Cold Read

by Renee Joiner

  “I’m not. The bastard gave a demand that we need to meet in 48 hours.” The urgency in his voice became more palpable with every word. He was frazzled. It’s something she’d never seen before. “Actually, I really can’t talk. I shouldn’t be standing idle for one second. Look, I’m sorry... um, my desk is over there. Leave your number on my notepad. I don’t think I have it anymore. I’ll check in when this is over.” He hastened away, tailed by three agents giving him feedback.

  Whatever slump Tasia felt while going there disappeared. It was the last thing that she had expected to hear. It didn’t seem like she was about to get to the bottom of her death precog regarding Daniel. Somehow, she just hoped that she’d have time to make a difference.

  Walking to his desk, she started to think that his request for her number was odd. Clearly, there was Facebook. Oh, wait, Tasia, you don’t even have it. Things like that didn’t exactly help rusalkas to keep a low profile. However, being FBI, she was sure he could track her without even trying. He remembered where she lived. Still, he was frazzled, and he couldn’t be blamed. Poor Sarah. Tasia couldn’t imagine what Daniel’s sister must be feeling.

  She reached his workspace, her eye motioning over a pen that she could use to scribble down the details. Her attention, however, was drawn to everything else that occupied his desk.

  At least three files lay splayed open, with their contents spread out before her. Just to the side, she noticed a cork board covered in photos, notes, and pieces of string—a clear effort to map out the cases he was investigating. Sure enough, only a cursory glance revealed that he had figured out how other kidnappings were linked to that of his sister.

  Tasia glanced over her shoulder, making sure no one watched as she started perusing the confidential dockets. The agents were preoccupied, pressed to find and reconcile loose bits of information that could help them track the victims. She could manage to snoop inconspicuously, but she needed to be quick. Thinking strategically, she knew that moving any of the evidence or information would draw attention. Instead, she decided to zone in on the victim profile around which the entire case was built: his sister. From the looks of it, he was trying to outwit them by finding the kidnapper’s hideout. Therefore, Tasia decided to use her gifts to help him do just that, even if he didn’t ask.

  She recognized the photo of his sister immediately. It was one of the headshots that had been taken at her graduation. Chocolate brown curls fell beneath her graduation cap, framing a beaming smile and innocent eyes. She was kind, gentle, and trusting, and perhaps that made her the ideal target. Daniel kept a few family photographs on one of the walls in his home. He had always been relatively proud of this one. He had likely taken it from the frame to aid in the investigation. She doubted it would work, but if the photograph had passed Sarah’s hands in any way before reaching her brother, she could perhaps get a read on her. If his sister was in danger, then the looming threat of death could reveal more to her through a vision than the agents’ information already unearthed.

  Her hand drifted over the picture before she rested her fingertips gently on its surface.

  Nothing. She couldn’t say that she was upset. In a way, it was good news. Even though his sister had been kidnapped, there was no immediate threat to her life, whatever the kidnapper may have made Daniel believed. The turn side, she knew, was that perhaps the possibility of her death was being overshadowed by someone else’s. Taking that variable into account, she started to feel worried. With Daniel so hot on the kidnapper’s trail, it seemed more than portentous of something happening to him instead of Sarah. Though it made her apprehensive, it comforted her to know that her vision was tied to something circumstantial instead of something entirely beyond her control.

  Even death can be averted if one is warned of it in time.

  Her eyes moved across his desk, looking past evidence trails and case information to find something that belonged to him. Something more personal.

  Her heart skipped a beat as she found it—his dog tags from his years in service. Daniel was ex-military and had been medically discharged due to an injury. His recovery had proved a miracle in itself, and to everyone’s surprise, he had been ready to work again. He surpassed expectations. But instead of answering the call of duty a second time, he decided to apply his skills in a different trade. His tags were a faithful reminder of his past and the things he had faced, and he rarely took them off. Strange then, that he should leave them at his desk.

  She didn’t overthink it. His behavioral repertoire was off-kilter as it was. Regardless of his motive for taking it off, it was the perfect trinket to tap into with her ability. Her read on his sister’s picture may have not amounted to much, but something this personal could yield a different result.

  Her vision started swimming the moment she touched the tags. She was transported to someplace other and outer, greeted by flashes of a street lined with white-blossomed trees. Next, the image of a grey house rose before her, and off to the side, she was sure she could make out the gilded number 12 hanging on the pillar. It suddenly went dark, and her nostrils were assaulted with a pungent smell. She reeled but then winced as a jolt of pain shot through her foot. The synesthesia ended with the sound of a barking dog, its fading echo following her mind as it returned with a jarring blow to her body.

  She gasped, instinctually looking around to see whether anyone noticed. Still, the race against time was clearly being taken up by every hand available.

  “Crescent Avenue,” she whispered to herself as recognition finally dawned on her while driving down the familiar street. She had seen just enough to have a solid lead. She did not yet know how to tie it in the other sensory experiences, but this was as good a start as any.

  Tasia wondered whether she was crazy as she acted out one of, perhaps, her more rash decisions. She was no detective. Nor was she a qualified field agent. Yet, after stumbling onto a clue concerning a kidnapping, she was channeling her inner bloodhound to pick up the trail.

