She looked fixedly back at me and shook her head. I guessed she was saying “no.” Then I saw the big red patch on her chest just above her clenched hands, where the raincoat fell open.
She’d been shot, or stabbed.
“Oh my god!” I spun around and found every person outside the café looking at me.
“Someone call 9-1-1!” I yelled.
I turned back to the woman. “Don’t worry, help is on the way.” I stepped nearer to her. “Let’s get you out of the sun.”
It registered I didn’t hear any movement behind me. I looked back over my shoulder. They still watched me, and as I looked from face to face, each dropped their eyes or turned their head the other way, or became interested in their lunch.
I couldn’t believe what I saw. “Did someone call emergency services?” I asked.
Not one person glanced my way. I couldn’t understand it. I know a lot of people in big cities tend to mind their business, which is why the police often have difficulty finding witnesses to a crime, but this lady stood right in front of them and they ignored her. They ignored me.
“What is wrong with you people?” I yelled.
I had never been angrier in my life. I took a couple of steps to the door of the café and stuck my head inside. “Hey! Someone call an ambulance. You got a wounded woman out here!”
Several customers looked up, startled, and two waiters went for the phone on the host’s desk. I wasn’t in there more than five seconds, but when I backed out, people at two of the sidewalk tables were walking away and those at another got to their feet. I glared at a couple stupid enough to meet my eyes, and one tall guy stood so fast his knees hit the table and shunted it a foot, making the umbrella tilt.
I was going to raise hell when this got over, but the woman needed my help, since nobody else seemed inclined.
When I stood in front of her again, she started moving her hands and fingers in an odd way. She was signing, which meant she was mute. I didn’t know sign language.
I put my hands to her shoulders and spoke gently. “I think you should sit down.”
My left hand went through her shoulder and hit the wall behind her, the brick grazing my knuckles.
My brain stopped working properly. My hand, wrist and part of my forearm were inside her body. I just stuck my arm through someone. There should be blood. She should be screaming. I should be screaming. She must be in shock and I wasn’t far behind her. I heard a siren. The paramedics were a block away. I couldn’t pull my arm free because then her blood would come gushing out, wouldn’t it? My arm plugged the gigantic hole I made in her body.
Inches from her white face, I saw the tears on it were static, like strings of clear wax pasted to her skin.
Although my knuckles burned where they hit the wall, I didn’t feel anything else other than hot Californian air. I felt nothing of substance, nothing at all. My right hand shook as I put my palm to her cheek and it started to sink in her flesh.
I guess I couldn’t process any more because I blacked out. I came to in the ambulance, thinking, I fainted? Wow! So this is what it feels like. Laying still, my eyes closed, I thought about the reason I passed out. I knew I didn’t imagine the insubstantial weeping woman. The café staff called emergency services for a wounded woman and instead carted off a loony, the same loony who yelled at their customers and talked to thin air. This loony had better keep her mouth shut if she wanted out of the emergency room.
I didn’t argue when the doctor diagnosed sun stroke.
I returned to the café a week later. She still stood to the right of the entrance, her hands clenched at her chest, tears streaking her sad face.
He faced her ten feet away, and she cried because she was going to die and couldn’t call out for help. She didn’t know him, just a guy who popped up in front of her as she sheltered from a fierce downpour. He didn’t look like he hated her, or killing her would bring him satisfaction. He just stared, and stared, and for an instant she thought he was only trying to scare her. Then he pulled the trigger.
That just came to me, the way it often does now when I see a shade for the first time. But that initial experience knocked me to my knees.
I found articles about the murder in the library. Nineteen-year-old May Wentworth worked as an assistant teacher at a private school for the deaf and blind and lived with her grandmother. They never found her killer. I learned to sign. I “talked” to her, but I couldn’t help her. I looked for her killer everyplace I went. His face became an imprint in my memory.
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve wished meeting May Wentworth was an isolated incident, but it seemed I couldn’t turn a corner without seeing dead people. I packed up and came back to Utah.
