Boots and Bullets
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Now, though, he thought the fact that the two babies were there did matter for some reason. He tried to remember, but that only made his head ache and the memory slip farther away from him.
Roberta Warren was still shaking her head. “There were no babies in the nursery that last night the old hospital was still open. I’m afraid you’re mistaken about that, as well.”
He tried another tactic. “Do you know a woman with long auburn hair, greenish-blue eyes, tall, slim, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties?”
“As I told your brother, there is no one employed at the hospital who matches that description.”
“Do you know anyone in town who matches that description?”
She raised a brow. “I thought you said it was a nurse who you thought you saw murdered.”
“She wasn’t wearing a name tag when I found her. Maybe she was only pretending to be a nurse.”
The administrator looked at her watch pointedly. “I’m sure you’ve spoken with the sheriff. Had there been a murder—”
“I’d like to speak to the two nurses on duty that night,” he said.
“I won’t allow that.”
“Why not?” he asked, thinking he might be on to something.
“I’ve questioned both of them at length, Mr. Winchester. One was always at the desk that night. The sheriff also questioned them as well and looked at the monitor readings. You never left your bed that night. If you decide to pursue this, it will have to be with a subpoena and just cause.” Her tone said good luck getting either. “I won’t have you accusing my nurses of something that never happened.”
He rose to his feet. He wasn’t going to get anything from this woman. “Thank you for your time.”
She sighed and gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sure your doctor explained to you that what you thought you experienced was a coma-induced hallucination of some kind, perhaps stemming from your line of work. There is no cover-up, no murder, no reason for you to waste your time or anyone else’s. I would think you would be glad to be alive and have better things to do with your time.”
“I am glad to be alive. Unfortunately, the woman I saw lying in a pool of blood in the old hospital nursery isn’t and for some reason no one cares.”
He saw that his words finally hit home because she had paled. But that gave him little satisfaction. He turned and walked out of her office and reception area into the bright October morning.
He was shaking inside. Where had that come from about the babies? But now that he thought about it, he was certain there’d been two babies in the nursery.
Just as he was certain there’d been a murder. Now all he had to do was prove it—against all odds, because his instincts told him he was right. If that woman was ever going to get justice, it would be up to him.
THE MOMENT the office door closed, Roberta Warren let out the breath she’d been holding. Her hands were trembling as she reached into the drawer for the small bottle of vodka she kept there disguised in a water bottle.
Taking a sip, she told herself that there was no reason she should be so upset. But when Cordell Winchester had called questioning whether or not there had been a murder more than three months ago at the hospital, she hadn’t thought anything of it.
That was because he hadn’t mentioned that the murder his brother thought he’d seen had been in the hospital nursery. Or that the woman had been found in a pool of her own blood. Or that there had been two babies in bassinets in the nursery the night of the murder.
Roberta Warren took another sip of the vodka and quickly put the lid back on the water bottle. Her hands were a little steadier, but her heart was still pounding. The man couldn’t have possibly dreamed any of this. Who dreamed a murder in such detail? But was he just fishing or did he know something?
She took a mint from her drawer and chewed it, debating how to handle this. The best thing was to ignore it. Cyrus Winchester would tire soon since he would keep running into dead ends, and he would eventually go back to Denver.
But then again, she hadn’t expected him to come all the way to Whitehorse to chase a nightmare. She’d heard the determination in his voice. The fool really thought he was going to get justice for the dead woman.
Calmer, Roberta picked up the phone and almost dialed the number she hadn’t called in thirty years. She put the phone down. She was overreacting. That was probably what he hoped she would do. But still she worried that this would get all over town, hell, all over the county, if he continued to ask questions.
If he didn’t give up soon, she would have to come up with a way to dissuade him.
She stood, smoothed her hands over her skirt and walked to the window, half expecting to see Cyrus Winchester standing outside her office, staring in as if he thought he could make her feel guilty enough to panic.
Well, he didn’t know her, she thought, but she was glad to see him drive off anyway.
