MIDDAY AT THE TIMES and most everyone had gone for lunch. A young receptionist at the front desk looked almost comatose from the afternoon heat, her head on the counter and her eyes closed. The electric ceiling fans buzzed but otherwise the office had fallen into a deathly silence.
Wendell Smith sat at his desk, fidgeting even more than usual, more nervous than ever before. Several staffers had asked Wendell to join them at the beer garden, but he'd begged off with the excuse of an urgent deadline for tomorrow’s paper. He had a deadline all right, but it had nothing to do with some pissant story. He needed to find the latest Nemesis letter. And find it fast.
Figuring the coast was finally clear, Wendell moved quietly across the newsroom into the boss’s office. The letter wasn’t amongst the documents scattered across the top of Clive’s almost-always cluttered desk. The next step presented considerable risk—searching the desk drawers. That would have been impossible with Nick, because he always locked his desk, even during short trips to the water closet. But Clive had no such compulsion or paranoia.
Wendell opened the slender middle drawer and scanned the contents—nothing that even resembled a letter. In the top drawer he found a half-empty whiskey bottle and two glasses that looked as if they hadn’t been washed in years. But the bottom drawer contained a metal box large enough to hold documents. It was locked—Clive wasn’t quite as negligent as Wendell assumed. But then the young reporter remembered something. He pulled back the slender middle drawer again and grabbed the ring of keys sitting in a wooden tray.
Peering through the open office door, Wendell made sure the receptionist was still asleep and no one had returned from lunch before plunking himself onto Clive’s chair. He removed the lockbox from the drawer and sat it on his lap. On the third key, the box opened. Wendell flipped up the lid and there it sat—the latest Nemesis letter.
He slipped the letter into his valise, closed the lockbox, placed it back into the drawer, and casually departed Clive’s office. The receptionist didn’t stir as he glided past the counter and down the stairs. In anticipation of his heist, Wendell had left his horse tied to a hitching post outside the Times rather than around the corner at the livery. He boosted himself into the saddle and took off.
Speed was of the essence. Wendell had to have the letter back in the lockbox by the end of lunch, before the newsroom filled up again, and especially before Clive and Nick returned to work. Moments later he was dismounting in front of the jailhouse and stumbling down the stairs into the lockup lobby.
Cradoc Bradshaw was nowhere in sight. “Is the marshal around?” he asked the deputy at the duty desk.
Big George Dow was about as vague as a man can be. “I’m not sure.”
“He either is or he isn’t,” Wendell insisted.
“Then I guess he ain’t,” was the deputy’s brusque reply. And while that may have been an honest answer, it was of no help to the increasingly anxious reporter.
If not at the county jail, Wendell figured the best place to find the marshal was at his home on the waterfront. Nobody answered Cradoc’s front door. After five minutes of furious knocks and increasingly desperate supplications, the young reporter decided the marshal must not be home. Wracking his brain, Wendell tried to figure where he might be.
Leaving the waterfront behind, Wendell made his way to the cook wagon in front of the County Courthouse where Cradoc often dined. Not there either. Quickly running out of time and options, he could think of just one last place to look—the Oyster Bar. No longer caring if anyone spotted him, Wendell rode as fast as he could to the saloon. Through the big picture windows Wendell could see Cradoc at the bar, talking to a beautiful dark-haired lady he presumed to be Josie Earp.
Wendell couldn’t just walk into the joint and announced that another Nemesis letter had arrived, and the brute was about to kill again. Not without drawing unwanted notice from other patrons and perhaps putting an end to his whole plan before it even got off the ground.
An idea occurred. Wendell galloped to the nearest cross street, hung a quick left and then another into the alley that split the block. Reaching the rear end of the Oyster, Wendell hitched his mount around a rubbish can and slipped through the saloon’s rear door, where the kitchen and washroom flanked either side of a hallway. He still hadn’t figured a plan, but one came together quickly. He reached into a jacket pocket, removed his reporter’s notebook, and scribbled a short note which he handed to one of the scullery girls making her way toward the main room with a tray full of glasses. “Would you be kind enough to hand this to the gentleman at the bar?” he asked, including a silver dollar in the deal.
Moments later, the scullery girl placed the note on the counter in front of Cradoc Bradshaw. His heart raced with the thought that it might be a message from Emma Lee. That she had returned from wherever it was she had fled and wanted to rendezvous. Flush with anticipation and hope, he slowly unfolded the piece of paper.
Marshal Bradshaw,
If you would be kind enough to meet me in the washroom.
Yours truly,
W. Smith
“Dammit to hell.” Cradoc mumbled to himself. The little turd was back. What the hell did he want now? The marshal downed the remainder of a tequila shot and slipped off his stool.
The door flew open and Cradoc stepped into the washroom at the back of the Oyster. The place looked vacant. “Smith, are you in here?”
One of the wooden stalls creaked open and Wendell Smith emerged, looking rather awkward. But then again, when didn’t he look ungainly and out of place?
“What the hell do you want, kid?” the marshal barked.
“I thought you might like a peek at this,” Wendell answered, withdrawing a white envelope from his jacket.
