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to his room to try to get some sleep that wouldn’t come.

Chapter 5
    â€œThe Denver police found a body down by the Cherry Creek bridge last night,” Billy Vail said as he looked across his desk at Longarm the next morning.
    Longarm didn’t look up at his boss until after he finished lighting his first cheroot of the day. Then he said casually, “Is that so?”
    â€œYes, it is. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Custis?”
    He should have waited with the body for a policeman to show up, thought Longarm. But he hadn’t been in any mood for a bunch of questions and paperwork. The bearded man was just as dead either way.
    â€œWhy would I know anything about a corpse, Billy?” he asked blandly.
    â€œBecause this fella was a friend of an old friend of yours. A former cell mate, in fact. You remember Bob McGurk?”
    Longarm’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Badger Bob?”
    â€œOne and the same,” said Vail. “The dead man’s name was Ross. He spent three years in Leavenworth with McGurk. Ross was in for mail robbery. Got out about six months ago.”
    â€œBadger Bob’s still in there, ain’t he?”
    â€œHe’s supposed to be.” Vail looked intently at Longarm. “He escaped two weeks ago when he was out on a work detail. Killed two guards doing it.”
    â€œDamn it!” Longarm leaned forward. “Didn’t those folks at Leavenworth have sense enough to know not to ever let Bob out of his hole?”
    â€œEvidently not.”
    Longarm sat back in his chair and took a deep draw on the cheroot as he remembered his first run-in with Badger Bob McGurk. It had happened not long after he’d gone to work for the Justice Department. McGurk had held up an army payroll wagon all by his lonesome, had killed four soldiers and wounded four more in the process. Then, while Longarm was trying to track him down, he had gone on a killing spree, murdering six more people before Longarm caught up with him in an isolated Idaho canyon. The two dead guards at Leavenworth brought his total number of victims to an even dozen, assuming that Badger Bob hadn’t killed any other prisoners while he was there. Given the man’s record, it was a wonder he hadn’t been hanged, but he’d been lucky and drawn a judge who decided to sentence him to life in prison instead. Longarm had a feeling that was because the army payroll Bob had stolen had never been found, and the government probably still held out faint hopes of getting him to talk someday so that they could recover the money.
    Longarm could have told them that wasn’t going to happen. Badger Bob was one of the craziest bastards Longarm had ever run across. He would have gnawed off his own arms before he’d cooperate with the law about anything.
    â€œI didn’t know McGurk was on the loose,” Longarm said slowly.
    Vail nodded. “And you’re one of the men he swore he’d get even with, Custis.”
    â€œYou say this fella Ross used to be his cell mate?”
    â€œThat’s right. Ross—the man who was killed last night down by Cherry Creek.”
    Longarm chewed on his cheroot, shifting it from one side of his mouth to the other. This bit of information might put things in a whole new light. He had formed a hazy theory as to why the bearded man might have wanted to kill him, but knowing that the fella was connected to Badger Bob McGurk provided Longarm with a much simpler explanation for the attempt on his life. And the simplest explanation, he had learned over the years, was usually the best.
    â€œThis gent Ross ... had he been on the straight and narrow since getting out of prison?”
    â€œNot hardly,” said Vail. “He’d been picked up several times by the Denver police for getting drunk and starting fights, and he was a suspect in a handful of robberies and assaults. They even thought he might have killed