Relentless Read online

  Ed Gorman

  Relentless

  ***

  WANTED FOR MURDER: THE MARSHAL'S WIFE.

  Marshal Lane Morgan is an honorable man who isn't about to let anyone dodge the law-not even the son of Paul Webley, the most crooked figure in Skylar, Colorado. Lane is all set to testify against Webley's boy-until Webley himself starts digging into Lane's wife's past and turns up one helluva dirty secret.

  No sooner does Lane receive a threat of blackmail than the dead body of a grifter is found-leaving the marshal's wife as the number one suspect.

  Now, with little more than his instincts to go on. Lane must risk his livelihood, his values, and his own freedom to track down the real killer-and save his wife from a fate worse than death…

  Genre: hard-boiled mystery/western.

  ***

  Scaning & primary formating: pagesofdeath.

  Secondary formating & proofing: pua.

  ***

  ONE

  I ALWAYS LIKE to disappoint the young ones a little. Get some of that dime-novel nonsense out of their heads.

  And so, when they raise their hands and ask me what a town marshal does all day long, I tell them that he sits in town council meetings, or tries to talk a teary woman into giving her drunken husband one more chance, or makes sure that everyone who is selling livestock within the town limits has been approved to do so. And so on. Boring stuff.

  What they want to hear about is all the shoot-outs I get into. And all the wild Indians I have to drive away. And all the train robbers I round up. Lately, train robberies seem especially popular in dime novels-I know this because a couple of my deputies are always reading the damned things-and that’s all kids want to hear about.

  My hour of speaking to the kids in the one-story redbrick schoolhouse was just about coming to an end when the very pretty schoolmarm said, “We have time for one more question. Anybody have one more?”

  They were getting ready for their midday break. There was a pail of milk next to the teacher’s desk-the kids took turns bringing the milk-and the lunch packages and pails were lined up neatly under the section of the front wall that had been painted black to write on with chalk. This was a pay school, each student’s parent paying a minimal fee. Next year this so-called plank school-because it was made from thick planks-would be converted to a public school. The tax assessment would pay not only for a blackboard, but for a lot more schoolbooks, too.

  A pudgy twelve-year-old with a missing tooth raised his hand. “My pa says if you testify against Trent Webley, his old man’ll have you run out of town. Is that true?”

  The schoolmarm froze for a moment. Several of the kids shot the questioner accusatory looks. They knew it was a rude question to ask. But I didn’t sense malice in the question. The kid was just curious.

  I saw pity in the eyes of the slender red-haired schoolmarm. She knew all too well the history behind the kid’s question. In addition to being the teacher here, Callie was also my wife. She was also the woman who’d educated me over the years. I hadn’t been able to read very well when I’d met her. And I didn’t have much interest in books or even magazines back then. But she’d changed all that.

  “That’s a good question.” I smiled. “I can’t honestly say I was expecting it, but I’ll be happy to answer it.” I looked around at all the faces. Smart, dumb, sweet, cunning, sad, bored, the typical mix of any classroom. I wished I’d had a school this nice to go to. I wished I’d had a teacher this pretty to daydream about. “Earlier you asked me who a town marshal has to fear most. Well, there’s a simple answer to that. Sometimes, that’s the people he works for. The citizens. Sometimes, they don’t want you to carry out the law. Sometimes, they have good reasons for this. And sometimes, they have bad reasons. But if a town marshal’s honest, he has to apply the law the same way to everybody.”

  “Even Paul Webley?” the kid said.

  “Even Paul.”

  The kid grinned. “My dad likes you. But he says you got more guts than brains.”

  The children laughed.

