Chapter 2

When Jarrod went into the doctor's office, he found Dr. Merar in the waiting area, dusting the furniture off. The doctor looked up at him. "Ah, good morning, Jarrod."

Jarrod said, "Good morning, Doctor."

"Come to talk about Ivy Erin, I suppose."

Jarrod nodded. "Did you find anything helpful when you examined her?"

Dr. Merar sat down on one of the chairs, so Jarrod sat, too. "There were no other marks on her body except for some old bruises on the left side of her face. They were just about healed. Nothing I haven't seen before on a saloon girl. I took some fibers from the bullet wound, but they were basically just little pieces of thread and completely blood soaked. They didn't come from her dress – it wasn't damaged at all, beyond bloodstains. We won't be able to clean the threads without destroying them. But they indicate that whoever shot her may have wrapped a cloth of some kind around the gun to muffle the sound."

"Any idea what kind of cloth?"

"Not really, but probably a scarf or something like that. If she was wearing a scarf, what I found would be consistent with a right-handed person coming up behind her, maybe grabbing her by the back of the scarf and then shoving the gun into her neck with the scarf around it when he shot her."

"Any idea where the scarf is? I didn't see it there with her."

"No idea at all. You might ask the sheriff, but my guess is that whoever shot her took it."

"A man carrying a scarf would be really conspicuous, unless he bundled it up somehow."

"True, or he dumped it fairly quickly, maybe after wiping the blood off his face. Shooting a woman at such close range would have put blood on his face, even if the scarf were around the gun."

"Or maybe he was a she," Jarrod said.

Jarrod looked off into the distant nowhere, thinking. Dr. Merar watched him, waiting for whatever he was going to say. But he wasn't saying anything.

"Is that what you're thinking, Jarrod?" Dr. Merar finally asked. "That a woman did this?"

Jarrod frowned. "I don't know. This one is – I don't know. I'm baffled. I don't know who did it and I don't know why. I haven't even got one real clue. Was she assaulted?"

"No," Dr. Merar said. "It looks like her killer just shot her and walked away."

"Why would someone do that?" Jarrod mused. "To a 20-year-old saloon girl who hasn't even been here a month. What could be the reason?"

"I know you, Jarrod. You're afraid there is no reason, that this was the work of some sick fiend who is just out to kill and he'll do it again."

Jarrod looked at the doctor. "I don't think I'm ready to say that just yet."

"But you're afraid of it."

Jarrod gave his frown to the floor. Yes, he was afraid of it. Some people killed just to kill. "Can you tell anything from the angle of the shot – maybe how tall the shooter was?"

"Close to her height, from the looks of it, and she was tall for a woman. Wearing heeled shoes, this woman would have been about five foot eight."

Jarrod remember she was tall. "Those bruises on her face – about how old do you think they were?"

"A couple weeks."

"Was she pregnant?"

"No."

Jarrod sighed and looked over at the doctor. "Can you think of anything I didn't ask about?"

Dr. Merar shook his head. "Not really."

Jarrod looked off into a slight crack in the wall and finally said, "Back east, they would call this a hit."

"A contract killing?" Dr. Merar asked. "Why would anyone hire someone to kill a saloon girl?"

Jarrod shook his head. "I don't have any answers on anything, Doctor. Just speculating by what this looks like. There are many kinds of murder and many reasons for it."

"The sheriff said he would check that alley again in the daylight. He's probably already been over there, or he's there now."

Jarrod nodded and stood up. "I've asked that the burial be today or tomorrow. I assume that's all right with you."

Dr. Merar stood up and nodded. "I've released the body. Anytime is fine."

"Thanks, Doctor," Jarrod said as he went out.

Once on the street he just stood there and looked for a while. The Gold Nugget was just down the street a couple blocks to the left. The alley where Ivy was killed was almost directly across the street from where he stood now. Jarrod wondered for a moment why Ivy had chosen that alley to meet him at. Why was she so reluctant to be seen in his office? Who was it she was afraid was watching her?

Jarrod remembered he needed to stop at the mercantile and get a dress for Ivy to be buried in, so he ran over there first. He picked out something suitable, put it on his tab, and had them deliver it to the undertaker right away. Then he went into the alley where Ivy had been killed. Sheriff Lyman was there, down around the back of the freight depot. He was just looking at the ground, then into some crates stacked there.

