First Grave on the Right

by Darynda Jones

I glanced down at my clothes one more time. Loose pants, long sleeves, high collar. Covered neck to kneecaps. I wondered if looking masculine in a maximum-security prison, however, would actually be of benefit. Considering.

  Thirty minutes and two elderly Italian women later—they had crossed through me, arguing all the way, as I sat in the waiting room—I was led to the office of Deputy Warden Neil Gossett. It was small but bright, with dark office furniture and mountains of paperwork nesting on every available surface. Neil had been a more-than-decent football player in high school, and he’d kept the bulk of his youth, though not in exactly the same proportions. He looked good, despite the tragic emergence of male-pattern baldness.

  He stood and circled his desk. “Charlotte Davidson,” he said, more than a little surprised.

  His height had me looking up as I took his hand. “Neil. You look great,” I said, wondering if it was okay to say such things to persons with whom you weren’t exactly friends.

  “You look…” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

  I wondered if I should be insulted. It couldn’t have been the bruises. I’d worked really hard on covering them. Was it my hair? It was probably my hair.

  “You look spectacular,” he said at last.

  Oh. That would do nicely. “Thank you.”

  “Please.” He gestured toward a chair with a sweep of his hand and took his own seat behind the desk. “I have to admit,” he admitted, “I’m a little surprised to see you.”

  A coy grin spread across my face as I angled for “light and flirty.” “Well, I had some questions about one of your inmates, and I figured I’d just start at the top and work my way down.” The sexual innuendo in that statement was not lost on me.

  He almost blushed. “I’m not exactly the top, but I’m glad you think so highly of me.”

  I chuckled appropriately and brought out my notebook.

  “Luann tells me you’re a private investigator now.”

  Luann, meaning his secretary. “Yes, I am. I’m currently working with APD on a DOA resulting in an FTA.” I purposely threw around a few acronyms to make myself sound savvy.

  He arched his brows. At least he seemed impressed. That would help in the long run. “And this is about that case?”

  “It’s all related,” I said, lying my ass off. “I’m actually here about a man who was convicted of murder about ten years ago. Can you tell me anything about a—” I looked down at my notepad, feigning tedium. “—a Reyes Farrow? I was hoping to question him regarding a case, you know, about this case thing I’m working on with…”

  I lost my train of thought when Neil paled before my eyes. He picked up his phone and stabbed a button. “Luann, can you come in here?”

  Damn, was I in trouble already? Was he kicking me out? I just got here. I knew I should have thrown around more acronyms, but I just couldn’t think of any. The NAACP! Why didn’t I think of the NAACP? That scares the crap out of everyone.

  “Yes, sir?” Luann asked as she opened the door.

  “Can you get me the file on Reyes Farrow?”

  Phew.

  But Luann hesitated. “Sir?”

  “It’s okay, Luann. Just get me Farrow’s file.”

  She glanced at me, then back at him. “Immediately, sir.”

  She was good. Cookie never said, Immediately, ma’am. We’d have to talk. And Luann’s reaction was just as interesting as Neil’s. She had a very feminine demeanor. Very bubble baths and wine beneath her business suit. But in a heartbeat, she had become protective. Almost angry. Though her anger didn’t seem directed at me.

  “Is this about the incident?” Neil asked. “I didn’t think Farrow had any relatives.”

  “The incident?” I asked as Luann brought in the file and handed it to him. She left without giving me a second glance. Had something happened to Reyes? Maybe he really was dead. Maybe that’s why he suddenly started showing up out of the blue.

  Neil flipped open the file and studied it. “Right. This shows no living relatives. Who hired you?” He locked his gaze with mine, and the rebel in me took over.

  “That information is privileged, Neil. I would hate to have to bring the DA into this.”

  “The DA? He’s already aware of the situation, I assure you.”

  Oops. Well, that didn’t help. Oh, for heaven’s sake. I pulled in a deep breath. “Look, Neil, this is more of a personal quest, okay. I am working on a case, but it’s not related. I just…” I just what? Want to rape your prisoner? Want to see if he can become incorporeal? “I just want to talk to him.”

