Fifth Grave Past the Light

  Uncle Bob looked around, rolled his eyes, then asked, “You mean the lawyer you got for your client is dead?”

  “He’s departed, yes. And you’ve met him.”

  I reached out and shook Sussman’s hand. He, along with his two partners, had been murdered a few months back. I’d worked on the case with Uncle Bob.

  “It’s Patrick Sussman from that case a while back. The one with the three lawyers?”

  “Right, right,” he said, becoming more nervous by the second.

  “Hey, Charley,” Sussman said. Like the newest dead guy in my life, Sussman wore round-rimmed glasses, but unlike Duff, Sussman wore a suit and tie, mussed as they both were. The only thing missing was a centuries-old briefcase.

  “How’s the wife and kids?” I asked him. He’d stayed behind for them despite my encouragement to cross.

  “They’re better. I think they’ll be fine.”

  “I’m glad. Shall we do this?”

  He beckoned me forward. “Absolutely.”

  Uncle Bob leaned into me. “You’re not going to talk to him in there, are you?”

  “Since I’d like to avoid a stint in a padded room, no.”

  Sussman chuckled and pushed his glasses up his nose with an index finger. “I think you’re on the right track with this one, Charley. Your plan is solid. I can’t imagine they won’t take it, but if they look like they are going to back out, call that other lawyer I told you about immediately. Your attorney - client privilege will get you only so far. They could have you in handcuffs in minutes.”

  “Got it. Thanks. Oh, and Ubie, can you send a patrol car to Gemma’s house and her office? I really need to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Why?” he asked in alarm. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain inside,” I said as we walked into a room full of suits. It was a small room. Everyone stood when we entered, and Uncle Bob introduced me to the ADA and the fire marshal. I’d met the DA, a fashion-centric man who I thought was entirely too young for such a stressful position. Why nobody asked me these things beforehand, I never knew.

  The ADA was actually a little older than the hotshot DA, but not much. Our legal institution was being run by kids. That was scary. Oh, well – half the staff that sent the first men to the moon were kids.

  The captain eyed me in that austere and slightly curious way of his. I had no idea why he made me so uncomfortable, but he did. He could have me sacked from the department. That could be one reason, but I didn’t rely on my consultant position to pay the bills. However, I did rely on it to keep me knee-deep in mocha lattes. That explained it. If I lost this gig, no more mocha lattes at whim. A cold shiver ran down my spine. I had to make this good. Both Kim’s and my mocha lattes’ futures were at stake.

  The captain spoke first. “Davidson, is there something you’d like to share?”

  I could have shared the reason I didn’t get to the station until ten, but I figured that would fall solidly under the label of oversharing. So I just nodded as we sat at a long wood veneer table.

  “I want to make sure my client is given every opportunity for a reduced sentence and to make restitution for what she’s done.”

  That knocked the wind out of everyone. Did they think I was kidding when I said I knew who did it?

  “So, you really know who the arsonist is?” the ADA asked.

  “I know exactly who it is, though I just recently found out.”

  With Sussman whispering what to say in my ear, I repeated his instructions word for word. “I want immunity from prosecution and I want my client to get a reduced sentence in a private psychiatric ward which she will pay for.”

  The men balked. A couple scoffed out loud.

  “Ms. Davidson,” the DA said, “surely you realize you’re tap dancing on some very thin ice. We could charge you with —”

  “Now, hold on there, Michael,” Uncle Bob said. “I told you how this was going to play out. You promised to listen to everything she has to say and charge her with absolutely nothing.”

  The DA glared at him. “I know that and you know that, but until about fifteen seconds ago, she did not.”

  “Charley came here of her own accord, and she’s worked miracles for this department. We aren’t playing games with her.”

  So proud I could burst, I took his hand under the table and squeezed. He squeezed back, and Sussman leaned over again, whispered something about how having Ubie in our corner was going to be very beneficial. I had yet to figure out why he was whispering.

  “If you’ll just hear me out,” I said, “I think you will be pleased with the outcome.”

