“He’s a friend. By the time he got here, I’d closed up shop. I didn’t even tell him why I’d called. I didn’t want him involved if he didn’t have to be.”
“He had no idea who Hector was?”
“No clue. And he couldn’t have killed him, anyway.”
“Why?”
“The man is seventy-eight.”
My mouth fell open, but I quickly closed it. Gaping mouth wasn’t a good look on anyone. “How was he going to help you clean up the mess?”
That time his mouth fell open. He couldn’t fathom where I was getting my intel. It took him a moment to answer. Finally, he said, “He wasn’t going to help me get rid of the body, if that’s what you mean. He was going to help me”—he lowered his head, embarrassed—“help me call the police and turn myself in.”
A tingling sensation ran up my spine. He was going to take the blame for the death, to sacrifice himself, for the players.
“It wasn’t what you think. He was an ass. I’d planned to tell them that he attacked me. I had no choice but to fight back.”
“But he was beaten up rather severely.”
He reached over and pulled a baseball bat from underneath his desk.
“Pretty. What’s her name?”
He grinned. “Betty.”
I liked her. “Look, Mr. McCoy, I don’t know how he died yet, but if he did die from the injuries sustained here—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “I understand.” He pushed a button and gave me the DVD from the recording. “This is the only copy. If he did die from those injuries, I go with plan A. I’m good with that. I have a feeling a jury will sympathize.”
“I agree. But just in case—”
“I know, I know.” He wrote down the names of all the players that were there that night as well as his lawyer friend.
“No one will see this, Mr. McCoy, unless absolutely necessary.”
“You gonna tell me who your informant is?”
I looked over at Domino. He sat at the bar, a mischievous grin on his face. “Tell him his brother told you.”
Realizing that I was probably walking into a trap, I said, “Your brother?”
Mr. McCoy nodded. “Yep. That would be just like him to come back from the grave to haunt me. And get me convicted of manslaughter in the first.”
I laughed softly. “If it helps, he still has a great sense of style.”
That time, Mr. McCoy barked a boisterous laugh.
I walked out with Domino asking, “Why is he laughing? What’s wrong with my sense of style?”
I would only go talk to the football players as a last resort. The odds of any of them hunting Hector down and finishing him off were slim at best. Why would they? They had their careers to worry about. Hector did threaten them, but without knowing their names, he would’ve been hard-pressed to find any of them.
On the way out, Cook texted me a picture of a woman, square-jawed with short brown hair and splotchy skin. I called my B.F.F.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Unless the injuries sustained in the fight had something to do with Hector’s death, I don’t want to bring this to the table. I do, however, want you to check arrest records just in case there’s something we should know. I’ll give you the names when I get back.”
“You got it, boss.”
“How’s Amber’s case coming? I take it this is the assistant coach?”
“It is. I don’t have anything on her yet, but the coach has a serious social media addiction. I’ll get something on her eventually.”
“I just need enough to intimidate her. To scare the bejesus out of her. We can threaten a lawsuit and all kinds of other fun stuff. Is she Deaf?”
“Nope. She’s hearing. A CODA. Her mother was Deaf.”
A child of a Deaf adult. Oftentimes, CODAs were some of the strongest advocates in the Deaf community. But there were those rare cases where CODAs resented their Deaf and hard-of-hearing parents. They were cynical and apathetic to the extreme. I’d met a couple of them in the past. They had learned to manipulate adults at an early age. That tainted a person’s soul.
“Okay, have we heard anything about Hector’s cause of death?”
“Not yet. They’re keeping it under wraps in the hopes of preventing violence between criminal factions.”
“Damn. I need that info.”
“We could always ask Robert.”
“I hate to get him involved. The lead detective, Joplin, dislikes Uncle Bob almost as much as he dislikes me. And that’s saying a lot.”
“Well, I am Robert’s wife. Surely he could share a little info. It’s called pillow talk.”
“You guys talk about dead people amid coitus as well?”
She laughed and hung up. In my face. That happened to me so often.
I hopped in Misery and settled onto Idris’s lap—such a lovely place to be—but I’d barely turned the key before getting another call.
I picked up with my best professional greeting. “Davidson Investigations. We don’t sleep so you can.”
Oh, I liked that. I searched for a pen and paper to jot that down when a woman’s voice came on the line. “Charley Davidson, please.”
“This is Charley,” I said. Giving up on the jotting things, I craned my neck to make sure I missed the Porsche behind me as I backed out. ’Cause that would be expensive.
“Hello, my name is Kathryn, and I’m a volunteer at Presbyterian Hospital. I’m calling to let you know that your friend was admitted a couple of hours ago.”
I slammed on the brakes. “What? Who? Which friend?” Was she assuming I had only one?
“She wrote your name and number on a piece of paper. I don’t usually do this, but she was insistent.”
“Who?” I asked, dread seizing my lungs. “Who’s there?”
“Oh, of course.” I heard the shuffling of paper. “Okay, according to her license, her name is Nicolette Lemay.”
I gasped. A horn honked behind me, as I’d only pulled out of my parking spot halfway, but I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. “I don’t understand. I just saw her a few hours ago.” Could something we did be the cause of her hospitalization? Did she get into an accident on her way home?
