Lovely Night to Die

by Caleb Pirtle III

  Eleanor had a pensive expression. “It was indeed a courageous and noble act,” she said, “but what does it have to do with a potential murder charge.”

  Hurt sighed deeply. “Daniel was never the same man again,” he said. “The war had crawled into his head and wouldn’t leave him alone.”

  “Post-traumatic stress Disorder?”

  “The doctors knew the diagnosis.” Hurt shook his head. “They had seen it too many times. They didn’t have a cure. Nightmares drove him away from the army, away from civilization, away from humanity.”

  “Does Mister Burke live in Denver?”

  “Daniel lives on the streets.”

  “Homeless?”

  “I rented an apartment for him when winter started getting colder, but he’s never been inside.” Hurt gazed out the window. The snow was falling harder and beginning to pile up on the window ledge. “He preferred a park bench and his old woolen army coat. The police woke him up two mornings ago.”

  “Afraid he might freeze?” Eleanor said.

  “No.” Hurt straightened his shoulders. “A man named Simon Pierce was lying on the ground beside the bench. He had been shot twice. Once in the chest. Once in the head. They arrested Daniel.”

  “Did Mister Burke own a gun?”

  “He said he had a military issue Sig Sauer M 11.” Hurt’s gaze was steady and penetrating. “Said he lost it. Or maybe he sold it. Or maybe the pistol was stolen. He says he doesn’t recall what happened or when it happened.”

  “Did the police find the bullet that killed Mister Pierce?”

  “It came from a military issue Sig Sauer M 11.”

  “What does Mister Burke say?”

  “He remembers he drank a bottle of cheap wine and nothing else.”

  “Is he guilty of murdering Mister Pierce?”

  “I don’t know,” Hurt said. “The law will figure it out. I just want Daniel treated fairly and with respect. Regardless of what else he’s done, he deserves that.”

  Eleanor looked at the lights of Denver through her window. They had grown blurred in the mist of sleet and falling snow. She suddenly felt a chill seep into her bones and knew it didn’t have anything to do with the weather.

  “I don’t handle murder trials,” she said.

  “You’re the last hope Daniel has.”

  Eleanor forced a laugh. “Denver has a lot of attorneys much more qualified than I am,” she said.

  “Maybe.” Commander Patrick Hurt stood, his fingertips tapping the top of her desk. “But it’s late, it’s dark, it’s almost Christmas, the law offices are empty, the bars are full, and Daniel goes on trial for his life tomorrow morning at nine.”

  “I can’t guarantee I can help your friend,” Eleanor said.

  “Life has no guarantees,” he answered and pulled a checkbook from his coat pocket.

  When Eleanor Trent walked into the courtroom the next morning, she knew that Daniel Burke’s case was a trial no one wanted to handle. The news of Simon Pierce’s murder had not even been reported in The Denver Post. “The bums may be people,” the cop shop reporter told her when she called him at home, “but they’re not news.”

  She was not prepared to represent Daniel Burke. But she knew that some bottom feeding prosecutor at the DA’s office was no better prepared than she was.

  Eleanor asked for a continuance. The judge gave her forty-eight hours. It was one homeless man probably guilty of killing another. Denver wouldn’t miss either Simon Pierce or Daniel Burke. Neither would the law. The trial was simply a matter of inconvenience, nothing more, nothing less.

  Eleanor and Hurt slogged through the snow all day and most of the night, talking to anyone who might have known Burke or the dead man. No one knew anything. No one suspected anything. No one saw anything. No one remembered anything. They were met with one dead end after another.

  By the evening of the second day, her shoulders were sagging. The snow was colder, the night darker. A harsh wind worked its way through Denver. The soles of her shoes were worn bare, and she longed for the warmth of her fur-lined boots left back in her apartment. Her boss at the law firm had chastised her for accepting a case that was taking too much of her time and bringing in too little money. Eleanor was staring defeat in the face.

