ON A MUGGY MORNING in late May, Cradoc Bradshaw sat at his desk trying to decide whether or not to release from custody (without charges) a local transient who had stolen a cow. The man was not of sound mind or body, and the marshal would normally have let him off with just a warning. If not for one complication: the animal in question belonged to Mayor Hunsaker. Still, it was a no brainer. The marshal would get a load of shit when the mayor discovered the cow thief had been liberated. But that was a small price to pay for doing the right thing.
Cradoc heard footsteps and looked up to see a nattily dressed young man descend into the jail, straw hat pressed against his chest.
“You need some help?” asked Cradoc, thinking the guy looked like the type who might have been ripped off in a card game, not so much by deception as his own folly, and had come to report the transgression.
“I’m Wendell Smith,” the fellow announced with no lack of self-importance. And when the marshal replied with nothing more than a blank stare, he added, “Wendell Smith from the Times. You requested a sample from one of our typing machines. The old Sholes & Glidden, I do believe.”
Cradoc sat up straight in his chair. “Took you goddamn long enough. I asked for that a week ago. I was on the verge of getting a warrant.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” Wendell replied. “But Mr. Bennett has been weighing the legality of your request and its implication upon our First Amendment rights.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” the marshal shot back. But he could tell by Smith’s sober bearing that it was no joke. For whatever reason—maybe for the pure pleasure of jerking the marshal’s chain—Bennett was dragging his feet. “You tell Clive that we consulted with the county attorney and a local judge, and that both of them assured us that our request for the typing samples is well within the law.”
“But not necessarily the Constitution,” Wendell countered. “Freedom of the press and all that. Mr. Bennett considers the request a distinct intrusion.”
Cradoc could have launched into a lecture on how obtaining a typing sample and suppressing speech were not one and the same thing. But on this particular morning, he felt no need to explain himself to Wendell Smith or anyone else. “Where the hell is it?” he barked.
“Where’s what?” asked a confused Smith.
“The goddamn sample. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Ah, yes …” Wendell fumbled around inside his jacket and produced an envelope, which he passed across the desk to the marshal.
Cradoc removed a single sheet of paper from inside. Typed about halfway down was a single sentence that began with the words “Forgive me for making contact with you in such an impersonal manner …”
He looked up at the young reporter. “I asked for the alphabet, not a reproduction of the killer’s letter.”
“I thought an actual line from the felon’s prose might be a tad more appropriate,” Wendell replied. “I presume, Marshal, given the fact that you are still collecting samples, that you have not yet located the machine upon which the killer composed the original letter?”
A thinly veiled yet clever attempt to glean a quote for publication. But Cradoc didn’t take the bait. This assbite reporter and everyone else in town could speculate all they wished. But he was not about to explain himself or his actions in an ongoing investigation. Still, the young reporter persisted.
“Is there precedence for this—solving a crime via type identification?”
You had to give the kid credit for trying. Maybe that’s the only way to get ahead at an outfit like the Times. Curry favor with someone who despised your newsroom rival and who just might, out of spite, slip you the sort of information that allowed you to write a story that vaulted you ahead of that rival. Certainly, an enticing proposition—using this Wendell Smith fellow to screw Nick. But the marshal could see no other benefit. By way of deflection, he turned the tables on Smith. “I don’t recall ever seeing your byline in the Times.”
The remark was meant to ruffle Wendell’s well-groomed feathers. And indeed it did. “I assure you, Marshal, it’s there,” the young reporter said defensively. “Nearly every day and almost always on the front page.”
“Beneath Pinder’s, of course.”
“Not always. I’m a journalist in my own right.”
And ambitious, too. Either that, or terribly ill-informed on the demeanor of the local marshal. “How long have you been in town?” Cradoc asked.
“Nearly five months.”
“And during those five months, has no one bothered to inform you that I do not fraternize with members of the press, do not grant special access, do not pay for tips, do not divulge confidential information in return for anything?”
“Yes, they have, Marshal. I’m well aware of your repute. And the fact that you leaked Archer’s autopsy report to our biggest rival.”
The marshal glared. “That wasn’t me.”
