The Devil's Snare

by Tony Healey

  Celia screamed again. Then the children. The woman cocked her head to one side. “It will be quick for them. They won’t even know it.”

  “Please . . . ,” he said, a tear rolling down his cheek. “Please.”

  Then the gun fired, and he said nothing more.

  PART ONE

  DIRT TO DIRT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sheriff Henry Abernathy closed the door behind him and removed his hat. Deputy Boyd Mitchell looked up from his paperwork and noted the sheriff’s pallor. He looked aggrieved, as he had the day before when they’d returned from the Hart place at the edge of town. The bags beneath his eyes were heavier, and his complexion paler, than ever before.

  “I’m guessin’ you didn’t sleep last night, either,” Mitchell said.

  Abernathy hung his hat from a peg on the wall, then ran his fingers through his lank white hair. “I did not.”

  Abernathy crossed the room to his desk and lowered himself into his chair—the old man was not as quick or able-bodied as he once had been. When Boyd had started out, the sheriff of Amity Creek had had dark gray hair and a lean physique. In the years since, his hair had turned pure white, his beard stained by the tobacco he smoked all day long. Abernathy’s stomach bulged over his pants, bloated by too little movement and too much whiskey. He wheezed whenever he was called upon to move faster than he was used to, and suddenly, the sheriff had grown old. Deputy Mitchell did not know how much longer Abernathy could keep on keeping on at the rate his health was declining. But he reckoned this would be the old man’s last season as Amity Creek’s chief law enforcer.

  The sheriff cleaned his pipe, tapping it out on his desk, then filling it with fresh tobacco. He coughed and spluttered as he did so, the sound that rolled out of his chest like ball bearings in a bucket. Abernathy often complained of his coughing fits, how they kept him awake at night whenever he lay flat. In the past few months, he had taken to sleeping in a rocking chair by the fire if it was cool out. If it happened to be warm, the old man dragged the rocking chair to the porch and took his rest under the stars with the crickets chirping around him.

  The deputy looked up just as the undertaker’s wagon trundled past, laden with coffins. Mitchell knew those four wooden boxes—two big, two small—held the Hart family.

  The deputy shook his head. “Will you look at that . . . ?”

  Abernathy got to his feet, his pipe momentarily forgotten as he stood by the window to watch the undertaker’s wagon roll by.

  “Have you ever known a tragedy like it, Sheriff?” Mitchell asked.

  Abernathy glanced at him. “Not in Amity Creek,” he said, voice gruff. “Not in my time.”

  Gil Bercow, the town’s resident furniture maker and undertaker, turned around in his seat and tipped his hat at the two lawmen. His withered face was gaunt. Next to Bercow, his young nephew, Wade, who was the man’s apprentice, rang the reins. Abernathy raised a single hand in greeting; then Bercow turned back around. A second later, the wagon disappeared.

  “This situation is gonna set the whole town on edge,” Abernathy said.

  “I had Sally Greenacre and Dolly Tubman barge in here not long before you arrived.”

  “You did?”

  Deputy Mitchell nodded. “In tears. Scared out of their wits. Thinking they’re gonna be next.”

  Abernathy resumed his seat and lit his pipe. “They got the right to be scared. Trouble with some folk is they get spooked only when they think somethin’ bad is coming their way. When it’s happening to somebody else, they can express their condolences and such, but they don’t really mean it as much as they do when they’re looking over their shoulders at night, wondering if that same bad luck is round the corner.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Mitchell said. He returned to his paperwork, stamping it and filing it for future reference. Abernathy liked a tidy, ordered ship, and Mitchell was of the same persuasion. Every “T” crossed, every “I” dotted, a place for everything and everything in its place. As Abernathy had told him on his first day, “Administration is half our job,” and he couldn’t have been closer to the truth if he’d tried. The sheriff viewed his appointment as that of a public servant, not some rogue operator beholden to nobody. That was why he’d lasted so long and continued to hold the citizens’ respect.

