The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (25 page)

Edge tried to ignore the boy’s ugly complexion with its many red and yellow pustules, not quite boils, which were made more prominent by his sallow colouring and a growth of fine bristles. Sawyer could not help having a greasy skin problem. And likewise his family circumstances meant he was probably not responsible for his belligerent attitude toward life when it was not totally to his liking. Which meant he had at least one trait in common with his stepfather. ‘I heard it second hand from his ma. She told me Alvin said you know more about the Quinn killings than you’ve admitted to the sheriff.’

Edge was aware of a disconcerting sense of unease as he towered over the slightly built kid who it was necessary he should treat as an equal in the present situation. This as Sawyer clawed off his hat and raked a skinny hand through his greasy hair as his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. Then he jammed the Stetson back on and spread a sneer across his blotchy face as he demanded:

‘Just what the hell am I supposed to know, mister?’

‘He wouldn’t tell her.’

The sneer became triumphant. ‘That’s because he doesn’t know a damn thing! Or he’d have told Meeker about it, ain’t that so?’

‘The sheriff wouldn’t listen to anything Alvin Ivers or Floyd Hooper told him.’

‘So that’s it then!’ Sawyer spoke in the cocksure manner of somebody not familiar with being right about very much. ‘Those two had their way with Nancy and then killed her and her ma. Meeker knows it and he ain’t gonna waste his time listening to Ivers try to blame it on me!’

‘Alvin Ivers didn’t accuse you of killing the Quinn women, kid.’

‘He didn’t say much of anything it seems to me?’ His voice was suddenly much louder and more shrill.

There was an ominous murmuring and stirring among the group behind the wagon until they saw the man and boy still stood six feet apart, Sawyer plainly angry and Edge icily calm. Then Alice Cassidy tossed the revolver into the back of the wagon and announced irritably:

‘Come on, you guys! It’s too damn dark for us to do anything more out here now. Let’s pack up for the night.’

The men came to retrieve their rifles from the stack and eyed Sawyer and Edge with a range of expressions from quizzical to menacing before they went toward their horses. Only the scar faced George spoke to ask:

‘Everything okay, Eddie?’

‘No problem, buddy.’

The woman became more irritably impatient and urged: ‘Hurry it up, Eddie. You know the rules around here. If you don’t share in the chores you don’t get to play the games.’ She pointed to the dying fire under the suspended cooking pot.

‘Okay, Mrs Cassidy, ma’am,’ Sawyer assured then looked at Edge. ‘We’re almost through.’

‘That’s up to you,’ Edge told him. ‘If you want this to be over and done with here and now tonight?’

The boy licked his lips and dropped his gaze to the ground as he allowed: ‘I guess Ivers or Hooper must have heard me and Bob Jordan talking the night before that happened to Nancy and her ma.’

‘Talking about what?’

Sawyer gestured into the night toward the extensive stand of timber to the south-west.

‘It was at the old mill. A bunch of us had a party there while most folks had their dull old dance in town. You must’ve been told about the party, mister? When Nancy Quinn got drunk out of her skull and started to take off her threads?’

‘I heard. The same night that Jordan was killed when he rode his horse off a cliff on this spread?’

Sawyer nodded. ‘It wasn’t nothing a whole lot of the others weren’t talking about, mister. Or thinking anyway. It was awhile after all that excitement that Nancy had stirred up was over. After Matt Colman pulled his gun and put a stop to her dancing and took her home. I got to talking to Jordan on account of I knew he was fixing to up stakes and drift on pretty soon. And I wanted to know if he’d sell me that knife he had that was supposed to have belonged to Jim Bowie himself.’

The boy spat forcefully to the ground and went on bitterly: ‘Well, the ornery sonofabitch wouldn’t sell it to me. Said nothing would make him part with that knife. But really you could tell he wasn’t in no mood to talk about anything else except Nancy Quinn. Said how he reckoned she wasn’t getting enough of what she wanted and . . . ‘ He looked to where a man was loading the cooking pot into the rear of the chuck wagon while another doused the fire: chores Alice Cassidy had told him to take care of. Then he gazed nervously back at Edge again and went on:

‘And Bob Jordan said he could sure supply what she needed. If she couldn’t get it off Matt Colman or any of them other guys she was supposed to have been screwing awhile back. Last year time.’

‘I get the idea,’ Edge said.

Sawyer went on in a rush: ‘Then he asked me what Nancy was like. If she was as wild as it seemed she was from that dance she did. Ripping off her clothes for all the guys to see her body the way she did.’ He began to pick at his nails, concentrating intently on his hands.

‘And I lied, mister. I told him all kinds of things that weren’t true. I made up stuff about Nancy asking me lots of times to bring her out here to the ranch to be with the guys. That I always told her no because I wanted to keep her to myself. But I never had a chance with her and she never asked me nothing like that.’

He raised his doleful gaze and saw that Edge was regarding him impassively. ‘Hell, mister, ain’t none of us the kind of wild ones some town folks think we are. A bunch of us come out here to shoot at targets and such like. And sometimes some of us go back with Bob Jordan to the old mill and drink a little too much. Springdale people figure we get up to all sorts of craziness out here and we just don’t set them right about it is all.’

‘So you and Nancy Quinn . . ?’

‘I never laid a damn hand on her, mister! And neither did any of them other guys she played up to for awhile. I just told Jordan what I did because I could see it was what he wanted to hear. And I figure that if I could get him in a good mood he might change his mind about selling me the Bowie knife.’ He made a sound of disgust. ‘But the bastard didn’t!’

