Chapter Twenty-Nine

“When and how do you want to do this thing, John Henry?” Kip Caine moaned.

Cole had been staring out into the night, watching the snow falling from a sky that still glowed red over the shadowy outlines of the town. He turned to Caine who was holding his head in his hands, leaning forward, his wet hair hanging in loose strands. His muddy boots had soiled the carpet.

Kip looked up at Cole with reddened eyes when he didn’t answer right away. “Well?”

“Not tonight,” Cole said.

Kip looked relieved, dropped his head back into his hands. “Maybe I’ll catch me a little sleep, then,” he muttered. “’At’s what I need, a little sleep.”

Cole watched Kip stretch out on the divan he’d been sitting on. He walked into the bedroom where Flora’s trunk was. He lifted the lid, took out the diary, and put it in the pocket of the curly coat. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do with the book, but it was all he had to try and tie Johnny Logan to Flora’s murder. But proving that Johnny killed Flora didn’t prove he killed the others, and it didn’t prove Leo Loop was behind it, or anything else, and that was Cole’s real problem. Johnny had already paid for whatever sins he might have committed. It wasn’t he that Cole really wanted.

He walked back to the window. Kip Caine was snoring, his right arm flung across his eyes. Cole checked the street again. It was still quiet, almost evilly quiet. He pulled his Ingersol and looked at the time. It was nearly 2:00 in the morning. What now?

He went over what few facts he already knew about the killings. Then he went over what he believed. Cole knew with all certainty that Leo was behind the murders, even though he had no proof. The reason was obvious. Liddy was hurting his business by running a first-class escort service and not the usual rough trade of a frontier town, the sort of trade Leo was good at running. But the question still persisted—why, if Leo wanted Liddy to fold her tent, didn’t he just go after her directly? Why kill three of her young women instead?

Then there was Doc Holliday. How did he figure into the killings? The way Cole saw it, Doc could have prevented the murders, or he could have been in on them. Doc had had the opportunity for doing either. Doc was like a moving shadow against the night, a man one could easily forget about until the next time he ran into him—or until it was too late. But the questions remained why he would kill the women, what did he have to gain from it? Again Cole considered the possibilities. Doc could have done the killings for money. It takes a special kind of man to be a paid assassin, and Cole had little doubt that Doc possessed such a capability. Then, there was the possibility that he owed a debt to Leo—a gambling debt, perhaps—and Leo was willing to wipe the slate clean if Doc committed the murders. Doc was a notorious gambler, but the problem was Cole had never heard that he was a poor gambler. So it made the odds that Doc might have killed the women to erase a debt seem long. The only other connection between Doc and the killings was Liddy. Liddy had told Cole that first night they had talked that Doc had an interest in her. And he had more or less admitted the same thing himself to Cole. Maybe Liddy had rejected Doc’s advances and it had made him angry, and he killed the girls to hurt her. But that sure seemed a long way around the barn.

Cole stood there, trying to piece the puzzle together. His reflection looked ghostly in the glass panes, and he wondered if he hadn’t stepped into it, like Bill Hickok had done. According to Jane’s version of the story, Bill had crossed someone in town and paid the ultimate price—a long, eternal sleep. Cole wondered if he might not wind up finding himself sleeping next to Wild Bill. All the odds were stacked against him ever leaving Deadwood alive. And what he had to fight with were only the diary of a dead prostitute and a dope-addicted gunfighter. Somehow, it didn’t seem nearly enough.

Absently his hands rested in his pockets, the fingers of his right hand touching the grips of the self-cocker. His other hand felt the diary. Doc troubled him the most. And if any of them was going to kill him, Doc would be the one. At least that much Cole was sure of. As far as the others, Cole wasn’t all that concerned. He figured he could kill Charley six days out of seven if it came to a face-to-face showdown. Watching him beat his horse over that ridge after the ambush had told him something about Charley’s nerve. The posse of drunken miners would scatter like quail once Cole either dropped Charley or a couple of them. But Doc was another matter. Feeling Flora’s diary in his pocket gave him an idea, perhaps a way to draw Doc out. Cole had to know the truth about Doc’s involvement in the murders. And if the killing was going to begin, it might as well begin between Doc and himself. It was time he found out who had killed the fallen angels.