Текст книги "The Chase"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Methodically, Cromwell began to count and stack the bills, wrapping the loose ones with bands as he inked in the amount. When he finished, he had his desktop filled with neatly piled bundles of cash, marked and counted. The tally came to two hundred forty-one thousand dollars. Then he carefully put the money back in the suitcase, slid the suitcase back under the desk, and opened several ledgers, entering deposits in bogus accounts, which he had set up previously to conceal money stolen over the years. Money that he used to build up the assets needed to open his own bank. Satisfied that he was covered by all the entries, he buzzed Miss Morgan and informed her that he was ready to deal with the day-to-day business of running a successful house of finance.

The banking hours were from ten o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon. When closing time rolled around, Cromwell waited until the employees had all left for home and the bank was locked up. Now, alone in the bank’s vast interior, he carried the suitcase down the elevator to the main floor and into the bank vault, which was still open according to his instructions. He placed the currency, one stack at a time, in the proper bins that were used by the tellers for customer transactions. The receipts he had made up would be turned over to his chief accountant in the morning, who would record the juggled deposits without knowing the serial numbers.

Jacob Cromwell felt pleased with himself. Swindling as well as robbing the bank in Salt Lake City had been his most bold undertaking to date. And he was not about to repeat it. The evil act would throw off his pursuers, who would think he was becoming more daring, and be led into thinking he might try robbing a major city’s bank again. But he knew when not to press his luck. Such a robbery was extremely complicated. When he went out on a crime spree again, it would be in a small town yet to be selected.

After closing the vault and throwing the locks and timer, he went down to the basement and slipped out to the street through a hidden door that only he knew existed. Whistling “Yankee Doodle,” he hailed a cab and rode to California Street, where he took the cable car up the steep, twenty-four-percent grade of the three-hundred-seventy-five-foot-high slope to his house on Nob Hill, the “hill which is covered with palaces,” as Robert Louis Stevenson described it.

Cromwell’s mansion amid mansions sat on a small picturesque lane called Cushman Street. The other monuments to wealth had been built by the bonanza-mining types and the big-four barons of the Central Pacific, later the Southern Pacific Railroad: Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker. To the eye of a creative artist or designer, the mansions looked like monstrosities of architecture gone mad with ostentation.

Unlike the others that were built of wood, Cromwell and his sister Margaret’s house was constructed of quarried stone and reflected more of a sedate, almost library-like exterior. There were some who thought it bore a striking resemblance to the White House in Washington.

He found his sister impatiently waiting. At her urging, he quickly readied himself for a night on the Barbary Coast. Yes indeed, he thought, as he dressed in his evening clothes, it had been a productive week. One more success to add to his growing sense of invincibility.

12

IRVINE COULD NOT COME UP WITH CURRENCY SERIAL numbers in Bozeman. Not only had the bank failed to record them; it had gone out of business due to the robbery. By the time their assets made up for the loss, the bank had collapsed, and the founder sold what few assets that were left, including the building, to a rich silver miner.

Irvine pushed on to the next robbed bank on his list and took the Northern Pacific Railroad to the mining town of Elkhorn, Montana, located at an elevation of 6,444 feet above sea level. A booming mining town with twenty-five hundred residents, Elkhorn had produced some ten million dollars in gold and silver from 1872 until 1906. The Butcher Bandit had robbed its bank three years earlier, leaving four dead bodies behind.

Just before the train pulled into the town station, Irvine studied, for the tenth time since leaving Bozeman, the report on the robbery in Elkhorn. It was the same modus operandi the bandit used on all his other robberies. Disguised as a miner, he entered the bank soon after the currency shipment had arrived to pay the three thousand men working the quartz lodes. As usual, there were no witnesses to the actual crime. All four victims—the bank manager, a teller, and a husband and wife making a withdrawal—had been shot in the head at close range. Again, the shots went unheard, and the bandit escaped into the atmosphere without leaving a clue.

Irvine checked into the Grand Hotel before walking down the street to the Marvin Schmidt Bank, its new name taken from the miner who bought it. The architecture of the bank building was typical of the current style in most mining towns. Local stone laid with a Gothic theme. He walked though a corner door, facing the intersection of Old Creek and Pinon Streets. The manager sat behind a low partition not far from a massive steel safe painted with a huge elk standing on a rock outcropping.

