Dead Man's Hand (Caden Chronicles, The) (9 page)

I
returned my pony to its pen and tossed the helmet on the pile. Despite his promise, Marshal Buckleberry had thus far refused to let me inspect the crime scene. Now I’d take a look myself.

I found padlocks on both bay doors. I knew in a few minutes the cook would ring the dinner bell announcing the start of the night’s big hoedown at the outdoor pavilion. With luck Annie would be there. I needed to know where she was during the time of the murder. Plus, I sort of missed having her around.

The sky had a coppery pink hue to it. The mountain range cast long shadows across the meadow behind the barn. I knelt
beside the padlocked door and inspected the ground. Tire tracks showed where the Charger had pulled away. A second set showed the tread pattern of a large farm tractor. The area around the back of the barn smelled of dusty burlap, diesel fuel, and sawdust. No discernable footprints in the grass or soft dirt leading away. No way in, either.

“Still looking for your ghost?” Wyatt Earp walked around the corner and pointed to tire tracks.

“Where’s your horse?” I asked, standing quickly. For a bumbling security guard, he exhibited a stealth-like ability to sneak up on people. “Marge, is it?”

“Good memory. Put her away for the night. Any luck finding your missing body?”

I wondered if he was fishing. His question seemed innocent enough, but after Deputy Garrett’s comments, I now had a new appreciation for the cunning of the elderly security guard.

I brushed dirt from my knees. “You named her after your wife. That’s why I was able to remember. And no, I haven’t found Billy the Kid’s body. But I will.”

“That’s good. For you, I mean, not Bill. Or the people of Deadwood. If it turns out you do uncover a murder, the press will be all over this place, asking questions, digging into people’s pasts. Could uncover some skeletons. Some folks wouldn’t like that.”

I was tempted to tell him I’d heard about his drinking but instead I said, “You have a key to Marshal Buckleberry’s office? Not the one on Main Street, but the trailer?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“The marshal said I could borrow his computer to access
the Internet. I would ask him myself but he seems to be dodging me.”

“I don’t know. The marshal is kind of funny about his deputies being in his office when he’s not around. You may think he’s just a two-bit actor playing the part of an Old West peace officer, but he’s actually a pretty good lawman.”

“Won’t take but a few minutes. You can stand over my shoulder and watch.”

“Guess it’d be okay if it helps you solve your case. Young buck like you we need to keep occupied. Otherwise you might get into some real trouble.”

“Don’t really see how a computer is going to help you solve a crime,” Earp said, looking over my shoulder. “But then, I never have understood them contraptions anyway. I took a course at a community college a few years back. Mostly it was senior citizens like myself trying to learn how to check email. Didn’t help me much. Kept forgetting my password. I still like talking on the phone. And not one of them cell phones that you can’t hear on, neither, but a real, honest-to-goodness landline with a speaker and receiver.

The computer monitor flashed and began scrolling data.

Earp asked, “What’s next?”

“We wait for the program to crunch the information I entered. When it’s done it’ll spit out a list of the most likely suspects.”

“Crunch what?”

“The program will evaluate the names, motives, and means I entered and sort it all into a report that’ll make sense. It’s all done with a mathematical formula. I could try to explain it, but if you didn’t understand how computers and email work, I doubt this would be any easier.”

“Do you need to be here in the office for it to work?”

I explained how the software application resided on a server in a bunker farm outside McLean, Virginia. That produced a big chuckle.

“Hold on, now. You telling me there’s a whole farm with nothing but computers in the field?”

“That’s just what it’s called, a bunker farm. It’s a large industrial building without windows. Nothing inside but computer servers and wires and routers, switches and hubs.”

Earp stared blankly at me. “So basically them computers do the investigating for you.”

The screen refreshed and displayed another login form. I entered a new ID and password and hit enter.

“They don’t investigate anything,” I replied. “All they do is run the program that analyzes the data. It’s still up to me to review the final report and determine the most likely suspect.”

“I still don’t see how computers on a farm can know anything ‘bout what’s going on in Deadwood Canyon.”

I tried a new approach. “You remember the old TV show Columbo?”

“Sure do. With him it was always, ‘Just one more thing.’ Sort of like you.”

“Okay, well, a bunch of us in our online detective group took all those episodes plus hundreds of other cop and detective
shows and cataloged every murder. Then we took the crime, suspects, motives, and facts of the case and entered that information into a database. Turns out a lot of crime shows use real police cases. By using the shows, we can overlay a real case, like this one, and come up with a pretty good summary of who the real killer is.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Members of Cybersleuths. It’s a closed membership of amateur detectives who look at real unsolved murders and
help
law enforcement agencies solve crimes. Of course, not everyone appreciates our efforts.”

“You mean like you butting in where you’re not wanted.”

“Exactly.”

“And all you have to do is look at a piece of paper and announce the killer.”

“It’s not quiet that easy. But it’s not as hard as you might think. For example, did you know there are over seven television episodes almost identical to this one? Murders where theatrics and fake killings lead to a real murder?”

“Don’t say.”

“That’s why I’ve been interviewing anyone who might have had access to the barn yesterday afternoon. Without a body I can’t get an autopsy report and without that, I don’t know the time of death. But it’ll work out. In the meantime, I’ll let the other members of our group review the evidence while I’m digging around here.”

From outside, a dinner bell clanged. Earp lifted the window shade and looked out. “You said this program on that funny computer farm runs all by itself? Don’t need you standing around watching it, is that right?”

I nodded.

“Then I say we go grab dinner before the marshal comes back and catches us.”

