First Grave on the Right

CHAPTER 8

The sun nested on Nine Mile Hill for several heartbeats before losing interest and slipping down the other side. I sat in Misery — the Jeep, not the emotion — and waited for the skyline to swallow it completely so I could get on with my breaking-and-entering gig. But the more I waited, the more I thought about Reyes. And the more I thought about Reyes, the more confused I became.

Rocket knew Reyes’s name, but did that necessarily mean he’d passed? Could it mean anything else? I’d never seen Rocket scared before, and that scared me. He seemed to be hiding something as well, but trying to differentiate between Rocket’s lucid and less-than-lucid moments was nearly impossible.

On the plus side, I did learn that Martians should never try to become human just to drink our water. Since Martians didn’t exist, I figured they were part of some bizarre Rocket Man analogy. So what on Earth could be comparable to alien beings? Besides circus performers? It had to be someone living contrary to the norm. I could think of a couple of groups, but I felt strangely secure in the knowledge that Reyes was neither an IRS auditor nor a member of the Manson family. Thank goodness, because swastikas aren’t as easily accessorized as one might think.

Perhaps the bigger piece to the puzzle was the water. What did it represent? What would a person living outside the boundaries of society want for badly enough to conform? Money? Acceptance? Power? Green chili enchiladas? I was clueless. It happened. In my own defense, Rocket used a bad analogy. We lived way too close to Roswell to think logically about alien invasions.

But I could think logically about the case. Mark Weir’s nephew was alive, and I had a very strong suspicion he’d known James Barilla, the deceased kid in Weir’s backyard. There had to be a connection. Mostly because I wanted one. Whatever that connection might be, Teddy was in trouble because of it.

Where the heck was Angel when I needed him? He rarely stayed away this long. How could I do supernatural recon without a supernatural reconnaissance team? Namely, Team Angel, which was pretty much a team of one. But by calling it a team, I could say things like, “There’s no i in team, mister!” I friggin’ loved saying crap like that. As it stood, I was having to do way more legwork than I’d planned when I decided on these boots.

On the way over from the asylum, I’d called the lead detective on Weir’s case. He was a friend of Uncle Bob’s, but not a big fan of mine. I think I irked him. I could be irksome when I put my left ventricle into it. I figured he was either jealous of Uncle Bob’s success — and my part in it — or he didn’t like hot chicks with attitude. Probably a smidgen of both.

Our conversation didn’t last long. Detective Anaya’s answers were short and to the razor-sharp point. According to him, APD had tried to find Teddy in connection to the case as well, but they were looking for another body, another death to pin on Mark Weir. Such an investigation would lead them continually in the wrong direction. Since I knew Teddy was alive, I would have a slight advantage over APD, emphasis on the word slight. Advantage might be a bit overstated as well.

When they’d interviewed Teddy’s mom, she told the police her son never moved back home from her brother’s house. And yet she’d waited until Mark was arrested for murder to report him missing? That left two weeks of Teddy’s whereabouts unaccounted for. I may not have been the state academic decathlon champ, but even I could tell the facts weren’t adding up.

As I waited for the lingering light to stop lingering and let darkness blanket the area, I flipped open my phone to study Reyes’s picture for the hundredth time that day. And just like each time before, my breath caught at the first glimpse of him. I couldn’t get over it. After more than ten years, I’d found him. True, I’d found him in prison, but for the moment — as I was fairly adept at living in denial — I was ignoring that part. The one ray of hope I clung to lay in the fact that Reyes was pissed when they took his mug shot. Not just upset, not just angry, but wildly, ragingly furious. Guilty people aren’t pissed. They’re either relieved at having been caught or worried. Reyes was neither.

I closed my phone, resisting the inane urge to make out with the screen, and made my way up the walk to the front entrance of the Sussman, Ellery & Barber Law Offices. A wide oak door sat conveniently hidden by evergreens and Spanish daggers, making my breaking and entering all the more uncomplicated — though, really, it wasn’t so much breaking as entering, since I had a key and all.

Barber’s office was only slightly less organized than a postapocalyptic war zone. I thumbed through stacks of papers and found Weir’s case files in a cardboard box marked WEIR, MARK L. Which was a totally logical place to find them. But the mysterious flash drive was another matter. Barber said it would be on top of his desk. It wasn’t, and his pencil drawer had seven flash drives without so much as a label in sight. I couldn’t loiter all evening. I had a stakeout to attend, which sadly involved neither steaks nor vampires.

I weighed the pros and cons of taking all the flash drives with me and checking them out later. The pros won. Mentally scheduling another B & E for tomorrow night to return them, I started stuffing flash drives into my pockets. That led to the realization that mocha lattes and cheeseburgers weren’t doing me any favors. Which, in turn, led to an angry growl echoing against the walls of my empty stomach. I was starving.

