The Chase

“Good luck to you,” said Ruskin. “I pray you will apprehend the fiend.” He turned to Ramsdell. “I will be at the Peery Hotel until tomorrow afternoon, should you require my services. At four o’clock, I will board a train, to oversee the establishment of our new bank in Phoenix.”

“You are most generous, sir,” said Ramsdell. “I will be in touch as soon as we resume operations.”

“Not at all.” Ruskin turned to leave. “Good luck to you, Captain,” Ruskin said to Casale as he made for the front entrance of the bank.

Casale stared out the window as Ruskin walked across the street toward a taxi. “Most strange,” he said slowly. “If I know my train schedules, the next train for Phoenix doesn’t leave for another three days.”

Ramsdell shrugged. “He was probably misinformed.”

“Still, there is something about him that bothers me.”

“What is that?”

“He didn’t look overjoyed that his bank’s money was not taken by the robber. It was almost as if he knew it was safe before he walked in the door.”

“Does it matter?” asked Ramsdell. “Mr. Ruskin should be glad his half a million dollars was overlooked by the robber.”

The detective looked thoughtful. “How do you know it’s a half a million dollars? Did you count it?”

“Mr. Cardoza must have counted it.”

“Are you certain?”

Ramsdell began walking from the office toward the vault. “Now is as good a time as any to make a quick tally.”

He opened the case and started to lay the first layer of stacked bills on a nearby shelf. The top layer consisted of twenty thousand dollars in gold certificate bills. Underneath, the rest of the case was filled with neatly cut and banded newspaper.

“Good God!” Ramsdell gasped. Then, as if struck by a revelation, he rushed back to the bank manager’s office and opened a book that lay on the surface of the desk. The book contained bank drafts—but the final draft was missing and unrecorded. His face went ashen. “The murdering scum must have forced Cardoza to write a bank draft for the half million. Whatever bank he deposits it in will assume we authorized it and demand payment from Salt Lake Bank and Trust. Under federal law, we are bound to honor it. If not, the lawsuits, the prosecution from United States Treasury agents—we’d be forced to close.”

“Ruskin was not only a fraud,” Casale said firmly, “he was the one who robbed your bank and murdered your employees and customer.”

“I can’t believe it,” muttered Ramsdell incredulously. Then he demanded, “You’ve got to stop him. Catch him before he checks out of his hotel.”

“I’ll send a squad to the Peery,” said Casale. “But this guy is no buffoon. He probably went on the run as soon as he walked out the door.”

“You can’t let him get away with this foul deed.”

“If he’s the notorious Butcher Bandit, he’s a shrewd devil who vanishes like a ghost.”

Ezra Ramsdell’s eyes took on an astute glint. “He has to deposit the draft at a bank somewhere. I’ll telegraph the managers of every bank in the nation to be on the lookout for him and contact the police before they honor a draft made out to Eliah Ruskin for half a million dollars. He won’t get away with it.”

“I’m not so sure,” John Casale said softly under his breath. “I’m not so sure at all.”

10

THE BUTCHER BANDIT WAS A COUNTRY MILE AHEAD of him, Bell thought as the train he was riding slowed and stopped at the station in Rhyolite. He had received a lengthy telegram from Van Dorn telling of the Salt Lake massacre, as it had become known. A bank in a major city like Salt Lake was the last place he or anyone else expected the Butcher to strike. That was his next stop after Rhyolite.

He stepped from the train with a leather bag that held the bare essentials he carried while traveling. The heat of the desert struck him like a blast furnace, but because of the absence of humidity in the desert it did not soak his shirt with sweat.

After getting directions from the stationmaster, he walked to the sheriff’s office and jail. Sheriff Marvin Huey was a medium-sized man with a head of tousled gray hair. He looked up from a stack of wanted posters and stared at Bell with soft olive brown eyes as the Van Dorn agent entered the office.

“Sheriff Huey, I’m Isaac Bell from the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

Huey did not rise from his desk nor offer his hand; instead, he spit a wad of chewing tobacco juice into a cuspidor. “Yes, Mr. Bell, I was told you’d be on the ten o’clock train. How do you like our warm weather?”

Bell took a chair across from Huey without it being offered and sat down. “I prefer the high-altitude cool air of Denver.”

The sheriff gri

“I wired you concerning my investigation,” Bell said without preamble. “I want to obtain any information I can that would be helpful in tracking down the Butcher Bandit.”

“I hope you have better luck than I did. After the murders, all we found was a dilapidated, abandoned freight wagon and team of horses that he had driven into town.”

“Did anyone get a good look at him?”

Huey shook his head. “No one gave him the slightest notice. Three people gave different descriptions. None matched. All I know is, my posse found no tracks from wagon, horse, or automobile leading out of town.”

“What about the railroad?”

Huey shook his head. “No train left town for eight hours. I posted men at the depot who searched the passenger cars before it left, but they found no one that looked suspicious.”

“How about freight trains?”

“My deputies ran a search of the only freight train that left town that day. Neither they nor the train engineer, fireman, or brakemen saw anyone hiding on or around the boxcars.”

“What is your theory on the bandit?” asked Bell. “How do you think he made a clean getaway?”

Huey paused to shoot another wad of tobacco saliva into the brass cuspidor. “I gave up. It pains me to say so, but I have no idea how he managed to elude me and my deputies. Frankly, I’m put out by it. In thirty years as a lawman, I’ve never lost my man.”

“You can take consolation in knowing you’re not the only sheriff or marshal who lost him after he robbed their town banks.”

“It still isn’t anything I can be proud of,” muttered Huey.

“With your permission, I would like to question the three witnesses.”