Second Grave on the Left (12 page)

The first time we’d met, she was sitting in the back of Taft’s patrol car as he was giving me a ride from a crime scene. When Strawberry thought I was after her brother, she called me an ugly bitch and tried to blind me. It left an impression.

She looked back, her long blond hair falling in disarray around her face, spotted the crumbling insane asylum, and folded her tiny arms in distaste. “What are we doing here?”

“I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

She turned back to me, her nose wrinkled as she considered my statement. “Okay, but you have to do one for me back.”

“Yeah?” I asked, leaning against Misery. “What do you need?”

“David is dating someone.”

“Oh,” I purred, pretending to care. “Now, who’s David?”

She rolled her eyes as only a nine-year-old could. “My brother? David Taft?” She hitched a thumb toward him.

“Oh! That David,” I said, offering him a conspicuous giggle.

“What’s she saying?” he asked.

I ignored.

“She’s ugly and she wears too much lipstick and her clothes are too tight.”

“So, she’s a ho?” I chastised him with a scowl.

He turned up his palms. “What?”

“Deluxe,” Strawberry said, confirming my suspicions. She pointed straight at him. “You need to have a talk with him. That ho stayed all night. Really.”

I pressed my lips together and jammed my fists onto my hips, hoping I wasn’t bleeding internally from Reyes’s blade. I hated it when I bled internally. If I was going to bleed, I wanted to see the evidence, revel in the heroics of it all. “I most certainly will.” After tossing him a glower of disappointment, one that had him glaring back in annoyance, I explained why I needed her. “While your brother and I have our talk, will you go into that building and look for a little girl?”

Taft and Strawberry both eyed the building with skeptical frowns. “That building looks scary,” she said.

“It’s not scary at all,” I lied. Like a dog. What could be scarier than an abandoned mental asylum where, according to legend, the doctors did
experiments
? “There’s a nice man named Rocket who lives there with his little sister. She’s even younger than you are.”

I’d never seen Rocket’s sister, but he told me countless times that she was there with him. She’d apparently died of pneumonia during the Dust Bowl, and from what he told me, I was guessing her age to be somewhere around five.

“His name is Rocket?” The thought made her giggle.

“Yeah, speaking of which…” I leaned down to her. “While you’re in there, see if you can find out Rocket’s real name.” I had yet to get any real info on Rocket’s origins, though I’d scoured every record I could find on the asylum. Apparently, Rocket Man was not his real name.

“Okay.”

“Wait,” I said a microsecond before she disappeared. “Don’t you want to know why you’re going in?”

“To find that little girl.”

“Yes, but I need information from her if she has it. I need to know if she can tell me where to find Reyes’s body. His human body. Can you remember that?”

She crossed her arms again and said, “Duh.” Then she disappeared.

I ground my teeth just a little, certain Strawberry was God’s way of punishing me for having one-too-many margaritas last Thursday night that resulted in an ugly, tabletop version of the hokey pokey.

As Taft stood at attention, still eyeing the building with concern, I rested against Misery, propping a booted heel on her running board. “Look,” I said, luring his attention my way, “your sister says the chick you’re dating is a ho.”

He turned to me, aghast. “She’s not a ho. Well, yeah, okay, she’s a ho, thus my dating her, but she knows?”

I shrugged, incredulous. “Dude, I have no idea if your GF knows she’s a ho.”

“No, I mean Becky. She knows I’m dating someone?”

I threw my palms up. “Maybe if I knew who Becky was—”

He stared at me, appalled. “My sister.”

“Oh! Right!” I said, going for the save. Who knew Demon Child would have such a normal name? I expected something exotic like Serena or Destiny or the Evil One That Comes in the Night to Make Us Chilly.

Taft’s radio squawked out something I found completely incoherent. As he strolled toward his patrol car to talk in private, my cell rang out. It was Cookie. “Charley’s House of Excruciating Pain,” I said.

“Janelle died in a car accident.”

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry. Were you two close?”

After an annoyed sigh, she said, “Janelle, Charley. Janelle York? Mimi’s friend from high school who died recently?”

“Oh, right,” I said, going for the save again. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “Wait, a car accident? Mimi told Warren Janelle was murdered.”

