That wasn’t the ghost, she was sure of it—and definitely not the mannequins.
A deranged-looking figure in a straitjacket held a cleaver high. The cleaver was plastic, although the mannequin was creepy. Out on the street it had probably drawn many to the theater; by day it would be a come-on to those who wanted to be a little scared by their entertainment.
Ignore the mannequins. They aren’t real.
“Jennie?” she called again. The mannequins might not be real, but they made it very hard to find someone who was.
“Go ahead. Try to scare me. I am ignoring you,” Jane said aloud. She laughed at herself and admitted that the mannequins scared the hell out of her. She determinedly wound her way around some shrieking harpy and a man with a fly’s head.
Again, it seemed that one of them, a man in a turn-of-the-century tux, swung around to touch her and knock her in the arm. She almost cried out in surprise, but realized she’d pushed another mannequin into it and the thing had moved.
She heard the groan again.
Another mannequin with a wide-open circular mouth was in front of her, holding up a book. She scooted by it and at last found the flesh-and-blood woman she sought.
Jennie was crumpled on the floor, lying on her back. Her eyes were closed and a trickle of blood had dried on her forehead.
“Oh, Jennie,” Jane cried, digging in the pocket of her skirt for her cell phone as she knelt down by the woman, clasping her wrist to test the strength of her pulse.
It was weak.
“Jennie, stay with me. I’m getting help right away,” she said.
Even as she spoke, she felt as if there was a tap on her shoulder. She looked up. Sage McCormick was with her again, in front of her, between Jennie’s crumpled body and a row of frontier schoolboys.
She had a look of terror on her face and she waved an arm frantically.
It was a warning to turn around.
Jane started to do so. She felt a whoosh of air and briefly saw the twisted face of a madman wearing a pork pie hat, lips pulled back over teeth that were bared and yellow.
It seemed to be coming at her.
She felt the slam of something hard and heavy against her head.
She crashed down on Jennie’s prone body.
*
Jane didn’t answer her cell phone when Sloan called. That worried him instantly; someone like Jane would always have her phone handy, ready for any emergency. He called Chet, who was working Main Street, and asked him to find her.
“I don’t see her right now,” Chet said, “but, boy, did I see her earlier! She got into the action on the street. She was great! She was funny, and she switched the whole scene. They didn’t have the shoot-out. She turned it into a totally different scene, with the girls from the show and the guys hamming it up. She’s a natural!”
“Chet, I’m glad to hear that, but I need to speak with her now.”
“Sure. I’ll look for her. Want me to call you back?”
“No, I want you to stay on the line until you find her.”
Sloan sat on a chunk of rock that had fallen to the floor when they’d caved in the shaft entrance. He glanced over at the body beneath the tarp, his mind racing. He’d already called Liam Newsome; he and his crime team and the medical examiner were on their way. Sloan rued the fact that there were no real roads back here and nothing was easy once you were this far into the desert.
“What’s happening now?” Johnny asked him as time ticked by.
“Chet asked Henri Coque where Jane went. Henri said she’s looking for Jennie and he hasn’t seen either of them since.”
Sloan turned his attention back to Chet. “Where’s she looking?”
“In the theater.”
“Well, get in there and find her!” Sloan said.
He waited; Chet eventually came back on the line. “I’ve been to her room, I’ve been in the theater, behind the stage, back of the bar, in the kitchen. She’s not here, Sloan.”
Sloan cursed and stood. “I’m on my way in,” he said. “Get everyone looking for her, Chet. I mean everyone. Tear the town apart.”
“We’re needed here,” Chet argued. “We’ve got a town full of people and some of them are getting drunk and a little rowdy—”
“Find her,” he broke in. “Everyone on it. We’ve just come across another victim.”
“Who—”
“Just find her, Chet. Now,” Sloan ordered.
He hung up, feeling so frantic he was ready to crash through the rock walls.
“I will deal with Newsome,” Johnny said. “I will tell him that the boulder was loose, and that you suspected there might be mischief going on in here, like you said when you called him.”
“Thanks.” Sloan had already pocketed his bug.
He cursed himself. He had known there was illicit activity in the mine, and he’d wanted to catch someone doing something.
He hadn’t expected this.