“Mr. Sigler?” inquired Irvine.

A young man with black hair, brushed back and oiled, looked up at the greeting. His eyes were a shade of dark green, and his features indicated Indian blood in his ancestry. He wore comfortable cotton pants, a shirt with soft collar, and no tie. He lifted a pair of spectacles from the desk and set them on the bridge of his nose.

“I’m Sigler. How can I help you?”

“I’m Glenn Irvine with the Van Dorn Detective Agency, here for an investigation into the robbery a few years ago.”

Sigler quickly frowned with an attitude of annoyance. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for Van Dorn to arrive on the scene? The robbery and murders took place back in 1903.”

“We were not engaged to make an investigation at that time,” Irvine retorted.

“So why are you here at this late date?”

“To record the serial numbers of the bills taken by the robbery, if they were listed in a register.”

“Who is paying for your services?” Sigler insisted.

Irvine could imagine Sigler’s distrust and incomprehension. He might have felt the same if he was in the bank manager’s shoes. “The United States government. They want the robberies and murders to stop.”

“Strikes me that the bastard can’t be caught,” Sigler said coldly.

“If he walks on two legs,” said Irvine confidently, “the Van Dorn Agency will catch him.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Sigler said indifferently.

“May I see your register of serial numbers? If we have those from the stolen bills, we will make every effort to trace them.”

“What makes you think they were recorded?”

Irvine shrugged. “Nothing. But it never hurts to ask.”

Sigler fished around in his desk and retrieved a set of keys. “We keep all the old bank records in a storehouse behind the building.”

He motioned for Irvine to follow him as he led the way through a back door toward a small stone building sitting in the middle of the bank’s property. The door protested with a loud squeak as it opened on unoiled hinges. Inside, shelves held rows of ledgers and account books. A small table and chair sat at the back of the storeroom.

“Sit down, Mr. Irvine, and I’ll see what I can find.”

Irvine was not optimistic. Finding a bank that kept a record of serial numbers of its currency seemed highly improbable. It was a long shot, but every avenue had to be followed. He watched as Sigler went through several clothbound ledgers. At last, he opened one and nodded.

“Here you are,” Sigler said triumphantly. “The serial numbers our bookkeeper recorded of all the currency in the vault two days before the robbery. Some of the bills, of course, were distributed to customers. But most were taken by the bandit.”

Irvine was stunned as he opened the book and stared at the columns of neatly inked numbers within the lines of the pages. There were several different kinds of large banknotes. Gold certificates, silver certificates, notes issued by individual banks were recorded in the ledger. United States Treasury serial numbers were printed vertically and horizontally on the sides; the local bank that issued them added their own number at the bottom. Most came from the Continental & Commercial National Bank of Chicago and the Crocker First National Bank of San Francisco. He looked up at Sigler, now fired with elation.

“You don’t know what this means,” Irvine said, gratified beyond his greatest expectations. “Now we can pass out numbers on the stolen bills to every bank in the country where the bandit might have deposited them. Handbills with the numbers can also be distributed to merchants throughout the West, urging them to be on the lookout for the bills.”

“Good luck,” said Sigler pessimistically. “It’s hardly possible that you can trace them back three years. Any one of them could have changed hands a hundred times by now.”

“You’re probably right, but hopefully the bandit is still spending them.”

“Slim chance of that,” Sigler said with a tight grin. “I’ll bet a month’s wage he spent it all a long time ago.”

Sigler was probably right, Irvine thought. But Irvine was not discouraged. Bell had said that it would be an insignificant mistake that would trip the bandit up. Now it was only a question of getting the information out to banks and merchants and hope there would be a response that led to the whereabouts of the mysterious killer.

13

CURTIS SAT AT A TABLE IN THE WESTERN ARCHIVES Division of the Union Pacific Railroad’s office in Omaha, Nebraska, surrounded by high shelves filled with ledgers and account books of reports on train operations. During the nine days since he launched his search, he had scoured the records of four different railroads and the Wells Fargo stage lines trying to find a link for how the Butcher Bandit escaped capture after committing his robberies and hideous murders.

It was an exercise in futility. Nothing fell into place. He had begun with the stagecoach possibilities. Most of the stage lines were gone by 1906. Wells Fargo still held the monopoly, with lines extending several thousand miles over overland express routes in remote areas that were not serviced by railroads. But the schedules did not fall into the proper times.

