Clive Cussler - The Chase

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.