First Grave on the Right

by Darynda Jones

  This could be the connection I’d been looking for. I had no idea what that connection might be, but I’d worked with less.

  “When did he disappear?”

  He glanced down and to the right, which meant he was remembering instead of inventing. Another sign of his innocence, not that I needed it. “Teddy stayed with me about a month. His mom had kicked him out. They didn’t get along.”

  “She’s your sister?”

  “Yes. Then she’d talked him into moving back home with her despite their constant bickering. That was the last time I saw him. I was arrested about two weeks later. No one told me he was missing until after the arrest.”

  “What did the prosecution say was your motive?” I asked.

  His expression morphed into one of disgust. “Drugs.”

  “Ah,” I said in understanding. “The one-size-fits-all motive.”

  “Ask him more about his sister.”

  I turned to see Barber standing behind me, arms crossed and head bowed in thought.

  “I had to have missed something.”

  “Can you tell me more about your sister?” I asked Mr. Weir, who was busy looking past me to check out what I was looking at.

  After a moment, he said, “She’s not the best mom, but not the worst. She’s been in trouble here and there. Drugs, and not just pot. Some shoplifting. You know, the usual.”

  The usual. Interesting defense.

  “What about recently?” Barber asked. I passed the question along.

  “I haven’t seen her in a year. I have no idea how she’s doing.”

  I wondered if she’d ever been questioned about the deceased kid. “What about—?”

  “Could she have gotten involved in anything more serious?”

  I slid an annoyed glance to Barber for interrupting me—lawyers—then relayed his question to Mr. Weir. Barber didn’t notice my glare. Mr. Weir did.

  “With Janie,” he said, becoming more leery of me, “anything is possible.”

  “Would you say—?”

  “I mean, could she have become indebted to someone? Someone with enough malevolence to kidnap—”

  “That’s it,” I whispered through my teeth. “No one asks questions but me.” I was doing my best ventriloquist impersonation, as though Mr. Weir couldn’t hear me because of my lack of facial movement. Or see me pretending not to talk to anyone.

  Barber looked at me, bemused. “I’m sorry,” he said, sobering. “I just keep thinking I missed something. Something that was right there in front of me the whole time.”

  Great, now I felt guilty. “No, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling bad but having to keep the stupid grin on my face so I wouldn’t move my lips. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

  “No, no, you’re right. My fault entirely.”

  I turned back to Mr. Weir. “Sorry about that. It’s a voices-in-my-head thing.”

  His expression changed, but not as I would’ve expected. He suddenly looked … hopeful again. “Can you really do what they say you can?”

  Since I wasn’t sure what he was talking about—who they were and what they said I could do—my brows raised in question. “And they would be…”

  He leaned in, as if that would help me hear him better through the glass. “I heard the guards talking. They were surprised you’d come to see me.”

  “Why?” I asked, surprised myself.

  “They said you solve crimes nobody else can solve. That you even solved a decades-old cold case.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That was one time, for heaven’s sake. I got lucky.”

  A woman who’d been murdered in the fifties had come to me. I’d convinced Uncle Bob to help, and we closed her case together. I couldn’t have done it without him. Or all the new technology law enforcement had on their side. Of course, it helped that she knew exactly who murdered her and exactly where to find the murder weapon. That poor woman’d had one mean stepson.

  “That’s not what they said,” Mr. Weir continued. “They said you knew things, things that no one could know.”

  Oh. “Um, who said that?”

  “One of our guards is married to a cop.”

  “Well, then, that explains it. Cops don’t really think—”

  “I don’t care what cops think, Ms. Davidson. I just want to know if you can do what they say.”

  A dismal sigh slipped through my lips. “I don’t want to get your hopes up.”

  “Ms. Davidson, your mere presence is giving me hope. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Mr. Weir. The odds that this will lead to anything—”

  “Are better odds than I had this morning.”

  “If you want to see it that way,” I said, giving up, “I can’t stop you.”

