Killer's Draw: The Circuit Rider (5 page)

Big River was just rousing itself from slumber when Tower
arrived, trailing behind him a horse that carried the dead body of Stanley
Verhooven.

The morning sun was bright and a shaft of light that cut
across the buildings illuminated the particles of dust and dirt stirred up by
the never-ending motion of cattle in the stockyards. A young boy emerged from a
doorway, glanced at Tower and his unfortunate companion, and ran ahead, calling
out to someone.

If memory served him correctly, the undertaker was at the
end of the street, just past the courthouse and tucked discreetly around the
corner.

But Tower didn’t make it that far.

“Whoa, hold up there!” a voice called out.

Tower glanced over to the doorway of a law office and
spotted Sheriff Chesser. Two men wearing stiff black suits and dubious
expressions stood behind him. The sign above the building read T
HOMAS
&
A
NDREW
C
ONWAY
, E
SQUIRES
.

Tower brought the horses to a stop.

 “What the hell is this, preacher?” Chesser asked, as he
stepped from the building’s porch onto the street and walked toward Tower.

A few more people began to appear outside the storefronts
and saloons, glancing toward them. Some turned and went on to finish whatever
business they were transacting; others turned and walked toward them, wanting a
closer look at what was appearing to be the morning’s top attraction.

“I think that’s up to you, ultimately, sheriff,” Tower said.

“What kind of answer is that?” Chesser responded. “Are you
getting smart with me?”

“Not at all, sheriff.” Tower tugged on the horse’s reins
behind him and tossed them to Chesser. “I’m simply saying that you’ll need to
figure out what this is. After all, you’re the highest law in this town,
correct?”

The two men behind Chesser chuckled.

“Damn right I’ll decide what this is. Murder is the first
thing that comes to mind.” He headed over to Verhooven’s dead body.

“Yes, it might be murder. Or suicide. Or an accident. Or
something else. But I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it.”

By now, a small crowd had assembled around the men, forming
a tight circle. Sheriff Chesser leaned down to study the face of the dead man.

“That’s Stanley Verhooven,” he said.

“See, you’re making progress on the case already, sheriff,”
Tower said.

Chesser glanced at him, then turned to the crowd.

“Burt and Glen. Take ol’ Stanley down to the undertaker. You,”
he said, pointing at Tower. “You need to tell me exactly what happened and why
I shouldn’t arrest you right this very minute.”

“Lock him up!” someone from the crowd shouted.

“Get a rope!”

Tower glanced around. There wasn’t a friendly face to be
found.

“Wouldn’t you rather question me somewhere private, sheriff?
This seems like a very public forum for me to be answering questions.”

“What, you have something to hide, preacher?” Chesser asked.

“Not at all.”

“So, tell us what happened.”

“We—”

“Who’s we?”

“Bird Hitchcock and I went out to question Mr. Verhooven
regarding his discovery of the body of Bertram Egans.”

A murmur spread through the crowd.

“When we got there, Mr. Verhooven was dead.  He’d been
strung up, and a suicide note was pinned to his clothes.”

“What note?” Chesser asked. “Burt! Bring him back here!”

The men hauling away Verhooven’s body stopped and led the
horse back to the sheriff. Chesser cut the ropes holding the body in place, and
Verhooven slid to the ground, landing on his back in the street.

The note was still attached to his shirt.

“I’ve got a huge problem with this, preacher,” Chesser said.

“I figured you might think it was suspicious.”

“It sure is. You see, Stanley Verhooven was illiterate. He
couldn’t write a single word to save his life.”

“Well if it isn’t Downwind Dave,” Bird said.

The corner of his mouth not occupied with the cigarette was turned
up in what Bird supposed was meant to be a sardonic smile.

She knew the man hated his nickname.

“And I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t Bird Hitchcock.” His
voice was low and harsh, probably from years of what was between the man’s
lips.

Bird recognized the tall, lanky man as David Axelrod, a
gunfighter from Laredo, Texas. Bird had once worked side by side with him for
the same employer—a rancher determined to bluff the town council into not
enforcing the laws against him. Bird had taken a week’s pay then quit. She
couldn’t remember what had happened between the rancher and the town, but
figured it ended badly. It usually does.

“What are you doing way up here?” Bird asked. “Thought you
Texas boys liked to stay close to home.”

“Ah, we’re just like you Bird,” Axelrod said. He took one
last deep drag on the cigarette, then flicked it into the middle of the trail. A
thin tendril of smoke accompanied its landing. “We go where there’s money and
booze.”

