Latour took a long puff on his cigar. “Jack said the rider was well dressed, when he saw him pass through an alley. He couldn’t figure out how someone riding one of those contraptions could wear clothes so clean and unsoiled.”
“Did your friend get a look at the rider’s face?”
“All Jack could tell was that the rider was clean-shaven,” Calloway responded.
“What about hair color?”
“According to Jack, the fellow wore a bowler. Jack wasn’t sure, as he didn’t get a good look because the motorcycle went by too fast, but he thought the hair might have been red. At least, that’s what he thought, from a glimpse of the sideburns.”
For the second time that week, Bell found excitement coursing through his veins. A resident of Eagle City, Utah, another mining town where the Butcher Bandit left four residents dead, mentioned that he had seen a stranger riding a motorcycle on the day of the killing.
“Where can I find this Jack Carson?”
“Not in Bisbee,” replied Crum. “The last I heard, he went back to his home in Kentucky.”
Bell made a mental note to ask Van Dorn to try and find Carson.
O’Leery made another sour face at seeing his hand. “Whoever rode that motorcycle must have hung around town for a few days after the robbery.”
“Why do you say that?” Bell probed.
“Because the sheriff and his posse would have spotted the motorcycle’s tire tracks if the killer had ridden out of town immediately after the robbery.”
“You’d think he would have been spotted if he stayed in town until the posse gave up the hunt.”
“You would think so,” said Calloway, “but he was never seen again.”
“Was Carson a reliable witness?” Bell laid five dollars on the table. “I raise.”
“Jack was a former mayor of Bisbee, an attorney highly regarded as an honorable man,” Latour explained. “If he said he saw a man on a motorcycle, he saw a man on a motorcycle. I have no reason to doubt his word.”
“You going to see Sheriff Murphy tomorrow?” Crum inquired, finally winning a hand.
Bell nodded. “First thing in the morning. But, after talking with you gentlemen, I fear there is little of importance he can tell me.”
After nursing his drink during two hours of play, Bell was even, almost. He was only four dollars in the hole, and none of the other players minded when he bid them good night and walked back to his hotel.
THE ROAD that wound up to the street toward the sheriff’s house was long, and muddy after a rainstorm that struck Bisbee in the middle of the night. Coming to a dead end, Bell mounted the steep stairway that seemed to go on forever. Despite being in excellent physical shape, he was panting when he reached the top.
Bell was in a happy mood. He had yet to learn what Irvine and Curtis turned up, if anything. But he was dead certain the man seen on the motorcycle was the Butcher Bandit after he removed his disguise as the old intoxicated miner. A missing finger and a hint of red hair was hardly a triumph. Even the hair color glimpsed by Jack Carson was a long shot. It was the motorcycle that intrigued Bell, not because the bandit owned one but because it fit that a shrewd and calculating mind would use the latest technology in transportation.
The primary question was, how did the bandit ride it out of town without being seen again?
Sheriff Murphy’s house was only a few steps from the top of the stairway. It was small, and looked more like a shed than a house. The flood had pushed it off its foundation, and Bell saw that Murphy was busily engaged in propping it up in its new location, ten feet from where it had sat before. True to O’Leery’s description, it was painted green, but the flood had devastated the orange grove.
Murphy was furiously wielding a hammer and didn’t hear Bell approach. A great torrent of dark brown hair flowed around his neck and shoulders. Most of the lawmen in the West were not fat but lean and angular. Murphy had the body of a blacksmith rather than a sheriff. The muscles in his arms looked like tree trunks, and he had the neck of an ox.
“Sheriff Murphy!” Bell shouted over the pounding of the hammer against nails.
Murphy stopped with his hammer in midair and turned. He stared at Bell as he might stare at a coyote. “Yes, I’m Murphy. But, as you can see, I’m busy.”
“You can keep working,” said Bell. “I’m with the Van Dorn Detective Agency and would like to ask you a few questions about the bank robbery and murders a few months ago.”
The name Van Dorn was respected among law enforcement circles, and Murphy laid down the hammer and pointed inside the little house. “Come inside. The place is a bit of a mess, but I have coffee on the stove.”
“After that climb up the hill, a cup of water would be nice.”
“Sorry, the well got befouled by the flood and isn’t fit to drink, but I carried a gallon up from a horse trough in town.”
“Coffee it is,” said Bell with a measure of trepidation.
Murphy led Bell into the house and offered him a chair at the kitchen table. There was no sign of the presence of a woman, so Bell assumed that Murphy was a bachelor. The sheriff poured two coffees in tin cups from an enamel pot that sat on the wood-burning stove.
“I don’t know how I can help you, Mr. Bell. I sent a copy of my findings to your agency in Chicago.”
“You neglected to mention Jack Carson’s sighting.”
Murphy laughed. “The guy on a motorcycle? I don’t believe what Jack said he saw. The description didn’t fit
