Buried Secrets (15 page)

What if this
diablero
is only drafting
evil
dead people,
Jo had asked.

But then again—Cecil was right, too. Over the past four years they'd uncovered eight more victims, college students, dead after joining clubs similar to Gabriella's. And that wasn't counting the handful of missing bodies with no sure connection to the club. Zack let names and photographs and histories play through his memory, gaming nerds and cheerleaders, slackers and honor students. Few of them had had a record, and those just for misdemeanors. None of them…

He sat down at the stupid Formica table. “Did you get hold of Brent Harper's juvie records?”

Cecil, still doing his magic with folds and creases, gently said, “We were talking about Gabriella.”

Zack held up a hand. “I'm going somewhere, here. Did you?”

“His mother e-mailed me right back with the basics, not long after we talked,” admitted Cecil. “Apparently the poor woman doesn't sleep any better at night than you do.”

“And?”

“Her son was a little neo-Nazi who may have helped cause several deaths, during high school.” Cecil shook his head. “The youth today, eh?”

“Jo thinks—” But that was a cop-out. “
We
think the folks vanishing around here, vanishing dead I mean, were all evil.”

Cecil looked excited. “Ooh! Interesting theory!”

Zack waited.

“And in absolutely no way connected to Gabriella,” added Cecil quickly. He even made a face; that's how silly he thought the idea was. “Zack, you can't be thinking…”

Not thinking. Just worrying. “The other kids who've vanished—not around here, but the one in Idaho, and Arkansas, and California…nothing in their files shows they were evil either. I've got that.”

So why wasn't he relieved? Why wasn't he happy?

Oh yeah. Maybe because his wife had died, possibly been
murdered, and instead of resting in hallowed ground her body had been stolen? Lots of loved ones' bodies had been stolen.

This wasn't happy material, here.

“The two investigations may be wholly unrelated,” offered Cecil. Then he sighed, because of course that wouldn't be real good news either. “Or perhaps the magic user we're after has grown increasingly selective?”

Yeah. That was it. Gabriella had been a throwaway.

“Which is not to belittle Gabriella,” Zack's partner added.

“Stop doing that,” warned Zack. Cecil insisted he couldn't read minds, just emotions, but it got creepy all the same.

“I only meant to say, the earlier bodies could have gone toward preparation, or experimentation, or any number of other purposes. What does Jo think of all this?”

“All what?”

“The disappearances outside of Almanuevo. The connection to Gabriella. Information which I now see from your expression you've not shared with her at all, have you? Zack, really!”

“Like you said, they might not even be related.” Zack stood to continue packing.

“I also said,” cautioned Cecil, “that this investigation seems to be getting rather personal. I am right, aren't I?”

Zack scowled at him. “It's my business, personal or not.”

“Actually, Lorenzo Investigations is
our
business. Half and half. More important, you're my friend. If your judgment is becoming skewed, then it becomes very much my concern.”

“I get it. Gabriella wasn't evil. I knew that.”

“Actually,” said Cecil, “Now I'm talking about Jo.”

“We're
working together,
” Zack repeated.

Cecil waited. But if he thought Zack was going to unburden about the sheriff, when even
Zack
wasn't sure what was going on between them, even after last night's make-out session….

Cecil looked at the bar and raised an eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Zack warned. Whatever existed between him and Jo was just that—between him and Jo. It probably wasn't helping the investigation. Or keeping him professional.

“I like her,” Cecil offered.

“Nobody asked you.”

“Are you carrying protection?” asked Cecil helpfully.

Zack thought
Shut up,
as loudly as he could, but of course it didn't work that way.

He hoped Jo was having a better day than this.

 

“Uh…Bud?” Jo hadn't moved from beside the filing cabinet except to slowly—so very slowly—raise one hand far enough to signal her dogs to stay. “Maybe you should put down that snake before it gets testy. Huh?”

She tried to talk low. After all, the snake didn't seem testy yet. It wasn't coiled, or rattling—but it was sliding sinuously across Bud's tattooed wrist, clearly alive. It seemed to
like
being stroked by the crazy vagrant.

Still…

“You see it now, Sheriff,” offered Bud, eyes sharp. Nobody had ever been sure of the old man's background. Indian? Spanish? Mestizo? Nobody had much cared. But suddenly, seeing the set of his shoulders and—and feeling something in the air about him—Jo found herself desperately wishing she knew.