  “It’s a lost cause,” he said.

  “That’s what we do here,” Eleanor argued. “Lost causes are our business.”

  “Don’t let this one cost you your job,” he said.

  Eleanor doggedly kept turning down one corner and then another. In the shank of a day without mercy, with time running out, she stumbled across Charlie Williams asleep in the Angel of Mercy shelter for old men cold, hungry, and down on their luck. He wore a lumberjack’s coat over his clothes, had a frayed red cap with ear flaps jammed on top of his head, and was sporting a thick gray beard.

  She gently jarred him awake and asked the questions she had asked so many times during the past thirty-eight hours. “Do you know Daniel Burke?”

  “Sure do,” he grumbled. He was rubbing his eyes.

  “How about Simon Pierce.”

  “Simon and I came down from Chicago together.”

  Eleanor sat down on the bunk beside him. “You know he’s dead, don’t you?”

  “Simon?”

  She nodded.

  “I saw him die,” Charlie said and a tear slipped from his eye.

  “Do you know who shot him?”

  Charlie reached beneath his bunk and pulled out a Sauer Sig M 11 pistol. He handed it to Eleanor.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked softly.

  “Simon gave it to me,” he said. “Simon bought it off an old soldier for two shots of bourbon and a can of chewing tobacco.” He paused. “Simon was dying, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “He had the tuberculosis. Had it bad. Couldn’t breathe when it got cold, and I don’t remember it ever being this cold. He was wheezing and struggling for every breath, and he dug this old pistol out of his jacket and gave it to me. Said, ‘Charlie, I’m tired of being cold. I don’t ever want to be cold again. I’m asking you to do something about it. A good friend would do something about it.’”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “I shot him.” Charlie smiled for the first time. “Simon’s not cold anymore,” he said.

  Daniel Burke walked out of the courthouse a free man. Patrick Hurt shook his hand and slipped five twenty-dollar bills into his shirt pocket. “Get yourself a good meal,” he said.

  Daniel nodded and bowed his shoulders against the wind as he fought his way on unsteady feet down the steps and toward downtown Denver. The falling snow reached out and swallowed him as if he were only a ragged image on a frame of black and white film.

  “I owe you for Daniel’s life,” Patrick Hurt said as he shook Eleanor’s hand.

  She smiled and shrugged her weary shoulders. “I got lucky,” she said.

  “No other attorney would have worked that hard to free a forgotten man who lived on the streets.” Hurt turned to walk away, then stopped abruptly and looked back. “I owe you,” he said. “You have my card. You have a private number only a few have. If you ever need me, call. I’ll be here or wherever you need me to go.”

  ON A WINTER night in Durango, she needed him. Her client was missing. Roland Sand had been stolen from the Durango City Jail and smuggled out of town by three men in black suits who carried badges that claimed they were government agents. They had a warrant, and the judge said it was legal. On his worst day, Eleanor figured, Sand had been little more than a two-bit shooter who was guilty of killing two men in a back alley. Maybe, she had been wrong.

  What did the government want with a man who was destined for life without parole in the state penitentiary?

  What did he know that they wanted to know?

  Whom did he kill?

  And why?

  What secrets did he keep buried behind the green embers of his eyes?

  Why did she even care?
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br />   Eleanor had no doubt that Roland Sand would be executed.

  She was just as sure he would never face a judge or see the inside of a courtroom.

  She had lost cases before.

  But this was the first time Eleanor Trent had ever lost a client.

  She stared at a wrinkled business card for a long time before she found enough nerve to place the call.

  COMMANDER PATRICK HURT looked exactly the way Eleanor remembered him as he walked briskly into the American Airlines waiting room of the Durango-La Plata County Airport. His face broke out into a warm smile as soon as he saw her standing along the edge of the corridor, her back to the wall. She had moved far away from the crush of humanity pushing its way toward baggage claim. Her brown leather jacket was coordinated to match her tan corduroy slacks and boots.

