Fatal Elixir

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Now what?” I demanded.

  “Stand back,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you, Mr. Booker. I know you’ve been doing your best for all concerned.”

  “I appreciate your saying so, but why are you pointing a gun at yourself?”

  She spoke to me between sniffles and sobs. “I’ve killed my son and my husband. Everyone I loved. Why should I live?”

  I try to make a policy of not answering rhetorical questions, so I addressed myself to the first part of her utterance.

  “Your son died by accident, Mrs. Murdo. You didn’t kill him, whoever poisoned that medicine did. As for shooting your husband, you did it to save my life. And the Lord alone knows how many others.”

  “Yes,” she said. “He was a monster. I have come to know that. But since he dragged me from my cottage the night he dropped that body in front of the sheriff’s office... Seeing him again, I realized I still love him.”

  She was suddenly screaming. “What sort of woman can degrade herself enough to love someone like that?”

  “All kinds,” I said. “The reason we know that love is divine is that it makes no earthly sense.”

  “My love has not been divine,” she said. “It has brought evil and misery, and the only person who could have redeemed it is dead. As I deserve to be.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and touched the barrel of the gun to her head.

  Absurdly, I wanted to point the gun I held at her and order her to stop, and I might have done that if the shot hadn’t rung out.

  In the event, I was aware of the effect of the shot before I heard the report. The arm crooked toward Jennie Murdo’s temple straightened, and the gun went flying away. She was collapsing to the ground when the sound of the shot made its way to us. I was by her side before the echoes died away.

  Kneeling beside the woman, I heard the voice of Lobo Blacke, faint with distance, but unmistakable, screaming at me.

  “Dammit, Booker! Is she all right?”

  I didn’t answer right away because I still didn’t know. She was bleeding profusely from just above the elbow. The bone didn’t seem to be broken. I fixed my necktie above the wound for a tourniquet, then used my handkerchief to wipe blood away from the arm itself. I tore her sleeve away and saw that the bullet had passed right through.

  Mercifully, she had fainted. I checked her pulse, heartbeat, and breathing, and they seemed to be fine. Another customer for Dr. Mayhew. Maybe she’d be lucky and remain unconscious through the carbolic.

  “Booker, God damn you to hell! Answer me!”

  I stood, cupped my hands to my mouth, and yelled in the direction of the hill, “She’ll be fine!”

  “Good! Come and get me!”

  “Right!”

  That ended the conversation between us for a while, which suited me fine because all this yelling was straining my throat.

  Still, going to get Blacke was easier said than done. The first thing I did was to make sure I had both guns. Next, I went to where I had tethered Domingo. I was surprised for a second to see another horse, big and black, tied nearby. Then it occurred to me that Muller hadn’t come here in a hansom cab, tipped the driver, and told him to pick him up in an hour or two.

  I led Domingo around the rock, lifted Jennie Murdo up to the saddle, then climbed on behind her, much as I had with Lucius Jenkins the other day. I had the horse walk slowly up the hill to where Blacke waited.

  Blacke waited.

  “About time,” he said as I carefully laid the wounded woman on the ground. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “You shot her,” I said. “She’s fainted.”

  “I’m sorry,” Blacke said. He didn’t sound all that sorry. “Shooting a gun out of a woman’s hand at this distance, by moonlight, would take a better marksman than I am.”

  “I’m not complaining,” I said. “She was on the verge of blowing her head off. A wounded arm is a small price to pay.”

  Blacke grunted. “She was about to blow her head off with my gun. I mean, the one I gave you. That gun never killed a woman yet, and I wanted to keep it that way.”

  Then he chuckled.

  “But she’s something, at that, isn’t she? What did she do, tell Muller she’d kill you to prove herself to him?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then she turned around and let him have it. Clever woman.”

  “She doesn’t think it’s so wonderful as you seem to.”

