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“Oh. Then you saw—I mean, smelled, his sister?”
“Something like that.”
“You’d said she was angry about being dead.”
“Very.”
“Why?”
“Because her brother had killed her when he shoved her down the stairs.”
My mouth gaped. I hadn’t shared that part of Wolfgang’s story with anyone last night. Not Detective Cooper, not Harvey, not Doc. I didn’t know why, probably to protect the little boy inside the monster, the poor child whose cruel sister had stolen the light from his life and left him in darkness.
“How did you know about that? Who told you?” I asked.
“Wilda sort of showed me how she died the first time I went into the house, but I wasn’t sure who’d pushed her until I did some research and deciphering.”
I shivered, chilled by his words. This had to be some parlor trick of his. He must have read something blaming Wolfgang for her death at the library. “How were you able to go back in the house during the fire? You couldn’t even step inside the foyer on Friday without collapsing.”
“I knew what I was facing. I could prepare up here,” he tapped his temple, “for her.”
The conviction in his voice gave me pause. He really believed he could sense dead people. Where on earth had he come from? More importantly, “What brought you to Deadwood, Doc?”
“Nothing brought me. I was just passing through on my way out West.”
“But something convinced you to stay. What?” I remembered his knowledge of the details of Emma Cranson’s disappearance, which occurred about the same time he claimed to have come to town. “Was it the first missing girl? Did you think you could help find her?”
“No. Not initially. That came later, after I started learning more about Deadwood’s history and experimenting.”
“Experimenting with what?”
“The past.”
The past? What? “How?”
“It’s easy around here. There’s lots to work with.”
He was being about as clear as chocolate pudding. “Okay, if it wasn’t the kidnapping that made you decide to stick around, what then?”
He stood there looking at me, his lips thin, squeezed tight. For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer me. I lifted my chin and refused to budge. I wanted an answer.
He exhaled loudly. “Wild Bill.”
“Hickok? Really? You’rethatbig of a fan?”
“No, I mean Wild Bill convinced me to stay. Literally. I ran into him in town.”
I laughed. When he didn’t even crack a smile, I stopped. “You’re serious?”
He nodded slowly.
I stared into his brown eyes, searching for something that would show he was pulling my leg. That it was all a hoax. That I didn’t have a Titanic-sized crush on a human bloodhound who believed he could sniff out ghouls and banshees.
Doc stared back, giving no ground. “If you want to walk out of here and never look back,” his tone was low, somber, “I’ll understand.”
He was offering me an out. A sweet gesture, but … I stepped inside the room and closed the door. “It’s not that easy to get rid of me, Doc.”
His eyes narrowed as I strolled toward him. “I never said I wanted to. Decent Realtors are hard to come by.”
