Marshal and the Moonshiner Read online

  “You even going to hear me with that one good ear?”

  Before I could answer, she turned up her collar and rode the shadows towards Vincent’s shop. I faintly saw her hold her gun alongside her leg as she peered into the yard. If I hadn’t known she was there, she would have been lost in the darkness. Then she was gone, and I knew she’d entered Vincent’s yard.

  I reached in my back pocket and felt Goar’s revolver. After I’d picked it up from the pavement the night I confronted him, I made sure it was loaded. And hidden. I felt as if I should have told Maris I had it, but for some reason I didn’t understand, I hadn’t. For all Stauffer and his deputies knew, the sheriff’s office had my only gun for ballistic comparisons with the slug the coroner dug out of Jimmy Wells’s head. I stashed the gun under the seat where I could get it readily if Maris needed me.

  I settled back in the seat and watched where I saw her enter the yard. The intense muggy Oklahoma heat was beginning to take its toll on me, and I started doing the pecking bird. I dropped my head on my chest, then jerked upright, awake for a few moments more until the cycle of fatigue repeated itself.

  I tried to think of Maris working alone, sneaking inside Vincent’s shop—anything to keep me awake. But my thoughts returned to that jar of moonshine in my hotel room. Someone had known of my drinking history. Someone wanted me off the wagon.

  A scuffling noise somewhere behind woke me with a start, and I tried to pinpoint it. I sat up and looked out the window of the Studebaker and into the barrel of a gun jammed against my head. The cocking of that revolver was louder than any artillery piece I’d experienced in the Great War.

  “Don’t turn,” a high-pitched woman’s voice ordered. Except I knew it wasn’t a woman, as I recognized the voice from that one time I met him. “Scoot over. Behind the wheel,” Amos ordered.

  I drew my legs under me and slid over. Amos had sneaked up on my blind side, and I wanted to turn my head to look at him. I wanted to, like I wanted my hand around the butt of Dale Goar’s revolver under the seat where Amos now sat. I just didn’t want an extra hole in my head for my efforts.

  “Drive,” he demanded.

  “Where?”

  “East.”

  I jammed the mixing stick into first, and the Studebaker lurched forward with jerks and starts before evening out. He told me to drive two blocks to Harvey and turn at the Western Union building.

  “You planning to kill me?”

  He didn’t answer but kept the gun jammed into the side of my neck. “Turn west here.”

  I drove the car to the area Maris told me railroad tracks once ran through, but that had been torn up last year. Thick dust surrounded the car as I drove on the gravel, and the headlights barely cut through the dimness.

  “Stop here and turn the car off.”

  I did as I was ordered.

  “Now we can jaw,” Amos said.

  He eased the barrel of the gun away and allowed me to turn in the seat to look at him, keeping the large revolver pointed at my chest. “Keep your hand on the wheel. Wouldn’t want you to do anything to make my finger twitch.”

  I gripped the wheel hard, like I was milking a cow. I wanted him to see just how white my knuckles were. He had a three-inch scar running along one cheek connected to a block-shaped head, and his thick forearms were corded as he clutched the gun tightly. “Vincent said you were looking for me.”

  “Guess I didn’t fool him none.”

  “Not hardly. As soon as he told me some big, dumb looking guy fresh off the farm hunted me, I suspected it was you. Then when he described Maris, I knew anyone she brought around would be bad news, so I figured I’d better look you up.”

  “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” I said. “All you had to do the other night was hang around my hotel room until I came back.” I forced a laugh. “Would have saved me getting my room trashed.”

  “What are you rambling about?”

  “The other night when you stole my room key from the board at the Kerfoot and trashed my room.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Amos said. He didn’t look around to see if anyone were close to us. In this part of town, even the hobos didn’t hang out here. “All I know is you’re complicating my life asking questions about me. Now what the hell do you want?”

  “Selly Antelope.” I eyed the gun barrel. It seemed to get larger every moment until I reasoned that, if Amos wanted to kill me, he would have done so by now.

