The Last Renegade (22 page)

She stopped Jem on his way out and asked him about it.

“They’re the ones that found her, Mrs. Berry.” Jem looked over Raine’s head to where Mrs. Sterling and Sue were unwrapping Emily’s body. “Came across her while they were on their way up to Apple Pie Ridge. Mr. Petit, he took photographs so Sugar would know how they found her. She’s been cut up real bad.” He added, “It’s not because she fell. What happened to her ain’t natural.”

Raine steeled herself when she heard Mrs. Sterling gasp and Sue make a retching sound. It seemed they had just discovered what Jem was talking about.

“They found a horse tethered close by. It was one of the mares that was taken from Matt Sharp’s place. If it hadn’t been tied up, it would have been long gone. Petit and Reasoner took care of Emily the best they could and headed back to town. My group came across them about five miles northeast of the old Hage homestead.”

“Thank you, Jem. Wait outside. We won’t be long. Her mother’s waiting.”

Emily Ransom was laid out in her home where her family could stay with her throughout the night. Friends came and went, brought food and sympathy, and left shaking their heads and whispering,
How could this happen to one of our own?

Sarah Ransom had the appearance of a stoic, grim determination in the face of this tragedy. She had buried three other children, all boys, all before they reached the age of two. They were terrible losses, and she had grieved deeply, but they were deaths she could comprehend. Illness struck randomly, without warning, and it dealt most harshly with the young. Sarah accepted that and found comfort that her girls possessed more robust constitutions. But what was a healthy constitution in the face of murder? How did one accept a random strike, or even a deliberate one, when the hand was not God’s, but man’s?

While Ed Ransom sometimes wept openly, Sarah remained dry-eyed. Ed had difficulty speaking, even to accept condolences. Sarah always found the right words but none of the emotion. No visitor to the Ransom home mistook Sarah’s steadiness for strength. To a person, they recognized her fragile state and wondered privately at her breaking point. It would
have caused little comment if she had thrown herself onto Emily’s box when it was lowered into the ground.

She did not, and no one was relieved by her restraint.

Emily Ransom was three days buried and the townspeople grieved collectively and alone. In the Pennyroyal Saloon some men drank too much whiskey; others had no taste for it. Civil conversation was often listless, while disagreements excited tempers to flare. Sometimes the saloon was just quiet. Laughter felt wrong and out of place. Speculation, mostly about the murder and the weather, was a presence at every table. Among the speculators, the disappearance of Mr. Weyman pointed to him as Emily’s murderer, and the harsh, bitter wind that carried snowflakes over her grave pointed to another hard winter.

Raine wiped down the bar, erasing the wet stains of whiskey and beer. She poured a drink for Richard Allen and discouraged him from standing at the bar by pointing out that the Davis brothers were looking for a few more players at their table.

Walt sidled over to her. She had given him the evening off since business was slow, but there was nowhere else he wanted to be. “I finished stacking the cases in the back,” he told her.

“Thank you, Walt. You deserve to sit down, put your feet up.”

“Maybe I will. Not just now.” He took the rag from her hand and began polishing the bar. “I don’t see our new guests.”

“I don’t think we will, not this evening.” The rooms recently vacated by the Stanleys and Mr. Weyman had already been filled, but the couple with two young children had no use for the saloon, and the gambler, after learning about the town’s recent tragedy, likely had sense enough to know his play would not be welcome.

“Some folks should be as smart,” said Walt, lifting his chin toward the entrance to the saloon from the hotel. “Looks like Mr. Coltrane left his little notebook behind.”

Raine thought Kellen Coltrane would be treated with less suspicion if he walked into the saloon carrying a gun. Since Emily’s murder, his notebook made people nervous. As much heartache and fear as the town experienced at the hands of the
Burdicks, it was made relatively tolerable by its secrecy. To have Coltrane expose Bitter Springs as a town as violent and lawless as Deadwood and the Pennyroyal Saloon as no better than a bucket of blood felt to some like a betrayal. They were guarded now, treating him with wary respect and no warmth.

For his part, Kellen seemed to be oblivious. Or perhaps, Raine thought, it was exactly what he wanted.

