Slay Ride Page 6

  Now that they understood each other, it would make it easier.

  At least, he hoped so. Self-denial was second nature to him now, but there was no arguing that when he’d come back from the war and realized Jamie was now a man—a man he liked very much—it had made things more difficult.

  At first, he’d given into his attraction, his own need for companionship, but when he’d realized how much he was starting to rely on that contact, how much Jamie too was starting to rely on it, he’d tried to pull back.

  Not as diplomatically as he’d hoped, it turned out.

  But maybe it would all work out for the best.

  Next to him, Jamie murmured in his sleep, flung out an arm—and just missed smacking Robert in the nose. Robert caught his hand, kissed it absently, drew the blankets up over Jamie’s wide, bony shoulder.

  No, however harder it made it in the end, he wouldn’t have traded this night for anything.

  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the snowy landscape stretching before him. Miles and miles of white space and gray sky for as far as he could see. He had not spent so much time driving since before the war.

  At some point during the night Jamie woke and they instinctively moved together, bumping and humping in the little bed—freezing into stillness every time the brass frame or the floorboards squeaked. It felt so good—hot bare skin, hot open mouths, hot wet release—how had he lived so long without it?

  Jamie’s kisses were sweeter than ribbon candy and maple walnut ice cream and the first lilacs of spring all tangled together. He was generous and full-hearted in this as in everything else. It humbled Robert and it made his heart ache.

  He wished the night would never end.

  He was awake the instant floorboards squeaked overhead.

  “Jamie?” he said quietly.

  Jamie lifted his head from his chest, blinked sleepily, and smiled at him.

  The sleepy trust of that smile caught Rob in his solar plexus. He braced against it, against the regret that this interlude was over, that it could not happen again.

  “She’s up.”

  Jamie’s eyes widened, and he drew back. He sat up, swearing at unexpected twinges from the bumps and bruises he had received the day before, ruffling his hair, which stuck out in coppery tufts, and Rob rose and went to the window, opened it. Cold, cedar-scented air wafted in, dispelling the lingering scent of sex.

  The snow had stopped, and the sun was surprisingly warm and shining brightly. It was going to be a beautiful day. A couple of cottontail rabbits hopped around the white blanketed yard, sniffing the frozen remains of Mrs. McLennan’s garden.

  Rob watched Jamie blearily hunt for his clothes and then vanish into the bathroom. He gave the winter air another minute or two and then pulled down the window.

  He dressed quickly, taking note when the fragrance of coffee began to waft its way down the hall.

  A moment or two later, Mrs. McLennan tapped on the door. “Breakfast,” she called.

  “We’ll be right there,” Rob called back.

  From behind the bathroom door, Jamie sneezed—and then again.

  Robert frowned at the sound, but he was preoccupied with thoughts of the manhunt, which would have resumed by now. Concern for Finney and dread of facing Eileen O’Hara were uppermost in his mind--but he could not quite tune out the noise of Jamie splashing industriously in the bathroom. And, of course, that constant awareness of Jamie was what had worried him in the first place. The long night’s reflection had forced him to admit the main reason—maybe the only reason—he had personally raced after Braun was knowing Jamie Jameson was chasing him.

  That was not good. That kind of thing could not go on.

  The bathroom door opened, and Jamie stepped out, his damp hair finger-combed into some semblance of order. “Any news?”

  Rob gave a curt shake of his head. “Breakfast is ready.”

  “Good thing. I’m starving.”

  Robert smiled reluctantly. “You’re always starving.”

  Mrs. McLennan was using way too many of her rations on them. They had ham and eggs for breakfast with biscuits and gravy. There was real sugar in the coffee—Robert nobly forgoing his teaspoonful-share so that Jamie could have two

  Their hostess brushed their concerns aside. “It’s nice to have someone to cook for. Menfolk do like to eat.” She fussed over Jamie, who smothered the occasional teeth-rattling sneeze between consuming helpings large enough to feed a platoon.

