Eyes to See

by Joseph Nassise

  She was kneeling, her hands clasped together in front and her head angled upward toward the heavens.

  I walked across the room and maneuvered around the body until I could see her face.

  Her mouth gaped wide in a silent scream and empty sockets stared back at me where her eyes should have been. She had not died easily, that was for sure.

  You had to look closely to see the fishing line that had been used to keep her forearms and hands tied together, but once you had, it was easy to see everywhere else it had been used to secure her in place. Her legs had been tied together at the thighs, knees, and ankles, and long stretches of fishing line had been run back to the bed and nearby armoire to hold the body upright.

  I reached out and touched one of the lines, noting the tautness of the fishing wire and the artfulness with which it had been used. From the other side of the room, you weren’t even able to see it.

  Which was exactly the point.

  I knew instinctively that the killer had wanted it to appear that the woman had simply been kneeling in the corner of her room, praying.

  I wasn’t a crime scene investigator by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d seen enough episodes of Law & Order and CSI to know that the positioning of the body was a strong clue to the motivation of the killer. I took a few minutes to study it carefully.

  Stanton was right; it was creepy. Very creepy. Staging the body like this had required patience and ingenuity. The killer had taken his time, binding the body and then securing it in place, using the natural process of rigor mortis to stiffen the corpse into the desired position. He hadn’t worried about being interrupted before he was finished, which suggested that he’d known ahead of time that he wouldn’t be.

  Turning my attention from the corpse, I glanced around the room, making certain the woman’s ghost wasn’t still lurking about, but Whisper and I were the only ones there.

  Relax, Hunt. Don’t get all spooked before you really need to.

  I wandered around the room for a bit, trying to get a feel for who the woman was, what she’d been like. A person’s bedroom can tell you volumes, if you know how to look. That she was wealthy was immediately obvious. The address alone told me that, but the exquisitely handcrafted furniture, the thick silk bedsheets, and the closet full of clothing with designer labels also spoke of a life of leisure without concern for expense. None of it, however, showed any real emotion attached to it. They were symbols of status and that was all.

  The stack of books on the nightstand, on the other hand, glowed with the brilliant sheen of hope.

  I walked over and picked a few off the top of the stack. They were all contemporary romance novels, bestselling hardcover stuff by Nicholas Sparks, Nora Roberts, and the like, though there were a few trade paperbacks in the bunch by authors I didn’t recognize. Up-and-comers, I assumed. Apparently the princess in the castle was still waiting, and pining for, her Prince Charming.

  The armoire was covered with photos of her standing with various celebrities. Most of them were local folks, the kind you’d meet at a major charity fundraiser here on the Hill, but here and there were pictures of the victim with the occasional movie star or Broadway actor. The latter were always in slightly larger frames, so that they stood out a bit from the rest. I thought it would have made more sense to have the entire set out in the front room somewhere where they would have been seen. Just who she thought was going to see them here in her bedroom was beyond me, but then again, I didn’t know much about the victim’s dating habits. Maybe they were right where they needed to be after all.

  A master bath, complete with the largest Jacuzzi tub I’d ever seen, jutted off one side of the bedroom, but a quick look told me that there wasn’t anything significant inside.

  Having exhausted my meager investigatory skills, it was time for Whisper and me to get down to business and give Stanton something he could work with.

  I steered the two of us back over to the corpse and then knelt beside it, pulling Whisper down next to me. Leaning over, I told her what I needed.

  She shrugged, as if my request was no big deal, and who knows, maybe to her it wasn’t. She reached out with her free hand and laid the tips of two of her fingers inside the victim’s empty eye sockets.

  I felt Whisper’s fingers squeeze my own, warning me, and then a freight train roared through my skull, wheels churning and horn blowing, tracks rattling thunderously beneath its wheels, filling my head with a cacophony of sound that brought its own shipment of raw pain. I expected it, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

  I waited until the train passed and the pain stopped before slowly opening my eyes.

  The last few minutes of Brenda Connolly’s life played out before me as witnessed through her own eyes, just as she had lived through them, with a little extra thrown in thanks to Whisper’s unique nature.

  She’d been getting ready to go out, that much was obvious. I caught a long flash of smooth thigh as she sat down on the stool in front of her cosmetics mirror. She’d been a good-looking woman; there was no doubt about that. As Whisper and I watched, she carefully applied makeup to her already flawless face. When she was satisfied, she wandered into the walk-in closet, chose a sleek black dress, and then slipped into it before returning to the mirror to admire the way it showed off her figure. She spent a few minutes fussing over the right shoes to wear, finally settling on a pair of high-heeled black pumps that accented her shapely calves and gave her a few extra inches of height.

  She was giving herself a final once-over in the full-length mirror when motion behind her caught her eye. A man appeared in the mirror, standing behind her in the doorway. He was dressed in a dark, ankle-length coat that dripped rainwater onto her expensive flooring. The wide-brimmed hat he wore was pulled low enough that it covered his face in shadow.

