Relentless (25 page)

    

    AS IT TURNED out, the judge only fined me $25, and the town council picked up the bill for that as a bonus for my becoming town marshal again. A lawyer came in from Denver and said he felt good about a self-defense argument as long as Tom agreed to plead on his attempted extortion charge. That might be some jail time, but not much. He couldn’t never be my deputy again, but a couple of factory owners in town gave him standing offers for working as a dock foreman. The ranch is up for sale.

    Callie got her teaching job back. There was an angry meeting at which a small band of women argued that she was “unfit” to be around children. But the majority of people at the meeting shouted them down. Decency and common sense-she was a damned good teacher-prevailed. And as you may have figured out by now from your own life, that isn’t always the case.

    Paul Webley? Nothing happened to him. He could afford the right lawyers and with two of his bought-and-sold flunky judges on the state supreme court, every single charge-including kidnapping-was dropped.

    The only satisfaction I get is seeing him on the street occasionally. He scowls and I grin. I grin like hell, as a matter of fact. I consider that a high and true distinction, the only man who ever hit a Webley and lived to tell about it.

    

    

    Ed Gorman has been called "one of suspense fiction's best storytellers" by
Ellery Queen
, and "one of the most original voices in today's crime fiction" by the
San Diego Union
.

    Gorman has been published in magazines as various as
Redbook, Ellery Queen, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
and
Poetry Today
.

    He has won numerous prizes, including the Shamus, the Spur, and the International Fiction Writer's award. He's been nominated for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Golden Dagger, and the Bram Stoker awards. Former
Los Angeles Times
critic Charles Champlin noted that "Ed Gorman is a powerful storyteller."

    Gorman's work has been taken by the Literary Guild, the Mystery Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and the Science Fiction Book Club.