  Standing in front of the house, she felt hesitant as post-rationalization kicked in. Her intentions had seemed almost valiant. She’d been standing in front of Daniel’s desk, confronted with the intricate web of deductions that he had formed based on his work on the case. Her exposure to the clues was fortuitous in giving her death precognition some meaning. Yet, she had no idea what or whom she was about to find behind those doors.

  Her steps up the porch and to the front door were measured and tentative. You’re a tired, overworked mess, Tasia. The street had suddenly gone quiet. It was almost incidentally ominous. The house looked dark inside, and she swore she could hear a pin drop on that floor as she stood in front of the doorbell, her hand raised to ring it.

  “Want to tell me what in God’s name you’re doing here?”

  The angry whisper gave her a start, and it was all she could do not to utter an embarrassing yelp. She swung around to find Daniel fuming on the pathway up to the house before swiftly covering the distance that separated them.

  “Tasia, why are you here? There’s no reason for you to be,” he pressed.

  “I—” Instead of stammering through her guilt, she composed herself before forming an answer. She decided to counter it. “I could ask you the same... Don’t tell me, let me guess. This place is connected to your sister’s disappearance.”

  “Tasia cut the crap. I don’t even think I need to answer that. You already know it is, don’t you?” He was trying to reign himself in, but the veins standing out on his neck were testament enough to the effort it was taking from him.

  Trying to meet that look head-on, although, with much less success, she remained silent for a while before nodding.

  “You’re hiding something. It sounds absolutely ridiculous even admitting it out loud, but I think you’ve been hiding something for a while now. I want to know how it led you here, of all places. Do you know the woman living here?”

  “I didn’t even know it was a woman living here, in all honesty.”

/>   “You’re avoiding the question again,” he responded tersely.

  “Fine! Look, you caught me. Okay. I had a hunch, I was impulsive, and now I’m in front of the house that’s part of your investigation.”

  “That’s quite the hunch, Tasia,” he said, “a very fucking specific one. How the hell was your hunch accurate enough to bring you right to the front porch of 12 Crescent Avenue?”

  “Listen, asshole,” she said, starting to become irritated with his tone, “you’re high strung because your sister’s missing. I get that. So, I’m trying to help. You were off so fast I couldn’t exactly catch up to you. Pro tip, if you don’t want someone snooping around—especially when you know nosy bitches like me—then don’t send them to your clue-ridden desk to write down their deets. Now, we can keep on talking, or actually get to the bottom of this.” With that, she reached for the doorbell.

  “No! Don’t—”

  It was too late. The bell echoed through the house. Turning around, Tasia saw Daniel turn pale. Maintaining a poker face, she folded her arms and waited. Seconds stretched into minutes and, after a while, she felt the rising impulse to ring the doorbell again.

  Daniel moved in between her and the door, stopping her attempt. He looked relieved if confused that there was no answer. “Let’s not try that again,” he said sternly. “Look... I appreciate the help. But—”

  “There’s no one there, you know.”

  Their heads whipped around as they looked at a pre-teen boy on his bicycle. “What do you mean? They just go out?” Daniel asked.

  “Well, I don’t know about ‘they’, but an old lady used to live there. She died a while ago. That house is totally empty. It’s been for a while now.”

  Looking at Daniel, Tasia saw that he was genuinely perplexed. Perhaps he wasn’t as fond of the idea of charging in without a plan but, a moment ago, he had been certain that he would find someone living there. His brow was still furrowed, but, after a while, he just nodded. “Thanks, kid. We didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, sure. Oh hey, you...” he was talking to Tasia.

  “Me?” Tasia asked.

  “Yeah. My brother says, thank you. That crash was horrible, but he’s in a better place now.” With that, the boy turned his bike around and barreled down the street.

  “You know that kid?” Daniel asked. “What was he talking about?”

  “No,” she responded. “I’ve never seen him.” She knew what he meant, though. But she deliberately avoided bringing that up. She rubbed her arm, trying to get rid of the goose bumps that had formed there.

  Three

  Skeletons in the Closet

  They were inside.

  After the boy’s random confession on the bike, Daniel looked about ready to break the door down to find answers. Instead, as soon as he swung around, he began picking the lock to allow for a more discreet entry. “All the leads point to this. There’s no fucking way this place is empty.”

  The door swung open after a few seconds of tinkering. In that unoccupied place, the squeaking of the door’s hinges seemed all the louder. Yet, one thing became readily apparent when they had a view within: the house’s owner may have been absent, but it was by no means empty.

  Tasia made a move to walk in, but he barred the entrance as soon as he noticed. “What are you hiding from me, Tasia? How did you figure out how to get here? You step back into my life at the very moment I face a crisis, and all of a sudden, you start assembling the pieces faster than I can.”

  “What makes you so sure I’m hiding something?” she countered, keeping the nervousness in her tone level.

  “Because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be asking questions to deflect from answering. And... I’m FBI. Uncovering hidden things is what I do. Besides, I’ve known you for a while.”

