Ed Gorman - Showdown

"Of course I'll pay them." Neville looked angry. "You think I wouldn't pay for my own sister?"

"Some people won't."

"Well, they don't have Cassie for a sister. I'd pay any amount they want."

"Don't be surprised if it's a lot of money."

"I just want her back." Neville nodded to Prine. "Then I'm going to ask you for the loan of your deputy here and we're going to hunt them down."

"I'm not sure I can do that," Daly said.

"You want to see them brought to justice, don't you?"

"Of course I do, Richard. But Prine here's a town employee. I can't hire him out freelance."

"What if I was to give the town a gift? I'll bet the mayor would let him go with me if I gave the town a generous gift."

"No offense, Richard. But Prine here's no manhunter. He's a town deputy. You'd be better off getting yourself a tracker or a bounty hunter. Those boys are used to work like that."

Prine, seeing that their disagreement might soon turn into an argument, both men being of the stubborn variety, said, "Why don't we worry about that when the time comes. Right now, Neville should go home and see if there's a ransom letter waiting. It's too late to do anything about it tonight. But why don't we all meet back here at eight this morning and make our plans then?"

Neville clapped Prine on the back. "Good idea. I need some rest, anyway." He glanced at all three of them. "I'll see you men tomorrow."

Prine settled in to look through his mail. Nothing interesting. He poured himself a cup of Davis's molten coffee and asked what the various teams of men had discovered.

"Not a hell of a lot," Daly said.

Prine carefully asked about several places they might have looked, working in the Knowles's farmhouse as casually as possible.

Carlyle joined in at that point. "There're four deserted farmhouses in the area. Men went through every one of them and didn't find anything."

"There's a root cellar at the Knowles place," Prine said. "They look there, too?"

"Looked everywhere. No sign of her."

Prine went back to his paperwork eventually. Or appeared to, anyway. Couldn't concentrate, of course. His stomach was tense and filled with acid. His throat with bile. He'd figured all along that they'd hide her in one of the many caves around the Knowles farmhouse. Way too many of those to check out. Then, at nightfall, they'd move her into the farmhouse and the root cellar.

But what if they hadn't? What if they'd changed their minds, figured that there was a better place to hide her? Then what?

There would go his reward. There would go his prominence. There would go his dream.

He made a show of being hungry. Three, four times over the course of the next hour, he talked about food. Finally, Daly said, "You convinced me, Tom. I'm headin' home to supper."

"Me, too," Carlyle said.

"Ryan's making his early rounds," Daly said. "You can lock up and leave if you want to."

"Might as well wait for him," Prine said.

"Thought you were so damned hungry," Daly said.

"I am, but I don't want to face this paperwork in the morning."

Daly shrugged. "Up to you."

They left.

All Prine accomplished while he waited for Harry Ryan, the night deputy, was working himself into a higher state of alarm. There was probably nothing to worry about. Probably everything was fine. Probably just about now they'd be moving her into the root cellar. Probably they would have delivered the ransom note and were now just waiting till morning to pick up the money. Probably.

But Prine couldn't let go of all the ways his plan could fail. Hell, it didn't take much imagination to think that they'd found a new and better place to hide her. He could remember his surprise that they picked a place so open and obvious. He could hear them making the argument for open and obvious—the posse would look at it early in their search, find it empty, move on, and then never bother them again. But it was still a perilous place to be should someone decide to recheck it the next day.

Prine wished he hadn't agreed to wait for Harry Ryan. Where the hell was he, anyway?

Prine got up and started pacing. That was a bad sign. Pacing was something he did only when everything started to overwhelm him . . .

Half an hour later, Harry Ryan came striding in. A large, square, affable man with a drinker's nose that was almost as scarlet as his hair, he said, "Hey, Tom, you didn't have to wait for me."

"That's all right. I had a lot of paperwork to do."

"Hell, you coulda just locked up and left. I woulda."

"Wasn't any trouble." Prine was back at his desk, pretending to be absorbed with all his paperwork. He stood up and yawned.

Ryan didn't have a desk of his own. There wasn't much inside work on the night shift. Mostly you ran in unruly drunks. He always sat at Daly's desk. "Say, I ran into Timmins over to the hardware store and he told me to tell Daly something. Maybe you could pass it along in the morning and save me the trouble of writin' it down."

Prine had seen some of Ryan's notes. He was barely literate and his notes not very understandable.

"Sure, what is it?" Prine said, heading for the door.

"Said a couple mornings when he was sweeping off the sidewalk, he seen this man watching Cassie Neville come into town on her buggy. Said the man used a stopwatch, like he wanted to know exactly what time she got here every morning. Sounds like one of the kidnappers to me."

"Could be," Prine said, trying to keep his voice neutral. He didn't know if this would help or hurt his plan. Probably it wouldn't have any effect on it one way or the other. Still, it gave him an anxious feeling. "He describe the man?"

"He sure did."

And boy did he. A description that detailed was just about as good as a photograph.

"You be sure and tell him, Tom."

"Don't worry," Prine said. "I will."

He walked over to his horse, mounted up, and headed for the farmhouse and the root cellar.

The evening rush had started early at The Friendly Café. Lucy was asked to stay for a few extra hours to help out. Maybe it was tonight's cold weather, a large number of only occasional customers coming in for the kind of food they couldn't get at home.

Lucy was leaving work just as Harry Ryan cut across the street a block away to enter the sheriff's office. She recognized his silhouette by his size and by his long stride. Not many men could eat up ground the way Harry could.

She convinced herself to walk past the sheriff's office so she could say hello to Harry. Tom would be gone by now, in his room probably, or maybe out for a few beers.

He wouldn't be out with Cassie Neville.

She felt ashamed of not fearing for Cassie. It wasn't Cassie's fault that Tom no longer loved Lucy. It wasn't Cassie's fault that Lucy couldn't deal well with her loss of Tom. It wasn't Cassie's fault that she was rich and beautiful.

Lucy said a quick and sincere prayer for Cassie. That she'd be found soon. Alive and well.

When she reached Harry, she said, "Any word on Cassie Neville, Harry?"

"Oh, evening, Lucy. Afraid not. Nothing new, anyway."

"I just said a prayer for her."

"Everybody's praying. All the churches had special services for her this afternoon."

Harry touched his hat and went inside. In the open door, she saw Tom bent over his desk, working, and that combination of thrill and terror went through her with icy panic.

She didn't know which was worse. That he might see her in the dusk out here. Or that he might not see her.

She hesitated a moment, fighting the urge to go up to the door and slip inside, pretending that she didn't know Tom was in there. But no. No, she wouldn't do it. She had to get control of herself. This was a form of madness, and she knew it. There were articles in some of the women's magazines about how spurned women sometimes gave in to melancholia that led to insanity or suicide or murder. She didn't feel that she was close to any of these things yet. But it wasn't impossible to imagine that she might get there someday.