2 The Spook Lights Affair

by Marcia Muller

  Ahead the first of the two cottages took shape. Dark, dilapidated, its chimney canted at a drunken angle from a sagging roof. Untenanted, possibly abandoned. He passed it by, moving abreast of the vacant lot. The lot’s expanse was choked with weeds and debris, bordered on its far end by a high, broken black wall that materialized into a clump of pepper trees. The second cottage was invisible behind them.

  Quincannon left the narrow roadway, angling into the lot toward the copse. The mist muffled the sounds of his progress; he could scarcely hear his own footsteps. The pungent pepper scent sharpened as he moved in among the trees. Through an opening between two of them, then, he could make out the second cottage.

  He stood there for a time to tab up the place and get the lay. It was another ramshackle specimen as forlorn-looking as the first, with no lamplight showing and no sign of activity inside or out. Either Jack Travers was already in bed asleep, an unlikely prospect at this early hour—it couldn’t be much past nine o’clock—or else he was a night creature, like the vampires of legend, and out somewhere spending a portion of his ill-gotten gains. If the former, Quincannon would surprise him in his bed, put the grab on him, and if necessary, do a bit of skull-dragging to lay hands on the stolen Wells, Fargo money. If the latter, he would search the premises for the green-and-greasy, and whether he found it or not, await Travers’s return.

  He drew the Navy, then eased out of the tree-heavy darkness. Cans, bottles, other detritus were strewn among the weeds growing in the side yard, and there were holes and mounds of dirt here and there as if someone had been digging with a spade. He managed to avoid all the obstacles until he was but a few yards from the cottage’s side wall, when the toe of his boot stubbed against something that made a rattling, clanging noise in the stillness. He froze in place, tensed, listening. The sound had been loud enough to carry a short distance, but it produced no response from inside. The silence that followed remained unbroken.

  Quincannon waited several more seconds before he continued forward, bypassing more holes and piles of dirt. A window in the side wall was shuttered; the narrow front porch had the kind of tumbledown look that meant rotted boards that would squeak loudly when trod upon. Stealthily he changed direction and made his way around to the rear, past a tangle of berry bushes and a privy that looked as if it were about to topple over sideways. No porch there, just an irregular path leading from a rear door to the privy.

  He crept along the path to the door, half expecting to find it barred from within. But when he tried the latch, it moved freely and the door opened an inch or two, the hinges making no sound. He paused again to listen, heard nothing from inside, and eased the door inward far enough to edge his big body through.

  The room he was in was small and cramped; the outlines of a table, a standing cupboard, a cast-iron stove identified it as a kitchen. Again he stood with ears straining, and again heard only silence. Always sensitive to the presence of others in places of darkness, familiar and unfamiliar, he felt none of the warning signs here. The place was empty.

  Nevertheless, he continued to hold the Navy at the ready while with his left hand he removed a lucifer from his vest pocket, snapped it alight with his thumbnail. The flickering glow showed him a room in disarray: the cupboard drawers pulled out and emptied, chairs overturned, the floor and tabletop littered with broken dishes, scattered sticks of firewood, food remnants a-crawl with insects. He followed the light through a doorway into another, larger front room. This one was in an even greater state of upheaval, the floor strewn with overturned and smashed furniture, a coal stove spilling ashes through its open door, a crumpled carpet shoved into a corner. Floorboards had been pried up in several different places, leaving large gaps.

  Another doorway stood to his left, covered with the remnants of a bead curtain: the bedroom, the only other room in a cottage of this size. The lucifer burned down and went out before Quincannon reached the curtain; he produced and struck another. The combined odors of sulfur and the night’s chill, damp mist were sharp in the air, but as he approached the curtain, a new and far less tolerable smell came to him—one that he knew all too well. He shouldered through the curtain, causing the beads to click violently.