  “But you can do what they say.”

  Reluctant to offer any more hope than I already had, I felt tension crawl up my spine, hunch my shoulders. It was easy to believe in my abilities when it would benefit a cause. I just didn’t know how advantageous my talents would be in this particular case. Maybe hope itself would benefit Mr. Weir. It was the least I could offer him.

  “Yes, Mr. Weir, I can do what they say.” I waited for that little jewel to sink in, for his mildly shocked expression to return to normal, then said, “They’ll be taking you to the Reception and Diagnostic Center in Los Lunas for evaluation before sending you to prison. I can brave the hordes of Los Lunatics and visit you there if you’d like. Keep you up to date.”

  A reluctant smile appeared at last. “I’d like that.”

  I spoke to Barber through the side of my mouth. “You got any more questions?”

  He was still buried in thought and simply shook his head.

  “Okay,” I said to Weir, “see ya soon.”

  After hanging up, I started to put my notepad and pen away when I had an epiphany. Of sorts. I turned and tapped on the window to get Mr. Weir’s attention.

  The guard allowed him to walk back and pick up his phone again.

  “How old is he?” I asked as I balanced the phone on my shoulder and tore through my notepad, clicking my pen to the ready.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your nephew. How old is your nephew?”

  “Oh, he’s fifteen. Or he was. I guess he’d be sixteen now.”

  “And they still haven’t found him?”

  “Not that I know of. What—?”

  “How old was the kid? The one in your backyard?”

  “I see where you’re going with this,” Barber said.

  “He was fifteen. Do you think there’s a connection?”

  I winked at Barber, then leaned toward Mr. Weir with a touch more promise in my eyes. “There has to be, and I’ll do my damnedest to find out what it is.”

  * * *

  The last thing I wanted to do was jump to conclusions, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that those two boys ran in the same circles. Two boys with similar backgrounds, one missing and one dead? My mind screamed predator.

  Though I needed Barber’s files, I didn’t want to deal with Nora, the lawyers’ administrative assistant. If she was anything like other administrative assistants I knew, she had only slightly less power than God at her fingertips, and she wouldn’t take kindly to any nosing about. Breaking and entering was much safer. But breaking and entering would have to wait until nightfall.

  In the meantime, Uncle Bob was rounding up everything APD had on the case, and Barber was headed to Mr. Weir’s sister’s house to see if there’d been any contact with Teddy, the missing nephew. I decided to send in Barber first to get the lay of the land before I talked to her, figuring I could use the time to mosey back to my office and glean as much information as possible off the Internet. As I headed out of the detention center, I opened my cell and called Cookie.

  “Hey, boss,” she said by way of a greeting. “Planning a jailbreak yet?”

  “Nah. Believe it or not, they’re letting me walk out of here.”

  “Crazy peopl
e. What are they thinking?”

  “Probably that I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

  She chuckled. “You have three messages, nothing too pressing. Mrs. George still swears her husband is cheating and wants to meet with you this afternoon.”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I told her, only I wasn’t quite so wordy about it,” she said teasingly. “Everything else can wait. So, what’s up?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” I said, walking out the glass doors. I did a quick scan of the area for Billy, but he must’ve had better things to do. “The lawyers gave me some interesting news at lunch.”

  “Yeah? How interesting?”

  “Pretty darned.”

  “Sounds promising.”

  “Can you pull up the prison registry and do a search for the name Reyes?”

  “The prison registry?”

  I cringed. She made it sound so … criminal. “Yeah, long story.”

  “Well, there are about two hundred inmates and/or parolees with the last name of Reyes.”

  “That was fast. Try it as a first name.”

  I heard clicking; then she said, “Better. There’re only four.”

  “Okay, well, he’d be about thirty now.”

  “And then there was one.”

  I stopped with my key halfway in the door. “One? Really?”

  “Reyes Farrow.”

