Joe had to force himself to look Jesse Weirdunkal, town founder, mayor and Millie's pain in the eye. Jesse had given him the job when he mustered out of the Army a year ago, said it didn't matter he'd never worked in law before, that it was more important to have a brave man. “You can always get experience. Bravery doesn't come so easily,” Jesse said. “They don't give the Medal of Honor to cowards.”
Jesse didn't look like he felt the same way after his daughter had been murdered: “Get that killer!” Jesse said. “Don't make me wonder why I hired you.”
“I've called for Charlie Malone from Tucson. He said if I ever needed anything . . .”
“Good. We'll have a real lawman on the case,” Jesse snapped.
Joe was about to say something else but Jesse didn't look interested in words; he only wanted to hear how the killer was found and hung.
The answer to the unasked question of why there was no chaperone with the two young people came from Lilly later. Millie had gone to see her friend, Arlo's sister. Arlo offered to walk her home and they must have stopped off at the park.
Joe watched the eyes of his citizens. Folks were getting scared. Fear was spreading like melting butter in a frying pan.
“Oh, my poor baby,” Lilly said, smoothing down Joe's hair and giving him a peck on his leathery cheek when he stopped by the café for dinner. A picture of the owner's favorite aunt and uncle hung right over the cash register, presiding over the dining room. Uriah Smith of St. Joseph, Missouri had never been to town to see how his nephew had made use of the photograph he’d asked for. If anybody asked who the weird uncle was, they were directed to the picture of Uriah.
“Being a hero isn't all it's cracked up to be,” Joe said to Lilly. “I really hope Charlie gets here soon. He can solve this damn thing. He can have the glory.”
“Chick,” Sheriff Joe said the next day, after sleeping on the case, “we’ve got to catch this guy. I don't know what's holding Charlie up but we can't wait.”
Chick gulped. Joe looked serious.
“We’re going to take shifts. I’ll ride for eight hours a day, and stay in the office for two, in case of other concerns. You’ll do the same. Then we’ll have Justin ride for eight. If we see anyone even holding a big piece of cactus, or something that looks like it could have made those kinds of wounds, we'll arrest them; we'll have our man.”
Chick rode though he didn’t like Joe's plan one bit. He was frowning, bug-eyed and trembling. All color drained from his face. He bit the side of his lip until it bled, bucked up and rode anyway. His momma told him to always do what your boss tells you to do. That’s what Chick did.
“I’ll see if I can’t get Charlie to help spell us some once he gets here,” Joe said later between Chick's circuits. “Then I’ll see if I can’t get some other men to ride patrol with us. It would be fine if we could get these shifts down to four hours apiece. Four hours riding around and around is enough time in the saddle for anyone.”
Still, Chick rode. If he wasn’t riding, nobody was and they needed a rider, Joe said.
Try as he might, Joe couldn't get anybody else to help with the patrols. Everyone gave one lame excuse or another. That bothered Joe to no end though he didn't say anything about it – except to Lilly.
That short, dandified newspaper writer from back east, working for the Tucson Citizen, had dubbed the unknown killer the ‘Pincushion Murderer'. Marshal Malone must have got the wire because there probably wasn't any other way the newspaperman would have found out about the murders, Joe surmised.
“You know if Marshal Malone is coming?” Joe asked pointedly.
“He didn't tell me. He knows you sent for him.”
Joe groaned trying to understand what this meant. He wasn't coming?
“You've got quite a reputation in Tucson, sheriff. Word is you done stood against eighteen Apache renegades armed with rifles and another criminal gang trying to kidnap orphans from a train.”
“It's what anyone would do.”
“No it isn't. And you captured ten of them? Killed the rest?”
“One of the older boys got a couple.”
“Still!”
Joe shrugged.
“It looks like the victim was hit repeatedly with cactus. We've probably got a crazy on our hands.” Joe said.