  “You’re wrong there, Booker. The whole reason she’s as upset as she is, wanted to kill herself, is that she knows precisely how wonderful and clever she was, and she’s ashamed of the pride she feels over it. And way down deep, Booker, everybody has a tiny part of his soul the devil never lets go of. That part might even have enjoyed it.”

  “How can you possibly know this?”

  “Because it’s just the way I felt the first time I killed a man.”

  Using his arms, Blacke forced his body around and up into a sitting position. “Now, will you please get Posy so we can get out of here?”

  That was easy enough; all I had to do was whistle and Posy trotted up the hill. The hard part was getting the bulk of Lobo Blacke back up into the special saddle, but I managed it. By the time I had him tied in, Jennie Murdo was stirring.

  “Take it easy, ma’am,” Blacke said.

  “My arm hurts.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You tried to shoot yourself.”

  “But I was aiming at my head.”

  “I’ve been around guns all my life,” Blacke said, “and I know some strange things can happen.”

  And there you have it, I thought, the answer to the burning question of earlier in the evening. Lobo Blacke would indeed shoot a woman; he just wouldn’t want her to know about it later. I pictured Jennie Murdo whiling away the boring hours of her recovery trying to figure out just how she could have shot herself in the elbow of the arm that held the gun.

  “Now,” Blacke went on, “have you got that foolishness out of your head?”

  She was too fuddled by pain to answer. I appropriated Blacke’s neckerchief to make a sling for her, assured him she wouldn’t try anything, at least for a while, and lifted her once more into the saddle.

  A stop back at Bishop’s Rock to sling Paul Muller over the back of his horse, and then we went back to town.

  31

  “SON OF A BITCH,” BLACKE breathed. “God damned son of a bitch.”

  “We certainly are being profane this evening,” I said.

  “Go to—Oh, put a sock in it, Booker. I’ve had a tough night, you know?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I was there. I think I was the one Paul Muller was about five seconds from shooting to death before his wife saved my life. Not the hero on the hilltop, mind you. His wife.”

  “I had a bead on him all the time, Booker. I never saw such a man for worrying as you are.”

  “Maybe you just never saw such a man for admitting it,” I suggested.

  Blacke ignored me.

  “Oh, Lord, if we could have just taken the bastard alive. I could have gotten the location of the evidence from him, I know it.”

  We’d been back in Le Four for about an hour. Stick Witherspoon was back on duty inside the jail, Jennie Murdo had been left in the care of Dr. Mayhew (“You have done something I would never have dreamed possible, Mr. Booker—you are beginning to make me long for the days of Asa Harlan as sheriff”), the horses had been taken care of, and I had changed my clothes and washed various blood spatters off my hide.

  Rebecca had taken Blacke away and tended to him as well. It is not, it seems, good for a paralyzed man to spend too much time prone, and Rebecca wanted to see if there had been any ill effects.

  I wondered if the kiss she had given him earlier had been a topic of conversation between them.

  If it had been, there was no indication of it when I joined Blacke in the composing room. Mrs. Sundberg had prepared a tray for us before going to bed, and we both dug in gratefully as we talked.r />
  Blacke had just taken a large bite of a steak pie when I told him what Muller had said to me about Lucius Jenkins and his role in criminal activities throughout the West. That had brought forth not only the flow of profanity but a fine spraying of golden pastry crumbs.

  “That close,” Blacke went on. “That close to making some real progress in bringing Lucius to justice, and now it’s gone. Why did you let her shoot him, Booker?”

  I looked at the ceiling and cupped my chin in my hands.

  “Hmmmm,” I said. “That is a poser. Why did I let her shoot him? Let’s see. He had a gun. She had a gun. I, following your instructions to the letter, did not have a gun. He, having heard me pass along the proposition you suggested, was about to ventilate my liver, and, incidentally, embark on a mission ending with your death immediately after. Golly, I give up. Why did I let her shoot him.”

  Blacke was smiling in spite of himself.

  “All right, all right, I just get frustrated, is all.”

