Deadman's Revenge (The Deadman Series Book 3) Page 14

  “Gawd-dammit, Howard!” the deputy howled. “Knock it off or we’ll set you in a jail cell right along with this big ‘un here!”

  The journalist faded away into the crowd, but the spectators had only gotten a nibble of forbidden fruit… they were incensed about… something, and wanted blood. Fruit, rocks and sticks pummeled Matthew and his escorts as they made their way down the street until, finally, the jailhouse came into view. “Hurry up, boys, before we end up having to hang a corpse!” Two rocks had hit Matthew within the last few second—one so large that he saw stars and his knees grew weak.

  Matthew felt a thrill of fear. Mobs were always a concern and one of the hardest things to contain as a sworn-officer. On one hand, a sheriff and his deputies were honor-bound to protect the citizens in their towns… on the other hand, sometimes those same citizens took the law into their own hands and acted as bad—if not worse—than the outlaws who persecuted them.

  This was one of those times, and Matthew heaved a sigh of relief as he and the rest of the Walla Walla’s city law officers flew through the front door of the sheriff’s office. “That damned reporter is really getting on my nerves!” Sheriff McCrady snarled when the front door closed behind them with a resounding bang.

  Turning toward the men who still held Matthew’s arms, the sheriff said, “Put him in the back cell. I can’t keep the nosy-bodies out of this office, but I don’t want some assassin coming in here on the sly and taking a pot shot at our wayward marshal, either.”

  Matthew was hustled down a long hallway with ten cells per side. Many of the cells were occupied, and some of the prisoners had gotten up from their cots and stood staring as he was marched along. “Who you got there, Jonesey… a marshal? No need for a jail cell. Me and the boys will take care of his ass right quick, won’t we boys?”

  “Shut up, Brian,” one of the deputies hollered, clutching Matthew’s right arm even tighter.

  A few more steps and they were at the last cell, which the deputy named Jones opened with a large set of keys. Matthew was pushed inside, the door was closed and locked and, besides water, which was circulated four times a day and three light but fairly,tasty meals that were shoved under the bars of each cell, Matthew was alone.

  There were a few snarled insults and a couple of hurled objects over the next few days but Matthew’s cell was isolated and eventually, he was left in peace. The only visitor he had was Sheriff McCrady, who seemed to take personal offence at the very sight of his latest prisoner.

  The first time the sheriff showed up, Matthew said, “I would like to get word of my incarceration to my boss, Marshal Adams, in Spokane.”

  The sheriff had replied, “First, you can tell me what possessed you to rape and murder that sweet little girl, Hildy Hanson.”

  Matthew gritted his teeth. “I did nothing of the sort. She was raped by two of Atkinson’s men and shot in the back by Atkinson, himself!”

  McCrady smiled, but there was no humor in his expression. “Sure,” he sneered. “Although a witness told us otherwise… Marshal.

  Can I place my phone call?”

  McCrady shook his jowls. “No! You have to wait until the circuit judge shows up, which will be a couple more weeks.” Then he walked away, while the other prisoners hooted in derision.

  A couple of days ago, McCrady visited Matthew’s cell again. “Tell me, again, why you raped and murdered Hildy Hanson and shot Miles Atkinson and his hired hands.” McCrady’s demeanor was quite different this time. His eyes were soft with understanding and his voice dripped with sympathy. If Matthew hadn’t been first, a sheriff and then, a Washington State marshal; McCrady’s tactics might have fooled him.

  Instead, Matthew shook his head and turned to face the wall. The technique McCrady was attempting was known as softening, which, at least, told the marshal that the Walla Walla sheriff was current on his state exams. McCrady clicked in teeth in frustration, hit the bars of Matthew’s cell with his Billy-stick and stalked back down the corridor.

  Now, Matthew heard footsteps approaching again. He turned over on his cot and faced the brick wall again. He was tired of the sheriff’s hostility, and poorly played police procedures and just wanted time to speed ahead, so he could swear his own testimony to the circuit judge and, hopefully, be on his way.

  “Leave me alone!” Matthew said, harshly.

  “Never, Mattie,” Roy Smithers answered.