“Exactly. According to the report, she’d been ill. They think she passed out at the wheel and crashed her car into a ravine off I-25. But it was ruled accidental.”

“Then why would Mimi say she was murdered?”

“Something had her spooked,” Cookie said.

“And maybe it’s connected to our murdered car dealer.”

“That would be my guess. I think you need to have that other talk with Warren soon. Find out why he was fighting with a man only days before said man was found dead.”

“Great minds think alike, baby. I am so on it.”

“Is that Cookie?”

Strawberry had appeared at my side. I closed my phone and looked at her. “The one and only. That was fast. Did you find Rocket’s sister?”

“Of course.”

Awesome. I never knew if she really existed or if she’d been a figment of Rocket’s imagination. I waited for more info. Like forever. “And?”

“She’s blue.”

Blue? Well, she did die of pneumonia. Maybe the lack of oxygen turned her blue. “Okay, besides that.”

She did the crossing-of-her-arms thing. If it weren’t so cute, it would be annoying. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Does she know where Reyes’s body is?”

“No. She went to look. But she said Rey’aziel should not have been born on Earth.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“He’s very powerful.”

“Yeah, I figured that out a while ago.”

“And if his human body dies, he will become what he was born from the fires of hell to be.”

Okay, that was new. “Which is?” I asked, my voice edged with a wary dread.

“The ultimate weapon,” she said as if she were ordering an ice cream cone. “The bringer of death.”

“Well, crap.”

“The Antichrist.”

“Damn.”

“He is more powerful than any demon or any angel that ever existed. He can manipulate the space-time continuum and bring about the destruction of the entire galaxy and everything in it.”

“Okay, I get it,” I said, holding up a hand to stop her. I suddenly found myself fighting for air. I just had to ask. It couldn’t have been something easy, something non–world destroying. Oh, hell no. It had to be all apocalyptic and ghastly. Well, this sucked ass. I had no idea how to fight that. But finding Reyes’s body suddenly became imperative. “You found out a lot in that five minutes.”

“I guess,” she said with a shrug.

I switched gears, dropped down into neutral, then shifted myself into denial before looking back at Strawberry. “So, did you find out Rocket’s real name?”

“Yep,” she said, running her fingertips over the sleeve of my sweater. It was disturbing.

I waited. Like forever. “And?”

“And what?”

“Rocket’s name?”

“What about it?”

Deep breaths. Deep calming breaths. “Pumpkin head,” I said, calmly and deep-breathily, “what is Rocket’s name?”

She looked up as if I were insane. “Rocket. Duh.”

My teeth slammed together again. If it weren’t for her large, innocent eyes, the perfect pout of her bowlike mouth, I would have exorcised her right then and there. Well, if I knew how. I lowered my head instead, played with an errant string on my jeans. “Is Rocket okay?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, he’s just a little scared.”

Damn it. Reyes could be such a butthead. Freaking Antichrists. A thought emerged. “Hey, so what’s his little sister’s name?”

Her mouth dropped open before she glared up at me. “Do you even listen?”

What the heck did I do now? “What?”

“I already told you. Her name is Blue.”

“Oh, really?”

She nodded.

“Her name is Blue?”

She crossed her arms—again—and nodded, slowly, apparently so I would understand.

“Does she have a last name, mayhap?” Smart-ass.

“Yep. Bell.”

I sighed. Another nom de plume. “Blue Bell, huh?” Well, that wouldn’t bolster my investigation any. Rocket Man and Blue Bell. Wonderful. No, wait. Now I had a Rocket Man, a Blue Bell, and an alleged Antichrist. Never let it be said that life in Charley Land wasn’t interesting.

“So, why won’t Blue Bell come out to meet me?” I asked, slightly hurt only not.

“Really?” She eyed me like I was part blithering and part idiot. “Because if
you
had died and wanted to stay on Earth to hang with your bro for all eternity, would you introduce yourself to the one person in the universe who could send you to the other side?”

She had a point.

Taft finished his conversation and strolled back over. “Is she here?” he asked, looking around. They always looked around. Not sure why.

“In the flesh,” I said. “Metaphorically.”

“Is she still mad at me?” He kicked the sand at his feet.

