“No,” she muttered, shaking her head. “You’re wrong. Someone is here, Sloan. Watching me—waiting for an opportunity.”
Sloan was torn. Jennie obviously felt afraid, certain of her own conviction. He didn’t want to sit at the hospital and worry about her imagined fear. Just as he began to tell her that he couldn’t stay with her, he noticed a nurse hovering in the doorway.
“I’ll come back,” the woman said in a husky voice. She had long dark hair with bangs and wore glasses with large green plastic frames.
“No, no, come in, we’re just talking,” Sloan said.
“It’s all right. I can, uh, check Ms. Layton’s vitals later,” the nurse said, and turned quickly to move down the hall.
Sloan stood, frowning. He wouldn’t say that the nurse had been ugly, but she had a strange, rather masculine look to her.
He lit out of the room.
“Sloan, don’t leave me!” Jennie cried.
“Stop!” Sloan commanded in the hallway, watching the nurse all but run away. “Stop!”
He was completely ignored. He didn’t want to threaten to fire or shoot off a warning in a hospital. With Jennie’s voice fading in the background, he tore after the nurse.
The nurse looked back and then forward, running, pushing a work cart between the two of them. It flipped onto its side, and Sloan hopped over it as paper cups filled with medications flew into the air and onto the floor.
He caught the nurse about twenty feet past the overturned cart. Tackling the buxom brunette from the rear, he brought both of them down. He finally straddled his madly scrambling prey.
The brunette wig fell off, so did the glasses. He found himself staring down into the face of Brian Highsmith—easily recognizable now despite the eye makeup and bright red lipstick.
“Brian, you’re under arrest for the murder—”
“No, Sloan, no, please! This isn’t what it looks like,” Brian wailed.
By then, they had an audience. Patients, some dragging their IVs, had come out to the hall. Nurses, doctors and orderlies, as well.
Sloan got to his feet, dragging Brian up with him.
“Sloan, honest, I swear to you! I would never murder anyone! You have to believe me. I’d never hurt Jennie. Not on purpose. No—”
“Really? It looks like you’re pretending to be a nurse in order to see Jennie Layton. And since someone put her in a coma to get her here—”
“Yes, yes, I was trying to see Jennie. I thought—hoped—she might have recognized me,” Brian said quickly. “I never meant for anything bad to happen to her—I love her like I love my grandma!”
“What were you doing, dressing up so you could slip in that door?” Sloan demanded.
“I had to see her!” Brian answered.
“Mommy!” one of the patients cried out. “That lady is...a man!”
“It’s all right. Let’s go back to your room,” the mother said.
“Hey, man, there’s meds all over the floor!” A skinny fellow who looked like he should be in detox said happily.
Another nurse came up. “Mr. Wilson, get back in your room!” she told him.
One of the doctors approached Sloan. “You need to take this out of here, Sheriff. You’re upsetting my patients.”
Sloan spun around on him. “Well, you’re going to have to explain to me how an actor got into your hospital dressed as a nurse and was moving among your upset patients!” he snapped.
He spun Brian around, snapping plastic cuffs onto his wrists. “I will remove this man that you’ve let in,” he said, glowering as he marched down the hall. The county officer was standing in front of Jennie’s room, trying to watch Sloan and trying to watch the hallway. Both Jimmy Hough and his mother had come out of their respective rooms. Zoe Hough was standing behind her son, a protective hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Sloan told them.
“He got in here!” Zoe said with horror.
“Did you kill my father?” Jimmy demanded, scowling at Brian.
“What? No!” Brian shouted. “I didn’t kill anyone! Won’t anybody listen to me?”
Sloan pulled his phone from his pocket and called the office. Betty answered. “Betty, get Chet or Lamont down here. I need someone to pick up a prisoner. I want him held at our facility until I can get back there myself. And warn whoever’s coming not to take their eyes off him for a minute. You understand?”
“Yes, Sheriff, of course. Who’s being picked up? Did you—”
“It’s Brian Highsmith. I want this man in our lockup, and I don’t want him getting out. No mess-ups. Get someone here now!”
“Yessir, yessir!” Betty said.
He hung up his phone. Jimmy Hough, fists clenched, looked as if he was going to hit Brian with a hard right hook to the jaw. Sloan quickly stepped between them. “Jimmy, stop. We have to get to the bottom of this. Please, go back into your rooms. Everything’s under control.”
“Sheriff, you’re not leaving us, are you?” Zoe asked, her eyes wide and frightened.
