First Grave on the Right

by Darynda Jones

  “Fine, if you really want to know. But you’re not going to like it.”

  “I really want to know.”

  After a long, breathy sigh, I said, “It happened here.”

  “Here? In Albuquerque?”

  “Here in this building. When I was four.”

  “You’ve lived in this building before?”

  I suddenly felt like I was in therapy and all the things that had happened to me in the past, both good and bad, were gushing from a festering wound. But what happened in this building was the worst of the worst. The knife in my flesh, buried so deep inside me, I doubted it could ever be extracted fully. At least not without some serious anesthesia.

  “No,” I said, drawing another sip, testing the rich, warm chocolate on my tongue before swallowing. “I’ve never lived here. But even before my dad bought the bar, it’d been a cop hangout. And he’d taken me to it on several occasions, quite innocently, mostly for birthday parties and such. And a few times he had to chat with his partner, as those were the eighties BC.” When Cookie’s brows slanted in question, I added, “Before cells.”

  “Ah, of course.”

  “But on one particular occasion, I’d upset my stepmother when I told her, in a rather matter-of-fact way, that her father had died and had crossed through me because he wanted me to give her a message. She hadn’t known yet that he’d passed away and she was furious, refused to listen. She never even let me give her the message. I didn’t understand it anyway. Something about blue towels.”

  “She wouldn’t listen even after she found out he’d actually passed away?”

  “Absolutely not. By that time, Denise was anti-anything-death-related.”

  Cookie took a deep breath as if to calm her nerves. “The woman never ceases to amaze me.”

  “You should try her meat loaf. It’ll put some pretty coarse hair on your chest.”

  She chuckled. “I have enough hair to deal with, thank you very much. I’ll pass on family night at the Davidsons’.”

  I shrugged. “Your loss.”

  “So, you were four.”

  Geez, she was so pushy. “Right. Four. So, my feelings were hurt as usual, and when we drove to the bar where my dad was having a beer, Denise left me on the bench by the kitchen to go tell on me to Dad. I loved it in the kitchen, but I was all mad and hurt, so I decided to run away. When Mr. Dunlop, the cook, wasn’t looking, I snuck out the back.”

  “A four-year-old, alone at night, on Central? A parent’s worst nightmare.”

  “Yeah, well. I figured I’d show her,” I said. “I wasn’t the brightest four-year-old on Central. Of course, the minute I stepped outside, I changed my mind. Not that I was scared. I don’t get scared like most people. I was just … aware. But before I could dash back inside, a super nice man in a trench coat offered to help me find my stepmother. Oddly, instead of going into the bar where I knew she was, we came into this building.”

  “Oh, honey,” she whispered, despair in her voice.

  “But nothing much happened,” I said with a lift of my shoulders. “Like I said, Bad saved me.” Trying to make light of a dark situation, I added, “Looking back, I don’t think that man ever planned to help me find my stepmother.”

  Cookie reached toward me and wrapped me into a huge, long hug. It made me think of warm fires on winter nights. And, for some reason, roasting marshmallows.

  After, like, an hour and twenty-seven minutes, I mumbled, “Can’t … breathe.…”

  She leaned back with her brows creased in thought. “Is it just me, or does the fact that you live in the same building you were abducted into seem a bit morbid?”

  “Pffft. It’s just you,” I said, discounting the entire bizarre, ghoulish thing.

  I was so happy she didn’t push for more details. The devil was in the details, and I wasn’t feeling particularly satanic at that moment. “Oh,” I said remembering another incident. “This guy in high school tried to run me over with his dad’s SUV. Bad shoved the vehicle through a store window.” The memory brought a smile to my face.

  “Someone tried to run you over in high school?” she asked, appalled.

  “Only that one time,” I answered.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose, then asked, “So, those are the only times you’ve seen Bad?”

  I counted off silently with my fingers. “Yep, that just about covers it.”

  “And our job is to figure out how Reyes plays into all of this?”

  “Yep again. We should roast marshmallows.”

