A Grave Calling

by Wendy Roberts

  When some of the news vans were determined to follow us down the highway, the officer put on his lights and sirens and put pedal to the metal until they were a distant memory. I caught the crooked smile on his face in the rearview mirror. It was difficult to ignore that my predicament had probably made his day; possibly his year.

  After almost forty-five minutes heading south on the I-5, he took an exit near Burlington and wove through side streets before stopping in front of a two-level motor inn with outside corridors. Wordlessly he got out, popped the trunk, retrieved my bag and then opened my door, tossing me a faded navy Mariners ball cap and a pair of wide-framed dark sunglasses.

  “Put those on,” he said. “Tuck your hair up under the hat.”

  It seemed like overkill. I couldn’t see a news reporter anywhere. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t a single other person in the weed-choked asphalt lot. Just a half-dozen older cars and a woman pushing a cleaning cart filled with dirty laundry. Still, I did as I was told with the hat and glasses and he walked me up to the second floor and opened the door to a dimly lit room. After tossing my bag on the bed he held out his hand.

  “I’m to take your cell phone.”

  “What? Why?”

  “In case anybody is tracking it and also to make it less tempting to answer all the reporters who’ll be calling.” He handed me an old flip phone. “You can use this one in the meantime to stay in touch with your grandfather. I imagine the feds will contact you on that too.”

  I’d turned my phone off when it wouldn’t stop ringing and now I begrudgingly dug it out of my pocket and turned it over.

  He turned to leave and then said, “Oh yeah. You’re not to leave here or tell anyone where you are. Including friends and family. You keep the drapes closed and sit tight until someone calls you on that.” He pointed to the old phone in my hand.

  “How am I supposed to eat if I can’t leave?”

  “Someone is supposed to drop by a bag of groceries later.”

  He tossed the room key on the bed next to my bag and was gone.

  First thing I did was call Gramps. It went to the machine first but as soon as he heard my voice he picked up.

  “I’m at some motel,” I told him. “Not the Ritz that’s for sure. This is the phone I’ll be using. I don’t even know the number.”

  “When was the last time you were in a hotel? Treat it like a holiday,” he said brightly. “Sleep, watch television...relax.”

  I looked around the depressing room with the old-fashioned décor and chuckled softly.

  “Sure. I’ll do that.” I laughed. “I guess things could be worse. You okay? Anyone bothering you?”

  “Nobody’s come onto the property since they parked a cruiser at the end of our drive. The phone’s been a bit nuts but I’m just letting ’em all go to the machine. Wookie and I are planning a fishing trip if the weather holds so don’t worry if you can’t get hold of me.”

  We said our goodbyes and I checked out my new hovel away from home. The last hotel I’d stayed at was years ago. I’d woken up after a bender next to a man I didn’t know. It was not exactly a spa day in paradise. This room was depressing and old. The furniture, carpet and drapes were brown and green and circa nineteen-seventy but at least it was clean. Although the purple flowered bedspread was the only thing not green or gold in the room, I stripped it off the bed and tossed it in a corner. I’d heard hotel bedspreads weren’t regularly washed. I collapsed onto the center of the saggy queen-sized bed and sighed. There was a small white refrigerator and microwave in the corner. Even the small bathroom had brown linoleum and a beigey sink and toilet. I turned every light on and still the room was dark so I pulled off the lampshades to give the bulbs a chance. It helped only a bit.

  It felt like I’d been stuck in the room forever but in reality it had been maybe fifteen minutes. Finally, I just clicked on the television. I switched to a news channel and the first thing I saw was my own face. There I was standing on the steps of my run-down trailer in a housecoat that threatened to part and reveal all that God gave me while I yelled and waved a shotgun around. I looked positively depraved.

  Beneath the clip of me yelling was the headline: Psychic Witch Helps FBI

  If the picture of me in the housecoat wasn’t enough, they showed other shots of me: school pictures where I had hollow eyes and stringy, unwashed hair and also my employee ID from a place I’d worked years ago when I was still regularly swimming in a lake of chardonnay.

  A serial killer on the loose was big news, but add to that some crazed girl with supposed psychic powers and the story exploded. I watched report after report on every channel I could find. It sickened me but I couldn’t bring myself to turn it off. Every time I tried to think of something else, that something was always Denny with Katie followed up with a powerful yearning for some cheap boxed wine.

  After a while a knock sounded at the door. I looked through the peephole and saw a woman of about forty in a tidy suit holding two grocery bags. The officer had mentioned someone coming by with groceries so I opened the door.

  “Rule number one,” the woman said as she pushed her way inside. “Do not open the door.” She held up federal identification but it disappeared back in her pocket before I caught her name. “You only open it if you receive a text or phone call in advance.”

  “Okay, but nobody texted or called and yet here you are.”

  “That’s because—” she grabbed the Do Not Disturb sign, opened the door and stuck it on the outside “—the newbies never listen.”

  She strode inside and clicked off the TV.

  “Watching that shit won’t do you any good.” Then she looked me up and down and shook her head. “So you’re Garrett’s little secret, huh? His little psychic Annie Oakley?”

