The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson #12)(18)

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Charles—”

“No. I just … no. Reyes is not doing this.” But even as I said the words, doubt sprang inside me.

“It’s just something we need to consider.”

I bowed my head, mortified at what was happening. I had to tell them everything. That this could all be my fault.

Uncle Bob put a hand on my shoulder. “What is it, pumpkin?”

After a long, thoughtful moment, I said, “Reyes came out of that hell dimension, as well as all those innocent souls. But I know of at least three other beings that were trapped inside.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because I put them there. Well, two of them, at least. One was a kind of supernatural assassin named Kuur, and one was a malevolent god named Mae’eldeesahn.”

Osh nodded. “Holy shit, I forgot about that. You didn’t feel either one come out?”

“No. I only felt the victims of the priest. And according to legend, the priest was in there, too. He didn’t cross through me, though. I’m pretty sure he went straight down. But I just don’t know what happened to the other two, and they are supernatural beings more than powerful enough to do something like this.”

I wasn’t so love smitten that I refused to consider the possibility Reyes was behind the deaths. We needed to consider all angles. It just hurt my heart too much to consider it for very long.

“Have you found any kind of connection to the victims?” I asked Uncle Bob.

“None at all. We have an accountant, a recording artist, and Mrs. Yeager, a clerk at district court. No familial connections. Nothing in their backgrounds that would even suggest they knew each other.”

“So, the killings are either completely random, which scares the crap out of me, or there is a connection we aren’t seeing.”

“Exactly.” Uncle Bob took a copy of the recording and dropped it into an evidence bag.

If the murders were completely random, there would be no way to track the killer’s next move. If there was a connection, we had to find it. We had to get ahead of this.

Just then, a woman’s screams could be heard outside. We glanced at each other, then shot out of the tiny office and through a set of glass double doors to find a distraught woman trying to push her way past the officers.

Uncle Bob and I hurried over as an officer tried to subdue a young brunette, her expression full of terror and her emotions drowning in anguish.

“You need to leave the area, ma’am,” the hapless officer said.

“No! That’s my wife’s car! They said the woman who owned that car had been killed in the restroom!”

I had to stand back as another officer joined his colleague in trying to subdue the poor woman. Her agony was so strong it wrapped around my chest in a viselike grip, squeezing the air out of my lungs. I put my hands on my knees and fought to refill them as a wave of dizziness washed over me.

The cops finally wrestled the woman back with Uncle Bob’s help, even though a cameraman who was recording the entire altercation caused them to trip.

“Get back,” the officer said, his voice like a razor, but it did nothing to stop the intrepid reporter and her stalwart cameraman.

“Keep recording,” she said, her gaze glistening with the fodder she’d have for the evening news.

And the poor woman whose wife lay dead on a convenience store’s restroom floor fought blindly, begging the officers to let her pass.

As nonchalantly as I could, I walked over to them, put a hand on her shoulder, and let a soothing energy flow from me and into her. She calmed almost instantly, collapsing against her captors, but her face was still flushed and her saucerlike eyes still wild.

“What’s your name?” I asked her when the officers forced her to sit on the back of an ambulance.

The EMT checked her pulse and blood pressure and slipped an oxygen mask over her face.

“Maya,” she said, trying to catch her breath.

Uncle Bob sent an officer after a bottle of water, then stood beside me.

She lowered the mask. “Is it her?” she asked, her voice pleading. “Is it Patricia?”

“We believe so,” he said to her, and she broke down, sobbing and shaking her head.

“No. That’s not possible. I just saw her.”

Another woman came rushing up then and threw her arms around Maya. They looked too much alike not to be sisters. They cried together while Ubie questioned a couple more potential witnesses. But I needed to know why this woman was attacked. If it were human and random, that was one thing. But supernatural and random was a completely different situation.

After a while, Maya had calmed down enough for me to talk to her. She was still crying, and a big part of her was still in denial—she wanted to see the body to make sure—but at least she was more coherent.

“Maya?” I asked, easing closer. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

She sniffed as her sister handed her a cup of water.

Maya had brown hair cropped short and a tattoo of SpongeBob SquarePants on her arm. She also wore strings of leather around her wrist with different charms. One had her wife’s name engraved on it.

“Did Patricia seem anxious lately? Worried? Maybe someone was harassing her or calling and hanging up?”

Maya shook her head. “No.” She looked at the water in her hands. “Everyone loved Patty. She was just that kind of girl, you know?”