The Bone Orchard (3 page)

Ezra’s heart stuttered, and his gaze shot to the back of the courtroom. Ambrose was still sitting there, his face hidden in the shadow of his hat. He raised his hand, and tipped the brim toward Ezra.

Boone Jennings began to chuckle.

“You’re a ghost!” Ezra shouted at Ambrose as soon as they were in the lobby of the Palace Hotel, the trial left to carry on without them once Ezra’s testimony was over. Ambrose was quite proud of him. He wished he could have sat up there himself, but he would settle for a front row seat to Boone Jennings’s hanging instead.

People stopped and stared at Ezra as he continued to rant at Ambrose, their scandalized murmurs growing louder the longer Ezra spoke.

Ambrose glanced around. “Most folks can’t see me. You might keep that in mind when you’re shouting at me.”

Ezra coughed and covered his mouth, glancing at the nearest hotel patrons. “Hello,” he said with a polite smile. He pointed at Ambrose. “He’s a ghost.”

The couple stared at him, and then the gentleman grabbed his wife’s arm and led her away in a hurry.

Ambrose laughed.

“I’m glad you find this funny, because I certainly don’t,” Ezra hissed. He stopped and narrowed his eyes. “Why can I see you and they can’t?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you got that second sight thing. Ain’t Pinkertons supposed to be all-seeing?”

“That’s not funny. Why did you choose me?”

“You were in my room, remember?”

“
Your
room?” Ezra spat. “It’s not your room, you’re
dead
!”

Ambrose reached for his arm, taking it in a pale imitation of the iron grip he’d once employed in life. “People are going to think you’re crazy, son. I’ll be damned if your testimony gets struck because you’re talking to air. Come on.” He dragged Ezra with him.

“Your hands are cold,” Ezra grumbled as he followed along.

“Of course they’re cold, I been dead for two weeks.”

“I’m dreaming right now. I’ve been slipped opium, and I’m in some sort of drugged daze.”

“Stop muttering to yourself, goddamn.” They got to the doors of the lobby, and Ambrose stood staring at them. Then he glanced at Ezra, who raised his eyebrows at him.

“Go ahead,” Ezra said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Open the door.”

“I . . .”

“You can’t, can you?”

Ambrose sighed at the grand doorway with its ornately carved wood and lead glass. “They’re awful heavy,” he said.

“Heavy,” Ezra echoed. His expression became more sympathetic. “I see,” he whispered, then opened the doors and let Ambrose walk through first.

The crowd was still waiting in the streets, but it had calmed. The rowdier element had drifted off to the saloons or the docks, and the curious had grown bored. The people waiting now were all silent, standing as if at a vigil. Ambrose’s hair stood on end, the air around him going colder despite his own state of ghostliness. He recognized every one of them.

“What’s wrong?” Ezra asked, finally remembering to speak under his breath so no one would notice him talking to nothing in the middle of the street.

Ambrose waved at the crowd. “You see them?”

“See who?”

Ambrose merely nodded. “I ain’t the only one he killed who’s been drawn here to see him hang. Guess that answers why I’m still here. They can’t get in. They’re left out here to wait.” He smiled sadly at Ezra. “Thanks for opening the door for me.”

His meaning seemed to hit Ezra suddenly, and the man looked out at the street again, going pale. “You mean . . . there are more of you? Spirits?”

“Men and women he killed.” There was a feeling in the pit of his stomach, the same one of helplessness and desperation that had driven him to sacrifice himself in a gun battle he’d known he couldn’t win. “A few little ones too. They look . . . they look confused.”

Ezra put both hands out as if to ward off the image of Boone Jennings’s victims wandering lost in the streets of San Francisco. “Oh this . . . this is so beyond my experience,” he said, then headed down the steps, still muttering to himself.

Ambrose watched him wade through the crowd, even walking through a few people. They shivered violently when he contacted them, then disappeared into the ether as if smoke to Ezra’s touch. The ones who remained didn’t seem to notice, all of them staring at the hotel, waiting. One by one they began to fade, pulled back to wherever they were doomed to spend their afterlives, just as Ambrose was sure to return to the bar of the Continental.

Ambrose glanced back at the doors, then lowered his head and followed after Ezra. For some reason, Ezra’s presence allowed him to travel off his tether; if he let Ezra get too far away, he’d surely be pulled back to the Continental and get stuck there again. He’d been trying to get out of there for two weeks now, but the damn doors were as solid as walls.

“Stop following me,” Ezra barked when Ambrose appeared at his side again.

“I’m not hurting anything being here.”

“Except my sanity!”

People on the street took pains to avoid Ezra, whispering or darting their eyes at him.

“You got to stop talking to yourself,” Ambrose reminded.

Ezra growled and gritted his teeth.

“Look, I don’t know why, but I can follow you out of the Continental, see? It’s the first time I’ve been able to leave the place where I died.”

“What about all the people you said you could see in the street, hmm? How’d they get here if you’re attached to me?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know the damn rules, I’ve only been dead a couple weeks!”

Ezra snarled and stopped in the middle of the street, shooing his hands at Ambrose, heedless of the attention he was drawing to himself. “Stop following me! It’s . . . it’s unsettling! I don’t wish to know there are ghosts roaming the streets, I don’t wish to know what happens after death, do you understand? I don’t need to know these things!”

