The Night Is Watching (9 page)

He hoped she’d say no.

“Yes, I ride.”

Of course she did.

He called Johnny Bearclaw as he drove, asking him to saddle Kanga and Roo.

“Kanga and Roo?” Jane asked as he rang off.

“I didn’t name them,” he said. “My grandfather got them from an old friend years ago. Kanga is a mare, Roo is her colt. They’re good horses,” he said briefly.

They
were
good horses. Despite that, over the years, one or the other of the two had lost a rider—they could turn so sharply. They never hurt anyone; riders just slid off.

He wondered if he was hoping she’d take a tumble...and not be able to come with him.

At his property, he walked around the house and straight to the stables, where Johnny had both horses saddled and ready to go.

Sloan introduced Johnny and Jane. They were cordial to each other, and Johnny smiled, honestly happy to meet Jane. She was easy and relaxed, and Sloan was forced to admit that he was the only one who seemed to be awkward with her.

She admired Kanga and Roo and, naturally, Johnny was pleased.

“We need to get moving,” Sloan said. “I’ll take Roo. Johnny, give Jane a hand up, will you?”

The horses were both seventeen hands tall. He swung up on Roo, leaving Jane to ride his beautiful grande dame. She tended to be a slightly smoother ride. Roo sometimes thought he was still a colt.

Jane politely accepted Johnny’s hand but straddled Kanga with agility. She knew how to ride, just as she’d said.

He kneed Roo, and they started off at a long, smooth lope to the rear of his property and onto the trails beyond that led through the foothills. She followed easily at his pace. A half mile into the ride, through desert, rocks and scraggly brush, they connected with the standard trail the stables used for their rides.

They passed one of the entrances to the old silver mines, then the Old Trading Post set up by the stables, where no one actually worked but a few vending machines could be found, and finally reached the Apache village the stables had created as a halfway point on the ride. Although the Apache had never lived in this little array of tepees, they’d set up some placards that accurately described life for Natives of the area; they’d also been hired to fashion the tepees and fireplaces, drying racks and weapon stands that formed the village.

He saw Heidi sitting forlornly on a rock near the placard that gave a history of Geronimo. She held her horse’s reins loosely and looked as if she was on the verge of tears.

“You’re here! Thank God! Oh, Sloan, you’re here!” she said, rising. Heidi was thirty-three, thin and athletic with short-cropped blond hair and dark brown eyes. An excellent rider, she often borrowed Roo when she entered barrel-racing competitions. Although Sloan had no interest in being part of a rodeo, he didn’t mind lending Heidi his horses. She was calm, assured and competent, not to mention friendly and garrulous—a great tour guide. She didn’t own the stables or the tour company, but she did the managing and scheduling.

He dismounted, aware that Jane was doing the same behind him.

“Heidi, you called 9-1-1? Where’s the body?”

“We’re right in the middle of no-road-ville. I’m assuming the med techs are coming by horse-drawn wagon. But I told them—oh, they were being ridiculous. They kept telling me to try emergency procedures, artificial respiration. Sloan, he’s dead. I mean,
dead.
I am not putting my lips on a corpse!”

“Heidi, they weren’t here. Their job is to save lives,” Sloan told her. “Where—”

“Over here, Sloan,” she interrupted, walking around behind another pile of rocks. She glanced back at Jane. “Uh, hello.”

“This is Agent Everett,” Sloan said.

“Oh, hi, nice to meet you. You’re the artist, right? You make faces out of skulls.”

“Something like that,” Jane said.

Sloan had reached the corpse. He stopped, staring at it incredulously.

As Heidi had reported, the corpse was just about mummified. Brown leathery skin stretched so tightly over the skull and bones that it seemed like an eerie caricature. A dusty old hat sat on the corpse, which was propped up against a rock almost as if he’d sat down to take a nap—and never awakened. He was dressed in dust-covered pants, an old shirt and a vest; it appeared that he’d been buried beneath the sand for years and dug up to sit on the trail.

“See! And they wanted me to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! Gross! He’s—I mean, he’s real, right?”

Sloan hunkered down to study the corpse more closely. Jane knelt beside him, studying the dead man in silence.