  My heart thrummed nervously in my chest. Could this really be it? After all these years, could I finally have found him?

  “Do they have a mug shot posted?” I asked. When Cookie didn’t answer, I tried again. “Cookie? You there?”

  “My god, Charley. He’s … it’s him.”

  My keys fell to the ground, and I braced my free hand against Misery. “How do you know? You’ve never seen him.”

  “He’s gorgeous. He’s exactly like you described.”

  I tried to control my breathing. I didn’t have a paper bag around if it came to that.

  “I’ve never seen anyone so, I don’t know, so fierce, so stunningly beautiful.”

  “That would be him,” I said, knowing without a doubt she had the right guy.

  “I’m sending the mug shot now.”

  I held out my phone and waited for the text. After several long seconds, a picture popped onto the screen, and I was suddenly concentrating on staying vertical. My knees weakened regardless, and I slid down to sit on the running board, unable to take my eyes off the screen.

  Cookie had nailed it. He was fierce, his expression wary and furious at once, as if he’d been warning the officers to keep their distance. For their own protection. Even in the poor lighting, his eyes sparkled with what seemed like barely controlled rage. He had not been a happy camper when they’d taken his picture.

  “He’s still listed as an inmate. I wonder how often they update these things. Charley?” Cookie was still on the line, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off his picture. She seemed to realize I needed a moment and waited in silence for me to recover.

  I did. With a new purpose, I put the phone to my ear and bent to pick up my keys. “I’m going to see Rocket.”

  * * *

  Figuring I could kill two birds with one stone, I pulled around to a side street and parked beside a Dumpster, hoping the neighbors wouldn’t realize I was planning to break into their abandoned mental asylum. The hospital, closed by the government in the fifties, had somehow ended up in the hands of a local biker gang, aka the neighbors. They called themselves the Bandits and were none too keen on trespassers. They had Rottweilers to prove it.

  Just walking up to the asylum had my stomach clenching in knots, but not because of the Rottweilers and not in a bad way. Asylums fascinated me. When I was in college, my favorite weekend trips involved tours of abandoned psychiatric hospitals. The departed I found there were vibrant and passionate and full of life. Ironic, since they were dead.

  This particular asylum was home to one of my favorite crazy people. Rocket’s life—when he was actually alive—was more of a mystery than the Bermuda Triangle, but I did learn that he’d been a child during the Depression. His baby sister had died from dust pneumonia, and though I’d never met her, he told me she was still around, keeping him company.

  Rocket was a lot like me. He’d been born with a purpose, a job. But no one had understood his gift. After the death of his sister, his parents handed him over to the care of the New Mexico Insane Asylum. Subsequent years of misunderstanding and mistreatment, including periodic doses of electroshock therapy, left Rocket a fraction of the person he’d most likely been.

  In many ways, he was like a forty-year-old kid in a cookie jar, only his jar was a crumbling, condemned mental asylum, and his cookies were names, the names of those who’d passed that he carved, day in and day out, into the walls of the asylum. The ultimate record keeper. I couldn’t imagine Saint Peter having anything on Rocket.

  Except for maybe a pencil.

  My adrenaline was flowing with the excitement. I could find out in one shot if Mark Weir’s nephew Teddy was still alive—fingers crossed—and find out about Reyes as well. Rocket knew the moment someone passed, and he never forgot a name. The sheer volume of information that flooded his head at any given moment would drive a sane man to the brink, which could also explain Rocket’s personality.

  The doors and windows to the asylum had been boarded up long ago. I sneaked around the back, listening for the pitter-pat of Rottweiler paws, and slid on my stomach through a basement window I jimmied open each time I visited. I had yet to get caught at this particular asylum—a good thing, since I’d probably lose a limb—but I did get caught at one I’d visited outside Las Vegas, New Mexico. A sheriff arrested me. I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure my men-in-uniform fetish began that day. That sheriff was hot. And he handcuffed me. I’ve never been the same.