  Rob spent most of breakfast on the phone. The news was not good. An abandoned Ford coupe had been discovered in a snowdrift on one of the backroads leading into Ennis. In the passenger seat were women’s coats and shoes soaked in blood.

  “Those will belong to the Roby sisters,” Jamie said when Rob reported the grisly findings.

  “Mercy me,” Mrs. McLennan gasped. “He was right here.”

  Close enough, certainly.

  Rob said to Jamie, “The clothes, sure. But the blood isn’t theirs. So whose is it?”

  They didn’t have long to wait for the answer. Walt Riddle phoned the McLennan house with more grim tidings. Caretaker Henry Floyd had been found dead, floating in the Madison river a few yards down from the Kirkley Ranch. He had been shot in the back of the head.

  “Finish your breakfast,” Rob said grimly. “I need to get back to Bolt.”

  Jamie used the final biscuit to shovel the last of his eggs into his mouth. He said indistinctly, “After you, Chief.”

  As desperate and nerve-racking as yesterday’s drive had been, Robert had felt an excitement, an exhilaration he had not experienced since the early days of his military service—particularly once he had found Jamie unhurt. Today he felt none of that.

  Today he was dismayed, even a little disgusted with the impulsion that had sent him chasing after James Jameson as though Jamie’s welfare was more important than the population of an entire city.

  Robert prided himself on his discipline and self-restraint, but he had shown none of either when he had jumped in his car, leaving his assistant chief to coordinate the investigation into yesterday’s crime.

  And although his choices were in no way Jamie’s fault, he could not quite escape a vague but generalized irritation with him. A feeling strengthened by Jamie’s uncharacteristic silence on the long drive.

  Did Jamie regret what they had done the night before? Had he been disappointed? Robert had no idea. The truth was, he was not greatly sexually experienced himself. More so than Jamie, yes, but that wasn’t saying much. His wartime encounters had been few and far between. He had taken seriously the posters, pamphlets, and training films about the risk of contracting VD. Plus, he was by nature austere—or maybe modest was a kinder word—in his inclinations. He didn’t enjoy celibacy, but he accepted it as inevitable, given the quirk in his character.

  Jamie was less cautious and a lot more romantic. Robert knew—had suspected from the first—that Jamie would not easily accept the restrictions of behavior necessary for safety and security.

  Last night, in the warmth and happiness of sexual afterglow, Rob had felt confident that he could be a friend and mentor to Jamie. In the cold light of day, that seemed much less likely.

  “I love you so much.”

  His heart skipped a beat, remembering. But that was just heat of the moment. Or maybe the remnants of boyish admiration. Having no father, it was no surprise Jamie had always looked up to him, seen Robert as the model of manhood.

  What had he meant by that comment about reading the Greeks?

  Robert had no idea. Jamie’s mother had been a schoolteacher, and he was always coming up with things like that. Not that Robert was ignorant. He had been to college. Briefly. At one point he had seriously contemplated fulfilling his father’s wish and becoming a lawyer, but he was bored by school, bored by fussy, dusty professors, bored by callow boys, and even more bored by the girls. It all seemed artificial and pointless. The legal system turned out to be a ridiculous game designed to allow lawbr
eakers and criminals to cheat justice.

  When his father had died, he had grabbed the excuse to leave and instead joined the police.

  The miles rolled by, endless stretches of melting snow and the bluest sky on this side of heaven. He glanced at Jamie, who was scribbling away in his notebook, occasionally stopping to scowl and chew on his pencil.

  “What are you doing?” Robert asked finally.

  “Writing my story for the Bolt Daily Banner.”

  Well, that was a relief. Jamie was not brooding over the night before, was not thinking about it at all, it seemed.

  Somehow it didn’t feel like a relief, though. Somehow it just served to further irritate Robert.

  Even with the snow, they reached Bolt well before lunchtime.

