Buried Secrets (3 page)

But the stranger had said the magic word,
help.
That word had power Jo might never understand. So she braced herself—and went back into the jail to ask Fred if he'd heard anything at all about missing persons in Almanuevo.

 

Jo James lived with two mongrel dogs in a little ranch house five miles outside the tiny town of Spur. She had big windows, on every side a view of open desert, and she liked it that way. Ever since the cave-in, she'd chosen wide-open spaces over small, enclosed areas. She liked being able to see sky forever, feeling that nobody could sneak up on her.

Or so she'd thought, until meeting Zack Lorenzo this morning.
Zombies?

She'd told herself she only had to guard against human intrusion. Dangers that could be repelled with guns, fists, dogs—the kind that stayed away from little places like Spur. Now, as she watched the waning moon rise over her backyard, she noticed herself shivering—from more than the night air. That damned detective had stripped away her illusion of safety.

According to Fred, a couple of folks in Almanuevo
had
vanished. Enough that the town's mayor worried about bad press, and an increasing number of their New Age tourists were talking about UFO abductions, which was almost as crazy as…

As the things she'd seen. Or thought she'd seen.

Jo whistled for the dogs. As soon as they loped inside, she shut and locked the back door. It was the first time she'd locked her door since her older brother's visit. He was a security specialist and had insisted on it last Christmas. She loaded the .22 rifle that usually hung in her sparsely furnished living room. After she fixed some chocolate milk she headed back to her
bedroom, and made sure to take her revolver and loop the holster on the bedpost of her twin-size bed.

Dogs or not, the house seemed achingly empty all of a sudden. She felt her isolation in her veins…in her lungs.

A Navajo medicine blanket covered the wall behind her bed, and an octagonal god's-eye, strung from yarn and sticks, hung to face the window. The remaining wall space was dotted with framed pictures, mostly of relatives. Only on nights like this did Jo notice how far away her family lived, how few friends she'd made since taking the job in Spur…how many years ago?

Maybe that had been her plan.

Her younger brother, Max, was a photojournalist, so she had pictures of her grandparents and her late parents, her aunts and uncles, her older brother, Lee. She had more recent pictures of herself, not quite thirty, looking decidedly average beside her vivacious cousins in East Texas. She had pictures of her dogs, even—of every person who'd ever held importance in her life…except one man.

Except Diego.

Jo told herself not to think of Diego. People died. She'd gone on without him and was doing fine by herself.

She drank the milk and put the empty glass on the barrel that was her night table, rather than carry it back out to the kitchen—but not because she was afraid. Then she turned off the light and tried to sleep. She had work in the morning. She almost always worked, despite the town council's worries over all the vacation time and sick time she'd been accumulating. And she prided herself in not frightening easily. She'd faced everything from rabid dogs to armed robbers, and she'd defeated them all. She'd even faced—

No. After all this time, she wouldn't let one bigmouthed detective make her believe in monsters.

But tonight the bed seemed awfully empty, too.
Small.

Despite the moonlight glowing through her windows, Jo closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

In her dream, she saw Diego and jerked awake with a sharp,
real
breath. Too real. She preferred the half life she'd been living since she moved here; it hurt less. She preferred the Novocain.

But another attempt at sleep—another gasped return to consciousness—confirmed that the numbness had worn off at just about the same time Zack Lorenzo opened his big mouth.

“Damn it,” Jo whispered brokenly, sitting up in bed so that her Navajo blankets slid to her waist, dragging her hands through her short hair. She wouldn't dream of him again. Not tonight. Not now. Not Diego.

It hadn't even been real.
Except for him being dead.

But the next morning's rising sun found Jo sitting at her kitchen table, dizzy from hours of fighting the dreams that haunted her each time she closed her eyes. Both Butch and Sundance lay at her feet, eyeing her with mutual doggy concern.

She glared blearily at Zack Lorenzo's business card, on the table in front of her. He'd somehow robbed her of her sense of safety. Business hours or not, Jo meant to take it back.

She picked up the phone.

