“Maybe you’d better get over here.”
“I’m supposed to be on duty here,” Valdez complained. “I can’t come running every time you snap your fingers, Mike. You don’t run the police.”
Duer glanced at the window and sighed. The noonday snow was piling up on the ledge. “All right, Joe,” he said ominously. “I’ll come over to your place, but I want to talk in private. Keep this to yourself.”
Duer hung up and reached for his sheepskin. Within minutes he was at the police station. The poker game had resumed, but with an impatient nod Duer called his brother-in-law away and into the inner office, where in terse sentences he repeated the priest’s narration.
Valdez was aghast at the news. “Pobrecita!” he murmured, shaking his head in dismay. “You’re sure of this description?”
“I’m giving you the story the way I got it,” Duer said. “That body is a good twenty miles out in the country—just waiting to be picked up. Frankly,” he added sourly, “I’d normally go out on this myself, but you’re the coroner, and I need your help. Let’s keep the trip small. You, me, Doc Hewlitt, and Sam Dodge.”
“The newspaperman? What for? And why the doc?”
“Because,” Duer said with thinly veiled impatience. “I want Dodge to be along. I owe him a favor, and I know he can keep his mouth shut when he has to.” Slowly and distinctly, knowing that his wife’s brother had none of Pepita’s wits, he went on, “Somebody took that girl out there on some purpose. I got no idea why that was done, but it smells weird, even from the description the priest gave me. If that buckboard really was a McCandless buckboard, this is gonna be a noisy case, and I want Doc Hewlitt to testify in your court from direct examination of the ground.” He paused a moment. “While we’re at it, get that Apache trailer and keep him sober long enough to do a job. He can examine the tracks.”
“Charlie Bear? Ain’t he at Fort Train?”
“Charlie’s here in town.” Duer paused. “Now what?”
Valdez scratched his head unhappily. “I don’t know, Mike! You say this was a McCandless buckboard? Is any one of them involved?”
“Might be. The little girl was fooling around a lot with Harry McCandless.” Duer went on stolidly. “I don’t know where this is going, Joe, but we might—we just might find ourselves knocking on Dan McCandless’ door with a warrant for that boy of his.”
“Ah!” said Valdez with a look of pain.
“Just keep your mouth shut, and let’s be careful each step of the way. Bringing a charge against any McCandless is easy enough, especially now with the way feeling is running against him. Making it stick is entirely another thing. How soon can you move?”
“I don’t understand, but—”
“Don’t bother understanding, Joe. Just remember this is big, and a lot of capital could be made in court of a sloppy investigation. Now get out and find that Apache, and the doc.”
It was freezing in the hills, but the wind had died and the sun was brilliant on the sparkling landscape. The small group of men stamped against the cold, and blew on their fingers, and cursed softly to themselves. Charlie Bear, a fat old Apache from the Mescalero reservation, huddled in sheepskin, labored up the rise. His breath was blowing like steam in the dry cold.
“I’m that sorry, Sheriff,” he said in fair American, rubbing his knuckles, “but it ain’t much I can give you. The ground was wet and soft before the body got pulled off the road, and then it froze over. You can see the drag marks where the twigs snapped off.”
Duer said, “How was she brought out?”
“Hard to say,” the Apache replied, squinting toward the mountain road. “There’s two or three tracks made by some wagons before the freeze-over, but also a couple of boot tracks in the mud that look like somebody from the city. Sure ain’t no cowboy made these tracks. But whether they belong to the man or men who brought this poor girl, I couldn’t say.”
Duer and Valdez exchanged glances. Dodge, the editor of the San Carlos Journal, remained silent.
“Is that all?” Duer asked.
“Just about. You got to expect wagon tracks on a road, Sheriff, so they really don’t tell too much about what took place.”
A voice called from above. “Sheriff!”
Dr. Spencer Hewlitt had been crouching in the thicket, carefully studying the white, frozen body of the girl. Bits of turf were stuck in the mass of hair, and the silk dress was torn. But it was not these things that attracted attention. It was the pale scurf that spotted the mouth. Delicately, mastering his trembling hand, the physician picked up a morsel of friable consistency with the point of a knife.