  “Selly Antelope got what he deserved.”

  “So Cat said. The way she told it, Selly’s death was an accident when you two struggled for his gun.”

  “I told her not to say a word to the law about what happened. But for the record, I didn’t shoot Selly. So lay off my ass.”

  “So you’re saying Cat struggled with Selly’s gun and killed him? Or that friend of yours visiting . . . Whiskers? Sergeant Dutch Seugard, I bet his real name is?”

  “What do you know about Dutch?”

  “I know he went AWOL a couple of weeks ago and came up to Wyoming to lie low,” I lied. I had nothing except hunches, incomplete sentences that needed Amos to punctuate for me. “You claim Dutch killed Selly?”

  Amos shoved the barrel of the gun against my bruised ribs, and I sucked in air. “You listen to me, hayseed: I ain’t saying a thing about it, except I didn’t murder anyone up from Wyoming. But you keep on my ass—asking your stupid questions—and I’ll make you the first.”

  Amos opened the door while he kept his gun leveled at me. “You just relax for a minute or two. Breathe in all the fine city smells. And if you come looking for me again, we’ll finish this little dance.”

  I was about to answer him when I realized he’d vanished as quietly as he’d sneaked up on me. I tilted my head back and sucked in deep breaths to calm my nerves and steady my shaking hands. If only I had a sip from that jar of shine in my room, I could put all this in proper perspective. I told myself I’d been as close to death as I had ever been since pinning on a badge. I could imagine the scenario where Amos has pulled the trigger, and sometime later in the day, someone would complain about the smell from some old Studebaker and find my body. Amos could have shot me in this old rail yard.

  He could have but didn’t, and that left me with far more questions than answers regarding Selly’s death.

  I started the car and headed back towards Vincent’s to pick up Maris. Next time I’d be prepared for Amos. And there would be a next time.

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  By the time I’d driven back to where Maris had parked the car at Morrison’s filling station, it was an hour later. She paced under the flashing neon signs in Morrison’s window, her anger nearly as red as the sign’s inner ring. I turned off the lights and pulled to the curb, and she jumped in the car before it even stopped. “Where the hell you been? I thought you left me here and drove back to El Reno.”

  “Amos and I took a little drive.” I explained how Amos had got the drop on me, and screwed his gun into my head to begin our little journey to the rail yards. “Wasn’t like I had a choice.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t you beat all,” Maris said. “You lost him.”

  “He lost himself. In case it’s escaped you, I managed not to get any fresh holes in me.”

  Maris fired up a cigarette and blew angry smoke my direction. “That’s just great. And I suppose you lost Goar, too?”

  “I kind of had my hands full keeping myself alive, let alone worry about one sloppy bounty hunter.”

  “At least you saw where he drove when he left Vincent’s?”

  “He must have left after my little drive with Amos. What was Goar doing?”

  Maris shook her head. “I just don’t know. When I injunned-up to the shop—we Indians do that real good, injun-up on people.”

  “So Amos showed me tonight.”

  “Anyway, when I peeked in the sho
p window, Dale and Vincent were arguing. Getting mighty heated.”

  “About what?”

  “I couldn’t hear.” The glow from Maris’s cigarette illuminated her glaring eyes. “I heard Amos’s name bandied about, then something about Dutch. Vincent got mad, and Dale started to yell. Getting in Vincent’s face. I figured Dale wasn’t getting the answers he wanted, and started playing hardball. Not the smartest thing to do with someone like Vincent. Damned fool Goar’s going to mess this up . . .”

  “So where is that damned fool?”

  “After the fight—”

  “What fight?”

  Maris laughed. “That’s the beautiful part. As much as I hate Vincent, Dale got his ass handed to him. Vincent got in Dale’s face, and he threw a haymaker. Next I knew, Dale was sprawled on his back on the greasy floor of that shop. But he was down only long enough for Vincent to grab him and give him the bum’s rush. Last I saw Dale he was staggered right toward where the car should have been. You sure you didn’t see him?”