  After a moment of contemplation, the DA smoothed his tie, then sat back down. “Fine. What are your terms?”

  “First, my client has agreed to pay back everything. Every penny of damage she caused.”

  “That will take a long time and a lot of payments she won’t be making if she’s soaking in the tubs at the state nuthouse.”

  “No, no, no, a private nuthouse that she will pay for.”

  “Yeah, right, do you have any idea how much —?”

  “Will fifty million cover it?” I asked, shutting him up before he could dig himself in too deep.

  That got their attention.

  “My client has fifty million to play with, although I’ve seen those properties. We will not accept inflated prices the insurance companies want to throw at us. I’ve seen the properties she’s destroyed. The value of everything combined couldn’t possibly be more than four million, but that will be between my client and her lawyer to negotiate. And while we’re on the subject, I also wanted to discuss why she did this, if that’s okay. You’ll understand more once you understand what she’s been through, and perhaps leniency won’t be such a hard pill to swallow.”

  “I’m not sure we’re up for hearing a sob story, Davidson,” the DA said.

  I was kind of impressed with the captain. He had yet to say anything. He just sat back and watched me, his gaze unwavering, like a hawk’s right before it swooped in for the kill. I shifted away from him, just in case.

  “No, you have no idea. Everything the arsonist did was to protect her brother. They had both been horribly abused growing up, and when I say horribly —” I took out my picture of Reyes. “And no, you can’t keep that.” If they looked at it long enough, they would be able to identify Reyes by his tattoos quite easily. I needed to make sure that didn’t happen, as promised. “I know that doesn’t excuse what she did, but if it helps you acquiesce to my terms, then so be it. This is her brother.”

  Uncle Bob knew the moment his gaze landed on the picture. He knew exactly whom he was looking at. I furrowed my brows and shook my head to silence him as the others took in the brutality of what they were seeing. It worked. They were stunned. Sickened. Heartbroken.

  “She has been through so much. The man who raised her and her brother would starve her to get her brother to comply with his demands. I’ll let your imaginations fill in the demands part. Just conjure the most vile, heinous acts you can imagine and multiply by ten. That should get you somewhere in the ballpark.”

  Uncle Bob stood abruptly and walked to the window as the men deliberated. He once told me he’d known, deep down inside, that Reyes was innocent, but the evidence was too overwhelming. He had no choice but to do exactly what he did – turn over his findings of Reyes’s guilt. And now, ten years after the fact, that knowledge was eating him alive. We’d have to talk later. I worried about him over this. It bugged him more than I thought it would.

  Sussman leaned over to me again. “I think now would be the perfect time for your trump.”

  I grinned and nodded. “But wait,” I said to the table, brightening, “there’s more.”

  The department liked to look good. They liked to solve cases, and what would look better than solving the mystery of a mass grave outside of Las Cruces? “I’m still negotiating here, and I can sweeten the pot if what I’ve brought to the table isn’t enough, though why i
t wouldn’t be is beyond me.”

  “What else do you have?” the captain asked, chiming into the conversation at last.

  “I am almost positive I know who killed those women in the mass grave they just found.”

  The captain’s face went blank. The DA looked at me skeptically, and the ADA’s mouth fell open, but just a little.

  “I need a couple of days to get the proof, but I have a very good idea who it is.”

  “Charley,” Uncle Bob said, stunned, “if you know who —”

  “Really, Uncle Bob?” I asked, giving him my best incredulous expression. “I’m using this as leverage.” Then I looked at the DA. “Do we have a deal? All my client will get is twenty-four months in the private institution of her choice.”

  “Twenty-four months?” the DA asked, appalled.

  “Twenty-four months.”

  He let my terms simmer, spoke softly with the other officials in the room, then leveled a hard stare on me. “She’ll pay back everything?”

  “Every penny.”

  “And you’ll hand over a shiny new serial killer,” the captain said matter-of-factly. “You seem to be doing that a lot lately.”

