Infamous (24 page)

It was funny how, now that he knew what to look for, he saw the echoes of that boy within the adult’s face. And he wondered if Jamie, while looking back at A.J., saw traces of the little boy that
he’d
once been, as well as pieces of the twenty-four-year-old army lieutenant who’d seen enough death and destruction for a lifetime, and then some.

“Early July was definitely when the Kellys returned to Jubilation,” Alison said. “It’s not just Quinn’s word on this one. There’s a whole list of people who made a point of mentioning they’d seen Bo Kelly and his boys back at the Red Rock Saloon.”

“The Kellys were definitely at the saloon,” A.J. told her. “They were in town, but I wouldn’t’ve called it
back
. They’d never left the area. They were still around, even after Quinn pretended to run them out of Jubilation some months earlier.”

“Pretended.” Alison smiled.

“My apologies,” A.J. said, smiling back at her, “for commencing the crushing of your girlhood fantasies.”

“You haven’t crushed anything yet.”

“I’m getting there,” A.J. said. “How does the legend go? The Kellys had control of Jubilation, so Marshal Quinn was called in and he cleaned up the place in less than a week, running Bo and company out of town. Am I right?”

“In a nutshell,” Alison confirmed. “Yeah. I’d add that Silas made a point to leave Melody behind, until he was satisfied that Jubilation was safe enough for women and children. You do know that Melody was pregnant when Silas left for Arizona, but she miscarried while he was away …?”

“Nope.” Jamie spoke up from across the room. “She just told him she was pregnant so he wouldn’t hit her as hard.”

“That, too, falls under the not-true category, but I want to focus on the Kelly Gang for now,” A.J. said as Alison tapped the end of her pen on her pad. “Like I said, Quinn didn’t run them out of town. He cut a deal with them.”

She laughed. “With Bo Kelly, whom he killed at the Red Rock?”

“Things were going south between them,” A.J. said, telling her the story that Jamie had told him, countless times. “At the beginning, though, Bo worked with Quinn, to make it look like the marshal was some kind of superman. He shows up, the Kellys run. High drama. On top of that, Quinn had what was essentially a
hands-off
list. People who’d paid for protection didn’t get hit—not just in town, but in the surrounding mines as well. Everyone else was up for grabs. They either learned to pay up, or they were robbed and sometimes even killed. It was effective marketing. Although there were key streets in town—Main and River in particular—where everyone was safe. Which increased the property values for those addresses—conveniently for Quinn, who took a lot of his initial fees in land.”

“There were definitely parts of town,” Alison argued, “that took a little bit longer to get cleaned up. And yes, there was still crime in Jubilation. Silas couldn’t control who came into
town—the fact that Gallagher could just stroll in is a case in point.”

“Quinn got a cut of the Kellys’ take,” A.J. told her, pushing his tray slightly to the side. He was long done with attempting to eat dinner. “He was working both sides of the game. And even though
he
couldn’t control who strolled into town, the Kelly Gang usually did. They had a good deal going, and they didn’t want someone else undercutting them. They happened to be fine with Jamie coming in, because they knew his reputation. They knew he’d be a better target to rob when he was on his way
out
of town, after he’d won a few dozen poker pots and liberated quite a few miners from their silver. They couldn’t hit those select miners, right, because they were on Quinn’s list, but they could hit Jamie Gallagher after he took their silver. It was a big win.”

Alison sighed, because she saw the logic to it. But she wasn’t done arguing. “Still, you’re telling me that a band of outlaws spent
all
of their time in the hills outside of Jubilation, and never came into town for so much as a bath in the hotel?”

“They had all the comforts they needed,” A.J. said. “Jamie told me he saw their camp, and it was just fine. Quinn gave them access to women and alcohol. And when they wanted a place to spend their silver, which they were raking in, hand over fist, they would ride into Tucson. Or down into Nogales, to Mexico. And of course, there were also the times when they showed up back in Jubilation—so Quinn could run ’em off again. Make sure the townfolk appreciated all his hard work.”

“And none of those ‘folk’ in town cared that Silas Quinn—their U.S. marshal—was profiting from their misfortune?” she asked.

“He wasn’t just profiting from theirs,” A.J. said. “Quinn used to send the Kellys out to other towns, at which point he’d ride in and bring law and order. For a fee.”