“The clothing is certainly old. Handmade, I think,” Jane said. “I’m not an expert on this, but it does look like the cloth is incredibly fragile—almost disintegrating—and that this man has been dead for years....”

Right. He might well have died around the time Sage McCormick disappeared—only to appear again in Lily as a skull more than a hundred years later. What the hell was going on here? Another macabre joke? Or were these dead showing up for a different reason?

“Who would do this?” Heidi demanded. “Who would dig up this poor guy and put him here? It’s so creepy! I can’t believe I stayed here waiting for you. I thought...I was so afraid he’d move. I never could have stayed if it was night!”

Sloan took a pen from his pocket and gingerly touched a darkened spot on the shirt. It was difficult to see clearly, but it seemed that the corpse had taken a slug in the chest.

“Poor fellow was shot a hell of a long time ago,” Jane noted.

Sloan felt a vibration and heard the rumbling of the horse-drawn wagon as it arrived on the scene. Two emergency techs jumped out of the covered wagon that was kept at the stables for emergencies in the desert. They could also bring helicopters, but most often, the wagon made its way to the desert. He knew many of the county techs but not all, and he didn’t know these two.

Sloan stood. The men approached, both of them staring at the corpse.

“Well,” the older one said.

“I told you I couldn’t revive him!” Heidi said.

“This is a waste of time for us,” the younger man said. He looked at Sloan. “I’m sorry, I mean...well, this is unusual.”

“Why did no one believe me when I said
dead, dead as a doornail?
” Heidi asked.

“Heidi, sometimes people think they’ve found a dead person when people are unconscious or in a coma. We always try to hope for life first,” Sloan said. He introduced himself and Jane, and the med techs did the same.

“I don’t know what protocol is here,” the older man, who’d introduced himself as Gavin Bendle, said. “I get the feeling this guy’s been dug up as some kind of a joke. I almost feel as if...we should just rebury him here. No muss, no fuss.”

“I say bring him to the medical examiner’s office. They can make the call there,” Sloan said. “You’ve already got the wagon out. I’m sure historians and anthropologists will want to examine the corpse before...before he’s reburied, I guess.”

“This is
Lily,
” the younger man, Joe Rodriguez, murmured.

Sloan laughed. “Right. And the town has no morgue. Our dead go to the county.”

“Can I go back?” Heidi asked hopefully.

No one answered her. They were all staring at the corpse.

“I’m afraid to try to move it,” Joe admitted.

“Might break,” Gavin agreed.

“Maybe we should get some kind of scientist out here,” Joe said.

“Maybe I could go back?” Heidi asked again.

Sloan turned to Heidi. “Of course. I’ll get a formal statement from you later.”

“A formal statement?” Heidi repeated. “I took out a trail ride. I saw this corpse sitting here. I called it in. That’s my formal statement.”

“He’s pointing,” Jane said suddenly.

“What?” Sloan asked.

“See how his hand is lying there? It looks as if someone arranged him so his fingers are pointing...in that direction,” she said.

She rose, walking in the direction in which the fingers pointed.

Sloan followed her. He didn’t see anything at first. Neither did Jane. She seemed perplexed.

“He’s
definitely
pointing this way,” she said.

“The tepee,” Sloan suggested. The tepee that stood a few feet from him was real; it just hadn’t ever been lived in by an Apache. Sloan ducked down and entered. There were cold ashes where a central fire would have burned. Indian blankets were rolled against the sides, and old cooking utensils had been set up as if ready for use.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Then Sloan realized he was breathing in a scent he’d learned all too well over the years.

The scent of death.

He walked toward one of the blankets and tugged at it.

A corpse rolled out.

He felt Jane behind him. She didn’t scream, but behind her, Heidi let out a terrified yelp. “Oh, my God! It’s another dead man!”

Gavin and Joe came in behind her.

“No!” Heidi said. “Oh, God!”

“It’s a fresh one,” Gavin muttered.

And so it was.

They had an old corpse....

Pointing the way to a new one.

What the hell was going on in Lily?

4

S
loan pulled out his penlight to examine the man and try to determine who he might be and how he’d died. He didn’t want to disturb the corpse any more than he needed to, until the medical examiner arrived.

