He controlled his impatience. “You came here of your own free will. You must have something you want to get off your chest.”
She swallowed. Her eyes were enormous in her colorless face.
“Why did you turn down his presents?” Robert asked. “Why did you say they’d been bought with blood money?”
She cried, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No. Not to me.”
“He killed that policeman. And the ranch foreman.”
“Caretaker,” Robert corrected, “but true enough. There’s blood on Braun’s hands now, but whose blood was it that made you turn down his presents?”
She struggled with it for a moment. “He told me something a few weeks ago. Something bad. He regretted it the minute the words were out—and so did I. I wished I’d never known. I liked him until then.” She wiped her eyes. “He said if I ever repeated it to anyone, he’d kill me. And that’s what he’s going to do.”
“He can’t kill you from prison.”
“No, but he’s not in prison.”
“He will be soon enough. What did he tell you?” Robert studied her face. “Who did he murder?”
She jumped a little, but it hadn’t been difficult to put two and two together.
“Would you like a drink?” He opened his desk drawer.
She shook her head, seemed to steel herself.
“It happened six months ago. A sheriff’s deputy caught him out on Mill Creek Road. Caught him red-handed stealing chickens. He said he didn’t mean to. But the deputy surprised Harold, and he…he shot him. He killed him dead.”
Killed him dead. Was there another way to kill someone?
For a long moment Robert didn’t move.
“Clinton Dooley,” he said at last. “Was that the name of the deputy?”
McDuffy shook her head. “I don’t know. I never knew his name. I didn’t want to know. I tried to forget. But I couldn’t. Every time Harry touched me, I remembered that those were the hands that had killed a man.” She buried her face in her hands.
Robert watched her, but in his mind he was seeing Mabel and those three little girls.
So that was the answer. That was why Braun had believed he had nothing left to lose when the police had shown up at the Knight’s Arms; that was why two more men had lost their lives.
He came back to himself. He rose and came from behind the desk. “You’ve done the right thing, Miss McDuffy. You’ll be protected. You have my word.”
She rose automatically, her expression doubtful as he ushered her from his office.
Bart was waiting for him. His eyes were sparkling with excitement. “We just got a phone call from St. James hospital,” he told Robert quietly. “They believe one of their employees stole a vial of insulin a couple of hours ago.”
“Insulin?” Robert stared at him. “What’s the name of this employee?”
“Nelda Ross. She’s not known to us. But get this, Chief, she’s Jim Ross’s wife.”
“Who the hell is Jim Ross?”
“One of the guys we interviewed about Harold Braun. Ross used to work with Braun. They were buddies.”
“Get Sheriff Riddle on the phone. Where the hell does this Ross live?”
“Oklahoma Street.” Bart hesitated. “Chief—Robert—it might be a coincidence, but that lead Jameson phoned about? It was on Oklahoma Street.”
Time stopped. Robert experienced a terrible moment of ice-cold clarity. He could see in an instant how it was going to play out, recognized the relentless, ruthless truth of it—like a bullet on a June night. He understood now what Jamie had meant about reading the Greeks. Stupid heartless plays where no one learned their lesson until it was too late and everyone was dead.
I never told him I loved him.
Had not even let Jamie say the words to him. Had let him think—lied even—about how much he meant to Robert. How much he’d always meant. Had not even tried to pretend he would find a way for them, when the way had been there all the time.
He had had the chance and he had left it too late.
It was a punch to the heart. He had to struggle to get the words out. “Christ, get me— I need every available man we’ve got. Now.”
* * * * *
* * * * *
“You’ve had better ideas,” Robert said when James finally opened his eyes.
Robert had been sitting beside James’s hospital bed for nearly twelve hours. For the first eight, James had been in an oxygen tent—getting tear-gassed turned out to be unbeneficial for a man with weak lungs—but once he’d been breathing strongly and regularly on his own, they’d unwrapped him and now he was lying there, blinking up at Robert. The most beautiful Christmas present since God had delivered Baby Jesus to a world bent on blowing itself up.
“Have I?” James’s voice sounded creaky and old.
Robert nodded grimly.
“Is it—” James stopped to lick his lips. “Is everything okay?” His red eyes looked like he’d been crying for a million years. Robert was going to make it business that Jamie never cried about anything again.
“Sure,” he said tersely. “You’re a hero. Congratulations.”
James looked more doubtful than ever. “Am I?”
“You sure are. And if you ever pull something like that again—” Robert’s voice shook. He couldn’t finish it. Couldn’t joke about it. It was still too close, too real. “Just don’t,” he said harshly.
James turned red—frankly it was a relief to see color in his face again. He said with a flicker of his old obstinacy, “I phoned the station. I tried to reach you.”
“Try harder next time.”
But it was no use trying to be tough with him. Not when all Robert wanted to do was tell him he’d had time to think, time to realize…and talking was just one of the things Robert wanted to do.
