Longarm and the Scorpion Murders, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Teaser chapter
DINING WITH DISASTER...
The pretty Irish gal went to serve a couple of new customers. Longarm heard her ask, “What can we get for you boys this evening? Steaks are our specialty, but the Irish stew is mighty tasty and filling.”
“I want a big bowl of chili,” the larger of the pair demanded, his words angry and slurred from drinking. “I don’t want no damned steak or stew. Chili.”
“We don’t have chili on the menu tonight,” Milly explained. “How about some hash or ...”
“Gawdammit woman, are you deaf?” John shouted.
Longarm laid his knife and fork down and was just about to come to his feet when Rory burst out of the kitchen. “Get out of here!” he bellowed. “I don’t need your business!”
The big man started to come out of his chair, bellowing, “Mister, you and this dumb bitch can go straight to hell!”
Rory punched the loudmouth on the side of the head, knocking him out of his chair. Then he turned to the other man at the table and shouted, “I said to get out ... both of you!”
“All right,” the one named George agreed. “Just take it easy there. We’re going.”
Rory turned to Milly. “Never mind them. They’re just liquored up and ignorant.”
Suddenly John raised a pistol, took aim, and fired. Longarm had just started to pick up his knife and fork when the shot boomed out, and he saw Rory spin around, grabbing his shoulder. The shooter thumbed back the hammer of his six-gun, and would have shot Rory dead, but Milly hurled a glass of beer at John, sending his second shot into the ceiling. By then, Longarm was on his feet, knocking over his table and drawing his gun ...
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Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him ... the Gunsmith.
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WILDGUN by Jack Hanson
Will Barlow’s continuing search for his daughter, kidnapped by the Blackfeet Indians who slaughtered the rest of his family.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LONGARM AND THE SCORPION MURDERS
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY Jove edition / June 2001
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2001 by Penguin Putnam Inc.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-17911-6
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Chapter 1
United States Marshal Billy Vail motioned Longarm into his office at the downtown Denver Federal Building. “Sit down, Custis. I appreciate you coming in like this on the first day you’ve had off in weeks.”
“Months,” Deputy Custis Long corrected. “Billy, I was going to spend the day in bed sleeping.”
“What for? You’d still be going out on the town at night with some pretty gal. Spending your hard-earned wages. Having fun.”
Longarm leaned back in the office chair and shook his head. “I don’t know why you have to call me in when there are about a half-dozen other deputies poking around here in the Federal Building.”
“Because that’s about all they’re any good for ... poking around. But you, now you’re the one man that I can count on when I’ve got a tough case to assign.”
Longarm shook his head. “I ain’t going to fall for your flattery, Billy. And I’m not going to put off my vacation again. In fact, I’ve got a train ticket down to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a pretty little señorita that I mean to have some fun with later this week.”
“She’ll wait for you,” Billy said. He was short, nondescript, middle-aged, and badly out of shape ... going to fat actually. In contrast, Longarm was in his mid-thirties, stood six foot four, and was lean, hard, and handsome. Sometimes their size difference made Billy feel a bit inferior, but he was the senior officer, the manager who had once also been a field deputy marshal bringing in his share of outlaws in his prime. “Women love you, Custis. Being as how you’re so ugly, I don’t understand it, but they do.”
“I don’t know about that,” Custis said, feeling uncomfortable talking about women because that was something he had been taught not to do when he was a boy growing up in West Virginia. “But you didn’t ask me here to shoot the breeze about my love life. And I’m tellin’ you straight out that I’m not going to cancel another vacation just because you don’t trust someone else to handle the dirty work.”
“Dirty work!” Billy protested. “When have I ever given you any dirty work?”
“Just about every assignment I get is one that no one else in this building would touch. Have you already forgot about how you sent me into Death Valley this summer?”
Billy shrugged. “That’s not where I sent you. I sent you to the green and cool Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. How was I to know that the outlaws had their hideout in Death Valley?”
Longarm snorted with disgust. He’d damn near died of heat stroke in Death Valley and he still hadn’t fully recovered from the ordeal.
“Custis, I have an assignment that is ... well, it would mean a promotion for you.”