The corpse was dressed in dirty denim jeans and a cotton shirt. He was wearing work boots, and Sloan noted that his hands and nails were dirty, as if he’d been doing manual labor. He judged him to be about forty years of age, but he’d never seen him before. At first, the cause of death wasn’t apparent. Then Sloan noted that the red on the blanket was deeper because of the blood that had escaped from a bullet hole in the back of the man’s head. He dug into his pocket for the gloves he hadn’t needed yet in Lily but carried anyway because of his days in Houston. He checked the man’s pockets, but he wasn’t carrying a wallet or any form of identification.

“You know him?” Jane asked.

“No.”

Heidi was standing there, hyperventilating.

“Heidi, you don’t need to be here. Gavin, can you and Joe take the old corpse back to town and over to the county morgue and then get a medical examiner out here for me—and a crime-scene unit? Jane, can you get Heidi back to the stables? You can use the patrol car to return to the office. Looks like I’ll be out here for a few more hours.”

Jane nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Heidi?”

But Heidi didn’t seem to hear.

“I knew him! I knew him. I knew him, oh, God, I knew him!” Heidi cried.

Sloan rose and took her by the shoulders. “Heidi, calm down.” He led her out of the tepee. “Who is it?”

“Um, um...his name was Jay. Jay something. He stayed at the Old Jail the other night. He was alone. He came and took the trail ride. Alone. His name’ll be on a form back at the stables. Everybody has to sign a form before they get on one of the horses. He was just a tourist, I’m pretty sure.”

Gavin and Joe walked behind Sloan. “We’ll get the old corpse back and send out the investigators,” Joe said dully.

Sloan nodded. He was still looking at Heidi. “So you took him on a trail ride. The usual?”

“Um, it was three days ago. I took him on a night ride. No, wait. He went on two trail rides. He went during the day and then again at night. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God...”

“Heidi, let’s go back to the stables,” Jane said. She glanced at Sloan, evidently realizing that the biggest help she could offer was taking Heidi off his hands. She put an arm around her. “Come on now. Are you going to be able to ride?”

“Her horse knows this trail and the way back to the stables better than I know my way around my own house,” Sloan said.

“Call if you need me,” Jane told him. “Heidi, come on.”

Sloan watched her go, berating himself. He’d actually wanted her to be an incompetent rider; he guessed that for some reason he’d wanted her to do badly at something.

Now he was grateful. She was a well-trained federal agent. She also happened to be a beautiful one.

He walked over to where Gavin and Joe had managed to slide a board beneath their century-old mummified corpse and lift it into the wagon, apparently causing no harm to the remains.

“We’ll get crews out here as fast as we can,” Joe promised.

“I’ll be here,” Sloan said.

He watched as they crawled in the wagon and Joe picked up the reins. Jane helped Heidi onto her bay, mounted Kanga smoothly and turned to wave to him.

He lifted his hand. “Thank you,” he said, though he doubted she could hear him.

But she nodded. He didn’t hear her, either, but he thought she said, “See you tonight.”

When they were gone, he returned to the area of the tepee. Unfortunately, they’d all done a lot of tracking around before they’d realized they had a current murder on their hands.

Sloan inspected the area carefully. In the end, he decided they hadn’t messed up any tracks or caused the crime scene any real harm.

The dead man—Jay, whatever his last name might be—had been forced to his knees, Sloan surmised. He’d been shot, execution-style, right where he’d knelt. The blanket had soaked up most of the blood.

Why the hell would anyone take a casual tourist out to the desert and execute him?

“Because, son, he wasn’t a casual tourist,” he heard.

He turned around. Longman was with him. He seldom saw Longman except in his own house.

Sloan nodded.

“I will wait with you,” Longman told him.

He smiled, glad that Longman hadn’t decided to reveal himself to Heidi. Poor Heidi would’ve had a heart attack and he might have had another corpse on his hands.

“Thank you,” he said. He pulled out his phone and called the office, telling Chet to get down to the stables and the Old Jail and find out everything he could about the dead man they knew only as Jay.

And then he waited.

Soon enough, he heard the whir of a copter.

He closed his eyes and remembered the strange feeling he’d had the day he’d gone to the Old Jail over the stolen wallets.

