Read Chapter 31: The Aftermath of Blood

The doctor’s office smelled of iodine and old paper. Eli sat on the edge of a cot, shirt stripped to the waist, while the old man with the spectacles and the shaking hands worked a curved needle through the gash in his shoulder. The wound from Calvin’s pistol ball had been ugly but shallow. The doctor had said so three times, as if trying to convince himself.

Dorothea stood by the window, arms crossed, watching the street through the warped glass. She had not spoken much since they’d been pulled up from the dark. The marshal had taken Calvin away in chains, and the crowd had parted for them like water around a stone. There had been no cheers. No jeers. Just eyes.

“You’ll live,” the doctor said, snipping the thread. He was thin as a fence rail, with liver spots on his scalp showing through the white comb of his hair. “The arm will ache for a month. Maybe two. You’ll favor it in the rain. That’s the price of getting shot, I suppose.”

Eli flexed his fingers. They moved. That was enough.

“How much do I owe you?”

The doctor waved a hand. “The marshal said the county will settle it. Something about forfeited property. Calvin Braithwaite’s holdings are being seized as we speak.” He paused, cleaning his instruments with a rag. “You’ll be a rich man, if the paperwork holds. Half the town is built on land that was his.”

Eli looked down at his hands. They were still stained with tunnel dirt, with Calvin’s blood. “I didn’t come here to be rich.”

The doctor chuckled, a dry rasp. “No one ever does, son. But the gold finds you anyway.” He turned to a cabinet and began rearranging bottles, his back to Eli. “The town’s nervous, you know. They don’t know what to make of you. A man shows up after twenty years, drags the richest man in the territory out by his collar, and suddenly every deed in this valley is up for question.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Some of them are wondering if they’ll still have a roof over their heads come winter.”

“I told the marshal I want nothing,” Eli said. “John’s share goes to his family. Mine goes to the widows Calvin made. I’ll take enough to buy a horse and a meal.”

The doctor stopped moving. He turned fully, studying Eli with rheumy eyes. “John Fletcher’s family is dead. Plague took his mother in ’52. His brother went to Texas and never wrote. There’s no one left.”

Eli felt the words land like stones in his gut. He had imagined, in the dark hours of the past three weeks, that he might one day find John’s people and lay the truth before them. Kneel at their feet, maybe. Beg their forgiveness. Now there was no one to forgive him.

Dorothea spoke without turning from the window. “What about John himself? Did Calvin ever say where he put the body?”

The doctor let out a long breath. He set down the rag and walked to a chair by the cold stove, sitting heavily. For a moment he just stared at the floor, and Eli saw something old and tired move behind his face.

“They never found John Fletcher,” the doctor said quietly. “The inquest ruled him dead by misadventure. Cave collapse, they said. The mine was sealed for a year after Calvin bought it. By the time anyone dug through, there was no trace of him. Just old tools and a watch that Calvin identified as belonging to you.”

Eli’s stomach turned. “My watch. I thought I’d lost it in the river.”

“You did lose it in the river,” the doctor said. “Calvin fished it out. He let everyone believe you’d died with John, swallowed by the earth. It made his story simpler.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “But the body never was in that mine. I know because Calvin asked me to sign the death certificate. I refused. I told him I couldn’t attest to a death I hadn’t witnessed and a body I hadn’t seen. He didn’t like that.”

Eli stood, wincing as the motion pulled at his shoulder. “Where is he?”

The doctor looked up at him, and there was something like apology in his gaze. “You have to understand. I was young. Not as young as you were, but young enough to look the other way when it suited me. Calvin was the most powerful man in three counties by then. He could have ruined me with a word. I told myself it was better to stay quiet and help the living than to make a martyr of myself for the dead.”

“Where is he?” Eli repeated.

“Three years after the collapse, a medical college opened in Sacramento. The new one, on J Street. They paid good money for specimens. Cadavers, mostly, for the anatomy students. Calvin had a standing arrangement with them.” The doctor’s voice dropped. “He sold them bodies from Boot Hill. Claimed he was clearing graves for a public works project. He took a fee and asked no questions. I only knew because he offered me a cut of the work. Certification, he called it. I refused that too.”

Eli’s hands had begun to shake. He pressed them flat against his thighs. “John.”

“If Calvin sold John’s body, that’s where it would be. The college keeps everything. They pickle the remains, catalog them, use them for study.” The doctor’s voice was thin now, almost pleading. “I’ve thought about it every day for twenty years. I could have said something. I could have gone to the law.”

“The law wouldn’t have listened,” Dorothea said quietly. She had turned from the window, her face unreadable. “Not then. Calvin owned too much.”

“That’s what I told myself.” The doctor looked at Eli. “The college is still there. If John’s remains are anywhere, they’re in that building. I don’t know what they’ll have done with him by now. But they catalog everything. If he’s there, he’ll be labeled.”

Eli stood in the middle of the room, the bandage tight around his shoulder, the ache in his chest far worse than the wound. Twenty years. John had been lying in a pickling jar or a specimen drawer for twenty years while Eli carried the weight of a guilt that was never his to bear.

“I need to see the marshal,” Eli said.

The doctor nodded. “He’s at the hotel. They’ve set up a temporary office in the parlor. He’ll want to talk to you anyway, before he leaves for Sacramento.”

“Does he know about the college?”

“I never told him.” The doctor’s voice cracked. “I was too ashamed. But if you go to him now, tell him what I told you, it’ll corroborate other things. The marshal said he’s been building a case against Calvin for five years. Five years, Eli. He’s got files. Witnesses. He may already know about the body trade.”

Eli pulled his shirt over his head, careful of the wound. The fabric was stiff with dried blood and tunnel dirt, but it would do. “You’ll put this in writing?” he asked. “What you just told me?”

The doctor hesitated. Then he nodded, slow and heavy. “I will. I’ll sign it and swear to it before the marshal. It’s long past time I did something about the man I let become.”

Dorothea stepped forward and put a hand on Eli’s good arm. Her fingers were cool through the fabric. “You’re going after him,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m going after John,” Eli said. “I’m going to bring him home.”

“He’s dead, Eli. He’s been dead for twenty years.”

“I know.” Eli met her eyes. “But I left him once. I’m not leaving him again.”

Dorothea held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded once, a small movement, and let her hand fall. “Then I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t have to.” She turned and picked up her coat from the hook by the door. “But I’ve read every word in that ledger. I know what Calvin did to the people in this town, and I know what he did to John. If there’s a reckoning to be had, I want to see it through.” She looked back at him. “Besides, someone has to keep you from doing something stupid.”

The doctor let out a dry laugh. “She’s got your number, son.”

Eli almost smiled. Almost. The weight in his chest had not lifted, but it had shifted. There was something ahead of him now. A path. A purpose that was not revenge and not gold, but something simpler.

A debt to a dead friend.

“We’ll leave in the morning,” Eli said. “First light.”

The doctor stood and extended his hand. Eli took it. The old man’s grip was weak, but his eyes were clear. “Bring him home, Eli. Bury him proper. And if you see my shame in the papers, remember that I chose to speak at the end.”

Eli squeezed the old hand once and let go. “The end is what counts.”

They left the office into the fading afternoon. The street was quiet. A few heads turned as Eli and Dorothea walked toward the hotel, but no one approached. The town was still deciding what to make of him. That was all right. Eli didn’t need them to decide anything just yet.

He had a body to find.