Bloody Sunday (16 page)

“Yes, ma'am.” Whittaker waited until Glory had gone into the adjoining room, then turned back to Luke and said, “What was she doing on the floor when I came in here?”

“I told her to get down when you started hammering on the door,” Luke answered without hesitation. “For all I knew, there was going to be more shooting, and I wanted her to get out of the line of fire as much as possible.”

“I yelled out who I was.”

Luke's shrug was eloquent.

With a frown, Whittaker went on, “You're still fully dressed, Jensen, right down to your guns, and it's obvious you hadn't turned in when the shooting started. What were you doing in a dark room like that?”

“It's not against the law for a man to sit in a dark hotel room, is it?” Luke asked. With a nod toward the chair where he'd been waiting earlier, he continued, “I like to sit and think. The dark helps.”

“You've got an answer for everything, don't you?”

“Not everything,” Luke said. “Some of the great philosophical questions still baffle me. Like the one about the bear in the woods.”

Whittaker's jaw tightened in anger, but he said, “I'll take a look around town, ask some questions, see if I can find anybody who saw anything.”

“You might want to start by taking a look out the window,” Luke suggested. “The bushwhacker might have left something out there that would help you find him.”

“Fine,” Whittaker agreed grudgingly. He walked over to the window, glass crunching under his boots as he did so, like Luke had said, and peered out.

Luke struck a match, lit the lamp on the bedside table, and picked it up to carry it over to the window. He held it so that its light shone on the balcony.

A splash of fresh blood across the boards of the railing gleamed redly in the lamplight.

“I was pretty sure I winged him,” Luke said. “That blood proves it.”

“I reckon. The railing's not busted.”

“It's low enough that he could have tipped over it and fallen without breaking it.”

“How'd he get out here in the first place?”

Luke thought Whittaker sounded genuinely curious, which was a bit of a surprise. He said, “The easiest way would be to climb out on the balcony through the window of another room. I don't see a ladder anywhere, and it would take an ape to climb down from the roof. Although, I don't suppose that actually rules out Deputy Singletary. . . .”

Whittaker glared at him but didn't say anything.

There was nothing else on the balcony except the drops of blood. When Luke and Whittaker turned away from the window, a man with gray hair and a mustache who waited in the doorway asked, “Was anyone hurt, Sheriff?”

“It appears not, Mr. Stafford,” Whittaker answered, the name indicating to Luke that this newcomer was probably the hotel's owner.

“Thank the Lord for that,” Stafford said. “Mr. Jensen, you'll move to another room, of course. You can't stay here, not with that damage to the bed. Not to mention the, ah, smell of gunsmoke in the room.”

“Like blood, it's a hard smell to get out,” Luke said.

Stafford led Luke down the hall to Room Three, which he said was empty for the night. When the hotel man opened the door, Luke immediately noticed that the window was open. Somebody had shoved the pane all the way up.

“Do you normally leave the windows open in vacant rooms?” he asked Stafford.

The gray-haired man looked perplexed as he shook his head and said, “No, not usually.”

Whittaker was still standing in the hallway. Luke said, “Take a look, Sheriff.” He pointed into the room. “Here's how that shotgunner got onto the balcony.”

Whittaker came down to Room Three, looked through the door at the open window, and grunted.

“I suppose that's possible,” he said.

Luke snapped a lucifer to life with his thumbnail and lit the lamp. He took it over to the window and held it over the sill. Something caught his eye right away. He motioned Whittaker closer and pointed it out.

“There's a little piece of cloth caught on a nail that didn't get hammered down quite all the way,” Luke said. “Looks like it's from a pair of trousers. It must've torn when the bushwhacker swung his leg over the sill and stepped out.”

Although Whittaker sounded like it pained him to admit it, he said, “You're probably right, Jensen. But that doesn't tell us any more about who the hombre was.”

“It does if Singletary has on a torn pair of pants in the morning.” Luke shrugged. “Of course, the fact that he'll have a bullet wound, too, is even better evidence.”

Stafford said, “Are you talking about Deputy Singletary? You can't mean you think that he—”

“Anybody can run his mouth and say loco things,” Whittaker interrupted harshly. “I warned you about that, Jensen.”

“I'm just speculating,” Luke said. “I think I have a right to, since it was me who nearly got blown apart by a shotgun.”

“Speculate all you want, but keep it to yourself. I'm done here.”

Whittaker left, stalking off with a ramrod-stiff back. Stafford said nervously, “I sure am sorry about all this, Mr. Jensen. If there's anything I can do to make things better . . .”

Luke shook his head.

