Ch.21003 Investigation Record – Justice of a Bygone Era (3)

I felt better, but that didn’t mean everything was over. Saying everything was over could wait until after I’d helped the old Cowboy get his revenge on the fugitive.

And I wasn’t anxious either. For some reason, I was the kind of person people gathered around. If I wasn’t lonely, I wasn’t anxious. Like Paulina said, I was a pretty good helmsman.

With that thought, I flashed a bright smile at the old Cowboy. Moments when smiles meet are always good ones.

“Well, after we get Hector’s report tomorrow, we’ll need to go right away… Would you like to come to our apartment tonight? Paulina and I have several empty rooms even though it’s just the two of us. My father was quite particular about the house…”

The old Cowboy’s eyebrows twitched. Refusing with a shake of his head was proper Southern manners.

“No matter how much we’re partners, I can’t just visit where two young ladies live. I’ll wait at the motel, and it would be better if you came to find me like today, wouldn’t it?”

I naturally shook my head. He didn’t seem like someone I needed to be suspicious about inviting home, and if anything happened, Paulina could certainly subdue him. Was that realistic thinking on my part?

“I’m the type who gets anxious when rooms in my home are empty! So, to not make it seem like charity… I’ll only charge you 1 dollar! I’m not sure if that’s the right price, but…”

When someone refuses once, it’s polite to accept after the second offer. He knew this too, and pulled out a wad of bills held with a clip from his pocket, handing me a single dollar.

A clean transaction! Now we could go together tomorrow. Thinking I should call Hector as soon as we got back, I headed to the apartment.

Angels were busy flying around Fifth Avenue, which seemed intoxicated with the sparkle and energy of the era. Near our home, past Fifth Avenue, it was much quieter. A comfortable place where sleep came easily at night.

I quietly watched the old Cowboy counting the floors of the building before entering with him. Since it was a place with an elevator, something rarely seen in the South, it was inevitable that his dry gaze would show signs of life and curiosity.

The words “apartment” and “luxury” didn’t really go together, but this place at least claimed to be upscale, with only four units per floor, unlike apartments with eight or nine units per floor.

I opened the door to unit 401, which already felt like home. Though not as spacious as my family home, it was roomy enough to feel homey, but it had been lonely with just Paulina and me—now that would be somewhat filled. The old Cowboy looked around and chuckled.

“Seems like there are four units per floor, but this is as big as our ranch owner’s house. Isn’t it lonely for just two people?”

He hit the nail on the head! For me, home was usually a place where twenty or thirty people lived. With even more people coming and going.

At my family home, there were seven siblings. Three older brothers, one older sister, two younger sisters, and one younger brother… If I had decided to inherit the family business, I would have stayed at home, but I wanted to try something in the city.

“It’s extremely lonely. I regret not asking for a home suitable for Paulina and me to live in together, rather than just a nice house, when they offered to prepare a place. I regret it every night.”

I smiled back at his chuckle, then showed him to a room that no one used but was kept dust-free. His belongings, apart from his gun, weren’t much.

“I’ll gratefully stay for a day. I hope that Orc friend who called won’t drag my friend all the way here… You’re someone who gets worried about from all over.”

Somehow, even someone I’d only met twice seemed to have figured me out. I rolled my eyes a bit and shook my head.

“Hector may be a capable bounty hunter, but he’s not someone who takes what belongs to others! Since you’ve shown your determination to handle it yourself…”

The old Cowboy shook his head. He removed his hat, revealing his graying hair, and shook his head again.

“What does determination matter? Hmm? It’s a gunfight. I’ll have a gun, and that fellow will have a gun too. He’ll be hiding in the house. From the moment I enter the house, my heart will be pounding like a machine running in a rickety barn, and if I lose focus for just a moment, it won’t even be able to pound anymore. Sometimes instead of thinking positively, you need to think about yourself, partner.”

It was what Paulina had said. Purity is good, but innocence isn’t bad. However, naivety is bad. Was talking about determination a bad choice this time too?

The Cowboy, who had been staring at me with somewhat sad eyes, continued.

“I may be a cowboy, but I’m not a duelist. Most of what I’ve shot were animals, and when I shot people, I had bad dreams for days. But do you know the one thing I learned?”

I swallowed and shook my head. It was a story I couldn’t know, and one he wanted to tell me. My voice didn’t seem necessary.