Kellen approached the bar and asked for a whiskey. Raine poured it for him. They did not exchange a word. He pushed a bill across the counter. Frowning slightly, Raine looked at it and then slipped it under her sleeve. Kellen nodded once, satisfied, and took a seat at a table. Alone.

“Would you mind taking over for me, Walt?” she asked. “This was supposed to be your free night, but if you’re going to be here anyway, I wouldn’t mind having some time to myself.”

“Sure. I’ll take care of everything.”

She laid her hand on his forearm and nodded. “I know you will. Don’t let Renee and Cecilia bully you into taking over. Their job is at the tables, not at the bar. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

Kellen kept his eyes on his drink as Raine left the saloon. He did not need to watch her to be aware of where she was in a room. She caught his attention because she tried so hard not to. She smothered her laughter, quieted her voice, and remained polite to a fault. Her manner was even more correct than her carriage, and she already held herself as though a steel rod had replaced her spine. Kellen was intrigued. And concerned.

He took his time finishing his drink, and no one came by to ask if he wanted another. He stayed to hear Sue play one Stephen Foster tune and placed a quarter on top of the piano for her before he left.

Raine was sitting in the dark in his room, waiting. When the key turned, she held her breath and released it slowly only after he was inside. The light from the lamps in the hallway had briefly illuminated his figure, but she would have known him regardless. He had a fluid, nearly soundless way of moving that made him seem easy in his skin. He never wasted a gesture.
She knew no one else so deliberate or set so full of quiet purpose.

“Good,” he said after closing the door. “You’re here.”

Raine thought she’d made herself invisible by standing in the deepest shadows. She stepped forward. “You summoned me.” She slipped two fingers under her right sleeve and came away with the dollar bill that Kellen had passed to her across the bar. “Now I’m waiting.”

“Move away from the window,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re in line of sight from the alley. As soon as I light one of the lamps, you’ll be visible to anyone standing outside.”

She could tell he did not like having to explain himself. “Don’t you think that’s a—”

“Humor me.”

Raine’s eyes had adjusted to the dark while she waited, and she found the lip of the table and eased herself around it so she could sit on the edge of the bed. “Better?”

“Yes. Stay there.”

Kellen went straight to the table and struck a match. He was expecting the brilliant flare and knew to look away. Raine was momentarily blinded by it. She closed her eyes and rubbed them. When she opened them, Kellen was fitting the glass globe back into place. He moved the chair so he could face her with his back to the window. He took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the chair before he sat. He carefully rolled up his shirtsleeves until they were just below the elbow. From inside his vest, he removed the derringer and placed it on the table.

Raine looked from him to the gun and back again. “Are you going to shoot me?”

“Are you going to provoke me?”

“Not intentionally.”

“And I won’t shoot you…intentionally.”

Raine’s mouth flattened and she regarded him with disapproval. It proved to be an ineffective method of upbraiding him because he simply gave her back the wry edge of his smile.

“I came because I thought you had something important to
tell me,” she said, starting to rise. “But if your message was for your own amusement, I believe I’ll see myself out.”

“Sit down.”

To demonstrate that she was not his subject to command, Raine waited two full seconds before she put herself back on the bed. She held out her hand. “Your note.”

Kellen took it, folded it, and slipped it into his vest pocket. “I have something I want you to see. You will find it disturbing.” Because she looked as if she wanted to argue the point, he added, “
I
find it disturbing.” He riffled through the stack of writing paper on the table. From somewhere in the middle, he produced a photograph. He held it in such a way that she could not see the image. “Do you know what this is?”

“I think so,” she said on a thread of sound. Whispering did not disguise the dread in her voice. “Jem told me Mr. Petit took photographs of Emily after he and Mr. Reasoner found her.”

“That’s right. I was asking Dan Sugar if he’d made any progress toward finding Mr. Weyman when Mr. Petit came by and delivered two photographs. He claimed they were all he had. The deputy believed him. I didn’t. I took this from his room. I don’t know if he’ll miss it, but I’m fairly confident he won’t mention it. He has a dozen similar ones, different angles and exposures, but essentially the same.”

“Why would he keep them? Do you think he means to sell them?”