“But—”

“I don’t wish to know this!” Ezra shouted. “I gave my testimony, I even read yours for you, and there’s no chance Boone Jennings will be anything but hanged at the end of this. I did exactly what you wanted, so stop following me.” He turned on his heel and stalked off.

“Thank you, Ezra,” Ambrose called after him.

Ezra didn’t turn around.

Ezra shoved through the doors of the Continental so hard that one of them banged against the wall, rattling the frames hung there. People turned to stare. He cleared his throat, straightening his coat.

Aside from the fact that he’d just learned his roommate for the evening had been dead, he wasn’t sure why he was so upset. Yes, befriending a ghost was the most unusual thing that’d ever happened to him, but at least Ambrose had been pleasant company. It was the fact that he was here at all that was rocking Ezra’s normally placid mind. Was that what happened when you died? No Heaven? No Hell? Just . . . an eternity of hoping someone could see you?

Ezra shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Good Lord.”

He didn’t head for his room, instead making a beeline for the saloon. If ever a drink was warranted, it was now.

The new mirror behind the bar had been hung, and the bartender was busy stocking bottles above it. It hit Ezra that this must have been where Ambrose had finally tracked down Boone Jennings and challenged him. Bullet holes littered the lower part of the bar, and one in the back wall must have gone right through a bottle of whiskey. This was where Ambrose had been shot. This was where he’d died.

“Best to order top-shelf,” Ambrose said to him.

Ezra jumped, holding a hand to his heart to calm its frantic beating. Ambrose was leaning on the bar, sipping from a shot glass and staring into the mirror on the back wall.

“You almost frightened me to death,” Ezra hissed.

Ambrose chuckled and took another sip of whiskey. “It’s not so bad, you know. Being dead.”

Ezra drew closer to him, still exasperated by his presence but beginning to truly ponder the implications of his being there. He stepped up the bar beside Ambrose and turned his attention to the mirror. Only his own reflection stared back at him.

He lowered his head sadly, glancing sideways at Ambrose. Was he stuck here? Doomed to forever haunt this hotel where he’d lost his life? If no one else could see him, was Ezra his only company? The thought made Ezra cringe at his earlier reaction on the street.

“What can I get you, sir?” the bartender asked him. Ezra tore his eyes away from Ambrose and gave the man a weak smile.

“Top-shelf,” Ambrose said. “Order top-shelf.”

“Top-shelf, please,” Ezra managed to say.

The bartender nodded and turned away. The smell of tobacco smoke wafted through the air, followed by a whiff of gunpowder. Ezra glanced around, frowning. The saloon was nearly empty, and no one had lit a cigarette.

“You here for the trial?” the bartender asked.

“I am.”

“They going to hang him?”

“I believe so, yes,” Ezra said, a hard edge creeping into his voice.

“Good.” The bartender set a glass and a bottle in front of him. “He killed that marshal right here in front of me.”

Ezra had to force himself not to glance at Ambrose. He nodded instead. “Why wasn’t Marshal Shaw’s murder prosecuted? His case seems far more compelling than the one being tried.”

“Self-defense,” the bartender grunted. “Marshal didn’t draw first, but no one who saw it was willing to say that. And the only other man still alive to tell it is Jennings.”

“What about you?”

The bartender smiled sadly. “Boone Jennings is a devil. Takes a brave man to stand toe to toe with him. And if I’ve learned one thing of myself, it’s that I am not cut from the same cloth as men like Marshal Shaw. I just serve the drinks.”

He took his leave then, stocking new bottles at the other end of the bar. Ezra turned his attention back to Ambrose, who was staring at the bar top.

“Are you here to protect me?” Ezra asked. “Is that why you won’t leave me alone?”

Ambrose spoke quietly. “I don’t know why I’m here. You left me standing in the street; next thing I knew I was sitting here.” He put his glass down and narrowed his eyes at Ezra. “Maybe you’re the one following me.”

There was a hint of amusement in his features, and Ezra found himself fighting a smile. He poured himself a glass of whiskey, then set the bottle between them. They sat in silence for some time, drinking together.

“I’m quite sorry you’re dead,” Ezra finally offered.

Ambrose laughed. “Me too, partner.”

It made Ezra chuckle. At least the man wasn’t a morose ghost. Ambrose pulled a cigarillo from his vest and frowned at it.

“I keep smelling those,” Ezra said. “Is it you?”

Ambrose shrugged. “Alls I know is it’s damned hard to light one when you can’t hold a match.”

He placed it on the bar. A moment later, it was gone. Ambrose stared dejectedly at the empty space, then reached in his vest again and pulled out the same cigarillo.

Ezra watched in fascination. “All you have on you is what you died with, isn’t it?”

Ambrose nodded. “I keep finding myself here, saddlebag over my shoulder. Pulling out a smoke. No one will light it for me though.”

Ezra wanted to reach out to console him, but he had the presence of mind to know that he’d likely reach right through him. He licked his lips instead, looking away. “I’m sorry I shouted at you. I was distraught by the thought of the afterlife you describe.”

“Yeah, well . . . I’m sorry I haunted you.”

They both chuckled softly. Ezra studied him, thinking of the sacrifice the man had made, the guts and bravado it had taken to walk into this saloon knowing he might die and not caring as long as Boone Jennings went with him. Ezra nodded. “I’ll open your doors until he’s hanged, Marshal Shaw.”

Ambrose tipped his hat, lips quirking. “Much obliged, Inspector Johns.”