  Mitchell hoped to be held in the same regard as Abernathy when he finally got his shot at the big chair and the big desk. Not that he was unproven. But there were only two ways to create a vacancy—a man in Abernathy’s position had to either die or quit. And neither appealed to Deputy Mitchell, though he knew they were inevitable.

  Abernathy drew on the pipe and exhaled blue-gray smoke, spurring on a coughing fit that lasted a full minute and turned the old man’s face purple. Mitchell found it hard not to believe it would be long before Abernathy had to admit defeat.

  “You asked me about sleep before,” the sheriff said out of the blue, holding the pipe in his hand.

  “Sheriff?”

  “After seeing that unholy mess out there at the Hart place. You asked me how I slept.”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “After the war, I had these dreams. They’d come to me some nights. Bad dreams of bad things I’d done to others and bad things others had done to me. Night terrors, I suppose they were. Hallucinations. The kind I haven’t experienced before or since. They’d have me leaping off the bed, scared out of my wits like you wouldn’t believe.” Abernathy cast a sidelong glance in Mitchell’s direction. “I do not feel any degradation in admitting that, either. Every man got his demons, and I certainly got mine. I ain’t forgot about them, and let me tell you, Boyd, those demons definitely ain’t forgot about me.”

  Deputy Mitchell held his hands up. “I make no judgment, Sheriff. That was a hell of a war.”

  “It was hell,” Abernathy said. He set the pipe down on his desk. “No boy left who did not become a man before his return. And no man went to war who didn’t come back different than he had been before. Brother fighting brother . . . it wasn’t right then, and it ain’t right now.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  “Some would tell you that it’s a shame you didn’t get to fight in that war, Boyd, but I’ll say it’s lucky you didn’t.” Abernathy shook his head slowly. “Cut a long story short, I have not had those kinds of dreams in a long, long while. Last night it all came back. Seeing that family killed like they were, it made me remember it all anew. Things no man my age has a right to dwell on.”

  Mitchell rarely heard the sheriff talk about his time in the army, much less his experiences in the war. But something in the man had been stirred up, and Mitchell guessed the sheriff had to release it somehow. For his part, Mitchell did not know what to say to his mentor. Tell him that he understood? He’d never been to war, never been in some of the situations Abernathy must have found himself thrust into as a younger man. He couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like.

  Abernathy continued. “The way we found that place. It took a special kind of malice to go into that house, shoot Glendon Hart in the face, go upstairs and shoot his wife and kids, too.”

  Mitchell had been dwelling on the murders, too. He’d barely slept for thinking about them. Playing the scene over and over in his mind. “Reckon we’ll find ’em, Sheriff?”

  Abernathy leaned back in his chair, hands on his considerable stomach. “I cannot say. But I can tell you what I do know, though.”

  “Go on.”

  “When we catch whoever it is, I will not feel any remorse in executing the full power of the law with extreme prejudice, if you take my meaning,” he said, his tone ominous.

  “I hear you, Sheriff.” Boyd was under no illusion; if they ever caught the killer, he and the sheriff would see to it that the animal suffered for his crime.

  No courtroom. No trial. Just swift retribution.

  Aber
nathy looked at him. “Good to know, Deputy. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this particular horror warrants some old-time justice.”

  “Amen to that, sir.”

  The door to the sheriff’s office opened, and Jack Denton blustered in without invite, doffing his hat as he addressed them. “Sheriff,” he said, nodding in their direction. “Deputy Mitchell.”

  “Morning, Jack,” Abernathy said, less than pleased to see the rancher in his office.

  Denton was in his fifties, with a bushy silver mustache dominating the lower half of his face and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair parted in the middle. He always dressed to impress, that morning being no exception. The fine tailored suit he wore was impeccably clean, without so much as a speck of dirt or mud on it. His boots were polished to a high shine, as if new. Without being asked, Denton sat in the chair opposite Abernathy, setting his hat down on the desktop and making himself at home.

