Nightwalker. Part 30

"I'm trying," Green said.

They were all startled by a cheerful whistle coming from the hall. "Good morning," Adam Harrison said as he walked into the room, showered and dressed and ready to tackle the day.

"No, stay!" Dillon said when Tanner looked as if he was about to disappear again. "It's Adam, my boss, and he can't even see you."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt," Adam said. "I'll be in the kitchen. You all keep talking."

"I need to think," Tanner said, his image solidifying. "I need to think."

Dillon rose. He needed to do some thinking himself. "Rudy, go hang around the Sun and see what you can pick up. Tanner, you go back to the Big Easy and see what you can find out over there. Jessy, we need to go see your grandfather."

"Gotcha," Rudy said, nodding.

"I'm off, then," Green said.

"I'm going to take a shower," Jessy said to Dillon. "You can go fill Adam in."

Nikki and Brent met them at the home, and Timothy was delighted with the extra company. He and Brent talked for several minutes about the old ways, and it made Jessy smile to see Timothy so happy.

She was embarra.s.sed when Sandra called and she realized that she had forgotten to call her friend that morning to a.s.sure her that everything was all right. She stepped out into the hall and told Sandra that some friends of Dillon's were in town, and said maybe they could all meet up that night.

Sandra was relieved to hear that Jessy was now surrounded by people who could be trusted. "Promise me you'll be with someone every second of the day," she demanded.

"I promise," Jessy a.s.sured her.

Sandra hung up, and Jessy wandered back to Timothy's room, where he was happily holding court. A little while later Dillon said he had to leave to do some work at the library. Adam excused himself, too, and said he was going to take the rental car and head over to the Sun to see if he could overhear anything useful, maybe even find someone likely to know something and get him talking. The others seemed happy enough to spend time at the home with Timothy until someone was free to pick them up.

Once they were gone, Brent Blackhawk faced Timothy. "I'd like to hear more about the ghost dancers," he said gravely.

Timothy, seeming totally lucid, nodded, looking anxious, and glanced at Jessy. She went to his side and put her arms around him. "Timothy, it's okay. The rest of us see things that others don't, too. Brent has been seeing...ghosts for many years, and he believes in your visions."

"They are a.s.sembling," Timothy said.

"Who is?" Brent asked him.

"My ancestor, Dillon's ancestor. The others...I know their names. The singer is Milly, and there is a man named Ringo Murphy and another named Mark Davison. No one likes him. The sheriff is there, too. His name is Grant Percy. Or Percy Grant," Timothy said, frowning and shaking his head. "I'm not sure. But they're waiting. Something evil lives there. The posse is on the way, and Wolf is waiting, but he's been betrayed. Someone told the evil man that he was there, because otherwise he couldn't have known so quickly that Wolf had returned. And now they're a.s.sembling again."

"Why, Timothy?" Brent asked.

"Because of the gold," Timothy said.

"But there is is no gold. The veins they found were tapped out, and no one ever found the mother lode." no gold. The veins they found were tapped out, and no one ever found the mother lode."

"But it's there," Timothy said gravely. "It's there."

"Where?" Brent asked.

Timothy ignored the question or maybe didn't even hear it, and said, "They'll a.s.semble because they're searching for the gold." He shook his head. "It isn't theirs, and that's why they want to find it first. So they can steal it."

For the second time that day, Jessy wanted to scream in frustration. Half of what he was saying made sense, and the rest sounded like nothing but nonsense.

Were all these people really dying because of gold that might not even exist?

The Henderson Library not only offered state-of-the-art facilities but a coffee shop and, best of all, librarians who were helpful, knowledgeable and willing to tackle any challenge.

Dillon started out by researching the town itself.

Indigo had been incorporated in 1857 by miners working a nearby goldfield that, sadly, didn't pan out as they'd hoped. Still, for years men kept looking for the vein that was rumored to be bigger than any other find. Frank Varny owned the mining rights on as much of the nearby land as he could grab and worked relentlessly to control the area. There were a few struggling ranches closer to the river, and the town had enough going on to support a bank, a doctor and a weekly newspaper. Every now and then a preacher even came to town and set up shop, but the preachers never lasted. The single church had pretty much crumbled into the dust, and it had never been repaired. The land the town stood on had not, oddly enough, actually belonged to Varny, but to an old miner who had moved on to the San Francisco goldfields. In 1876, a purchase, duly registered in the territorial offices, showed that one John Wolf had paid the measly sum requested by the old owner, and a deed had been written out, making the Paiute nation the actual owners of the land.

Dillon looked up and shook his head. He hadn't learned anything new. He started looking for articles on the gunfight that had killed John Wolf and Frank Varny, along with a number of others.

Blood Bath in Indigo, read one headline.

Dillon began to scan the accompanying article, Timothy's words running through his head as he read.