  “Things might not be as hopeless as you think.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because before this, you’ve been hoping to find some evidence that Lucius Jenkins is the criminal mastermind you’re sure he is. Now you know it exists.”

  Blacke nodded. “That’s a fact, isn’t it?”

  “Not only that,” I went on. “You know the evidence is something—or someone—that Paul Muller knew about and could produce if he wanted to. So all you have to do is imagine what and where that might be, then ask me nicely to go bring it back for you.”

  “Yeah,” Blacke said. “That’s all.” He grunted. “Still, it’s a place to start. Shouldn’t be impossible. I know Lucius, and I know Muller. What kind of evidence could there be...? Evidence that Muller would recognize as evidence, I mean...”

  His voice drifted off the way it did. Usually, I just let him muse, but this time I interrupted.

  “Excuse me. Blacke?”

  He jumped. “Yes, yes, what is it?”

  “Well, the Lucius Jenkins hunt is all well and good, but we had fifteen murders in this jurisdiction—my jurisdiction, God help me—and we’ve cleaned up one of them. We still have all the poisonings to deal with. Or should I not say ‘we.’ ”

  Blacke pushed his hands flat down on the table to straighten his back, then gave a huge sigh.

  “No, it’s okay to say ‘we.’ In fact, I guess you’re right. Now that Muller’s taken care of, we might as well get this taken care of as soon as we can.”

  “We can?”

  “We can what?”

  “We can take care of it?”

  He shrugged. “As well as we’ll ever be able to. It depends how people react, and it’s going to be a lot of show for damn little substance. We’ll have to take a chance.”

  “You scare me to death when you say that.”

  He grinned at me. “You’re the sheriff. Practically everything that has to be done has to be done on your authority. You can always say no.”

  “This is just your subtle way of telling me that if whatever it is you’re planning ends in tragedy or disaster, I’m the one holding the bag.”

  Blacke sighed. Suddenly he looked very old.

  “It’s a tragedy already, Booker. All we can do is clean up after.”

  He slumped in his wheelchair for a few seconds, then gave a quick sharp nod to rouse himself.

  “So let’s get going,” he said.

  “As soon as you tell me what needs to be done. And why.”

  And he told me. Until then, I hadn’t really believed that this thing was ever going to end, not in my heart. Now, though he had convinced me he had the answer, I didn’t think anyone else in town was going to believe it. Was there, I wondered, such a thing as an anti-lynch mob?

  Fortunately, there was enough work to do to keep my mind off the problem. Once again, I spent the night going through town, waking people up, though not on the scale, or with the degree of panic, as on the night of the poisonings.

  I woke Clay Becker, the town carpenter, in his shop near the livery stable, and told him I wanted a platform put up in front of the sheriff’s office.

  He grinned at me. He grins quite a bit, though he lacks a sufficient number of teeth to make seeing him grin a truly pleasant experience.

  “With a trapdoor, Cap’n?” He called everybody “cap’n.” “You fixing to hang somebody?”

  “A trapdoor won’t be necessary,” I said. “But I want a ramp.”

  “A ramp?”

  “Yes, a nice, shallow ramp, so that Lobo Blacke can get up on the thing without being carried.”

  Clay rubbed an unshaven cheek. “When do you want this by?”

  “As early as possible. Before noon.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t do it,” he said. “Not without help.”

  “I’ll get you help.”

  “I don’t just mean two hands and a body, Mr. Booker. I mean somebody as knows what he’s doing.”

  “I’ll get one. Where do you want me to have him meet you?”

  “Right here. He can help me load lumber on the wagon.”

  Then we haggled over the price for a minute or two, ending up at the price we’d both known from the start he was going to get.

  I was just turning to go when I thought of something that gave me a chill.

  I turned back to the carpenter.

  “Clay,” I said, “when you measure a piece of wood, and you want to mark it, what do you use?”

