Nightwalker. Part 19

As soon as she was dressed, she called Sandra, who was delighted with the idea of meeting her for dinner on the Strip.

It wasn't until Jessy had left the casino and was waiting out front for Sandra to show up that she once again had the sense of someone someone watching her, raising goose pimples on her flesh. watching her, raising goose pimples on her flesh.

She paused, looking around. There were people everywhere, some just strolling along sightseeing, others hurrying toward some unknown destination. Some were alone and quiet, while others talked and laughed as they pa.s.sed in groups. And some of them were weaving as if they were already drunk.

None of them was Tanner Green or Rudy Yorba.

Despite her inability to spot anyone, she was sure she was being followed. The thing of it was, she didn't think her shadow was a ghost.

She was being stalked.

By someone who was very much alive.

10.

Indigo.

It was a ghost town now, and Dillon parked in the dust alongside what pa.s.sed for a road, then got out and leaned against the hood, looking around. He knew without even glancing over that Ringo was next to him, just checking out the place, the same as he was doing.

It might have been a movie set. The facades of the buildings were faded but still mostly intact, facing the barren and G.o.dforsaken stretch of road that had once lived up to the name of Main Street. Sand and dust coated everything with a film that only added to the surreal effect. The road itself remained dirt, as it had always been. Time and the elements had left it a rutted mess.

The remains of the sidewalks that fronted the buildings were wooden, the boards, cracked and broken, at least where they weren't missing altogether. Peeling, faded paint still proclaimed the names of various buildings: Leif's Livery, Miners' Bank of Nevada, even-decipherable despite the missing letters-Martin's Harness, N w and Repa red. A freestanding house advertised itself as the office of Dr. Benjamin Sully, M.D.

"There's the jail," Ringo pointed out, and Dillon looked over and made out the words Sheriff's Office, Town of Indigo, Nevada. Sheriff's Office, Town of Indigo, Nevada.

Dillon had been to Indigo twice before. The second time was after his grandfather had died and Ringo had come to stay. Dillon had learned his story and come here to see the town through Ringo's eyes. He'd been here once before that because his ancestor John Wolf, a legend to his tribe, had a.s.sociations with the town. John Wolf had given his own life so that a white girl, a Paiute adoptee, could live, in the process protecting the tribe's claim to the land beneath the town, as well as a nearby claim. Though the claim hadn't yielded the riches the tribe had dreamed of, this was still Indian land. A man named Varny-a con artist with a nasty streak-had ruled the town until he and John had shot each other in the same gunfight that had killed Ringo. With Varny's death, the brothels and bars he ran closed, and that-combined with the fact that the rest of the claim hadn't yielded the hoped-for gold-had completed the demise of Indigo. Roads and the railroad had gone elsewhere, and the town had become nothing more than a proud but ultimately worthless symbol of one man's victory over injustice.

Ringo had attached himself to Dillon because he was a descendant of John Wolf, and he had admired John during their brief acquaintance. The white girl, Mariah, had been Dillon's many-times great-grand-mother. Mariah had been pregnant with John's child when he'd died. Ensuing years of inter-racial marriage had created his own mix of white and Indian blood.

Indigo didn't look any different now than since he'd been here the first time, much less since the last. A few years back, some Hollywood execs had paid the tribe to rent out the town for a movie. But the desert reclaimed its own quickly, and whatever minor improvements they made had been wiped away quickly.

"Indigo," Ringo said, shaking his head. "Do you think that Jessy heard right? Why in h.e.l.l was that Tanner Green's dying word?"

"I don't know. Has to mean something," Dillon said. He looked at Ringo curiously. "Do you remember yours? Did you have a dying word?"

"If I did, I'm sure they were something like 'f.u.c.k you, sucker,'" Ringo told him wryly. "It was all too fast, though. I don't remember."

"What the h.e.l.l could Tanner Green have to do with Indigo?" Dillon wondered aloud.

"Nothing to do but start looking around," Ringo said with a shrug.

"Think those movie people changed the place much?" Dillon asked.

"Looks to me like they put all the dust back exactly where it had been," Ringo told him.

Dillon laughed and said, "I'll take the bank."

"All right, I'll start with the livery," Ringo said, then paused, shaking his head as he pointed farther down the street. "There she is-the old Crystal Canary. Some of the gals they had there could actually sing. There was one pretty little thing...Oh, well. That was a long time ago. Okay, you take the left side, I'll take the right." Then he stood still for a moment, looking around.