  “Then I feel it my duty,” she continued, unfazed, “as friend and confidante, to analyze in panoramic detail the shower scene.”

  I held back a giggle. “I’m not really sure the shower scene plays into this on a salient level. It seems more, I don’t know, nonsalient.”

  “Charley,” she said in warning, “spill or die a slow and painful death. Who was in the shower with you? Reyes? The Big Bad? Work with me here.”

  “Okay,” I said, acquiescing, “you know that Reyes called me Dutch that night when I was fifteen, right?”

  “Right,” she said, clearly impatient to jump to the shower scene.

  “And you know about the beautiful man showing up in my dreams every night for the past month, right?”

  “Right,” she said, a sigh softening her voice.

  “Well, today, Dream Guy wrote Dutch in the condensation on my mirror, and he called me Dutch in the shower.”

  “Now we’re talking.” She scooted to the edge of her seat, then stopped abruptly in realization. “So, Dream Guy is Reyes?”

  “That’s what I mean. I realized tonight Bad called me Dutch the day I was born.”

  She frowned in confusion. “So, who was in the shower?”

  I grinned and gazed at her, suddenly in awe of the woman sitting beside me. “You know, I just told you that this big, scary creature follows me around and saves my life every so often and that I remember the day I was born and that I know every language ever spoken, and you have yet to run out of the room screaming. How can you just accept what I say?”

  After a long, thoughtful pause, she asked, “Are you purposely trying to change the subject?”

  A deep chuckle almost doubled me over. I grabbed my aching ribs and cried out, “Stop! Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”

  “Sorry.”

  She wasn’t. I could tell.

  “What did you find out from the prison?” I asked, my tearful gaze returning to the screen. “Is Reyes still there? Is he … alive?”

  “All the officer could tell me was that Reyes was still listed as an inmate in the prison registry, housed in D Unit. But I have to say, I got the feeling she wasn’t telling me everything.”

  “I’m going tomorrow.”

  “To the prison?”

  “Yes.” I clicked on the personnel files that listed the administrators of the prison and highlighted the picture of Neil Gossett. “I went to school with the deputy warden.”

  “Really? Friend or foe?”

  I wondered the same thing myself. “That’s a tough call. Had I suddenly burst into flames in the school lunchroom, I doubt he would have sacrificed his vitamin D to save me, but I’m pretty sure he would have felt guilty about it later.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Cookie said, gazing wide eyed at another article in her hands. I leaned over, winced at the pain the movement caused, then stopped when I read the last paragraph of the article.

  Uncle Bob had been the lead detective in the case against Reyes. Well, crap.

  Chapter Eleven

  I’d have a longer attention span if there

  weren’t so many shiny things.

  —T-SHIRT

  I awoke at the butt crack of dawn with the call of nature urging me out of bed. After my fall, however, I felt like I’d just downed a fifth of Jack.

  After tripping on a planter, stubbing my pinkie toe on a step stool, and running face-first into the doorjamb, I eased onto the toilet and reviewed my agenda for
the day with a tinkling melody playing in the background. Thank goodness I had a minimalist attitude toward home decor. If anything else had stood between me and the porcelain throne, I might not have lived to see my next birthday.

  I glanced down at the football jersey I was wearing, stolen from a boyfriend in high school, a blond-haired, blue-eyed devil with sin in his blood. Even on our first date, he’d been more interested in the color of my underwear than the color of my eyes. Had I known that beforehand, I would totally have worn the teal ones. Odd thing was, I didn’t remember donning the jersey last night. I didn’t even remember going to bed.

  Maybe Cookie slipped a roofie into my hot chocolate. We’d have to talk later, but for now I needed to figure out what to do with my day. Should I ditch my APD responsibilities and go to the prison to check on Reyes? Or should I dump all my APD responsibilities on Cookie and then go to the prison to check on Reyes?

  My heart raced in anticipation with the thought of seeing him, though admittedly I was nervous. What if I didn’t like what I found? What if he was actually guilty? I couldn’t help but hold out hope that his conviction was all some big misunderstanding. That Reyes had been wrongfully accused. That the evidence had been mishandled or even fabricated. Denial was not just a river in Egypt.

