The Curse of Tenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  The more people I talked to, the more it appeared to be random. Could Emery really have been viciously attacked for no reason?

  I gave up on interviewing her colleagues and went in search of the supposed scene of the crime. While Emery lived at the foot of the Sandias, her car had been found miles from there off Highway 313 between Albuquerque and Bernalillo, in a deserted field.

  The land was privately owned, but the owners had been on a cruise when Emery was killed. Were still on a cruise, hitting beaches up and down the coast of South America. Tons of Facebook updates confirmed it.

  So, what looked even worse for Lyle Fiske, the man I was fighting tooth and nail to prove innocent, was that he’d found her car in the rural area, even though he’d explained that she’d had a tracking app installed on her phone.

  Cookie called while I was stuck on I-25. Traffic crept forward, and I realized I could be there awhile. Thank God for Cheez-Its, though only He knew how long they’d been in the back of Misery.

  “Hey, Cook,” I said through half a mouth of crackers.

  “Hey back. Are you feeling better?”

  “You mean since I almost kissed a guy to death? Peachy.”

  “I’m sorry, hon.”

  “I really need to learn to control my shit, but how can I control it if I’m not really even sure what my shit is capable of? It was one thing to be a god from my very own dimension, but it’s like those rules don’t apply here. Here, I’m the grim reaper. Why would anybody in their right mind give someone like me this kind of power?”

  She laughed, but I got the feeling she agreed with me.

  “So, what’s up, chicken butt?”

  “You aren’t going to like it,” she said.

  “Do I ever?”

  “A reporter from KOAT wants to do a story on you.”

  “Like, a real one?”

  “It could be KRQE. I’m so bad with letters.”

  “But he’s legit?”

  “Then again, what’s that other one? No, wait, that’s KOB. Only three letters. I’m pretty sure there were four.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “And there’s always KASA.”

  “Cook,” I said, launching an intervention. “Come back to me. Is this guy a real reporter?”

  “Apparently. He’s left three messages.”

  “Sounds legit to me. So, he wants an interview, huh? Is it because of my reaper status?”

  “No.”

  “Is it because I’m a god from another dimension?”

  “No.”

  “Is it because I solve so many cases for APD, they want to give me an award and a year’s supply of oven cleaner?”

  “No. It’s because of the video.”

  I heard the “told you so” dripping from her voice. Or that could’ve been my guilty conscience projecting for dismissing the video so carelessly. “That old thing? I was, like, twenty-two.”

  “I told him you weren’t available for comment.”

  “Oh, hell, yeah. We’re sounding more and more important all the time, Cook. More celebrity-like. Next thing you know, we’ll get special seating at the Macaroni Grill.”

  “You think?” she asked, intrigued. “I love the Macaroni Grill.”

  I snorted. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Oh, and that bakery in the creepy picture? It was owned in the thirties by a Mae Dyson. Mae L. Dyson, to be exact. Ring any bells?”

  “Not even a Tinker.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep digging.”

  “Thanks. And I’m at the scene of a violent crime.”

  “Where? What happened?”

  “No, no. It’s nothing. I just came to check out the scene where they found Emery’s car.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She breathed a sigh of relief.

  The area was starkly beautiful with gnarled trees and tall grasses. I saw the crime scene tape and headed that way, careening over bumps and through ravines. Thank goodness Misery was made for that shit. “It’s beautiful out here.”

  “Oh, I know. My dad used to go hunting in that area before Albuquerque expanded as much as it did. Hey, what did you find out about Ms. Adams?”

  “As squeaky as my dishes after Reyes washes them.”

  “I figured. I can’t find anything. She’s never filed a police report. Never filed a grievance at work. Never filed a report of any kind while at college. Had perfect attendance and perfect grades. The word Stepford comes to mind.”

  “And yet,” I said, “according to her grandfather, her dad was not the best. I don’t doubt that he loved her, but he has some serious issues. And a horrendous head for business. Cost his father a lot of money and him his marriage.”

  And yet when I’d met him, he’d seemed so normal. But he was clearly a man continuously living beyond his means. Or was there something more? A bad business investment was one thing, but to do the same thing over and over for years—decades, even—would suggest a deeper problem. Though I had no idea what that might be.

  “Having an irresponsible parent could explain Emery’s strong need to project a perfect image.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking. She’s overcorrecting.”

  “I did that once,” Cookie said. “You know that huge dent on the side of Olive Garden?”

  “No,” I said, aghast.

  “Yep.”

  “It’s like I don’t know you at all.”

  “Oh, I checked out the Harbor House,” she continued, unfazed. “Charley, she’s right. Heather is right. Nine residents have died there over the last seven years, but not all of them died on the grounds, and they all seemed to die of completely different causes. It doesn’t seem malicious, and yet the sheer numbers would suggest otherwise.”

  “I agree. Keep digging. I’ll head back to town in about twenty.”

  “Will do. Be careful.”

  “Careful’s my middle name.”

  I stepped out of Misery and onto dry pastureland. Crooked trees surrounded me, bare and hauntingly beautiful against the landscape. Many vehicles had been in the area recently. The ground was covered in tracks, so it must’ve been raining the night Emery’s car was found.