  Matthew’s eyes opened wide and he sat up, facing his two, newest visitors. “What are you doing here, Roy… and uh, Dicky?”

  “Saw that warrant and thought we’d find out what in the Hell is going on.” Roy said.

  Matthew grinned. “Didn’t buy it, huh?”

  “No, Sir!” Dicky said with enthusiasm.

  “Can you get me out of here?” Matthew asked.

  The Granville sheriff shook his head, “No, not yet. That sheriff out there seems to have it in for you and is insisting that we need, at least, two witnesses to speak for your innocence, before he’ll let you out on bail.” Roy took off his hat and scratched at his balding pate. “What did you do to piss him off, Matthew?”

  “It’s a long story, Roy, but someone is trying to set me up. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some big money at play here, as well.” Matthew sighed.

  “Well,” Roy said. “I don’t suppose you have a witness or two Dicky and I could round up?”

  Matthew said, “I think so, although no one, alive still, actually saw what happened. Still, if she’s up to it, I think that Patty Hanson will serve as a witness. Also, if he can be found, Dr. Lawrence Talbot might be persuaded, if the price was right.”

  Roy lifted an eyebrow. “And where might I find these folks?”

  The marshal gave directions to the pig farm and then he asked, “Roy, I appreciate what you are doing, but I’ve got to ask… how are my children? Are they safe with you gone?”

  Roy winked. “I sent both Chance and Abby… and her family, to Amelia’s house in Marysville with Abner. They are safe and sound, Mattie. I wouldn’t have come looking for you, otherwise.”

  Nodding in relief, Matthew turned to the small deputy by Roy’s side. “Dicky, will you do something for me?”

  “Anything, Sir.” The young man replied.

  Matthew smiled. “Good. While Roy goes out to talk to Patty, I would like you to go to the prison and find out everything you can about a man named Earl Dickson. It’s my best lead so far and I was heading there when I was… interrupted.”

  “I’ll go there, right away, Matthew. You can count on me,” Dicky said, stoutly.

  Matthew, feeling the weight of the hangman’s noose slowly lifting from around his neck, and the deepest gratitude to his best friends in the wide world, stood up and shook Roy’s hand, accompanied by the muffled catcalls of their captive audience.

  ~

  Later that night, Matthew heard footsteps approaching his cell again. Knowing it was late… very late, Matthew sat up and stared into the darkness. Usually, when the deputies needed to come to the back cells after dark, they brought lanterns to light the way. Whoever approached him now, though, did so in utter darkness.

  Knowing that something was wrong, the marshal stood up and made his way around to the front of his cot, where he had hidden a loose piece of brickwork. It was large enough and sharp enough; Matthew figured it would make a good weapon, if the need arose. Grabbing the shard, he knelt on the floor and waited.

  He heard the sheriff whisper, “Go in and grab him, quick!”

  The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, and Matthew suddenly realized that there were many men with him in the closed cell. Knowing he couldn’t hide, the marshal sprang to his feet with a roar and swung his brick at the closest shadow he could see in the enveloping darkness. The brick sent the man to the floor, but it also disintegrated into powder upon impact with his head.

  At once, three more men converged on Matthew, kicking and punching. One of those punches landed on the point of his chin, and the marshal�
�s knees buckled. Then, as he struggled to remain conscious, Matthew heard the sheriff say, “Give him the shot… do it now!”

  Matthew felt a sharp sting in the back of his neck and he knew then, that despite Roy’s best efforts, he had just lost complete control over his life. He made one final effort to break free, but then his eyes closed and he sank to the floor with a sigh.

  Chapter 19

  Henrietta

  Henrietta Atkinson watched as the state marshal was hauled, facedown, out of the jailhouse. Four stout ward attendants carried the man by his legs and arms while the psychiatrist, Dr. Avery Thompson, supervised from a safe distance. The doctor, who worked for the Eastern Washington State Hospital for the Insane in Medical Lake, had been warned of his newest patient’s violent nature.