There were sixteen hundred different company railroads across the nation in 1906, with two hundred twenty thousand miles of track among them. Fifty of the largest had a thousand miles of track each. Curtis had narrowed the number of companies down to five. They were the railroads with scheduled runs through the towns hit by the bandit.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Curtis looked up from a train schedule record into the face of a little man standing no more than five feet two inches. His name was Nicolas Culhane, and his biscuit brown–streaked graying hair was brushed forward over his head to cover the receding baldness. The ferret brown eyes shifted with amazing frequency, and he wore a thinly clipped mustache whose pointed ends extended a good inch on either side of his lips. He walked with a slight stoop and wore spectacles with lenses that magnified his eyes. Curtis was amused at the helpful little man with the springy step. He was the perfect stereotype of a keeper of musty records in an archive.

“No, thank you.” Curtis paused to glance at his pocket watch. “I never drink coffee in the afternoon.”

“Having any luck?” asked Culhane.

Curtis shook his head wearily. “None of the passenger trains ran close to the time the bandit robbed the banks.”

“I pray you catch the murdering scum,” Culhane said, his voice suddenly turned angry.

“You sound like you hate him.”

“I have a personal grudge.”

“Personal?”

Culhane nodded. “My closest cousin and her little boy were killed by the Butcher at the bank in McDowell, New Mexico.”

“I’m sorry,” Curtis said solemnly.

“You must catch and hang him!” Culhane struck a fist on the table, causing the schedule book lying open to tremble and flip its pages. “He has got away with his crimes far too long.”

“I assure you, the Van Dorn Agency is working night and day to bring him to justice.”

“Have you found anything at all that might trace him?” Culhane asked anxiously.

Curtis raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “All we’ve discovered is that he is missing the little finger on his left hand. Besides that, we have nothing.”

“Did you check out the stagecoach lines?”

“I spent a day in the Wells Fargo records department. It was a dead end. None of their schedules put them in town within four hours of the robberies. More than enough time for the bandit to evade capture.”

“And the passenger trains?”

“The sheriff and marshals telegraphed surrounding towns to stop all trains and examine the passengers for anyone who looked suspicious. They even searched all luggage in hopes that one of the bags might contain the stolen currency, but they turned up no evidence, nor could they make an identification. The bandit was too smart. The disguises he used to rob and murder were too original and too well executed. The law officers had little or nothing to go on.”

“Did time schedules work out?”

“Only two,” Curtis replied tiredly. “The departure times on the others didn’t coincide with the events.”

Culhane rubbed his thinning hair thoughtfully. “You’ve eliminated stagecoaches and passenger trains. What about freight?”

“Freight trains?”

“Did you check out the departure times on those?”

Curtis nodded. “There, we have a different story. The trains I’ve been able to find in the right place at the right time left the robbed towns within the required times.”

“Then you have your answer,” Culhane said.

Curtis didn’t reply immediately. He was tired, on the verge of sheer exhaustion, and depressed that he was no further along and had made no discoveries. Inwardly, he cursed the Butcher Bandit. It didn’t seem humanly possible the man could be so obscure, so will-o’-the-wisp, so able to defy all attempts at detection. He could almost see the man laughing at the inept efforts of his pursuers.

At last, he said, “You underestimate the law enforcement officials. They searched the boxcars of all the freight trains that passed through the towns during the specified time limits.”

“What about the boxcars that were switched onto local sidings to be hauled later to other destinations by incoming trains? He could have dodged the posses by hiding in a freight car.”

Curtis shook his head. “The posses searched all empty cars and found no sign of the bandit.”

“Did they check out the ones that were loaded?” Culhane questioned.

“How could they? The cars were locked tight. There’s no way the bandit could have entered them.”

Culhane grinned like a fox on a hot scent. “I guess nobody told you that the train brakemen all carry keys that will open the locks on the loading doors in case of fire.”

“I was not aware of that angle,” said Curtis.

The steel-rimmed spectacles slid down Culhane’s nose. “It’s certainly something to think about.”

“Yes, it is,” Curtis mused, his mind beginning to turn. “We’re looking at a process of elimination. The posses claimed there were no tracks leading out of town to follow, which means our man didn’t ride a horse. There is almost no chance he could have taken a stagecoach, and it appears unlikely he bought a ticket and traveled out of town as a passenger on a train. He also failed to be spotted in an empty boxcar.”

