Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (36 page)

Sheriff Tegner stood up, reeling some, as he snarled, "I see you think I'm just a dumb Swede you can brush away from your guilty fresh face like a housefly! But you can't fool me with your slippery answers, Helga Runeberg! I'm arresting you in the name of the people of Brown County for murder in the first degree and-"

Longarm moved with surprising speed to catch the older lawman as he lurched the gal's way, but seemed to be fixing to go another. The tall deputy said soothingly, "I told you to go easy on them caraway seeds. You're too upset to question the witness calmly. So why don't you step outside for some fresh air and let me see what I can find out from Miss Helga, Sheriff?"

The older man muttered, "Hang her, I say! Hang her as high as she blew poor Vigdis Magnusson's pretty blond head!"

But Longarm still managed to ease him outside. Helga Runeberg was frog-belly sweaty and pale as he turned back to her. But she managed a brave enough front as she said, "Drunken old fool! He hasn't a thing on me, and he'd know that if only he'd stay out of the aquavit!"

Longarm smiled knowingly and nodded, but warned, "He is the sheriff, and that gal Laughing Larry killed in my place was mighty popular in New Ulm. I'd hate to face a local jury, stuck with even the circumstantial evidence we have on you. That's what they call it when nobody saw you actually pull the trigger. Circumstantial evidence."

She said, "Damn it, I was right here on my own land, miles away from New Ulm, when that stuck-up blonde was killed!"

Longarm soberly informed her, "Miss Viggy wasn't stuck up. She was blown up. Laughing Larry would have been miles away by now had not I beat his train into the depot. I didn't know it was him before I got there. I ain't that smart. I only figured whoever it was would want to get out of town suddenly, and seeing I did know a train was about to pass through..."

"I don't know who or what you're talking about," she said. "You were there when I told my boys not to gun you down like the dog you were born. Were you there when somebody instructed a killer from out of town who his target might be and with whom he'd be planning to spend the night?"

Longarm sighed and said, "I sure hate small-town gossip. But I do thank you for tying up that loose end, ma'am. You see, I solve these tougher ones by tying up one loose end after another until none seem to be left and I get to make my own arrests. I'm a tad more scientific than Sheriff Tegner."

He let that sink in. Then he told her, "I want you to listen tight and weigh all the words of either of us before you toss more sass my way, Miss Helga. Sheriff Tegner's up for another term in the coming elections, and he needs an arrest and conviction so bad he can taste it."

He let that sink in before saying, "I'm sore about poor Miss Viggy too. Since you seem to have heard some gossip, I have no call to tell another lady why. Suffice it to say I am out for blood. But I can be flexible, not having to produce anyone for a local court. I want the big fish, on federal charges. I want him so bad I may just see my way clear to toss a few smaller fish back."

She hesitated, looked away, and bitterly replied, "Forget it. I have this family spread to think of. We both know I'd have to move far away and change my name forever if I ever turned state's evidence on a man like Calvert Tyger!"

Longarm nodded pleasantly and said, "Pinamiyeh, as your Santee neighbors would say. That's exactly the sort of loose end I like to tie up, and we've been wondering how come Calvert Tyger keeps dying all over this country. Would you like to try for the way those hot hundred-dollar notes got scattered even wider, ma'am?"

She hesitated, then softly murmured, "I have your word I won't have to sign anything or repeat one word of this in front of anyone else in this world?"

He hesitated in turn before cautioning her, "I can only bend the law so far. It's my duty as a potential witness against you to warn you I can't turn my back on a serious felony. But if I'm right about you only aiding and abetting, and you'd like to tell me just what in blue blazes has been going on, I see no reason to drag your name all over the arrest warrants once I know who I really want to arrest."

She poured another cup of coffee, this time for him, as she choked back a sob and confessed, "You were right about my sheltering Uncle Chief and, all right, a couple of other boys who might have been a bit wild. But I swear I've never taken part in any felonies myself, and that was no lie about Uncle Chief knowing nothing about that robbery in Fort Collins."

