The Trouble With Twelfth Grave

  “Bottom line, he flat-out tried to kill me.”

  I eased forward and took her hand. Tears slid from behind her dark glasses. She swiped at them angrily.

  “He was … he was choking me.”

  I squeezed her hand to cover up the anger spiking inside me.

  “He was so strong. I’ve taken self-defense and martial arts classes my entire life, and I still couldn’t fight him off.” She bit down and turned her face away. “I was on the verge of blacking out when Tre came back to the shop. He’d forgotten his wallet.”

  “Thank God,” I said.

  She nodded and swallowed hard before continuing. “He hit Hector with a baseball bat I keep for protection, but it barely fazed him. Whatever designer drug he’d taken was powerful. He went after Tre like a raging bull. We fought him for what seemed like hours before Tre finally got him in a headlock. He choked him out, and when Hector came to, he bolted.”

  “Wait, he ran out?” I asked, a little surprised.

  “Yes. But by the time it was said and done, there was blood everywhere. All over my office. All over the floor. All over the walls. Hector stumbled out after being beaten bloody, and two days later they found his body in the desert.”

  “How long had he been dead?”

  “According to preliminary reports, about two days.”

  “The detective told you that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Dread clenched my throat. “Pari, you didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “Okay, that’s it. No more hacking government databases until all this blows over. They can trace that shit, you know.”

  “I panicked.”

  “I don’t blame you. But, Pari, why didn’t you call the police that night?”

  “Tre convinced me not to. He knew him. Or, well, he knew his mother.”

  “And?”

  “Her name is Edina Felix. She’s a very powerful matriarch in El Paso.”

  “Matriarch?” An odd term.

  “She runs a few legitimate businesses that Tre swears are a cover for a huge crime ring.”

  “Oh. That’s … ambitious of her.”

  “Let’s just say the mental illness was inherited, from what Tre told me.”

  “In what way?” I asked, growing even more concerned.

  “They found the last girl who dumped one of her sons bleeding out in an alley with her face slashed.”

  I eased back into the chair.

  “They never pinned it on Hector, of course, but that poor girl.…”

  “You keep saying girl. How old was she?”

  Pari pulled off the sunglasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. Waves of terror washed over her. I had never known Pari to be afraid of anything. Or anyone. She was tough, resilient, and irreverent to anyone who tried to control her. But Hector really scared her.

  “Pari? How old?”

  “Sixteen,” she said at last. “The girl was sixteen.”

  A shock wave rocketed through me, causing me to flinch visibly. Sixteen? Who does something like that to a sixteen-year-old?

  “It was a few months ago,” Pari added.

  “How old was Hector?”

  “He was thirty-two.

  “So, he was a child molester, too?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Did the girl die?”

  “Tre didn’t know. He didn’t think so, but her family moved away.”

  “I need to talk to Tre.”

  “Good luck. He’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn’t stick around to be sliced up and left in an alley,” she said in his defense. “He took off the day after Hector attacked me.”

  “He just left you here?”

  “What? No. It wasn’t like that. He begged me to go with him. It’s a little different when you have a business. I can’t just abandon my customers and leave town.”

  “You can, actually,” I said, encouraging that very thing.

  “Chuck, you know I can’t.” Her expression urged me to look for the deeper meaning, and it took me a moment to realize she was talking about the terms of her probation.

  “Pari, even people in your situation can leave town with permission.”

  “Not me. My probation officer’s a dick. I’m thinking about asking him out, though. He has an incredibly sexy sneer.”

  I laughed softly. “Do you have a number where I can reach him? I have some questions.”

  “For the love of God, Chuck, you’re a married woman. Why do you need to talk to my probation officer?”

  “Tre,” I said, coughing on a half-sipped, half-inhaled sip of coffee. “I need to talk to Tre.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  I handed her my phone, and she typed it in. “So, which detective came to see you?”

  “Is godlike one or two words?” she asked, concentrating on my phone.

  “Tre’s that good in bed?”

  “Yes. Yes, he is.” She finished and handed it back. “Oh, and it was a Detective Joplin.”

  I groaned aloud. Could this day get any worse? “Joplin hates me.”

  “He didn’t seem the most pleasant sort of guy. He seemed … dogged.”

  Pari was still terrified. It trembled just beneath her colorful yet steely surface. I could hardly blame her. Joplin terrified me, too. She needed answers. And closure. And I needed to pray that Hector’s death was not the result of the fight. Knowing she’d killed someone, even in self-defense, would devastate her.

  “Okay, if Joplin comes back, don’t give him anything. He’ll take the slightest crumb and run with it, so don’t say a word. Lawyer up and call it a day.”

  “But won’t that be admitting something happened?”

  “If he comes back a second time, hon, he’ll already know. But don’t worry. I’ll find out if Hector died as a result of the altercation. In the meantime”—I scanned the walls of her cluttered office—“how much do you like this building?”

  7

  I’ll tell you what’s wrong with society.

  No one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.

