The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,125

his neck. He’d do that for ten minutes, and then bang his head on the table. After the fifth or sixth time, I started to worry he was going to give himself a concussion.

Then he started saying, “Nay, it itcheth not,” and a lot of crazy stuff I couldn’t really understand.

“Seriously, what do you think he’s on?” Zelker said.

By then we knew we had those two escaped convicts from Kansas, one dead, and one in the county hospital trying to die. We were working on identifying everybody else, so we decided to take a run at this kid. Fingerprint him, swab his hands for GSR, take a blood sample, see if we could get a statement.

Once we were inside with him, I started with a trade-off.

“You got an itch you need scratched?” I said.

“Nay, it itcheth not,” he said. He was staring at the wall, with his jaw clenched.

“You sure? We could undo those cuffs, if you tell us your name.”

“I am called Gentry Frank.”

“There. Easy enough.” I unlocked the cuffs, planning to give him his right hand free.

“I pray thee, my lord, my left hand,” he said.

So I kept his right hand cuffed to the table. For a second, he rested his left hand flat on the top of his head. Then he brought it down to the back of his neck and started scratching. Ten solid minutes he scratched his neck.

“That can’t be good,” Zelker said, but the kid actually looked more relaxed the longer he scratched. He’d spent two hours shouting at himself and banging his head on the table, but after ten minutes of scratching, he was calm.

“Okay, Gentry Frank. I’m Deputy Evangelista and this is Deputy Zelker. Do you want to tell me what happened tonight?”

He took a deep breath and started in like he was reciting something.

“Sir Edrard and I gone there this night to rescue the lady LaReigne from the knaves that kidnapped her. He armed with his bow, I armed with my sword, we came upon them unawares, but ere we could make away with their captive, they would fight us. We fought and tho Sir Edrard be valiant, he was sore wounded.”

I looked at Zelker like Are you hearing this shit?

“That is one crazy-ass story,” Zelker said.

“’Tis no lie.” Most people tried to sell their lies with eye contact, but the whole time we’d been in with him, Gentry Frank never looked us in the eye. Like he couldn’t.

“Maybe we could try it again from the beginning,” I said. “Only this time in regular English?”

An hour later, it was pretty clear we weren’t going to get that. If he was lying, it wasn’t to protect himself, because he admitted that he’d stabbed two men with the sword we had in evidence. He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us about how anybody else had ended up dead.

“What about this guy with an arrow in his leg, an arrow in his shoulder, and a bullet in his head?” Zelker slid the picture across the table to Gentry. The look on the kid’s face never changed, but he kept squeezing his right hand into a fist.

“I know not. I was not there when he was slain.”

“What about this guy? Conrad Ligett. Two bullets in him. Were you there when he was slain?” I said.

“Nay. I know not how he was slain, but Barnwell, I slew him, and another man.”

“Well, Barnwell isn’t dead,” Zelker said.

“He yet lives?”

I figured the kid would look disappointed or something but he kept his poker face.

“Yep. So, you know who Barnwell is? And Ligett?” I said.

“Yea. I saw them upon the news. They aren knaves and men of murderous intent. ’Tis no great harm that they should be slain.”

Zelker laughed, and I shook my head at him.

“And that’s what you went there to do?” I said. “To kill them? That was your plan?”

“Nay. ’Twas my intent to negotiate for the lady LaReigne’s freedom. ’Twas not I who struck the first blow.”

That was all we could get out of Gentry Frank, and after he’d given us the same version three times, he asked for some water. Zelker got up to get it, but he stopped at the door and looked back at Gentry with a frown on his face.

“Where did all that blood come from?” he said.

I got up and went around the table, where I could see there was a puddle of blood under Gentry’s chair. I’d thought all the blood on him was from his friend, but that would have