Hell's Half Acre

by William W. Johnstone

  “You’ll have to use his glass,” Jess smiled, “or wash it under the pump out back.”

  “Whiskey kills all germs, even Chinese ones. Pour it, Sheriff.”

  After Luke was seated with a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other, Jess said, “What’s your opinion of Mayor Stout?”

  “I don’t like mayors. They’ve thrown me out of too many towns.”

  “I mean as a person,” Jess said.

  “I told you, I don’t like mayors.”

  “Is Stout capable of kidnapping a young woman and keeping her in his home against her will?”

  Luke was genuinely surprised. “Horny Harry? Hell, no. He likes whores. He sees using whores as a business arrangement that keeps him free of emotional entanglements. For men like Stout it’s all about power, and a full-time woman would do her best to undermine that power. You’re an innocent, Sheriff, but I hope you’re catching my drift.”

  “Is he capable of murder?” Jess said.

  “Any man is capable of murder under the right circumstances, but Harry Stout?” Luke shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Is he mixed up in the opium racket?”

  “Like Kurt Koenig, Stout gets his cut to turn a blind eye to it.” Short grinned. “What is this, Casey, a question-and-answer session? I came here to see if you wanted to call in the favor I owe you, not exchange gossip.”

  Jess said, “I believe somebody wants to introduce a deadly new drug into Fort Worth and I think Mayor Stout is behind it.”

  “Right now this city has all the drugs it needs—Stout knows that,” Luke said. “You’re listening to too many rumors.”

  “Are you going into the opium business with Kurt?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Luke Short drained his glass and rose to his feet. “Casey, the thought of owing you a favor is keeping me awake o’ nights. Until you call it in, I’ll be your shadow.”

  “Nice of you to say so, Luke,” Jess said. “But we’ll let things play out and see what happens.”

  “And for God’s sake, change your shirt,” Luke said. “You’ve got blood all over it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  There was little by way of mindless violence that could horrify the people of Hell’s Half Acre, but the manner of Lillian Burke’s death did.

  Jess Casey, the entire left side of his chest stiff and sore, sat at his desk drinking his morning coffee as he gazed out the window at a sky the color of tarnished brass and wood smoke. The wind gusted in the street and a few random drops of rain ticked on the roof.

  Jess was on his second cup of coffee when the door opened and several men and a couple of women stepped inside. The men seemed stunned, the women were pale, their lips white.

  Jess sensed something bad and he let them speak.

  A man wearing a cloth cap and workman’s clothing said, “Sheriff, you’d better come.”

  “What happened?” Jess said.

  “Mother of God, come,” a woman said. Her dark eyes were haunted.

  “Where?” Jess said.

  “The graveyard. Come,” the woman said.

  Jess stubbed out his cigarette and rose to his feet. He glanced at the bruised sky and shrugged into his slicker, a move that caused him considerable pain.

  When Jess stepped outside it seemed the entire town was headed in the direction of the cemetery. People moved like automatons and clergymen walked among them, reading aloud from the Book . . .

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me . . .”

  “What the hell happened?” Jess said to a man walking close to him.

  “I don’t know how to say it, Sheriff. Something terrible.”

  “An evil thing,” a woman said.

  And Jess gave up asking.

  * * *

  A slender rain fell on the city graveyard like a mist and the crows that had sought shelter in the wild oaks quarreled incessantly and sent down showers of leaves. There were no shadows but darkness lingered in hollow places as though the night had been reluctant to leave.

  Jess followed the crowd to where a large wooden cross with a carved Jesus had stood over the mass grave of two pioneer families killed by Comanches. But the Jesus figure was gone, replaced by what had once been a living human being . . . the bloody body of Lillian Burke.

  The girl had been nailed to the cross in a grim parody of the suffering Savior. She was naked and the huge nails had been driven through her wrists and feet. Jess pushed people out of his path and studied the ground around the base of the cross. As he expected the soil had been dug up and then replaced, indicating that Lillian had been crucified before the cross was raised. Jess hoped fervently that she’d been dead before it happened.

