Red Dog Saloon (18 page)

Smith
grinned, the lines in his face suggesting he had spent a lifetime in the sun
from his weather-beaten appearance.

“I
said I met your killer. I didn’t say I knew who he was,” Smith clarified.
“However, I know for a fact why the murders are happening.”

“And
how do you know with such certainty?” Sam countered. “You seem to say that with
conviction.”

Smith
furled his brow as he shot the lawman a serious look.

“How
else would I know, sheriff? Because I was there!” Smith snapped.

“You
were where?” Sam asked.

“The
Red Dog,” Smith responded. “I was there when it happened. I saw everything. I
saw what those pigs did to that little girl.”

Sam
leaned in toward Smith. He realized that before him was an eyewitness to
the two decade old crime.

“Why
are you just telling now?” Sam asked. “It’s been more than twenty years.”

Smith
dropped his head and looked down at his feet in shame.

“Because
I was a coward,” Smith replied. “I’ve been a coward for twenty years but now my
days are coming to an end. I figure I owe it to the girl to let someone know. I
don’t want to take it to my grave. If I do, I’m afraid I’ll never rest.”

Smith’s
candor intrigued the sheriff. The old man was baring his soul after two
decades, perhaps making what some would call a deathbed confession.

“Tell
me what happened,” Sam urged.

His
tale would prove to be the most captivating story Sam ever heard. The look
on Smith’s face told the lawman he was reliving the events of twenty years ago
with every word.

Smith’s
story began at the Red Dog only days before it burned to the ground. The old
man recalled that Bart’s group was there, being even more rowdy than
normal.

“The
whole bunch of them was drunk, but then that wasn’t anything unusual. That's
what they did every Saturday night,” Smith said. “They were getting loud and
they’d already been in one fight that night. They were looking for trouble,
that’s for sure.”

The
whole gang, Smith explained, were in their early twenties back then. Bart was
the worst of the group.

“If
there was any trouble out there involving his boy, then Sheriff Foster would
sweep it under the rug,” Smith pointed out. “Bart knew that, so he had no
limits. He knew he could do what he wanted and so could his boys. That made
them dangerous. They were above the law.”

Smith
recalled seeing them nearly beat a man to death one evening a few weeks before
the incident. No charges ever came of the beating, despite the serious injuries
sustained by the patron.

“They
were like a pack of dogs,” Smith recalled. “If you took on one, you took on all
of them. And even then you couldn’t win because Sheriff Foster would see
nothing bad happened to his son.”

Smith
walked ahead to the night of the incident. The pain on his wrinkled face
revealed the sincerity of his remorse.

“That
night Gina Porter was there with a slightly older girl,” Smith revealed. “It
was Gina’s eighteenth birthday so she decided it’d be fun to go to the Red Dog.
She’d never been, and like most kids, they thought it was dangerous, kind of a
forbidden place good folks weren’t supposed to go.”

Smith
said Gina stayed at the bar deep into the night, drinking with some other
patrons despite being underage for alcohol. He couldn’t recall if the drinks
were bought for her or if she was passing a fake identification. Either way, as
the evening progressed so did her buzz as did that of her friend.

“At
some point in the evening she became friendly with Stevie Grissom,” Smith said.
“They sat around talking for probably an hour before her friend decided to
leave. That’s when Stevie offered to give her a lift home so the other girl
could leave with a guy. Accepting that ride was the biggest mistake of her
life.”

Smith
paused to catch his breath. The elderly man strained for air as he progressed
through his story.

“An
hour later, the bar was empty except for Stevie, the rest of the crew and the
girl,” Smith recalled. “They were all drunk and one of them, I don’t recall
which one, began touching the girl. First it was just playing around but then
it started getting serious.”

Smith
again lowered his head in shame.

“She
tried to resist but that just made him want it more,” Smith recalled, noting
Andy walked over and locked the door to make sure no one would walk in on them.
“Then they were all on her like a bunch of animals. She tried to fight but they
held her down and covered her mouth. She was crying and begging but they didn’t
care. They were out of control.”

Smith’s
voice took a tone of anger. His false teeth ground together as he continued.

“They
raped her, all of them,” Smith said with a look of disgust. “It was horrible. I
can still hear her screams like it was yesterday.”

Moved
by the old man’s recollection, the sheriff wondered why Smith didn’t do
something to help the girl. It was obvious Smith was an eyewitness to the crime
so he had to be in the bar when it happened.

“Why
didn’t you do anything?” Sam questioned. “I mean, what were you doing there in
the first place?”

Raising
his head back up, a sober look on his face, Smith floored the veteran lawman.

“What
was I doing there?” Smith asked. “It was my bar.”

“But
that’s impossible,” Sam interjected. "Earl Cutts owned the bar at the
time."

“Not
at all, sheriff,” the man responded. “I haven’t been Bob Smith all my life. In
this case the names were changed to protect the guilty. You know me better by
my given name - Earl Cutts.”

The
revelation was too much for Sam to believe. Earl Cutts had burned up with the
Red Dog over twenty years ago. Or had he? The words of Cliff Chapman crossed
his mind at that incident. The reporter specifically said that Cutts
was “believed dead” given the fact no remains had been found in the ashes of
the Red Dog.

“But
Earl Cutts is dead,” Sam said with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. “Everybody
knows he went up in flames with the bar.”

Sam's
statement brought a smile to the old man’s face.

“Yes.
That's exactly what I wanted everybody to believe,” the man said. “When you
don’t want someone to find you, what better way to avoid them than being dead?

Sam
was confused by the twist. How could Earl Cutts convince the world he was dead
for the past twenty years? Better yet, why would he want people to believe he
was dead?

