1

Odd. The door to a fancy hotel suite standing half-open like this.

And not a single sound coming from inside.

Skye Fargo stood in the second-floor hallway of the exclusive Mountain View hotel, which was a gilded tribute to the good luck of the locals. While a lot of Colorado boomtowns had gone bust in the past ten years, Mountain View had turned into a prosperous and permanent town thanks to the rich veins of gold-streaked quartz in the surrounding mountains.

This hotel, with its carpeted hall and brocaded wallpaper and elegant French sconces, was a tribute to the good fortune the locals had enjoyed for eight years now. The saloon and dining facilities on the main floor were even more imposing.

Fargo drew his Colt. That probably wasn’t the polite thing to do in a place as refined as this, but he didn’t care. He sensed something wrong. And he’d survived by trusting his senses.

In addition to the door being half-open and only silence coming from inside, the suite was dark. The only illumination was from the street lamps below.

It was near midnight, the time at which he was supposed to meet the mysterious Carlotta Massett, the woman who’d left a note for him saying that she could help keep his friend Curt Cates from hanging for murder three days from now. She claimed she knew the identity of the real killer and asked that he meet her in her suite at midnight.

He inched the door inward. Stepped across the threshold.

“Carlotta?” he said, his voice sounding ghostlike in the silence. “Carlotta?”

He stood in the center of the large parlor that was filled with a fireplace, two huge couches, and other furnishings in the heavily decorous Renaissance Revival style, the British style preferred by the wealthy Americans.

A mewing sound came from near his feet. He looked down to see a tiny kitten, one so small it looked as if it could fit into his large palm, craning its neck upward to see the giant hovering above it. The kitten’s fur was mostly white except for a few mixed patches of brown and black. It was too dark to see any other detail.

“Hey there, little one,” he said. “Where’s your mistress?”

The kitten just mewed again.

Fargo decided to look into the bedroom. He expected to find it empty. No way she would’ve gone to sleep after leaving him that note.

He walked wide of the feline, not wanting to crush her with one of his boots.

 

The killer had been hiding at the far end of the second floor, in the closet where the maids stored their buckets and mops and dusters.

The killer watched as Fargo entered the room number that had been printed on the note the killer had sent Fargo this afternoon. The note signed as “Carlotta Massett.” Whoever the hell that was.

Now the second part of the evening’s work would have to get under way. This might prove to be difficult. Many were the tales told of the Trailsman, and if even half of them were true, he was no man to take chances with.

But the deed must be done and done now. No telling how long Fargo would be in the hotel suite before deciding that he’d been duped. And leave.

The killer moved swiftly, surely.

 

Neither lamplight nor moonlight pressed against the bedroom drapes. The room was cave-dark. The interior of the canopied bed was almost ominous in its black depths.

Fargo found a lantern. He scraped a lucifer against his belt buckle and got the lantern going. Shimmering gold light filled the room with wavering illumination.

More money had been spent on decorating this bed-chamber than any twenty men earned in a year. The armoires were expansive enough to need double doors. He threw them open, held the lantern inside.

Empty.

Strange. A woman who could afford a suite like this not having at least a few clothes hanging in the closet.

The empty armoires reminded him that he’d seen nothing personal at all in this suite. As if nobody was staying in it. As if the hotel maid had just finished getting it ready between guests.

He searched the rest of the room, finding no trace of anybody who might be staying here. He’d been skeptical of the note—it could easily have been a trap—and now he wondered if he’d been stupid to come here in the first place.

He wanted to find the real killer so that his friend wouldn’t die. But the real killer obviously didn’t want to be found. Had it been the real killer who’d sent the note?

As he started to lift his boot, he felt a slight pressure on the arch of his left foot. The kitten. He set the lantern down on the elaborately carved bureau with its gigantic oval mirror. Then he bent down and picked up the kitten, stroking her head to satisfy her lonely need.

In the lantern light, he saw that the white fur on her left side was spattered with something liquid and dark. He held her closer to the lantern.

No mistaking what it was. Fargo surveyed the chamber. He’d sure missed something important in his search.

The canopy bed. After taking a second inventory of the room with a few quick glances, he realized what he’d overlooked. The canopy bed—underneath. The fancy burgundy-colored bedspread reached the floor. The kitten had crawled beneath it and gone exploring.

Now it was Fargo’s turn to go exploring.

He walked to the bed, got down on his knees, and lifted up the bedspread.

He needed a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness but soon enough he saw where the kitten had picked up the blood. The naked body of a once lovely, now dead, woman faced him. Her eyes had grown enormous in the last horrible moments of her life. Her open mouth shaped a silent scream.

He got up and went to the bureau, got the lantern and brought it back. He wanted a better look at the woman and the situation under the bed.

The sweet-faced but blood-spattered kitten pranced proudly behind him. Whether Fargo liked it or not, he’d made a new friend.

Now that he could see the corpse better, he saw that the killer had beaten her up before killing her. A kerchief lay nearby. He’d probably gagged her so nobody could hear her scream.

He thought he heard something but when he glanced up, he saw nothing. He couldn’t see much, anyway. The chamber was three-quarters dark again with the lantern down on the floor.

The kitten sat about a foot from his hand, watching alertly.

He thought about dragging the woman out from under the bed but realized that was unwise. He’d go for the law and show her to them just as he’d found her. He’d kept the note, too. He’d also show them that. Though he’d been here for a time, he hadn’t met the sheriff or any of the deputies. His friend said they were bad people who held the town captive. But you couldn’t expect a man who was about to hang to have much good to say about the people who wanted to hang him, could you?

The kitten jumped at him suddenly, meaning to be friendly and playful, but knocked over the lantern instead. Fire was the constant enemy of hotels. The lantern spilled some fuel immediately.

Fargo moved quickly. He righted the lantern and felt along the dark stain on the floor. He’d get some water and wash it off.

That was when it happened.

If Fargo hadn’t been busy with the kitten, the lantern, and the spilled fuel, he would have heard the footsteps before it was too late.

He would have jerked away from the descending arc of the heavy fireplace poker. . . .

And then he would have jumped to his feet and hurled himself at the person who’d just crept into the room.

But preoccupied as he was with a room literally crawling with distractions, his response was too little and too late. The poker was swung with such force that his instincts for self-preservation were frozen even before they could reach his consciousness.

The wound was so savage and so deep that his blood was splashed against the wall in dark, sticky pieces so heavy and hairy they did not resemble anything that could have come from a human being.

 

When the killer was sure that Fargo was unconscious, the rest of the work was undertaken. Fast work, accurate work, important work.