He remembered the change in the air.

The skull in the theater basement.

And he remembered his dream.

The dark cloud of evil wasn’t coming his way.

It was already here.

* * *

Heidi might have been in shock for a few minutes, but riding back to the stables, she talked nonstop. “It’s horrible. Just horrible. That poor man! Shot dead. He was nice—and he actually tipped after the ride. So he comes here on vacation and he winds up dead in the desert. That’s so horrible. Oh, Lord, I thought an
old
corpse was horrible. A new one is so much worse. I wonder who the old corpse is? You know, not much happens in Lily. Seriously, thank God we’re not
that
far from Tucson in one direction and Phoenix in the other, because we’re pretty dead these days. Oh, God, not dead! That’s not what I meant. I mean...there were all kinds of murders way back in the day. Right after the Civil War and into the era of all the cowboys and miners. Back then, I think it was a couple of killings a week. But that was the wild, wild west, you know?”

Jane knew. It was just that her own mind was racing and she was only half paying attention to Heidi, which didn’t seem to matter.

“We had our famous outlaws—sheriffs, deputies
and
outlaws. Trey Hardy was the big one around here. He robbed banks after the Civil War. He was a Reb and when the war was over, his family had nothing, but he was like a Robin Hood—giving money and food to everyone around him. Except, of course, robbing banks is illegal. He was finally taken into custody by Sheriff Brendan Fogerty. Problem was, his deputy, Aaron Munson,
hated
Hardy—although I don’t think he really knew him—and he murdered Hardy in his cell. But people
loved
Hardy, and they were furious, so they wound up lynching Aaron Munson right in front of the jail on Main Street. So Hardy’s supposed to haunt his old jail cell, just like Munson’s supposed to haunt the street. Oh! Wow! What if we found Trey Hardy’s body? Or Munson’s? No, wait, that can’t be. They’re buried up on Dead Horse Hill, in the graveyard there. Unless someone dug them up. But Hardy supposedly wore parts of an old Rebel cavalry lieutenant’s uniform. And Munson...he’d probably be in a deputy’s uniform. No, wait, maybe they didn’t have them back then....”

Jane could have turned to Heidi and said that, yes, ghosts seemed to be teeming in Lily, Arizona. And that was probably true, but what could the ghosts have to do with a man being shot in the desert? And what was the point of scaring Heidi even more than she already was?

“You’re so calm!” Heidi said, admiration brimming in her eyes.

“Sad to say, I’ve seen a few corpses,” Jane told her.
And sadder to say, I’ve had conversations with some.

“Nothing happens here—nothing! And now a skull, an old corpse
and
a new corpse!” Heidi marveled.

Thankfully, they reached the stables soon after that. And with almost perfect timing, her phone rang. It was Sloan; he’d called to make sure they’d gotten back without incident.

She assured him that they had. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“A crime-scene unit is out here, and I have Betty and Chet on finding out who our dead man is, where he came from and how he might’ve gotten himself shot in the desert,” Sloan explained. “Our old corpse, as Heidi calls him, is on his way to the county morgue. If you’re up to it, take the patrol car back to the station and work on the skull.”

She smiled at that.

If she was up to it.

“I’m in town. I’ll clean up, grab something to eat, then head over to your place to get the car and go back to the office. It’s still early.”

“Sure. Like I said, I have a car for you. It’s at the office, so once you’re there, you can leave whenever you want. I’ll give Johnny Bearclaw a call and tell him you’ll need my backup keys. Oh, and thank you for dealing with Heidi.”

“No problem. She was traumatized. I can well imagine. I remember the first time I saw a corpse. Don’t you remember what it was like?”

He was quiet a minute. “There’ve been so many now. Anyway, thanks.”

His voice seemed to wrap around her. Impatiently she gritted her teeth as they ended the call. It was better to think of him as a jerk. She didn’t need a one-night affair with cowboy.

Or maybe she did. Work had consumed her since the Krewe had come together. She’d had a life. Once.

She shook her head. They were dealing with the dead—not just the “old” dead, but the “new” dead.

And she was daydreaming about sex....

She walked toward Heidi, who was watering her bay. “Heidi, can I leave Kanga here? I’ll be back in an hour or so, then I’ll ride her over to Sloan’s.”

