“Him?” Kelsey asked. “You mean—”
“Red Marston. The man who supposedly helped Sage disappear—and who supposedly ran away to Mexico with her. That was the rumor. So poor Sage was murdered at the theater. And Red was found out in the desert...so sad!”
“Well, it proves our theory,” Jane murmured. “Or part of it.”
Why had he suddenly shown up in the desert to point the way to a newly murdered man?
“It’s brilliant. Your work is really brilliant.” Betty sighed. “If only you were working with the dead people from today—but then we know who they are, don’t we?”
“Unfortunately,” Kelsey said wryly. “That’s not as much of an advantage as you’d hope.”
“I still don’t get why someone would kill a tourist no one knew in Lily,” Betty said. “But Caleb Hough...well, you must be tired of hearing this, but the man didn’t get along with anyone.”
“And, of course, they might have been killed by different people,” Kelsey pointed out.
A phone buzzed in the outer office, and Betty went running out to answer it. She reappeared as Kelsey was helping Jane pack up her personal art supplies and printing copies of Jane’s sketch. “That was Sheriff Sloan. He wants you to know that he and Agent Raintree are still at the Old Jail.”
“Thanks, Betty. Did he ask us to join him there?”
“No, he said to finish whatever you’re doing. He also needs to meet Detective Newsome out at the old mine shaft. But you two just stick with your program,” Betty said. “You’re still busy here?”
“Not really. I have the two-dimensional likeness—enough to know what we wanted to know,” Jane said.
“Lunch,” Kelsey said. “We’re going to go find some food.”
“Well, if you need me at any time, just call,” Betty said.
They thanked her and walked out of the station. “You were acting a bit strange,” Kelsey murmured to Jane. “As if you didn’t want Betty to know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Betty certainly seems helpful and legitimate,” Jane said. “But Sloan’s been more communicative with Newsome than his own deputies about all this. I’m not sure it’s a matter of mistrust so much as a certain wariness, since everyone in this town talks to everyone else. Or maybe it’s because we know that Brendan Fogerty—who came out of the whole gold heist all those years ago looking like a hero—was probably behind the whole thing.”
“Hmm. So what’s our plan?”
“I figure we’ll get back into town, see what’s up at the Old Jail, maybe get something to eat there,” Jane told her.
When they arrived, Mike was at the desk. He gave Jane an angry glare when she arrived.
“You looking for Sloan? Well, he just left. Ripped up my room—and took off.”
“Oh,” Jane said, disappointed. “Did he leave me a message?”
Mike nodded, not at all happy. “He said for you to keep looking.” He glared at Kelsey in turn. “He said between the locals and the feds, they’d get my place back in shape. He promised!”
“Mr. Addison, I know we’ll see that your place is better than ever,” Kelsey told him.
Mike sniffed. “You like throwing those tax dollars around, do you?”
“We can do a lot of the work ourselves,” Kelsey said. “Honestly.”
“Mike, I’m going to see what he was up to, okay?” Jane asked.
Mike frowned. “He told me not to let anyone back there. But I guess he didn’t mean you. Go on. You’ll see what he’s done!”
Jane made her way through the door to the cells and then down the hall, Kelsey right behind her. They entered the Trey Hardy cell.
“Well,” Kelsey said. “I can see why Mike was so upset.”
The plaster in the bathroom looked as if it had been attacked with a sledgehammer—which it clearly had.
Jane bit her lower lip, smiling. “I’m pretty sure this is my fault,” she told Kelsey. “Trey Hardy keeps banging on this wall, so...”
“Do you think he found anything?” Kelsey asked.
“I don’t think he had a chance to get very far,” Jane said, brushing at the wall, knocking away first the new plaster and then the old plaster to get down to the wooden beams beneath. Those beams had once been strong and sturdy; when the jail was restored, thinner plywood had been used along with the plaster. She tried poking her fingers through to see if she could find anything.
“I’ll call and ask him what’s going on.” Kelsey pulled out her phone.
Jane thought she knew how Sloan had felt while digging. The more she worked, the more she wanted to get done. She tried to imagine the jail as it had been with no nice modern bath built into the side. She’d already guessed that the barred window would have been just about where the mirror was now, and Trey Hardy might have leaned against the wall right here, staring out at the world. He might’ve been doing that when the door to his cell burst open—and Aaron Munson had walked in, guns blazing.
“They’re at the mine,” Kelsey said to Jane. “He’ll call us back later.”
Just then, Jane’s fingers touched something. She wiggled them deeper between the boards. What she touched felt like metal.
“Need help?” Kelsey asked.
“I got it, I got it!”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but...” She managed to extract a little metal tube. It might have been the muzzle of an old gun, sawed or cut off to create a cylinder. Or perhaps it had been fashioned from the leg of an old bed. It seemed as encrusted as something taken from a shipwreck.
And inside, rolled up, was a piece of paper. It was old, fragile, but the metal tubing had done its work.
Jane looked at Kelsey and carefully unrolled it.
* * *
The bones were in the mine wall.