“Plaster,” he remarked.
“So it seems,” Duer agreed. “Something she picked up from the ground, maybe? While she was being dragged?”
Dr. Hewlitt shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. The girl’s mouth is filled with this stuff. I’ll examine it more carefully when I get back to my office. But you wouldn’t find builder’s plaster like this out here in the country. They’d have wood or adobe houses here.”
The sheriff crouched and poked a finger between the frozen lips. The thrust was resisted by teeth and stiff jaw muscles, but the effort extracted a sprinkle of crumbs. The sheriff glanced at the Apache trailer. “Charlie, why would a man stuff the girl’s mouth with plaster?”
“Beats me,” Charlie Bear said. “It sure ain’t Apache.”
“It ain’t a white man’s trick.”
“That don’t make it Apache,” said the trailer stubbornly.
Duer ran a hand over the girl’s clothing, studying the open eyes and the pieces of builder’s lime strewn on the dress. “All right, Charlie,” he agreed. “But what about some other tribe? Could this be some special kind of medicine? Ute, say? Or Navajo?”
The Apache shook his head. “They’re so damned scared of the dead, they wouldn’t linger. Besides, what would be the point?”
“Don’t rule out the possibility,” Sam Dodge said suddenly. “The idea might be to keep the spirit in the body. Like a plug, I mean. It would be consistent with tribal customs.”
The Apache turned stolidly toward the newspaper editor. “It might be to choke the girl to death. Besides, there’s something else right under your nose, and it sure don’t point to any Indian.”
“What are you talking about?” Duer asked.
The Apache knelt and picked up a pin with a curious design from the ground.
“These letters are Greek,” said the doctor with surprise.
“Like a fraternity pin from college,” Sam Dodge put in. “A fraternity pin—”
“Let’s see,” said the sheriff, snatching the pin and examining its gold texture with an intent expression.
Police Chief Valdez’ slow mind had been following the conversation with some difficulty. But now he brightened and said, “Hey, there ain’t but one college man in these parts, I mean who might have been in one of them Greek fraternities. And he’s—”
“Sure. He’s Harry McCandless,” Duer said. “Now we don’t need tracks of that buckboard. We got better proof that it was from the McCandless ranch.” He glanced up with satisfaction. “I guess we got enough here, Doc. Suppose we get that corpse into the wagon and roll. You can do your cutting when we get back to town.” He frowned. “A fraternity pin, a bloody Navajo rug, a dead girl with her mouth full of plaster. And the campesino who saw the brand on the buckboard. I bet Dan McCandless will come running back from New York in a hurry when he finds out what kind of a mess his boy’s in this time!”
3.
THE SNOW had stopped, but the wind was still strong and afternoon gloom had descended as the corpse-laden wagon crept slowly into San Carlos. It came to a halt at the Lucero barn at the outskirts of the city. At a gesture from Duer, Charlie Bear dismounted and shoved open the side door of the barn. The Apache went in and turned on a kerosene lamp. Valdez and Doc Hewlitt lifted the frozen body down from the wagon and carried it inside.
Mike Duer stared meaningfully at
the newspaperman. “Sam, you’d better get back to your office and proofread tomorrow’s paper.”
Sam Dodge frowned. “What about the autopsy?”
“I’ll let you know, Sam. You go about your business now.”
The newspaperman accepted the dismissal and moved away. Turning, Duer slowly went into the barn, his face a study in concentration. This was going to be a testing time for him, he knew. He had always been confident of his strength; he was head and shoulders above men like Hewlitt and Valdez, and he knew it. But now the time was coming when he’d have to stand up against Dan McCandless himself, the most powerful man thereabouts, and probably against Jake Kilgore, too. There was no sense wishing none of this had ever happened, Duer thought bleakly. It had happened, and as sheriff of San Carlos County he was duty-bound to see it through to the end.
On a pair of rough planks lay the girl’s body, extended and rigid, the long red tresses trailing to the straw-colored floor. Alongside, the doctor was opening his case of surgical instruments. The kerosene lamp flickered balefully overhead.