Because after a week of interviewing magic users, she now knew at least one reason people thought Crazy Bud was crazy, and she wished she had a label for it. Shaman? Santero?
Colombé?

“I see you're holding a rattlesnake, Bud. Let's not upset the snake.”

“But she's already riled, Sheriff. You and your partner know that, she done told me so. Her kind's in one hell of an uproar, I'll tell you.”

Then maybe you should put this one down?
But Jo
did
see. Because instead of going with the part of her mind that wanted Bud to shut up, go away, stop his crazy talk, she took a deep, slow breath and felt the connection between her booted feet and the earth beneath her.
Growing roots,
Sigrid Thorson had said.
Grounding,
Ashley had called it.

The air seemed to hum. Sort of. Then Jo asked, as casually as she could, “
What's
got the snakes in an uproar, Bud?”

“That dark one you and your partner been tracking. Tappin' into the old powers. Mine. Other folks'. He ain't choosy. Mixes
'em willy-nilly. No good comes of that, Sheriff. No good
never
comes of that. Makes us all look bad, fer one.” He shook his matted head. “Disrespects the laws, too—laws of the old 'uns, laws of nature. Nature don't much like it.”

Jo watched him lift the snake toward her like an offering—or maybe just to second the opinion. Even from the other side of the cell bars, and half a room past that, she had to set her shoulders to keep from shuddering. When nature came in the form of reptiles, she could definitely see the value of playing nice.

She chose her next question carefully. “Do the snakes know why this…this dark one wants the dead bodies he's stealing?”

Bud narrowed his eyes. “Thought you
saw
now, Sheriff.”

“I'm still learning, here, Bud.”

“Ain't just stealin' bodies,” said Bud. “The bodies, that's the least of anyone's concern. Ain't you figured that out yet?”

He paused to whisper something to the snake. Or vice-versa.

“Only got one to go,” offered Bud. “You and that partner of your'n best stop him once he gets that. Otherwise all hell will break loose.”

Jo had a sinking feeling that wasn't just a figure of speech. “But if you know what's going on, why don't
you
stop him, Bud? Why don't the snakes? If they're so, uh, concerned?”

“Ain't qualified,” said Bud simply. “Takes somethin' special to fight evil. Takes somethin' powerful to counter hate. Any fool knows that. You and t'other 'un, you're the ones have the best chance of doin' that now.”

Maybe the snake said something; Jo couldn't tell. All she knew was, Bud nodded and stood. “Best of luck, Sheriff.”

“Bud, wait.” Not that she didn't want him to leave. Every sane cell in her body was screaming to be away from this strange man, and his little snake, too. But if he was legitimate—

And she was no expert, but oh, this felt legitimate.

—this might be the best chance she had for information.

Even if he did stop at arm's length from her, on his way to the front door. With his snake.

“I appreciate you coming to tell me all this,” said Jo, sur
prised by the evenness of her own voice. “And, um, you can tell the snakes, we'll try to be more careful of them, too.”

“Oh, sometimes they need killin',” admitted Bud with a shrug, as if it were a joke between him and his reptilian girlfriend. “Cain't let 'em bite you, no matter how riled the rascals get. Ain't like they don't have plenty of lives.”

Oh?
thought Jo, a little wildly.
That's not just cats?
“But Bud, we don't know where to look. To find this—this dark one.” The description seemed way too inefficient. And vaguely racist. “Is he some kind of wizard, or priest, or what?”

“Yep.” Bud grinned. His remaining teeth made for a uniquely unsettling grin.

Perhaps the strangest part of the encounter was when Jo found herself grinning back. “Could you—or your friends—please tell us where to look?”

“He's robbin' death,” said Bud, with an implied
duh.
“Look where the dead things go.” Then he nodded—“Ma'am”—and left.

At least he took the snake with him.

Jo followed to the door, though at a distance. As Bud headed off down the road, the tails of his duster flapping behind him, he called, “Good to have you with us, Sheriff.”

“Thank you,” she said—probably way too weakly for him to hear. Assuming he was using normal, human hearing.