Longarm scoffed. “You know damn good and well that I’m not interested in any promotion. I’ve seen what a desk job and the politics of managing a government office has done for you, Billy. I want no part of either.”
“The assignment that I have for you is really important.”
“You say that about all of them.” Longarm had heard enough. He climbed out of the chair with every intention of getting through the door and out of the building before his old friend talked him into doing something that he didn’t want to do.
“I’m serious about this one, and it involves someone out of your past. Custis, it involves Jesse Jerome, your old friend and mentor.”
Longarm stopped halfway to the door. He turned. “Did you say Jesse Jerome?”
“That’s right.”
“He was a fine good officer and teacher when I first signed on as a deputy marshal, but this department decided he lacked the necessary temperament.”
“Jerome was the meanest, toughest, most devious, and most charming man I’ve ever known,” Billy said. “He also happened to enjoy beating and killing people.”
“Only those who deserved it,” Longarm argued. “I rode with him for two years and he never once shot an innocent man.”
Billy shook his head. “Let’s not argue about Jerome. We both know that he considered himself judge, jury, and executioner. He never brought a man back alive if he could help it, and that’s not the way that the law works. Guilty until proven innocent. We don’t judge the guilt or innocence of people we arrest. We simply bring them in and allow the court to make that determination. Jesse Jerome never accepted that he was an officer of the law, not a damned bounty hunter.”
“Look,” Longarm said. “I’ll admit that Jesse was a little hotheaded. Maybe a mite quick with his fists and his six-gun too. But he was fair. I saw him risk his life dozens of times trying to give the fella we was after the benefit of the doubt bef
“Spare me!” Billy cried, throwing his hands up in the air. “Have you forgotten that Jerome actually hung four men in Montana? Now don’t tell me that happened by accident.”
“All killers, Billy. They killed three children, if you remember, and raped their mother before they bashed in her head. Last I heard, she never regained her good senses. If ever four men deserved to be hanged on the spot, it was those four.”
“If you had been there, could you have stopped Jesse?” Billy demanded. “Or perhaps the better question is ... would you even have tried?”
Longarm came back to the chair and sat down. “I’ve asked myself that same question a time or two, and I guess the answer is that I just don’t know. I expect I’d probably have shot them instead of using a rope. Belly-shot them, that is.”
“Don’t ever do something like that, Custis. No matter how vile, how heinous the crime, never kill anyone when you can arrest and bring them in for trial. If we go around the court system and start becoming the final word on guilt or innocence, we’re doomed.”
Longarm shook his head. “Those four men that Jesse hanged had raped and killed before. He was weak and badly wounded, and they were too much for him to bring in given the situation. As hard and as tough as he was ... those four would have found a way to kill him before he could get them to a jail.”
Billy stood up and turned to his window. “Custis, I’m beginning to think,” he said quietly, “you aren’t the right man for this assignment. Maybe you still feel a sort of ... loyalty to your old teacher that would prevent you from bringing him to trial if it turned out he had gone down the wrong road.”
“What does that mean?” Longarm asked, his eyes turning suspicious.
“Do you know anything about what he’s been doing since he was fired from this agency?”
“I heard he went back to a bounty hunter.”
“That’s correct.” Billy turned back to face Longarm. “From what I’ve heard, he’s operated the same way as a private bounty hunter as he acted for us ... only on his own, he somehow came across a great deal of money.”
Longarm’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “How’d he do that?”
“I don’t know, but my source in Arizona said that he mysteriously came into possession of a very prosperous gold mine and that the former owner has never been found or heard from again.”
“Come on!” Longarm protested. “You’re not suggesting that Jesse murdered a mine owner and somehow managed to gain title to the claim.”
“Well, you know as well as I do that Jesse Jerome spent his money as fast as it came into his hands.”
“Okay, he likes to gamble,” Longarm admitted. “Jesse probably won his gold mine playing cards. That happens plenty of times. A fella starts out with just a few dollars in his pockets, goes on a winning streak, and by dawn he’s a wealthy, wealthy man.”
“Sure,” Billy agreed. “That can happen. Only thing is ... Jesse Jerome was a terrible gambler. You know that as well as I do. He always thought he was good, but he wasn’t.”
Longarm scowled. “Well, that is true, but sometimes Lady Luck comes a-callin’ and it doesn’t matter how bad you are because when she smiles, you come up winners.”