“Get the dress off her,” Doc Hewlitt said.
Valdez and the Apache stripped the dead girl. She had been a lovely little thing, but there was nothing appealing about that frozen nakedness now. Duer eyed the small dead breasts, the slim hips. He turned suddenly to Charlie Bear, realizing the Apache tracker had no place here, and said, “Charlie, you get yourself back to the fort now.” The Apache looked unhappy about being sent away. Duer flipped him a silver dollar and said, “Here. Get your guts warm before you go.”
“Thanks, Sheriff.”
“Ain’t that a little foolish, Mike?” Valdez asked after the Apache was gone. “He’ll get loaded and spout the story all over the place.”
Duer regarded his brother-in-law thoughtfully. “I think he might,” he replied, “but it might take a bit of time before the story spreads around. You can expect Charlie to get drunk, but he won’t babble until it becomes convenient. A little public sentiment can’t do the cause of justice any harm.”
Dr. Hewlitt let his long, trembling fingers smooth back the dark-red tresses of the dead girl. “I could use a drink myself,” he muttered.
“Afterward, Doc,” Duer said. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t know,” said Hewlitt. “But I feel right badly. I remember this little girl.”
“Go on,” said Duer. “You just give me a criminal cause of death and that’s all I ask.”
Hewlitt was another who wouldn’t spill information when boozed up, Duer thought. The doctor was a wreck, a shameless alcoholic, drunken graduate of the St. Louis Medical School, abortionist, discredited refugee from complaints of the Medical Society of Missouri. But he was the best San Carlos had at the moment. They would have to make do with him. He knew his trade, after all.
Hewlitt blew on his hands, then searched in his bag for his bone saw. “I’m going to open up her head,” he announced. “She’s got a fractured skull. I want to see what it looks like inside there.”
Long minutes passed in silence as Hewlitt sliced into the cadaver, pausing from time to time to rub his hands together. He looks like a cadaver himself, Duer thought. The doctor was six feet three, and probably weighed no more than one fifty, if that much. Instead of eating, he drank. It gave him energy, but no fat.
The sheriff stared with fascination at the interior of the girl’s skull. Joe Valdez muttered an inaudible prayer and turned his eyes away squeamishly. Hewlitt nodded in satisfaction, talking to himself at a steady clip.
“Well?” Duer asked finally.
Hewlitt looked up from his task. “She was hit on the head, that’s what killed her. Fracture of skull caused rupture of the dura mater—that’s this, here, the tough lining around the brain. An effusion of blood from the dura compressed the brain, causing death. You can see extensive hematoma—blood clots—yourself. Of course, to be sure, I’ve got to examine the other vital organs, but the blow to the skull would be a competent producing cause of death.”
Joe Valdez crossed himself. “Pobrecita!”
Mike Duer nodded grimly. “I want a thorough job, Doc. But we’ll take that for now. Was she raped?”
“That isn’t so easy, her being dead three or four days and all. But with this cold spell, the signs might hold and I could tell with a microscope. Best I can give you is an educated opinion.”
“Go on.”
Hewlitt indicated a series of bruises and scratches on the face and neck. “She was attacked, and she defended herself.”
“Good enough,” the sheriff said. “Now you can fill in the details—but I’ve got a strong hunch that you’re going to find that this poor little thing was treated like an animal before she was killed. Joe,” he added, turning his back, “tell your woman to fix dinner for you pronto. You’re going to take this news to Santa Fe yourself. I want you to tell Laurie Morgan that we found her little girl and that she can come and bury the body. Doc, you finish up and I’ll send a deputy to watch the body when you’re done until we figure something out.”
Valdez paused at the barn door, staring into the freezing cold. “You going to make an arrest tonight, Mike? This is shaping up to quite a case.”
“Not tonight,” said Duer. “This is one case I want to be very careful about. Tomorrow morning I’ll ride up to Wa-po-nah and ask Harry McCandless some questions. Maybe he can answer, maybe he can’t. I want to be fresh and rested when that moment comes. I’ve got a simple question to ask. What was this fancy little pin on the poor little girl’s body doing out there in the cold?”