  “Well,” I said, “I’m going to take that as a compliment.” If they were a little older and had a firmer grasp of more subtle things, I’d tell them how a town marshal’s most menacing enemy isn’t the stray gunny or the ex-convict with a grudge, but the powerful people who run most towns. They’re always wanting you to do them special favors. And when you can’t or won’t, they come after you. Usually they don’t use guns or physical force of any kind. They use words, whispers, trying to undermine your authority in the eyes of the average citizen. If they’re especially powerful, they’ll have the town council, the same people who hired you, do their work for them. The council’ll buy out any agreement you had with the town and send you on your way.

  Callie stepped forward. She was a transplanted city girl and wore a lot of shirtwaist blouses and belted long skirts with her hair done in a bun. In Chicago they called this the “Gibson girl” look, the sort of style preferred by all the young women flocking to the cities as we approach the last decade of this century.

  She held her brooch watch out for inspection. “It’s such a nice day. How many children would like to eat lunch outdoors?”

  Unanimous hand-waggling.

  They got into a single long line, stumbling over each other as they did so, and when Callie gave the word the line, like a Chinese paper dragon, jerked its way outside.

  “Sorry if Clete Browne’s question embarrassed you.” The smell of October was warm and dusty through the lone open window. Chalk dust. Ink. Hair tonic to slick down the boys’ hair; pretty-water, as they called it, to enhance the curls of the girls. I was all alone with the schoolmarm in this room of blackboard, globe, flag, and desk, and I wanted to kiss her, but I knew better. Even though we were married, one of the kids would see us, report us to his parents, and somebody would complain to his pastor or the newspaper editor. By the time the story had circulated all the way through town, we’d have been fornicating on the desk.

  “It’s what people are talking about,” I said. “It’s natural for a kid to bring it up.”

  She said, in her best cool voice, “You could always change your mind.”

  My voice wasn’t cool at all. “I thought we’d settled that.”

  “It’s just- If he’d shot you, that’d be one thing, Lane. But he didn’t.”

  I shook my head. “Now you’re sounding like his father. He only missed me because he was too drunk to hit me. The fact is, he shot at me with intent to kill. Bad enough if I was just a citizen. But I’m also a lawman. The law has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re getting a little pompous, Lane.”

  She walked to the window. Watched the children eat and play. Their voices ached with youth. Or maybe it was my hearing that their voices ached with youth-a youth and young manhood wasted on trail towns that needed simple laws enforced. I wasn’t a gunny or a brave man. That’s generally more dime-novel stuff. I was an administrator. I took over a town, chose five deputies who were family men, didn’t drink or gamble or particularly enjoy a fight, gave them some training in the ways of law enforcement and some understanding of law, and put them to work. There was to be no dueling, no concealed weapons, no guns in town. I worked closely with the county attorney and the area judge. I help recruit qualified jury members and the court docket was dealt with swiftly. In all those years, I killed one man, and I wouldn’t have killed him if he hadn’t been so drunk that he fell into the path of my single wild shot. I used fines and county jails the way other lawmen used guns and clubs. The towns seemed generally appreciative of my work.

  Three years ago, just before coming to Colorado, I went to a peace officers’ seminar in Chicago. Callie was one of the young women who’d passed out leaflets and brochu
res at the function. This was summertime. Her teaching was over for three months. She was lovely but not quite fresh. Being a cynical lawman, I assumed there were things in her past she’d get around to telling me about someday. It wasn’t anything I gave much thought to. I loved her in the slightly awkward way of a man who’d never had much success with women and who was just a tad bit afraid she’d someday walk out on me.

  “You’re mad,” I said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Sure, you are. You never say I’m being pompous unless you’re mad.”

  She turned from the window to face me. “I like it here in Skylar, Lane. We have friends here, people who like us and respect us. Those are things I haven’t had much in my life.”

  The past of hers I didn’t know much of anything about, except that she’d spent most of her time teaching. But the pain in her voice and in her eyes said that there’d been other things, too. Bad things.

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, Lane. I’m not being fair. You’re standing on principle, and I’m just being selfish.”

