The Crack in the Lens

by Steve Hockensmith

  Then there was a swirl in the crowd, a chaos within the chaos.

  “Stop it!” a woman shouted. “Let ’em go!”

  “Yeah!” a man joined in. “They’re innocent, dammit!”

  Lottie and Bob came shoving through the throng.

  The men who had hold of me didn’t let go, though. They just swiped and kicked at Bob and Lottie, too.

  “Get outta here, you crazy old whore!” one of them was dumb enough to say.

  Lottie went at him with both claws.

  It was two against an army—and then three against an army as Old Red’s friend Suicide Cheney fought his way to Bob and Lottie’s side, fists flying.

  Then four as Brother Landrigan came wading in bellowing, “Stop this insanity!”

  That brought five and six and seven and more as Landrigan’s followers crowded in after him, trying to build a wall of bodies between us and the mob.

  One by one, the men clutching onto me were peeled off and pushed away. The last one refused to stop getting his licks in, though, flailing at me as he raved and spewed spittle.

  “…meddlin’ sons of bitches gonna beat out your brains stupid bastard…”

  It was Sheriff Ike Rucker himself, and I can’t tell you how much it saddens me to say I lacked the strength for a single swing at him. Not that it was needed.

  A hand grabbed Rucker, jerked him around, then clenched into a fist that slammed into the man’s mouth, sending blood and teeth flying.

  As Rucker sank out of sight, I found Milford Bales standing before me.

  “Order!” he bellowed, spinning away to face the roiling crowd. He drew his Colt and fired it once into the air. “Order! There will be order!”

  He was still standing that way—gun up, shouting for order, the Kriegers’ house a giant wick of flame behind him—when I felt my knees start to buckle.

  Well, why not? I thought. I’ve earned myself a good faint.

  So I had one.

  41

  The Breaks

  Or, We Finally Get Some Good News, but Old Red Remains in the Dark

  I awoke from my swoon stretched out on a jail-cell bunk. You might think finding myself in the clink would be a mite discouraging, but that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, I took it as a sign that our luck was finally turning around.

  Lucky Break #1: I was alive.

  And, oh, how alive! Alive with stinging eyes, aching lungs, throbbing bumps and burns, and a splitting headache.

  I summed it all up thusly: “Oooooooooooooh.”

  “You awake, Brother?” I heard someone say.

  Lucky Break #2: Gustav was alive.

  “Yeah, I’m awake,” I croaked. “Kinda wish parts of me weren’t, though. How long was I out, anyway?”

  “Long enough so you missed the sawbones they brought in to look us both over. He was a little concerned, you bein’ out cold for such a spell, but I told him not to worry—you was just goldbrickin’.”

  “Gee, thanks. I’d hate for anyone to waste their time frettin’ on my account.”

  I struggled up to a sit and saw Old Red in the little jail’s only other cell, a few feet away. He looked like I felt—bruised, bloodied, and charbroiled—but what hit at my heart the hardest was the way he had his head cocked to one side, eyes pointed down.

  He hadn’t been looking at me. He’d just been listening.

  Unlucky Break #1: My brother still couldn’t see.

  “What’d the doctor say about you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m alright…though my eyes are still boogered up. Reetinal trah-ma, I think the doc called it. On account of that magnesium goin’ off. He thought it should pass by and by.”

  I didn’t like the way Gustav stressed the “should” there. All too often, such shoulds never turned into dids.

  “I was there when them magnesium kegs went off,” I said. “How come you got it so much worse than me?”

  Old Red shrugged. “I looked back.”

  Footsteps started clomping on the staircase nearby, and a moment later Lucky Break #3 appeared—Marshal Milford Bales.

  He looked tired and rumpled, yet sounder than I’d ever seen him, somehow. Not stronger, exactly. Steadier.

  He turned to me first. “Thought I heard your voice. How you feeling?”

  “Like a million dollars…that’s been run through a thresher and set on fire.”

  Bales smiled. “You’re young. You’ll heal.”

