The Assassin by Clive Cussler (epub ebook reader .txt) 📕

are you going to do?” asked Matters.

“Take my knife back, to start,” said Bell. He yanked it out of his wrist, wiped the blood off on Matters’ shirt, and sheathed it back in his boot.

“I’ll bleed to death.”

“Not before you answer a heap of questions.” He screwed the cap off Rivers’ flask and poured whiskey into the wound the knife had slit. Matters sucked air. “Beats infection. Now, Bill, let’s talk.”

The rage that Bell had seen explode on the Bremen boat train flared red-hot in Matters’ eyes. Bell said, “It’s over. I’ve got you dead to rights. There is no escape. It’s time to talk. Where is your assassin?”

Slowly, the fire faded.

“Where? Where is the assassin?”

“You’re looking at him.”

—

“You shot your old partner Spike Hopewell? What about Albert Hill and Reed Riggs, and C. C. Gustafson in Texas?”

“Them, too.”

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

“Hunting in the woods. I was a natural. Good thing, too. Bloodsucking bank foreclosed when Father died. The sheriff drove off our pigs and cows and turned my mother and me out of the home. We lived on the game I shot. Later, I ran away to the circus and a Wild West Show.”

Isaac Bell reminded Bill Matters that they had been sitting together in the Peerless with Rockefeller when the assassin fired at them in Baku.

“I paid a Cossack a thousand rubles to throw off suspicion.”

“Did you pay him to wound me or kill me?”

Matters looked Bell in the face. “Wound. My girls were sweet on you. I reckoned it might turn out well for one of them.”

“No one ever denied you were a loving father. Did you arm the Cossack with one of your Savages?”

“I didn’t have any with me. He used his own rifle.”

“Really?” said Bell. “The 1891 Russian Army Mosin is about as accurate as a pocket pistol. The short-barrel Cossack version is worse— You were never the assassin. Why are you trying to protect a hired hand with your own life?”

“What hired hand?”

“It’s not in your character to protect the assassin. You are not an honorable man. Will you look me in the eye and tell me you’re an honorable man?”

“Honorable never put game on the table.”

“Then why are you protecting your hired killer?”

“There is no hired killer. I did my own killing.”

“And poisoned Averell Comstock and threw Lapham off the monument?”

“I did what I had to do to advance in the company.”

“You’re trying, and failing, to protect a hired killer.”

“Why would I bother?” asked Matters.

“Only one answer makes sense.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“The assassin is your stepson.”

“My stepson?”

“Billy Hock.”

“You could not be more wrong.”

“Your stepson who ran away and joined the Army.”

“I never thought of Billy as my stepson. He was my son. Just as both my daughters are my daughters.”

“Call him what you will,” said Bell, “he became the finest sharpshooter in the Army. You made him a murderer.”

Matters’ expression turned bleak. There was no more anger in him. “My son is dead.”

“No, your son is your own personal murderer.”

“I know he is dead.”

“Your daughters don’t know. The Army doesn’t know. How do you know?”

“I found his body.”

38

The tall detective, who was leaning close to interrogate the handcuffed criminal, rocked back on his heels. He stared, eyes cold, mind racing. He paced a tight circle, cast an eye on the still-unconscious Rivers, gazed across the pond, and down at Matters. The man was as skilled a liar as Bell had ever encountered. And yet . . .

“If Billy was dead, why would Edna and Nellie tell me that he ran away from home and joined the Army?”

“That was my story. I told them that. It was better to let the girls think he died a soldier.”

“How did he die?”

“He drowned in that pond.”

“Here? In your backyard? But you never reported his death.”

“I buried him myself.”

“Why?”

“To protect the girls.”

“From what?”

“He committed suicide. The poor kid tied a rope around his neck. He tied the other end to a concrete block. Then he picked up the block and waded into the pond until the mud got him and the block dragged his head under. I saw his foot. His trouser leg had trapped air and it floated. Don’t you understand, Bell? The girls loved him. The idea that he was so unhappy that he would commit suicide would destroy them. I know, because I still ask myself every day what did I do wrong? What could I have done better?”

“Spike said you were never the same after that.”

“Spike was right.”

“Why did you have Spike shot?”

“Spike wasn’t as dumb as I thought. Or as ‘honorable.’ He figured out what I was up to, and when the Standard started breathing down his neck in Kansas, he threatened to tell Rockefeller that I was out to destroy him. He thought I could help him, that I could stop the Standard from busting up his business . . . Before you start blaming some other innocent, I repeat, I didn’t ‘have Spike shot.’ I shot him myself.”

“No you didn’t,” said Bell. “You were a thousand miles away at Constable Hook at your regularly scheduled meeting with Averell Comstock.”

“I was not at Constable Hook. I was in Kansas.”

“Van Dorn detectives read it in Comstock’s diary,” said Bell. “You were not in Kansas the day Spike was shot. And before you cook up a new lie, Comstock’s secretary confirmed that indeed you did show up for that meeting, on time, as always . . .”

Matters tugged at the handcuffs. In a bitter voice he asked, “When did you start checking up on me?”

“We checked up on all the new men who were in a position to attack Standard Oil from within the company. After you tried to kill Mr. Rockefeller, we naturally focused full attention on you. Where did you bury Billy?”

“Right here.” Matters pointed at the headstone. “Shakespeare’s grave.”

Bell peered at the stone, imagining the sequence of events. The boy was dead. The headstone was already there. Matters dug a hole. The stone marked