The Bridge Read online

  The Bridge

  Number VII of Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch

  Knott, Robert

  Penguin Group US (2014)

  * * *

  Tags: Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch

  Virgil Cole & Everett Hitchttt

  The next gritty, gun-slinging entry in the New York Times-bestselling series, featuring itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.

  Territorial Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are back in Appaloosa, where their work enforcing the law has been exceptionally quiet. All that is about to change. An ominous storm rolls in, and along with it a band of night riders with a devious scheme, who show up at the Rio Blanco camp, where a three-hundred-foot bridge is under construction.

  Appaloosa's Sheriff Sledge Driskill and his deputies are the first to respond, but as the storm grows more threatening, news of troubles at the bridge escalate and the Sheriff and his deputies go missing.

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot (by Ace Atkins)

  Silent Night (with Helen Brann)

  Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby (by Ace Atkins)

  Sixkill

  Painted Ladies

  The Professional

  Rough Weather

  Now & Then

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  School Days

  Cold Service

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues (by Michael Brandman)

  Split Image

  Night and Day

  Stranger in Paradise

  High Profile

  Sea Change

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  THE VIRGIL COLE/EVERETT HITCH NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Bull River (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse (by Robert Knott)

  Blue-Eyed Devil

  Brimstone

  Resolution

  Appaloosa

  ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races (with Joan H. Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs (with Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring (with Joan H. Parker)

  Training with Weights (with John R. Marsh)

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2014 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Knott, Robert, date.

  Robert B. Parker’s The bridge / Robert Knott.

  p. cm.—(A Cole and Hitch novel ; 3)

  ISBN 978-0-698-16409-3

  1. Cole, Virgil (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Hitch, Everett (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Bridge.

  PS3611.N685R64 2014b 2014040666

  813'.6—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Julie

  CONTENTS

  Other Titles from Robert B. Parker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Acknowledgments

&
nbsp; Prologue

  The dense mass of stars was unusually ominous and threatening, as if the whole tangle of constellations was up to no damn good. The wide night sky pushed down hard on the four weary horsemen, appraising them, like a powerful and intolerant observer.

  With their tilted brims and slouching shoulders, the mounted men rode single file and without word, as their horses carried them toward their destination. They were all fairly young. One was a hefty fellow with a large gut; the second was gangly with a narrow face and shoulders; the third was also skinny but was dark-skinned, maybe a half-breed; and the fourth was small and wiry.

  Hard to know what the hell these night riders were thinking. What was going on in their heads? They would have had to feel the overhead pressure, the challenging and unforgiving weight. The stars loomed close enough to reach out and touch; a twisted twinkling expanse. The four horsemen rode slowly, deliberately up the eastern rim of the Rio Blanco River.

  The only sound was the occasional clink of a bit, the footfalls of their horses, and the soft rumble of the white-water river in the canyon far below.

  The dropping moon provided enough light for them to see their dogged and hell-bent way, and just ahead, where he was supposed to be, they saw the big man waiting for them.

  They had met him only once before. They knew from the brief encounter he was not someone to cross. Not ever. He was different, above average in every respect. He could smile and show his nice white teeth, but he was menacing and ill-tempered to his very core. There was something even more dangerous about him: it was as if he were from another place in time. One of the riders told the others that the big sonofabitch reminded him of what the warrior Achilles might have been like. He was handsome and rawboned. He had a warrior swagger to him as if he’d single-handedly just wiped out an army and was looking forward to his next victim. His movements were swift and specific. He had thick, broad shoulders and his hands and forearms were sinewy with muscle. His neck was wide and corded. He had a full head of shiny, coarse hair and his eyes were deep-set and dark blue.

  The night riders were also fearful of the two brothers who would accompany them later, but they were in this, all of them. They would not turn back and they could not turn back, not now, not tonight. They were all committed to what they rode out on this night to do.

  The big Achilles man got to his feet in the buckboard. He stood looking at them as they neared and then jumped down from the wagon as they came to a stop.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  He threw back a canvas uncovering the wagon’s freight.

  “What about the telegraph lines,” he asked, before they could defend their belated arrival.

  “They’re cut,” the dark-skinned man said, as he dismounted.

  “You see anybody?”

  “We did not,” the hefty man said.

  “Anybody see you?”

  “No, nobody.”

  “You sure?”

  “We are,” the hefty man replied.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s get a move on it.”

  “How far from here?” the small, wiry man said.

  “Quarter-mile,” he said. “From here we go in on foot. Each one hauls a load.”

  “Where we gonna meet ’em?” the hefty man said.

  “Just carry your load and follow me,” he said. “Got one hour before sunup.”

  The riders didn’t waste any time. They tied their horses under a stand of small sycamores and went about the task at hand.

  One by one, each of the men removed the supplies from the buckboard and followed the big warrior man, the Achilles man.

  They walked along a narrow deer path through thickets, high above the river. As they neared their destination, they could hear someone up ahead of them.

  “Far enough,” a man’s voice said.

  The voice was raspy, with a distinct southern drawl.

  They knew it was one of the brothers, and then they saw them both. The two men stepped out from a cluster of briars near a tree-covered wash that folded off down toward the river some two hundred feet below.