THE OCTOBER DAY WAS sunny and blustery. Golden leaves showered down from the trees and formed piles in the gutters. The air smelled of fall with just a hint of the snowy winter days that weren’t far off.
He was driving down a wide, tree-lined street when he saw the single-level brick building. Even with the sign removed, Cyrus recognized the old hospital. The realization gave him a chill.
As he pulled to the curb, he saw that apparently the movers hadn’t completed the job of removing the furnishings, because there was a large panel truck parked out front and both front doors of the building were propped open.
Getting out of his pickup, Cyrus walked along the sidewalk past the truck. The back was open, a ramp leading into the cavernous, dark interior. He glanced in and saw a dozen old wooden chairs, some equally old end tables and several library tables.
As he passed, he saw that on the side of the truck were painted the words Second Hand Kate’s. Under that in smaller print, Used Furnishings Emporium.
“Hello?” he called as he stepped through the open front doors of the old hospital. The interior still had that familiar clinical smell and that empty, cold feeling he remembered. He reminded himself that it had been empty now for more than three months.
“Hello?”
No answer.
He walked down the hallway, his boot heels echoing on the discolored worn tile. He hadn’t realized where he was going until he reached the nursery windows.
His breath caught in his throat as he shoved back his Stetson and, cupping his hands, looked through the blank glass. The cribs and furnishings were gone, the room bare, but he could see it as the nursery had been in his memory.
A half dozen bassinets, but only two babies. Both boys with little blue blankets and ribbons on the bassinets, he recalled with surprise.
He touched his fingers to the pane, then quickly pulled them away as a memory moved through him like a spasm. With a jolt, he remembered seeing the murdered woman right before she was killed.
He had stood in this very spot and watched her switch the babies in the bassinets.
“CYRUS, DO YOU REALIZE what you’re saying?” He’d had to go outside to get cell phone service. “I saw her purposely switch the babies. Cordell, she stood there for a long moment as if making up her mind.”
He could almost hear his twin’s disbelief.
“I know how crazy it sounds, but when I saw this place as I was driving by, even without the sign, I knew it was the old hospital because I recognized it. Cordell, I walked straight to the nursery. When I touched the glass—” He shuddered at the memory. “I felt something so strong, I can’t explain it.”
“Okay, let’s say you saw this woman who was later murdered after switching the babies,” his brother said finally. “It should be easy enough to find out if there were two baby boys in the nursery while you were there.”
He sighed. “I already asked the hospital administrator. She swears there were no babies in the nursery that night.”
“So you think she’s lying? The whole town is lying? Why would they do that?”
Cyrus had no idea. He was more concerned with how he was going to prove it. “The hospital administrator won’t let me talk to the nurses who were on duty that night without a subpoena.” He heard his brother sigh. “I have to go see the room I was in. I’ll call you later. Stop worrying about me. I know what I’m doing.”
He disconnected and walked back into the hospital. He felt scared as he entered the long corridor of worn tile. He’d heard the fear in his twin’s voice. Maybe he couldn’t trust his own judgment. Or maybe it was just that no one else trusted it.
Cyrus heard someone singing from one of the mazelike hallways deep in the building. At least that was real, he thought. The woman had a good voice and he recognized the country-western song. It was one of his favorites.
Past the nursery, he walked down to what he was certain had been his room. It was right beside what had been the nurses’ station. Didn’t this prove that he had regained consciousness at some point while still in this hospital that night?
He started to step into the room when he saw her. She came out of a doorway at the end of the hall and started toward him, a pair of iPod buds in her ears. She was singing along with the song, completely lost in the music.
As she came closer, Cyrus felt all the air rush out of him.
It was her!
The woman he’d seen switch the babies in the hospital nursery. The woman he’d found murdered right here in this old hospital more than three months ago.
Chapter Four
Cyrus stared at the woman as if she were an apparition. Everyone was right. He was losing his mind. Fear turned his skin clammy. He told himself he was seeing things, imagining her the same way he had the murdered woman.
