The Night Is Watching

“Happen? Not really. But, Sloan, we’re getting closer. In the morning, I’ll do a two-dimensional sketch of the skull from the desert. I’m willing to bet it’s Red Marston. I’m almost positive Red and Sage were killed because they knew too much—and the same with Trey Hardy. I saw Sage tonight and...” She paused.



“And?”



“She’d had her tongue cut out. And just like we discussed earlier this evening, you have your tongue cut out when you’ve said too much or spoken against someone—or when it’s a warning not to talk.”



“Or if you want to make sure your victims suffer before they die.”



He walked past her into the bathroom and ran his hand over the painted plaster of the wall. “So, the ghost insists there’s something back there?” he asked.



She nodded. Sloan raised his brows, hands on hips. “I think your agency’s budget is bigger than mine.”



“Meaning?”



“Tomorrow, we’ll dig out that wall,” he said. “We’ll just have to replace it. Logan and Kelsey are at the Gilded Lily, right?”



“Yes.”



“From now on, one of us is at both of these places every night. But for now, we really need to get some sleep.”



“I agree.”



“I’ll take that chair,” he told her.



“Why would you do that when we’ve been sleeping together?” she asked.



“Ghosts.”



She smiled. “Just because we’re in the same bed doesn’t mean that we have to fool around in it.”



“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.”