Doom Weapon

by Ed Gorman

  “Grieves is a killer, Liz. You know that already.”

  She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “Well you may not have noticed, old man, but so am I. And if things get rough, I’ll be there to protect you.” Then: “I just wish you weren’t too old for me.”

  Chapter 21

  Just before midnight, the doc came in, checked me over, and said I could leave on my own.

  “You’re doing a lot better than I would have thought.”

  “Glad you think so, anyway.”

  “She’s somethin’, ain’t she? Liz, I mean.”

  “Sure is.”

  “That first husband of hers, he didn’t deserve her.”

  As we talked, he helped me to my feet. Dizziness and shaky knees made me wonder if the doc knew what the hell he was talking about. But after a minute or so the worst of the dizziness passed and my knees stopped trembling.

  “I heard what she said about you being too old.”

  “Thin walls, huh?”

  “She’s all romantic about handsome young men.”

  We reached the darkness of the outer office.

  “Walk over to the front door now.”

  I did so with no problem. “Look good to me.”

  “How much I owe you, Doc?”

  “Two dollars.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I walked back and put the money on his desk.

  “I also heard you two talking about starting out early in the morning.”

  “You heard some dangerous things, Doc. You shouldn’t’ve been listening.”

  “At my age, what else I got to do?” His cranky smile was luminous in the shadows of the office. “And you don’t need to be worryin’ about me tellin’ anybody else, either.”

  “Good. Because if you did tell somebody what I’m going to do, I’d come back here and show you how unhappy I was.”

  “Not much for threats.”

  “Neither am I. Givin’ or takin’ ’em. But I expect you to keep quiet.”

  “This conversation sure got crazy fast. All I meant when I brought up tomorrow morning was that you’ll have to take it awful easy.”

  “Fine. That’s what I’ll do.”

  “Somehow I don’t believe you but it’s up to you. It’s your life.”

  The night air revived me further. The head still ached but it was down a few notches and I had my mind on things other than the pain.

  The occasional lamplight lent the sleepy town a kind of storybook aspect. So neat and clean, all its physical sins hidden by the shadows. A few chimneys plumed smoke into the starry sky, here and there a lamp burned, maybe a book reader or a parent worried about a child with fever.

  I’m pretty sure I was asleep by the time I got back to my room.

  My body just plain didn’t want to get up. A good washing, three cups of coffee, a chilly breeze through the open window, and the damned thing still wanted to head right back to the bed to hide under the covers for another eight or nine days. My mind kept trying to give it orders. But all the body did was make a dirty gesture.

  But I had no choice. I had to get up, to function and function reasonably well. If my calculation was right about the date circled on Nan’s calendar, this was an important day.

  Liz waited for me at the restaurant. She patted an empty chair as if I was her pet dog. I sat down where my master indicated.

  “You look pretty rough, Noah.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Still attached to my shoulders.”

  “You’re really in a terrible mood, aren’t you?”

  “Gosh, I can’t imagine why.”

  The woman came for my order. Before my mind could even form the images of the breakfast I wanted, Liz said, “He’ll have what I had, Mae.”

  “Thanks, Liz.”

  I looked at her plate.

  All that was left were a few traces of gravy.

  “Thanks for ordering for me.”

  “God, are you crabby. I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  “I can order my own breakfast. I’m a big boy.”

  “You don’t sound like a big boy. You sound like a very spoiled small boy. I try and do you a favor and you go all sullen on me.”

  I drank my coffee. With the three I’d had at the hotel, I was starting to get those morning jitters that often accompany too much caffeine.

  “I brought my carbine. I’m going to prove to you that I’m a good shooter, Noah.”

  “I still wish you weren’t going.”

  “Please. Let’s not go through this again.”

  I ate. She watched me. The head wound started to leak a little. She daubed at it with a clean white handkerchief. “I figured you’d still be bleeding. I also figured I’d have to take care of you.”

  By now, the town’s most important people had started to gather in the room. Most of them glanced in my direction. None of them looked happy to see me.

  “Sometimes I want to leave this town.”

  My mouth packed with eggs, potatoes, and coffee, responding to her was impossible. I shrugged.

  “You probably don’t believe that, do you?”

  I just wanted to sit here and eat. I didn’t want to hear about her life. I didn’t care about her life. I shrugged silently again.

  “But my folks helped settle this land here and that’s sort of my heritage. Or does that sound corny?”

  Another shrug.

  “You have very expressive shoulders.” She laughed. “You have a dab of egg yolk on your nose.”

  She found her trusty handkerchief again and cleaned off my face.

  I finished up and said, “You really do talk a lot.” Then: “There they are.”

  I’d stationed myself so that I had a clear view of the hotel where Nan and Glen had been staying. They wore riding clothes. Glen carried a Winchester. They’d be headed to the livery. I wasn’t sure where they were going but I assumed they wouldn’t be walking.