  “I told you, by that time me and Amos had started our little trip.”

  “That’s right,” Maris said. “He kidnapped you.”

  “You act like you don’t believe me.”

  Maris looked out her window. She took a last draw on her smoke before tossing it out. “It was bad enough that you got drunk when you were supposed to be trailing Dutch at Ft. Reno. Now, you lose Dale Goar . . .” She held up her hand. “I am sorry. I’m just a little upset that we got little to show for our trip here.”

  “Well, we got Amos worried that we’ll find him,” I said. “And you must have seen something tonight that’ll help us.”

  Maris smiled for the first time. “I saw bottles in crates and barrels of booze in a back room rigged with a false wall waiting shipment to customers. Vincent even labeled where they go, real neat and organized-like. And some of those barrels had Dutch’s name on them right next to Ft. Reno.”

  “Good work.” I started the car. “Now Dutch’s involvement in the illegal hooch in your county is no longer just a supposition.”

  “It isn’t,” Maris said. “Let’s just get back to El Reno before I pee myself with excitement.”

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  Pounding at my door woke me, loud and impatient; pounding that matched the throbbing in my head from a world-class hangover. I rubbed the sleepers from my eyes and staggered to the door after I paused to kick the empty Mason jar under the bed. Welcome to the wonderful world of alcoholism once again. “Wait a damned minute.”

  I looked around for my dungarees as the pounding continued and the hinges threatened to break inward. I put one leg into my trousers and crow-hopped across the floor before I found the other leg and answered the door. It flew open and hit my shoulder. I started to fall, but strong hands grabbed me and shoved me onto the bed. “Finish dressing,” Stauffer said in that annoying German guttural twang. Johnny Notch stood beside him. He fingered a flat sap sticking out of his back pocket, and I got the impression he was anxious to use it.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I demanded. “What you busting in here for?”

  “Some hobo found Dale Goar knifed to death in Oklahoma City.” Maris came out of the hallway. She leaned against the door jamb but didn’t look at me. “His body was soaking up dust in the old rail yards when some bum found his body this morning.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Let’s just take him to jail,” Notch said, his flat sap instantly in his hand. He took a step closer and cocked his arm back when Stauffer stopped him.

  “He’s a fellow law officer, Johnny,” Stauffer said. “He deserves an explanation before we . . . interrogate him.”

  “Like I said, what’s that got to do with me?”

  Stauffer freed one of his thumbs from his pink suspenders long enough to jerk it towards Maris. “She said you two made a little trip into the city last night. Said you two hot shots went to Vincent Iron Horse’s shop. Said you stayed in her car while she went in. When she came out, you were gone.” Stauffer snapped his fingers. “Don’t look at her. Look at me.” When I did, he continued. “Deputy Red Hat said you were gone nearly an hour.”

  “She knows Amos got the jump on me. Put a gun to my head and drove to the rail yards.”

  “So you claim.” Notch kicked my boots toward me, and I slipped my socks on. “Handy how you say Amos forced you to drive to the one spot where a dead man is found murdered not a few hours later.”

  “Maybe you, like, blacked out.” Johnny Notch nudged the empty jar from under the bed with the toe of his boot. It rolled against the wall beside where Maris stood. Her look of betrayal at me holding out with the booze matched my feeling that she’d betrayed our trust about last night. “Lot of drunks black out,” Johnny said, as if to give me an out. “Do things and never recall—”

  “That’s bullshit.” I put my boots on and used the bed to stand. “If I’d killed Goar I would have remembered it.”

  “Maybe you finished the little fight you and Dale had a couple nights ago.”

  I looked to Maris.

  “That’s right—Deputy Red Hat told us all about that, too.”

  “Maybe Vincent finished the fight he had with Goar last night,” I said. “Tell him, Maris.”

  Stauffer stepped between us so I couldn’t see her. “She’ll tell us everything in due time. Let’s go.”

  “Where we going?”