Kellen shrugged. When he saw Raine’s mulish look, he said, “I really can’t tell you what he intends to do with them. Perhaps there is a market for them, or he is a man with peculiar tastes.”

Raine frowned. It was a common practice to take photographs of the dead in their final, restful pose, but only criminals were photographed with all the indignities of their violent death exposed. Had Mr. Petit subjected Emily to the same ignominy? Raine had begun to prepare herself to see Emily lying at the foot of a pine under a canopy of boughs; she envisioned a glen with a trickling stream and tall grasses and Emily settled peacefully, her eyes closed and her hands crossed and resting comfortably at her breast.

Raine had cared for Emily’s battered body, cleansed and
closed the worst of the wounds, washed beads of blood from the young woman’s throat, and bathed her face as gently as she would a baby’s. She knew the worst of what had happened to her sister’s friend, and she had been tender in her ministrations. She did it for Emily and Emily’s family. She did it for herself.

What had Mr. Petit’s camera seen when it stared at Emily Ransom from its cold, indifferent lens?

Raine took a deep breath and released it slowly. She held out one hand. “Show me.”

Kellen gave it to her facedown and watched as she turned it over. Whatever preparation she had made wasn’t enough. She still sucked in a sharp breath. Her stricken expression stopped his heart.

Emily’s body was sprawled on the rocky bank of Elk Creek. She lay on her back, her slender frame contorted by the bed of rocks. Her eyes were open but void of lively light and sparkle. Her head was tilted slightly to one side so that she seemed to be staring directly at the camera. Her coat was open; her scarf was attached to one wrist. It looked as if she’d been bound at one time and struggled free. The sudden vision she had of Emily fighting off her assailant had the power to squeeze Raine’s heart.

Emily’s dress had been the color of dark, ripe plums. In the photograph it appeared to be black. Raine could not make out the tears in the fabric where Emily’s murderer had plunged his knife, nor could she see the spread of blood that she knew was there.

The skirt of Emily’s dress was bunched around her thighs. The ruffled hem of her petticoat lay skewed across her legs just above the knees. Her drawers were torn, split at the thigh. Here the blood was evident. The cut had been shallow but long. Blood stained the rocks between her legs.

Raine averted her eyes. Her skin prickled as blood ran cold in her veins. She squeezed her damp palms into fists and took measured breaths. Bile rose in her throat, but when she felt Kellen begin to pull the photograph away, she shook her head. Emily had borne this, was all she could think. She could bear it, too. For Emily’s sake, she could bear it.

Raine’s attention was drawn back to Emily’s sightless eyes and the angle of her head. “It’s as if she’s looking directly into Mr. Petit’s camera.”

Kellen nodded. “I thought so, too.”

Raine sensed a slight hesitation. “What is it?”

“I told you Mr. Petit has a dozen or so similar photographs.”

“Yes?”

“Those photographs are similar to this one, but the two he gave Deputy Sugar are different.”

She frowned. “You mean he moved the camera around.”

“No, I don’t mean that.”

“Then what—” Raine stopped. “He moved
Emily
?”

“Yes. In the photographs that Petit gave Sugar, Emily is lying on her side. She’s facing the creek so the camera’s view is largely of her back. Petit would have needed to set his tripod in the water to get another perspective, and for whatever reason, he didn’t do it. Also, even though Emily’s gown is much as it is in this picture, she is less exposed. Her legs, her arms, are drawn closer to her body, and it’s not possible to see whether her scarf is tied to her wrists as it is in this photograph.”

Raine could not look at the photograph any longer. She turned it over but held on to it. “Which set of photographs represents how Mr. Petit and Mr. Reasoner found Emily?”

“I don’t know. If there is some way to determine that, I don’t know what it is. I saw the photographs Sugar was given, but I didn’t ask if I could study them. There could be a slight difference in the slant of shadows, but Petit took the photographs in a relatively short period of time, and you can see in this picture that the pine boughs scatter sunlight.”

“And Deputy Sugar knows nothing about this photograph or the others like it?”

“No.”

“Perhaps Mr. Petit found Emily in this fashion but couldn’t bring himself to deny her the dignity of a less provocative pose.”