by R. J. Jagger
“Keep coming up.”
She did.
Then she saw the body and gasped.
WILDE EXPECTED HER to head back down the ladder. Instead she climbed all the way up, walked over to the body and studied it.
“Do you know her?” Wilde asked.
“No, why would I?”
Wilde shrugged.
“No reason,” he said. “I was just curious.”
She turned back to the body and said, “Someone posed her.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“Good question.”
“She’s dressed like a pinup girl.”
“Yes she is.”
Wilde pointed to the grouping of pinions a hundred yards to the north.
“See those trees over there? That’s where your client Mr. Smith buried Madison,” he said. “If my brain is working right, the person who saw him do it saw him from right here where we’re standing.”
Senn-Rae got a distant look.
Then she focused on Wilde and said, “So what you’re saying is that the person who’s blackmailing Mr. Smith is the same person who killed this woman.”
Wilde pulled his hat off and wiped sweat off his forehead.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
14
Day Three
June 11, 1952
Wednesday Morning
THE MYSTERY CAR came down the road at an incredible speed, maybe targeting her, maybe not. It wasn’t a cop. She flipped open the briefcase with a racing heart.
Damn it.
Damn it.
Damn it to hell.
It wasn’t money.
It was ordinary papers. She ruffled through to see if money was underneath. There wasn’t, not a single stinking dollar. She kicked the stupid thing into a rabbit bush and shot it until the bullets ran out.
The silence gave way to the low humming of rubber on the road. The mystery car was getting dangerously close. Fallon would never be able to outrun it, not in the Packard. She ran to the car, ripped open the box of shells and reloaded the gun. Then she fired up the engine, did a one-eighty and headed back the way she came. If the other vehicle was after her it would turn around.
She stepped on the gas.
The cars were only a hundred yards apart, closing at a breakneck speed. Suddenly the other car turned into her lane and came directly at her.
There were two men inside.
They wore hats.
She could jerk to the right.
She had time.
She’d flip, though.
Then the other car would slam on the brakes, turn around and come for her.
That wasn’t going to happen.
She put the full force of her leg into the pedal and kept the hood pointed straight. Then just before impact she closed her eyes and screamed.
15
Day Three
June 11, 1952
Wednesday Morning
WILDE TOOK ONE LAST LOOK at the body, headed down the grungy ladder, lit a cigarette and threw the match on the ground. It landed next to another match, not his, not ancient. He picked it up and watched Senn-Rae as her body lowered down the side of the boxcar.
“Our friend smokes,” he said, showing it to her.
“There’s some of those up top too,” she said.
“On the boxcar?”
She nodded.
“I thought they were yours,” she added.
Wilde climbed up and found six or eight matches flicked onto the far end of the boxcar. He looked over the backside and saw a number of spent butts on the ground. He climbed down and gathered them up, twelve all told.
“He spent some time up there with her,” he said.
Senn-Rae cocked her head.
“Before or after he killed her?”
“Good question.”
The butts had no filters.
Wilde lit one, inhaled and said, “Camel.” Then he searched the weeds under the railcar.
“What are you looking for?”
“Clothes,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out if he dressed the woman here or brought her that way.”
Senn-Rae joined in.
They found nothing.
“Check that area back there,” he said.
Something small and red caught his attention in the weeds to the left. It turned out to be a book of matches with all the guts ripped out. On the cover was a gold B. He continued the search, found nothing else then showed Senn-Rae what he found.
“B,” she said. “I wonder what it stands for.”
“Bastard would be my guess,” he said.
ON THE DRIVE back to Denver they talked about whether they should report the murder to the police, perhaps anonymously.
“I think we should,” Senn-Rae said. “I don’t like the thought of this guy running around loose. Who knows if he already has someone else in his sights?”
“Think it through.”
“How so?”
“If they find him before we do, there’s probably something about the blackmail scheme at his house. Mr. Smith may well end up exposed.”
Senn-Rae wrinkled her brow.
“We can’t have that.”
Wilde shrugged.
“It’s your case,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
She looked out the windshield.
Then she turned and said, “I need to sleep on it. In the meantime, run down that book of matches. It’s probably from a restaurant or bar.”
BACK AT THE OFFICE, Wilde found Alabama sitting behind the desk with her 24-year-old feet propped up, reading a magazine.
He tossed his hat at the rack and overshot.
Alabama snatched it out of the air and threw it back.
He missed again.
It landed on the desk.
Alabama put it on and dipped it over her eye. “Where have you been all morning?”