“I don’t know what you want,” James said, and just for a moment he sounded very young and very unsure. Like the boy he’d once been. Robert had loved that boy, but those feelings didn’t hold a candle to what he felt for the man James had become.
He threw a quick look at the bed next to James’s, where Whitey Whitehall was snoring the peaceful sleep of the drugged-to-the-gills. Robert leaned over the bed and brushed James’s pale mouth with his own.
James’s mouth quivered. His hazel eyes filled with the easy tears of the not-yet-convalescent. But he kissed Robert back. They both knew he’d have to be dead not to kiss Robert back.
“I’m going to tell you,” Robert said softly. “It turns out, I’ve had better ideas too.”
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Author Notes
The original inspiration for this story was sparked by my reading a 1935 true-crime story about William Henry Knight’s Christmas Day murder spree in Butte, Montana. Dates, names, even a number of places have been changed for the purposes of this work of fiction. As 1940s Butte was a bit too large for my needs, I’ve replaced it with the smaller fictional town of Bolt.
About the Author
Author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure, and unapologetic man-on-man Romance, JOSH LANYON’S work has been translated into eleven languages. Her FBI thriller Fair Game was the first Male/Male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, then the largest Romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016, Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan’s annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list). The Adrien English series was awarded the All Time Favorite Couple by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group.
Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist (twice for Gay Mystery), an Edgar nominee, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads All Time Favorite M/M Author award.
Josh is married and lives in Southern California.
Find other Josh Lanyon titles at www.joshlanyon.com
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If you enjoyed this story, check the following titles by Josh Lanyon:
Novels
The ADRIEN ENGLISH Mysteries
Fatal Shadows
A Dangerous Thing
The Hell You Say
Death of a Pirate King
The Dark Tide
So This is Christmas
Stranger Things Have Happened (Interactive Novel)
The HOLMES & MORIARITY Mysteries
Somebody Killed His Editor
All She Wrote
The Boy with the Painful Tattoo
In Other Words… Murder
The ALL’S FAIR Trilogy
Fair Game
Fair Play
Fair Chance
The ART OF MURDER Trilogy
The Mermaid Murders
The Monet Murders
The Magician Murders
Other novels
This Rough Magic
The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks
Mexican Heat (with Laura Baumbach)
Strange Fortune
Come Unto These Yellow Sands
Stranger on the Shore
Winter Kill
Jefferson Blythe, Esquire
Murder in Pastel
The Curse of the Blue Scarab
Murder Takes the High Road
Séance on a Summer’s Night
The Ghost Had an Early Check-Out
Novellas
The DANGEROUS GROUND Series
Dangerous Ground
Old Poison
Blood Heat
Dead Run
Kick Start
The I SPY Series
I Spy Something Bloody
I Spy Something Wicked
I Spy Something Christmas
Other novellas
Cards on the Table
The Dark Farewell
The Darkling Thrush
The Dickens with Love
Don’t Look Back
A Ghost of a Chance
Lovers and Other Strangers
Out of the Blue
A Vintage Affair
Lone Star (in Men Under the Mistletoe)
Green Glass Beads (in Irregulars)
Blood Red Butterfly
Everything I Know
Baby, It’s Cold (in Comfort and Joy)
A Case of Christmas
Murder Between the Pages
In a Dark Wood
The Parting Glass
The Dark Horse
The White Knight
Snowball in Hell
Haunted Heart: Winter
Mummy Dearest
Short stories
A Limited Engagement
The French Have a Word for It
In Sunshine or In Shadow
Until We Meet Once More
Perfect Day
Heart Trouble
Other People’s Weddings (Petit Mort)
Slings and Arrows (Petit Mort)
Sort of Stranger Than Fiction (Petit Mort)
Critic’s Choice (Petit Mort)
Just Desserts (Petit Mort)
In Plain Sight
Wedding Favors
Wizard’s Moon
Night Watch
Fade to Black
Plenty of Fish
Halloween is Murder
The Boy Next Door
Collections
Short Stories (Vol. 1)
Sweet Spot (the Petit Morts)
Merry Christmas, Darling (Holiday Codas)
Christmas Waltz (Holiday Codas 2)
I Spy…Three Novellas
Point Blank (Five Dangerous Ground Novellas)
Dark Horse, White Knight (Two Novellas)
The Adrien English Mysteries (Volumes 1 - 3)
The Adrien English Mysteries (Volumes 4 – 6)
SLAY RIDE
April 2019
Copyright (c) 2019 by Josh Lanyon
Cover by Catherine Dair
Edited by Keren Reed
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from JustJoshin Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-937909-60-4
Published in the United States of America
JustJoshin Publishing, Inc.
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Suite 116
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www.joshlanyon.com
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.