Longarm 245 longarm and.., p.18
Longarm 245: Longarm and the Vanishing Virgin, page 18
Billy Vail was on his knees by now, looking down at Canady. “I hate to say this, Mr. Canady, but you’re under arrest for trying to defraud the United States government.”
Canady sat up. “So it’s all come out, has it?” he asked heavily. He looked at his daughter, who was crying now. “Nora, you knew....”
“I’m sorry, Father,” she practically wailed.
Canady climbed to his feet. Under Vail’s watchful eye, he stepped over to her and put his arms around her. “Don’t worry,” he told her, patting her back. “Are you all right? Were you hurt?”
Nora shook her head as she buried her face against his chest.
Canady smiled and hugged her. “Then that’s all I care about. None of the rest of it matters. I’ve got my little girl back.”
“No thanks to Palmer here,” said Longarm. “He did his damnedest to have her killed, Canady.”
The tycoon turned his head to look at his secret partner, the man who might have been his son-in-law. His lips drew back from his teeth. “I hope they put us in the same cell, Jonas,” he said softly.
Judging from the sag jawed expression on the senator’s face, thought Longarm, Jonas Palmer had just found himself looking right into the pits of Hell.
Jennings was fussing over O’Shaughnessy, who was holding a hand over a bloody patch on his shoulder. “Oh, Lord, you’re hurt, Fergus!” Jennings said.
“‘Tis naught but a scratch,” insisted O’Shaughnessy. “Ye did not think a wee gun like that could hurt me, did ye?”
“I’ll summon a doctor,” Jennings said before he rushed out of the room. Obviously, the hostility he had demonstrated toward the big Irishman during Longarm’s previous visit to the Canady mansion was just a facade.
“Well, now,” Billy Vail said as he looked around the room, “looks like it’s all over.”
Longarm looked at Canady, who was still holding his daughter as she cried against his chest. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe some of it’s just starting.”
The streets of Denver were quiet, and a hint of a cool breeze drifted down from the Front Range, relieving the warmth of the summer night. Longarm was walking because he felt like walking. He could have ridden in the wagon with Billy Vail and the two prisoners and the other deputies who were guarding them, but he hadn’t felt like it. He probably could have stayed back at the Canady mansion for a while, where Nora was being looked after by Jennings and O’Shaughnessy and the other servants.
Instead he had felt the need to stretch his legs, to walk downtown and maybe get a drink, play a hand or two of cards.
Put this case and its tangled emotions behind him.
He drew deeply on the cheroot that was smoldering between his teeth. He and Nora had parted friends, and that was good. She had known that he and Vail were only doing their jobs. And she had whispered to him while they were momentarily alone that she didn’t regret a thing they had done on the train, not a thing. But it would be a while before she would want to see much of him again, if ever, and he could understand that. He had to.
He wondered how Billy Vail would feel about giving him some time off, time enough to ride back down to Texas and see Beth Jellicoe again....
The whisper of boot leather on pavement was all the warning he had.
Longarm spun around and spotted the figure lunging out of an alley mouth, heard the screamed curses, saw the gaping twin maws of a double-barreled shotgun pointing at him.
“Shit!” said Longarm.
He had forgotten all about Badger Bob McGurk.
He went diving for the ground as McGurk triggered both barrels of the Greener. The orange flare of the muzzle blasts lit up the night and cast the ugly features of the vengeful outlaw in a garish light. Longarm’s gun was in his hand as he landed on his belly and felt buckshot sting his back as it grazed him. He fired twice, and both bullets caught Badger Bob in the face, making him even uglier as well as dead. McGurk flopped backward, dropping the scattergun.
Longarm stood up, dug out a lucifer with his left hand, and flicked it into life. The light from the match showed him Badger Bob’s sprawled body. The outlaw would never hurt anybody again. Longarm dropped the lucifer and ground it out under his boot heel.
Somewhere in the distance, a whistle was blowing. One of the Denver policemen must have heard the shot and was summoning help before he came to investigate, thought Longarm.
He holstered his gun and sat down on the curb to wait. After a moment, he said, “Huh.” He had just realized that he still didn’t know if the fella called Ross, Badger Bob’s old cell mate, had been hired to kill him by Senator Palmer, or if Ross had come after him as a favor to McGurk. He might never know, because McGurk and Ross were both dead and Palmer wasn’t likely to ever admit to anything he didn’t have to.
Not that it really mattered, Longarm told himself, because the people who had tried to kill him hadn’t succeeded. He was alive, damn it, alive and kicking.
Longarm took another drag on the cheroot, which he hadn’t dropped even while he was killing McGurk, and blew the smoke out in a perfect ring. Then he sat there next to the dead man and listened to the police whistles coming closer and watched the cool night breeze carry the smoke away.
Watch for
LONGARM AND THE CURSED CORPSE
246th novel in the exciting LONGARM series from Jove
Coming in June!
Evans, Tabor, Longarm 245: Longarm and the Vanishing Virgin
