A Wild Fright in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 7)

by Ann Charles

  When I lowered my hands, a young girl was standing on the other side of the candles. Her eye sockets were blackened, like fire had burned out through her eyes, leaving nothing behind but singe marks. Her pink, heart-shaped mouth had a vertical fracture running down through it with a small triangle of color missing from the lower lip, as if it had chipped off. Her skin looked gray and cracked, like an antique doll with a porcelain face that had seen better days. Her blonde hair was parted down the middle with long braids draped over her shoulders, the ends secured with pink ribbons. Her dress was covered with a white apron, reminding me of the old Walt Disney cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland, only this girl’s dress was pink instead of blue.

  I recoiled thinking Wilda had found me. But then I realized this girl was older than the ghost I’d seen on Rosy’s playback that day in Cornelius’s suite. Nor was there any creepy clown doll in her hand.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you.” The sound of a child’s voice seemed to come from the girl. She spoke English with a hint of something Slovak maybe? Her lips didn’t move.

  I focused on her pink, heart-shaped mouth, afraid to look up into the dark holes where her eyes should be. “Who doesn’t want to talk to me?”

  “The doctor.”

  What doctor? “Why not?”

  “He is angry at you.”

  “What have I done?”

  “Set him free.”

  Set who free? Was this girl somehow tied to Ottó? Hadn’t Aunt Zoe said he was some sort of doctor? “Freedom is good, isn’t it?”

  “Many more will die now, just like the other yellow-haired lady.”

  Did she mean Katrina? “What happened to the other lady?”

  “There had to be a sacrifice. Freedom comes at a cost.”

  “Tell the doctor I need to know who helped free the lidérc.”

  “She did,” her voice lowered to a whisper.

  “Who?” I matched her level.

  “The visitor.”

  “The yellow-haired one?”

  The girl’s arm lifted jerkily, like someone was controlling her movements overhead using a set of wires. Her index finger lifted, bumping against her lips, shushing me.

  I heard the sound of a door slam somewhere in the darkness off to my right. I looked and saw nothing; when I looked back, the girl doll was gone and a dark haired, middle-aged man with thick V-shaped eyebrows, heavy lidded eyes, and a handlebar mustache glowered at me. His brown jacket was worn with patches on the shoulder.

  “You brought it back here.” His accent was thick, turning brought into BRA-oot and adding a slight trill to the r at the end of here, making my brain flash back to Eva Gabor in Green Acres.

  “Ottó?”

  Footfalls clacked in the darkness, coming from the same direction as the door that slammed. “Go and take your TRA-bull with you BE-forr there is more blood spilled.”

  He faded into the blackness. Which trouble did he mean? Old man Harvey? Doc? The lawman?

  “Ottó, wait.”

  The footfalls stopped. “Here, kitty kitty,” said a voice I knew well from my nightmares. “I can smell you, my pet.”

  Caly!

  “Run, Boots,” I heard from the darkness. Then someone shoved me backward.

  I gasped in surprise, falling into the dark, bouncing onto the cold, hard wooden floor. I opened my eyes, frowning up at Harvey and Cooper, who were both bending over me.

  Harvey reached down and pinched my arm.

  “Dammit, Harvey!” I smacked his hand away.

  “How many fingers am I holding up, Parker?” Cooper made the peace sign in front of my face.

  “Enough to poke each of you in one eye.” I pushed his hand away and scrambled to my feet. “What time is it?”

  Harvey checked his pocket watch with his flashlight. “Almost eleven.”

  “What time exactly?”

  “It’s ten-forty-six,” Cooper said. “What’s with the sudden concern about time? You late for something?”

  “You didn’t hear her?”

  “Hear who?” Harvey asked.

  The sound of the second story door slamming open echoed down the hall. Cooper drew his gun, whirling toward the darkened doorway leading to the hall. Harvey grabbed his shotgun from the floor next to me.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered to both of them.

