Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) (5 page)

“Well, it can’t have been Ricky’s fault. Who would he have in his life who could do something like that? He doesn’t know those kinds of people.”

Don and Watts stared at her silently. Death let out a laugh, for a moment forgetting
Mockingbird
.

Casey went hot, and ran her fingers through her hair. “Look. I don’t mean she got herself killed on purpose. Of course not. I feel terrible for her. I mean, the poor girl was tortured. And raped. No one deserves that. But you have to believe me. Ricky would not do that. To
anybody
.”

Watts looked into the bottom of his mug. “Can I show you something?”

“Nothing will convince me he’s guilty.”

“Please. Just take a look.”

“I won’t—”

“For heaven’s sake,” Death said. “Don’t make the man beg.”

Casey held up her hands. “Fine. Show me.”

Watts took his empty mug. “You stay put.”

“Well,” Don said when Watts was gone. “That went well.”

“You mean the part about me basically saying the poor woman was asking for it? I can’t believe I said that.”

Death snorted. “Like you’re usually a ray of sunshine.”

“You’ve been under a lot of stress,” Don said. “It’s understandable.”

“No,” Casey said. “It’s not.”

Watts was back soon. Casey expected him to be carrying folders with the same things Don had showed her in the office—grisly crime scene photos and notes explaining why her brother was the guilty one. But he had only one clear plastic bag. He set it on the table in front of her. “Any idea what this is?”

She did. It was one of Ricky’s old T-shirts, with Colorado U’s name printed across the front. She knew it was his because the collar had a blood stain on it from when she’d accidentally busted him in the face when he’d volunteered as her sparring partner. He hadn’t done that again. And he hadn’t thrown away the stupid shirt.

Watts held it a little closer. “Recognize it?”

“It’s my brother’s.”

“Yes. Guess where we found it?”

“The victim’s house, probably, since it’s in an evidence bag. But that doesn’t mean anything, assuming she really was his girlfriend. There’s bound to be lots of his stuff there.”

“I’m sure there might have been. But do you think all of his ‘stuff’ has this?”

He flipped the bag over. The bottom half of the shirt was spattered with blood. New blood. Not from when Casey had busted his nose.

Casey stared at it. “
This
is your evidence? A shirt from her apartment that anybody could have put on? Or maybe they used it to mop up the blood when they were done. Don’t tell me you haven’t considered that someone else wore it, then left it there to make Ricky look like the attacker.”

“Of course I would have considered that.”

“Would have?”

He set the shirt on the table. “We didn’t find it at the crime scene. We found it in your brother’s house.”

Chapter Five

“I don’t understand it,” Casey said.

“Doesn’t seem too confusing to me,” Death said from the driver’s seat. They were waiting for Don to finish up the last of the paperwork which would make Casey a completely free woman. “They found her blood on Ricky’s shirt. In his house. Perhaps he’s not the golden boy, after all.”

“There has to be an explanation.”

“Of course there is. Maybe he was
there
.”

Casey spun sideways. “Maybe if you were better at your job, you could find out these things right at the beginning.”

“You mean at the end. For them. But I told you. She didn’t say the names of the men. And the way things were during her last few minutes, Ricky could have been there and she wouldn’t have known. She wouldn’t have been all too coherent just then.”

Casey collapsed back against the seat. “It’s all just…too awful.”

Don got in the car, barely missing Death, who oozed to the back, and sat for a moment with his eyes shut. “Your part went remarkably well.”

“You
called
them.”

“It worked out, didn’t it?”

“But what if it hadn’t?”

He started the car. “No use worrying about it.”

He was right, of course.

“What
didn’t
go well was that I hadn’t known about the shirt before.”

Casey could tell from the set of his jaw that he was angry. “What was their excuse?”

“That we aren’t at trial yet, and they still had time before disclosing it.”

“Is that true?”

“Even if it is, it’s unfair. Watts should have told me. He should be giving me every chance to prove your brother’s innocence.”

Death made a choking noise. “So a bloody shirt found in Ricky’s house means he
didn’t
do it?”

“He
is
innocent,” Casey said. “We
will
prove it.”

Don was silent.

“So, can you get me in?”

Don didn’t pretend not to understand. “I asked the detective to put our names on the prison’s visitation list. We’re set up for a lawyer appointment during open hours this afternoon.”

“And until then?”

“I’ve got work to do. You can hang out in my waiting room. Unless, of course, you have other places to go.”

Casey heard the suggestion in his voice, along with what was probably criticism.

“How can I possibly visit my mother without seeing Ricky first?”

“Easy,” Death said. “You go to her place.”

Don shook his head. “I don’t know, Casey. But this has been a hard time for her.”

Casey rested her forehead on the side window, letting the coolness soothe her.

“I know,” Don said. “It’s been a hard time for you, too. But think about it…”

“Scout doesn’t even
have
a mother,” Death said. “I’m sure she would have been overjoyed to spend time with one if she had been lucky enough—”

“Will you shut up about that book?”

“What book?” Don’s forehead wrinkled. “You have been having the strangest outbursts today.”

“Oh,
God
. I know. I’m sorry. It’s…the stress. And I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Sure.” Although he didn’t
look
too sure. “You want to take a nap at my house? I’m sure Mel would be fine with that.”