“Which leaves loaded boxcars as the only means of transportation that was not examined,” Culhane persisted.

“You may be onto something,” said Curtis thoughtfully.

A peculiar expression crossed Curtis’s face as he began to envision a new scenario. “That leaves a whole new avenue to follow. Now I have to go through freight car records to study the cars that made up those specific trains, who owned them, their manifest, and their ultimate destination.”

“Not an easy chore,” said Culhane. “You’ll have to check out hundreds of freight cars from a dozen trains.”

“Like a piece of a puzzle. Find the boxcar that was parked on a nearby siding in all of the robbed towns on the days of the robberies.”

“I’ll be happy to help you with the Union Pacific freight records.”

“Thank you, Mr. Culhane. Two of the freight trains in question were hauled by Union Pacific.”

“Just tell me which towns they were at and I’ll dig out the records that give the car’s serial numbers, their ownership, and the agent who arranged and paid for their transportation.”

“You’ve been a great help to me and I’m grateful,” Curtis said sincerely.

“I’m the one who is grateful, Mr. Curtis. I never thought I would be instrumental in bringing the Butcher Bandit, the killer of my cousin and her child, to justice.”

Four hours later, with Culhane’s able assistance, Curtis had the information that gave him a solid direction to investigate. Now all he had to do was research the archives of the Southern Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, and the Denver & Rio Grande railroads to confirm Culhane’s theory.

By nightfall, he was on a train to Los Angeles and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe archives. Too inspired to sleep, he stared at his reflection in the window since it was too dark to see the landscape roll by outside. He was optimistic that the end of the trail seemed to be over the next hill and around the next bend.

14

THE EARLY EVENING CAME WITH A LIGHT RAIN THAT dampened the dirt street through town as Bell stepped off the train. In the fading light, he could see that Bisbee, Arizona, was a vertical town, with sharply rising hills occupied by many houses that could be reached only by steep stairways. On his way to the Copper Queen Hotel, he walked through the narrow, twisting streets, a maze flanked by new, substantial brick buildings.

It was a Saturday, and Bell found a deputy holding down the sheriff’s office and jail. The deputy said the sheriff was taking a few days off, to make repairs to his house that had been damaged in a flood that had swept down the hills, and would not return to work until Thursday. When Bell asked him for directions to the sheriff’s house, the deputy refused to give them, claiming that the sheriff was not to be disturbed unless it was an emergency.

Bell checked into the Copper Queen, ate a light dinner in the hotel dining room, and then went out on the town. He skipped having a drink in the Copper Queen Saloon and walked up to the infamous Brewery Gulch, lined with fifty saloons, known throughout the territory as the wildest, bawdiest, and best drinking street in the West.

He checked out four of the saloons, stepping into each and studying the action, before going on to the next one. Finally, he settled into a large, wooden-walled hall with a stage and a small band playing a ragtime tune while four dancing girls hoofed it around the stage. Moving through the crowded tables to the bar, he waited until a busy bartender asked, “What’ll it be, friend, whiskey or beer?”

“What’s your best whiskey?”

“Jack Daniel’s from Tennessee,” said the bartender without hesitation. “It won the Gold Medal at the St. Louis Fair as the best whiskey in the world.”

Bell smiled. “I’ve enjoyed it, on occasion. Let me have a double shot glass.”

While the bartender poured, Bell turned around, leaned his elbows behind him on the bar, and gazed around the busy saloon. Like most watering holes in the West, a large section of the room was given over to gambling. Bell’s eyes went from table to table, looking for the right mix of poker players. He found what he had hoped to find, a table with men dressed in fancier clothes than the large number of miners. They appeared to be businessmen, merchants, or mining officials. Best of all, there were four of them, one short of a fifth player.

Bell paid for his whiskey and walked over to the table. “May I join you gentlemen?” he asked.

A heavyset man with a red face nodded and motioned toward an empty chair. “You’re quite welcome to sit in,” he said.

A man directly across the table shuffled the cards, looked across at Bell as he sat down, and began dealing. “I’m Frank Calloway. The others are Pat O’Leery, Clay Crum, and Lewis Latour.”

“Isaac Bell.”

