by J. E. Neiman
Denver, Colorado
Allie pulled her laptop from her computer bag, opened a self-designed software program and reviewed her case files.
Unidentified Teen
Visions: April 1 - Teenage girl in front of tattoo shop. Man inside store has a name written in red on a forearm.
Skiers dodging a bloody trail in the snow.
Black car speeding west on I-70.
She scrolled down the active case files until she reached Pauly St. Claire.
Paul (Pauly) St. Claire
Disappeared: March 27-6 pm in Larimer Square - downtown Denver.
Description: 4 yrs. old, Caucasian, brown hair/eyes, freckles, Down's
Syndrome.
Details: Parents, Dennis/Eva, didn't notice anything unusual before abduction.
April 1: Pauly's decapitated nude body @ bottom of outhouse at a viewpoint
park off I-70, exit #226 near Georgetown.
Dr. Hafner, ME will contact regarding cause of death.
Allie wanted to unearth the person who had destroyed this freckled-face child. She touched the photo of Pauly's smiling face on the computer screen. A busy food fair at Larimer Square filled her mind. Pauly's father frowned at his son as the boy touched everything within his reach at least twice. The boy cried out in shrill, bird-like sounds. People pulled away. A man with a weird smile leaned against a street sign, watching the child.
Allie entered follow-up notes.
1. Did authorities find anything in trash receptacle at the mini-park?
2. Who killed child? Parents? Or the man leaning against the column?
She put the computer away and stretched out on her bed. Night had fallen, and she noticed a perfect square of moonlight on the floor. She relaxed and immediately felt the presence of Pearl, one of her guides.
"Allison. See the girl. She's dizzy and afraid."
"Yes, Pearl. I see her. Where is she?"
"It's cold where the eagles fly. Beware of the man. Your paths will cross."
"Pearl. Where is she?"
But Pearl had gone.
Allie refocused and the vision returned.
The girl struggles to sit up. A man slams her back down. He holds her ankles in one hand, draws back the other. The girl's head whips to the side, her right cheekbone cracks. Blood and tears unite streaming down her face into her mouth.
The man rips off her panties and pulls away. The sound of a zipper echoes in the room. The girl moans.
The vision stopped as if the film had jammed in a projector. Allie started to put her feet over the edge of the bed to get her tape player to record what she had just seen. New images flooded in.
The man enters the room where the girl is crumpled on a rug beside the bed. He lifts her body into his arms, turns and grins like a jackal. He walks down the hallway to a back door, steps out onto a balcony and throws the girls over a wall. The lifeless body bounces off a mound of rocks and rolls against a large boulder nestled among a cluster of evergreen bushes. Nearby a steep, snow-covered hill slopes toward a mountain village. Dim lights flicker as the morning glow pushes shadows away. An eagle swoops down over the girl and emits a piercing cry.
* * *
The phone shrieked. Allie sat up in bed and glanced at the digital clock: 2:30 am. She shivered and clicked on the lamp and reached for the phone. "Hello."
"It's Maddie. You okay?"
"I'm freezing. Give me a second." Allie crossed the room to the wall thermostat. It read seventy-two degrees, a comfortable temperature. She sat down and wrapped herself in a blue afghan.
"Sorry. I was locked in a vision somewhere." She glanced at the clock again. "Why are you calling at this hour?"
Maddie sighed. "Think we may be on the same page, even though I'm in San Diego and doing everything to avoid this shit. I had a vision. Mom was stumbling down the creek bank by the ranch house. I phoned her, but no answer. Did you talk to her today?"
"Yes, I did. She was just landing her plane after a trip to Grand Island. I think she worked tonight. Did you try her cell?"
"No. I didn't think about her being at the clinic. That must be where she is." Maddie paused. "Oh, did your vision include a girl and an older man in a bar? And eagles?"
"An eagle, but no bar." Allie paused. "Maddie, the man smirked at me after he killed the girl. He knows me." She took a drink of water and calmed her voice. "Pearl gave me a nudge on this one. She warned me I'd cross paths with this guy."