It’s universal, I suppose: when you’re in trouble you go running home. I don’t know why I thought familiar surroundings and re-immersion in a culture I was once desperate to escape would make life easier. Perhaps it was the homing instinct. Clarion was my home. My foster homes, the foster-parents and the other kids meant nothing to me, but the city itself, the population—I understood the people and their mentality. I was older, and could see life was seldom black and white, and the gray areas in between were an acceptable compromise. I knew what to expect from life in Clarion. I felt safe, and I would not see many violently slain people in my little old hometown. Or so I thought.
She still stands outside the Sun and Bun Café. I spend a little time with May Wentworth when I go to San Francisco, but I see her in the early hours of the morning when few people are about, and I always carry my gun.
I made a long-distance call to California, to the only person I know who is like me. I met Lynn at a training gig for police consultants, where we learned about standard police procedures during various cases so we don’t get in the way and end up being more a hindrance than a help. She marched right up to me. “Hi, I’m Lynn and I see dead people.” I thought, whoa lady, you just haul your skinny little butt away from me, until she added in a whisper, “like you do.” Turned out, Lynn not only sees the shades of the dead, she’s also telepathic. She picked a heap of stuff out of my mind. She knew what I was the minute I walked in the auditorium.
Lynn’s talent is sporadic and she doesn’t actually see shades as I do. To her they are amorphous, and there is no rhyme or reason to why she sees one here and there and not all of them, which is good for Lynn, as I can’t imagine how she could cope with seeing every dead person who lingers. She doesn’t pick thoughts out of every person’s head, either. They come to her as flashes, and again, randomly. She calls them insights. And Lynn is the only other person I know who sees demons as they truly are.
“This is Lynn!” her bright voice said.
“Hi, Lynn. It’s Tiff.”
“Tiffany!”
I hate her calling me Tiffany. I hate my name. Really, I do. It brings to mind some bouncy, fluffy little valley girl who goes around saying ohmygod! all the time. Someone about as far removed from me as anyone can be.
“Yeah, well, I’m kinda in a rush, Lynn. Sorry. On my way to town. I need some answers if you have them.”
Unfazed by my abruptness, Lynn kept her silence, waiting for me to speak again.
“I got a woman who walked a half-block from the scene,” I went on, knowing Lynn knew I meant one of the departed. “I didn’t think they could.”
The silence on the end of the line lasted longer than I expected, or liked. Finally Lynn said, speaking slowly as if thinking it through, “In every aspect of life, and death, there are exceptions to the rule. I was talking to an uncooperative little spirit in a rural area of Pennsylvania, when he told me to go to hell and walked right out of the house. The last I saw of him, he was trotting down a dirt road leading to the highway. The killer was unhuman, Tiffany.”
“Unhuman? You mean… ?”
“Yes. He was one of the Otherworldy.”
A chill ran down my spine. Otherworldy. Demon.
Chapter Three
The
Clarion City Police Department and Fifth District Court share a big shiny building on Linden. It’s all concrete and metal, with reflective glass windows which dazzle you if you drive near when the sun hits them. The acoustics in the place make voices echo and bounce around and you can’t tell from which direction they come, and stiletto heels rattle like hailstones on marble. The old building on Madison, built in the 1930s, has more character but no longer has the capacity. In addition, the city jail abuts the new building, making everything more convenient for police and court alike.
A few people sat on uncomfortable wooden benches along the perimeter and more milled about. Despite my Civilian Consultant’s badge, I had to cross the gargantuan entry hall and report in to the desk sergeant. I went up the escalator and took an elevator to the fourth floor, where I moseyed along the corridor, through the Squad Room and in Lieutenant Mike Warren’s office.
I had worked with a number of police officers, and Mike was the only one who didn’t roll his eyes when he listened to me, plus he headed up Homicide. If anyone knew about Lindy’s case, he did.
