The Night Is Watching (28 page)

“If we’re in the same bed, I’d
want
to fool around. I’m great at sleeping in chairs.”

“That’s ridiculous, and you’re going to make me feel bad.”

This time he smiled. “So, you’re saying you can keep your hands off me?”

“With ghosts in the room, I can.”

“Get in there. I’ll be fine.”

Sloan was determined. He pulled the chair up, stretched his legs out on the bed and settled in. Jane crawled into the bed and tossed him a pillow. “You know, I’m going to worry about you all night.”

“Don’t. I’ll be sleeping.”

He was stubborn and Jane could tell she wasn’t going to change his mind, she crawled into bed. Sloan’s head was thrown back; his eyes were closed. For a moment, she thought he’d already drifted off.

“Ironic,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Our relationship is going to be all over town tomorrow—because of the one evening we slept apart.”

She curled her arms around the remaining pillow. He was in the room with her and she let herself fall into a deep and peaceful sleep.

If Trey Hardy came again that night, she didn’t know it. When she woke, Sloan was in the bathroom. The door was open; he’d showered and he was frowning at the mirror.

He turned to her. “He’s here. Trey Hardy is here. And there
is
something in that wall.”

* * *

“I’ve been looking up the history of mannequins,” Kelsey told Jane as they drove to the station. “Great stuff. They found a torso carved out of wood in King Tut’s tomb, which shows that the use of mannequins goes back thousands of years. Kings and queens gave them as gifts to fellow royals and to inform other countries of the latest fashion trends. In the 1700s they were often wicker, and a lot of them had no heads, but by 1870—right around the time all the trauma was going on here—the fashion-conscious French started making them elaborate again and you know how it goes with the world imitating French fashion.”

“Whenever I’ve finished this drawing,” Jane said, “we’ll get down into that basement.”

“Didn’t a whole crime-scene unit go through it?” Kelsey asked.

“Yes, but I think we’re looking for something a crime-scene unit isn’t going to find.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know—but that’s what we do, right? Find what we don’t know we’re looking for,” Jane said, adding, “in a way.”

“Yeah, in a way. We could really use physical evidence against someone, too.”

They reached the office. Chet Morgan and Lamont Atkins were still working in town; Betty greeted them at the desk. Kelsey followed along behind Jane and helped her set the skull on the Franklin plane, take the photographs and do the scanning. Betty came in now and then to see how they were doing. “Wow!” she said, watching Jane work first with the computer and then do her sketch from the overlays. “I’m impressed.”

In fact, Betty was in the room when she’d almost finished. “It’s him, all right. It’s him!” Betty said excitedly.

“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 stagecoach?”

“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

J
ane 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.

“Mommy!” one of the patients cried out. “That lady is...a man!”

“It’s all right. Let’s go back to your room,” the mother said.

“Hey, man, there’s meds all over the floor!” A skinny fellow who looked like he should be in detox said happily.

Another nurse came up. “Mr. Wilson, get back in your room!” she told him.

One of the doctors approached Sloan. “You need to take this out of here, Sheriff. You’re upsetting my patients.”

Sloan spun around on him. “Well, you’re going to have to explain to me how an actor got into your hospital dressed as a nurse and was moving among your
upset
patients!” he snapped.

He spun Brian around, snapping plastic cuffs onto his wrists. “I will remove this man that
you’ve
let in,” he said, glowering as he marched down the hall. The county officer was standing in front of Jennie’s room, trying to watch Sloan and trying to watch the hallway. Both Jimmy Hough and his mother had come out of their respective rooms. Zoe Hough was standing behind her son, a protective hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Sloan told them.

“He got in here!” Zoe said with horror.

“Did you kill my father?” Jimmy demanded, scowling at Brian.

“What? No!” Brian shouted. “I didn’t kill anyone! Won’t anybody listen to me?”

Sloan pulled his phone from his pocket and called the office. Betty answered. “Betty, get Chet or Lamont down here. I need someone to pick up a prisoner. I want him held at our facility until I can get back there myself. And warn whoever’s coming not to take their eyes off him for a minute. You understand?”

“Yes, Sheriff, of course. Who’s being picked up? Did you—”

“It’s Brian Highsmith. I want this man in our lockup, and I don’t want him getting out. No mess-ups. Get someone here now!”

“Yessir, yessir!” Betty said.

He hung up his phone. Jimmy Hough, fists clenched, looked as if he was going to hit Brian with a hard right hook to the jaw. Sloan quickly stepped between them. “Jimmy, stop. We have to get to the bottom of this. Please, go back into your rooms. Everything’s under control.”

