The Loner by J.A. Johnstone

door open and stepped into the room, he recognized the smell in the air. He had seen enough gruesome death to know what freshly spilled blood smelled like. He stopped in his tracks and stared down stupidly at the figure lying on the floor in front of him.
    It was Edwin Sinclair, Conrad realized. The secretary lay facedown. A large pool of reddish-black blood had formed around his head and was slowly soaking into the hardwood floor. Several large crimson stains marred the back of his suit coat. In the middle of one of those stains, the handle and part of the blade of a knife protruded from Sinclair’s body.
    And pinned to the corpse with that knife was a piece of paper.
    Conrad lurched forward. He saw his name written on the paper and knew it was meant for him. He dropped to his knees beside Sinclair and reached for the knife. He wrapped his fingers around the handle and pulled it free. The blade made an ugly sound as it came out of Sinclair’s lifeless flesh.
    Conrad heard other sounds, but they meant nothing to him. A door slamming, voices shouting, heavy footsteps…He ignored all of them. Every bit of his attention was focused on the words crudely printed on the paper, which Edwin Sinclair’s blood had stained in places. Sinclair hadn’t written this note.
    WE HAV YUR WIF. DO WHAT WE SAY OR WELL KILL HER. YULL HERE FROM US.

    Rebel was gone, taken from their house by strangers, intruders who had killed the secretary. Had he been wrong about Sinclair? Conrad asked himself.
    “Good Lord!” a gravelly voice exclaimed. “Put that knife down, mister. I’ve got you covered.”
    Numbly, Conrad looked around. Carson City had an actual police force now, not just a local marshal and deputies, as befitted the capital city of the whole state. Two uniformed officers stood just inside the kitchen, revolvers in their hands. They pointed the guns at Conrad, and he realized that he was still holding the knife. Not only that, but he was kneeling beside the bloody corpse of his own secretary.
    “This isn’t…what it looks like,” he managed to rasp after a moment.
    “What is it, then?” one of the officers demanded. “It looks to me like you stabbed that poor son of a gun.”
    Conrad held the paper out so the man could read it for himself. Suddenly, he was too tired to explain.
    Too tired, and too filled with fear for his wife.
     

    The presence of the note made it clear that Conrad hadn’t killed Edwin Sinclair. The chief of Carson City’s police force admitted that as he sat in Conrad’s study an hour later.
    “Your secretary must have tried to fight off the kidnappers,” the chief said. “He paid for it with his life, but at least he tried.”
    Conrad rubbed his temples as he sat behind the desk. The dull, throbbing ache in his head hadn’t gone away.
    But it wasn’t as bad as the ache in his heart.
    “I misjudged poor Sinclair,” he said. “To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I trusted the man. In business, yes, but not that much around my wife.”
    The chief raised his eyebrows. “You shouldn’t say things like that, Mr. Browning,” he advised. “Some folks might figure that was a motive for murder. Of course, in this case, we know the kidnappers are to blame for Sinclair’s death.”
    “Chief, do you have any experience with things like this?”
    “Well…no, sir, I don’t. This is the first kidnapping I remember ever taking place in these parts. But I’ve heard about such things, and I reckon it’s only a matter of time before you hear from those varmints again. They’ll have to tell you how much money they want, and where and how you’re supposed to deliver it.”
    “Do you think they’ll want me to bring the money in person?”
    The chief scratched his jaw. “That wouldn’t surprise me. They’ll figure you’d be less likely to try some sort of trick that way.” He hesitated. “You are going to pay?”
    “Of course,” Conrad snapped. “I’d pay any amount of money to get my wife back