Now Playing: The Silent Child
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Episode Twenty concluded with:
In a panic, Rupert turned and ran. His foot
collided with the first step of the stairway. He began to scramble up the
wooden planks. He heard a few quick steps behind him and then his neck was
trapped in an iron vise. A tight grip wrapped around his gun hand.
“Give it up, Rupert!” Dehner ordered.
Rupert Bushrod was breathing in puffs. “Okay,
okay, you got me. Guess Shakespeare was right. The race is to the swift.”
Clarence’s voice thundered from the floor of the
basement. “That’s “The race is NOT to the swift.” And it’s from the Bible, not
Shakespeare.”
Rupert sighed. Maybe my brother shoulda spent
less time readin’ and more time tendin’ the store.”
Episode Twenty-One
***
“Yeah,
Rance, you got it right,” Rupert Bushrod said from his jail cell. Clarence and
I killed the Thompsons yesterday mornin’, but the kid got away. We looked ever
where and couldn’t find her till we spotted her ridin’ with you. We took a
couple of shots at you.”
“Yeah,”
Clarence spoke from the same cell. “But did you hav’ ta shoot back so good?
Made my brother and me run like rabbits.”
Rance
and Clint Bolger were standing outside of the jail cell talking to the two
prisoners. The detective and the sheriff shared the same thought: these two men
are killers, we shouldn’t be having so much fun talking to them.
Dehner
pushed his hat back an inch or two before speaking. "Right after the first time I came by
the store asking about the Thompsons, you rode back there because Clarence
discovered he had dropped his watch in the Thompson’s cabin.”
“How
did you figure that out?” Clarence asked.
“Last
night, I noticed that the glass on your timepiece was broken,” Rance explained.
“The crack looked recent. And, after I spotted it, you were mighty quick about
getting that timepiece back into your pocket.”
Rupert
shook his head. “The book of Psalms is right: ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave,
when first we practice to deceive.’”
“Sir
Walter Scott wrote that, you dummy!” Clarence shouted.
“Isn’t
he the guy who wrote the Psalms?”
“If
we could get back to the matter at hand,” Rance interrupted. “When you returned
to the Thompson’s place, you stole some stuff, and then you set the place on
fire in case one of you had dropped something else that could be incriminating.”
“We
knew the sheriff would be ridin’ out there,” Rupert said. “When we saw the two
of you approachin’, we delayed your journey with a few shots. Wanted to make
sure the place burned good.”
“That
story you handed me about taking valuable jewelry directly to Mrs. Candler was
a big mistake, fellas.” Dehner smirked and then continued. “The Bushrod
Brothers’ General Store never carried valuable jewelry. You stole that jewelry
from the Thompson’s place, then sold it to Mrs. Candler along with a tale about
how you got it. I talked to Mr. Candler, he verified that you never sold
anything to his wife before.”
“That
man never has been helpful,” Clarence sighed.
Sheriff
Bolger scratched his forehead. “I still don’t understand how all this ties in
with Emory Logan breaking into Harper’s Mercantile.”
“Well,
you see, Sheriff, Clarence and I have never been paternal types, never cared
much for kids.”
“And
that Pixie girl did nothin’ to change our minds,” Clarence explained. “We was
out and out relieved when Rance first walked into our store with her. The kid
looked plum frozen. But we knowed that wouldn’t last. Sooner or later, she’d
talk.”
“And
we’d hang.” Rupert tilted his head toward his shoulder. “Of course, as things
turned out, we’re gonna hang anyway…”
“Still,
our plan weren’t bad,” Clarence cut in. “Enoch’s good with a gun. We needed to
get him outta the way in order to kill the kid. We had stole that picture of Judy
from the Thompson place, so we put it in Enoch’s saddle bag.”
Anger
flared in the sheriff’s voice. “Then you informed Emory that Judy Thompson had
told you guys that she had once sparked with Enoch and that he had a picture of
her. You knew that the green kid would try to find the picture and be the big
hero. The man who uncovered evidence proving Enoch was a killer.”
Clarence
nodded his head. “If it helps any, we thought he’d check the stable first: the
easiest place. With Enoch in jail, we could get rid of the kid. But things
didn’t quite work out that ways and we was obliged to come up with a plan B,
which Mr. Dehner stopped.”
“How’d you wise up to us, Rance?”
“After that story about the jewelry,
I’ve been keeping an eye on you guys. I noticed that you were being very kind
to Laszlo and spending some time with him. Fortunately, Laszlo was happy to
share about the joke you were playing on the Harpers. Of course, you’d have had
to kill Laszlo too.”
Rupert rolled his eyes upward. “But
we never got that far. Guess the plan had a fatal flaw.”
Clarence sighed deeply. "'Fatal’ is
a good way to put it. For once, brother, you called it right.”
Tomorrow: Episode Twenty-Two, the
conclusion of The Silent Child
