We ate at the International Hotel—a hotel in name only. It no longer rented rooms. During the time of the Civil War it had been dismantled board by board in Virginia City and trundled through the desert to Austin, then reassembled. They did things differently back then.
Afterward we walked the streets until the night chill drove us back to the Lincoln Motel. At an elevation of sixty-six hundred feet, the nights in Austin are cold, even in August.
The shower was too small for two. Nor was Kayla in the mood. She showered, then I did, and we went to bed.
Although the sag in the middle ensured we wouldn’t drift apart, Kayla clung to me. Not with passion, however. More than anything, I felt like a life raft, keeping her afloat. I could only imagine how it felt to learn such terrible things about your father.
We left the window open an inch, allowing cold air to drift into the room. Clean mountain air, full of magic and narcolepsy.
We slept.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I AWOKE, MISSING her.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the window at the night. Moonlight was on her neck, arms, breasts, sending glints of silver through her hair. Her nipples were erect in the cold. It was a hell of a sight, but I felt like a voyeur, looking at her without her knowing.
I sat next to her, our knees almost touching the wall beneath the windowsill. The town and the valley were bathed in eldritch light.
“He was a rotten son of a bitch,” Kayla breathed.
I had no answer to that.
She leaned a shoulder against mine. Her skin was cool. “When I was fourteen,” she said, “he came on to one of my girlfriends. Well, came on isn’t quite right, but…something.”
She spoke to the empty night, not looking at me.
“I never told anyone. By then he was married to his second wife, Anne. I didn’t like her very much. That’s one reason why I didn’t say anything, to her or to anyone. I didn’t want to cause trouble. And, I guess, there wasn’t all that much to say.”
A lone pickup truck rumbled along the highway fifty feet away, taillights and engine sounds fading, then gone.
“Her name was Suzy Evans. It was just the two of us. She was my best friend. Sometimes I’d sleep over at her place, or she would sleep over at mine. Dad—Jonnie—cupped her breast in a hallway one night as they were passing, squeezed gently. She was in a nightgown. Not flannel. Something filmy, like sheer polyester. It was way late. We didn’t think he was still up.”
“She didn’t think it was an accident?” I asked.
“No. She said he…reached out and grabbed. Squeezed her for a second, then smiled and kept going. Didn’t say a word.”
Another fourteen year old. “She never said anything to anyone, either?”
“Not that I ever heard. Maybe she thought no one would believe her. But she never came over again, and I never went back to her place. After that we drifted apart. I guess I didn’t believe her myself, not completely. I mean, my own father. It was so…weird. If it were true, it would have been unbelievably stupid of him, and I’d never thought of him as a stupid man. Disingenuous at times, but not outright stupid.”
I took her hand. Moonlight and cold night air bathed our bodies.
Kayla sighed. “I guess it was true, though. Probably was.”
I still didn’t tell her about Clair Hutson and the alleged attempted rape of Sarah Jean. No reason to. Kayla already knew more than she wanted to about Mayor Jonnie.
“Makes me wonder…” she murmured, letting the thought float away in a sigh.
“What?”
“Given how my father was, if…if maybe I have a half-brother or half-sister somewhere.”
“Victoria,” I said. It was out before I could stop it. It must have been on my mind, ever since Emmaline told us about Jacoba’s rape.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I closed my eyes at my stupidity. Too late. Too damned late.
“Victoria. You said Victoria.”
“It’s just a name.”
“You say names? They just pop out? Who is Victoria, Mort?”
Maybe I had to tell her, I didn’t know. Victoria had said she was Edna’s granddaughter. Maybe she was. Edna only had one child, Jacoba, who had been knocked up by either Jonnie Sjorgen or Dave Milliken. Maybe Jacoba had given birth to Victoria. But if Jacoba had never returned to Reno, why would Victoria have come back? Or was she lying? Maybe she was a scam artist. I wouldn’t have trusted her or her kid, Winter, with a roll of nickels.
Kayla grabbed my jaw and yanked my face toward hers. It hurt. “Who is Victoria?”
So I told her about my impromptu visit to Sjorgen House, being discovered by Winter outside, then Victoria, then my lengthy pseudo-conversation upstairs with Edna afterward.
“Victoria,” Kayla breathed. She looked at me. “You know a lot about what’s going on, Mr. Angel, sir.”
“That’s impossible, since I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on.”
“You knew about Jacoba. Now I find that you know this woman, Victoria. And her daughter.”
“I stumble over trivia. It doesn’t amount to anything. Nothing adds up.”
It might have, though, if almost forty years hadn’t elapsed between the rape of Jacoba and the decapitations. I’m not the swiftest pigeon in the flock, and as a private eye I might have trouble finding my hand in my pocket, but even I saw that long-ago connection between Jonnie and Dave. I could feel its energy, feel it humming somewhere out there in the dark, renewed, resurrected and alive, like Frankenstein’s monster during an electrical storm. Or maybe not. It might’ve been my imagination that was over-heated and running wild and free. It does that.
“Victoria,” Kayla said, testing the name. She put an elbow on the windowsill and rested her chin on her hand, staring out at the night.
“I don’t like her,” I said.
“She might be my sister, Mort.”
“Half-sister. It’s possible,” I admitted.
“I might be an aunt, too. Half-aunt.”
Meaning Winter. I