"Oh, that's just great." Maddie sighed. "Well, I didn't sense Pearl. I was working late, and while staring into my microscope, the microbes turned into images. To get back into my project, I put my headset on with Sammy Hager, screaming his heart out. I'll send you my notes. Forget about the smirking asshole."
Allie hung up, and then dialed her mom's cell. No answer. She tried the house phone with the same results. When she'd last talked with her mom, something nagged her about her mom's safety. Allie blamed it on the fact that her mom lived alone in bum-freaking Nebraska. Let alone flying her plane in unstable weather.
She called the clinic. Her mom had left at one am. After finding the Red Willow sheriff's office number, she dialed it.
"Deputy Sheriff Beckett here."
"It's Allison Lewis. Would you check on my mom? She's not answering her phone."
"Did Susan work last night?"
The deputy's familiarity with her mother's life did not surprise Allie. In mid-America, in a town of eight hundred counting the dogs, and in a county of less than two thousand, everyone knows everybody. At times, she disliked the intrusiveness, but tonight Allie considered it a blessing.
"Yes. I called the clinic. She left two hours ago."
Papers shuffled in the background. "Got reports regarding your mom here. Let me see . . . five complaints about her flying low and buzzing the town today."
Allie sighed. She heard Beckett drop something metal to the floor, then mumble a few expletives. Her mom, Susan, fondly called the deputy sheriff, "Barney" from the 1960's television show placed in Mayberry, North Carolina.
"Okay. Here's a report from Susan Lewis, 5 pm." He read aloud. "RP . . . that means reporting party . . . claimed that Gilbert Martin had just driven off the ranch."
"Gilbert? He's in prison."
"Nope. Released a few days ago. Sheriff Krueger wrote something here. Says he contacted Gilbert and told him to stay away from you all. Warned him he'd be breaking parole if he didn't."
"Geez. My sister called and she had a . . . " Allie stopped. Nearly all of the Red Willow residents thought she, her sister and her mom were wacky because of their psychic abilities. "Could you drive out to the ranch and check?"
"Sure. I'll call you when I get there." He paused, then chuckled. "You might try some of your hocus-pocus stuff . . . sorry, didn't mean to offend. But I'm betting Susan's asleep and didn't hear the phone."
Allie knew better. Her mother never slept through anything. In fact, her children believed Susan never went to sleep.
Allie phoned Maddie. "Something's terribly wrong."
Chapter 13
1875-Near Wicked, Colorado Territory
I wanted to die, but as the heat reached my face, the instinct for survival took over. The fire seemed to chase me as I hurried toward the river. With each step away from my dead family, I became resolved to find Jake and his partners. I would destroy them all.
At the river's edge, I turned to see the blaze racing my way. I waded across the cold water realizing my life depended on me. Me alone.
I felt Joey's leather pouch slapping my thigh. It held his folding knife he'd received for his birthday last year.
For hours, I ran and stumbled following the river west, which paralleled the South Platte Trail. Exhausted, I fell down hard among dense thickets. My body refused to get back up. My mouth felt dry and I wanted to crawl to the river's edge to drink. But we'd been warned to boil the river water. Cholera took more lives on the trails than anything. My stomach growled from hunger.
Thunder roared in the distance. I removed my apron and rolled it up for a pillow. As I rested my head on it, I longed to be in my mother' arms, but images of my dead family flashed through my mind. I didn't want to remember them that way, but I knew I would.
My eyes shut from fatigue. I tried to stay awake to protect myself from the coyotes that I'd heard earlier. But I felt as if I was falling down a deep well and couldn't claw at the walls quickly enough to stop myself from drifting into sleep.
Rain splashed onto my face. I awoke with a jolt not knowing how long I'd slept. My muscles ached and my feet stung from blisters. I opened my mouth to catch a few drops. My tongue reached out for more, but the rain stopped. I needed to find safe water to survive.
I smelled the burning cow dung of a campfire. Hushed voices drifted through the wind. I sat up slowly and listened.
The pungent aroma of fried bacon drifted to me. After I picked up my things, I crept toward the smells and sounds as quietly as possible. At last, I was near enough to see the flicker of fire. Three women and two men sat around the campfire.