Mike is a very large man, all over. He’s not fat, it’s mostly muscle, but he’s widely built, if you know what I mean. His flat slick of wheat-colored hair sticks out over slightly prominent brows and a bulbous nose, and his reddish pockmarked skin gives him a permanently overheated look. He tends to hunch his shoulders, and he hunched over his desk as I walked in.
I plopped down in the chair facing his desk. “Favor, Mike?”
He grimaced at me as he leaned back. “Depends… .”
“Coralinda Marchant.”
Looking interested, Mike squinched up one eye. “Lived up behind you, right? You sensing something?”
Bless him, he didn’t even accentuate “sensing,” saying it like a regular word where I was concerned.
Of course, the drawback of pretending to have a psychic talent is I can’t repeat the lengthy conversations I have with the departed, so I couldn’t always give Mike the whole story. I would get his take on the case before I told him I thought Lindy was murdered.
“I’m getting she’s worried about her little boy.”
He made a harrumph noise in his throat. “Then you’re mistaken. She didn’t have a child.”
This stopped me cold. No child? No little boy? “Are you sure?”
He laid his hand flat on the manila folder on his blotter. “It’s all here. We’ve talked to every resident in her apartment block over the last two days. Asking if they know of any next of kin, other relatives, or friends, is standard procedure. Nobody mentioned a son.”
Trying to block out the background hum of a busy precinct, I thought hard for a second. “What about personal effects? Pictures in her wallet? Kid’s stuff in the apartment?”
He shook his head side to side. “Nothing.”
“I don’t understand,” I muttered more to myself. I gave him my best pleading look, which produced a deep sigh from him. “Could you dig a little, Mike? Pretty please? Just for me?”
He rolled his eyes before closing them, hefted a sigh. “Not officially, but if it makes you feel better, I can make a few calls.”
He meant if it will shut you up. I smiled my thanks. “Would you? I’d really appreciate it. Lawrence Marchant, like his mother.”
He got to his feet, my signal he was done with me and wanted me out his office. “Consider it done.”
But I was not through. “Autopsy?”
He tapped the folder with his index finger. “We’ll know more when the medical examiner is through with her, but preliminary results seem to indicate heart attack. I got someone talking to her family physician right now.”
Is this a day for surprises. “But she drowned!”
“Did you get that from her?”
I pulled on my lower lip with my teeth, gave him a thoughtful look. “No.”
“But you read in the paper she was found in her tub, so you jumped to the conclusion. Right?”
Crapola. Lindy didn’t say she drowned. She didn’t know what happened. I couldn’t argue on this one. I slumped lower in the chair. “Right.”
“We thought the same when we found her, but no bruising to indicate she slipped and knocked herself out, or anyone held her under. Looks like it was her heart, Tiff.”
I nodded distractedly. Mike perched his butt on the edge of his desk. “It’s not like you to jump to conclusions, Tiff.”
“I know,” I said, wriggling my shoulders. I straightened up. “But I am positive of one thing, Mike. Lindy Marchant has … had a son. His name is Lawrence Marchant, and he’s out there somewhere.”
A roll of his eyes, a light shake of the chin, and Mike forced a smile. “Okay, Tiff. I’ll make those calls and get back to you. Okay?”
“Thanks, Mike.” I gave him a bright smile as I got to my feet and waved my hand bye.
As I walked back through the Squad Room with its underlying aroma of male bodies and inadequately applied deodorant, someone in the far corner went woo woo and someone else did a lousy impression of a creaking door. I ignored them. A lot of PDs occasionally use psychics, so you’d think they would appreciate the work I did for them instead of making fun of me. But that’s life in any police division; they get their fun where and when they can, because what they deal with most of the time is far from amusing.
Mike and his crew called me the Ice Queen, which had nothing to do with regal bearing or giving them the cold shoulder, because neither applied.
My silver-white hair hangs to my hips when loose, but can be a pain because of its weight, so I generally wear it in one long, fat braid. Someone told me my eyes are icy-blue and my tip-tilted nose makes me look aloof. I don’t accentuate my wide mouth with lip color, as it stands out too much against my pale skin. And I am not a habitual smiler; my expression veers toward neutral.