They’d been undetected for over a hundred and forty years because they’d been shored up against the stone of the mine wall when work was done to support the structure to protect the miners from cave-ins.
“We found them,” Newsome told Sloan and Logan, “because one member of our crime-scene unit noted a little crevice in the rocks in the second set of openings. If she hadn’t seen that crack and been determined to go farther...”
There was something infinitely sad about the bones in the wall. They were attached to bits and pieces of fabric; time and heat had worn away the tissue and flesh, and they were heaped in a confusing pile. It appeared that the stagecoach robbers had brought them here, dug out the support structure, covered them with dirt and rock, then built up new “support beams” and a new wall around them.
The robbers—the killers—must have moved quickly, at night, because miners were working there at the time.
In fact, miners had come to work for years. Maybe, especially in the months afterward, they’d wondered at the smell.
But maybe they’d been so conditioned to the stench of heat and one another that they’d never noticed, and maybe decay had happened fast....
Three skulls lay in the pile of remains. Femurs stuck out, rib bones seemed strewn about.
It no longer seemed tragic, not the way finding the newly dead could be. It was still terribly sad.
“I’ll see that they’re removed,” Newsome told Sloan. “I’ll take all the proper measures, do what we can to identify the remains and arrange for burial. I just thought you should see this.”
“Yeah, I’m glad to see it,” Sloan said. “I think we’ve managed to solve the past, and what a kick in the ass to oral history and legend. Brendan Fogerty wasn’t a good guy at all. He was probably the mastermind pulling all the strings. Just his bad luck McNulty up and died without letting his partner know how to find the gold.” He looked at Newsome. “But we have no clue as to where the gold did wind up, right? And what about the st
agecoach?”
“The stagecoach might well have rotted to nothing over the years. And bones of dead horses have been found in the desert throughout time,” Newsome reminded him. “Or they could’ve been rescued by ranchers or Apaches.”
“Let’s hope so,” Logan muttered.
Sloan nodded. “Yeah, but that gold is somewhere,” he said. “And I believe someone is after it now.”
“Your men are still searching here?” Logan asked Newsome.
“Yes, but it’s not an easy task. I don’t want my people risking their lives in a possible cave-in.”
“I know, and we don’t want to see anyone injured, either.”
“You believe there are a number of people involved in this?” Newsome asked, turning to Sloan.
“At least two. There were two people in the Hough house,” Sloan said. “According to the son.”
“Later today I’ll have DNA results back from those glasses you pilfered from the theater the other night,” Newsome said. “Just remember, unless any of them show up in the system, I need something to check them against. I have the bottle you found in here, but that’s all I have.”
“Appreciate it,” Sloan told him.
“It’s my job. But you know your town way better than I do, Sloan.”
“I thought I knew the town,” Sloan said. “Now—” He broke off and shrugged. “We’ll find out what’s going on. I was a lucky bastard in Texas. I was never part of an unsolved murder case. I’m not going to be part of one here, either.” As he spoke, his phone rang. To his surprise, it was Jennie Layton.
He stepped back. “Jennie? You okay?”
“I’m improving and they say I can leave. Maybe tomorrow. But, Sloan, I’m afraid to leave. I keep remembering things.”
“You do?”
She lowered her voice. “Sloan, can you come see me? I’m feeling uneasy.”
“I’ll come over right now, Jennie,” he promised. “I have to ride back in and get a car, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Thank you. There’s just...” Her voice fell to a whisper he could barely make out. “There’s something going on here, Sloan. I can just feel it. Something’s going to happen. Something bad.”
14
Jane sat on the floor with Kelsey, carefully reading the note left behind by Trey Hardy.
They know, I’m sure, that I overheard them talking. I don’t believe they will let me come to trial. They suspect that I will use what I have overheard to save my life before a circuit judge. I know this just as I know what will transpire. They leave the jail and speak to one another about their intentions in the alley between my window and the theater, and they have seen my face when they look at me.
There is nowhere to turn. The sheriff and the deputy are both involved. I have lived hard and recklessly; I have seen the fall of the South—and known that we were often wrong. What becomes of me will not be just, and yet it will be deserved because I took the law into my own hands. May God help me. I practiced no cruelty. I killed during the war in the name of a Cause, but never killed at any other time in my life. What comes my way I will accept.
But I fear now for Sage; she has been to see me many times, a dear friend, a skilled actress, and mother and wife. They will kill me before my trial. I pray that someone else might find this letter, stop the crime those conspirators have planned, and see to her safety.
Their plan is that they can surprise the stagecoach. A sheriff and his deputy riding up will not cause alarm. They will murder those on the coach and hide their bodies in the desert; they have no fear of reprisal. They will hide the gold and let time go by, let it be forgotten. Then they will remove it from its hiding place, divide it and make haste across the border. The robbery will remain a legend, and they will invent some story to explain the disappearances of so many—including themselves.
God help us. Pray for all sinners.
Trey Hardy
Jane looked at Kelsey. “This is so tragic. I’m halfway in love with this poor dead outlaw!”
Kelsey nodded, trying to shove a piece of plaster back onto the wall.
It wasn’t going to work.