The thin newspaperman nodded meaningfully and jotted some notes down.
Chick busted in Joe's office, mad that Justin Collins had hadn't shown up for his shift. Collins said he might be getting on with one of the ranches in the area. He didn't need a paid job as bad as he had the week before, he told Chick.
“It’s a sad day when the only thing folks care about is themselves,” Joe opined.
The newspaperman scribbled the quote.
“Please don't write that,” Joe sighed. “Last thing I need is everybody in town mad at me. All this murder is getting me a bit tetchy.”
The writer scratched the quote out. “Sure, sheriff. People are scared, can't blame them.”
“Can I speak off the record?”
“Sure.”
“Scared people scare me!”
Chick patrolled alone the rest of the day. Joe had to attend to a thousand other issues.
The deputy didn’t know what he'd do if he saw the Pincushion Murderer. He's thirty-one, but he looked like he's at least twenty-five years younger, and standing in a graveyard at night.
Chick imagines the murderer as a man with sleeves down to his hands. The sleeves have small, thin nails sticking out of them. He doesn't have a clear idea of his face but its crazy, bug eyed and aggressive.
In the sky, the moon is almost a full; for a night, it's bright.
“Goin’ around again?”
The man who called out is standing with his buddies in front of The Watering Hole, usually the most crowded saloon in Weirdunkal.
“Yup, that’s right.” Chick answers again as he answered the other hundred times this man or one of his associates had asked.
The men get a hardy laugh out of that--again. They're already drunk but they down some more swallows in Chick's honor.
“You're like some kind of damn vulture, the way you go round and round,” another man says, slurring. “Too bad to be you. I feel sorry for you, Joe Conroy needs to give you a break.”
“Let him ride around for once,” another man says.
“You're going to get dizzy!” another man says, busting out laughing.
Chick ignores them and rides on, figuring out another way to go where he doesn't have to pass The Watering Hole.
It's likely the thousandth time that week Chick sees the scene in front of him: the blue, towering mountains; a variety of palo verde and creosote trees in the foreground and an eighteen-foot-tall saguaro with two arms in the middle, towering above the palo verde. Had the saguaro moved?
“I’m getting nutty,” Chick mutters. He's shaking and embarrassed. He feels like he's being watched and wishes he could as brave as Joe Conroy.
On the next trip around, bypassing The Watering Hole, the scene is different again.
Rubbing his eyes, Chick looks even closer. Maybe sketching everything all the time the way Joe does isn't a bad idea.
“Hey, Chick,” Clint Walker says interrupting Chick's concentration, calling out to him from his porch.
“Evenin’ Clint,” Chick said.
“You’re going by Le Clair’s place? I borrowed this here hatchet from him the other day. Mind returning it for me?”
Chick sighs. “Might as well. It’ll give me something to do besides ride past his place.”
“You're all right, buddy. Thanks!”
On the next pass, Chick is sure his eyes are lying to him. There's a saguaro standing by the side of the road. None had been there before. The saguaro looks odd. Plants in the area were tall grass, rushes and cottonwoods, not saguaros.
He sits straighter in the saddle, widens his eyes and grips the hatchet for Le Clair tighter.
“Iy-yi-yi-yi!” Chick whoops.
Chick doesn't have to spur his horse to gallop away; the horse gets the idea for himself. The saguaro springs after him on two running legs like a man's, but green like a plants. When held together the legs come together like the base of a normal cactus except for a think vertical line where the base splits apart to form the two legs on which it ran. They're definitely not together right now.
A hundred feet later, Chick reins in his horse. Nobody's going to believe a saguaro attacked him. He isn't sure he believes his eyes as it is.
Joe's going to laugh at me. Only thing to do is bring it down myself. It's what Granddaddy would have done!
It's also what Joe would do. Brandishing the hatchet, he and the horse charge. He has to use the hatchet because he's sure shooting at it wouldn't do much except make it ugly.
