Red Dog Saloon (27 page)

“And,
I kept turning through the pages, looking at the old stories from back then,”
Cliff continued. “That’s when I came across a wreck that happened a few weeks
after the Red Dog burned.”

“What’s
that have to do with anything?” Sam wondered.

“Well
if you’ll listen for a second, I’ll tell you,” Cliff replied. “So anyway, there
was a girl involved in the wreck. She had to be flown out, got hurt pretty
bad. It was the girl who was with the Porter girl that night at the bar. I
remember thinking that to myself back then, connecting the two. It’s funny how
a memory works, isn’t it sheriff?”

“Yes,
hilarious,” Sam said. “What was her name?”

“I’ve
got it right here in front of me so I wouldn’t forget,” Cliff replied as he
looked at his notes. “Her name is Elizabeth Warner.”

“Is
she still around Easton?” Sam asked excitedly.

“That
I wouldn’t know,” Cliff responded. “There’s not a lot of Warners around so it
shouldn’t be hard to find out.”

“That’s
true,” Sam agreed. “I’ll do that as soon as I get to the office.”

“So
you ready to tell me what you’ve got going on?” Cliff asked. “I mean, I spent
my Saturday night doing your research.”

“Trust
me, if this works out you will be the first to know,” Sam said thanking the
reporter as he pulled up outside the sheriff’s office, anxious to look through
the phone book.

Sam
found six listings under the name “Warner” in the Castle County phone book.
None of them were for Elizabeth Warner. He realized there was no guarantee any
of them would have any relation to the woman he was looking for but then he was
due for a bit of luck.

That
luck seemed far away at first as, one by one, the listings failed to pay off.
The sheriff had pretty well lost hope as he dialed the last listing, one for
Randolph Warner.

“Hello.
Is Elizabeth there?” Sam asked.

“Who
is this?” Randolph Warner replied in a stern voice.

“I
was calling for Elizabeth Warner,” Sam repeated. “Do you know her?”

“I
don’t know who this is but I don’t appreciate what you’re doing,” he responded
in an angry tone. “Now who is this before I hang up?”

The
man’s response made Sam's heart jump. He may have just hit pay dirt.

“I’m
sorry. This is Sheriff Sam Delaney,” he explained. “I’m trying to reach
Elizabeth Warner.”

The
tone on the other end changed.

“Sheriff
Delaney. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize your voice,” Randolph said. “I was afraid
it was someone playing a sick joke or something.”

“So
you do know Elizabeth Warner then?” Sam clarified.

“Why
yes. She was my daughter,” Randolph said, the sheriff quietly pumping his fist
as he stood up from his chair.

“Do
you suppose I could talk to her or get a number or something?” Sam asked.

His
request was met with silence on the other end of the line. Randolph didn't know
how to respond to the sheriff’s request.

“I’m
sorry sheriff, but that’d be impossible,” Randolph began. “Elizabeth died three
months ago.”

“Died?”
Sam repeated aloud.

“Yes.
She had cancer for quite a while,” Randolph said in a hushed tone. “She fought
it hard but lost her battle.”

“I’m
sorry,” Sam apologized as he racked his brain trying to place her seeing Castle
County wasn’t exactly a metropolis. “I didn’t know. Did she have any children?”

His
question was met with a slight chuckle from the other end of the line. Sam
found that odd given the subject matter of their discussion.

“Yes
she does. He was adopted as an infant and she raised him as her own,” Randolph
responded. “I figured you knew that.”

Sam
was confused. What would make Randolph think he would know about his daughter
or her son?

“How
would I know that?” Sam asked.

“Because
you just hired him a couple months back. He works for you,” Randolph responded
his words causing the sheriff to catch his breath as he heard the sound of his
own blood pumping in his ears. “He isn’t a Warner though. Maybe that’s why you
didn’t recognize the name. He goes by his adopted father’s name – Faulkner.
He’s your deputy Ben Faulkner.”

Sam
dropped the receiver, his mouth agape, ignoring Randolph calling out wondering
where he had gone.

“Sheriff!
Sheriff! You there, sheriff?” the far off sound of Randolph’s voice continued
as the receiver swung back and forth on its cord beneath the sheriff’s desk.

“That’s
how he did it,” Sam whispered to himself.

