Fifth Grave Past the Light (16 page)

I scoffed. “Kids, right? And besides, I have Cookie now.”

“Want me to sever her spine?”

“Cookie’s?” When he only smiled at me patiently, I shook my head even though his offer was so much more tempting than he could’ve imagined. Oddly enough, however, I didn’t hate Jessica. I hated what she did, who she’d become, but I hated worse the fact that even to this day, I wanted her friendship. Her acceptance. Her approval. She was like a redheaded version of my stepmother, and I was forever seeking that unconditional love that had been denied me. Pathetic as that sounded.

Except with Jessica, I’d had it. For a little while anyway. She was like the sun. We laughed and cried together. We cuddled and watched scary movies. We made pancakes and pizza and drank Kool-Aid from wineglasses. And we told each other our deepest and most guarded secrets. So at a sleepover one night, after she’d shared her belief that she once saw her grandmother’s ghost in her hallway, I shared with her as well. I told her I could see ghosts. She’d seemed fascinated. Intrigued. So I continued.

I hadn’t known at the time that I was, in fact, the grim reaper, but I told her about my abilities. How I helped my dad and uncle with cases by talking to the victims. How the departed could cross through me if they wanted to, a fact that boggled even my own malleable mind.

I’d gone too far. I’d scared her.

No, I’d lost her.

She seemed frightened at first, then repulsed. Revolted that I could be so inane as to believe I had superpowers. Her reaction surprised me so much, I didn’t argue when she called her parents in the middle of the night to come get her. When she refused to answer my calls the rest of the weekend. When she crusaded the next week at school to single-handedly have me branded a crazy witch wannabe. As sacrilegious and sanctimonious. I didn’t even know what
sanctimonious
meant at the time. If I had, I would’ve known where the true recipient of such an accusation stood. Oceans apart from me. In the blink of an eye, our friendship was over.

The second half of my freshman year was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through. The only bright spot I remembered was Reyes. I’d met Reyes. True, he was being beaten unconscious at the time, but it was still a pivotal moment for me. I thought back to the first time I’d touched him. He was doubled over, clinging to a Dumpster for support, dry heaving and coughing up blood. His muscles constricted with pain, corded around his arms, and I saw the smooth, crisp lines of his tattoos. A little higher, thick, dark hair curled over an ear.

Gemma had been with me. She’d raised a camera from around her neck to illuminate our surroundings, and Reyes, squinting against the light, lifted a dirty hand to shade his eyes. And his eyes were amazing. A magnificent brown, deep and rich, with flecks of gold and green glistening in the light. Dark red blood streaked down one side of his face. He stole my heart and I’d wanted him from that moment on.

“Where’s your head?” Reyes asked me.

I snapped back to him. “Sorry. Where were we? Right, no spine severing for you, mister.”

“You sure? She’s staring at me.” He hissed in another breath. Damn it. I had to get that shit under control.

“What do you want for lunch?” he asked.

“I ordered off the menu, actually. Sammy always made me huevos rancheros whenever I asked. They rocked. No pressure.”

He quirked a brow. “How would you like your eggs?”

I tried. I really did. But I glanced at his crotch and it came out anyway. “Fertilized?”

A wicked grin spread across his face. “It’ll be right out, ma’am.” He tipped an invisible hat and started for the kitchen.

“And if that man comes back to kill you, do
not
kill him back.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“I mean it, Reyes,” I called out to him.

He winked right before the door swung shut behind him.

Five minutes after I sat down with Uncle Bob, Reyes brought out our food personally. The room quieted to a whisper, and several women actually raised their phones to snap pictures of him. This was ridiculous. This was beyond ridiculous.

Of course, he was kind of famous now. He’d done ten years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Everyone wanted his story. Reporters begged for an interview. And once the public got an eyeful of Reyes being released and escorted to a waiting car outside the courthouse, that same public clamored to know more about him. So, in a way, he was a celebrity.

But still, Jessica?

“Detective,” Reyes said to Ubie as he sat down his plate.

“Farrow, it’s good to see you getting out. Working.”

“You mean it’s good to see me become a productive member of society?”