“That’s what U.S. Marshals did back then,” Alison said. “I know it sounds mercenary—”

“They didn’t do what Quinn did,” A.J. told her. “They
didn’t have a deal going with the outlaws who were causing the trouble.”

“Why didn’t anyone complain?” Alison asked. “No one in town said,
Hey, this is unusual. It seems as if Silas Quinn is always after Bo Kelly and his boys.…”

“Bo had a lot of men,” A.J. said. “And remember, Quinn did ride in and quiet things down. People didn’t know, though, that he was responsible for stirring up trouble in the first place. And as for the good people of Jubilation—nobody knew about the money Quinn was getting from the Kellys. Nobody but Melody.”

“And me,” Jamie said.

“And Jamie,” A.J. told Alison. “See, he’d had a recent losing streak at cards, and this one evening, things started to turn around and he began winning again. Only he was playing with Bo Kelly, who kept throwing his I.O.U. into the pot. Jamie wasn’t about to let that much cash walk out of his sight, so without Bo knowing, he followed him back to his camp up in the mountains. And who does he see, hanging with the Kelly boys—with five of the territory’s ten most wanted—just waiting for Bo to get back from town?”

“I’m supposed to say Silas Quinn, right?” Alison asked.

A strong gust of wind rocked the trailer, making the ice tinkle in the glass of lemonade he’d gotten with his dinner, and A.J. paused. “Is it really okay to be in this thing in a storm like this?”

“I think we’re okay,” she reassured him, “unless it’s a tornado. Two-thirds of the cast and crew are housed in trailers. I’m sure they’ll call us if we need to evacuate.”

“Come on, kid,” Jamie said. “She’s actually taking notes.”

“Where was I?” A.J. asked.

“Silas Quinn, hanging with the Kelly Gang,” Alison said, as Jamie told him, “I’d just followed Bo Kelly back to camp, and saw Quinn there, waiting for him.”

“Right,” A.J. said. “So Jamie’s sticking to the shadows. No one knows he’s there, and he overhears Quinn and Bo start to argue. Quinn’s angry about something, about some missing bag of silver. His week’s payment is what Quinn called it.”

Thunder rolled, ominous and no longer quite so distant, but Alison’s full attention was on him, so he kept going.

“Bo told Quinn they were down a bit that week,” A.J. told her. “A few of his boys had been shot in a scuffle up at one of the mines, and the take was slimmer than usual.

“But that’s not what Quinn’s upset about. Turns out he hasn’t even seen this week’s payoff. He’s there to collect, only Bo tells him, no, he’s already paid him off. He says he dropped the silver at Quinn’s house early that same morning—right on schedule. He says he left it with Mrs. Quinn. With Melody. Before Quinn had even risen for his morning meal.

“Well,” A.J. continued. “Quinn took off out of there like a bat out of hell, and Jamie followed. He’d only been in town for a few weeks, and he’d only gotten a few short glimpses of Melody in that entire time, but he’d seen enough to be wary of what the marshal might do to his wife when he caught up with her.”

“I was scared to death for her,” Jamie said. “Quinn was furious. I truly thought that he might kill her.”

“When Jamie made it back to town, to Quinn’s house on River Street, Quinn was already there, already inside, and already shouting,” A.J. told Alison.

“I could hear his voice, but not the words,” Jamie remembered. “He sounded goddamn crazy. And then I heard something break and, then, God, Mel …”

“There was a crash,” A.J. said, “and Melody screamed, which is when Jamie kicked the door in and told Quinn that the violence had to stop.”

“He kicked down Quinn’s door and the marshal didn’t kill him?” Alison didn’t sound convinced.

“The marshal was otherwise engaged,” Jamie said, and A.J. told her that.

“Jamie drew on him and the two men stood there, at an impasse,” A.J. continued, “because Jamie knew as soon as he backed down, as soon as he walked away and that door closed behind him, Quinn would start in on Melody again, and maybe this time, he’d kill her.

“So he did the only thing he could, short of pulling her out
of there—which he had no right to do, since, well, I assume you know that Melody was considered to be Quinn’s lawful property.”

“I’m aware of that, yes,” Alison said. “At that time, women were … Yes.”

“Killing Quinn right there and then was a possibility,” Jamie interjected. “I considered it, but knew if I did I’d hang.”

