Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) (8 page)

His eyes flashed. “I don’t care about what’s happened to
me
.
I’m
fine. It’s what they did to
her
. What they did. They…” He closed his eyes and swayed on his feet.

Casey grabbed him, and Don hopped up from behind the table. Together they lowered Ricky onto a chair. When they were sure he wasn’t going to fall over, Don went back to his seat.

“He means it, you know,” Death said. “What they did to her is far worse in his mind than what’s been done to him in here.”

Casey knelt beside her brother. “I know what they did to her. I’m sorry about that, too. It was terrible.”

“Terrible?” He gave a manic laugh. “It was…more than that.”

Casey dragged another chair around the table so she could sit next to him. “I want to help find out who did this, Ricky. You don’t deserve to be in here. And she deserves the truth.”

He looked away. “She doesn’t care about the truth anymore.”

“No, but you do, don’t you?”

“The truth won’t bring her back.”

Casey had way more experience with going after “truth” than she ever wanted. Courtrooms, test drives, payoffs. All of them were designed to “bring closure,” but in reality brought nothing other than wasted time and money. She was more alone after all the legal crap than she’d ever been. Which was why she’d given up on the “truth” of her family’s accident long ago. But this situation was different. No innocent person had ever been charged with killing her family, not like Ricky was being blamed now. Not even Pegasus, the guilty car company, had paid very many consequences for the accident. No matter what sort of “closure” there was supposed to have been, Casey—and her husband and son—had paid all there was to pay.

“Listen, Ricky, I didn’t know this girl—”

“Alicia.”

Casey hesitated.

“He thinks it’s her real name,” Death said. “You going to tell him, or should I?”

Casey let it go. “I didn’t know Alicia, but it sounds like you knew her pretty well. What can you tell me about her?”

His eyes went soft. “She was sweet. And quiet. And kind of…mysterious.”

“Secretive?”

“No! Just…” He sat for a few moments. “She wasn’t the kind to go blabbing about herself everywhere. She was…private.”

“But she talked to you?”

“Of course. We talked all the time.”

“About what?”

“What do you think? Normal stuff. Work. Food. I don’t know.”

“Where was she from?”

“All over, I guess. She moved around a lot. Oregon. California. Lots of places. But I told her this should be her final stop. I’d convinced her, I’m sure of it. She liked it here better than anywhere else.” A little color stole into his cheeks, indicating his hope that he was the reason for her contentment.

“What about her past?”

“What about it?”

“Did she talk about it, other than just where she’d lived? Houses, friends, jobs? You know. Actual details?”

His eyes slid away.

“Ricky? What is it?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“But—”

“Forget it, all right, Casey? Please?”

Casey watched as his face went through a change from sad and depressed to stubborn, his mouth a thin line.

“Okay,” she said. “Fine. What about her childhood?”

“Her
childhood
?”

“Sure. You’d been going out for a few months. It would be normal for you to talk about your childhoods. You would see things around here that you remember, so you’d tell her, and that would trigger her memories. You know. You share stuff when you’re dating.”

“She didn’t talk about her
childhood
.”

“Not even—”

“At
all
.”

“Casey,” Don said, “perhaps we should just let him tell us what he
wants
to tell us.”

Casey looked at her brother, who suddenly resembled a sullen teenager. Too bad he was actually ten years past that.

Ricky closed his eyes. When he opened them, the despair was back. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just…” This time the tears overflowed onto his cheeks, and he swiped at them with his sleeves.

Casey leaned forward. “It’s okay. Just remember I want to help you. The more I know about her, the better chance I have of figuring out who did this to her.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Of course it wasn’t. I never thought so for an instant.”

Death swooshed around, then hovered up by the ceiling, checking out the jail’s video camera. “This isn’t on. Just wanted to make sure.”

Casey ignored the interruption. “Did Alicia have any other friends?”

Ricky frowned. “Not really. There was one other waitress at the restaurant who was about her age, but she kind of drove Alicia crazy. Ali said she never shut up.”

“Would this be Bailey?”

“You
know
her?”

“I stopped by The Slope before coming here. She was working. And very eager to talk.”

“You can’t believe anything she says.”

“Then I guess you
are
guilty.”

“What?”

“She’s one of the few people in this whole town, apparently, who thinks you’re innocent. She’s going to help me. So I wouldn’t go bad-mouthing her right now if I were you.”

“She’s going to
help
you? But she always hated—” He stopped.

“Hated Alicia?”

“Look, I don’t think she killed her, okay? She just never thought…She always said…”

“That you should be with her instead of Alicia? I know. She told me the same thing. It’s not exactly a secret.”

“So if she wants to help it’s not because she wants to help Alicia.”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters! She doesn’t care that Ali got killed. She just wants to use this to prove she was right. Or something.”

“It doesn’t matter
why
she wants to help. We’ll take whatever help we can get.”

“I don’t want her making Alicia look bad.”

“Ricky.” Casey grabbed his hand. “You said it before. Alicia doesn’t care anymore. She’s gone. But I care. And you should. You don’t want to be in here the rest of your life for a murder you didn’t commit. Accused of killing the woman you loved. I mean, you did, right?”

“Did what?”

“Love her.”

“Of course I did.”

“And you didn’t kill her?”