  My discomfort mounted. Not a horse or anything. Maybe something small like a donkey or a goat. The man was a shark. He knew something. But what on earth could he know? It wasn’t like consorting with departed people was a crime.

  “Yeah, well, I get lucky a lot.”

  “I have no doubt that your success rate has nothing to do with luck.”

  Deciding not to comment on his use of a double negative, I cleared my throat and looked at the DA askance. “Well? My client needs help, not a prison sentence.”

  “Fine. She won’t see the inside of a jail cell. You deliver her and I’ll have accounting sort out the restitution details before we sign anything.”

  Sussman whispered to me again and I nodded, then said, “Can I get that in writing?”

  With their mouths drawn in grim lines, the DA and ADA set down to write out a legally binding document stating the terms of my client’s surrender.

  I stood and went to Uncle Bob. “Are you okay?” I asked. I could feel a pang of regret filter out of him.

  “I failed him so completely.” I knew he was talking about Reyes. That picture affected him more than I’d imagined. “He was just a boy, Charley.”

  “Uncle Bob, everyone failed him. Every single person in his life, including me.”

  “You?” he asked.

  “From that first night, the first time I saw him being beaten by Earl Walker. I did nothing.”

  “Pumpkin, he told you not to. He threatened you, if I recall.”

  “But still, I should have at least filed a report so it was on record. I didn’t even do that, and I had two cops in the family.”

  “This is all contingent on your arsonist turning herself in by five p.m. today,” the DA said.

  Taking in a deep breath, I looked back at him and nodded. “I’ll go get her now.”

  “I’m going, too,” Uncle Bob said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said, worried she’d change her mind if she saw him.

  “I’m not sure I care.”

  “You’re not playing me, are you, pumpkin?”

  “What?”

  “Farrow. He doesn’t have a sister.”

  “Not a biological one, no, but he was raised with a girl he thinks of very much as his sister.”

  “Was she… Were they —?”

  “Yes, they were really abused in the way that I described.”

  “How did we not know that?”

  “She has a different last name. They look nothing alike. They rarely ever attended school. They were ghosts, Uncle Bob. Earl Walker made sure of it.”

  “And her name?” he asked, dying to know.

  “Kim. Kim Millar.”

  I pointed the way to Kim’s apartment. She knew to expect me. I’d told her about what time I’d be showing up and she was going to have her affairs in order and be ready to surrender. I had Cookie looking into private psychiatric institutions. She should be getting back to me soon.

  We walked up the path and I noticed a cup on the lawn outside her door. There were also bits of trash here and there, which was unusual for this complex. “This is her,” I said, knocking on Kim’s turquoise door. When I got no answer, Uncle Bob went to the window and looked in.

  He turned to me, startled. “Is this a joke?”

  “What?” I asked, completely perplexed. Then the fact that Kim had been suicidal the night before sank in. I hurried over and looked in. “No. No, no, no, no, no. We had an agreement.”

  I rushed back to the door. It was unlocked. I practically stumbled into something that resembled a clean room at a software corporation. The apartment was completely and utterly empty. I rushed from room to room, looking for evidence of Kim’s existence. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  “Charley,” Uncle Bob said from the living room.

  I hurried back and nodded toward the wall. An envelope had been taped there. My name had been written in black marker across the front. I tore it off the wall and opened it. There was nothing but a cashier’s check to the city of Albuquerque for ten million dollars. No other name on the check. No other indication of whom it had come from. I suddenly knew how Angel’s mom felt when she got anonymous check after anonymous check, month after month. Only I knew exactly who had purchased this one.

  I stood stunned.

  “How soon do you need a place?”

  I turned to a man standing in the doorway. “I’m sorry?”

  “I assume, since you’re in the apartment, you’re looking for one.”

  Uncle Bob pulled out his badge and flashed it. “We need to know where the occupant of this apartment went.”

  I patted my pockets and realized I’d left my PI license at home, so I dug through my bag and flashed my driver’s license instead. “And we want to know how.” I was just here last night. The place was immaculate, neat and orderly like Kim herself. But there was no sign of her leaving anywhere.

