The Shotgun Arcana (29 page)

The Five of Swords

Augustus Shultz entered Malachi Bick’s office, escorted by one of Bick’s men. The shopkeeper was still wearing his stained work apron under his coat, having decided to see Bick on the spur of the moment. The emotions churning in Auggie couldn’t be held in check any longer and he knew what he had to do.

It was the day after Gillian’s discovery, of his and Clay’s nocturnal activities, of Clay’s revelations. Auggie was exhausted. And today, today had been the final straw.

“Mr. Shultz,” Bick said, standing from behind his desk. “An unexpected pleasure. Please, may I offer you a libation?”

Auggie stood awkwardly before Bick’s desk, his dirty hands clenching and unclenching.

“Mr. Bick, the men … The men from your bank, your men … They took over half of my shipment of merchandise that arrived today, right off the wagon.”

“Yes,” Bick said. “My people calculated that those items sold at the Argent Mining Company Store would be sufficient to cover the arrears on your loans to me, Mr. Shultz.”

“Yes,” Auggie said, “but if I can’t sell those goods in my store, how will I ever catch up and pay you off, Mr. Bick?”

“The current arrangement seems to be working out fine,” Bick said. “You seemed quite confident that the boom would increase your sales when you spoke to my people at the bank about taking that loan, Mr. Shultz.”

Auggie’s fists clenched again. “Why … why are you doing this?” Auggie looked at the floor, the blood rushing to his face making him flush. “You know as well as I that you’ve taken away half my customers with your establishment up at the camp. You know that, yes?”

“What I know is that you have an obligation to me, Mr. Shultz,” Bick said, sitting back behind his desk. “You need to honor that.”

“A man like you, a great man,” Auggie said. “With so many fine things, so much money and power, why would you hurt so many people, Mr. Bick? You have no need to. You could live well, better than most, the rest of your life and still forget every penny you have bled out of the people in Golgotha. I don’t understand. You, people like you, will never know what it feels like to…”

“To feel helpless?” Bick interrupted, a jagged edge of anger in the black-garbed businessman’s voice. “To think that those who have power over your very existence have abandoned you? Don’t care or worse, are amused by your plight? Was that what you were going to tell me I don’t understand, Mr. Shultz? I assure you that I do, and far deeper than you can ever comprehend.”

Auggie was silent, but his eyes burned with anger. Finally he spoke. “Then if you understand it, why do you do it yourself, Mr. Bick? Why hurt so many people? Why hurt me?”

“Because, Mr. Shultz,” Bick said. “When one is a predator, beset on all sides by those who would destroy him, you cannot afford to show weakness.”

“What you call weakness is mercy,” Auggie said.

“What you call mercy I call operating under a vulnerability,” Bick said. “I tried it once. It did not end well. I can never afford to do that again, Mr. Shultz. Once nearly ruined everything. Good day.”

Auggie remained. Looking down. His hands ached from the pressure of his squeezing them in anger. “Predators can be pulled down,
ja
, Mr. Bick?” Auggie said. His hand slipped into his coat. He felt the cool, smooth steel of the gun against his hot, rough palm.
“Genug hungrige Wölfe können sich einen Bären, ja?”

“You can leave of your own volition,” Bick said. “Or I can have my men beat you and throw you onto Main Street. The choice is yours.”

Auggie began to pull the pistol out of his pocket, to shoot this smug bastard in his smug face. He paused, the gun remaining hidden. He felt Gillian’s soothing presence, felt her arms around him, heard her voice. He felt her horror at what he was about to do, saw her waste away, dying with him as he danced at the end of a rope. No. He could never do that to her, never. He let go of the gun and turned to walk out Bick’s door. He paused as he was leaving.

“I was like you once,” Auggie said. “So afraid, so lonely and bitter. So terrified of losing something, someone, that I held them so tight that I almost crushed them, yes? I forgot how to live. I was lucky enough to have someone to remind me, to drag me back into the light. Be careful you don’t chase your salvation away, Mr. Bick. Good day, sir.” Auggie walked out of the Paradise Falls and headed for Gillian’s house. There was something he needed to do. It was time he began taking his own advice.

*   *   *

The Dove killer’s abandoned wagon was parked in front of the jail. Clay had driven it over from his workshop, where he had spent the evening examining it. Now as curious passersby wandered past them, Highfather, Mutt, Kate and Jim stood on the porch and listened to Clay’s findings.