He yanked his hand away and stumbled from his chair, hanging onto the back. “I already told you—”

“Then we’ll take Bailey’s help. Won’t we?”

He thrust out his chin, but then his shoulders drooped again, and he sank back into the chair. “You’ll be careful what you believe?”

“About Alicia? Or about you?”

“About any of it.”

She studied him. “So, what
should
I believe?”

“The only thing that really matters is that she was a good person. She really was.”

A good person who had lied to him about such a basic thing as her name, and hadn’t shared the slightest detail about her past except a list of multiple, gigantic states. Never a good sign.

“So tell me why someone would kill her.”

“It wasn’t her. I mean, it wasn’t
because
it was her. It was a random break-in. It had to be.”

Don cleared his throat. “I really don’t think it was random, not from the way they—”

Casey glared at him, and Don stopped talking before he said anything too upsetting.

Ricky didn’t seem to have heard, anyway. “She didn’t have anything worth stealing. There was no secret stash of money—”

“And you know this how?”

“Because she wasn’t the kind of person to hoard cash, or even care about it. She wore hand-me-down clothes. She never ate out on her own, even at The Slope. She didn’t even have a computer, for God’s sake.”

“Why would God want her to have a computer?” Death said.

“She never bought things,” Ricky continued. “If I did take her out to eat, she might pay her part—because she’d insist, not because I didn’t want to—but she didn’t go shopping, or skiing, or anything. There was nothing in her apartment people would plan to take. It had to be totally by chance.”

“Okay.” Casey drummed her fingers on the table. “So let’s say it was random. How did they find her? She lived in a basement apartment, underneath a nosey landlord, in a residential neighborhood that wasn’t exactly fancy, but wasn’t a slum. You said yourself there was nothing obvious worth stealing. So why her?”

“I don’t know. They followed her, maybe. She always walked home from work, and she was always alone. It would have been close to dark if it was after work. They could have been waiting for someone like her. Someone they could overpower and—”

“Stop.” Casey held up her hand. “You’re saying ‘they.’ What makes you think it was more than one person?”

Ricky went even paler, and his mouth dropped open. “What?”

“You know
what.
There’s something you’re not telling me.”

His mouth clamped shut, and he shook his head. “There’s not.”

She looked over at Don, and he raised his eyebrows. He saw it, too.

“Look, Ricky, this is just like the Bailey thing. If you want me to help, you’ve got to tell me what you know.”

He closed his eyes and breathed out through his nose, obviously struggling with something. Casey waited him out.

“She didn’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“I mean, she didn’t tell me on purpose. She was asleep.”

“So you feel like you’re betraying her if you tell us.”

He shrugged, obviously embarrassed. “I guess. Kind of.”

“I understand, Ricky. Really, I do. But the way I see it, you’re betraying her if you
don’t
tell. If it’s something that could help us find her killers. And you know there was more than one.”

He took a shuddering breath. “Have you seen the pictures?”

“Of Alicia? Yes. You have, too?”

His jaw trembled. “I wish I hadn’t. What they did to her…”

“
Tell me
, Ricky.”

He glanced at Don, and lowered his voice, as if he didn’t want Don to hear. Don pulled a paper out of his briefcase and pretended to be reading it. Casey could tell he was faking, because his eyes weren’t moving.

“We were sleeping,” Ricky said. “One of the few nights she let me stay.” He flushed. “Not because she didn’t want me to, but because we were both so tired, and we had to get up early. You know how my shifts are, and if she had to work breakfast she’d be there at five. Usually I’d be at her place for a while in the evening, and then go home. It worked well for us. Or okay, anyway. Sometimes I’d ask if I could stay when it was late after we—” He stopped, and his flush grew deeper.

“It’s all right, Ricky. You don’t have to explain that part. I do remember what men and women do when they’re in love.”

He gave a brief smile, which looked more like a cringe. “Anyway, we were sleeping, and she started thrashing around. I woke up when she yanked the covers off of me. I tried to wake her up, too, because she was mumbling weird stuff, but she grabbed me. Both arms, like she was trying to get me to listen to her. Her eyes were wide open, and she was scared, really scared…”

Casey held his hand. “It’s okay, Ricky.”

“She kept saying, ‘They found me. Oh, my God, they found me.’ I asked her who, but she just said ‘they.’ It was freaky. She finally went back to sleep when I…I held her tight enough. When she woke up in the morning she didn’t say anything about it, so I didn’t, either. I figured if she wanted to tell me, she would.” His face crumpled and he dropped it into his hands. “I should have asked her about it. If I had, she might still be alive. This wouldn’t have happened.”

“Ricky, you don’t know—”

“I could have
protected
her! She wouldn’t have been alone! She wouldn’t have been walking
alone
.” He fell onto Casey’s shoulder and sobbed. She rubbed his back and looked up at Death, who was filming the whole exchange.

“I know,” Death said. “I’m exploiting your brother’s emotions. But you have to admit, his sense of grief is so raw it makes even me feel like weeping. It’s so astounding I needed to record it.”

She didn’t stop glaring.

Don caught her expression. “Um, Casey? You okay?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes, leaning against Ricky’s hair.

“The other question,” Death said, coming in for a close-up, “is this. Does he really think he could have prevented what happened? Or is he simply angry that she didn’t let him help? Does he know there were big things she wasn’t telling him?”