No one reported hearing growls or snarls, not Stanton, not any of those who had been drawn to the alley by the screams. Certainly not David or Annie. The Fort Smith police let them go. There was, after all, nothing more to be said or done by them, and that department had all it could handle.
The Blazer's heater had all it could handle, too, fighting the increasingly cooler outside air of late afternoon as it whistled and roared through the shattered window.
David had taken off his windbreaker and draped it around Anne's shoulders, but it wasn't enough.
He stopped in Fairview. The Chevy dealer was remarkably unconcerned about the damage to the loaner, maybe because David's car still sat, untouched, in the back lot. "You're hell on cars, Huerra," was all he'd said, and cheerfully at that, before he'd lent him still another vehicle, a modified Suburban.
Blake had not been available when he called the sheriff's office, but the dispatcher promised to find him and relay the message that David needed to talk to him. It was time to live up to his promise to the sheriff, and he wasn't looking forward to it.
And he wasn't looking forward to taking Annie back to that house. But he had to.
He'd seen her look like this once before. Damn it. Only two days before. At the fork in the highway just outside Allegro, he pulled to a widened place on the side of the road and stopped.
This truck had bench seats.
He unsnapped his seat belt and hers and dragged her to his side.
She was cold. Still cold. Little shivers shook her. And she wasn't with him. Where was she? In Chicago pleading futilely for the lives of those who had trusted her? At the top of Simpson Knob, physically holding life and blood in a small boy? Or in an alley in Fort Smith witnessing a sight that rivaled any nightmare he had seen in fifteen years as a cop?
He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, across her back, and finally just wrapped her as close to him as he could and held her. "It will be all right, Annie girl. We'll make it all right. We can do it. Somehow."
He felt her drag in a tortured breath and rock against him. "It isn't supposed to happen here. I came here because this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen here. No violence. No blood. No crime. Harriet Nelson or June Cleaver in every kitchen. Who was he, David? Someone sent by that awful man from the museum? Someone sent by Joe? Or just a thief who picked the wrong car? And what difference does it make who he was? This place is supposed to be safe. Damn it! Bad things don't happen in little towns like this. That's why I'm here; that's why I have to stay. It's the big cities where greed and death rule not—"
"Annie, Annie, it can happen anywhere. Some places are safer than others, but no place is completely safe."
"No, you don't understand. I won't let it happen here; I can't let it happen here. I need someplace in the world, someplace in this whole big world where I won't be afraid."
He felt his throat tighten, felt the pressure of not being able to promise her that he would always keep her safe. Because he couldn't promise her that.
"You're safe here, Annie," he said around the constriction in his throat. "And now. Right here and right now you don't have to be afraid. Start with that, darlin'. Build on that. You can do it."
"And when you leave? What do I do then?"
She was sure, so sure he would leave her. Was she right? Could he survive in this corner of the world where she had chosen to hide? Could she?
Anne seldom saw a sunset. The hill behind her house cut off any view of one from her home. Her home. Only a week before those words had brought her great pride. Now—Now she suppressed a shudder as David turned the Suburban into her driveway and downshifted for the climb. Twilight already hid the yard and lower windows, and from the kitchen a light gleamed.
Margaret's truck sat parked in the turnaround. Of course. The clinic would be closed by now, and she and Wayne wouldn't leave the house unguarded.
God. Did any human have to guard the house?
David parked and took the key from the ignition. He, too, looked up at the house, at the back wall bare of windows, at the overgrown hillside behind them, at the closed and barred doors of the sagging barn.
"I should have run with you that first day," he said softly. "I should have said, 'I'm not going in that house, and there's no way in hell I'm letting you go back in without me.' I should have stuffed you back in that brown truck of yours and hauled us both out of this county."
She fumbled for his hand and held on.
"We're not in any danger from what's in there," he said. "I'm pretty sure of that. But I'm not so sure we're safe from anyone who decides to come looking. I'm sorry, Annie."
"Why are you sorry? If it weren't for my crazy, greedy family, there'd be no problem."
"Now that I'm not so sure of."
A shadow separated from the side of the house and moved forward, just before the bright beam of a flashlight trapped them in its glare. Anne could have sworn her heart stopped, then started again at double speed.
"Damn. It's okay, Annie. It's okay." David opened the truck door, and when the interior light came on, the flashlight went off. "Sorry, Wayne. I should have realized you wouldn't recognize the truck."