  Jamie grabbed Whitey Whitehall’s camera and jumped out of the car. He seemed to be in a hurry, avoiding Rob’s gaze as he said briskly, “Thanks for the ride, Chief.” But then he shot Rob a quick, uncertain look from beneath his lashes. His smile seemed a little unsure, though he said with his old cockiness, “I guess I’ll be knocking on your door before you know it.” His eyes widened, and he turned scarlet.

  Robert knew Jamie had meant that he would be approaching the chief of police as a reporter, but that red-faced confusion was a dead giveaway.

  And Jamie’s pains to make it clear he was not looking for anything more personal from Robert was annoying, even though it was exactly what Robert wanted from him—or at least thought he wanted from him—so his retort was sharp and crisp. “Make sure you call first.”

  Jamie looked stricken. For Christ’s sake, what did he think Robert meant? What were they even talking about?

  Robert had no chance of finding out because Jamie nodded curtly and strode away down the street.

  Robert stared, half-tempted to go after him and sort this out, here and now, but common sense prevailed. He had a job to do, and he had been neglecting it long enough. He could not be chasing after James Jameson like a…like he was… Any misunderstanding between them could be worked out later.

  He was not even sure they did misunderstand each other.

  For another moment, Robert watched James, bareheaded and long-legged, cutting through the cars lining Broadway and then loping across the slippery, snow-churned street. James reached the other side and vanished into the crowd.

  Robert sighed and went inside the tall brick building with its clock tower and mortared, unshaped granite boulder foundation.

  Once inside his office, there was no time to think of James or anything but the job.

  Bart brought him quickly up to speed on what they had learned of Braun since he had started his killing spree. Harold Braun was thirty-nine years old and reportedly had a wife, from whom he was separated, in Idaho. He had worked in several restaurants and bars in Bolt over the years, but seemed to have given up the restaurant business for the more lucrative game of chicken stealing. He was reported to have boasted to cronies that since the war began, he could net over fifty dollars a day stealing chickens and selling them to householders. His friends—and he did have them—claimed he was generous and good-natured, but there was consensus that “in a pinch, he was a man who would shoot.”

  Bart said, “His landlady accused him of being a drug addict, but the girlfriend claims he’s diabetic.”

  “Diabetic?” Robert repeated. “He’ll be needing medicine in that case. Have you notified all the hospitals and pharmacies between here and Anaconda?”

  Bart assured him every doctor’s office and drugstore had been warned to be on the lookout for anyone wanting insulin. He said Braun had been spotted before dawn on the Mill Creek Road by a road crew shoveling snow. Braun had been driving a Ford coupe.

  “Then he did double back to Anaconda,” Robert said. “He’s headed for the backwoods and this cabin of his.”

  “Seems like it,” Bart agreed. He had been Robert’s sister Louise’s high-school sweetheart. They had married right before Bart was due to ship out to Hawaii—December 7, 1941. Bart was a typical Montanan: tall, lean, and weathered. His right sleeve was neatly pinned where he’d lost an arm in the Battle of Badung Strait.

  “Were you able to get anything more from the McDuffy woman?” Robert asked.

  “Nope. I think you’re right, though. She’s hiding something.”

  “Everybody’s hiding something. It’s the human condition.” Robert sighed. “Maybe I’ll take a crack at her.”

  “Should we invite her to pay us another visit?”

  “Sure. But first, I guess I need to see Eileen O’Hara. How’s she taking it?”

  “Badly.”

  Robert grimaced. He was tired. He had not slept well the night before—oddly enough, his heart lightened for a moment, remembering the reason for that poor sleep.

  With uncanny timing, Bart said, “Young Jameson okay?”

  “Fine.”

  For some reason, that laconic response seemed to amuse Bart. He said, “He’s got grit, you have to give him that.”

  “He’s a pest.” Robert knew it was unfair, but he didn’t correct it.

  Bart said, “While you’re ministering to your flock, you might swing by your mother’s. She was fit to be tied yesterday when she heard you’d taken out after Braun.”

  Robert grunted. He hadn’t taken out after Braun, that was the trouble. He’d take out after Jamie.

