Robert B. Parker's Revelation Page 20

  “What?”

  “Who?”

  “What? It’s you, Gus. Look . . . I seen you, last night, and I . . . I . . .”

  “You what?”

  “Thought you was dead, Gus, I swear . . .”

  “Thought wrong.”

  “I can’t believe it . . . What the . . . ?” Dave said. “What the hell you doing here, Gus?”

  “I could ask you the same thing, but that would be wasted verbiage on my part,” Driggs said. “I know damn good and well what you are doing here.”

  “Don’t . . . Don’t hurt me, Gus, please . . .” Dave said.

  “Hurt you? Now, why would I want to hurt you?”

  “You know I was not the one.”

  “The one? What do you mean, ‘the one’?”

  Dave just stared at him, shaking his head hard from side to side.

  “I was not the one that shot you.”

  “No?”

  “I swear to God. You have to believe me.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You’ve never told the truth in your life, Uncle Dave, so why do you think I have to believe you now?”

  “He done it. It was him . . .”

  “Don’t need to tell me what I know.”

  “I’m not . . . I mean . . .”

  “You mean? You mean nothing, absolutely nothing. And here, I’m thinking you are the law looking on me.”

  “Law? No. Hell. I’m no law.”

  “You don’t need to point that out, either, Uncle Dave. Still kissing ass. You have not so much as even been invited to sit and eat lunch with him, have you?”

  Dave just stared at him.

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” Driggs said. “You’re still leveraging for him. That’s what you are doing. Making the little people like you pay to stay? Threatening to take over businesses. Or are you just polishing his boots? Getting young pussy for him? Sucking his dick when he wants you to?”

  “What . . . what do you want from me . . . ?”

  Driggs shook his head.

  “Nothing.”

  Dave looked relieved, but then Driggs put pressure on the board he held across Uncle Dave’s throat. Uncle Dave’s eyes bulged as he stared at Driggs.

  “This will be good for you, Uncle Dave,” Driggs said. “It will be the best thing that has ever happened in your lifetime.”

  Uncle Dave tried to pull the board from his throat, but there was no stopping the force of Augustus Noble Driggs, not when he had his mind set, and his mind was—dead set.

  64

  The darkness of the clouds was not yet upon us, but we could feel the pressure. Virgil and I watched the store for a long moment before we made any move. In the corrals there were a handful of mules. In another pen there were some goats and pigs. Toward the back of the property was a long milk barn with a few cows behind the barn, but there was no one moving about.

  When we finally walked out of the thickets and up to the store we found the scene was nothing more than another gruesome field of carnage left by Degraw. He killed three men. The older tall fella we cut down who had been strung up and hanging from the ridge beam had also been shot and castrated. And two other men, younger Negro fellas we found dead off the side of the porch. Both men had gunshot wounds to the head.

  When we walked out the back door we saw another person. A skinny young Negro fella, he was standing in knee-high grass in front of the milk shed. He appeared to be looking directly toward us, but something seemed off about the way he was just standing there, staring at us. The milk shed backed up to a stand of hackberry trees that were currently covered with an anxious murder of crows. They were cawing and cackling as if they were a chorus of angry mourners.

  The young man stood perfectly still, looking at us, and then he fell face-first and disappeared into the high grass in front of him.

  When we got to him we discovered he had a long, bone-handled knife sticking out of his back. The wound had left a trail of blood that had traveled all the way down his backside to the lower portion of his legs. His face was turned to the side and he was trying to look up at us with his large eyes.

  “Help me,” he said.

  He was a delicate and gentle-looking fella with smooth skin and almost feminine features.

  I got on my knees next to him and leaned down, looking at him.

  “We are here for you,” I said.

  He just looked at me with terrified, shifting eyes that were full of tears.

  “Just be very still,” I said. “Close your eyes.”

  He was beyond frightened and his eyes started moving nervously, but he did as I instructed and closed his eyes. I looked up at Virgil, then to the knife in the young man’s back. I held out my hand, then got a hold of the knife, pulled it from his back, and when I did the young man screamed out in pain as his eyes bolted open.