  “What a beautiful morning.”

  “What’s this about?” Abernathy asked, getting straight to the point and making no attempt to hide his displeasure at having Jack Denton in his office. Mitchell knew the old man bristled at this kind of imposition.

  Denton had come to Amity Creek fifteen years earlier and made short work of establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with. He’d quickly bought up land all over the territory, in the process getting himself into a fair share of rows with free grazers attempting to drive their cattle through his pastures. Rows that Abernathy then had to intervene in before they became physical confrontations between the free grazers and Denton’s hired men.

  He was not much liked by the people of Amity Creek, but they had no choice but to tolerate him. It had become an accepted part of life that if Jack Denton wanted something, he’d get it somehow. Denton was a man of means, but no one could say how he had come to have such wealth or even where Denton had come from. He was an enigma to all and had never attempted to explain himself to anyone.

  “I came to inquire about the shooting at the Hart place,” Denton said.

  Abernathy sat up straight. “What about it?”

  “I saw Bercow’s wagon a moment ago, and it came to me that I should stop by, see if there’s any assistance can be rendered,” he said, opening his hands in a gesture that signified giving. “I mean, I have manpower I can call upon.”

  “This is a matter for the law.”

  For a moment the two men just looked at each other, neither moving, neither looking away, Sheriff Abernathy’s words landing between them. Jack Denton shrugged dismissively. “Well, the offer is there.” He crossed one leg over the other. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what kind of barbarian would be capable of a thing like this?”

  “All men are capable, Jack. But in terms of evidence, no, we have no leads yet. Believe me, we’re working on getting some.”

  Denton placed his clasped hands on his knee. “I’m sure you can understand this case is the talk of the town. The people out there are worried.”

  “Only a fool wouldn’t be. That much is certain. So how’s about we get down to the matter of your visit this morning. You know, why you happened to drop by. I can’t say I’m used to seeing you in here, other than those occasions when someone in your employ has got himself into some scrape or other.”

  Denton relaxed into his chair, one corner of his mouth lifting in a sneer. “Sharp as ever, Sheriff. Don’t let nobody tell you different.”

  Abernathy just looked at him.

  “I know that you must view me as something of a thorn,” Denton said, “what with some of my men hitting the saloon and their prevalence for mischief when they’ve had a bellyful of liquor.”

  “Or when your son follows suit,” Deputy Mitchell said, speaking up from the sidelines of the conversation, “though it has been a month at least since his last dustup.”

  Bobby Denton, Jack’s son, was eighteen and a troublemaker. Sheriff Abernathy openly admitted to Deputy Mitchell that he’d like nothing more than to throw the kid in the back of a sealed wagon and send him off someplace. Being the son of a rich, powerful man had not done the boy any favors. He was unlikable, prone to causing fights and quarrels in town and an all-round bad egg. Neither lawman cared to have him around.

  Denton looked at the deputy. “My son is impetuous and querulous, I will admit. But he’s seen the error of his ways since you both had to intervene in one of his fights, and I’ve set him to working hard on the ranch. There ain’t a day goes by that boy don’t finish his work covered head to toe in mud, the way it’s meant to be.”

  “Getting a young man such as that working hard is no bad thing. It will serve to knock some sense into him. Lord knows he could use it.”

  Denton took umbrage at the comment—Mitchell could see it—but he did a good job of trying to hide it. “Well . . .”

  “So the real reason you’re here?” Abernathy pressed him.

  Denton cleared his throat and got back to business. “I have long had my eye on the Hart place. It’s next to my land and the pastures are desirable, particularly for a man with a number of beasts such as mine. Added to that, the existence of a well directly in front of the property, which I heard tell has supplied clean drinking water for generations. A man in my line of work can always use another source of drinking water. I think even a layman can understand that.”

