What the Dead Men Say

by Ed Gorman

  He got out of bed. James started to wake up.

  “You go back to sleep now,” Ryan said. “You hear me?”

  But James didn’t need convincing. Between the early hour and his hangover, James had barely been conscious when he’d glanced up. He fell back asleep, snoring wetly.

  Ryan went down the hall to the bathroom. He filled the basin with clean tepid water that he poured from the pitcher. He washed his face and then shaved with a straight razor, getting all lathered up, and then he washed his neck and his armpits and dropped his trousers and washed his balls and his butt. He took water and a comb and got his hair to lie a certain parted way and then he was satisfied. He was a handsome man and he knew it and that was his vanity, so even on a morning such as this he wanted to look his best.

  Back in the room, he put on a clean white shirt and a nice light jacket. He looked over at James only once. He smiled to himself. James would always remember last night. His first girl and most likely his first drunk. He didn’t want James to be a woman and a woman was exactly what his sister was turning her son into.

  The last thing he did was pick up the Winchester. Then he was ready. He left the room.

  The hotel he sought was down by the tracks. The back door was flanked by garbage cans. The garbage stank, gagging sweetly like a corpse left in a hot room too long.

  People weren’t up and around yet. It was scarcely five a.m. Another half hour and then they’d be about their tasks.

  He went up three flights of stairs to the top floor and then he went in through the fire door and halfway down the hall to room 307.

  He glanced left, glanced right. Seeing nobody, he rapped on the door with one knuckle.

  “God damn fucking sonofabitch,” a male voice said from the other side of the door. “Who the hell is it?”

  A muzzy female voice muttered something Ryan didn’t understand.

  Ryan rapped again. One knuckle.

  “You’re gonna be one sorry pecker when I get there, let me tell you,” Carlyle said.

  Ryan could hear covers being thrown back. Even in weather like this, some people liked covering up. He could hear Carlyle pulling his pants on. Carlyle continued to swear. The woman said nothing. Hopefully she’d gone back to sleep.

  Carlyle opened the door and Ryan put the muzzle of his Winchester right in Carlyle’s face.

  Ryan saw that behind Carlyle the woman was still sleeping.

  He got Carlyle out into the hall. The man wore pants. No socks. No shirt. He had a lot of gray chest hair and little fleshy titties like a young girl.

  Ryan said, “Walk downstairs now, Carlyle. There’s a buggy and you’re going to get into it.”

  “You got the wrong man, mister,” Carlyle said. It was easy to see how scared he was. It was almost disgusting to see. You’d think a man who had played a part in the death of an innocent young girl wouldn’t be scared of anything.

  Ryan said, “Move.”

  “Hey, listen,” Carlyle said. “You got the wrong man. Honest.”

  Ryan slammed the barrel across the back of Carlye’s head.

  Carlyle, who appeared to be just as hungover as Ryan, started crying.

  Ryan said, “Move. You understand?”

  Carlyle, looking confused and baffled and imploring, snuffled some snot up into his sinuses and starting walking down the rubber runner leading to the fire door, and down the stairs outside.

  Ryan made Carlyle take the reins of the top buggy. He held the Winchester on Carlyle where passersby couldn’t see.

  ***

  As they left town they passed the morning’s first citizens, a black man washing down horses, a Mexican throwing out fry grease, and a chubby priest in a dusty black cassock sweeping off the steps of his church.

  As they reached the sheriff’s office, Carlyle started looking around for any sight of Dodds or his deputies. But the squat adobe building with barred windows on three sides appeared to have no one awake inside.

  Carlyle looked as sad as any man Ryan had ever seen.

  They rode on out of town.

  “You ever have children?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “How come?”

  “Whaddya mean how come?”

  “Most men have kids.”

  “Just never did is all.”

  “Ever married?”

  “Nope.”

  “How come?”

  “What the hell you askin’ me all these questions for?”

  “We got a ways to go. Just trying to make the time a little more tolerable.”

  “You plannin’ to kill me?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You should look at your god damn eyes sometime, mister.”

  “That’s enough for now,” Ryan said. “Just keep your eyes on the road.”

  The horse was a big bay. Every ten yards or so he dropped big splashing green shit on the road. It splattered all over his fetlocks. The smell made things worse for Ryan. He shouldn’t have had so much to drink last night. This morning was important.

  When they got to the timber land, Ryan had Carlyle pull the wagon over.

  Ryan said, waving the Winchester, “Get down.”

  “Get down?”

  “That’s what I said isn’t it?”

  “Why am I gettin’ down?”

  “Because you’re going for a walk.”

  “You’re gonna kill me, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You liar. You liar.”

  This time Ryan smashed the butt of the Winchester into the back of Carlyle’s head. A bloody hairy hole showed on the back of Carlyle’s head now.

  “You sonofabitch,” he said, but he got down. He held his head, trying to stop the blood, but red kept pouring between his fingers.

  Ryan dug in his pocket and took out his handkerchief. “Here,” he said.

