The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

SIX

Vin Miller couldn’t believe it. Here he was, locked up in a jail that was more like a nuthouse.

The whole thing was loony. They’d locked up the sheriff and turned the prisoner loose in broad daylight, and the kid had hauled ass on that big motorcycle of his. Then they’d waited until morning — letting the full moon give way to sunrise — before turning over their weapons to Hastings and Rutherford.

A shotgun, a dainty little chrome-plated automatic, and Vin’s own service revolver.

That was a hell of a note. Big blonde Vera Marlowe packing Vin’s own gun. The undertaker’s daughter with that big old shotgun. The banker’s wife with that chrome-plated automatic. The three of them putting the freeze on every peace officer in town.

For a while they’d all been locked up together — Vin, the sheriff, and the three crazy broads — one in each of the jail’s five cells. Well, Dwight Cole wasn’t really locked up. Rutherford had opened his cell when the women surrendered, but the sheriff wouldn’t come out. He just sat there, looking like a man who’d been pole-axed.

And that’s when the women started in on him. Vera first, saying that she’d just been jealous, mad at the way ol’ Dwight had stopped visiting her, and she didn’t mean visiting her at the diner. She said that she didn’t care about Vin at all, said it right in front of Vin like he was the Invisible Man or something!

Christ Almighty, and Vin the guy who’d been ready to cook breakfast for her!

Then the undertaker’s daughter started in on the sheriff. She said it was a big mistake, them getting involved. She felt terrible about it, especially now that she’d heard Vera’s side of the story, and she said they were just going to have to stop meeting clandestinely. That was what she said. Clandestinely. She couldn’t leave her father alone at night, because if anything ever happened to him she’d feel just awful.

The banker’s wife had no such regrets. Except one, which was that her cell and the sheriff’s were separated by the cell that held Vin. And it was pure hell, hearing that, because Vin had tasted her warm lips when he’d given her mouth-to-mouth. He wanted to remind her of that, of how brave he’d been while capturing the fiend who ate her Chihuahua, but he just didn’t have the heart.

Women! Damn! Vin was plenty happy when the whole wild bunch of them made bail.

Still, the sheriff just sat there in the cell with the open door, that pole-axed look glued to his face, not saying a word. Not that Vin felt sorry for the idiot. Christ, he should have such problems.

It took the lady barber to get the sheriff talking. She showed up and collected her silver razor from him.

“Do you think he was a werewolf?” she asked.

“We’ll never know,” the sheriff said.

“But what do you think?”

“Why think about it? We’ll never know. It’s crazy to think about it.”

“You know,” she said, “you’re the kind of man who always waits too long, trying to figure all the angles. One day you’ll have to make a decision based on faith alone.”

He grinned. “Maybe I’ve already made my decision. Maybe I’m just sitting here waiting to tell someone about it.”

She laughed. “Right. Now tell me the one with the three bears in it.”

“You don’t give me a whole lot of credit, Liz,” the sheriff said. “Maybe — just like our werewolf — there’s a little more to me than meets the eye.” He winked at her. “But then again, maybe not.”

“That’s cute.” She flicked open her silver razor. “But let’s get one thing straight, Dwight Cole — if you come to my bed, you’d better be prepared to stay there.”

That was when Cole got up and left, arm in arm with the lady barber, and damned if Vin Miller didn’t end up thinking that it was just the opening the sheriff had been waiting for all along.

Vin didn’t even want to think about that.

So he just sat there, biding his time, flexing his muscles, hoping that the county public defender was going to be as good as that lawyer who’d gotten him off the hook in the army.