Then she went back inside the jail. Casting a suspicious look toward the now-empty cell, she fetched a billy club and poked the cot. Then she crouched—from several feet back—and peeked under it. Just in case Bud had left some friends.

When Sundance nuzzled her elbow, to see what she was doing, Jo let out a yelp. Then she sat down, right there on the worn linoleum, and practiced breathing again. “Oh. My. God.”

Sundance licked her face. Then Butch joined them, panting.

That had been…insane. In so many ways! The temptation to dismiss it as just that—Crazy Bud, being his crazy old vagrant self—felt familiar…but, now, somehow false, too. That's what she'd done when she first came to Spur, after all.

This time, she knew better.

This time she wasn't alone.
She wasn't alone!

With a last hug for the dogs, Jo went to her desk for the borrowed cell phone.

She had to tell Zack about this before she forgot anything important.

Z
ack still hadn't forgiven Cecil for prying into his personal life—much less forcing him to take a handful of condoms, just to shut him up—when Cecil's phone rang.

“It's for you.” Cecil handed it across Ashley Vanderveer's tiled tabletop without even answering it. Not that this took any psychic ability, since Zack's own name and number scrolled across the phone's display.

Jo.

Damn, but he felt weird about having accepted those condoms. “Yeah,” he said, answering. “Zack!” Jo sounded surprisingly excited—especially for Jo. “You're not going to believe what happened….”

But when she told him, talking fast except for the dramatic pauses, he completely believed it. Crazy men. Snakes. Cryptic prophecy. Par for the freakin' course, in his world.

Just Spur, she'd said this morning. Barely an hour away, she'd said. And he'd thought hell, middle of the day,
what could happen?

Clearly she was in his world with him, now, whether he wanted her to be or not. His twisted, dangerous world.

Zack turned away from Cecil's increasingly curious looks and frowned into the phone. “So you're on your way back, right?”

“As soon as Fred gets here with lunch. I'm leaving the dogs with him for the weekend. Isn't that something, though?”

He assumed she meant the crazy snake man, not her deputy taking in the dogs. “I knew one of us should've gone with you.”

There was a long pause. Then Jo said, “What?”

She suddenly sounded a lot less excited.

“I shouldn't have let you go there on your own.” Zack noticed Cecil dramatically plaster a spread hand over his face. What, he couldn't have concerns?

“Okay, first of all,” said Jo, “you didn't
let
me do anything. Second of all, I wasn't about to drag one of you into the office like it's some twisted, Take-Your-Paranormal-Investigator-to-Work Day.”

Like they couldn't have come up with a better cover than that.

“Third, I think I handled myself just fine, thank you very much. Remarkably well, even. And fourth,” she finished—he could imagine her ticking off fingers—“Did you not hear anything I just said? Whoever we're after is mixing powers, whatever that means, and Nature doesn't like it. And yet again, you and me are apparently the ones with the best chance of stopping him.”

“According to a
snake,
” Zack reminded her. This
her and him
business was a whole 'nother issue for debate.

He'd said she could help investigate. He hadn't planned on taking her into a demonic war zone.

Jo said, “
Look where the dead things go!
I know you're the professional, but is this not a pretty big clue? 'Cause it seemed big at the— Hi, Fred!”

Zack squinted at the phone, piecing together what was going on at the jail. Being a professional, and all. Then he scowled at the ceiling, waiting her out while she explained Bud's absence to her sharp-as-a-tack deputy. The one who'd left her alone with the crazy snake guy in the first place.

But it wasn't Deputy Fred's fault Jo was involved in this. That responsibility fell on the shoulders of Zack himself.

Cecil whispered, “According to a
snake?
”

Zack waved at him to shut up.

“I'm back,” Jo said.

“Yes,” Zack admitted, to her previous question. He liked to think he sounded calmer. “It's big.”

For some reason, Cecil snorted.

“Would a little enthusiasm kill you?” Jo asked.

“I'm excited, okay?”

Now Cecil full-out laughed, belatedly muffling it with one hand, and Zack realized why. Dirty mind, that's why. Like they needed any more proof of
that
today.

He flipped Cecil off and said, “I'll be happier when you get back here, that's all.”

“Fine,” she conceded—but at least she sounded increasingly less annoyed. “Consider this my official checking-in-before-I-eat-lunch-and-head-back call.”

“Thank you.” See? He could play nice.