  He looked over at Gustav then, and his smile faded. My brother’s just six years older than me, yet to see the haggard, empty-eyed little fellow slumped there staring down at nothing, you’d be excused for thinking that gap was measured in decades.

  Yeah, I was young. I’d heal—but what about Old Red?

  “You tell him?” Bales asked him.

  Gustav shook his head. “Ain’t had the chance.”

  “Alright. I’ll do the honors.” Bales turned my way again. “I’m holding you and Gus on suspicion of murder. Don’t worry, though. I know you aren’t killers.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  And Bales proceeded to unspool a whole roll of Lucky Breaks.

  “Krieger had his wagon in back of the house when the fire started. The horse spooked and bolted, but it didn’t get far, so I got a look at what Krieger was packing up. He was getting set to leave town, alright, and he was taking some…keepsakes, I guess you’d call ’em.”

  “What kinda keepsakes?”

  “He was a photographer, Otto,” Old Red said. “Think about it.”

  I did…and wished I hadn’t pretty quick.

  “Four different women,” Bales said. “I sent Tommy out to the Phoenix with some of the more presentable pictures.” He turned toward my brother again. “He just got back, Gus, and it just was like you said: They were all Phoenix girls who went missing over the last four years, always in October.”

  Old Red nodded glumly. “You know, I been thinkin’. Soon as you can, you oughta dig around where Krieger’s dark room was. He wouldn’t have bothered haulin’ the bodies far.”

  “I was just waiting for the cinders to stop smoking,” Bales said. “I’ve got more to tell you, too. I found something this morning in Pete Ragsdale’s desk.”

  He reached into one of his coat pockets and produced two folded pieces of paper. He handed them through the bars to me.

  I smoothed them out, gave a whistle, then let my brother in on the news.

  “It’s the membership form I filled out for you when we joined the library. That ‘Texas Jack’ letter, too—written out in someone else’s handwritin’.”

  “Krieger’s,” Gustav said.

  Bales nodded. “That’s a safe bet—and easy enough to prove.”

  I handed the papers back to the marshal. “I wonder why Ragsdale and Bock didn’t set a match to these the second they were done with ’em.”

  “They probably told Krieger they did,” my brother said. “Only it wouldn’t be like them to give up a hold on nobody. Who knows when a little extry dirt might come in handy?” He kicked at a non ex is tent cat. “We should’ve found them things ourselves.”

  “Well, as I recall, you were a little rushed for time,” Bales pointed out dryly. “It’s better I found them, anyway. Makes for stronger testimony coming from me, don’t you think?”

  “Nice work, Marshal,” I said. “You’re turnin’ out to be quite the lawman, after all.”

  I hadn’t meant to hide any barb in it, but Bales winced all the same.

  “Better late than never, huh?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s alright, Otto. I can admit I’ve been a fool. After that talk we had here last night, I did some digging. It didn’t take me long to realize I’d been on the wrong track about you two.” The marshal shook his head and chuckled. “No pun intended.”

  “None detected,” I said.

  “I went to Mr. Coggins, the clerk at the wallpaper store,” Bales explained. “I wanted to find out what
he’d overheard when you two were in there having it out with Ragsdale and Bock the other day. He told me Gus was asking a lot of questions about Gertie’s murder—which certainly didn’t jibe with Gus being the murderer himself. What’s more, Mr. Coggins had a dime novel he’d checked out of Krieger’s library. He didn’t start reading it until yesterday afternoon, but he recognized the heroes’ names straight off.”

  “Why, of course.” I beamed like a daddy gazing for the first time on his newborn son. “Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer in ‘On the Wrong Track.’”

  “That’s right,” Bales said. “Once I took a look at your story, I knew all your talk about being detectives was actually true.”

  “Yeah, well…don’t believe everything you read,” my brother grumbled.

  “So,” I said, “now all that’s cleared up, I assume you’ll be lettin’ us outta here right soon.”

  Bales shook his head. “Not exactly. There’s going to be an inquest—several, in fact—and you remember who the county coroner is.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  Ike Rucker.