“Sure. She’ll be fine here,” Heidi said.

“Thanks.”

She left Heidi and walked across the street. The door to the theater was open, although it was still early. When she went in, she found Valerie Mystro behind the bar making herself a cup of coffee at the espresso machine.

“Hey!” Valerie said, turning around and hurrying to the bar when she saw Jane. “I heard someone was murdered out in the desert. How horrible! I don’t think I ever met the man, but I heard that he was here in town. That’s so scary—almost as scary as finding the skull.”

“How do you know all of this already? I just got back with Heidi.”

“Oh, well, this is a small town, remember? I was across the street at the saloon earlier, having lunch with Alice and Brian. And the people who’d been on the ride came in and told us about the weird mummified man they’d seen. And then Terence came in because they were closing the stables for the rest of the day. And Chet—Sloan’s deputy—had just been at the stables to get the information on the dead man. Seriously, Jane, this is a small town. If you sneeze, everyone knows about it.”

“I see.”

“It’s so strange! I’m from Philadelphia. There’s something going on there all the time. But when you’re in a small place like this, well—it’s different. And this is scary. Of course, in a way, the whole place is scary.” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “I don’t know how you can stay in that room upstairs!”

“It’s a nice room.” She smiled. “I like staying there. In fact, I want to.”

“But it’s
haunted.
I know that for a fact.”

“Oh?”

Valerie nodded with assurance. “I actually think Henri put you in there on purpose.”

“Because he hoped he’d scare me?”

“I guess you don’t scare easily, do you?” Valerie asked her. “But you
should
be scared.”

“Why? What has this ghost done?”

Valerie was shocked. Her pretty face wrinkled in confusion. “Done? Well, it’s a ghost, for one. But I tell you, people have run out of that room. They say Sage McCormick shows up in the middle of the night, looking at them. They wake up—and there she is, watching them sleep.”

“She’s never hurt anyone, has she?”

“Well...I’m sure she has. Indirectly. She makes them nervous wrecks and then they trip and fall and... People are weird! Some come here because they
want
to see her, but she scared the producer of a ghost show right out of here. And over at the Old Jail, Trey Hardy is still there, you know. He moves people’s things around. And he just plain scares them, too!”

“But you’re not afraid to stay at the theater?”

“No one died in my room or became overly attached to it.” Valerie’s eyes widened. “This is horrible timing. Silverfest is next weekend. The money it brings in helps keep the town going for the whole year.”

“What happens at Silverfest?”

“Everyone dresses up in old frontier wear. We have a horse parade down Main Street, we perform all day and night as our characters. All the kids in town and half the adults dress up, too. And down by Sloan’s property there’s a rodeo. Oh, and we have a shoot-out on Main Street. It’s fun, and brings in a ton of money.” She paused. “Too bad it isn’t Goldfest, but it’s not, it’s Silverfest. They found way more silver than they did gold. And there was the gold heist, so I guess we don’t celebrate gold.”

She suddenly seemed to remember her coffee. “Want some coffee? This machine is great. American, caffe latte, cappuccino and mochaccino!”

“Sure. Actually, I could use something to eat.”

“Oh, that’s right. Sloan came for you so early. We have a refrigerator with sandwich meat, if you want, or I’ll run across the street with you. There’s pizza, there’s the saloon—”

“A sandwich will be fine. I’m going to have to get back to work,” Jane said.

“Let me make it for you. Salami, ham or turkey? And do you like cheese?”

While Valerie rummaged around under the bar, Alice joined them and then so did Brian and Ty, all talking about the two corpses.

A minute later, Henri Coque joined them, as well.

He didn’t want a sandwich; he walked around the bar and poured himself a large Scotch.

“What the hell?” he said, gulping down the shot. “Who’s digging up old corpses—and why? And why shoot a tourist?” He shook his head with disgust, then sighed. “I guess people can be ghoulish. Maybe these corpses will make us more popular this Silverfest. Let us pray!” He lifted his glass to the beautiful nineteenth-century, oval-framed portrait of a woman over the bar. “To you, my love! May we prosper, despite chaos! What is the world coming to here in Lily?”