“You are so very welcome.” Smart-ass. So why was he starting to smile, even before she asked, “How's your head?”

“My head is fine. Now—”
Come home.
He came so close to saying it, the words kind of echoed in his head, confusing him. He replaced them with, “—leave. If your truck starts.”

He could be a smart-ass, too.

Jo groaned, deep in her throat. It sounded surprisingly sexy, though he doubted she meant it that way, what with the dogs and Deputy Fred listening in. Then she hung up on him.

He'd take that as a,
Yes, Zack, I will of course do as you ask.

He gave Cecil back his phone. “New rule. From now on, the sheriff doesn't go anywhere alone.”

His partner arched an eyebrow. “Until when, exactly?”

“Until we take down whoever the hell shot at us. She was alone with some rattlesnake-wearing shaman and she doesn't even realize how dangerous it was.”

Would a little enthusiasm kill you?
Zack didn't like to think how easily it could kill
her,
if they weren't careful.

“A shaman? What did he say? Does she know more—” Either reading Zack's glare or his aura—with Cecil, who could tell?—the younger man returned to the original point. “Is it that she doesn't realize the danger, or she simply doesn't mind?”

Like that made a whole hell of a lot of difference!

“You go alone to meet unsavory people all the time,” Cecil reminded him. “It hardly fazes you.”

“Well, she's a woman.” And yes, Zack knew just how badly that one would go down with Jo. So he added, with what he felt was full justification, “And an amateur.”

Cecil said, “Since she seems to have survived well enough, what
did
she learn?”

And Zack grudgingly told him, while they unpacked the files from the motel. But he didn't rest easy until Jo pulled her clunker into Ashley's driveway, almost an hour and a half later.

The relief he felt, at the sight of her crossing the nurse's rocky front yard, unsettled him just as much as the idea of rattlesnakes. Her joking, “Hi, honey, I'm home”—though said to Cecil as well as Zack—didn't help that disorientation.

Zack decided it was all Cecil's fault for implying there was something between them. He just wanted to know she was okay.

“When you move into a place,” Jo teased, gesturing one hand toward the file-covered table as she dropped her duffel and sleeping bag, “you really do make it your own, don't you?”

Zack swallowed. Then he said, “Well, it's short on Formica.” His voice sounded normal, and Jo grinned.

She got herself a drink, rising onto her toes to reach the glasses, then cocking a hip out a bit as she leaned forward to fill the glass. “Want some?” she asked, over her shoulder.

Zack shook his head. Cecil said, “No, thank you, love.”

Jo turned one of Ashley's kitchen chairs away from the table, so she could fold her arms across its back while straddling it, glass in one hand. She looked healthy, today.

Really,
really
healthy.

Zack finally admitted to himself that he wasn't just eyeing the sheriff's tanned arms or her spread, blue-jeaned legs to ascertain her well-being. Again—all Cecil's fault. Since the investigation was their real goal, here, he forced himself to focus on unearthing a clean legal pad instead.

“So the crazy snake man waited until you were alone,” he prompted.
By yourself. Without one of us.

By which he meant,
Without me.

“Except for the dogs,” she agreed, like that made him feel better, and launched into the story.

Jo seemed to enjoy describing her encounter to Cecil even more than she had to Zack, probably because Cecil was good at nodding and oohing at appropriate places. Empath crap. Zack didn't like the story any more this time around. But he also started to notice Jo watching…his pen? Sometimes her story slowed, and he'd see she was staring at his hand on the legal pad. Then she'd blink and start talking faster again.

She'd done that the first day, too—not the uneven storytelling, but watching his hands. What, did he have ink on his fingers? Freaky handwriting? She wasn't used to lefties?

When she noticed him notice her noticing, Jo bit her lip and quickly looked away. That brought up other, more intriguing implications which had nothing to do with this investigation.

Zack still felt drawn to investigate them.

“Wait—did he say we're fighting evil, or countering hate?” He asked it to pull them both back on topic. “Which one?”

“Both,” said Jo. “He said something
special
fights evil, and something
powerful
fights hate.”

She seemed to make a deliberate effort to turn her gaze to Cecil. At least, it felt deliberate to Zack.

Cecil said, “But he didn't clarify what those were, eh?”

Jo shook her head. “He said fools already knew it.”

