His cheeks glisten, and he stops to wipe away a tear. “I didn’t even know she was dead until much later, in the hospital.”
* * *
Darkness. Natalie is floating in it, just her mind, a sense of herself. And somewhere in the middle of this sense is a growing awareness of pain, shimmering all around her, like black light—not quite visible but she knows it’s there.
“It’s a damn shame, that’s all I can say,” a man proclaims from somewhere out in the void. It’s a stranger’s voice, a nasally twang, directed at someone else.
“Got that right.” A woman’s voice, also unfamiliar. “Stuff like this, it just makes you wonder. All those children.”
Nasally Twang grunts.
Natalie wonders who they are, why they’re here, and then it occurs to her that she doesn’t know where here is. She’s waking up, that would explain the darkness, but why was she asleep?
Her eyes squint open, adjust to a flood of cold light. A woman in a white uniform is standing over her, hooking a plastic bag with a long tube dangling from its end onto the top of a thin metal rack. Some kind of monitor with lights is up there, too. Natalie has never been in a hospital before, but this is how it looks in pictures, busy nurses attending to patients, tubes and gadgets everywhere.
A hospital. Why would she be in a hospital?
Nasally Twang isn’t visible. He’s down by the foot of the bed—she can hear him rustling something. When she tries to look down. her head won’t move.
Why am I here?
The question forms in her head but not on her lips. She wonders if she’s paralyzed. Or dead, her soul trapped inside her body, unable to find its way out.
“What do you suppose they were thinking.” Nasally Twang asks, “blowing themselves up like that?”
“Who the hell knows? Milt—you know Milt, my trooper friend?”
“Yeah.”
“He says maybe that’s not what happened.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning maybe one of those gas canisters hit where they kept the explosives and that set it off.”
“Jesus.”
Who are they talking about? What gas canisters, what explosives?
The woman is looking down, writing something. The rustling at the foot of the bed stops.
“Personally,” Nasally Twang says, “maybe this is just me, but I don’t see why we couldn’t have just left them in there. I mean, so what, what would it have mattered? At least they wouldn’t all be dead.”
“All but two,” she corrects.
“You know what I mean.”
The nurse turns so that Natalie sees her in profile. She reminds Natalie of someone, she can’t place who, and then suddenly it hits her, an image of her mother keeping vigil at the window, a far-off longing in her eyes, waiting for the men to come. The men. The eyes tum to face her and become a man’s and between them appears a third eye, cold and vacant. It blinks out a puff of smoke and Natalie remembers there’s someone in her arms because suddenly she’s nothing more than weight falling.
And that’s when Natalie understands who they’re talking about. Father’s house, Father’s family. All dead, every one of them.
All but two.
Her heart begins to race. Which two? If she’s one, who’s the other?
“Should have been just one, far as I’m concerned,” the woman says, walking away. out of view.
“You heard he was dead, didn’t you? When they found him?”
There’s a click and the lights go out.
“Yeah, I heard. Idiots. they should have just let him stay that way instead of bringing him back.
Nasally Twang laughs. “It is pretty weird. Out of all those people only two survive, and the bastard who caused it all is one of them.”
A second later. they come running back into the room, because somehow, she manages to scream.
* * *
“Natalie? You there?” Ballard’s voice.
Natalie looks up with a start. The prosecutor’s face is close to hers, scrutinizing her like she’s something he can’t quite figure out.
She turns away and sees that the video has been paused again. Father is frozen with his face pinched in a reflective pose, his mouth slightly open, one hand raised, time stopped the way she used to wish it could be. One of her childhood fantasies was that if you could stop time you could just step right out of it like out of a car taking you someplace you didn’t want to go and walk away.
“I’m sorry,” she mutters. “My mind must have wandered.”
“Any place in particular?”
She thinks of how her mother looked at them when Father told her to go ahead with the plan. A kiss good-bye through the mask. She knew what was going to happen. and she left anyway. “That explosion was his idea, you know. It wasn’t an accident—he ordered it.”
Ballard sighs. “We never could prove that.”
“Prove it now.”
“How?”
When she admits she doesn’t know, that’s his job, he tells her it doesn’t matter anyway. “He’s been granted a new trial in the death of your sister, Natalie. That’s the charge we have to make stick. This is complicated enough already—let’s not add to it.”
“Tell me something, Simon. What’s complicated about him killing my sister?”
Ballard doesn’t answer right away. The room is quiet and for the first time Natalie notices the ticking of a clock mounted on the wall behind her. “Okay,” he shrugs. “For one thing.” He hits the remote, waving it in the air like he’s throwing the signal out of it, and Ralston and Temple start talking again.
“When did you first notice this ability?” Temple asks.
‘‘I’ve fast forwarded the tope,” Ballard interjects. “This is a little later in the show.”
“In the hospital.” Ralston says.
“After the stand-off?”
“Exactly. So, thirteen years. I remember looking up at the doctor who was working on me and seeing this—I want to say person but that’s not how it was, more like a glow, actually.”
“Is that how spirits appear to you, as a glow?”
