Naturally all the kids wanted a look inside Johnny One-Arm’s place.
One afternoon Roy Thatcher said, “Kyle, let’s sneak out there tonight for a peek.”
I knew what Sheriff Jason would do if he learned of it, but I was eager to go. “If they catch us, we’re in hot water.”
“Shoot, we can run faster than any old grown-up, even Johnny One-Arm. We’ll just look in the window. Maybe we’ll get a gander at the Honky Tonk Killer.”
I don’t know how he thought we’d know him, if we saw him. Maybe he just liked the sound of it, the thrill of fear it gave him.
Of course, I agreed to go. It was on a week night. We knew we couldn’t get away with it on a Saturday, there’d be too many people around. We waited until after nine, the time we were supposed to be in bed. It was easy enough to slip into my clothes and tiptoe out of the house. I’d done it before on possum-hunting expeditions and such. We met down at the corner, about a mile from the honky tonk.
We said hardly a word on the way, almost tiptoeing alongside the road, as though going past a graveyard at midnight. At the edge of the parking lot Roy nudged me and jerked his head. We slipped into the shadows of the live oaks, circling around until we were behind the honky tonk. Only three cars stood in the parking lot. Although the front blazed with light, there was but a single yellow bulb in back, on a stringer stretching between the main building and the cabins. None of the cabins showed a light.
We started toward the main building. Roy touched my arm again and whispered in my ear, “Wonder which one was where the honky tonk gal was killed?” I whispered back, “I don’t know.”
“I thought, seeing’s you live with Sheriff Jason, he might have told you.”
“Well, he didn’t!”
The thought of being that close to where someone was choked to death gave me a creepy feeling. We reached the building and moved at a crouch down to the corner, to the one grimy window, then slowly raised our eyes above the sill. The window was up a few inches, letting sound escape.
Two couples were dancing to music from the juke box, and two girls were sitting alone in a booth. The only other person in the place was Johnny One-Arm, leaning on the counter reading a newspaper. I wasn’t much of a judge of female beauty in those days, but even I realized the four girls inside wouldn’t have won any prizes. Two had acne-scarred faces. All were powdered and rouged to an excess. Their dresses were ill-fitting, sweat-stained. All were old before their time.
The record came to an end, and the dancers straggled back to the booths without anyone dropping another coin in the juke box. In the sudden silence I heard a car drive up out front with a rattle of gravel. A man came in alone. He was a slender individual, red-face, swaying slightly, apparently already drunk.
Johnny One-Arm glanced up incuriously, then returned his attention to the paper.
The newcomer hitched up his pants, swaggered over to the bar and smacked it with the flat of his hand. “Gimme a drink!”
Without even looking up from the paper, Johnny One-Arm dipped his hand below the counter for a bottle of 3.2.
“Not that slop! I want something stronger!”
“You won’t get it here, friend.” Johnny One-Arm finally glanced up. “Even if I sold something else, I wouldn’t sell it to you. You’ve had too many snortsalready.”
“Now don’t hand me that!” the man said belligerently. “You peddle the good stuff here. I know!”
Johnny One-Arm drawled, “Do you? What do you know?”
“I know you’re the one they call Johnny One-Arm. Ain’t that right?”
“Reckon you’re right there.”
“And I know you’re supposed to have killed them girls...”
A change came over Johnny One-Arm. All humor left his face as he said coldly, “You’d better explain that, friend.”
“What’s to explain? Two tonk girls died, you killed them.”
Evidently the man wasn’t too drunk to read danger in Johnny One-Arm’s face, for he suddenly began back-pedaling.
He was too late.
Using his one arm like a pole, Johnny One-Arm vaulted over the counter and had the that most of the anger had man by the throat, the five fingers of his hand tightening around the other’s neck like a vise. He squeezed and squeezed, and his captive began to thrash wildly, fists, knees, feet, all flailing at Johnny One-Arm. It was wasted effort; he might as well have been pounding away at a stone wall.
The fingers tightened and tightened. The man was now pinned against the wall like an insect. After a stunned moment, the other two men in the place were now trying to pull Johnny One-Arm off.
One shouted, “Johnny, let go! You’re goin’ to kill him!”
I somehow had the feeling drained out of Johnny One-Arm, or they would never have been able to manage it. But they did pull him loose, and his victim finally escaped, scuttling away, massaging his throat. As the man disappeared through the door, Johnny One-Arm threw his head back, laughter rumbling from him.
At the window Roy Thatcher tugged at my arm, pulling me down below the windowsill. He whispered triumphantly, “You see, Kyle, I told you we’d see the Honky Tonk Killer!”
Naturally it was all over town before you could turn around twice.
I found that out the next afternoon. Sheriff Jason often sat on an upturned Nehi box at the filling station down at the corner, pipe fuming, yarning to the men gathered around him, sometimes settling disputes. He did a lot of sheriff business there.
But the men collected around on this day weren’t there for swapping yarns. They were openly hostile; the air crackled with it.
“I tell you, Jason Little, that Johnny One-Arm is the killer of them gals!”
“When that temper of his blows, he’ll kill anything in his way!”
“Sure, some folks said a one-armed man couldn’t do it. But not after last night.”
“You don’t believe us, ask Kyle yonder.”
Roy Thatcher and I were hunkered down against the station wall. Sheriff Jason glanced over at us.
Before I could speak, Roy said eagerly, “That’s right, Sheriff Jason! Roy and me was there, we saw it all!”
Sheriff Jason’s glance rested on me in mild reproof, but he didn’t say anything, which had to be a measure of how upset he was.
“You can’t arrest a man just because he could do something,” he said. “There’s no proof that Johnny’s the man we want.”
“Did you know, Jason,” a man said, “that this last one killed, Ethel Thompson, was the one told on him about peddling Wild mustang?”
“That don’t explain the first one.”
“Could be he killed her to cover up for killing Ethel. Ever think of that?”
The third honky tonk girl was found strangled that Saturday night.
The phone rang shortly before midnight. This time. Sheriff Jason was just hanging up the receiver when I shot out of my room. Aunt Beth was standing sleepily in the hall doorway.
I don’t think he even saw me as he spoke to her. “Another gal was just found strangled to death back in one of Johnny’s cabins. They likely wouldn’t have found her until morning, but some drunk stumbled into the cabin by mistake.”
“I told you about that man, Jason,” Aunt Beth said darkly.
He shrugged. “I’d better get over there; sounds like there may be trouble.”
I said excitedly, “I’m going with you!”
He ignored me, starting down the hall for his room, tails of his nightshirt flapping. As I started toward my room, Aunt Beth caught me by the arm.
“You’re not going anywhere, young man, much less to that den of sin.” She gave my arm a pinch. “You march right back to bed.”
I got dressed in the dark. I heard the Model A start up and drive off, and waited awhile longer before I eased the door open and listened. The house was quiet and still. Aunt Beth always went to sleep the minute her head hit the pillow. I tiptoed down the hall, going out the back instead of the front. I thought maybe Billie Bob would like to go with me. That way Sheriff Jason might not be so mad if he saw me there with the teacher.