Anne watched as Wayne stopped and examined both of them in the dim light. "You two okay?"
"Yes." David slid from the seat, still holding Anne's hand. He bent toward her, looking at her face, her eyes, focusing for a moment on her lips. His own quirked ruefully, and he gave her another of his wicked grins. "We'll neck later," he whispered. "This will be a great truck for it. Much better than the Blazer."
With a sob or a chuckle, she wasn't sure which, Anne slid from the truck. With a little effort, she convinced her knees to support her, and she convinced her legs to work as she walked with David up onto the porch and into the warmth of the kitchen.
Wayne came in with them. Margaret entered the room from the hallway, and the two of them shared a silent communication before Wayne shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a peg. "Don't suppose you'd want to tell us what happened to the Blazer, or to Anne, or just in general what in the hell is going on, would you?"
"Wayne," Margaret's soft voice both chastised and invited his silence.
"No, hell, no, Maggie. If it were just me, I would keep my mouth shut. But you're here, and that poor, hurt little girl and her baby, and this is the second trip out of three in as many days that he's brought Anne back looking like death warmed over. It's time to ask questions."
David looked down at Anne. He was going to tell—she knew that—with or without her permission. And he was right to do so. Slowly she nodded.
"And it's time for answers." Still looking at her, David spoke to Wayne and Margaret. "Just as soon as Blake gets here."
David met Blake on the back porch when he arrived.
"Tell me that homicide in Fort Smith doesn't have anything to do with the problems coming from this house," the sheriff said without preamble.
"I can't do that, Blake."
Blake slumped slightly. He scrubbed at the back of his neck. "Well, hell."
David opened the screen and stepped back. "Come inside."
Nellie had joined them in the kitchen for a few minutes. She'd even been persuaded to drink a cup of soup. But the two men and undercurrents she had no way of understanding obviously made her uneasy, even though she tried to hide it. Margaret had fixed her a cup of hot tea, given her more analgesics, and convinced her to rest in the downstairs bedroom before Blake's arrival.
Gretta Tompkins, perhaps understanding the need for an early bedtime, had kept Lilly up and active all afternoon. So after a quick supper for her, even though it was not late, it hadn't been difficult for them to persuade the little girl to take a nap with her mama.
That left just Wayne and Margaret, David and Anne, and Blake, seated at the round table in the kitchen.
Still pale, still wearing his windbreaker, Anne had her hands stuffed in its pockets. An unpleasant, expectant hush had settled over the room. She looked up at David. "Where do I start?"
"I'll do it." Somehow it seemed the least he could do for her. "If you'll let me."
"Oh, please."
Now, all he had to do was figure out how to explain the unexplainable. But maybe that wouldn't be completely impossible. Wayne met his glance from across the table and gave him an almost imperceptible but nonetheless encouraging nod.
He supposed he'd have to start at the beginning. And where else would that be but with the man upstairs? His gesture at the museum, tearing up the photographs, had been more for security than for dramatic emphasis; in the wrong hands those pictures could be dangerous. He'd meant to shred them further and dispose of the pieces, but he hadn't yet.
"Annie," he said softly. "Give me the pictures. In the jacket pocket," he added when she just looked at him, confused.
She remembered. Nodding, she withdrew her hand from the pocket and handed him the pieces of photographic paper.
The puzzle wasn't difficult; he'd only torn them twice—four parts to each of four distinctive portraits. With only a moment's study he pieced them together and laid them in the center of the table, clearly visible by the three people—friends, good friends, trustworthy friends—across from them.
Wayne gave a low whistle and looked up, understanding. "Ralph Hansom's treasure."
"Yes."
"Is that what got him killed?"
"Probably."
Blake looked up from the photo he had been tracing the perimeter of in fascinated disbelief. "You're saying he was murdered?"
"No." David hurried to stop that misconception. "I believe his car went off the mountain with him in it, and that no other person was involved."
"Then what—" Wayne stopped, finding the answer to his own question. "The cats? Inside with him?"
David nodded. "I think so."
"Cats," Blake said. "Like these cats you've been hearing, seeing, tracking?"
"Not like them, Blake," David told him. "The same ones."
"Wait a minute. That was almost fifty years ago. Are you telling me that you've been tracking geriatric mountain lions?" He gave a short laugh. "Or maybe their ghosts?"