  Virgil retrieved a wheelbarrow that was leaning up against the milk shed.

  “We are gonna get you out of the grass and inside the store,” Virgil said.

  “You just do your very best to breathe,” I said. “And though I know it’s hard, just try to remain as calm as you can . . . Okay?”

  He bit his lip and nodded.

  Virgil looked to me. We got on each side of the young man, lifted him out of the grass and into the bed of the wheelbarrow. Then I positioned myself between the handles, lifted the wheelbarrow, and swiftly moved him toward the store.

  Once we had him inside we placed him on his stomach across a table that we covered with a blanket. I cut open his shirt and saw that he had been stabbed twice. We scoured the store for medicinal supplies, coming up with alcohol and bandages, but he was bleeding badly and for now all we could do was clean and keep pressure on the wound.

  Virgil leaned down and looked at him closely.

  “We are gonna do what we can to get you outta here,” Virgil said. “But you just need to stay strong.”

  The young man nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay . . .”

  “How long ago did this happen?” Virgil said.

  He shook his head a little.

  “Two, three hours, maybe.”

  “How many of you were here at the store?” Virgil said.

  “Mr. Gibson, he own the place, and my papa he worked for him, my cousin, too.”

  “That it?” Virgil said. “That is all the folks that were here?”

  “Yes sir,” he said. “But no more, they . . . they been killed.”

  He started crying.

  I looked to Virgil. He followed my look to the blood that was continuing to flow from the wound. I shook my head and looked back to Virgil.

  “Maybe it will help if we sit him up,” I said.

  Virgil nodded.

  “We are gonna have you sit up here, okay,” I said.

  He nodded and Virgil helped me turn the young man to his side and sit up.

  “Stay strong,” Virgil said.

  The young man nodded as he stared at Virgil.

  “What is your name, son?” Virgil said.

  “Gracie,” he said.

  “Well, Gracie,” Virgil said. “We are gonna do everything we can to help you here, young man.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Then he just looked at Virgil and me and shook his head and said, “Why this happen?”

  “No reason,” Virgil said.

  “Crazy man just came in here. He told my daddy and my cousin to hang Mr. Gibson or he’d have Mr. Gibson hang them.”

  Virgil looked to me but did not say anything.

  “That’s what happened?” I said.

  “No, he shot my daddy and cousin, just shot them in the head, then shot Mr. Gibson in the stomach. Then he strung up Mr. Gibson while he was alive. Then he cut off his . . . privates.”

  Gracie stopped talking. He looked down, then looked back up to us.

  “He . . . he cornholed me . . . before he stabbed me,” he said. “He did that to me . . . Made the lady w
atch.”

  “What lady?” Virgil said.

  “She was no lady, no woman,” he said weakly as tears fell from his eyes. “Not really, she was a girl, younger then me . . . I’m fifteen.”

  “Goddamn,” I said.

  Virgil shook his head.

  “Settlers’ girl.”

  I nodded.

  “What’s the closest town to here?” Virgil said.

  “Twenty miles, up the road here, there is Rose Rock,” he said.

  65

  Driggs went upstairs to the center room where Uncle Dave had been keeping watch. There were cigar ends and rib bones on the floor, a canteen, a few empty bottles of beer, and the pair of binoculars. Driggs looked out through the binoculars to his room up the street. He peered at the window, thinking he might catch a glimpse of the princess, but saw nothing. Then he collected all the stuff—the bones, bottles, cigar ends, canteen, and binoculars. When he got back downstairs he dumped the stuff and Uncle Dave’s body into a hinged opening he discovered that led to the building’s substructure.

  When he was done he scanned the room, making sure everything was in order, then moved toward the front of the building and looked out the window. Then as he watched the rain pour from the porch overhang, he heard a deep voice behind him. “Got a gun to the back of your head. Get your hands up.”

