Robert Randisi - Bullets & Lies

He approached the office just as a man appeared, coming from another direction, pushing another man ahead of him, whose hands seemed to be handcuffed behind his back.

“Sheriff,” the man whined, “this ain’t right.”

“Tell it to a judge, Aaron,” the other man said. “I warned you about this before.”

The cuffed man was wearing an empty holster. The man behind him had an extra gun tucked into his belt, and was wearing a badge.

The sheriff shoved his prisoner face first into the closed door, then reached around him to turn the knob.

“Sheriff?” Roper said.

He had not really meant it as a question, but the lawman took it that way.

“No, I ain’t,” the man said. “I just do this for fun.”

“Sorry,” Roper said, “but I need a moment of your time.”

“That so? Just get to town, did ya?”

“I did.”

“Well, my name’s Parnell. Let me get this fella situated in a cell and then we can talk.”

“Suits me.”

The sheriff opened the door and shoved his prisoner inside. Roper looked around, still conscious of possibly being followed, and then entered the building behind the lawman.

24

The sheriff’s office was musty and crowded. It had the prerequisite desk and stove, some file cabinets and chairs, but everything seemed forced into a space much too small, giving it a cramped feel.

The sheriff shoved his prisoner through a door that presumably led to a cell block. Roper heard the metallic clink of a cell door, and then the man reappeared and tossed a set of keys on his desk.

“Whataya think?” he asked, waving his arms. “They shoved me into this closet when the police department opened.”

“Not much room.”

“No, it ain’t.” The sheriff fell into his chair with an audible sigh. He was about fifty, with the air of a much older man. “I’m tired,” he said. “Have a seat and tell me your business.”

“My name’s Talbot Roper,” Roper said. “I’m a private detective working out of Denver.”

“Now there’s a job,” the lawman said. “You’re your own boss, ain’tcha? Nobody lookin’ over your shoulder. Bet you got a big office, don’t ya?”

“Pretty big.”

“That’s what I should do,” the sheriff said. “Set myself up like that. Get much work?”

“I do okay.”

“Yeah, I bet,” the sheriff said. “So what brings you my way?”

“I’m looking for a man named Vincent McCord.”

The lawman’s face changed, and he didn’t look so relaxed anymore.

“What do you want with McCord?”

There was no reason to lie, so he told the sheriff the truth.

“I want to talk to him about somebody he served with in the war,” Roper said. “A man who received the Medal of Honor.”

“What’s his name?”

“Westover, Howard Westover.”

The sheriff thought a moment, then said, “I don’t know him.” Roper believed him, but there was something on the man’s mind.

“So can you tell me where to find McCord?”

“Sure I can,” Parnell said. “I can take you to him if you want.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Sheriff Parnell got up and said, “Come on.”

They stepped outside, and Roper said, “My horse is at the livery.”

“You won’t need your horse. We can walk.”

He followed the sheriff until he got an uncomfortable feeling about where they were headed.

“There ya go.”

Roper had been able to tell minutes earlier that the lawman was walking him to boot hill, just outside of town. Now he looked down at the crudely drawn headstone that simply said VINCE MCORD.

“What happened?”

“He and his boys got drunk one day and decided they’d like to rob the bank.”

“He got shot doing it?”

“No, sir,” Parnell said. “They robbed the bank, all right, killed two tellers. One of ’em was a woman. They got away with over twenty thousand.”

“So what happened?”

“Posse tracked them down, brought ’em back, and hanged ’em in the center of town. No trial.”

“You lead that posse?”

“I wasn’t nowhere near the posse,” Parnell said. “It was a combination of lawmen and some of the town folks.”

“There were lawmen involved in a lynching?”

“They was,” Parnell said, “but nobody talks about it. Not ever. The next day this town just went back to business as usual.”

“This town’s got a pretty good history, what with the pony express and all,” Roper said. “That’s quite a blemish to have.”

“What blemish?” Parnell asked. “I told you, nobody ever talks about it. Why you think this headstone only has a name on it and nothin’ else?”

“You mean,” Roper asked, “the town goes on as if it never happened?”

“Mister,” Parnell said, “as far as this town is concerned, it never did happen. If you go over to the police department right now and ask about the robbery and the hanging, they’ll just look at you like you was crazy. There wasn’t no robbery, there wasn’t no murder, and there wasn’t no lynching.”

“And you’re okay with this?”

Parnell shrugged.

“There ain’t a damn thing I can do about it,” he said. “Ain’t a body in this town would back me if I told that story.”

“Then why’d you tell me?”

“Beats me,” he said. “I only meant to walk you up here and show you the grave. The rest just come tumblin’ outta my big mouth.”

“Well, Sheriff,” Roper said, “how about we go back to town and I buy you a drink.”

“I say that’d be right neighborly of you.”

25

Since he was spending the night in Saint Joe, Roper decided to go ahead and get as much information as he could while he was there, so over a beer or two—or four—he asked Sheriff Parnell what kind of man McCord had been. He was interested in the kind of men that had served with Howard Westover in the war. The kind of man Victoria Westover would suggest he contact about her husband’s medal.

“McCord was a bad one,” Parnell said. “Went to war bad, came back worse. I heard he was almost court-martialed during the war, but it was the eve of a battle and they needed every man they had.”

“What happened after the battle?”

“Nothin’,” Parnell said. “The officer who was recommending him for court-martial was killed. He just went along fat, dumb, and happy after that, the same man he’d always been.”

That certainly didn’t sound like the kind of man a Medal of Honor winner would be associated with, but Roper knew you couldn’t control who you served with in a war.

“Did anybody else he served with come back here with him?” he asked.

“Nope, just him,” Parnell said, “but everybody could see he’d gotten worse. The war gave him a chance to kill, and he developed a taste for it, as well as a taste for cruelty.”

“And it took all this time for him to get himself hanged?” Roper asked.

“All what time?”

“Well, it’s been over twenty years since the war’s been over.”

The sheriff looked at Roper strangely, as if the detective were speaking some foreign language, and then seemed to get it.

“Mister,” he said, “didn’t you notice how old that grave marker was?”

“Well, it was kind of worn,” Roper said. “I thought maybe it was used wood they reused over again.”

“Naw,” Parnell, “wasn’t no used wood. That grave’s twenty years old.”

“What?”

“McCord didn’t last very long when he came back to town from the war,” the lawman said. “He got himself involved with the wrong people, and ended up at the end of a rope. Where he belonged.” The sheriff held out his empty glass. “Another drink?”