  She must have known him, for a smile spread across her face and she moved to join him by the door with a clear sense of eagerness that made her seem younger than her years.

  I waited for him to lift his head as she drew closer, to give me a look at his face, but he never did. He kept his head down and his hat on. At the last minute he opened his arms and she practically flung herself into them. Her eyes were closed as she lifted her face for a kiss …

  That’s when the vision faded.

  Apparently she hadn’t been conscious for whatever had happened next.

  I cursed beneath my breath as Whisper brought us back to the here and now. I hadn’t gotten much in the way of information. Her visitor had been male, a bit over average height and had apparently been someone she’d known. For all I knew he was her boyfriend and not her killer.

  At least it was a place to start.

  As I got back to my feet, I inadvertently kicked something with the side of my shoe and sent it skittering across the floor. Retrieving it, I saw that it was a small charm in the shape of a winged fairy, the kind of thing a young girl might wear on a charm bracelet. It was fashioned of silver, and a good deal of care and detail had been used in its construction. It had tiny eyes, a pixie nose, and the faintest traces of swirling designs in the center of its wings.

  It seemed so out of place that for a long moment I just stared at it. Where had it come from? More importantly, what was it doing here? It didn’t fit the scenario; it didn’t feel like something that belonged to the victim, nor could I imagine it as the type of item the killer would have left behind.

  It was oddly familiar, like I’d seen it before, but when I tried to focus on it the feeling slipped away and I knew better than to chase after it. It would come when it was good and ready to do so and not a moment earlier. On impulse, I slipped the charm inside the pocket of my coat.

  With Stanton waiting in the hall for whatever I could tell him, I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts, trying to figure out what it was that I was going to say and what I was going to keep to myself. When I was ready, I positioned myself so that I was facing the doorway, said thank you to Whisper, and braced myself as
she left me on my own.

  As she faded away into nothingness beside me, the light stole my vision from me, and with it came a wave of fatigue so strong that all I wanted to do was lie down right then and there and go to sleep. I fought it off and made my way to the door instead.

  Stanton caught me as I stumbled out into the hallway. “Well?” he asked, a bit impatiently.

  I shook him off and stood on trembling legs. “You’re looking for a man,” I told him wearily. “Over six feet and roughly two hundred pounds. Big hands.”

  “What about his face?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t get a look at it. But he was wearing a long dark coat and a wide-brimmed hat. Someone must have seen him. Folks like that aren’t exactly inconspicuous in this neighborhood.”

  “Anything else?”

  I thought about it for a long moment, then, “Gloves. He was wearing thin latex gloves, like a surgeon.”

  So much for fingerprints. I knew Stanton was thinking the same. Still, the description was more than they’d had to go on before I’d been called in. That was something at least.

  “Anything else?”

  I shook my head.

  “All right, Hunt, good enough.”

  I knew that was as close to thanks as I was going to get, so I took it for what it was worth and followed Stanton back down the stairs to the first floor. The medical examiner’s men had arrived while we were upstairs and Stanton’s hands were suddenly full directing them to the body and passing along the necessary information to the uniforms so they could start canvassing the neighborhood, looking for anyone who might have seen the mysterious perp.

  In the resulting confusion, I slipped out the front door and made my way down the street.

  7

  NOW

  Behind Hunt, the creature wearing the face of Officer Marcus Williams stood on the steps and watched him go, a smile spreading across its features.

  Everything had gone accordingly to plan.

  Now only time would tell.

  Meanwhile it would continue carrying out its orders, for it was imperative that the Master’s suspicions not be aroused. For the plan to work, Hunt had to have time to put it all together.

  But what if the clue left behind hadn’t been interesting enough to capture his attention? What if Hunt decided not to get involved after all?

  That wouldn’t do.

  Wouldn’t do at all.

  It would have to think of something else, a surefire way to keep Hunt in the midst of things until he figured out for himself what he was supposed to do.

  It turned back toward the chaos that was the crime scene, ready to play its part to the hilt, but its thoughts were still on the strange human who had just left and what it could do to ensure that he remained a part of the investigation.

  It thought it knew just the thing.

  8

  THEN

  In the aftermath of Elizabeth’s disappearance, my house filled up with strangers. Old man Weinstein, my normally recalcitrant neighbor, was the first to arrive; he’d heard me screaming Elizabeth’s name while I was frantically racing around the backyard and had come over to be certain everything was all right.

  It was Weinstein who’d let the police in when they arrived. The group moved like a cyclone, all frantic activity and thundering noise. Three uniformed officers searched the house and yard, as if I hadn’t just spent the last half hour doing so, while a pair of detectives, one male and one female, sat me down on the couch in the living room and asked me a lot of questions. Questions to which I didn’t have many answers. What was Elizabeth doing before she disappeared? What was she wearing? Had she been upset about anything? Had she spoken to anyone on the phone?

  To my shame, I had no idea about any of it.