  Driggs froze. He did not turn and he did not raise his hands.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am the sheriff of Appaloosa,” he said. “Name’s Chastain. Got a Colt pointed at the back of your head. Now I need you to raise your hands . . . right now.”

  Driggs did as he was told.

  “As high as they will go,” Chastain said. “Straight up in the goddamn air and do not turn around. You don’t do as I say I will not hesitate to put a bullet in your head.”

  Driggs raised his arms higher. Then he started to turn.

  “Don’t you fucking move,” Chastain said. “Don’t you think about fucking moving unless I say so.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” Driggs said, as he remained looking out the front window of the building with his hands held above his head.

  “Problem?”

  “Yes,” Driggs said.

  “One of my smallest problems with you, and it ain’t the first one, or the biggest one, I might add, is you thinking you is sneaky, going through the goddamn drugstore like you did, trying to lose me.”

  Driggs started to lower his hands some.

  “Fucking up and high, goddamn it,” Chastain said.

  Driggs did as he was told, and once he had his hands back up high, Chastain said, “Turn around, slow-like.”

  Driggs turned very slowly and faced Chastain.

  “What the fuck you doing in this building?” Chastain said.

  “Just stepped in to get out of the rain,” Driggs said.

  “Fuck you,” Chastain said.

  “The truth, Officer.”

  “I know who you are,” Chastain said. “So you can spare the horseshit.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Driggs said.

  “I followed your ass, tracked you in the mud all the way to right here, you see.”

  “You followed me?” Driggs said.

  “You goddamn right I did,” Chastain said. “Footprint by footprint.”

  “Why?”

  “You are under arrest,” Chastain said.

  “For what?”

  Chastain took a pair of cuffs from his pocket and tossed them to Driggs. The cuffs hit Driggs’s chest and fell to the floor.

  “Put those on.”

  “Why,” Driggs said. “What for?”

  “You are under arrest for escaping Cibola for one, and I’m sure when it is all said and done there will be a whole bunch of other shit that you will be charged with.”

  “You have the wrong man,” Driggs said.

  “Put them on,” Chastain said. “Put the cuffs on, now.”

  “Okay, just know I’m here to cooperate,” Driggs said. “So just take it easy . . . but you have made a grave mistake, I’m afraid. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Do like I tell you,” Chastain said as he moved toward him with his Colt pointed at his head. “I won’t ask again, and believe me, I got no problem in putting a bullet in your goddamn fucking head. Put them on, now.”

  “Okay,” Driggs said.

  Driggs lowered his hands.

  “Very fucking easy as you go,” Chastain said. “You so much as flinch, make any kind of goddamn move otherwise than getting them cuffs on, you will be a dead man.”

  “Okay Sheriff,” Driggs said. “Okay . . . please just take it easy . . .”

  Driggs leaned down and picked up the cuffs. He secured one side of the cuffs to one wrist and then clicked the other side closed.

  “There,” Driggs said. “Are you happy?”

  “Let’s go,” Chastain said.

  Driggs smiled and looked to the doors.

  “Front door or back door?”

  “Same way you came in.”

  “As you wish,” Driggs said. “But you are making a big mistake, I assure you.”

  “Just move,” Chastain said.

  Driggs walked toward the rear door. Chastain followed with his Colt pointed at his back. The door had swung back closed after Chastain’s entrance. When Driggs got to the door, he turned ever so slightly to Chastain.

  “Shall I open it?” Driggs said. “Or do you prefer to open it? I don’t want you to be impetuous.”

  “Just open it very easy,” Chastain said. “Easy all the way to the jail and you won’t have a problem. You don’t and you will be dead.”

  “Yes,” Driggs said. “As you have reiterated.”