“People who don’t understand the today in their hands and only look at the tomorrow they’ve bet on die first. They don’t leave behind grand last words or close their eyes peacefully—they freeze in that moment of failure, like a photograph capturing it. Your talk of determination and tomorrow is comforting, but we still have today in our hands like a pebble we picked up without knowing better. We must be careful, partner.”

Paulina nodded as if this was what she had wanted to say too. Paulina had said similar things, but somehow they had just sounded like nagging… but this didn’t.

I nodded with wide eyes. Don’t just look at tomorrow that you’ve bet on without knowing the today in your hands. It wasn’t so much a cool saying as… a necessary one.

His expression softened again. I’m still being worried about, even now. His words were dry, but somehow they felt warm.

“Did I frighten you too much, partner?”

“No, Cowboy! I still have the courage to go with you tomorrow! Even if you tell me to wait in the car, I’m prepared to wait and trust you…”

Just at that moment, the phone began to ring. With a “just a moment,” I got up to answer it. At this hour, only Hector would be calling.

I answered the phone. From the other end came the sound of an Orc clearing his throat.

“Miss Rose? This is Hector. Well, I did some looking around on my own… He used a common alias. Seems he bought a gun under the name Jose Ramos. Those damn FFF guys run the store, so he bought it without ID verification. It looks like they sold military rifles that had been piling up in warehouses since the Great War ended. Let’s just leave this to the angels.”

Military rifle? What’s used in the military… is it different somehow? Not understanding, I decided to pass the phone to the Cowboy. Hector probably didn’t think I knew much about weapons either.

The Cowboy repeatedly insisted on handling it himself. Hector seemed to be trying quite hard to persuade him, but the Cowboy, whose very purpose for coming to New York was to meet this fugitive, wouldn’t give up.

Was this going well? I had told the delivery elf that a reporter should know how to do anything, but there was nothing I could do or judge here.

Now the phone was passed to Paulina. While the Cowboy just repeated the same thing, she answered in a way that seemed to explain to me what was happening.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Hector. Of course we’ll go together. I can’t just abandon someone Rose… Miss Rose has offered to help. Rose will wait in the car while the Cowboy and I enter the house. I’ll go in first with my shield, but I don’t know how to shoot a gun. I’m a lawyer, after all.”

Paulina wasn’t ignorant about harming others, but she really didn’t know about guns. She was quite an extreme person.

I wanted to say I’d like to go in too, but I knew how absurd that would be. Above all, if something happened because I was naive…

While I wasn’t particularly capable, I was at least someone who knew exactly what my abilities were and weren’t. The best I could do was to connect Hector with the Cowboy, and Paulina with the Cowboy.

After some back and forth with phrases like “that sounds okay” and “I’m not bad,” Paulina finally handed the phone back to me. Was there something I needed to know?

“Yes, Miss Rose. We’ve finished talking. It seemed ridiculous to send just a lawyer who can’t shoot and an old cowboy, so I’ve decided to go along too. We’ll take Paulina’s car, but you need to stay in the car. You’re a smart person, so I don’t need to explain why, right?”

I should quote what I heard from the Cowboy on the way back. Such well-crafted words would be needed to truly say it was okay.

“Of course! The helmsman may hold the wheel, but it’s the crew who must make the ship move. Right?”

“That’s right. Thank you for understanding, Miss Rose. I’ll come to your apartment tomorrow morning.”

Finally, a proper schedule was set. With Hector there too, it would surely be fine. I repeated words that might be reassuring others or myself, then stood up.

“Well, since the operation is tomorrow, we should have a hearty dinner tonight! Ah, I don’t want to cook… How about Mr. Douglas’s home-style restaurant downstairs? It was good, wasn’t it? Eating out is nice on days like this!”

Since neither Paulina nor the Cowboy objected, that evening we had a hearty turkey dinner. The seasoning was bland for an elf to eat, but Paulina was used to such bland seasoning, and the Cowboy said he couldn’t get along with seasonings either, so we must have looked like a very well-matched trio.

After preparing my interview suit for tomorrow, I fell asleep in my room. Paulina would sleep in her room, and the Cowboy in the room I’d given him.

I used the clicking sound of the Cowboy checking his gun as a lullaby. Somehow it was similar to the sound of a camera shutter, which made it pleasant to hear.

The next morning, I woke up with my hair still messy as usual. It was around my normal work time, but today the scale of my resolve was different.

The Cowboy, who had been wearing old cowboy clothes, had made his outfit shine with something like leather polish. I watched him quietly praying to the God-President.

