Longarm 243: Longarm and the Debt of Honor (4 page)

Longarm supposed there was no reason to be amazed that he was already known in town. After all, no one had told Jeremy it was to be a secret. Nor would that have done any good, even if Longarm had wanted his identity unknown while he was here. It was too late for that as soon as he walked inside that jail and spoke to Norm, so there was no sense in having second thoughts now.

“Thanks, son. Do you mind telling me whose company I'll be enjoying?”

“The gentleman in the suit coat and tie is Mayor Chesman. The man next to him is Pete Hankins. Mr. Pete is our pharmacist. He's also a county commissioner. And the gentleman on the right is Sheriff Jonas Brown.”

“And they were expecting me?”

The young man grinned. “There aren't so many choices you might have made, sir, and I expect the folks over at Dottie's place will have been told to send you over here if you were to show up for lunch there instead.”

“Thanks, son.”

“Will you be wanting the special for lunch today, Marshal?”

Longarm looked at the chalkboard listing the choices, which were headed by mutton stew. If there was any one eatable that he could reasonably be said to detest.... He made a face. “Not damn mutton, I won't. Just bring me a steak and some fried taters. Coffee, biscuits, you know how it should go.”

“Yes, sir.” The waiter started to turn away, then hesitated. “In case you're wondering, Marshal, this place is favored mostly by the town folk and farmers. The cow-men generally take their meals over to Dottie's.”

Longarm nodded his thanks, and made a mental note to add a tip to the boy's income from this meal. The waiter was trying to be helpful.

Longarm racked his Stetson by the front door, and ambled over to the corner table where the Crow's Point gentry were expecting him. It wasn't strictly necessary, but he went through the motions of introducing himself, and received the same courtesy in return.

“It's nice you could visit our little community,” the mayor allowed. “Are you on official business here?”

“No, sir, I'm not. Come to visit an old friend, you might say. I hope you won't mind that.”

“Not at all, Marshal. Not at all, I... would you mind if I called you, uh, Custis, is it?”

“My friends generally just call me Longarm. I'd be pleased if you felt so inclined.”

“Now that is just fine, Longarm. Just the sort of attitude we were hoping you would have.”

“You don't have any objection either, Sheriff?” Longarm asked.

“Not at all. In fact, I'll be glad to show you everything I have in Norm's case. And I'll instruct my deputies to cooperate with you any way they can. Believe me, Longarm, I like the old fellow too. Having to place Norm Wold under arrest was one of the hardest things my job has ever forced me to do. No, I take that back. It wasn't one of the hardest. It was hands-down
the
most difficult single thing this badge has ever required me to do. If there is something I've missed, in Norm's favor or otherwise, I would be pleased for you to point it out to me. If you want to look into his case—and I have to assume that is why you came here—you won't get any resistance from me. You and your expertise are more than welcome here.”

Longarm was quite frankly surprised. Damn near dumbfounded, in fact. This was not what he would have expected. Dumbfounded, but almighty pleased. He truly appreciated Sheriff Brown's welcome.

Moreover, the welcome seemed to be matched by that of the Crow's Point mayor and County Commissioner Hankins.

“Is there anything I should know? Anything you'd like me to avoid looking at while I'm here?” Longarm asked in a deceptively mild tone. If there were any reservations lying unstated behind the welcomes, that might be a way to sniff them out.

Each of the three gents in turn shook his head. “No,” the sheriff said, “nothing at all that I can think of. You look into anything or anybody you want. I mean that. Anything. You won't be grating on my nerves any.”

“You know,” Chesman confided, leaning forward a little and dropping his voice a mite, “we wouldn't necessarily be this open with just anybody riding into town. But you aren't exactly unknown, Longarm. You have a good reputation. It's said you're honest. So are we, and that is all we would ask of anyone. You, Norm, anybody. Just be honest with us. We won't get our backs up about anything that's true. And that is a promise, sir.”

“I wish I had to deal with gentlemen like you three everywhere I go,” Longarm said, meaning it quite sincerely. “Thanks.”

“If you want to start this afternoon, Longarm,” the sheriff offered, “I'll tell our court clerk to open the records to you. I'd go over everything with you myself, except that I have a meeting this afternoon with the county attorney. As soon as I'm done there, though, I will be glad to make myself available to answer any questions you have at that point.”

“And if you need me for anything,” Chesman said,

“I operate the livery down at the edge of town. You'll find me there most times.”

Longarm was amused. Mayor Chesman was the most carefully dressed of the three. And he was the one running a livery where you would normally expect overalls and grime. “Gentlemen, I thank you for your welcome,” Longarm said.

Of course, it remained to be seen if the fine words were genuine. But if only for Norm's sake, Longarm damn sure hoped they were.

The waiter came with their food, and conversation slowed considerably while that was tended to. Afterward, the gents excused themselves one by one, until Longarm was the last man left at the table. When he tried to pay for his meal, he was told it was already covered. A request for the name of the friendly soul who'd paid for his lunch brought only a smile and a shrug.

“Thanks,” Longarm told the young fellow, and remembered to add an extra-large tip.

With this kind of cooperation, he thought, he should have a shot at clearing Norm's good name in no time at all.

He lit an after-dinner cheroot and wandered outside into the afternoon heat.