Wayne leaned back in his chair and reached for Maggie's hand. "Maybe," he said. "That would explain why Uncle James didn't see them."
"Wait a minute," Blake said, looking from Wayne to David. "Hold on. Stop."
Wayne stopped.
David stopped. He recognized the need Blake felt to deny the unbelievable. He'd done it himself. He recognized Blake's need to orient himself with something familiar and real. He'd done that, too. But Blake had now had his moment to do that; it was time to move on.
"In the last three days, we've spoken to Frances Collins, the interim director at the Spiro Mounds Park, and to Marian Hansom, Joe's grandmother, as well as to you, Blake, looking for answers to questions we didn't even know how to ask. Each answer we got led us deeper into confusion, but there were some things that kept recurring. Cats. And curses. And death."
Blake shifted in his chair, but he gave David his full attention.
"In 1935, Ralph Hansom apparently either stole this burial," David told them, indicating the photographs, "or hired someone to steal it. Everyone who helped him, everyone he tried to sell it to, died a brutal death.
"Frances's grandfather was a digger at the site. She heard this from him. She says the old-timers talk about big golden cats prowling the mounds. She didn't tie the deaths she told us about to the cats. She did tie them to the curse.
"Marian Hansom blames everything on the curse: Ralph's death, her poverty, her injury." He glanced pointedly at Blake. "The deaths of Lucy Hansom and Walter Briggs. She also admitted that the reason Joe is supporting her is because she has told him about the fortune this represents, but not where it is."
Wayne and Blake knew the next part of the story; he doubted that Margaret did. "We found the burial on Wednesday. That was the first time we heard what could have been a large cat. We sent a shell to a collector in Dallas. He was murdered. We sent a femur to a friend of Anne's in Chicago. It was stolen from her. The thief was murdered. Both by large animals."
Margaret gasped and clutched Wayne's hand. "These are the cats he's heard?"
"Yes, Margaret, I believe they are."
He turned to Blake. "The day Joe broke in, the cats warned Wayne. He heard them, before and after the break-in. Joe didn't.
"We asked Frances to help us find a way to let archaeologists and historians benefit from the knowledge this burial can reveal and yet protect anyone who might come in contact with it in the future.
"We met today with a representative from a private museum in Tulsa. We took him these four pictures and five items from the grave goods. All Anne asked in exchange for turning this collection over to him was a legally binding promise that it would be kept secure and together. He gave lip service, but it was apparent he didn't intend to do that. It was also apparent that the cats didn't like his treatment of the artifacts."
"You heard them?" Blake asked.
David nodded. "I heard them. Anne heard them. And Frances Collins heard them. God, Wayne, I know now what you mean about the volume. We were in a windowless room, maybe fifteen by thirty. They were all around us. And Stephen Carlton didn't hear a thing."
"So I was right." Wayne grimaced. "They weren't fussing at me, were they?"
"Oh, they were fussing, all right. They only stopped when we forcibly took the last artifact from him and packed it away with the others. I don't know what would have happened to us if we hadn't done that."
"And Fort Smith?" Blake asked. "How did they get from the Mounds park to Fort Smith?"
"We went into the city to make sure no one from the museum followed us home," David said. "I would have sworn I wasn't followed. We stopped to eat. While we were in the restaurant someone broke into the car and stole the box of artifacts."
"The man who was killed in the alley?"
"Yes, Blake. I saw the empty box just outside the doorway where he had been trapped."
Anne laid her hand on his, seeking his attention. "We have to call Frances," she said. "We left her locked in the museum with that awful man. We have to make sure she's all right."
"Huerra, damn it!" Blake rose with a roar. "What the hell kind of path are you cutting through this part of the county?"
"With her permission, Blake." Annie said quickly. "She told us to. She kept him locked in with her so that we could leave. Please. Please . . ."
David turned his hand and laced his fingers with hers.
She returned the pressure. Whatever she had been about to beg for, she didn't. "Would you please see if you can get in touch with her? She lives with her grandparents, but I don't know their names."
Blake dragged his chair around, scooted it back up to the table, and rested his hands on the back of it. "Sorry, Doc. Sure. Sure. I'll have my dispatcher call the sheriff's office up there. They'll know. But first—" Now he was the one giving a pointed look—at David. "You said the box was empty. Any idea what happened to the items that were in it?"