  “What’s the word on Finney?”

  “They might be able to save his arm.”

  He nodded. He felt like groaning.

  “There are worse things that can happen to a man,” Bart said philosophically.

  They seemed to say that a lot these days.

  Eileen O’Hara could not get past the fact that Harold Braun had a German name. She was sure her husband’s murder was part of a larger plot to sabotage Bolt’s copper-mining facilities, and nothing Robert said could shake that tearful conviction.

  Maybe she needed to believe that Michael O’Hara’s death was part of a grand design, that he had given his life for more than thwarting a chicken thief’s revenge on a former girlfriend.

  Robert heard her out, but in the end felt compelled to tell her it didn’t look as though Braun had been part of any saboteurs’ ring.

  “You can’t be sure,” Eileen insisted. “The girl might be part of it too. Maybe he thought she was going to talk.”

  Yes, it seemed pretty likely that Braun had feared the McDuffy woman was going to talk, but about what? Surely not sabotaging the war effort. In Robert’s experience, the Brauns of this world existed on a different plane, outside the concerns of ordinary citizens. It was highly likely Braun didn’t think about the war as anything more than a prolonged and personal inconvenience.

  He compromised by saying, “We’ll know more once I question Miss McDuffy.”

  “Yes! Make her talk,” Eileen said, her green eyes bright with anger and tears. “Someone has to pay for this.”

  “Harold Braun will pay,” Robert promised.

  When she saw him to the front door, she said, “He used to dye his hair. Did you know that? Michael. He said he couldn’t be looking older than his own chief of police.”

  Robert had had his suspicions. He said gently, “I didn’t know that.”

  He could hear her crying all the long walk to his car.

  Chapter Six

  After James filed his story—calling that somewhat embellished interview with the Roby sisters a “story” was maybe a little too accurate—and stoically weathered the expected and frankly deserved chewing-out from his editor Terence Hazlitt, he headed back to his room on Anaconda Road for a proper wash, a shave, and a change of clothes.

  He was feeling uncharacteristically dispirited. Partly it was the knowledge he had spent the entire day before chasing a vicious gunman and had nothing to show for it but a “story” he could just as easily have written staying put. Earl Arthur had scooped him twice in twenty-four hours—without ever leaving Bolt.

  Partly he felt another cold coming
on.

  And partly, mostly, he was down-hearted about the way things had ended with Robert. Well, they had not technically ended, because they had not technically begun. Robert had made it only too clear he regarded James as a brother and a friend. He must have said it at least a dozen times. And that was not a bad thing—James was truly grateful for that—but last night had shown him what things could be like if the world—and Robert—were different. That little glimpse of heaven—although he wouldn’t trade it for anything—made it harder now to accept how things were.

  How that had to be—at least in Robert’s view.

  And why did it have to be that way?

  Maybe it was a funny way for a reporter to think, but why couldn’t people mind their own business?

  What happened between him and Robert was surely only up to Robert and him?

  It did complicate things with Robert being police chief. People paid attention to Robert.

  But others like them found a way. Nobody really thought Miss Jimson and Miss Carmichael were only old school chums, did they? And Mr. Fahey was no more Paul Hedge’s step-father than Jamie was.

  So it wasn’t that they couldn’t find a way. Robert didn’t want to find a way. He had tried to stop Jamie from saying, “I love you.” He didn’t feel the same. That was clear.

  Jamie wasn’t going to be awkward about it. He wasn’t going to pester Robert anymore. But it was going to be hard to forget. Hard to let go of the dream of how things could be if Robert only felt the same.

  Mrs. Spinoza caught him on the way out and asked him all about the murders—not that he knew anything more than she’d already read in the Montana Standard. A big woman with a hot temper and a mustache to rival Hitler’s, she had lost two sons in the First World War, and she had a soft spot for “motherless boys.” She made Jamie drink a cup of hot chicken broth, and then he was able to finally escape and walk to Idaho Street and St. James Hospital to return Whitey’s camera to him.