  “He has a Winchester.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “I’ll bet I’m a better shot than he is.”

  I glanced at her and smiled. “I’m afraid, my dear, that isn’t saying much.”

  If there’s a heaven, I sure hope it looks a lot like the territory we traveled through that day. The black oak and silver pine, Joshua and incense cedar, the shining river that curled around prehistoric abutments of rock packed with centuries-old limber pine that at least four Indian tribes held to be sacred. We didn’t talk much because the beauty all around us required silence and reverence.

  You could see why they’d built a resort out there. The loamy aromas alone had an almost narcotic effect on your senses. And the wind off the wide blue river was like a baptism, it birthed you anew in its purity.

  One time I even caught Liz tearing up. I liked to think that maybe it was because of the sheer startling power of the land all around us.

  But later I had to think again when she said, for no seeming reason: “He always said we’d live in a place like this someday.”

  “Who said?”

  “My husband.”

  I think that was the first time I sensed real grief and loss in her. She’d always sort of kidded about her feelings toward the man before. But those words were pure pain. Those words spoke of a love still very much with her. I still wanted to sleep with her but now I wanted to help her some, too.

  “Maybe he’ll come back someday.”

  “If he does, I’ll shoot him.”

  “You’re one dangerous lady.”

  “Just shut up, Noah. Just shut up.”

  I smiled at her and rode on ahead a while. Give her some alone time.

  During my Pinkerton years I worked mostly out of Chicago, Baltimore, and Kansas City. There was a lot of surveillance work. A lot of agents will tell you that it’s easy work. You just follow somebody around and jot down where he’s gone and who he’s seen. Better than being shot at, they’ll tell you.

 
But it’s boring. Your feet ache, you have to be extremely conscious of what the man you’re following might do suddenly—like turn around and point at you and shout that you’re following him—and only about 40 percent of the time does it yield anything interesting either to the party that engages the Pinks or to you as an agent.

  Following somebody on horseback isn’t a hell of lot more thrilling. You’re doing the same thing except you’re sitting atop an animal that is a virtual shitting machine. On a nice day, like this one was, the scenery provides the only real diversion.

  I doubted that Nan and Glen Turner were going to spot us. From what I could see with my field glasses, they were too busy bickering to notice much else going on. One of them had undoubtedly slept with a stranger the night before and was now engaged in defending him or herself.

  Liz said, “How come you keep looking back like that?”

  “Because somebody’s following us.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You know who?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We’re following somebody and somebody’s following us?”

  “Sure seems to be that way.”

  “Does stuff like this happen to you very often?”

  “All the time.”

  “What’re you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  “No reason to. I want to find out who they are and why they’re following us. Give it some more time.”

  “Boy, I don’t like this. They could ambush us or something.”

  “Just relax.”

  “They probably have guns.”

  “They probably do.”

  We rode side by side. I reached over and touched her arm. “If you’ll take some advice from a creaky old man, we have guns, too.”

  She said, “Now let’s be fair here, Noah. I never said you were creaky.”

  “I just put that part in so you’d feel sorry for me.”

  “Well, it didn’t work.”

  After that, I didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Early in the afternoon, we stopped to water the horses and to feed ourselves with the beef and bread Liz had brought along.

  We sat on the riverbank and she said, “You worried about who’s following us?”

  “I’m curious. Not worried.”

  “I just don’t like the idea that somebody’s behind us and we don’t know who it is.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea of who it is.”

  “You do? Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought I’d wait till I got a look at him so I could be sure.”

  “Well, tell me who you think it is.”

  “Grab my field glasses and climb that tree over there and find out for yourself. You good at climbing trees?”

  “I grew up with three brothers and I could outclimb every one of them.”

  “Well, we just came up from a pretty deep valley. You should be able to see him pretty easy.”

  She didn’t even finish her sandwich. She went over to my saddlebags, snatched up the field glasses, and confronted the sizable oak.

  She scrambled up it a hell of a lot faster than I could have even as a boy. When she got near the top, she called back, “I told you I was good at this.”

  “We’ll have a ceremony back in town.”

  “You’re just jealous.”

  And then she went about her business.

  Didn’t take her long. “Damn. I see him.”

  “Good.”

  “Let’s see if you guessed right. Who is it?”

  “Sheriff Terhurne.”

  “You’re right. How’d you know?”

  “Because there’s an election coming up and he probably thinks that if he helps bring Grieves in, the voters’ll put him back in office.”

  “He’s finished.”

  “You know he’s finished and I know he’s finished but I’m not sure he knows he’s finished.”

  She came back to the riverbank, sat down next to me, and resumed finishing off her beef sandwich.

  “I sort of feel sorry for him.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “You stuck up for him.”

  “I stuck up for him because I didn’t like what Rafferty was doing.”