  “Rocket?” I called after tumbling headfirst onto a table and stumbling—rather impressively—to my feet. I dusted myself off, turned on my LED flashlight, and headed toward the stairs. “Rocket, are you here?”

  The first floor was empty. I walked the halls, marveling at the thousands upon thousands of names carved into the plaster walls, then started up the service stairs to the second level. Abandoned books and furniture lay strewn in crumbled disarray. Graffiti covered most surfaces, attesting to the countless parties that’d been thrown over the years, probably before the biker gang had acquired the property. Apparently the class of ’83 had lived free, and Patty Jenkins put out.

  The myriad of nationalities that Rocket carved into the walls awed me. There were names in Hindi and Mandarin and Arapaho and Farsi.

  “Miss Charlotte,” Rocket said from behind me, a mischievous giggle exciting his voice.

  I jumped and whirled around. “Rocket, you little devil!” He liked to scare me, so I had to feign a near-death experience each time I visited.

  He laughed aloud and pulled me into a suffocating hug. Rocket was a cross between a fluffy grizzly and the Pillsbury Doughboy. He had a baby face and a playful heart and saw only the good in people. I always wished I’d known him when he was alive, before the government quite literally fried his brain. Had he been a grim reaper like me? I did know that he could see the departed before he died.

  He set me down, then drew his brows together in a comical frown. “You never come to see me. Never.”

  “Never?” I asked, teasing him.

  “Never.”

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  He shrugged begrudgingly.

  “And there is a small matter of Rottweilers I have to contend with each and every visit.”

  “I guess. I have so many names to give you. So many.”

  “I don’t really have time—”

  “They shouldn’t be here. No, no, no. They need to leave.” Rocket was also a consummate tattletale, always giving me names of those who had passed but had yet to cross.

  “You’re right, Rocket, but this time I have a name for you.”
/>   He paused and eyed me in confusion. “A name?”

  I decided to toss out a name of someone I knew had already passed. “James Enrique Barilla,” I said, quoting the name of the kid found murdered in Mark Weir’s backyard.

  “Oh,” he said, jumping to attention.

  It was a cheap trick, throwing out a name like that, but I had to keep Rocket focused. I didn’t have much time. I had a date with one Mr. Illegal Activity. That breaking-and-entering gig wouldn’t break and enter itself.

  Rocket recognized the name immediately and began walking with a purpose, which unfortunately included taking shortcuts through walls. I struggled to keep up, jogging around corners and through doorways, hoping the dilapidated floor held beneath my weight.

  “Rocket, wait. Don’t lose me.”

  Then I heard him, down the stairwell and through the kitchen, repeating the name to himself over and over. I tripped on a broken chair and dropped my flashlight, sending it tumbling down the steps.

  Then Rocket was in front of me. “Miss Charlotte, you never keep up.”

  “Never?” I asked, struggling to my feet.

  “Never.” He grabbed my arm and jerked me down the stairs. I just managed to scoop up the flashlight as we ran past.

  He meant well.

  Then he stopped. With an abruptness I hadn’t expected, he skidded to a halt. I slammed into his backside, ever thankful of its plumpness, and bounced off him to land, once again, on my ass. Normally, Rocket would have laughed when I stood and dusted myself off, but he was on a mission. Based on past experience, nothing swayed Rocket from one of his missions.

  “Here. Here it is,” he said, pointing repeatedly to one of the thousands of names he’d scraped into the plaster. “James Enrique Barilla.”

  Finding James’s name among those of the departed really wasn’t surprising, since there was a man going to prison for his murder. But I had to check, just in case.

  “Can you tell me how he died?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Not how,” he said, suddenly annoyed. I fought back a grin. “Not why. Not when. Only is.”

  “How about where?” Now I was just being obstinate.

  He glared at me. “Miss Charlotte, you know the rules. No breaking rules,” he said with a warning shake of his pudgy finger. That’d teach me.