  “I generally score it with a nail,” he said, “and cut along the scratch. Unless I’m measuring on a surface that will show. Then I use chalk. Why?” I saw the toothless grin again. “Thinking of ‘prenticing out to me?”

  “Do you ever use a carpenter’s pencil?”

  “Naw. Chalk is cheap, and I got to buy nails, anyway. Why should I spend money on something fancy I don’t need?”

  I breathed a little easier. I knew Clay hadn’t been getting them through the general store, but it was best to make sure.

  “All right. I’ll have Junior Simpkins meet you here as soon as he can.”

  “Little Billy Simpkins? He used to hang around here all the time. He knows what he’s doing all right.”

  I had to rouse half the boardinghouse before I got a chance to talk to Junior Simpkins. Finally, after the porter, the proprietor, and several guests had angrily asked the noisy visitor what he wanted (one teatotaling Methodist circuit rider nearly threw a chamber pot at my head before it sank in that I was the Law, there on official business), I was ushered into Junior Simpkins’s room.

  He was sitting up in bed, blinking sleepily, still too tired to realize that the thing in his left eye he couldn’t seem to blink away was the tassel of his nightcap. His big white feet protruded from the bottom of his nightshirt and rested on the oval rug alongside the bed.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I need your help.”

  “Booker?” he said. The fog had lifted sufficiently for him to push the tassel away from his eyes. “What? What is it?”

  “I’ve just come from Clay Becker’s,” I said.

  Sleepily, Junior showed me a grin very similar to that of the old man’s, except that it had more teeth.

  “Clay Becker,” he said. “How is he?”

  “I’ve been here less than a year, but I’d venture to say he’s the same as ever.”

  “I’ve been so preoccupied here, I never got around to visiting him.”

  “Well, if you’re willing to help, you’ll be working with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I told him about the platform and the ramp.

  He thought it over. “The ramp will be the tricky part. What do you want this thing for?”

  “I’ve got to talk to as many people in town as I can reach. Show them a few things. Lobo Blacke wants to speak to them, too. We figure building the thing through the night and morning will attract the crowd, and the platform will give us a good spot to speak from.”

  “O
h, I thought...”

  “Can’t hang anybody without a trial,” I said.

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “Will you help?”

  “Sure I will. If only for the chance to work on a project with old Clay again.”

  I told him how much I was paying Clay Becker, and asked if he’d be happy with the same.

  “I’m not doing this for money,” he said. “Keep mine. No. I’ve got a better idea. Give my money to my stepmother, for her orphanage fund.” He started to laugh. “That ought to confuse her.”

  I told him it would be the way he wanted it.

  The next stop was the livery stable. I woke up Jackson Watford and asked him if he could send one of his helpers with a note from me out to Bellevue. He was all business, and instantly named a price for himself, plus a bonus for the rider. There would be no haggling. I often thought Watford spent all his spare time imagining anything that might possibly happen to him and putting a price on it.

  It was a fair price, and I paid it—or rather, the town did. It was sort of intoxicating, spending money that didn’t belong to me. I was beginning to understand why people went into politics.

  I scribbled a note while Watford summoned one of his men. I told Lucius Jenkins that Paul Muller was dead and that I had spoken to him before he died, and some things would be declaimed in front of the sheriff’s office in the morning that he might be interested in hearing if he were well enough to travel.

  There, I thought, that ought to fetch him. A string of truths that added up to a barefaced lie. Still, though he might have lucked his way through Blacke’s clutches this time, Lucius Jenkins should still be around for the finish of the case that had brought him so close to disaster.

  I handed the note to Watford’s assistant, a young Negro lately out of the cavalry, then left the stable.

  I saw a fire roaring away, well down Main Street.

  “Now what?” I yelled, and ran down the street.

  As I got closer, though, I saw that it wasn’t a building that was on fire, it was a huge pile of scrap wood out in the middle of the dusty street, directly in front of the sheriff’s office.

  Clay Becker and Junior Simpkins were there, sinking a stout piece of lumber into the earth.