Chapter 12
When Jarrod and Heath took a turn at a corner four blocks away, Nick was losing sight of them and started off after them. Luckily, he ran into the sheriff coming out of a side alley before he got two blocks. "Fred! Come on!"
"Where?" the sheriff asked and joined Nick in hurrying after Jarrod and Heath.
"The Ashby place," Nick said. "Jarrod found a note in Korby's file. There might be something to find there."
At that moment, Heath just happened to be saying, "I hope there's something to find there. If there was something, Mrs. Ashby might have known about it and took it to Sacramento with her."
They kept walking fast. Jarrod said, "We won't know until we look, but if there isn't, at least now we've got something to hang a search warrant on in Sacramento."
"You think it might be the book Imwald was after?"
"I don't know," Jarrod said. "But I hope so. I just wish we'd thought of searching the Ashby house yesterday."
"I'm surprised we didn't," Heath said.
"Well, even if we don't find something under those back steps, we have good reason to go searching the whole place now."
It wasn't long before they arrived at the Ashby place and went straight around to the back. It was a sizeable house, the back of it secluded by a large fence. Heath didn't like that they were there alone, so he kept looking around while Jarrod got down and nosed around and under the back steps. Jarrod remembered the number two and fished around under the second step from the ground with his bandaged right hand. "Ow!" he suddenly yelled and pulled his hand out.
"What?" Heath asked, his attention drawn.
"Spider bit me," Jarrod said, looking at his index finger. "Just what I need. This is gonna swell up." He still dug right back in, still feeling around, and now feeling up against the underside of the step as well as the ground.
And he found something.
"Heath, help me out here, I need your hand," Jarrod said. "There's something feels like it's nailed to the underside."
"Nailed?" Heath asked, bending down beside his older brother.
"Stuck up there somehow," Jarrod said.
Heath reached under. Without a bandage hindering him, he was able to pull whatever it was off the underside of the step. He pulled it out, and he and Jarrod stood up. Heath had a small leather book in his hand. It had a closure that had a nail through it, keeping it on the underside of the step. Heath put the nail in his pocket so as not to lose it.
They were looking at the book. They didn't see the stranger come into the yard behind them.
The stranger whacked Heath on the back of the head first. Heath went down, dropping the book. Jarrod whirled just in time to block a blow the stranger was delivering to him, and before the man could try again, Nick and the sheriff came around the house. Nick flew at the stranger, tackling him to the ground and then hauling him to his feet, twisting his arm behind him, yelling, "That'll be enough!"
Jarrod and the sheriff were helping Heath to his feet. "Are you all right?" Jarrod asked.
Heath rubbed the back of his head as he sank to sit down on the steps. "I don't know." He looked at his assailant, now in Nick's "care." "Who's this?"
"What's your name, fella?" the sheriff asked.
The man said nothing.
"Imwald No. 2," Jarrod said.
"Do you need the doctor, Heath?" Nick asked.
Heath took his hand away from where he'd been hit in the head. It was bloody. "It looks like I do."
"Can you walk?" Jarrod asked.
"At least around to the front," Heath said, getting up.
"Let's get you to where people can see you, and Nick and I will take this guy down to the jail," the sheriff said. "I trust you'll be pressing charges."
Heath looked at Jarrod. "Yeah, this time I don't think we'll waste any time doing it," he said. Both he and Jarrod were thinking about how Heath never had gotten to press charges against Jake Kyles and his boys.
Nick wrangled the stranger – who still hadn't said a word – around to the street while Jarrod and the sheriff got Heath around there to the front steps. There were people around now, looking, their attention drawn.
Jarrod said to the sheriff, "Fred, we found this book under the step." He held it up for the sheriff to see.
"You hold onto it," the sheriff said. "I'll send the doc here and come back for that after we get this character put away."
Heath sat down on the steps, still rubbing the back of his head. "Do you think that guy was working alone?"
"Probably," Jarrod said. "If he isn't, nobody will be after us out here though – too many witnesses. And we'll have the book in the sheriff's hands before anybody else can get to it."
"What's in it?"
Jarrod opened it. It wasn't a big book at all, hardly the size of his big hand. Most of the pages were actually blank but about six pages in, there was a list of names. After that there were more blank pages. "It looks like a roster," Jarrod said. And then his stomach dropped. "There are some pretty familiar names in here. If this is a list of Col. Ashby's and Korby's contacts – oh, my, George Allison is gonna feel like he's hit the jackpot."
The editor of the local newspaper is going to start salivating when he sees some of the names in this book, Jarrod thought, but his own heart broke at seeing one of them.
XXXXXXX
"Let me go see him," Jarrod said to the sheriff when it came to the name on the list that bothered Jarrod the most.
"You plan to get him to hire you?" the sheriff asked.
"He may be facing federal charges as well as state charges, as will the man you have already locked up," Asa Harmon said. The sheriff had sent for him as soon as he and Nick got the latest suspect back to the jail. Harmon had already had a look at the suspect, but didn't know him, nor was he on any of the sheriff's wanted posters. He also did not carry any identification and refused to say anything at all.
But it wasn't the man in cell Jarrod was talking about. It was the man whose name in the book disturbed him most. "Under the circumstances, I can't represent any of the people in this book or the guy in your cell," Jarrod said. "But I want to talk to my friend alone, see if I can get him over here without the law having to drag him. I'd hate for it to end that way for him."
"It's not gonna end well no matter what," the sheriff said. "Especially if our out of town guest starts to talk."
"I'm not gonna want you to go alone," Nick said.
Heath was still getting tended to by Dr. Merar, back in his office, while Jarrod and Nick were with the sheriff. Jarrod said, "He's only a couple blocks away. Why don't you go check on Heath? He's hurt and alone, and we don't really know if this is over yet. I'll be all right for a couple blocks."
Nick conceded, and so did the sheriff. Jarrod left the sheriff's office and walked the two blocks to the office building near the courthouse. His feet were heavy as he trudged up the stairs, and when he knocked on the door and the voice said to come in, he hated to do it. But he had to. He opened the door and went in.
Matt Cooper looked as young and innocent as ever. He smiled. "Hello, Mr. Barkley," he said. "I didn't think we had any business together these days. How are you?"
Jarrod didn't extend his hand. "I'm afraid we do have business, Matt. About Korby Kyles."
Cooper looked surprised. "Kyles?"
Jarrod said, "About a book he left behind, hidden at the Ashby house. Mrs. Ashby apparently didn't know it was there. The sheriff and my brothers and I found out about it when a man named Imwald tried to get it out of me on the way home the other night, and another fella from out of town tried to rip it out of my hands when we found it this morning."
Now Cooper looked suspicious, and surprised. He didn't say anything.
"It looks like you didn't know about it either," Jarrod said. "A small book Korby left behind. A book of names. Your name is in it."
"My name?" Cooper fumbled with the words.
"Korby wasn't alone in Col. Ashby's employ, was he Matt?" Jarrod asked. "What was the problem – you got hooked on the opium and they started using you to help supply it? Or did you just do it for the money?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Cooper said.
Jarrod said, "I need to take you to see the sheriff. He's expecting you. You're gonna need a lawyer, but it can't be me. Tell me who to go see to get you represented, because you're gonna be arrested. I'm sorry, Matt. I'm sorrier than you can imagine."
"Mr. Barkley, I don't – I don't know what kind of book you have or why my name is in it – "
"Matt," Jarrod said calmly. "Let's go talk to the sheriff."
