Bullets & Lies (Talbot Roper 01)

by Randisi, Robert J.

  While he enjoyed eating at a campfire, three days of his own cooking had Roper ready for a good meal. When he walked into the hotel, he was happy to see it had its own dining room.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” the clerk said. “Just ride into town?”

  “Yes, I did. I need a room, and this looked like the best place in town.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the clerk said, “we like to think so.” He turned the register book so Roper could check in. “How long will you be staying?”

  “I’m not sure. At least a couple of days. I’d like to put my horse up in your livery.”

  “Of course, sir. I can have that taken care of for you.”

  “The Appaloosa out front.”

  “Does he need any special care?”

  “Nope, just the usual.”

  “Yes, sir. Our man is very good with horses.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  He could have asked the clerk if he knew Vincent McCord, but Roper had learned a long time ago to be cautious when searching for somebody, get the lay of the land before he started tossing a man’s name around. Some people didn’t like to be found.

  The clerk, a middle-aged man with thinning, sandy hair, handed him a key and said, “Room Five, sir.”

  “Thank you. How long does your dining room serve?”

  “Until nine, sir.”

  “Very good.”

  “Do you need help with your bags?”

  “No,” Roper said, “I just have the one, and my saddlebags and rifle. I can manage.”

  “Very well, sir,” the clerk said. “Enjoy your stay.”

  “Thank you.”

  Roper went up to the second floor, found Room 5, and let himself in. It was a medium-sized room, clean from the look and smell of it. He dropped his gear on the bed, sat on it, and found it firm enough for his liking. He went to the window, mostly to see what was right outside. The curtains were old, but not threadbare. Satisfied that there was no access to him from that avenue, just a sheer drop, he looked down at the town. The street was busy at midday. There were a couple of buildings across from him that were of the same height, but at the moment nobody with a rifle was taking a bead on him from the roof or a window.

  The shot in Washington was still weighing heavily on his mind. There was no good reason for it that he could see. And White’s comment that he was shot at “once in a while” didn’t ring true. No matter how many times you’ve been shot at, it’s not something you get used to. He wondered if White had sent men to examine the rooftops above.

  Roper studied the street but didn’t see anyone who looked as if they were paying special attention to the hotel.

  Satisfied that he had gone relatively unnoticed, he washed some of the trail dust off, then left the room to go down and see how the food was.

  The dining room was midsized, enough tables so that he could not hear the conversations of people sitting across the room. There was no tablecloth on the table, but the tabletop was clean. The waiter recommended the lamb off the menu. Roper ordered it and found it gamy, but edible. He’d go back to steak next time.

  After he finished his meal, he went for a bath and a shave at a place across the street, then stopped in the mercantile and bought a change of clothes. He’d had a suit with him in West Virginia, but left it behind in favor of trail clothes, because of the amount of traveling he was going to be doing. To add to his wardrobe, he bought a shirt and a fresh pair of jeans.

  Carrying them wrapped and tied in brown paper, he decided to try the sheriff’s office first. Although he had lived in Denver for many years and had been dealing with a police department for much of that time, he still had a Westerner’s preference for a sheriff over a policeman. “Sheriff” was an elected position, so people got the man they wanted. Policemen were hired.

  He approached the office just as a man appeared, coming from another direction, pushing another man ahead of him, whose hands seemed to be handcuffed behind his back.

  “Sheriff,” the man whined, “this ain’t right.”

  “Tell it to a judge, Aaron,” the other man said. “I warned you about this before.”

  The cuffed man was wearing an empty holster. The man behind him had an extra gun tucked into his belt, and was wearing a badge.

  The sheriff shoved his prisoner face first into the closed door, then reached around him to turn the knob.

  “Sheriff?” Roper said.

  He had not really meant it as a question, but the lawman took it that way.

  “No, I ain’t,” the man said. “I just do this for fun.”

  “Sorry,” Roper said, “but I need a moment of your time.”

  “That so? Just get to town, did ya?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, my name’s Parnell. Let me get this fella situated in a cell and then we can talk.”

  “Suits me.”

  The sheriff opened the door and shoved his prisoner inside. Roper looked around, still conscious of possibly being followed, and then entered the building behind the lawman.

  24

  The sheriff’s office was musty and crowded. It had the prerequisite desk and stove, some file cabinets and chairs, but everything seemed forced into a space much too small, giving it a cramped feel.

  The sheriff shoved his prisoner through a door that presumably led to a cell block. Roper heard the metallic clink of a cell door, and then the man reappeared and tossed a set of keys on his desk.

  “Whataya think?” he asked, waving his arms. “They shoved me into this closet when the police department opened.”

  “Not much room.”

  “No, it ain’t.” The sheriff fell into his chair with an audible sigh. He was about fifty, with the air of a much older man. “I’m tired,” he said. “Have a seat and tell me your business.”

  “My name’s Talbot Roper,” Roper said. “I’m a private detective working out of Denver.”