They are a.s.sembling.

The account of the incident said that there had been a history of bad blood between John Wolf and Frank Varny. It was a pretty good article, Dillon thought, filled with facts. Killed: Frank Varny, John Wolf, Ringo Murphy, Mark Davison, Sheriff Grant Percy and five hired guns who had worked for Frank Varny: Austin Makepiece, Riley Hornsby, Seth Bigelow, Drew Miffins and Tobias Wilson. Those who had survived the ma.s.sacre and lived to describe it had been Mariah Wolf, Milly Taylor and the piano player, George Turner, who had left before the gunfire to raise a citizens' posse. Despite being afraid and armed with only a motley array of weapons, they had come as quickly as they could, but arrived only after the bloodbath. Since John Wolf had purchased and registered the claim to the land on behalf of the Paiute nation, the land underneath Indigo, as well as the nearby claim, had belonged to the tribe, and a later act of Congress had given it to them in perpetuity as reservation land. Any gold discovered would belong to the tribe. But the gold hadn't been discovered, and Indigo had become a town of dust and tumbledown buildings, soon to be abandoned completely.

They are a.s.sembling.

Dillon shook his head. He was a Wolf, Jessy was descended from the piano player and Ringo was still here. There were already three dead men-did they count for three of Varny's gunslingers? If so, it meant there were two remaining-one gunslinger and Davison-along with Varny himself. And what about Rudy? Was he connected somehow?

He gritted his teeth, wondering if he was crazy. If he was right, Emil Landon was Varny. Two more henchmen would round it out. No, he was forgetting the sheriff, the bartender and the singer. But they hadn't taken sides in the deadly confrontation, nor had Mariah.

It still didn't make sense that the whole thing was connected to the search for gold. Men had searched the entire area, and no one had ever found the gold that legend claimed was there.

He read the article again, wondering what he wasn't seeing. And why in h.e.l.l would Emil Landon hire Tanner Green as a bodyguard, then kill him himself?

On a hunch, he asked a librarian for local birth and death records. Emil Landon had claimed Paiute blood in his ancestry, which meant his lineage could be traced.

The librarian led him to a separate room, where he started to pore over long-ago records, some seemingly as dusty as the town of Indigo itself.

Finally he found exactly what he was seeking. Emil Landon could trace his bloodline back to a Paiute on his paternal side-and to Frank Varny on his maternal side. Did he believe that there really was gold in Indigo? That he could finesse it away from the tribe because of his ancestry?

Dillon closed his eyes and was rubbing them in exhaustion when his phone started vibrating in his pocket. He answered it quietly.

"Wolf here."

It was Jerry Cheever, and Dillon realized he should have expected the call. Cheever didn't know he'd already seen the latest corpse to wind up in the morgue.

"One of those guys you chased off last night is dead. At least, I think it's one of the men who attacked Jessy Sparhawk last night. Corpse came into the morgue last night, a jumper-or that's what it looked like, anyway. But you'll never guess what Tarleton found in his system when he ran the tox screen today."

"What?" Dillon asked.

"LSD. The fellow took a nice trip before he went for his flight straight to h.e.l.l. Oh, he had a record, by the way."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"Well, here's something else to factor into the equation. We're bringing Emil Landon in for questioning. Go figure," Jerry said sarcastically. "We found a b.u.t.ton in his limo. A b.u.t.ton off Tanner Green's s.h.i.+rt. Imagine that."

Dillon smiled at Cheever's sarcasm. "Can you charge him?"

"I can keep him around a while. Charge him? I can try-but he'll walk. Tanner Green worked for him, and whether it's true or not, Landon will say that Green sometimes drove the car. There's no way a b.u.t.ton from Landon's employee's s.h.i.+rt in Landon's own casino's limo will be enough evidence to satisfy anyone that the man's a murderer. A good defense attorney-h.e.l.l, even a c.r.a.p one-could tear apart a flimsy piece of evidence like that. But I'll hold him as long as I can. See if he'll inadvertently spill some info. I could be wrong, but he doesn't seem like he's that bright, certainly not bright enough to be behind this whole thing, so maybe we'll get lucky."

Mean, yes. Bright? Maybe not. Maybe Cheever was right.

"Just because he's not brilliant doesn't mean he's not in on it," Dillon said.

"I agree. But we need evidence."

"Right, and thanks. Jerry, mind if I come in and study the tapes again?"

"No problem. Give me an hour or so. I'll get you set up with a decent monitor and a tech."

Jessy was glad to answer her phone and hear Dillon's voice. When he suggested that they all have lunch together, she agreed, and he said he would be by shortly.

"I think we ought to take Timothy with us, don't you?"

"I think that would be great," he told her.

When they got to the restaurant, she and Nikki wound up at one end of the table-with Ringo-while Brent, Timothy and Dillon confabbed at the other. Before long, she and Nikki-and Ringo-found themselves eavesdropping, and from there it was just a short step to joining the conversation.