  I felt myself turn crimson. “Um, I didn’t get your name?”

  “Jill. I’m your keeper.”

  “My...?”

  “Your keeper. I’ll be checking in with you to make sure you’re holding up okay and you’ll contact me if there are any issues.” She looked me firmly in the eye. “To be clear, there will not be any issues unless you break the rules like rule number one, opening the door, and rule number two, leaving this room.” She pointed to the phone I’d been given. “My phone number is already programmed in that phone. From now on I’ll text you before I come by. Rule number three is no contact with anyone besides me, and we’re letting you also contact your grandfather once a day.”

  “But what about Agent Pierce? I thought—”

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about him. He’s off chasing bad guys. I’m guessing if he needs you for any, um, whatever it is you do, he’ll call you up. He has this new number.”

  “Okay, but I don’t have his number so I can’t just call him.”

  “Right. You can’t. If there are any issues, you call me. If I feel he needs to know, I’ll give him a ring.”

  “Okay.” I licked my lips nervously. “But I was told they’re putting up a fence to keep reporters off my property so why can’t I just be home?”

  “The Bureau doesn’t want to take any chances about you revealing things about the case that you might know and, besides, you’re much safer here because of all the death threats.”

  “Death threats?”

  “Sure, honey, your very existence has lit a fire under every screwball and nutcase in the entire Pacific Northwest.” She waved her hand in the direction of the television. “Or haven’t you figured that out by now?”

  “Oh.” I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed and let that sink in. “But my grandfather and my dog—”

  “We’ve got people watching them.” She turned away, grabbed the grocery sack and began to empty it on the small corner table. There was a lot of instant and microwavable food, some feminine hygiene items, a loaf of bread and a
small jar each of peanut butter and jam. Lastly, she held up a box of hair dye.

  “You ever been blonde before?”

  “No.” My hand went protectively to the top of my head.

  “Well, you’re in for a treat.”

  She opened the box and snapped on rubber gloves. An hour later my hair was “natural ash blond” according to the box. I thought we were done, but then Jill pulled out some scissors and started cutting. She snipped off about eight inches until my hair was cut into a wispy bob. When I looked in the mirror I almost didn’t recognize myself.

  “Holy shit.”

  “You’re lucky it was me,” she remarked. “I actually took a few classes in hairdressing before joining the Bureau. If you’d had one of the other agents watching you there’s a chance your head would look like it’s been hacked at with a weed-whacker.”

  “Oh. Thank you” is what I said but I didn’t feel thankful at all. “If I’m not leaving here until things are good, then why the new hair?”

  “We have no idea how long you’ll be here. And in case we need you to help find a body on-site, we don’t want you easily recognizable.” She then added, “Oh yeah, there’s also these.”

  She tossed me an eyeglass case. I opened it up to see rectangular glasses with blue plastic frames.

  “They’re nonprescription,” she said. “Put them on.”

  I did and they were a little tight and pinched my temples. She grabbed the Mariners ball cap and put it on my new blond head.

  “Your own grandfather wouldn’t recognize you.”

  I glanced at my reflection. She was right. I’d been erased. My eyes briefly burned with emotion.

  “So are these the things you use?” She walked over and picked up my dowsing rods, which were sticking out of my bag.

  I didn’t want her touching them but I just nodded wordlessly.

  “You know I had an aunt that did dowsing.” She put the rods back in my bag.

  “You did?”

  “Yup. Well, not like you. Not for bodies or even for water. She did pendulum dowsing. Are you familiar with that?”

  I nodded and Jill smiled at me like we were buddies now since we’d found a common thread. Jesus, I hoped she didn’t want to paint our nails, giggle about boys or sing “Kumbaya.”

  “Yeah, my aunt used to take her wedding ring and dangle it by a long thread and then we’d ask yes or no questions. If it swung in a circle the answer was yes and if it went back and forth the answer was no.”

  My thoughts got all sticky and dark. At Katie’s fourteenth birthday sleepover she brought out a long chain with a crystal so that everyone could take turns asking the crystal yes or no questions. The questions were supposed to be secret but, of course, the girls all shared afterward the question that they’d asked and, predictably, the questions were all boy related. Did he like me? Will he ask me out? Will he kiss me?

  When it was my turn I politely declined. Katie tried to insist and pouted when I wouldn’t give in but eventually let it go. I’d been afraid that the crystal might show me something far worse than a boyfriend who didn’t like me.

  “I did some checking and, you know, Albert Einstein was into dowsing. He thought it had to do with electromagnetism. He said just as birds migrate by following a magnetic field, dowsers go after energy that isn’t seen and—”

  “Yeah, I know!” I didn’t mean to shout. I coughed and cleared my throat and then added quietly, “I’ve done a little research on the subject myself over the years.”

  “I bet you have.” Jill narrowed her eyes and regarded me coolly. “Well, I guess that’s it for now.” She glanced at her phone. “I’ve gotta run. You have my number if you need me. Before I leave, repeat the rules back to me.”

  God, seriously?