  The brothers were stout men, with full, bristly beards and tangled, unruly hair. Two of the riders had known the brothers in earlier days and were not any more comfortable with them than they were with the warrior man.

  Both brothers were intelligent men, but they were mercurial and quick-tempered. They presented themselves as polite and forthright, but a strange, disconnected quality lurked within. They both were quiet and though their eyes were kind, there was a constant callous and mistrusting element about their demeanor.

  “Don’t ever turn your back on them,” the dark-skinned man said to the others.

  This night, however, what these men were focused on was the brothers’ shrewd scheme. They recruited the warrior man and the four riders, and if everything went as planned, they all would make a lot of money. More money than any of them would have made in a lifetime.

  Before tonight, they had done a mock run of the plan. Each man knew his job. When the taller brother said, “Let’s go,” they moved out.

  It did not take long for them to plant the dynamite.

  One of the men, the heavyset man, knew everything about how and where it should be placed. He had been the one who showed the others what to do. His extensive knowledge of explosives was the very reason for his recruitment in the first place.

  Daybreak was upon them and the first rays of sun began to appear as the heavyset man instructed the younger brother how to terminate the last connection.

  “I remember,” the younger brother said.

  The heavyset man nodded. He started off walking toward the trail that led back to the buckboard. The others were ahead of him and he followed them as he unspooled the wire.

  After the younger brother made the final connection and was headed back toward the deer path he came face-to-face with Percy O’Malley.

  “Hey,” Percy said. “Good morning.”

  The brother was startled to see the old man.

  “Morning, Percy,” the brother said.

  “What are you doing out here so early?” Percy said.

  The brother looked around the old man to see if there was anyone behind him.

  “I’ll show you,” the brother said, as he walked to the edge.

  The old man followed him.

  The brother pointed to the river, two hundred feet below.

  “Look,” the brother said.

  When Percy leaned over to look, the brother pulled his long knife from its sheath, cupped his hand around the old man’s mouth, and slit his throat. He shoved the man off the side and watched as his body tumbled into the river. If he had stopped to look, he would have seen the body swept up by the current, leaving a murky red trail dispatched behind it.

  By the time he made it back to where the other men were, the heavyset man had the wires connected on the terminals of the detonator.

  They had a good vantage point from their location.

  “Who wants to do the honors?” the heavyset man said.

  “Me,” the warrior man said without hesitation.

  He got down on his knees and the others closed in behind him.

  “On three,” the warrior man said.

  “One . . . two . . .”

  He lowered the plunger handle on the detonator and the men watched the three-hundred-foot iron bridge that crossed over the Rio Blanco River explode in a monstrous blast, earth-quaking and sulfurous as if it came from deep down in hell, delivered by the Evil Red Devil himself.

  —1—

  Weather.”

  “Is,” Virgil said.

  “Don’t look good,” I said.

  “No,” Virgil said. “It don’t.”

  Virgil and I were watching a faraway line of darkness coming toward us from the north.

  “Got this place shingled just in time,” I said.

  Virgil glanced up, looking at the underside of the porch overhang we were sitting under.

 
; “Know soon enough if we got any leaks,” I said.

  “’Spect we will.”

  “This’ll be the first sign of weather since we’ve been back here in Appaloosa,” I said.

  “It is,” Virgil said, looking back to the clouds. “Ain’t it?”

  “Been warm and dry,” I said. “Hot, even.”

  “Has,” Virgil said.

  Virgil put the heels of his boots on the porch rail and tipped his chair back a little. We sat quiet for a long moment as we watched the dark weather moving slowly in our direction.

  “What is it,” Virgil said, tilting his head a little. “Where are we, Everett?”

  “November, Virgil. Second day of.”

  Virgil shook his head a little.

  “What the hell happened to October?”

  “You had those two German carpenters you hired working my backside off on this place, that’s what happened,” I said. “Good goings for you things have been quiet in the outlaw racket.”

  “Temperate times,” he said.

  Virgil rocked his chair a little as he looked at the clouds.

  “Hope it’s not the calm before the storm,” I said.

  “Never know,” Virgil said.

  “No reason to think about outlawing that’s not yet happened,” I said. “Or be downright superstitious.”

  “No,” Virgil said. “No reason.”

  We sat quiet a moment, watching the faraway storm.

  “Bad weather does make folks desperate,” I said. “People get out of sorts.”

  “Been our experience,” Virgil said, “people get cold, desperate, and hungry.”

  I leaned back in my chair and looked through the open doorway into the house.

  “Speaking of it,” I said. “What do you think she’s cooking up in there?”

  “Don’t know,” Virgil said. “Allie said she was making something special.”

  “That don’t sound good.”

  Virgil smiled a little.

  “She’s trying,” he said.

  “Maybe you ought to get her a cookbook,” I said. “With recipes. Where she learns how to measure stuff out and how long to cook it and what goes with what and so on.”

  “I offered,” Virgil said. “She told me all good chefs cook by the seat of their pants.”

  We both thought about that for a moment.

  “You got some of that Kentucky?”

  “I do,” Virgil said.

  “Might as well have ourselves a nudge or two,” I said.