“There was dust in the bed,” Clay said. “Consistent with the rock dust we found on the victim in the alleyway and on the girl killed in the church. It is different in composition from the dust found in the desert. I’d hazard both victims were in this wagon at one point,” Clay said. “I also used a presumptive test developed by the brilliant German chemist, Herr Schonbein, to ascertain that there was blood in the back of this wagon—even though it had been cleaned several times. This, I believe, is the conveyance used to move the murdered women about from the sites of their deaths to the sites of their exhibition.”

“So we find the owner of this wagon and these horses and we got our fella,” Jim said. Highfather shook his head.

“Doubt it will be that easy,” the sheriff said. “If he’s fine with ditching the wagon, I doubt it’s his.”

Clay nodded. “I concur, Jonathan. He’s too clever for that by half.”

“Maybe we can trace it to him, by finding the owner,” Kate said. “If it’s been stolen or missing, I imagine someone will report it sooner or later.”

Mutt walked off the porch of the jail and sidled over to the wagon. He leaned on the backboard and seemed to be concentrating on something. Clay went on.

“I also researched astrology and astronomy and discovered some interesting phenomena that might explain his rush to claim a new victim each night.”

“Really?” Kate said. “What?”

“There is a conjunction of Venus, Saturn and the sun at the winter solstice that is approaching,” Clay said. “It signifies a need for love, paradoxically difficult to fulfill because of an imbalanced self-image. In such a tangle, hatred and desire can be knotted up. It also tends to be a time of growing strength for those who possess an insensitivity to disagreeable things, kind of a moral blank slate.”

“Sounds like our man,” Highfather said. Clay nodded.

“Add to that the discovery of the asteroid 111 Ate in August,” he said. “Named for the Greek goddess of mischief and destruction, and the appearance of asteroid 112 Iphigenia in September. Iphigenia is named for the Greek princess sacrificed by her father. This madman thinks the heavens themselves are preordaining his acts. The stars are tumblers unlocking some horrible mystery for him and now is his time to act. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of victims and their profession has something to do with his occult obsessions as well. There are numerous prostitute goddesses in mythologies all about the world.”

“Amazing,” Kate said. “I’m impressed, Mr. Turlough.”

“Observation, data collection and deduction,” Clay said with a dismissive wave. “Simple reasoning, ma’am.”

“Blood,” Mutt said, sniffing and stepping away from the truck. “Fresh and human. Also some chemical smells—I think the victims might have been drugged—and blasting powder. I picked up all those on the bed.”

“Stone dust and blasting powder,” Highfather said. “Sounds like the mines.”

“Molly was working for the Nail,” Jim said. “And he’s one of the crooks running things up at the mining camps.” “So was Rica,” Kate said. “They were both moonlighting behind Bick’s back for the Nail to make extra scratch. I think we may have found our pattern, gentlemen.”

“Thank you, Clay,” Highfather said. “Can you give us a little bit more help? I want you to help us lay a trap for this lunatic tonight.”

“I don’t believe that the moon is a factor,” Clay said.

“What?” Highfather said.

“You called him a lunatic,” Clay said. “I don’t see any indications that the moon is a contributing factor to his crimes. And yes, I will help as best I can, Jonathan. I have a previous engagement this afternoon I must attend to, but I will meet up with you back here by, say, four o’clock?”

“Sounds good,” Highfather said. “Oh, and Clay?”

“Yes?” Clay said.

“Your face? Your hand and arms? The scars, they’re all better, gone?”

“Yes,” Clay said. There was an awkward silence.

“Um … How?” Jim offered.

“I just stopped picking at it, and it healed right up,” Clay said. The old inventor climbed up onto the wagon and drove it down Dry Well Road without another word.

“Well, that cleared things up,” Mutt said as he watched Clay ride away. “At least he’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long spell. If you’re going to be crazy, it’s better to be happy and crazy.”

“True,” Highfather said. “All right, we’ll meet up at four and figure the best way to catch our man tonight. Agreed?”

“Jonathan,” Mutt said. “Can I have a word, private like?”

The two men stepped away from the porch while Kate and Jim talked. They walked down the street toward the old well.