Charging, it doesn't spook it at all. Its arms draw back as Chick closes in.
Chick's hands shake and he almost drops the hatchet.
Of course all this, and the four-second fight that follows, is moot when Chick is discovered bloodied and murdered a little after sunup.
Joe notices evidence. Chick hacked off a bit of the cactus's green flesh before he died. It doesn't look like it comes from your regular plant. It doesn't take a botanist to tell it's from something else entirely. But exactly what is beyond me, Joe thinks.
Joe told Lilly he thought the killer might be a plant. “Kind of like one of them Venus fly traps.” Word spread from the Weird Uncle Café until it reached all the way back to Joe.
“My son has something he’d like to tell you about,” Jim Chestnut said later to sheriff Joe, stopping by the office. He was a robust blacksmith from Missouri who moved to Weirdunkal about a year ago to work for the mine but ended up opening his own blacksmith shop a couple of months later.
The fifteen-year-old behind him was Chestnut's son Michael. Michael was brawny like his white father yet short and brown skinned like his Apache mother.
“Tell the sheriff everything you’ve told me. Go on,” Jim said.
Shyly, the boy began. “I don't know if all this means anything, Sheriff.”
“That's all right. Say your piece and I'll decide.”
One day an Apache fighter is walking in the desert thinking of ways to become a better hunter and warrior.
The best thing he can do, he decides, is to become less visible.
How can I do that, he asks the heavens.
A storm gathers. From the south comes a mighty wind, then gusts of rain and flashes of lightning. Nothing uncommon about this. During certain times of the year, it can be sunny and cloudless one minute and stormy the next. The warrior decides to hide to wait out the storm.
The lighting follows him. No caves where he is, but there are tall trees. The trees blow apart, hit by lighting bolt after lightning bolt.
The warrior doesn't know what to do–there isn't any place to hide. The storm seems to be directed at him. Has he made the spirits angry?
The young warrior backs up a hill. At the top of the hill is a giant saguaro; no other place to go. At the base of the giant cactus is a depression. The roots of the plant are exposed. He hides among them, sitting within the depression, partially shielded from the slapping rain.
The storm blows on. Flooding fills the depression. The warrior edges up closer under the saguaro to stay out of the water. It isn't comfortable, but it's cozier than remaining in the open.
Lighting bolts slash through the air hammering the earth and plants all around. The warrior makes himself smaller underneath the saguaro.
A bolt from the sky hammers the ancient saguaro seemingly angry it's sheltering the crouching warrior.
“He wanted to look different in order to become a better warrior. That's what happened. He became part cactus and part man. My grandfather said I was something like that man. I am not quite Apache, not quite white man. I am something in between,” the boy says.
“Well, you're quite a young man anyway,” Joe says. “I appreciate you coming out and telling me this.”
The more Sheriff Joe thought about it, the less crazy the story sounded. Last week, it might have. Now, after four strange deaths, he wasn’t so sure. It actually explained a lot. Whatever the thing Chick had seen was, it fought like an Apache–hit and run. It wasn't going to attack a large group of people aggressively; it was going to go for the one or two people out by themselves favoring those whose attention was diverted. It would hit, “run” and blend into the desert. Either that or it might set up an ambush.
This killer isn't going to stop until Weirdunkal is a ghost town. Joe was sure of it.
“What are you going to do?” Lilly stopped by his office where she found him reading Scientific Law Enforcement. “Are you really waiting for the marshal to do anything? That's what everyone is saying.”
“No. For whatever reason, Charlie isn't coming. Anyway, I'd be surprised if I saw him now. Chick's dead and Justin suddenly decided being a ranch hand is better than being a deputy. Can't do a thing about Justin. Not sure he'd have been much use anyway if he wouldn't of stuck at a time like this.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Become bait like a worm on a hook.”
Lilly knew exactly what he meant. She'd been with him long enough to know how he thought.
