Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

by Don Pendleton

  "Suppose for the sake of argument," he said soberly, "that both God and Satan do indeed exist, co-equals, each ruling his own half of the image. We, you and me, do not know which side of reality we inhabit. Do we not run a hell of a risk, then, in choosing sides?"

  I grinned and told him, "You are suggesting, then, that we do have that choice."

  "Quite the opposite. This is for the sake of argument, remember. God or Satan, whichever rules here, is a cosmic force with absolute power. If God is on our side, as we are constantly being implored to believe—which means, in the same sense, that we inhabit God's side of reality—then how can Satan manifest power here? And if Satan does not manifest power in our reality, then where do we get all the agony, all the greed, all the brutality?"

  I suggested, "Reason from the other end—start with agony, greed, brutality, and tell me which reality that describes. Sounds to me, in that argument, like we came down on the wrong side."

  He said, "Exactly."

  I said, "But maybe asymmetry is purely a mathematical concept, and maybe our math models have the same limitations as the dimensioned minds that fashion them. Maybe we have asymmetrical minds, Carl. Could we ever then see true symmetry—and would we even recognize it if we did?"

  He slapped his leg and said, "Jesus! You've struck a nerve!"

  I suggested, "We all are a bit premature in handing down judgments on cosmic questions. We can't even find cosmos, can we? So how the hell do we circumscribe it?"

  "Exactly!"

  I said, "What kind of sick is Karen?"

  He replied, "Dreadfully."

  I pointed out, "If I am going to help ..."

  He got up and left the room, returned a minute later with a bottle and two glasses, sloshed some whiskey into each and handed me one, belted his, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, said, "It's a violation of ethics, but I am going to regard this as a consultation, so I'm holding you to confidentiality too."

  I said, "Okay," and belted mine.

  He refilled the glasses, peered into his, said, "She has an unresolved sexual conflict."

  I said, "Tell me about it."

  "Electra complex. Well ... I don't really buy Freud's whole bag of tricks, especially not as they would apply to the general population, but I guess that is the basic Freudian weakness; he tried to extend clinical psychology—that is, mental pathology, into an explanation of the whole psychogenetic and sociopathic structure of mankind. As much as to say that the diseased mind presents a valid diagram of mankind in general. I don't buy that, never did. But Freud was a genius, let's not sell him short. And Karen's personality profile fits perfectly into the Freudian complex characterized by an unnatural love for her father."

  I said, "But Freud himself did not buy the Electra complex."

  "Touche," replied the good doctor, "but it does not change anything. Freud did elaborate the Oedipus complex, which is simply the reverse case. I have always found that the sauce for the goose is equal sauce for the gander. But if you want to get picky, call Karen's sauce an Oedipus complex and I won't get mad at you. Point is, there is this unresolved conflict that is simply eating her alive."

  "Would you consider it characteristic, then," I mused, "that she now claims to have very little feeling for either parent?"

  "If not characteristic," he replied, "then certainly not destructive to the theory. Such complexes are caused by feelings prisoner to the subconscious realm. That is where they do their dirt. She could consciously hate her father while still gripped by the guilt generated within the subconscious."

  "You see it as a guilt trip, then."

  "That is the destructively moving force, yes. And, of course, in this case compounded by feelings of guilt over the untimely death of both parents."

  "Why would she feel guilt over that?"

  "Because," he replied, pausing to belt the second shot, "she thinks she killed them."

  I said, dumbly, "What?"

  "Thinks she put a bomb on their boat. TJ had been in bed, sick with the flu. Elena had already made plans to take the boat out that day. TJ began feeling better and joined her at the last minute. Karen backed out at the last minute, tried her best to keep TJ home too. The boat exploded in flames forty feet out of the slip. Karen thinks she did it."

  I said, "Shit." Then I belted my second and added, "So what do you think?"

  "I think," said my new drinking buddy, the mystic shrink, "that it is all very tragic."

  Enter, now, our mutual good buddy and keeper of souls, Terry Kalinsky. He is in a hell of a dither.

  "Thank God I found you guys here!" he yelled. "We got a hell of a problem!"

  Powell placed the bottle on the floor beside the bed and surged to his feet. "Is she ?"

  "Naw, shit, it's Karen again! She came in to see how Marcia was doing and Marcia flipped out, said all kinds of crazy shit. Karen ran out into the goddamn night and is right now wandering around the neighborhood somewhere all alone in the damned dark. I sent all the men out looking for her—very quietly, we don't want the guests in on this and ..."

  Powell was already moving toward the door. I was staggering around trying to find some clothing.

  "... I'm just hoping you guys have some idea where she may have gone. Jesus Christ, it's pitch dark out there and that kid—"

  I grabbed him by the chin to shut him up. "What did Marcia say to her?"

  "Aw, some crazy shit about—said Karen tried to kill her, said she saw Karen watching her as she dived into the pool—crazy, it's crazy!"

  "How did Karen try to kill her, Terry?"

  He laughed, almost hysterically. "By psychic force, I guess, if you want to believe that shit. Marcia said Karen held her under by psychic force. Can you believe that shit?"

