Wilde West Part 16

"Well now," said Grigsby. "That'd be up to you, ma'am. So far, this fella, it seems like he only has it in for prost.i.tutes, like I say." But was this an actual fact? What about the woman in Leavenworth? That storekeeper's wife. She'd been hooking on the side, maybe? "And-Listen, Countess, if I told you some-thin', confidential-like, could you keep it between you and me? Not let the rest of 'em in on it?"

Once more, she c.o.c.ked her head slightly. "Yes, of course. You have my word." She leaned forward and softly touched Grigsby's knee with the tips of her fingers. "But please. Not Countess. My name is Mathilde."

"Yes ma'am." Grigsby was still trying, less successfully now, not to look at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Well, the thing of it is, all these women so far, the women that got killed off, they were all redheads."

"Redheads?" p.r.o.nouncing the word like she hadn't heard it before.

"They all had red hair, ma'am. All four of 'em. Now red hair, you don't see much of that, usually. So I figure, what with all four of 'em havin' it, I figure this fella's gotta have a special kinda interest in red hair."

The Countess reached up, abstracted, and felt lightly at her own blonde curls. "And why would you not want the others to know of this?"

"Because the way I calculate it, ma'am, one of 'em is the killer. And I figure maybe it's better for me to know a little somethin' about him, about this fella, that he don't know that I know, if you follow me."

She nodded. "Yes. I comprehend. I shall not mention it. And you think that because of this, I should be safe if I remained with the tour?"

Grigsby sat back. "Well now. Safe. I don't know as I could put no guarantees on that, ma'am. But I reckon that if you kept an eye peeled, made certain sure that you didn't get yourself alone with any one of 'em, you'd be okay, prob'ly. And the other thing is, like I been tellin' all of 'em, I'm gonna be one step behind this here tour. Until I find this fella and nail him. What I mean is, I'm gonna be around. Close by. You figure you need yourself some help, all you gotta do is come to me and let me know."

She smiled again, more warmly this time. "Thank you. It is kind of you to rea.s.sure me."

"My pleasure, ma'am." He nodded to her. "And now, I reckon I'll let you alone." He stood up, and winced involuntarily as the old familiar twinge shot from his hip down his leg.

The Countess looked up at him, concerned. "You are in pain?"

"No, ma'am. Touch of rheumatism, is all. Well, I'm right sorry I gotta be the one who tells you all this. And I appreciate your help."

"Not at all," she said, standing. "It is I who should be grateful." She stepped over to the dresser, picked up Grigsby's Stetson, returned and handed it to him. "And perhaps you will visit with me again one time? Perhaps, if I give thought to this, I will remember something that could help you."

"Yes ma'am. Thank you. Maybe I'll just do that." He started for the door, and then turned back to the Countess. "One other thing, ma'am. Just thought of it." Later, after he learned the truth, he would ask himself why he had.

The Countess raised her eyebrows. "Yes?"

"The reporter. O'Conner. You ever read any of his articles?"

"About the tour, you mean?"

"Yes ma'am."

"But no. How should we find a New York newspaper out here?"

Grigsby nodded. "Reckon that's so."

WITH A BROAD BUOYANT GRIN, hugely pleased by the brilliance and ingenuity of his Plan, Oscar swept through the door and past Henry Villiers. When he reached the middle of the room-which took no more than a single, abruptly terminated step-the grin disappeared and he looked around him in shocked disbelief.

"Good Lord, Henry. Are these the sort of accommodations that Vail's been providing you?"

Still standing by the door, Henry shrugged. "It's fine with me, Mistuh Oscar."

"But Henry, it's drab. It's worse than drab. It's, funereal. That wallpaper is grotesque. If you continue to stay here, you'll become quite morbid. And I simply cannot tolerate morbid people-they become so involved with themselves that they ignore me altogether. I'll speak with Vail, we'll get you moved into a new room immediately."

"Really, Mistuh Oscar. No need for that. This room's jus' fine."

"Nonsense. Now, please, close the door and come along. Sit down while I explain what I've come up with. I think you'll find it extraordinary."

Henry did as ordered, stepped over and sat in one of the room's two chairs, both of which looked cramped and hazardous. Oscar remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Now," he began. "This Marshal Grigsby person-big brutal chap with a silly hat and a colossal handgun-has he spoken with you yet?"

"Yes suh."

"You know about the women being killed, then. The prost.i.tutes. And you know that Grigsby believes one of us responsible."

"Yes suh. A terrible thing, Mistuh Oscar."

"Yes, yes, of course. Terrible. And I'm afraid that Grigsby may be right, that one of us is, in fact, the murderer. But it's obvious to me, Henry, that Grigsby is entirely out of his element here. Oh, no doubt he can twirl a rustler and track down a lariat, or whatever it is these frontier stalwarts do, but the simple fact is, just now he's confronted with an extremely cunning and resourceful killer. And Grigsby is hopelessly outcla.s.sed."

