First Grave on the Right

CHAPTER 18

Had I been asleep for the last twenty-seven years? Were there beings and entities I’d never seen? Beings so dangerous and savage that only something supernatural could fight them?

I sat in the conference room with Uncle Bob, unable to fully focus after last night. Garrett was there, too, as well as the DA, the lead detective on the Price task force, the lawyers, and a very fidgety Angel. We were finalizing the plans for the evening. It was tricky making plans when not everyone in the room was in the loop, but Uncle Bob sold it. I knew he would.

Garrett and Angel had been surprisingly quiet. Garrett, I could understand. He was against the whole thing. But Angel had a prime opportunity to flirt with a hot, departed lawyer in a miniskirt, and he didn’t take it. In fact, he hardly looked at her. I couldn’t imagine what ate at him. Was it Reyes? Did he know I had fantasies about him that bordered on criminal?

After the detective and the DA left, Uncle Bob turned to me. “Okay, what’s the real plan?”

Back to reality. A weak grin slid across my face. “I go in with my ridiculous video and fabricated evidence and get Price to confess everything.”

“You can do that?”

“I can do that.”

“Damn,” he said, impressed already, “you really are a whisperer.”

Garrett shifted in his seat but refused to say anything.

“What if we can’t find him?” Barber asked in reference to their search for Father Federico. “What if the task force doesn’t know about all of Price’s holdings? Maybe they’re keeping him somewhere else?”

“Or they’ve already killed him,” Sussman said.

“That’s always a possibility,” I said, “but Price is Catholic, through and through. I just think he’d have a hard time offing an ordained priest.”

“So, Barber and I are searching his holdings,” Elizabeth said, “while Sussman and Angel assist you?”

“That’s the plan.”

“What’s the plan?” Uncle Bob asked. I summarized our ideas, and he gave us a thumbs-up. Good thing, ’cause we really didn’t have a Plan B.

“Angel,” I said as everyone was taking off, “are you going to spill, or do I have to resort to the torture techniques I learned last year during Mardi Gras?”

He smiled and added a bounce to his step for my benefit. “I’m good, boss. I can do this with my eyes closed.”

“Only ’cause you can see through your lids.”

“True,” he said with a shrug.

I checked my phone. Cookie’d left me a message. “You just seem so sad,” I said, dialing voice mail. “Like someone stole your favorite nine millimeter.”

“I’m not sad.” He started down the hall, then turned back. “Least not when I look at you.”

Aw. That was sweet. He was totally up to something; I just couldn’t put my finger on what it might be.

“Guess what? Guess what?” Cookie chimed happily into the phone. “I got her name. I called that cell mate of Reyes’s, that Amador Sanchez, and threatened to have him picked up on a parole violation if he didn’t spill. I got her name and address. She’s—” The voice mail beeped; then another message started. “Sorry. Damn phones. She’s still in Albuquerque. Her name is Kim Millar, and she’s still here.”

My knees weakened beneath my weight. I grabbed a pen and paper off a uniform’s desk as I walked past, earning a hostile glare for my efforts, and wrote down the address.

“He didn’t have a number, but he said she works from home, so she should be there when you get this.”

I could have kissed that woman.

“I know. You could kiss me. Just find Reyes’s sister, and we’ll make out later.”

With a mad chuckle, I jumped into Misery and headed downtown. The anticipation growing inside me had my heart and stomach switching places. I glanced at my watch. Twenty-four hours. We had twenty-four hours to stop this.

The ride gave me time to contemplate what Reyes had said the night before. What did he mean when he said they would find him? Who would find him? Was he being hunted? I chose not to think about what Reyes had been growling at. Clearly there were things out there that even I couldn’t see. Which brought up an important conundrum: What was the point of my being a grim reaper if I couldn’t see everything out there? Shouldn’t I be kept in the know? Seriously, how could I be expected to do my job?

After pulling up to a gated apartment complex, I padded across the walk to the door of 1B and knocked. A woman about my age answered with a towel in her hands, as if she’d been drying dishes.

Stepping forward with my own hand outstretched, I said, “Hi, Ms. Millar, I’m Charlotte Davidson.”

She took it warily, her paper-thin fingers cold to the touch. With dark auburn hair and light green eyes, she looked nothing at all like Reyes. A tad Irish and then some.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I’m a private investigator.” I fumbled for a card and handed it to her. “May I speak with you?”

After studying the card a long moment, she opened the door wider and gestured me inside. When I stepped into the sunlit room, I scanned the area for photos of Reyes. There were no pictures at all, of Reyes or otherwise.

“You’re a private investigator?” she asked, leading me to a seat. “What can I do for you?”

She sat across from me in the front room. The morning sun filtered in through gauze curtains and bathed it in warmth. Though her furnishings were sparse, they were clean and in perfect shape.

Wondering if she had a touch of OCD, I cleared my throat and contemplated how to begin. This was harder than I’d thought it would be. How did you tell someone her brother was about to die? I decided to save that part for later.

“I’m here about Reyes,” I began.

But before I could elaborate, she said, “Excuse me?”

I blinked. Had she not heard me? “I’m here about your brother,” I repeated.