  “I wouldn’t worry about Rucker too much,” Bales said. “Horace Cuff’s preparing quite the story for the Free Press. He can’t tie Rucker directly to any of the deaths, but the sheriff was close enough to Ragsdale and Bock to get some of the blood on his boots. If he knows what’s good for him—and he usually does—he’ll want all this to die down fast. In the meantime, I’m going to keep you two here until you’re cleared. For your own protection.”

  I looked around at my cell—all thirty square feet of it—and tried to calculate how quick I’d lose my mind cooped up there. The answer being “It’s half gone already.”

  “What if we don’t wanna be protected?”

  “Well, then there’s the little matter of assaulting a peace officer, not to mention unlawful flight,” Bales said. “Tommy’s been very understanding about the whole thing, but I don’t know. Hit a man over the head, and sometimes he can’t think straight for a while. He might wake up tomorrow and decide to press charges after all. Which would force me to reconsider my position on your escape—”

  “Say, Marshal.” I stretched out on my bunk, doing my best to look comfy-cozy and content. “Could you loan me some paper and a pencil? Long as we’re makin’ camp here, I may as well get me some work done.”

  Bales grinned and started off, then stopped halfway to the stairs. “A couple things still bother me, though.” Slowly, reluctantly, he turned around. “Ragsdale and Bock’s man Stonewall and a prostitute called Squirrel Tooth Annie—they’ve gone missing, too. Went to the Star Saturday night and haven’t been seen since. You know anything about it?”

  I wanted to steal a peep at my brother, try to read the look on his face, but that might have been what Bales was looking for—his way to read me.

  “Nothin’ more than what you just said,” I replied, holding the marshal’s gaze. “You got any theories?”

  Bales peered over at Old Red, then back at me, not just looking at us but into us. Gauging who we were, how we were connected. Who owed what to whom.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing to speak of.”

  He turned again to leave.

  “You said a couple things was botherin’ you,” Gustav said. “What’s the other?”

  Bales stopped without looking back. Even without having his face to judge by, I knew what he was thinking of.

  Gertie. Adeline. The woman they’d both loved, and who may have loved both of them.

  Or one of them.

  Or neither.

  “Forget it,” Bales said, and he headed down the stairs.

  Gustav just sat hunched on his bunk, staring at nothing. He stayed that way for a long, long time.

  Forget it?

  Never.

  42

  Memento Mori

  Or, Old Red Tries to Untangle Himself from the Last Loose End

  Here’s a little pearl of wisdom you can tuck away for a rainy day: If you ever get a hankering to write a novel of your own, you’d do well to get yourself thrown in the pokey. And not for some trivial, one-night-in-the-hoosegow kind of thing like public intoxication, either. Be ambitious. Get hauled in for murder. Because I’ve discovered there’s no better place to get some good writing done than in jail.

  My brother and I spent five days behind bars, and during that time I composed more than half of this book. Old Red, on the other hand, didn’t do much of anything, beyond listen to the occasional Holmes story and sleep and brood. There’s not much you can do when you’re locked up and blind.

  The doctor—a young fellow fresh from some eastern university—came by to check on Gustav often, but it was obviously out of his hands. My brother would see again soon…or he wouldn’t.

  We had other callers, too. Horace Cuff dropped in to interview us for the Free Press, though I didn’t get the feeling he liked us any better now that we were, even by the reckoning of his own newspaper, heroes. Brother Landrigan came by as well, mostly to talk God to Gustav. My brother’s spiritual awakening in church (if that’s what it had been—I still wasn’t sure) represented unfinished business, as far as Landrigan was concerned, and he was there to close the deal.

  Normally, I would’ve guyed the man a bit, sanctimony bringing out my sacrilegious side, but I gave him no guff. He and his flock had helped save our skins when the lynch mob got us, and Cuff told me what Landrigan had been preaching on the courthouse steps that night: the book of John, chapter 8, verse 7.

  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

  So I was actually respectful, for once. Not that it mattered. Brother Landrigan never got much more than grunts and nods out of Brother Gustav. Before long, the preacher stopped coming altogether.