“Sheriff, you’re not leaving us, are you?” Zoe asked, her eyes wide and frightened.

“Not right now. I’m here until I can get more help in.”

“Do as he says, please, Jimmy!” Zoe told her son. Jimmy continued to stare at Brian but he moved back as his mother pushed his chest. “Jimmy, the law will take care of it.”

“He killed my father,” Jimmy said dully.

“We don’t know that yet,” Sloan said.

“I swear I just came to see Jennie!” Brian insisted. “I was, uh, fooling around in the basement when she came down and I didn’t want to get into trouble. I didn’t mean to hurt her—or that nice agent, Jane. I didn’t want them to know I was there.... I accidentally hit Jennie too hard and I need her to forgive me. I was trying to...I was trying to talk to her, to beg her forgiveness. I—I was worried about jail, but I love Jennie. I need her to forgive me.”

“Shut up for now, Brian,” Sloan said. His phone was ringing. He flipped it open; Logan was calling.

“I found the connection,” Logan said without preamble.

“Which connection?” Sloan asked.

“Jay Berman. He did some work for Caleb Hough about a decade ago. I’m pretty sure he put a few ranch workers in the hospital. He’d been out in Arizona on another so-called vacation. That was right around the time two of Hough’s workers—who’d demanded higher pay—ended up injured. So, I’m not sure who the hell killed Hough, but I’ll bet Jay Berman messed up, so Hough was the one who might’ve killed him.”

Sloan looked at Brian. “Can you get down to the hospital?”

“Right away.”

He hung up. Brian was shaking his head. “I’m not a killer, Sloan. I’m an actor! I was just going to plead with Jennie not to give me up so I didn’t go to jail or lose my job!” he said.

“Brian, people just ‘fooling around’ in the basement of the building they work in don’t render old women unconscious because they’re afraid of being caught.”

“No, you don’t understand. I could have lost my job.”

“Brian, you
should
lose your job for nearly killing people,” Sloan said.

“But I didn’t mean to! Hey, Sloan, I’m a good guy. Really. Sure, I wanted to look for the gold. That’s all anyone talks about now. But I never—I swear I
never
meant to hurt anyone.”

Jennie came into the hall then and confronted Brian, her face twisted in a mask of fury. She pointed a finger at him. “You tried to get in before. There was another nurse in here and she sent you to tend to another patient. God help that patient! How could you, Brian? How
could
you?”

“Jennie, please, believe me! I came to beg your forgiveness!”

Sloan was relieved to hear the sound of a siren. “Jennie, go back to bed. Brian, move!”

He prodded Brian to the front, pulling him through reception where stares and whispers followed his every move.

As he drew Brian outside with him, he was surprised to see Betty getting out of the car.

“Hey, what are you doing here? I told you to send Lamont or Chet.”

“Lamont was breaking up a bar fight and Chet was dealing with some kid who was higher than a kite. He’ll probably be in here in a few minutes. Talked to Scotty and he was on his way in. It sounded urgent when I talked to you,” Betty said.

Sloan nodded. “Betty, get him back to our offices, put him in lockup, make sure he’s secure. And stay there. Scotty will be manning the office alone, since the other night guys will be back in town. It won’t be that long. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve gotten the Hough family and Jennie calmed down enough for me to leave.”

“If he calls an attorney—” Betty began.

“I don’t care if he calls in all the gods on Olympus, I can have him for twenty-four hours and I want him there when I get in,” Sloan told her.

“I’ve got it, Sloan. But...Brian? Brian Highsmith? What the hell were you doing, young man? And to think I enjoyed your performances!”

Brian groaned. “Yes, I knocked Jennie out by mistake. Okay, and the agent. But I didn’t kill anybody. Honest to God, I’m not a killer! I just thought I’d look for gold, too. I mean, I hear so much about it!”

“Betty, get him out of here,” Sloan said, irritated. Betty took Brian by the arm. “Wait!” Sloan said, accosting Brian head-on. “What about the bones? The skull? Did you put the skull on the wig stand?”

Brian turned red and pursed his lips, nodding. “Sheriff, I...found the trapdoor, the body. I should have reported it, but... I set up the skull. You weren’t supposed to come. When Valerie screamed, I was supposed to save her. I was just trying to get lai—” He broke off, looking at Betty. “I was trying to make Valerie see me more as a date than a coworker. The woman in the floor had been dead forever. Yeah, I figured it might be Sage McCormick. Sheriff, I know she was...that you’re like her great-great-whatever grandson, but come on, she’d been dead for years. More than a century. I didn’t kill anyone, I swear it.”