  He blinked a moment, then said, “Well, hopefully he went to heaven, and he did that by way of heart attack, I’m told.”

  It was my turn to blink. “He?” I asked, walking toward him. “Kim Millar has been living in this apartment for years. Tall. Dark auburn hair. Painfully thin.”

  He rubbed his mouth in thought. “Well, she sounds great, but she never lived here. This has been Old Man Johnson’s place for almost ten years.

  “And your workmen just happened to clean this place out in twelve hours?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, chuckling. “Mr. Johnson died about two weeks ago. His family moved everything out last week.”

  Uncle Bob took out his memo pad. “I need a name and address for his family.”

  He rubbed his mouth again. “Not sure I have one, but I can look.”

  “You do that.”

  The manager nodded and headed back outside.

  “I assume he’s lying?”

  “Through his teeth, and happily so. There’s no telling what Reyes paid him.”

  “You think he’s behind this?”

  “I know he is. These are the most connected siblings I’ve ever met. Who can get an apartment stripped and refinished in the middle of the night like that? And I was with him.” Then it hit me. Reyes’s BFF Amador Sanchez, that’s who. I didn’t dare mention his name to Ubie. There was no need to drag him into the station. He’d only deny everything and have a rock-solid alibi.

  “Well, I can send around a couple of uniforms to interview the other tenants. Get a few eyewitness reports and possibly a couple of descriptions of whoever did this.”

  “Not sure what good that will do besides prove to the DA that I’m not crazy and I wasn’t lying. But she’s gone, Ubie. If Reyes wants her gone, she’s gone.”

  After the manager couldn’t turn up an address for Mr. Johnson anywhere, we went back to Ubie’s SUV with our tails betwee
n our legs and started back to the station.

  “This is going to negate my little contract with the DA.”

  He fluttered the check. “I think this will help, pumpkin. And the fact that you have a strong suspicion on who our serial killer is. He wouldn’t give up that lead for anything.”

  “You don’t think they’ll have me arrested for aiding and abetting?”

  “I think they have better things to do with their time than prosecute one of their best and most successful consultants.”

  That made me feel a little better, like a balloon with just enough air in it to be pear shaped. “Would you really have had me arrested if I hadn’t told you?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  The air in my balloon rushed out, making a disturbing flatulence sound as it went.

  “But don’t let it bother you. I would arrest my own mother if it meant a collar.”

  “You would arrest Grandma?” Okay, I was better again, even though I had never met my grandmother. Both sets of grandparents had passed before I was born, actually. All I had was my stepmother’s father, and even he died when I was four.

  This time we went straight to the DA’s office. He had meetings all afternoon, and we were hoping to catch him before he headed to lunch. We did, and the circus began anew. He ranted and railed until Uncle Bob handed him the check. It was strange how fast that cooled his overheated jets.

  He called in the captain and the ADA, and I gave them Kim’s name, but not her connection to Reyes. He could be held liable for all this. Then again, Kim had proved herself mighty resourceful. Who can burn down two buildings, seven houses, a ramshackle garage, and a bunker and leave the cops scratching their heads? I admired her for her conviction, for her fierce desire to protect Reyes, more than I cared to acknowledge.

  16

  I don’t expect everything to be handed to me. Just set it down wherever.

  —T-SHIRT

  The first thing I did when I got back to Misery was to call Gemma again. Now that the whole arson thing was out of the way, I could concentrate on the other issues at hand. Namely the identity of the possible serial killer. When she didn’t answer either her cell or her office, I tried the GPS thing. No signal. She was probably with a client and had turned off her phone. But I was beginning to get worried. If the serial killer was whom I suspected, she could be in trouble for the mere fact that she was blond. I left her another message. Thankfully, Gemma was savvy and resourceful. And she didn’t have any tattoos. Nicolette said the victim had a tattoo of the number eight. Which, oddly enough, resembled an infinity symbol on its side.