"What?" Dillon asked him.

"We can meet in the saloon." Ringo pointed to the building in question, where one of the swinging doors now hung lopsidedly from a single hinge.

"When the sun goes down, the rays reach right into the saloon. That was when it happened. Right when the sunset began."

"Good. We can go check it out in a few hours."

"Why?" Ringo asked.

"Why? Because we're here-for some reason," Dillon told him. He found himself remembering his discussion with Timothy Sparhawk. Was this what he'd meant when he said they were all coming together again? It made no sense. Ringo had been here, and so had John Wolf, but what did any of that have to do with Tanner Green?

He didn't know.

Ringo, spurs clinking, walked off toward the livery stables.

Dillon started with the bank.

His eyes had to adjust to the sudden shadow when he stepped through the doorway-an easy maneuver, since the door itself was gone. He almost stepped through a hole in the floor left by a broken floorboard, but he saw it at the last minute and avoided it.

The windows facing the street were a dusty, grimy gray. The counter remained, and the bars that had separated the tellers from the customers were still in place. A locked gate separated the outer area from the inner workings, but it was low, and Dillon easily leaped over it. There were drawers at all the tellers' stations, but whatever adding machines they might have used were long gone. In a back office he came across a desk with a broken swivel chair. Opening one of the drawers, Dillon found a dead scorpion and a pile of rat droppings.

There was a safe in the back, but the iron door was open, the lock was broken, and the safe itself was completely empty.

In short, there was nothing in the bank to tie Tanner Green to the place.

Next he checked the doctor's office. The examining room still held a table but nothing else, and the windows were mostly devoid of panes. The wallpaper had once been rose patterned, but the design was almost impossible to discern anymore. Several old photographs were hanging at skewed angles in the entryway. There was one that seemed to be of the doctor, standing unsmilingly next to his equally unsmiling wife.

After checking out the lower level, which held the doctor's office, the examining room and a small waiting room, Dillon carefully climbed the stairs, testing each step before he placed his weight on it, and found only empty rooms where the doctor and his wife had once lived.

Next on his side of the street was the pharmacy, and he found it oddly appealing. Ornate Victorian grillwork framed the counter, and behind it, there was an old blown-gla.s.s candy dispenser, although the dead insects in it broke the old-time illusion. Still, if you ignored the insects, it was a pretty piece. Dillon imagined that, long ago, useless tonics as well as prescriptions for laudanum, had once been handed across this counter from seller to buyer. Upstairs-where he decided he probably shouldn't have ventured, given the rather spongy state of the floor-he found nothing, just as he had at the doctor's house. No furniture, no photos, nothing. Just three empty rooms.

He moved on. There were four more buildings to explore before he reached the saloon. One had been the general store, and another appeared to have been a dentist's office. A reclining leather chair-mostly eaten away by worm rot or other tiny predators-was surprisingly suggestive of the modern-day dental equivalent.

The third building had been the undertaker's parlor. Once Dillon's eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw that, unlike what he'd seen elsewhere, many of the artifacts of the time still remained. There was an outer office, and right behind it, a large room that was still filled with cheap coffins. They were mostly just plain wooden boxes. One was leaning up against the wall, and closer inspection revealed that it was stained in a number of places with what might have been blood. Dillon wondered if it had been used to display the unsavory characters who had been apprehended and shot for their crimes, a graphic warning to everyone else to behave.

The last building, right next to the saloon, was the newspaper office. The faded but still legible sign informed him that, at one time, the Indigo Independent Indigo Independent had been quartered there. had been quartered there.

At first glance, there was nothing left in the front room but broken desks, swivel chairs and-Dillon discovered, after gingerly inspecting a ma.s.s in one corner-a torn canvas hat, the type a harried typesetter might have worn.

He was pretty sure that the rotting machinery in back had once been a printing press, and up the stairs, he came across nothing other than two offices. One desk yielded several sheets of yellowed paper, but when he went to touch them, they fell into dust. He made a mental note to get to a local library and see if any past issues of the Indigo Independent Indigo Independent had been preserved in any form. had been preserved in any form.

He looked out a window and saw Ringo coming from the sheriff's office across the street, and went downstairs and stepped outside to meet him.

"Anything?" he called to Ringo.

"Nope. How about you?"

"Nope. Let's go check out the saloon," Dillon said.

Dillon entered ahead of Ringo, and there was something eerie in the clinking of Ringo's spurs behind him.