She waited until he'd sipped some coffee without calling her a liar to her face, and then she added, "He was never after you when you shot him either! I can see now how you might have thought he was. But he and some other boys he rode in with a few weeks ago were only following you about in hopes of finding out who'd sent you after them. Uncle Chief never bought that story about a bank note from that payroll robbery attracting you all the way to New Ulm. He said he'd heard they were turning up all over, and besides, he didn't know about any robbery in Fort Collins. He was afraid someone was trying to frame him and his friends."

Longarm asked where the rest of the poor framed gang might be. She shrugged and said, "Uncle Chief never told us. He did say they'd all agreed to split up and lay low for a while after the last big job they pulled. He never said what that one had been. Just that he found it awfully surprising that you and your own pals were after him for that Fort Collins robbery he knew nothing about, see?"

Longarm must not have looked as convinced as she wanted him to. For the next thing he knew she was standing mightily close as she put both hands on his upper sleeves, smiled timidly up at him, and asked if he thought she was out to give false testimony. She smelled so fine he had to smile back, and up this close she didn't seem quite so plain after all. Her perky nose was sort of cute, and her eyes were downright naughty as he stared down into their smoky blue depths.

Then something clicked in the back of his skull and Longarm put his coffee cup aside to soberly say, "I reckon I can go along with most of what you just said, Miss Helga. I'll see if I can get the sheriff not to arrest you this morning."

She looked so grateful he was afraid he'd never get out of there with his pecker in his pants. But he managed, and catching up with Sheriff Tegner outside, murmured, "It worked. Albeit not the way we planned. She lies like sin, and you're going to need way more evidence before you haul her before any grand jury, pard. But I'll send you what we have once we wrap the fool case up. Meanwhile, I fear arresting her might tip her pals off that I'm on their trail at last!"

Tegner shrugged and said, "I reckon she'll keep here on her own place for now. But what did she tell you if she was lying so much?"

Longarm replied, "Nothing. I took every word she said with a peck of salt. Then I suddenly figured out who she's been reminding me of ever since I first laid eyes on her mean little face!"

CHAPTER 27

Later that week Longarm had an even less friendly conversation in the chambers of Judge Dickerson of the Denver District Court. Then he legged it over to the Tremont House to relieve Deputies Smiley and Dutch, who looked mighty relieved as they lit out a full hour before they'd expected to that afternoon.

As soon as Longarm found himself alone with the voluptuous honey-blonde they had down as a soiled dove known as Elvira Carson, he came right to the point, saying, "I've cleared it with my own office, which was easy enough, but the prosecuting attorney had a fit when I suggested he let you off scot free, Miss Margaret. He seems to think you were going to testify in court against your lover, Frank Keller, of the notorious Keller gang, which only goes to show how much they teach such dudes at Harvard Law."

The buxom half-naked blonde, wearing only a shantung kimono that late of a summer's afternoon, and not bothering to sash it all that modestly, leaned back on her hotel bed to smile up at him dreamy-eyed and puff, "I haven't had any lover in a coon's age, and what was that funny name you just called me, handsome?"

Longarm remained planted in the middle of her bedroom rug as he calmly replied, "Margaret, ma'am, Margaret Runeberg of Brown County, Minnesota, before you went wild. The real Elvira Carson died of the clap mixed with yellow jack over a year ago, and I reckon one of her admirers told you the name was up for grabs, just as the old boy they were expecting you to testify against must have heard about the real Frank Keller getting shot by the Mounties trying to rob the Canadian and Pacific even earlier. I just found out about that myself by including some old boys I know up at Fort MacLeod, even though the current Canadian government is sore at President Hayes, as the bunch of you were banking on."

She stared up at him thunderstruck, the wheels in those familiar blue eyes ticking visibly as he gently continued. "I never would have strained that hard, this not being my case at all, had not I gotten to know your older and uglier sister better back where you both hail from, and suddenly recalled where I'd seen such wickedly innocent eyes before. Once I had the least notion who you might really be out this way, it became a heap plainer what you were up to."

She said, "I don't know what you're talking about. Why would any girl adopt the name of a notorious trail-town whore if she was really some innocent child off a cattle spread in... Minnesota, did you say?"