  He was ramrod straight, dressed in dark slacks and a navy-blue turtleneck sweater that fit tightly across his broad shoulders and thick chest. A gray topcoat lay across his arm. His face was deeply tanned, and he had shoved his sunglasses on top of his head. Hurt’s eyes were never still, constantly shifting from face to face. It gave him the edge, he had once told Eleanor.

  She had been around him long enough to understand the two distinct characteristics that shaped Commander Patrick Hurt.

  He would die for his friends.

  He was suspicious of everyone else.

  “Why?” she had asked.

  “It keeps me alive,” he said.

  Hurt took her hand in his and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here,” Eleanor said.

  “If you called, you knew I’d be here.”

  She stepped back and stared at Hurt. Her voice trembled. “I’m scared.”

  “If you’re afraid, there’s a reason.”

  Eleanor stiffened her shoulders and tried to chase away the sense of dread that had turned her mood so somber. “I keep thinking there was something I could have done.”

  “To protect Sand?”

  She nodded.

  “He plays a dangerous game, Eleanor, and he knows there will come a day when he can’t beat the odds anymore.”

  “Who would want to kill him?”

  Hurt took a deep breath. “The man Sand regards as a father,” Hurt said.

  Lovely Night 10

  HURT’S BAG WAS the third one to come down the carousel. He grabbed it, placed his hand gently around Eleanor’s arm, ducked his head, and they both ran toward the dwindling line of taxicabs that had congregated to meet the American Airlines flight. The sleet stung their faces like pellets fired from a child’s rifle. A biting wind tugged at their clothes as it whistled around them. The dry snow clung to their coats and didn’t melt. Not even the inside of the taxi warmed them.

  “Strater Hotel,” Eleanor told the driver. She turned to Patrick Hurt and asked him, “You know something I don’t?”

  “I know something you don’t want to know.” Hurt shrugged. “In fact, it would be much better for you if you never find out.”

  “It’s too late now.” She was adamant.

  “I hope not.” His voice had a slight chill. He nodded in the direction of the taxi driver. “We’ll talk when we reach the hotel.”

  Eleanor forced a smile. “He’s just a taxi driver.”

  “So are some of the best spies living on American soil.”

  Her smile faded. “You look worried,” she whispered.

  Hurt forced a smile. “I was born that way,” he said.” He laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

  Eleanor watched him.

  He didn’t move.

  Hurt barely breathed.

  All she heard was the steady rhythm of sleet bouncing off the windshield and the throbbing sounds of Dr. Dre rapping through the static about “Nothin’ but a G Thang” on the taxicab’s radio.

  She suddenly felt very tired.

  She suddenly felt very alone.

  It was as if Commander Patrick Hurt didn’t exist at all.

  SHE HAD BRIEFED him on the phone about the strange circumstances surrounding the arrest of Roland Sand, the sudden appearance of three men who claimed to be government agents, the abrupt disappearance of her client, and a city full of lawmen and judges who acted as if Sand had never walked the streets of Durango. The police report had vanished from the files.

  No ambulance service had any record of picking up a pair of homicide victims in an alley behind an Irish pub. The pub had closed its doors and locked them. Only one sign hung above the door: Closed Until Further Notice. No hospital or mortuary within a hundred miles had any record of treating or receiving two victims, one with a gunshot wound and the other with a broken neck.

  No bodies.

  No autopsies.

  No paperwork.

  No problem.

  All Eleanor had possessed was her own personal Xeroxed copy of the arrest report. After going through security in the lobby of the jail, it, too, was missing.

  She tried to track down Harold Dawson. He was the arresting officer. He seemed like a decent man. He had spent more time with Roland Sand than anyone.

  “I’m afraid Harold’s not here anymore,” the desk sergeant said at the police department.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s retired.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “Why?”

  “Bad ticker is what I heard.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  Eleanor took the detective’s business card from her folder and dialed his home number.

