Dead Man Hand (A Dead Man Mystery, Book 3) by T. M. Simmons

Author:T. M. Simmons [Simmons, T. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePublishing Works!

Chapter 18

At first I thought the man walking away from me was Gambler Gil, but I noticed he was shorter, maybe five-eight, a wiry hundred-fifty pounds. He wore black pants and boots, a checkered vest, a black coat jacket slung over his shoulder. With his back to me, I couldn't see his face, but his hair was as black as Jack's and had the same healthy sheen. The pistol slung low on his right thigh and well-cared-for gun belt around his waist would have told me I was looking at a ghost from the Wild West era of the hotel, had my senses not already confirmed it.

"Uh...Twila?" I whispered. She'd already bounded down the steps to fetch Miss Molly's litter box, before we ended up with cat-urine-soaked carpets.

A foot or so behind the ghost, a room door opened silently. Another apparition slipped into the hallway. A sound the figures in the other dimension could hear but I missed must have warned the first ghost. He started to turn.

But the second man already had his pistol out, pointed straight at the first man's head.

Boom!

The first man fell...and so did I. Someone tackled me from behind, and we both crashed to the floor. In a corner of my hearing, I recognized booted footsteps racing towards us.

Boom! Boom!

"What the f—?" Jack's voice.

I tried to rise, but Jack cupped me to his chest and sheltered me with his body. The footsteps clattered past us and on down the adjacent hallway. Jack released me and jumped to his feet. I opened my eyes in time to see him on the verge of chasing after the ghost, aiming his Glock again.

"Don't!" I screamed. "It's a ghost! You can't kill it by shooting it!"

He dropped his pistol, resignation on his face, and...yeah, a blossom of red embarrassment. He finished muttering the interrupted fuck from a second ago.

A couple things flashed through my mind: First, I'd just watched True murdered in the distant past, but since Jack tried to protect me from a non-existent danger, I hadn't been able to see the killer's face. Had I managed that, Twila and I would possibly have been able to reason with the rest of the ghostly crew around here and get then to agree to cross into The Light. Joleen wanted the residual haunting to cease. Punishment for the killer wouldn't be possible, but we could publish our results on the internet and maybe satisfy the need for justice. The result would hopefully diffuse yet another residual haunting and leave the hotel in peace for a sale.

Second, Jack was still seeing ghosts. He'd acknowledged that ability in himself a few times before, reluctantly and highly annoyed at having it. He'd seen Sir Gary in Jefferson, Texas, as well as watched the ghost and Bucky, reunited with his missing head, cross over. He couldn't deny also seeing Patrick, who loved to wander around in all his naked glory at the old hotel in Mineral Springs.

In this instance, he had obviously watched the murder go down in full glory, clear enough in his mind to mistake it for an actual event.

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