It
was obvious now why there were no clues found at the scenes of the first two
crimes. Deputy Faulkner had been first on the scene at both the Andy Crouch and
Eddie Young murders. The CSI team was looking for strange prints, those that
couldn’t be accounted for. Prints belonging to the sheriff and his deputies
were discounted since they were “supposed to be there.” It was also apparent
who doctored the phone records, something that had bothered Sam given his
suspicion he had a mole in his department. The deputy had been able to hack the
system, or more likely figure out the sheriff’s passcode, to erase Rhody’s
conversation with his girlfriend on the eve of his short-lived escape. And, he
had done it all to avenge what they had done to his mother so long ago.

Forgetting
he had just been talking on the phone with Randolph, Sam clicked on his
intercom to dispatch.

“Is
Ben Faulkner on duty tonight?” Sam asked as he stared blankly at the wall, still
in a state of shock.

“Yes
sheriff,” the dispatcher responded. “He’s out on a call right now.”

“Where?”
Sam questioned.

“He’s
out on a call of shots fired,” she responded. “It’s in the vicinity of the old
Red Dog.”

Bart
wept as he fell to his knees in the snow looking into the face of his father.
Only a wire held the former sheriff to the pole, keeping his lifeless body from
falling face down in the powder. Bart’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. He
could see the gaping holes where his bullets had ripped through his father’s
body, exiting out his chest. The form he thought was the dark man through his
night sight was actually his own father. He had been tethered to the pole like
a condemned man before a firing squad. Bart had in fact hit his target when
sniping from the top of the hill, striking the center of mass with every
squeeze of the trigger. The first shot had likely proved fatal to the long-time
lawman.

Bart
wouldn’t be afforded a formal period of mourning as the sound of a voice behind
him interrupted his macabre gaze into his father’s dead eyes.

“Put
your hands behind your head and kick the gun away from you!” Deputy Ben
Faulkner ordered in a firm voice, his gun trained at Bart’s head. “Do it now,
sir!”

Recognizing
the young deputy, worried the gun might go off by accident if he made a false
move, Bart did as ordered. He slowly rose from his knees before kicking his
rifle away.

“I
can explain, deputy,” Bart began. “It’s not what it looks like. It was the
killer who did this. He called me here and killed my father. It was the dark
man. He’s still here …somewhere.”

Bart’s
explanation fell on deaf ears as the deputy stood silently with his gun still
trained on him.

“Well,
aren’t you going to do something, officer?” Bart said, looking down the barrel
of the deputy’s gun. “He is still out here. He could kill us both. Don't you
hear what I’m saying?”

The
deputy remained silent despite Bart’s emotional plea. The night was so quiet he
could hear the snow hitting the ground.

“Did
you bring the head?” the deputy asked calmly.

“What?”
Bart stammered.

“I
asked, did you bring the head like I told you,” Ben repeated in a calm voice.
“Eddie Young’s head. I loaned it to you this morning. I’d like it back.”

Bart
couldn’t believe his ears. The young deputy was the dark man!

“I
won’t ask you again,” Ben repeated as he cocked back his gun’s hammer.

“It’s
in my bowling bag in the car,” Bart replied quickly. “Who are you? Why are you
doing this?”

“Let’s
just say I’m a man who cares,” Ben replied. “But, while we’re playing twenty
questions I just have to ask - do you have a soul?”

Bart
couldn’t fathom the deputy’s query. Here they stood in the middle of a vacant
lot, the cold freezing them to the bone, his father riddled with bullet holes,
his blood still running onto the snow and he was asking if he had a soul.

“I’ve
killed a lot of men,” Ben confessed. “It’s just part of my line of work,
nothing personal. But I’ve never seen a person who would kill their friends at
the drop of a hat like you. You're pure evil.”

Bart
claimed ignorance to the deputy’s assertion. He wasn't about to confess his
long list of wrongdoings.

“I’m
sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bart replied.

“Come
on Bart. It’s just me and you here. No one else,” Ben began. “I’ll share if
you’ll share. You know, they say confession is good for the soul.”

“I
wouldn’t know about that,” Bart countered, his eyes darting to the ground, his
attempts at absolution minutes earlier at the church a miserable failure.

Ben
wore a wry smile on his youthful face as he looked knowingly down his barrel at
Bart.

