A Song of Redemption

by Lillian I Wolfe

  “I’m sorry, Ferris. I know you feel the loss also. Stupid of me...”

  He shook his head, “It’s fine. It’s just a shock to all of us... and we watched it happen. It’s going to be harder for her family. Even from a distance, Digby senses the unreality of it.”

  He was right. If someone had told me about it, I would still be upset, but not as tortured by it. Seeing it put it in a whole different realm. The images imprinted in my mind would be with me for the rest of my life, and probably beyond. Same thing for Ferris. Our friend, a beautiful light that we’d hugged, kissed, laughed, and cried with had been taken from us in a burst of violence.

  I laid my head against his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat and a shiver of fear flowed through me. “To add to it, the detectives have that poor man for her murder even though he wasn’t actually the one who did it. He wasn’t controlling the body, but how can anyone prove it? Ferris, what should I do? Should I level with the detectives and tell them the whole story?”

  Even as I asked, another part of me feared for whomever the yiaiwas might go after next. No one could protect anyone from them except, maybe, my little band of demon fighters and me. Next time, it could be Ferris or Digby. Or even Heeni.

  “I don’t know. How much do you trust those guys to have your best interests at heart?”

  “Moss knows I have some psychic ability, but he doesn’t know the full extent. But he and Hernandez have played it pretty straight with me.”

  Then I recalled I’d fired a light blast that had been seen by at least a few people in the room. Maybe not where it originated, but the impact as it hit the shooter. Even Ferris had seen it. And the guy had reacted to the hit. So that answered my question about using it on people. Apparently, I could. While I didn’t kill him, it seemed to have shocked or stunned him in some way. More to the point, it sent the yiaiwa fleeing from the body, which, of course, only I could see. Nonetheless, Moss would be looking for an explanation of that.

  “I still think you should have a lawyer present,” Ferris muttered.

  “But then I’d have to tell him the truth about what I’m hiding, and that’s one more person in the loop. Do you think he would believe me? Seriously, who, in their right mind, would?”

  “I do,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. A wistful smile flitted across his mouth as he leaned in and kissed the top of my head. “Even as weird as it sounded when I first heard it, I knew you were telling me what you perceived to be real, and whether it was or wasn’t, so long as you believed it, then it was. Now, I know it is.”

  I leaned my head back and got a glimpse of the clock and the time. “Oh, gods, I need to go to work. I—I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “Call in,” he said immediately. “I did this morning.”

  “I can’t do that to Heenie. She has dogs booked, lots of work today. It’s just the two of us. I have to go in.”

  “Isn’t there someone else she can call in?” he asked as I slipped out of his arms and pulled on my robe.

  I was just processing that he’d stayed the whole night with me. I vaguely recalled him bringing me home and leading me upstairs to my bed. I’d been in a daze, emotionally spent, and still teetering on the edge of hysteria. I turned my head back to gaze at him, his face with stubble on it and wrinkles in his shirt from a night spent on my sofa. My heart skipped a beat or two as I said softly, “Thanks for staying and taking care of me.”

  “Of course. There was no other choice for me. I love you—no matter how weird things might get. I’m right beside you, babe.”

  My eyes teared up as I wondered how I’d gotten so lucky to have him.

  Crawling the rest of the way off my bed. I reached for my phone to call Heeni when I noticed a text from Orielle. It had come in late on Sunday, but I had muted the ringtone for the gig and hadn’t turned it back on. The message was brief, just to let me know she and Gavin had gotten in, and he was now checked in at Stanford.

  I felt the threat of another choke of emotion. Safe, but not sound. Another victim of a damn yiaiwa even though it hadn’t killed him...yet. Trembling, I fought the urge to fling my phone across the room in a rage at the monsters taking my friends from me. A bitter taste filled my mouth, and I thought I might throw up. I tossed the phone on the bed and ran to the bathroom.

  After spitting up a mouth full of bile, I showered and tried to gather my emotions. I decided I needed to go to work. I needed to keep my mind busy and try to cope with my feelings. When I came out, Ferris had gone back downstairs leaving me to dress.

  As I walked into the kitchen, Ferris handed me a cup of coffee with cream, just the way I liked it. Nygard nibbled at his breakfast, pausing only to give me a pitiful mrrow to let me know how neglectful I’d been.

  “Yeah, sure, Ny,” I muttered. “Like you’re the only one who matters.” I knelt to give him a chin scratch. I straightened up and addressed Ferris. “I’m going to work. Are you staying here?”

  He shook his head. “Not if you aren’t. I’ll take you to the shop and pick you up later.” His face wore a frown, the flat tone of his voice telling me he wasn’t happy with my decision.

