Winding Stair (9781101559239) by Douglas C. Jones Page A

Lila.
    â€œMiss Lila,” I said, “would you be willing to go before a grand jury and tell them what you’ve told us?”
    â€œJesus Christ! No, I won’t tell nobody a thing. You send me off to jail if you want to, but that’s better than gettin’ my head caved in.”
    â€œGive her the money,” Schiller said.
    Outside, the evening breeze was coming off the river and I was aware of my damp shirt. My hands were shaking with excitement.
    â€œShe’ll be on the first train to Memphis,” Schiller said. We started back along the tracks toward Garrison Avenue.
    â€œWhat about Johnny Boins?”
    â€œWe’re going after him. Tonight. There’s a Frisco freight later on. We’ll take that to Seligman and change to the North Arkansas line and ride right into Eureka. Be there before noon tomorrow. Now, you get over to the commissioner’s office and have him issue a warrant for Boins’s arrest. Tell him what we’ve heard. But don’t get a murder warrant. I want a little time with this Johnny Boins before he really knows what we’ve got him for. Get a warrant for being in Indian country without a permit.”
    â€œThat’s a misdemeanor.”
    â€œYes, but it’ll never be tried. Once we get him here, that nigger kid can identify him and then we’ll hold him for a hearing with the commissioner and I suspect he’ll be bound over for the grand jury. We’ll just hold him until we catch those other four.”
    â€œWe could get a murder warrant now, I’d bet.”
    â€œNo. I want a little time with him. Until we’ve got an identification on him that will hold in court, we don’t even know if he’s one of our men. This may be a wild-goose chase.”
    â€œNo, it isn’t,” I said. “I’ll bet my life he’s the one I saw on the Frisco station platform with Milk Eye that night.”
    I had hoped my revelation would stun him, shake him somehow. But he kept walking, the streetlights shining against his glasses, his frail body hunched forward as we walked. I might as well have commented on the weather.
    â€œI figured that’s who it might be,” he said. “And get a search warrant, too.”
    â€œOn a misdemeanor?”
    â€œThe commissioner will do it. You tell him what we’re up to. If this is one of our men, we’ll want a search warrant.”
    â€œIt’s our man,” I said. “I’d bet my life on it.”
    â€œLet’s hope you don’t have to.”

SIX
    S ummer tourists arrived in Eureka Springs on the North Arkansas railroad, leaving the cars at the deep valley station in the north end of town where the mountains pitched up sharply on every side. The June hardwood foliage was like a jungle, and through the leaves of trees standing in thick ranks up all the slopes showed the fine Victorian houses and hotels and the peaked roofs of grottoes built around the many springs. The streets were so narrow and winding that barely two wagons could pass, and all along the sidewalks were stone benches where pedestrians making the steep ascent to hotel row could rest and admire the spectacle of houses built almost on top of one another up the shoulders of surrounding hills.
    The Carroll County courthouse and jail was only a few hundred yards along the valley from the railroad station. There, Oscar Schiller and I made ourselves known to the sheriff ’s chief deputy. The sheriff, we were told, was seldom there.
    The deputy was also jailkeeper. He was a genial man of such mild disposition and unimposing manner that he left little impression on us. Within five minutes of having met him, neither Oscar Schiller nor I could recall his name. He was willing to take us as guests of the county under the facade of a vagrancy charge so that we might sleep in his cells and eat at no expense to ourselves. At the same time, this gave him the opportunity to skim off the few