The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (9 page)

Inevitably much of the talk continued to be about the recent deaths in a community where such tragedies were far from being a common occurrence. And some excitement was generated by a rumour that a local young man named Alvin Ivers and a close friend of his – a drifter in the same age group called Floyd Hooper – had this morning gone missing from town

– did not show up at the cotton warehouse where they worked. By all accounts Sheriff Meeker knew all about the young men – who were not much for socialising with their fellow workers or at the saloon – going missing and he had his suspicions about their disappearance. Nobody spoke more than a few words directly to Edge, his presence in the saloon sometimes fleetingly acknowledged by those who had already talked to him during the day. Mostly he was studiously and occasionally a little fearfully ignored. Liked nobody believed he and Quinn were not firm friends and so they did not want to talk out of turn about the newly dead family within his hearing. Then he attracted a few apprehensive glances when, as the bartender began to light a scattering of kerosene lamps he eventually rose from the table and some men interrupted what they saying until he had crossed the saloon and went through the archway into the empty hotel lobby.

From here he stepped into the small, neat and clean, candlelit dining room. Where the no longer quite so flush faced Mrs Wexler served him with an excellent steak and all the trimmings in the same quiescent and deferential manner she had adopted when she earlier showed him up top his room. Halfway through a second cup of coffee he was still the only diner and had just lit a cigarette when he heard voices in the lobby. And recognised the first speaker as Owen Wexler, the henpecked husband of Elizabeth who had been behind the desk when he rented the room. The other man was Meeker

When Edge heard his name spoken he glanced up to see the lawman enter the restaurant, looking irritable, dishevelled and weary. His shoes no longer had a high gloss and were now more of a match for his shabby suit.

‘I need to talk with you, mister.’

Edge gestured to the chair across the table from where he sat and Meeker advanced tentatively into the room, moving among the crisply set tables like he was afraid of banging into the furniture. At the same time Mrs Wexler bustled in through a doorway from the kitchen, beat the sheriff to the table and picked up the used plate and silverware.

‘Are you eating, Vic?’

‘Not tonight, Lizzie. Don’t know when I’ll next be able to face food.’

She nodded. ‘I don’t suppose there are many folks who’d have an appetite after they’d seen what I heard you saw today, Vic?’

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’ He sat down and instituted a pointed silence the frowning woman endured for just a few seconds before she turned and left the restaurant. The two men who faced each other across the white linen covered table said nothing for a few moments more then Meeker cleared his throat and made the admission: ‘It’s kinda awkward.’ The overweight, shabbily business suited man wriggled uncomfortably on the comfortable chair.

‘So best you get it off your chest as soon as you can, feller.’

Meeker took out his pipe and sack of tobacco and began to fill the bowl, studiously watching what he was doing instead of looking at Edge. Then he announced flatly: ‘You’ve been offered a job.’

‘That so?’

‘High paying work. More than I get in a year.’

‘It may be awkward for you but it sounds real interesting to me, sheriff.’

‘Yeah.’ He clamped the pipe between his teeth, jerked it out again, looked levelly at the man opposite and said quickly: ‘Nick Quinn wrote a letter and left it on his desk. The guy wants you to . . . Hell, be easier if you just went ahead and read it for yourself. It was meant for you anyway.’

He reached with his free hand into an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out a sheet of paper that was folded three times, unfolded it and passed it across to Edge.

‘Much obliged.’

Meeker shrugged. ‘It wasn’t sealed or nothing. He didn’t even put it in an envelope. I naturally read it – even after I saw it was meant for you. Because of what happened and – ‘

‘No sweat.’ Edge held up a hand to halt the lawman’s apologetic excuse and gave his full attention to the letter that was written in ink and started off in a neat hand.
Edge. When you read this I’ll be dead. With my wife and daughter I hope if there
really is a hereafter.

My lawyer, Andrew Devlin who has an office above the bank in town, has full
power of attorney in this eventuality. Show him this note and he’ll pay you one
thousand dollars providing you see to it that the animals responsible for the deaths of
Martha and Nancy – and my own end, I suppose – are brought to justice. I want you . .

.

Meeker leaned forward and said on a cloud of aromatic smoke: ‘He was drinking. There was an empty bourbon bottle under his desk. And another half empty one on top.’

Edge nodded and continued to read the letter, needing to study it more carefully as the handwriting deteriorated.

. . . to find those murdering sonsofbitches, Edge.

And see to it they get hunted down and tried and found guilty and hanged for
what they did to my family. Or if that’s not possible, to make sure they pay for it some
other way.

Please, Edge, I’m putting my faith in you and it’s my last request on this earth.
The people of Springdale won’t go too far out of their way to do what needs to be
done.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but you’re the only man of the kind . . . The only kind
of man I know who can do what I want.

Damn, make it two thousand dollars you give to Edge, Mr Devlin.
Edge, show Devlin this letter. And he’ll see to it that – ‘

The note finished abruptly and was unsigned, unless a messy blot of spilled ink at the foot of the page had obliterated the signature.

‘All through?’ Meeker asked while Edge continued to peer down at the letter spread on the tablecloth beside his half full coffee cup.

‘Sure, sheriff. It only needs one reading to get the message.’

‘He was wrong about me, mister. As a citizen of this town who happens to be the sheriff, I intend to go one hell of a long way to see to it that the murderers of – ‘

Edge cut in: ‘A man in Quinn’s state of mind – planning to blow his head off after what happened to his family – I guess he wasn’t thinking too clearly.’

Meeker sighed deeply and suddenly looked close to exhaustion. ‘I’m doing all I can. So is Max Lacy in his own way. A couple of young punks went missing today. A local kid and a drifter who were sidekicks.’