Today, he didn’t hide his rifle in cloth. He held his lever-action rifle, old but shining with a horizon and sunrise carved into the stock with a knife, as if it were part of his body.

Paulina, who usually preferred gray suits, had put on her plate armor suit. Paulina was always large, but the thick plate-lined suit made her look even bigger.

As for me… I had my camera, so my preparations were complete. We descended in the elevator with a somewhat solemn air. Hector was waiting in front of the apartment building.

He had a revolver as big as a human face hanging at his waist, and his head was smoothly shaved, giving him a somewhat threatening impression. He even had a ring pierced through the fang protruding over his lip.

“Well, you all seem to be taking this very seriously. I suppose I am too… Anyway, let’s go.”

He smelled of cigarettes, though he wasn’t smoking at the moment. The four of us got into Paulina’s car, and this time I sat in the back seat instead of the passenger seat. I gave the passenger seat to Hector.

Trying not to let the sound of my pounding heart escape, we headed toward the fugitive’s house. A serial killer with a military rifle versus a former cowboy. The weight of these words was only now starting to feel real.

The old Cowboy’s hands holding his lever-action rifle were trembling slightly. Though our hand sizes were quite different, I placed my hand on his. The trembling subsided a little.

The Cowboy’s face still had the same smile I’d seen yesterday. He spoke in a reassuring tone.

“Don’t worry too much, partner. They say calmness makes a person strong. Makes them well-prepared, ready.”

The Cowboy quietly nodded. The car drove on. The scenery around us passed by, but I seemed to be the only one really seeing it.

The ordinary and extraordinary overlapped as we passed by. I wanted to count how many minutes it would take from the grocery store where I often bought apples to the house where the serial killer was—that’s how far we were departing from the ordinary.

After driving for quite a while, we arrived at the outskirts of New York, where there were no longer just walls of buildings, but many abandoned houses with occasional signs of habitation between them.

Hector would know the house address, so I didn’t need to tell him. The car arrived, and everyone except me got out.

Where would the fugitive be? Would he be quietly waiting in the room, knowing this old Cowboy would come looking for him, determined to see it through? The three approached the door of the house. The door was locked, of course.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem like anyone was hiding right behind the door. Thinking about it, there was no reason for the fugitive to risk his life sitting in a room, or hiding beside the door to kill one more person. They ran to survive.

Hector pressed against the door, and there was a small sound of the wooden door rubbing against the frame. Then, the old Cowboy quickly moved to the side of the house, leaving the others.

“I heard the door opening. Sounds like he went to the backyard. You go around the other side. I’ll go this way.”

Paulina stuck with the Cowboy, while Hector went the opposite way. My heartbeat was so loud I couldn’t hear anything else. Paulina led the way with the Cowboy following as they rounded the corner of the house.

I knew I should wait quietly, but I wanted to get out. However, I felt that if I got out, something worse might happen. Should I have studied magic more diligently? It was too late for regrets now.

But there were more people coming around the side of the house. Someone was coming from the backyard and around the side to where Paulina and the Cowboy were.

Neatly groomed hair and a well-worn suit… but a dry face that looked as if it had been carved by wind and sand, like the Cowboy’s. I thought I knew who it was. Surely Enrique…

Two gunshots rang out almost simultaneously. But there was no sound of anything hitting a shield. Even though Paulina was standing with her shield almost covering the Cowboy’s body, Paulina remained standing while the Cowboy fell backward. The acrid smell of gunpowder, difficult for an elf to bear, drifted on the wind.

What just happened? It took too long for what my eyes saw to reach my brain, and for my brain to process the information. The explosive gunshots still rang in my ears, and the flames bursting from the muzzle still created flashes before my eyes.

“Cowboy!”

Whose voice was that? Was it mine? I wasn’t even sure if I had shouted after seeing the Cowboy fall backward. My head was spinning from the gunpowder smell.

Hector, who had come running at the sound of gunfire, fired six shots in rapid succession at the staggering, wobbling fugitive. The fugitive, losing even the strength to stagger, collapsed in a heap.

The Cowboy would get up, right? I opened the car door and ran out. So, Paulina had covered everything up to below his chest so he could shoot, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that right? My mind felt frozen by the lingering gunpowder.

Half of what he said was right. He froze the moment he was shot. But it wasn’t a moment of failure. Though his strength was draining away, his sharp eyes, aiming at the fugitive who had been his friend, remained the same.

There would be no grand last words while taking a final sip of whiskey to open tomorrow, like in the cowboy stories I’d read. He just remained frozen as his warmth gradually faded away.