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!”