  My lashes lowered with my admission. I probably looked like an idiot. One of those prison groupies who wrote love letters to inmates and got hitched for the conjugal visits.

  “So, you don’t know?” he asked. A hint of relief laced his voice. But something else, too. Regret maybe?

  “Apparently not.” He was going to say it. Reyes was dead. Died, what, a month ago? I waited with bated breath for the news.

  “Farrow’s in a coma. Has been for almost a month.”

  It took me a few moments to pick my jaw up off the floor and find my voice again. When I did, I asked, “A coma? What? Why? What happened?”

  Neil rose from his desk and handed me the file. “How about some coffee?”

  As if it were encrusted with precious jewels, I took the thick folder from him, then said absently, “I’d kill for some.” Oops. “No, I wouldn’t,” I assured him, glancing around the maximum-security prison. “I’ve never killed anyone. Except that one guy, but he had it coming.”

  My feeble attempt at humor seemed to relax Neil. An echo of a smile thinned his mouth. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  I bit my lower lip. “That’s probably bad, huh?”

  “Not in the least.”

  He left me wondering about his statement and went for coffee as I examined Reyes’s file, also known as the Holy Grail.

  Chapter Twelve

  Reyes Farrow.

  Because perfection is a dirty job,

  but someone has to do it.

  —CHARLOTTE JEAN DAVIDSON

  “You knew him?” Neil asked me over an hour later. I’d been reading. We’d been chatting. Garrett called. I ignored.

  And I learned. Approximately one month earlier, a fight broke out in the yard, and the prison immediately went into lockdown. Everyone was supposed to get on the ground. When one of the inmates, a large childlike man Reyes had befriended, got confused and didn’t go down, a guard in one of the towers prepared to fire a warning shot. Reyes saw this and tackled his friend to get him down, thinking the guard was going to shoot him. Instead of burrowing harmlessly in the dirt as intended, the bullet found Reyes’s skull and pierced his frontal lobe. He’d been in a coma since.

  I glanced up and refocused on Neil’s question. “Just from that one incident when I was in high school,” I said. I’d told him about the night I first saw Reyes, the physical abuse he’d suffered at the hands of the man he supposedly killed. Neil didn’t seem surprised. I closed the file and looked into his gray eyes. “Just between us,” I said, leaning forward to make the statement more intimate, “between old friends,” I elaborated, “what did you know about him? What did you think of him?” I tapped the file with my fingertips. “What’s not here?”

  Neil sat back in his chair, adjusted his collar, and dragged in a long, deep breath. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  That was promising. “Bet I would,” I said with a wink.

  He stared at me a good minute before he spoke. And when he did speak, it was with a reluctance I understood all too well. He truly doubted I would believe him. If he only knew …

  “Something strange happened when Farrow first got here, about a week after he’d been released into gen-pop,” he said, glancing down to study the clasp on his watch. “South Side sent three of their soldiers to kill him. Why, I don’t know, but when South Side attacks, people die. Period.”

  My chest tightened and
I ground my teeth together, trying hard not to react, not to show what the thought of Reyes in that position did to me.

  “It ended almost the minute it began,” he continued, his face growing dark as he reconstructed his memories, pieced together what he knew. “I was just a guard then, fresh out of training, positive I was hot shit. I almost pissed my pants when I saw those men heading toward Farrow, not that I knew who he was at the time. I called for backup, but before I even finished the request, three South Side members lay on the ground in pools of their own blood with this twenty-year-old kid … I don’t know … crouched on a table, ready to spring at anyone else who came near him, eyeing the inmates with absolutely no emotion, no fear whatsoever.”

  I sat stone still, barely breathing as I watched the events unfold in my mind.

  Neil shook his head and looked up at me, his expression a mixture of relief and reverence. “He wasn’t any more winded than I am now. I just barely caught a glimpse of what happened, but…”

  “But?” I nudged, barely able to contain my curiosity.