Oscar drew himself up to his full height. "So, what I propose to do, you see, is determine for myself just exactly which one of us is responsible."

Henry nodded. "Yes suh. How?"

"Ah, Henry. Wonderful. You leap at once to the crux of the matter. How, indeed. And I answer-by bringing to bear on this problem a talent, a faculty, that poor Grigsby lacks, one which he would be utterly unable even to imagine."

Oscar leaned forward and intoned, "I speak now of the sensibility, the intuition, of a poet."

Henry nodded. "Yes suh."

Oscar smiled happily and spread his arms. "Do you see it, Henry? Of course you do. Really, it's obvious, isn't it? Who better than a poet, with his insight into the mind and the heart, who better than he to penetrate the mask behind which this villain has hidden himself? We will uncover this man, Henry, and we will do it by a systematic application of the poetic imagination."

"Yes suh," Henry said. "We, Mr. Oscar?"

Oscar put his hands into the pockets of his coat. "Well, yes, of course. I'll need your a.s.sistance, Henry. One of the first things we must do is learn as much as we can about these women, and specifically about the woman here in Denver. We shall enter into the mind of the killer by apprehending the nature of his victims. What particular quality, or combination of qualities, did these women possess, such that they were chosen? This we can learn only by talking to the locals. And, naturally, being an American, you'll be of tremendous help to me in dealing with them."

"Yes suh. But Mr. Oscar-"

"And, too, bear in mind that three of the men under suspicion-Vail, O'Conner, and Rudd.i.c.k-are also Americans. Here again, you'll be of enormous a.s.sistance. As distasteful as it is, we must study them, Henry. We must study not only their outward appearances and activities, but also, in so far as possible, the inner workings of their psyches. The hidden wellsprings of their lives. For I have a theory, Henry."

Oscar began to pace. One step to the left, a turn, two steps to the right, a turn. "I believe it possible that this killer may be a kind of bifurcated personality. What do I mean by this? I mean that in some manner, for some reason, the mind of this person may have become split, divided. And, as a result, one part of his mind has become a sort of subterranean self-a separate and unsuspected semi-being, if you will-and it is this being, this creature, which is committing these terrible crimes. Without, and this is the salient point, Henry, without the man himself knowing of it."

"He don' know he's killin' people," Henry said.

"Exactly. You grasp my meaning perfectly. I-"

Someone knocked at the room's door.

Oscar turned, frowning impatiently. He strode over to the door and jerked it open.

"Oscar boy," said Vail. "I been lookin' all over for you." He scuttled into the room, nodded to Henry, turned back to Oscar, and said, "Lookit, this yokel marshal, he talked to you, right?"

"Yes, yes. A very colorful character."

"Right. So you know about the hookers and all. Well, I just wanted to tell you not to worry. I got everything under control."

"Under control?"

"I went and talked to Bill Greaves. He's the chief of police here, met him the other night at the lecture. Nice guy, kinda guy you can do business with. Anyway, I asked him about this hooker thing, and Grigsby and all. And you know what I found out?"

"I will in a moment, presumably."

Vail chuckled, shook his head. "That wit you got. Okay, what I found out is, Greaves didn't know nothing at all about the other hookers. The ones in the other cities. It was a big surprise to him. And he told me that this Grigsby, he's a federal marshal, sure, but he don't have any kinda jurisdiction here in Denver. Not over this case here, the hooker who got killed down by the river, and not over the others neither. Grigsby's just an old rummy, Greaves says, who likes to stick his nose into other people's business." Vail grinned. "Greaves is really burned up at the guy."

Oscar frowned. "I'm not sure I understand. You mean that no other prost.i.tutes were killed?"

"Who knows? Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. What's it got to do with us? You didn't kill 'em. I know I didn't."

"And the others on the tour?"

"Come on, Oscar boy. Von Hesse? O'Conner? Can you picture either one of 'em as a guy kills hookers? And besides, I got the whole thing figured out."

Oscar was frowning still. "Figured out," he repeated.

"Right. We drop 'em. O'Conner, von Hesse, all of 'em. We tell 'em to hit the road. That way, later, if it comes out about the hookers, we put out a statement, see? We say, yeah, sure, there were some folks traveling with us, maybe it was one of them who did this horrible thing, but we don't know anything about any of it, and anyway they're all gone now." Vail interrupted his explanation to frown thoughtfully. "Too bad about the Countess. She's got a lot of cla.s.s." He shrugged. "But sometimes in life you got to make sacrifices."

Oscar nodded. "Tell me something," he said. He was finding it extremely difficult to keep his voice even. "Why did you go to this Greaves in the first place?"