“Takes one to know one,” Zack muttered.

“I know it seems crazy.” Jo leaned forward to hug the chair-back as she turned to him. “It
was
crazy, but so's half the stuff I've heard since you drove into Spur. You said yourself that magic hides in normalcy. I think it also hides in insanity—so people who don't want to see it can dismiss it as craziness. Which probably sounds old hat to you, but it really feels
significant
when I think of it that way. Like I've…like I've cracked some kind of code. Like there could be all kinds of things going on in the world, right under my nose, that I'm not ready to see for fear of seeming…”

Her gaze, watching his mouth, seemed less than focused.

Zack took a deep breath, more aware of her than seemed at all professional. The idea that his partner was watching every
move, looking for romance in it, made him uncomfortable, like he was on camera or something.

“Crazy,” Jo finished quickly, pressing her lips together, shaking off the moment. She braced her elbows on the back of the chair and clasped her hands. “Anyway, once I started thinking that way, everything Bud told me just felt…right.”

Cecil said, “I do believe we have a convert.”

Zack considered that while he wrote,
Special/Evil
and
Powerful/Hate.
He didn't want Jo to be converted, if it meant she was putting herself in danger. He wanted Jo…

Hell, he just wanted Jo. When her gaze crept back to his hands, his palms itched to do something about that.

Definitely Cecil's fault. And now…

Zack put down the pen. “Well, it gives us more to go on, anyway. Even if it's a wild-goose chase, at least it's something to do.”

“But we have plenty to do,” Cecil reminded them. “I've set up an exciting little database—of my own design—to transcribe the main points of each of your interviews into a file, using keywords, so we can search by similarities. Won't it be lovely to see it all laid right out in front of us?”

“Yeah,” said Zack, watching Jo slowly tuck her head so that her mouth rested against her knuckles. She didn't wear lipstick, but her lips looked as soft as he remembered, all the same. Soft, and just a little moist. Maybe she wore lip balm—and Cecil had said something, hadn't he? “Nothing gets my heart pounding like a good spreadsheet.”

Or lip balm. Maybe it was flavored. That didn't seem like Jo's style, but she did have her feminine moments….

Aw, crap. Some days, Zack hated Cecil's intuition.

“Or if you prefer research,” continued Cecil, “that symbol the sheriff found last night is still eluding identification. It looked vaguely Hebraic, but I've scoured my files and found no match there. If it's a rune, it's none of the known standards. Now I'm going through online encyclopedias of symbolism—but it may just end up being a doodle. And then there's the involvement of the snakes to pursue, thanks to Crazy Bud. Myths. Herpetology….”

Jo's lashes lifted and her wry gaze touched Zack's, as if to say,
Goody.
Of course their attention would wander, as long as they sat here listening to Cecil gush about paperwork. And herpetology.

Zack said, “Or we could go check out some places of the dead, while it's still daylight,” and she perked right up.

“Without a plan?” Cecil gulped visibly. “There could be any number of locations that fit that description. At least you should make a list, before you wander off.”

“Cemetery,” offered Jo, going for the obvious.

“Oh dear,” said Cecil.

“Or morgues,” added Zack. “If they have any in Almanuevo.”

“Funeral homes,” Jo suggested.

Cecil said, “Now, let's not be rash.”

“Anyplace that's reputed to be haunted,” Zack said.

She slanted a private smile at him. Her true-blue eyes really did sparkle, when she smiled. “The Eternal Companion Pet Mummification Shop. It
is
a place of the dead,” she reminded him, when he snorted his disgust.

Cecil said, “Why don't I keep working here while the two of you go see what you can find?”

“You don't want to come along?” asked Jo politely. And somehow real annoyingly, too.

“Yeah,” Zack said. “You like funeral homes, right?”

Cecil glared. Okay, so it was a low blow. Then again, talking about Jo as if Zack meant to drag her back into Ashley's bedroom and have his wicked way with her had been low, too. They'd only even kissed that one time.

And if there was
something
between them, then damn it, Zack wanted to be in on it before Cecil was.

“No, really,” said Cecil. “You two seem better suited for fieldwork. And better armed. Just be careful, please?”

“When am I not careful?” asked Zack, standing. He hoped that the younger man didn't mean those damned condoms.