  “Now there’s a job,” the lawman said. “You’re your own boss, ain’tcha? Nobody lookin’ over your shoulder. Bet you got a big office, don’t ya?”

  “Pretty big.”

  “That’s what I should do,” the sheriff said. “Set myself up like that. Get much work?”

  “I do okay.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” the sheriff said. “So what brings you my way?”

  “I’m looking for a man named Vincent McCord.”

  The lawman’s face changed, and he didn’t look so relaxed anymore.

  “What do you want with McCord?”

  There was no reason to lie, so he told the sheriff the truth.

  “I want to talk to him about somebody he served with in the war,” Roper said. “A man who received the Medal of Honor.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Westover, Howard Westover.”

  The sheriff thought a moment, then said, “I don’t know him.” Roper believed him, but there was something on the man’s mind.

  “So can you tell me where to find McCord?”

  “Sure I can,” Parnell said. “I can take you to him if you want.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Sheriff Parnell got up and said, “Come on.”

  They stepped outside, and Roper said, “My horse is at the livery.”

  “You won’t need your horse. We can walk.”

  He followed the sheriff until he got an uncomfortable feeling about where they were headed.

  “There ya go.”

  Roper had been able to tell minutes earlier that the lawman was walking him to boot hill, just outside of town. Now he looked down at the crudely drawn headstone that simply said VINCE MCORD.

  “What happened?”

  “He and his boys got drunk one day and decided they’d like to rob the bank.”

  “He got shot doing it?”

  “No, sir,” Parnell said. “They robbed the bank, all right, killed two tellers. One of ’em was a woman. They got away with over twenty thousand.”

  “So what happened?�
��

  “Posse tracked them down, brought ’em back, and hanged ’em in the center of town. No trial.”

  “You lead that posse?”

  “I wasn’t nowhere near the posse,” Parnell said. “It was a combination of lawmen and some of the town folks.”

  “There were lawmen involved in a lynching?”

  “They was,” Parnell said, “but nobody talks about it. Not ever. The next day this town just went back to business as usual.”

  “This town’s got a pretty good history, what with the pony express and all,” Roper said. “That’s quite a blemish to have.”

  “What blemish?” Parnell asked. “I told you, nobody ever talks about it. Why you think this headstone only has a name on it and nothin’ else?”

  “You mean,” Roper asked, “the town goes on as if it never happened?”

  “Mister,” Parnell said, “as far as this town is concerned, it never did happen. If you go over to the police department right now and ask about the robbery and the hanging, they’ll just look at you like you was crazy. There wasn’t no robbery, there wasn’t no murder, and there wasn’t no lynching.”

  “And you’re okay with this?”

  Parnell shrugged.

  “There ain’t a damn thing I can do about it,” he said. “Ain’t a body in this town would back me if I told that story.”

  “Then why’d you tell me?”

  “Beats me,” he said. “I only meant to walk you up here and show you the grave. The rest just come tumblin’ outta my big mouth.”

  “Well, Sheriff,” Roper said, “how about we go back to town and I buy you a drink.”

  “I say that’d be right neighborly of you.”

  25

  Since he was spending the night in Saint Joe, Roper decided to go ahead and get as much information as he could while he was there, so over a beer or two—or four—he asked Sheriff Parnell what kind of man McCord had been. He was interested in the kind of men that had served with Howard Westover in the war. The kind of man Victoria Westover would suggest he contact about her husband’s medal.

  “McCord was a bad one,” Parnell said. “Went to war bad, came back worse. I heard he was almost court-martialed during the war, but it was the eve of a battle and they needed every man they had.”

  “What happened after the battle?”

  “Nothin’,” Parnell said. “The officer who was recommending him for court-martial was killed. He just went along fat, dumb, and happy after that, the same man he’d always been.”

  That certainly didn’t sound like the kind of man a Medal of Honor winner would be associated with, but Roper knew you couldn’t control who you served with in a war.

  “Did anybody else he served with come back here with him?” he asked.

  “Nope, just him,” Parnell said, “but everybody could see he’d gotten worse. The war gave him a chance to kill, and he developed a taste for it, as well as a taste for cruelty.”

  “And it took all this time for him to get himself hanged?” Roper asked.

  “All what time?”

  “Well, it’s been over twenty years since the war’s been over.”

  The sheriff looked at Roper strangely, as if the detective were speaking some foreign language, and then seemed to get it.

  “Mister,” he said, “didn’t you notice how old that grave marker was?”

  “Well, it was kind of worn,” Roper said. “I thought maybe it was used wood they reused over again.”

  “Naw,” Parnell, “wasn’t no used wood. That grave’s twenty years old.”

  “What?”

  “McCord didn’t last very long when he came back to town from the war,” the lawman said. “He got himself involved with the wrong people, and ended up at the end of a rope. Where he belonged.” The sheriff held out his empty glass. “Another drink?”

  Roper went to his hotel after that. He could have checked out and moved on, but it would be dark in a few hours, and that lamb he’d eaten didn’t qualify as a good meal to him. He was determined to have a steak before he hit the trail again—even if it was at breakfast.