I typed a short message to our system administrator telling him I’d log back on later, then killed the browser window, erased my browsing history, and put the marshal’s computer back into sleep mode. Earp made sure the door was locked and led me down the steps toward the covered walkway.

“Mind if I ask you something?” I said in a casual way. “Last night in my room I found a Bible. Several verses had been underlined or highlighted. All of them dealt with ghosts or made references to dead people coming back from the grave. At first I thought the killer … or someone else wanted me to find those verses. Like maybe they were clues. But then I wondered if maybe it was just me reading too much into things. Could be whoever stayed in my room before me highlighted those passages because they found them interesting.”

“What are you trying to ask, son?”

“I know you mentioned this morning how some people think the Native American burial ground is haunted. But you never said yourself if you believe in that sort of thing. You’ve worked in this ghost town a long time. What’s your take on spirits returning from the dead?”

He removed his hat and rubbed his hand through his thick white hair. We’d stopped next to a streetlight casting a halo of light onto Main Street. Kerosene lamps flickered in shop windows. On the second story balcony of the hotel, guests leaned against the railing, enjoying the coolness of dusk. Horses tied to hitching posts and the banging of the
piano in the saloon made the scene feel … well, special. Like I’d stepped back in time.

I fell in step with Earp and we headed out of town, walking toward the corral and stables.

“Got a friend of mine who lives in Roswell, New Mexico,” said Mr. Earp. “Swears a little green man from outer space served him a plate of fried eggs at Kenny’s Diner. ‘Course he’s also the same buddy who believes Elvis is living in the catacombs of Disney World. Says he’s got pictures of The King peeking up from a manhole. He also claims all this global warming business is a government conspiracy to get us to stop using automobiles and go back to riding horses. Says there’s a whole secret program set up to keep the herds hidden until Congress bans cars. He’s a lot like you. Spends way too much time on that Internet thing.”

“My sister is sure she’s seen a ghost. She says when we die that’s it. No heaven or hell. We only end up wandering the earth looking for our bodies.”

“Sounds like a pretty bleak outlook on the future if you ask me.”

“My point exactly. If you can conjure up enough faith to believe in ghosts, why is it so hard to believe there’s something else after we die?”

Earp grew quiet. I could tell he was thinking, so I kept quiet, waiting while we strolled past the last of the buildings toward the little white church at the end of town.

At last Earp said, “For a long time I never gave this life after death business much thought. Just went about my business thinking this was all there was. Then Marge got sick and I fell
into a place where … well, let’s just say I needed something more than my own smarts to get me through. Talked to a lot of folks. Some of them with lots of letters after their names. They tried to convince me that whatever I believed was fine so long as it made me feel better. That sort of talk sounded like a bunch of hogwash. I did a little digging and reading on my own and settled on the thing that made the most sense to me. I may not be college educated, but I know you can’t just head off down a road and expect it to take you someplace it ain’t going.”

We’d reached the little chapel. Earp stopped and rested his boot on the front steps, his eyes gazing upwards at the stars winking on and off and the steeple slanted against the night sky.

“Some folks say we’re cursed. Made a wrong turn long time ago and we’re still paying for our mistake. Maybe we are. But if we are cursed, I hope we get a second or third chance. God knows I could use ‘em.”

“So … ghosts. Real or not?”

“I wish I could tell you for certain, but I plain don’t know. Every man’s got to find truth on his own. That’s what my Marge used to tell me.”

Behind the church, torch lights glowed brightly. Bales of hay framed the entrance to the path leading down to the pavilion. Guests mingled, waiting to board the wagon that would take them to the bonfire built near the small pond. Somewhere beyond the flickering torch lights a country band played square dance music.

Earp peeled off as if he were going back to town, then paused and said to me, “The other day you asked me why I
wasn’t at the guardhouse when you arrived. I told you I had to reset the security. I did, but that wasn’t the only reason. I plum forgot to mention that I stopped by the marshal’s office on my way back. He radioed and said he needed help moving a filing cabinet. He showed up about fifteen minutes after I did. Said he’d got tied up taking care of some things. We wrestled that cabinet over to behind his desk, just where he wanted it.”

“You’re talking about his office on Main Street, right?”

Earp shook his head. “Trailer office. Back where we were. That’s why he wanted it moved. Every time he opened the bottom drawer it raked over the power strip. Kept accidentally cutting off his computer.”

My mind raced as I tried to make sense of what Earp had just said. The marshal claimed he and Deputy Garrett were together just before Billy the Kid was shot. And Pat Garrett had confirmed that the two of them were in the office on Main Street when my family arrived. But I also recalled how Garrett had acted confused when I’d first mentioned Buckleberry’s alibi. I wondered if the deputy was so desperate to keep his job that he’d be willing to lie for the marshal.

Pointing through the trees toward the train depot, Earp said, “All this talking about dying and Marge has left me feeling a little sorry for myself. Think I’ll do a little walking by myself, if that’s okay.”

I said it was and strolled down the path toward the pavilion. Outdoor lights shaped to look like lanterns hung from dusty rafter beams. Checkered tablecloths covered picnic tables. A fiddle player stood on a small stage at one end of the open-sided building. Pulling his bow across the strings,
he nodded to a banjo player and the picking and plucking commenced.

I snagged a cup of punch and spied Annie standing in the shadows just beyond the spray of lantern lights. She wore a knee-length denim skirt, white blouse, and calf-high cowgirl boots. Jesse James leaned close to her, his cowboy boots moving to the music. I got the impression he was trying to get her to dance with him.

She slowly shook her head and turned as if to walk away. When she did, James grabbed her roughly by the elbow and spun her around. When he saw me marching toward them, he released Annie and hurried off toward the stand of trees.