What the Dead Men Say (3 page)

    “Not on purpose.”

    “That don’t bring her back to life.”

    Carlyle looked as if he were about to cry. “What the hell we gonna do, Griff? You’re supposed to be the boss. You tell me.”

    “You go back to the hotel and relax.”

    “Yeah, sure, Griff. I sure can relax knowin’ some sonofabitch is lookin’ for me.”

    “Get ahold of Kittredge.”

    “And tell him what?”

    “Tell him to meet us at nine tonight at the west end of the Second Avenue bridge.”

    “You know what he’s like, Griff. He won’t be able to handle this.”

    Griff stared at him hard. “He won’t have much choice, Carlyle. None of us do.” He nodded to the street. “Now go tell him and then stay in your room till you go to the bridge.”

    “You sure like givin’ orders, don’t you?”

    Griff smiled without much humor. “If you want me to play boss then you better get used to me givin’ orders. You understand me?”

    Carlyle looked sulky. “I don’t like none of this.”

    “Get going. And get going
now.”

    Carlyle shook his head, wiped some sweat from his face, and then set off down the driveway to the street.

    

    

    Griff watched the man go. Then his girls came up and jumped up and down around him in their faded gingham dresses. If good times ever rolled around again, the first thing Griff planned to do was buy the girls some new clothes. Now they wore hand-me-downs from in-laws and Griff, a proud man, just hated to see it.

    Kneeling on his haunches, he drew the two girls close to him and hugged them tight with his eyes closed.

    “Boy, it sure is hot, Daddy,” Eloise said.

    “It sure is,” Tess agreed.

    But that was the funny thing to Griff. Hot as it was-the afternoon ablaze now at three o’clock-he felt so cold he was shivering.

    He hugged the girls even tighter, and tried not to think of how the little girl in the bank had looked that morning, bloody and dead on the linoleum floor.

    

    

    

    Just off the sidewalk there was a huge oak, one with roots like claws, and beneath it stood Ryan. On so hot a day he appreciated the shade, though curiously he left his vest and suitcoat on. Hanging loose from his left hand was his Winchester.

    For the past ten minutes, Ryan had kept his brown eyes fixed on the small, white cottagelike house and the large barn that loomed over it directly behind. Griff and Carlyle were back there now, talking.

    Ryan set the Winchester against the tree then took out a cigar and lighted it. Even on a day this hot, the fifty-cent Cuban tasted good, heady as wine the first few puffs.

    A small boy pulling a small red wooden wagon inside of which sat an even smaller girl came by, followed by a yipping puppy. Ryan said hello to the boy and smiled at the puppy. The girl, even though she said hello, received nothing from Ryan, not even a glance. He knew better than to look at pretty girls.

    As the kids and the wagon and the dog rolled past, Ryan looked down the street and saw Carlyle coming up the walk, moving fast. He looked agitated.

    Carlyle didn’t seem to see Ryan until he was a few feet from the tree.

    Ryan hefted the Winchester then stepped out into the middle of the walk.

    Carlyle, sensing rather than seeing somebody moving into his way, stopped abruptly and raised his head. “Shit,” he said when he saw who it was.

    “Kind of a hot day to be moving so fast, Mr. Carlyle,” Ryan said.

    Carlyle’s eyes had dropped to the new Winchester slung across Ryan’s chest.

    Ryan said, “You know who I am, don’t you?”

    “Yessir.”

    “And you know why I’m here.”

    “Yessir.”

    Ryan patted the Winchester. “And you know why I brought this.”

    Carlyle said, “It was an accident, sir, what happened to your daughter.”

    “You know, I’ve tried to console myself with that notion every once in a while. But then I start to thinking-if those three men hadn’t gone to the bank that day, then the accident would never have happened. My little Clarice would have gone in there and made her deposit and Mr. Dolan would have given her a mint and then she would have walked back to my store and it would have been a regular, normal day.” Now the tears came, but more in his voice than in his eyes. “She would have graduated from school this past spring, Mr. Carlyle. Her mother and I would have been so proud.”

