.

GENIUS!

I tore open the telephone book. Judge Charles S. Vaught Jr. lived on Iron Street, a block or two west of the courthouse—I recalled because I’d driven down it on my first recon of the town. But I wouldn’t drive. Any of Chavez’ prowl cars would pick up the Silver Wraith at first sight. It would be a ten-minute stroll to Iron Street. It was now only ten o’clock. I’d see Tyler’s father, my last chance, get what I could grind out of him, be back at the Ramada and in the Rolls and on the road in an hour.

GENIUS!

I packed like mad and hurried into the Huddlesfield jacket and Caraceni slacks, the hell with tie and homburg. Stripped for action, I clipped the Smith & Wesson to the ostrich belt. I unbarricaded the window, moved the luggage close to the sill, crawled out, hauled out my bags, drew the shade down. With the lights on in 114, the assumption would be that I was in there, too.

Toting the load to the Rolls, I stowed it in the boot, gave the old lady a love-pat and told her we’d soon be home again with Rodney, her mechanic, then slunk behind parked campers and pickups and various bourgeois vehicles to the street.

The late May night was warm. A lopsided moon lay low in the sky. I walked a block down Gold Street, would have crossed had I not spotted a county sheriffs car cruising toward me. I jumped into a store doorway. The car passed. After which I practically went into cardiac arrest.

There he was. Seated beside the driver, a different deputy. Pingo Chavez.

Now I stuck to side streets, cutting south to the courthouse, intending there to turn west to Iron Street and the judge’s house.

What in God’s name was the little devil doing here when he was supposed to be halfway to San Carlos? How had he given the dependable Davis the slip? My caper was predicated on his being out of town. Since he wasn’t, I was out on the end of a very vulnerable limb. If he caught me he would kill me, no doubt of that. And he had also been headed in the direction of the Ramada. Discover I had flown the coop, on foot, and he would have every car at his command combing the county.

I hid behind a mulberry tree, pondering whether to turn back or go on. Went on. Because if I returned to the Ramada now, without the Border Patrol to back me, my next appearance in print would be an
NYT
obit.

Went on, too, because I’d have Judge Vaught where the hair was short this time. If he double-talked at this late hour, I’d indict him with the empty graves at La Casa de la Justicia, my being dragged half to death under a car by Chavez, the first Doc Shelley’s suicide and shooting by his own father, the old judge, and finally, his wife’s flight to me tonight. Then I’d say, unless you want your daughter rubber-rooming with her mother at Tamarisk instead of living happily ever after with me, you had damned well better open up. This is your last goddamned chance.

I reached Harding Courthouse. It was dark. On top, its tower loomed into moonlight. My eyes followed it upward to the clockface.

11:14.

Out of habit, I punched my gold-plated-light-emitting-diode-hour-minute -second-month-date-digital Pulsar.

10:21.

It couldn’t be. My first morning in Harding, when I had come to the courthouse to see Judge Vaught, I had checked the clock against my watch, which was accurate within a minute a year, and both read 11:14.

Looked at the clock again. 11:14.

Punched the Pulsar again. 10:21.

I crossed the street, walked to the statue of the World War I doughboy, his rifle and bayonet at the ready. Looked again, from this angle, up at the white face, the two black hands juxtaposed with Roman numerals in black.

11:14.

Punched my Pulsar.

10:22.

Stood like the doughboy. A statue.

My brain became an opaque screen. Somewhere in my consciousness a field of sensors was buried, had been buried for some time. Pressure was now applied to one. A radio signal was relayed from the sensor to my brain. A white dot of light alerted me.

COINCIDENCE. That the clock in the tower and my watch had both read 11:14 that morning two weeks ago had been sheerest COINCIDENCE.

Pressure was again applied to the field of sensors in me. Several white dots of light tripped on in my brain.

The clock in the tower of Harding Courthouse had STOPPED. Had been STOPPED for at least two weeks. Perhaps MUCH LONGER.

HOW MUCH LONGER?

More pressure. White dots on the screen on my brain in a directional sequence. A genuine and meaningful penetration of my mind occurred.