“Sometimes. Other times it’s like these vibrations, you kind of sense them. Anyway, there I was, just back from the other side, and the first words out of my mouth were to tell the doctor your mother says hi and wants you to know she’s all right and you shouldn’t worry about her. He just about choked, because it turns out his mother had recently died and he was having real problems with it.”
“Which you didn’t know?”
“How could I? That was the first I ever laid eyes on the man. And remember, Max, I spent the first few minutes of our acquaintance clinically dead. I was just repeating what this presence next to him was asking me to tell him.”
“Is that when you realized you were a medium?”
Ralston seems to find this amusing. “Heavens, no. I thought I was hallucinating. Everywhere I looked I kept seeing these . . . spirits. I thought I was going crazy.”
No hint of irony—Natalie wonders how he pulls it off. She peers over at Ballard to see if he catches it, but his expression doesn’t change. Why is he making her watch this part of the tape? She knows all about Ralston’s burgeoning career talking to the dearly departed. He’s even written a book about it, Voices from the Other Side, big hit well on its way to the bestseller lists.
Which is probably why he’s on this show in the first place, to plug lt.
He does it well, though. Just the right amount of self-deprecation, a dab of humor here and there. Likable, she supposes, if he hasn’t murdered your loved ones.
“So what did you do?” Temple asks.
“I turned it off.”
“Turned it off how?”
“Blocked it out, like most people do.”
“Until when?”
Ralston eyes his host pensively for a second before answering. “Four years ago. A friend of mine, Nick Thornton, I met him in prison, had just lost his brother . . . he wa
s murdered. Nick and his brother, they were really close, and he just lost it, totally devastated him. They had him under a suicide watch, but it didn’t matter, because he would have figured it out eventually, how to kill himself. One day, I was trying to console him, praying with him, and when I looked up, there was his brother standing next to him, clear as day.”
“You saw him?”
Ralston nods. “He wanted me to tell Nick that he needed to live, that it was okay.”
“And what happened?”
“I told him, and it comforted him. it was so simple, so beautiful. That’s when I realized what a gift I’d been given, the power of it to really help people, and that I shouldn’t block it out anymore.”
Temple looks at the camera. “Tampa, Florida, as we go to calls for Ellsworth Ralston.”
“Hello. This is Tampa.” A woman’s disembodied voice, tentative and unsure.
“Yes, go ahead,” Temple prods.
“Can you tell me about my husband?”
“What’s his name, please?” Ralston asks.
“Bill Dudak.”
“You loved each other a lot.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I get a sense of him next to you, standing next to you. He’s been gone a while?”
“Yes.” The woman sounds stunned, hopeful. Natalie thinks: define “a while.”
“I don’t always know what this means, they don’t always tell me, but there are books around him, I see books. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did your husband like to read?” Temple asks.
“He was a writer,” the woman says.
Score one for Ralston. Natalie thinks: a decent gamble pays off. He always was exceptionally intuitive.
“Smiling,” Ralston says. “I sense he’s smiling, because he’s very happy for you. He wants you to be happy. Do you understand?”
The woman says she does.
“He says it’s okay, go ahead, you should stop worrying.”
There’s a moan, and Temple asks the woman if that makes sense to her. “Yes,” she says, obviously choking back tears. “I’m getting remarried next month. I just wanted to know if he minds.”
“Oh, Christ,” Natalie spits. “Turn this crap off. I get the point.”
Ballard puts his finger over his lips. “Not yet.”
Temple breaks for a commercial and then comes right back—someone has edited the breaks out of the tape. He ushers in a caller from Worcester, Massachusetts.
“I have a question.” A man’s voice this time, deferential but curious. “Mr. Ralston, I don’t mean this to be snide, but do you ever talk to any of the people who died in that explosion with you? And during that time when you were dead, did you see any of them? The others from your group, I mean.”
Ralston doesn’t miss a beat. “Sadly, no,” he says. “I describe my death experience in my book, but the answer is I felt the presence of a lot of people around me when I was over there, loved ones, but not them. And unfortunately, I’ve discovered that one of the limitations of my gift is that I can’t always use it to talk to people I love.”
“You can’t reach them?” Temple asks.
“It’s like static.”
“Maybe they’re a little peeved at you for killing them,” Natalie suggests.
Ballard shushes her.
* * *
“Santa Barbara, California, hello?”
“HI, Mr. Ralston.” Another woman, her voice thickened, like she’s covering the mouthpiece with something. Still, there’s something vaguely familiar about the way she talks.
“Hello,” he answers.
“I just want you to know I believe in you totally, one hundred percent.”
He seems flattered. “Thank you.”
“I know what it’s like, not to be believed.”
“I sense that.”
“You know the best part about this guy?” Ballard says. “He really makes it seem like he cares. Hell of an act.”
Natalie tries to ignore him. “I’m wondering about my son,” Santa Barbara is saying.
“What’s his name?”
“I ‘d rather not—”
Ralston is staring off into space but for just a second, he focuses on the camera. “This is difficult, and I’m sorry, but I sense violence.”