  He couldn’t be on to me, Tasia thought. She had been using her powers more in the open of late. Still, for whatever worth Daniel may have held as an FBI agent, there was no believable body of evidence that he could build against the supernatural. He has played this game before to gauge what he wanted to find out.

  Her current position didn’t look too defensible. She was on the threshold of an investigation that she had no business meddling in, and she had done so on the very day she chose to pay him a visit. It was always such a challenging game—being forced to detach herself while feeling incapable of actually doing so. Left to her own, her powers might have well have helped her in protecting him. With him here, it was as though her powers were the very thing that threatened him.

  “If anything, your reaction to me being here tells me that I wasn’t wrong and that this place is somehow important. Regardless of how you may feel, I’m in the know now. Let’s just go in, and if I have any other hunches, I can at least give you the heads up before I act on them, myself.”

  He looked long and hard at her but eventually let his arm fall to his side. He turned around and walked straight into the foyer. He looked both ways, ultimately deciding to turn right. She took a deep breath, and then followed. Whatever newly arisen reservations she may have harbored still paled in comparison to her desire to help him.

  She found him in the middle of the living room—fully furnished, without any indication that the home had been vacated. The blinds had been drawn, possibly to keep prying eyes out. But whoever lived there must’ve left only recently. It had not been empty nearly as long as the neighbors were made to believe. But then, perhaps that was the point.

  “Doesn’t seem too grim in here considering that someone allegedly died a while ago. There’s no dust on the mantel, or on the picture frames in the hallway. This place was closed up but not abandoned, from what I can tell. The owner just stepped out for a while. Usually, there are telltale signs of occupancy in the kitchen. Stay here. I’m going to check it out.” He slipped down the hall and into another room.

  Tasia noticed the pictures that he’d referred to. She stepped closer to the wall upon which they were displayed, taking a glimpse into the life of the woman to whom the house had belonged. A picture of her hung in the middle. She assumed it was her, mostly because of its placement. It was an average snapshot of herself and—Tasia thought—her son. Impulse nudged her to touch it, for hopes of uncovering another clue, but her death precognition was not retroactive. If this woman was dead, she would not gain insight into what may have been the cause. It was one of the cruel downsides to her power. She gained foresight into the death of others. Still, she could never regain the past to uncover the answers to lingering questions.

  She looked at the picture awhile before studying the others. At first, she found it strangely beautiful. Nearly every photo seemed as if it had been professionally taken. Yet, the longer she looked, the more unsettled she became. Turning her gaze back to the picture of the woman and her son, she suddenly found it unnatural. The posture, facial expression, and the entire composition seemed almost forced. Both of their faces were strained in a way that could not be hidden by their smiles. It was there in the finer details—the absence of laugh lines or crow’s feet at the eyes.

  “There’s nothing in the kitchen. It’s strange. The refrigerator is empty, but it’s up and running. I also checked the switchboard. Everything is turned on throughout the rest of the house.”

  “It’s not the only thing that’s strange. Look here...”

  Daniel looked to where she was pointing. “Yeah, it’s a family wall. Guess that’s her in the middle.”

  “No, Daniel, I mean... really look. Hard.”

  He did. It took him a while, but eventually, his eyes widened as he became more interested. “None of these pictures are of them. These look like those pictures that come with store-bought frames. They’re all stock photos. Jesus. It’s kind of creepy.”

  “Which is why I looked longer at this one. One of them. Clearly not a stock photo. Do you think it’s her son?”

  He moved closer to take in the details. The shifting reactions that flitted over his face must have mirrored her own. Even
tually, he said, “If it is, then there’s something seriously wrong with the dynamic between them. Look at the way she’s holding him. It looks as though her hand is digging into his shoulder.”

  He was right. It explained many of the other signs she had picked up. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but the word ‘abuse’ came to mind more than once as she mused on it.

  “It doesn’t seem like he got out a lot. Compared to her, his complexion is fairly pale.”

  Tasia noticed as Daniel chewed over her last words. He bit his lip, clearly thinking hard on something, before swooping around and heading down the hall.

  “Where are you going?” she shouted after him. Daniel didn’t answer. She trotted after him, reaching him just as he stood in front of a door that opened to darkness. Little was visible, save for the first few steps that led down to the basement. He flicked on a switch to the side, and a small light flickered to life down.

  Tasia gulped, finding comfort in the fact that there were no immediate spirits around that she could sense. As Daniel started to descend, she followed. He noticed as she did, and his questions unexpectedly restarted. “What are you even doing awake? Shouldn’t you be messing up your circadian rhythms by sleeping during the day to start a night shift later?”

  “Still on my case? If you must know, I have the next four days off after working a four-day stint. It’s a new rotational schedule they’re trying out. So yeah, my sleeping patterns are screwed. So I’d thought I’d get up to something productive during my waking hours.”

  “So you decide to dive headfirst into my Sarah’s kidnapping? You can imagine why I find that a bit strange, don’t you?”

  “Look, can we talk about this later. Right now, there seem to be more important things at hand, don’t you think?” As much truth as there was in that statement, she also wanted to avoid the interrogation as much as possible.

  She could see his jaw tense as he continued measuring her, but, eventually, he redirected his attention to the basement’s gloom.