Z
ack was in Hell—Hell with Formica countertops, contoured bedspreads and a window air conditioner that made the carpet smell like wet socks. Almanuevo didn't rate a Holiday Inn, much less a Hilton. Unless he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast or tourist resort, he was left with the Alpha Inn, a “motor hotel” of unparalleled luxury—if you lived in the freaking 1950s.

He still stayed awake most of the night, for his own reasons. But even though he was awake ungodly early, taking notes at the pink “kitchenette” table, Zack swore when his mobile phone rang out its programmed Journey riff. It didn't matter if he was awake or not. Who the hell called at
dawn?

He snatched up his phone. “Whaddaya want?”

“Mr. Lorenzo?”

A woman? “Yeah, this is Lorenzo.”
So whaddaya want?

“This is Sheriff James, from Spur.”

He guessed the sheriff counted as a woman. Cocky, yeah. Butch even. But Josephine James couldn't hide being female, even from a man who wasn't particularly interested. Jeans and short-sleeved cotton tops just fit differently over feminine curves. Her shiny brown hair, shorter than some men's, had bared the
nape of her neck. Zack never really thought before then about how soft and vulnerable napes looked. And her pixie nose had undermined her no-nonsense,
I'm the sheriff
attitude.

So, now, did the caffeinated strain in her voice. He felt a twinge of guilt for maybe giving the lady a fairly sleepless night, but he fought it. Gotta break a few eggs, yada yada. This was his job. Worrying about other people wasn't, not anymore.

He wasn't any damned good at it, anyway. “What can I do for you this morning? It is morning, right?”

“Look, Mr. Lorenzo, I've changed my mind. I'd like to talk to you. If you're still in the area, I mean.”

The area. Yeah. Right. “I'm still in the
state,
anyhow. You want I should drive back down there?”

“No,” she said quickly, then paused. “It's a small town, and I don't want questions. I'll drive up and meet you.”

“You know,” he pointed out, “as many car accidents are caused by exhausted drivers as by drunks.”

“I'm a good judge of my own limits.” He'd heard that before. It was usually a lie.

“I'd make better time,” he insisted.

“I'm sure you would. Where are you staying?”

Stubborn, wasn't she? “The Alpha Inn. Room 7.”

“I'll be there by lunch.” And she hung up, which Zack found annoying, even though he generally did the same thing.

“I could be there by breakfast,” he muttered, and went back to his note-taking so he could maybe catch a nap before Little Jo moseyed on into town.

A nervous woman. Great. Even the well-rested ones were trouble.

He hoped she had something worthwhile to tell him.

 

Relieved to have that decision made, Jo managed a quick nap on the cot in the jail's cell before she left Fred in charge for the day. She couldn't help remembering that the last person to stretch out on that cot was one rangy, thirty-something Chicago P.I. Despite having changed the sheets, she imagined that she could smell the faint scent of aftershave. Or was that just the whole “breathing again” business?

Either way, she slept better.

She drove her old Bronco into Almanuevo a little after 11:30 a.m., marveling at how quickly the once-deserted little town had risen from the dead. Was it even five years since some real-estate developers started marketing the area as an Eden for psychic enlightenment? Not that it wasn't pretty in its red-rocked, desert-y way—Big Bend National Park lay several hours south of them and the Guadalupe Mountains almost as far to the north. But when the closest metropolitan area was El Paso, how could Jo not be surprised by Almanuevo's success?

And it was, against all probability, succeeding. Billboards advertised vortex tours, psychic readings and even a dude ranch that offered everything from chakra alignments to rattlesnake roundups. The signs were set too far back to shade the two-lane highway as she drove into town, her windows open to the unseasonably warm March sunshine. But they were entertaining.

She knew the Alpha Inn, with its pitted parking lot and faux-adobe bungalows. It was one of the oldest businesses in town. Its first incarnation had been as the Tumbleweed Motel, before interstates had put the original town out of business. Jo spotted Lorenzo's black Ferrari, a rental with New Mexico plates, and she parked her battered blue Ford beside it.

God, she was tired.

