Yuma Prison Crashout, page 15
“No sabe,” Yaqui Mendoza said.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know, Mendoza,” the warden fired back. “You understand English. I’ll ask you again, and you might consider your answer before you open your mouth. Because I can put you in the Dark Cell.” He looked at the other inmates out in the yard, and even turned back to Fallon. “I can put every single one of you in that cell. For two days. Even three. Now, Yaqui, what did you hear?”
The Mexican grinned. “I hear the ringing of bells. I hear el capítan yelling. I see the blinding light in the middle of darkness. And I see poor Roach. He swings. Till I wake, I hear nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Sí. I sleep muy grande after a day of hard labor.”
“And you?” The warden frowned at Preacher Lang.
Lifting his hands and spreading them out, the homicidal fiend began his sermon. “Poor Brother Louis should have awakened me, but we do not question the ways of the Lord, who deafened me to the sounds of that poor, tormented soul as he fashioned the noose, that instrument of death, around his throat and secured the other end to the iron bars. Oh why, oh why, oh why?”
The killer shook his head, and looked into the lights shining from not heaven, but one of the guard towers. Fallon looked at Lang’s hands.
“I shall pray for Roach, who has taken God’s greatest gift. I shall try to remember him as he was in the months I have shared my Bible with him. I shall picture him in better times, knowing that I will never see the poor man again. For someday I will walk the Streets of Gold with my Lord and savior. But Brother Louis . . . ?” Lang shook his head and lowered his hands to his side. “He took his own life, and it is written that the man who does that will never see the kingdom of heaven. Brother Louis will spend his eternity”—he grinned, and then even chuckled—“with his kinfolk, the roaches . . . Amen.”
“So you didn’t see or hear a thing?” the warden asked.
Lang dabbed the corner of his eyes with the cuff of his right sleeve. “No, Brother Gruber. I heard nothing.”
Gruber studied Pinky.
“And I suppose, Pinky, that you’ll tell me that all your hard work left you sleeping soundly. That a man in a crowded cell could hang himself without waking you or anybody else up.”
“Ol’ Pinky’s an old man, sir. He don’t hear good even when he’s awake.”
The superintendent spit in the dirt. “Write up your report, Captain Allan, and have it on my desk in the morning. Pinky.” He looked at the inmates outside and likely had no other choice. “You and Fulton cut Roach’s body down, take him to Doctor Fowler who can confirm the cause of death and give me a death certificate. I’ll have to send that to Cochise County to satisfy the officials that Louis Roach is dead. Then we’ll need a burial detail tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow afternoon, sir?” Allan blurted out.
“It’s summer, Captain. Corpses ripen quickly in Yuma.”
“I’ll make out the detail, sir.”
“You’ll be busy writing your report, Captain. No haphazard job. Every detail explained. We’ve robbed the residents of Cochise County the chance to watch a hanging. We’ve robbed the family and friends of the man Roach murdered of the chance to see justice served. Your report shall be spotless, Captain, because the attorney general, the governor of the territory, and most likely the editor of the Yuma newspapers and about fifty others in this territory are going to demand some answers.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The sky to the east was lightening, black becoming gray, by the time Pinky and Fallon got the body of Louis Roach into the prison hospital. They laid the corpse on a cot, and Pinky muttered, “I’ll see if I can wake up the Killing Sawbones.” He shook his head, then pointed at the stove. “It might take a while. Why don’t you heat up the coffee?”
Fallon looked at the stove as Pinky turned up the lights in the office.
“You sure there’s coffee in the pot?” Fallon asked.
“Doc? He don’t drink much . . . coffee.”
* * *
Fallon had the fire going again in the stove, and the coffee boiling. He found the other lights, turned some switches, and realized that the spotlights in the guardhouse were not the only things powered by a Dynamo generator. He glanced at the doctor’s quarters, saw little signs of life, but still heard Pinky’s pleading voice, so Fallon walked to the body of Louis Roach.
A few minutes later, the front door opened. Fallon turned to see more daylight shining outside, as two guards led Gloria Adler into the hospital. One of the guards was Captain Allan, who dismissed the other and escorted the woman prisoner to the corpse.
