Wilde West (51 page)

He was ready.

The night was perfect. The full moon was nearly at the center of the sky and by its light, had he wished to, he could have read a newspaper. He had not needed the oil lamp to search through the chill, empty hallways of the Palace. The room he had chosen was ideal for his purposes: splashed with moonlight, ceilingless but for the spidery metal framework which had once held sheets of ice. Part of one wall had already collapsed. In one corner lay a ragged jumble of ice and snow, and there, afterward, when he had finished, he would bury it. He had never felt the need before to hide them, to conceal the bits and pieces; but with Grigsby still prowling about, concealment was the wisest course. No one would find it for weeks, and by then he would long be gone.

The earth beneath his feet was a frigid, semiliquid muck which now, in the cold, was beginning to solidify. His toes were aching, tingling—an indication that once again all his senses had been brought to a preternatural sharpness.

He could hear his breathing, soft and steady. Always he was surprised and pleased by how calm he could remain. Anyone else might, right now, be panting with fear and tension. He—

He heard, and then he saw, the carriage. Led by two prancing black horses, it rolled across the empty field of snow. Even from a hundred yards away, so extraordinary was the accuracy of his vision, he could see her clearly, sitting upright in the seat, her long red hair trailing in the wind behind her, black now in the moonlight.

Always, before, he had gone in search of his prey. Stalking it. Tonight it came to him.

He giggled.

How convenient this was. He must use this method again.

The carriage drew closer, the thudding of the horses' hooves, the rattle of the wheels, growing louder in the still night air.

Come to me, bitch. Come to me, slut.

Come to us
.

Oscar knocked on the door to room 303.

No answer.

He slipped the key into the lock, turned it, pushed open the door.

“Elizabeth?”

He shut the door behind him. The only light came from the oil lamp he held. He was in the empty sitting room of a suite—bookcases, a dining table and some chairs, a long sofa behind a dark-wood coffee table. A door stood open to his right. The bedroom.

She would be in there, naked, lying on the bed.

Just stopped by for a minute, must run …

He entered the bedroom. The room was empty, the bed was empty.

Another betrayal.

A cruel joke.

Somewhere she was laughing at him, filled with wicked mirth as she pictured him standing here, the lamp in his hand, an expression of doltish disappointment on his face.

Enough. He had played the fool for far too long.

He was turning to leave when he saw, lying open on the dresser top, a sheet of paper.

Perhaps she had been called away, perhaps she had left him a note.

He crossed the room, lifted the paper, read, “My Dear Mrs. Doe …”

He frowned. A joke, yes; but a joke played on
her.
By someone else. Someone masquerading as him.

Was the woman a ninny? How could she possibly have believed that he had written this drivel? Declarative sentences so simple as to be almost moronic. Could she really accept that he was capable of such limp, pedestrian prose?

And
I have something of great weight and pointedness to share with you
. Only a dull, lewd mind could have produced that.

Nasty, really. Repellent.

Who could have written it? And why had he done so?

Suddenly he knew.

Not who, but why.

He remembered what Grigsby had said in the dining car. When Oscar had asked if all the murdered women had been prostitutes. “All but one. And maybe she was working on the side. Or maybe he thought she was. I got the feelin', readin' about her, that maybe she was a little loose. Maybe that was enough for him.”

Maybe that was enough for him
.

Red hair. All the women had red hair.

All the men traveling with the tour had seen her last night; all of them knew that Elizabeth McCourt Doe had red hair.

And, thanks to O'Conner, all of them knew that she was staying in room 303 of the Clarendon.

He set the oil lamp carefully on the dresser, and then he ran from the room.

“Oscar?”

The creature was down from the carriage, standing in the slush at the entrance to the Palace, calling out Wilde's name. It stood close enough for him to see the color of its hair, a deep dark red in the moonlight, the color of blood.

The snow crunched beneath him as he came up behind it, and the creature turned.

He brought the gun down, hard, against the side of its head. It flinched, tried to bring up an arm to protect itself, and he brought the gun down again.

Grigsby was drunk and he was no longer a United States marshal.

The drunkenness wouldn't have happened at all (so he had told himself several times, back when he was still capable of telling himself anything) if he hadn't learned that he was no longer a United States marshal. He'd been doing damned well—not a single drink all day, not even a heart-starter in the morning. He'd been stone cold sober when he talked to that little weasel, Vail, and confirmed O'Conner's story. He'd been stone cold sober for the entire train trip from Manitou Springs. When the train pulled in to Leadville, he'd been feeling so proud of himself that he nearly stopped to celebrate in the saloon beside the station. He'd caught himself in time.

The telegram had been waiting for him at the Clarendon. Mort, the Denver telegraph operator, had addressed it to U.S. Marshal Robert Grigsby—even though Mort had known that no such a person existed anymore.

SHELDON RECEIVED WIRE TODAY CONFIRMING RECALL STOP WIRE ME IF QUESTIONS STOP SORRY MORT.

