Third Grave Dead Ahead (27 page)

“Walker’s going around cutting throats?” Ubie asked, alarmed. “Is Swopes still with you?”

I glanced in my rearview at the huge black truck behind me—Garrett was clearly overcompensating—and said “Yes” in the tersest voice I could muster, considering my lack of sleep.

“Good. Keep him close. I’ll get a uniform over to Gibbs’s apartment to check on him. You know what this means, don’t you?”

I was busy dodging a flock of suicidal birds. I swerved and ducked behind the steering wheel, because that would help. “Not really. What?”

“It means I put an innocent man behind bars ten years ago.” His voice had changed, become despondent.

“Uncle Bob, you thought he was guilty. I read the reports and the court transcripts. Anyone would have done the same.”

“He didn’t … I didn’t listen to him, to what he was trying to tell me. He was just a kid.”

My heart contracted at the image that popped into my mind. Reyes at twenty, accused of murder, all alone with no friends, no relatives, no one to turn to. He’d forbidden the only person in his life—his sister, Kim—from seeing him. And he sat there in jail, waiting to be put on trial for a murder he clearly didn’t commit. Where was a time machine when I needed one? But now we could put this right. We had to. “We have a chance to redeem that mistake, Uncle Bob.”

After a long silence, he said, “How do you pay back ten years, Charley?”

My heart broke at the guilt in his voice. I was actually surprised by it. He’d done his job. No one would deny that. Unless he knew more than he was letting on. Surely not. “Earl Walker is apparently really good at covering his tracks. No one will blame you for this.”

He scoffed. “Reyes Farrow will.”

Yes, I supposed he would. I could just imagine my uncle Bob drilling him for information in an interrogation room as he sat there cuffed, stewing in anger and confusion. “What was he like?” I asked Ubie before really thinking about the question, what it might do to him.

“I don’t know, pumpkin. He was a kid. Dirty, unkempt, living on the streets.”

Before I could stop it, a hand covered my mouth at the mental image. My left knee instinctively rose to steer Misery until I could lead my hand back to the wheel. I totally needed a hands-free phone accessory.

“He said he didn’t do it. Once. And then never spoke to me again.”

The sting in my eyes couldn’t be helped. That was so like Reyes. Stubborn. Rebellious. And yet, maybe it meant more. Maybe he’d given up, like an animal that had been exposed to so much abuse, it figured, Why bother? Why fight back?

“But it was the way he said it,” Uncle Bob continued, his mind clearly lost in another time. “He looked me in the eye, his stare so strong, so powerful, the weight of it was like a punch to the gut, and said simply, ‘It wasn’t me.’ And then nothing. Not another word. No talk of lawyers, rights, food … He just shut down.”

My lips pressed together hard as I drove. “We can fix this, Uncle Bob,” I said, my voice shaking.

“No, we can’t.” He seemed resolved to the fact that Reyes would hate him until the day he died. And then he added, “I grabbed him.”

Startled, I asked, “You what?”

“By the shirt collar. At one point in the interrogation, I was so frustrated, I lifted him from the chair and threw him back against the wall.”

“Uncle Bob!” I said, not really sure what else to say and realizing he was lucky to be alive.

“He did nothing,” Ubie continued, oblivious. “Just stared at me, his face blank, and yet I could feel the hatred simmering just beneath the surface. In all the years since, that look has haunted me. I’ve never forgotten him or the case.”

“He’s a powerful being, Uncle Bob.”

“No, you don’t understand.”

My brows furrowed as I steered through a mountain range.

After a long moment that had me wondering if we’d lost connection, he said, “I knew, pumpkin.”

I could almost picture Ubie’s head in his hand as he spoke, his voice pregnant with such regret, such sorrow, it caused a cinch around my chest. “You knew what?”

“I knew he didn’t do it.”

I stopped breathing as I waited for an explanation.

“I’m not stupid. I knew he didn’t do it, and I did nothing. All the evidence pointed directly at him, and because I didn’t want to look like a fool, I didn’t question it. Not for a minute. So you see,” he said, resigned to his fate, “we can’t fix this. He’ll come after me.”

I blinked in surprise. “No, he won’t. He’s not like that.”