"Timothy, you say there's gold out there?" Dillon asked. He was frowning, but he wasn't acting as if he thought Timothy was delusional in any way.

"It's there," Timothy said. "I saw what happened when I was there. Well, George Turner was there, and I saw it through his eyes. Wolf knew where the gold was, I'm sure of it. And then Varny came in, and...well, you know what happened after that."

"If that's the case, and all these deaths really have something to do with Indigo," Jessy said, "it means that someone out there believes in the gold, too. But he doesn't know how to find it. He thinks Dillon will figure it out for him."

"You think that's why he was looking for a paranormal investigator? Because he knows things are building toward a reenactment? You think it was all a scam, his life being in danger?" Brent asked.

"It's beginning to look that way," Dillon admitted.

They had barely finished eating at that point, and already he was looking anxious.

"We've got to go," he said, standing and reaching into his pocket for a piece of paper, which he handed to Brent. "Check out these names for me, will you? Start with the top name in the left-hand column. On the right I've listed the names of everyone in the saloon the day of the gunfight. I want to see if they all connect somehow, if each name from the past lines up with a descendant in the present. I'm going over to the police station. I want to see the security tapes again. I swear I'm missing something."

They left, and Dillon dropped them all at Jessy's house so they could pick up her car, since Adam had the rental. Dillon started to drive off, then stopped and called out to Jessy.

She walked over to the car and saw that he was smiling at her.

"What?"

"I..." He reached out and pulled her close, then planted a gently pa.s.sionate kiss on her lips. "Be careful. Stay at the home until you hear from me. Stick with Timothy or Nikki once you're there. I'll be back soon," he promised.

She smiled. "I won't spend a moment alone. By the way, who's on the list?" she asked curiously.

"Everyone I've come across in the course of this investigation," he told her. "Cops-Jerry Cheever, Len Durso. Emil Landon and Hugo Blythe. Darrell Frye. I even threw in an M.E., my friend, Doc Tarleton, along with Sarah Clay, who works in forensics. And your stage manager."

"Ron?" she said with a gasp.

"And Sandra," he admitted.

"Sandra?" She felt her temper rising.

"Trust me, she's not a suspect," he a.s.sured her. "Humor me, huh?" Then he kissed her lips again and drove away.

"Jessy?" Nikki called, and Jessy turned around to see that Brent was already settled behind the wheel, with Timothy next to him. It was her car, but she decided it wasn't really the time for a feminist statement.

Jessy got into the backseat with Nikki, and in a few minutes, they were back at the home. Brent walked them in, and Timothy greeted Jimmy and a nurse named Liz, who he really liked. He admitted he was ready for a nap, but first he took them to the TV room and introduced them to Mrs. Teasdale, who took one look at Nikki and Brent and informed Nikki that she was going to have beautiful children.

Timothy and Mrs. Teasdale agreed on a Scrabble date for later, and then Jessy, Nikki and Timothy retired to his room. Brent left them at last, heading for the library where Dillon had spent the morning. To be on the safe side, Brent ordered Ringo, who'd tagged along, to stay with the women. "And call if anything-" he began. He shook his head. "h.e.l.l, Ringo, you're such a d.a.m.n good ghost, I forgot you can't use a cell phone."

"Who knows, maybe I can," Ringo said. "It'll be a new challenge, anyway."

They left Timothy to his nap and retired to a table in the empty breakfast room, where Jessy started doodling, and Ringo was standing off to the side, trying to dial Nikki's cell phone.

"It's bizarre, isn't it?" Jessy said to Nikki.

"What's that?"

"'They're all a.s.sembling,'" Jessy quoted. She looked over at Ringo, who had managed to flip open the phone. "Ringo, tell me about the shoot-out that day."

He set the phone down and walked over to her. "The circ.u.mstances of my own death are beginning to bore me."

"Please, Ringo."

"Okay, okay. There was a bartender-and some townsfolk, but they had cleared out. At the poker table, there were John Wolf, myself, Sheriff Percy and Mark Davison. When Varny came in, he had four men with him. Now this I've only read, mind you, because I was dead at the time, but Varny had another of his goons, a particularly distasteful fellow named Tobias, with him, and he dragged in John Wolf's wife. They'd been married in some kind of an Indian ceremony, and I guess the law recognized it."

"Ten people," Nikki said. "Four poker players, Varny, five goons. Wait, and Mrs. Wolf. That makes eleven."

"Actually, there were really thirteen," Ringo pointed out. "Don't forget the piano player, and the singer."

"Okay, so you're you," Jessy said to Ringo. "Dillon would be John."

Ringo laughed. "Or Mariah. She was the one who carried on the line. She was pregnant at the shoot-out, or the Wolf line would have ended right there."