I crouched to watch them. Could the men be part of the group that had slaughtered my family? My intuition told me that they were not the attackers. I hesitated. Throughout my life, most of my loved ones knew about my gift of knowing things. Mama called it sinful. Papa said it was evil. But my grandma whispered to me many times to use my gift. Now I was alone, could I trust it?
I circled around the camp until a makeshift horse corral stopped me. A large stallion reared up and neighed loudly. I dropped to the ground.
"Who's there?" a man bellowed. "Step into the light or I'll shoot."
I stood and moved forward. A grunt behind told me I was in trouble. Before I could react, something heavy jumped onto my back, smashing me to the ground.
Chapter 14
Breckenridge, Colorado
After Jake ripped the sheets and pad off the bed in the Breckenridge mansion, he stuffed them along with Molly's backpack and clothes into a black trash bag. Blood and excrement had seeped through the bedding and onto the mattress. He covered the purple-brown stains with the white down duvet that had been thrown to the side of the bed. Chances were the owners of Eagle's Nest wouldn't be back until next ski-season, and after the animals had a good feed on the body, only a few bones might be found in a month or two. And since she was a runaway with no ID, she would probably be labeled as a Jane Doe for a long time to come.
Jake grinned. "Everything's copacetic." His cell phone rang as he stepped out the front door. "Hey partner, what's up?" He approached his car, opened the trunk and tossed the plastic sack inside.
"Where are you?" Karl's voice sounded tense.
"You know. I'm driving back from Denver. Remember . . . I did presentations." Jake opened the BMW door, slipped behind the wheel and started the engine." He wondered what insecure Karl, the nerd from hell, wanted now. "You sound upset."
"Jake, the San Diego police want to talk to you."
"What about now? They've questioned me a zillion times." Jake drove slowly out of the private drive and onto Four O' Clock Road.
"There's a rumor of new evidence in Tiffany's murder." Karl shuffled something in the background.
"Shit. I'm sick of this shit. But I'll call Detective Garrison and let the bastard know I'm on my way back."
"There's something else." Karl paused. "First Central in Del Mar called. Several checks bounced. Did you deposit the ten-thousand from Smith Enterprises?"
Jake raised his voice. "You doubting me, shit head?" He pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. "Don't ever doubt me, Karl."
"Okay . . . I thought─"
"You thought nothing. I'll call the bank. They probably put the funds into the wrong account. Did you even think of that? You worry about the programming. I'll take care of this crap." He slammed the phone shut.
Jake's hands were shaking. The police had new evidence. "Shit," he yelled as he pounded the steering wheel. They couldn't prove he had been there when his wife Tiffany had died. Impossible. Or could they?
Now the freaking bank was calling. He'd hoped to have other funds in the business account before anything bounced, but the eggheads at the Denver seminar didn't have the balls to write a check. How many times did he hear the same whiney ass words? "We need to compare it with other products on the market and then talk to purchasing."
Jake needed to calm down and think things out. He glanced outside. Six or seven inches of new snow had fallen during the night. One piece of luck, he thought. It'll cover the bitch's body.
He watched skiers racing down trails with provocative names like Goodbye Girl, Vertigo or Psychopath. A year ago, Jake had skied them all. He glanced at skiers riding a chairlift high above trees, snow and jagged rocks.
Two children in matching sapphire blue snowsuits pointed at something. One of them screamed. Jake opened his window.
A woman's voice shouted. "Oh my God. Look at the girl falling down the mountain."
Another voice cut through the morning cold like a knife. "Damn. She's bleeding."
Four cross-country skiers hustled by Jake's car. One yelled into a cell phone. "A girl's hurt . . . What? They can't miss her. She's freaking naked with a red bra hanging off one shoulder." He slammed the phone shut and shook his head.
Jake spotted the woman just as she let out a long, ghastly scream that seemed to echo through the freezing air. It was the skinny girl. How could she be alive? He watched her struggle toward a group of skiers trudging up the steep slope, their pace set, with skis loaded on their shoulders. They moved over a few feet to give her room. A woman reached out as if to grab the ghostly figure, but the bleeding girl slipped and rolled away.
