Dead on Delivery (29 page)

I found him on my third dive. This time when I hauled him up, he stayed dead weight. There was no miraculous stirring as I swam toward shore. He didn’t breathe. He also didn’t smack me in the head, but I’d almost prefer that he had. This hero stuff was turning me into a masochist. Who was I kidding? This hero stuff was all about masochism. I swam to shore as fast as I could, pulling his dead weight with me. If I hurried there might still be time. I got to the beach and dragged him up onto the solid ground.

Everyone in the hospital gets CPR training. We get recertified every two years whether we want to or not. Generally, it irritates me. I have never once used CPR at the hospital. I can’t imagine a moment when someone might need CPR when someone much more qualified than me to administer it isn’t within shouting distance. The class is the same every time. I can go through the motions of it practically in my sleep.

As it turns out, that might be a good thing. I didn’t have to stop and think as I cleared Littlefield’s airway, positioned him on the hard sand and tried to get him to start breathing again.

Unfortunately, being well trained does not guarantee success. I didn’t bother trying to call 911. I was pretty sure my cell phone was toast. I might have some magical protection, but that didn’t mean my electronic equipment did. My cell was in my pocket and my guess is that the water had totally fried it. It wouldn’t be my first one. There was a reason that I always purchased the insurance.

Besides, I could hear the sirens. Help was on the way.

I heard something else, too. I heard crying. I looked up to see Emilia Aguilar crouched at the edge of the lake, whimpering. I felt rage building up in me and rising up from my gut.

“What the hell are you crying for? This is what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s what you’ve been working for.” I yelled at her between compressions.

She turned to me, cheeks wet with tears and smeared with dirt. “No,” she shouted. “Yes. I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

She began to sob for real.

Confused, was she? Well, that made two of us.

THE CAVALRY ARRIVED AND I WASN’T SURE THAT WAS GOOD news. I kept doing CPR on Littlefield, even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to help matters any, until I let two police officers haul me off of him. I didn’t fight them, so I felt like the two on one deal was a little bit of overkill, but frankly I was grateful that someone else was taking over and didn’t feel up to making a fuss. Maybe they’d have better luck than I had.

I watched them start to work on him. It didn’t look like they were going to have any more success than I had had. I suspected that if Littlefield had wanted to live, he might have made it. I shivered in my wet clothes as I watched them work and listened to Emilia sniffle next to me.

“Someone get her a blanket,” Chief Murdock barked, as she marched onto the scene.

A female officer scurried off to the cars. Murdock just stood and looked at me. I stared right back into her eyes. I was wet and cold and dispirited, but I’d be damned if I was going to let her intimidate me. Or, I suppose, let her know that she intimidated me more than she already had.

I felt the blanket hit my shoulders and wrapped it around myself. It was scratchy and smelled like mildew and tobacco, but it was at least a little protection from the wind that had picked up and was making my clothes turn to ice around me.

“You couldn’t take a hint, could you?” Murdock said, shaking her head. “You know I’m going to have to arrest you now, don’t you?”

“For what? Trying to save someone? You guys ever hear of the Good Samaritan law down here?” I countered, even though just the sound of the words
arrest you
made me shake in my boots. Of course, I was shaking in them anyway. I was freezing.

“Drowning a man doesn’t sound like being much of a Good Samaritan to me.” Murdock clasped her hands behind her back and put her face right into mine. She had lovely skin. Practically poreless. I didn’t think it was the moment to ask her about her beauty regime, though.

“She didn’t try to drown him. She tried to save him,” Emilia piped up beside me.

Now there was help from an unexpected quarter. Of course, Emilia had me pretty darned confused anyway.

Murdock shifted her attention. “And I should take the word of the cousin of the man that the dead guy murdered on that subject?”

Emilia stood up. It wasn’t terribly frightening. She was an ittybitty thing. Still, it showed presence and some definite backbone. I could respect that. “Yes. Yes, you should.”

“May I ask why?” Murdock smiled, but it was a little like the smile of a crocodile. She was just getting ready to snap.