As the young woman looked up then and saw him, she appeared startled. She slowed, looked unsure. He half expected her to vanish before his eyes.
“Can I help you?” she asked, frowning, as she walked toward him. Was it possible she recognized him? Or was she just surprised, thinking she was alone in the building?
As she drew closer, he saw that either his memory was in error or this wasn’t the woman. But she looked enough like the murder victim to be her sister. Her hair was more copper than auburn, her eyes emerald rather than aquamarine and she was shorter than the murdered woman, although about the same age.
She had a small wooden nightstand in one hand and a slat-back wooden chair in the other and she wore blue denim overalls over a white T-shirt, sneakers on her feet. The logo on the overalls read Second Hand Kate.
“Are you all right?” she asked as she plucked out the earbuds.
He knew he must have lost all color. While he’d been getting stronger every day, the shock of seeing her had left him feeling weak and shaky.
He realized how bad he must look when she asked, “You know the hospital moved, right? Do you need someone to drive you up to the new one?”
He could hear the murmur of the music coming from the iPod in her overalls pocket. He shook his head and finally found his voice. “Sorry, I called out as I came in … “
She smiled. It seemed to light up the old building and the sweet innocence in the gesture tugged at his heart. This wasn’t the woman he’d seen murdered in the nursery, but she had to be a relative. Wasn’t it possible she’d seen him at the hospital?
“Do you know me?” he asked.
She looked at him as if he might be joking. “Should I?”
He shoved back his Stetson and smiled sheepishly. “You look familiar. I thought … You don’t happen to have a sister, do you?”
“Sorry.” She was smiling again as if she thought this was a bad pick-up line.
She was definitely not the woman he’d seen. This woman, while the spitting image of the murder victim, lacked the darkness he’d felt in the dead woman. This woman was all sunshine and rainbows.
“Is this for the secondhand shop?” he asked, motioning to the furniture and then to the logo on her overalls, desperately needing to say something that didn’t come out stupid.
She nodded, clearly pleased with the items. “They don’t make furniture like this anymore. I can’t wait to refinish some of these pieces,” she said, her enthusiasm bubbling out.
“So you must be Kate.” Not a nurse. Or even a nurse’s aide here at the hospital.
“The Kate in Second Hand Kate’s.” She set down the chair and wiped her free hand on her overalls and held it out to him. “You aren’t interested in used furniture, are you?”
“I might be,” he said, realizing he was flirting with her. He held out his hand. “Cyrus Winchester.”
“Winchester? You’re not related to—”
“The sheriff is my cousin and Pepper is my grandmother.”
“Oh.” She chuckled. “I see.”
“You know them?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I just moved here, but I’ve heard stories. Your grandmother is pretty famous around here. I’ve always wanted to meet her.”
“Infamous, you mean.” The Winchesters had always provided fodder for good gossip. His grandmother had been a recluse for the past twenty-seven years, his grandfather had ridden off on a horse one day forty years ago and never been seen again—until recently—and one of his uncles had only turned up after a gully washer had washed up his remains.
She turned her smile on him again. “Kate Landon.”
Cyrus felt a gentle shock run through him at her warm, strong touch.
“So you just happened to stop by the hospital to … “
“Return to the scene of the crime.” She laughed and he added quickly, “So to speak. I was brought in a few months ago by ambulance and spent a night here. I
don’t remember much about it. They tell me I was in a coma.”
She instantly sobered. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine now.” Sure you are. You thought this woman had been murdered just down the hall in the nursery. Or at least her sister had. Except she doesn’t have a sister. “I’m just going to take a look around, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. Just do me a favor, if you don’t mind. This is my last load. Close the doors when you leave? There’s a chain with a padlock on the outside that loops through the door handles.”
He’d forgotten how trusting people were in small towns. “I’d be happy to lock it on my way out.”
“Thanks.” She seemed to hesitate, her green eyes darkening. “Take care of yourself.”
Cyrus knew he was being paranoid, but her words seemed to echo in the still, empty hallway like an omen.