  The crowd was hushed around the cross, only small sounds could be heard, the murmur of prayer and the click-click of rosary beads through trembling fingers.

  Jess scouted the area but onlookers had trampled the ground to mud and there were no tracks. It shamed him to draw close to Lillian’s body and raise his eyes to her nakedness. She was as white as bone. Her head hung onto her breast and Jess thought he could detect the signs of bruising on her neck, but the cause of her death would be determined by Dr. Sun. Mercifully, then, he could not see her back.

  Jess forced himself to do what had to be done. He turned to a responsible-looking man and said, “Bring Simon Hall the carpenter here.” Then, the words sticking in his throat, “He has the tools.”

  The man left, replaced by a woman who held a bundle of clothing in her arms. “I think these belonged to the dead girl,” she said.

  Before he could object, she thrust the clothes into Jess’s arms. He identified white underclothes and a plain dress of blue and white gingham. The dress was ripped, as though it had been torn from the girl’s body, and so was the underwear. Her perfume lingered on the dress, but when Jess lifted it to his nose he could not identify it. He knew he’d smelled it before, but it wasn’t the flowery scent he recalled Lillian wearing. Had another woman been involved in her murder?

  “Sheriff, look at this.”

  A man held out a small object and dropped it into Jess’s palm. It was Lillian Burke’s brooch. It looked as though it had been torn from her dress. The fastening pin was bent and a scrap of blue fabric still clung to it. One of the emeralds was missing from the You and No Other motto.

  That missing stone had been found outside City Hall, a pointer to Mayor Harry Stout as Lillian’s abductor and murderer. As Jess stood in the soft rain he recalled that one of Stout’s henchmen had called Lillian a black man’s whore. Was he behind the framing of Zeus for the jewelry shop robbery and the shooting of Addie? Had he bribed Dorothy Miles to lie? Was he enraged because Lillian had slept with a black man? And yes, that man had to be Zeus. That was why he had to die.

  Jess’s mind was still racing when Simon Hall arrived, Dr. Sun riding in the back of his wagon.

  “Get her down from there and off the cross, Hall,” Jess said. He was about to say, “And don’t hurt her,” but realized how foolish that would sound. Instead he said, “Be gentle with her.”

  Hall, stone-faced, nodded and then he and his apprentice went about their grim task.

  “Poor child, I’ll examine her when she is freed,” Dr. Sun said.

  “I think she was strangled, Doc,” Jess said.

  “We’ll see,” Dr. Sun said.

  * * *

  Lillian Burke’s back was a nightmare.

  “She was lashed, many times,” Dr. Sun said. “By a man who was in a rage at the time. He wanted to hurt her, repay the girl for all the grief she’d caused him. Then he strangled her. I don’t think she was pregnant.”

  “I think she told Stout that she’d slept with Zeus and that drove him into a killing rage,” Jess said. “He framed Zeus for the jewelry store robbery and then had his thugs drag him out of City Hall and execute him.”

  “An e
xcellent deduction, Sheriff, and one we should definitely explore,” Dr. Sun said.

  “I think I’ll arrest him and at least put him out of the girl-killing business for a while,” Jess said. He watched Hall spread a tarp over Lillian’s body.

  “Not yet, my friend,” Dr. Sun said. “Let me conduct my own investigation first. I have ways of getting information that you don’t.”

  “Sheriff, I can take her to Big Sal’s place,” Simon Hall said.

  “Yes, please do,” Jess said. “And Simon, thanks. You left her with some dignity in death.”

  “She was a beautiful girl,” Hall said.

  “She was all of that,” Jess said.

  Dr. Sun, lost in thought, said nothing.1

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Kurt Koenig, wearing a holstered gun under his gray frock coat, walked into Jess Casey’s office and said, “I heard what happened this morning.”

  “Be glad you didn’t see it, Kurt,” Jess said.

  “I had nothing to do with the girl’s death,” Koenig said. “I hope you don’t think otherwise.”

  “Kurt, I don’t blame you for everything bad that happens in the Half Acre, just most of it.”