“They’re all like that.” He seemed to welcome the idea, as though he deserved to be punished.

I sat stunned to my toes, not sure what to say, how to proceed. “Can I see the interrogation tape?” I asked him, clueless as to why I’d want to see it.

“You won’t find my outburst.” His tone had changed again, hardened. “I had friends in high places, and strangely that part of the tape was erased.”

“It’s not your outburst I want to see. It’s him. I met him when I was in high school, remember? I know how powerful he is, how dangerous. But he won’t come after you, Uncle Bob. I promise,” I said, mentally adding my name to the roster of the Big Fat Liars Club. I had no way of knowing what Reyes would do. What he was capable of. And I was helping to free the one man who might want my uncle dead. Deep down inside, I wondered if that made me a bad niece.

18

There are very few personal problems that can’t be solved with a suitable application of high explosives.

—T-SHIRT

When I got to the sheriff’s department, I jumped out of Misery and hit the ground running. My plan worked. I was in an interrogation room before Garrett could get inside. I told the sheriff everything I knew. Farley Scanlon was a bad guy. He practically threatened me with a knife and then left when he saw Garrett, then he slashed my tires while we ate. It wasn’t a difficult story for them to swallow, but I still had to account for every minute of the night, and they wanted to talk to Garrett to confirm.

So, while they interrogated him, I took off back out to Farley Scanlon’s house, the weight of Uncle Bob’s story still heavy on my chest. Or it could have been the fact that if Earl Walker was still at Farley Scanlon’s place, or happened to stop back by the scene of the crime, I’d just ditched my best defense. That would suck.

My cell sang out. I answered it. “Hey, Cook. I just ditched Garrett.”

“Good for you. You two weren’t really right for each other anyway.”

I grinned.

“So, here’s the word off the street.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“Yolanda Pope’s niece almost died after having a routine tonsillectomy.”

“No way.”

“Way. Minutes after the good doctor showed up on the ward.”

“Which is suspicious because?”

“He had no patients that day. He’d performed no surgeries and had no one to check in on, yet he checked onto the ward. Yolanda’s niece went into cardiac arrest minutes after he checked out.”

“Oh, my gosh. How old was she?”

“Twelve. They chalked it up to a reaction to the anesthetic, but she makes it through the entire surgery just fine, then has a reaction over an hour later?”

“Not likely. I can understand why Yolanda suspects him.”

“Do you think he knew she was Yolanda’s niece?”

“Positive. Poor Xander,” I said, remembering her older brother with fondness. I couldn’t imagine what Yost put him through. “How did you get this information so fast?” I asked her.

“I just happen to know the charge nurse who was on duty that morning.”

“Sweet.”

“Yeah, but none of it can be proved. The nurses just found the whole thing odd. Nothing was ever reported, but they believe Yolanda overheard the nurses talking about it, which is why she suspects him.”

“Well, all this leads to one conclusion. Nathan Yost is more aggressive than I thought. I’ve never met anyone who could pull off such malice with such skill. The man is absolutely evil.”

“I don’t understand what he hoped to gain by it, though,” Cookie said.

“Revenge. He’s an opportunist, saw his chance. Yolanda left him. He was paying her back. Speaking of evil, I’m going out to get a look around Farley Scanlon’s trailer. Obviously, Earl Walker was close, possibly even staying with him.” The one time I’d seen him years ago, beating the fuck out of Reyes, was enough to last a lifetime. The mere thought of that man being close by made me lose consciousness a moment. Either that or the lack-of-sleep thing was catching up with me.

“And you’re going out to his house because it’s been days since someone has tried to kill you?”

With a weary grin, I said, “Of course. This everyday mundane stuff is getting old.”

“Can you at least wait for Garrett?”

“Can’t.”

“Why?”

“Don’t like him.”

“Yes, you do.”

“And I have to visit a biker gang this afternoon.”

“If I had a nickel for every time you said that.”

We hung up as I pulled into Farley’s lot. The mobile home was little more than a tin can, and while I liked mobile homes as much as the next girl, this one left a lot to be desired. Like Spam. It should be ham, but it just ain’t.

I picked the lock and ducked under the police tape just as a car slowed in front of the house. They didn’t stop, thankfully, but they were probably calling the police at that very moment, or performing some other civic-minded duty. Then again, they could’ve just been checking out my ass. Which, who could blame them?