“He blackmailed the marshal,” A.J. told Alison. “In an attempt to keep Melody safe. He made a deal of his own with Quinn. As long as he refrained from beating his wife, Jamie would keep his mouth shut about Quinn’s little financial arrangement with the Kelly Gang. He took a cut of Quinn’s share, while he was at it. He figured Quinn wouldn’t understand—wouldn’t trust him to stay silent if there wasn’t an additional payoff of some kind.”

Alison leaned forward. “I’m not sure I understand. Why would Jamie risk so much for someone he says he didn’t know. Is it possible that part’s been conveniently misremembered?”

A.J. glanced over at Jamie, who’d stretched out on the sofa, feet up, arms folded up behind his head.
“Why
is a good question.”

“It’s God’s truth,” Jamie said. “Mel and I hadn’t exchanged as much as a hello before that night. And I was no hero, so why I should suddenly start acting like one, I can’t explain. Sure, I wanted Melody in my bed, but … At first I tried to tell myself that I only wanted her for the thrill of the hunt. Seducing the marshal’s wife would be a kick. He was a son of a bitch, and I tried to tell myself that if I had her, I’d be hurting him. Double the pleasure, you know, kid? But in truth? That wasn’t it at all.”

Alison was just watching A.J. Waiting for him to speak.

So he spoke. “I think,” he said slowly, “that even then, even before Jamie really knew Melody, he saw something special in her. Something that he didn’t want to live without.”

“Did it work?” Alison asked. “You know. Jamie’s blackmail. Did it keep Melody safe?”

“For a little while,” A.J. told her. “Of course, it made Jamie a target. Quinn had to get rid of him. And that’s what it was about, you know. The shoot-out at the Red Rock. The Kelly Gang wasn’t after Quinn. They were
with
him. They were part of an ambush, set up to kill my great-grandfather. And the only reason he survived is because Melody came to the saloon to warn him.”

Alison sat in her office trailer with a man who believed that the shoot-out at the Red Rock Saloon
—the
most notorious and heroic gunfight in the history of the American West—was all about Silas Quinn’s criminal need to silence a man who had seen and heard too much.

And Jamie Gallagher had survived not by dumb luck or blind chance, but because Melody—Mrs. Silas Quinn—had ventured outside the safety of her home, in the middle of the night, risking not just her reputation but her life, to warn him.

“Okay,” Alison said.

A.J. Gallagher blinked at her. Frowned very slightly. “Okay?” he repeated.

She nodded. “Okay,” she said again. “Let’s have it. The rest of the story. I’m curious, though. Why did Jamie and Melody wait so long to leave Jubilation? The shoot-out was early in the morning on Tuesday, July twenty-sixth—unless you’re disputing that, too.”

“I’m not,” A.J. said. “That’s really when it happened.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “At least we got something right.”

He smiled at her sarcasm, his crow’s feet crinkling attractively around his eyes. “The battle took a hell of a lot less time than Quinn said it did, though.”

“I don’t think he said how long the gunfight went on,” Alison pointed out.

“Implied,” A.J. corrected himself. “He kind of implied it was long and drawn out. But it was over pretty fast.”

“I took that as hyperbole,” she said, sitting back in her chair as outside the wind picked up and pushed at the trailer, almost as if a thug or two were throwing a movie star against its flimsy side. Funny how, after that incident, Trace Marcus had been keeping mostly to himself. And showing up on time.

The lights flickered and she mentally located her candles. Top drawer, right side. Matches were in there, too.

She tapped her pen on her pad again. “According to Quinn, it was another two and a half weeks after the shoot-out before Gallagher grabbed Melody and ran. Why not just go then, on the twenty-sixth? If she was in such a hurry to leave with him …?”

A.J. was always so deliberate, as if taking a moment to think his answers through. He paused again now, before saying, “Because that was the very first time they spoke—in that back room at the Red Rock, the night before the gunfight. Melody didn’t know him, didn’t trust him. But he’d saved her life a week earlier, when he’d kicked in Quinn’s door, and she was returning the favor.”

“It
is
a romantic story,” Alison started to say, but the door blew open with a startling crash as a solid swirl of dirt and dust blew inside.

Alison was on her feet along with A.J., but she was behind the desk. She didn’t get more than a few feet around it before he was down the steps, grabbing the door and pulling it shut.

He coughed as he latched it, but then had to grab the frame to keep from losing his balance as another gust of wind rocked the trailer.

“Damn, it
does
look like hell out there,” he said.