CRADOC MADE STRAIGHT for the Oyster Bar. A “CLOSED” sign hung in the window and the doors were bolted. The only person he could see through the big front windows was a Mexican kid mopping the floor behind the counter. He stood for a moment on the boardwalk, wondering if he dared wake the Earps an hour before dawn. And having convinced himself that he should, the marshal turned heel and made for Burns Boarding House on Third Street.
Eliza Burns, the proprietress, was just getting breakfast together in the dining room. Cradoc tipped his hat to her as he cruised through the foyer and upstairs to the second floor, where the Earps rented a suite of rooms. His pounding was met by Josie in a silk kimono, book in hand, not a trace of sleep in her big, dark eyes. No need to ask: she had evidently been awake for hours, reading.
“Cradoc!” she blurted out, unable to contain her surprise. He rarely visited their quarters, and certainly not as such an early hour.
“Is Wyatt awake?”
“I wouldn’t think so, but do come in. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see you,” she said, half sarcastically. Wyatt did cherish his shut-eye.
Cradoc waited in the parlor while Josie ducked into the adjacent bedroom. “Honey,” he could hear her say. “You have a visitor.”
After a suitable amount of grumbling, Wyatt appeared at the bedroom door, clad in a faded red union suit, scratching an itch in his crotch that didn’t seem to want to go away. “This better be good,” he groused and wiped the sleep from his eyes with his other hand.
With Wyatt still in his skivvies, they grabbed coffee in the boarding house kitchen and sat at the dining room table, lit by a single kerosene lamp. Cradoc gave him the short form: Father Figueroa pistol-whipped to death in the process of molesting a young Mexican girl who apparently witnessed the crime … the killer using the priest’s own telephone to alert the jailhouse. “And get a load of this—” He reached inside his coat and withdrew two neatly folded sheets of paper and spread them on the table.
Wyatt immediately recognized the document on the left as a Nemesis letter. The document on the right bore a typed rendition of the Roman alphabet in the same font as the Nemesis correspondence.
“Yeah, so?” asked Wyatt, not immediately catching on.
The marshal stabbed a finger on the letter. “This is Nemesis.” And moved his hand across to the alphabet. “This is the Sholes & Glidden typewriter in the rectory at St Joseph’s.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows arched. “Are you sure?”
“The Es are an exact match and so are the tiny fissures in the left leg of the letter M. As are several other letters. I’ll get a second opinion from Marston, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain that each and every Nemesis letter was typed on the rectory machine.”
“You don’t think …” Wyatt’s voice trailed off.
“That Figueroa was Nemesis?” Cradoc shook his head. Back in the day, when he’d been involved with Roz, she had taken him to Mass on several occasions at St Joseph’s. Many other times, the marshal had seen Figueroa around town. The padre was slight of build and meek of manner, didn’t seem to have the physical strength or mental fortitude to carry out kills of the Nemesis variety, let alone ordinary homicide. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. Just highly unlikely.”
“If he was shaggin’ some Mexican kid, the old padre was already well on his way to Hades. So why not brutal murder, too?”
Cradoc begged to differ. “There’s a huge leap from fornication—no matter how deviant and disgusting—to cold-blooded murder.”
“Eye for an eye—straight from the Bible. Isn’t that what Nemesis is all about? And Figueroa had the typewriter, for God’s sake. That’s enough to convict him right there.”
“Then who killed him? And why?” asked Cradoc.
Wyatt shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe some upstanding citizen who discovered his secret identity and—taking a page from the good book of Nemesis—decided to take matters into his own hands. Did the girl get a look at the priest killer?”
“Apparently not. She told Jose Cota the fella had a bandana around his face. And get this—she described the killer as ‘el hombre quién mata a diablos’.”
“The man who kills devils? Now that sounds like Nemesis.”
“For sure. But it still doesn’t add up. Figueroa’s murder looks like a messy, spontaneous beating rather than a carefully planned ambush.”
Wyatt cottoned on at once. “So if Nemesis did kill the priest—”
“I’m not saying Nemesis didn’t do it. I’m just saying it wasn’t premeditated. Something went wrong. The killer was thrown off his game. This very well could be the mistake we’ve been waiting for.”
The marshal had expected Wyatt to be more ecstatic. This was huge news, the biggest break they’d had in the Nemesis case. But his old friend seemed either unconvinced or less than thrilled. After a moment of silence, Cradoc finally asked, “You don’t agree?”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what’s eatin’ you?”
“I got another cable … from my source in St Louis.”
Cradoc didn’t say a word, just gave him a look.
“I’m not sure this is the best time,” Wyatt cautioned.
“Just tell me, for God’s sake. Who’d she kill?”
Wyatt blew a gust of air between his lips. “Her husband.”
Dumbstruck by the revelation, it took Cradoc a few moments to respond. “No mistake?”
“Not according to my source. The details seem to be fairly well known. She knifed him in a riverboat cabin while he was sleeping.” Wyatt ran a finger across his neck. “Took all his money and jumped ship in Vicksburg.”
“When did all this happen?” Must have been years ago, Cradoc was thinking.
Wyatt tugged at the end of his mustache before answering. “Right before she came to San Diego.”