CLOCK.

STOPPED.

HOW LONG?

COMPREHEND.

The screen of my brain went dark. I went weak. Would have sagged to my knees had I not flung an arm around a puttee on the doughboy’s leg.

I stood again. Hyperventilated.

Started unsteadily for the courthouse steps. A man surfacing from his subconscious. Toward something he had long, long known. To which in his thirty-four years he had not yet assented.

And that: Within minutes after midnight Charles Vaught and the four jurors—Francis Word, Hazen Van-Dellen, Dr. Jack Shelley, and Coye Turnbow—reappear on the front steps of Harding Courthouse. There they stand in the beams of headlamps from the row of automobiles which still line the street before the building; stand to confront the hundred or more armed men in the yard. Then one of them, the county prosecutor, descends the steps to meet Max Goss.

“Max.”

“Charley.”

“Tell your people to go home.”

“Why?”

“It s all over.”

“Meaning what.”

“Max, if I tell you something in strictest confidence, will you keep that confidence?”

“That depends.”

“Very well. It’s all over. Gilmore took care of the Mexicans several hours ago.”

“How?”

“They call it a ‘Texas horse race.’ Blaise and two of his deputies sneaked the Mexicans out the back way to the edge of town and told them to hotfoot it for the line. They’d give them an hour’s head start. Then they’d come after them, mounted. If they made the border, fine. If they didn’t, if Blaise and his boys caught up with them on this side, it was their bad luck, they were guilty anyway.”

“Blaise just got back. The Mex’s didn’t make it.”

Goss grins. “Ain’t that a shame.”

“A shame,” Vaught agrees. “So tell your people to go home and get some sleep. It’s all over. Justice is done. Tell them only that, nothing more, no hows or wheres. Well, one more thing. Not to carry a grudge against Francis and Haze and Doc and Coye. They know they made one hell of a mistake with that verdict. When they went in with me they were prepared to take those Mexicans away from Gilmore and hand them over to you. So was I. But it’s a lot better this way—better than hanging them out here in plain sight of God and the governor.”

“I guess so.”

“Please pass that word, too.”

“O.K.” The butcher shoulders his deer rifle. “Say, what happened to Wood?”

“When he found out, he left, the back way. He’s probably bellied up to a bottle by now, the worthless bastard.”

“Prob’ly.”

“So tell your people. What had to be done has been. From now on they can look at this courthouse and be proud of it. Good night, Max.”

“See you, Charley.”

Vaught rejoins the four jurors, and together they depart. Max Goss passes the word. The crowd disperses. Cars pull away. Harding Courthouse sleeps once more in darkness and in silence.

No one notes that the tower clock has stopped. That the hands are fixed at 11:14.

11:14       11:14

11:14

11:14       11:14

I entered Harding Courthouse.

Dark.

Hush.

Smells. Wills and leather, oaths and ink, appeals and urine.

Moving from memory past the offices of the county-treasurer, tax assessor, clerk and recorder, prosecuting attorney. Mounting the staircase.

At this end of the second floor, the chambers of Judge Charles S. Vaught Jr., Third Judicial District, Harding, Cienfuegos, and Maria de la Luz counties. At the other end, the courtroom. Over the bench, between the tattered flags, between the lithographs of Marshall and Blackstone, the face in oil of his father.

Remembering. The courthouse had been completed in 1910. The first case tried there involving a capital crime was that of her grandfather, charged with three counts of murder in the first degree.

Remembering. “First you must have order. You get it however you can, usually with a gun and a rope. Then you need law. These come first. When you have them, you can take time to think about wallpaper and a choir for the church and sunsets and indoor privies. Oh yes, and justice.”

Guiding myself through gloom as much by pre-knowledge as by eyesight. I knew there would be, at this end of the second floor, a second staircase which I would climb. There was.

Climbing. I knew there would be, at the top of the stairs, a DOOR. An iron DOOR. There was.

From a pocket I took the large KEY given me by Helen Vaught. Groping, found the knob, the lock, inserted the key, turned it. Click. Opened the door, stepped within.