“I don't blame you or your hotel, Mr. Stafford,” he said. “Somebody's got a grudge against me, and chances are they would have come after me no matter where I was.”

“Well, if there's anything you need . . .”

“Just some rest,” Luke said.

That didn't come easy, though. For one thing, he was on edge from nearly being murdered, and for another, he wasn't sure what he had told Stafford was the truth. He had assumed that he was the bushwhacker's target, since the shotgun blast had been fired through the window of his room.

Maybe the gunner had been skulking out there on the balcony for a while, though. Maybe he had known that Glory was in Luke's room instead of her own. It had been dark in the room, but if the man's eyes had adjusted enough, he might have been able to make out both of them.

No, Luke decided, that wasn't what had happened. The would-be killer had known where the bed was located in the room and had targeted it, thinking that Luke would be asleep there. That meant he was familiar with the layout of the hotel's rooms. Probably somebody from Painted Post. Somebody with a grudge against Luke.

All the signs kept pointing to Whitey Singletary.

Maybe the morning would bring some new information to light. In the meantime, Luke closed the window, stuffed the pillows under the covers to make it look like he was sleeping there, then spread a blanket on the floor on the far side of the bed and stretched out there. The makeshift pallet wasn't very comfortable, but he had slept in worse places.

Besides, getting his hide filled with buckshot or .45 slugs would be even less comfortable.

The thought that he had misjudged the situation and that Glory might still be in danger nagged at him during the night, but when he knocked on her door in the morning she opened it almost immediately and didn't appear to be any the worse for wear.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” he asked her.

She shrugged and said, “A little. How about you?”

“Some.”

“Actually, I laid awake most of the night with my derringer in my hand.”

Luke chuckled and said, “We had the same idea. I had my hand wrapped around the butt of one of my Remingtons.” He inclined his head toward the staircase. “You want to go down and get some breakfast?”

“Yes, please. I could use about a gallon of coffee, too. But let's go over to the Elite for it. Nobody in Painted Post makes better hotcakes than Mrs. Anderson.”

That claim proved to be true. The hotcakes were fluffy and sweet, the bacon was crispy, and the hash browns were cooked perfectly. Hazel kept their coffee cups full of the hot, strong brew as well. By the time they finished the meal, Luke felt almost human again, and Glory seemed to be doing better, too.

She had settled the bill for their rooms before they left the hotel to walk up the street to the café, so all they had to do was head for Cramer's livery stable to pick up their horses.

Luke saddled his dun while Cramer got Glory's big white horse ready to ride. The liveryman said, “I heard about all the excitement up at the hotel last night.”

“I'm not sure how exciting it was,” Luke said. “It didn't make for a very relaxing night, either.”

“No, I expect it didn't. A shotgun blast ain't exactly a lullaby.”

“I'm sure you're up and about fairly early, Mr. Cramer. Have you seen Deputy Singletary today?”

Before Cramer could answer, Jared Whittaker strode into the livery barn through the open double doors and said, “I warned you about spreading rumors, Jensen.”

“I just asked a question. I didn't spread anything.” Luke finished tightening the cinches and stepped away from his horse. “But now that you're here, Sheriff, I'll just ask you, since you're the one in the best position to know. Is your deputy anywhere around town today?”

Whittaker glared at him, and for a moment Luke thought the lawman wasn't going to answer the question. But then Whittaker said, “As a matter of fact, I haven't seen him yet today. That doesn't mean anything, though. He hasn't been feeling very well since the other day, so I told him to take some time off if he needed to.”

“Since I broke his nose, you mean.”

“That's exactly what I mean,” Whittaker snapped. “He's probably over at the boardinghouse where he has a room, getting some rest.”

“Why don't we go see?” Luke suggested.

Again Whittaker looked like he wanted to argue, but Luke's suggestion was a reasonable one and he couldn't just disregard it. He jerked his head and said, “All right, come on. You'll see that you're wrong, though.”

“One of us will,” Luke said.

Glory was waiting in front of the livery stable. Luke told her, “I'll be back in a few minutes. The sheriff and I are going to check on something.”

“Does it have anything to do with what happened last night?” she asked.

“It does.”

“Then I'm coming, too,” she declared.

“That's not a good idea,” Whittaker said.

“I think it is, and the last time I checked, this was still a free country.”

“Might be better if it wasn't,” Whittaker muttered, but he didn't try to stop Glory from walking along McDowell Street with him and Luke.

They turned onto one of the side streets, and the sheriff led them to a two-story frame house. A nice-looking, middle-aged woman with graying brown hair answered Whittaker's knock. He took off his hat and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Miles. I'm looking for Deputy Singletary. Does he happen to be here?”