For a moment, right after she killed the engine, she let her head fall back and wondered what the hell she was doing here. The sensation felt very much like panic, but at what? The story she finally was going to tell?

Or the man she meant to tell it to?

Since she never allowed herself to panic, Jo grimly shook it off and got out of the truck, sand crunching between her boots and the warm, worn asphalt. At least her cowboy hat—stained white straw, for summer wear—kept the worst of the sun off.

She knocked on door #7. Then she waited, squinting even through the shade of her hat brim and sunglasses. She noticed the drapes were closed.

She knocked again, harder. Nearby a snake of some kind flowed off a flat rock and into the desert. Jo thought she might just fall asleep on her feet out here.

Then the door swung open, and she found herself surrounded by a burst of air-conditioned coolness and nose-to-hairy-chest with the P.I.

Lorenzo had obviously just woken. His thick, dark hair was messy, his shirt was halfway open, his jeans partly unbuttoned, and he was barefoot. For a long moment, Jo just stared—breathing again. She forced her gaze slowly upward. From the small, gold medal nestled in his chest hair to his throat, his shadowed jaw, finally his intense eyes squinting down at her against the glare of Texas sunlight. The awareness that whispered through her from his proximity surprised her. It was another sensation she didn't generally allow herself to feel.

When Lorenzo covered a wide yawn and waved her in—“Nice hat”—Jo entered his cool, dark cave. She didn't like caves.

Yet it was so unlike anyplace she expected a man who drove a Ferrari to stay that she found herself grinning. “Pink Formica?”

He snorted. “You got something against Formica?”

But her attention had moved on to the rumpled, king-size bed. It looked particularly inviting, more than this morning's cot had, and Jo hid her own yawn as she took off the hat and sunglasses. “It's kind of dark in here,” she hinted.

“Oh yeah. Sorry.” Lorenzo flipped on the lights.

Accepting that as the best she'd get, Jo sank into one of the hard plastic chairs by the paper-strewn table. “I'm sorry I woke you.”

“No problem.” Belatedly, Lorenzo buttoned his jeans, then sprawled with his odd, lumbering grace into the other chair. He dwarfed it. “I'm gonna send out for lunch—you want anything?”

She tried not to look at the bed, wishing she didn't feel so…so alert, around this man. “Almanuevo has
delivery
now?”

“Not exactly.” He smirked at the rotary phone as he dialed, as if something about it amused him, then said, “Yeah, this is Lorenzo at the Alpha. Send me the usual, and….”

He widened his eyes, waiting on her.

“Just coffee,” she insisted.

“Toss in a slice of apple pie and an extra coffee. Yeah.” And he hung up. “Delivery in Almanuevo is me saying I'll give five bucks extra to whoever carries my order across the street from the Ambrosia Café. Sometimes it's a waitress, sometimes it's another customer.” He shrugged at the quirks of small-town life. “So you thought about what I said yesterday?”

“I thought about the cave-in,” she admitted.

“Want to tell me about it?” It wasn't exactly concern, but she appreciated his pragmatism. Concern might make her want to cry, or say something embarrassing, and she didn't need that. Lorenzo found a legal pad buried amongst the pile of loose pages on the desk and fished a pen out of the mess as well.

Jo hesitated. She hadn't told anyone what she'd seen—
thought
she saw—since the reporter, and she'd been doped up on painkillers at the time. Since she'd been quoted as an anonymous source, she doubted even her brothers knew she was the one who'd started the rumor about zombies.

A laptop computer sat on the kitchenette bar, plugged into a phone jack, and paperwork covered the table. But did she really mean to recite the whole, unbelievable story to a stranger from Chicago?

She was here to make the dreams stop, that was all.

“You changed your mind again,” guessed Lorenzo, sagging back in the chair and looking ceilingward.

“I'd just like to know more about why I'm telling it,” Jo challenged. She'd been more comfortable in her jail. Now in his motel room, his messy bed sprawled beside her and his chest hair staring her in the face, she felt distinctly out of her league.

Like the world had started vibrating at a faster speed. But to hear some folks talk, maybe that was just Almanuevo.

