One Good Deed(111)

Then Archer found something stuck inside a pillow case that he had not been expecting. It was a sheaf of papers stapled together. He read down the first page and then flicked back to the last, eyeing the signatures at the bottom.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed.

“What’s that?” Amy said in a trembling voice.

“Nothing.” He put the papers in his jacket pocket, put the crate top back on, and pounded the nails back in using one end of the crowbar.

Next, he eyed the trolley, and his plan came together. Squatting down and using all his strength he heaved one end of the crate up on the trolley, and then squatted down once more and lifted the other end up. He rolled the trolley to the front doors, unlocked them, and managed to get the crate from the trolley into the enormous trunk of the Buick. He closed the warehouse door and pointed the .38 at Amy.

“You say one word to anyone about this, you’re going to hang, do you understand me?”

Teary-eyed, and her hands gripping her white apron, she nodded. “But I don’t understand one thing.”

“What?”

“I was nice to you. I was even…flirty with you. So why’d you ever think I was involved in all this?”

“You just answered your own question, lady.”

“What?”

“I’ve discovered some gals like to play me for a sucker because I lose my good sense around them. Well, not this time.”

He left her to walk back while he drove off down the road and hit the main strip. He had to find some place safe to hide the contents of the crate. Two miles down the road, the perfect place came to him.

He floored the Buick and shot down the road to where he needed to go.





Chapter 47



LATER THAT DAY ARCHER went back to his room at the Derby to do some serious thinking. He had taken the shipping label off the crate and stuck it between two pages of the Gideon Bible in his bureau drawer. He had just finished two cigarettes and a fifth of the bottle of Rebel when someone knocked on his door.

He muttered, “Who is it?”

“Front desk sir, you got a message.”

“What? Who from?”

“She wouldn’t say.”

“She?”

Archer jumped up from the bed and hurried over to the door. As soon as he opened it, it flew inward, and Bart and Jeb plowed through the opening. They slammed him up against the wall.

“Well, good day to you, too,” Archer said breathlessly.

“Your ass is under arrest,” growled Bart.

“What for?”

“The attempted murder of Irving Shaw. And that’s added to what you’re already charged with, the murder of Lucas Tuttle. How the hell you made bail with that hanging over your head is beyond me.”

“That’s bullcrap. I had nothing to do with any of that. And I sure as hell didn’t do anything to Mr. Shaw.”

“So you say, Archer. We have it on good authority that you were seen with him last night right here at this hotel. Then he was found nearly bled to death early this morning three floors down from your ass.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“They moved him to the big hospital over in Garfield. He’s still unconscious, not that you give a damn.”

“We were working the case together.”

“What case?”

“These damn killings.”

“Again, so you say. We don’t know nothing about that.”

“But I’m out on bail.”

“Not anymore you’re not. Not after what happened to Lieutenant Shaw.”

They hauled him out of his room and led him out the front in handcuffs.

Shortly after that he was behind bars in a holding cell.

They had found Shaw’s spare gun on him, which did not help his cause in the least.

Indeed, when they had found the .38, Bart had eyed him triumphantly. “Shot the man and took his gun. Don’t get any lower than that in my book.”

“Well, maybe you should read some more books then, Bart.”

That had cost him a heavy fist in the face and a bloodletting from his nose.

He sat on the bench against the wall of his cell, wincing from his shiner and pinching his nose. His facial injuries from his encounter with Draper hadn’t even fully healed yet. Archer took a deep breath and contemplated his options. That didn’t take long, because he really had none.

But then a tall, portly man in his late forties with slicked-back hair and wearing a gray three-piece suit and a tightly knotted blue tie appeared on the other side of the bars. He looked like a preacher or a politician, and Archer didn’t really care to be jawing with either one right now.

“Mr. Archer?”

Archer looked up. “Who’s asking?”

“I am Herbert Brooks, the district attorney for Poca City.”

Herbert Brooks. Archer recognized the name from the letter that Archer had found inside Tuttle’s shotgun barrel.

“That means you’re no friend of mine.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Come again?” said Archer, rising to his feet and coming over to the bars.

“It appears that Lieutenant Shaw’s current condition was due, unfortunately, to a previous injury.”

Archer’s brows knitted together. “I’m not following.”