Sanchez dozed.
Later, I elbowed him, pointing.
Richard had emerged from the school’s central hallway with a pack of kids. The pack boarded a waiting bus. We gave pursuit. Along the way, we watched Richard shove a red headed kid’s face into the bus’s rear window. Perhaps amplified by the glass, the freckles along his forehead were huge. Judging by the way that the redhead resigned himself to his fate, I surmised this was a daily routine.
“I really don’t like this kid Richard,” said Sanchez.
“Yup,” I said. “Then again, the other kid is red headed.”
“True.”
The bus dropped Richard off, along with a half dozen other kids. We followed Richard home from a safe distance. Along the way, we watched him turn over three trashcans and knock over a “For Sale By Owner” sign in front of a house.
Sanchez said, “I ought to bust his ass for vandalism.”
“You realize we’re trained investigators following a twelve-year-old kid.”
“Kid or no kid, he took part in a pre-meditated beating of a defenseless eleven-year-old. My defenseless eleven-year-old,” said Sanchez. “And I’m the only trained investigator here. You’re just a rent-a-dick.”
“Hey, we both fell asleep.”
The kid turned into an ugly white home, and promptly chased away an ugly orange cat off the wooden porch. He went inside. Sanchez pulled out a notebook and wrote something down.
“What are you doing?”
Sanchez checked his watch. “Noting the mark’s time of movements, assessing the daily routine.”
“Did you include abusing the redhead?”
Sanchez ignored me. When finished, he snapped the notebook shut. “Same time tomorrow, but this time we bring Jesus.”
“Good,” I said. “I could use some more ice cream.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
I was in the desert city of Barstow, otherwise known as the Great Las Vegas Rest Stop. I wasn’t resting. I was actually working, sitting in front of a microfilm machine on the third floor of Barstow Junior College library.
Earlier, a rather pretty college student with hair so blond it was almost white showed me how to operate the machine. I might have flubbed my first few attempts just to be shown the process all over again.
Now, after being thoroughly trained, I zipped through some of the oldest issues of the Barstow Times, currently scanning headlines in the 1880’s. Barstow is an old city, and its newspaper is one of the oldest in the region. Next to me, sweating profusely, was a regular Coke. I love regular Coke, and sneak it in when the mood strikes. After driving through 100-degree weather in a vehicle with no air conditioning, the mood struck and I ran with it.
The headlines were fairly mundane. Cattle sold. Drops in silver prices. Heat waves. Oddly, no mention of terrorists, nuclear fallout, Lotto results, or presidential scandals.
I was looking beyond headlines at what would be considered the filler articles. Most historians agree that Sylvester died no later than 1880. He was found in 1901. Like a good little detective, I was going to sift through every page of every newspaper published between January 1, 1880 and December 31, 1900.
I may need some more Coke.
Most of the news was indeed about Barstow, but there was the occasional mention of neighboring Rawhide and its wealthy family, the Barrons. From all accounts, the three Barron boys were hellraisers, always in some scrap or another, constantly bailed out by their wealthy family. Fights, shootouts, drunken misconduct, and wild parties. They were the Wild West’s equivalent to rock stars. Their raucous exploits often made the front page, along with pictures. I suspected I was seeing the birth of the paparazzi.
It took me two hours to go through the years 1880 and 1881. At this pace, I would be here all night. I wondered if the cute librarian would pull an all-nighter with me.
In March of 1884, I came across something interesting. One of the Barron boys, Johansson Barron, had been in a barroom fight with a silver miner. According to the article and witnesses, it wasn’t much of a fight: the Barron kid stabbed the miner from behind. The miner was later treated for a superficial wound to his left shoulder, but appears to have been okay.
A week later, the very same miner disappeared.
His disappearance rallied the whole town, probably because he had had the guts to stand up to a Barron. A thorough search of all the local mines was conducted. Search parties scouted the local hills. Nothing. The miner was gone, leaving behind a wife and five children.
The miner’s name was Boonie Adams.
I thought about Boonie Adams some more, then looked at my watch, in which I started thinking about lunch. I decided to get the hell out of Dodge. Or at least Barstow.
As I headed back out into the desert, with a fresh Coke nestled in my lap, I was feeling giddy. I was fairly certain I had found my man, and luckily there was one way to know for sure.
Chapter Twenty-nine
It was after hours and we were with Sylvester. Jones T. Jones was chain smoking. Wet rings circled his armpits. For the ninth time, I told him to breathe and not to get his hopes up.
“This feels right,” he said for the tenth time.
If I had told him that I suspected Sly was really a woman and I had proof that her name was Bertha, Jones would have said the same thing: this feels right.
“Well, don’t get your hopes up,” I said.
“Too late, they’re up. Way up. Besides, I’ve lived my whole life with my hopes up. I’m not afraid to get them dashed every now and then. Getting your hopes dashed builds character.”
“Then this might be a character-building exercise.”
“So be it,” he said. “I enjoy living life with my hopes up. Keeps me out of therapy and off of the mood- enhancers.”
It was after eight p.m. The store was closed for the night, and most of the lights were out. I was keenly aware that I was currently being watched by about two dozen shrunken heads. Rubber, granted. But shrunken nonetheless. And I was keenly aware that I was standing in front of a very dead man. One of the deadest men I had ever seen. Hell, if I wasn’t so tough, I might have been nervous.
“This store gets creepy at night, huh?” said Jones. Perhaps he was a mind reader. Or perhaps he saw me look nervously over my shoulder.
“Hadn’t noticed,” I said.
“We hear voices at night, you know. And sometimes we show up in the morning and the displays are knocked over.”
“Maybe it’s mice.”
Jones wasn’t listening. “Say, do you investigate the paranormal as well?”
“No.”
“Too bad, I could have thrown some more work your way.”
“More publicity for the store?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. Jones was shameless. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get more customers in through those doors.”
“Even make up ghost stories.”
“If I have to,” he said. “But these are real.”