“I’m sorry. That’s all I know. She’s in intensive care, but I believe she can receive visitors.”
“Wait, was it … did she get into a car accident?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Kathryn,” I said, pleading.
After a hesitant sigh, she said, “From what I heard, no. I believe she was attacked. The police are here.”
I couldn’t tear out of that parking lot fast enough. I called Cookie on the way and told her what I knew. Then I hung up amid her protests, just barely catching her insistence upon meeting me there before the call disconnected
I slammed on the brakes under the Emergency Entrance Only sign and shoved Misery into park before bolting out the door and into the emergency room. After a series of unhelpful encounters, I made my way to the intensive care unit. Two patrolmen stood outside one of the glass rooms with a detective—it was Uncle Bob—talking to a doctor inside.
I sprinted to the room, but the patrolmen blocked my entrance.
“Uncle Bob!” I shouted, despite the glares I knew I’d receive.
He turned and came out to me. “Pumpkin, how did you get here so fast?”
“A volunteer called me. What happened? Is she okay?”
“Do you know her?” he asked, incredulous.
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. Wait, why are you here?”
He cursed under his breath, then led me to the side to talk in private. “Sweetheart, she was attacked like the others. She barely survived.”
“The others?” I stood there stunned, the truth staring me in the face yet my mind unable to grasp it. To get a firm hold. I swallowed hard, then asked, “The others? Like the one at the gas station yesterday?”
He nodded, and my hands flew to my mouth.
“Did she … will she…?”
“They think she’ll be fine, but her wounds are extensive. We can only wait.”
I swallowed again and drew in a deep breath. “Uncle Bob, was she burned like the others?”
“Charley,” he began, but I held up a hand.
“I need to know.”
“Yes, pumpkin. She was. Her wounds are identical to the ones on all three bodies. The scratches. The bruises. The strange burn marks.”
My knees weakened, and Uncle Bob helped me to a chair. He grabbed a cup of water just as Cookie ran up to us, panting and half-hysterical.
“How is she?”
“Do you know her, too, hon?” Uncle Bob asked.
She nodded, and he pulled her into his arms.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t know.”
“Is she…?”
“They’re hopeful. They said all we can do is wait.”
“I need to talk to her, Uncle Bob.”
“Pumpkin, she’s unconscious.”
“Uncle Bob,” I said, injecting meaning into my tone. “I need to try.”
He nodded and walked me into the room. I almost passed out when I saw her, and he had to guide me to a chair once again.
It was at that moment I realized Reyes was in the room. Why? Did my distress summon him as it had in the past? But that had been Reyes. Why would Rey’azikeen care if I were distressed?
I stood again, refusing to let him see me so, well, distressed.
Nicolette’s dark hair had been partially shaved where a long gash on her scalp had to be stitched up. Her face was swollen, completely unrecognizable, and covered in scratches. But just like Uncle Bob had said, she had burn marks on her arms and feet.
My breath hitched in my chest as I walked up to her. Put a hand over hers. Closed my eyes.
“It’s okay,” she said from behind me.
I whirled around to see her standing in a corner, and panic set in. “No way.” I walked over to her. “You get back in there. I can save you if you’re still inside your body.”
“Charley, it’s okay. It’s—” She stopped and gave me a once-over. “My God, you’re beautiful.”
“Nicolette,” I began, but an alarm on her monitor blared, and a team of medical staff rushed inside.
After being ushered out, I searched the area for Nicolette and found her looking in from the outside of her room.
I hurried over to her. “Nicolette Lemay, get back in your body this instant.”
“Okay,” she said with a grin, “but you need to know.”
“Right.” I nodded. “Who did this, hon? What happened?”
“It’s not what you think. It’s … he…” She looked down as though confused. As though she was searching her memory. Just as she looked up, just as she opened her mouth to explain, she vanished.
She’d been thrust back into her body when they resuscitated her. Her heartbeat stabilized, but we weren’t allowed to go back in.
“Uncle Bob, I need to get in there,” I said through gritted teeth as a very nice security guard showed us to the door.
He. She’d said he. So, it was a person? But who could do such a thing?
“Okay, I’m going to have to do this old-school.”
Cookie nodded in understanding, but Uncle Bob frowned, uncertain.
“Cover for me.” Before he could ask, I shifted onto the celestial plane and sought out my friend. A friend I’d come to adore.
I found her lying down, but in this state, on this plane, she lay on a bed of yellow grass and small white flowers. She was lovely.
I touched her shoulder and healed her most life-threatening wounds. The swelling in her brain would diminish, and any internal bleeding would stop. I didn’t want to heal her completely, not just yet, but this, I could do.
However, she remained unconscious. I let her sleep. She clearly needed it.
I materialized inside the women’s bathroom and headed out to meet Uncle Bob and Cook. After a quick nod of reassurance, I glanced at the security guard.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
“To the little señoritas’ room. Is that a problem?”
He scowled, annoyed, then led us the rest of the way out.
