“I might have found something, but I’d rather not pursue it until I talk to you.”
“Where are you? What did you find?”
“I’m at the station. And maybe nothing. I’ll explain when I see you. Meanwhile, I thought I’d work while I waited.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
He wedged the boulder back where it had been. He would need light to go farther into the old tunnel. He was rather fond of living, so he wasn’t exploring until he had one of his deputies with him—and until his whole crew knew where he was and what he was doing.
Before mounting up, he looked around again. Someone was running around the desert with a gun and executing people. Well, only one so far, but that could be just the beginning...
He wasn’t letting anyone take him that way.
Right now, he was damned certain that he was alone.
He rode home and took the car into the station, anxious now to see Jane and learn what she had discovered.
No, he realized.
He was anxious to see her.
*
By the time Sloan arrived, Jane had placed half of her clay “muscle” strips over the wooden depth-marker pegs she’d attached to the skull. When she heard him come in, she covered the skull—remembering that it had belonged to his great-great grandmother. He grimaced.
“I’m a sheriff. I can take it,” he told her. But he didn’t wait for her to move the cloth. “What did you find?” he asked.
She got up to close the door he’d left open.
“I saw Sage last night,” she told him.
He looked at her and arched his brows slowly. She wondered if he thought she might have imagined a sighting—because last night they’d spoken about the dead they saw.
“I woke up because she was standing over me.”
“That’s what the supposed ‘ghost expedition’ guy said when he ran out,” Sloan told her.
His voice was level. She still couldn’t tell if he was skeptical.
“She led me out of the room. It was late, in between the bar closing and the day staff coming in,” Jane said.
He was watching her with a deep frown but didn’t say anything so she went on. “I followed her down to the theater and into one of the dressing rooms. She wanted me to see that there’s a trapdoor in the flooring.”
“And what was under the trapdoor?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t budge it, and then...then I left because I thought I heard someone in the bar.”
“Who was it?”
“There was no one there, and then I just ran back up to the bedroom because the staff was coming in.”
“So, you want me to ask Henri Coque about opening the hatch in the dressing room,” he said.
“Yes. I mean, I shouldn’t even know it’s there. I’m a guest. I have no business being in that part of the theater at all.”
He nodded. “I guess I need a reason to prowl around the dressing rooms,” he said.
“There’s a little more....”
“What’s that?”
“When I woke up and showered...there was blood on my feet.”
“You cut yourself?” he asked in a thick voice.
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t have any cuts—not even a scratch. So, somewhere I walked, there was...blood. And when I heard those sounds, it was like something being dragged. But I didn’t see anything at all, so I don’t know if I imagined it. And I was in the kitchen, so it could’ve been blood from meat they used or...” She stopped, shaking her head again in disgust. “I’m not even sure it was blood. It had rinsed down the drain before I realized I’d tracked it in.”
“All right. Let me call Newsome and check in with my deputies, then we’ll head back to the theater,” he said.
He left, and she figured she had about fifteen minutes so she could get another few strips placed on the skull. She went back to work and was concentrating so fully that she didn’t hear him when he returned. He must have been watching her for a while.
“Muscles make the face,” she murmured. “And soft tissue. The mouth is such a major part of a person’s expression, but working with eyes and nose can give us a good idea of that person’s appearance and demeanor. A skull can tell you about a person’s health and development, too. The reconstruction done on the skull of Robert the Bruce clearly showed the leprosy he suffered before his death. And the skull of King Midas revealed that he’d had his head bound as a child to create a longer vault—something considered noble or beautiful at the time.” She dusted her hands on her work jacket and covered the skull again. She’d been rambling on about her work.
But, to her surprise, he didn’t refer to anything she’d said.
“What you did was really dangerous,” he told her instead.
“Pardon?”