“Talking about could they make sure all the witnesses would stick to the party line in other words.”
“I will admit that one hears two widely varying accounts about what happened,” Amos said. “But I’ll tell you what I think.”
“What’s that?”
“You should have hit the son of a bitch.”
“Come again?”
“You should have punched him, Longarm. Kicked him. Beaten the shit out of him. Any one of those would have been fine. I mean, a man can stand being beat up. I never heard of anybody, you or me included, who isn’t ever going to come up against somebody else who’s stronger or quicker or just plain luckier on a given day. But what you did to him, Longarm, picking him up and dumping him into a rosebush.”
“It was only a lilac,” Longarm protested. “No thorns.”
“The man is skinned up pretty good.”
Longarm shrugged.
“Okay, lilac, fine. The point is, his pride could have taken being beaten by you. But what you did, treating him like he was some sorry-ass kid that you didn’t even have to bother whipping, that cut deep. Bone deep. Bender won’t ever forgive or forget, I can tell you that much.”
“T’ tell you the truth, I don’t much give a shit. All I want out of Addington is out of Addington. You know?”
“With your murderer.”
“Well, yeah, with a murderer. That’s what I come here t’ do.”
“At least in that, you have an ally you might not have counted on. Sergeant Braxton is four-square in your corner on letting you get your man quick as possible and then get the hell out of here. Brass seems to be about the only one around who recognizes that Norm Colton’s killing should be handled as a separate matter so you federals can be satisfied and the local affairs can take place without any outsiders looking on.”
“If I were planning what those boys are, I think I’d follow good advice when I heard it,” Longarm said.
“You, uh, wouldn’t ignore a threat to the Constitution of the United States, would you?”
“Of course not. But I got to tell you that I think it would take an awful lot more than a bunch of east-Texas assholes like these Texas Firsters to represent any kind of a threat. So until or unless I see good reason t’ change my mind about that, all I’m looking at here is the death of one federal employee. Any other killings the same party or parties may’ve done are strictly the affair of the local law, far as I can see it.”
“I’ll make sure Braxton understands that. Could be he’ll convince Bender to cooperate with you instead of raising his hackles every time you come into view.”
“I’d appreciate that, Lester.”
“All right then. Oh, and by the way. This afternoon while you were off dancing with the police chief, I did some asking around. It seems there is some doubt about whether all the town records are intact.”
“Oh?”
“And guess what sort of records they think are missing?”
Longarm waited. Hell, Amos didn’t want an answer anyway. Not really.
“I heard someone at City Hall say they think the poll records and voter-registration books are missing.”
“Mm, now imagine that. The Whig party secretary dead and now the town clerk. Records missing from both. This is beginning to look kinda interesting.”
“Sure does give somebody room to make a fresh start, doesn’t it?” Amos said.
“All I got t’ say is that it’s a damn good thing everybody in politics is honest, because a situation like this could give an unscrupulous person opportunity to rewrite history just about any way he wants it.”
“Like excluding names off the registration lists if those people are likely to vote the wrong candidate.”
“Yep, it’s just a damn good thing nobody around here would stoop so low as t’ do a thing like that. You thirsty, Lester?”
“I could stand a drink.”
The two men stood and turned to leave the lobby. Their attention was caught, though, by a breathless messenger running in to ask the hotel clerk if he’d seen the night patrolman.
“Not for half an hour or so—why?”
“Because there’s been another killing, that’s why,” the young man puffed. “The worst yet. It’s the police chief himself that’s been shot this time.”
The distraught fellow bent over for a moment to gulp for breath, then turned and dashed back out into the night. “Aw, shit,” Longarm mumbled. He shook his head. “Reckon we better put that drink off till later, Mr. Colton.”
“Yes, I expect we should at that.”
Chapter 34
Longarm and “Lester Colton” made the steep climb to the top floor of City Hall in record time. They found the expected scene of confusion there with virtually every cop on the force—there weren’t really all that many, one night man, two day officers and a part-time relief officer who worked weekends and the occasional day off for the others—getting in each other’s way along with Ranger Sergeant George Braxton and a handful of civilians who no doubt worked for, or anyway drew pay from, the town.
In his role as an interested spectator Amos couldn’t say much, and he tried to fade into the woodwork as much as possible while Longarm stepped into the middle of things.
At that middle was the focus of all the fuss and feathers, namely the very dead body of Police Chief J. Michael Bender. The man had changed to fresh clothing since Longarm last saw him—something without brush scrapes and grass stains—and was dotted here and there with a salve to heal the scratches he’d gotten from Mrs. Deel’s lilacs. Not that he need have bothered. There was a dark-purple depression in the center of his forehead. The dime-sized hole was surrounded by a black ring where burning gunpowder had scorched the skin. Apart from that little flaw, though, Bender looked pretty good. His hair was not even mussed. He was still at his desk, seated in his chair almost normally, though slumped back into a more relaxed posture than he had allowed himself in life. There wasn’t any great secret about the way the man died. He’d been sitting peacefully at his desk, expecting no difficulties, and then he was shot at virtually point-blank range.
The dead man’s eyes were open, which Longarm always found a mite disconcerting. Since no one else seemed inclined to do it, Longarm went around behind the desk and pushed his eyes shut. They stayed closed without having to be weighted or sewn, which Longarm considered something of a small blessing. He hated it when you couldn’t make the eyes remain closed.
Brass Braxton looked at Longarm, opened his mouth as if to protest, and then thought better of it. Which Longarm thought damned odd. The sergeant was not a shy fellow and would almost certainly want to take over this investigation himself.
Something else occurred to Longarm, though, that was of more immediate interest than thinking about the actions and reactions of a stray Ranger sergeant. When he’d touched Bender the man had felt downright warm. He put his fingertips on Bender’s throat and confirmed that fleeting impression. The body had barely begun to cool.
“Did anybody hear the shot?” he asked of no one in particular.
Since no one volunteered an answer, he selected the uniformed cop whom he recognized as the regular night officer and repeated the question to him.
“No, sir. Not that we know about.”
“Any idea as to time of death then?”
“Yes, sir, we pretty much know when it has to’ve been.”
“Care to explain that, officer?”
“Yes, sir. The chief’s habit is … was, that is … to come in every night at ten. Never failed to do that, sir, not as long as I’ve been on the payroll. I never knew him to be late and he wasn’t often more than five or ten minutes early. He always checked the incident log”—the young officer pointed to a large leather ledger book that lay on a counter at the side of the room—“and had a word with the night duty officer before he’d go home and go to bed. Every night including weekends he did that.”