First Grave on the Right (8 page)

“What light?”

“
The
light. The only light I know of,” I replied, using the escape and evasion tactics I’d learned from a first lieutenant I dated in college.

“Uh-huh,” he said, not falling for it. “What light?”

I hesitated. Some bits of information were just more sacred than others. Some were reserved for the departed only. It wasn’t like the truth of what I do would help him believe me. More likely, it would send him running for the door. Come to think of it …

“Me,” I said with a hint of self-righteous arrogance lifting my chin. I felt like I was back in middle school, begging the bully to challenge me.

After a thoughtful moment, he asked, “You?”

“Me,” I repeated, with just as much arrogance.
Go ahead, Mr. Skeptic, make my day. Challenge me. Prove me wrong. As if.
“Apparently, I’m very bright.”

I suddenly realized what I’d done. I’d said too much. I’d let my pride go to the party, and it ended up auditioning for Girls Gone Wild. It was so grounded.

Garrett sat back in his chair and let his gaze travel over every inch of me that he could see before relocking with mine. “So you help them figure out why they didn’t cross.”

No way to weasel out of the damned conversation now. No wonder pride was one of the seven deadlies. “Yes,” I answered.

“And then you lead them to the light.”

“Yes.”

“Which is you.”

“Yes.”

“So when we cross,” Sussman said, “it’ll be
through you
?”

I glanced at him. I figured he was creeped out by the concept—one that could be considered sacrilegious on a thousand different planets—but he seemed fascinated. “Yes, you’ll cross through me. Grim reaper,” I said by way of explanation.

“Wow,” Barber said. “That’s about the coolest thing I’ve heard all day.”

“You’re a portal,” Garrett said.

I shrugged. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

An intrigued smile spread across his face as he studied me, making my nerve endings prickly with suspicion.

“He is so into you,” Elizabeth said.

I ignored her and glanced at my watch. “Gosh, look at the time.” Where the heck was Uncle Bob?

“So the spirits that don’t cross are just hanging out on earth, walking through us without a care in the world?” Garrett asked, not ready to give up his quest.

I sighed. This could go on for days.

“No. They exist in the same time and space but on a different plane. Like a double-exposed picture. I’m just able to be on both planes simultaneously.”

“Then that makes you pretty amazing,” he said, appreciation shimmering in his eyes.

This was too much. I was still prying my jaw off the floor, metaphorically, that he believed anything I said.

“So, how about it? Let’s go get some coffee,” he suggested again.

“But I just explained everything.”

“Sweetheart, I doubt you’ve even scratched the surface.” When I hesitated, he said, “We can go as friends.”

I scowled, just a little, then reminded him, “We’re not friends, remember? You’ve made that painfully clear over the last month. We’re not pals or buds or anything else even remotely resembling friends.”

“Weekend lovers?” he offered.

That was it. I didn’t know what game he was playing—though I was fairly certain it wasn’t Monopoly … or checkers—but I refused to play along. I stood and walked around the desk so I could stand over him. Menacingly. Like Darth Vader, only with better lung capacity. After a meaningful stare-down, I pointed to the exit. “I have work to do.”

He glanced at the door I was pointing at, the one through which I was suggesting he leave. “You have work to do? On that door?” he asked, all teasing and smart-assy.

“What?”

“Are you going to paint it?”

“No.”

“I suggest a deep, rich brown to go with your hair.” He stood, reversing the situation to tower over me. After another stare-down, one with a different meaning entirely, he leaned in and said softly, “Or gold … to go with your eyes.”

“I think I just came,” Elizabeth said.

The other two lawyers, after clearing their throats, had the decency to step out of the room. Elizabeth reluctantly followed them into the reception area, otherwise known as Cookie’s-god-danged-space-and-don’t-you-forget-it.

As Garrett waited for me to agree to have
coffee
with him, I saw it from the corner of my eye. The blurry Superman thing. It moved so fast that by the time I turned my head, it was gone. It had moved to my other side, brushed my arm, feathered across my mouth, then dived inside me, pooling in my abdomen, oozing warmth throughout my entire body.

My insides quaked, and I threw back my head with a startled gasp. Garrett stepped forward and grabbed hold of my arms to keep me from falling. Only then did I see the bewildered expression on his face. He pulled me closer. Then the feeling left me and Garrett shot backwards, as if a violent force had shoved him.