Since he would be downstairs anyway, Longarm trudged the extra set of stairs to the top-floor jail to look in on Norm before he spoke with the county clerk. Besides, he reasoned, he needed to give the sheriff time to let the man know a stranger would be prowling through the records. Most clerks Longarm was acquainted with would get their hackles up mighty high in the air at the idea of someone—pretty much anyone—coming in and wanting access to their files.

In the sheriff's office and jail, young Jeremy was nowhere to be found. Norm was in his cell enjoying a dish of cherry cobbler that was layered thick with sugar and was swimming in cream so rich it was yellow in color.

“Sure looks good,” Longarm said.

“Tastes even better than it looks,” Norm assured him.

“Dottie, she makes the best.”

“I'll have to try her place next time.”

“You do that. So what brings you back up here, old friend?”

Longarm explained, then shrugged. “Remains to be seen what happens next, don't it?”

Norm's expression clouded into a scowl. “Don't let those good old boys fool you, Longarm. Somebody ... I won't claim to know who or how many, maybe all of them, but maybe not... somebody has it in for me. And whoever those somebodies are, they want my butt on a platter. Bad. Don't believe quite everything you hear around here. And maybe half of what you see. You know what I'm telling you?”

Longarm gave the old man a smile and advised, “Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs. I might look easy, but I ain't exactly a virgin when it comes to poking my nose in other folks' affairs.”

Longarm heard Jeremy coming up the stairs. He touched the brim of his Stetson and made his way back down to the clerk's office.

The county clerk turned out to be a fat, balding man who was puffing from climbing the short flight of stairs from ground level, but who did not stint in his welcome.

“The sheriff told me to expect you,” he announced.

“He said you're federal and that you have a good reputation. His recommendation is enough for me. Can I call you Longarm?”

“I hope you will.”

“Good. I'm John Stein, but my friends generally call me Schooner.”

Longarm raised an eyebrow. “You a sailing man, are you?”

Stein threw his head back and roared. “Lord, no. I turn green and puke all over myself if I have to take a ferry across a creek. But I've been known to lift a schooner of beer now and then.”

Longarm grinned. “A man after my own heart, I'd say. Well, then, Schooner, what can you tell me?”

“Step right this way, Longarm, and I'll tell you everything I know. That should take, oh, six or seven minutes.”

“Lead the way, Schooner. I'm right behind you.”

Hirt County, Kansas, did not own a fireproof vault to protect its documents. Had the county been prosperous enough, and farsighted enough, to buy one, Longarm thought, Norm probably would not be upstairs in that cell right now. But then hindsight is always perfect, he conceded. The hard part is preparing for odd contingencies ahead of time.

The most important records, such as tax and voting rolls, court documents, and a few pieces of physical evidence relating to criminal cases pending in the county court, were all—or at least had been all—stored in a wooden locker that occupied much of one wall. The locker stood roughly eight feet tall by twelve feet in width, and was—Longarm measured—fifteen inches deep.

The arsonist who'd tried to destroy it had very nearly succeeded. The three sets of double-wide doors had all been left standing open—they'd been locked at the close of business hours, but the locks had been forced open with a pry bar or some similar instrument—and the heavy, canvas-bound ledgers rearranged on the shelves so they were fanned partially open. That had allowed the flames access to the pages. Closed books were not exactly immune to fire, but it took quite a blaze and a very long period of exposure for closed books to burn.

Coal or whale oil had been splashed liberally inside all three sections of the locker and set on fire.

Enough damage had been done that Schooner was having difficulty reconstructing the records.

“I won't ever get all of it down,” he admitted. “Not exactly the way it was.”

“How serious will that be?” Longarm asked.

“In the long run?” He shook his head. “More like a nuisance than a disaster, really. Nobody will lose his farm because of it, or be disenfranchised from his vote. We don't have so many folks around that we can't know them all. Some better than others, of course, but I don't think you could say there's any strangers in the county. And most of the people here aren't all that contentious. We get along with each other pretty well for the most part. I mean, there won't be anybody suing his neighbor over a fence line because the survey records burned, nothing like that.”

“Uh-huh. Was there any other damage?”

“Down in the corner there were the town records.

There isn't any city hall, you see, won't be until we move the county seat and ownership of this building goes over to the town. We let the city clerk keep his stuff there. I wouldn't have any idea what he lost, but I know whatever was there is pretty much gone now. It was on the bottom there, and of course the coal oil ran down onto the floor, so it was down at that level that the fire was the worst. We were able to salvage some of the stuff from the higher shelves, but you can see how the whole cabinet was doused with the oil.”

Longarm nodded. He could see that plain enough, all right. The wood was charred, and there was still, after all this time a faint, rather unpleasant scent lingering inside the records locker. Longarm supposed Schooner was so used to the smell that he was no longer aware of it, but Longarm would have found it unpleasant to have to work at one of the desks close by.

“None of the desks was bothered?” he asked.

Schooner shook his head. “Not even messed with as far as we can figure out. Not that we lock them at night. Never had any need before, if you see what I mean. But the things in the drawers, stamps and little personal items and like that, nothing was missing, nothing seems to've been disarranged.”

Longarm frowned. A vandal—and the truth was that he'd been thinking of this in terms of it being done by some half-grown idiot who liked simple meanness—more than likely would have helped himself to some petty thievery before calling attention to himself with fire.

If the desks were ignored, that made casual vandalism much less likely as a motive.

“Mind if I look through what's left in there?” Longarm asked. “I don't have the vaguest idea what I'm looking for, but I'd kinda like to poke around just in case something catches my eye.”