The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (37 page)

‘I tell you I just went along with what the others – ‘

Edge interrupted him in the same even tone as before. ‘The others were mad that I gave Alvin Ivers a chance to get away from the lynch mob. And some of them just plain don’t like me because I fought for the Union awhile back. Plus I happen to have some Mexican blood in my veins.’ He raised himself up on to his elbows and began to roll a cigarette ‘They figured to give me a bad time and rough me up some. But you were fixing to kill me. You had two turns at running me down. And both times without yelling your head off like the others did. Why’d you want to kill me in that cold blooded way, kid?’ He struck a match on a thumbnail to light the cigarette and went on: ‘Because I gave Ivers the chance to stay alive when he might have been dead? Was that it? A jail breaker, so reckoned to be guilty of what he was accused of without benefit of a trial? Or did you figure I was getting too close to finding out it was you killed the Quinn women and old Joe Kellner?’

‘That’s crazy! Colman blurted. ‘Nancy and me were planning to be married. But then we had the stupid quarrel the night before she was killed! But just because she changed her mind about marrying me, that wasn’t no reason for me to rape her and then strangle her, damnit!’

‘Changed her mind because she couldn’t change the way she was,’ Edge said evenly on a trickling stream of tobacco smoke.

‘What?’ His frustration was mounting by the moment. ‘Look, Mr Edge, I think you ought to do something about getting up me from here! Get some help and we can talk. And I’ll tell you how wrong you are about all this. Just because I’m in this fix I’m not going to say I did something I didn’t do. You’re not making any sense.’

‘You know what I mean, kid. What Nancy finally realised was that she couldn’t change how she liked women instead of men when it came to – ‘

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ The sound of nausea in his voice had not been entirely replaced by a degree of terror that drove it to a pitch close to a shriek again.

‘That must really have come as a shock. When that pretty girl you planned to marry and spend the rest of your life living and sleeping with turned out to be – ‘

‘How can you prove any of what you’re saying, tell me that why don’t you?’

‘I know a woman who Nancy went to see after you broke up at the end of last year. And I know you didn’t tell me everything that Nancy said to you the night before she was killed.’

‘Please, I’m hurting real bad, mister,’ Colman groaned. ‘I need to have Doc Sullivan take a look at me. Get him to give me something to kill the pain.’

Edge continued to smoke in an unhurried manner that emphasised he was pointedly ignoring the latest pleas. ‘You were a normal, decent young man and – ‘

‘Am I supposed to thank you for saying that?’ Colman challenged bitterly. ‘I sure wish you were a decent guy instead of some kind of – ‘

‘It was natural that you wanted to bed that fine looking young girl. But like most normal and decent women of her age Nancy Quinn kept saying no. And you resigned yourself to that. Maybe you even respected her for holding out on you? And were willing to wait until you and her got married?’

Colman stared across the chasm toward the less sheer drop on the far side and his tone was ruefully pensive when he countered defensively: ‘I’m sure not going to say that wasn’t true, mister because it was. I had really deep feelings for Nancy Quinn.’ He turned his head to look back up at Edge and winced with the discomfort that even this slight movement caused. ‘So why should I hurt her?’

Edge hardened his tone. ‘For a time while she was growing out of being a girl into an adult she had doubts about the kind of woman she was turning into, kid. That’s why she broke up with you and started running around with Ivers and Sawyer and the rest of that wild bunch. Partly to test herself and partly because she was troubled by how life had handed her the dirty end of the stick. Despite her having a rich, over-indulgent father and all the luxuries that brought her.’

‘You can’t know anything like that!’ Colman challenged bitterly.

‘Right. Because like I told you I ain’t God. I can just guess what went on in the mind of a woman who’s dead now. And that only after people with nothing to hide have told me what they say happened before she died.’

Colman coughed and groaned as bruised tissue or maybe broken bone protested at the spasm in his chest. ‘It could be you won’t have to tip me off this cliff, mister,’ he groaned plaintively. ‘I’ll maybe die here and you’ll get your money real easy. Because you’ll be able to tell any kinda crazy tale you like about me.’