“Custis, do you remember that time that Jesse had a can of deadly scorpions and he tossed them onto a card table down at the Palace Club right here in Denver? He was drunk, had lost all his money, and he wanted to scare the bejeezus out of the people who’d won his money.”
“I remember. I wasn’t there, but I read about it in the newspaper. I guess he did what he set out to do.” Longarm had to smile. “Diamond Jim Brady was stung pretty bad by those scorpions and damned near died.”
“That was the last straw, and why this department finally said enough is enough and fired him.”
“So Jesse Jerome is a little crazy when he is drinking and gets mad,” Longarm said. “The man saved my life twice. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” Billy managed a tight smile and climbed to his feet. “Custis, I’m sorry that I pulled you in here for this assignment. Go on back and have a great time down in Santa Fe with that senorita. I’ll send Homer Wilson to Arizona to investigate the Scorpion Murders.”
“Scorpion Murders,” Longarm echoed. “What the deuce are you talking about?”
“Apparently, you don’t read the newspapers.”
“Not lately,” Longarm admitted.
“Well, if you did, you’d know that no less than the territorial governor of Arizona was found dead in his bed a few days ago, and do you know what they found crawling all over his body?”
“Scorpions?”
“That’s right. Someone had put them into his bed while he was staying at the Agate Hotel in Agate, Arizona. Apparently, the governor was drunk and by the time the scorpions got done stinging him, he was bloated and turning purple with their poison.”
Longarm was accustomed to all sorts of deaths, but hearing about this one made his skin crawl. “Hell of a way to go,” he muttered.
“It was. And get this ... it turns out that a reporter from Tucson who was up there doing the story wrote an article strongly hinting that Jesse Jerome had put the scorpions in the governor’s bed. And do you know what happened to that brave but foolish reporter?”
“No,” Longarm said, thinking he could guess.
“The reporter was found the next day tied spread-eagled to the four-poster bed of his hotel room with scorpions crawling all over his dead body!”
“Holy shit,” Longarm drawled, shaking his head. “Now I see why they are calling it the Scorpion Murders.”
“Yeah, and now you know why we think that your old friend and teacher Jesse Jerome—now wealthy mine owner and respectable Agate, Arizona, businessman—is behind those murders.”
“I don’t share that opinion.”
Billy Vail sat down heavily. He leaned his short, chubby arms on his desk and said, “And that’s why I’m sending Deputy Marshal Homer Wilson to Agate, Arizona, instead of you.”
“Now wait just a darned minute here! Are you saying I don’t have enough integrity as a sworn officer of the law to arrest Jesse Jerome if I learn he is guilty?”
“Yeah,” Billy said quietly. “I guess that I am.”
Longarm was not a man to lose his temper unless the situation was extreme. And this situation was extreme. “Dammit, Billy, have I ever let my personal feelings interfere with my job? Even once in all the years I’ve been deputized do you ever remember that happening!”
“No,” Billy said calmly, “I don’t. But after listening to what you’ve just told me, I’m afraid that this would be the exception. That you wouldn’t bring Jesse Jerome to justice ... even if you were convinced he was guilty of the Scorpion Murders.”
“That just about ties it!” Longarm shouted. “I thought you knew me better.”
“Let’s not put your integrity to the test,” Billy replied. “I’ll send Homer Wilson to Agate tomorrow. Go on down to Santa Fe and have your well-deserved vacation.”
Ignoring Longarm’s glare, Billy looked down at a stack of paperwork and said, “I’ve got a couple of reports to do now. Thanks for coming in. I really appreciate it.”
Longarm jumped up in anger and stomped to the door. He started to leave, then changed his mind and marched back to Billy’s desk. He leaned on it hard and said, “Look me in the eye, Billy. Look me in the eye and tell me that you’re wrong.”
Billy raised his head. “Maybe I am, but I’m not willing to take a chance on it. Jesse Jerome saved your life twice and you feel bound to honor that, no matter what he might have done or become after leaving Colorado and the service of this agency. So I’ll send Wilson.”
“Wilson is inept! He’s an idiot!”
“He tries hard and he’s a bit slow, but he will do his duty.”
“And so would I!”
