She began to laugh with unabashed delight.
And Longarm, incredibly enough, began to respond, the dead returning slowly but inexorably to life one more time. He closed his eyes and let the girl have her way.
Chapter 28
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Layin’ down on the job,” Longarm answered. Which of course was considerably more true than Amos was ever likely to know.
“Well you went and missed the excitement.”
“Oh?”
“Our killer has been at it again. Or killers, as in more than one of them, which is more likely.”
“Who this time?”
“The town clerk.”
“James Deel?”
“I be damned,” Amos said. “For someone the townspeople won’t talk to, you seem to be pretty well-informed. Yeah, the man was Jim Deel. You know him, I take it?”
Longarm shook his head. “No, but that informant I told you about mentioned Deel as a possible suspect.”
“I think we can prob’ly strike him off the short list of suspects,” the scrawny Ranger drawled.
“How was he killed?”
“Same old deal. Somebody came a-tapping at his door. He opened it and, boom. Took one square in the face at a range so close the powder burn made him look like a raccoon.”
“Efficient,” Longarm said.
“Our boy, or boys, are good at what they do.”
“What time did all this happen?”
“Morning, this time. Just about dawn.”
“No witnesses, of course?”
“Not unless you count the wife, and she didn’t actually see anything. She was in the kitchen mixing up a batch of biscuit dough. She’s in hysterics now, thinking it’s all her fault. She said Deel was on his way out to the backhouse for his morning shit … well, that’s what she meant even if it isn’t quite the way she put it … and she’s the one, heard the knocking at the door and asked him to see who it was before he went out the other way. Said she had her hands all covered in flour or she would have gone and it would have been her dead instead of him.”
“I’m not so sure she’s right about that,” Longarm said.
“Chief Bender is trying to convince her. Hell, whoever it is who wants all these people dead wants them, not their families. If she’d gone to the door … and my guess is that the shooter was peeking in to make sure it was likely the right party would show up ready for slaughter … if she’d gone I bet it would have been somebody pretending to get the wrong house. Some excuse or other. He wouldn’t have shot the lady of the place anyway, I bet.”
“Or would have and then come in to finish the job properly. You never know. Whatever might have happened, she’s alive now and that’s a good thing. Any kids involved?”
“No kids.” Amos made a sour face. “I always hate it too when there’s kids left without a daddy. I guess it shouldn’t make any difference. Dead is dead. But I always think of it as being worse.”
Yeah.” Longarm fired up a fresh cheroot—he was making up for lost time now that he was out of Clarice’s house—and offered one to Amos, who declined. “You’ve found out an awful lot for a fella who isn’t supposed to be a cop.”
“Unlike you, my friend, I am a very sympathetic soul in Addington. The bereaved cousin and all that. So when I heard my dead cuz’s murderer struck again, I naturally hustled over there to see what was what. The chief and I get along just fine.”
“And Sergeant Braxton?”
“His balls aren’t the only things made of solid brass, you know. So is his brain. Solid from one ear clean through to the other. I don’t like that man. Don’t trust him. Neither does the major or I wouldn’t be here. The only problem is that he has a lot of powerful friends, and there is no clear evidence to use as an excuse to get rid of the son of a bitch.”
“So much for the camaraderie of brothers in arms, an’ all that dreary horseshit.”
“I feel toward Brass Braxton just about as kindly as you would to a deputy on the take. Okay?”
“I reckon that pretty well says it, all right,” Longarm agreed.
“You gonna look into Deel’s murder?”
“Damn right I am. Do you happen to know if the chief remembered yet t’ warn the new widow that she oughtn’t t’ talk to me?”
“I don’t know, but if he hasn’t done it yet he soon will. That man don’t like you, Longarm. Not worth a shit, he don’t.”
“Reckon I better go have a word with Mrs. Deel quick if I’m ever going to then.”