  “Don’t make me more than I am, honey. I might reconsider this whole thing if I hadn’t been the one he fired at. But I don’t like the idea of somebody shooting at me and then having their rich daddy talk me out of pressing charges.”

  A couple of the kids had come to school on horseback. They’d left the animals ground-tied. Now the country kids were introducing the town kids to the mounts.

  “I’m always afraid one of them’s going to break his neck,” she said. “Most of them don’t know any more about horses than I did growing up in Chicago.”

  My railroad watch said it was time to get back to the office. “I’ll see you at supper.”

  She took my hands. “I wish I could kiss you.”

  “Same here.”

  “Do the right thing, Lane. You usually do. I don’t want to stand in the way. Testify against him this Thursday and if we have to leave town, we’ll leave town. We’re young enough to start over again.”

  I wouldn’t have seen the envelope if I hadn’t bumped my hip against her desk, knocking several books to the floor. When I bent to pick them up, I saw that she’d stuck a white business envelope between two of the books. THE ROYAL-TON HOTEL, CHICAGO ’S FINEST was the imprinted return address. “Callie Morgan, Skylar, Colorado ” was written on it in a broad masculine hand.

  I would’ve asked her about it, but a kid let out a wail just then. Callie rushed to the door to see what was wrong.

  I put the books back on the desk and pushed the envelope between two of them. For years I’d arrested men who got in jealous scraps over women. Not having a woman of my own, I’d always felt a little bit smug about jealousy. As if it wouldn’t ever happen to me. But now that I had a woman of my own, it happened to me all the time. Men who stared at her a little too long; men who asked her to dance one time too many at social events; even the stray man who flirted with her from time to time. One of the few things she’d told me about her past was that she’d had a number of jealous suitors and that jealousy made her angry. She was always faithful, she’d told me, and never encouraged men to approach her in any untoward way. She’d warned me that I’d be best off keeping jealous thoughts to myself.

  What I wanted to do was open the envelope, which she’d already done, and read the letter. It might be a business letter, but I doubted it.

  Some piece of her past had returned. No doubt about that. A man. A former suitor? One of the jealous ones?

  I put my hand out and touched the edge of the envelope. She was busy outside. She’d stopped the wailing. Now she’d have to find out what was going on.

  So easy to give the letter a quick read. But what if I read words that I’d never again be able to get out of my mind? What if I read words that somehow altered our marriage forever? What if she’d been writing an old beau on a steady basis and I hadn’t found out about it till now?

  From the doorway, she said, “Are you all right?”

  She was silhouetted in the door frame, blue sky and snow-peaked mountains behind her. She walked up to me. I didn’t move. I saw her look at me and then at the books on the edge of her desk. And the edge of the white envelope jutting out like a sin exposed.

  Something changed in her gray eyes when she saw the envelope. She must have realized that I’d seen it, too.

  “Maybe we should have a talk tonight,” she said softly.

  I shrugged. “If you think so.” I didn’t want to say anything more than was absolutely necessary. Sometimes words just speak themselves, and they’re always words you want to take back.

  She took my hands in hers again. “The one thing we agreed to was that we’d always trust each other, Lane. I need you to trust me now.”

  Two girls burst through the door. One of them held her head tilted far back. “She’s got a nosebleed, Mrs. Morgan. Judy punched her right in the face.”

  I headed back to the office.

  TWO

  YOU KNOW HOW it is when you first start a job. Everybody eager to please you and you eager to please them. The only thing that gave them pause the day I took the job was a request for $500 in office furniture. “Hell, Lane, we’ve got a desk and a chair there.” But I wanted more than a desk and chair. I wanted the curtain-top style of desk I was used to working at, and two standard-style desks for my senior day deputy and my senior night deputy. I wanted a cork bulletin board for wanted posters that would be updated once a week, and I wanted a plain five-shelf oak $4 bookcase that I’d load up with books and magazines pertaining to modem law enforcement. I wanted a good coffeepot and a small box-style stove that would fit unobtrusively in the comer. All this got the inevitable laughs among the council members and all the people they told, but the day it was all put together and unveiled, the town saw something it had never seen before: a professional town marshal’s office.