The woman frowned and said, “I'm afraid I really don't know, Sheriff. I haven't seen him since supper last night. He didn't come down for breakfast this morning.”

Whittaker shot a glance at Luke, then asked, “Did you go up and knock on his door to see if he was all right?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. He didn't answer, and I didn't hear anyone moving around.”

Whittaker crammed his hat back on his head, then said, “If it's all right with you, I'm going to go up and take a look myself.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Miles said. “Do you think Deputy Singletary might be sick or hurt?”

“I hope not,” Whittaker muttered. As the landlady moved aside, Whittaker stepped past her into the foyer. Luke followed, and so did Glory. Whittaker looked like he wanted to tell them to stay put, but he settled for saying, “You'd better stay down here with Mrs. Miles, Mrs. MacCrae.”

Luke halfway expected Glory to argue, just on general principles if for no other reason, but she nodded and said, “All right.”

“I'll need your key, Mrs. Miles,” Whittaker said to the landlady. The woman reached inside a pocket on the apron she wore and took out a large brass key. Luke figured it would open every door in the house.

Whittaker went up the stairs with Luke right behind him. The sheriff obviously knew which room was his deputy's, because he went straight to one of the doors in the upstairs hall and hammered a fist on it.

“Whitey? Whitey, are you in there?”

When there was no response, Whittaker knocked again, but only silence came from the other side of the door.

“I don't think he's here,” Luke said.

“All right, damn it,” Whittaker snapped as he thrust the key into the lock and twisted it. “Let's find out.”

He put his right hand on the butt of his Colt as he used his left to push the door open. Being ready for trouble like that was a habit every lawman got into if he wanted to survive for very long in a dangerous profession.

Luke didn't pack a badge and never would, but he had his hand on a gun, too, as he followed Whittaker into the room.

The sheriff stopped short and said, “Well, son of a bitch.”

Luke moved slightly to one side and looked past Whittaker at the rumpled bed. Somebody had pulled the top sheet off and from the looks of it torn strips of cloth from it. What was left of the sheet lay in a bloody, wadded-up lump on the bed. Drops of blood were splattered across the other bedclothes.

Other than the furniture, the room was empty.

“I'll bet if we check the back stairs, we'll find more blood there,” Luke said. “He made it back here, came in that way without waking anybody, and used that sheet to stop the bleeding, then tore pieces off of it to use as bandages.”

“I've got eyes,” Whittaker said in a grim voice. “I can see.”

“After that, your guess is as good as mine where he went, but he knew he couldn't stay here in town, shot up like that. Not with me still alive to tell what happened at the hotel.”

Whittaker shook his head and said, “You can't prove any of that.”

“Singletary's not here to deny it, is he?” Given the sheriff's reaction to their discovery, which seemed genuinely surprised, Luke decided to play the other card in his hand. “That's not all of it, either. Yesterday, just as that shootout started in the street, somebody took a couple of shots at me from the roof of the courthouse. Do you happen to remember if Singletary was with you just then?”

“No, he—” Whittaker caught himself. “That doesn't mean anything. He was somewhere around there.”

“Yeah,” Luke said dryly, “up on the roof taking potshots at me. That's where he was, and you know it whether you want to admit it or not.”

Whittaker turned to him and said, “Listen to me, Jensen. I didn't know anything about this. I don't mind admitting I don't like you. I didn't like you even before I found out you're a bounty hunter. And I don't have much use for Mrs. MacCrae, either. I think she's trying to make Harry Elston a scapegoat for her troubles. But I didn't have anything to do with trying to kill either of you!”

“You know, Sheriff, I almost believe you.”

“It's the truth, damn it!” Whittaker paused and frowned, obviously thinking. “I wonder if there's some other explanation for all this. Whitey could've gotten hurt some other way. . . .”

“We both know that's not true,” Luke said. “He was the one who fired a shotgun through that hotel room window last night. And now that I think about it, I've got a hunch I know where he went, too. Now that he's hurt, he's gone running to his real boss—Harry Elston.”

“Maybe I need to take a ride out to the Lazy EO. That might be the best way to prove that you're wrong about all this, Jensen.”

“Be my guest,” Luke invited, “but don't expect that Elston will admit Singletary is there. He'll have him hidden out in some line shack or something. Elston will make sure you can't come up with any proof that he's involved. From everything I've seen since I've been here, he's very good at that.”

“I want you to stay away from there,” Whittaker snapped. “I won't have you harassing the citizens of this county.”