  Old Red perked up more for Bob and Lottie’s visits, and all the bad blood from that dark night out at the springs seemed to be forgotten. They’d stay for hours sitting on chairs Tommy toted up, all of us (even Gustav) swapping stories and (all but Gustav) laughing. Bob even brought up his old offer again, with an approving nod from Lottie. Squirrel Tooth Annie would be staying on at the Lucky Two for a spell (this said in a whisper), but what they really needed was hardworking men. Partners.

  Half the ranch was ours, should we want it.

  “I don’t know,” my brother said. “Let’s see how these peepers of mine heal up, huh?”

  He dodged all other attempts to talk it through. The future was something he wasn’t ready to face. It was the past he was still pondering.

  “Say, Lottie,” he said one day. “Adeline ever mention her and Milford Bales…you know? Doin’ business?”

  Lottie looked like she was going to bust out laughing. “Bales? With one of the girls? Never. I didn’t even know he had balls at all till I saw him slug Rucker the other night. Why? Did Ragsdale or Bock tell you that?”

  “Oh, we heard something of the kind somewhere or other,” Old Red muttered, and he quickly changed the subject to the myriad miseries of jailhouse food.

  We only had one other visitor of note during those days. Sure, a few gawkers and curiosity seekers came by—townsfolk with nothing better to do than angle for a good gape like we were sideshow pinheads—but Bales only let one up to see us.

  It was Mr. Coggins, the mousy little wallpaper salesman. He was clutching something in his hands: a thick magazine he held up for me to see.

  Across the cover, in blocky black letters, were the words Smythe’s New Detective Library. Underneath that, smaller but by no means small, was the title of that issue’s main story hovering above a black-and-white drawing: two men in a furious fight atop a locomotive as it plunged over a mountainside.

  “‘On the Wrong Track’ by Otto Amlingmeyer,” I read out for my brother’s benefit.

  I mashed my face against the bars, squinting at the illustration.

  Yup—that was a mustache, alright.

  “Oh, wouldn’t you know it.”

  “What?” Old Red asked.

  “They put you o
n the cover instead of me.”

  “So this is all true?” Coggins marveled.

  “And I’ve got the scars to prove it,” I told him. “Only I think they’re all buried under new scars.”

  Coggins stepped up to my cell and passed the magazine through to me. It was lighter than I’d expected, and rougher, too.

  Coggins pulled out a fountain pen. “Would you mind signing it?”

  “My friend, nothing on this earth would give me greater pleasure.”

  Gustav mumbled something under his breath, but I paid him no mind. This was a moment of pure triumph, and no naysaying or needling would be allowed.

  I John Hancocked the cover with big, swirling loops. “Here you go, sir.”

  I passed the pen back to Coggins. But when it came time to hand over the magazine, I hesitated.

  It was a dream made manifest I was holding. The word made flesh—or cheap paper, at least.

  Would it, I had to wonder, ever feel this real again? Or was this my one little brush with fame and fortune, and after that…goats?

  Coggins cleared his throat, and I reluctantly slid the magazine back through the bars. Once he had it in hand, he turned toward Old Red—then quickly changed his mind.

  He’d read my story, so he knew. Even before he’d been blinded, my brother was not an autograph-signing kind of fellow.

  “Thank you.” Coggins started backing toward the stairway. “I truly appreciate your—”

  “Mr. Coggins, I gotta ask,” I said. “Would you mind leavin’ that magazine? Just for a day or so? I’ve never actually seen anything of mine in print, and I’d dearly love to—”

  Coggins kept going.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, “but this might be valuable now.”

  And he hustled off down the stairs.

  The inquests started the next morning. Rucker tried to herd them along quick, as Bales had predicted, but it still took days. There had to be hearings for Mr. Krieger, Mrs. Krieger, Big Bess, Ragsdale, Bock, and every one of the four skeletons they did indeed find once they dug under the rubble of the Kriegers’ home. Nine deaths to make findings on, in all.