  AT WORK, I DUG IN IMMEDIATELY, taking a big, shaggy mutt to cut and bathe. It would keep me distracted, which I desperately needed. Although surprised when I walked into the shop, Heeni, tactfully, didn’t say too much except she was sorry and asked if I was all right. I nodded, accepting that she’d probably heard about the shooting on the news. If I tried to talk about it, I’d start crying again.

  I slipped over to the back door of the shop and threw up a hasty ward to protect it from a yiaiwa attack, then planned to get the front door and the big window when Heeni took a break. She’d throw a fit if she thought I was throwing some kind of voodoo on her shop. Honestly, I feared the demons would try anything at this point.

  As I worked, I caught a glimpse, every now and then, of Heeni looking my way as if to make sure I hadn’t broken down or gone berserk. My throat felt tight. I struggled to keep my mind focused on the tasks, but the threat of crying was constant. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that I had to call Janna’s mom, yet it took more courage to dial that number than I could muster at the moment.

  By mid-afternoon, I’d turned into a shaky, nervous mess, tension and misery making me fidget around the dogs, which wasn’t helping either of us. I think Heeni was teetering on the edge of sending me home when my phone buzzed with a call from Moss. I picked it up, almost snapping out, “Hey, so you’re calling...”

  “Whoa, you sound in a mood, Foster.”

  “Just edgy. It’s a tough day. I had expected you to call sooner.” I tried to get a grip. I needed Moss and his partner on my side.

  “I had a lot to do today. Lots of people to interview and evidence to look at before I talked to you. Where are you?” His voice was calm, even, and almost friendly although I knew this was official.

  “The grooming shop.”

  “You’re at work?” He sounded surprised.

  “Uh huh. I needed to keep busy.”

  “Okay, how about we swing by there and we can have a chat?”

  I looked at the sopping wet dog I was working on and said, “Can we make it in about an hour? I have a just washed dog to finish up.”

  He agreed readily, and I went back to my task. Once I’d done the final trim and put the dog in the dryer, I told Heeni that the detectives were coming by for a statement. Her eyebrows shot up.

  “They’re not in a marked car, are they? I don’t like police coming to the shop, Gillian.”

  “No, they have a regular car. But I’ll talk to them outside so they won’t come in here. I’m sorry about this, Heeni. I didn’t ask for any of it.”

  Her expression softened to a sympathetic look. “I know. Why don’t you go on home after you’re done talking to them? I can handle the rest of the dogs. There’s only a few.”

  Part of me wanted to object to leaving, but I gave in to the part that wanted to go. I called Ferris to
update him and asked him to come by in about an hour. I figured that would be time enough to answer Moss’s questions or else he’d be hauling me to the Sheriff’s Office.

  I waited outside for the detectives, my nerves getting to me as I picked at the polish on my fingernails. One of them was cracked, probably as I scrambled across the stage floor. I’d stuffed a pack of tissues into my purse and made sure I had one in my pocket anticipating that I wouldn’t make it through the interview without a display of waterworks. I gazed around the area, noting the partially overcast sky and the breeze that shook the barren branches of the trees at the edge of the parking lot. It felt like a weather front was coming in.

  Sadly, I thought, we’d probably bury Janna on a blustery, cold day. An ideal time to bid goodbye to her exuberant spirit. Once more, I considered calling her mom, delaying the action by convincing myself I needed to be at home in a quiet place to talk to her. Then I tried to make a plan of what I might say to her other than to tell her how devastated and sorry I was. No words I said would change anything in this tragedy; they couldn’t fix or even explain what had happened.

  For now, the more important words I needed to say were to the two detectives who had just pulled up and parked. Moss climbed out of the passenger side, while Hernandez took a minute longer, likely letting dispatch know where they were, before joining him. The two chatted as they walked up, Moss nodding his head and looking calm—very business as usual.

  For them, it was just another case; for me, a significant piece of my life had been forever altered. She would never be my bridesmaid; I would never sing at her wedding. We wouldn’t raise families together, and a dozen other dreams and plans were now gone. I wiped the forming tears from eyes.

  “Where can we talk?” Moss asked as he came even with me.

  “Around back. There’s a picnic table behind the shop. No one uses it in the winter. It’ll be private.”

  “Lead on, then,” he said as Hernandez followed us.

  I took them around the corner of the strip mall—a coffee shop, a beauty salon, and a sewing store filling the other spaces, then around to the backside where loading areas backed to the shops. At the end, behind the Heeni’s shop, sat a picnic table with bench seating. I slid onto the east side as the detectives took the other side facing me.

  “Nice area,” Hernandez commented, noticing the small hedge of evergreens that surrounded two sides. While neat and kept clean, it wasn’t anything fancy, but I’d spent many lunch hours out here enjoying the fresh air on pleasant days.

