A Knife in the Heart - William W. Johnstone A Hank Fallon Western

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shook his head. “That must have been one hell of a horse.”

      “And not a hell of an attorney.” She slid her finger to a name. “Remember him.”

      “Morrison.” Fallon sighed. “A blithering idiot.”

      “Who doesn’t speak Spanish,” she whispered.

      Their eyes met. Fallon understood. The headmaster yesterday had said that the boy did not speak one word of English when he started attending the Abraham Lincoln Academy. Which meant, almost without question, that Carlos Pablo Diego IV spoke exclusively Spanish during the trial.

      “A plea deal,” Fallon said.

      “Right,” Christina said. “He probably feared they would hang him for stealing a horse.”

      “Even though horse theft has never been a capital crime,” Fallon said. “Anywhere.”

      “Tell that to ranchers and cowboys in Wyoming,” Christina said. “Or anywhere in the West.”

      “Was there an interpreter in the courtroom?” Fallon wondered aloud.

      “Apparently,” Christina said. “They don’t name him, or her, in any documents I found, but you know what court records are like. Especially at the county level. But in the loose transcript”—She picked up a stack of three pages, shuffled to the second page, and began to condense the translation—“he said he walked out of the smithy and saw this horse that had wandered out of the corral. He was bringing the horse back to the livery, thinking it might have wandered from the corral, or one of the stalls, and that’s when a cowboy busted his head with the butt of a pistol.”

      “Did the cowboy testify?”

      Christina shook her head.

      “The livery owner?”

      Her head moved again.

      Fallon muttered a curse. “My guess,” Christina said, “is that Morrison, idiot that he might be, would have had both men outside the courtroom as witnesses.”

      Fallon picked up the thought. “And the prosecutor and the judge decided that, so as not to risk an acquittal, they would get Diego to plead guilty.”

      “Probably pay Morrison a little for his troubles, too,” Christina said.

      He found the indictment, jotted down the name of the livery stable where the arrest had taken place, and the name of the deputy sheriff, then wrote down the names of Morrison and the judge, and started to write the prosecutor’s name as well, before remembering that he had been run over by a streetcar three months earlier.

      Fallon stood, kissed his wife on the lips, thanked her, and moved to the door. “Marshal . . .” Christina said as the door opened.

      When he turned, Christina said, “It’s not federal business.”

      “I know. But I made a promise. That makes it my business.”

      CHAPTER TEN

      It felt good. Real good. Fallon hadn’t felt this way in years, at least, not professionally. Sure, when he had married Christina, and when Rachel Renee was born, those were wonderful times, but as a United States marshal, Fallon had been playing politics, trapped behind a desk, putting his John Hancock on documents and letters, giving speeches, playing that absurd game. Now he found himself with a purpose.

      And his nightmares had stopped. He had started sleeping in his own bed again, not on the chaise. Two nights ago, after Rachel Renee had go to sleep, Fallon had made love to Christina.

      Christina was helping, too, and Fallon believed she was feeling revived, motivated, more like a full-fledged contributor to society and not just a homemaker and mother. She probably had been longing to do something like this for five years. So they worked together, or separately, tracking down facts, witnesses, and documents.

      Two weeks later, he sat inside his office, looking over what kind of documents he had. Helen tapped on the door, then pushed it open. “You have a visitor,” she said. Her face told Fallon that it was someone he did not likely want to see. “The warden,” she whispered. “And he has company, supervisor Hector French.”

      Fallon nodded grimly. In some ways, he had expected this call, although he expected Warden M. C. Jackson to send him a nasty telegraph and not bring in the state attorney general in as a reinforcement, so Fallon slid his papers to his left and said, “Send them in.”

      He stood as the fat man and the slim, erudite, distinguished gentleman with silver hair and a well-groomed mustache walked inside, with Helen closing the door behind them.

      “Warden,” Fallon said, extending his hand. “Hector.” He shook hands with both men, waved at the jury chairs in front of his desk, and settled into his chair. “It’s an honor to see you. What can I do for you?”

      “You have been meddling in my affairs, sir,” the fat warden said.

      “Really.” Fallon leaned back.

      “That Mexican is not the concern of the U.S. marshal. He was convicted in a county courtroom.”

      “I wasn’t aware there are boundaries for justice,” Fallon said.

      “If you want to become warden in Laramie, you will find an opening soon,” Jackson said. The man’s face had turned so red, Fallon thought he might keel over from a stroke or heart attack at any second. “I have put in for the job of superintendent at the federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. They are building a new prison there, you know.”

      “You seem to be moving from state to federal,” Fallon said.

      “Hank,” Hector French intervened. “What do you have regarding this inmate . . .” He looked to Jackson for a name.

      “Delmonico,” Jackson said. “Carlos Delmonico.”

      “Carlos Pablo Diego,” Fallon corrected. “Delmonico is a restaurant.” He wasn’t sure if the jab at the warden’s obesity registered with M. C. Jackson, but the grin on French’s face said at least one of the visitors understood.

      “Yes, yes, yes. Diego.” Jackson had to find a handkerchief to wipe his sweaty face.

      “The Fourth,” Fallon added.

      “What do you have, Hank?”

      Fallon slid the papers to the center of the desk. Jackson tried to stand, but couldn’t without effort, and by the time he had pulled himself halfway out of the chair—it had arms, and the fat lout barely managed to squeeze between them—French had taken the stack and was finding his spectacles.

      “He pled guilty, Hank.” French looked over his bifocals.

      “I know,” Fallon conceded.

      “You can argue points of law,” French said, “look at improper evidence, perjury, bits of law. But a confession. . . a guilty plea. What brought all this about?”

      “His kid asked me to look into it,” Fallon said. “He’s a student at the Abraham Lincoln Academy here in town.”

      “And you did, of course.” French grinned, shook his head, and found another document.

      “Heck,” Fallon said. “To be honest with you, I thought it would be a waste of my time. Figured I’d check it out, realize the man was behind bars for a good reason, and go about my business. But the more I looked into the matter, the more I smelled a rat.”

      “I resent that remark, sir,” the fat man whined.

      “I was not talking about you,” Fallon said quietly.

      “You’re talking about taking away one of my prisoners!”

      “Shut up,” French said. He scanned the page, slid it back to the desktop, and looked at another paper.

      “Have you interviewed Diego?”

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