As I hopped up and down, trying to cram the last two flash drives into my pockets, I ran a mental list of all the fast food joints I could hit between here and the warehouse we were staking out.

“You’re about as inconspicuous as a monster truck at an exotic car show.”

I started and whirled around to see Garrett standing in the doorway. “Holy crap, Swopes,” I said, placing a hand over my heart. “What are you doing here?”

He strolled in, eyeing the moonlit surroundings before returning his attention to yours truly. “Your uncle sent me,” he said, his voice flat. “Any evidence you obtain without that warrant will be useless in court.”

Ah, we were back to being mortal enemies. Coolness wafted off him. I’d have to be on guard in his presence, ever wary of his traitorous tendencies. I’d have to eat, sleep, and potty with one eye open.

“Do the words chain of custody mean anything to you?” he asked.

“They would if I gave a crap.” I picked up the box and headed for the door. “I just need to know what I’m up against, Swopes.”

“Besides mental illness?”

Dang, we were even back to the volatile insults. It felt good to be home.

“I’m not out to prove my investigative prowess, Swopes, or how ginormous my dick is by making a name for myself. I’m helping my clients. It’s what I do,” I said as I edged past him. “It’s what I’ve been doing for years now, long before you came along.”

Garrett followed me out the front door. “What’s the code?” he asked to reset the alarm.

I yelled the numbers over my shoulder — apparently so everyone in the neighborhood could hear — then put the box in the back of my Jeep. He walked up behind me.

“I have to stop for sustenance along the way. I’ll meet you at the warehouse,” I said.

After closing the back door for me and making sure it was locked, he said, “We’re not far from your place. Why don’t we drop off your car, and you can ride over with me.”

I put the key in to unlock my door. “I’m hungry.”

“You can eat on the way.”

An annoyed sigh slipped through my lips as my hand hovered over the door handle. “Is Uncle Bob paying you to babysit me now?”

“We have four dead bodies, Davidson. He’s … concerned.”

“Ubie?” I asked with a snort.

“I’ll follow you to your place.”

“Whatever makes your balloon red, Swopes,” I said, climbing into Misery and slamming the door. He didn’t seem any happier about Charley-sitting than Charley did herself. Somewhere deep inside, she felt bad about that. Not.

“Mmm. Tacos are good.” I looked over at Swopes as we pulled in beside Uncle Bob’s unmarked police car, a bland, dark blue sedan. “I just hope I don’t spill any more salsa on your nice vinyl seats.”

Garrett’s jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. It was funny. “They’re leather,” he said, his voice tightly controlled.

“Oops. Well, they’re real nice.”

He threw the truck into park, and I hopped out before the tension could escalate into random acts of violence, ducked back in for my monster cup of diet soda, then dashed over to Uncle Bob’s car. Aka the Safety Zone.

We were parked a fair distance away from the warehouse; a wide field of ragweed and mesquite lay between us and the rusting metal building. It looked like a cross between an airplane hangar and a mechanic’s shop and sat perched smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. Not a single neighbor for miles. A fact I found most interesting.

Uncle Bob sat in his car, staring out of a nifty pair of binoculars from behind his steering wheel. I leaned over his windshield, peered into the binocular lenses, and smiled. He pulled the specs away from his eyes and frowned at me.

“What?” I mouthed before bouncing around to the passenger’s side and climbing inside the warm interior. Death by starvation had been staved off another day, thanks to Macho Taco. Life was good.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to a second unmarked police car strategically parked a few yards away. Totally camouflaged by darkness. Except for one small, teensy-tiny, minuscule blunder. His parking lights were on. I took a shot and guessed the guy hadn’t graduated at the top of his class.

“That’s Officer Taft,” Uncle Bob said.

“No,” I breathed.

“He volunteered.”

“No.”

“He’s a good egg, that one.”

I rolled my eyes and eased lower into the seat as Garrett opened the back door to get in, shining the minisearchlight directly on me.

“Close the door,” I whispered with a furtive urgency.

Uncle Bob frowned. Again. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he needed the practice.

“Taft has a fan,” I explained. “An adorable little girl has been stalking him. I think her name is Hell Spawn of Satan.”

Uncle Bob chuckled. “What the Hell Spawn of Satan are you wearing?”

What Ubie was so indelicately referring to was the outfit I’d changed into, carefully picking out my most comfortable black-on-black attire and meticulously applying black greasepaint to my face to complement a desert-at-midnight look. Naturally, I had to struggle through several costume changes as Garrett sat out in his leather-seated truck waiting for me. I sure hoped my time-consuming endeavor didn’t annoy him.

“I’m blending,” I said.

“With what? Evil?”

