would have to wait until nightfall.
In the meantime, Uncle Bob was rounding up everything APD had on the case, and Barber was headed to Mr. Weir’s sister’s house to see if there’d been any contact with Teddy, the missing nephew. I decided to send in Barber first to get the lay of the land before I talked to her, figuring I could use the time to mosey back to my office and glean as much information as possible off the Internet. As I headed out of the detention center, I opened my cell and called Cookie.
“Hey, boss,” she said by way of a greeting. “Planning a jailbreak yet?”
“Nah. Believe it or not, they’re letting me walk out of here.”
“Crazy people. What are they thinking?”
“Probably that I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”
She chuckled. “You have three messages, nothing too pressing. Mrs. George still swears her husband is cheating and wants to meet with you this afternoon.”
“No.”
“That’s what I told her, only I wasn’t quite so wordy about it,” she said teasingly. “Everything else can wait. So, what’s up?”
“I’m glad you asked,” I said, walking out the glass doors. I did a quick scan of the area for Billy, but he must’ve had better things to do. “The lawyers gave me some interesting news at lunch.”
“Yeah? How interesting?”
“Pretty darned.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Can you pull up the prison registry and do a search for the name Reyes?”
“The
I cringed. She made it sound so … criminal. “Yeah, long story.”
“Well, there are about two hundred inmates and/or parolees with the last name of Reyes.”
“That was fast. Try it as a first name.”
I heard clicking; then she said, “Better. There’re only four.”
“Okay, well, he’d be about thirty now.”
“And then there was one.”
I stopped with my key halfway in the door. “One? Really?”
“Reyes Farrow.”
My heart thrummed nervously in my chest. Could this really be it? After all these years, could I finally have found him?
“Do they have a mug shot posted?” I asked. When Cookie didn’t answer, I tried again. “Cookie? You there?”
“My god, Charley. He’s … it’s him.”
My keys fell to the ground, and I braced my free hand against Misery. “How do you know? You’ve never seen 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