  Carlyle took the handkerchief and applied it to the back of his head. The white cloth turned red almost instantly. Ryan must have hit him harder than he’d thought.

  “Move,” Ryan said then.

  “Where?”

  “Into the woods. To the river.”

  “You sonofabitch.”

  But he started walking.

  “You remember the dress she had on that day?” Ryan asked. The trees were spruce and elm and maple. The shrubs were red bud and lilac and mock orange. In the underbrush were fox and rabbit and gray squirrel. You could smell the heat already. You could smell the dry dirt on the narrow winding trail through the woods. Ryan could smell the sweat and the piss on Carlyle. Ryan could smell the sleep still on himself.

  ***

  After a time, them moving faster now, Ryan said, “Calico.”

  “Huh?”

  “The dress she wore that day. Calico.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’d only worn it twice. It was her birthday dress.”

  “Mister, look, I-”

  “You should’ve seen how the bullets tore up the dress. You should have seen the blood.”

  “God damn, mister, you got the wrong-”

  “Stop. Right here.”

  “Mister, look-”

  “I said stop.”

  He jammed the Winchester in Carlyle’s back.

  They were in a clearing. A doe stood on the edge of the long grass. Ryan could smell thistle and thyme. The deer looked so sweet he wanted to go up and hug her. Clarice at the zoo had always hugged the deer.

  Ryan said, “Turn around.”

  “Mister-”

  “Turn around.”

  Carlyle turned around.

  “You know I’m going to kill you, don’t you?”

  “Mister-”

  “I’m going to gut-shoot you. It’s going to take a long, long time to die.”

  Carlyle started crying. You could smell how he’d shit his pants just then. Just standing there, just then, shit his pants.

  “Mister, please-”

  “There’s no pleasure in this for me. I want yo
u to know that. I’m only doing what needs to be done.”

  “Jesus, mister, if you’d just listen-”

  Ryan put a big sopping red hole in Carlyle’s stomach. There was the sound of the gunfire and the scent of gunsmoke. Carlyle’s cry was a pitiful thing. He fell to the ground. He was twitching pretty bad. It was ugly to watch.

  Ryan walked over and stood next to him. Ryan looked down and said, “You should’ve seen that calico dress, Carlyle. You should’ve seen it.”

  Carlyle was sobbing. Ryan could see every piece of beard stubble on Carlyle’s chin and every whiskey and tobacco stain on his teeth. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Carlyle was saying, praying out loud without any kind of shame at all.

  Ryan watched him for a time. Stood there. Just watching. After a time the convulsions started.

  “Shit, mister, just shoot me. Please. Jesus, please. Please.” The blood soaked into his trousers now. You could see life fading in the blue eyes. Fading.

  “Please,” he said. “I can’t take it no more. Please.”

  Ryan lifted the Winchester and pointed it directly at Carlyle’s face. He didn’t have the taste for torture after all. He put the weapon right on Carlyle’s nose. “You sure you want it this way?”

  Carlyle was in so much pain he couldn’t even talk. All he could do was nod. His lips were already dry and white and chapped. “You should’ve seen what that calico looked like,” Ryan said. Ryan shot him in the face. He blew his nose off. All that remained was a ragged hole with blood chugging out. Ryan stared until he couldn’t stand to stare any longer.

  A jay came and sat on Carlyle’s forehead and pointed a delicate beak at the hole in the dead man’s face and started tasting the blood. Already you could see plump black ants coming up.

  Ryan took one more look at Carlyle then hefted his Winchester and left.

  2

  “Morning, Mrs. Griff.”

  “Morning, Sheriff.”

  “Wondered if your husband would be around?”

  “ ’Fraid not. He went over town early.”

  Dodds smiled. “Darned early. It’s hardly seven.”

  “He was needin’ some kind of wrench he didn’t have. Said he could borrow one from Charlie Smythe.”

  Dodds nodded to the barn in back. “He still works on his buggies, huh?”

  “They’re his pride and joy.”

  “Guess they would be,” Dodds said. “He built some good ones when the wagon works was open.” Seeing that he’d made Mrs. Griff melancholy-he was not what you’d call steeped in the social graces, particularly where women were concerned-he bent down to look more closely at the two little girls who stood on either side of their mother. “Now let me see. One of you is Eloise and one of you is Tess. Right?”

  The older girl giggled and blush. “Uh-huh, Sheriff, uh-huh.”

  “You’d be Eloise, wouldn’t you? The oldest one?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How old are you, sweetie?”

  “I’m six and Tess is four.”

  “Four!” Dodds said, turning to the littlest girl. She had golden braids-her sister had dark hair-and wore a blue calico dress. “Why, I thought you were five for sure.”

  Tess blushed and buried her face in her mother’s apron. Dodds looked up at Mrs. Griff and winked. “Last time I saw your mother, I said that, didn’t I, Mrs. Griff? I said why I thought that Tess was five years old for sure.”