Bird laughed. Axelrod got the nickname “Downwind” when he’d
been caught with a sheep farmer’s wife and was chased through a pasture by the
wronged husband and his four full-grown sons. He’d gotten covered in shit, and
although he’d escaped, he’d been unable to get rid of the stink for months.

“So what kind of money have you been finding up here, Dave?”
Bird asked. “Are you freelancing, or working for Stanley Verhooven? As I
recall, you weren’t exactly the type to become a miner.”

Axelrod smirked at Bird and she noticed the relaxed slump of
his shoulders dissipate when her question landed.

“Oh, there’s always money to be had somewhere,” he said. “But
hell no, I ain’t no miner. Only thing I like to mine is a bottle. Just like
you, Bird.”

Axelrod’s horse shifted impatiently and Bird noted the way
the gunfighter tried to move to position the sun shining behind him over his
shoulders and into Bird’s eyes. But she wasn’t concerned. She could see him
just fine.

“You have anything to do with that old man being strung up?”
Bird asked. “I’ve been following the trail of the bastard who did it. Not sure
why I stumbled on you.”

“Now why in the hell would you care about who killed some
old man? Unless you was shacking up with him or something. But I figure even
you could do better than that.”

Axelrod cackled at his own joke.

“No, old men aren’t my cup of tea. Deadbeats are my taste,
which is why I was always kind of sweet on you, Dave.”

Axelrod chuckled again.

“The truth is, I’m looking into the murder of a preacher
over in Killer’s Draw. Seems this old miner found the body. And now someone
killed him. Strange, don’t you think, Downwind?”

“Coincidences are a helluva lot of fun, aren’t they, Bird?”
Axelrod asked. He leaned forward, laughing, as he drew. It was a smooth, fluid
motion, unhurried but very fast. Axelrod’s gun was halfway out of its holster when
Bird shot him out of his saddle. The two slugs tore into the breast pocket of
his shirt and he managed to get his gun all the way out of his holster but then
it slipped from his hand as he slid from the saddle, landing near his
still-smoldering cigarette in the middle of the trail.

Axelrod’s horse, now riderless, bolted and ran the other
direction.

Bird held her gun in her hand, smoke rising from the muzzle.
She looked at the dead man on the ground.

“Stupid, smelly bastard,” she said.

“Seems a mite suspicious, preacher. I tell you about
Verhooven being a witness, and you ride back into town with his body. I got half
a mind to put you in jail,” Chesser said.

Tower allowed himself to be squired directly into the law
offices of Thomas and Andrew Conway, per Sheriff Chesser’s suggestion. It was
clearly a place Chesser was comfortable with, and Tower was curious. Why was
the sheriff so tight with these lawyers? Clearly, they were the big law firm in
Big River, with their office in a prime location and in a substantial building.
But when Tower had ridden into town with Verhooven’s body, Chesser had emerged
from the law office’s front door.

Tower was impressed with the law firm’s office. The parlor
was decked out with a mahogany floor, antler lamps, and a crystal chandelier. Settees
lined one wall, on the other were oil paintings depicting the migration out
West.

“I’m Thomas Conway,” the first brother said. He held out his
hand and Tower was surprised by the man’s powerful grip.

“And I’m Andrew Conway,” the other brother said. Tower
pegged him as the younger sibling, but not by much. They were both tall and
broad shouldered, with blond hair and pale blue eyes.

“Mike Tower,” he said.

They were ushered into a room dominated by a long table made
of rough-hewn pine.

They all took seats around the table and Tower felt as if he
were going to trial, but he didn’t mind—his goal was to get more information
than he would give. It would be easy, especially as he didn’t really have
anything to hide. Also, having worked a long time ago in a very different life
as an investigator, he was used to attorney’s offices and the kind of conversations
that typically occurred in them.

“So, how did you come to find Stanley Verhooven dead?”
Chesser asked, with a quick glance toward the lawyer brothers that did not go
unnoticed by Tower. It seemed the brothers were going to let Chesser lead the
way and focus on observing.

Tower considered his response. He had nothing to hide, but
he wasn’t about to provide unnecessary detail with two lawyers in the room.

“If I killed him, why would I bring him back into town so
everyone could be a witness?” Tower said, opting to ask a question rather than
provide an answer. He enjoyed his own response so much, he added another
question. “And exactly why would I kill him?”

Chesser looked hard at Tower, then turned to the brothers. Clearly,
he had reached the limits of his interrogative abilities.

“So, are you here on official church business?” Thomas
Conway asked, stepping into the prosecutor role. “Possibly doing some damage
control?”