  Koenig pulled the chair over with the toe of his boot, then sat. The chair creaked under his weight. “Somebody’s pushing a new drug, Jess. Yesterday a beef squad walked into the premises of one of my best customers. They told him that from now on he had to push a new product and to quit buying opium and morphine from Kurt Koenig. My man says, ‘Why, I always buy from Kurt—he gives me an honest deal. And I buy my booze from him as well.’ One of the hoodlums says, ‘Not any longer, you don’t, or you’ll see this place blown sky-high and you with it.’ What do you think of that?”

  “Kurt, I won’t put my stamp of approval on your illegal activities,” Jess said.

  “Well, that’s no matter. I’ve got some of my Panther City Boys guarding the place.” Koenig sniffed, then said, “But I want to know who’s selling the new opium drug.”

  “I have my suspicions, Kurt, but I can’t reveal them at this time.”

  “Well, suspicion this, Sheriff, one of the hoodlums said that my shadow will not fall on the Acre for much longer.” He sniffed again. “Now that’s a death threat if ever I heard one.” He sniffed again. “What the hell is that stink? It smells like a Shanghai brothel in here.”

  “Those are Lillian Burke’s clothes over there in the corner,” Jess said. “I think that’s what you’re smelling.”

  Koenig was horrified. “You’re keeping them?”

  “Doc Sun says we should hold on to them as evidence.”

  Koenig got to his feet, walked to the corner and sniffed. “That’s incense, the stuff the Chinese burn. Hell, I’ve smelled it a thousand times.”

  Realization dawned on Jess. “Yeah, I knew where I smelled it before. At Doc Sun’s place.”

  “There are Chinese living all over Fort Worth,” Koenig said. “She probably picked up the smell in one of them backroom opium dens.”

  Jess considered that. Had she been returning from some opium dive when Stout’s men grabbed her? No, that didn’t make any sense. Why would they if she was already living with the mayor?

  Unless . . . Jess figured it out and he tried it on Koenig.

  “I believe that Lillian Burke was living with Harry Stout,” he said. “She’d been at some opium den as you say and when she returned to Stout’s house he accused her of having sex with Zeus.”

  “Zeus?” Koenig said. “That’s a stretch.”

  “Hear me out, Kurt. Fearing for her life Lillian fled from the house but Stout’s hired thugs brought her back. Later the mayor murdered her.”

  “And nailed her to a cross,” Koenig said. “I doubt that Harry has that much imagination.”

  “Then what do you think?” Jess said.

  “Maybe she was living with Harry and he knocked her up. She went to Doc Sun to confirm her suspicions and picked up the incense smell on her clothes. Somebody murdered her on her way back to Harry’s place.”

  “Doc Sun says she wasn’t pregnant,” Jess said.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter. I’m trying to explain the incense smell on her clothes.”

  “It’s thin, Kurt, real thin.”

  “And so is accusing Horny Harry. Jolly fat men don’t go around nailing young ladies to crosses. Just not their style.”

  Koenig stepped to the door. “Jess, this job is getting to you, driving you nuts.”

  Jess glanced out the window and saw a shadow flick across the oil lamp that always burned in the window of the hardware store across the street. He would not normally have attached much importance to such a thing if it were not for the death threat Koenig had received.

  Koenig’s hand was on the door handle. He pulled it toward him. Jess yelled, “No! Down!”

  Koenig, a man with fine-tuned reflexes and an instinct for survival, threw himself on the floor. A split second later a bullet crashed through the half-opened door where he’d been standing just a moment before.

  Gun in hand, Jess blew out the office oil lamp and then ran to the door. Koenig was already on his feet. “You or me?” he said.

  “I reckon it was meant for you,” Jess said. He rushed out the door but the boardwalk opposite was deserted, black with shadow.

  “See anything?” Koenig said. He had his Colt ready.

  “Not a damn thing,” Jess said. “Whoever he was, he’s gone.”

