I couldn’t have been imagining it. I remembered it so clearly. Dutch. Whispery and soft, deep and mesmerizing. Rather like Reyes himself. And the similarities didn’t stop there. My mind started registering all kinds of likenesses between the two. The heat and energy that radiated off them both. The way they moved—a blur—very unlike the departed. The paralyzing power of their touches, their stares. The way my knees almost gave beneath my weight with the appearance of either one.
Maybe I was losing it. Either that or Reyes and Bad were the same kind of being. But how was that even possible? I needed a second opinion. As Cookie pulled her Taurus into the parking lot, I said, “I saw him again.”
She braked short and looked at me.
“When I fell through the skylight,” I added.
“Reyes?” she asked in disbelief.
“No. I don’t know.” Fatigue seeped into my voice. “I’m beginning to wonder. I’m beginning to wonder about a lot of things.”
She nodded her head in understanding, eased up to the curb, and turned off the engine. “I’ve been doing some research. It’s late, but I have a feeling you won’t be able to sleep until some of your questions are answered.”
* * *
After Cookie more or less carried me into my apartment, she went to check on Amber. I shouted out a hey to Mr. Wong then put on a pot of coffee in my brand-new coffeepot that, according to the card and bow attached, had been provided by the good people at AAA Electric for the investigation I did on the missing switchgears—whatever the heck a switchgear was and why ever the heck anyone would steal one. It was red. The coffeepot, not the switchgear. I had no idea what color switchgears were, as I’d discovered the thief long before it came to that. Still, I doubted they were red.
I poured a small glass of milk and downed it so I could take four ibuprofen at once without tearing up the lining of my stomach. I’d refused the prescription painkillers the doctor in the ER had offered. Scripts and I didn’t generally get along. But the soreness was already infiltrating my muscles, stiffening them until I thought they would break with each move I made. That fall may not have done any permanent damage, but the temporary crap was going to suck. I could barely breathe.
Still, even a slight ability to breathe was better than a nonexistent one.
Between visiting Mark Weir in jail, chasing Rocket around the asylum, breaking into the law offices, and falling through the skylight at the warehouse, I had yet to get my hands on a computer long enough to search the prison database for more information on Reyes. As I eased into the chair at my computer, Cookie strode in with an armful of notes and printouts. Knowing her, she’d already researched Reyes’s life down to his shoe size and blood type. I logged on to the New Mexico Department of Corrections Web site while she poured us some coffee. Ten seconds later, thanks to fiber optics, Reyes’s mug shot shone brightly on the screen.
“My god,” Cookie said from behind me, apparently experiencing the same visceral reaction to Reyes that I did every time I looked at him.
She set a cup beside me.
“Thank you,” I said, “and I’m sorry I had to call you out in the middle of the night.”
She pulled up a chair, sat down, and put a hand over mine. “Charley, do you honestly think it bothers me one iota that you called me?”
Was that a trick question? “Well, yes, with a sprinkle of duh on top. Who wouldn’t be upset?”
“I wouldn’t,” she said, taken aback, as if I’d hurt her feelings for even suggesting such a thing. “I would have been furious had you not called me. I know you’re special and you have an extraordinary gift that I’ll never fully understand, but you’re still human, and you’re still my best friend.” Her face transformed into a map of worry lines. “I wasn’t upset that you called me. I was upset because you think you’re indestructible. You’re not.” She paused to let her gaze bore into mine, to drive her point home. It was sweet. “And because of this false sense of security, you get yourself into the most … bizarre situations.”
“Bizarre?” I asked, pretending to be offended.
“Three words. Sewage plant disaster.”
“That totally wasn’t my fault,” I argued, balking at the very idea of it. As if.
She pursed her lips and waited for me to come to my senses.
“Okay, it was my fault.” She knew me too well. “But only a little. And those rats had it coming. So, what did you find out?” I asked, looking back at Reyes’s picture.
Cookie thumbed through the printouts and slid one out. “Are you ready for this?”
“As long it doesn’t contain nude pictures of elderly women, I’m good.” I kept my eyes locked on to Reyes’s, fierce and intense as they were.
She handed me the printout. “Murder.”
“No,” I whispered, as if the wind had been forced out of my lungs. It was a news article dated ten years earlier. No, no, no, no, no. Anything but murder. Or rape. Or kidnapping. Or armed robbery. Or indecent exposure, ’cause that’s just creepy. I scanned the article with a reluctant eye, like when you pass by an accident and can’t help but look.
ALBUQUERQUE MAN FOUND GUILTY.
Short. To the point.
A man with a past more mysterious than the circumstances surrounding his father’s death was found guilty Monday after three days of jury deliberation. The prosecution faced several unusual problems during the trial, such as the fact that Reyes Alexander Farrow, 20, doesn’t exist.