    “We didn’t mean for it to happen, Mr. Ryan. Honest.”

    “You know what happened to her mother?”

    “No.”

    Ryan drew himself up and sighed. “Whooping cough.” Carlyle’s eyes dropped back to the Winchester.

    Ryan said, “You can always go to the sheriff here, Mr. Carlyle.”

    “Yessir.”

    “You can always tell him you were the men who robbed that bank and killed that little girl.”

    “Yessir.”

    “Because if you don’t-” Now it was Ryan who looked at the Winchester. “Because if you don’t, you’re going to have to worry about me.”

    “Yessir.”

    “And you know something?”

    “What, sir?”

    “I’d sure as hell rather have to worry about the law than worry about me. Because maybe in a court of law you’ll convince a jury that what you did was an accident-but you’ll never convince me. You understand that?”

    Carlyle didn’t even have time to respond before Ryan raised the Winchester and slammed the butt of it into Carlyle’s mouth.

    Carlyle moaned, putting his hands to his mouth. He sounded as if he didn’t know whether to puke or cry or what.

    Ryan said. “That’s just the start of things, Mr. Carlyle. Just the beginning.”

    But Carlyle wasn’t paying any attention. He was looking at the tiny white stubs of teeth he’d just spit out bloodily into the palm of his right hand. He looked shocked and confused and terrified.

    “Just the beginning,” Ryan said, and walked off down the street toward town again.

    

    

    James Hogan lay on his bed thinking of what he was going to say to his uncle Septemus as soon as he saw him. Septemus had no right to speak so slightingly of either James or his mother. She’d done a good job of raising all the kids and if she wasn’t quite as good a father as she’d been a mother, well, you still couldn’t blame her because she was a refined lady whose tastes just naturally gravitated to violin musicals in the parlor and the study of classical thinkers such as Plato and Socrates. Nothing wrong with that at all.

    But of course it was Septemus’s aspersions on James’s own character that really had the boy angry. Hinting that James was a panty-waist and a mother’s boy; hinting that at this rate he’d never grow up to be a man.

    He lay shirtless on his back, a black fly crawling around on his red freckled face. Maybe he should tell Septemus about the time he got drunk on beer that Fourth of July night when everybody thought he’d gone up to bed; or maybe he should tell him about how many times he’d loaded cornsilk into a pipe bowl and smoked till he’d turned green; or maybe he should tell him about the time, a spring moon making him slightly mad, he’d nearly kissed Marietta right on the lips. Boy, wouldn’t these things surprise Uncle Septemus? Wouldn’t he then look at James in a very different way?

    A pantywaist; a mama’s boy. Just wait till he saw Septemus.

    The knock startled him. He turned his head to face the door so quickly that a line of warm pain shot up the side of his neck.

    “That you, Uncle Septemus?” he called, uneasy about opening the door unless he knew who it was. His mother had given him explicit instructions about not putting himself in a position where he’d ever be alone with a stranger.

    And then he heard Septemus inside his head:
see how she’s turning you into a sissy, son? Somebody knocks on your door and you won’t even go open it, Now is that how a real man would act, son? Is it?

    He fairly flung himself off the bed, making loose fists of his hands, striding to the door. To heck with what his mother said. He was sixteen; he was on his way to becoming a man. He would open the door and-

    Halfway there, he realized he didn’t have his shirt on. He was sure he shouldn’t open the door half naked.

    Feeling foolish and vulnerable, he dashed to the chair on the back of which was his shirt. He snapped it up and put it on and buttoned it. Then he went back to the door.

    James had seen few men this tall. Even without a hat, the top of the man’s head touched the top of the door frame. In addition to that, he was fleshy in a middle-aged sort of way, somewhat jowly and with a loose belly pinched tight by a huge silver buckle on which the initials DD had been sculpted. He wore a western-style white shirt, a brown leather vest, dark brown trousers, and Texastoed black boots. He looked a little sweaty from the heat and a little sour around his large, wry mouth. James couldn’t read his eyes at all.