I winced. Uncle Bob had sent him to prison all those years ago, but in his defense, Earl Walker’s setup was almost perfect. The evidence was too overwhelming despite Ubie’s gut, which told him Reyes didn’t do it.

Uncle Bob’s mouth thinned into a forced smile. “This isn’t poisoned, is it?”

Without taking his eyes off Uncle Bob, Reyes took his fork, cut into the burrito, scooped up a bite, and held it out to me. Then his gaze, still sultry and electrifying, locked with mine. I opened my mouth and wrapped my lips around his offering; then I closed my lids and moaned.

“Delicious.” When I looked back at him, his features had darkened. He watched me eat, his gaze hooded, his jaw hard. I swallowed, then said, “You’re really good at that.”

“I know.” He put the fork down and nodded a good-bye to us both before heading back to the kitchen. All eyes were on his ass, including mine.

“So,” Ubie said, “you two seem to be getting along well.”

“Don’t even think about it,” I said, staring at the door Reyes just went through.

“What?”

“Judging who I date.” Then I glared at him. “Like you’re any better with the trash you bring home.”

“Charley,” he said, offended.

But I was only preparing him, tenderizing him for my next statement. I leaned toward him and said, “I know you like her, Uncle Bob. Just ask her out.”

“Who?” he asked, suddenly fascinated with his burrito.

“You know who.”

He took a bite and nodded. “This is amazing.”

That was my cue. I rounded my eyes in horror, grabbed my throat, and did my best impersonation of a silent screen actress’s death scene. “No, he… he couldn’t have.” Only I talked. I choked out the words between gasps. “It’s… it’s poisoned.”

“Okay, I’ll ask her out.”

“Seriously?” I asked, straightening. “When?”

He took another bite. “Soon. Eat up. We have to get out of here.”

Good enough for now. I could torment him until he followed through with his promise. Cookie wasn’t going to wait around forever. She was gorgeous, albeit challenged in many ways, like coordinately, but that just made her all the more interesting in my book. Which was a bestseller called
Charley’s Book
. That gave me an idea.

“Hey,” I said, cutting a bite and stabbing it mercilessly, “I should write a book.”

“About me?” Ubie asked.

“I want it to be interesting, Uncle Bob. It would be about what it’s like to see dead people.”

“I think that’s been done already. There’s a movie, too.”

Darn it. Always late to the game. I slid my fork into my mouth and smiled as my taste buds broke into a rousing chorus of “I’m So Excited.” My god, that man was talented.

I left without saying good-bye to Reyes. The place was jam-packed. I didn’t want to disturb him. I still couldn’t believe he was working for my dad. I was stewing in that bit of news when Ubie broke into my thoughts.

“By the way, it’s been twenty-four hours,” he said as we headed toward I-25.

I knew he would ask about the arsonist. “I was going to take care of that little situation this afternoon, but since you insisted I come to this crime scene with you —”

“I didn’t insist. And at the moment, the arson case trumps this one. These bodies aren’t going anywhere. We can turn around right now and close the case.” He spun an index finger in the air.

“I don’t know for certain that we can. I promise, Uncle Bob, I’ll let you know the minute I’m positive.”

“Charley, if this person is innocent, we’ll figure it out.”

“It doesn’t always work that way, and you know it.” I hated to throw Reyes’s case in his face, but this was important. I needed to be sure.

He stiffened but didn’t argue. “I at least need to know who you suspect. What if something happens to you between now and then?”

“What could happen?” When his expression deadpanned, I shrugged. “Fine. I’ll text who I think it is to Cookie with explicit instructions not to tell you unless something dire happens. Like if I have a fatal allergic reaction to your cheap cologne.”

He didn’t like it, but he nodded in agreement. “Now, if you don’t mind.”

“Geez. Okay.” I took out my phone and texted Cookie.

“And my cologne’s not cheap.”

I snorted and typed.

I didn’t trust the guy. He’d be bugging Cookie the first chance he got, and I knew it.

I started to put my phone back in my bag when Ozzy yelled out, his accent so thick, I was only half certain he said, “Where the foock are ya goin’?”

Unlce Bob jumped. I must’ve turned on my GPS.

“You have to tahn the foock around. You’re in the middle of foockin’ nowhere.”

