“Two hundred thousand dollars,” the man finished.
Sickles tuned back around and looked at the two men.
“Two hundred large?” he smiled. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You’ll have to spend the week before Halloween in New York doing some technical work.”
Leonard looked the smaller of the two over, and then eyed the larger.
“Get the fuck outta here,” he repeated. “This is a fuckin’ joke, right?”
The two men exchanged looks. “No joke, Mr. Sickles, Professor Gabriel Kennedy asked for you personally.”
“Professor Gabe? Where’s he at?”
“We don’t know,” the large one said. “We are to retain your services and get you to New York within the next 24 hours.”
“Is he in trouble again?” He fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“We don’t know, sir.” The smaller man pulled a sheet of paper out of the file he was holding. “There is this.” He handed the paper over to Sickles.
He eyed the man and then slowly reached for the paper.
“Bring your Infra-Spectroscope design — I found you the money to build it.” He read down the page, looking for a signature, but there was none. In its place was one word that he read aloud. “Punk! That’s Professor Gabe all right — the asshole.”
“Hey, hey, what’s going on here? You’re taking a hike on me and my company for New York?”
The three men at the door turned to see Thomas Reynolds standing angrily in the outer entranceway.
“Spying, Mr. Reynolds?” Leonard asked, his right eyebrow rising. “Is this the kind of trust I can expect from you and your company, man?”
“I’m paying you enough to buy your trust. Now what’s this about?”
“What this is about, is the man who saved my life. My shrink from a long time ago. He needs me, and I’m going to help him. I’ll be back—” he looked questioningly toward the two men.
“The day after Halloween, sir.”
“Yeah, the day after Halloween. Then I’m yours. And don’t think I’m not going. I owe this man everything I am, and all that I will become.”
Reynolds’ posture eased. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and withdrew his wallet. He handed a card to Leonard.
“Use this. It’s a company credit card. Try and keep it reasonable, okay?”
Leonard smiled and nodded. “You bet. The big city hookers can wait until I have an expense account,” he joked. Reynolds shifted uncomfortably, and so did the two network security men. Leonard stuck out his hand, and when Reynolds took hold of it, he turned his hand upside down and grasped Reynolds’ hand with both of his in a hood-shake.
“Thanks Mr. R, I’ll be cool with it.” He let go of his hand and then smiled again. “Give my regards to the pukes inside; tell them my main man needs me.”
“Leonard, do you even know what you’re getting into?”
“No, not really.”
“Do you know what this man does now?” Reynolds asked.
“What does he do now?” Leonard asked the two men.
“Sir, all we know is that he is working for the producers of a reality television show.”
“Yeah, what’s it about?” Leonard asked.
The two men looked at each other, and the larger one opened the door and turned.
“Ghosts I believe. A haunted house type of thing. Shall we go, sir?”
Leonard’s smile faded. He started to wonder what the hell he had just agreed to.
“Ghosts, huh?” he asked as he cautiously stepped forward.
“Yes, sir,” the small man said. He gestured for Leonard to leave first.
“Haunted house?”
“From the rumors and gossip we’ve heard at the network, sir, it’s very, very, haunted.”
Leonard felt a sudden chill. He reached out and snapped on the front porch light before stepping out into the darkness. “I thought Professor Gabe was a full time shrink,” he mumbled to himself. “Ain’t there enough live people around, he’s gotta go after dead ones?”
Kennedy’s team had its second member for the live broadcast from Summer Place.
John Smith — at least, that was how he had signed in — sat alone inside the coroner’s examination room. The lights were low, with only a single spotlight illuminating the sheet-covered body on the stainless steel table before him. He knew the sheriff and coroner of Glacier County would be coming along soon, so he waited. That sheriff would know him as John Lonetree, headman, activist, and also the Chief of Police of the Blackfeet reservation, located near the border with Canada. He had used the fake name and ID to gain entrance to the county offices when the sheriff and coroner went to dinner. He had made his prayers, his examination, and had done all the right things his people traditionally called for, for the young woman laid out on the cold steel table.
The girl’s name was Betty Youngblood. John had known her from the day she came into the world, and now on this dark day he performed her death rites. As he lowered his head, he removed his cowboy hat and tossed it on the chair next to him, freeing his long black hair to cascade around his shoulders. Blood had stained the area at the top of the sheet, and at her midsection. Betty hadn’t been important enough for the coroner to delay his dinner. Her wounds were unattended and had been unexamined when John had arrived. He swallowed hard to keep his emotions in check. The world would never change for his people, it seemed.
The girl had been born, like most Indians on the Blackfeet reservation, into abject poverty. She had endured a life of abuse by a single mother who had tended toward the bottle, and who had taken out every one of life’s failures on her oldest child. At fifteen, Betty had left the Rez and escaped into the white world. John had heard she had taken to prostitution and other forms of criminal life to keep from going home again. He shook his head. She could not avoid it now; she was going home with him tonight. Another bright red spot on everyone’s shame: the reservation system, the white world, and his own closed world of the American Indian.
John heard their voices long before the examination room door opened. As the overhead lights came on, he kept his head lowered and his hands clasped in front of him. The voices ceased suddenly when the two men saw they weren’t alone.
“Just who the hell are you?”
Lonetree finally looked up. He saw the small, balding fat man who called himself the county coroner, standing with his hands at his sides. Beside him was Sheriff Van Kimble. They had been friends since they were kids, but now the sheriff had his hand on the butt of his nine-millimeter, looking at him in anger.
“What are you doing here, John?” the sheriff asked.
“Who is this man?” the coroner asked.
“He’s the police chief over at the Blackfeet reservation. You two haven’t met yet. John this is Doctor Fleming, our county coro—”
“I know who he is, Van,” Lonetree said, standing. He towered over both men at six feet five inches. “Doctor, do you usually leave a body to sit while you go and eat, without taking the decedent’s vital stats?”
“I, uh—”
“This girl was raped; there may be seminal fluids that are at this moment deteriorating. Have you even fixed the time of death through body temperature?”
“Now wait a minute, John, we already have the killer in custody,” the sheriff said. He stepped forward and let the door close behind him.
“Yes, I’ve heard that also. Randy Yellowgrass, that right?”
“Your Harvard education hasn’t failed you. Yeah, that’s right. My deputy found the drunken, stupid bastard still standing over the girl in the alley at Eighth and Monroe.”
“And you believe Randy, harmless Randy Yellowgrass, could do something like this?” Lonetree pulled the white sheet away from the body and let it fall to the floor.