him.”
“He’s gorgeous. He’s exactly like you described.”
I tried to control my breathing. I didn’t have a paper bag around if it came to that.
“I’ve never seen anyone so, I don’t know, so fierce, so stunningly beautiful.”
“That would be him,” I said, knowing without a doubt she had the right guy.
“I’m sending the mug shot now.”
I held out my phone and waited for the text. After several long seconds, a picture popped onto the screen, and I was suddenly concentrating on staying vertical. My knees weakened regardless, and I slid down to sit on the running board, unable to take my eyes off the screen.
Cookie had nailed it. He was fierce, his expression wary and furious at once, as if he’d been warning the officers to keep their distance. For their own protection. Even in the poor lighting, his eyes sparkled with what seemed like barely controlled rage. He had not been a happy camper when they’d taken his picture.
“He’s still listed as an inmate. I wonder how often they update these things. Charley?” Cookie was still on the line, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off his picture. She seemed to realize I needed a moment and waited in silence for me to recover.
I did. With a new purpose, I put the phone to my ear and bent to pick up my keys. “I’m going to see Rocket.”
Figuring I could kill two birds with one stone, I pulled around to a side street and parked beside a Dumpster, hoping the neighbors wouldn’t realize I was planning to break into their abandoned mental asylum. The hospital, closed by the government in the fifties, had somehow ended up in the hands of a local biker gang, aka the neighbors. They called themselves the Bandits and were none too keen on trespassers. They had Rottweilers to prove it.
Just walking up to the asylum had my stomach clenching in knots, but not because of the Rottweilers and not in a bad way. Asylums fascinated me. When I was in college, my favorite weekend trips involved tours of abandoned psychiatric hospitals. The departed I found there were vibrant and passionate and full of life. Ironic, since they were dead.
This particular asylum was home to one of my favorite crazy people. Rocket’s life — when he was actually alive — was more of a mystery than the Bermuda Triangle, but I did learn that he’d been a child during the Depression. His baby sister had died from dust pneumonia, and though I’d never met her, he told me she was still around, keeping him company.
Rocket was a lot like me. He’d been born with a purpose, a job. But no one had understood his gift. After the death of his sister, his parents handed him over to the care of the New Mexico Insane Asylum. Subsequent years of misunderstanding and mistreatment, including periodic doses of electroshock therapy, left Rocket a fraction of the person he’d most likely been.
In many ways, he was like a forty-year-old kid in a cookie jar, only his jar was a crumbling, condemned mental asylum, and his cookies were names, the names of those who’d passed that he carved, day in and day out, into the walls of the asylum. The ultimate record keeper. I couldn’t imagine Saint Peter having anything on Rocket.
Except for maybe a pencil.
My adrenaline was flowing with the excitement. I could find out in one shot if Mark Weir’s nephew Teddy was still alive — fingers crossed — and find out about Reyes as well. Rocket knew the moment someone passed, and he never forgot a name. The sheer volume of information that flooded his head at any given moment would drive a sane man to the brink, which could also explain Rocket’s personality.
The doors and windows to the asylum had been boarded up long ago. I sneaked around the back, listening for the pitter-pat of Rottweiler paws, and slid on my stomach through a basement window I jimmied open each time I visited. I had yet to get caught at this particular asylum — a good thing, since I’d probably lose a limb — but I did get caught at one I’d
“Rocket?” I called after tumbling headfirst onto a table and stumbling — rather impressively — to my feet. I dusted myself off, turned on my LED flashlight, and headed toward the stairs. “Rocket, are you here?”
The first floor was empty. I walked the halls, marveling at the thousands upon thousands of names carved into the plaster walls, then started up the service stairs to the second level. Abandoned books and furniture lay strewn in crumbled disarray. Graffiti covered most surfaces, attesting to the countless parties that’d been thrown over the years, probably before the biker gang had acquired the property. Apparently the class of ’83 had lived free, and Patty Jenkins put out.
The myriad of nationalities that Rocket carved into the walls awed me. There were names in Hindi and Mandarin and Arapaho and Farsi.
“Miss Charlotte,” Rocket said from behind me, a mischievous giggle exciting his voice.
I jumped and whirled around. “Rocket, you little devil!” He liked to scare me, so I had to feign a near-death experience each time I visited.
He laughed aloud and pulled me into a suffocating hug. Rocket was a cross between a fluffy grizzly and the Pillsbury Doughboy. He had a baby face and a playful heart and saw only the good in people. I always wished I’d known him when he was alive, before the government quite literally fried his brain. Had he been a grim reaper like me? I did know that he could see the departed before he died.
He set me down, then drew his brows together in a comical frown. “You never come to see me. Never.”
“Never?” I asked, teasing him.
“Never.”
“I’m here now, aren’t I?”
He shrugged begrudgingly.
“And there is a small matter of Rottweilers I have to contend with each and every visit.”
“I guess. I have so many names to give you. So many.”
“I don’t really have time—”
“They shouldn’t be here. No, no, no. They need to leave.” Rocket was also a consummate tattletale, always giving me names of those who had passed but had yet to cross.
“You’re right, Rocket, but this time I have a name for you.”
He paused and eyed me in confusion. “A name?”
I decided to toss out a name of someone I knew had already passed. “James Enrique Barilla,” I said, quoting the name of the kid found murdered in Mark Weir’s backyard.
“Oh,” he said, jumping to attention.
It was a cheap trick, throwing out a name like that, but I had to keep Rocket focused. I didn’t have much time. I had a date with one Mr. Illegal Activity. That breaking-and-entering gig wouldn’t break and enter itself.
Rocket recognized the name immediately and began walking with a purpose, which unfortunately included taking shortcuts through walls. I struggled to keep up, jogging around corners and through doorways, hoping the dilapidated floor held beneath my weight.
“Rocket, wait. Don’t lose me.”
Then I heard him, down the stairwell and through the kitchen, repeating the name to himself over and over. I tripped on a broken chair and dropped my flashlight, sending it tumbling down the steps.
Then Rocket was in front of me. “Miss Charlotte, you never keep up.”
“Never?” I asked, struggling to my feet.
“Never.” He grabbed my arm and jerked me down the stairs. I just managed to scoop up the flashlight as we ran past.
He meant well.
Then he stopped. With an abruptness I hadn’t expected, he skidded to a halt. I slammed into his backside, ever thankful of its plumpness, and bounced off him to land, once again, on my ass. Normally, Rocket would have laughed when I stood and dusted myself off, but he was on a mission. Based on past experience, nothing swayed Rocket from one of his missions.
“Here. Here it is,” he said, pointing repeatedly to one of the thousands of names he’d scraped into the