He felt Annie's fingers jerk within his. He drew her hand up and clasped it in both of his, rubbing it. Warming it. "They ought to be back by now, don't you think?"
"Yes."
Oh, hell. If the first part of this story had been hard for Blake to believe, how much more difficult would be the rest of it?
"Have I been upstairs since we came in this afternoon, Wayne?"
"No."
"Has Annie?" he asked, knowing that not even his Annie would be safe from suspicion.
"Thanks," David said when Wayne dragged his head to one side in a negative gesture. "Remember that, please. Make the call, Blake," he suggested. "Then we do have to go upstairs. All of us."
Blake called his office and requested the information, then hauled the telephone back over to the table and set it in front of his chair. It rang in only minutes—minutes that had dragged because of the silence around the table. Blake noted a number, said a few terse words to the caller, then scooted telephone and the scrap of paper with the number on it across the table.
David considered giving the telephone to Annie to make the call. Considered it for about the space of two heartbeats. She had rallied, but not that much, and not that well. He dialed the number.
Frances answered on the second ring.
"Are you all right?" he asked. "Annie wanted to be sure you survived confinement with Carlton."
"Yes," Frances said over the mumble of a television in the background. "But I'm not sure he did. He was looking awfully ragged by the time Gramma got there to unlock the door."
He patted Annie's hand and mouthed the words, "She's all right."
"I'm sorry we had to do that," he told the woman on the phone.
"Those are the magic words, aren't they, David? Had to. I'm sorry I got you nice folks involved with him."
"Will there be any repercussions for you?"
"No, I . . ." Her voice faded as the sounds from the television grew louder. "Wait a minute. What? What Gramps? Oh, my lord."
"What is it, Frances?" he asked sharply.
"What it is, is the Fort Smith news," she said eventually, and he knew what story she must be seeing, but not how much was being told. Their names shouldn't be mentioned. There wasn't any reason for them to be dragged into the news story. But the mangled body was news. Big news.
"Yeah," he said without her having to ask. "Someone broke into the car and stole the box of artifacts."
"Oh, shit."
He listened to the faint hiss of the line and the rumble of the television newscaster.
"How is Anne?"
How was Anne? He glanced at her. About at the end of her endurance? Holding on by a thread and sheer determination? "Better," he told her, praying it was true.
"I'm coming down there," Frances said abruptly. "Something's got to be done. Carlton's going to try to find you. God only knows what he'd do if he got his hands on the burial. Do you suppose he was responsible—Never mind. We can talk about that when I get there. Maybe—Maybe together we can come up with something."
"Can you—" Hell, why not? "Can you make sure you're not followed?"
For reply, she only gave a wicked laugh. "Give me finding directions for where you are."
Maybe his paranoia was working overtime. Maybe it was time for his paranoia to start doing just that. If Blake had found her telephone number so easily, who else might have? "No," he said. "Call when you get to town. Then we'll either give you directions or come and lead you here."
Anne looked in on her other guests before they went upstairs. Lilly lay curled against her mother with her thumb securely in her mouth. Nellie slept heavily, her battered face cushioned against a down pillow, unaware that Anne watched. Unaware of anything, not even dreams at this level of sleep. Good. That was what she needed. Sleep to let her body heal. Sleep to give her a chance to recapture her strength.
Was that what she herself was doing, Anne wondered as she pulled the door shut against any noise they might make going upstairs. Retreating from the shock and the pain to recover? Or had she finally reached the limit of what she could endure? She wasn't sure.
Neither was David. He thought she didn't know; he was careful not to be too obvious as he hovered over her. She knew. What she didn't know was how to bring herself out of this cushioned fog that had enveloped her.
"How is she?" David asked at her side.
"Asleep."
"Good."
The two of them led the way upstairs. Anne might have resisted the way David held her arm if she hadn't glanced back and seen that Wayne had taken the same protective posture with Margaret.
The door was closed, as they had left it. David pushed it open and flipped the switch for the overhead light. They'd left the small stove lighted, burning low.
Marian had lived in this room for how long? Years and years and years as a bitter, vindictive, and greedy woman. The hate that fueled her, the madness that governed her, ought to have permeated even the boards beneath their feet.
But it hadn't. The room was warm. Warm and as inviting as its shabby sophistication would allow.