Only Mort had known where to reach Grigsby, and Mort had been cagey enough to word the message in such a way that the operator here in Leadville wouldn't figure it out. No one here in town, and probably only a few people in Denver, knew that he was out of a job.

But Grigsby knew. He folded the telegram neatly into quarters and slipped it into his left back pocket, thinking, as he did, that this thin scrap of paper was far too fragile, far too flimsy, to carry the weight it carried. A few words penciled across its front, and a life was ended. A career was finished. Twelve years of work went spinning into the gutter. He paid the desk clerk for his room and then he walked over to the bar and ordered a drink.

That had been the first. Since then, over the past three hours, he had downed at least a quart of whiskey. After the first five or six drinks, he had stopped telling himself that the drunkenness was a considered, reasonable response to bad news. He drank, he realized, because he was a drunk. Other people were lawyers, bakers, candlestick makers. Farmers. Mine owners. Poets. United States Marshals. He was a drunk.

With the knowledge had come a kind of liberation, a sense of pressure lifted, tension eased. He was a drunk, he had always been a drunk, he would always be a drunk. So what if he wasn't marshal anymore. Who gave a shit. No one in Denver. No one here in Leadville. Not him. He still had his other identity, his true identity. That he would always have. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or maybe next week, he'd go back to Denver, sell the house, and then take off for Texas. Lots of good whiskey down in Texas. Good place for a drunk.

He had been in Hyman's Saloon, next door to the Opera House, for an hour. (An hour and a half?) His legs were wobbly and his mouth was numb and slack, and he knew, dimly, that it was time to go. He bought a bottle from the barkeep and staggered off.

Shuffling along the wooden planking of the sidewalk with a flat-footed lurch, the bottle tucked under his arm, he smiled blearily when he saw people watching him from the corners of their eyes, taking care to step well around him as they passed. Citizens. The good citizens of Colorado. The good citizens he had sworn to protect, back when he had been a U.S. marshal.

Assholes, all of them. Petty, money-grubbing assholes. What did they know? Nothing, was what.

Mathilde. Maybe he should go see Mathilde.

No. Not like this. Tomorrow, after he sobered up. Plenty of time tomorrow. Plenty of time now for everything.

As he was reeling into the entrance of the Clarendon, some large bulky shape exploded from within and slammed into him. He stumbled backward and the whiskey bottle went slowly sailing from beneath his arm, lazily spun in the air once, then somehow sped up just before it smacked against the sidewalk. It shattered, whiskey splashing everywhere.

Grigsby wheeled around, his big hands coming up to destroy. “
Asshole! Sonovabitch!
”

Wilde grabbed him by the front of his jacket. “Grigsby! He has her! The killer! The madman! He has Elizabeth!”

Grigsby tried to focus. Clumsily he grabbed Wilde's wrists, tried to wrench the hands away, discovered that he couldn't. Sonavabitch was strong for a lulu-belle.

Wilde was shaking him. “Damn it, Grigsby! Don't you understand! Mrs. Doe! He wrote a note, he pretended he was me! The Ice Palace! He's
there
with her!”

“Mrs. Doe?” said Grigsby. His mind was clearing, and he was beginning to understand that he didn't want it to clear because when it did he would learn something horrible. About the killer. About himself. “The killer?”

Wilde's mouth curled with contempt and he pushed Grigsby away. “
Drunk!
” He looked quickly around him, turned back to Grigsby. “
Your gun! Give me your gun!
”

Grigsby had never handed his gun over to anyone. Now he didn't, even for an instant, consider refusing. He fumbled at the hammer strap, finally slipped it free, fumbled the gun from its holster. Holding the weapon by the barrel, its butt wavering, he forced his loose lips to move around the words: “You know how … use it?”

Wilde snapped it away, shoved it into his waistband. “You point it and you pull the bloody trigger.”

He spun away and Grigsby called out, “
Wait
!”

Wilde looked back.

Grigsby pointed to the horses tethered to the hitching rail in front of the hotel. “Horse. Take a horse.”

Wilde nodded, sprang from the sidewalk, ripped loose a set of reins, and then awkwardly but swiftly scrambled up into the saddle. The horse reared, forelegs clawing at the air, but Wilde leaned forward, knees clenched against its flanks, and kept his seat. He jerked the reins to the right, and the horse came down and then bolted off in a gallop, kicking up black clods of mud behind it.

Weaving, Grigsby tottered to the hitching rail. He put his shaking hand atop it and lowered his head.

Fucking useless old man. Fucking useless old drunk.

You swore to yourself you'd get this bastard, stop him before he killed again, and then when it comes to the crunch you're blind stinking drunk, slobbering with booze and self-pity, can't ride a fucking horse, can't even fucking walk.

Useless
.

End it, old man. Pack it in. Put a bullet in your head and get it over with.