  Henrietta smirked with satisfaction. Although that fat little toad, Sheriff McCrady had come running to her earlier that day, croaking about how another sheriff named Roy Smithers was in town, and was, apparently, determined to get Miles’s murderer out of hock, she had other plans. No one… and I mean No One can just walk away from killing my dearest Miley, my king! She mused, silently.

  Henrietta had married the cattle rancher over thirty years ago, when she was a wealthy but rather homely sixteen-year-old girl. They had had a storybook romance throughout their many years together (or so she thought) and the shock of losing her husband had pried apart what little remained of wits, long ago, unraveled by bouts of acute hysteria and schizophrenia.

  When she was nineteen and had just lost the first of her many miscarried babies, Henrietta started hearing voices inside her head. She didn’t know, however, that the conversations she was party to were only inside her mind. Feeling shunned and left out, as she so often did when she was a young and socially awkward teenager; Mrs. Atkinson lashed out at her husband and the household staff.

  Demanding to know who was talking to her and why the gabby perpetrators would not show themselves, Henrietta presented the first manifestations of what would become a life-long illness. Not knowing what the crazed lady would do next, the astounded maids used every excuse they could think of not to enter Henrietta’s rooms, for when they did, the lady ranted and raved, throwing dishes and glassware and howling like a banshee.

  When no amount of sedatives could calm the frenzy in her mind, Miles was forced to have her committed—at first to a local nunnery and later, at the splendid new lunatic asylum in Medical Lake, Washington. She underwent numerous procedures, including shock and insulin therapy, freezing showers and heavy dosages of calming opiates.

  Sometimes these therapies helped, at least, temporarily. She was brought home, pronounced cured and spent most of her time either languishing in her rooms or mooning about the garden.

  Relapses were inevitable, however. A month or two might pass in relative peace, then she would become hyper-alert and suspicious. She started at any sudden noise and grew more and more paranoid about the hapless maids who tried to help her. Finally, convinced that one of the younger and prettier maids in her employ was trying to poison her, Henrietta waited behind her closed bedroom door one morning with a long, butcher knife.

  When the girl (who was not trying to poison her, but was having a passionate affair with her husband, Miles) entered the room with a lunch tray, Henrietta flew out from behind the door and sank the knife into the girl’s back.

  Miles was fit to be tied. On one hand, he loved his poor, sick wife. Although she had never been a raging beauty, her dowry had enabled him to fulfill his dreams. In addition, (at least, when she was sane) her wits were sharp, and her sexual appetites keen.

  It was Henrietta who had urged Miles to take what he wanted—to expand his kingdom, so to speak, no matter what or who stood in the way. (It never occurred to Atkinson that when his wife spoke of expanding his kingdom, her words were not rhetorical. She actually did consider herself a queen and Miles her king—especially when she entered some of her more, manic episodes.)

  There were too many witnesses, though, to his lovers’ brutal murder. A month later, in the spring of 1887, Henrietta was put in a straitjacket and taken, by train, to the Eastern Washington State Hospital for the Insane. Once there, she was subjected to more electro-shock therapy, water therapy and a new procedure… the removal of all her teeth.

  Alienists around the world had become convinced that infections of the teeth and jaw were the culprits of madness and many mentally ill patients were relieved of their ivories. Another procedure that had gained favor over the last few years was the lobotomy. A doctor inserted a devise, known as a leucotome, under the patient’s eyelid and wriggled it about in the frontal lobes, essentially short-circuiting the nerve endings in the brain that caused seizures and violent behavior. *

  Henrietta, once inside the lovely brick walls of the hospital was heavily sedated, and strictly monitored by a vigilant staff of doctors and nurses. She was also aware enough to understand that a lobotomy loomed in her future, if she didn’t behave herself. She vaguely recalled the little maid—and how red the blood flowed from the knife wound her other self, had inflicted. She could hardly reconcile the fact that she… Henrietta Atkinson had murdered the poor serf, although she was also sure that there must have been a good reason for her actions. *

  Henrietta, although she still heard strange noises and saw large, horrid shapes looming in her peripheral vision, made sure not to let on to the staff. It took all of her willpower, and a considerable fortune on her husband’s part to convince the psychiatrists that she was finally, cured.

