“I’ll find out. I’ll try to get over in the next couple of days. Don’t start without me.”
“That’s not soon enough.”
Darn it. “Okay, let me think.” I had to run out to Corona to be interrogated for murder. Other than that, my day was fairly open. “Barring an arrest, I can be there this afternoon. Are you going to be home?”
“I can come to you,” he said, “right now.”
“I’m headed out of town on a case. I’ll come there. I need to look around the neighborhood and ask you about your neighbors anyway.”
With a sigh of resignation, he agreed. “Okay. But if you’re not here this afternoon, I’m looking into this myself. I only called you because Eric wanted me to. He thinks you’ll have better luck.”
I assumed Eric was one of his gang members. Obviously one of the smarter ones.
“I’ll be there. I promise. Will you let me know if anything happens to her?”
“Sure.” He hung up without further ado. Why would anyone do such a thing? My heart broke. I could almost feel the guy’s pain through the phone connection, which would be a first.
I swung by for a mocha latte, then pointed Misery south when Garrett called. I almost didn’t answer, but he’d only call back.
“Where we headed, Charles?” he asked, a grin in his voice.
“Nova Scotia.”
“Looks like we’re headed back out to Corona. You really liked that burger, didn’t you?”
“Farley Scanlon was murdered last night.”
“Damn, you get around.”
“The sheriff’s office wants to talk to us.”
“Can a sheriff’s office really talk?” he asked, stepping up his game. He’d have to if he wanted to keep up with the likes of me.
“Good-bye, Swopes.”
“Wait, where were we?”
I made sure the sigh of annoyance I exhaled was blatant enough, even a child could understand. “Is that a trick question?
“Oh, right, number two. Ready?”
Of course, the list of things one should never say to a grim reaper. I blew out another breath for good measure. “Hit me.”
“Okeydokey,” I said before hanging up. Freak.
I called Uncle Bob on the way to fill him in on the situation. “I have to be honest with you,” I said when he answered, “I’m not sure you’ll ever get a woman with that haircut you insist on sporting.”
“Is that why you called?” he asked, only slightly miffed.
“Pretty much. And I might be charged with murder. Just wanted to let you know.”
“You murdered someone?”
Why do people always assume the worst? “No, I might be accused of murder. Big difference, Ubie.”
“Oh, how’s the missing wife case?”
“It’s there and yet nowhere. The guy won’t leave his danged house.”
“What can I do?”
“You can call Cookie. She’s swamped, trying to get information. We need to know where all his property holdings are. He could have Teresa held hostage somewhere. Also, I’d like to know what happened to Xander Pope’s daughter. Find out if she’s okay.”
“Xander Pope?”
“Yes. Yost could have hurt her.”
“In what way?”
“No idea. That’s why I have Cookie checking into it.”
“I’ll look into it and give Cookie a call. Does this murder rap have anything to do with an escaped convict named Reyes Farrow?”
“It does,” I said after taking a big swig of the mocha latte. “I think Earl Walker did it. He’s still alive, Uncle Bob, and he’s tying up loose ends. He killed his girlfriend shortly after Reyes’s trial, and now he’s after everyone else who might know he’s alive. Can you get someone over to Virgil Gibbs’s apartment?” Gibbs was the other name on Reyes’s list, the man I’d visited before I went to see Farley Scanlon in Corona. “He could be next, and while he’s not the most productive member of society, he doesn’t deserve to get his throat cut.”
“Walker’s going around cutting throats?” Ubie asked, alarmed. “Is Swopes still with you?”
I glanced in my rearview at the huge black truck behind me — Garrett was clearly overcompensating — and said “Yes” in the tersest voice I could muster, considering my lack of sleep.
“Good. Keep him close. I’ll get a uniform over to Gibbs’s apartment to check on him. You know what this means, don’t you?”
I was busy dodging a flock of suicidal birds. I swerved and ducked behind the steering wheel, because that would help. “Not really. What?”
“It means I put an innocent man behind bars ten years ago.” His voice had changed, become despondent.
“Uncle Bob, you thought he was guilty. I read the reports and the court transcripts. Anyone would have done the same.”
“He didn’t … I didn’t listen to him, to what he was trying to tell me. He was just a kid.”
My heart contracted at the image that popped into my mind. Reyes at twenty, accused of murder, all alone with no friends, no relatives, no one to turn to. He’d forbidden the only person in his life — his sister, Kim — from seeing him. And he sat there in jail, waiting to be put on trial for a murder he clearly didn’t commit. Where was a time machine when I needed one? But now we could put this right. We had to. “We have a chance to redeem that mistake, Uncle Bob.”
After a long silence, he said, “How do you pay back ten years, Charley?”
My heart broke at the guilt in his voice. I was actually surprised by it. He’d done his job. No one would deny that. Unless he knew more than he was letting on. Surely not. “Earl Walker is apparently really good at covering his tracks. No one will blame you for this.”
He scoffed. “Reyes Farrow will.”
Yes, I supposed he would. I could just imagine my uncle Bob drilling him for information in an interrogation room as he sat there cuffed, stewing in anger and confusion. “What was he like?” I asked Ubie before really thinking about the question, what it might do to him.
“I don’t know, pumpkin. He was a kid. Dirty, unkempt, living on the streets.”
Before I could stop it, a hand covered my mouth at the mental image. My left knee instinctively rose to steer Misery until I could lead my hand back to the wheel. I totally needed a hands-free phone accessory.
“He said he didn’t do it. Once. And then never spoke to me again.”
The sting in my eyes couldn’t be helped. That was so like Reyes. Stubborn. Rebellious. And yet, maybe it meant more. Maybe he’d given up, like an animal that had been exposed to so much abuse, it figured, Why bother? Why fight back?
“But it was the way he said it,” Uncle Bob continued, his mind clearly lost in another time. “He looked me in the eye, his stare so strong, so powerful, the weight of it was like a punch to the gut, and said simply, ‘It wasn’t me.’ And then nothing. Not another word. No talk of lawyers, rights, food … He just shut down.”
My lips pressed together hard as I drove. “We can fix this, Uncle Bob,” I said, my voice shaking.
“No, we can’t.” He seemed resolved to the fact that Reyes would hate him until the day he died. And then he added, “I grabbed him.”
Startled, I asked, “You what?”
“By the shirt collar. At one point in the interrogation, I was so frustrated, I lifted him from the chair and threw him back against the wall.”
“Uncle Bob!” I said, not really sure what else to say and realizing he was lucky to be alive.
“He did nothing,” Ubie continued, oblivious. “Just stared at me, his face blank, and yet I could feel the hatred simmering just beneath the surface. In all the years since, that look has haunted me. I’ve never forgotten him or
