The older lawman nodded easily and replied, “That’s only on account she is a she. Appointed to serve out her late husband’s term when he died of sugar diabetes last summer.”
Some of what Longarm was thinking must have shown. The older lawman added, “Don’t low-rate our Pat just because she’s a gal. I’ll allow at first I figured the county was just trying to get their money’s worth out of her widow’s pension. But before he died, old Tommy Brennan taught his woman to shoot right fair with a man-sized .45, and for a white gal, she tracks better than your average stock thief in these parts really wants her to.”
Longarm smiled thinly and said, “Sounds fair enough to me, and now that you mention it, I do recall what sounded like distant gunshots as I was fetching my saddle from inside a stable. Would along about five-thirty add up to anything?”
The local lawman answered, “Closer to five-fifteen. The husband got home forty-five minutes early and put five rounds in his wife and the delivery boy from the general store. Two in the boy and three in her. I’d be a tad more vexed at my woman too. Boys will just be boys. But a false-hearted woman can drive men mad.”
As Longarm whistled softly, the older man volunteered, “Pat and the rest of the boys are over yonder to secure the scene and see if anybody else wants to make a statement. I sure hate domestic shootings, don’t you?”
Longarm agreed they could be a bitch, and asked how far away the scene might be.
The man said to look for a spinach-green two-story frame just three streets over.
Longarm wasn’t sure he wanted to head on over, for there was nothing like a dogfight or a killing to bring the neighbors from far and wide with the sun still shining above the rooftops to the west.
On the other hand, it might be easier to murmur a few words to a female undersheriff in a milling crowd without anyone feeling all that curious. For everybody knew the law talked to everybody when the smell of gun smoke still hung in the air. So he thanked the old-timer and ducked out to stride on with the low sun at his back while other men and boys seemed intent on racing his long shadow to the scene of the gunplay.
As he strode, Longarm reflected on the notes Henry had typed up on Minnipeta Junction. Like a lot of such settlements in cattle country, Minnipeta Junction left most of its governing to the more crowded world over the grassy horizon. The one-room post office was federal. The county roads crossing one another at the modest business center were naturally maintained by the county. A part-time justice of the peace and a resident undersheriff, appointed by the elected sheriff of the county, dealt with on-the-spot legal matters and referred them to the county court, district attorney, sheriff, and such if they couldn’t be handled in town.
So Longarm knew before he got there that the female undersheriff Henry hadn’t known about either was more or less in the position of a corporal of the guard on outpost duty, expected to refer more serious crimes to headquarters, and judged by how good she might be at knowing when she ought to pester her superiors or tidy up on her own.
Finding the spinach-green two-story frame would have been easy, even if there hadn’t been a crowd milling around out front and a lean and hungry-looking deputy guarding the opening in the whitewashed picket fence.
As Longarm closed in, he was wondering how he figured to get past the guard at the gate without unmasking himself in full view of that infernal crowd.
But the deputy had just finished telling “Buck Crawford” he wasn’t allowed in when a mannish female voice called out, “That’s all right, Shep. I was about to send for old Buck.”
So Longarm stepped around old Shep with a friendly nod, and mounted the porch steps as a lady with her full figure tucked inside a dark riding habit and cross-draw gun rig regarded him with interest from the veranda. Her gun was a Schofield .45-Short, and her hat was a dark Stetson with a cavalry crush. The badge pinned to the well-filled bodice of her riding habit was a gold-plated eight-pointer. Her regular features fell short of sweet young thing, and there was a frosting of scattered silver to her mostly black hair. It wasn’t really blue-black when you looked close. Her piercing eyes of cornflower blue just made you think that.
She held out a firm tanned hand, and murmured in a lower tone that Hard Pan Parsons had wired ahead about a fellow lawman who called himself Buck.
As they shook hands, she added, “We can talk about that Medusa gal later. Right now I’m up to my hips in bullshit, and I fear the son of a bitch is going to get away with it.”
Longarm said he’d heard about some husband coming home early to catch his wife with another man. To which the local lawlady replied in a tone of disgust, “Sure he did. With the whole afternoon to play slap-and-tickle, they waited that long to get started? Speaking as a former bride who might or might not have had a happy marriage, I just can’t see having the other man over after five when my husband’s expecting to sit down to supper at six!”
She indicated they were to go inside as Longarm soberly agreed he’d feel dumb calling on a married woman in her own home with less than an hour to spare.
Pat Brennan led him past a balding cuss in rusty black who was seated in the parlor with another deputy. The deputy was taking notes as what seemed to be the man of the house sort of whined and mewled in tones of self- pity.
In the hallway beyond, the undersheriff explained, “He said his tale of woe would shock my shell-like ears. But I read the statement he made earlier, and now he’s going over it a third time. The bodies are back this way.”
Longarm followed her into what seemed a study, asking if the bedrooms weren’t usually upstairs in a house laid out like that one.
Pat Brennan sniffed and said, “He says he was surprised to find his wife and her lover going at it atop his very own desk down here, the lying bastard.”
Then she moved her skirts out of the way to give Longarm a clearer view of the two cadavers heaped by the wastebasket near the roll-top desk against one wall.
A youth of about nineteen lay face-down, with his jeans around his ankles, across the spread-eagle cadaver of a no-longer-young but nice-looking redhead with her nightgown up around her chest. She seemed to be grinning sheepishly, eyes half open, as if she felt a tad ashamed of being caught, but was proud of having such a handsome young lover.
Longarm asked if any pictures had been taken of the scene. Pat Brennan said the one photographer in town had just left. So Longarm hunkered down to gingerly roll the dead boy off the woman’s corpse as the lawlady stared soberly down at him and asked if they were supposed to do that.