  From what I’d been able to garner last night, reading article after article on the case—not that any of them were in a particularly pretty font—and even part of the court transcripts Cookie had unearthed of Reyes’s trial, the evidence was nowhere near enough for a conviction. Yet twelve people found him guilty. And even more disturbing was the fact that there wasn’t a single mention of the abuse he’d endured. Wouldn’t being almost beaten to death by your father count for something?

  As badly as I wanted to go back to sleep, I knew it wouldn’t happen. My mind was racing too hard, too fast, even though I had a very good reason for wanting to go back to sleep, to fall into oblivion, come what may. For the first night in a month, Reyes didn’t visit me. He didn’t slip into my dreams with his dark eyes and warm touch. He didn’t trail kisses down my spine or slide his fingers between my legs. And I couldn’t help but wonder why. Did I do something wrong?

  My heart felt hollow. I’d become quite addicted to his nightly visits. I looked more forward to them than to my next breath. Maybe my trip to the big house would shed some fluorescents on the situation.

  As I was brushing my teeth, I heard shuffling in the kitchen. While most women who live alone would be alarmed by such an occurrence, I just chalked it up to job security.

  I stepped out of the bathroom and squinted against the harsh light. “Aunt Lillian?” I asked, limping to the snack bar and scooting onto a stool. Aunt Lillian’s small frame was being swallowed by a floral muumuu, which she had accessorized with a leather vest and love beads straight out of the sixties. I’d tried over the years to figure out what she’d been doing when she died. I just couldn’t make anything click that would require muumuus and love beads. Other than playing a wicked game of Twister on LSD.

  “Hey, pumpkin head,” she said, her ancient smile bright, albeit toothless. “I heard you stumble your way to the bathroom, so I figured I’d earn my keep and make us some coffee. Sure looks like you could use some.”

  I grimaced. “Really? How sweet.” Damn. Aunt Lillian couldn’t really make coffee. I sat at the counter and pretended to drink a cup.

  “Is it too strong?” she asked.

  “No way, Aunt Lil, you make the best.”

  Pretending to drink coffee was similar to faking an orgasm. Where in the supernatural afterlife was the fun in that? But caffeine withdrawal was the least of my problems. I still couldn’t get Reyes’s no-show out of my head. Maybe I did do something wrong. Or didn’t do something I should have. Maybe I needed to be more proactive in bed. Of course, that would imply that I actually had anything tantamount to control during our sessions. Controlled would not be my first adjective, were I to describe them in panoramic detail to Cookie.

  “You seem … distracted, honey pot.”

  Well, I wasn’t voted Most Likely to Become Distracted for nothing.

  “Do you have a temperature?”

  I glanced back. “I’m sure my temperature’s fine, Aunt Lil. Thanks for asking.”

  I neglected to mention that, yes, I did indeed have a temperature. Every being on Earth has a temperature. Even dead people have a temperature. It’s not a good one, but it’s there.

  “And thanks so much for the coffee.”

  “Oh, anytime, sweetness. Would you like some breakfast?”

  Not if I planned to make it through the day. “Oh, no, I couldn’t ask you to do that. I need to get in the shower, anyway. Big day ahead.”

  She leaned in and grinned conspiratorially. I often wondered if her hair had been that blue in real life, or if it was an effect of her being incorporeal. “You goin’ after some bad guys?”

  I chuckled. “You know it. The baddest.”

  She sucked in a dreamy breath. “Ah, to be young and reckless. But really, pumpkin,” she said, sobering and leveling a very serious stare on me, “you need to stop getting your ass kicked. You look like hell.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Lil,” I said, easing off the stool with a grimace, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She smiled, revealing an empty cavern where her dentures had been. Apparently, they didn’t make it to the other side. I’d never been sure if Aunt Lillian knew she was dead or not, and I never had the heart to tell her. I really should, though. I finally had a coffeepot that worked, and my departed great-great-aunt decided to make herself useful.

  “By the way, how was Nepal?” I asked.