Because I had mad skill at reading people, I could tell instantly she was lying when she said, “I’m sorry. I have no idea who you’re talking about. I don’t have a brother.”

Wow. Why would she lie? My mind started running scenario after scenario, trying to solve this newest mystery. But I didn’t have time to play games. Even one so intriguing. I decided to fight fire with fire and lie right back.

“Reyes told me you’d say that,” I said, a pleased smile on my face. “He gave me the password so you’d know it was okay to talk to me.”

Her brows slid together. “What password?” She leaned forward. “Did he tell you about me?”

That was too easy. I almost felt guilty. “No,” I said in regret, “he didn’t. But you just did.”

Anger flared in her Irish eyes, but it wasn’t directed at me. She was mad at herself. The concave angle to her shoulders, the disappointment thinning her lips and pinching her brows told me everything I needed to know. Reyes wasn’t the only one in the family who’d been abused.

“Please don’t be angry with yourself,” I said, still not feeling guilty so much as empathetic. “I do this stuff for a living because I’m good at it.” She eyed the rag in her hands as I continued, her grip tightening. “Why would Reyes want your identity to remain a secret? There’s nothing about you in his prison jacket. He’s never listed you as a relative or a contact of any sort. There’s not a word about you in any of the court transcripts.”

After a long pause, she spoke with a sadness that seemed almost palpable. “There wouldn’t be. He made me promise not to tell anyone who I was. We have different last names. It was easy to fade into the shadows at the trial. No one suspected a thing.”

Why on Earth would Reyes want her to remain anonymous during his trial? If anything, she should have been a key witness. “Do you know what’s happened to him?” I asked.

Her chin dropped farther, her hair shielding her eyes. “I know he was shot. Amador told me.”

“Ah. Does Amador keep you informed?”

“Yes.”

“So you know the state is going to take him off life support tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice catching.

Finally, we were getting somewhere. This might just work after all. “You have to fight it, Kim. No one else can. You seem to be his only living relative.”

“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “I can’t get involved.”

Astonishment sucked the air out of my lungs, and I stared at her, shocked and bemused.

She twisted the rag between white-knuckled fists. “Please don’t look at me like that. You don’t understand.”

“Obviously not.”

A soft sob escaped from her chest. “He made me swear I would never contact him again. He said when he got out, he would find me. That’s why I’ve stayed here in Albuquerque. But I don’t go visit him, I don’t write him or call him or send him gifts on his birthday. He made me swear,” she said, her eyes pleading with me to understand. “I can’t get involved.”

Though I couldn’t imagine why Reyes made her swear to such a thing, the situation had clearly changed. I decided to go for the jugular. Desperate times and all. “Kim, he protected you all those years,” I said, my voice acidic with accusation. “How can you do nothing?”

“Protected is not the right word,” she said, sniffing behind the dish towel.

“I don’t get it. Was there … sexual abuse?” I couldn’t believe how presumptuous I was becoming, how much nerve I’d suddenly garnered in the face of adversity. To just blurt out something so sensitive like that bordered on brutality.

Tears pushed past her lashes and flowed in rivulets down her cheeks, answering for her.

“And he protected you the best he could. How can you turn your back on him now?”

“I told you, protected is not the right word.”

The end of my patience was rocketing toward me. Why would she not want to help him? I saw how much he’d worried about her, how he’d risked his life that night just to stay with her. He could have run away, gone to the police, turned his psychotic father in to the authorities and been free. But he stayed. For her.

“What is the right word, then?” I asked, a caustic edge to my voice.

After a long moment of thought, she looked up at me, her green eyes shimmering in the afternoon sun. “Endured.”

Okay. That threw me. “I don’t understand. What—?”

“My father”—she interrupted, her voice cracking under the weight of her words—“my father never touched me. I was simply the weapon he wielded to control Reyes.”

“But you just … implied there was sexual abuse.”

Her gaze lifted to mine, her green eyes almost hostile at what I was forcing her to say. “He never touched me. Me. I didn’t say there wasn’t sexual abuse.”

I sat blindsided, stunned into silence a full minute, absorbing what Kim told me, turning it over and analyzing it in my mind. It was painful even to contemplate, like the thought itself was a physical entity, a box covered in razor sharp shards of glass, slicing through my fingertips every time I tried to open it.

“At first, he used animals to control him.”

Refocusing on her fragile face, I stumbled back to her.

“When Reyes was little, he used animals. If Reyes misbehaved, the animals paid the price, suffered because of him. Our father learned early on he couldn’t control him otherwise.”

I blinked, allowed the words to sink in despite my sudden reluctance to hear them.

“Then my mother, a drug addict who ended up dying from complications due to hepatitis, gave him the ultimate weapon. Me. She dropped me on his doorstep and never looked back. She gave my father power over Reyes. If he did not obey the man’s every command, I went without dinner. Breakfast. Lunch. And eventually water. On and on, until Reyes gave in. Our father had no interest in me whatsoever except as a tool. Leverage over my brother’s every move.”