“You new in town, Mr. Bell?” asked O’Leery, a big, brawny Irishman.

“Yes, I arrived on the six-thirty train from Phoenix.”

“Business or pleasure?” O’Leery probed.

“Business. I’m an agent with the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

They all looked up from their cards and stared at Bell with inquisitive interest.

“Let me guess,” said Crum, folding his hands over a rotund belly. “You’re looking into the bank robbery and murders that took place four months ago.”

Bell nodded as he fanned his hand and examined his cards. “You are correct, sir.”

Latour spoke in a French accent as he lit a cigar. “A little late, aren’t you? The trail is cold.”

“No colder than it was five minutes after the crime,” Bell countered. “I’ll take two cards.”

Calloway dealt as the players called out the number of cards they hoped would give them a winning hand. “A mystery, that one,” he said. “No trace of the bandit was ever found.”

“Uncanny,” O’Leery said as he inspected his hand, his expression revealing he had nothing worth betting on. “I fold.” His eyes briefly met Bell’s. “Uncanny that he could escape into thin air.”

“The sheriff found no sign of his trail,” muttered Crum. “The posse returned to town looking as if their wives had run off with a band of traveling salesmen.” He paused. “I’ll bet two dollars.”

“I’ll raise you three dollars,” offered Calloway.

Latour threw his hand toward the dealer. “I’m out.”

“And you, Mr. Bell,” inquired Calloway, “are you still in?”

Bell was amused that the stakes were not high, but not penny-ante either. “I’ll call.”

“Two queens,” announced Crum.

“Two tens,” said Calloway. “You beat me.” He turned. “Mr. Bell?”

“Two eights,” Bell said, passing his cards facedown to Calloway. Bell had not lost. He held three jacks, but he thought that losing would bring him closer to the other men’s confidence. “Was there any clue to how the robber escaped?”

“Nothing I ever heard of,” replied O’Leery. “Last time I talked to the sheriff, he was baffled.”

“That would be Sheriff Hunter?” Bell inquired, recalling what he read in the agency report.

“Joe Hunter died from a bad heart two months after the murders,” answered Latour. “The new sheriff is Stan Murphy, who was Hunter’s chief deputy. He knows what went on as well as anybody.”

“As nice as they come, if he likes you,” Crum said. “But get on his bad side and he’ll chew you to bits.”

“I’d like to talk with him, but I doubt if he’ll be in his office on the Sabbath,” said Bell, not mentioning the discouraging comments of Murphy’s deputy. “Where might I find him?”

“We had a bad flood through town two weeks ago,” replied Calloway. “His house was badly damaged. I suspect you’ll find him up to his neck in repairs.”

“Can you give me directions to his house?”

O’Leery waved a hand toward the north. “Just go up to the end of Howland Street and take the stairs. The house is painted green and has a small grove of orange trees alongside.”

The talk moved to politics and whether Teddy Roosevelt could run for a third term in 1908 and, if not, whom he would pick as his successor. Bell lost three hands for every hand he won, easily putting the other men at ease as they realized the stranger was no gambling cardsharp. He swung the conversation back to the bank murders.

“Seems strange that no one saw the robber leaving the bank or riding out of town,” said Bell idly as he played his cards.

“Nobody came forward,” said O’Leery.

“And none saw the bandit enter or leave the bank,” Latour added.

“There was an old drunken miner that hung around across the street from the bank,” answered Calloway, “but he disappeared soon afterward.”

“Sheriff Hunter did not consider him a suspect?”

Latour had no luck. He folded for the fifth time since Bell sat down at the table. “An old miner who was all played out and looked like he wasn’t long for this world? He was the last one the townspeople thought had anything to do with the crime.”

“More than once, I saw him sprawled on a sidewalk, drunk out of his mind,” said O’Leery. “He couldn’t have robbed a bank and murdered three people any more than I could become governor. I still think it was an inside job pulled off by someone we all know.”

“It might have been a stranger,” Bell said.

Calloway shrugged negatively. “Bisbee has twenty thousand inhabitants. Who’s to recognize a stranger?”

“What about that fellow on a motorcycle?” Crum asked no one in particular.

“There was a motorcycle in town?” asked Bell, his interest aroused.

“Jack Carson said he saw a dandy riding one.” Crum threw down a winning hand with a flush.

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.”