"Morning, Harry," Jarrod said.

The sheriff looked up. "Jarrod."

"Find anything?" Jarrod asked.

The sheriff shook his head, straightening from the crates he was looking into. "No. Doc says she might have been wearing a scarf when she was killed, but I haven't found one."

"That could be anywhere, I'm afraid. I've been talking to the doctor, too. I don't think this was an impulse killing. I think whoever shot Ivy had planned this out and aimed it specifically at her. I'm surprised he didn't just leave the scarf and the gun, but he didn't."

"Was probably planning on the darkness keeping people from noticing he had the scarf or the gun."

"And hiding any blood he got on himself. Or herself."

The sheriff looked surprised. "You think a woman might have done this?"

"Maybe," Jarrod said. "Doc thinks somebody about five eight. That's how tall Ivy was wearing heels. It could have been a woman. She could have carried the scarf to hide the gun, and no one would think it odd if a woman had a scarf."

"No. I'm gonna have to look all over this town for that scarf, aren't I?"

Jarrod smiled a little. "I'll help if you like. Why don't we start here and work toward the Gold Nugget?"

They started that way, eying a stack of crates and barrels in the alley. "What do you think this scarf is going to tell us?"

"I don't know," Jarrod said. "Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. We won't know until we find it, will we? We might keep an eye out for a gun, too."

"You're not planning on getting lucky enough to find these things, are you?"

"No," Jarrod said. "But if we don't look and they're there to be found – we're going to kick ourselves."

XXXXXXXX

Jarrod and the sheriff spent the better part of the day searching the alley, to no avail. Wherever the scarf and gun were, they weren't in that alley. It was after noon time before they gave up, standing at the farthest end of the alley and looking back toward where they started.

"I really hate not finding that scarf," Jarrod said.

"It's not here to be found, Jarrod," the sheriff said.

Jarrod shook her head. "Whoever shot her probably disposed of it somewhere else. They wouldn't be foolish enough to keep the scarf. The only reason to keep it is to plant it on somebody else – or to claim somebody else planted it on him."

"Or her."

"Or her." Jarrod sighed, thinking. "You hungry, Harry?"

"I could use a bite."

"It's on me."

They ate their lunch together at the Stockton House, talking about anything other than Ivy Erin, just to let their brains rest. Jarrod decided he needed to go home after they ate and get some rest – also ease whatever worrying his mother was doing, and Nick. Sheriff Lyman chuckled at the thought of Nick worrying.

"You'd be surprised," Jarrod said. "If everything in Nick's world isn't just so, alarms go off in his head and he has to track down the problem."

"Well, in Nick's defense, you do tend to run into trouble when you're off somewhere on your own," Sheriff Lyman said.

"Fair enough," Jarrod said, "but more often than not, I'm fine and Nick worries needlessly. But I'll go home and ease his mind. I'll be back in town tomorrow. You'll let me know if something comes up?"

"Sure. When will they bury Ivy Erin?"

"I'll go see the undertaker on my way out of town, arrange it for tomorrow afternoon. It'll be interesting to see who comes."

"I'll spread the word at the Gold Nugget. We might see somebody interesting from there at the burial."

"Maybe," Jarrod said, and then he yawned. "Wow, sorry, Harry."

"You'd best not lose any more sleep over this, Jarrod."

"It's hard not to," Jarrod said. "Things like this grate at the back of my mind. I really think Ivy was targeted specifically, and that just breaks my heart – but I also wonder, what if she wasn't?"

"What if this was a random killing by some sick s.o.b. and we have to worry about it happening again," the sheriff completed Jarrod's thought. "I've been worrying about that myself."

Jarrod nodded. "Either way, I've got it grating at the back of my mind, and it's gonna keep doing that until I get some answers. She was my client. She came to me for help, and I let her down."

"No, you didn't. You just didn't have time to do what she needed you to do."

Jarrod smiled a little. "I'll keep telling myself that. For now, I'm going home. Send word out if anything happens, Harry."

Jarrod left money for the food and a tip, then got up and walked wearily out the door. Sheriff Lyman watched him go, wishing he didn't so often get so wrapped up with his clients, but the man cared. How could you fault a man for caring?