One step ahead of me, he said, “Bought and paid for.”
Damn, he thought of everything. At least he was thorough.
“I also have footage of you constantly talking to yourself. Arguing with air. Shaking some invisible friend’s hand. Hugging someone only you could see. Everything together adds up to a lengthy sentence in prison or the nuthouse. I’m good with either.”
Holy crap. I knew that stuff would come back to haunt me. Damn it.
He leaned closer. “As long as I stay out of jail, you stay out of jail.”
I was beaten. He won. I crossed my arms over Danger and Will. “Why go to all this trouble? Why confess something so incriminating to me now? After all these years? You don’t exactly like me. Or trust me.”
“I do trust you to a degree. I see the lengths you go for your clients. It’s noble. Stupid at times, but noble. But you’re right. I’m fairly certain I don’t like you. And I need to know.”
“If you like me?”
“If he did it. The kid. When I was – When I killed him, he swore he didn’t do it. Over and over. He swore he never touched my sister. But I’d seen the bruises on her. The blood. I also saw the mark she left on her assailant. She said she bit his wrist. He had a bite mark on his wrist days later. But I need to know the truth. I have to be certain.”
If he killed the guy, how was I supposed to find out the truth? Just how much did he know about me?
“I need to hear it from the dead kid, and you are just the person to ask him.”
I shifted in my chair, suddenly uncomfortable. Or, well, more uncomfortable. “And how am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. Call him. Channel him. Do whatever it is you do.”
“That’s crazy talk,” I said, inching up out of my chair.
He didn’t move to stop me, but put a hand on the sidearm at his hip. “I’m an excellent shot.”
I plopped back down. “You’re psychotic, is what you are. I am so telling Uncle Bob. You want me to talk to a dead kid? Now who’s going to the nuthouse?”
“Spare me. I know everything.”
He couldn’t possibly know everything. Wait – “Did you bug me?” I asked, appalled. He’d done every other kind of surveillance. Surely he threw in a few bugs for good measure.
“A little.”
“That’s so illegal!” I bolted to my feet.
“So is framing you for crimes you didn’t commit. I think we’re beyond that right now.”
He had a point. And despite everything he just told me, I felt nothing malicious coming off him. I did feel an odd mix of emotions, but I doubted he harbored any ill will toward me. This was a means to an end.
“How do you know I won’t lie to you?”
“I don’t. So I’ll need proof. You talk to this kid, ask him how I killed him, then ask him if he did it.” He tossed another picture at me, only this one was an old school picture of a blond kid, about fourteen years old. “Do whatever it is you do to talk to dead people. Ask him.”
I gave in. “Captain, I can’t just talk to dead people.”
He glowered. “Don’t bullshit me. I will have you in lockup with enough charges to make your lawyer’s head spin before you can say frame job. And I might toss in some charges on kiddie porn to spice things up. I will destroy your reputation in any way that I can.”
He was serious. He was actually serious, but again, reluctantly so. He would do what he had to do, my life be damned.
I blinked in absolute shock. “That’s so not fair.”
“Life’s a bitch that way. His name was Kory. Do your thing or get used to the idea of spending the rest of the decade behind bars.”
It could happen. Reyes was living, breathing proof that people went to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. But the odds of this kid still being on earth, on this plane, were zero to nil. It just didn’t happen that way. Once the departed crossed, I couldn’t talk to them. They were gone. On the other side.
“You’re going to have to indulge me a moment.”
He shrugged a shoulder.
I summoned Angel.
“What the hell?” he said, complaining as ever. “I was in the middle of something.”
“I need you to go to the other side and talk to somebody for me.”
“I can’t just go to the other side and talk to somebody, loca.”
“Angel, I really need this. If you can’t pull this off, I’m going to prison on drug possession and kiddie porn.” I showed him the picture. “I need you to find this kid and ask him a couple of things for me.”
The captain watched me with those eagle eyes of his. Not a lot got past him, I could tell. And I certainly no longer cared about what it looked like when I talked to my invisible friends.
“I can’t jump over and back. Nobody can do that.” He dusted off his shirt. No idea why. “Except you.”
“I can’t jump over either. Do you think Reyes can?”
“I don’t think the son of Satan would be very welcome in heaven. Even if he could get there.”
I collapsed onto the chair. This was an impossible situation.
“Why don’t you just summon him?”
“Angel, if he’s already crossed, I can’t summon him.”
“You never listen to me,” he said. He took off his shoe and dumped sand out of it and onto the carpet.
I looked at it, watched it fall through the floor.
“How did you get sand —?”
“It doesn’t matter if they’ve crossed. You’re the stinking reaper.”
I had no idea if the captain knew that part, so I clenched my teeth to demonstrate my annoyance to Angel, and whispered through my teeth so the man couldn’t hear me. “I know I’m the stinking reaper, but I can’t just summon someone back from the other side.”
He put his shoe back on and took off the other, dumped out the sand, then put it back on before leveling a stare on me dripping with attitude, and said, “Yes, you can. I’ve been telling you that forever. Oh, mi Dios.”
“Don’t bring God into this, and really?” I stood and sidled up to him. “I really can do that?”