“I don’t want to bother her. I’ll just…I have some places to go.”

“All right.” He put the car in gear. “So where should I drop you?”

“Actually, nowhere.” She got out and leaned back in the open door. “I’ll walk.”

“Casey—”

She shut the door and held up three fingers. Three o’clock. That’s when she’d be back at his office to go visit her little brother in jail. She could see Don wanted to say more, that he would argue with her about being on her own that far across town, so she waved, and walked away.

Chapter Six

“You okay? You look a little pale.” Death leaned toward Casey. “I’m really not so sure this was a good idea.”

Casey ignored the nagging and breathed in the surroundings. It had taken her almost an hour and a half to walk there from the police station. As Watts had said, the accident site was outside the city limits. Not super far, but enough for a good hike. Casey gazed up at the mountains. They remained the same as they always had been. Permanent. Unfeeling. Beautiful. The sky was blue, with puffy white clouds. The trees glowed with autumn.

Their car had been going a decent speed when it went out of control. Not over the limit. Not reckless. Just a normal straight-road kind of speed. One moment they were moving along, singing a nursery rhyme, and the next they were sliding into the guardrail with a clash of metal and glass, hood buckling, tires screaming, leaving their blackened tire trails on the pavement. Once the movement stilled, Casey had glanced quickly toward her husband, confirmed that he was shaken but intact, then yanked off her seatbelt and stumbled out of the car, shoving the door open with her shoulder, calling all the while to her crying son in the back seat that
Everything is okay, baby, I’m right here
.

But then she wasn’t.

The force of the blast had catapulted her backward, the car’s door a steel wall between her and the shrapnel and flame. When she awoke, the faces she saw were not Reuben’s or Omar’s, but the detached, professional expressions of two paramedics.

“My family,” she’d croaked.

The man holding her wrist looked away. The other one slumped his shoulders only a fraction. But it was enough.

“Reuben!” Casey struggled to break free. The men held her down with hands and even knees, but she wasn’t trained to accept submission. A head butt to the first guy’s nose sent him flying backward into the second, who lost his grip on her legs. The second guy scrambled to grab her again, but a swift kick to his solar plexus stopped him as he buckled in half, gasping for air.

Casey stumbled forward, where firefighters in bright yellow uniforms surrounded the blackened hull of what had been her car. They didn’t see her coming, or they would have stopped her from barging through, from seeing the melted upholstery, the steel frames of the seats, and her husband, still clasping the steering wheel, even though he could no longer see where the car was headed. His hands, charred and exposed, were the last part of him she’d ever see.

The firefighters had wrestled her away, kicking, screaming, and biting, before she could see into the back seat, where her baby had died. The coroner all but refused to let her see him once he was in the morgue, and in her shock and despair she didn’t realize most of what was happening during the next week until it was too late. Her son was buried without her being able to say a last good-bye. She would be thankful after it all that her final image of Omar hadn’t been of his broken, blackened body.

The guardrail must have been repaired some time later. Now it shone silver in the sun, brighter than the sections to the right and left. The burned grass had replenished itself, and the gravel along the shoulder looked the same as all the rest. There were no crosses or plaques or any other outward sign to show that this was where Casey’s life had changed forever. Where she had lost everything.

Except she hadn’t lost her brother.
He
was something. A big something. And he needed her.

“Okay. I’m ready to go.” Casey turned, expecting Death to be waiting.

But Death was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Seven

The house looked the same as it always had as Casey was growing up. A pleasant enough white two-story on a small, winding street, with an attached garage, brass numbers on the door, and a cast iron lamppost at the end of the sidewalk. The mountains stood magnificently in the background, and the neighborhood gave off the feeling of comfort and stability.

What was different about the house was the state of repair. It wasn’t horrible. It didn’t look empty. But the bushes had become overgrown, and the flowerbeds lay dormant and brown. The lawn was a mixture of too-long grass and leaves, and weeds grew up in cracks in the driveway.

A stab of worry sent Casey a little faster up the walk. Her mother had always been meticulous about the yard. Flowers in every season but winter—and then the poinsettias bloomed inside—mown grass, cleared driveway. One of the shutters hung crookedly, and several shingles were missing from the roof. Had this really all happened in the last week since Ricky had been in prison?

It wasn’t possible.

Casey felt a flood of shame. Ricky had been so busy keeping track of
her
place during the past couple of years, making sure it was up for realtor walk-throughs and prospective buyers, that he hadn’t been able to help their mother. Had her mom really gone downhill so much since Casey had seen her that she couldn’t even maintain her place on her own?

Casey stood at the door, her hand raised, as if to knock.

“You don’t just walk into your mother’s house?” Death waited beside her, twisting over the railing to see in the window.

“I used to.”

“And now is different because…”

“I’m a bad daughter.”

“I see. Only good daughters get to go in unannounced? Then I will go out on a limb and say there are a lot of women who shouldn’t have keys to their parents’ homes.”

“You mean there are
more
people who have abandoned their mothers, and left their little brothers to rot in prison?”

“He’s been in for a week, Casey. That’s hardly rotten. A little ripe, maybe, but that’s about it.”

Casey took a deep breath through her nose. It wasn’t worth getting angry with Death. Death had a mouth that flapped a lot, but she couldn’t exactly slap it.