Had I not been shell-shocked over the pending apocalypse, I would have laughed when Strawberry did the same, her tiny pink slippers skimming over the ground, disturbing nothing. “I wasn’t mad,” she said. “I just wish he would stop taking ugly girls to dinner.” Before I could say anything, she reached up and curled her fingers into mine. “He should take you to dinner.”

To say that the mere thought horrified me would have been a grievous understatement. I threw up a little in my mouth then swallowed hard, trying not to make a face. “She’s not really mad,” I told Taft when I recovered. I leaned in and whispered, “Just please, for the love of God, find a girl good enough to take home to your mother. And do it soon.”

“Okay,” he said, confusion locking his brows together.

“And stop dating skanks.”

Chapter Seven

I STOPPED FIGHTING MY INNER DEMONS.

WE’RE ON THE SAME SIDE NOW.

—T-SHIRT

After presenting my ID at the front, I strolled into the central police station, where they’d brought Warren Jacobs for questioning, and spotted Ubie across a sea of desks. Fortunately, only a couple of uniforms took note of my presence. Most cops didn’t take kindly to my invading their turf. Partly because I was Ubie’s secret weapon, solving cases before they could, and partly because they thought I was a freak. Neither particularly bothered me.

Cops were an odd combination of rules and arrogance, but I’d learned long ago that both attributes were needed for survival in their dangerous profession. People were downright crazy.

Ubie stood talking to another detective when I walked up to him. At the last minute, I remembered I was annoyed with him for putting a tail on me. Thank goodness I did, because I almost smiled.

“Ubie,” I said, icicles dripping from my voice.

Clearly unfazed by my cool disposition, he snickered, so I frowned and said, “Your mustache needs a trim.”

His smile evaporated and he groped his ’stache self-consciously. It was harsh of me, but he needed to know I was serious about my No-Surveillance Policy. I hardly appreciated his insensitivity to my need for privacy. What if I’d rented a porn flick?

The other detective nodded to take his leave, humor twitching the corners of his mouth as he walked away.

“Can I see him?” I asked.

“He’s in observation room one waiting for his lawyer.”

Taking that as a yes, I headed that way, then offered over my shoulder, “He’s innocent, by the way.”

Just as I stepped inside, he called out to me. “Are you just saying that ’cause you’re mad?”

I let the door close behind me without answering.

“Ms. Davidson,” Warren said, rising to take my hand. He actually looked a little worse than he had at the café. He wore the same charcoal suit, his tie loose, the top button of his shirt unfastened.

“How are you holding up?” I asked, sitting across from him.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said, his hands shaky with grief. Guilty people were often nervous during interviews as well, but for a different reason. More often than not, they were trying to come up with a good story. One that would cover all the bases and hold up in court. Warren was nervous because he was being accused of committing not one, but two crimes, and he’d committed neither.

“I don’t doubt that, Warren,” I said, trying to keep my voice firm nonetheless. He didn’t tell me everything, and I wanted to know why. “But you had an argument with Tommy Zapata a week before he was found dead.”

Warren’s head fell into his hands. I knew that Uncle Bob was watching. He’d kept Warren in an observation room, knowing I was coming to see him, but if he was hoping for some kind of confession, he was about to be very disappointed.

“Look, if I’d known he was going to be found dead, I would never have argued with him. Not in public, anyway.”

Well, at least he was smart. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“I did,” he said, his voice breathy with frustration. “I told you how I thought Mimi might have been having an affair. She changed so much, became so distant, so … unlike herself that I followed her one day. She had lunch with him, a car dealer, and I thought … I just knew she was having an affair.”

“Is there anything in particular that stood out? Anything that made you feel that way?”

“She was so different toward him, almost hostile. Before their food even arrived, she stood up to leave. He tried to get her to stay. He even took her hand, but she pulled back like she was repulsed by him. When she tried to walk past, he stood and blocked her path. That’s when I knew it was all true.” The memory seemed to drain the life out of him. His shoulders deflated as he thought back.

“Why?” I asked, fighting the urge to take his hand. “How did you know?”

“She slapped him.” He buried his face in his hands a second time and spoke from behind them. “She’s never slapped anyone in her life. It looked like a lovers’ quarrel.”