The Night Is Watching

He glanced over at her. “You still going to dress up as Sage tomorrow?”



“I guess. You’re going to dress up as Trey Hardy, right?”



He smiled. “Me dressing up as Trey Hardy isn’t all that difficult. I wear a plumed hat and an old Confederate cavalry jacket. You, however, will have to walk around in a Victorian dress.”



“I can handle it for a day,” she said. “But seriously, should I keep working with the skull—sorry, your great-great grandmother’s skull? With everything else—”



“Yes, keep working on it. And the medical examiner’s office is going to clean up the skull of the old corpse we found. It would be good to learn who he was before we bury him again. And the more I think about it, the more I believe this might have to do with someone—or several someones—figuring they can find the gold that disappeared in the 1870s. Hmm.” He slowed the car as they came onto Main Street. “Town’s already hopping.”



And it was. People were crowding the street. The saloon was overflowing, and although it was almost eleven, people were coming in and out of Desert Diamonds, many wearing old-fashioned garb.



“I’ll see you at the station tomorrow,” Jane told him. “Don’t get out!” she said, suspecting that he meant to stop the car and open her door. “I’ll be fine.”



He nodded and watched her go.



Jane hurried through the busy downstairs of the theater and up to her room. She stepped inside, closing and locking the door behind her. “Hey,” she said quietly. “I hope you’re feeling better. We do know the truth, and we’ll bury you properly,” she promised. “Oh, and by the way, I take back anything bad I said about your great-great grandson. In fact, I think I’m a little too fond of the man!”



Sage didn’t respond. But later that night, when Jane started feeling chilly in the air-conditioning, she was suddenly warm.



Sage might have been Bohemian in her lifestyle; she might have been a great actress, stealing many hearts.



But Jane had the feeling that she’d been a very tender mother, as well.



* * *



It was barely six in the morning when Sloan’s cell phone rang.



He woke immediately and reached for it, afraid something else might have happened at the theater.



Grabbing the phone he noted the caller ID. Liam Newsome.



“We found the rental car, Sheriff. Want to meet out on the highway?”



“You bet. Where are you?”



Newsome gave him the coordinates, and Sloan told him he could be there in twenty minutes.



He got ready quickly, but before heading out, he went to his at-home office. He turned on the receiver, hoping he might have caught sounds from the cave shaft where he’d left the bug yesterday. He listened, but nothing registered.



Someone was doing something in the old mine. What? If he knew that, he was certain he could solve the murder.



He checked in with Johnny, asking him to monitor the audio and get in touch right away if he heard anything.



When he arrived at the site of the car, he wasn’t surprised it had taken so long to find. It was almost off the highway, strategically placed behind and to the side of a hillock of grassy shrub and brush, now covered by desert sand and blended into the landscape.



A tow truck from the county stood ready to retrieve it and bring it in for forensics, but Newsome had halted the recovery until Sloan could reach the scene.



“Thought you’d want to see where it was,” Newsome said.



Sloan nodded. “Thanks. I doubt Jay Berman parked it here,” he said drily, “which leads me to believe that two people were probably involved in his murder. Someone had to drive the car here, and since we’re miles from anywhere, whoever drove it must have had someone come by to pick him—or her—up.”



“That’s what I was thinking,” Newsome agreed. “What still gets me is that there has to be a reason. You only see this kind of thing when gangs, mobs...drugs are involved.”



“Unless it was made to look like a mob hit. In a real hit, the body would usually be found in a scrap yard or such—not in the desert with another dead man pointing the way.”



“Yeah. You have anything else? He did come out of Lily,” Newsome said.



“I’m working a few angles,” Sloan told him. “Combing the area where the body was found.”



“Crime-scene tape is still up.”



Sloan nodded. “Anything inside the car?” he asked.



Newsome walked him over to it; the doors and the trunk were open. The trunk was empty. So was the car. The glove compartment stood open and Sloan asked Newsome what they’d found in it.



“Maps. Maps of the county—and maps of Lily. One was especially interesting. Copy of a map done by a surveyor back in the early 1870s. I’ll get it scanned and over to your office as soon as I’m back in mine,” Newsome said. “Your fed artist is still here, right?”



“Yes.”



“We’ll have the skull of the dug-up corpse ready by this afternoon. Someone will bring it over. I guess you’ve got a lot on your plate, what with Silverfest, but the medical examiner said he’d be done by then, so we might as well send it over.”