“Of course.” He shrugged, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say his glare was accusing me of being a moron. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“So, like, how?”
He pulled out his pockets and shook them to get the sand out of them as well. How on earth? Incorporeal sand? Clearly there was a lot I had yet to learn.
“How what?” he asked.
“How do I summon someone from the other side?”
“Qué demonios, how should I know?”
When he shook out his hair from behind the wide bandanna tied around his forehead and sand fell all over the captain’s desk, I took hold of his shoulders. “Angel, focus, my freedom and my access to coffee 24/7 could be compromised. How do I do that?”
“You just do,” he said with a shrug.
I looked at the captain and shook my head in helplessness. “He’s not helping.”
“Bullshit. I told you. You just do it.”
“Just like I have powers and I can mark souls and I can save the world?” I threw my arms wide. “I think I’m defective. I think something went horribly awry and they sent the wrong girl.”
He chuckled. “Still, I don’t know why you’re asking me all this.”
I pointed to the pic of Kory. “Because I need to talk to that kid. I told you.”
“So why do you want to know how to summon someone back from the other side?”
I grabbed his shoulders again and shook them. He was pretty solid, though, and I actually shook more than he did. “Because I need to talk to that kid.”
“Yeah, but he’s not on the other side. Not yet.”
I stopped, blinked three times, then gaped at him for at least sixty-seven seconds, long enough for Angel to clear his throat and shift his weight, squirming in discomfort.
“You couldn’t have told me that ten minutes ago???
?
“You didn’t ask me that ten minutes ago. You asked me how to summon someone from the other side.”
He had a point. I prayed for patience, then asked, “How do I summon this kid since he hasn’t crossed?”
“Que Dios me ayude. Charley, what did I just say? See, you never listen. You’re like those kids who poke forks in electrical outlets.”
“I have never poked a fork in an electrical outlet.”
“Is this conversation going anywhere?” the captain asked.
I whirled around and glared. “Really?”
He held up his hands in surrender.
“Just do your thing,” Angel said. “You know, like you do with me.”
“But I know you.”
“You know everyone. You’re the grim reaper.”
Wow, okay, fine. I’d give it a shot. What could it hurt, besides my crumbling pride?
I took the picture, closed my eyes, and said, “Kory, I summon you.”
When I opened my eyes, Angel was doubled over with laughter. “Really?” he asked, holding his stomach. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“What?” I stomped my foot. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Do it like you do me. I know you don’t say, ‘Angel, I summon you.’”
“No, I say, ‘Angel, get your a punk ass over here.’”
“You do not.” When I raised my brows, he said, “No, really, you don’t say that, right?”
Without answering, I closed my eyes again and thought about how I summoned Angel and Artemis and even, on occasion, Reyes. I just imagined them there, summoned their energy, and brought them forth. So I thought of this kid, sought his energy, found it in the distance, a luminous glow in the darkness, and brought him forth.
I opened my eyes and before me was a scared kid, hands in pockets, a bullet hole in his chest as well as one in his pant leg. His shoulders were concave, his chin tucked in fear. And despite every attempt to the contrary, my heart went out to him.
“You were a good shot even then,” I said to the captain.
He stood and glanced around before saying warily, “What do you mean?”
“You shot him in the knee. That takes a steady hand even at close range.”
Surprise and awe washed over him. “I was aiming for his head.”
“Oh, then you kind of suck.”
“Is he – is he here?”
“Yes.”
“Did he do it?” he asked. “For certain he did it?”
“I haven’t gotten to that part yet.”
“Are you God?” Kory asked, his voice soft.
“Um, no, but I appreciate the compliment. I’m Charley.”
He nodded and studied me from head to toe.
“I need to know something, Kory. Did you assault that girl?”
“Cindy,” the captain said.
“Did you rape a girl named Cindy?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“Why are you even asking him?” Angel said. “You just have to see it. He can lie to you, but your vision won’t.”
See it? “I see people’s lives when they cross. Is that what you mean? He should cross?”
“They don’t have to cross for you to see them, to see what they’ve done. Just do your thing.”
“What thing?”
“Your reaper thing. Just do it.”
I was growing very tired of being told to just do it. Angel, the captain, the Dealer, Nike. Who next? The Pillsbury Doughboy? Actually, I really liked the Pillsbury Doughboy.
“You need to be honest with me, Kory. Did you sexually assault Cindy Eckert?”
He bowed his head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“We saw her at the park after school. She was alone on a swing and everyone told me to go talk to her, to pretend to be into her.”
“You’re not winning any brownie points here, Kory.”
“Just wait. I didn’t – I was just kidding with her.” He shoved his hands farther into his front pockets. “She told me she’d always had a crush on me, and I told her the same thing back.”
As Kory spoke, I relayed what he was saying to the captain.
“She told me she had a special room in the woods just beyond the park. She wanted to show it to me. Everyone was teasing me, telling me to go with her.”
The captain’s anger rose. “That was not in the report,” he said. “No one ever said that. According to the police, no one ever saw him with her.”
“Then they lied,” I said to him. “For Kory.”