“The
only way I could avoid being dead was by making people think I was already
dead,” he explained. “They would have come back and finished the job if they
realized I survived.”

“They,
I assume, being Bart and his gang?” Sam asked as he slowly clued in to the
story.

“Exactly,
sheriff. You catch on fast,” the man said. “They left me for dead and figured
they‘d burn up the evidence. They just missed one little detail - they left me
breathing.”

Could
it be? Was this the long-dead owner of Red Dog Saloon sitting before him
recounting events of twenty years ago like they just happened?

“Why?”
Sam asked as he began to believe he was talking to Earl Cutts.

“I
couldn’t live with myself,” Earl confessed. “I held my tongue that night
because I was scared, not just of Bart but his father. The sheriff turned his
head to things that went on at the Red Dog so I was beholden to him. And
frankly, I couldn’t have done anything that night if I’d tried. I was an old
man even back then. Sixty-five to be exact.”

By
the sheriff’s quick math that would make the man before him eighty-six or
eight-seven. And, by the looks of him, he was every bit of it.

“I
couldn’t sleep after that, not a wink,” Earl admitted. “I’d done a lot of bad
things in my life but standing by and watching that, well, I was ashamed of
myself.”

Earl
explained he was not sure what happened to the girl after the incident that
night. All he knew is she disappeared from town at some point. He was also
unsure if she reported the rape to anyone. He wasn’t even sure how she got home
that night as she escaped from the bar after the deed was done and the gang
went back to drinking. However, about a sleepless week after witnessing the
atrocity in his bar, Earl decided to come forward and reveal what he had seen
to the district attorney.

“There
was a mole in the DA’s office,” Earl said. “Bart and his boys found out what I
was doing and paid a call on me at the Red Dog.”

Earl
said that much like the night of the rape, the gang came in and locked the
front door behind them.

“I
told them they would burn in Hell for what they did and I’d see to it even if I
had to come back from the grave and drag them there with me,” Earl said. “That
didn’t sit well with Bart. He had his boys hold me while he and Rhody beat me.”

Earl
said while they held him, blood pouring from his mouth from the merciless
beating, he spit in Bart’s face. The act of defiance infuriated the gang’s
leader, prompting him to crack him in the head with the butt of a pistol he
pulled from his waistband. The impact knocked the elderly bar owner out cold
for a few seconds. However, his head was hard from years of bar brawls and
that was what kept the blow from proving fatal.

“When
I woke up, I could smell gas and heard the whoosh of flames coming at me,” Earl
recalled, saying he scrambled away from the heat of the approaching wall of
fire. “I was able to crawl to the back door through the flames.”

Earl
pulled up the sleeve of his night coat. There were scars on his right arm and
hand. The scars, he explained, were left by burns he suffered from the fire.

“I
got out the back door without being seen,” Earl said, noting he threw his false
teeth back into the burning building as he formulated a plan to disappear
forever. “I knew that if they realized I survived they would hunt me down and
finish the job. I knew at that moment I had to stay dead.”

Earl
revealed he made his way back to his nearby house and gathered up part of his
belongings. He then paused to watch the flames from the old Red Dog spire high
into the night sky while waiting for his girlfriend. She then helped spirit him
away.

“I’d
done pretty well for myself,” Earl revealed.

He
owned a vacation house on Harvest Lake which he had put in his girlfriend’s
name for legal purposes in case the revenuers came calling about his illegal
enterprises at the tavern.

“I
was already retirement age so I figured it was time to enjoy my golden years,”
he said.

The
elderly man grinned with pride as he revealed his girlfriend was listed as
beneficiary on both the bar and on his life insurance. The settlements were
quite lucrative.

“That
was more than enough to live on for the rest of our lives,” Earl said.

He
recalled that he and his girlfriend went on to get married a short time
later and that he had taken her last name.

“I
didn’t even have to get a new name really," he grinned. "My full
name is Robert Earl Cutts. Her name was Rachel Smith. So, when we got
married, I just rolled over into being Bob Smith.”

Earl
explained that Rachel died about five years ago and that he fell into ill
health shortly thereafter and was moved into the assisted living facility.

“There
hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought about what happened,” Earl confessed. “But
I knew that if I came forward, that would be the end of me.”

“So
you’re just trying to make peace before your time is up?” Sam asked. “You know
you could live another ten or twenty years.”

Sam
knew better than that. The man sitting before him looked to be at death's door.

“No,
sheriff. As shameful as it may sound, I’m trying to save my skin again,” Earl
declared. “I guess no matter how old you get you still want to get just one day
older.”

Earl’s
statement again left Sam baffled. What did he mean by saying he wanted to save
his own skin?

“You
see, sheriff, you’re not the first person I’ve told all these things to,” Earl
continued. “There was a man who paid me a visit a few months ago.”

“A
man? Was he the killer?” Sam asked.

“I
suppose he is,” Earl sighed. “It appears to be his work, your murders back in
Castle County, that is.”

“Who
is he? What does he look like?” Sam asked again, sensing he was close to
discovering the identity of the killer. “Give me a description. Did you know
him?”

“All
I know is he was a man who knew everything that happened at the Red Dog that
night,” Earl replied. “He came and visited me here one evening.”

“You
mean you can’t recall what he looked like?” Sam wondered. “I mean you remember
details about stuff that happened twenty years ago. Can’t you remember
something? Hair color, height? Was he skinny or fat, young or old?”

“Sorry,
sheriff. All I can say for sure is he had a deep voice,” Earl responded. “In
case you haven’t noticed, which you obviously haven’t, I’m blind. All I can see
is shapes and shades in the light. That’s why I sit at the window.”