  She heard a recorded voice: This number has been disconnected.

  She drove to Dawson’s house on Juniper Road. It was an old but well-kept one-story ranch-style home. The yard had been recently mowed. The morning newspaper lay on the front porch. A circular from Home Depot had been left in the mailbox. The lights were on. The front door was unlocked.

  The house was empty.

  Long streaks in a gray carpet beside the queen-sized bed were stained the color of blood.

  SAND HAD WARNED her to ignore his case, drop him immediately as a client, and forget she had ever seen him, forget he had ever walked into her life, if only for an instant. Eleanor tried but couldn’t. Sand had become a puzzle with far too many pieces missing. He knew he was in danger but didn’t appear worried about the threat. He wanted to keep her out of the maze. Why hadn’t she listened to him?

  He was gone.

  Why couldn’t she let him go?

  Eleanor was pinning her hopes on a SEAL commander, and his words had chilled her worse than a growing blizzard of sleet and snow. What did Sand know, and why was it so dangerous for her to find out a secret that might well threaten or end her life?

  The cab pulled to the curb and stopped. Eleanor took Commander Patrick Hurt’s arm as they moved through the snow and into the historic Strater Hotel.

  She felt as if she if she were walking her last mile.

  Her nerves were churning. The cold stabbed her like a thin-bladed scalpel.

  Eleanor was a smart girl. Everyone said so.

  If she were smart, she quietly told herself, she would turn and run.

  Lovely Night 11

  THE DIAMOND BELLE SALOON looked almost as abandoned as Eleanor felt. She should be excited that Patrick Hurt had flown across the country through the rains and snows of a nasty winter simply because she had asked for his help, but a deep, foreboding sense of dread wrapped itself like a funeral shroud around her mind.

  She ordered Pinot Grigio, thought about Roland Sand again, and wondered if he were still among the living, or if she should toast the memory of a dead man.

  Why was she chasing a ghost anyway?

  The blonde waitress could have passed for an Old West dance hall girl from the 1870s. She wore a low-cut turquoise blouse, short black skirt, and a red garter at the top of her black stockings. She was smiling and winking for tips.

  Hurt asked for
a Scotch straight up but didn’t smile back at her flirtation. He dismissed her with a quick glance. His eyes were moving methodically from one face to the next, probing the shadows of each dark corner of the lounge. Two businessmen in blue suits were seated at the bar. A rancher – at least the gentleman was trying to look like one – wore jeans, boots, and a sweat-stained Stetson. He had pulled his chair up closer to the ragtime piano. A young dark-haired woman was laughing at every joke the old man in a gray flannel suit told, which, Eleanor decided, meant she wasn’t his wife. She nibbled his ear like a secretary in love with his bank account. It was a slow afternoon, and none of them apparently had any place better to go.

  “What are you looking for?” Eleanor asked.

  “Someone who doesn’t belong here.”

  “How will you know?”

  Hurt turned toward her, and his face softened. “You never know for sure,” he said, “so you keep looking.” He shrugged. “When you stop looking, the one who does not belong may kill you.”

  “Yours is a dangerous business,” Eleanor said.

  “No.” He chuckled. “Mine is a cautious business.”

  He paid for the drinks with cash.

  No change.

  The dance hall girl winked again.

  He didn’t.

  Hurt leaned back and let the darkness shadow his face. “What do you know about Roland Sand?” he asked.

  “Only what I’ve already told you.” Eleanor sighed awkwardly. “He was a nobody who has apparently become very important to somebody. He was arrested. He was charged with murder. He was kidnapped from maximum security in the Durango jail by government agents. At least that’s what they said they were. And suddenly, no one has any record of him. I seriously doubt if you can find a birth certificate or a death certificate for Roland Sand.”

  “Have you talked to the jailer?”

  “He doesn’t recall ever seeing Roland Sand.”

  “How about the guard?”

  “Doesn’t remember him.”

  “What about the arrest report?”