  “Ugh,” she said, raising her hands in helplessness, “humid and hotter than a june bug in August.”

  Since the departed weren’t affected by the weather, I had to hold back a grin.

  Just then, Cookie crashed into the apartment, took one look at me, and rushed forward, her sky blue pajamas skewed and crinkled. “I fell asleep,” she said in a breathless rush.

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do at night?”

  “No,” she said, looking me over with a mother’s eye, “well, yes, but I meant to check on you hours ago.” She leaned forward and peered into my eyes. Why, I had no idea. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m alive,” I said. And I meant every word.

  Only half convinced, she smoothed her pajama top and looked around. “Maybe I should make us some coffee.”

  “Why?” I asked, my tone accusatory. “So you can slip me another roofie?”

  “What?”

  “Besides,” I said, indicating Aunt Lillian with a nonchalant nod of my head. “Aunt Lil already made coffee.”

  I watched—and tried really hard not to giggle—as Cookie’s hopes for a caffeine high were dashed on the mocking rocks of irony. She hung her head and took the cup I handed her. “Thanks, Aunt Lillian. You’re the best.”

  She’s a trouper, that one.

  * * *

  I set Cookie on the arduous task of going through Mark Weir’s court transcripts—which Uncle Bob had left on my desk—and checking Barber’s flash drives. Hopefully Barber wasn’t into fetishes. And if he was, hopefully he wasn’t into leaving evidence of such a thing on a flash drive where anyone could find it. Those things were much better off in a password-protected file buried deep in the underbelly of one’s hard drive with an inconspicuous file name. Something like Hot Firefighters in Love. For example.

  My cell broke out into a chorus of Beethoven’s Fifth, and I did the find-the-needle-in-the-haystack thing while cruising at ninety in a seventy-five, marveling at how a cell phone could make itself so obscure in one tiny handbag.

  “Hey, Ubie,” I said after a three-hour search.

  “Must you call me that?” he asked in a groggy voice. He seemed almost as caffeine deprived as I was.

  “Yep. I got the files you put on my desk. Cookie’s going through everything now.”

  “And what are
you doing?”

  “My job,” I said, pretending to be offended. As badly as I wanted to ask him about Reyes’s conviction, I wanted to be face-to-face, where I could read his every expression. Or read things into his every expression, whichever worked best to my advantage. I still couldn’t believe he was lead detective on Reyes’s case. What were the odds?

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “They found a partial on the shell casing from the Ellery site.”

  “Really?” I asked, suddenly hopeful. “Did you get a hit?”

  “This isn’t CSI, sweetheart. Things don’t happen quite that fast ’round these parts. We should know by this afternoon if it’ll get us anywhere.” He yawned loudly, then asked, “Are you in your Jeep?”

  “Sure am. I’m headed to the prison in Santa Fe to check out some intel.”

  “What intel?” he asked, suspicion altering his voice.

  “It’s … another case I’m working on,” I hedged.

  “Oh.”

  That was easy.

  “Hey, what does bombázó mean?”

  “Uncle Bob,” I said reproachfully, “have you been in that Hungarian chat room again?” I tried really hard not to giggle, but the thought of some Hungarian chick calling Ubie “the bomb” was just too much. I cracked up regardless.

  “Never mind,” he said, annoyed.

  I laughed harder.

  “Call me when you get back to town.”

  After he slammed down the phone, I closed mine and tried to focus on the road through my tears. My reaction was insensitive and uncalled for. I thought this as I doubled over the steering wheel in laughter, holding my aching ribs.

  It took me a few moments to sober, but at least laughing at Ubie’s expense was better than pining over Reyes like I’d been doing all morning. Unfortunately, my hour-long shower—while revealing exactly how black and blue I was becoming—didn’t lend any insight as to why he wouldn’t have shown up last night. But the closer I got to the Penitentiary of New Mexico, the more optimistic I became. Surely this place would have some answers. Then I drove up to the gates of the maximum-security prison, and my optimism morphed into a crackly kind of sweat-induced pessimism.