Margaret looked with interest at the art deco sofa and parlor stove. Wayne glanced at the off-center light fixture and then at the closet wall.
"That's what raised Anne's suspicions," David told him.
"A false wall?" Wayne asked.
"Yes, but not where we thought."
David opened the closet and then discovered he either had to let go of her arm or drag her into the closet with him. He patted her arm—he'd done a lot of that since they left the museum—but he let go of it and walked into the closet. She heard the sounds of him wrestling the panel away and stepped back, indicating that Blake should follow him into the closet.
He did. Wayne followed him. Margaret remained by her side. "Should we go back downstairs?" she asked.
Only that morning Anne had thought that it seemed as though Margaret had been involved forever. Now that feeling doubled. How strange. "No," she said.
The three men stood at the foot of the skeleton. Anne and Margaret stepped to one side, standing together. And he was a skeleton, Anne told herself. No longer a warrior. No longer a man. Bones. Just bones, as David had said, with the spirit that animated him long gone.
But why did the loss seem so recent? Why did the separation seem so new? She felt Margaret's arm come around her waist in silent support and looked up to see moisture glistening in her friend's eyes.
And why did it seem as though she had stood just here, before, with this woman, sharing her support as she grieved for this man?
Blake broke the spell. "Wait a minute. You said you sent the femur, the right femur, to Chicago."
Anne slipped from Margaret's side and went to kneel beside the litter. "Yes," she said. She shifted the copper slightly. "This one." She didn't look at Blake's face; she knew she'd see blatant skepticism there. "And this gorget is the one we sent to Dallas." All of the other items except the crystal jaguar had already settled into place. It still rested on the edge of the litter. One by one she touched them. "And these were in the box that was stolen from the car in Fort Smith." Now she turned to look at Blake. "We told the police officer the box was empty, because we knew it would be when they found it."
Blake was dragging his head from side to side. "I trust your word, Anne Locke, but I'm having a whole lot of trouble with this."
"Frances is coming," David told him. "She can identify the pieces that we showed Carlton."
"There's another way," Anne said. "Pick out a piece, Blake. One that you can easily recognize."
"Annie—"
"It's all right, David. We've done it. And maybe this is the only way Blake will truly understand."
Blake approached the foot of the litter warily and went down on one knee. Just as warily he reached toward the heaped up treasures. When she saw that he picked up the cedar box containing the miniatures Anne wanted to call back her words, wanted at least to cry out, Not that one. Anything else, but not that.
She didn't have to. A low rumbling came from her left, not really threatening—not yet—just making its presence known. Blake tossed down the box and backed carefully away from the litter.
"That's it?" he asked softly. "That's the sound you heard?"
"Not quite," David stepped between Blake and the warrior. "I don't think it was really pissed off at you, just moderately upset. You read it that way, Wayne?"
Wayne had already thrust himself between Margaret and the sound. "Yeah. That about describes it. Why don't we take the women downstairs."
The crystal jaguar had not moved. Anne scooped a little loose dirt from the floor of the litter and sprinkled it on and in the pipe bowl. "How about this piece, Blake? Would you be able to recognize it?"
"Anything. Anything, Anne. Don't you think you should move away from there?"
Should she? Anne looked at the litter, at all that remained of the man who had amassed such wealth and power. Someone who for some reason unknown by them, and in spite of what was now believed about the religion of his time, had gone to his grave and his afterlife alone. And he was still alone. Anne knew that as certainly as she knew he had been torn from his grave.
"Annie."
David had moved to stand beside her. Now he held his hand for her to help her to her feet. He was right. She knew he was right. Only bones and a lingering memory. And he was worried about her. Concern tightened his features and darkened his eyes. And maybe he was right about that, too, because no matter how much David meant to her, a part of her wanted to stay right where she was. With a man who had been dead for seven hundred years.
But of course she wouldn't do that.
She shifted the crystal jaguar into her left hand and took David's hand with her right as she rose to her feet. Such a fierce frown he had. Such a possessive grip. Did he realized that? She gave him a smile to ease his frown. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them both his frown and his grip eased.
They left the light on in the room. David and Blake settled the panel into place and closed the closet door. They waited in the hall while David closed the door to the room behind them. "We can't lock it," he said. "We haven't found the key or changed the lock. But I think we can find a way to convince you."