The Searcher (26 page)

C
ASSIDY WAS SITTING IN THE FAMILY PEW AT THE FRONT OF THE CHURCH
when his phone rang.

He had set it to vibrate, but the church was so quiet it might as well have been playing a Sousa march. There was no one else around so he let it ring, the insectile buzz shimmering through the quiet until, finally, it gave up. He had come here for peace and to pray and to think. He did not wish to hear whatever news the phone was bringing. He doubted it would be good.

It rang again almost immediately and he opened his eyes and stared at the twisted altar cross ahead of him. “God give me the strength to see out this day,” he whispered and pulled the phone from his pocket. “Cassidy,” he said, his whispering voice loud in the quiet of the church.

“It's Morgan. Tucker's dead.”

He sat bolt upright. “What?”

“We got a call from Ellie that there was an intruder at the ranch, and by the time we got there, Pete was dead. Guess who was riding away? Solomon Creed.”

Cassidy struggled to take it all in. “Pete's dead?”

“Yes.” Morgan's voice dropped lower. “And he was tortured first.”

Cassidy felt sick. “Why would they torture him?”

“Why do you think? To get information. Which means they'll most likely be coming for us next.”

Cassidy turned and looked back toward the door, checking that there was no one there, though he had locked the door from the inside so knew there couldn't be.

“Where are you?” Morgan said.

“Church.”

“Good. That's good. You should stay there. You'll be safe. Throw up a few prayers while you're at it.” Cassidy bristled at that but said nothing. “Listen, I've stepped up the manhunt for Solomon Creed. We're hunting a murderer now, not a horse thief, but I've kept it local—only my men, no outside agencies, nothing on the wires.”

“Why?”

“Because we don't want him captured, we want him dead. If we get outsiders in, they'll capture him and ask him all kinds of questions. We can't afford for that to happen.”

Cassidy stood and started walking past the cross to the dark fresco beyond. “What's the point?”

“What do you mean?”

Cassidy stopped in front of the mirror and stared at his dim reflection, the painted devil on one side, the angel on the other. “Say Solomon Creed is responsible for the plane crash and we give him to Tío, you think that will be enough? Remember that last message we got from him?”

“El Rey.”

“Exactly. It means this whole town is at stake now.” He shook his head and stared hard at his reflection, forcing himself to gaze upon the man he had become. “We can't let people suffer because of what
we did.” He looked up at the painted heaven and the words written on the banner beneath it: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

“This town is what's important, and the town is the people. We need to protect them, not ourselves. I've been blinded by the Cassidy name. We all have. The people are what's important. I deserve whatever's coming to me.”

The painted devil stared out at him, the painted angel too.

“Call everyone,” Cassidy said. “The DEA, the FBI—anyone who wants Papa Tío's head on a plate. Tell them you've discovered a conspiracy here to import drug shipments using the airfield, and that you believe Tucker and I are behind it. I'll back that story up if I make it that far; there's no need for you to go down too. The town will need someone to look after it. Tell them about the crash, tell them who was on the plane, and tell them you think Papa Tío is on his way here to personally wreak his revenge. Tío may be able to muster an army, but so can we. We need to save the town—that's all that matters. I'll take my chances either way.”

S
OLOMON SAW THE TRACK CUTTING UP THE SCREE-SIDED LOWER SLOPES
of the Chinchuca Mountains and steered his horse toward it. A sign pointed up, a simple board cut in the shape of an arrow, a cross burned on it with a hot iron to show day trekkers they were on the right track. He doubted there would be any tourists plodding their steady way up to the cemetery today, not after the fire. It would be some time before it was business as usual in this town.

He hit the track at a trot and kept it up as they rose, pushing the horse hard enough to make good time, but not so hard as to exhaust it. He would need the horse for more than this journey. The sun was dropping lower now and bathing everything with the warm blood glow of dusk. He could see the town below him, long shadows stretching from the taller buildings, the church glowing white in the center of everything, white like the cross marking the cemetery above him, white like he was.

He reached the top of the track where it forked left and continued up the mountains and to the right to double back to where the tall cross stood by a stone hut. A wall stretched away from the hut on both
sides, high railings sticking up from it with spikes on the top. The hut had a deep veranda and a tie rail and a trough for horses. There were water bowls for dogs too and a map of the local area on a board with hiking routes and points of interest marked on it and a sign saying N
O
G
UNS
P
LEASE—
G
RAVEYARD
I
S
F
ULL
. Another sign in the window of the door said C
LOSED
though the big iron gate was wide open.