* * *
She was on the celestial plane. At least a part of her was. Her essence, perhaps? But humans weren’t on that plane. Not entirely. Not until they passed, anyway. Maybe she’d shown up because she had been so close to death.
Or maybe there was more to it than that.
Either way, I needed to take a closer look at this case. It wasn’t Rey’azikeen. I knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But the deaths did coincide with the shattering of the god glass. With the opening of the gates.
When Reyes had broken out of the hell dimension, when he’d shattered the god glass to free himself, he’d also freed everything inside. The poor souls that had been trapped by the sinister priest darted straight through me, but I’d never felt or seen the priest, the evil man who’d put them all there in the first place.
A suspicion that had been simmering in the back of my mind reappeared. Being in a hell dimension for over six hundred years had to wreak havoc on one’s mental state, and his hadn’t been exactly stable to begin with. But if my suspicions were right, he hadn’t gone to hell, the hell of this dimension, as I’d suspected.
If my suspicions were right, he was still on this plane.
But his presence on this plane didn’t explain why those people had died in such a horrible way or why Nicolette was so savagely attacked.
I hurried back to the office to pore over the files for the hundredth time. I was missing something. I had to be. The connection. There had to be a connection, and I was missing it.
I grabbed the files off Cookie’s desk, put on a pot of the good stuff, double the good stuff, then sat at my own desk to study. To dissect. To search for any commonalities between the victims. I combed through their files, but all I got was the usual, so I hit their social media sites.
Out of the three deaths, one man and two women, including the woman found yesterday morning in the convenience store restroom, only one had her social profiles set to private. Cookie had a way of bypassing those kinds of nuisances. I did not.
The other two victims, a woman named Indigo Russell, who was found in her home three days ago, and a man named Don Koske, who was found in his car the day after, seemed the polar opposites of each other. Taking into account the latest victims, Patricia Yeager and Nicolette, made the differences even more glaring.
An accountant, a recording artist, a court clerk, and a nurse.
Hopefully, a search of their social media accounts would give me a broader picture of their lives and habits. Something had to connect them. But three and two-thirds cups later, I’d found nothing.
“Think about it,” Cookie said. She’d joined in the search. I now officially had a search party. She couldn’t look at the pictures of the victims’ bodies, but she was fantastic at poring over pictures on social media outlets.
“I’m thinking,” I assured her. “It’s all I’ve been doing for hours.”
“Nicolette is a very unusual girl. She has a gift. A supernatural gift. Maybe she somehow lured the entity to her. Like, maybe—”
She stopped talking when I jolted upright and gawked at her, lids wide, mouth slightly open.
“You had an epiphany,” she said, letting a grin cut across her pretty face.
“No, Cook. You did.”
I grabbed my mouse and went back to Indigo Russell’s Tumblr account. Something had caught my eye, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
“Look,” I said, pointing.
Indigo had posted a picture about a year earlier. The image depicted a dark, leafless forest, stark and eerie, and hiding behind a tree lurked a demon with bright red eyes and sharp claws.
“It’s not just the picture,” I said, pointing to the description. “It’s what she says about it.”
“Every night,�
�� Cookie read aloud. “This is what waits for me every night since the incident.” She looked back at me, empathy evident in the lines on her face. “Wait, what incident?”
I had gone back to staring at a picture of Indigo taken by a friend of hers on a camping trip. Ensconced in a sleeping bag, Indigo was barely awake when the culprit stole into her tent and snapped the shot. Her hair had been a mess, her face soft with the lingering remnants of sleep.
“Cookie, I’ve seen her. Look at the date of that picture.” I sat back in thought. “Remember when we first met Quentin?”
“Of course, poor baby. He’d been possessed by a demon because he could see into the supernatural realm. Several demons had possessed people sensitive to their world. Because only those people could see you, and they were after you. They wanted to kill you.”
“Yes,” I said, pointing to Indigo. “Cook, she was one of them. I remember her that night.”
“You mean during the fight in front of our apartment building?”
“The demons were using humans as both bloodhounds and shields so they could try to kill me. To kill Beep. My light wouldn’t hurt them as long as they were inside a human. We had to literally pull them out before we could kill them.”
I stopped and studied Indigo’s features, her large eyes and long, dark hair, and I remembered her from that night. Sitting off to the side during the battle. Rocking back and forth, trying so desperately to shake off the demon inside her.
“She was one of them, Cook. She fought the demon with everything she had, but it still managed to control her to some degree. After the fight, after we killed all the demons, she ran off. I never found out her name or where she was from. Nothing. And she was right here in Albuquerque the entire time.”
“And now she’s gone,” Cookie added. “Despite surviving that nightmarish ordeal, she’s gone.”
“Exactly. What if you’re right? What if it works the other way? What if the same people who can see into the supernatural realm can be seen by the supernatural realm? What if they are targets because of it?”
“It would explain why both Indigo and Nicolette were attacked by a supernatural entity.”
“And it could explain the others. We have no way of knowing. Unless…”
I thought back to the case of Joyce Blomme and the haunted house. I had been curious as to why Joyce, the departed grandmother and great-grandmother of the current occupants, could only see two of the three people in the house that night.
The Trouble With Twelfth Grave Page 15