Christ, was he that cold? Keegan wondered. Did he lure her to his house and make love to her before he killed her and dumped her in the river? A man on the run from the FBI who takes time out to get laid before he fakes his own death? He could not have planned it. He didn’t know John Dillinger was going to rob the bank. Everything he had done that fateful day had to have been spur of the moment. Was 27 really
“How about Dempsey?” Keegan asked.
“Nothing. She had his jacket in her hand, like she was hanging on to him when she died. My guess is, the door flew open and Dempsey was swept out of the car.”
“Isn’t it likely he would have surfaced sooner or later?”
“Not really. River’s a hundred and fifty miles long, Mr. Keegan. Long stretches of it are uninhabited. Lots of debris from the spring floods. Hell, he could’ve been jammed under junk somewhere . .
Keegan put the report back in the folder. “Tell me about the fight in the hobo camp that night,” he said.
“Know about that, do you?”
“Somebody mentioned it to Captain Dryman.”
“Well, sir, nobody here’s real proud of what happened that night,” Taggert said. “There’d been a lot of grumblin’ in town about the Hooverville and how big it was gettin’. And the railroad people were gettin’ real put out about it. The railroad bulls decided to clean it out. Some of the tents caught on fire. Pregnant woman had a miscarriage. Twelve people in the hospital. And two dead, one of the railroad cops and a hobo.”
“How were they killed?”
“The cop was beat to death with a baseball bat. The hobo was stabbed. Deep wound. Under the ribs right here and up into the heart. Nasty wound. Must’ve been a hell of a knife.”
He pulled off the road and parked on the shoulder.
“That’s where it happened, right over there in Barrow Park,” Taggert said, pointing out of the car. There was a broad expanse of green grass and trees beside the railroad. “The hobo camp spread along the railroad tracks from the edge of the river there all the way down the road to the edge a town. Real eyesore, it was.”
“Where’s the railroad come from?” Keegan asked.
“it’s a spur. Runs down from Logansport.”
“Through Drew City?”
“Yep.”
“Were there any witnesses to the killings?”
Taggert nodded. “One man saw the whole thing, even saw the stabbings. Joe Cobb. Worked for the railroad. Lives over on Elm Street.”
“Here in town?”
“Yes sir.”
“And he was there that night?”
“Right in the middle of it.”
“Can we talk to him?”
“Sure. Old Joe’ll tell anybody about it who’ll listen to him. Problem is, nobody takes him too seriously.”
“Why’s that?” Dryman asked.
“Cause he’s blind as a mole.”
Joe Cobb sat in a rocker on his porch, eyes hidden behind dark glasses, his hands gripping the arms of the chair as if he were afraid he would fall out of it. Years of inactivity had turned muscle to fat. Cobb had a big stomach which folded over his belt, hulking shoulders and a neck the size of a tree trunk. The chair squeaked as he rocked back and forth.
“Remember that night? Of course I remember that night. Last time I ever saw God’s sweet earth,” he said. “Look, I never took offense at those folks. They was just unfortunates, got wiped out in the bust, tryin’ to make a go of it, y’know. The Hooverville was down to Barrow’s Point. There was this spate of robberies around town. Nothin’ big, mind yuh, but folks was gettin’ nervous. Railroad didn’t want em. Town didn’t want ‘em. Hell,
“That the train that came through Drew City?” Keegan asked.
“Yeah. Bunch of hobos jumped off and was runnin’ down to the camp. They was maybe ten of us from the railroad chasm’ them.”
He remembered that night all right, like a nightmare montage burned into his mind. Men silhouetted against campfire sparks twirling into a black, windless sky. Dirt-caked fingers protruding from the holes in a pair of red wool gloves. Cardboard lean-tos, worn-out canvas tents, shacks of tar paper. The tired, burned-out faces of defeat and the frightening sounds of the attack. A woman screaming. The sickening sound of wood striking flesh and bone. Flashlight beams crisscrossing through the camp. People running from shanties, bumping into each other in the dark, scrambling to get out of the camp. The sound of a shot. A crazy-eyed hobo, blood spurting down his face from a jagged crack in his forehead, waving a Bible at arm’s length as he cried out. “They’s upon us, the heathen screws is upon us. Save yourselves, sinners. . . the wicked draw their bows and aim their arrows, to shoot at good men in the darkness.’ Psalm eleven, verse two.” And a brutal response: “C’mere, you miserable stinkweed.”
Chaos.
Oh yes, he remembered it.
“We come up on two of ‘em sitting on the edge of the gulch gasping for wind,” Cobb went on. “They jumped up