"The poker table is still here, and the chairs," Ringo said. "Look, pieces of the broken chair are still piled up by the wall. h.e.l.l, they left the old piano, too. Can you believe it?"

Dillon narrowed his eyes, trying to imagine what had taken place here a century and a half ago.

The bar still stretched across one long wall. There were several tables, and then, against the wall, the old piano. At the far end of the room there was a small stage.

A staircase led to the second story, where a balcony lined most of the second floor, the wooden railing leaning precariously, the handsome carved posts broken in places, completely gone in others. Once, he thought, saloon girls had plied their trade in those rooms up the stairs, decked out in their frilliest-and s.e.xiest-attire as they stared down at the clientele, trying to find the least repulsive cowhand or miner.

Or the one with the most money.

He returned his gaze to the poker table, where Ringo was standing and gazing down ruefully.

"My cards sucked," the ghost said. "That day, the real compet.i.tion was all between John Wolf and that fool from the East. Mark Davison, that was his name."

There were no longer cards on the table, only a thick layer of Nevada sand and the dust of time.

"Tell me about that day," Dillon said. "I've heard the stories, but you were there, and I need to know details."

"I hadn't been out here all that long," Ringo said, taking a seat. "Milly was singing. She wasn't great, but she was all right. All-right singer, good barmaid, lousy wh.o.r.e. But with the pickings around here, beggars couldn't be choosers."

"Ringo, I need you to tell me what happened, not rate people like they were contestants on American Idol American Idol," Dillon said.

"Sorry," Ringo said, leaning back in the old chair until it rested on two rickety legs. "Although I have to say that George Turner, the mixed-blood who played the piano, was d.a.m.n good. Ahead of his time. He should have been born today. He'd have been rich and famous."

"That's good to hear," Dillon said dryly. "Now tell me what happened."

"I can't tell you the whole thing. I died, remember? I wasn't afraid of dying. I'd been in the war. I'd seen people die bad. It was just bad in general, in those days, especially in the South. That's why so many of us came West. That's the thing with war...they teach you to use a gun and tell you to kill. Then it's all over, and what the h.e.l.l do you know but how to use a gun? That's why Varny took control so easy. Folks were used to the fellow with the biggest gun controlling the situation, you know?" He noticed Dillon's impatient look and said, "All right, all right, I'm getting to it. Let's see...I got here first. I think Grant Percy, the so-called sheriff-though he was really just Varny's lapdog-came in when I was at the bar, and then that Mark Davison. He was a real wannabe, as you call it these days. He'd thrown his lot in with Varny, but I think Varny knew he was a useless s.h.i.+t. Anyway, then your great-great-grandpa comes in. It was like he was geared up from the minute he got here. You know, you remind me of him a lot. Same eyes. And you could see in his eyes that there was something besides cards on his mind, but he could hold his peace real good. He had patience.

"So we all start playing-George is at the piano, Milly is singing, the bartender is dis.h.i.+ng out the whiskey. We're here-I'm in the same chair I'm taking up now, so to speak. We're all kind of angled, cuz in this town, no man worth his salt ever turned his back on the door. The last hand came down to Davison and Wolf, and the sheriff and I were kind of just waiting to get back into it. Then Varny showed up. Here's the thing. Wolf intended to see Varny. But I don't think he was expecting him so soon. John Wolf had a real poker face, and still, cool as he was, I could tell Varny took him by surprise that day.

"Wolf's clan didn't live far from here. I'm thinking they were coming in that evening, maybe, so he wouldn't be taking on Varny and his thugs alone. Who the h.e.l.l knows now? Anyway, Varny shows up, and he and Wolf get into a thing over the gold. You know. The gold everyone thought was just outside town somewhere. They started arguing over who owned the land. Then the gunfire started. I took out a couple of Varny's hired guns, but not before one of them got me. I remember dying. I was. .h.i.t hard and fast, and I was thinking, h.e.l.l no, I'm too young to die, this can't be happening. I remember all the guns. All the blood. I was already dying, maybe even already dead, when they dragged the girl in. Mariah."

"My great-great...however many greats, grandmother."

"Yes. I don't know if I really saw her then, or if I've just heard the story so many times that I think I did. You know how it is. We hear things often enough and they turn into memories. Did I really see her as I was dying? I don't know. But I do know that John Wolf would have died a thousand times over to save her. And that there was something he needed to tell her. I've had a long time to think about it, and I think it must have had to do with the gold everyone thought was here. That's what they were fighting over. Land. Gold. Wolf had made sure this was Paiute land, but no one ever found the gold. So we all pretty much died over nothing."