‘Okay,’ Edge said and dug out the makings.

It seemed as if Sawyer felt compelled to press on without any urging from Edge. ‘She was real strange, that Nancy Quinn. At first I thought she was just trying to make Matt Colman jealous. Either that or she wanted to finish with him. And pretended to put herself around like that as a way of doing it – or to make him finish with her, maybe?’

‘You thought that
at first
,’ Edge said as he rolled the cigarette. Sawyer stared fixedly at the ground between his scuffed boots and muttered: ‘Look, mister, it’s plain you ain’t got no idea what kind Nancy really was: what I told Jordan she was really like – in the end. Which was when he said he’d prove she wasn’t like that at all.’

‘What was she like, kid?’

‘Damnit, I’m sorry,’ Sawyer blurted and looked and sounded like he meant it. Was clearly afraid of voicing the revelation he was about to make because of the effect it could have on the man hearing it. He held back for a stretched second then went on falteringly: ‘Hell, I know you were a friend of Mr Quinn. So it’s hard to tell you this.’

Edge prompted: ‘Her old man and me weren’t best buddies, kid. Just tell it like it was. The same way you told Jordan at the old mill.’

He tried to meet Edge’s steady gaze but failed and went to work on his nails again then blurted: ‘Nancy just wasn’t normal! She didn’t like guys, damnit! You know what I mean?

That Bob Jordan had been around a lot: all over the country. And he knew about women like her! Nancy was . . . She only liked women. Shit, I just don’t know the proper way to say how she was, mister.’

Edge nodded, struck a match and murmured sardonically: ‘Try the other way.’

CHAPTER • 16

___________________________________________________________________________

SARAH FARMER, who was attired for riding instead of in a dress and bonnet that
Edge considered suited her best looked afraid for her life as she watched him heading up River Road on his return from the Cassidy spread. He saw her after she moved out from the doorway of the darkened livery leading her saddled horse by the bridle.

‘Thank God you’re here, Edge,’ she greeted tautly. ‘I was going out to the Quinn house to find you. But I’m not so sure if I could have made it to there the way I’m feeling.’

He reined in the gelding and swung out of the saddle. Revised his first impression of the woman’s state of mind as she snatched a look toward the mid-town intersection and her face was more clearly visible in the light that spilled down the street from store windows to supplement the moon glow. She was not terrified: instead she appeared to be mad as hell at something. Or somebody.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked as she led her horse over to where he stood alongside his mount.

There was some screwed up paper in her hand and she thrust it toward him as she said grimly: ‘I found this when I got home a few minutes ago. I want you to read it, please.’

He pursed his lips and sighed. ‘The way you look I figure I already know what it is, Sarah. And if it is that kind of letter I know who wrote it.’

‘You can name the person who wrote this filth?’ she gasped and jerked her hand back, her expression conveying something close to murderous hatred. ‘Who is she? Tell me, please!’

‘A woman with a twisted mind. Let me see?’

He reached out and she gave him the balled up paper like an automaton. Then she swallowed hard, shook her head, sucked in a deep breath and peered intently into his impassive face.

‘Who? Tell me who she is! I knew it was a woman!’

‘I’m on my way to see her.’

‘Why? How do you . . ?’ It was obvious that a fierce rage simmered just beneath the surface of the redheaded, green-eyed woman and she had to struggle to maintain a tenuous grip on her self-control.

‘Not to rub her nose in the mud she’s been throwing. I was to talk to her because I’m pretty sure she can help me find out who killed the Quinn women.’

She vented a strangled groan of fresh shock and moved her lips to form the words to express it but no sounds emerged.

He asked: ‘You’re sure you want me to read this?’

‘You’ve had one like it?’ She shook her head in disbelief at her own assumption.

‘I can’t be sure until I’ve read it. If it’s the kind of letter I think it is I was meant to get two. But something went wrong the second time.’

Sarah peered up and down the deserted street, a scowl of incredulity on her attractive face then nodded emphatically. ‘Yes. Yes, of course you must do that. But please don’t read all of it. Just enough so you can see . . . ‘

He began to smooth out the heavily crinkled sheet of familiar cheap quality paper between a thumb and fingers and even before he had flattened the worst of the creases he recognised the clumsily untidy scrawl that matched the handwriting in the letter delivered to the Quinn house. He tilted the paper to read what was written on it in the moonlight and the dim fringe glow reaching down from the intersection.

You evil bitch. Why should you have that man to yourself. Why should your dried
up skinny body feel his flesh against you. I could give him more joy than you ever could
hope to. I bet that if he had one proper look at me he’d never want to touch you again.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Acting like one of them whores that used to work
for that shameless sister of yours when you moan and thrash about with him to satisfy
your wanton lust. I bet all the money in the world I’d be much better than you with
him. I bet my body –

After Edge had read this far he folded the letter into its four original creases. Because he had already seen on the periphery of his vision that lower down the sheet of paper Muriel Mandrell, convinced she was writing anonymously, had abandoned every vestige of selfrespect and begun to fill her litany of deepening hated with obscenities of the worst kind. Sarah said thickly: ‘I felt sick and faint as soon as I started to read that filth, Edge. But I just couldn’t stop myself going on until I got to the end. Then it frightened me. And next I felt angry. So damn angry. Faint again and – ‘ She ran out of breath in her state of high emotion rather than became lost for words.

‘I guess I can understand something of how it was for you.’

‘Who is she, Edge?’

He slid the letter into his shirt pocket with the others, took the reins of his horse from her and said: ‘You want to come with me?’