Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) (7 page)

“Get you something?” Bailey held her order pad and pen at the ready.

Casey pushed the menu away. It wasn’t likely she’d be eating anything out of
that
. “You know Alicia? The woman who got killed?”

Bailey fumbled with her pen, almost dropping it. She snatched it up and scribbled something on her pad, avoiding Casey’s eyes. “Of course I knew her. We worked together.”

“Here at The Slope?”

Bailey gave a jerky nod. “Where else? She started back a few months ago, in the summer. I’ve been here for, like, ever.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

Bailey’s eyes narrowed. “You a reporter?”

“Do I
look
like a reporter?”

Bailey checked out the pale blue warm-ups. “Hardly. You look like a soccer mom.”

Casey kept her face neutral. “I’m not that, either. So what was she like?”

“Why do you care?”

Casey refrained from jabbing the girl’s pen in her eye. “Because I want to know what happened to her.”

“Why?”

What was this girl? A four-year old? “I think they have the wrong guy in prison.”

Bailey sucked in a breath, and her eyes went wide. “You
do
?”

Casey almost laughed. “Why is that such a surprise?”

Bailey looked over her shoulder, then scooted in the opposite bench, leaning forward on the table. “Because nobody else seems to think so. Everybody just wants to think he’s the guy and forget about it.”

“Why?” Now Casey was asking.

“Dunno. Scared, I guess. I mean, if it wasn’t Ricky, who was it?”

Casey felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Hearing this girl use her brother’s name so casually, naming him a scapegoat, was too much. “But you feel differently?”

Bailey’s eyes shot first one way, then the other, before settling on Casey’s. “Look, Leesh and I didn’t get along, okay? I wanted to be friends, but she was all ‘I’m too good for you.’ I didn’t hold it against her, though. We did fine here, but it’s not like we were close.” She messed with the salt shaker. “Ricky was out of her league. I told him so, too, whenever he stopped by and she wasn’t here. Or even if she was, but, like, in the back. He should have found somebody better.”

“Like you?”

Her chin jutted out. “What? You don’t think
I’m
good enough for him? Not like
her
?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Oh, I get it. You want him for yourself. Well, I was the one who was here first, not you, so you can just—”

“He’s my brother.”

She paused, her mouth hanging open. “What? Your
brother
? Oh, gosh, Sorry. That’s kind of gross, isn’t it? Me thinking you wanted to hook up with him. Anyway, unlike some people, like
Alicia
, at least I tell the truth. I don’t lie about—” She stopped.

“Don’t lie about what?”

She shook her head again, like it was an automatic reflex. “Look. This restaurant, they don’t ask a lot of questions, okay? People like me, I do all right. I have a real driver’s license, and folks in town actually know me. Other guys, like our dishwasher, or even the janitors, they don’t always have the right stuff. The Slope helps them out. But then Alicia comes along…” She picked at a dried glob of ketchup on the table.

“And?”

“I don’t know. Her story, it’s all wrong. She’s just this white woman from ‘out of town,’ she says. Looking for a job while she ‘gets her head together.’” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Says she’s trying to stay under the radar just for a while. So Karl, he’s the manager, he says it’s no problem, she can just fill out what she wants on the application. See, we had another waitress quit—ran off with some ski instructor from up the hill—and Karl was freaking out. Girls don’t want to come work here. They’d rather work across town with all the rich folks.” She went back to picking at the ketchup.

“You don’t want to work up there?”

“Nah. Rich folks can be a real pain in the ass. Anyway, she comes in here all quiet and hot, and Karl signs her up. Just like that. No questions asked.”

“And you think she lied about herself?”

“I’m sure of it. The first time I called her Alicia I had to say it like five times before she answered me. And another time…” She lowered her voice and leaned forward again. “She was dealing with this old lady who comes in here, who couldn’t hear a bomb go off in her underwear, and it was taking her, like, forever just to take the woman’s order. I went into her locker and looked through her purse. And guess what?”

Casey sighed. “What?”

“No license. No credit cards. Nothing with her name on it. Just cash and chap stick and some lame picture.”

“Picture of what?”

“I don’t know. Some old guy. I didn’t look real close because I heard her coming.”

She looked at Casey all knowingly, like Casey should be able to read her mind.

“What?” Casey said.

“Didn’t you hear me? She had
zero
papers with her ID. If Alicia McManus was her real name, where was her stuff? Driver’s license? Bank card? Heck, even a note or a frequent customer card or something. She wasn’t only flying under the radar, she’d completely dropped off the map.”

Which Casey happened to understand.

“Bailey!” A man was calling. Karl the Manager, Casey assumed. He leaned over the cook counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room and was pointing to a couple who had come into the restaurant and stood uncertainly at the front door.

Bailey pushed herself out of the bench seat, her lack of excitement oozing from every pore.

“Bailey…”

Casey sat so Bailey blocked the view of her manager. She lowered her voice.

“You want to help me get Ricky out of jail, right?”

“Sure. Don’t know what I can do, though.”

“Think you can get me a copy of Alicia’s employee file? The fake application and whatever else?”

Bailey’s eyes did the swivel thing, and she gave a little smile. “I’m sure I can. Not right now, though.”

“That’s fine. I’ll come back. It’ll have to be later, though. I’m going to see Ricky this afternoon.”