“It’s pretty simple, gentlemen, and I don’t know how much
more plainly I can put it. I would simply like to know who killed Bertram Egans
and why,” Tower said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“But if you could prove that the crime had nothing to do
with the church, well, your supervisors back in San Francisco wouldn’t mind
that all, now would they?” the other brother said.

Chesser nodded enthusiastically. He liked where the brothers
were taking this.

“Everyone loves the truth except those working to obscure
it,” Tower said. “I just want to find out the truth.”

Chesser pulled a small piece of wood out of his pocket, and
began rubbing his thumb over it, sizing it up as his next project, Tower
figured. He idly wondered if the sheriff set out to carve an image he already
had in his mind, or if he let the block of wood provide the suggestion.

“I sure don’t know about all these questions you’re asking,
Mr. Tower,” Chesser said. “I just have to look at the facts. And the fact is, I
told you about ol’ Stanley, you rode out there and came back with him dead. Seems
like a pretty obvious case of cause and effect to me.”

Tower almost laughed at the sheriff’s smug satisfaction with
his own line of questioning. Instead, he ignored him.

“What do you two know about the murder of Egans?” Tower asked
the attorneys. The younger brother looked out the window toward the street. The
older one, Thomas, looked directly at Tower. Tower could tell he didn’t like
being questioned himself.

“Didn’t surprise me at all someone killed that preacher,” he
said. “Some of the nastiest, dirtiest, most women-hating men I’ve ever met in
my life have been preachers.”

The block of wood being turned in Chesser’s hand came to an
abrupt halt. The younger brother turned to Tower to see his reaction.

“Yes sir,” Tower said. “We’re almost as bad as lawyers.”

It took Bird nearly a half hour to track down Axelrod’s
horse and coax it into letting her grab its reins. The sound of gunfire and the
sight of blood were apparently new to the animal, which was mildly surprising
to Bird. Her Appaloosa was a seasoned veteran at this point.

Bird brought the horse, a big roan, back to the rise in the
trail where its previous owner had waited for Bird. Axelrod was still face down
in the dirt, the pool of blood now black.

A tree just off the trail made a temporary hitching post as
Bird tied the horse to its solid trunk. She then hoisted Axelrod’s body onto
the back of the horse, tied his hands and feet to the stirrups, mounted the
Appaloosa, and turned back toward Big River.

As she rode, morning turned into early afternoon, with the
sun at its peak and creeping toward the start of its descent. The wind died
down and the dust from the trail hung in the air.

Bird drank from Axelrod’s whiskey bottle as she rode,
retracing her steps back toward Verhooven’s place. There was no one else on the
trail, and as she rode, she wondered what Mike Tower was doing back in Big
River.

She had to grudgingly admit that they made a good team. Bird
was good with guns; Tower was better with people. For the kind of work Silas
had outlined for them, hell, maybe they could actually accomplish something. She
even figured they just might be able to find out what happened to Bertram Egans.

It became hotter, and as Bird crested a rise, she realized
she was at the edge of Killer’s Draw. The trail sloped off to the west, but
Bird guided the horses to the edge of the water and made a picket with a fallen
branch and a good length of rope.

As the horses walked to the water’s edge to drink, Bird
slipped Axelrod’s saddlebags from his horse and slung them over her shoulder. She
also reached into Axelrod’s pockets.

“Don’t mean to pick your pockets, Dave, but who knows what I
might find?” She dug out some papers and a box of matches, then carried
everything over to a tree that was casting a wide shadow on the grass beneath
it.

She sat on the soft grass, leaned her back against the tree
trunk, and took a drink from the whiskey bottle. It was quiet here, and the breeze
that was nonexistent back on the trail now moved with a cool forcefulness that dried
the sweat on Bird’s forehead.

Bird set the bottle down next to her and opened Axelrod’s
saddlebags.

There was not much there that interested her. Aside from another
unopened bottle of whiskey, which she would put to good use when she moved on. Bird
glanced over at the bottle next to her. She’d kill the rest of that with
another drink or two.

The rest of Axelrod’s gear was expected—a bedroll, some
food, and ammunition for both a rifle and a pistol.

Bird set the saddlebags aside and looked at the papers she’d
fished from Axelrod’s pockets.

There were two pieces of paper. The smaller one turned out
to be a receipt from the general store in Big River for the food and ammunition.
The other slip of paper was a short note, with a hand-drawn map that Bird
instantly recognized as the rough directions from Big River to Verhooven’s
mine.

The note was short and sweet:

This is where you’ll find him. $200 and whatever you can
take. Meet back in Big River in a week.

-P

Bird folded the note and map, then put both of them into her
pocket.

Who the hell was “P”?