Free Breaking Blue by Timothy Egan Page A

patrolmen found tiny, urine-fouled homes in darkened corners. How could people live like this? This town was going down the toilet.
    Empty-handed, the police search team headed for the Hotel de Gink. Perhaps the killers were trying to blend in with the rest of the Okie trash, as they called the inhabitants of the former brewery. They searched rooms where hollow-eyed men awoke to the light of another hot day and a Monday-morning hangover. The Gink smelled worse than the boxcars. People had made small fires in their rooms to cook. The cots were yellowed and flat, stained by moonshine and lovemaking. An Italian immigrant was found with a gun; they slapped him around and chained him to a post while they looked for other suspects. There was plenty of hooch in most rooms of the Hotel de Gink; plenty of gambling slips from the Chinese lottery game. But no butter. “The Indian did it!” one man said in desperation. “Yes,” a friend seconded, “check the Indian!” The officers rousted an alcoholic native, red-eyed, mumbling when they woke him. He was chained next to the Italian. By day’s end, the search had produced a handful of warm bodies: a smart-mouth, a troublemaker, a goddamn Okie with an attitude, the Italian, the Indian. There was nothing to tie any of them to the robbery of the Newport Creamery or the killing of Marshal Conniff. But it was enough to get the officers back into the station without a tongue-lashing from the shift captain.
    V IRGIL B URCH had showed up at Mother’s Kitchen early Sunday morning, just before dawn. He looked terrible, nervous and frayed. Pearl Keogh was still there, waiting for Ruth to get off work. She had never seen Virgil so tense. When she asked him what was up, he yelled at her to keep quiet. A few police officers, the usual contingent of uniformed stool-dwellers, were still at the diner. Burch went to a back room, and when he reappeared nearly an hour later his face was pale. He paced behind the bar, walked around the restaurant, undistracted by the familiar banter.
    Just after dawn, Detective Ralstin appeared, a sight better than the sun. He looked clean and well kept, his green eyes clear, and never more commanding. Virgil rushed over to him, but Clyde made a motion with his hand, like a master slowing down his overanxious pup. Clyde flashed a grin at Pearl, ordered coffee.
    “You heard about the shooting?” Pearl asked him. Even before it hit the papers, the cops who spent most of their shift at Mother’s Kitchen had spread the word.
    “What do
you
hear?” Clyde asked, his voice as slow as crank-case oil.
    “The marshal,” she said. “Somebody gunned down the Newport marshal last night. Shot him in the back.”
    Clyde stared at Pearl, an interrogatory hold with his eyes. At six foot three, he was a full head taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the nurse from Montana. “And …?”
    “That’s all I heard,” she said.
    Clyde sat down, holding back a smile. He looked up at Virgil and winked. “Relax,” he told his buddy.
    “So they shot the marshal?” he said to Pearl, flashing his teeth, showing his dimples. “In the back, you say?”
    “That’s what the boys are saying.”
    “Shouldn’t ever turn your back to anybody.”
    Now Virgil eased up a bit. Clyde was so commanding. “Shouldn’t ever turn your back to anybody,” he echoed.
    “What kind of smokepole he use?” Clyde asked.
    “Smokepole?” Pearl asked.
    “A rifle? Forty-five? What?”
    “Didn’t hear.”
    Clyde sipped his coffee, checked his watch, and turned to Virgil. “I’m going out of town for a few days,” he said.
    “I’m going with you,” Virgil said.
    “No, you’re not. It wouldn’t look good.”
    “You can’t leave me here, Clyde.”
    Ralstin told Burch to calm his nerves and settle his heart. He would be gone for only a day or so—just enough to establish his whereaboutsthis weekend. His brother Chub had a place down by the Snake River in the traditional home of the Nez