The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (6 page)

He was now more obviously struggling to keep his emotions under control. ‘They came into this room. And my daughter was raped on the sofa then strangled. My wife’s throat was cut while she struggled with another man over there. The way the bottles and glasses are smashed she must have put up a hell of a fight for her life.’

He clutched briefly at his own throat. ‘And not just that. There are other signs of violence, too. A bruise to her jaw and her lip was badly cut so Martha was hit hard in the face. And it was vicious, how he cut her throat. He slashed her time and time again. There was so much blood, which is why there’s a blanket on the floor where it happened.’

He shifted his bleak eyed gaze to the draped sofa. ‘And Nancy was sick to her stomach.’

This time he did not hold back from pouring himself another drink. Almost filled the tumbler, perhaps accidentally because of the way his hands shook.

Edge asked: ‘You got any idea who did the killing, sheriff?’

Meeker sighed and shook his head. ‘We ain’t been able to find any clue to that. Like Mr Quinn just said, there have been a few burglaries around Springdale lately. So it could be this started out as a robbery and ended up as something a whole lot worse.’

‘Nobody got hurt until today?’

‘It wasn’t necessary at the other houses.’

‘Because nobody put up a fight?’

‘There was nobody home before. But the line that this crime was committed by the same two men as all the others is the one I plan to follow. Unless any new evidence shows me I’m wrong.’

‘There was no robbery here,’ Quinn murmured absently.

Meeker allowed: ‘There doesn’t seem to have been, that’s true. But I want you to look around more carefully than Lacy and me did. We only saw there was no mess outside of this room. You’ll be able to tell if anything was taken better than anyone else can. Stuff that nobody else would know about. Are you sure you won’t be better off with coffee, Mr Quinn?

Liquor can do more harm than good for somebody who – ‘

‘I’m fine. No, that’s a stupid thing to say! I’m not fine. But I’ll be okay, though. I can check now if you like. See if anything’s missing, sheriff?’

‘There’s no big rush.’

Edge asked: ‘The other houses were left in a mess?’

Meeker glowered as he knocked out the embers from his pipe into the cold fireplace.

‘They sure as hell were. It just seemed like whatever the sonsofbitches didn’t want to steal, they had to smash up.’

Quinn said dully: ‘And this house was left neat as a new pin.’ He swallowed hard and added bitterly: ‘Give or take a couple of corpses.’

Meeker allowed:

‘There sure are some differences between what happened here and at the other houses. But you know how things are in Springdale, Mr Quinn. We do have crimes, though there was nothing ever very serious before now. It could be the same two men who committed the burglaries are the ones who came here. Expected it to be empty and . . . ‘

He shrugged. ‘But you don’t have to concern yourself with the work that Max Lacy and me need to do. My advice is for you to rest up for awhile. Maybe ask Doc Sullivan to mix you up a sleeping draught?’

‘I’ll see.’

‘And maybe you shouldn’t stay here at the house? Wouldn’t it be better if you moved to town for awhile? Get a room at the hotel until . . ?’ He shrugged again, the expression on his mottled face more morose than ever.

‘Don’t you worry your head about me, sheriff. You just concentrate you mind on catching the animals who did that to Martha and Nancy.’

‘You can count on it, Mr Quinn,’ Meeker started away from the fireplace and nodded to Edge as he stepped out of his path. ‘It’s good you’re here, mister. Best for him to have some company for awhile I reckon.’

Quinn protested vehemently: ‘Hell, I don’t need anyone to stay with me!’ He moderated his tone. ‘It was real nice of you to trouble to bring the valise, Edge. But, please, you go about your business now.’

‘I figure I will, feller.’

‘And good luck in Austin.’

Edge turned away without meeting the intense gaze of the new widower and stepped into the hallway behind the sheriff. As they started toward the front door the scowling Max Lacy opened it and went out of the house first. Then as the three men moved across the terrace two of them breathed deeply of the countryside scented afternoon air, like they had just spent much time in a foetid basement rather than a brightly sunlit room. But a moment later the parlour where the two women had been brutally murdered was suddenly not sunlit anymore when Quinn jerked the heavy drapes across the large window that overlooked the terrace.

‘I sure as hell hope he don’t do nothing stupid,’ Meeker muttered grimly.

‘It wouldn’t be no surprise to me if he did,’ Lacy said harshly in his Deep South accented voice. ‘A wife and an only daughter both. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to handle something like that.’

Edge said as they went down the steps to where their three horses were hitched: ‘I never had a daughter but I figure there can’t be much anything like that.’

‘And I figure no one around here gives a shit what a stranger to town like you thinks!’

Lacy snarled as he climbed into his saddle.

‘Max, quit that kind of dumb red neck talk,’ Meeker muttered wearily as he unhitched his mount. Then said to Edge: ‘Same as a handful of other people hereabouts, my deputy doesn’t have much time for Yankees. Even less for Mexicans. And you talk like one and have something of the look of the other.’

Edge was easily able to curb an impulse to anger with the hard eyed, square faced Lacy as he replied evenly: ‘I can’t change the way I am because of where I was born and the parents I was born to, feller. Even if I wanted to.’

The bigoted lawman wriggled his tall and broad frame into a more comfortable position in the saddle then spat to the side and growled: ‘And I won’t forget what you are, stranger.’

Edge smiled with his mouth while his glittering eyes narrowed and became icily cold when he countered wryly: ‘Much obliged, deputy. It’s a big comfort to know I’ll be forever in somebody’s thoughts.’

CHAPTER • 4

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NONE OF the men spoke again until they had ridden between the wrought iron gates
off the Quinn property and were on the rutted track that ran out to the Old Town Road. Where Lacy who was at the centre of the trio, said:

‘It don’t look to me like you’re in the same line of business as Quinn, stranger?’

