Part 19 (1/2)

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.