KATE CARRIED the end table and chair out to the truck, put it in the back with the last of the furniture, pushed in the ramp and slammed the rear doors, smiling to herself.
It had been a while since a man had openly flirted with her—let alone a very handsome cowboy. At the memory of the man she’d met inside, her gaze felt pulled back to the old hospital. The interior was deep in shadow, but she thought for a moment she saw movement in the darkness behind the open double doors.
Her friend Jasmine, a Whitehorse native, had kidded her about watching out for ghosts at the hospital. “Seriously, the nurses used to tell stories of feeling something in that old hospital when they worked the night shift and this one nurse swore she saw the ghost of this woman coming down the hall toward her.”
Kate had laughed, figuring Jasmine was just fooling with her. She’d felt a little creepy in the old building alone earlier, but had just turned up her music. Now though, she would have sworn she saw a figure just beyond the doorway.
But when she’d turned to look down the long side of the building, she’d seen a set of white metal blinds flash open at a window in a far room.
Cyrus Winchester peered out for a moment, then closed the blinds again.
She felt a chill, remembering the feeling that someone had been watching her from just inside the hospital doors. It couldn’t have been Cyrus. Had someone else been in there?
“It’s the ghost of that woman,” Jasmine would have said.
Fortunately Jasmine wasn’t with her.
You’re just imagining things. But she decided she would swing by later and make sure no one had gotten locked inside the old building.
As she climbed behind the wheel of her truck, she forgot all about ghosts. It was Cyrus Winchester she couldn’t get off her mind. He had startled her earlier when she’d looked up and seen him standing in the hallway. Blame Jasmine for her darned ghost stories.
Cyrus Winchester had looked nothing like the legendary ghost woman standing there so tall, dark and exceedingly handsome.
Yet there had been something haunting in his eyes …
She shivered at the thought, remembering that when he’d seen her he’d looked as if he was the one who’d seen the ghost. Probably just recovering from his injuries. Still, it was odd, him wanting to return to the scene of the crime, as he’d said. Who visited his old hospital room?
She looked again at the windows where he’d peered out just minutes ago. With the blinds closed, she could see nothing but white metal.
Turning the key, she started the engine and a Christmas song came on the radio. It was too early to be thinking about Christmas. She was still gearing up for her annual Halloween haunted house. She turned the radio dial until she found country and western and turned her thoughts to Halloween.
She planned to transform the basement of Second Hand Kate’s into a haunted house. She’d only been in town for a few months and it was her way of welcoming the community into her new store. The basement of the old two-story, once-a-library building with all its nooks and crannies was the perfect place for chills and thrills.
Fortunately, she’d managed to make a couple of friends who’d offered to help her. Jasmine was sewing some of the costumes and backdrops while Andi preferred working with the blood and guts, turning perfectly normal food into something gross and frightening.
Kate couldn’t wait to hear the children’s shrieks and screams, giggles and gags. She hoped for a good turnout Halloween night. But she still had a lot of work to do and was glad she’d finally gotten the last of the furniture out of the old hospital. There had been no hurry, but she hated leaving anything undone.
As she drove away, her cell phone rang.
“I found the most perfect fabric for the ghost in the pit of horror,” Jasmine said, making her laugh.
“Of course you did. I was just thinking of you.” She’d met Jasmine soon after she’d come to town at where else? A garage sale. The two had realized how much they had in common when they’d both tried to buy the same ugly chair.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I was just leaving the old hospital with the last of the furniture.”
“You saw the ghost.” Jasmine sounded excited. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“What I saw was no ghost. I just ran into Cyrus Winchester.”
“Who?”
“Pepper Winchester’s grandson. You’ve never met him?”
“No. So what is he like?”
“Gorgeous.” She almost added, “and a little strange,” but chastised herself for even thinking it. The man had just come out of a coma.
“Sounds like a Winchester. Black hair and eyes?”