“Try tomorrow, or later tonight. I get off at eight. Karl will have to leave at some point to go to the store or bank or some other place. I’ll try then. And give Ricky a hug for me, okay?” She went off to put the other customers at a table, leaving Casey in view of the manager. He made no secret of watching her.

Casey decided to go somewhere else to wash her hands, although she really would have preferred a complete shower and a dry cleaner. She stood, and tried very carefully not to touch anything else until she was out in the fresh air.

Chapter Nine

“Did you get some lunch?” Don was eating in his conference room, with papers spread out on the table all around him.

“Wasn’t hungry,” Casey said. “Although now I see
that
…”

Don waved at the second half of a gigantic turkey sandwich. “Please. Take some. Mel has been killing me with healthy food. What she tends to forget is that healthy food becomes
un
healthy when it’s doubled in size.”

Casey took a seat, moving a few papers out of harm’s way, and devoured the sandwich, an apple, and a slice of the cake Don had mentioned the night before.

“Better?” Don looked at her over his glasses.

“Much. Are we ready to go?”

He glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes. We’ll give ourselves plenty of time for getting through security, and for the inevitable wait.”

“Not looking forward to all that.”

“No one ever does.”

Forty-five minutes later they were in the parking lot of the jail. It was a huge block of a building about twenty miles out of town, and just looking at it gave Casey a greater understanding of her mother’s state. To think her little brother was behind those walls was enough to make her want to curl up into a ball and cry. But that wouldn’t help Ricky. And it wouldn’t make her feel better for long.

“This,” Death said, “is totally cool.” Red and green images cavorted on the screen of an iPad. “I hacked into the security system. This is showing all the heat signatures behind the walls.”

“Doesn’t look very full,” Casey said.

“Don’t know how you can tell that,” Don said. “But you’re wrong, anyway. Place is packed to the gills. They’ve been paroling people faster than ever, just to make room for the new criminals.”

“Like Ricky,” Death said. “Anyway, this thing just reads through the first layer of these walls. Too much iron and concrete and God knows what else.”

Casey shuddered. “How far in have you gotten in person?”

“All the way,” Death said. “Folks die in there all the time. Some naturally, some…not.”

“I’ve been in pretty deep,” Don said. “Literally and figuratively. Gives me the creeps, getting closed up in there, but I don’t always choose who my clients are, you know. Some of them are buried about as far in as they go.”

“And where’s Ricky?”

“I’ve been assured he’s safe. Although what exactly they mean by that, I’m not sure. The two times I’ve been able to get in to see him, he insisted he’d been treated all right. He’s got a clean record up till now, and the blowback, should he be innocent and something happened to him in there, would be terrible for the facility.”

“Glad to hear they’re so concerned about him as a person.”

“You’ve got to take what you can get, and as long as he’s safe, I don’t care why they’re doing it.
We
know what he’s like. We’ll just have to be content with that for now. There’s no way the system can know people like their families do.”

“He’s got a point,” Death said. “You can’t expect law enforcement to actually
care
about the prisoners. It’s not like they’re regular people. Drug dealers, child molesters, murderers…oh. Sorry.”

“I’m not a
murderer
.”

Don stopped halfway out of the car. “Look, Casey, I understand how you must feel coming here. But you’ve got to put the past few weeks behind you. No one is looking at you for the death of that man anymore. It’s over. Completely forgotten.”

Casey got out of the car.

The process to see Ricky was as involved and time-consuming as she’d feared. Every moment, from when they first stepped into the building until they were left alone in a room, she expected someone to realize who she was, and to have old paperwork saying she was a wanted criminal. But they got through without incident, and within the hour she and Don were waiting for her little brother in a cold, off-white box of a room, with a bolted-down table and three chairs, much like the room where she’d met with Detective Watts that morning. Only this one smelled a lot worse.

Death had taken off during the screening process—“Waaay too boring, and the technology is
so
yesterday”—but was now back, holding up the iPad and checking out heat signatures again. “Someone’s coming.”

When the door opened, Casey jumped up. Don grabbed her wrist. “Stay behind the table until the guards tell you it’s okay.”

She shook him off, but stayed where she was, even when Ricky appeared.

The first sight of him took her breath away. Pale, blotchy skin, sunken, dull eyes, and a buzz cut. His prison-issued clothes hung loosely on him, and the slump of his shoulders turned him into an old man. But what really got her were the handcuffs. They held his arms stiffly behind him, in a posture Casey had never seen, or even imagined, on her little brother.

Two guards followed him in, one staying by the door, the other with a hand on Ricky’s elbow. “Okay,” the one touching Ricky said. “Hold still.”

Ricky waited, his eyes averted from Casey’s, as the guard unlocked the cuffs. When he was free he shrugged, then pulled his arms forward to rub his wrists.

“Call if you need anything,” the guard said, “or bang on the door. We’ll be waiting outside.” The guard gave a little salute and let himself out.

Casey walked around the table. “Ricky—”

He ducked, hands up, as if expecting to get hit.

Casey froze. “Ricky, it’s me. Casey. Your sister.” She felt almost like she had at her mother’s, except her mother hadn’t acted
afraid
of her. Casey walked slowly toward him, hands out, as if she were approaching a nervous dog. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you. But I’m here now. I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”

He lowered his hands and peered up at her with wide eyes.

She couldn’t manage a smile, but she tried to look confident and loving. “It will be okay.”

His eyes filled. “It will never be okay.”

“Look, whatever has happened to you in here, we’ll deal with it together. I’ll get you any help you need. I’ll stay with you.”