  “But … he didn’t move like a normal man moves, Charley. He was a blur, so fast it was impossible for my eyes to follow him. Then he was crouched on the table like an animal, powerful, dangerous.” Neil shook his head again, as if still not believing his own eyes. “That’s how he got his name.”

  “His name?” I asked, even more intrigued.

  “No one ever touched him again,” he continued. “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s a legend to these men, almost godlike.”

  I scooted closer to his desk, almost drooling. “You mentioned a name?”

  “Right,” he said, snapping to attention. “They call him El Aliento del Diablo.”

  “The devil’s breath,” I echoed in English.

  “Told you it’d be hard to believe,” he said with a heavy sigh, clearly expecting me to balk at his story.

  “Neil, I don’t doubt a single word you’ve said.” When his expression turned to one of surprise, I added, “I saw something similar the night I met him as well. The way he moved. The way he walked.”

  “Exactly,” Neil said, pointing at me repeatedly. “Not quite … not quite…”

  “… human,” I finished for him.

  He glanced at the file in my hands. “I guess he’s human enough, though.”

  I couldn’t help but hug the file to me, to hold on to every nuance that was Reyes Alexander Farrow. “I guess.” He was such an enigma, surreal and mystical.

  “You know, I never really liked you in high school,” Neil said, pulling me back to the present.

  Um, okay. Least he was being honest. “I know,” I said apologetically. “I didn’t really like you either.”

  “You didn’t?” He seemed shocked.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I used to think you were such a nutcase.”

  “And I thought you were an arrogant bastard.”

  “I was an arrogant bastard.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, suppressing a sad giggle.

  “But you weren’t a nutcase, were you?”

  I shook my head, grateful for the validation.

  “I can let you see him, if you’d like.”

  My heart skipped a beat and seemed to rise physically in my chest.

  “But I have to tell you, Charley, he won’t pull through. He’s brain-dead.”

  Just as quickly, it plummeted to my toes and the floor seemed to slip out from under me. Brain-dead? How could that be?

  “He has been since it happened,” he added. He stood and walked around the desk to put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the state plans to terminate care in three days.”

  “You mean pull the plug?” I asked. A wave of panic washed over me. I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly parched and raw.

  Neil’s lips thinned in regret. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. With no relatives to contest it—”

  “But what about his sister?”

  “Sister? Farrow has no living relatives. And according to his file, he’s never had any siblings.”

  “No, that’s not right,” I said, reopening the file and tearing through the pages. “He had a sister that night.”

  “You saw her?” Neil’s voice was filled with hope. He didn’t want Reyes to die any more than I did.

  Knowing there would be nothing about his sister in the file, I stopped and closed it again. “No,” I said, trying not to let disappointment swallow me whole. “The landlady told me.”

  With a disappointed sigh, Neil collapsed into the chair beside me. “She must have been mistaken.”

  * * *

  As I drove to the Guardian Long-Term Care Facility in Santa Fe, where they were keeping Reyes, my head swam in a sea of information, trying to fit each piece into neat little folders, to organize what I’d learned. Reyes had continued his education, and one year after his conviction, he’d received a degree in criminology. Then, surprisingly, he’d switched to computers. He had a master’s in computer information systems. He’d bettered himself. He would have been a productive, taxpaying member of society when he got out.

  Yet now they were going to kill him. Neil had explained that the only way to stop the state would be to get an injunction, but I’d have to have a damned good reason. If I could just find his sister …

  As I picked up my phone to call Cookie, it rang with her personal ringtone, Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

  I flipped it open, and Cookie asked, “Well?”

  “He’s in a coma.”

  “No stinkin’ way.”

  “Stinkin’ way. And they’re going to take him off life support in three days, Cook. What am I going to do?” The emotions I’d held at bay in Neil’s office threatened to break free. I fought hard to tamp them down with the deep-breathing techniques I’d learned on my Yoga Boogie DVD.