    His grin was somewhat surprising. “I take it you’re not Septemus, son.”

    “No, sir,” James said, then immediately recalled what his uncle had said about being too deferential. “I’m sure not.” He tried to make the last sound hard-bitten, but his voice had soared too high for that. He’d just spotted the six-pointed star that the man wore tucked half under his vest.

    “You’d be-”

    “His nephew.”

    “I see.” The man put out a huge hand. James slid his own into the other man’s grasp. When they shook, James felt like a pump handle that somebody was jostling mercilessly. When he returned his hand to his side. James tried not to feel the pain the big man’s hand had inflicted on him. “I’m Dodds.”

    “Dodds?”

    “The sheriff.”

    “And you want to see my uncle Septemus?”

    “If I could.”

    “He’s not here.”

    The grin again. “I kinda figured that out for myself, son, I mean, I can see the whole room from here and I can see that it’s empty except for you.”

    James flushed, knowing he’d been gently but absolutely shown his place.

    “Any idea where I could find him?”

    “Huh-uh.”

    “Any idea when he’ll be back?”

    “He said a couple of hours.”

    “How long ago was that?”

    “’Bout an hour, I guess.”

    “Will you remember to tell him that Sheriff Dodds is lookin’ for him?”

    “Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I’d forget to mention.” This time the grin was accompanied by a whiskey laugh. “Say, you were bound and determined to pay me back for that crack I made, weren’t you?”

    James felt himself flush again. That’s just what he’d been doing. Trying to show Dodds that he was a lot smarter than the lawman might think. “Guess so.”

    Dodds lifted the white Stetson he’d been keeping in his hand and cuffed James on the shoulder. “Damn straight, son. I’ve got a smart mouth on me and every once in a while somebody needs to put me in my place.” He grinned again. “Damn straight.”

    Then he nodded and was gone.

    James closed the door. He thought about lying down but he was too stirred up now. What would a sheriff want with Uncle Septemus?

    He went over to the window and the billowing sheer curtain and stuck his head out. It was like leaning into an oven. Even though the water wagon had been over the dusty main street once today, dust devils rose in the still, chalky air. A crow sitting on the gable to James’s right looked over at the boy with sleepy curiosity. The bird looked too tired to move.

    There was no sign of Uncle Septemus.

    James looked in every direction this particular window afforded. Then he looked again and saw nothing.

    What the hell would a lawman want with his uncle?

    He took his shirt off and went back and lay on the bed. There was no possibility of a nap now. He was too churned up.

    Nor was he any longer angry with his uncle about the man implying he was a mama’s boy. They could settle that particular matter later.

    He lay on the bed. Another black fly started walking around on his red freckles.

    What the hell would a lawman want with Uncle Septemus, anyway?

    

    

    “You telling me you don’t believe in a divine being?”

    “No. I’m just telling you that I’m tired of a prayer that goes on for five minutes.”

    “It’s not just another prayer, Dennis. It’s grace. It’s thanking the Lord for all his wonderful gifts.”

    “And just what gifts would those be?” Dennis Kittredge asked his wife.

    They were at the dining room table, the festive one with the red and white oilcloth spread over it, a small blue blown-glass butter dish the shape of a diamond, and a pair of salt and pepper shakers got up to look like stalks of sweet corn.

    His wife Mae was a small and fine-boned woman who was given to excessively high collars and excessively long skirts and excessively stern looks. In her youth she’d been high fine company, a tireless attender of county fairs and ice cream socials, and a somewhat daring lover. While they had never committed the ultimate sin in the time before their vows, they had many nights come very, very close: especially downriver near the dam where fireflies glowed like jewels against the ebony sky, and there was music to be heard in the silver water splashing down on the sharp rocks below.

    Then two years after their marriage Mae had become pregnant, but she’d lost the child in a bloody puddle in the middle of the night, on a white sleeping sheet she’d later burned.