plaster. “James Enrique Barilla.”
Finding James’s name among those of the departed really wasn’t surprising, since there was a man going to prison for his murder. But I had to check, just in case.
“Can you tell me how he died?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Not how,” he said, suddenly annoyed. I fought back a grin. “Not why. Not when. Only is.”
“How about where?” Now I was just being obstinate.
He glared at me. “Miss Charlotte, you know the rules. No breaking rules,” he said with a warning shake of his pudgy finger. That’d teach me.
I sometimes wondered if he really did know more and was just following some cosmic set of rules I was unaware of. But his vocabulary, I had a feeling, stemmed from years of institutionalization. Nobody liked rules more than institutionalizationers.
I pulled out my notepad and thumbed through it. “Okay, Rocket Man, what about a Theodore Bradley Thomas?” If nothing else, I’d leave here today knowing if Mark Weir’s missing nephew was dead or alive.
Rocket bent his head in thought for a moment. “No, no, no,” he said at last. “Not his time yet.”
Relief flooded every cell in my body. Now I just had to find him. I wondered how much danger the kid was in. “Do you know when his time will be?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Again.
“Not when. Only is,” he repeated as he turned and started carving another name into the plaster.
I’d lost him. Keeping Rocket’s attention was like serving spaghetti with a spoon. But I had another name to give him. An important one. I inched closer, almost afraid to say it aloud, then whispered, “Reyes Farrow.”
Rocket stopped. He recognized the name; I could tell. That meant Reyes was dead after all. My heart dropped into my stomach. I’d hoped so hard he wouldn’t be.
“Where is his name?” I asked, ignoring the sting in my eyes. I scanned the walls as if I could actually find his name among the mass of scribbled chaos that looked like an M. C. Escher on acid. But I wanted to see it. To touch it. I wanted to run my fingers along the rough grooves and lines that made up the letters of Reyes’s name.
Then I realized Rocket was gazing at me, a wary expression on his boyish face.
I lifted a hand to his shoulder. “Rocket, what’s wrong?”
“No,” he said, stepping out of my reach. “He shouldn’t be here. No, ma’am.”
My eyes slammed shut, trying hard not to see the truth. “Where is his name, Rocket?”
“No, ma’am. He should never have been born.”
They flew open again. I’d never heard such a thing from Rocket. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“He should never have been a boy named Reyes. He should have stayed where he belonged. Martians can’t become human just because they want to drink our water.” His eyes locked on to mine, but he stared past me a long moment before refocusing on my face. “You stay away from him, Miss Charlotte,” he said, taking a warning step toward me. “You just stay away.”
I held my ground. “Rocket, you’re not being very nice.”
He leaned down to me then, his voice a raspy whisper as he said, “But, Miss Charlotte, he’s not very nice either.”
Something beyond my senses caught his attention. He turned, listened, then rushed toward me and clenched his meaty hands around my arms. I winced, but I wasn’t scared. Rocket would never hurt me. Then his grip tightened, and I almost cried out, realizing I might have spoken too soon.
“Rocket,” I said in a soothing voice, “sweetheart, you’re hurting me.”
He jerked back his hands and retreated in disbelief, as if astonished at what he’d done.
“It’s okay,” I said, refusing to rub my throbbing arms. It would only make him feel worse. “It’s okay, Rocket. You didn’t mean to.”
A horrified expression flashed across his face as he disappeared. I heard three words as he left. “He won’t care.”
Guys have feelings, too. But like … who cares?
The sun nested on Nine Mile Hill for several heartbeats before losing interest and slipping down the other side. I sat in Misery — the Jeep, not the emotion — and waited for the skyline to swallow it completely so I could get on with my breaking-and-entering gig. But the more I waited, the more I thought about Reyes. And the more I thought about Reyes, the more confused I became.
Rocket knew Reyes’s name, but did that necessarily mean he’d passed? Could it mean anything else? I’d never seen Rocket scared before, and that scared me. He seemed to be hiding something as well, but trying to differentiate between Rocket’s lucid and less-than-lucid moments was nearly impossible.
On the plus side, I did learn that Martians should never try to become human just to drink our water. Since Martians didn’t exist, I figured they were part of some bizarre Rocket Man analogy. So what on Earth could be comparable to alien beings? Besides circus performers? It had to be someone living contrary to the norm. I could think of a couple of groups, but I felt strangely secure in the knowledge that Reyes was neither an IRS auditor nor a member of the Manson family. Thank goodness, because swastikas aren’t as easily accessorized as one might think.
Perhaps the bigger piece to the puzzle was the water. What did it represent? What would a person living outside the boundaries of society want for badly enough to conform? Money? Acceptance? Power? Green chili enchiladas? I was clueless. It happened. In my own defense, Rocket used a bad analogy. We lived way too close to Roswell to think logically about alien invasions.
But I could think logically about the case. Mark Weir’s nephew was alive, and I had a very strong suspicion he’d known James Barilla, the deceased kid in Weir’s backyard. There had to be a connection. Mostly because I wanted one. Whatever that connection might be, Teddy was in trouble because of it.
Where the heck was Angel when I needed him? He rarely stayed away this long. How could I do supernatural recon without a supernatural reconnaissance team? Namely, Team Angel, which was pretty much a team of one. But by calling it a team, I could say things like, “There’s no
On the way over from the asylum, I’d called the lead detective on Weir’s case. He was a friend of Uncle Bob’s, but not a big fan of mine. I think I irked him. I could be irksome when I put my left ventricle into it. I figured he was either jealous of Uncle Bob’s success — and my part in it — or he didn’t like hot chicks with attitude. Probably a smidgen of both.
Our conversation didn’t last long. Detective Anaya’s answers were short and to the razor-sharp point. According to him, APD had tried to find Teddy in connection to the case as well, but they were looking for another body, another death to pin on Mark Weir. Such an investigation would lead them continually in the wrong direction. Since I knew Teddy was alive, I would have a slight advantage over APD, emphasis on the word
When they’d interviewed Teddy’s mom, she told the police her son never moved back home from her brother’s house. And yet she’d waited until Mark was arrested for murder to report him missing? That left two weeks of Teddy’s whereabouts unaccounted for. I may not have been the state academic decathlon champ, but even I could tell the facts weren’t adding up.
As I waited for the lingering light to stop lingering and let darkness blanket the area, I flipped open my phone to study Reyes’s picture for the hundredth time that day. And just like each time before, my breath caught at the first glimpse of him. I couldn’t get over it. After more than ten years, I’d found him. True, I’d found him in prison, but for the moment — as I was fairly adept at living in denial — I was ignoring that part. The one ray of hope I clung to lay in the fact that Reyes was pissed when they took his mug shot. Not just upset, not just angry, but wildly, ragingly furious. Guilty people aren’t pissed. They’re either relieved at having been caught or worried. Reyes was neither.
I closed my phone, resisting the inane urge to make out with the screen, and made my way up the walk to the front entrance of the Sussman, Ellery & Barber Law Offices. A wide oak door sat conveniently hidden by evergreens and Spanish daggers, making my breaking and entering all the more uncomplicated — though, really, it wasn’t so much breaking as entering, since I had a key and all.
Barber’s office was only slightly less organized than a postapocalyptic war zone. I thumbed through stacks of