“Not right now. I’m here until I can get more help in.”
“Do as he says, please, Jimmy!” Zoe told her son. Jimmy continued to stare at Brian but he moved back as his mother pushed his chest. “Jimmy, the law will take care of it.”
“He killed my father,” Jimmy said dully.
“We don’t know that yet,” Sloan said.
“I swear I just came to see Jennie!” Brian insisted. “I was, uh, fooling around in the basement when she came down and I didn’t want to get into trouble. I didn’t mean to hurt her—or that nice agent, Jane. I didn’t want them to know I was there.... I accidentally hit Jennie too hard and I need her to forgive me. I was trying to...I was trying to talk to her, to beg her forgiveness. I—I was worried about jail, but I love Jennie. I need her to forgive me.”
“Shut up for now, Brian,” Sloan said. His phone was ringing. He flipped it open; Logan was calling.
“I found the connection,” Logan said without preamble.
“Which connection?” Sloan asked.
“Jay Berman. He did some work for Caleb Hough about a decade ago. I’m pretty sure he put a few ranch workers in the hospital. He’d been out in Arizona on another so-called vacation. That was right around the time two of Hough’s workers—who’d demanded higher pay—ended up injured. So, I’m not sure who the hell killed Hough, but I’ll bet Jay Berman messed up, so Hough was the one who might’ve killed him.”
Sloan looked at Brian. “Can you get down to the hospital?”
“Right away.”
He hung up. Brian was shaking his head. “I’m not a killer, Sloan. I’m an actor! I was just going to plead with Jennie not to give me up so I didn’t go to jail or lose my job!” he said.
“Brian, people just ‘fooling around’ in the basement of the building they work in don’t render old women unconscious because they’re afraid of being caught.”
“No, you don’t understand. I could have lost my job.”
“Brian, you should lose your job for nearly killing people,” Sloan said.
“But I didn’t mean to! Hey, Sloan, I’m a good guy. Really. Sure, I wanted to look for the gold. That’s all anyone talks about now. But I never—I swear I never meant to hurt anyone.”
Jennie came into the hall then and confronted Brian, her face twisted in a mask of fury. She pointed a finger at him. “You tried to get in before. There was another nurse in here and she sent you to tend to another patient. God help that patient! How could you, Brian? How could you?”
“Jennie, please, believe me! I came to beg your forgiveness!”
Sloan was relieved to hear the sound of a siren. “Jennie, go back to bed. Brian, move!”
He prodded Brian to the front, pulling him through reception where stares and whispers followed his every move.
As he drew Brian outside with him, he was surprised to see Betty getting out of the car.
“Hey, what are you doing here? I told you to send Lamont or Chet.”
“Lamont was breaking up a bar fight and Chet was dealing with some kid who was higher than a kite. He’ll probably be in here in a few minutes. Talked to Scotty and he was on his way in. It sounded urgent when I talked to you,” Betty said.
Sloan nodded. “Betty, get him back to our offices, put him in lockup, make sure he’s secure. And stay there. Scotty will be manning the office alone, since the other night guys will be back in town. It won’t be that long. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve gotten the Hough family and Jennie calmed down enough for me to leave.”
“If he calls an attorney—” Betty began.
“I don’t care if he calls in all the gods on Olympus, I can have him for twenty-four hours and I want him there when I get in,” Sloan told her.
“I’ve got it, Sloan. But...Brian? Brian Highsmith? What the hell were you doing, young man? And to think I enjoyed your performances!”
Brian groaned. “Yes, I knocked Jennie out by mistake. Okay, and the agent. But I didn’t kill anybody. Honest to God, I’m not a killer! I just thought I’d look for gold, too. I mean, I hear so much about it!”
“Betty, get him out of here,” Sloan said, irritated. Betty took Brian by the arm. “Wait!” Sloan said, accosting Brian head-on. “What about the bones? The skull? Did you put the skull on the wig stand?”
Brian turned red and pursed his lips, nodding. “Sheriff, I...found the trapdoor, the body. I should have reported it, but... I set up the skull. You weren’t supposed to come. When Valerie screamed, I was supposed to save her. I was just trying to get lai—” He broke off, looking at Betty. “I was trying to make Valerie see me more as a date than a coworker. The woman in the floor had been dead forever. Yeah, I figured it might be Sage McCormick. Sheriff, I know she was...that you’re like her great-great-whatever grandson, but come on, she’d been dead for years. More than a century. I didn’t kill anyone, I swear it.”