He seemed to consider the request, then shrugged. “Right. I can handle that. What I do, Miss James—”

“Ms. James,” she corrected easily. “Or Sheriff.”

He stared at her, then tried again. “What I do,
Mzzz.
James, isn't the usual private investigation stuff. I do that too—cheating spouses, skip-traces on bounced checks, crap like that. A guy's got to make a living, no matter how well-off his partner is. But our specialty is the weird stuff. Cults. Curses. Ghosts.”

Zombies.
Jo's discomfort settled into her gut as she pursued the less remarkable claim. “You believe in ghosts?”

“My partner does. Me, I'm careful not to
dis
believe in anything nowadays. What with the Internet, it's pretty easy for people with, let's call 'em
special
requirements, to find me. Most of them are major flakes, by the way, same as the assholes who generally suck them in. But a few of 'em aren't.”

And that, apparently, was important.

He shifted in his seat, though it looked a bit small for him to get truly comfortable, then continued, one hand sculpting the story out of air. “So a few weeks back, we get a call from a mother whose son vanished, maybe four months ago, in Almanuevo. Not a child—a college kid. Thing is, he vanished
dead.
Seems he and his buds tried rock-climbing under the influence of God-knows what, with the expected, pancakelike results. No biggie.”

Jo didn't bother to hide her scorn.
“No biggie?”

He was unfazed. “So one minute his remains are safe in the town clinic, toe-tagged and body-bagged. Next thing you know—” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. Like he got up and walked away.”

“But clearly,” said Jo, “he
didn't
get up and walk away. Corpses have been stolen before….” Though not around there. That she knew of. “Haven't they?”

Lorenzo's rugged expression stilled. Then he frowned.

When a knock sounded at the door they both jumped—then avoided each other's eyes. “Lunch,” the detective said, rolling to his still-bare feet. He checked the peephole before cracking the door, more cautious than Jo would have expected. He was a big guy, after all. And his automatic pistol lay on the bedside table.

It
was
lunch. He handed the kid some bills, then shut and chained the door and carried the bag back to their table.

“Yeah, corpses get stolen,” he agreed finally, exhuming cardboard cups and Styrofoam containers of food and laying them on top of his papers. “But usually their buddies don't claim to see them wandering around a few days later. Have some pie.”

He got the pie for her? “I only asked for—” Did he say
wandering around?
“—coffee,” Jo finished lamely.

“Have pie anyway. I can't eat if you aren't eating.” Considering how he tore into his hoagie, she questioned that.

“His friends saw him wandering where?” she demanded.

“That,” said Lorenzo, covering his mouth behind his thick wrist until he could swallow, “is the tricky part. They don't know for sure. Not our best or brightest, they were having a memorial out in the desert, honoring their fallen comrade—no pun intended—when whaddaya know? They see him ambling along in the distance. They take off after him, lose him in the rocks, then decide not to report it to the cops because they weren't exactly smoking Marlboro 100s out there. But later they feel guilty and admit it to the kid's mom, who then calls—” And he pointed a thumb at himself.

Jo hesitated. She didn't want to insult the man, but…. “And these guys
don't
fall under the category of flakes?”

Lorenzo grinned full agreement with her conclusion. He had a great grin, wide and honest. It almost turned him handsome.

Almost.

“Like Christmas snow,” agreed Lorenzo. “And along with their sterling testimony, the kid's mother has contacted a psychic who says the kid's neither alive nor dead. As probably won't surprise you, this upsets her. Thing is—” And he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, turned more serious. “The psychic she contacted is one of the most reputable in the country.”

Jo hadn't fully realized that some psychics had better reputations than others. Better publicists, sure. But… “So you looked into it?”

“And found out that this kid's not the only stiff to go missing in the area. Not all of 'em are from Almanuevo, but close enough that the Chamber of Commerce is no-commenting on the issue. Also, he's not the only John Doe to be sighted wandering the desert in a daze, though others weren't recognizably dead at the time.
This,
I had to look into. So I flew into Albuquerque, and here I am.”

Bingo.
“El Paso's closer.”