  Footfalls clacked across the wooden floor out front, echoing off the tall empty walls. “Here, kitty kitty,” Caly repeated. “I can smell you, my pet.”

  Déjà vu, I thought. Ottó must have been giving me a warning of what was to come before fading back into the ether.

  “Who in the fuck is that?” Cooper said quietly.

  “Caly. She’s here for our ten forty-seven meeting.” I’d forgotten about this meeting actually, thanks to the distraction of Katrina’s death. But Caly hadn’t apparently.

  I glanced around at the shadow heavy corners in the room. “Where’s Doc?”

  “He left,” Harvey said.

  “What do you mean he left?”

  “He told us to keep an eye on you while he went to find the other ghost.”

  He left me? Wasn’t he the one who always told me not to go out on my own? And what other ghost? I’d talked to Ottó after that bizarre talking doll had disappeared.

  “Come out come out wherever you are, my kitten,” Caly purred. “You can bring your little friends along, too.”

  “Who’s she calling little?” Harvey asked, taking aim at the empty doorway.

  “Cooper, give me your gun.”

  “No way in hell.”

  “Harvey, I need Bessie.”

  “I’d sooner hand ya my right nut than give up ol’ Bessie.”

  His right nut was his favorite, of course. I growled. “Your bullets won’t do any good against her. Besides, if either of you shoot, the cops will come.”

  “I’m already here.”

  “I mean more cops, including Detective Hawke.”

  “If our bullets won’t work, why do you want our guns?” Harvey asked.

  For batting practice. But I could see that neither man was going to play baseball with me, so I changed my tactic. “Cooper, give me your knife.”

  “I don’t carry a knife.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have a gun. Why do I need a knife?”

  Harvey’s hand bumped mine. “Here.”

  I held my hand out under his closed fist. He opened his hand and a Swiss Army knife fell into my palm.

  Frowning down at the red casing with the cross logo on it, I sighed. “This is all you have? I thought you always liked to travel prepared.”

  “I do. That puppy is eight tools in one.”

  I opened the knife only to find the blade broken in half. When I held it out toward Harvey with a scowl, he frowned. “Hell. I forgot about breakin’ that blade when I was poppin’ a lid off an old gallon of paint.”

  “Great. Now what? Am I supposed to clip her to death?” I held up the knife with the fingernail clippers sticking out.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Cooper said.

  With a final glare at both stubborn men, I told them, “Stay behind me, but don’t shoot me in the backside.”

  I tiptoed toward the hall.

  It was time to face off with Wanda’s killer, as Prudence ordered when she had Cooper’s fingers digging into my thigh. In lieu of my war hammer or any other sort of medieval battle ax or samurai sword or plain old shotgun, I decided to lead with the Swiss Army knife’s corkscrew attachment sticking out between my knuckles.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Cooper said when we reached the doorway and paused.

  “She’s gonna screw ‘er,” Harvey answered.

  Something like that.

  A movement at the end of the hall caught my attention.

  “Hello, kitten.” Caly stood there, backlit by the orange glow of streetlights coming through the front windows. “Where’s my b
ook?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “What’s the magic word?” I asked Caly, tightening my grip on the Swiss Army knife in my palm. I had a feeling this was going to turn ugly quick, and I was going to be lucky to make it out with only scratches this time.

  Caly’s chin jutted. She said something in a language so foreign to me I couldn’t begin to place its origin.

  “Did you get that?” Harvey whispered.

  “Not even a little.” I chewed on my lower lip. That had sort of backfired on me. What magic word had she spoken? Should I be worried now about something else besides her sharp teeth and claws, dammit?

  “Yer ‘bout as useless as a needle without an eye.”

  “Can it, old man,” I muttered out of the side of my mouth. To Caly, I said, “I’m not giving you the book.” Mainly because I didn’t think to bring it with me tonight, but also because I highly doubted she wanted it for her late night reading pleasure.

  “The book does not belong to you, Scharfrichter.”