Kory kept going. “When we got there, she wanted… she wanted to show me…”
“I don’t really want the details,” I told him. “I just want to know what you did to her.”
“She started it,” he said, shame making him flinch every time he started to talk. “She rubbed me and told me to —” He stopped, unable to explain. “Then, right in the middle, she changed her mind. She told me to stop. I – I finished anyway. She didn’t really fight or anything. She just bit me. But, yes, I did it with her. She said no and I did it anyway.”
“That’s very wrong. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t mean for it to go that far. By the time she changed her mind, I was already in her. I just needed a minute. Then she killed herself. I wanted to die. I’d lied to everyone. They all thought I was so cool. Too cool to sink low enough to have sex with Cindy Eckert.”
“Because she was mentally challenged?”
After he nodded, he repeated, “She killed herself because of me.”
“And because of how she was treated afterwards.”
“Exactly, because I didn’t have the balls to confess to what I’d done.” He looked up at me then. “No one would have messed with her if I’d just told them not to. They did it thinking they were doing me a favor. Am I going to hell?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“That’s enough,” the captain said. “That’s all I needed to hear. I had to know if I got the right guy.”
“And if you hadn’t?”
“I would have gone after the right guy. But since I got him, I can get on with this. Thank you, though,” he said, tossing the entire envelope of pictures to me. “I won’t be needing those anymore.”
“Wait, how do you know I’ll hold up my end of the bargain?”
“It won’t matter. There are some things you can’t outrun. Your past is one of them. Can you ask your uncle to come in here, please?” He sat behind his desk and started straightening papers.
“Why?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.
He tapped a pile of folders until they stood in perfect alignment, just like everything else on his desk. Pristine. Orderly. Everything in its place. “I’m going to turn myself in.”
“What? Why would you do that? That was, what? Thirty years ago?”
“Thirty-five. My mother died last week. She was the only one I was protecting by keeping this secret. Now I can own up to what I’ve done and put it behind me.”
“He doesn’t need to do that,” Kory said. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, the JV letter jacket he wore crinkling. “It won’t make any difference.” Then he brightened. “Maybe if I fix this, I can go to heaven.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I’m supposed to make amends, but there’s just no way to do that. But maybe if I stop Cindy’s brother from making a big mistake, I can get in.”
I wanted to tell him he could probably get in anyway, but I decided not to.
“He’s a good guy, right?” Kory asked.
“Yeah, he’s a pretty good guy. Or he was until he set me up like a bowling pin on league night at the alley.” I scowled at him, but only a little, since he was taking the charges off the table. And he’d killed someone. Did I now have a moral obligation to see him brought to justice?
I was torn. On what to feel. On what to do.
Then another thought hit m
e. “Maybe you are paying for what you’ve done,” I said to him as he straightened yet another stack. “I mean, you help people every day, right? Maybe that is your way of paying society back.”
“But what about Kory’s family?” He stood, put his jacket on, then walked to the door to face the firing squad. “My mind’s made up, Ms. Davidson. If you won’t get your uncle, I will. It’s time this ends.”
“Do your thing,” Angel said.
“What thing?” I asked him for the bazillionth time.
“Your reaper thing. Only you know the hearts of men on earth.”
“Trust me, hon, if there is one thing I do not know, it is the hearts of men. I know they like sex. That’s about it.”
“No, I mean, humans in general. You can see their intentions, and you mark them.”
The captain opened the door, and I couldn’t help but think he was making a huge mistake. I felt it deep inside. This was wrong.
“What do I do?” I asked Angel. The captain was getting away. So to speak.
“Ask him about the dog!” Kory called out to me.
Without another thought, I called out, “What about the dog?”
He stopped, hesitated, executed a slow, military-style about-face, and waited.
I tossed a sideways glance toward Kory. “What about the dog?”
Kory shrugged. “It’s just, I don’t get why he’s so hell-bent on turning himself in for a crime he didn’t commit.”
My eyes widened. Before this got too out of hand, I stepped to the captain, grabbed his jacket sleeve, took a quick peek toward Uncle Bob, who was still talking to the psychic wannabe, and dragged the captain back inside his office.
“Just hold on,” I said, closing the door. “Kory, what are you talking about.”
He shrugged. “This is wrong. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was the stupid one.”
“In what way?”
Exhaling superfluously, he sat against the windowsill and said, “It wasn’t even his gun. It was mine. Or, well, my dad’s. I took it from his drawer. Trying to be all cool and shit once again. When Van found me —”
“Van?” I asked the captain. Even though he seemed to believe everything that was happening, my knowing that surprised him.
“When he found me, he was madder than a diamondback during roundup. He hit me and I pulled the gun on him. He just wanted me to confess. This kid who meant nothing to me. He wanted me to confess to what I’d done. When I refused, he got so mad, he was crying and shaking. He was a tiny shit.” He looked the captain up and down. “I can’t believe he turned out that big. We started fighting and my dog jumped on us. The gun just went off. Hit me square in the chest. He wanted to help me get to a hospital, but I screamed at him to leave. If my dad found out I’d taken the gun, he would’ve killed me.”