  “Damn, that was a big gun,” Koenig said. “Sounded like a ship’s cannon.” He stepped back into the office, examined the wall and then did the same in the cell area. “Bullet went right through the place like it was paper and it’s probably still going. Look at the wall. What kind of bullet makes a hole like that? I could put my fist in there.”

  “A Holland and Holland elephant gun,” Jess said.

  “Wilson Tucker has one of those, but he told us he left it behind,” Koenig said.

  “He didn’t,” Jess said. And he told Koenig about the death of the old woman named Dixie. “Almost blew her head off,” Jess said. “It was a big bullet from a big gun.” Then, “Did Harry Stout hire Tucker?”

  “Hell, get Harry out of your head,” Koenig said. “He wouldn’t even know how to hire a killer like Wilson Tucker, he doesn’t have the smarts or the connections. Harry’s mind never rises any higher than his crotch, remember that.”

  “Then who did?” Jess said.

  “Whoever wants to sell a new drug in Fort Worth and make his fortune.”

  “That could be a lot of people,” Jess said.

  “Damn right it could,” Koenig said. “And that’s what bothers me.”

  His handsome face was troubled.

  The incense smell in the office was suddenly very strong and Jess wondered at that. Was Lillian Burke trying to tell him something?

  The little calico cat jumped onto the desk beside him and then stared fixedly at the pile of torn clothing on the floor. She didn’t blink.

  Was the kitty also trying to tell him something he should know?

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “There’s something you should know, Sheriff,” Destiny Durand said.

  Jess Casey smiled. “Then tell me.”

  He decided that once you got around the slightly hard cast of the woman’s features she was stunningly beautiful. And her body . . . well, he didn’t want to think about that.

  “Kurt doesn’t know I’m here,” Destiny said. “And I’m sorry it’s so late. I heard the City Hall clock strike eleven just as I stepped into your office.”

  “Then I won’t tell Kurt you were here, and I don’t feel much like sleeping anyway,” Jess said.

  “You’ve never taken his money,” the woman said.

  “No. And I never will,” Jess said. Then, “You have something to tell me?”

  “Maybe it means nothing,” she said. Her French perfume clung to her like an embrace. “It could be just idle gossip.”

  “Let me decide that,”
Jess said.

  “Before she disappeared Lillian Burke came to ask Kurt for a position. She made it clear that what she had in mind was a job where she’d sit at a desk, not lie on her back.”

  Jess smiled but said nothing.

  “Sometimes Kurt just takes a liking to people, as he did you, and he seemed to like Lillian. Well, like her enough to offer her a clerical job. He has a lot of paperwork keeping track of all his businesses, you know.”

  “Paperwork. Well, that surprises me,” Jess said.

  Destiny’s eyes searched for the sarcasm, but Jess’s face was empty.

  “Well, anyway,” Destiny said, “that was on a Friday and she was to start the following Monday, but she never showed.”

  “This was before she disappeared?” Jess said.

  “Yes, before,” Destiny said. She shifted in her chair and her gold silk dress rustled like autumn leaves. “I met her in the street, that would be on the Thursday, and asked her why she hadn’t showed up for work. She said her circumstances had suddenly changed. What an odd thing to say: ‘My circumstances have suddenly changed.’”

  “And had they?” Jess said.

  “Well, she said so. Lillian was wearing an expensive brooch. Kurt never bought me anything like that, the skinflint.”

  “Destiny, what do you think of Harry Stout?” Jess said.

  “I never think about him.”

  “If you did, what would be your opinion?”

  “Horny Harry? Well, he’s very outgoing, the typical hail-fellow-well-met local politician on the make. He’s also as dumb as a wagonload of rocks. On his best day Harry doesn’t have enough smarts to spit downwind.”

  “Could Lillian Burke have played house with him?”

  “Anything is possible, Sheriff, but I doubt it. Harry is not a one-woman man, that’s why he keeps all the whores in Fort Worth in business. Besides, Harry is not that rich. If Lillian wanted a meal ticket she could have found better. She was an attractive girl. Sheriff, are you wearing perfume?”

  Jess smiled. “No. The incense smell is from Lillian’s clothes over there in the corner.”