‘I heard some talk about them in the saloon.’

‘Floyd Hooper showed up in town just before the robberies started. And got to be a close buddy of Alvin Ivers, a Springdale boy who’s been in small time troubles most of his life.’

He scowled: ‘Now the two of them have took off straight after the killings and it looks like . . . Well, I’ve telegraphed their descriptions to every law office within three days ride of here. And me and Max have been out at the Quinn house again. Searched it from top to bottom for evidence but didn’t find none, though. Just that letter.’

‘Sure, sheriff,’ Edge said absently.

‘Nothing was taken, as far as we were able to tell. Place is as neat as can be except for the daughter’s bedroom. But that’s only mess up a little from where Nancy got ready to go to the dance last night. And slept in late this morning.’

He peered miserably into the smoke curling out of the bowl of his pipe. ‘Yeah, and the parlour where it all happened, of course. Like you saw. So it seems that if they went there planning to rob the place what happened to the two women took up all their time and they left empty handed.’

Edge said again: ‘Sure, sheriff.’

‘You interested?’

‘I’m listening. It sounds like you’ve done all you can for now.’

‘Didn’t mean it that way,’ Meeker countered impatiently. ‘Meant are you interested in taking up the offer Quinn made in the letter?’

‘Wages sure are good.’

‘And there ain’t no doubt at all the guy left enough money to cover the two grand he finally got around to offering you. With plenty more to spare. And I want you to know, as far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to do some of what Quinn wanted you to.’

‘Some of it, Sheriff?’

‘If you can track down the killers then turn them over to the law – which around here is me and Max Lacy – I won’t take it amiss. Even help you out if you need it and I’m able to. But I won’t be party to you or anyone else doing any dead or alive bounty hunting. I don’t run that kind of vigilante law office in Avery County.’

‘No sweat, sheriff.’

‘As long as we understand each other on that score. So, are you interested?’

‘Two grand is a sum of money I have to think about pretty seriously. But then money ain’t everything.’ He returned the letter to its original creases and folded it in two so it fitted into his shirt pocket.

Meeker sucked against his pipe and grunted when he found it had gone out. ‘Makes a lot of things easier. But a man has to be up to the job he’s getting paid for?’

‘Sure enough.’

‘Ever worked as a lawman before?’

‘Been hired on as a deputy sheriff a couple of times recently.’

Meeker rose from his chair and put the cold pipe in the top pocket of his shabby suit jacket. ‘I’m not handing out a badge and swearing you in, mister. Like I said, I’ll help you if I

can. But you better be careful not to step outside the law while you’re doing this high paid work for a dead man. You’ll just be an ordinary citizen, the same as everyone else who doesn’t wear a badge.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, feller. Need to go out to the Quinn house and look it over?’

‘I got no objection to that. It might just be that another pair of eyes will spot something that Max and me overlooked.’

‘Could be.’

‘You’ll be going out there in the morning?’

‘Thinking about tonight.’

‘Okay, it’s probably better. Jed Winter has scheduled the funerals for ten o’clock tomorrow morning, if you plan to attend.’

‘I heard there’s going to be a problem rounding up a decent number of mourners?’

Meeker grimaced. ‘The Quinns didn’t mix much and if they’d died from natural causes or in an accident or something maybe people would be spread a little thin on the ground at the cemetery tomorrow. But after a rape and a couple of brutal murders . . . Then how Quinn fixed to blow his brains out so he that fell across the corpses of his wife and girl down at Winter’s place . . . That kind of thing stirs up morbid curiosity.’

He shrugged his thick shoulders and started for the doorway into the lobby, where he paused to remind in a menacing tone: ‘Remember, mister, I’ll have no truck with a bounty hunter in my jurisdiction.’

Edge inclined his head. ‘My days of earning a buck that way are long gone, sheriff. How the cards have been falling lately, I’ve gotten to be more of a big game hunter.’

CHAPTER • 6

___________________________________________________________________________

EDGE FINISHED his now tepid coffee and read again the letter from Nicholas Quinn.
Then rolled and lit a fresh cigarette and went out into the hotel lobby where Owen Wexler was still behind the desk, reading the same book that had occupied him earlier. He told Edge that when Andrew Devlin was not in his office above the bank he roomed at the Colman boarding house down at the south end of River Road. But he added it was no use trying to find him there tonight because the lawyer had left town to go to Austin. He drove out in his buggy at mid-afternoon and planned to remain up there for a couple of days. The fifty something, short of stature, pinch featured and almost bald Wexler knew of the lawyer’s plans because he was the deputy church organist. And Devlin, who was the regular organist, had stopped by the hotel to ask his deputy to stand in for him at tomorrow’s funeral service. The diminutive, neatly dressed man was self-righteously disapproving of the lawyer’s action and sniffed a couple of times as he said:

‘It seems the winding up of a rich man’s estate and the fee Mr Devlin can charge for doing that is more important than providing the sacred music at his funeral.’

Edge said evenly: ‘The way I see it, feller, Devlin could be arranging to make some real fine music to my ears.’

He first went up to his room to get his gear then came down and stepped into the saloon where Harry Shelby was engaged in a game of five card stud with Doc Sullivan, Frank Conway and the old timer named Virgil. In other circumstances he may have been tempted to take a hand if he had been invited to sit in. But tonight the situation was such that a penny-ante poker game was low down on his list of priorities. He needed a horse and Shelby told him to help himself from the livery and pay what was owed when he returned the animal. As he pushed out between the batwings his name was called by Meeker who had emerged from the telegraph office on the opposite corner of the intersection. The lawman held up a telegraph message as Edge approached him then folded it and stowed it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. From a pants pocket he took a key that he handed to Edge.