“Your
friend Andy - I almost backed out,” Ben confessed. “I showed up at his place
not knowing what I’d do. I’d planned it all out, how I was going to get rid of
all of you. I mean he had it coming but I still wasn’t sure when I got there.
It was actually pure bad luck on his part.”

“Bad
luck?” Bart asked timidly.

“Yes,
I suppose you could say that,” Ben thoughtfully responded. “Frankly, the fact
he had a wood burning stove cost him his life. I was walking up to his house
when I saw the ax lodged in a piece of wood out front so I grabbed it. I mean I
couldn’t shoot him in the face with my sidearm.”

“I
suppose not,” Bart agreed.

“So
anyway, I walked up his steps and was standing there, in my uniform mind you,
holding the ax in my hand trying to decide if I wanted to go through with it,”
Ben recalled. “That’s when he opened the door. I figure he was heading to work
or something because he was dressed in his factory shirt. He left me no choice.
I was standing there with an ax. He forced my hand so I killed him. The good
news for him is that he never knew what hit him.”

Bart
stood silently considering the deputy’s confession to the murder - a murder
which had started the house of cards to fall.

“Your
turn,” Ben said.

“I
don’t know what you mean,” Bart replied.

“Yes
you do,” Ben retorted. “I was there the next night outside Eddie Young’s
trailer.”

“What?”
Bart snapped back, still trying to deny his guilt.

“Imagine
my surprise,” Ben began. “I go there with plans to get Eddie and I hear gun
shots so I turn off my headlights and just sit there and watch. And what do you
suppose I see? Is it coming back to yet, Bart? I see Eddie stumbling out of his
trailer, running around in the snow like a drunken maniac with a gun in his
hand and then I see someone dressed all in black sneaking into his trailer.
That’s where I got the whole idea to dress in black when I went out hunting.
You were the original dark man. I’m just a copycat.”

Bart
realized his crime was witnessed by the deputy. He thought there were no
witnesses to his murderous deed that night.

“Eddie
was a drunk,” Bart declared. “He was in a panic. He figured he was next. I knew
it was only a matter of time until his drunken tongue got us all, so I took the
liberty. He’d filled up my voice mail with crazy messages. Pretty soon, I knew
he’d be calling other folks and it wasn’t exactly like you sent out a schedule
of when you’d pay him a call so I couldn’t take the chance of him spilling his
guts.”

“The
liberty of killing your friend?” Ben clarified. “You cut his head clean off.”

“I
don’t know if you’d call him a friend,” Bart said pointing out the two rarely
spoke since the Red Dog burned down. “As far as the head thing, that was just a
lucky swing."

“You
could have been shot,” Ben countered. “He did have a gun you know.”

“He
couldn’t have hit the broad side of a barn in his condition,” Bart replied,
cracking a grin despite his situation. “If you ask me, I did him a favor. Left
to his own deserts he would have died from cirrhosis of the liver.”

Ben
shook his head in disbelief at Bart’s coldness.

“I
guess I should thank you for leaving his head,” Ben said. “When I went in after
you left it was just lying there, staring at me. Now it’ll serve as the prime
piece of evidence against you.”

“So
you’re planning on taking me in?” Bart asked in a hopeful voice.

“Then
there’s the little matter of Stevie Grissom,” Ben continued as he ignored
Bart’s question. “I really would have felt bad killing him, given the way he’s
turned his life around and all. Of course, again, you didn’t give me that
opportunity.”

Bart
again grinned at the deputy’s grasp of the situation.

“He
was on the edge of telling the sheriff everything,” Bart replied. “His wife had
his stones. I had to take advantage of the situation. We followed him from his
house, me and my two colleagues who you stuffed in my trunk. When he got out at
the store I crawled in his back seat and waited for him to leave. It was easy
after that. He never saw it coming.”

“See,
confession is good for the soul,” Ben said. “And while you’re confessing I have
to confess that I followed you from the parking lot to the place you thought
you’d hidden his vehicle. Just like the night before, you’d beat me to the
prey.”

“I
was going to come back the next night once Rhody broke out of jail and kill two
birds with one stone,” Bart admitted.  “But the car and the body were gone
so I had to make arrangements for another vehicle to pick up our escapee.”