“Where’s Doc Fowler?” Allan asked.
Fallon nodded at the door. “Pinky’s trying to get him up.”
The guard cursed. “Get in there, woman. He’ll do whatever you tell him to do.”
Gloria Adler crossed the room without argument.
Allan said, “Mr. Gates will be waiting outside. Autopsies make him sick. When you, that petticoat, and Pinky have been dismissed by the doctor, Mr. Gates will escort you to your cells. You’re lucky. No work details for you two, or that wench, today.”
Gloria Adler had stepped inside the doctor’s quarters.
Allan’s voice turned into a whisper. “No need to be in front of the sally port today. Roach’s death has caused a delay. And I have to write a damned report that won’t have a bunch of know-nothings butting into our business. Be there instead tomorrow afternoon. Don’t disappoint Monk Quinn.”
He spun on his heel and stormed out of the building, slamming the door behind him and leaving the youthful, pimply guard named Gates leaning against the wall near the door, a Winchester .44-40 cradled in his arms.
* * *
Doc Fowler used his teeth to pull the cork out of the bottle of clear alcohol. He spit the cork into his left hand, brought the bottle to his mouth with his right, and guzzled. Even before drinking, Fallon had smelled the alcohol on the drunkard’s breath. Fowler did at least use the rest of the alcohol to dump over his hands, which he dried off on the legs of his pajama bottoms before he staggered over to the table on which lay the remains of Louis Roach.
“Gloria,” the doctor said, stifled a cough, and supported himself by bracing his arms on the bunk. “My darling, take notes for me if you would be so kind.”
Obviously, Gloria Adler had done this before. She held a pad in her left hand and pencil in her right. She stood just a few feet behind the doctor as Fowler glanced at the clock and the wall and noted the time. He had to ask the date, but the guard by the door gave him that. Gloria Adler wrote it down. Fowler described the clothes the dead man wore, his lack of shoes and socks, that the man was white.
Fowler managed to raise one hand and close the dead man’s eyes. “Gloria, please note that conjunctiva of the eyes has been observed by me.”
Her pencil went to work.
“Primary flaccidity has already occurred in the deceased’s eyelids,” the doctor said, and paused as Adler scribbled on the page. Fowler tested Roach’s jaw, and tried to turn the head. “As well as the jaw and neck. Rigor mortis has set in. Given the condition of the body and taking into consideration the cooler temperatures of the night, I would put the time of death as three o’clock this morning.”
To Fallon, that sounded just about right.
Fowler estimated the dead man’s weight and height, both of which were within reason. He noted the “India ink marks” on the back of the dead man’s right hand, a type of Gaelic cross. He recorded the missing tip of the index finger on Roach’s left hand. He pried open the jaw and offered remarks on the teeth that were missing, the teeth that remained, the rotted molar, and the chipped incisor. He said, “The age of this man appears to be around twenty-six.”
Twenty-six hard years, Fallon thought, but that would have been Fallon’s guess, as well.
Even drunk, the Killing Sawbones seemed to know exactly what he was doing.
“Write that the deceased is positively identified by me, surgeon at the territorial prison, as Louis Roach. No middle name. No middle initial. Convicted of murder in Cochise County, Territory of Arizona, and awaiting the sentence of death by hanging.”
He moved along the body and came to the man’s throat.
“A red ligature circles the neck. It is dark.” He found tweezers and removed the fibers from the rope Pinky had removed. “Pieces of hemp line this wound. The mark continues across the anterior midline of the neck and is positioned an inch below the laryngeal prominence. I detect petechial hemorrhaging.” The tweezers worked for three minutes. “More hemp has been removed, suggesting that a rope was used. There are several other evidences of asphyxiation.”
He dropped the tweezers and moved to the shelves, found another bottle, and drank.
“It is the ruling of the surgeon examining the body that the deceased, Louis Roach, died from strangulation as the result of hanging.”
Which is what Harry Fallon already knew.
“Suicide,” Fowler said, and drank greedily.
When the surgeon rested the bottle on the shelf, and moved toward the dead man, Gloria Adler brought the pad to him. He took the pencil from her hands and signed at the bottom. He patted Gloria Adler’s arm, turned to Pinky, and said, “Thank you.”