A huge, misshapen bloodstain sullied the olive green carpet and wood paneling that stood as a bold testament to the hideous décor choices of the seventies. Since I’d lacked the forethought to bring gloves, I found a set of oven mitts and quickly searched through stacks of papers and filthy trash cans, no easy feat in oven mitts. I realized Earl Walker was probably not using the alias Earl Walker anymore. There were a couple of bills with the name Harold Reynolds. Sounded like a fake name if ever I heard one. I stuffed the bills into my bag and continued rummaging through the insanity of it all.

I sat concentrating on a photo of a man in a hat with antlers when the doorknob jiggled. After a quick curse, I rushed down the narrow hall and ducked into the bedroom at the end of the house. The front door opened, skyrocketing my heart rate into near panic. If the cops caught me out here, it would probably look bad.

Hoping I wouldn’t seize and make a ruckus, I peeked through the slit between the door and the wall. A man stood there with gun drawn, but I could only see part of his backside. The sun streaming in through a dirty window just past him made it impossible to see what kind of clothes he was wearing, but it didn’t look like a police uniform. Then a hand covered my mouth from behind, and I struggled to keep that last cup of coffee from coming back up.

“Shhhh,” the intruder whispered in my ear as his other hand slid over my stomach and down to the button on my jeans. The heat from his body left a white-hot trail wherever it tread, and I rolled my eyes, partly in relief and partly in annoyance.

I was going to kill him. Reyes Farrow. How the hell did he get out here? He eased me against him, his heat saturating my clothes and hair. He was scalding, and I couldn’t help but let my head drop back against his shoulder and breathe him in. Then he started to unfasten the button on my pants, and I rushed back to attention, fighting him with both my mitted hands. He caught them and pressed into me, his steely arms wrapped tight.

“It’s your boyfriend,” he said into my ear. When I fought his attempts a second time, wrapping my hands awkwardly around his solid wrist as his fingers deftly unbuttoned my jeans, he shushed me again with a playful nip at my ear.

“Reyes,” I whispered as softly as I possibly could as he slid the zipper down. Now was hardly the time.

“Are those oven mitts?” he asked as he placed hot kisses down my neck. Then his hand dived inside my panties. I couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped when his fingers dipped between my legs, and footsteps sounded in the hall a moment later.

“Don’t take this personally,” he said with a disappointed sigh, and I felt a knife at my throat instantly.

My sudden voracity crashed and skidded across the ground like the bad landing of a hot air balloon. Again with the knife? Really?

Reyes walked back toward the far wall with me, his arms locked around my body like a straitjacket. Then Garrett walked in. He took one look at us and instinctively raised his gun, the tight quarters closing in on us fast.

I felt Reyes’s head tilt to the side, as though questioning him. Garrett’s silvery gaze darted between the two of us. He hesitated, pressed his jaw closed in anger, then lowered his gun, helpless to do anything else.

In my periphery, I saw Reyes grin. He lifted his hands in a gesture of mutual surrender, lowered his own weapon and dropped it on the ground. Then, with the gentlest of pushes, he eased me aside. I realized what he was doing the instant Garrett raised his gun again.

“Garrett, no,” I said, but it was too late.

In the space of time it took a cobra to strike, Reyes relieved Garrett of the weapon and had it aimed at his head point-blank, an appreciative smile on his face.

Garrett blinked, realized what happened, then stumbled back with arms raised.

“Reyes, wait,” I said, a harsh warning in my voice.

“Back,” he said to Garrett, gesturing with the gun.

Garrett backed down the dark hall as Reyes pulled me into the threshold between us. He looked down at me, able to see both Garrett and me at the same time.

“I don’t kill people, Dutch,” he said, as though disappointed that I’d worried. “Unless I have to.” He said the last while studying Garrett. Without taking his eyes off him, he took my chin into his hand and placed the softest kiss on my mouth.

Then he was gone. In a heartbeat, he was out a window about the size of a postage stamp, like an animal, a blur of sleek fur and muscle.

Garrett rushed past me to the window. “Son of a bitch,” he said, biting back the anger that consumed him. He turned toward me. “Nice.”