“The
car is still there. I just pulled it down the trail from where you hid it in
the woods,” Ben noted. “I, as you know by now, removed the body of the late
Stevie Grissom and deposited him into the closet of the Honorable Mayor
Satterfield later that night. I had to let you know someone was watching. He
was still bleeding when I got there. You left a fresh kill.”

Ben
looked for a twinkle of regret in Bart’s eyes. There was none.

“And
then there was Rhody Turner. I have to admit I hadn’t a clue how I was going to
get to him but you are very good at what you do,” Ben noted. “Oh, and you’re
welcome for my getting rid of the recording of his conversation with Tia. I
couldn’t take the chance of the sheriff implicating you in the escape, um, and
the murder - or should I say murders - since you’re the one who killed Tia too.
I hate that worst of all since she really had nothing to do with all of this. I
couldn’t have you locked up in his jail like Rhody was. I have a schedule to
keep.”

“The
girl was expendable,” Bart snapped.

“You
are a real piece of work,” Ben said shaking his head in amazement and
disgust.

Bart
took Ben’s words as a compliment. He was impressed by his own ability to adapt
to the static situation and eliminate those who posed a threat.

“It’s
my turn,” Bart declared, wondering about Ben’s motivations. “You never told me
why you’re a man who cares. Are you kin to Earl Cutts, maybe a grandson or
something? He wasn’t exactly man of the year you know. He did some bad things,
some very bad things.”

Ben
couldn’t help but laugh at Bart’s ignorance.

“You
really don’t get it do you?” Ben declared through his laughter. “This isn’t
about Earl Cutts. Besides, you did a bad job killing him since he’s still
alive. It looks like he’s the only one you didn’t kill given the head count
you’ve amassed in under a week, most of them your friends. I barely had to lift
a finger. I feel like Tom Sawyer and the picket fence.”

“Alive?
Impossible!” Bart snapped. “I saw him burn up right here.”

“You’re
wrong,” Ben corrected. “I just spoke with him a while back. He’s very much
alive, at least for now anyway.”

Bart
searched his mind for the source of the dark man’s venom. What had caused his
murderous rampage? Could it be?

“Was
it that whore?” Bart blurted out before realizing the consequences of his
words.

“What
did you say?” Ben asked, not believing his ears.

“This
isn’t all about that whore we had fun with that night?” Bart replied.

His
words were barely out of his mouth before he felt the crack of the deputy’s gun
across his nose. The impact knocked him to his knees.

“Don’t
you ever call her that again!” Ben screamed, resisting the overwhelming urge to
fire a round from his forty-caliber into Bart’s eye. “She was my mother!”

Bart
grimaced as he saw his blood pouring onto the white snow. His nose
was likely broken. He reached under his nose to stem the flow.

“I
hit a nerve didn't I?” Bart said.

Bart
struggled to his feet, finally daring to look toward the deputy. The taste of
his own blood gave him a sudden surge of courage much like a wounded animal.

Ben
stood quietly for a moment, biting his lip as he fought his trigger finger
which was twitching around the cold steel. Then he broke his silence, a sneer
crossing his face.

“It’s
a hell of a thing killing your own father,” Ben stated with a smirk, nodding
toward the dangling corpse of Bart’s father. “Like I said, I wanted you to do a
favor for me. I don’t kill women, children or old people. I figured you
couldn’t resist the temptation to shoot me in the back. I was banking on that
and you didn’t disappoint me.”

Gathering
his courage, figuring he was going to die anyway, Bart straightened up and
looked Ben in the eye.

“You
wouldn’t know, would you?” Bart said spitting blood at Ben’s feet, his words
bringing still another smile from the lawman’s lips. “You wouldn’t know what
it’s like to kill your own father.”

“No,
I wouldn’t, but I figure I’m about to find out … dad,” Ben replied.

Bart
stood bleeding in the steady snow. He couldn't believe his ears.

“You’d
be surprised what you can find out when you have nothing but time on your hands,”
Ben began. “Surely you had to wonder why I saved you until last when I could
have killed you at my leisure. I wanted to meet my dear ... old ... dad.”

Bart
couldn’t find the words to either beg or defy.

“I’d
always wondered where I got the ice water in my veins,” Ben continued. “Now
it’s obvious. You’re the coldest person I’ve ever met. You gave me the killing
genes ... dad. I don’t know whether to thank you or blow your head off. Is it a
blessing or a curse?”