“Uh-huh. Tall with broad shoulders and slim hips that look great in Wrangler jeans.” Kate remembered how good-looking he’d been standing there in his Stetson and boots. Even now she couldn’t put her finger on what it was about him that had left her feeling afraid for him.
“Wait a minute, is he the one who was in the hospital with the coma?” Jasmine and Andi always knew more of what was going on than Kate ever did. Jasmine worked at City Hall so she heard all the good stuff and Andi was the local newspaper reporter.
“Uh-huh.”
“He and his brother are private investigators in Denver. I heard he’s drop-dead gorgeous and that he and his brother are identical twins,” Jasmine said.
“Really?” She felt a chill at discovering Cyrus was a private investigator, but tried to hide her reaction from her friend. She’d never told anyone in Whitehorse about her past.
“What was he doing at the old hospital?” Andi asked.
“He stopped by to visit his room.”
“Seriously? Don’t you think that is a little macabre? Maybe he died there, you know, went toward the light but was pulled back and now he’s trying to call up the other side.”
“Or maybe you’ve been spending too much time planning the haunted house,” Kate suggested.
Her friend laughed. “Swing by and I’ll show you the fabric. I also have some old white curtains I can use for the ghosts, but I want your opinion first.”
Kate was tired and dirty from hauling dusty old furniture, but she agreed. “See you in a minute.” She hung up and on impulse, circled around the block and made a point of driving back past the hospital.
The pickup with the Colorado plates that had been parked behind her truck was still there, which meant Cyrus Winchester was still inside the hospital.
What was he doing in there?
THE HOSPITAL ROOM was exactly as he remembered it. Cyrus had quit asking himself how he knew that. Obviously he hadn’t been unconscious the entire time.
When he’d opened the blinds, he’d seen Kate Landon sitting in her truck. Was she worried he wouldn’t lock up? She couldn’t be worried that he’d steal anything, since clearly there was nothing left in the building to steal.
He’d dropped the blinds and searched the room, not sure what he was hoping to find. Of course there was nothing either in the room or the bathroom but dust. How quickly the building was falling into disrepair.
When he peeked out the window again, the Second Hand Kate’s truck was gone. He had wanted to question her further, but had warned himself not to ask too many questions that would scare her.
She looked too much like the murder victim not to have some connection. He would have to find out what he could about the Landon family.
Leaving his former hospital room, he walked down the hall, his boot heels echoing. The place had taken on an eerie feel. He stopped to listen as if he thought he could tap into the building’s history, feel all the lives that had traveled through here from birth to death and all the broken bones and illnesses in between.
But of course he couldn’t. He wasn’t psychic. He’d seen someone switch two baby boys in the nursery and then become a murder victim. That was a far cry from being able to tell the future.
He thought about calling Cordell and telling him about Kate Landon. But he knew his brother would try to come up with some reason Kate looked so much like the murder victim.
“You must have seen her before you were attacked, before the coma, and unconsciously put her in your dream,” Cordell would say.
Unfortunately, everything that had happened between his last memory of driving to Montana and waking up was lost. Except for what had happened that one night in the old hospital. He knew that alone should be proof the murder was just a bad dream.
At the nursery, he paused. It was just inside there that he’d found the dead woman. He walked a few feet down the hall, found the door into the nursery and stepped in.
Fortunately the power company hadn’t turned off the electricity yet. He snapped on the light and studied the room, trying to picture where the bassinets and other equipment had been in this room that night.
At the back of his mind, a thought nagged at him. Why was the equipment still here that night? Why were there two babies still here if most everything had been moved to the new hospital?
He shoved the thought away. It didn’t make any sense, but then again none of it did.
Cyrus moved to within feet of the spot where he believed the body had been sprawled. The woman had put up a struggle. In the semi-soundproof nursery and the near-empty hospital, it was no wonder no one had heard it.
Crouching down, he studied the worn tile. There were scuff marks, dust, some dirt and a scrape where something heavy had been dragged out. He wondered if the blood would show up in the thin cracks between the tiles with the luminol crime labs used?