  “Rule number one, don’t open the door unless you text first. Rule number two, don’t leave the room. Rule number three, I can only contact you or my grandfather.” I reined in my sarcastic tone with a ton of effort using the years I’d had at mastering a blank face and tone, courtesy of my grandmother.

  “You got it, kiddo. Now, lock the dead bolt when I’m gone.”

  As soon as she left I locked the door and exhaled loudly. I didn’t know what to do with myself. It had only been a few hours but I missed Gramps and Wookie and having a job to go to. I looked through the groceries and ate an apple and a muffin that was more like cake. The people in the next room had young children and I listened to them bouncing on the bed and laughing. They were maybe five and seven years old. It made me smile. I listened to the dad chase them around the room pretending to be a monster and then the mom gently admonished him for disturbing others in the motel. It felt good and normal. Eventually they went out and I turned the TV back on to the news and saw the footage with my crazy ass outside the trailer with my shotgun.

  “I’m never going to live that one down,” I mumbled. “I’m going to be a short-haired blonde for the rest of my life.” I snagged another cakelike muffin. “And if I gain fifty pounds that’ll help the disguise.”

  They replayed the same crazy-me clip over and over.

  Things got kind of interesting when the news station interviewed someone from the university who legitimized dowsing. She talked about the history of dowsing for water and mentioned how it’s been called witching and divining as well but even now it was considered a reasonable way for farmers to look for wells. She also said that in the late nineteen-sixties the marines used divining to find tunnels in Vietnam and in the eighties the Norwegian army used dowsers to find dozens of soldiers buried in an avalanche. I hadn’t known about that and I found myself becoming very still as I listened. She mentioned the different kind of dowsing using L-rods like mine and then even brought up pendulum dowsing where people ask yes or no questions. When asked if she’d heard of dowsing to find bodies she admitted she hadn’t heard of it being used in this way before but confirmed that dowsing had been used to locate unmarked graves.

  “So there!” I fist-pumped the air and shouted at the television, feeling vindicated.

  After the news I dug out the map and my laptop and brought them to the small desk-like table in the corner. I’d given up life as I knew it for these missing and dead girls. I wanted to feel like I knew the case inside and out. I put the names on the map:

  Iris Bell taken from Maple Falls.

  Luna Quinn gone from Arlington.

  Kari Burke from the town of Alger.

  Sue Torres missing from Burlington.

  After I put their names on top of their town I reviewed the spots where Iris and Luna were found. Then I stared hard as if expecting that my low-tech gas-station-map approach could possibly compete with the FBI’s investigative techniques. When I was riding around with Agent Pierce I’d felt like I was doing something worthwhile. He made me feel important. Now he’d pawned me off on Jill to be taken care of in a cheap motel. I tossed the map aside in frustration.

  Next to the motel phone was a card indicating that Wi-Fi was free. I started up my laptop and was impressed because things loaded quickly. The first thing I did was go on social media. I’d signed up for Facebook because Katie had insisted it would be a cool and fun way to keep in touch when she wasn’t in town. Mostly that meant that I would “like” the pictures she posted online but have no real interaction with her at all. Now when I looked at my page it was riddled with hateful messages. Random strangers called me a satanic witch who should be burned at the stake. People who knew me said much worse things. I fumbled through the settings and finally learned how to delete my profile. Too bad the delete button didn’t work as easily in my head.

  The television in the room got pay-per-view. I figured the FBI was paying the tab for the room and decided that, even if they balked at the cost of a show, I’d just pay them back. I chose a romantic comedy, which was silly in its simplicity but made
me almost smile and nearly forget about the shit show that was my current situation and the fact that I’d kill for a bottle of wine. The movie coated my brain with thoughts of happily-ever-afters, making it much easier to drift off to sleep.

  A couple hours into my sleep there was a crash in the room next door followed by the mom shrieking at the kids to settle down and then the skin-on-skin reverberation of a slap when someone disobeyed. I winced at the sound and my hand shook as I reached for my cell phone so I could put my headphones in my ears. Then I realized I still had the earbuds but my phone was with Jill. The kid who’d been slapped was wailing loudly. This wasn’t a bad thing. Kids who were beat regularly didn’t cry like that. With an exasperated sigh I clicked on the TV to a music station and let Top 40 drown out the noise. When I woke up the next morning I felt like I’d fought dragons all night.

  The room had a two-cup drip coffeemaker that made pouches of the worst coffee possible. I made a pot and brought a cup to the corner desk, where I cracked open my laptop.

  After viewing the news websites I was relieved to see there’d been a cop killed in Seattle and that bumped me off the top five stories. Not happy about a cop killing, just thrilled I was no longer the center of attention. However, a serial killer on the loose in the Pacific Northwest was not the kind of story that would go away.

  Since the laptop was open I decided to open my email.

  “Holy shit.”

  My spam filter caught most of the emails I ever got. Rarely did anyone ever send me any kind of actual mail that wasn’t selling me something. Now there were over two hundred messages in my inbox. It was seven o’clock in the morning and I had nothing but time. I refilled my mug with coffee and ate another of the cakelike muffins in Jill’s supply. Then I cracked my knuckles and sat down to go through my mail.