  The girls giggled and flushed some more, thoroughly charmed. Dodds straightened up, his bones cracking as he did so. The older one got, the more noises one’s body made. “Do you suppose you could walk me down to the corner, Mrs. Griff? Maybe have Eloise and Tess stay here?”

  He could see the instant alarm in the woman’s eyes. He hadn’t wanted to put it there but there was no other way.

  “Why don’t you girls go back and finish your breakfast,” Mrs. Griff said. He could hear the tightness in her voice, the fear. Something was wrong and now she knew it. She was a plump woman, but pretty even though her hair had started turning gray. She had always struck Dodds as one of those women who can handle any crisis, much stronger than most men at such moments, himself included. But now, panic besetting her gaze and sweet pink mouth, he saw her vulnerability. He was almost disappointed.

  They set out down the walk.

  “Just tell me straight out,” she said. He could feel her trying to remain calm.

  “I think he’s in some trouble, Mrs. Griff.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Old trouble, actually. A bank robbery a few years back.”

  “A bank robbery?” She smiled with a kind of pretty bitterness. “Believe me, Sheriff, you go take a look at the food on our table and then you tell me that we ever saw any money from a bank robbery.”

  “That was one of the problems, at least from the robbers’ point of view. A young girl got killed and the robbers got all het up and took off without any money.”

  “A young girl?”

  “Thirteen. Delivering something to the bank for her father.”

  “My Lord.” She sounded shocked and almost angry. Obviously she was thinking of her own girls.

  They walked a time in silence. Kids were invading the green dusty summer day, streaming clean from the small white respectable houses of Tencourt Street, eager to soil shirts and trousers and dresses and, most especially, faces.

  “Why do you think my husband had anything to do with this?”

  “An ex-Pinkerton man was in town a while back. He’d traced the robbers to here.”

  “And he said Mike was one of them?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Who else?”

  “He said Kittredge and Carlyle.”

  At the last name her face turned sour with a frown. “Carlyle, I could understand. But not Mike or Kittredge. They’re good men, Sheriff, and you know it.” She was watching him now, expecting him to agree.

  “That they are, Mike and Dennis,” he said. “Good men. But think back to when the wagon works closed. Think how desperate men were around here.” He didn’t have the courage to look at her as he said this.

  They reached the corner. A small band of kids stood ten feet away pointing at the sheriff, or more specifically at his badge. It always brought a lot of ooohs and aaahs of the sort kids muster for people in uniform.

  Now they faced each other and Dodds said, “The girl’s father came to town yesterday.”

  “My God. Does he think Mike is responsible?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s what he thinks.”

  “Are you going to tell him otherwise?”

  This was the hard part for Dodds. “Mrs. Griff, I’d like you to talk to Mike and have him turn himself in at my office.”

  “My God. You think he did it, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “My God.”

  “If he don’t turn himself in, Mrs. Griff, he’s at the mercy of this fellow Ryan. So far Ryan has done nothing I can arrest him for. That means he’ll have every opportunity to kill the three men.” He hesitated a minute. “You’d rather have Mike alive, wouldn’t you?”

  “He couldn’t have killed a girl. He just couldn’t have.”

  “It was an accident. Even the bank employees agree on that. An accident. So in all likelihood he wouldn’t be facing any murder charge. Least not a first degree one.” His jaw clamped. “You’ve got to see this Ryan fellow to know what I’m talking about, Mrs. Griff. He’s insane. He’s so grieved over his daughter that nothing else matters than killing the men responsible. If Mike don’t turn himself in, Mrs. Griff, Ryan’s gonna kill him for sure.”

  “My God,” she said.

  The kids watching them inched closer. One kid said, “Sheriff, did your badge really cost two hunnerd dollars?”

  The sheriff winked at Mrs. Griff and said to the kid, “Oh, a lot more than that, Frankie. You just can’t see the jewels I got on the other side.”

  “Jewels! Wow! See, I tole y
a!” Frankie said to the other kid and then they took off running, tumbling into the morning.

  “You tell Mike to turn himself in, Mrs. Griff,” Dodds said after turning back to the woman. “That’s the safest way for everybody.” He touched her elbow. “Please do it, Mrs. Griff. I don’t want anybody else to die because of all this. The girl was enough.”

  Mrs. Griff was crying now; soft silver tears in her soft gray eyes. “He just couldn’t have killed any girl, Sheriff,” she said. “Not on purpose; not on purpose.” That’s all she could think of, the girl.

  “You tell him,” Dodds said quietly. “Please, Mrs. Griff. All right?”

  He went back to his office.

  3

  The hangover felt like a fever in James, but not so much a fever that he couldn’t think about the girl last night. He was changed, and this morning the change felt even more important than it had last night. He wished he had a good male friend in Council Bluffs, somebody you could really talk to-partly to impress, of course (not many boys his age had ever actually slept with a girl), and partly just as a confidant. Obviously he couldn’t tell his mother and he couldn’t tell Marietta. And his uncle already knew about it and…