  The match flame, held high, revealed more evidence of a frenzied search. A half-overturned cot had nothing on it but a soiled blanket. But on a second cot against the wall opposite—

  The dead man was sprawled on his back, fully dressed, mouth and eyes agape. Quincannon stepped closer. The black-dried blood on the corpse’s shirtfront had become a meal for flies and ants. Shot once at close range with a large caliber weapon, judging by the size of the wound. At least three and possibly four days ago, he judged.

  A third match revealed the dead man to have been in his early thirties, wiry, dark, balding, without facial hair that might have concealed a mole the size of a dime at a corner of his mouth. He was no one Quincannon had seen before. Jack Travers? Or whoever had torn the cottage apart, caught in the act and dispatched for his troubles?

  The reason for the search seemed obvious: the Wells, Fargo loot. Had Travers had an accomplice, or had someone gotten wind of his and the money’s whereabouts and come to hijack it? Not Bob Cantwell, else he wouldn’t have confided the address to a stranger for a mere one hundred dollars. But possibly another party he’d told about this house for a cash settlement. One shot fired in any case, unheard because of the cottage’s relative isolation, and the shooter long gone with or without the spoils.

  Hell and damn!

  Quincannon holstered his weapon, breathing through his mouth. An oil lamp lay on the floor, its globe unbroken; he picked it up and lighted the wick, then went to the cot. The dead man’s clothing was disarranged, trouser and shirt pockets turned out and empty. A scatter of items that come from those pockets were on the cot and the floor beneath it. So was a wicked-looking spring blade knife, its sharp surfaces free of stains—poor defense against a pistol.

  A cheap pocket watch told him nothing; the inside lid bore no inscription. Neither did the other items he found: a coin purse containing two dimes, a nickel, and four pennies; the stub of a pencil; several pieces of hard candy; a sack of Bull Durham; and two well-pawed French postcards that Quincannon studied judiciously in the lamplight before discarding.

  A new-looking frock coat had been tossed into a corner. Its pockets and lining had been ripped apart, but he picked it up and examined it nonetheless. And a good thing he took nothing for granted, for the searcher had missed something that Quincannon’s deft fingers detected—a folded piece of paper that must have slipped through a pocket hole and lodged in the lining of one of the tails. Scrawled on the paper in penmanship so poor as to be barely identifiable was: The Kid, 9:15, Tuesday, usual place.

  The paper hadn’t been there long; didn’t look old and wasn’t worn. Was the Kid, whoever he was, the murderer? Or did the name apply to Bob Cantwell? And had Cantwell lied or withheld information about the scope of his involvement in the robbery?

  Grimly, Quincannon refolded and pocketed the paper. No matter who had committed this crime and where he might have gone, he would not get away with it or with Wells, Fargo’s $35,000 if the swag was now in his possession. Quincannon had chased down miscreants the length and breadth of California, across a dozen states and territories. He would, as he had once declaimed to Sabina, pursue a quarry to the ends of the earth, even into the bowels of the Pit if necessary. Few had escaped him, none that he would admit to publicly—and none at all when it meant the collection of a reward as substantial as $3,500.

  Glowering, he blew out the lamp and made a hurried exit through the unlatched front door. On his way to track down the cowardly little weasel who had sent him to Drifter’s Alley.

  5

  QUINCANNON

  There was no sign of Bob Cantwell at the Bucket of Beer Saloon. And neither the bartender nor the handful of remaining customers could or would say where the young rascal might have gone to gamble away his one hundred-dollar windfall. Q
uincannon tarried long enough to drink two cups of hot clam broth, his favorite tipple; his blood had thinned considerably since his discovery in Drifter’s Alley and the night’s chill had cut into him bone-deep. His earlier exhilaration was gone, his mood now considerably darker.

  It turned darker still when he discovered that Cantwell had not as yet returned to his room at Drake’s Rest. The front door of the lodging house was unlocked, the crone having carelessly forgotten to lock it, or else it was intentionally left off the latch so she wouldn’t have to admit late-arriving tenants who had misplaced their keys. No lamp burned in the common room or anywhere else inside; Quincannon had to burn another lucifer to light his way upstairs and locate the door with a painted numeral 3 on it. Locked, that one, and no sounds from within or response to his knuckle rap on the panel.