“Laugh it up, Uncle Bob,” I said before pausing to take a noisy slurp of my soda. “Just wait until someone has to go traipsing through the desert for a closer look. You’ll appreciate my forethought.”

Garrett chose that moment to join the conversation. “I appreciate your forethought,” he said, his tone distant, as if his mind were elsewhere. “Not as much as your fore-parts, but still…”

I twisted around in my seat to face him. “My fore-parts, as you so ineloquently put it, have names.” I pointed to my right breast. “This is Danger.” Then my left. “And this is Will Robinson. I would appreciate it if you addressed them accordingly.”

After a long pause in which he took the time to blink several times, he asked, “You named your breasts?”

I turned my back to him with a shrug. “I named my ovaries, too, but they don’t get out as much. Did you ever think that this whole operation was blown when they tortured Carlos Rivera?” I asked Uncle Bob. “If these guys are anywhere near intelligent, they would have cleared out any incriminating evidence the moment they figured out what Rivera did.”

“True,” Uncle Bob said. “But there’s only one way to be certain.”

“Why don’t you just get a warrant, gather a small army, and storm the place?”

“Based on what probable cause? Anonymous tips aren’t enough to obtain a search warrant, pumpkin. We need that flash drive.”

He had a point. Not a particularly pointy one, but a point nonetheless. And he called me pumpkin. I slurped as loud as kinesthetically possible in response. It would help if we knew what we were looking for. I sighed to emphasize my impatience-slash-boredom. Stakeouts were nothing if not boring. I felt it my civic duty as a certified connoisseur of sarcasm to liven it up a bit, so I slurped some more.

“Why don’t you go keep Taft company?” Uncle Bob suggested from behind his binoculars.

“Can’t.”

He lowered them. “Why not?”

“Don’t like him.”

“Perfect. I don’t think he likes you either.”

“Also,” I said, ignoring my unappreciative uncle for the moment, “he has the Hell Spawn of Satan following his every move. Remember?” Then I realized what Uncle Bob had said. “He doesn’t like me?”

Ubie shrugged with his brows.

“What have I ever done to him?” I glared at Taft’s stupid car. “Little punk. See if I help him when demon child starts making her presence known.”

An electric hum sounded behind me as Garrett rolled down his window. “Movement.”

We all looked toward the warehouse, where a vertical shaft of light appeared. The massive doors slid open, spilling light over a waiting van. It rolled inside before the doors closed again.

“At this rate, we’ll never solve the case and Mark Weir will grow old in prison. This stakeout sucks,” I said, whining into my calorie-free beverage. “We can’t see a thing. We need to get closer.”

“Send in your people,” Uncle Bob said.

“I don’t have any people with me.”

“What?” he asked, suddenly panicked. “What about Angel?”

I shrugged. “Haven’t seen that little shit in days. Why do you think I’m dressed like this? Greasepaint wreaks havoc on my complexion.”

“I am not sending you over there, Charlotte Jean Davidson.”

Uh-oh. Ubie seemed überserious. I gave it two minutes. Sixty-seven seconds and three long slurps later, he changed his mind.

“Fine,” he said with a heavy sigh.

Finally.

“Go do your thing.”

I knew he’d cave.

“But for God’s sake, be careful. Your dad’ll shank me if anything happens to you.”

He handed me a radio, and I traded him my soda. “No backwash,” I warned.

“No getting caught.” He turned to Garrett. “Watch her close.”

“What?” I squeaked into the radio, having been surprised in the middle of my sound check. Uncle Bob scowled. “I am so not taking Swopes. He’s in a bad mood.”

Garrett eyed me, his expression expressionless.

“Either Swopes goes with you, or you don’t go at all.”

I snatched back my diet soda and slumped down in my seat. “Then I guess I’m not going.”

“Be careful.”

I scowled at Garrett through the chain-link fence as I dropped to the other side. Well, not the other side. The other side of the fence. “Yeah, I got that much from Uncle Bob,” I said, my voice acidic. I’d lost the argument. Despite the fact that I’d had lots of practice, losing wasn’t my forte.

Garrett followed suit, climbing the eight-foot chain-link fence with way more upper-body strength than I had and dropping beside me. But could he tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue?

We started out across the open field toward the warehouse. It took most of my concentration to keep from falling, and even more of my concentration to keep from clutching on to Garrett’s jacket for balance.

“I read that grim reapers collect souls,” he said, jogging beside me.

I tripped on a cactus and just barely managed to catch myself. Night was so dark. Probably because of the time. The moonlight helped, but traversing the uneven ground still proved challenging.

“Swopes,” I said, breathing slowly so he wouldn’t realize I was getting winded, “there are oodles of souls running around, wreaking havoc upon my life. Why would I collect the darned things? And even if I did, where would I keep all the jars?”