Edge hung a freshly rolled cigarette at the side of his mouth, lit it and confirmed: ‘I’m not a storekeeper and I don’t know the first thing about tailoring.’

‘Nor him neither, it seems to me,’ the deputy sneered. ‘Just rakes in the dough that other guys sweat to earn for him.’

‘Nick Quinn has had just about the worse news there could be, Max.’ the scowling Meeker reminded as he re-set a Stetson on his head, the Western style hat looking incongruous above his threadbare city suit. ‘Won’t hurt none to show a little Christian charity toward him.’

‘He’s rich and I guess you ain’t that either?’ Lacy asked of Edge - not prepared to give any thought to what the sheriff had suggested.

‘If you got something to say, feller, then why don’t you just come right out and say it.’

Lacy shrugged his powerful shoulders and said: ‘You and him, it don’t add up to my way of thinking. How you did him a favour that meant you missed the stage to Austin. Like you’re old buddies. But you only just met him at the Pine Wells way station a handful of miles down the trail?’

‘Don’t you pay too much heed to Max, Mr Edge,’ Meeker said grimly. ‘Way things are, he reckons he’s got good reason not to like the Quinn family.’

‘And I ain’t the only one of that mind around Springdale, Vic. As you well know. Highhatted Yankees come down here and treat us like poor white trash just because they – ‘

‘Yeah, okay,’ Meeker cut in. ‘But our personal likes and dislikes don’t matter at all in the job we got to do. Which is to find out who did that to Quinn’s wife and daughter.’

‘I know that, Vic. It just puzzles me is all. Way this guy went to so much trouble to lend a helping hand to a stranger. He just don’t look like the sort of guy to – ‘

‘An impulse, feller,’ Edge said. ‘After I saw how no one in town gave much of a damn about Quinn being in trouble. Him being rich and having Union sympathies a few years ago?

They the only reasons people around here hate the family so much?’

Lacy spat more viciously, like he needed to empty his mouth of bad tasting saliva before he could give an explanation he was going to enjoy. But the sheriff spoke first, with none of the vehemence it was clear Lacy had intended to vent.

‘Quinn ain’t liked in these parts and there’s the truth, Mr Edge. Him and his family moved into the area ten years ago and had that big house build way out there.’ He reached into the pocket where his pipe was stowed but elected not to take it out. Sighed and continued: ‘Always kept themselves to themselves in a way that made it seem like they figured they were a whole better than other folks.’

He shrugged. ‘Quinn and his wife never joined in any of the local shindigs. And they always went to Austin or San Antone to buy the best of everything in the way of clothes and stuff for the house: instead of using the local stores. Then Nancy opened up that fancy coffee shop in town but it was only ever a plaything for her. She didn’t need to work, the way her pa was so rich.’

‘And having that place to fool with give her another excuse to come to town and show herself off to the menfolk,’ Lacy muttered acidly. ‘Showing what a fine looking woman she’d gown into but making it real clear that what she had was never going to be got by any guy around here.’

Meeker snapped: ‘Vic, you better quit talking that way after what’s happened to the girl!’

‘It ain’t nothing but the truth and there’s plenty more than me have said the same!’

Edge murmured on a stream of expelled smoke: ‘And they’ll say more than that now, I guess.’

‘What?’ Meeker asked.

‘Maybe claim the girl getting raped was something she’d been asking for?’

Lacy rasped: ‘Damn right!’

‘Max!’ Meeker’s harsh tone of voice and the scowl that was cut more deeply into his flabby features expressed a degree of earnestness that threatened to explode into rage. ‘I hear any talk of that kind around town I’m gonna call it slander of the dead. And make it a locking up offence. And I won’t count you out from that, deputy or not!’

‘Okay, Vic. But you must know that if nobody says it, a whole lot of them will be thinking it. Men and women both.’

‘I can’t make laws against people thinking whatever the hell they want to! And I can’t in truth say I don’t know how a whole lot of Springdale folks will think just what you said. But in my book rape’s a mighty serious crime. And two murders on top of rape, that’s gonna lose me a whole lot of sleep until I catch them who did it. And you know how losing sleep can play such havoc with my disposition, Max?’

‘Sure.’ Lacy looked chastened and refused to meet the glowering gaze of the sheriff whose three chins continued to quiver with the strain of holding his temper in check. Neither of the lawmen chose to encourage further talk and Edge was content to smoke his cigarette and think his own thoughts during the remainder of the ride back to Springdale. There, as they neared the mid-town intersection, a rider appeared at the top end of River Road. It was a woman, leading a second horse by a rope and Lacy asked:

‘Ain’t that Alice Cassidy, Vic?’

‘Looks like.’ Meeker’s rasping voice was as grim as his expression as he added: ‘And it looks like that’s another corpse slung over the saddle of the second horse, damnit!’

The woman halted her mount and the animal on the lead line out front of the law office. Where she remained stoically in the saddle until the three men rode up close enough to her to see the fully clothed but undraped body on the horse behind her was folded face down over the saddle. The dead man’s head, arms and lower limbs swung limply for a few moments before they became totally inert. While Edge registered that the impassive Alice Cassidy was handsome rather than beautiful and there was about her as she sat the big chestnut stallion an innate quality of authority. A blond with large blue eyes, she was in her mid-forties and looked to be statuesque beneath work stained black denim overalls more suited for a man to wear.

‘I heard about the Quinn women, Vic,’ Alice Cassidy said and hooked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘This ain’t anything like that. His name’s Bob Jordan. Hired hand Noah’s had working on the place for a few months. Long enough for him to know about the cliff at Timber Hill. But it seems like he just rode right off it last night.’