  Downstairs again, he paused in the hallway. There was nothing to be gained in doing any more tramping around the area; for all he knew Cantwell had gone uptown to do his rolling of the bones at Riley’s House of Chance. But he was loath to put off his second conversation with the clerk until tomorrow; in all cases he preferred to strike while the iron was hot, the more so in situations such as this one. He thumbed another match alight to consult his stemwinder. Nearly eleven o’clock. Tomorrow being a workday, it was likely that Cantwell, win or lose, would return before it got to be too late. A wait of an hour or even two, Quincannon decided, wouldn’t try his patience too severely. And he had no compunction about doing so on the premises, uninvited.

  He followed the match flame into the common room, where he took the liberty of lighting a small oil lamp. His presence disturbed the scrawny parrot, whose cage was now covered with a black cloth; the bird made rustling and muttering noises before subsiding again. Quincannon sat in a lumpy, dusty armchair and settled down to his vigil.

  A creeping weariness from his night’s exertions, the lateness of the hour, and the house’s stillness combined after a while to put him into a long doze. But the sounds of the front door opening and footsteps in the hallway brought him instantly alert. He was on his feet and moving when Bob Cantwell came into his line of sight.

  The self-pitying look on the youth’s face said that he’d had no more luck than usual with the dice tonight. When he saw Quincannon approaching, sudden fright replaced the self-pity and he backed up a step, his body stiffening, his hands lifting as if to ward off an attack.

  “You,” he said. “What … what’re you doing here?”

  “We need to have another talk, Bob.”

  “Why? I’ve already told you all I know—”

  “Have you? I doubt it.” Quincannon caught his arm, tugged him into the common room. Cantwell tried in vain to pull away.

  “Don’t hurt me! If you try I’ll shout the house down—”

  “Tell me what Jack Travers looks like.”

  “… What?”

  “Your cousin, Jack Travers. Describe him.”

  “I don’t … what’s the idea? Why do you want to know that?”

  Quincannon fixed him with a steely eye and pinched his arm more tightly. “Describe him, Bob.”

  “Lean, hard … black hair … clean-shaven…”

  “Large mole at one side of his mouth?”

  “Yes. A mole, yes.”

  “Now tell me about ‘the Kid.’”

  Cantwell blinked, blinked again. “Kid? What kid?”

  “The one your cousin was meeting regularly at the same place.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he did know. The furtive shift of his eyes, the sudden tenseness of his body, testified to that.

  “You, Bob? Are you the Kid?”

  “No! I told you, I haven’t seen Jack Travers since I gave him the key to the cottage—”

  “What was your role in the robbery?”

  “My … None! I had nothing to do with it! I’m a respectable—”

  “But the Kid did, eh? Who is he?”

  “I … I don’t have any idea.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Jack never said anything to me about a kid. Why’re you asking me all these questions? Why don’t you go up to Drifter’s Alley and ask him?”

  “I’ve already been to Drifter’s Alley,” Quincannon said. “Your cousin was there, but he couldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Why couldn’t he?”

  “He’s dead. Shot. And the cottage torn apart by whoever killed him.”

  Cantwell’s eyes bugged wide. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, not unlike a gaffed sea bass.

  “Jack Travers killed? Oh, my God! But it couldn’t have been—”

  “Couldn’t have been whom?”

  Cantwell wagged his head. Then his body spasmed, stiffened, as if he’d been struck by a sudden thought, and a name burst out of him unbidden. “Zeke!”

  “Zeke, eh? Who would he be?”

  “No. Oh, God, no! Suppose that big bastard comes after me next?”

  “Why would he, if you had nothing to do with the robbery?”

  Another head wag. In the lamplight Cantwell’s face was the color of clabbered milk.

  Quincannon said, “If that were his intention you’d already be dead. Travers was shot three or four days ago—”

  But Cantwell wasn’t listening. A surge of panic had him in its grip, and it served to double his strength. He struggled mightily, managed to break loose from the tight-fingered grip on his arm. Quincannon clutched at him, caught the tail of his coat as he turned away, but couldn’t hold it; Cantwell twisted away and ran for the front door.

