Роберт Паркер - Robert B. Parker's Revelation

“Where is she?”

“She looked really nice,” he said. “Little canary. So do you. You look like you’re ready for a party... and, a goddamn flower? Goddamn, Lonnigan, you’re a regular dandy.”

“Where is she?”

Degraw rubbed his crotch.

“She was just as I imagined she’d be,” he said.

“What’d you do?”

“What else?” Degraw said.

Driggs stared at him without an ounce of emotion.

Degraw grinned.

“Have a look for yourself,” he said as he nodded to the armoire.

Driggs looked to the tall, mirrored wardrobe cabinet, then looked back to Degraw.

“Go on,” Degraw said, “I think you will like what you see. You won’t be disappointed.”

Driggs rose out of the chair and walked to the cabinet. He reached out and opened the door. He stared motionless at what he found inside.

“She was... good,” Degraw said. “I knew that Bible bullshit she brought around was a bunch of bullshit. She was just like all the others, nothing but a fucking whore.”

The princess was hanging inside the tall cabinet from a cord around her neck. Her eyes were wide open. Her purple tongue protruded from her lips. Her yellow dress was split all the way up the front, as was her body. She’d been split open from her crotch all the way to her chin with the straight razor that was lying at her feet.

Degraw leaned just a bit to get a closer look at Driggs’s face.

“Is that a fucking tear?” Degraw said.

Driggs did not look at him.

“It is,” Degraw said with a laugh. “I’ll be goddamn. Donnie fucking Lonnigan...”

Driggs turned his head slowly and looked to Degraw. Tears were running down his cheeks.

Degraw laughed again, harder this time, and when he did Driggs quickly dropped and lunged just as Degraw pulled both triggers. The shotgun’s double-barrel explosion was loud, but the shots missed. They went just over Driggs’s head and blew through the top of the armoire door as Driggs’s shoulder hit Degraw in his midsection, slamming him hard against the wall.

Driggs pulled on the gun but Degraw held it from him. Then Driggs grabbed Degraw by the hair and pulled hard, banging his head into the remaining jagged mirror of the armoire door, slicing Degraw across the face.

Driggs got Degraw in a headlock, then spun and charged toward the room door. The door shattered and splintered free from the doorjamb and fell into the hall followed by the big men. Driggs landed on top of Degraw and he twisted Degraw’s head to the side. Degraw screamed in pain, as his neck was about to snap. Degraw rifled three elbows into Driggs. Driggs was momentarily stunned and Degraw put the shotgun to Driggs’s throat. But Driggs pushed back as the two men powered back up, getting back on their feet. They were locked arm to arm with the gun held by both as they stumbled back into the room. Driggs jerked Degraw hard and they slammed into the wall, busting through the lath and plaster. Degraw pulled back, then pushed hard on Driggs and drove him across the room, snapping the post from the footboard of the bed, as the muscled men smashed hard into the opposite wall. The two powerful men turned and turned again, going back out into the hall. Then Driggs picked Degraw up off his feet and charged back into the room with him and crashed out through the window. They landed, striking hard on the shingled porch overhang and instantly started to slide, and within a moment they rolled off the fifteen-foot-high roof. There was a short silence as they fell. When they landed on the hard-packed street Degraw gasped — his wind knocked out of him. Driggs was on top of him. Looking down at Degraw’s eyes staring up at him. Driggs put his large hands on Degraw’s head, and with a dominant twisting crack, he snapped Degraw’s neck.

Driggs stared at Degraw for a long moment, then glanced up and looked around. There was a crowd of people on the boardwalk that had come out of the Boston House Saloon who had just witnessed what happened, including Wallis.

“Mr. Bedford?” Wallis said.

Driggs pushed back his hair and tucked in his shirt.

“My God,” Wallis said,

Off in the distance the whistle blasts of the evening train coming into Appaloosa echoed through the streets.

“Are you okay, Mr. Bedford?” Wallis said.

Driggs straightened his coat and tie as he looked to Wallis.

“Yes,” Driggs said. “I’m fine.”

Driggs looked to dead Degraw. He reached down, scooped up the double-barrel shotgun. Then he rifled through Degraw’s pockets and found some shotgun shells.

“Are you sure?” Wallis said.

Driggs rose back up and broke open the double-barrel and slid in two new shells then looked to Wallis.

“I’m perfectly fine, Mr. Wallis, perfectly fine,” Driggs said. “I have a party to attend.”

Driggs snapped the break-over shotgun closed with a loud click and started walking off toward the Vandervoort Town Hall.

The train pulled into the Appaloosa depot at just past eight o’clock in the evening and Book was waiting there for us on the platform. When we approached, he removed his hat and looked down to his feet.

“Hey, Book,” I said.

Book raised his head kind of slow-like and looked up to Virgil and me. He had tears in his eyes.

“I got some real bad news,” he said with a quivering bottom lip.

“What is it, Book?” I said.

“Sheriff Chastain has been killed,” he said. “Murdered.”

“Goddamn,” I said.

Virgil looked to me.

“By who?” Virgil said.

“Don’t know.”

“Well, how do you know?”

“He was found.”

“Where?”

“In a building that was being built over on Main Street.”

“How was he killed, Book?” Virgil said.

“I’m not real sure.”

Book shook his head and looked away, fighting back tears.

“What do you know?” Virgil said.

“There is a building over there, the corner of Main and Third, that is under construction. Two workers found him there dead... along with another man.”

“Another man?” Virgil said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Who?”

Book shook his head a little.

“I got no idea who he is... was. I might have seen him around, but I’m not real sure.”

“And you’re not sure how Chastain was killed?” Virgil said.

“Not for certain... Looked like he was... was in a fight and he maybe was strangled. His neck was swollen and caked in blood.”

“What about the other man?” Virgil said.

Book shook his head.

“Looked like the same thing, I guess.”

“What’d the other man look like?”

“Oh, older... I say mid-fifty-something, sixty, maybe. Kind of a hefty fella. Dressed sort of normal, bowler. None of us deputies for sure knew who he was, but some of the others said they thought they’d seen him, too.”

“Where are they?” I said. “The bodies?”

“Undertaker.”

“Nobody saw nothing at this building?” Virgil said. “Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“When the workers find them?”

“Today, this morning... they were down behind a door under the floor.”

“What?” Virgil said.

“There is an opening to the building’s floor. The substructure, there was a door in the floor. They, both Sheriff Chastain and the other man, had been dumped there.”

Virgil looked at me and shook his head.

“Nobody knows but us deputies,” Book said. “I told everybody to keep shut about this... I told them you two was coming back and that you needed to know first and we’d go from there.”