He smiled thinly and replied, "I did say Minnesota. I never said a thing about no cattle spread. You got to develop a good memory to be a good liar, ma'am. I'd like you to put some duds on now. I'm taking you over to Curtis Street, where I mean to check us into another hotel as man and wife."

She laughed incredulously and declared, "This is so sudden, dear!" as she sat up to calmly shrug out of her thin kimono.

She shrugged mighty temptingly, and Longarm hadn't met anybody half that willing on the long train ride back from New Ulm. But he told her, "Maybe. I'm only human. But first we got to get some more serious matters settled. Like I said, I'm checking into that other hotel with you, and so it won't matter in court whether we did anything else or not. As a lady who's ridden the owlhoot trail as long as you have, you know what a pickle I'd be in, trying to testify against you in court, after you had documented proof I'd slept with you within an easy walk from the courthouse!"

He could see she did as she rose to her feet naked anyway and moved over to a corner wardrobe to start dressing herself with skill and speed to make one suspect she was used to getting in and out of her duds at short notice.

As she sat back down, still mostly unbuttoned, to pull on her high-button shoes, she asked with a puzzled frown, "You say a federal judge and prosecutor wanted you to be so good to me?"

Longarm chuckled and replied, "They wanted to lock you up and throw away the key, should you go back on your promise to testify against the cuss they've been holding as a dead train robber. I convinced them how tough that could be, if you had any sort of lawyer of your own, once you threw the case so comically, with members of the fourth estate in court to describe the hilarity on the front pages of the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News in an election year."

She stood up and asked him to button the back of her bodice for her while he told her where he got such wild ideas.

He managed to keep his hands steady, with some effort, as he got her fit to be seen on the streets with, saying, "I've seen a hostile witness throw a case before. It's even happened to me. I could be a hair off as to your exact moves, but as soon as I figured out who you had to be, I saw how easy it was going to be for you to wait until they were trying to swear you in as a woman of ill repute with an arrest record going back to Sodom and Gomorrah. I'd laugh too if I saw a bailiff trying to swear in another lady entirely as a long-dead trail-town hooker. I'd likely wonder how much attention the prosecution had been paying to its other homework."

She said he surely had a vivid imagination, and asked who he thought the prisoner they had down as Frank Keller might be.

He said, "We'll get into that after I get into you, or at least compromise myself forever as a witness. You see, I ain't just doing this because you're concave where I'm convex. I know plenty of gals here in Denver. I'll tell you what I really want as soon as you have me over a barrel. Let's go."

They went. She brought along her purse and carpetbag, saying she could hardly wait to get him over a barrel after she took the usual precautions.

They walked arm in arm in broad daylight to a more affordable but fairly clean hotel on Curtis Street, and she stood there pretending butter wouldn't melt in her mouth as he signed them in as U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long & Spouse. The room clerk, who knew Longarm of old, looked surprised but said nothing as he handed over their key.

Longarm helped her upstairs with her carpetbag, and she said the hot stuffy room needed airing. So he locked the door and opened a window while she naturally bolted for the door.

When he told her, not unkindly, "I locked it with the key, which I hold in my hand," she just shrugged and commenced to get undressed again, murmuring, "Oh, well, I haven't had any for weeks, and it's not as if you're deformed or busting out in boils."

He didn't see any reason to stop her from undressing. For openers it might make a gal think twice about unexpected dashes down the hall outside. He shucked his own hat and frock coat as well, saying, "My first hunch was that we'd picked up the more notorious Calvert Tyger after that less exciting robbery by Keller, and so you meant to surprise us with, say, Canadian newspaper clippings, proving they'd booked him wrong as Frank Keller. But as soon as I studied more on that, I saw it was just plain impossible. The cuss we're holding as Frank Keller, whoever he is, ain't old enough to have ridden in the war on either side. Besides, somebody in a leadership position has to have been issuing a heap of orders, and paying at least something to have them carried out. So an alive and kicking Calvert Tyger still at large works better than Tyger in jail, or the late Brick Flanders, albeit the third in command called Chief might have issued one or more orders before he wound up just as late more recently."