He stumbled, caught himself, then looked at me. We both stood stunned and wide-eyed. I toppled toward my desk, leaned against it to keep my knees from buckling.

“Was that … one of them?” he asked, absently rubbing his chest where he’d apparently been shoved. He glanced around wildly before placing a disconcerted scowl on me.

“No,” I said, trying to slow my breathing, “that was something very different.”

What, I didn’t know. But I could guess, and I didn’t like the direction my guesses were heading. Could it be the Big Bad? If so, why here? Why now? My life didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

Fear was difficult for me to hide. I rarely felt it. But surely Garrett sensed it in me now. The thought of him seeing me afraid grated more than a little.

Then another scenario came to mind. Of all the times I’d seen Bad, he’d never
brushed against me.
He’d never even touched me, and he certainly hadn’t dived in for a swim in my nether regions. Maybe it wasn’t Bad at all.

I scanned the room, probably looking a little desperate. Was it Reyes? Could it have been him? Could he have been … jealous? Of Swopes? Was he serious?

I rushed to the door and asked everyone, “Did you see anything? Did he come this way?”

Elizabeth, who had been sitting on our sage green reception sofa, jumped up and said, “You lost him? How could you lose him?”

“Not Garrett,” I said, possibly a little too impatiently. “The dark, blurry guy.”

Cookie was slowly beginning to realize we had company. She eased up out of her seat as if a cobra were perched on her desk. “Charley, sweetheart, do we have clients?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that. Everyone, this is Cookie. Cookie, we have the three lawyers who
left
us last night. The ones I told you about. We’re working on their case with Uncle Bob. Okay, now, did anyone see him?”

The lawyers questioned each other with sideways glances and shrugs. I let a hapless sigh slip through my lips and slumped against the doorjamb.

You’d think, me being a grim reaper and all, I’d have connections, ways of obtaining Blurry Guy’s identity. But since the only
connection
from the other side I’d ever made was that of Bad, aka death incarnate, inquiries proved difficult.

Then I noticed an odd shadow in the corner, one that undulated and shifted under the morning light. It was him. It had to be. I straightened, pried my fingers off the doorjamb, and eased into the room, trying not to scare him away.

“May I see you?” I asked, my voice too shaky.

Everyone looked toward the corner, but only the lawyers saw him, too. All three took a wary step back, so in synch, the movement looked choreographed, while I stepped forward pleadingly.

“Please, let me see you.”

The shadow moved, disintegrated, disappeared, and reappeared before me in the same instant. Then it was my turn to retreat. I stumbled back as a long tendril of smoke raised, and suddenly an arm was braced against the wall beside my head. A long arm that angled up to a tall shoulder.

The lawyers gasped as the entity materialized before them, as smoke became flesh, as molecules meshed and fused to form one solid muscle after another. My gaze had yet to linger past his arm, sliding from the hand steadied against the wall—a hand that, even with the wear of hard labor, was beautiful—to the long, sinewy curve of a steel-like forearm. A rolled cuff, an oddly bright color, encircled the arm below the elbow, but above that, a biceps strained against the thick material, attesting to the strength it encapsulated. Then my gaze slipped farther up to a shoulder, wide and powerful and unyielding.

The entity leaned in before I could see its face, pressed the warmth of its body into mine, and bent forward to whisper in my ear. It was so close, I could only make out its jaw, strong and shadowed with at least two days’ growth, and dark hair in need of a trim.

His mouth brushed my ear, sending shivers down my spine. “Dutch,” he whispered, and I melted into him.

This was my chance, my opportunity to ask if he was who I thought he was—who I hoped he was. But I’d spiraled back into my dream world, where nothing worked right. My hands had a will of their own as they lifted to his chest. The bones in my legs dissolved. My mouth wanted only one thing. Him. His taste. His texture. He smelled like rain during a lightning storm, earthy and electric.

I curled his shirt into my fists—whether to push him away or pull him closer, I wasn’t sure. Why couldn’t I see him? Why couldn’t I just convince myself to step to the side and look at him?

Then his mouth covered mine and I lost all sense of reality. My world took his form, became his body, his mouth, his hands, skimming over me, surveying the hills and valleys of all that was me, his moon. His very own satellite seduced into his orbit by the sheer will of his gravity.

