The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (23 page)

She sucked in a deep breath then said hurriedly: ‘The sheriff’s sure Alvin and his friend did the killings here. He surely thinks that, isn’t that so?’

‘That’s the reason your boy’s locked up in the jailhouse, lady.’

The slightly built, life-wearied woman who was more than sixty years old looked strangely child-like as she sat in a hunched posture at the front of the big chair, dry washing her hands as she fought a silent battle to stay in firm control of herself. She nodded several times then said: ‘I realise I’ve got to try to see things from other folks points of view as well as my own. But fretting about how my Alvin is gonna get hung for something so terrible I just know he never done, it – ‘

‘I told you before, just saying something doesn’t make it true.’

She did some more earnest nodding and sighed deeply. Then began to fidget with the bony fingers of one hand in her stringy hair, like she was missing having the handles of her shopping bag to toy with. ‘I know that, mister. I’m a foolish old woman, rambling on like I am. Especially when I got good reason for coming all the way out here. Fact is, I got to see my Alvin for the first time since Mr Meeker brought him back to Springdale and locked him up. That ornery deputy of his at last let me in this morning.’

‘Your son told you to come see me?’

This time she emphatically shook her head and expressed impatience with herself as she snatched her hand down from her head. ‘No he never! Alvin didn’t say to come to see you, mister. But you’re the only one I can think of to tell what he told me.’

‘So what did he tell you?’

She began to dry wash her hands again. ‘That somebody ought to ask that Sawyer boy about what happened to Mrs Quinn and her girl, mister. Alvin reckons Eddie Sawyer knows a lot more than he’s said.’

Edge recalled Sawyer being at the depot when the stage arrived in Springdale and he and Quinn got off. And later in the saloon of the Grand Hotel when the acne-faced young man with unkempt long hair asked about a Bowie knife the dead Robert Jordan had owned. Agnes Ivers went on: ‘Eddie is Luke Sawyer’s boy. Luke’s got a wagon repair business down on First Street and Eddie works for his pa. He’s about the same age as Alvin and the Quinn girl.’

‘Yeah, I know of him, lady. What is it this Sawyer kid knows that he didn’t tell Meeker?’

She shrugged her skinny shoulders and frowned in her helplessness. ‘I ain’t got no idea of that. My Alvin wouldn’t tell me the details. Because he don’t know so much himself. He said that no matter what people think about the thieving him and Floyd Hooper owned up to, they never done that awful thing to the women. And it could be the Sawyer boy knows who did.’

She looked around the well-furnished parlour that was not sunlit at this time in the late afternoon, realised it was the scene of the killings and shuddered.

‘Why didn’t he tell the sheriff about the Sawyer boy?’

‘He tried to,’ she answered eagerly and clutched at the arms of the chair. ‘He spoke to Mr Meeker and that awful Lacy man. Him and Floyd both tried. On the ride back to Springdale from Austin. But them lawmen weren’t in no frame of mind to pay them any attention, Alvin says. And it’s for sure Alvin’s the only one locked up. And Floyd’s dead. And the Sawyer boy is – ‘

‘Mrs Ivers, I think – ‘

‘Well, mister,’ she interrupted his interruption. ‘I didn’t reckon there was nothing I could do. Except try to tell Mr Meeker to listen to Alvin. But then I figured he wouldn’t pay no more attention to me than to my boy. So I thought I’d try to forget it. Let the law take its course while I went to church and prayed. I just didn’t think I had anyone else to turn to except the Lord God. Until I came out of the church and saw you riding out of town.’

‘I can’t see how I can do anything, lady.’

She had never looked confident at any time since he opened the door to her. Now she was totally dispirited as she rose wearily from the chair. ‘Well, at least I’ve told you. And that’s taken a weight of my mind. Which I guess is being selfish. Almost like I’m shifting part of my burden on to somebody else’s shoulders? And I’m sorry if you think that’s what I’m doing. But all I can say is that I won’t trouble you no more. And if you want to forget about all of it, well . . . I’m much obliged to you anyway for taking the time to listen to a no account old woman like me.’

He didn’t attempt to delay her. Followed her slight, badly dressed figure in silence as she went from the parlour into the hallway. But then he became the gentleman he could sometimes be these days and reached around her to open the door.

‘Good luck to you, mister,’ she said as she went out of the house. ‘At least you listened to me. More than that pair of lawmen did to them two boys. God bless you for that, sir. He watched her as she moved dejectedly across the flagstones and went down the steps from the terrace. Registered that there was no horse hitched to the rail and that surely meant she had walked all the way out here from town. Then, back in the parlour he poured and slowly drank the whiskey he had felt so much in need of since his run-in with Muriel Mandrell. And had another while he sat in the same comfortable armchair as before until he felt ready to start to carry out the decision he had made as he watched the distraught old woman shuffle away to begin the long walk home. For two thousand bucks – maybe – he was going to take even more trouble over discovering the truth about the murders of the Quinn women than he had so far. Which meant going to more trouble than the sheriff - who seemed to be doing his best - and his disinterested deputy who were paid a lot less to ride herd on all aspects of law and order in Avery County.

He locked up the house for the second time today and went to the stable, saddled the dappled grey gelding and rode to Springdale at an easy pace without seeing Agnes Ivers along the way. In the town, where house and store windows were starting to gleam with lamp and candlelight in the gathering gloom of early evening he turned off the southern end of River Road on to the narrower, slightly curved First Street. And some fifty yards of so from the corner saw a sign displayed across two large doors:
LUKE SAWYER – WHEELWRIGHT AND

WAGON REPAIRS.