I sat speechless, unable to comprehend such an existence. To even imagine Reyes so helpless, a veritable slave to a monster. My chest tightened and my stomach knotted and I felt my breakfast edging back toward my mouth. I swallowed hard and took several deep breaths, disgusted with myself for making Kim relive horrors I could barely imagine.

“But you have to understand how Reyes is,” she continued, unaware of my predicament, “how he thinks. What I’ve just told you is the truth, but the way he sees it, our father hurt me because of him. He took the burden onto his own shoulders all those years, carried the weight of my well-being like a king shoulders the welfare of his people.”

I fastened my jaw shut to keep my chin from quivering.

“He told me that no one would ever hurt me because of him again. How can he think that? It was just the opposite. My father hurt him because of me.” After she wiped at a tear, she leveled a hapless gaze on me. “Do you know why I’m telling you this?”

Her question surprised me, and I shook my head. I hadn’t thought of it.

“Because it’s you.”

I did my best to focus, to get past everything she was telling me and listen.

“From the time Reyes was little, he’s had seizures. Sometimes they would last for over an hour. When he came out of them, he would have the most bizarre memories. Memories of a girl with dark hair and sparkling gold eyes. I knew the minute I opened the door, it was you.”

He had memories? Of me? My pulse quickened.

“He said he saved your life once. Said a man had taken you into an apartment.” She leaned forward. “In case you’ve ever wondered, you weren’t going to make it out of that apartment alive. The man was going to do what he wanted and then smother you. He’d done it before.”

A jolt of anxiety rushed through me. “Reyes knew I was in danger?” I asked, finding my voice at last.

“Yes. Another time, he only thought you were in danger, but he said your stepmother was yelling at you in front of dozens of onlookers. You were scared and mortified. Those strong emotions are what caused him to seize. He was so outraged when he got there, so worried about you, he said he almost cut your stepmother in two just to teach her a lesson. But you begged him in soft whispers to let her be.”

With the images of that day swimming in my head, I said, “I remember. He was so angry.”

“Later, he learned how to find you without the seizures. He would go into a trancelike state just to see you, just to watch you.” She smiled, remembering happier times. “He called you Dutch.”

Shaking visibly, I released a long, labored breath. Every word she spoke only evoked more questions, an even deeper lack of understanding.

“If Reyes learned to control what he is, to harness the power he had and to use it, why didn’t he … stop your father?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think he believed it.”

My brows slid together. “I don’t understand.”

“In Reyes’s mind, it was all a fantasy. None of it was real at that time. Even you were a fabrication of his imagination, the girl of his dreams. But I knew what he did was real. When we got older, I started to research some of what he had imagined, what he’d done. Everything he told me actually happened.”

The intelligence sparkling behind Kim’s eyes belied the soft-spoken, meek woman I’d met earlier. She’d learned to hide what she was. What she was capable of. Admiration welled inside me. I would’ve loved to be friends with her in a different life. Under different circumstances. Then again, anything was possible.

“Do you know … do you know what he is?”

The question didn’t surprise her. “No. Not at all,” she said, shaking her head. “I just know he’s special. He’s not like us. I’m not even sure he’s human.”

I couldn’t have agreed more. “What about his tattoos?” I asked. “Did he ever tell you what they mean?”

“No.” Her posture relaxed minutely. “He just told me he’d always had them. Ever since he could remember.”

“I know they mean something — I just can’t put my finger on it.” I pressed a palm to my forehead as if to stop my thoughts from racing so fast.

“Are you like him?” she asked, her voice completely matter-of-fact.

I took a deep breath and refocused. “No. I’m a grim reaper.” Which always sounded so bad when said aloud. But she just smiled, wide and pretty. It took me by surprise.

“That’s what he told me. You ferry souls to the other side. He said you sparkle like a newborn galaxy and have more attitude than a rich kid with his daddy’s Porsche.”

I couldn’t keep a hiccup of laughter from escaping. “Yeah, well, he’s got a little attitude himself.”

She chuckled and folded the towel in her lap. “I think that’s what kept him going. His attitude. If he hadn’t been so strong, I don’t think he would have made it.”

My heart ached with everything Kim had told me. I wanted him to be okay. I wanted everything bad that had ever happened to him to be erased. But how could it if he didn’t wake up? “Can’t you please try to stop this?” I asked, my voice desperate.

Her fingers ironed out the creases of the towel. She’d made her decision. “Charlotte, he’s suffered enough because of me. I made him a promise. I can’t break it now, not after everything he’s done for me.”

As badly as I wanted to argue, I understood her position. I could see the love on her face and hear it in her voice. What I had originally taken for disregard was, in fact, a deep and ardent loyalty. I’d just have to put all my hopes in Uncle Bob. He knew people who knew people. If anyone could get it done, he could.

I left in the same state of surreality I’d been swimming in for days. With the passing of each hour, I learned something new, something amazing about Reyes. After searching for him for so long to no avail, the avalanche of information coming at me from all directions was a little overwhelming. Not that I was complaining. People dying of thirst don’t denounce a flood. The enigma that was Reyes Farrow became more mysterious at every turn. And I planned to find out exactly how many turns the mystery held. The question remained, however: Could I do it in twenty-four hours?