The kiss deepened, grew more urgent, and my body responded with a quiver of desire. He groaned and pushed farther into me, his tongue delving between my lips, not just tasting, but drinking every part of me, melding my soul with his.

He pried one of my hands off his shirt and led it down his pants to cover his erection. I sucked in a sharp breath, inhaling the heat that drifted off him. I felt a hand squeeze between my legs, and liquid fire pooled in my abdomen. I wanted him on me, around me, and in me. I could think of nothing else but the utter sensuality of this perfect being.

My hunger seemed impenetrable until I heard my name from a distance and the fog began to evaporate.

“Charley?”

I tumbled out of the dream and snapped to attention. Everyone in the room stared at me openmouthed. Uncle Bob stood halfway in the door with a quizzical expression drawing his brows together. Garrett looked on as well. Agitation flashed in his eyes. He turned and strode out the door, nodding brusquely to Uncle Bob as he walked past.

And then I realized it was gone. He was gone. No longer able to bear my own weight, I sank to the floor and stewed in my own astonishment.

“Were you just possessed?” Cookie asked after a long moment, awe softening her voice. “ ’Cause let me tell you, sweetheart, if that was possession, I’m selling my soul.”

Chapter Six

ADD. A lifetime of distractions.

—T-SHIRT

While I wanted nothing more than to quiz the dearly departed about Reyes—Did they get a good look at him? What color were his eyes? Did he seem, I don’t know, dead?—Uncle Bob insisted on discussing the case. In the meantime, my sanity hung in the balance. My fragile sense of well-being. My ability to cope with the everyday realities of reality. Not to mention my sex life.

Was nothing sacred?

“Did you get an ID on the shooter?” Uncle Bob asked as we headed back into my office, currently dubbed the Dead Zone.

“No.” The room seemed cold now, probably because I’d just had a near-sex experience with a blazing inferno. I cranked up the heat and poured a cup of coffee before sitting down.

Uncle Bob sat across from me. “No? Well, are they, you know, here?”

“Yes.” How was this happening? Clearly Reyes wasn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill corpse. If it
was
Reyes. If he
was
a corpse.

“So, you haven’t talked to them about it?”

“No.” If he was dead, how was he so … hot? Like literally hot? Then again, if he was alive, how was he incorporeal? How did he move so fast? How did he switch from one molecular state to another? I’d never seen anything like it.

Uncle Bob snapped his fingers in front of my face. I blinked to attention, then glared at him.

“Don’t get mad.” He showed his palms in a gesture of peace. “You keep going elsewhere, and I need you here. We had another homicide last night. Though they don’t appear to be related, I need to know for certain.”

“Another one?” I asked as he lifted an autopsy photo from the file jacket he carried. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did. Your phone’s off.”

“Oops.”

“I’ve got the mayor breathing down my neck on this one. Three dead lawyers in one night looks bad on the evening news.”

I checked my cell. “Sorry, my battery bit the dirt.” I guess nothing was safe in the Dead Zone.

After I plugged my phone into its charger, Uncle Bob slid the photo across the desk. A bloated face, blue and purple, appeared before me. It had crusts of blood around several puffy wounds, as if the man had been in an accident. Considering the circumstances, I doubted any of his wounds were accidental. Whoever he was, death had not come easily.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“He was tortured, then killed. But they weren’t after information.” He pointed to the guy’s mouth and throat. “They taped his mouth and kept pressure on his windpipe to keep him from screaming. So he’d either already given them the info they needed, or they knew what he’d done.”

I let my gaze stray, trying not to seem squeamish.

“The assailants wanted to inflict as much pain as possible before he died. If I had to take a street-educated guess, I’d say he snitched on the wrong guy. This kind of torture is usually reserved for traitors, either to a higher-up in a gang or to an entire group or organization. These days, crime syndicates are more hierarchical than English nobility.”

The lawyers gathered around my desk, so I held up the photo, angling it away from my line of sight. Sussman made a face and stepped back. I was right there with him. But Elizabeth and Barber studied it more closely.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe if he wasn’t so blotchy…”

“It would help if we had a mug shot instead of an autopsy photo.”

“No ID yet,” Uncle Bob said to me before answering his ringing cell.