“Yeah, it’s sad. It’s terrible. But where’s the gold?”
Jane was thoughtful. “It’s in the theater.”
“Why the theater? It could be anywhere. We just dug out a wall and found the note. And here’s another question—why kill Berman? He was a stranger as far as we know. Berman, and then Caleb Hough. Hough is probably involved. But...why kill people, when the gold hasn’t even been uncovered?”
“They both had to be in on it,” Jane insisted.
“You seem convinced,” Kelsey said. “I’m going to call Logan again. If the county cops are handling whatever they just found in the mine, Logan can come back and get started on figuring out the connection. There has to be a connection.”
“I think I know,” Jane said slowly.
“Know what? The connection?”
Jane nodded. “How do you best hide anything?”
“Um, in a deep hole?” Kelsey suggested.
Jane laughed. “No. In plain sight. I think one of these conspirators found some of the gold, maybe a piece. He brought them all in on it, but the hiding place must be so obvious that no one’s seeing it.”
“Right. No one—like any one of us.”
“So, call Logan and tell him about the note. Meanwhile, we’ll go check out the theater.”
* * *
The county officer on duty at the hospital, a conscientious man in his late twenties, was distressed when Sloan arrived at Jennie Layton’s room.
He started to move a few feet from the door to greet Sloan, and Sloan smiled as he heard Jennie calling out, “Don’t you leave me, young man!”
He grimaced as he saw Sloan, speaking softly. “I keep telling her I have to keep an eye on three people here and she’s just one of them. She doesn’t want me to leave her, not for a minute.”
“It’s okay. Go see Jimmy and Zoe Hough. I’m here. Do you know what got her so upset?”
He shook his head.
Sloan went in to be with Jennie. “Hey,” he told her. “You have that young officer all in a dither, Jennie. What’s up?”
“They’re going to find me now, and they’re going to kill me!” she said, her voice hushed. She glanced at the door as she spoke.
“Who are they and how are they going to find you?” Sloan asked.
“They know I’m here. Maybe they didn’t mean to kill me at first, but they do now,” Jennie said decisively.
He sat for a minute, wondering if—despite her job or perhaps because of it—she was still essentially a lonely aging woman with no family of her own.
“Jennie, we haven’t let it out that you’ve even regained consciousness.”
“There’s someone in here, watching me,” Jennie said stubbornly. “One of the nurses, I think.”
“None of these nurses has anything to do with the theater.” He took her hand. “This is a county hospital. We’re from the little town of Lily. Honestly, a lot of county people hardly know we exist.”
“No,” she muttered, shaking her head. “You’re wrong. Someone is here, Sloan. Watching me—waiting for an opportunity.”
Sloan was torn. Jennie obviously felt afraid, certain of her own conviction. He didn’t want to sit at the hospital and worry about her imagined fear. Just as he began to tell her that he couldn’t stay with her, he noticed a nurse hovering in the doorway.
“I’ll come back,” the woman said in a husky voice. She had long dark hair with bangs and wore glasses with large green plastic frames.
“No, no, come in, we’re just talking,” Sloan said.
“It’s all right. I can, uh, check Ms. Layton’s vitals later,” the nurse said
, and turned quickly to move down the hall.
Sloan stood, frowning. He wouldn’t say that the nurse had been ugly, but she had a strange, rather masculine look to her.
He lit out of the room.
“Sloan, don’t leave me!” Jennie cried.
“Stop!” Sloan commanded in the hallway, watching the nurse all but run away. “Stop!”
He was completely ignored. He didn’t want to threaten to fire or shoot off a warning in a hospital. With Jennie’s voice fading in the background, he tore after the nurse.
The nurse looked back and then forward, running, pushing a work cart between the two of them. It flipped onto its side, and Sloan hopped over it as paper cups filled with medications flew into the air and onto the floor.
He caught the nurse about twenty feet past the overturned cart. Tackling the buxom brunette from the rear, he brought both of them down. He finally straddled his madly scrambling prey.
The brunette wig fell off, so did the glasses. He found himself staring down into the face of Brian Highsmith—easily recognizable now despite the eye makeup and bright red lipstick.
“Brian, you’re under arrest for the murder—”
“No, Sloan, no, please! This isn’t what it looks like,” Brian wailed.
By then, they had an audience. Patients, some dragging their IVs, had come out to the hall. Nurses, doctors and orderlies, as well.
Sloan got to his feet, dragging Brian up with him.
“Sloan, honest, I swear to you! I would never murder anyone! You have to believe me. I’d never hurt Jennie. Not on purpose. No—”
“Really? It looks like you’re pretending to be a nurse in order to see Jennie Layton. And since someone put her in a coma to get her here—”
“Yes, yes, I was trying to see Jennie. I thought—hoped—she might have recognized me,” Brian said quickly. “I never meant for anything bad to happen to her—I love her like I love my grandma!”
“What were you doing, dressing up so you could slip in that door?” Sloan demanded.
“I had to see her!” Brian answered.
Krewe of Hunters, Volume 3: The Night Is WatchingThe Night Is AliveThe Night Is Forever Page 27