She landed at the bottom of the hill near King's Crown Road. A siren howled in the distance. Two people stood nearby with snowboards in tow, but hung back three or four feet as they stared at the naked body.
Jake drove the BMW down near the scene and parked at the edge of the road. He knew he should get the hell out of there, but he wanted to make sure the skinny girl was dead.
The siren became louder as a few skiers formed a circle around the body. With bright flashers and a final loud wail, a Summit County Sheriff’s jeep, outfitted with large snow tires drove up scattering snow and gravel.
A uniformed, lard-ass man in his late thirties opened the door of the vehicle and spoke into a shoulder mike. "Sheriff Clifton. Ten-twenty at Four O'clock and Kings. Request EMT unit." He stepped out of the vehicle and moseyed to the naked girl. His snow boots crunched in the icy, packed snow.
The circle opened for him like a kaleidoscope creating a new pattern. Wheezing, he leaned down on one knee and removed his insulated leather gloves, one finger at a time. He checked for a pulse on the girl's thoracic arteries.
“Anybody know what happened?" the sheriff asked.
No one answered and another siren screamed, announcing the arrival of a red and white emergency vehicle. Two medical technicians jumped out and grabbed a gurney from the back.
Sheriff Clifton faced the approaching attendants. "I think it's a DRT."
Leaning over the girl's blue-white body, the EMT's went through standard procedures to double check for pulse and respiration. One whispered to the other, "Christ, why did he yell out DRT. People know that means Dead Right There."
After a few minutes, the attendants pulled a red blanket from the gurney over the dead girl. The spectators murmured, some in disbelief.
An eagle screeched from above and diverted their attention. The bird flew over the scene and dipped near the body before disappearing into a swirling snow flurry.
Bystanders began to turn away. Sheriff Clifton stopped them. "Please, nobody leave."
A woman in a bright pink parka and matching ski pants said, “She came down from the Westridge area.”
Others in the group offered vague information, and comments.
“Yeah, she came falling down under the Snowflake lift."
“She looked like she
was running from the devil.”
"I was driving by and saw the commotion.”
Sheriff Clifton took notes. “What's her name? Anyone?”
Silence.
The sheriff scratched his head and shivered. "Before anyone leaves the scene, write down your name, phone and address. We may need to contact you." He handed a clipboard to the lady in the pink ski suit.
The EMT attendants lifted the lifeless body onto the gurney and into their vehicle. They slammed the doors shut and drove off.
The BMW with the dark-tinted windows created an eerie cloud of exhaust. Jake leaned out the car's window and called to a snowboarder. "Hey. What happened?"
She looked at him and smiled. "Who knows? Probably on drugs or something."
"Thanks." Jake closed the car window and drove toward Main Street. "Damnit, I'd have sworn she was dead when I threw her over the railing. Whew! Skinny girl, you gave me quite a scare."
He turned the defroster on high, sighed and laughed. "I'm leaving this pop stand. But first I'll grab some coffee and a cinnamon roll."
Jake turned on the radio. A reporter's voice filled the car. "We have the latest on the brutal murder of Tiffany Tansey in San Diego, California. A leak from law enforcement indicates that new evidence has been uncovered. More about that after the weather—" Jake turned the voice off as he parked in front of the Prospector Bar and Grill. "Goddammit, Tiffany. If you'd only kept your mouth shut about the money."
Before he entered the restaurant, he bought a copy of the Denver Post from a sidewalk dispenser. Bold letters on the front page read, "Missing Boy Found In Toilet."
At the counter inside, he scanned the article.
"In an unorthodox twist to the case, the FBI used Special Agent Allison Lewis, an alleged psychic, to help locate the four-year-olds body. The agency says Lewis and her twin sister Madison, also said to be a psychic, have helped solve missing-person cases as well as locate criminals throughout the country, including Colorado. According to sources, Lewis, who declined to comment for this article, will next assist Phoenix, Arizona authorities with another missing-person case. However many people doubt . . ."