Pinky shrugged.
He turned to Fallon and started to thank him, but Fallon spoke first.
“You sure about that, Doc?” Fallon asked.
The man blinked. Gloria Adler turned to stare hard. Pinky shuffled his feet and held his breath.
After a long pause, Fowler chuckled. “What would you say?”
“I wouldn’t call it suicide.”
The doctor frowned. Gloria lowered the pad the Killing Sawbones had returned to her. She did not take her eyes off Fallon.
After a quick glance at the bottle he had left on the shelf, Doc Fowler wet his lips and turned again to Fallon.
“An accident?”
Fallon’s head shook. “Murder.”
Pinky let out his breath.
The doctor laughed. “Well, Fallon, let’s hear your theory.”
Fallon stepped to the corpse, turned the head, and bent back the top of an earlobe.
“A contusion and laceration,” the doctor said.
“Fancy talk for a bruise and a cut,” Fallon said.
“Which likely happened when he struck his head against the post.”
Fallon’s head shook. “Skin would not have bruised had Roach hit something after he was dead. But if someone knocked him out before he was hanged . . .” He stopped and studied the Killing Sawbones.
The doctor grinned, but Gloria Adler frowned hard. Fallon did not look back to see Pinky’s reaction. “Since the drop did not snap the deceased’s neck, he was still alive and strangled on the rope. You suggest that someone hit him from behind, knocked him out, put the rope over him, and hanged him by the neck till he was dead, dead, dead.” He nodded and bowed. “A fine theory. But, Fallon, just a theory. He was strangling when he hit his noggin.”
Fallon touched the ear. “The rope was here,” he said. “And it was a big rope. Don’t see how he could have hit his head. The rope would have protected it.”
“Well, sir, when you are out of the Hell Hole in two years, I invite you to read for the bar. You have a theory, but nothing to support it.”
“Ever been strangled to death, Doc?” Fallon asked.
The doctor laughed.
“Ever seen a man strangle when a hangman botched the job?”
The laughter stopped.
“I have,” Fallon said, and he turned to Pinky. “More than once. More than a half-dozen times. They try to cry out, but they can’t. Mostly, they gag, if they can even manage that. But what they can do is kick, kick, and dance on the air that keeps them off the ground, the air—the space—that prevents them from living. They kick their shoes off.” He pointed behind him at the dead man’s feet. “We sleep with our shoes on in Yuma, Doc. Don’t want to get bitten by a bug or spider or step in something when we have to use the privy. They kick until they’re unconscious or dead.” His eyes did not blink.
Pinky stared at his own feet, but Fallon did not turn around.
“So tell me, Doc, if a man’s strangling from a bad hanging, kicking the veritable life out of him, how can anyone just a foot or two away from him not wake up?”
The doctor took the report from Gloria Adler’s hands. He nodded at the guard and spoke loudly:
“Mr. Gates, I have no further need of assistance from our guests. Please escort Miss Adler to her cell, and then our doctor and his bunk mate to cell number twenty-four. I must take this report over to Superintendent Gruber. I appreciate your theory,” he told Fallon, “but you have nothing but a guess.” He waved the pad of paper. “I have an official report, which is legal and which will help the relatives of the deceased—as well as the relatives of the man Louis Roach butchered on the other side of Arizona Territory—come to terms and maybe let both men rest in peace. May God save their souls.”
The guard motioned with his Winchester repeater. Pinky led the way, followed by Fallon and Gloria Adler. Doc Fowler, the “Killing Sawbones,” headed for the bottle on the shelf.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They were left alone in cell number twenty-four. Preacher Lang and Yaqui Mendoza were on whatever work detail they had been assigned to. The bunk of Louis Roach had been stripped, and what few personal items he had owned—a collection of Homer, a newspaper clipping, and a tintype of a woman sitting in a chair—had been taken away. The rope that had strangled Roach to death had been removed. Even the chamber pot had been emptied and the floor swept and mopped.
The guard named Gates closed the door, turned the lock, and walked away.
Pinky waited a few seconds, found his bunk, and said, “You talk too much.”