  The same cleaning woman who took care of the four-cell jail on the second floor also dusted and tidied up the office every morning, too.

  When I walked in, I smelled sweet-scented furniture polish. Solid Tom Ryan, my senior day deputy, was at his desk doing paperwork, the scourge of all peace officers who take their job seriously. Tom Ryan was solid of body and solid of mind, one of the best deputies I’d ever had. Some people found the big towhead a little cool, but that was just because he didn’t allow himself the luxury of running his mouth. He sized up a person or a situation before he said or did anything. He had one problem. He’d bought a small ranch on the edge of town when he was younger. He lost money on it every year. He was a terrible rancher. Now the bank was going to take the paper back on it. He was always looking for new ways to raise money to pay off the ranch. He was so damned sensible otherwise. Every man and every woman has something that makes them a little crazy. That was Tom and his ranch.

  “How’d it go at school, Lane?”

  “They wanted to know how many train robbers I’d killed lately.”

  He laughed. “That’s what they wanted to know the time your wife invited me out there.”

  “Any business?” I said, sitting down at my desk. The night sheet was written in neat longhand for me to see. The usual. Two drunk-and-disorderlies. Another drunk who smashed out a saloon window with a rock after the barkeep cut him off. Nothing notable.

  “You want to go see Mrs. Daly or you want me to do it?” I shook my head. “Poor old lady. But at least I have some good news for her.”

  Mrs. Daly was a widower a scam artist had managed to swindle $500 from. He’d convinced her that he had to sell the family jewels, literally, in order to save the family manse near Denver. He brought a forged letter with him from a local banker whose name she recognized. She gave him the $500. I caught the bastard four days later in a whorehouse where the madam had summoned me. He’d gone through all the money and was now drunkenly demanding free merchandise.

  Leaving Lucy Daly with a tax bill she couldn’t pay and hadn’t paid for nearly three years now.

  “What’s the good news?�
�

  “I got the county assessor to re-appraise her property. He cut the tax assessment in half and agreed to accept quarterly payment for the next four years.”

  “Lucy’s going to be saying a whole lot of masses for you, Lane.”

  “I could use them.” Lucy probably would, too. She was a devout woman.

  “Any prisoners upstairs?”

  He shook his head. “I got them over to the courthouse. The judge fined all three of them and let them go.”

  “Good. I want to open the doors and windows up there and air the place out.”

  “You sure do run an accommodating jail. Clean, good food, the guard gets fined if he gets too rough.”

  The slight sarcasm in his voice edged upward when he came to the last part, about the guards being fined. Very few townspeople, including my deputies, liked my idea of running a clean, safe jail. They especially didn’t understand why I’d fine a guard who got too rough with a prisoner. But to me, it was all part of being a professional lawman. There’s nothing in the law that gives a peace officer the right to brutalize a prisoner. On the other hand, I have a rule that says that any prisoner who lies about a guard hurting him gets the exact punishment he lied about. If he said the guard hit him three times in the face, he gets hit by that guard three times in the face.

  “Oh, I got Conroy on the stage,” Ryan said. “He gave me quite a tussle. Didn’t want to leave. Seems he liked our little town. Drew a nice little crowd when he started fighting me in front of the stage.”

  “Thanks, Tom.” Conroy was a confidence man who’d just started working Skylar. We managed to catch him fast. And get him on a stage and get him out of town.

  I hadn’t had time to sort through the mail stacked on the far right comer of my otherwise clean desk.

  Seeing the mail there, I thought of the envelope Callie had stuck between two of her schoolbooks. The letter from the Royalton Hotel in Chicago. I wondered what she was going to tell me tonight. Something I probably didn’t want to hear, to know. Something that just might alter our marriage forever.