“Maybe and maybe not,” Wendell retorted. “But if you should ever get the urge, I wanted you to know, sir, that I can lend a sympathetic ear. And who knows? You might need something from me at some point in future.”
Cradoc didn’t like this Smith fellow one bit. Way too clever for his own good. Way too self-important. The marshal’s grim stare told the young reporter to get a move on.
“Keep me in mind,” said Wendell, bowing ever so slightly as he backed away from the desk.
The young reporter having departed, Cradoc wrenched open his desk drawer and withdrew a cardboard folder containing both the original letter and samples he’d collected from the owners of the various Sholes & Glidden typing machines that still existed in San Diego.
Wendell’s question had been remarkably prescient. As far as Cradoc knew, no one had ever solved a crime by matching words and typing machine. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. George Marston had already planted the seed in his mind by casually mentioning that no two typing machines produced exactly the same imprint on paper. Immediately grasping the significance, Cradoc asked why that was so. Marston replied with a long and overly complicated discourse on the intricacies of the modern typing machine. The twenty-six characters at the end of the “typebars”—the metal letterheads that strike the carbon sheet against the paper page—were marginally different on each machine. Although produced of the same molds, usage of the machines over a period of time endowed the letterheads with tiny cracks, uneven wear, and slightly varied pitches. Differences too small for the naked eye to detect, but quite obvious when comparing documents from two machines beneath a magnifying glass.
Thus, it was theoretically possible to link the Archer correspondence to a single typewriter. Assuming the marshal could locate that particular machine. With that in mind, Marston had provided a list of the two dozen Sholes his emporium had sold in the late 1870s, their serial numbers rendered on a small brass plaque on the underside of the frame. Upon receiving the list, Cradoc had petitioned the various owners to provide an alphabetical sample of the typeface. If the original owners were no longer in possession of said machine, they were required to tender details on how they had disposed of their Sholes.
The sample from Wendell Smith was the fourteenth the marshal had received thus far. Removing the original letter from the binder, Cradoc placed it on the desktop beside the Times sample. Reaching for a magnifying glass, he began to compare.
“Dammit to hell,” Cradoc mumbled to himself.
“Another miss?” asked a familiar voice.
Cradoc gazed up into the face of Joe Coyne, chomping on a wad of chew that made his cheek bulge. The marshal had been so involved in examining the typefaces that he hadn’t noticed the boss emerge from his office.
The sheriff had deep reservations about Cradoc’s typewriter theory. Even if such comparisons could be used to finger a suspect, he doubted that such unorthodox evidence would hold up in a court of law. Then again, Cradoc had solved cases in the past through fairly irregular means. As long as it didn’t interfere with what Coyne considered the main thrust of the murder investigation, the sheriff didn’t mind his number-one detective going off on this tangent.
“’Fraid so.” Cradoc leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “And this is one of the samples I was counting on to shed some light.”
“Who’s it from?”
“The Times.”
Coyne rolled his eyes to high heaven. “You think somebody over there killed Archer? That takes the cake!”
“If you’re going to ridicule my theories, maybe I shouldn’t even discuss them.”
“You’re telling me that Nick Pinder killed someone for no other reason than to get himself a good story?”
“No … I’m suggesting that maybe Nick took advantage of the fact that somebody else killed Archer by inventing an imaginary letter written by an imaginary killer—and that is how he got himself such a goddamn good story.”
“Even that’s a stretch.”
“Not as much as you think,” Cradoc responded. “I could easily type a letter, mail it to myself, and claim that somebody else sent it. Anybody can.”
“Fair enough,” said Coyne. “But you just said yourself that the original letter wasn’t done on the machine at the Times.”
“Not the one this sample came from. But Marston sold twenty-three of these machines in total. Nick could have composed the letter on any of them. Or got somebody else to write and post it. He could have paid someone.”
“And you think Pinder is capable of such deceit?”
“Not just capable, but damn good at it. When we were kids, Nick made up stories all the time. My dad used to take us out on patrol around the county, and we’d sit around the campfire at night and spin yarns. Nick was always the best. Better than my dad or any of the troopers. He’d make up the wildest tales about goblins and ghosts. Scared the shit out of me.”