Sussman stared at Barber through his round-rimmed glasses. “Do you recognize this man, Jason?”

I glanced toward him. Barber looked stunned, struck speechless, pale despite the physiological impossibility. Since they lacked blood and all.

“That’s him,” Barber said. “That’s the guy who asked me to meet him.”

Elizabeth glanced back at the photo. “That’s your mystery man?” she asked.

“I nearly know it is,” he replied.

Sussman stepped forward and studied the photo again. “Are you sure?”

Barber gave a shaky affirmation. “I wouldn’t bet my life or anything.”

“Too late for that anyway,” Elizabeth said, still gazing at the photo, her face morphing into varying degrees of revulsion.

Uncle Bob shut his phone. “Carlos Rivera. He has an arrest record as long as my legendary and much-envied memory.”

“So, no priors,” I said, holding back a chuckle.

He squinted his eyes and tapped an index finger on his temple. “Like a steel trap.”

“Yeah, you seem to be forgetting that time you were supposed to get me out of Dad’s car and put me to bed while he whipped up some margaritas. I woke up at two in the morning almost frozen solid in the backseat while you were making whoopie with Mrs. Dunlop next door.”

He adjusted his tie. “I believe that was an alcohol-related incident,” he grumbled. A strangely flattering crimson spread over his face, making the whole account worthwhile.

Just to add icing to the cake, I shook my head in mock disappointment. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Uncle Near Negligent Homicide.”

Elizabeth chuckled.

Uncle Bob didn’t. “How ’bout we leave the filing of criminal charges to the DA.” Before I could argue, he said, “We found Mr. Rivera floating in the Rio Grande.”

“Maybe he was thirsty,” I offered.

“Have you ever tasted the Rio Grande?”

“Not lately,” I said, wondering when he had. And why. And if he carried any parasites because of it. “Barber thinks this might be the same guy who asked him for a cloak-and-dagger meeting.”

Uncle Bob leaned forward, intrigued. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” As Barber explained the incident to me, I relayed the info to Uncle Bob, who, naturally, recorded everything in his notepad.

“This guy calls me,” Barber said, easing onto the seat I’d pulled up earlier. Elizabeth followed suit, but Sussman walked to the window and gazed out at the university campus across the street while we talked. “He wanted to meet in an alley, which I thought was pretty odd. But he sounded, I don’t know, almost desperate.”

“Can he describe his behavior?” Uncle Bob asked me.

“He was nervous,” Barber said, “jumpy. He kept looking over his shoulder, checking his watch. I just figured he was high on the latest jagged little pill.”

“But you listened to him anyway?” I asked, butting into Uncle B’s interview.

“He said he had information on one of our clients,” Elizabeth said. “Jason had no choice but to listen.”

“What information?” I asked, taking note of her knee-jerk leap to his defense. Interesting.

By the time Barber had finished his tale, we’d learned that, according to the deceased Carlos Rivera, there was a man going to prison for a very long time whose worst crime involved the smoking of a little pot in college. Admittedly, he inhaled.

But forensic evidence pointed to a more severe crime. Police found a murdered teen in his backyard and his own sneakers with the kid’s blood on them inside his house. The sneakers were like the final nail in his coffin. Pile on a corroborating witness—an eighty-year-old woman with Coke-bottle glasses and bunions—and the poor guy went down for murder. The woman stated under oath that she saw the defendant stashing the kid in his backyard. Behind a storage shed. On a dark and stormy night. Clearly, she’d read too many mysteries.

“But it was dark,” I said. “And stormy. She could have seen my great-aunt Lillian stash the body there and assumed it was your client.”

“Exactly,” Barber agreed. “Nonetheless, he was convicted of second-degree murder.”

“Did your client know the kid?” Uncle Bob asked. That was totally my next question.

Barber shook his head. “Said he’d never seen him before in his life.”

“What’s your client’s name?” I asked. Before Uncle Bob could.

“Weir. Mark Weir. He gave me a USB flash drive,” Barber said.

“Who did? Your client?”

“Who did what?” Uncle Bob asked without looking up from his writing.

“Someone gave Barber a flash drive.”

“Who did?” he repeated. For heaven’s sake, didn’t I just ask that?