Edge said grimly through gritted teeth: ‘Don’t think I haven’t already considered that, kid.’

‘It sounds to me like you’ve been doing a lot of considering, mister.’ He grimaced and gulped. ‘Tell you what: if I listen to this fairy tale you’ve dreamed up will you get me some help. Haul me up from here and take me to the doc?’

Edge offered no response to this. Said: ‘Tuesday night you and Nancy quarrelled. After she got drunk and did that shimmy dance that got all the young fellers fired up at the mill.’

‘It was me who told you about the fight we had over that.’

‘But you didn’t tell me all about it, kid. What you did make mention of, though, was how Nancy had gotten almost as drunk one time before. Round about Christmas last year when you and Ed Scott rescued her from what whatever a couple of cowhands had in mind to do to her.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything that happened the other – ‘

‘The way I hear it the reason Nancy got drunk with those two drifters that night was because she’d tried to test herself with another girl and it ended badly.’

‘I didn’t know anything about that,’ Colman claimed.

Edge flicked his cigarette butt down to the rocks and wriggled into a more comfortable position on the cliff top as he allowed: ‘No sweat, I’ll believe that. Whatever happened or didn’t happen back then, you and Nancy got together again. And things looked good until you had to keep her from tearing her clothes off at the mill.’

‘I already said we had a quarrel and – ‘

‘Sure, kid. But you didn’t tell me how she admitted to you what she was – how she was inclined toward women instead of you. Or any man.’

He looked about to make a vehement denial. Then peered into space for awhile before he returned his gaze to the man looking down at him and admitted wearily: ‘All right, that’s about what Nancy told me. I just didn’t tell it to you because she was my girl and she was dead and I didn’t want that kind of stuff to come out about her. That doesn’t mean that next morning I went to her house and – ‘

‘I guess you told her you didn’t believe her? Maybe accused her of making it all up to end your friendship because you’d give up any idea of marrying her?’

Once more Colman considered a denial but recognised there was no point. ‘So what?’

‘So she said she’d take you to see somebody who’d make you believe her? A woman who’d been giving her sympathy and advice ever since she’d realised what she was and suspected the woman had the same inclinations she did.’

‘Alice Cassidy!’ Colman sneered viciously. ‘When Nancy told me that I lost my temper. When I thought about her and that painted up old hag . . . I told her I never wanted to see her again and I left her.’

‘And went back to the mill?’

‘Why would I do that? No, I just rode away to be on my own for awhile. Then I went home.’ High emotion caused his muscles to tense, which hurt and triggered a groan.

‘You went back to the mill, kid,’ Edge repeated. ‘But after you’d ended Nancy’s dance the way you did the party had broken up. And everyone had left except for Jordan who lived there. If you want to claim he talked you into doing what the both of you did no one will argue. Jordan sure can’t.’

Colman complained: ‘This all amounts to nothing more than a heap of bull.’

‘Is that what Jordan said about Nancy? Did he say she had given you a line of bullshit and you and him should go and see her and – ‘

‘No!’

‘Earlier that night, Jordan said it was plain what Nancy wanted. Just as clear she wasn’t getting it from you.’

‘He never said that to me!’

‘He said it to Eddie Sawyer. And I figure he was sure to have said much the same to you when you went back to the mill. And told him Nancy claimed to like women instead of men. And you or Jordan or the both of you together came up with a way to teach her a lesson.’

‘Look, this is all – ‘

‘Show her how she couldn’t get away for free after playing you along and keeping you at a distance all that time. Teaching her by him and you getting a piece of what she’d been flaunting in front of all the young fellers that night?’

The tension gradually drained out of Colman as he listened passively while Edge told him how he had figured out the progression of events on the night before the murders. Then he began: ‘This is – ‘ But he lost the thread and could not find the words to finish what he had intended to say.’

‘That’s about how it happened, right kid? The way a lot of Springdale people had figured it out – until Meeker and Lacy brought Ivers and Hooper back from Austin. And the sheriff convinced himself he didn’t need to look any further for the killers.’

