Ghoul Interrupted (22 page)

The deputy’s fingers drummed on the desk, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Instead he checked his watch, rubbing the back of his head, before getting up and coming around to grab Gilley by the arm and escort him over to the jail cell. He placed Gilley inside before ordering him to turn around and put his wrists against the bars. Gilley did as he was told and the cuffs came off.

The deputy then moved over to retrieve me and do the same, and with immense relief I felt the pressure subside from the cuffs, even though I couldn’t really feel my hands.

“The ceremony will go on until after midnight,” the deputy said. “I’m going to run my patrols and find your car, then head home. You two behave until tomorrow morning when I ask Ari to vouch for you.”

“Can we have something to eat?” Gil asked him.

The deputy walked over to the pizza, which was now cold and congealed. He folded two pieces and handed them to Gilley with two plastic plates and got us two cups of water, for which I was very grateful. By now I was both really thirsty and hungry.

“I’ll be back at six a.m.,” he told us. And then we were left alone, most of the lights shut off, save the one desk lamp next to his computer.

Gil chowed down and I had to wait until the feeling returned to my hands before I could join him. The pizza was pretty bad, cold, hard, and rubbery; it took most of the water in my cup to get it down, but it was definitely better than nothing.

About a half hour after finishing the meager meal, I was regretting drinking the water. Gilley seemed to be in the same boat, because we both eyed the one open toilet in the cell nervously.

“I need to pee,” he said from the bunk on the opposite side of the cell from mine.

“Right there with you.”

“No, I’m serious, M. J. I gotta go.”

I closed my eyes, plugged my ears, and rolled away from him. “I won’t peek or listen if you promise to do the same.” I then began to sing.

A few minutes later, just when I thought that Gilley was taking the longest pee in history, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped a little and twisted around. Gilley stood there with a big old grin on his face and the earphones to his new iPad in his ears.

“Your turn!”

I looked at him curiously. “Where’d that come from?”

“My backpack,” he said, his grin broadening.

I sat up. “Huh?”

Gil pointed to his bunk. Sitting in the middle of it was his backpack.

“How’d you manage that?”

Gil pointed to his belt. “Do you remember that episode of
The Brady Bunch
where the family got locked in the jail of that ghost town and they had to use their belts to get the keys?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, that method works!” he said triumphantly.

My messenger bag was still on the chair next to the deputy’s desk, however. “You couldn’t get mine too?”

“I figured you’d want to do your business. Then we could work on your bag.”

I jumped up from the bunk. “Turn the music up, Gil.” I had to go so bad I was about to pee in a cup and I didn’t care who watched.

When I was done, Gilley and I worked on getting my messenger bag. It took us seventeen tries, but eventually, we managed it.

Once we had our bags with us, I felt a little better about being cooped up. “Maybe I’ll call Teeks in the morning and she can look for a good lawyer in the area in case things get sticky for us tomorrow.”

Gilley, however, was busy rummaging around in his pack again, searching for something. At last he pulled up a small pair of binoculars with a satisfied, “Ha!”

I looked around the room, which was mostly windowless, and all the blinds were closed anyway. “What’re you gonna do with those?”

Gil ignored me while he fiddled with the focus. He seemed to be looking through them at the deputy’s desk. “Crap,” he said. “Too close.”

He then got off the bed and moved to the very back of the cell, fiddling again with the glasses before saying, “Okay, I should be able to read the type on the computer.”

I looked over at the computer on the deputy’s desk. The screen saver was on, displaying a running message with the words
Zanto Pueblo PD
. “What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.

Gil lowered the lenses and moved back to his backpack to pull out his wireless keyboard. “This has an amazing range,” he said. “And it’s the same model as the one the deputy uses. So, all we have to do is . . .” Gilley clicked the space bar and suddenly the screen saver was gone. “That.”

“Whoa!” I said, thoroughly impressed. The screen displayed the e-mail window, but I couldn’t read any of the type. It was too far away. “Now what?”

Gil fumbled around inside his backpack again until he’d pulled out his wireless track pad too. He then scooted to the back of the cell and offered me the binoculars. “Will you hold them for me?”

“Sure,” I said, moving over to hold them while Gil got comfortable, placing the keyboard in his lap and the track pad at his side. When he was ready, I held the lenses over his eyes and marveled at how quickly his fingers flew over the keys.

I had to switch hands after a while, and Gil continued to type. After another fifteen minutes without him uttering a single word, I said, “Can you give me a status report?”

Gil backed away from the glasses and blinked his eyes a few times. Then he told me to put the binoculars away and got up from the floor. I watched him retrieve his iPad from the backpack and bring it back to our corner. He whipped his finger around the display for a minute, then turned the tablet toward me so I could see. “Whoa!” I said again when I scrolled through all the new e-mails from Deputy Cruz. Oh, yeah, that was his name . . . Cruz.