“What the hell is that?” Uncle Bob asked, almost swerving off the road.

“Sorry, it’s Ozzy.” I grabbed my phone and turned down the volume. “He’s so demanding.” I pushed a few buttons to turn off the app, then put the phone to my ear. “Sweet buttermilk pancakes, Ozzy, you have to stop calling me. You’re a married man!” I pretended to hang up, then rolled my eyes. “Rock stars.”

Uncle Bob blinked and stared ahead, not sure what to think, a moment I would cherish forever. Or as long as my ADD allowed me to.

We pulled onto a private road and drove another half hour, easing through gates and over cattle guards until we came to the burial site. Uncle Bob parked beside a bulldozer, then handed me his handkerchief.

“This could be bad, pumpkin.”

“The bodies?”

He shook his head, his expression one of sympathy. “No, the remains they’ve found so far are at the morgue. The smell.”

“Oh, right.”

I jumped out of his SUV filled with a sense of dread. The site itself had been taped off. There were a dozen official vehicles including several state cars, a couple of local law enforcement, and one with federal plates. I recognized it. Looking around for Special Agent Carson, I spotted her and her partner talking to the sheriff. She waved me over.

“Hey,” I said, surprised at how normal the area smelled. Then the air shifted, and I gulped and bit down, trying not to gag.

“Good to see you,” she said, struggling through a similar reaction. She held a kerchief to her nose and mouth as well. But the smell wasn’t what I’d expected. It was gaseous and oily, not so much of death as just an odd, heavy smell.

The entire site was covered in slick oil, thick and dirty. I bent and rubbed some between my fingers. “This is it,” I told Uncle Bob under my breath. “This is where the women are from.”

He nodded an acknowledgment. “They’ve found the remains of five possible bodies so far, but they aren’t intact. They brought out an archaeologist from the university, and a forensics expert from New York is on his way to assist the investigators as well.”

I stood and looked out over the area. It went on for miles, a gorgeous display of New Mexican desert with earthy colors punctuated with splashes of violet. “There are more. Many more. Is this oil coming from underground?”

“We don’t think so,” a sheriff’s deputy said. He walked up and handed the sheriff some kind of report. “It looks like it’s been dumped here. Hundreds if not thousands of gallons of oil.”

“Why would anyone do that?” I asked, frowning. “Where would they get that much oil from?”

“We’re checking into it. We’ve sent samples to the state lab to determine exactly what kind of oil it is.”

“What about the land?” I asked. “Who owns it?”

“First thing we checked,” Agent Carson said. “This is the Knight Ranch. Mrs. Knight, an elderly woman, actually owns it now. Her husband died a couple of years ago and she’s been in a nursing home ever since, but she ran the ranch for years by herself.”

“Could it have been the couple? Perhaps the woman’s husband?”

“Not likely,” the sheriff said. “Doyle had an accident while branding cattle and used a wheelchair the last thirty years of this life, which is why Alice, Mrs. Knight, took over the daily operations. There’s just no way he could have dug those graves. It could have been anyone from relatives to ranch hands to a random stranger using their land as a dump.”

I shook my head. “It just doesn’t seem random to me. There were too many obstacles to get to this point. Too many locked gates. And it happened over too long a period of time. If I had to guess, I’d say our killer was at it for more than twenty years.”

“Can I ask how you know that?” Agent Carson asked.

She was much too savvy to lie to, so I evaded the question. “You certainly can. In the meantime, I would love a peek at your case file as well as a list of all of the Knight’s relatives, ranch hands, anyone else who had access to this land.”

Since we’d worked together on a couple of other cases, Agent Carson knew to trust me. So where another agent would balk at such a demand, she just shrugged. “That’s a pretty long list.”

“I’m a fast reader. What was a construction crew doing out here anyway?” I asked, surveying the cleared land. “Of all the places on this two-thousand-acre ranch, why here?”

“The Knights’ son retired from the rodeo circuit a few years ago and took over operations. He decided to build a new house out here.”

“Can’t say as I blame him,” Uncle Bob said. “The view is incredible.”

I wondered if the view was why the killer chose that spot. I also wondered if the son found it as incredible as Ubie did. But if the son was doing the killing, why would he send a construction crew to this very site? Maybe he wanted his victims found. Maybe he wanted to be captured. Or chased. Serial killers loved the chase. Maybe no one was paying attention, so he decided to make them.

