He smiled, glad that Longman hadn’t decided to reveal himself to Heidi. Poor Heidi would’ve had a heart attack and he might have had another corpse on his hands.
“Thank you,” he said. He pulled out his phone and called the office, telling Chet to get down to the stables and the Old Jail and find out everything he could about the dead man they knew only as Jay.
And then he waited.
Soon enough, he heard the whir of a copter.
He closed his eyes and remembered the strange feeling he’d had the day he’d gone to the Old Jail over the stolen wallets.
He remembered the change in the air.
The skull in the theater basement.
And he remembered his dream.
The dark cloud of evil wasn’t coming his way.
It was already here.
*
Heidi might have been in shock for a few minutes, but riding back to the stables, she talked nonstop. “It’s horrible. Just horrible. That poor man! Shot dead. He was nice—and he actually tipped after the ride. So he comes here on vacation and he winds up dead in the desert. That’s so horrible. Oh, Lord, I thought an old corpse was horrible. A new one is so much worse. I wonder who the old corpse is? You know, not much happens in Lily. Seriously, thank God we’re not that far from Tucson in one direction and Phoenix in the other, because we’re pretty dead these days. Oh, God, not dead! That’s not what I meant. I mean...there were all kinds of murders way back in the day. Right after the Civil War and into the era of all the cowboys and miners. Back then, I think it was a couple of killings a week. But that was the wild, wild west, you know?”
Jane knew. It was just that her own mind was racing and she was only half paying attention to Heidi, which didn’t seem to matter.
“We had our famous outlaws—sheriffs, deputies and outlaws. Trey Hardy was the big one around here. He robbed banks after the Civil War. He was a Reb and when the war was over, his family had nothing, but he was like a Robin Hood—giving money and food to everyone around him. Except, of course, robbing banks is illegal. He was finally taken into custody by Sheriff Brendan Fogerty. Problem was, his deputy, Aaron Munson, hated Hardy—although I don’t think he really knew him—and he murdered Hardy in his cell. But people loved Hardy, and they were furious, so they wound up lynching Aaron Munson right in front of the jail on Main Street. So Hardy’s supposed to haunt his old jail cell, just like Munson’s supposed to haunt the street. Oh! Wow! What if we found Trey Hardy’s body? Or Munson’s? No, wait, that can’t be. They’re buried up on Dead Horse Hill, in the graveyard there. Unless someone dug them up. But Hardy supposedly wore parts of an old Rebel cavalry lieutenant’s uniform. And Munson...he’d probably be in a deputy’s uniform. No, wait, maybe they didn’t have them back then....”
Jane could have turned to Heidi and said that, yes, ghosts seemed to be teeming in Lily, Arizona. And that was probably true, but what could the ghosts have to do with a man being shot in the desert? And what was the point of scaring Heidi even more than she already was?
“You’re so calm!” Heidi said, admiration brimming in her eyes.
“Sad to say, I’ve seen a few corpses,” Jane told her. And sadder to say, I’ve had conversations with some.
“Nothing happens here—nothing! And now a skull, an old corpse and a new corpse!” Heidi marveled.
Thankfully, they reached the stables soon after that. And with almost perfect timing, her phone rang. It was Sloan; he’d called to make sure they’d gotten back without incident.
She assured him that they had. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“A crime-scene unit is out here, and I have Betty and Chet on finding out who our dead man is, where he came from and how he might’ve gotten himself shot in the desert,” Sloan explained. “Our old corpse, as Heidi calls him, is on his way to the county morgue. If you’re up to it, take the patrol car back to the station and work on the skull.”
She smiled at that.
If she was up to it.
“I’m in town. I’ll clean up, grab something to eat, then head over to your place to get the car and go back to the office. It’s still early.”
“Sure. Like I said, I have a car for you. It’s at the office, so once you’re there, you can leave whenever you want. I’ll give Johnny Bearclaw a call and tell him you’ll need my backup keys. Oh, and thank you for dealing with Heidi.”
“No problem. She was traumatized. I can well imagine. I remember the first time I saw a corpse. Don’t you remember what it was like?”
He was quiet a minute. “There’ve been so many now. Anyway, thanks.”
His voice seemed to wrap around her. Impatiently she gritted her teeth as they ended the call. It was better to think of him as a jerk. She didn’t need a one-night affair with cowboy.
Or maybe she did. Work had consumed her since the Krewe had come together. She’d had a life. Once.
She shook her head. They were dealing with the dead—not just the “old” dead, but the “new” dead.