He told her about the new case, including the fact that he took Senn-Rae to the boxcar to see the body that had been dressed up like a pinup and posed. “I went up first,” he said. “I wanted to see the look on her face when she got up.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see if she was surprised or not,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I had a sneaking feeling that she already knew about the body.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And, was she surprised?”
Wilde shrugged.
“There was surprise on her face but I don’t know if it was real or not.”
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
Alabama studied him. He knew the look and said, “Now what?”
“You like her.”
“I like all my clients,” he said. “They keep the lights on.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but with this one you’d be just as happy with the lights off. I can already tell.”
Wilde went to deny it.
Instead he pulled the red book of matches out of his pants pocket and tossed it on the desk.
“This is from the scene. Do you recognize it?”
“No.”
“You want me to run it down?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s probably from a bar or restaurant, or maybe a hotel. Start with those, the ones that begin with a B.”
She swung her feet off the desk, stood up and ran an index finger down Wilde’s chest. “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t screw anybody until I get back.” Halfway to the door she turned and said, “Hey, what’s this writing on the back?”
Wilde looked.
Sure enough, there was something written on the back, barely visible, in red ink. He walked over to the window where the light was better.
“It’s numbers,” he said.
“A phone number?”
“It looks like 616.”
“Could be a room number,” Alabama said.
16
Day Three
June
11, 1952
Wednesday Morning
TIRES SQUEALED as the other car swerved at the last second. Fallon opened her eyes, got the front end of the Packard pointed straight and checked the rearview mirror. The other car was off the road, flipping.
She slammed on the brakes.
The Packard fishtailed then ground to a stop.
The air was coffin-quiet, broken only by the passing of air in and out of her lungs.
Her hands trembled.
She bowed her head into the steering wheel still alive, not dead, incredibly not dead.
She got out and looked at the crash, which was a good distance down the road. The car was upside down. The wheels were pointed at the sky, still spinning, not with much strength but spinning nonetheless.
Her blood raced.
Get the hell out of here.
That’s what she should do, no question, just get the hell out right now this second. The men in the other car might still be alive. They might have guns.
No sign of movement came from the wreck.
Anyone unhurt would have been out by now.
They were either dead or busted.
What to do?
What to do?
What to do?
SHE PACED, then hopped back in the car, spun it around and headed for the wreck, coming to a stop on the shoulder. She left the engine running, looked for traffic and saw none in either direction. She grabbed the gun and stepped out. The metal was cold and heavy in her hand.
Evil, almost.
Three giant black birds circled overhead.
“Are you okay?”
No answer.
Déjà vu.
“Hey!”
Silence.
She pointed the barrel at the vehicle and then took one cautious step after another towards it. Inside she saw something she didn’t expect—a bloody body, deathly still and unmoving—but no second body.
She spun around.
The other man was thirty yards away behind a rabbit bush, on his back, badly hurt, with pain etched solidly on his face. He was using every ounce of strength he had to force his broken body to get the barrel of a gun raised up high enough to shoot her.
She froze.
The barrel continued elevating.
She watched, transfixed by the slowness.
Shoot him!
Shoot him!
Shoot him!
That’s what her brain screamed but her hand didn’t respond.
She turned and ran.
The gun exploded behind her with a deafening solitary crack. She waited for her spine to shut down or her consciousness to fade.
Neither happened.
She wasn’t hit.
Something in her brain brought her body to a halt. She turned and stared at the man.
“Go ahead and take another shot,” she said.
The gun was still in the man’s grip but had dropped to the ground.
“Go on!”
He raised it up.
Fallon stood there.
Motionless.
Waiting.
Her arms were down to her sides but her finger was on the trigger.
“Shoot me!”
The man pulled the trigger.
The bullet passed so close to Fallon's head that she felt the suction of the vacuum.
This is where she expected to kill him.
This is where she pictured herself pointing the cold barrel at his stupid face and pulling the trigger. When she looked into his eyes, though, she saw a line—a line that would change her life forever if she crossed it.
“Rot in hell,” she said.
Then she walked away.
BACK AT THE PACKARD, she shifted into gear and drove down the road. Suddenly the briefcase appeared on her right. It had no money inside.
It did, however, have something important enough to cause everything that just happened.
She grabbed it, threw it in the back seat and got the hell out of there.
17
Day Three
June 11, 1952
Wednesday Afternoon
THE BAR WAS DESOLATE AND ALONE when Shade pulled into the dirt parking lot mid-afternoon. A sign in the window said CLOSED. A bouquet of withered wildflowers sat on the ground in front of the door. She headed around back, busted a padlock off the door and stepped inside.
The wood creaked.
Stale smoke choked the air.
A large brownish mark stained the wooden floor midway between the bar and the entrance, once blood, since diluted with a mop.