  She returned home in the summer of 1897, still beset with mad visions, but calmer now with thrice-daily injections of bottled heroin—a marvelous new invention of the Bayer Company. Perhaps it was the medication, and maybe the uneven distribution of hormones in her body finally calmed enough after menopause came and went, but Henrietta enjoyed a couple of years of relative sanity.

  Mile’s death, however, brought all of her old demons roaring back to life. Their voices whispered, “Hang him! Watch that murdering marshal die!” and she had surely tried to make that happen. The introduction of another sheriff, though and the possibility of witnesses to what had happened at Patty’s farm that day put a stop to her devilish dreams. Therefore, Henrietta did something else—something that had been done to her so many times by now, she had lost count.

  She contacted the Bughouse in Medical Lake, via Sheriff Bill McCrady. After paying McCrady five thousand dollars, he had done as she wished and told the doctors that a mad man was in his custody… and would they please help, for the man was huge and powerful and had murdered no less than six innocent people in his latest fit of lunacy.

  Now, Henrietta Atkinson grinned as she watched the marshal’s limp body being stuffed into the back of a closed carriage for transport to the state-car she herself had paid for on the next northbound train.

  “There!” she murmured. “I bet that one of those white-coated doctors in the hospital will be more than happy to perform a lobotomy on you… for enough cash. That’s what you get for killing the king!”

  ~

  Matthew swam up through syrupy layers of consciousness, slowly…painfully. The back of his head felt caved in and the pain was so sharp, so intense, he felt waves of nausea back up behind his throat. Feeling the need to vomit, he tried to sit up, instinctively putting his hands over his mouth lest he soil himself.

  But, his hands wouldn’t move. Bewildered, he groaned and tried to rouse his fists to usefulness but the only movement he seemed able to perform was to move his elbows, slightly, like the wings of a chicken.

  His heart started pounding with fear, which caused the pain in his skull to intensify—he felt like he was a boy again, listening to the rhythmic pounding of Indian drums, as he fished along the shores of the Kettle River. A tear dripped from the corner of his eye. He was grievously, wounded… more importantly, he was trapped!

  He tried to open his eyes but they kept drifting closed again, as if lead weights anchored his lids. Another w
ave of vertigo swept over him and he gritted his teeth. “Hel… hello?” he croaked. His tongue felt thick and another jolt of fear coursed through his body. It seemed as though he had been sick for a long, long time, and in the process had forgotten how to talk.

  Trying again, Matthew said, “Hello. Is anyone there? I can’t see and I can’t mo… move!”

  He heard a scuffle of footsteps and heard a male voice say, “Ah ha! The patient is back among the living!”

  “Who is that? Wh… where am I?” Matthew turned his head back and forth on a pillow that was probably soft, but felt like stone under his skull.

  “Mr. Wilson, my name is Dr. Avery Thompson. I am a doctor of psychiatry and you are in the Eastern State Hospital for the Insane in, Medical Lake.”

  Matthew shook his head. “No!”

  The doctor smiled. “No what, Sir?”

  The patient struggled a bit and then stilled with a sigh. “I meant to say that my name is not, Wilson. My name is Matthew, uh… Wilcox. Marshal Matthew Wilcox.”

  Thompson smiled. “A marshal, you say? My goodness!”

  Matthew tried to sit up. “Why can’t I see… what has happened to me? WHY CAN’T I MOVE?”

  “Steady on, now.” The doctor tightened the straps that held the patient firmly to the gurney. “Nurse! Bring in another ampule, please… 10 milligrams, this time!”

  Looking down at the patient, Thompson tried to be kind rather than disgusted and appalled by what the man had done. Still, it was a struggle. Many of the poor creatures he had sworn to help were their own worst enemies but peaceful for the most part. This one though… he grimaced in distaste.

  “Mr. Wilson, you have been brought to us by concerned citizens from the town of Walla Walla, Washington. You have been found guilty of rape and murder and, after thorough investigation, I have diagnosed you as a dangerous and violent lunatic. You have been given a strong opiate and, at this moment, you are in a straitjacket. That’s why you’re finding movement difficult.”