Free The Crack in the Lens by Steve Hockensmith Page A

us.
    “Oh, my. Could that be Gloomy Gus over there?” He walked to our table and pulled out one of the empty chairs. “Mind if I join you fellers?”
    He was already sitting as he said it.
    “Not at all, please, go right ahead,” I said. If Rucker wanted to fake conviviality, then I’d show him how it was done. “Truth is, we’ll feel safer havin’ you with us. I hate to tell you this, Sheriff, but you’ve got some mighty unsavory characters in your county.”
    It looked like Rucker was giving me a friendly grin until I noticed something strange: The man didn’t blink. His eyes just kept boring into me, and I had to fight the urge to blink on his behalf or look away altogether.
    “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said.
    “Not formally, I suppose, no. I’m Gloomy Gus’s brother, Unstoppable Otto. Three guesses how I got my nickname.”
    Rucker casually plucked a piece of bacon from my plate and tore off a bite.
    “Boy, they sure wasn’t lyin’ about you,” he said as he chewed. “You are a stitch.”
    He stuffed the rest of the bacon in his mouth.
    He wasn’t laughing.
    “What else you heard about us?” my brother asked him.
    “Well, for one thing, that you borrowed horses off a couple Circle B boys last night.”
    “Oh, that couldn’t be,” I said, wide-eyed innocence personified. “We don’t know anyone from the Circle B.”
    The cook came over with Rucker’s coffee, and after thanking him, the lawman picked up my brother’s fork and helped himself to some home fries.
    “I’m also told you been harassin’ some of our local business leaders,” he said around a mouthful of tater.
    “Golly, Sheriff…you make it sound like we blew up the Elks Lodge,” I said. “As I recall it, I was the one with the gun to his head last night.”
    Rucker gave me a glower, then turned to my food, poking at a yolk until it bled gold all over my plate. He sopped up the mess with my egg’s mangled remains and stuffed his mouth full, leaving a yellow slime trail up his chin.
    “We wasn’t harassin’ nobody,” Old Red said. “Just askin’ questions.”
    “It ain’t for the likes of you to ask questions. That’s my job.” As if Rucker’s badge couldn’t be more tarnished in my eyes, he tapped it twice with his fork, leaving a smear of yolk and grease. “And let me tell you something else…”
    And just like that, Rucker’s voice rose and his back straightened and his head went up high. It was almost like he was giving a speech—and from the way the rumble of conversation and the clink and scrape of cutlery came to a sudden stop all around us, I knew he was.
    “Pete Ragsdale and Gil Bock provide a service this county needs. That’s what this stick-up-its-ass town doesn’t understand anymore. Oh, yeah, we’ve got a fancy school up on the hill and telephones and electric lights—but the money for all that? It still smells like cowshit, no matter how much perfume these townsfolk sprinkle over it. It’s cattle that made something outta San Marcos and cattle that’ll keep it something. And you can’t push men as hard as ranch work does without lettin’ ’em blow off a little steam at the end of the week. So the boys whore. So they drink. So they get rowdy. So what? At least they ain’t rapin’ and robbin’ and shootin’ up the county courthouse. And that’s just what they’d do, run wild through town, if they didn’t have someplace like the Phoenix to turn to.”
    I caught a flurry of motion out of the corner of my eye, a little ripple that spread from table to table.
    Nods. Cowboy or railroader, it didn’t matter—they agreed with Rucker.
    He may have been a rotten lawman, but as a politician he was first-rate.
    “Sheriff, with all due respect,” Gustav said, and from his grating tone and gritting teeth, it was clear not much was due. “I don’t give a damn about any of that. I just wanna know who killed my Adeline.”
    Rucker nodded, an expression of benevolent tolerance on