  I walked the area, not sure what I was looking for, until I’d crested a ravine about a hundred yards away and saw it. More tracks, but these were separate from the others. The vehicle had been stuck. Deep ruts had dried. The vehicle had been sitting in the rain awhile before the driver tried to rock it out. It looked like the tires spun for quite some time before catching.

  It could’ve been guys out having fun, four-wheeling their way across the area, but there were better places to go four-wheeling.

  Could this have been the vehicle that took Emery’s body? If so, why would they kill her, leave her blood-soaked car to be found by anyone, and take off with her body? She had to have been killed somewhere else, her body dumped in one place and her car dumped in another.

  Just in case, I texted Parker and told him to check out the tracks if they hadn’t already.

  * * *

  On my way back to town, I received a call from another of Emery’s coworkers. From all accounts, he was her closest friend. They went to lunch often, and I’d wondered how Lyle Fiske handled their close relationship. Until I heard him on the phone.

  “You’re gay,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “As a blue jay on a sunny day.” I imagined he normally delivered that line with a great deal of enthusiasm and gusto. But today it lacked energy.

  “And you’re a poet,” I said sadly. Diageo’s sexual orientation would certainly explain why Lyle didn’t have a problem with their relationship.

  “I try.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve heard from a couple of people now that Emery had been upset for about two weeks before her … disappearance.” I almost said death, but I couldn’t imagine someone like Diageo would accept such a sentence without physical proof.

  “She was, but she wouldn’t tell me why. I do know it involved her father.”

&nbs
p; “You’re certain?”

  “Ninety percent of the time she was upset, which wasn’t often, it involved her father. But this was different. She wasn’t mad at him. Or anyone, for that matter. She was hurt. Hurt like I’d never seen her.”

  “Hurt? Not worried? Or scared?”

  “Not that I could tell. The girl told me everything, but not this time. She tried to hide it, but she was upset.”

  “And you don’t have a guess as to why?”

  “Not without making shit up.”

  “I appreciate the honesty. You have my number. Call me if you remember anything else?”

  “Of course. I want this guy caught as much as anyone. Probably more so.”

  “You mean Lyle? Emery’s boyfriend?”

  He laughed softly. “Lyle Fiske doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. Trust me. I’ve studied it at great length. From afar, naturally. I know good, and I know bad, and that boy is one hundred percent good.”

  “I’m glad you think so, too.”

  “And I thought this one was the one.”

  “The one? Lyle and you?”

  “Oh, no, honey, Lyle and Emery. She liked him. She really, really liked him. For a while, I even thought she was pregnant.”

  My pulse jumped in reaction. “Why?”

  “She’d almost passed out during lunch one day. I had to grab her bag and help her to her car where she promised to sit and wait for Lyle to come get her. But I saw iron supplements in her purse. You know, like pregnant women take. At least I think they do.”

  “It depends,” I told him, mulling over that last bit. As far as I knew, she wasn’t pregnant when she died. “Thank you so much, Diageo.”

  “No problem, sweets. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”

  * * *

  I walked into ADA Nick Parker’s office determined to find out two things from him: Why did he withhold pertinent information about Lyle Fiske’s conviction, and what exactly was his stake in all this?

  Getting the answer to the first should be fairly easy. I could guess, actually. He left that out so I wouldn’t see it and would be more likely to take the case. It was the second one I was most interested in.

  “Excuse me,” his receptionist said as I stormed past her and into his office. I’d wanted to do that since the first time I saw it in a movie.

  “I want answers,” I said to him. Only it wasn’t him. It was an elderly gentleman in a sharp suit with a woman on her knees in front of him. “Oh, gosh, I am so sorry.”

  I started to back out. The woman raised her head. She was holding a measuring tape and had pins sticking out of her mouth. He was being fitted for said sharp suit.

  “It’s lovely,” I said to him before closing the door and trying the next office.

  “You’ll have to set up an appointment,” the receptionist said, hurrying behind me.

  I shoved open the next door. Broom closet.

  “I’m calling Security,” she said just as I reached the right door. I totally needed to stop and read a sign here and there.

  I shoved open his door. It banged against a bookcase, and I tried not to cringe. I straightened my shoulders and hiked my chin up a notch. “I want answers,” I said for the third and hopefully last time. He was looking out the window of a much smaller office than I’d expected.

  Without even turning to see who’d barged in, he held up an index finger to put me on hold.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Parker,” the receptionist said. Just like in the movies.

  He held up a finger to her as well.

  I snorted. “Looks like we both got the finger.”

  She glared.

  “Sorry. I saw it in a movie once and wanted to do it.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time someone said that to me. I swear there is something in the water here.” She turned and left us alone, closing the door behind her.

  “Davidson,” he said, turning to me at last.

  “Parker.”

  “How’s it going with the case?”

  “Peachy keen, Parker. Thanks so much for asking.”

  He motioned for me to sit down. I ignored him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Fiske’s priors?”