  “Uh-huh,” Abernathy grunted.

  “I made that man several offers without luck, rest his soul.” Denton embellished the last part by pressing his hand to his chest, over his heart. As if it made his intentions more noble—or his misgivings about the murder of Glendon Hart and his family more sincere. “But Glendon Hart was stubborn as a mule. Eventually I gave up asking.”

  “Hope you’re not in the way of thinking you’re gonna get preferential treatment just because you came by here to voice your intentions, Jack. That’s not how these things work,” Abernathy warned him.

  “I know how it goes, Sheriff. There’s a process to matters such as this, and they must be completed as per the expectation of the law. I’m a shrewder man than you give me credit for.”

  Sheriff Abernathy tilted his head. “So why are you here, then?”

  “I came by to signal my intentions to make an offer on the place once the dust is settled. And I didn’t want you to be expectin’ any kind of skulduggery or dishonesty. But you know as well as I do, if I don’t buy that place, somebody else will. We can’t be sitting on our hands, not even when there’s been a tragedy such as this. A terrible, terrible tragedy, I might add. The world turns with or without us.”

  “Very poetic,” Abernathy said with a snort.

  Deputy Mitchell made no attempt to hide his outrage. He rose from his chair, arms braced on his desk. “Are you really discussing a man’s property when he ain’t even in the ground yet?”

  Denton merely looked at him. His congeniality, his good manners were an act. They were a means to convince people that he was an honest businessman. That he cared about community. All of it was a mask he wore to conceal the hard, stonehearted son of a bitch he really was. Mitchell despised him.

  “You really must calm yourself, Deputy,” Denton said, his voice dripping with condescension. “I’m just havin’ a conversation here. As I said, just stating my intentions.”

  “Damn you, Denton, it ain’t a simple conversation and you know that all too well.”

  “Boyd . . .” Sheriff Abernathy gestured for him to calm down.

  Mitchell thumped the top of his desk. “But, Sheriff, the blood ain’t even dry!”

  Abernathy shot him an angry look. Denton half turned in his chair, looked at Mitchell and smirked.

  The deputy exhaled heavily and collected his hat. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Might be a good idea, son. You should clear your head,” Denton said.

  Mitchell glared at him. “I hope your busine
ss here is concluded by the time I get back,” he said, brushing past Denton and reaching for the door.

  Abernathy spoke up. “Boyd, head on over to the livery. See what Warren knows about that new fella. Find out where he was on the night.”

  Mitchell tipped the front edge of his hat. “Yes, sir,” he said, walking out into the sunshine and leaving the sheriff to finish his conversation.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Deputy Mitchell headed down the main street, nodding politely to the storekeepers who greeted him with good mornings and hellos from their front porches. Although it was early, the general store already bustled with customers. Amity Creek was expanding at an exponential rate, with at least one new house built every year. Outsiders arrived from all over. Some set down roots; some moved on. Boyd Mitchell had to admit he had never seen the like of country such as this: the rolling hills, the sweeping pastures and the subtle blue of the mountain range in whose shadow they existed.

  The walk to the blacksmith gave the deputy a chance to think. He could not stand to be in the same room as Jack Denton a moment longer with his talk of profiteering from murder and death. He saw the way Abernathy had handled him—his impartiality—and wondered if he’d ever be able to keep his own emotions out of things the way his boss did. It took a lot of discipline to be able to sit there and listen to Denton’s mock sympathy for the dead.

  Mitchell’s boots sloshed in the tacky mud from the previous night’s rainfall—the street had a way of becoming an impassable bog with runoff that could sweep your legs out from under you if you weren’t careful. But the sun was out, and soon the ground would firm back up. The deputy crossed the street and passed Bercow’s furniture store. He saw that the wagon now stood empty of its cargo. The Hart family would be inside, awaiting their burial. It made him sick to the stomach to think that Denton was already planning what he was going to do with their place when they’d barely turned cold.