“I’m sorry. I won’t do it anymore.”
Jane let out a sigh of aggravation. “Come on, now you have to tell me what you were thinking. It’s only fair!”
“First I should tell you I’m not rude or macho or politically incorrect—most of the time.”
She laughed. “Okay, I believe you. But now I know there’s a really politically incorrect thought running through your head, so you have to tell me.”
“Uh, well...you’re not what I was expecting. Not what I figured you’d, um, look like. Being a Krewe member and all...” His voice trailed off.
“Pardon?”
“Never mind!”
“No! Tell me!”
“You make me think of a TV show. Like those crime shows where the medical examiner is a beautiful woman who whispers gentle things to her corpses. You know, like, ‘You poor, poor baby, what did they do to you?’ Or a crime show where the detectives are dressed by Versace or some other designer.”
She stared at him as if she were about to explode.
“I didn’t mean to be offensive, Agent Everett. It was a compliment,” he insisted. “You’re just—I mean, you must be a little aware that you’re...beautiful.”
She gazed at the road ahead, a slight smile playing on her lips. “Well, that part of your statement is quite charming, so thank you. But I don’t whisper sweet nothings to corpses,” she assured him. “And I only wish I had a wardrobe by Versace.”
He winced. “I’m sorry. I guess, even if we know better—and I do—we all expect a forensic artist to be an old man like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from the Muppets or... I’m not helping myself here, am I?” he asked.
“No.”
“Let me try again. Agent Everett, you look very nice today.”
Her smile still teased at her lips as she turned to him. “Hmm. Does that mean I looked like hell yesterday?”
“No. I just...hey, sorry. I told you! I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Her smile became an honest laugh. “It’s all right. I prefer to avoid stereotypes—as an artist and a law enforcement officer. But you...”
“Me?”
“Yeah, Sheriff. You. Spend much time at the rodeo? Or, wait—walking down Main Street for a quick-draw contest with a bad guy?”
“What?”
“Well, you know, you look the part. Rugged Western hero. Gunslinger. Tough guy.”
He grinned. “So I’m a stereotype?”
“Oh, you definitely could be. But...are you?”
He didn’t have to answer; they’d arrived at the sheriff’s office. But even as he exited the car, Deputy Chet Morgan came hurrying out of the office. “Heidi Murphy just called, and she sounded pretty hysterical. She took a group out on a trail ride and they found a body.”
“A body? Did she call 9-1-1 for an ambulance?” Sloan asked quickly.
“She did, and an ambulance is on its way out. But Heidi was insistent that there’s no need. Says the corpse is practically mummified and that she knows dead from alive. I was going to head out there.”
“I’ll take it, Chet. Why don’t you hold down the fort with Betty and Agent Everett,” Sloan told him.
Mummified? Were remains from the past showing up all over the place?
“I’d like to ride with you on this, if you don’t mind,” Jane said.
She was wearing her sunglasses and her perfect face was stoic. Sloan thought of the dream that had plagued him the night before.
“It’s better if you stay here, get your work done.”
She didn’t have an argument and she knew it as well as he did. She was a federal agent on loan, and a body in the desert was his territory. He’d be calling in the county coroner, and if someone had been killed recently, the state police would probably come in on it, too. But...she was a fed.
“Please. I understand. But I’d really like to ride along on this,” she said.
He wished she hadn’t been so polite, that the tone of her voice hadn’t shown her complete respect for her position—and his.
The dream had been ridiculous. Brought on by the fact that he’d been back home too long without meeting a woman who really appealed to him. So, just because he was afraid for her, and because he was so attracted to her, he was about to be a jerk.
He checked himself. “Sure. If you wish. Chet, where are they?”
“They’re by that replica Apache village. She was working with a second guide, Terence McCloud, and she’s having him take the tour on back. She’ll be waiting for you. And I’ll warn you—she’s freaking out. She didn’t want to hang out by a corpse.”
“I’m on my way.”
He started back to the car without saying anything to Jane.
She followed him, slipping into the passenger seat as he held the door.
Once in the car, he turned to her. “This isn’t just a ride-along. It really means ride. The trail area where Heidi found the corpse is out back from where my home is. We’ll drive to my place and get the horses. You ride, don’t you?”
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 ha
d 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
Sloan 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.
Krewe of Hunters, Volume 3: The Night Is WatchingThe Night Is AliveThe Night Is Forever Page 8