Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 by George G. Gilman Read Free Book Online

doorway.
    Arm-in-arm, much like Quaid and his new bride had been on this street for a brief time in happier circumstances earlier in the day, Munro and Hannah Foster stepped over the threshold into the building.
    Edge followed them and perfunctorily eyed much the same scene as he had witnessed in several law offices during the years when run-ins with peace officers were routine occurrences each time he reached a new town. But this small office with a four space rifle rack on one wall, a map of the Stony River Valley on another and curling and faded wanted posters flanking the window beside the door, was neater and cleaner than any he could remember. Doubtless because it was under-used by a marshal who did not often need to sit in the new looking swivel chair behind the uncluttered desk. A stove in one corner was clean and cold and two cells could be seen through a rectangular archway in the centre of the rear wall.
    ‘In there.’ Hooper felt it necessary to draw his sixgun and gestured with it toward the archway with the open doors of the cells in a wall of bars beyond. Bars also separated the cells. ‘The way the two of you are such close friends, I guess you won’t mind that there’s no privacy back there? But it’s one to a cell: I ain’t gonna allow any co-habiting while you’re in my custody.’
    ‘A Goddamn lawman with moral scruples!’ Munro growled as he stepped into the cell on the right. ‘That sure is a new one for me.’
    Hooper locked him in.
    The woman entered the other cell and sneered as she turned around: ‘Vic’s seen all I got dozens of times. But if you figure you’re gonna get even a peek at me in the buff you’d better think again, marshal.’
    ‘I’m a happily married man, Miss Foster,’ Hooper countered staidly as he holstered the Colt, closed the door gently and turned the key.
    She challenged harshly: ‘In my experience, men who claim that are usually the horniest kind!’
    ‘And you’ve already admitted that you’re a woman of great experience,’ Hooper muttered as he came out from the dark cell area.
    She had been about to snarl an insulting retort but checked the impulse when Munro rasped something that was inaudible to the men in the lamp-lit, unheated office.
    ‘Obliged for your help, Edge,’ Hooper said as he dropped heavily into the chair behind the desk, pulled open a drawer and took out a pad of printed forms. ‘Consider yourself released from the duty of deputy. Down to me to take care of the damn paperwork and all the rest of what needs to be done.’ He opened another drawer, delved for a bottle of ink and a pen and sighed deeply as he prepared to undertake a chore he did not relish. Edge asked as he took out the makings: ‘You want to hear my deposition now, feller?’
    ‘Maybe I ought to, while it’s all still fresh in your mind?’
    ‘Fresh or not, what I have to say will be the same. The woman you’ve got locked in here ain’t the one that was with the feller who killed Quaid. And the way we found them doing what comes naturally out in the woods, I don’t reckon Munro had another lady friend along when – ‘
    ‘You tell him, mister!’ Hannah Foster encouraged bitterly.
    ‘I’m much obliged to you, Edge,’ Munro said with less enthusiasm. ‘But the way the rest were so hell-bent on making an easy arrest I reckon that what you have to say won’t make too much difference.’
    The scowling lawman waited impatiently for the prisoner to finish then sighed again and rubbed his temple like there was a dull ache in his head as he told Edge: ‘Better if we took care of it tomorrow maybe? It’s been quite a day, what with one thing and another. And I need to bed down just as soon as I make out the arrest report - while the details are still fresh in my mind?’
    Edge finished making the cigarette and answered: ‘No sweat, marshal. I’ll be out at the McGowan place until morning. Then I’ll stop by here, make the deposition and go about the business