Lonagarm and the Mark of the Cat by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Once things calmed down, with all the forms filled out and reports written and signed, Longarm took Schrank by the elbow and pulled him into a small room at the police head-quarters. The room was ordinarily used for the interrogation of suspects . . . which was pretty much what Longarm intended to use it for now.

“You an’ me need to talk,” he told his young prisoner. “That dead fella. You knew him.”

“I . . .”

“Don’t be tryin’ to deny it. He’s what you shied away from when we was coming out of the eatery this afternoon, and that was him in the crowd on the platform later on. He was laying for you, Delbert. He didn’t try and ask you anything or warn you about anything, he just started throwing lead in your direction. If you hadn’t thrown yourself down like you done, you likely would be the dead man laying over there in a box. So . . . who the fuck was that fella?”

Schrank stared at his toes for a bit and squirmed on his chair. He craned his neck to look around, but the walls of the interrogation room were as bare as a fifty-cent whore’s ass. There was nothing to look at except the man who sat across the table boring holes in Schrank’s head with the fixed look he was giving him.

Finally Schrank looked at Longarm again. “I don’t know his name. I seen him a couple times before.”

“With the Jennings bunch?”

Schrank looked down again, twisting his fingers together and wringing his hands like he expected to squeeze water out of them. In a very small voice he said, “Yes, sir. With Mattie’s brother an’ them.”

“Did you ever ride with that bunch yourself?”

Schrank quickly looked into Longarm’s eyes again. “No, sir. Never. I knew them, through Matt, but I never rode with them. Not when they were . . . you know. Working.”

“You knew what they were doing when they rode off?”

Schrank shrugged.

“Is that a yes?”

“All right, dammit. Yes. I knew.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“It wasn’t my job to. And anyway Matt is my friend. I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble.”

“Now you are in trouble, Delbert, and your only way out of it is to testify to what you know about Matt Jennings and his brother and the brother’s gang.”

Schrank shrugged again.

“I’m gonna tell you something else, Delbert, in case you haven’t figured it out for your own self,” Longarm said in a calm, level voice. “Your friend Matt and his brother have decided they can’t trust you. They don’t want you to live long enough to get up on that witness stand and swear to tell the truth. They’re afraid you just might actually do that and the truth would land all o’ them in prison. They’d rather see you dead than take a chance on you.”

“I know that. You’re right.” Schrank leaned back and stared toward the ceiling. After a moment he said, “You know the funny thing?”

Longarm grunted.

“When I

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