  —T-SHIRT

  Pari refused to let me burn down her place of business-slash-apartment to get rid of the evidence. Blood splatter was impossible to scrub away. So, instead of solving a crime, I was going to have to cover one up. But I had an inkling how to do exactly that. I just needed a little help from a friend.

  Thus, I tried repeatedly to call said friend, a clairvoyant named Nicolette Lemay who could see people’s deaths through their eyes via a series of hellacious dreams. Thank God for psychotherapy.

  Since she didn’t pick up, I could only assume she’d either blocked my number—understandable—or she was at work. Hoping for the latter, I hightailed it back to the office, hopped in Misery, then drove to Pres, where she worked in post-op.

  Ten minutes later, I was standing in front of a nurses’ station, waiting for her to pop out of a door. Any door would do. When she did, choosing to emerge from one appropriately marked Gastroenterology: Exit Only, she took one look at me, then slowed her step in surprise.

  She only knew the bare minimum where I was concerned, but it was enough to set her on edge. She recovered after a moment and picked up her pace again, but it was a long hall.

  A natural beauty, Nicolette had cinnamon-colored skin and hip-length black hair currently pulled back and stuffed under a cap. Her crowning achievement, however, were her eyes. Large. Dark. Seductive. The kind people paid a fortune for in liners and false lashes to try to duplicate.

  “Charley,” she said, stopping in front of me. “What are you doing here?”

  This may have been a bad idea. She was nervous to see me. It radiated out of her rather like the perspiration covering her brow and upper lip.

  “I just came by to say hi.” This was going to be awkward to get out of.

  “No, you didn’t.” Her lids narrowed. Then she leaned closer and whispered. “Did something happen?”

>   “Well, yes, but not in that way. Speaking of which, you seem really nervous. Is everything okay?”

  “No, I just thought I might’ve been dreaming there for a minute.”

  “Hopefully not,” I said, leaning in for a hug. “Every time you dream of someone, they die a few days later.”

  “Not always.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, sometimes they die that very day.”

  I laughed softly at her teasing. “So, how’s that going?”

  “Okay,” she said, lifting a slim shoulder. “No murders lately or I would’ve called. I’ve only had three incidents since we met, and they were all natural causes.”

  “Well, cool. Cool.” I studied the wallpaper. A stapler on the desk. A basket of pens with a yellow ribbon around it.

  Nicolette giggled. “Are you going to tell me why you’re really here?”

  I bit my bottom lip, realizing what I was about to ask might sound bad. But it was now or never.

  “Can we go over here?” I motioned for her to follow me until we were a few feet from the nurses’ station and hovering near the entrance of a waiting room with a nervous looking couple inside. “I have a favor to ask. A big one.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  “I’m glad, because this might sound bad, so I want you to keep an open mind.”

  “Charley, I may not have known you for very long, but you did me a huge favor once. I figure the least I can do is repay the gesture.”

  “Nicolette, you don’t owe me anything. You know that, right?”

  “Of course. Still, good karma is good karma.”

  “True.” Gosh, I liked her. “So, can you steal a few pints of blood for me?”

  The surprise on her face glowed. Clearly, she hadn’t expected me to ask her to commit a crime. Strange.

  “Can I ask why you need them?”

  “You probably don’t want to know.”

  “Hmmm.” She pursed her lips, pondering her answer, trying to decide how to word it, how to put it as delicately as possible. “No.”

  Oh, well, that was easy. “’Kay. Thanks for your time.”

  She laughed softly and pulled me back when I tried to walk away.

  She leaned close and said, “It’s not that I won’t. It’s that I can’t. Every pouch of blood has to be signed for.”

  “Really? Do they get stolen often?”

  Nicolette shrugged. “It is what it is. The only way to get blood without getting caught on Candid Camera would be to knock off a blood bank or a mobile collection van or something.”

  “That’s it,” I said, my mind racing.

  “I was kidding. You know that, right?”

  I started backing away. “No, yeah, totally.” I had a heist to plan. “Thanks so much.” I waved as I headed toward the door. “Oh, hey.” I turned back. “Did your mother ever marry you off? Last time we spoke, she was going to take out an ad.”

  “Yeah, that didn’t really go well. She’s worried my eggs are going to dry up and I won’t be able to give her grandchildren.”

  I snorted. “Aren’t you a little young?”

  “That’s what I said. She told me we have a genetic disorder called early onset egg dysplasia.”

  That time I laughed out loud. Then I stopped abruptly. “Wait, is that a real thing?”

  She folded her arms at her chest and grinned. “No, it is not.”

  “Well, good luck with that.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  I called Cook on my way back to the office. “Hey, Cook. I need you to see if there are going to be any mobile blood collection vans out tonight.”

  “You mean like a Red Cross kind of thing?”

  “Exactly. I need to knock one over ay-sap.”

  “As in rob? You’re going to rob a mobile blood collection unit?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because I figure robbing a mobile will be easier than robbing an established blood collection business. A building would have better security.”

  “I’m sure they have wonderful security. But I meant, what has possessed you to steal blood?”

  “It’s for a project.”

  “What kind of project?”