Cradoc gave him a dubious look. He snatched the letter from the reporter’s hand, flicked it open with a snap of his wrist, and began to read. Immediately his face changed, morphing from blatant skepticism to something more like astonishment. “When did this arrive?”
“Day before yesterday,” Wendell told him. “And I need to get it back—into Clive’s desk—by the end of lunch.”
“You stole this from Clive’s office?”
“More like borrowed.”
Cradoc shook his head in wonder. Maybe the kid had more balls than previously thought.
Wendell’s anxiety continued to spike. “We made a deal, remember? When I came into the jailhouse with the first typing sample.”
“We didn’t have a deal. You made an offer,” Cradoc reminded him. “Which I declined in no uncertain terms.”
“No matter. You’re the only one capable of doing something about this, Marshal.”
True enough, Cradoc thought to himself. Still, could he trust the kid? Was this new letter the real deal or an elaborate hoax to draw him out, play him for a fool in front of the whole town? He wouldn’t put it past Clive to concoct something so deviously clever.
Even more troubling was the lack of time. Smith was pressing him for an answer now, which meant that Cradoc wouldn’t have a chance to double-check the letter’s authenticity against the older Nemesis letters and typing machine samples. He could tell just by sight that the latest missive bore the same sort of wording and the same typeface as the others. But it could have been counterfeited by Nick or Clive, and Smith could be a partner in the hoax or perhaps getting duped himself.
He needed to know more before committing. “Did they share this with you?”
“No, I came upon them discussing it in Mr. Bennett’s office late at night. Neither one of them realized that I was outside, listening to them discuss the details: Nemesis is back. He’s going to strike again, and he wants to make a deal with Nick.”
“And Clive agreed to this?”
Wendell scrunched up his face. “Not in so many words,” he sighed. “But he did say they should seriously consider it.”
“Did they make any sort of plan for proceeding?”
The young reporter sighed again. “Not that I could clearly hear.”
Cradoc rolled his eyes towards heaven. “You don’t know much, do you?”
But Wendell wasn’t ready to capitulate. He stabbed a finger at the letter. “As you can see, Nemesis pledged to write again with the details of ‘when, where, and who.’ At that point, Nick and Mr. Bennett will have to decide if they are game or not. If they accede to the killer’s request, they’ll have to plot a strategy for going forward—what they are going to do with the information and when they are going to do it.”
“And you’re a fly on the wall again?”
“Precisely. When the next correspondence arrives, I ascertain the particulars and report them to you. Assuming we have all the facts we need, you can set a trap and catch the killer. Simple as that.”
Only it wasn’t so simple. Cradoc ran the various scenarios through his mind. Even if they knew the location and target ahead of time, that was no guarantee they could stop the killer from taking another life. And there remained the possibility that Clive might get cold feet, nix the whole affair. Or that Nick might decide to go it alone. “What makes you think Nick will continue to keep Clive in the loop?”
“You of all people must know that Nick doesn’t make a move without Mr. Bennett’s blessing. And he’s no fool. He’s not going to run off and have a chat with the killer without telling at least one person where’s he going and when he should be expected back. That’s been the case with every move on the Nemesis stories—Mr. Bennett has been kept informed. Given that Nick has already shared this latest message, I wouldn’t expect anything different going forward.”
“Fair enough,” said Cradoc, who for the first time thought that Smith’s grand plan might work. He still didn’t know if he could implicitly trust the reporter, yet at the same time he recognized this as their long-awaited opportunity to catch the killer. Possibly the best chance they would ever have. The marshal couldn’t pass it up. He would have to let Coyne in on the plan, and by extension several deputies. Best to bring in Wyatt, too. A small group of people he could trust not to blab beforehand and who would perform to the utmost of their ability when it came time to close the trap.
Cradoc handed the letter back. “Better get going.”
But Wendell wasn’t finished. “I want exclusive rights to the story. And I insist on being there when the arrest is made.”
“The first one’s fine,” the marshal told him. “But I don’t know about the second. The guy’s way too dangerous.”
“Then no deal,” Wendell said. “I’ve got a lot more on the line than you. With me, you’ve got them licked. Without me, you’re back to square one.”
Cradoc grudgingly agreed. No harm in making that pledge now. They could always give Smith the slip when it came down to the crunch, when there was nothing the reporter would be able to do about it.
Yet something still nagged at Cradoc. “There’s one thing I still don’t understand: why are you doing this?”
“Can you think of a better way to advance my career?”
“I’m not so sure that’s your primary reason.”
“Why does it matter to you?” Wendell snapped.
“Because I wanna know what sort of person I’m going into business with, what your motives are. Call it a matter of trust. Why are you so keen to stab Nick in the back? He’ll never forgive or forget. You’ll make an enemy for life.”
Wendell’s face went flush, the anger rising inside. “From the moment I arrived, Nick has never taken me seriously. He’s always treated me like a rich fop whose father got him the job.”
Cradoc wanted to say: Well, isn’t that the truth? But he held his tongue.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Nick,” Wendell added, “it’s that you’ll never get anywhere in this world unless you’re ambitious, maybe even ruthless, and willing to take chances. That’s how he got where he is, and that’s how I’m going to get where I want to be.”