“So, what’s in these e-mails?” I asked absently, scrolling down the subject headers.

“I pulled every e-mail that had to do with any mysterious deaths on the Pueblo, including the remains of that John Doe, who’s not so much a John Doe anymore.”

“Huh?” I looked up at Gilley.

“The coroner was able to pull a print off the lone finger they found.”

I swallowed hard. “Ick.”

Gilley smirked. “Ick aside, the identity came back as Daryl West of Los Alamos. And if you’ll scroll down to that e-mail from the Los Alamos PD, you’ll see that the attachment is Daryl’s rap sheet, which, among the many offenses listed, has on there eight charges of grave robbing, and defiling a corpse.”

I swallowed again. “Ick squared.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gil agreed. “But there’s a pretty long exchange between Cruz and the deputy in Los Alamos who booked West for the grave-robbing crimes.”

“So?”

“
So
, there must be a reason Cruz is so interested in West’s past, and who the hell robs graves in the twenty-first century anyway?”

“Someone looking for gold,” I said easily. “Seriously, Gil, the price of gold is ridiculous these days. And people get buried with their jewelry all the time.”

“Yeah, but, M. J., even if they recovered a ring or a bracelet or a necklace, that’s an awful lot of work and even more risk for a few hundred bucks.”

“To you,” I said. “But maybe not to West.”

Gilley nodded but held his ground. “I say there’s something there.”

“Okay,” I agreed, knowing that Gil had pretty good instincts when it came to information. “I trust you. When we get outta here, we’ll check on it.”

Gil shifted sideways and pulled up his sweatshirt. “In the meantime,” he said, lifting out a book from his waistband, “I figure we can read up on the history of our demon spirit.”

My jaw dropped. “
Please
tell me you did not steal that from the library!”

“I did not steal this from the library.”

I glared at him.

“I didn’t!” he insisted. “I
borrowed
it. That’s what you do at a library, M. J. You
borrow
the books and promise to bring them back.”

I leaned against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “Heath is gonna break up with me for sure.”

“No, he won’t,” Gil said, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction in his voice.

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. “Do you think they’re back from the burial grounds yet?”

Gilley shrugged. “Maybe.”

I sighed. I didn’t know if Cruz was going to tell Heath we were locked up here, and if he decided not to—which was what I suspected—then Heath was going to return to an empty hotel room and wonder where I was. I looked longingly at the desk drawer where Cruz had put our phones. Then I eyed Gilley’s tablet with interest.

“Don’t,” Gil said.

I looked up. “What?”

“You’re getting ready to ask me if you can e-mail Heath.”

“He’ll be worried if he goes back to the hotel and sees that I’m not there, and I don’t think Deputy Dog is going to tell him where we are until morning.” And then I thought about Doc and my heart skipped a beat. “What about the birdie?”

Gil sighed, and set the book down to pick up his tablet, where he then opened up a blank e-mail. Without letting me look, he typed very fast, then punched the ENTER button with emphasis.

“What’d you do?”

“I sent Heath an e-mail.”

“Oh, God. What’d you say?”

“That you were hanging out with me tonight at a club and we’d catch up with him in the morning, and could he please put the bird to bed because we were bound to be very late getting in.”

“He should know the truth about where we are, Gil.”

But my best friend only shook his head. “He’s at a funeral, M. J. He’s upset enough for one night.”

I suddenly felt ten times worse. “What the hell was I thinking?”

“You weren’t. Which is why we’re stuck in this jail cell.”

“Thanks, Gil,” I said woodenly.

“You asked.”

I reached over and took the book from his side. Flipping to the back, I looked for an index, found one, and then read through the list for the legend of the black and white hawk spirits.

It was on page 229 and began exactly the way Mrs. Lujan had described. I read aloud to Gilley from the part where the battle ended and the black hawk fell to earth.

I looked up to see Gilley gazing at me. “I kinda dig that story,” he admitted.

I folded the book closed over my thumb to look at the cover again. “Yeah, me too.”

“Okay, so find the part about the Whitefeathers.”

I opened the book back up and skimmed the next page, but the story seemed to end there without anything more about the white hawk spirits. Flipping to the back again, I moved my finger down the list to the
W
s and found the pages for “Whitefeather.”

I then skimmed the story of Whitefeather’s father, finding the white feather on the ground. “Did you know that Whitefeather’s father was named White Wolf?” I said to Gil.

“No. Did Heath’s mom mention his name?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, still reading the passage. “Hey, Gil, listen to this.