"All the poker players died that day, right?" Dillon said after giving Ringo a moment for reflection.

"Dead as doornails," Ringo agreed. "Along with Varny and a bunch of his henchmen. Mariah lived, though. Of course, you already know that. She was pregnant, and that's why you're here now. And that's the end of the story."

Dillon stared at him. "Except that it's not-because a twenty-first century man whispered the name of the place right before he died."

Ringo looked toward the door. "It was just like it is now. See the way the sky is turning all bloodred and gold? I remember thinking, before Varny walked in and everything went to h.e.l.l, that this town might be a stinking disaster of sand and sagebrush, but when you looked out at a sunset like that, it made everything around you all beautiful. And then the shooting started and the blood was real, and pretty soon all I saw was darkness. Not even the fires of h.e.l.l," Ringo said.

Darkness. Dillon felt inexplicably uneasy that night was coming quickly. Night-and darkness. He felt a stirring in his mind, an elusive idea that teased and then disappeared. Was something Ringo had just said a clue of some kind? If so, the word elusive elusive was dead-on. Dillon couldn't shake the sudden feeling that he needed to get back to town. He dismissed the idea that he had nearly been onto something. After all, he'd already known what happened here; it was clan lore. was dead-on. Dillon couldn't shake the sudden feeling that he needed to get back to town. He dismissed the idea that he had nearly been onto something. After all, he'd already known what happened here; it was clan lore.

"I'll come back out here and explore again another day," Dillon said suddenly.

Darkness.

The idea haunted him.

It was time to be getting back. Jessy had finished work hours ago now, and even though she'd sworn she wouldn't go anywhere alone, that she would call her friend Sandra to pick her up, Dillon didn't want her out in the dark without him to take care of her.

He left the saloon, and Ringo rose at last and took a last long look around the place before following him out.

At the car, Ringo paused before getting in.

"What?" Dillon asked.

"That's the old cemetery over there. Can't see much anymore. Looks like the crosses are all broken or long gone. But you can see some of the stones ringing the graves. They carried me over there. Took a look at me and said, 'That b.a.s.t.a.r.d's dead, just dump in him the ground.' No, that's not fair. Some preacher did say a few words over me."

"We'll bring flowers and set up a cross next time we come," Dillon a.s.sured him.

"Whatever. I think my pa was half-Jewish."

"We'll get a star of David and and a cross, how's that?" Dillon said. a cross, how's that?" Dillon said.

"I like it. And you can add whatever mumbo jumbo your people do, too, huh?"

"You got it," Dillon a.s.sured him. "Now get in the d.a.m.n car, will you? It's an hour's drive back."

"So you admit you like him?" Sandra teased, speaking up to be heard over the crowd in the restaurant. "I think that's great. Now tell me all the details. Well, no, not all all the details, but...a few of them, okay? Is he as fantastic as he looks? You know, sometimes the pretty boys aren't so hot in bed. I mean, they're so accustomed to being adored that they think it's all about them. They like the rabbit thing. Wham, wham, wham. I'm done, let's light up a few cigarettes." the details, but...a few of them, okay? Is he as fantastic as he looks? You know, sometimes the pretty boys aren't so hot in bed. I mean, they're so accustomed to being adored that they think it's all about them. They like the rabbit thing. Wham, wham, wham. I'm done, let's light up a few cigarettes."

"He's not a pretty boy," Jessy protested, laughing, happy to realize that the world seemed right again. Sandra always had that effect on her. The other woman was down to earth and funny, and even when she was serious, it was with a grain of irony. Life was what it was. Ups and downs, the good and bad. Sandra had perspective, and it was one of the things Jessy treasured about her.

In fact, the minute she had seen Sandra pull up in front of the casino, she had felt better.

Safe.

No longer so certain that a living living stalker was following in her footsteps, that she might suddenly be whisked away, unnoticed. That she might disappear, with no one to tell her story. stalker was following in her footsteps, that she might suddenly be whisked away, unnoticed. That she might disappear, with no one to tell her story.

Now Sandra leaned across the table and said, "Okay, no pressing on the s.e.xual details. As long as he was good. I mean, if you're only going to break down and have one affair a decade decade, it at least ought to be hot."

"Sandra!"

"Okay, okay. So tell me about the ghost-busting thing," Sandra said. "Does he find ghosts? And what does he do then? It's not like he can call the cops and have them arrested. Tell me. I'm an inquiring mind, and I want to know."