  “My office, where else?”

  Notch handed me a pair of shackles. “Put these on, hayseed.”

  I dropped them at his feet, and he drew the flat sap so quickly I figured he must have used it a time or two before. “I’ll go peaceably,” I told Stauffer. “But you try to put those cuffs on me, and someone will be eating their supper through a straw.”

  Notch grinned. “In the shape you’re in, you couldn’t win a fight with Ragwood downstairs.”

  Stauffer held up his hand. “Johnny, where’s your professional courtesy? If the marshal gives his word he’ll behave, then we have to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  When we arrived at the courthouse, Stauffer held the door for Maris as his eyes wandered to her tight jeans; her eyes wandered anywhere except to me. She continued to look away as she had in my room, and I wondered what it cost Stauffer for her to turn on me like she did.

  Notch led me to an interview room and shoved me inside. “You could have interviewed me in my room.”

  Notch smiled. “Not us who want to interrogate you. A couple dicks from Oklahoma City PD want to talk to you about Dale.” He nodded to bloodstains on the wall and floor that someone had done a piss poor job cleaning up in the recent past. “If you’re wondering—the room is soundproof.”

  I sat in a folding metal chair across from its twin, on the other side of a wooden table, the only furniture in the room. A single flood lamp dangled by a threadbare cord hanging low enough to hit my head when I came into the room. I sat, though I didn’t have long to wait. Two men dressed in dark business suits entered the room, narrow ties set off by white, long-sleeved shirts. Sweat stained the collars and armpits of both men, even though it was only nine in the morning.

  “Detective Howe,” the older and much heavier man said. He didn’t offer his hand but nodded to his partner, a young man wearing a fedora cocked to the starboard. He looked at me through squinty eyes while he chewed on a toothpick. “And this is Detective Larin.”

  I labeled them Laurel and Hardy.

  Hardy grabbed a folder from a worn leather satchel and read from his notes. “Sheriff Stauffer says you’re here looking for a murder suspect, and Marshal Quinn confirmed it.”

  “I’m here to take a fugitive back to Wyoming to stand trial.”

  “And you claim he found you and took you for a ride to the rail yards,” Laurel said. He stepped closer and leaned over the table. The banty rooster was about eye level with me sitting down. “B
ut we don’t believe a thing you told Deputy Red Hat. We just want to know why you killed Dale Goar.”

  When I didn’t immediately break down in a bawling confession, Hardy reached inside his satchel. He took away paper protecting a bloody knife and showed me the hilt. “That your initials?”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Sure,” Hardy said. “We already had it checked. There’s no useable prints on it.”

  I saw Laurel tense out of the corner of my eye, and his hand snaked under his coat when I grabbed the knife. I held it to the light. Fresh blood had dried on the blade and ran into a crack on the wooden handle, nearly covering the 4th Marine insignia etched into the ebony wood. I had received it—as did all survivors of Belleau Wood—from the French government in appreciation of our efforts at the battle. “Never saw it before,” I lied. “It mean something?”

  “It was sticking out of Dale Goar’s chest.”

  I stood to stretch, and Laurel stepped back. I racked my brain to recall when I’d last seen the knife. I had carried it since my war days and took it for granted I always had it with me. For a moment the terrible thought that Notch raised overcame me: had I passed out at the rail yards and used the knife without realizing it?

  Laurel craned his neck up and met my eyes. “I think it’s yours.”

  “Am I speaking some foreign language here? It’s not mine.” But it was mine, and it dawned on me: the last time I saw it was when I opened a can of peaches with it on the train ride from Wyoming. I had stuck it with other things in my dresser at the Kerfoot. It was there the day before my room was ransacked. If my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me.

  Laurel stepped close enough that I could smell the booze on his breath. One thing we drunks could always do well—identify another lush. “You admitted to Deputy Red Hat that you drove to the rail yards last night.”

  “I told you I did.”

  “And she said you claim you didn’t see Goar come out of Iron Horse Services’ yard.”