“Because it’s the truth. That’s why.” Emilia squared her shoulders and looked Murdock in the eye.

Murdock’s smile grew. “That is so sweet, Emilia. Is there any reason I should believe you? Any reason at all?” She cocked her head to one side and looked at her with her squinted eyes. “What are you doing here anyway? How’d you end up here just as your cousin’s murderer was drowned?”

Emilia took a deep breath. “I was called.”

Murdock leaned back. “Called? Who called you?” She turned and looked at me. “Did you call her, Markowitz? Are you two in cahoots?”

Cahoots
sounded like such a sweet word for what Chief Murdock was actually accusing us of. I shook my head. “I didn’t call her. I didn’t call anybody.”

“So how did you end up here?” Murdock asked me.

“I followed him.” There it was. The plain truth. Who knew it could even come out of my mouth?

“After I told you to leave him alone?” Murdock pressed her lips together in a thin line.

I shrugged. “And threatened me that if any harm came to him, you’d arrest me. I didn’t see anyone else protecting him, so I figured I was it.”

A flicker of doubt crossed Murdock’s cool gray eyes, but it was only a flicker. A brief light of possibility and then—poof!—gone again, suspicion in its place. “Where did you follow him from?”

“Some church over on Patwin Road.” I nodded my head toward the Camry. “That’s the preacher’s car. Littlefield took it.”

Murdock twisted her lips. “I’m aware. I’m also aware that he apparently steamed when holy water was thrown on him and was possessed by Satan.”

I shrugged. I figured it was better to neither verify nor dispute that. “He ran out here and jumped into the water with all his clothes on. I jumped in after him. I pulled him up once, but he fought against me and popped me in the nose. I lost my grip on him and he went under again. It took me too long to find him the second time.” Horrifyingly, my voice started to clog up as I told the final part of my story. I coughed and tried to pretend that it was water in my throat.

Murdock stared at me for a few seconds and then turned her attention back on Emilia. “And you were called here. Who did you say called you?”

Emilia tilted her chin up. “I didn’t say. It wasn’t a who. It was a what. I was drawn here. The universe called me. I answered.”

“The universe, huh? Must be one heck of a phone bill.” She looked from one of us to the other for a second and then turned. “Arrest these two,” she barked at the closest uniform. “And call a bus for the dead guy, will you?”

“Arrest them for what?” Bless his heart, he actually looked confused.

“I don’t know. Find something. Maybe Markowitz here has got a broken taillight.” She marched back toward her car, saying over her shoulder as she went, “Find something that we can hold them on until I can book them for murder.”

I didn’t exactly feel like I’d made a new friend.

 

 

THE GOOD NEWS WAS THAT I WAS IN AN INTERROGATION room. That meant that they hadn’t found anything to charge me with. Yet.

The bad news was that I’d been there for two hours in my soggy clothes and I was getting pretty bored. I do not have the world’s longest attention span. I need stimulation. I like books and TV and the radio, and I like them pretty much constantly. Sitting here in an empty room with its industrial-grade carpet embedded with the smell of fear and desperation without so much as a piece of paper to doodle on might well make me go crazy.

Chief Murdock was a wily one. She knew how to soften a girl up.

I laid my head down on my folded arms. If I hadn’t been so damn uncomfortable in my wet jeans and if my nose hadn’t been throbbing like the bass beat at a Sublime concert, I might have taken a nap. I closed my eyes and tried to drift off.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been like that when the door opened. At least they’d brought me something to eat. It smelled yummy. Kind of like an apple cinnamon muffin.

“Hey, you wanna go home?” a very familiar voice said.

My head shot up. “Ted? How did you get here? They haven’t let me make a phone call yet!”

Maybe I was dreaming. I’d had worse dreams. I didn’t remember ever being able to smell something in my dreams, though.

Maybe we’d become psychically linked and he could sense my dismay and danger. I’d heard that happened to werewolves once they were part of a pack. They could sense when one of their members was in trouble.

Maybe Littlefield had hit me harder in the head than I realized and I was hallucinating.

They were all possibilities.