  “It doesn’t belong to you either, Calypso.” I’d once heard Dominick Masterson call her by that name and she hadn’t liked it one bit. Something told me making waves was a good way to keep her off her game and give me the upper hand.

  I heard a hissing sound come from her end of the hall. Her eyes seemed to be more reflective tonight, almost glowing in the flashlight beam I had locked onto her. Had she shucked her contacts, freeing those snake-like eyes I’d witnessed in the Opera House?

  “You have met your match, kitten” she stepped toward me.

  That’s when I noticed the short sword-like blade attached to her arm—the one I’d stabbed last time we’d battled. The withered stump that remained served as a hilt, the blade somehow secured to the flesh. “That’s a fancy hand shaker,” I told her, lowering the light to it.

  “Give me what is mine or I will use it to remove your head.”

  Criminy. Did it always have to be about decapitation with these white-haired freaks? “Why did you kill Wanda?”

  “She mewled when I came for the book. It disgusted me.”

  “What is your fetish with cats?”

  Caly took another step closer. “We kill for sport.” She hissed again, showing off her sharp canines. After all of the vampire love played up in movies and books these days, I wasn’t impressed. Now if she could distended her jaw and flash a set of shark teeth, that would make me look twice.

  “Would you stay on task, Parker,” Cooper bit out behind me.

  The bossy detective must have been reading my thoughts. Fine. I returned to Caly’s most recent bloody deed.

  “Did you kill Katrina King?”

  Her smile looked positively ghoulish in the beam from my flashlight. “Maybe.” She practically purred the word.

  “Why?”

  “Her hunger for immortality made her useful.”

  “Useful how? Did she know how to free the Hungarian devil locked up in this place?”

  “She thought she did.”

  I had no patience for her games tonight. “Stop fucking around and answer my questions, Caly.”

  “Or what, Scharfrichter? You’ll slay me?”

  Her thick sarcasm made my gut boil. When I thought of the way she’d killed Jane, Helen, and Wanda, the urge to rip her tongue out made me tighten my grip on the knife even more.

  “Oh, I’ll do more than slay you,” I stretched my neck from side to side, gearing up for battle. “I’ll take your stupid blade, gut you, and cram your innards down your throat like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  “Jesus, Parker,” Cooper said from his seat in the peanut gallery. “Hawke’s right about your violent streak.”

  “She started it.” I glared at Caly, sick of her games. She reminded me of a spoiled child tearing the wings off butterflies because she was bored. “Before I kick your ass for murdering my friends, the lawman here wants to know why you killed Katrina? How about you humor him so he’ll quit pestering me?”

  “Her death was your fault,” Caly said.

  “My fault?” Sheesh, first the caller in Ms. Wolff’s apartment and now Caly. Did anyone else want to step forward and blame me for more murders that I didn’t do? Anyone besides Detective Hawke?

  “We cannot have you execute the succubus,” Caly continued.

  Who was we?

  “So I helped it to escape its bondage.”

  “And then you killed Katrina with my war hammer?”

  “The weapon was offered to me as a gift in exchange for freedom. Of course I could not turn down an opportunity to kill a human,” she said that last word with a sneer. “Especially with a weapon belonging to a Scharfrichter.”

  “You set me up on purpose.” Caly would make a good chess player, the Deadwood police department acting as her pawns.

  “We want what belongs to us.”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first five hundred times you sent that message.”

  “Give me the book or I will tear your daughter to pieces before your eyes.”

  The mention of Addy sent a zing of adrenaline down through my arms and out of my fingertips. There it was—the gauntlet. Thrown down at my feet. I would now have to kill or be killed to protect my child. Prudence wouldn’t hesitate. Neither would I but not yet. I needed to know one more thing.

  “Let me fill ‘er full of holes.” Harvey bumped me aside, doing his version of a guard dog, snarling and growling.

  I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. “Wait.” I had another question for the hissy bitch first. “Why are you hanging human body parts in the trees around here?”