“Joe, let me come with you. Let me help.”
“Forget it, Lilly. It's too dangerous. I'd never let you put yourself in danger like that. You've got to think of Chip. He needs you.”
“He needs you, too.”
“There's other men around.”
“Nobody pays attention to him like you.”
“Forget it.”
“I can't.”
“You're not coming with me.”
“I am. Look, Joe. I can help.”
“How?”
“For one thing, I can net a snare better than any man. I'll be a second set of eyes. If I see some giant cactus moving toward us, you can be sure that I'll scream and let you know.”
“Lilly, I'll be fine.
“And one more thing – you might need yourself a girl to get this monster.”
“How's that?”
“Maybe we can get it to think we're paying attention to each other instead of looking for it. You're not going to be able to do that sitting out there waiting for it. You're an entirely different man than Chick. Chick would ride around shaking and looking pie-eyed, bless his soul. It was all he could do to stay in the saddle. You probably scared him more than some giant killer cactus. You'd be about the last person the cactus man would attack and you know it too.
“Now, if that damned cactus killer thinks you're paying more attention to me than everything around you . . .”
Joe's mouth set into a line and he growled. “All right.”
“Goody! This is going to be lots more interesting than waiting tables.” She pecked him on the cheek, thrilled.
“That boy is going to need his momma. If something should happen to you, I don't know that you'll be doing right by him.”
“He's going to be fine ‘cause nothing will. And anyway it's better for parents to provide a good example to their kids. I don't want him to grow up thinking it's all right to be a coward.”
“There's no arguing with you, is there?”
Lilly grinned and batted her eyelashes.
Joe and Lilly passed the wooden bench where Arlo and Millie were murdered behind a wooden barricade marked “Work Area.” The sun was setting. The desert around them was getting harder to see.
“He's a good kid. You done right for him.”
“Thank you.”
Lilly looked absently around, trying to keep from looking like she was concentrating on the darkness. They planned to promenade back and forth through the park. Neither Arlo, Millie, nor the killer paid heed to the Work Area sign before. Hopefully folks in the town w
ould. If they didn't, they'd be in for an unpleasant surprise. The whole park was booby trapped. She and he spent the day fixing the place up.
When Joe and Lilly stopped, they'd stop in front of or near one of their snares. They wouldn't be safe from all directions. With Chick dead, and no U.S. Marshal, there wasn't anybody else to help them if they ran into trouble with the killer cactus. If they were going to prevail they'd need a little luck.
More small talk: “It's a beautiful night. The stars are twinkling like your eyes,” Joe cooed.
Lilly grinned at the compliment and modestly glanced downward. Never having dramatic training and only seeing a few plays in their time, they put their heads together and found they knew enough about such things to know they had to avoid talking about the murders. There wasn't any way to know how much English the creature spoke.
When she looked upward, she saw how, at first glance, what looked like a barrel cactus had moved behind Joe. Instantly she knew that was part of the way the killer cactus had avoided detection by the townspeople, by appearing to be an entirely different species. Few went around looking at plants closely.
There'd been a lot of ways for the killer to hide among them. It could lie down and pretend to be a felled cactus. It could hide in a copse. It could leave the area and come back at night.
“To your back,” Lilly whispered. “Not yet. Get ready.”
Slowly, the cactus unfurled itself, lengthening along the ground.
Joe reached down her leg and worked out a knife from her petticoats. To the observer it might look like he was getting fresh and she was letting him.
“Ooh!” Lilly cooed and swayed her hips from side to side.
Joe kissed her neck again and again. Waiting.
When the cactus killer sprung, a trip line strung near the trail triggered a tree branch. The branch hit the cactus square in the side, surprising the cactus creature but falling far short of stopping it.
Over eighteen feet tall fully extended, the cactus towered over Joe. Still, Joe didn't appear impressed. He sprung on the cactus stabbing and slashing savagely. He carved out a big hole in its side.
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