“Honey?” said the old man.
The strong knocking continued at the door of the wooden shack on the far side of the city.
“Honey?” the old man repeated.
“It ain’t Honey,” a deep voice replied. “Open up, Dade! We’re freezing our ears off.”
“Sure, sure,” said the old man hastily. He paused a moment on the edge of an unmade bed, panting from the exertion and breathing out the fumes of cheap whisky. After a moment, he arose and drew about his shoulders a tattered shawl and shuffled across the splintery floor to the door.
“Come in, Sheriff,” he muttered. “What in the world brings you here? I was hopin’ it would be Honey. You ain’t got any news?”
Mike Duer strode in from the black night, bringing a gust of cold air, and stood in the center of a slovenly room that smelled of sweat and beans and cheap whisky. Visible beyond was another, smaller room decorated with portraits of actors and actresses and a devotional picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The old man stood blinking in the presence of his visitor, and both were conscious of a blue frock thrown across the bed in the little room.
Dade Rawlins was a drifter, a man who lived without any apparent means of support. He was in his late sixties, probably, and it was said that he had made a pile in the Seventies in prospecting and had stashed it away, living like a miser on his hoard. A more plausible theory was that a brother in San Francisco sent him a small check every month to keep him alive and far away from California.
“You got some news about Honey?” Rawlins repeated.
“Yes.”
“She’s found?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, where?”
“Out in the country.”
Rawlins took a deep breath. “I’m that relieved, Sheriff,” he said earnestly. “I was beginning to get that worried. The girl’s mother has been writing, and wiring, and pestering, and I just didn’t know what to tell her. Oh, now! Where was she found?”
“A campesino found her twenty miles out of town a few days back. Took his time about letting anyone know.”
Rawlins stared at the sheriff, and as the import of the message sank in, he began to tremble. “Oh, my, Sheriff!” he muttered. “Something’s happened to that little girl? She’s dead?” He drew a shaking hand over a whiskered face. “Oh, my! Oh, my! I can’t believe it. I was that fond of the child.” He looked up in the dim light of a smoking kerosene lamp. “Does Lauri
e know?”
“She will,” said Duer grimly. “I sent Joe Valdez to Sante Fe to give her the news. Now, Dade, I’d like to ask you a question.”
Rawlins seemed in a daze, and the question was repeated before he shook himself and motioned the sheriff to a chair. Duer said, “Which bed did she use?”
Rawlins pointed dumbly to the inner room. Duer studied the trembling chops, the rheumy eyes, the blinking and gummy corners of a shaking mouth. He asked, “Were you messing with that girl?”
Rawlins raised a trembling hand. “As God is my witness, Sheriff!” he said earnestly, “she was just a pretty little thing I liked to see around the house. I’m old enough to be her grandfather. It’s a terrible question to ask an old man.”
“It’s important to know.”
Rawlins was struck with a horrible thought. “Why? What difference does it make?” He paused, aghast. “Somebody killed her?” he whispered. Duer nodded. “Who? Who?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. When did you last see her, Dade?”
“About a week ago.”
“A week? Lord, man, and you didn’t tell anyone she was gone that time?”
“I wasn’t worried,” said Rawlins defensively. “Wagon come down from Wa-po-nah to get her, and she lit out when she heard the jingle bells. I figured she was going to spend a few nights with Harry McCandless. No reason for her to report to me.”
“And that was the last you saw?”
“Yes, sir!” Rawlins drew a trembling hand over his face. “Sheriff, I feel responsible—letting her go off like that with Harry McCandless. He’s got a lot of book learning, but he’s a wild one. I don’t know what I was thinking about. Sheriff—” He paused, not daring to utter the thought.
“Go ahead,” the sheriff invited.
“Do you think Harry McCandless had a hand in this thing? Excuse me,” he added hastily, “maybe I shouldn’t ask a terrible question like that.”
Frontier Lawyer Page 3