Solomon walked the horse over to the trough and slid to the ground. There were noises coming from beyond the office, the faint scrapes of a shovel across ground. Solomon breathed in, instinctively trying to catch the scent of whoever was there, but the wind was coming from the wrong direction.

He stepped onto the porch, carefully cushioning his footfalls so they made no sound, and peered through the window into the darkened office. He saw shelves filled with graveyard memorabilia and the exact same things he had seen in the stores down in the town. Jack Cassidy's memoir was stacked up by the cash register. He tried the door, hoping that whoever was working in the graveyard had unlocked it and forgotten to flip the sign around, but it was locked tight.

The scraping sounds continued and he heard some soft clangs as the blade of a shovel patted the ground.

Gravedigger. Probably tidying up James Coronado's plot after the funeral. He might have information about the funeral. Holly's contact number. A key to the ticket office. Something.

Solomon moved softly across the boards and peered around the edge of the wall.

The cemetery was small and densely planted with bodies. Simple boards bristled up from the ground, names carved into the white flaking paint and picked out in black. Most were over a hundred years old. The only stone tomb was in the center, close to where a large cottonwood offered some shade, its roots nourished by the graves. A pickup truck
was parked under it, barrels of tools lashed to the back. A man in green overalls was working on a patch of ground a little way beyond it, shoveling stones onto a fresh mound of earth and patting it flat. Solomon watched him work, his back to him, his eyes fixed on the ground. It was the same man Mayor Cassidy had pointed out when the fire was still raging, the man who had given him the cap he had left in Morgan's car and the sunscreen he'd been using. Useful man to know.

Billy Walker.

Solomon glanced back at the pickup. If there was an information sheet relating to the cemetery, it would be in there. Probably be a phone in there too. All of which was academic because what was also in there was a very large dog. It sat behind the wheel, its huge head pointing at its owner, its tongue lolling from its mouth, the half-open window next to it smeared with drool.

American bulldog
, his mind told him.
Powerful, loyal, known to form extremely strong bonds with their owners.

He glanced back at the office door. He could break the glass, but the man might hear. The bulldog would for sure. He leaned close to the door; it was fitted with security glass, a grid of wire running all the way through it. It was bound to be alarmed too, a building like this, isolated and out of the way. Hardwired to the local police. Smash the glass and a cruiser would show up. No good.

He studied the locks. There were two, both heavy-duty. He pictured the tumblers and barrels within, the dead bolt, the levers, the detainers.

Could he pick them?

Perhaps, if he had the tools. But he didn't and the door would be alarmed too. He would need a key or a code to disarm that, and he had neither. He looked back around the edge of the building.

Billy Walker was finishing up now, scraping the last loose rocks into a pile on James Coronado's grave. A triangle of sweat had soaked
through the back of his overalls and the band of his cap. He must have been here for some time, tidying up, clearing away. Long enough that he might not have heard what had happened at the Tucker ranch. Hopefully. Either way, it was a risk he had to take.

He moved silently back to the trough where the horse was drinking, cupped his hands into the water, and rubbed at his face and hair to wash the ash from it. Then he grabbed one of the dog bowls and filled it.

The dog turned its head toward the sound of Solomon's boots crunching across the gravel. Its ears pricked forward and it barked, a single deep cough that stopped Billy Walker working and made him turn around. He squinted at Solomon from beneath the shade of his cap and leaned on the handle of his shovel.

“Hello again,” Solomon said, waving a greeting and holding up the dog bowl. “Thought your dog might want a drink.”

Billy shrugged. “I guess.”

Solomon drew closer to the truck and looked in at the solid knot of muscle and teeth. “What's his name?”

“Otis.”

“Is he friendly?”

“He's friendly enough if you're giving him food or sumpn' to drink.”

Solomon placed the bowl down in the shade and opened the door to let Otis out. The truck rocked on its springs when he jumped down. He ignored Solomon and headed straight to the bowl, sniffed it, then started slurping it down.

“Tough to be wearing a fur coat in this weather,” Solomon said, stepping out of the shade and walking over to Billy. “Is that James Coronado's grave?”

Billy turned and looked at the neat mound of stones as if he had only just noticed it. “You knew him?”

“Long time ago. I heard about what happened and was in the area, so I thought I'd come by. Then the fire happened and . . .” He let the sentence trail off. “Thanks for the hat, by the way. I left it with Chief Morgan to give it back to you. Didn't figure on bumping into you again. He took me over to Holly's house so I could pay my respects, only she wasn't there.” He stared down at the grave. “Reckoned I'd come here instead.”

“You missed the funeral,” Billy said, dropping the shovel onto a tarp along with a rake and a pair of work gloves.