  “What can we do? Did Mr. Gossett tell you?”

  “I need to find Reyes’s sister. She’s really the only one who can stop this. Not that I’m giving up. I’ll blackmail Uncle Bob. Maybe he can do something.” I was not going to lose Reyes without a fight. Finding him after all these years … there had to be a reason.

  “Blackmail is good,” she said.

  The world turned green as I pulled my car into a parking lot that resembled an English garden. Before hanging up, I gave Cookie yet another job. According to the article I’d read the night before, Reyes had spent three months at Yucca High. Maybe his sister did, too. I needed those transcripts.

  Cookie went to work on the transcripts as I headed inside the gorgeous health-care facility. This was certainly better than the prison infirmary. I figured they couldn’t have cared for a comatose patient in prison, so they moved him here. Neil had called ahead and told the corrections officer watching Reyes that I would be paying him a visit.

  When I walked down the hall to the nurses’ station, the officer stood in an alcove off the main hallway, flirting with an RN. I couldn’t blame him. Watching a comatose prisoner could hardly be exciting. And flirting was fun.

  He straightened when I approached, and the RN hastened off to see to her duties. “Ma’am,” he said, tipping an invisible hat. “You must be Ms. Davidson.”

  “I am. I guess Mr. Gossett got ahold of you.”

  “He did, indeed. Our boy’s in there,” he said, gesturing to a sliding-glass door across the hall with a pale blue curtain covering the opening.

  A little surprised the officer didn’t ask for an ID, I headed toward the door. Well, most of me headed for the door. My boots were cemented to the floor. What would I find when I went in? Would he look the same? Would he have changed much in the ten years since the mug shot had been taken? In the twelve years since I’d seen him? Would he have the look of prison about him? The hardness that seemed to saturate people who’d done such a substantial amount of time behind bars?

  The officer seemed to recognize my distress. “
It’s not bad,” he said, sympathy softening his voice. “He has a breathing tube. That’s probably the worst of it.”

  “Do you know him personally?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I asked for this duty. Farrow saved my life once during a prison riot. I wouldn’t be standing here today if not for him. Felt like the least I could do, you know?”

  My throat tightened and I wanted to ask him more, but something was suddenly pulling me toward Reyes’s room, like the gravity in that one spot had just increased exponentially. I finally took a step, and the officer tipped his invisible hat again and strolled away toward the coffee machine.

  When I crossed the threshold, I scanned the area, just in case he was in the room incorporeally. I was a little disappointed when he wasn’t. He did incorporeal well.

  Then I glanced at the bed. He lay there, Reyes Farrow, solid and real, his dark hair and skin a bronze shadow against the white sheets. Gravity took hold again; only this time, it was centered on him as I stepped closer, walked to the edge of the bed, and saw utter perfection for the second time in my life.

  A breathing tube had been inserted into his trachea, and he had a bandage wrapped around his head. His mussed hair, thick and dark, swept over the bandage and brushed his brow. Three days’ worth of stubble framed his strong jaw, and his lashes, long and thick, cast shadows across his cheeks. And then my gaze landed on his mouth, sensual and sculpted and impossible to forget.

  The ventilation machine made the only sound in the room. No beeps of a heart monitor, though one had been hooked up, its lines and numbers in a constant state of flux. I stepped closer, brushed a hip against his arm that lay beside him. The sleeves of the pale blue hospital gown were short and afforded a generous view of sinewy muscles, hard and lean even in slumber. He had a tattoo that flowed along his tanned biceps, lending to its beauty and fluidity. A tribal work of art with graceful lines and sensual curves, lines and curves that had meaning. I’d seen them before. They were ancient, as old as time. And important. But why?

  My heart and mind were having difficulty grasping the fact that it was truly Reyes Farrow in the bed, lying there, vulnerable and powerful at once. My knees had liquefied, and I wondered how long I’d be able to stand in his presence without falling. After all this time, he seemed even more surreal than in my dreams. More beautiful than in my fantasies.