There’s a pause. “Yes, he died violently,” she answers, her tone expressing emptiness.
“That’s what I’m feeling. He wants you to know something. That it’s not your fault, he doesn’t blame you.”
“He says that?”
“It wasn’t anything you could stop, that’s what I’m getting. Does that fit?”
“Yes. Oh God, yes.”
The way she says these words, stretched out in great swallows-full of grief, is what gives her away. Natalie turns toward Ballard, and he meets her gaze with a knowing grin. “Marti Tillotson. Tried to disguise her voice, didn’t work. it’s been all over the news. You mean you didn’t hear about it?”
Almost, she thinks. Picking up a cup of coffee at the convenience store. “I guess I haven’t been paying attention.” She shrugs—what’s to explain?
The prosecutor turns away. “Maybe you should pick up a newspaper once in a while.” His tone suggests disappointment, like she isn’t measuring up to whatever he expected or hoped.
On the television, Ralston is saying, “He misses you, but he says it’s okay. You shouldn’t worry about him. He’s happy now.”
Marti’s voice cracks. “Really?”
“That’s what I’m getting.”
Temple, realizing with a start who he has on the line, says, “You sound a lot like—.”
But she cuts him off with a howl. “Why couldn’t he have been happy here with me?”
“He was.” Ralston assures her calmly. “But he had to go. it wasn’t his choice. He just wants you to know he loves you.”
“Marti?” Temple asks.
“Thank you,” she sobs. “Thank you so much.” And hangs up.
Ballard’s arm waves the remote and the screen goes blank. “Pretty much gives you the idea,” he says.
“What idea?” Natalie asks.
“What we’re up against.”
“Yeah. A man who talks to the dead.”
“That, too. But I mean a man who talks to celebrities, and who these days is pretty much a celebrity himself. New book, new image. whole new persona—has half of Hollywood behind him.”
Half is an exaggeration, but the glitterati are fond of Ralston. They patronize him in poorly concealed droves. Some hold press conferences, claim he has suffered enough, imply his crime was just an unfortunate mistake, promise he’s a new man with a good heart. A couple, a husband and wife team, screenwriter and director, even asserted he has a wise soul. He’s the dependency of the moment for tinsel town’s fix-hunting finest.
“So what?” Natalie asks. “What does that mean?”
“Just a little reality check, Natalie. We’re not terribly fond of convicting celebrities in this country,” Ballard sighs. “Especially not celebrities whose guilt depends on who you believe.”
* * *
Natalie waits for him to add something, a promise that “we’ll get him anyway,” or just a disclaimer that every case has its problems, it’s normal, they can be overcome. But there’s nothing like that. He just sits and stares morosely at the television. “You can’t be serious,” she says.
“As a heart attack.” He says it like he expects to die from one.
A cold fury begins to build inside her. This meeting isn’t what she was promised; it was supposed to be about strategy, laying out the plan, letting her know what they needed from her. instead. she’s hearing excuses.
Like they’ve already lost.
“This isn’t about believing,” she says, struggling to keep her voice down. “It’s about a bullet lodged in my sister’s brain. They found it, remember, at the autopsy? His bullet, his gun, I saw him pull the trigger. Nothing ambiguous there. This isn�
��t some article of faith we’re peddling here.”
Ballard rises to his feet and begins to pace. This is how men try to take control of a situation, Natalie thinks, they stand up. “Sure, it is,” he says. “The physical evidence isn’t the issue. Wasn’t in the original trial, isn’t now. A bullet fired from Ralston’s gun while he was holding it killed your sister, even he admits to that. The question is intent. Is that what he meant to do?”
“Of course it is.” Natalie can feel herself shaking with anger. “He meant to kill every one of us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I was there!”
“I wasn’t. Convince me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell me something to convince me. What about him makes you so sure?”
Why is he making this about her all of a sudden? “I shouldn’t have to convince you, of all people!” she shouts.
“You know someone else who’s going to prosecute this case?”
The question hits her hard, like a shot to the abdomen. “What are you trying to tell me here, Simon? That you may not? Is that what this is about? Mister Seance has you spooked?”
He seems to be thinking about it as he pops the tape from the VCR and slaps it against his thigh. “You know what happens when one of these deals comes into our office, Natalie, new trial of an old case?”
She shakes her head.
“We duck, every one of us runs for cover. Time is never on our side in these things—evidence gets lost, memories fade, opinions change, we’ve even had witnesses die.”
“None of which applies here,” she points out. “The witnesses all started out dead, remember? Except for me, of course. I’m still here, they’re still dead, everything’s status quo.”
He brushes off her sarcasm. “Things have changed anyway. Thirteen years ago, you were the ideal witness—young girl, freshly bereaved, stripped of her innocence, the perfect victim. The defense couldn’t touch you because the jury sided with you from the start, they wanted to believe you. And they wanted to punish someone for hurting your sister.”
All of which she knows is true, but so what? “They still will. Like I said, she’s still dead.”
Ring of Years Page 7