“Your timing is spot-on,” Agent Carson said, gesturing toward a huge silver pickup as it pulled up to us.

She seemed to be getting the fact that when I talked to people face-to-face, I could siphon information she was not privy to. I loved how much she trusted me. Her partner, on the other hand, was not so impressed. A crisp dresser, he kept looking over at Carson as though she were crazy on toasted rye for even talking to me.

She gestured toward the truck. “That’s the son.”

“Oh, perfect. I’ll let you know if he’s guilty in a few.”

She smiled. “Appreciate it.”

But it didn’t even take that long. The minute he stepped out of his truck, I felt grief combined with a strange sense of outrage pouring out of him. He was angry at whoever did this, whoever dumped these unfortunate women on his land, buried them in his dirt.

“Never mind,” I said to her as she and Uncle Bob followed me over. “He’s as innocent as my great-aunt Lillian.”

“Figured as much.”

She was a smart one.

“Mr. Knight,” Agent Carson said as we approached him.

Slightly bowlegged from years atop an animal of one sort or another, Knight walked with a straight back and a stiff gait, but he was strong, still in his prime. Probably in his late thirties, he had a tall, thin frame and a tan face underneath hair the color of a desert at dusk. But what was even more striking than his handsome features were his startlingly green eyes.

“This is Detective Davidson,” she continued, “from the Albuquerque Police Department and his consultant Charley.”

“It’s just Kenny, Detective,” he said, holding out his hand. Uncle Bob took it. “Charley,” he said in turn.

I scrutinized him as we shook. Kenny Knight. I’d heard of him. A champion bull rider who’d competed all over the world.

“Kenny,” I said, and figuring there was no time like the present, I charged forward with, “any idea how these women ended up on your land?”

A defensive reflex bucked inside him, but he calmed himself instantly. Scanned the area. Worked his jaw in annoyance. “No, ma’am.”

“What about this oil?”

“What oil?” he asked, examining the killer’s dump site.

Agent Carson explained. “There’s oil in the ground here, but it’s not a derivative of this area. In other words, it’s not the kind that will make you rich. Do you know anything about that?”

“What the hell?” He shook his head, baffled. “Why would there be oil here?”

“That’s what we would like to know.”

As they questioned Kenny on the oil thing, I walked to the overlook. Underneath was a sheer cliff about twenty feet high, the sparse beauty that was New Mexico stretched as far as the eye could see. I took in its vastness and waited for the departed woman who’d been hanging around since I got there to talk.

“Thought I’d never get him out here.”

I looked to my right. She stood beside me dressed in a hospital gown and wearing a head wrap, the kind that cancer patients wore. And she had been beautiful. Even painfully thin with her cheeks sunken and her eyes dulled from illness, she had a glow that radiated strength and elegance. I glanced around and gestured for Uncle Bob. He walked over, his brows raised in curiosity. I raised an index finger, then nodded to my side. He nodded in understanding. I could talk to her in front of him and make it look like he and I were having a conversation.

“So, this was your idea?” I asked her.

“It was. I always wanted a house out here, but it seemed like Kenny didn’t have it in him to settle down long enough to build one.” She looked out over the landscape. “He didn’t want this ranch. Didn’t want anything to do with running it. His spirit’s wild. Always has been. I thought kids would quiet the rider in him, but they just weren’t in the cards for us.” She laced her fingers together, her eyes brimming with sadness. “He’s still young. He can still have kids if he’ll give it another go.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to her, “about the kids.” For me, the thought of having kids caused hives and a slight wheezing sound to emit from my chest. But I understood that most women wanted them. “You said you were trying to get Kenny out here?”

She nodded. “Someone had to find these women.”

Surprised, I asked, “You knew about them? You knew they had been buried out here?”

Uncle Bob perked up, but kept quiet, waiting for information from a one-sided conversation from his point of view.

“Not like you think,” she said, shaking her head. “I heard them one day when Kenny brought me out here. I wanted to see this place one more time. I guess I was so close to death, I could hear them.”

My chest tightened at the image. “What did you hear?”