Coyne noticed that a certain fondness had crept into the marshal’s voice. He could see it in the man’s eyes, too. Nostalgia for things long gone, a sentimental side that Cradoc showed none too often. A small chink in the man’s considerable mental armor.
“And when we were teenagers,” Cradoc continued. “Nick conjured the most incredible stories to impress girls. He even had his own theory about how to lie successfully, what he called the Ninety Percent Rule. Always tell ninety percent of the truth. And spin that ninety percent in such a way that nobody ever suspects the bogus ten percent that lies beneath. Worked every time! With his mother, with our teachers, with the various girls he lured into kissing in the reeds beside the river. It was unreal—his talent for obfuscation.”
“Telling stories as a kid,” Coyne felt obliged to point out, “is one helluva lot different than writing lies as a grown man. Especially when it comes to something as serious as murder.”
“Point taken. But what’s ninety percent of the truth in this case? Nick receives a letter in the post—a confession from someone claiming to have killed Zebulon Archer. He really did get a letter. The letter really did make those claims. That’s your ninety percent. The critical ten percent is that Nick knows who wrote the letter. Not the genuine killer, but Nick himself or someone in his hire.”
“Then how do you account for the particulars of the crime that Nick nor anyone else in the local press had access to?”
Cradoc had an answer for that, too. “You and I and everyone else know that Nick can find out anything he wants in this town if he spreads enough cash around. He’s got informants everywhere including more than a couple in this jailhouse. And he’s cultivating new sources all the time. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to acquire details of Archer’s autopsy.”
“All fine and dandy,” said Coyne, who had just about heard enough of this nonsense. “And certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. But it’s beside the point. Establishing the letter as a fraud does not reveal who killed Archer.”
“Neither does prosecuting animal thieves.”
The sheriff shrugged off the dig. “Nothing I could do about that. The mayor shouts, we jump. Even for something as trivial as an old milk cow. But other distractions”—Coyne cocked his head toward the typing samples on the marshal’s desk—“I can do something about. Especially if they start to interfere with or distract from our primary objective.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cradoc asked gruffly.
“I fully appreciate that you and Nick have a past that neither of you is willing or able to come to terms with. I can’t fault you for that. But I can fault you for letting that past blind you to the bigger picture. Nick may or may not have written that goddamn letter himself. But last time I checked, it wasn’t illegal for a journalist to deceive the public. Immoral, perhaps. But not illegal. I did not employ you—at considerable expense, I might add—to expose reprobate journalists. I hired you to catch felons, quell violence, and restore order to the streets.”
Cradoc stabbed a finger at the documents on his desk. “My gut tells me this will give us the answer.”
“And mine tells me it won’t,” said Coyne. “And seeing as I’m the boss, my innards take precedent. Now I can order you to cease and desist with this typing machine crap, or you can take it upon yourself to let it fade away. Don’t matter to me as long as you get back on track and find Archer’s killer, rather than trying to nail Nick for something that is most definitely not a crime.”
“And what would you have me do instead?”
“What you were doing before. What you do best. Snooping and sniffing around. Talking to people. Making ‘em nervous. Spreading seeds of doom amongst those who might help us solve this crime.”
“I’ve already questioned anyone in San Diego with even the slightest reason to kill, mutilate, or look sideways at Zeb Archer. All of them have rock-solid alibis.”
“Ah, but you haven’t looked everywhere,” Coyne reminded.
The marshal knew exactly what he meant. “You’re suggesting I head up north?”
“It’s not me who’s suggesting. Try the mayor and the city council—the people who pay our wages.”
“None of whom gave a shit about Archer’s killer until that infernal letter arrived. Can’t have some Chinese fella murdering white folks.”
“Don’t mock me,” said Coyne.
“Then be reasonable! You know just as well as me that a Chinaman didn’t kill Archer and that sending me to Frisco won’t accomplish a damn thing.”
“I won’t disagree. But it’s getting to the point where it no longer matters what you and I think or what the actual truth might be. Just like that goldarned cow this morning, we are often at the whim of Hunsaker, Horton, and the other people who run the show. That, my friend, is the bottom line. And like I’ve told you on more than one occasion, we either learn to live with it—or get out of town.”