He grabbed a bent-wood chair, swung it around to sit astraddle facing the bed, and said, “Cut that out. I want you to listen tight before you tell me any more fibs, Miss Maureen. Whether you get out of prison whilst you’re still fairly pretty, or wind up an old gray lady in a cell, depends a heap on how much help you’d like to give us with a few loose ends.”
She protested, “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I admit I liked Matt more than I might have let on. I knew he was wanted by the law, but I liked the way he strummed on my ring dang doo.”
Longarm said, “If I tell them you were willing to turn state’s evidence, they may let you off with no more than ten at hard, and they don’t work women all that hard in any federal prison.”
She whimpered, “You can’t send me to prison. What are you trying to say I’ve done wrong?”
He smiled down fondly and replied, “We can start with the Lord’s Prayer. Like yourself, I’ve heard it said so often I know it by heart. So it only came to me later that you’d recited it wrong at that funeral we held for your poor momma.”
She asked what he meant. He told her to recite the Lord’s Prayer again and she did, all the way through.
He shook his head and said, “I thought I remembered you ending it with, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. ’”
She nodded, and asked what was wrong with that.
He said, “Nothing, if you’ve learned it listening to Protestants. The Roman Catholic version goes the same way up until you get near the end. Then it goes, ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.’ Nothing about kingdoms, powers, or glories. Once I got to wondering why an Irish Catholic gal would pray Protestant, I naturally got to wondering if she was a feebleminded gal named Maureen Cassidy or somebody else entirely. Once I got to wondering that, like I told Pat Brennan down Kansas way, the whole house of cards commenced to tumble down.”
She whined, “I don’t remember who taught me my prayers. I’ve never had any book learning, mister.”
Longarm went on relentlessly. “Once I had cause to suspect you and your momma might not be Rose Cassidy and her slow-witted child, it was easy enough to start backtracking from Kansas to Texas, Texas to New Mexico, and so forth, all the way to this very first homestead proven by one Sean Cassidy and still up for sale.”
She said she didn’t know what he was talking about. She’d never seen the place before Matt Currier brought her there just days ago.
He heaved a weary sigh and said, “Stage magicians call the trick One Ahead. The two of you took the chance with the unchanging name because that seemed less risky than appearing out of nowhere and heading off the same way within days of a bank robbery.”
She protested that she hadn’t robbed any banks.
He nodded soberly and said, “We know why you all gave up on the one at Minnipeta Junction. But we may be able to use that in your favor when it comes time for you to be sentenced. Each time you moved close to a bank you bought one place openly, citing the last place you hailed from with an innocent rep. Sometimes you sold your old spread at a profit. Sometimes you kept it on the market by asking too high a price. The flim-flam called for you to have wide-scattered spreads you could hole up at as lawful owners registered by the county clerk. You never used any of your own property for scenes of blood and gore. Knowing the neighborhood, scouting the neighborhood, you lined up some lonesome neighbor’s handy place as a hideout.”
She insisted he had her all wrong.
He insisted, “You never told Buster Crabtree and his recruits to rally at the old Nesbit place after the robbery. Come payoff day and a good haul, everyone but half-witted Maureen Cassidy was to meet at Little Spider’s whiskey still in that handy wooded draw. Then your brother aimed to gun everyone but French Barbara. Where did you two kill French Barbara by the way?”
She just stared at him, eyes big as saucers and pink lips all wet and twitching, until he nodded soberly and said, “You heard what I just said. I told you I only need help with a few loose ends. I have enough to put you away for a long, long time, no matter who you really turn out to be. On the other hand, I don’t have proof you ever killed anybody. Aiding and abetting can be sentenced gently when the crooks you’ve aided and abetted are close kin.”
“How … how did you ever figure that out?” she asked in a defeated tone.
He said, “Family resemblance and what we call a process of eliminating. I’m sorry I had to shoot your brother. But he shot me first. So what’s it going to be? I can take you in kicking and stubborn, or I can say you were willing to sing for your supper.”
She cursed him, said she was never going to forgive him, and then proceeded to sing for her supper.
And so in less than forty-eight more hours, Longarm had Miss Janet Armstrong, as she’d been sprinkled back East, stored for safekeeping in the women’s wing of the Federal House of Detention back in Denver.
They kept a court stenographer handy for confessions there. A lot of first offenders were inclined to make clean breasts of it their first night behind bars.
Longarm introduced his prisoner to a sisterly stenographer with pencils in her bun and a conspiring expression when she talked about men to a sister in trouble. But he’d already made Jane Armstrong go over the whole story more than once aboard the train from Nebraska after a long sleepless night in the local jail. So he had her saga of murder and incest down on paper, although unwitnessed, as he headed over to the Federal Building.
He got there just after four, and Henry looked up from his typewriter to say their boss was down the hall in conference with Judge Dickerson.
Henry said Marshal Vail would surely be back before the office shut down for the day. But Longarm handed over the handwritten field notes he’d been keeping and said, “Old Billy will want these typed up in triplicate. We’ll likely have a confirmation from the House of Detention come tomorrow morn. I’ll go down the hall and see if I can catch old Billy before he leaves for the day.”
As he stepped out in the hall, he heard Henry wailing that he’d just said Marshal Vail would be back to turn them all loose for the day. But Longarm didn’t answer. He just shut the damned door, knowing Vail wouldn’t turn him loose until after five if he was dumb enough to tarry.
He might have heard somebody calling after him as he moved down the granite steps of the Denver Federal