“I could’ve said more.” Fallon sat down and found the photograph of his dead wife and daughter.
“Like what?” Pinky asked.
“Like the rope burns on Lang’s hand.”
Pinky sucked in a deep breath, and held it.
Fallon kept talking. “So Allan gets me out of the cell in the middle of the night. Takes me over to talk to Monk Quinn. We talk . . . about absolutely nothing. Quinn got you, Lang, and Mendoza to murder Roach. The man’s going to hang in less than a week, so what’s the point in killing a man doomed to die? That’s what I can’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand. Just listen to Pinky. Pinky knows.”
“Pinky knows how to kill.”
The man jumped down from his bunk and crept closer to Fallon. “Yeah, Pinky knows how to kill. Why do you think he’s been in the Hell Hole for all this time? Pinky knows something else, though, and that’s how to stay alive. If Monk Quinn says that Roach has to die, he dies.”
“So you knocked him out, fixed the rope, and strung him up.” Fallon tucked away the photograph and turned to Pinky. “Lang put the rope on Roach’s throat. Choked him to death before you boys ever got him swinging. That’s how the rope burn got on Lang’s hand. That meant Mendoza had to haul him up, tie the knot, make sure it looked good. Lang isn’t strong enough to do that. You certainly couldn’t have done it.”
Pinky just stared.
“Which means you had to knock him out, Pinky. All three of you have to take part in a murder. Monk Quinn could have it no other way. Otherwise one of you could sell out the other two in a trial.”
Pinky fell back and sat on the—by Yuma standards—relatively clean floor. His head dropped.
“So why Roach? Why not me?” Fallon asked.
Pinky’s head shook.
“They say if you need to know anything about what’s going on in Yuma, you ask ol’ Pinky. All right, Pinky . . . I’m asking.”
The white-haired old-timer let out another sigh. His head shook. He looked at his fingernails, and turned to stare out the cell door and admired the view of the whitewashed wall. Pinky shook his head again.
“Roach was supposed to go with us. His lawyer said he would get the conviction overturned, force a new trial. That didn’t happen. And then the sentence is confirmed. So Roach is supposed to leave tomorrow to be held in the county jail before he goes to the gallows. Monk Quinn decides that’s too risky. Wouldn’t be unlike Roach, a Southern gentleman, to go to Gruber and make a deal. He says what Quinn’s planning to do. Gruber gets the judge to change Roach’s sentence. At least call off his hangin’.”
Fallon tried to comprehend this. He said, “So Monk Quinn plays God.”
“You best be glad he is playin’, and that he decided he needed you.” Pinky nodded. “Ol’ Pinky knows things. He knows that Monk Quinn decided you could replace Roach. That’s another reason we had to get rid of Roach. You said you wanted out. Well, Pinky can tell you that you’ll be gettin’ out. With Pinky and some others.” He grinned.
“Monk’s got a fortune in gold buried in Mexico. Pinky’s gonna get his share. You’ll get yours too. With some others Monk figures he needs.”
Fallon felt his stomach, which was empty, turn into knots that pulled and twisted and tightened. They had killed Louis Roach because they wanted Fallon instead. Fallon had wanted to get in on the break, but not this way. He couldn’t figure out why. Why would a murdering rogue like Monk Quinn want a former deputy United States marshal tagging along with him, over the prison walls, and into the desert south of the border? For a chance at two hundred thousand dollars in gold bullion?
“Who all’s coming with us?” Fallon asked.
“That,” Pinky said as he pulled himself to his feet, “be a thing Pinky might know but Pinky can’t say. Because Pinky don’t want to find himself hangin’ from the ceilin’ and on his way to get covered with rocks in our little ol’ boneyard. No, sir. Pinky won’t tell you nothin’ more. And”—his voice turned from stern to hopeful—“you won’t tell Monk Quinn nothin’ that Pinky’s tol’ you. Will you?”
“No,” Fallon said. “Because I might need you when we’re out of the Hell Hole.”
Pinky grinned, and almost instantly his face saddened. “Don’t look like we’ll be gettin’ our breakfast this morn. Might not get no dinner or supper neither.”