When he hitched his reins to a ring beside one of the doors he saw a smaller sign:
IF

CLOSED TRY HERE.
A crudely painted arrow in a different colour that seemed to have been added as an afterthought pointed toward a neighbouring two-story house. This, like the man’s workshop, showed Sawyer had no time or no inclination to trouble with maintaining his property after he was through getting paid to fix other people’s wagons. As this unbidden and inconsequential thought faded from his mind he discovered he was having more than his fair share of surprises with doors today. For a hammering sound inside the workshop stopped abruptly and as he was about to thud the heel of a fist against one of the double doors it swung away from him. And a man asked without enthusiasm:

‘You want something, mister? It’s about time for me to eat, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

He was fifty-five or so; his short and broadly built frame attired in patched and greasestained dungarees. His face was sour looking under a skull that was bald between two thick tufts of grey hair and as he set a pair of wire framed spectacles on his mottled nose their thick lenses magnified his dark eyes to emphasise an expression of frank unfriendliness.

‘The name’s Edge in the event you don’t already know that, feller.’

‘And mine’s Sawyer, like it says on the doors here. You don’t have no sign painted on you so how the hell could I know who you are, stranger?’

Edge nodded his agreement with the reasonable contention. ‘Figured you may have heard of me.’

‘Why should I?’ Sawyer did not sound like he came from the Deep South and Edge thought the man was just naturally a grouch with everybody without need to be a bigot.

‘It just seems to me like everyone knows everything about everyone else in Springdale.’

‘I know sure enough that you’re a stranger around here, mister. But I ain’t giving you no credit for smartness for finding out real quick there’s a whole mess of folks living in Springdale more interested in other people’s business than they are in their own.’ He shrugged. ‘So, now I know Edge is your name, but it don’t tell me why you’ve come to my door after I’ve done a long day of damn had work and want to put my feet up.’

‘I’d like to talk with your son and I was told Eddie works for you?’

He grimaced. ‘When he feels like it the boy works for me.’

‘Need to talk to him about the killings at the Quinn house.’

‘That’s what I figured, mister.’

‘So you know what I am if not who, feller?’ Edge rasped acidly.

Sawyer dug out a pocket watch and peered myopically at it from close quarters. ‘I’ve got my supper to go eat or there’ll be hell to pay. Eddie ain’t here or at the house right now. And if he’s done something wrong I want you to be clear I don’t know nothing about it.’ He looked anxiously toward the next door house. ‘It was terrible what was done to them two women. Want you to know, though, if that woman’s boy had anything to do with it, Eddie ain’t nothing to do with me. No blood relation. Stepson is all he is to me.’

He scowled and hooked a thumb toward the house where his wife was evidently on the point of erupting into ill temper: for Sawyer certainly looked as if he expected something unpleasant to happen if he did not go to get his supper very soon. ‘Like I say, the boy ain’t here. And even when he is here he don’t do any work to speak of. It’s been like that for five years ever since me and his ma wed. He don’t like me and I don’t like him. And that being so we try to keep out of each other’s way much as we can. It seems to me that all he does like is that sharp shooting nonsense they fool around with out at the Cassidy place.’

The door of the house opened and a homely featured, fifty something woman who was a grey haired head taller than Sawyer and considerably broader across the hips leaned out to glower toward the two men. After a double take she demanded in much the same sour tone that was in her husband’s voice:

‘Are you going to come in the house to eat, man? Chops are already on the table and getting colder by the minute.’

She peered fixedly at Edge for stretched seconds then a glint of recognition came into her flesh crowded eyes and she made a disdainful sound as she recalled seeing him in the grocery store yesterday afternoon before Max Lacy shot the fleeing Floyd Hooper. Edge tipped his hat to her and she did not alter the frown on her full-featured face as she nodded a curt greeting that also served as a farewell before she withdrew into the doorway. And warned her husband: ‘Just don’t you cuss me about the food being cold when you sit your rear end down at last, man. That’s all I’m saying.’

Sawyer said quickly to Edge: ‘So, if you want to see the lazy little gun-crazy bastard you’ll most likely find him out at the Cassidy spread. You know where that is?’

‘Go get your supper, feller. I’ll find it.’ Edge went to his horse and began to unhitch the reins.

Having endured one bawling out by his wife, Sawyer seemed unconcerned about riling her some more as he held back to watch Edge mount and explained: ‘You need to go out along River Road. A couple of miles on you’ll come to a big stand of timber on the right. And a halfmile beyond the far side of that you’ll reach the start of the Cassidy spread on the left. Noah Cassidy is normal enough, I guess. But that wife of his seems to be as crazy about shooting guns as Eddie and the rest of the crowd that get together out there.’

‘Much obliged.’

‘If you’re really that, mister, I’ll thank you not to tell the boy it was me told you where to find him. I don’t know exactly what you want with him but sometimes Eddie gets to thinking the whole damn world is against him and he don’t need much excuse to get mad at anybody. I’m on the receiving end of enough bad mouthing from the wife without inviting any more from her son.’

‘I think she recognised me as the feller hired on to find out who killed – ‘

Sawyer broke in scornfully. ‘That don’t bother me none, mister. The boy don’t get on much better with his ma than he does with me. She won’t say nothing to him.’ He scowled and added sardonically: ‘Unless it’s to yell at him when he’s late for his damn supper. But I’d better go get mine now.’

He moved toward the house where, Edge figured, the existence he led there with his harridan of a wife and her belligerent son was surely largely responsible for his jaundiced view of the world outside of it. Then the embittered man paused short of the door and lowered his

voice to confide glumly: ‘I don’t reckon you’re married, mister and it you’ll take my advice you’ll stay that way. The honeymoon don’t last more than the blink of an eye. And after that it’s nothing but do this, do that and don’t do a damn thing unless I tell you!’