He didn’t answer. We sprinted across the parking lot to the back of the windowless building. Luckily, it had no security cameras. But I could tell from the soft glow illuminating the roofline that it did have skylights. If I could get to the roof, I might be able to see what they were up to. No good, surely, but I did need some kind of evidence to back that up.

When Garrett pulled me behind a grouping of garbage bins, I bumped into a metal pipe that led all the way up and over the roofline with brackets every few feet for stability. Perfect footholds.

“Hey, give me a boost,” I whispered.

“What? No,” Garrett argued, eyeing the post faithlessly. He shoved me aside nonetheless. “I’ll go up.”

“I’m lighter,” I argued back. “This pipe won’t hold you.” Even though I was pretty much arguing for argument’s sake, the pipe did look a tad flimsy. And it had more rust than a New Mexico sunset. “I’ll go up and check out the skylights. Odds are I won’t be able to see in, but maybe I can find a hole. Maybe I can make a hole,” I said, thinking aloud.

“Then the guys inside will make a hole as well. In your obstinate head. Probably two if history is any indication.”

I studied the pipe while Garrett ranted something incoherent about holes and history. I’d chosen that particular moment not to understand a word he said. When he was finished, I turned to him. “Do you even know English? Give me a boost,” I added when his brows furrowed in confusion.

Shouldering past him, I gripped the pipe with both hands. He let an annoyed breath slip through his lips before stepping forward and grabbing my ass.

Thrilling? Yes. Appropriate? Not on your life.

I slapped his hands away. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You said to give you a boost.”

“Yes. A boost. Not a cheap thrill.”

He paused, looked down at me a long, uncomfortable moment.

What’d I say? “Cup your hands,” I ordered before he got all mushy. “If you can get me to the first bracket, I can take it from there.”

Reluctantly, he put one hand in the other and bent forward. I’d brought my gloves to go with my black-on-black ensemble, so I slipped them on, placed one foot in Garrett’s cupped hands, then hoisted myself up to the first brace. Easy enough with his upper body strength and all, but the second was a tad trickier. The sharp metal of the brackets tried to cut its way through my gloves, making my fingers ache instantly. I struggled to hold on to the pipe, struggled to keep my footing, and struggled to lift my own weight to the next bracket. Surprisingly, the worst pain centered in my knees and elbows as I used them for leverage against the metal building, slipping and squirming far more often than was likely appropriate.

A decade later, I pulled myself up and over the roofline. The metal cap scraped agonizingly into my rib cage as if mocking me, as if saying, You’re kind of dumb, huh? I collapsed on the roof and lay completely still a full minute, marveling at how much harder that had been than I thought it would be. I’d have hell to pay in the morning. If Garrett had been half a gentleman, he would have offered to climb the pipe in my stead.

“You okay?” he whispered into the radio.

I tried to respond, but my fingers were locked in a clawlike position from clinging on to the brackets for dear life, and they couldn’t push the little button on the side of the radio.

“Davidson,” he hissed.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. I pried my fingers apart and pulled the radio out of my jacket pocket. “I’m fine, Swopes. I’m trying to wallow in self-pity. Would you give me a minute?”

“We don’t have a minute,” he said. “The doors are opening again.”

I didn’t waste time with a response. After rolling to my feet, I hunkered down and crept to the skylights. They were actually greenhouse panels, but they were old and cracked and had more than one peephole I could see through. To do so, however, to be able to see down into the warehouse, I’d have to almost lie across a panel. A thin beam of light shot up through one of the cracks and I leaned into a push-up, my wobbly arms braced on either side. As long as the metal frame held, I figured I wouldn’t fall through the roof. Which would be a plus.

The van was driving out of the warehouse when I peeked down. Two men were boxing up papers and files from an old desk. Other than the desk, the warehouse itself, at least fifty thousand square feet of space, was completely and startlingly empty. Not a candy wrapper or cigarette butt in sight. My concerns had been well founded. Whoever owned this warehouse cleaned it out the moment Carlos Rivera met with Barber.

My arms still shook from the climb, and I was deeply regretting the tacos and forty-four-ounce soda I’d inhaled. Forty-four ounces was forty-four ounces. Calorie-free or not, it weighed the same. Time to make like a sheep.

As I inched back on the metal frame, I rehearsed my told-you-so speech to Uncle Bob. The warehouse was empty. Yes, just like I said it would be. I know I was right, but— Really, Uncle Bob, stop, you’re embarrassing me. No really, stop it. I’m not kidding.

It was about the time I was imagining my reluctant appearance and off-the-cuff speech at the Really, Really Right Awards Ceremony that my mind processed movement. Something flashed in my periphery, a fist possibly, and was quickly followed by a burst of pain in my jaw. Then all I could think as I fell through the skylight was, Holy crap!