A Knife in the Heart. William W. Johnstone
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Fallon said, and slid two signed affidavits in front of the attorney general. The spectacles came out of the vest pocket, and this time French sat down to read. When he finished, he leaned forward and put the papers back on Fallon’s desk.
“These men did not testify?” French asked.
“Diego pled guilty, ending the trial.”
“The interpreter?”
Fallon shook his head. “From what Christina and I have learned, you and I speak better Spanish than he does.”
French grinned. “Christina’s working on this one with you?”
“Once a private detective . . .” Fallon shrugged and smiled slightly.
M. C. Jackson tried to squeeze out of the chair, which Fallon hoped the fat man did not break.
“What’s your next step?” French asked.
“Cross some T’s and dot some I’s,” Fallon said.
“Find an interpreter and head down to Laramie to visit Diego in the Big House. See what he has to say. If it feels right, then I bring it to you.”
French nodded, then shook his head. “Ten-year sentence. For horse theft. After a guilty plea. Must have been a damned fine horse.”
“That’s what Christina and I thought.”
French stood, helped pull the obese warden out of the chair, and shook Fallon’s hand. “Keep me posted on this, Hank,” French said. “I don’t like thinking of innocent men behind bars.” His eyes locked on Fallon. “Do you ever think about that, about the men you arrested?”
“I didn’t,” Fallon answered. “Until I wound up in Joliet.”
“Yeah.”
Jackson decided to say something. “Well, Diego won’t be my problem once I get the job in Leavenworth.”
“And you won’t be my problem, either,” French said, and moved to the door, opened it, and called out, “Let me know if you need anything, Hank. Jackson, I suppose you’ll be joining me for dinner.”
“By all means,” the warden said, and lumbered through the door.
“My lucky day,” French said, and closed the door after the fat man exited Fallon’s office.
* * *
During his forced, and, thankfully, brief, employment —or imprisonment—with the American Detective Agency, Fallon had been an undercover officer, not a detective, but now he kept putting together evidence—hoping he might have enough to present to a judge and the attorney general, and see about getting Carlos Pablo Diego IV out of the Big House Across the River in Laramie.
Four days later, he decided it was time to travel to Laramie, meet with the warden, get an interview with Diego, and see what he would tell. Christina had found an interpreter, a cook at one of the small cafés in Cheyenne that catered mostly to cowboys. Two round-trip train tickets to Laramie and back for Fallon and Señora Rodriguez. They could do this on the cook’s day off, no hotel, since Fallon was paying for this on his own.
He stood before Helen in the outer office, asking his secretary if she could telephone the train depot, see about getting those tickets for Monday, when the door opened, and Attorney General Hector French removed his bowler.
“Hank,” he said. “Helen.” His face was grim. “Got a minute?” he asked Fallon, and already was moving to Fallon’s office.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Hec?” Helen asked.
“ No.”
Fallon frowned, entered his office, closed the door, and saw the yellow telegraph paper that the attorney general held out for him to read.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“It stinks,” French said. “And I hate to bring it this way. But I figured . . .” He sighed.
Fallon leaned against his desk, shaking his head.
He looked at the telegraph, read it again, felt his stomach turn over, his heart sink, and he wondered if God was playing another joke on him or cursing him.
Carlos Pablo Diego IV, Convict Number 4231, was dead. Knifed in the back, throat slashed, in the exercise yard at the state prison in Laramie on Thursday afternoon.
“It stinks, all right,” Fallon said and tossed the telegraph into the wastebasket.
French straightened. “Hank, I spent all morning checking this out, exchanging telegraphs with Jackson—”
“A gutless wonder,” Fallon said, and swore bitterly.
“Be that as it may, but don’t think this was some conspiracy. That’s the first thing I thought, too, but M. C. Jackson is a fool but not an idiot. He wouldn’t do anything that would hurt his chances of getting out of Wyoming and landing that federal job at Leavenworth.”
Fallon sighed. “How do you figure it?”
“Diego was Mexican,” French said. “You know what prisons are like, federal or state. Even that hellhole at Fort Smith, the jail, was no different. You got your Mexicans. You got your whites. You got the Negroes. And the Chinese. And none of them mix. By all accounts, Diego had made an enemy of a white convict, Easy Emmett Tanner, murderer and cattle thief. Tanner swore he would kill Diego, and he did. Two men witnessed the affair. The guards rushed in, but it was too late. They threw Tanner in the sweatbox. But they did not check him for any other weapons. He had another homemade knife, and he used that to cut his own throat.”
“God.” Fallon moved to the basket and spit out the bitterness. He ran his hands through his hair, tried to control his breathing, and spit again. “What the hell did Diego do to make Tanner so mad?”
“He prayed too loudly in his cell.”
Fallon cursed softly.
“I’m truly sorry, Hank,” French said.
Fallon sighed, shook his head, moved to the book cases. “Diego never should have been in that prison.”
“I know.”
“I should have moved quicker. Gotten him out of there.”
“Hank, even if you had presented all the evidence to the governor, to me, to a judge, it would have taken us two weeks, maybe longer, before we could have overturned the court actions, the sentence. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . we could have gotten Diego to a safer place, maybe out of the Big House and into a county jail. But that wasn’t going to happen in a hurry. The law doesn’t move that fast. Prisons don’t operate that quickly. We did all we could do.”
Fallon nodded. “Yeah. But it’s a waste.”
“Yeah.”
Their eyes met, held.
“Does his son know?” Fallon asked. “His wife?”
“I don’t think so,” French said. “I thought I’d find a priest, take him over to the shack or the school, break the news to them.”
“I’ll do it,” Fallon said.
“Hank, that’s not your job.”
“Yes,” Fallon said. “It is.”
* * *
Christina seldom cried, but that night she did, but only after Rachel Renee had fallen asleep. Fallon hugged his wife tightly, told her none of this was her fault, that life sometimes didn’t go the way it was supposed to. He laid Christina in the bed, kissed her forehead, and pulled the sheet and blanket over her.
Then he moved out of the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” Christina asked.
“I’d better sleep in