  I could, yes.

  I could believe that shit.

  Chapter Ten: Maxim

  Is it possible to kill with the mind? It has never been done, to my knowledge, under laboratory conditions—nor have I heard of anyone in modern times being hauled into court charged with psychic murder or manslaughter—but the literature of mankind, including holy writ, is rich with examples of human preoccupation with just that sort of power.

  Consider, if you will, the witch scare of early America—which, at its height, was but an extreme realization of a centuries-old terror exported to the New World from England. Consider also the voodoo priests who rule certain religious convictions of the Caribbean area, also ages old and imported from Africa.

  I toss these two up as ready examples for easy recognition by almost any literate person, but there are thousands more, and they have their roots in virtually every culture on the planet.

  Of course such preoccupations today are instantly labeled, by those in the know, as superstitious clap trap. And maybe they are. We do not have to look much farther than our television sets to realize that a leading human trait is suggestibility, and that there are always those among us who will seek to exploit that trait to their own advantage. That could well be the real story behind today's shamans, witches, and other black magicians, as well as religionists of various hues.

  But a pure scholar or scientist will want to know a lot more than the evidence available today is able to tell us about the origins of ideas in the human belief system. We may, as a species, be naturally suggestible or gullible—but what made us that way?

  Can a shaman wield power over any individual who has no living or genetic memory of an actual "supernatural" event? And for a modern definition of supernatural, we have only to look at the so-called Cargo Cults of New Guinea, born during World War II among primitive tribesmen who could not make the natural link between cause and effect with respect to their "manna from heaven" dropped from American cargo planes.

  To this very day the shamans of New Guinea continue to build crude mock-ups of aircraft upon mountaintops to attract the pleasure of gods long departed from their skies, and they may well go on doing so for centuries out of mind if their culture remains isolated from the tide of hum
an evolution. So somewhere about the year 2550, descendants of the World War II shamans may begin to question this superstitious practice, pointing out that no gods have been seen in the skies over New Guinea in living memory and therefore probably never were—so who the hell do these guys think they're kidding?

  I do not know how pure I may be as scholar or scientist, but I do not close the door on witches or shamans or any others without wanting to know a hell of a lot more than I can know about the heart of their belief systems.

  How did the witch idea get started? Did someone see or experience something so mind-blowing as to anchor a possibility within human psyche for generations to come?—and have others added fuel to that possibility by duplicating, at least to some extent, that experience?

  Or how many "superstitions"—examined and fully understood by the modern mind—would fall neatly into "natural" but "real" categories, as easily and accurately explainable as the cargo gods?

  Is it possible to kill with the mind? Millions upon millions of modern humans believe it possible to heal with the mind and to sicken with the mind. The entire science of psychosomatic medicine is built upon that belief. And how many medical doctors with no interest whatever in psychosomatic or psychic/religious phenomena have consigned a medical prognosis to the patient's own "will to live"?

  Is it possible, then, to fabricate a thesis that may explain a purely psychic power that can and does manipulate matter? I think so. I have been toying with one for years. And I need no supernatural laboratory in which to examine it. It is, actually, implicit in virtually every discovery of science during the Age of Einstein. So I find my anchor not in superstition and black magic but in the basic modern tenets of physical science.

  Is it possible to kill and/or to otherwise manipulate matter with the mind? I say yes, with the shamans; yes, with the witches; yes, with Jesus and Gautama and all the mystics; yes, with Einstein and Bohr and Planck; yes, with modern medicine.

  The full exposition of my thesis would fill a book of its own, so I give you here only the maxims from which it operates:

  Pure energy is the underlying reality of the space-time continuum; in its purest form, energy is never more than wave-potential.

  The potential of energy manifests as matter imbedded within structured energy fields that themselves result from fluctuations within the energy constant.

  Consciousness is an energy constant, expressing as wave-potential.

  Self-consciousness, or Knowingness, is a fluctuation within a conscious continuum. Fluctuation within a consciousness field may be produced by “thought” and/or may be expressed as “thought” inside space-time.

  Since fluctuations within the energy constant are the source of all "matter" and since consciousness itself is an energy constant influenced by thought, it therefore holds that thoughts may produce matter and may be said to be capable of physically influencing matter.

  Is it possible to kill with the mind? Do not ever bet your life that it is not.

  Chapter Eleven: Rendezvous

  "When you think of LA, think of a nation." Someone once said that in print, I don't remember who, but the reference was to life-style, multiplicity of cultures and industries, the human equation.

  When I think of LA, I think of a county, because it is literally impossible to separate the city proper from the sprawl of neighboring communities that crowd the coastal plain from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific—and, actually, I guess I think of two counties, because Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm and the charming beach communities of the south coast are in Orange County—well, really, four, five, or six counties when you start trying to make the cut, because you have to also include parts of San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, and Ventura counties to really think LA.

  But if you just consider LA County by itself, we are talking more than seventy-five incorporated cities encompassing some four thousand square miles and a population that exceeds that of more than forty of our states, seventy-five miles of coastline, nine hundred square miles of desert. Forget all the bad press and one-line jokes, it's the most interesting big city in the world; smog and freeway jams are a small enough price to pay for the privilege of calling this area home. But I guess it's the geographical contrasts that I like best: mountains, valleys, canyons, beaches, deserts, all intermingled like disparate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle yet so harmoniously blended into urban/suburban environments.