“Their crying. Their wails of agony. I didn’t tell Kenny. I thought I was going crazy, so I didn’t mention it. Then it was too late.” She breathed deep, then leveled a determined stare on me. “I couldn’t cross, knowing these women were out here. I had to get someone to come. To set them free.”

“I don’t understand. How were they trapped here? The departed are incorporeal. They can pretty much pass through anything. And how did they get set free?”

“I’m not certain. The minute the construction crew started clearing the land —” She stopped and thought back. “No. No, the man running the bulldozer thought he saw something. He jumped out and lifted a hand out of the dirt. And that did it. That set them free.”

The workings of the supernatural realm still surprised me. How could a departed be trapped? How could the touch of a human set them free? I would never fully understand. “How did you get Kenny out here?”

“I haunted him,” she said, a mischievous smile emerging from behind the sadness. “I moved books and shook glasses until he paid attention. I couldn’t do much, but when I finally got his attention, I tried to get him to come out here. I left clues for him to come out to the land. A saltshaker on a map. A pencil on a sketching I’d done of our house. He knew I was haunting him, for lack of a better phrase, but he thought I wanted him to build our dream house.” She shrugged. “Whatever works. It got him out here. But it took longer than I thought. He had to ‘make plans.’ ” She used air quotes to emphasize the last bit. “You know, for a champion bull rider, that man can move slower than molasses in January.”

I laughed. “I think that’s an impediment for most men.”

“What?” Uncle Bob whispered. “What’s she saying?”

I patted his cheek, then asked, “Do you know who did this? There have to be at least twenty women buried here.”

“Twenty-seven,” she said, bowing her head. “There are twenty-seven.”

After allowing myself to absorb that bit of knowledge, I asked, “Do you know their names? Where they’re from? Who did this?”

She looked down in regret. “Nothing. I know exactly how many there are, what they look like, but none of them talk.”

Disappointment gripped me. “I’m having that same problem.”

She glanced at me in surprise. “What are you anyway?”

I lifted one corner of my mouth. “I’m the portal, whenever you’re ready.”

She took in another superfluous breath and surprised me again by saying, “Somehow I knew that. I’m ready, I suppose. I’ve done what I needed to do. And the longer I stay, the longer Kenny will put off the rest of his life. I’m afraid in my haste to get him to come out here, he promised to wait for me, to never marry again.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Can you give him a message for me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Can you tell him to build our house over there instead?” She pointed to a spot about fifty yards back. “And to put a garden here? In honor of these women? When he can, anyway. I’m not sure how long the state will keep the land tied up.”

“I’ll tell him.”

She looked back at her husband. His eyes were red-rimmed, his shoulders drawn as he regarded a wildflower he twirled in his hand.

“He is such a rascal,” she said. Then she stepped through.

Salient images of her life flashed before me as her essence soaked into my body, rushed through my veins. She’d taken ballet as a child but preferred saddles and cowboy boots to tutus and slippers. She had a horse named Cinnamon and a dog named Toast. They were buried on her parents’ farm outside of El Paso.

The first time she saw Kenny, he was getting ready to ride at the state fair. She was nineteen and enthralled with the way his leather chaps left one of his best features exposed. She told him so. They’d been together ever since except for a few weeks he’d gone on a drunken binge in Mexico after white bull named Hurricane crushed two vertebrae in his back. She hunted him down and found him passed out in a hotel room with another woman asleep beside him. With heart almost shattered, she sent the woman away, packed up his clothes, and brought him home to the ranch. She never told him she knew about the other woman, and he never mentioned it. It was likely he didn’t even remember her. That’s what she told herself.

But she loved him as fiercely as he rode bulls. His face was the last thing she saw before she passed, and it was her most prized memory.

I breathed deep as she crossed, and clasped Uncle Bob’s arm to steady myself.

He took hold of my elbows. “What just happened?” he asked as I caught my breath.

I wiped at the wetness under my eyes. “She crossed.”

“What? What does that mean?”

Uncle Bob didn’t know about that part. He knew I could communicate with the departed, but that was about it.

“She crossed to the other side,” I explained.

“You mean, you can’t talk to her anymore?”

“No. But she had no idea who did this.”