‘Look, I know I shot off my mouth in the saloon about how people were saying – ‘

‘That’s why you didn’t admit to me how you knew the truth about Nancy, ain’t that right? Because it could have set me to wondering if you might have planned to get even with her?’

‘By raping her and then killing her?’ He managed to generate a degree of incredulity into his voice. ‘And killing her ma, too? Just to even a score?’

‘I don’t figure it was as cold-blooded as that - like it was between you and me tonight. It seems to me that what happened at the Quinn house was a rape that went wrong?’ His intonation made it a query that invited Colman to take up the argument. The young man compressed his lips and was unable to hold Edge’s gaze, then peered across the chasm while he did some more thinking and finally asked dejectedly: ‘If I tell you all of what I left out before will you help me up from here?’

‘We got the makings of a deal,’ Edge allowed.

Colman swallowed hard. ‘All right. You’re right, I did go back to the mill when I left Nancy after the quarrel we had and I guess she went to the hotel to see Alice Cassidy. At first I planned to join in with whatever party was still going on there. And try to forget all that weird stuff she’d told me?’

‘Keep talking, kid,’ Edge invited in response to the implied query.

‘But there was only Bob left out there by then, fooling around playing music with his harmonica. And, like you figured I did, I told him about Nancy. But he didn’t do what you said he did. I swear he didn’t say nothing about the two of us showing Nancy how . . . ‘

This time Edge offered no response to a quizzical gaze and Colman pressed on almost eagerly: ‘But I reckon you could be right about Jordan being one of them that went to the Quinn house the next day. Hell, I guess it could’ve been me put the idea into his head! But I swear it wasn’t me he went with. If he went with anyone else it must have been Eddie Sawyer or one of the Cassidy hands, I reckon.’

‘No, kid. It was with you. He told you that night how you could use the house robberies as a cover. How the two of you would get into the Quinn house and while one of you had your way with Nancy the other one would rob the place. So the sheriff would be sure to blame it on the two men who’d done all the other break-ins. Then you switched places maybe and – ‘

Colman challenged scornfully: ‘Oh yeah and Nancy wouldn’t be able to recognise me?’

Edge pointed out: ‘I didn’t recognise you earlier tonight, kid. While you were wearing the kerchief mask and had your hat brim pulled way down.’

‘Damnit!’ the obviously suffering youngster exclaimed. ‘If it was Jordan he went out there with somebody else I tell you!’ His tone was shrill again.

Edge shook his head. ‘Jordan and somebody else would have wanted to teach Nancy a lesson about men that night. While the memory of her taking off her clothes and showing her near-naked body was still fresh in their minds. But you talked him into waiting until next morning, kid. You knew Nancy took Wednesdays off from her café and that Martha Quinn should be in town shopping for her husband’s return home.’

‘Look, I don’t know where you’re getting all – ‘

‘Guess it shook you up to find Martha Quinn there? Did she open the door to you? Or was it Nancy? Whichever one it was I bet she screamed when she saw the two of you standing there? Masked men can look damn frightening. Especially to a couple of women alone in a house a long way from the nearest neighbours.’

Colman had calmed himself and now generated some conviction into his tone when he said: ‘Yeah that sure is what must’ve happened, Mr Edge. And if it wasn’t Alvin Ivers and the Hooper guy did all that it could’ve been Bob Jordan and somebody else.’ He snapped his head around and sounded suddenly excited. ‘Maybe even Max Lacy! Have you thought of that? The deputy had a yen for Nancy when she was running wild that time. And she really told him what he could do with himself one night. Ask anyone! Lacy, he’d want to get even for the way Nancy stood up to him that time in the saloon. You got to see how that could be? Got to see it wasn’t me killed Nancy and her ma?’

Edge briefly recalled how the redneck deputy seemed to have a greater hatred for the Quinn family than anyone else in Springdale. Then ignored this irrelevant side issue and pressed on: ‘You forced your way into the house and took the women into the parlour.’