“No, that guy.” Barber nodded toward the photo. “Rivera. Though he never gave me his name, he did give me a location. He told me I could find the evidence I needed to clear Mr. Weir at a warehouse on the Westside. He said to be there Wednesday night.”

“Time?” Uncle Bob asked. Apparently really good interviewers didn’t need to use complete sentences. I made a mental note.

“He never gave me a time. I think he saw someone following him. He pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt and ducked inside a pizza place before I could ask him anything else.” Barber glanced back at the photo. “I guess they busted him anyway, figured out what he was up to.”

“Today is Wednesday,” I said. “When did all this happen?”

Sussman turned back, and all three lawyers eyed each other. Then Elizabeth answered, a sadness softening her voice. “The day we died.” She glanced at Barber. “It seems so long ago.”

Barber covered her hands with his. Her tough bravado, her powerful don’t-fuck-with-me demeanor, seemed to fade a little.

“This happened yesterday,” I said to Uncle Bob.

“Okay,” he said, launching into Nazi interrogator mode. He asked dozens upon dozens of questions, scribbling wildly in his notebook as I relayed the answers. I wondered if he’d ever heard of a digital recorder.

“The flash drive is on his desk at his office,” I said, answering yet another question. “No, the guy didn’t say what was on it, but Barber got the impression it was a video of some sort. Yes, this Wednesday, today. No, he didn’t see who was following Rivera. They’ve already filed an appeal, but it’ll take months to get it before a judge. Yes. No. The client hasn’t been transferred yet. Maybe. Not on your life. When hell freezes over. Um, okay. No, his
other
left testicle.”

By the time Uncle Bob had run out of questions—a good thing, since they were veering way off subject—I had run out of energy. Not enough, however, to allay the niggling suspicions I had about this whole situation. This was more important than one innocent man, and I had a feeling it centered on the murdered teen. I needed more information on both.

We headed downstairs to grab a bite. Dad made the best Monte Cristos this side of the Eiffel Tower, and my mouth watered just thinking about them. When I finally had a moment to breathe, my thoughts strayed back to Reyes. It was difficult not to dwell on a man whose mere presence evoked images of the devil hell-bent on sinning.

“I love the name of your dad’s bar,” Elizabeth said as we trod downstairs.

I forced myself back to the present. Elizabeth’s attitude toward me had changed since I’d almost had sex with an incorporeal being in her presence. But I didn’t think she was angry. Or offended. Maybe it was something about Garrett. Maybe she felt as though I were cheating on him, since he seemed to have feelings for me. He had feelings for me, all right, but they weren’t the warm and fuzzy kind.

“Thanks,” I said. “He named it after me, to the utter chagrin of my sister,” I added with a snort.

Sussman chuckled. “He named it after you? I thought it was called Calamity’s.”

“Yeah. Uncle Bob called me Calamity for years, as in Calamity Jane? And when my dad bought the bar, he just figured it fit.”

“I like it,” Elizabeth said. “I had a dog named after me once.”

I tried not to laugh. “What kind?”

“A pit bull.” A mischievous grin spread across her mouth.

“I can totally see that,” I said with a chuckle.

We took a secluded table in a dark corner so I could hopefully talk to my clients without anyone staring. After a quick intro—and an abbreviated version of my night with domestic-abuse husband in the bar to explain the state of my face—I asked my dad if I had any messages.

“Here?” he asked. “Are you expecting one?”

“Well, yes and no.” Rosie Herschel, my first assisted-disappearing case, was supposed to call only if she ran into trouble, so no news was good news. We didn’t want to risk any communication otherwise, any connection to me and my job, thus spilling the fact that she’d hightailed it out of her asshole husband’s pathetic life, not that the man lived anywhere near close enough to the town of Intelligence to figure out what had really happened.

“ ‘Yes and no’ doesn’t answer my question,” Dad said, waiting for me to elaborate.

“Sure it does.”

“Ah,” he said, understanding my point. “Official business. Got it. I’ll let you know if anything comes in.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

He smiled, held it for a moment, then leaned down to whisper in my ear. “But if you ever come into my bar with a bruised and swollen face again, we’re going to have a serious talk about your
official business
and everything it entails.”

Damn. I thought I’d gotten away with it. I thought I’d convinced him that my ass-kicking was more of an educational experience than a scarred-for-life one.