  “A … bloody one.”

  “Charley.”

  “Look, just trust me. I need blood from lots of different people.”

  “Did you ever think that the blood you are planning on stealing was meant for a purpose? What if someone dies because the hospitals run out of their blood type?”

  “You did not just put that on me.”

  “Damn sure did. Where are you?”

  “In Misery, both literally and figuratively, behind Calamity’s.”

  Cookie’s head appeared at a window above me. “Why are you just sitting there?”

  “Because I don’t want to get out yet.”

  “Why don’t you want to get out yet?”

  “Because I’m waiting for the angry archangel looking in my driver’s-side window to go away!” I yelled the last two words, hoping beyond hope Michael would get the message. He was a messenger, after all.

  Alas, he did not. He stood his ground, towering over me like an ominous statue, the combination of dark hair, silvery eyes, and massive wings breathtaking.

  “There’s an angel standing beside your car?”

  Another face shone in the window, a round one with a veil and a habit, in the nondrug sense.

  “You have a visitor.”

  “I see that.” I waved excitedly at my homegirl Sister Mary Elizabeth. She lived at a local convent. The same convent that took Quentin in when he had no one and nowhere to go. He was special, and the mother superior sensed that. I would be forever grateful to them. “I’ll be up as soon as I ditch the cherub.”

  I hung up, then rolled down my window. “I gave at the office.”

  “Rey’azikeen has been awakened.”

  An electrical current rushed over my skin. No matter how many times I saw one, being so close to an angel, especially an archangel, was a surreal experience.

  “Yeah. I know. I woke him. Accidentally. But I’m working on it. I have a plan. Will you go away now?”

  “For the third time, a volatile god is loose on this plane.”

  “And that’s my fault?”

  I rolled up my window and opened the door, encouraging him to move aside. He stepped away so I could get out.

  “Look, I get it,” I said, slamming the door. “But this god just happens to be your Boss’s little brother. Isn’t there some kind of concession? Some kind of special dispensation for family members?”

  “Yes. Three days.”

  “I can work with that. Three days. We can get the supplies we need, meet back at—”

  “The three days that have already passed.”

  I blinked in surprise, then slowly glared up at him. “Are you messing with me?” I’d wondered that about this particular angel more than once. Did supreme beings have a sense of humor? I’d always doubted it, but who knows?

  “I am not.”

  “You know what? You have your rules and your laws and your decrees, and I’ve been pretty good about following them.”

  “It.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been good about following it. We gave you only one rule—a life may be restored only if the soul has not already been freed. Only if it has not left the vessel and entered our Father’s kingdom.”

  “Dude, I know the rule,” I said, trying not to let the resentment I felt filter into my voice. I could’ve brought three people back the other day. Instead, I had to follow the rule. My rule. Created, I was certain, for me and me alone.

  Two women came out of the restaurant and walked past us. Their expressions made me remember that the average joe couldn’t see Michael unless he wanted them to.

  “Come here,” I said, leading him to an alcove that only I fit into. His wings were too tall, even folded as they were. “Ok
ay, yes, you expressly gave me only one rule, but I assumed I had to follow the other ten as well. Amirite?”

  He inclined his head, just barely, in acknowledgment.

  “And I follow them without question.” When he arched a skeptical brow, I added, “Most of the time. My point is that I’ve been a pretty good grim reaper. I’ve done my job without complaint and … wait.” My brows inched together. “So the three days started the moment Rey’azikeen was awakened on this plane?”

  Incline.

  “In other words, they’re coming to an end.”

  Incline.

  “Okay, tall, dark, and silent, what exactly happens when the end comes? Will he be cast off this plane like I will if I break my one and only rule?”

  He tilted his head to the side as though studying me. “No.”

  “Then what?” I did actually have a point with the line of questioning I’d chosen. I was gathering intel. What options, when it came to Reyes, were there? Would Michael trap him? If so, how? “What will you do when the countdown—thanks for the heads-up, by the way—comes to an end?”

  He stood a moment, contemplating how much to tell me. At least that was the only reason I could think of for drawing out his answer. When he finally spoke, it was with a sadness I had yet to receive from him. But his words, as tenderly spoken as they were, siphoned the breath from my lungs.

  “We will send an army. We will slay him if we can.”

  The world slowed around us, and I didn’t know which one of us was doing it. Everything stilled. The cars driving on the side street slowed, then came to a complete stop. A couple of college kids out for a jog froze in midair. A bird coming in for a landing on a Dumpster hung suspended in flight, a beautiful testament to its ability. And sound ceased to exist.

  “Michael,” I began, but my voice failed me. I had to swallow and then try again. “Michael, there were two malevolent gods on this plane, and you did nothing about it. You never intervened. Why now? Why with Reyes?”

  “They did not threaten the very existence of every sentient being on this planet.”

  “They were malevolent,” I argued. “Of course they did.”

  “They were amateurs. Schoolchildren. Bullies playing pranks.”

  “They killed people,” I said, astonished we were even having this conversation. “They killed people I loved. People Reyes loved.”