She and Erik were placed in an interrogation room with an officer who spoke English. He asked how the shooting happened. They skirted the truth and said they were tourists exploring the cave and that a man wearing a cowboy hat had threatened them with a gun.
Their description of Leroy Hunt didn’t impress him. “Nobody was seen coming down the mountain when we arrived,” he said coldly. “The only people in the cave were you two and the man who was shot. How do we know you didn’t do it?”
“But we didn’t!” Cassie exclaimed indignantly.
“We found a gun in your backpack,” the policeman said to Erik.
“It was never fired,” Erik countered. “You can check.”
“Whether it was fired or not, most tourists do not climb the mountain while carrying weapons.”
“We’re innocent!” Cassie protested. “Ask Iker.”
“Who is Iker?” the officer scribbled a note on a legal pad.
“Iker Mendiluze. He’s a friend of ours,” Erik explained.
“Did he see the shooting?”
Erik hesitated before answering. “No, he went outside because he thought he heard a noise, but he never came back.”
The officer looked at him skeptically. “Never came back?” he echoed.
“We’re really worried about him,” Cassie rushed to add. “Maybe he crossed paths with the cowboy, and he’s been hurt. Maybe even dead. Somebody should be looking for him too.”
“Give me his description,” the policeman said. He wrote more notes on his legal pad as a formality. Tapping the page with his pen, he looked at the two suspects. “Even if we find this Iker you speak of, he won’t be able to help you. He didn’t see the shooting. It’s only your word.”
“If Griffin’s still alive, he can tell you what happened,” Cassie insisted.
The policeman raised an eyebrow. “Then you should pray he lives because, if he doesn’t, there is a very good chance you both will be charged with murder.”
After receiving that terrifying news, Erik and Cassie were led off to separate cells in the jail. They’d been told they were being held for questioning by the Superintendent. He was away but would return tomorrow. In the meantime, Cassie had nothing to do but wait. The only thought that kept surfacing over and over was, “It shouldn’t have been Griffin!” She would have expected Erik to get shot in the line of duty—to get shot and shrug it off. Even if she, herself, had gotten shot, she would have been able to handle it. But Griffin? Sweet, gentle Griffin? It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve for that to happen to him. She felt strangely guilty.
Another equally unpleasant thought surfaced. Cassie had never expected the world of the Arkana to collide with the surface world—the day-to-day world of policemen and judges and the legal system. The work her team was doing belonged to a different dimension of reality. Somehow, the consequences of their work had bled over, quite literally, into that mundane place where the only vision that mattered was the kind that could be checked by an optometrist. She could never explain to a lawyer or a judge what they were doing or why. She and Erik were trapped—stuck between worlds for the time being. She stared around her cold cell and tried once more to wake up from this nightmare.
Chapter 45 – A Visit from the Reaper
Leroy Hunt hated loose ends. First, little Miss Hannah and now this. Hunt was sure the yahoo he’d shot in the cave was dead till he got down off the mountain. From his hotel window he could see an ambulance tearing through town, sirens wailing. He didn’t figure they’d go to all that trouble for a corpse. A little further investigation was in order. He had to make sure the patient couldn’t identify who’d shot him. He figured he’d wait out the night. With any luck, the feller wouldn’t make it til morning.
***
Bright and early the next day, Hunt dragged Daniel into the car to make the rounds of the hospitals in Durango. The kid was still babbling something about it being a ghost, but there was a guy somewhere in town with a bullet in his gut who was real enough. Leroy stopped along the way to pick up a nice bunch of posies. He figured it would be more convincing if he pretended to be a friend of the injured man, paying an innocent social call. He’d already visited two clinics with no luck and was about to enter a third. He ordered Daniel to wait in the car. The boy had been acting owly all morning, and he had no patience for crazy today.
Leroy approached the nurses’ station, flowers in hand. “Buenos dias. I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am. Any chance you speak English?”
The woman nodded.
“That’s good. I hear there was a terrible accident on the mountain yesterday. Lots of commotion. They said that a feller was brought to a hospital in town with a gunshot wound. I’m pretty sure I know him. Any chance he was treated here?”
The nurse pointed down a hallway to the left and gave him the room number.
“Muchos gracias.” Hunt tipped his hat and ambled down the corridor. If the stranger was still alive, he wouldn’t be for long. Leroy was planning to introduce the patient to his maker via a pillow to the face. Hunt hadn’t used that technique for a while. It was a classic—a lot quieter and less messy than a gun.
When he reached the room, he was surprised by the sight of a uniformed policeman standing outside the door.
“Howdy, officer. Any chance I can pay a neighborly visit to the feller inside? I’m pretty sure I know him. American like me.”
The policeman sized him up coldly before replying in perfect English. “He was not American. A tourist, yes, but not American. He died last night.”
Hunt adopted a mournful expression. “I’m right sorry to hear that. Any family about? Maybe I could