  “Oh. I wonder what he’ll do after he loses. He never has any money. He owes quite a bit to Swarthout’s bank, in fact.”

  “He’s a big boy. He can figure it out.”

  “You’re kind’ve cold right now, Noah.”

  “I just don’t like him grandstanding. He obviously kept his eye on me, otherwise he wouldn’t have known what we’re up to.”

  “Imagine that,” she said, “you spy on people all the time but when they spy on you, you don’t like it at all.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “imagine that.”

  Chapter 22

  After a few more miles, and after Liz said we were obviously headed for the resort, I said, “There’s a hollow back there just right for stopping Terhurne. We’ll hide our horses in those trees over there and then wait for him.”

  “I wish I didn’t feel sorry for him.”

  “I wish you didn’t, either. If he hadn’t had his nephew on duty that night, Molly would still be alive.”

  “You liked her, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I felt about her. But I didn’t want to see her die. Maybe she could have found a decent life for herself after all this.”

  “People don’t change, Noah.”

  “That’s a myth,” I said. “People change all the time. It’s just that the people around them refuse to believe it.”

  Long shadows kept us well hidden. Terhurne wouldn’t see us until it was too late. The spring warmth was turning chilly on us. By Liz’s estimate, we had about an hour till we reached the resort. We should still have some daylight to see how we were going to approach the place. Grieves was a professional. He’d probably hired a few guns so he could meet any kind of surprise that came his way.

  Nan and Glen Turner had apparently been pretty fortunate in their dealings with rogue scientists and federal people. They’d gotten the merchandise they’d wanted and they’d sold it for the price they’d wanted and they were still walking topside up here on earth. I guessed that they hadn’t ever run into anybody like Grieves before.

  Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe they’d run into a dozen Grieveses in their time. But maybe they were so treacherous themselves that they’d killed everybody they’d ever done business with. Just because Glen was a drunk and a dandy didn’t mean he wasn’t a killer when he needed to be. And I had no doubt that Nan could do what she needed to.

  An owl shared his dirge with us.

  He was riding faster than he had been, Terhurne was. Maybe with daylight starting to fade he realized that he needed to draw close to us so that we could all reach the resort at about the same time.

  I had to judge his distance by the sound. When I figured he was far enough away that he wouldn’t run over me, I came out from behind the copse of lodgepole pines and stood in the center of the trail. He stopped about ten feet away. He automatically dropped hand to gun but by then I had a Winchester on him.

  “I don’t remember asking for help.”

  “I don’t remember needing to ask your permission to take my horse for a little ride, Ford.”

  “Drop the gun on the ground and then dismount easy.”

  “This is bullshit.”

  “That’s right, it is. You shouldn’t have been following me. Now do what I said.”

  He took his time. By then Liz stood next to me. She whispered, “You wouldn’t actually shoot him, would you?”

  I grimaced. “You think we could talk about this later?”

  He walked the distance between us. He didn’t put his arms in the air. Embarrassing enough that I’d ambushed him that way.

  He shook his head at Liz. “I don’t want any mention of this in the paper.”

  I
didn’t let her answer. “How long have you been watching me?”

  He shrugged. “Had Spoon do it.”

  “Who the hell is Spoon?”

  “That’s his cousin’s kid,” Liz said. “They call him that ’cause he’s always eating.”

  “How about letting him answer from now on?”

  “I was just trying to be helpful.”

  Dusk was coming faster than I’d expected. The birds had that melancholy sound by then, that nightfall sound.

  “We better get there before dark so we can see something,” Terhurne said.

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  To Liz he said, “Will you tell this arrogant bastard that all I’m doing is trying to help?”

  “I better not. He’s mad at me.”

  “Will you two shut up?”

  Liz looked chastened. Terhurne, of course, did not.

  “You hear anything about Grieves I haven’t?”

  “I would’ve shared it with you if I had, Noah. We had a bargain.”

  “I didn’t know the bargain included you following me. You should’ve asked if you could go along.”

  “Would you have let me?”

  “Probably.”

  He snorted. “Now there’s a hell of an answer.” But I was wasting time we didn’t have. “Let’s go.”

  Flickering ruby light was all that was left when we rode up on a ragged chunk of mountain and gazed down upon the perfect bowl in which the enormous spread of hotel and cabins sat. A half-moon lent the scene a silver patina.

  There was a huge dock. Steamboats used to set their wealthy passengers down there. If the visitors were especially important, the staff band would no doubt play for them as they reached the hallowed ground of the resort. There would have been fancy buggies to take them to the three-story hotel with six large cabins angling out from each side. The cabins would have been the exclusive province of the rich and notable. Rich alone wouldn’t have been enough. Notable alone might have been enough if it was the right kind of notable.

  I wondered where the Turners had gone to. Not only was there no sign of them but no sign of horses anywhere. No lamps or candles in windows, either. Not on our side of the hotel, anyway.