  “Prior,” he said, raising a brow. “Singular. Please sit down.”

  I walked around a black leather chair and sat. He joined me. Not on my chair, but he sat in his.

  Parker could have been good looking if he didn’t have such a rigid stick up his ass. He was so uptight, it actually made others around him uncomfortable. A trait like that probably came in handy during a trial.

  “Why did you leave it out of the folder you gave me?”

  “You act like I did that on purpose.”

  I did my best deadpan in which I channeled a sarcastic Christopher Walken.

  “I didn’t think you’d take the case if you knew about that.”

  “No shit.”

  “But I can explain.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  He leaned forward and started shuffling and straightening papers, unconsciously forming a barrier between us. The guilt I’d felt before came cascading down around him.

  “He was one of those people everyone loved, you know? The girls chased him nonstop. The guys couldn’t help but like him. He was that rare combination of nice guy and killer looks that everyone wanted to be around. To absorb.”

  I could see that. The guy was probably a doll when he wasn’t being accused of murder. Especially one he didn’t commit.

  “He had offers from schools all over the country. Could have gone to graduate school anywhere. He had his whole life ahead of him.”

  “So did that kid, I suspect.”

  He nodded, the guilt like fire roiling out of him. “It was rush week, and a hazing went bad. The kid went into anaphylactic shock. El did everything to save him—”

  “El?”

  “Lyle. It’s what we called him. Anyway, the kid died. El took the fall. Did three years for negligent homicide.” He shifted in his chair, the guilt eating him alive. “It was my idea, but because he was the president, he took the fall. He took the fall for all of us.”

  “A kid died during a hazing at a fraternity of which he was the president. He was ultimately responsible.”

  “Yeah,” he said, pasting on a sour smile. “That’s what he said. But he wasn’t responsible. I was.”

  “Directly?”

  “Yes.” He coughed into a fist and then left it pressed to his mouth as the memory of what must have been a horrible night overcame him. “We would kidnap our pledges, put sacks over their heads, put them in a van, take them to the seedier side of Central, and kick them out. They were all in their underwear at the time, of course. But Lyle said it would be too dangerous to leave them there like that, so we did doughnuts awhile and then drove onto the middle of campus to drop them off there.”

  “Sounds like standard operating procedure.”

  “It would have been if I’d just done my fucking job. I was supposed to check the medical records of the pledges, but I’d had a big exam that day and didn’t get around to it.”

  “This can’t be good.”

  “One of the pledges was allergic to peanuts, and the bags we used were from a peanut plant.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “I didn’t know someone could have an allergic reaction like that. I mean, I thought you had to actually ingest whatever you were allergic to.”

  “That’s a hard way to find out.”

  “They told us later his throat swelled shut so fast, he couldn’t even call out for help.” He turned to look out the window. “I killed him, but because Lyle was the president and the media was all over the DA’s ass, he was convicted of negligent homicide.”

  And here I thought the guy had no conscience.

  “Okay, you feel guilty. I can certainly see why, but what does that have to do with this case?”

  He gave me a fierce look, one of utter determination with jaw clenched
and lids narrowed, and said, “He will not go down for something else he didn’t do, Davidson. That ain’t happening.”

  “The evidence is pretty compelling.” Then again, the evidence is always compelling. That’s why people came to me. I was their last hope. Their last-ditch effort. Not that I was going to tell Parker that.

  He leaned forward. “Trust me, you do not want this to go to trial. Either you un-compel the fuck out of the evidence, or I’ll cop to the murder myself.”

  I sat back in my chair, almost wishing he would cop to it. It would ease the guilt he felt for the guy. Allow him to move forward with his own life.

  “What if I can’t?”

  He slammed a hand on his desk. “He didn’t do it, Davidson, and you damned well know it. You have a sixth sense about these things.”

  “I know he didn’t do it, but how did you know? The evidence says otherwise.”

  “I know. I’m the one sifting through it to make sure we have enough to prosecute, remember?”

  “Ah yes. The smoke and mirrors.”

  “Pretty much. So, the case?”

  I shook my head. “No. Let’s get back to me. What exactly do you have on me? I’m not fond of being blackmailed.”

  “Extorted, actually. What I’m doing is extortion.”

  “Either way, what is it?”

  He narrowed his eyes, as though trying to decide if he should trust me or not, then he reached over and grabbed an evidence bag with a bloody knife in it. “This was found in a wall at a cold case crime scene a few weeks ago. It was used to murder a woman in the South Valley.”

  “Okay,” I said, growing a tad wary.

  “It has your fingerprints on it.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “I have never seen that knife before.”

  “Yeah?” He stood and leaned forward. “Not even when you killed Selena Ramos?”

  “What?” I asked, my mouth falling open. “I have no idea who you’re talking about. I’ve never—”

  “Just kidding,” he said, laughing harshly as he fell back in his chair.

  I gaped at him, speechless. If I hadn’t been so shocked, I would’ve been able to tell he was lying.

  “This old guy in Corrales slaughtered his neighbor’s pig. Said he was hungry. He’s being charged with theft and cruelty to animals.”