Ted came the rest of the way into the room and sat down across from me at the table. “We got a request for information from the Elmville Police Department.”

“About what?” I was definitely not thinking straight. This made no sense to me.

“About you. To see if you were a person of interest in any investigations. Or had come to our attention in any way. Your name is mentioned in my report on the gang troubles last summer.” He arched a brow at me and touched his lips with his finger, as if I didn’t have enough common sense not to start babbling about Chinese vampires and hydroponically grown marijuana in an interrogation room that could very well have a tape running somewhere. “That’s how I knew you were here. I tried your cell but didn’t get an answer.”

“It was in my pocket when I went into the reservoir.” I explained.

He nodded slowly. “You went into a reservoir. Fully clothed, I take it.”

“There wasn’t really time to change into a more appropriate outfit.” I smiled at him, but it made my face hurt.

“And was this before or after you broke your nose?” He reached out and tilted my chin.

“Kind of concurrent.”

He stood up. “Let’s get you out of here.” He held his hand out to me.

I took it. I wasn’t feeling all that proud at the moment. We started to walk out of the room. “Ted?”

“Yeah?” His voice sounded a little rough.

“Have they let Emilia go yet?” I couldn’t leave without her. She was the key to everything. Maybe it was all over, now that Littlefield was dead, but I didn’t think so. Plus, I still didn’t understand, and that rankled with me.

“Who?”

Not a good sign. “Emilia. The woman they brought in with me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Ted, we need to get her out, too.” I knew I was asking for a lot. I knew he was probably ready to kill me. I knew I couldn’t leave her here, not if I wanted answers.

“Melina, I don’t think you appreciate what it’s costing me to get you out.” He kept his voice even, but there was definite stress in it.

“I’m so sorry. I will try to find a way to make it up to you. But I can’t leave here without Emilia.” I stopped walking.

He sighed and looked down at me. “Who exactly is this person, now?”

“Her name is Emilia Aguilar, and she’s the one who’s been killing all these people, and I’m not leaving without her.” I looked back up at him. At least I wasn’t lying anymore.

He closed his eyes and I was pretty certain he was counting under his breath. “Then we’d better go find her.”

 

 

THEY HADN’T CHARGED EMILIA WITH ANYTHING YET EITHER. IT took another fifteen minutes or so, and all three of us were walking out of the Stanislaus County Jail together.

“Thank you for helping me,” she said, as we walked to Ted’s truck. “I don’t know how long they would have kept me in that room if you hadn’t.”

“Not much longer,” Ted said. “Eventually they either have to charge you with something or let you go.”

My feet squelched as we walked across the pavement.

“We need to get you some dry clothes,” Ted and Emilia said, nearly in unison.

“Please,” Emilia said. “Come to my home. I’ll get you some dry clothing and some food. You’re hungry.”

As if on cue, my stomach growled.

We rode the rest of the way in silence, although Emilia kept turning to look out the back window. Ted parked the truck at the curb and we all piled out. Emilia led the way into the house. It was cozy inside. I’d half expected it to be covered with shrines and Day of the Dead figurines. It was mainly distressingly normal.

“Come with me,” Emilia said. “I’ll get you some dry clothes.”

I looked at her. “I don’t think anything of yours will fit me.” I was five or six inches taller than her and we don’t even need to start talking about issues of width. Maybe Paul was right. Maybe I needed to hit those diet drinks a little harder.

“I have some things I keep for clients, just in case.” She led me to a bathroom, disappeared down the hall for a minute and then came back with a set of sweats. “These should fit you. Bring your wet things out when you’ve showered and changed and I’ll wash them.”

She shooed me into the shower and walked out.

I turned on the hot water and stepped into the tub. It was such a relief to be warm again. I found a bottle that smelled like shampoo on the side of the tub and used it to wash the reservoir smell out of my hair. There was a bar of soap and I scrubbed down with that, too.

By the time I stepped out of the bath, I could smell something delicious. I towel-dried my hair, combed it out with a brush I found by the side of the sink and pulled on the sweats. They were old and a little worn, but that just made them feel soft against my skin.