  Driggs reached for the door and as he pulled it open he swiftly removed Uncle Dave’s pistol from under his belt, swiveled his hands around his side without turning back toward Chastain, and pulled the trigger. The bullet caught a piece of Chastain’s side just as Chastain pulled the trigger of his Colt. His bullet just missed Driggs’s head as it splintered the doorjamb. Driggs spun around on Chastain, but Chastain’s body slammed him into the door before Driggs could fire again. The impact with the door made Driggs lose control of the pistol. Driggs spun around with his boot outright and flipped the sheriff off his feet. Chastain got off a second shot but the fall made the bullet go wild. Driggs got his hands on Chastain’s Colt.

  Driggs tried to wrestle the pistol out of Chastain’s hand and, even though Chastain had received a shot to the side, he was every bit as strong and as powerful as Driggs. Driggs was now on top of Chastain and he slammed Chastain’s pistol free. Chastain managed to turn his body and reach for the fallen pistol, but Driggs got his cuffed hands over Chastain’s head. With the chain between the cuffs around Chastain’s neck, Driggs pulled hard. Chastain reached behind him, trying to get ahold of Driggs, but Driggs maintained control. Driggs put his knee to Chastain’s back as he pulled the cuffs tighter and tighter around Chastain’s neck. Chastain began to violently flail as Driggs choked him. Chastain spun around, kicking. He kicked a hole in the wall, spun, and kicked a hole in the door. He fought as he got to his knees, then he got to his feet, but Driggs kept choking him. Chastain kicked the glass out of the door, then spun around into the room with Driggs on his back. He dragged Driggs toward the front door, but before he got too close Driggs fell back with him. Chastain spun around, getting to his feet again, but Driggs was not about to let up. Chastain charged a wall and tried to dislodge Driggs, but to no avail.

  “What’d I tell you,” Driggs said. “What the fuck did I tell you? Huh? Nothing to say?”

  Chastain stumbled, falling forward to the floor, as Driggs continued to pull hard. Then Chastain rose up and powered his strong legs in reverse and slammed Driggs hard into the wall.

  But Driggs just pulled even harder on the cuffs. Chastain moved away from the wall and then powered back again, slamming into the wall, but Driggs did not let go. Chastain moved to the center o
f the room and turned, then turned again as Driggs choked him. Chastain dropped to his knees with Driggs still on his back. Chastain toppled forward onto his face and after a moment he gave up the fight as blood flowed from his neck and puddled onto the floor. Driggs looked around at Chastain’s face as the last bit of life drained from his eyes.

  “I told you that you were making a mistake . . . I goddamn told you.”

  66

  Driggs moved to look out the front window for other lawmen. He figured they had to be right there, ready to pounce on him. He did not see anyone. He rummaged through Chastain’s pockets and found the keys to the cuffs. He unlocked the shackles, then dumped Chastain’s body into the same opening where he discarded Uncle Dave.

  He looked out the broken glass of the back door but saw no one. He stepped out the door and just stood there for a moment, then moved down the steps into the alley.

  The rain was still coming down hard and the alley had a good-sized creek running down the middle of it. Driggs moved to the opposite side of the alley and stood under the building’s overhang. He looked left and right to make sure nobody saw him and he saw nobody. Then he slogged off down the alley the way he came.

  Driggs thought that Chastain coming on his own was abnormal procedure for a city lawman. Driggs stopped and moved under an overhang out of the rain. He wondered if he was going to be confronted at any moment by other Appaloosa lawmen, but the only thing that came and continued to come was rain.

  He fished a cigarette and match from his vest pocket. He lit the cigarette and just stood there for a moment letting his fast-moving blood slow down some. Driggs was never really riled and he was not riled now but he was intent on taking care of business. He knew himself well enough to know that this sort of stimulation was like opening valves and gates made for destruction.

  He moved between two buildings and made his way back to the street. He crossed the street, passed through the alley behind the drugstore, then emerged out onto a street a block closer to the Boston House.

  When he started up the boardwalk he walked right under the Room for Rent sign where Margie boarded. He stopped, then took a step back and looked inside. There was no one in the small lobby. Then he walked to the side of the building and looked up to the window where he previously saw Margie when he’d followed her.