“I guess I did.”

Billy rolled his tools in the tarp and walked up the slope to his truck. The dog glanced up from his bowl then went back to drinking.

“You wouldn't have any idea how I might contact the widow, would you?” Solomon said. “Be a shame to be here and not get a chance to say hello and offer my sympathies.”

Billy dumped the tarp in the back of the truck and turned to him. “You don't got her number?”

“I lost my phone. Must have dropped it out by the fire line. Lost all my numbers too. Pain in the ass.”

Billy nodded then moved around to the driver's seat and reached inside. Solomon tensed. If he did know what had happened at the Tucker ranch, now would be the moment he would pull out a shotgun.

“I saw what you did there at the fire line,” Billy said, pulling a phone out of a dashboard charger. “Taking charge and shifting the line like that. That was a ballsy move. I guess this town owes you something for that. You can use my phone to call Mrs. Coronado if you like.” He handed him the phone and pulled a folder out of the door pocket with a map of the cemetery pasted to the cover. “I got her number in here someplace.”

H
OLLY
C
ORONADO DESCENDED INTO THE COOL, POLISHED GLOOM OF THE
town museum, a worn, stone block of a building that faced the church and filled one whole side of the town square. It had originally been the Copper Exchange, built to house all the offices and personnel who ran the mine and traded copper when the town was booming. Now it was part town hall, part museum, with the museum on the first two floors and the archive in the basement.

She caught Janice Wickens coming out of a pebbled-glass door with Archive Office painted on it and noted the look of sympathy that passed across her face.

“Mrs. Coronado,” she said. “I'm so very sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.” Holly forced a smile. “I was wondering if I could check something.”

Janice already had the key in the lock. “Well, I was fixing to close up for the day.”

“It will only take a moment, please.” She held up the requisition. “Jim had this in his personal things. I wanted to pick it up for him.”

Janice Wickens was a metronome of a woman who lived in a house
wrapped in plastic to keep everything clean and in perfect order. Precision was important to her, more important than friends even, and Holly could feel the turmoil her request had roiled up inside her. “Please,” she said. “For Jim.”

Even the plastic-wrapped heart of Janice Wickens couldn't hold out against the wish of a widow invoking her dead husband's name. “One moment then,” she said, turning the key and opening the door again.

Holly followed her into a room with oak panels and wide floorboards and a counter at waist height that made it feel like an old mutual savings office or a bar in an old hotel. Janice took the requisition slip, checked the number on it against a handwritten ledger, then disappeared through a door leading to the main archive.

Holly paced and waited. Checked the time on her phone and frowned when it started ringing. She didn't recognize the number. She let it ring a few times, debating whether to let it go to voice mail. Then she answered. “Hello?”

“It's me. It's Solomon.”

“Hi,” she said and stepped away from the counter.

“Where are you?”

“I'm in the Cassidy archive.”

“Where's that?”

“In town. Opposite the church.”

“What happened at the police station?”

“Nothing. They left me alone in a room for a while then let me go.”

“Okay, you need to get out of there now.”

“Why?”

“Because Pete Tucker's dead.”

“What! How?”

“It doesn't matter. Listen, don't go home. Don't talk to the police.
Don't talk to anyone. I think you're in danger. You need to get out of town as fast as possible. Don't let anyone know where you're going.”

Holly felt like the ceiling had started to lower and the walls were closing in. “Where are you?”

“Up at the cemetery.”

“I want to meet up.”

“Not here.” There was a pause and Holly turned to the door. She could hear Janice returning on the other side. “The place your husband died, is it easy to find?”

She knew exactly where he had died but hadn't wanted to go there. Not now. Perhaps not ever. “Yes. All right, yes. It's about three miles east of town on the Chinchuca road, the road that winds up through the mountains. There's a stone near the road with a wagon-trail marker like an eagle on it.”

Janice Wickens walked back in holding an envelope. Holly smiled and Janice handed it to her then turned the ledger around so she could sign for it.

“Okay,” Solomon said. “I'll get there as soon as I can. Be careful.”

She signed her name, feeling as if she was watching everything through the wrong end of a telescope. “I will.”

The phone clicked and she looked up. Janice was regarding her with concern. “You okay, dear?”

“Yes, I'm fine.” She placed the pen down on the ledger and started backing away, trying to remember what she'd said and how much Janice might have heard. Don't talk to anyone, Solomon had said. She felt panicked. “Thanks for this,” she said, holding up the envelope. “I appreciate your time.” Then she turned and left the room, her boots sounding far too loud as she hurried away across the polished stone floor.