So I was the Ice Queen. I was okay with the title. Rather they called me that to my face than repeated aloud what they said behind my back.
I sat in my Subaru, thinking.
I didn’t know a thing about Lawrence, but I had no reason to ask Lindy. I thought Mike would give me some plausible reason why Lawrence was not named in the newspaper, something fairly innocuous, and I could go back home and get rid of Lindy. Did she lie to me? Shades do lie, and they can become confused. I think they cannot always distinguish between their reality, dreams or cravings when they were alive, and it becomes mixed up in their minds. Did Lindy want a child she never had? But she was newly dead; surely she had not deteriorated to such a degree in a brief time. So, either she lied to me, or the neighbors lied, or … I really did not want to think about a third possibility.
The alternative to Lindy lying was going to give me heartburn.
Otherwordly. Not human.
Dead people are not the only things I see.
Why can Lynn and I see demons as they really are? I have no idea. I’m pretty sure other people see normal, human men.
I gave my wrist an experimental shake, making my bracelet jingle, making sure it was there. Every tiny charm was a crucifix and each a different metal. The gold and silver made the bracelet pretty, but I bought it for the charms of metal alloys. I wore the bracelet on my right wrist and a watch with a gray steel band on my left. A stainless-steel rosary hung around my neck. We’d never had a problem with the Otherworldy in Clarion, but Lynn thought a lot of nasty stuff in other parts of the world, of the inexplicable kind, could be attributed to them. As far as I knew, at least one demon lived in Clarion, so I took precautions.
Everything I knew about the Otherworldy I got from Lynn, although knew was the wrong word. She spent years researching them, but it was really guesswork gathered from myth, unexplained sightings and unsolved mysteries. They can move like the wind, their hearing is acute and they are far stronger than we humans. Although they are fine with pure metals, they don’t tolerate alloys well. Hence my watch and jewelry. As for the crucifixes, I just happened to like crucifix jewelry.
Lynn was trying to be
ethnically sensitive, calling them the Otherworldy. It was too much of a mouthful for me; I called them demons. Not that I thought they were creatures from hell. I didn’t know what they were, or where they came from. They could be aliens from outer space for all I knew. But with their slightly pointed teeth and glimmering eyes, demon seemed an apt description.
Gorge Ligori, our friendly neighborhood demon, did not know I knew what he was. The first time I went in his store, I couldn’t decide whether I had risen to heaven or descended to hell. He is so freaking gorgeous, the prettiest man you’ll ever see, almost too lovely to be a man, in fact. His long hair glows, sun-bright, golden, and on sunny days appears to reflect on his face and turn his tanned skin a lighter version of the same color. His golden brows arch enquiringly over sparking teal eyes. Lynn told me all demons are tall, but she’s wrong—Gorge is about five-foot-five. Yet I see how she reached that conclusion, for although petite and slim, the picture of Gorge in my mind is of a tall, slender man, supple as a willow.
Gorge and I belonged to the Heart of Clarion Restoration Society, the nucleus of a project to revitalize the downtown area, so after our first meeting we often saw each other. I made myself treat him like a regular human being, so he did not suspect I recognized him for what he really was. And I have to admit, if Gorge were a human he would be a pretty nice one, along with being absolutely stunning. Gorge owned and ran an antique store in downtown Clarion.
Lynn thought demons had been here a long, long time. She thought they could be the inspiration behind legends and myth: elves, vampires, even angels. She wondered if an Otherworldy being touched Lindy’s spirit as it departed her body, giving it a powerful jolt. Maybe the jolt added to the spirit’s range of abilities, letting Lindy move away from her place of departure. And a demon—though it would have to be a mighty powerful one—could have messed with every mind in the apartment building, making them forget Lawrence. It could have removed any trace of the child before the police got there.
I’ve been in the apartments; the units are similar in design. Even if Lindy went straight from the bathroom and out the front door, she would see Lawrence’s stuff had disappeared. The place was cleaned out after she left to find me.
Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories Page 14