  In the darkness and his haste to give chase, Quincannon stumbled over a fold in the threadbare carpet and banged into and upset a table. By the time he regained his balance Cantwell was out the door and gone. The noise caused by the falling table woke the parrot, which began screeching maniacally in its cage. This in turn woke some of the house’s other residents; angry cries followed Quincannon as he lurched outside.

  It took him a few seconds to locate Cantwell in the foggy darkness. The youth was twenty rods distant, fleeing in a spindle-legged run along the sidewalk. “Stop!” Quincannon yelled. “Come back here, you damned young scruff!”

  The shout had no effect. Cantwell didn’t even break stride, running head down as if a demon from hell were breathing fire on his backside. Quincannon gave chase, but couldn’t catch him. It was all he could do to maintain enough speed to keep him in sight.

  Cantwell dashed diagonally across the empty street in mid-block, casting a brief look back over his shoulder. The nearness of Quincannon’s pursuit spurred him past the darkened front of a warehouse and into an alley beyond its board-fenced side yard. The fog not only hid him then, but deadened the pound of his footsteps. Furious now, Quincannon charged around the corner of the fence without slowing. It was like hurling himself into a vat of India ink; wet black closed around him and he could see nothing but vague shapes through the ragged coils and streamers of mist. He slowed, heard only silence, plunged ahead—

  Something swung out of the murk, struck him squarely across the left temple, and knocked him over like a ninepin.

  It was not the first time he had been hit on or about the head, and his skull had withstood harder blows without serious damage or loss of consciousness. He didn’t lose consciousness now, though for a few seconds his thoughts rattled around like pebbles in a tin can. Through a faint ringing in his ears he heard Cantwell’s frightened voice cry something unintelligible, then a clatter on the cobbles nearby—a board or whatever it was that had been used to bludgeon him. He rolled over onto his knees and forearms, hoisted himself unsteadily to his feet. Fresh pain throbbed in his temple. Somewhere in the darkness ahead there was again the faint beat of receding footfalls.

  A multijointed oath swelled his throat. He bit it back and plunged onward, shaking his head to clear it, using the fence to guide him and heedless of obstacles. Blood trickled warm and sticky down his right cheek, adding fuel to his outrage.

  The
fog-softened steps veered off to the right, were replaced by scraping sounds, resumed dimly at a greater distance. Quincannon’s mental processes steadied. There must be a second alley that crossed this one through the middle of the block. He slowed, saw the intersection materialize through the gray vapors, and swung himself around into the new passage.

  Where, after half a dozen paces, he ran into another wooden fence.

  He caromed off, staggering. The multijointed oath once more swelled his throat and this time two of the smokier words slipped out. He threw himself back to the fence, caught the top and scaled its six-foot height. When he dropped down on the far side he could hear Cantwell’s steps a little more clearly. The fog was patchier here; he was able to see all the way to the dull shine of an electric streetlamp on Howard Street beyond. A running shadow was just blending into other shadows there, heading toward the Embarcadero.

  When he reached the corner he skidded to a halt, breathing in thick wheezes. Visibility was still good; he could make out Cantwell’s thin shape less than half a block away. He broke into another run, summoning reserves that lengthened his strides; he was less than thirty rods behind when the youth crossed Beale Street. Gaining on him, by Godfrey! Quincannon raced across Beale. But as he came up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side, his quarry once more disappeared.

  Another blasted alley, this one dirt-floored, he saw as he reached its mouth. He turned into it with considerably more caution than he’d entered the previous pair. No ambush this time: Cantwell was still fleeing. Quincannon plowed ahead, managed to reach the alley’s far end without blundering into anything. There, he slowed long enough to determine that the footfalls were now fading away to his right, in the direction of Folsom Street. He angled that way, spied Cantwell some distance ahead—and then, again, lost sight of him. And when that happened, his footsteps were no longer audible.