  I wasn’t sure Caly was responsible for the foot Layne had found in that tree back in July, or the hand someone else had found up on Mount Roosevelt, but she might know the guilty party.

  She laughed, haughty like. “It’s bait, of course. It’s about the only thing these disgusting monkey spawn are good for.”

  “Bait for what?”

  “You shall see, my kitten.” She lifted her sword to her mouth, her tongue flicking out and slowly licking up the blade.

  I winced, my tongue shrinking back into my throat.

  “You will be easy prey for the hunters, Scharfrichter.” She pointed the sword at me. “If I let you live that long.”

  “What hunters?”

  “Enough questions!” She sliced a Z through the air with her sword.

  She must have some Zorro aspirations. Santa should leave her a black mask under the Christmas tree this year.

  “Give me the book!”

  Hmmm. I didn’t like her tone much. I opened my palm, frowning down at the Swiss Army knife in my hand. “I believe it’s time to put an end to your long life, Caly.”

  I just hoped I had the right tool and enough grit to follow through without ending my own life in the process.

  “We need to prove your innocence,” Cooper reminded me. “You can’t kill her.”

  I turned my head partway toward him while keeping my focus on Caly. “You heard what she said about my kid. I’m not letting this bitch live long enough to deliver on her threat.”

  “We need a confession from her, Parker.”

  “You think you can kill me, kitten?” She snickered. “You are part human, remember? That makes you weak and slow.”

  What did she mean by “part human”?

  Something moved in the darkness behind Caly.

  “I will tear out your heart be—”

  A black shroud covered her ghoulish face, cutting her off, sliding down over her shoulders. Then a pair of arms wrapped around her from behind, locking hers down before she could free her sword or claws. She stumbled forward under the weight, falling facedown onto the floor with a muffled shriek of fury.

  It all happened so fast, I didn’t notice her captor until he looked up while struggling to hold the spitfire under his weight.

  My mouth fell open. “Doc?”

  His face was tight with the strain of holding Caly prisoner. “How about a little help with this wildc
at, Coop?”

  That’s when I put together that the shroud was actually his leather coat and that Caly wouldn’t be kept down for long.

  Cooper raced to Doc’s aid with me right behind him. I wrestled to get a grip on Caly’s legs as she kicked wildly, finally sitting on them in order to win. Doc moved off of her enough for Cooper to handcuff her wrist to her makeshift sword hilt behind her back.

  Cooper shined his light on the sword. “What the hell is that?”

  “Look.” I pointed at the disfigured flesh above the hilt, what was left of her arm above the elbow joint after I’d stabbed the glass into her forearm at our last meeting. “That’s what I was trying to explain to you that night at the Opera House.”

  He leaned closer for a better look.

  “Be careful,” I warned.

  “She’s cuffed, Parker. Relax.”

  I thought of the way Caly had kicked and clawed when Dominick Masterson had held her up by the scruff. I didn’t have a lot of faith in those handcuffs.

  Cooper and Doc flipped her over while I continued to hold her legs. “Watch her,” I told Doc as she twisted and turned her head under the leather still cloaking her face. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she tore her way free with her sharp teeth alone.”

  He tied his coat sleeves around her extra tight.

  “Where were you?” I asked him.

  “In the front corner closet.” He indicated the location with his head, still holding onto Caly’s shoulders. She was bucking with her whole body now. I could hear her hisses and her teeth gnashing through the leather.

  “You left me,” I said more questioning than accusing.

  “Your energy kept sending out these blinding bursts of light. I had to put some space between us in order to see well enough to open the doorway and slip over to the other side.”

  “But you left me. Aren’t you the one always telling me not to go anywhere without you?”

  “I only left physically. Mentally, I was there with you while you spoke with the old doll Ottó sent in his place.”

  I let that soak in, thinking back to my time in the darkness with the two candle flames. “Ottó showed up later.” And so had Doc, telling me to run. He must have been the one who shoved me back out of the darkness and into the room with Cooper and Harvey.