  I give you this not as a hype to immigration (one of the more common bumper stickers lately seen on local freeways reads: Welcome to California—Now Go Home), but to relate you properly to the scene of Karen Highland's disappearance.

  If you have been thinking of Bel Air as a typical urban neighborhood but just a bit richer than most, then you cannot really visualize the problem. Bel Air is a jumble of hills and canyons, twisting roads and near-vertical lanes and driveways set into the Santa Monica Mountains. Leave one of the main drives, of which there are very few, and you are in a maze of rambling, twisting, plunging, sometimes corkscrewing country lanes with no apparent logic and often no obvious way out.

  It can be trying enough feeling your way through Bel Air in broad daylight and with a neighborhood map; try it on a moonless night with the wind beginning to whip a bit and scudding clouds cloaking the hilltops and misting the roadways.

  Yet Beverly Hills is a stone's throw east, UCLA and Westwood just across Sunset Boulevard to the south, the San Fernando Valley with its million-plus population over the hills to the north. Due west is absolutely zilch, though—nowhere, nothingness, the great spine of the Santa Monicas—wilderness.

  Kalinsky was understandably upset. A person could disappear into that nighttime environment and never be seen again except as a pile of bleached bones accidentally discovered months or years later by a backpacker.

  I was upset, too, primarily because of the questionable emotional state of my client. But there are crazies in the land, too, and no one likes to think of any woman wandering around alone in the night in any part of LA.

  I had no idea whatever as to where the other searchers were looking, how many were looking, or if there was any particular logic to the search. Apparently Kalinsky was remaining on the premises, both to anchor the party, which was still in progress, by now loudly so and centered around the lounge off the patio, and to serve as headquarters contact for the search operation.

  I later learned that the security force numbered a dozen men and that they were in constant radio communication with each other, so I assume in hindsight that some concerted plan of action was in place.

  I didn't know about Doc Powell. He was off and running even before I cleared Karen's apartment, which I abandoned wrapped in a towel. By the time I got to my room and into my own clothing, he had a good five-minute jump on me.

  So, as I said, I didn't know what the hell was really

  happening around me. I went straight to the Maserati, liberated a Walther PPK 9mm pistol, which I customarily store in a trick floorboard compartment and which I now placed on the seat beside me, and went cruising with no particular route in mind.

  Don't ask why I wanted the gun. It was a dark, misty night and I was in alien territory seeking a needle in a haystack; maybe the Walther gave me a feeling of power, a refutation of the impotence creeping through me.

  I was worried, yes. But I tried to focus the emotion and put it to work for me, maybe to highlight and sensitize some vaguely realized aspect of consciousness—or, to put it in popular lingo, I was "going for vibes."

  Trouble with that is, you seldom know which "vibes" to trust. I cruised aimlessly along Bellagio Drive for a couple of wasted minutes, then just gave the Maserati her head. Almost instantly she did a U-turn in a broad driveway and went back past the Highland estate and onto Stone Canyon Road.

  But hell, it was pitch black out there, the headlights forming a well-defined cone extending into mistville. The compass was showing a heading of generally north with an occasional swing to NNW. I had gone several minutes
past any lighted structures when suddenly we veered up a little lane and, seconds after that, into a dead end.

  I sat there for a moment, wondering just what the hell had brought me there, then I got out and walked around the car a couple of times before venturing on.

  I was in the wilds, pal, pure wilds, and in a stygian, vapory darkness that hungrily swallowed the pathetic little beam from my pencil-flash. But I had found a trail, and it seemed to be curving gently upward along one of the many canyons that characterize the topography of that area.

  I paused a couple of times to wonder if I was nuts or what to be out there staggering about the darkened countryside—this, to show you how fine and uncertain the extrasensory influence can be—and wondering how much more rope I was willing to give this particular vibration.

  But then I had a rush and a wild chill tickling my spine, and I knew that I was on target.

  I found her a moment later, crumpled across the trail, weeping like a lost child, something wet and sticky and odorous soaking the chiffon dress.

  I found the doc, too, in her arms, his head bashed in and obviously all the life bashed out of him.

  No psychic killing, that one.

  It stunned me, I mean really stunned me in all the fine ramifications of the event.

  I have told you that I was no more than five minutes behind Powell, then I had wandered for maybe another two or three minutes before finally homing-in on this very spot with no dallying along the way—but there had been the sensation, at least, of covering quite a bit of ground in a vehicle during that brief travel.

  So where the hell was I?—and how the hell had Powell gotten here so fast?—for that matter, how the hell had Karen gotten here so quickly, on foot?—and how the hell had Powell known exactly where to find her for this rendezvous with death?

  Besides which, I felt such an overpowering sadness over the death of this man with whom I had felt so close in such a short time.

  And I had this equally overpowering sense of sadness for Karen and the terrible goddamn mess her life seemed to have fallen into.