That’s where Tehya must have been scalped.
Two bullets were embedded in the walls, but they were from last year. There were no new ones.
A door led to a backroom. The back wall was crammed with shelves of cleaning products, generator gas, staples and whatnot. A mattress was on the floor, covered with a thin white sheet. A box of rubbers sat where the pillow should be.
Shade laid down, felt erratic springs on her back and closed her eyes.
She hoped to feel Tehya’s spirit.
She got nothing.
SHADE WAS HALF NAVAJO, not full. Her mother, Prairie Aspen, was full Navajo. As to her father, she didn’t know anything about him other than he raped Prairie Aspen one moonless night and that’s how Shade got created. He might be white, he might be Mexican, he might be something else. The rumor was that Prairie Aspen’s man, Deh-Keya, hunted him down three days later. He took him out to a remote part of the reservation and then spent a week killing him.
Prairie Aspen would never talk about him.
She would have kept Shade.
It was Deh-Keya who wouldn’t hear of it.
Two days after birth, Shade was passed to strangers.
Visible Moon, the natural daughter of Prairie Aspen and Deh-Keya, was Shade’s half-sister.
Almost no one off the reservation knew anything about their relationship, including the CIA. Even Shade didn’t know about it until five years ago when a stranger named Visible Moon walked out of the shadows one night and told her a story.
She pushed off the mattress and headed back into the main room.
A spider crawling up the wall came to a standstill.
So simple, to be a spider.
Such an easy life.
SHE GOT UP close to the spider and studied it for a few heartbeats then slumped to the floor and leaned against the wall. When she closed her eyes, Visible Moon’s spirit slowly emerged.
Shade could feel her moving around behind the bar.
She could hear her asking a customer if he wanted another one.
She could feel her yearning for a man in her life.
She could feel the air passing in and out of her lungs.
She opened her eyes.
Visible Moon was still alive.
There was no question.
She stood up, grabbed a warm beer from under the bar and took a long swallow. It tasted like mud, bad mud. She finished it as she walked to the car and then threw it to the side of the building.
A pickup truck was heading her way.
She recognized it as Tehya’s.
Behind the wheel was Mojag.
The asshole himself.
SHE LEANED AGAINST HER CAR and waited.
He skidded to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust that floated directly at her. She didn’t move. She was too busy trying to determine how angry she was.
Mojag got out and walked towards her.
He looked exactly like the last time she saw him—six foot, built like thunder, a warrior’s face, long black hair braided into a ponytail that hung almost to his waist. He wore tight jeans, cowboy boots and a white V-neck pullover.
When he got close enough, Shade swung a fist at his face. He caught it with an iron grip and squeezed. He kept it locked in, forced her to the ground and then pushed her away.
Shade threw dirt at his face.
He didn’t flinch.
“I’m pretty sure I know who did it,” he said.
“It was a white man at the end of the bar. He was the only one here when I stopped in to check on things an hour before closing.”
He extended a hand to pull Shade up.
She hesitated, then grabbed it and got yanked upright.
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
Mojag frowned.
“I think so,” he said, “but I only looked at him from the side and that was only for a moment. I’m pretty sure he was from Denver.”
“Why?”
“He was wearing a fancy suit. The car in the parking lot was expensive. I never saw him around these parts.”
“Do you remember what it was—the car?”
He frowned.
“It was big and black and shiny under the dust,” he said. “I’m going to Denver to find him. Then I’m going to bring him back here.”
“Are the police doing anything?”
He shook his head.
“It happened on reservation land. No whites got killed. What do you think?”
18
Day Three
June 11, 1952
Wednesday Afternoon
WILDE WAS HALFWAY OUT the door, tipping his hat over his left eye, when the phone rang. He hung for a moment, debating, then stepped back and answered.
“This is Earl Johnson,” a man said. “I’m the manager of Mercedes Raine. Have you ever heard of her?”
Wilde shook his head.
“No, I can barely hear you.”
“I’m calling from New York,” Johnson said. “Mercedes has a show in Denver tonight at the Bokaray. We need a drummer. There’s a nasty rumor going around that you’re the best in the area.”
“What happened to your drummer?”
The man grunted.
“He got arrested.”
“For what?”
“For being stupid,” Johnson said.
“How stupid?”
“Murder stupid.”
“He killed someone?”
“That’s what the police say,” Johnson said. “Anyway, it’s not important. What’s important is that I need someone with a pair of drumsticks to step in and save my ass tonight. Will you do it?”
Wilde hesitated.
“Where’d you get my name from?”
“Dexter Dex,” Johnson said.
A beat.
“Sure, why not? What time?”