“I … I kind of made some other plans for tonight,” Mutt said. The confident, almost cocky deputy seemed suddenly very awkward to Highfather. “I … I can cancel them if you need me tonight. It’s just…”

“Oh my God,” Highfather said, a smile coming to his face. “You did it. You asked her, you finally asked her.”

“What the hell you mean ‘finally,’” Mutt said. “Look, I can just tell her that—”

“Go,” Highfather said. “We can handle this without you for one night, Mutt. Go.”

“Jonathan, I’m serious, I can just—” Mutt said.

“You ain’t squirming out of this,” Highfather said. “We got Agent Warne here to help us. It will be okay.”

“You sure?” Mutt said.

“I’m happy for you,” Highfather said. “She’s good for you. I’ve seen it. Between her and the boy,” Highfather nodded back toward Jim, “you’ve changed a hell of a lot from the drunken hell-raiser I had to drag out of the Paradise Falls, what was it, four years ago?”

Both men chuckled.

“I kicked your ass that night,” Mutt said, grinning.

“The hell you did,” Highfather said. “I seem to recall you ending up in my jail cell.”

“I was tired,” Mutt said. “I needed a place to sleep off the exertion of kicking your ass.”

They laughed again. Both men paused in their walk.

“I hope it goes real good for you tonight,” Highfather said. “You both deserve that.”

“Thank you, Jonathan,” Mutt said. “I was wondering if I could ask your help with one more thing.…”

The Three of Swords

The war never ended for Victory Ferrell. Nosirree. He relived it nightly. The slightest sound, the faintest motion, and he was awake, ready for some bluecoat doodle to sneak up and try to slit his throat. He stayed awake for two weeks once because he knew the blue-bellies were out there waiting for him to close his eyes, ease his mind, so they could strike at him.

That was fine with him, though. He liked the war just fine, thank you. He loved it, in fact. He liked the killing, the occasional fire and pillaging, the chaos. He took trophies, a collection of Yankee eyeballs and tongues. Kept them in wax-sealed jars. He liked to rape their women, even after he shot them in the head. Sometimes he had sex with the wounds on the dead bodies of the soldiers when there wasn’t a Union whore to be had. It didn’t make him no kinda sissy, no sir, even if he did cornhole a few of the bodies.

They said it was because of the things he did, of what he did without orders, without regret, “violated the rules of war and human decency”; that’s what his nancy of a commanding officer said. They wanted to hang him, but they needed men too badly and they said some bad things about Victory not being smart enough to understand what he was doing was wrong. So they sent him to the rear of the lines to shovel horseshit and do laundry, like a damn woman.

When the war ended and the cowards and quitters lost, Victory refused to accept the surrender. He began to wander the roads, starting out in Tennessee and going wherever it told him to go. Anyone unlucky enough to cross his path with a kind word to say about the fucking Union, or fucking blowhard U. S. Grant, or even those Southerners who had just up and rolled over like a licked dog and were “trying to get on with their lives,” they all met up with Victory’s guns and knives. He liked to break into lonely farmhouses and tie the families up, hold war crime trials, spend a few extra days with the wife and kids, before he moved on down the road. In the chill of late October on the roads of Pennsylvania, he was visited in dreams and portents by a pillar of golden, divine fire that told him where he needed to go and what he needed to do. He began to walk west. Victory’s was the eleventh.

Death

Everyone dining in Delmonico Hauk’s small restaurant grew quieter when Clay Turlough entered. Hauk, a newcomer to Golgotha, had built and opened a small restaurant across the street from the old dried–up well at the end of the road bearing its name. He’d bought the late Odd Tom’s old house and built his very popular restaurant on the land adjacent to it.

Clay was dressed in a dirty, collarless white shirt, suspenders and filthy canvas work pants. His boots, while scraped with a knife, still carried the pungent odor of horse manure. Clay wore a black sack coat of decent quality. His hair was its usual eruption of gray tufts from his spotted pate. The surprise was partially Clay’s appearance in a public eating establishment and partly in what was missing from Clay’s disheveled appearance. The deeply pitted, scarlet-colored scars from Clay’s burns on his hands, arms and face all seemed to be completely gone.

Clay navigated through the pattern of tables, seemingly oblivious to the stares and the gawking faces. He sat down across from Gillian Proctor, who looked at him with a pinched, almost sad expression.