  We spent an hour, maybe more, going through it over and over again. In the back of my mind I knew they were looking for inconsistencies, but I had nothing to hide and couldn’t have hidden anything even if I had wanted, my mental state having been torn to ribbons as the horror of it all descended like a black cloud over my mind.

  Somewhere in the midst of it all Anne returned home. I have no recollection of her arrival, just a hazy memory of looking up as I fought to come up with an answer to what should have been a simple question, only to find her standing on the other side of the room, tears streaming down her face as she stared at me in disbelief. I think that it was at that point that our marriage became irrevocably broken. Sure, it lingered for a while, two whole years actually, but the damage had been done right then and there. It simply took us a while to recognize the cracks that ran beneath the surface, cracks that just became too deep and too wide for us to do anything about.

  But that was for later. At this point we thought Elizabeth might still be found and Anne wasn’t going to waste a precious second if there was a chance of bringing her back to us. Recognizing my utter uselessness, she stepped in and took over, giving the police a precise description of what Elizabeth had been wearing that morning, the places around the neighborhood she liked to go, who she liked to play with, the whole nine yards. The information galvanized the investigation, as the police finally had a place in which to start. As everyone jumped into action, I was left alone on the couch, staring off into space, appalled at my inability to help search for the one person I loved more than life itself, my own failings staring me starkly in the face for perhaps the first time in my life.

  Yet despite all the confusion and noise going on around me, it was the silence that was deafening. A silence that stood four feet tall. A silence with long flowing hair and a shy, tender smile that could melt your heart in an instant, that shouted from all the things she’d left behind: the dollhouse in the corner of the playroom, the stack of Disney videos leaning haphazardly against the television, the half-finished picture resting on the coffee table, its bright colors mocking me with their cheerfulness.

  The silence of the dead is a terrible thing, but it is a silence with a sense of finality to it, an air of completion. The silence of the missing is anything but. It communicates without words, its message clear and unhindered. Find me, it screams, find me, and your heart breaks to hear it so loud in the empty places that should be filled with laughter and the joyful sounds of life. It follows you wherever you go, tugging on your sleeve, reminding you every second that something is wrong, something is missing. You can’t ignore it, you can’t escape it, and eventually, no matter what you do, it drives you insane with its insistent cries. Parents of missing children live their days in a special corner of hell reserved just for them and I’d just joined the club with fanfare and fireworks.

  I might have been drowning in self-pity and shame, but the well-oiled machine that was the Boston Police Department never hesitated.

  Uniformed officers were brought out in droves, given the photograph Anne had produced, and sent out to speak to the neighbors, looking for anyone who might have seen Elizabeth, alone or in the company of a stranger. The license and registration of every car in the vicinity were run through the registry’s computer systems, looking for one that might be out of place, that didn’t belong. The crime scene people came in and began to systematically go over every square inch of Elizabeth’s bedroom, hoping to find a piece of physical evidence that would give them a starting point in identifying who might have taken her. I remember my wife being fingerprinted, and then, when it was my turn, feeling a strange sense of shame and guilt as they rolled my fingers in the black ink and pressed them down on that small white card. For exclusionary purposes, they said, and I simply nodded, not caring if it was true or not. I found out later that they even brought in a team of tracking dogs and set them to work in the fifteen acres of woodland that butted up against the back of my property.

  After searching for hours, they came up empty.

  Technicians were brought in to wire my phones, in anticipation of the ransom call we were all expecting. My wife and I were instructed to keep the caller on the phone as long as we could. The longer the t
race the better able the police would be to narrow their search area and focus in on the exact location. If the kidnappers were stupid enough to call in on an identifiable line, the police might even be able to get a physical address. The tape also could be analyzed for background noise, voice patterns, and a hundred other identifying criteria that could be used to build a psychological profile and help narrow the list of suspects.

  By this time the press had gotten wind of what was going on and our quiet suburban street filled up with news vans from the local network affiliates, WCVB, WBZ, W this and W that. Their reporters and cameramen stomped around in my front yard, blocking traffic and generally making an annoyance of themselves until the police erected a cordon around the property to hold them back. Word went out on the wires that a young girl had gone missing, presumed abducted, and we all waited with bated breath for a call that never came.

  In the end, it made no difference.

  None of it.

  Elizabeth had vanished as surely as if she’d never existed in the first place.

  It wasn’t until later, when a witness surfaced claiming to have seen Elizabeth in my company an hour after I’d reported her missing, that suspicion came to rest on me.

  9

  NOW

  Despite my fatigue, I didn’t feel much like going straight home. I wanted to wash the sight of that dead woman out of my mind, and I knew just the place to do it. I wandered a short distance down the street from the murder scene and then I raised my hand and waited for a cab to show up.

  You’d think that in this day and age a cabdriver would think twice about picking up a guy who refused to take his sunglasses off after dark, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. The first driver who saw me pulled over without hesitation and I opened the door and climbed inside, nodding at the ghost of the middle-aged woman who already occupied the rear seat. She moved over to make room for me, as if she actually filled the space in which she sat, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her differently.