"I got to protect the tour, Oscar boy. With this guy Grigsby running around asking questions, it would of gotten out about the hookers. And that's the kind of publicity we don't need. I stalled him for a while, told him I'd cooperate, right? And then I got to thinking. How come Bill Greaves never came and talked to me about all this? Me and Bill got along real well. And who's this Grigsby guy anyway? So I went and had a little talk with old Bill."

"I see," Oscar said. He cleared his throat. "And what about the prost.i.tutes?"

Vail looked puzzled. "What about 'em?"

"What are old Bill's feelings regarding the prost.i.tutes?"

"Jeez, Oscar. What kinda feelings is he gonna have about a bunch of hookers got killed in some other city?"

"And the one who was killed here?"

"Okay, it's a tragedy and all, and, sure, naturally, he's gonna try to find out who did it. That's his job, right? But the thing is, Oscar boy, he knows it wasn't us. He knows we got no reason to go around killing hookers. He knows we don't need no bad publicity on the tour. And like I said, he's a guy you can do business with." Grinning, Vail winked broadly. "Him and me, see, we came to an understanding."

"An understanding?"

"Sure. He keeps quiet about the other hookers, keeps all that outta the newspapers, and he gets Grigsby off our backs."

"And in return?"

Grigsby shrugged lightly. "We slip him a percentage of the receipts. Not much, don't worry. And even at twice the price, I'm telling you, it'd be worth it. And it's only until we're out of Colorado."

Oscar nodded. "Mr. Vail," he said, "are you familiar with the word abominable?"

Vail frowned again. "Sure, yeah. I know plenty of big words. And what's with this Mr. Vail?"

"I think that what you suggest is abominable. I think it is loathsome. I think it is despicable. I think that you, personally, are contemptible. No. I think, actually, that you are beneath contempt. So far beneath it as to make contempt seem like veneration. I should call you a swine, but compared to you a swine seems the pinnacle of grace and chivalry."

Vail glanced uneasily toward Henry. "Hey, Oscar boy, not in front of the troops. I mean, we got a disagreement, we can-"

"Has it occurred to you, has it even once penetrated that quagmire you call a mind, that whoever is killing these women will continue to do so, indefinitely, until someone stops him? Has it occurred to you that if the killer is one of the people traveling with us, then we, you and I, are in some measure responsible for these deaths?"

"Responsible? Jeez, you got to be kidding!"

"On an even simpler level, much more your style, has it occurred to you during your shabby attempts to keep this from the newspapers, that O'Conner is a reporter? If we drop him from the tour, what's to prevent him from writing about all this?"

"Hey, O'Conner's a lush. I can handle him. Or Greaves can-"

"Can what? Chop off his head? What portion of the receipts will that cost us? And has it occurred to you, furthermore, that if one of these people is guilty, then the rest are innocent? And that you, in your glib indifference, will be casting them to the wolves?"

"Oscar boy, we got the tour to think about."

"We are not going to drop anyone. Not O'Conner. Not von Hesse. Not anyone. No one is going to hit the road."

"Now Oscar-"

"Except perhaps yourself. I mean that literally. If you open your mouth once more before I've finished speaking, I will pick you up, walk you over to the window, and push you through it. I a.s.sure you that I'm capable of doing this with great dispatch, and with even greater pleasure."

Oscar paused. Vail, unfortunately, merely stood there blinking.

"Now," said Oscar. "I want you to listen to me very carefully. This is what you're going to do. First, you will talk to the others and make sure that they've all spoken to Marshal Grigsby and given an account of their activities last night. To any who haven't, you will suggest that they do so. Grigsby may be a buffoon, but he's a determined buffoon, and he won't be satisfied until he's talked to all of us."

Vail took a deep breath. Oscar glared at him. Vail said nothing and blinked a few times more.

"Second, you will go down to the desk clerk and arrange for Henry's things to be moved from this dreadful little crypt into an actual room. If the expense money is dwindling, then I recommend that you make up the difference by altering your own accommodations."

Vail opened his mouth, Oscar glared, Vail shut his mouth and returned to blinking.

"Now. You mentioned that the prost.i.tute had been killed near the river. Where, exactly?"

"How come you want-"

"Where?"

"Shantytown," said Vail quickly. "That's all I know. That's what Greaves said. Come on now, Oscar boy, this ain't right. You threatening me like that. We been through a lot together."

"And perhaps we shall continue to do so. We'll discuss it later."

"Yeah, but Oscar ..."

Oscar looked at him. "Yes?"

"About Grigsby. I told you, we don't have to worry about him no more."

"I suspect it will take more than a chief of police to stop Marshal Grigsby. For the time being, we cooperate with him. Is that understood?"