Dying Echo A Grim Reaper Mystery - By Judy Clemens Page 0,17

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 unhealthy 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