  He tried to read to kill the time—this time with a local newspaper, as he had finished his book on the train—but the things the sheriff had told him about Vincent McCord weighed on his mind. What had possessed Victoria to give him that name? Hadn’t her husband talked about McCord when he came home? Hadn’t he told her what a bad penny the man was? Why would she think a man like McCord would sign an affidavit to help her husband?

  He thought about sending the woman a telegram but decided against it. Instead, he would move on to Vega, Texas, and see what he could find out from the next man on the list, Gerald Quinn. Maybe he’d know something about McCord, and Westover, and any relationship they may have had.

  He went out to find himself a decent steak dinner a few hours later. There was a different desk clerk on duty, and Roper asked the man where to go if he didn’t want to eat in the hotel.

  “Down the street, sir, you’ll find a place called Thad’s. They got right good steaks there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Thad’s turned out to be a small steak house with two waiters working the floor. One of them showed him to a table with a checkerboard tablecloth and a vase with one rose in the center.

  “What can I get you, sir?”

  “A steak dinner,” Roper said, “all the trimmings, and coffee.”

  “Comin’ up.”

  As the waiter walked away, Roper saw the sheriff come in the front door. The man spotted him and walked right over.

  “I stopped by your hotel and the clerk told me you’d be here.”

  “What can I do for you?” Roper asked. “Buy you dinner?”

  Parnell sat down and considered the question, then smiled and said, “Why not?”

  The waiter came with the coffee and Roper told him to bring two steak dinners.

  “Comin’ up,” the man said.

  “So what brings you here, other than steak?” Roper asked.

  “I remembered somethin’.”

  “What?”

  “McCord had a woman here.”

  “Before or after he went to war?”

  “Both,” Parnell said. “She waited for him to get back, and they were together when he got killed.”

  “Living together?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how do you think this will help me, Sheriff?”

  “Well,” Parnell said, pouring himself a cup of coffee, “she’s still in town. I thought maybe you’d like to talk to her.”

  Clint studied the man. He didn’t know what he could learn from an old girlfriend of Vincent McCord, but he was still in town, so where was the harm in talking to her?

  “Will you take me to her?”

  “Sure.”

  “No surprises?” Roper asked. “She’s still alive.”

  The waiter came with their dinners, and as he set them down, Parnell sat back and said, “No surprises.”

  26

  Vincent McCord had lived, at the time of his death, in a small house just walking distance outside of town. It had once been a ranch, but the corral and barn had fallen into disrepair. So had the house, but the smoke from the chimney showed that it was still inhabited.

  “What’s her name?” Roper asked.

  “Tina.”

  “Tina what? McCord?”

  “Naw, she never took his name, but she’s used a few different ones. Been married a couple of times.”

  “What happened to the husbands?”

  “They both died.”

  “Suspicious?”

  “Naw,” Parnell said, “men just seem to die on Tina.”

  “Starting with McCord?”

  “I guess so.”

  As they approached the house, Parnell said, “Let me do the talkin’ at first. Tina’s been known to answer her door with a rifle. She don’t like people.”

  “She lives alone?”

  “Yep, ever since her la
st husband died a few years ago.”

  “Okay,” Roper said, “whatever you say. You know the lady.”

  Parnell laughed. “Tina’s been called a lot of things, but never a lady.”

  “Tina!” Parnell called when they got near the house. “Tina, it’s Sheriff Parnell!”

  The front door opened, and a woman appeared holding a rifle. She was wearing a calico dress that hung on her bony frame. Both the dress and the woman had seen better days.

  “Whataya want?”

  “Got a fella here wants to talk to you about Vince McCord.”

  “Why the hell would I wanna talk about Vince?” she demanded. “He’s been dead for twenty years. Who is this fella?”

  “A detective from Denver,” Parnell said. “His name’s Roper.”

  “I never heard of him,” Tina said. “Why I gotta talk to him?”

  “I’ll pay,” Roper shouted.

  The woman hesitated, then asked, “How much?”

  “How much you want?”

  More hesitation, then, “Twenty dollars?”

  “Done,” Roper said, “but I get to come inside.”

  She thought a moment, then lowered her rifle and said, “Come ahead, both of you.”

  As they approached the house, she turned and went inside. They followed, closing the door behind them. The musty smell hit Roper first, and the smell of something she’d cooked recently.

  “I can make coffee,” she said. “It’s all I have to offer you.”

  “That’s fine,” Roper said.

  She came up to him, an angular woman whose angles were more evident this close up. She extended her hand, the dirty palm face up.

  “My twenty dollars.”

  Roper handed it over.

  “Sit,” she said.

  He looked around. In the kitchen area was a pitted old table and a few rickety chairs. Several of the windows had broken panes that had never been repaired. He noticed, however, that the floors were swept clean and there were no spiderwebs anywhere. In her own way, to her own standards, she kept the house clean.