Sloan wondered if it was wrong to be glad that they had another old corpse to identify, since it would keep Jane in Lily for a few more days....



He drove back to town.



Main Street was alive with activity. He arrived just in time to see the annual lynching of Aaron Munson. For the past few years, Mike Addison from the Old Jail had taken on the role of Sheriff Fogerty, while Brian Highsmith portrayed the ill-fated Munson. Henri Coque orchestrated the reenactment, and volunteers were drawn from the crowd to play small roles, along with the rest of the theater troupe.



Sloan decided to take a few minutes to watch the spectacle before heading into his office for the day. Betty was handling the desk alone. Chet was in town; one officer was always on Main Street during Silverfest, assuring tourists that law enforcement was concerned about their safety.



Parking, he saw Chet standing on the wooden sidewalk in front of the saloon.



Cy Tyburn held Mike back in his role as Fogerty as he tried to prevent the mob from taking his deputy—even if his deputy had just shot their prisoner in cold blood.



Valerie Mystro and Alice Horton were out to spur the crowd into action, Valerie screaming that Munson had killed their hero, Hardy. Bartenders and waitresses from the theater were all in on the action, encouraging the crowd to join them as part of the lynch mob.



“Our hero! This man—this deputy!—shot down our hero! No trial, no conviction. He shot him down when he was defenseless, cornered, caged! Lynch him!” Valerie cried.



“Take him, take him! Show him that we won’t allow even a deputy to take the law into his own hands!” Alice Horton shouted.



“Get rope! Get a horse, get this man dead!” Henri Coque demanded.



Sloan recognized two of the night bartenders as they came down the street from the stables with a horse and a rope. Brian, loudly protesting that he’d killed a heinous, low-down bank robber who just wasn’t going to get away with robbing the county blind, was dragged up onto the horse; the noose was slipped around his neck. The rope was then tied to the rafters of the overhang by the Old Jail. Someone slapped the horse’s rump and “Munson” swung from the rafters.



Henri Coque crawled up on a podium set to the far side of the road for the reenactment. “And so it was that Deputy Aaron Munson paid the price for his eagerness to kill Trey Hardy in Lily, Arizona. Was Hardy guilty? Beyond a doubt. But he was loved because at a time when the country was healing, when the West was still wild, he was a man of the people. Take care today, friends. The ghosts of Trey Hardy, murdered in his cell, and Aaron Munson, lynched by the crowd, still wander these streets! Just as the ghost of our beautiful diva, Sage McCormick, roams the stage of the theater and haunts her old room—appearing at her window to watch the streets of the town she came to love.”



There was a roar of applause, especially as “Munson”—hanging from the rafter but with a safety harness around him—lifted his head. “And come back and see us here in Lily!” he called out. “The Old Jail fills up for Silverfest, so get your reservations in early!”



Sloan applauded with the rest of the crowd. He looked up at the theater, drawn to the window Henri had indicated.



His heart seemed to quicken. There was someone at the window. A woman, gazing down.



He glanced around to see if he was imagining things, but he saw a little girl in the crowd tugging at her mother’s hand and pointing. “It’s Sage! Sage McCormick!”



For a moment, he thought he’d actually seen her at last.



But then the woman raised a hand and he realized she was looking right at him. She smiled.



And he smiled in return.



It was Jane, and she was playing her role, just as she’d been asked.



The crowd broke up after Henri announced that there’d be a gunfight between Mean Bill Jenkins and Savage Sam Osterly on Main Street in an hour.



Chet walked over to him. “Hey, Sloan.”



“Chet. Everything going well here?”



Chet nodded. “We’ve got a heck of a crowd, though. You hadn’t left orders, but Betty checked in with the chief over at county. They have a few of their people here, just wandering through the crowd. Hope that sits fine with you. Not that we usually have trouble, but with this many people... The boys from the night crew suggested it. The reports are on your desk.” He shrugged. “We had a few bar fights last night.”



“I think Betty was brilliant and I’m ashamed I didn’t take care of it myself.”



“Silverfest is getting bigger every year,” Chet said happily.



“Yes, it is.”



“And what with a murder in town and all...”



“Yep. I’ll go in and check the reports,” Sloan said. “Then I’ll be back here for most of the day, unless something breaks.”



As he spoke, Jane appeared on the sidewalk. He thought she did the town’s diva and his great-great grandmother proud. Her hair was swept up in a loose chignon and she was wearing a blue period dress with gold cord that seemed to bring out the brilliance of her eyes. She smiled and joined him.