  “How are you doing?” Moss asked, looking at my face and no doubt seeing the stress in it.

  “Holding it together,” I answered shifting my gaze to the tabletop. I noted where the paint was peeling and focused on it.

  “Again, I am very sorry for your loss. I know this isn’t easy, but I have to ask you some questions. We’re going to record, so anything you say will be on record and can be used in a court of law. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He began by asking me to describe what happened from my perspective. While Hernandez had set up the recorder to face me, he was also taking notes on a pad.

  I wet my lips and began with the start of the party and meeting the gentleman, who was a vice-president for the company sponsoring the event. His name eluded me, but I thought it sounded like Stanton or Slaughton. He seemed like a nice person, out-going and in a great mood. I ran through the whole event in my mind—the first set, the break with a bit of chatting with people, then we began the second set, and that was when the shooting started.

  “I heard the retort from the gun and went for the stage floor, crawling over to where Ferris had gone underneath the piano. From there, I could see what was going on. The vice president man was firing a gun into the crowd of attendees. It looked like he hit a couple of them, but they didn’t go down as near as I could tell, but they stumbled a bit. Then there was panic with people trying to get to the exits as they realized someone was shooting.”

  I paused for a moment to see the details again. “Janna kind of burst out of the crowd and tried to signal security. I could see she’d pulled out her phone and was talking to someone. As she turned toward the man, he shot her in the chest, and she went down. I screamed, and I saw the man jerk like he’d been slammed backward, then he shrieked and dropped to the floor, clutching at his chest. I rushed to Janna and tried to help, but I... I couldn’t... so much blood and... I couldn’t...”

  As the tears broke through, I grabbed my tissue and wiped, then blew my nose, ready for the next trickles coming down my cheeks.

  “Take a deep breath,” Moss said in a gentle voice. “Take your time. It was traumatic.”

  That was one word to describe it. Try horrific, I thought. Crap, I’d coped with my near murder better than I was handling this.

  “You want a coffee or a soda?” Hernandez asked.

  “Coffee sounds good,” I mumbled between sniffles.

  He glanced at Moss, then took off back around the corner to the coffee shop.

  Crossing my arms on top of the table, I dropped my head, face down on them as I tried to get control of my skittering emotions. By the time Hernandez returned with coffees for all of us, I’d gotten the tears under control and was muttering, “I’m sorry” over and over.

  “It’s okay,” Moss said. “I didn’t expect this to be easy for you. But I need your help to get the details of the events.”

  I looked up at an angle, my head still barely above my folded arms. “What details?”

  “Your story is very much like every other witness, except for a couple of points. A few witnesses said they glanced back at the gunman after he shot, and they saw a streak of white, like lightning, coming from across the room and slamming into Mr. Staunton, who was firing the gun randomly at the crowd. They had no idea what set him off. But they didn’t believe he was specifically aiming at anyone, and Ms. Lewis happened to step into the path of the gunfire. You were watching at that point. Did you see a streak of parallel lightning burst through the room to hit him?”

  “No,” I said, keeping my breathing under control. I could honestly say I did not see lightning.

  “You said it looked as if something had struck him. Did you see anything?”

  “I thought he might have had a heart attack,” I answered slowly. Again, it was the truth. When the bolt had hit him, it could have caused a heart attack.

  “But it didn’t kill him,” Moss noted. “EMTs took him to the hospital. He tested out clean, but he says something powerful struck him, and it felt like an electric charge had jolted through his body.”

  I said nothing at that point, so he continued. “The few people who noticed the streak thought it might have come from the stage area. But you didn’t see anything?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Moss raised an eyebrow and stared at me for several seconds before he said, “Nothing at all?”

  Again, I didn’t answer, just dropped my gaze to my hands folded on the table and focused on the cracked fingernail.

  He drew a deep breath, then said, “Okay. So, did you think that Mr. Staunton accidentally shot Ms. Lewis... that she moved into the path of the shot?”

  Involuntarily, my head jerked up, “No. It was on purpose. She turned, the bullet was aimed at her.” I knew that without a doubt. I couldn’t tell him the whole reason why, but I knew it nonetheless.

  Both Moss and Hernandez were sharp though, and a glance passed between them before Hernandez gently said, “Ms. Foster, you just said the bullet was aimed at her. Not that the suspect pointed the gun at her. Is that what you meant?”

  I looked away from them, gazing toward the mountains at the end of the valley where snow capped their tops. Don’t plant your garden until the snow is off Peavine, local people advised. Often it was into June before that happened. I remembered the garden Janna’s mom had in their backyard and the plastic tent she put over it in order to start it in April. We used to go out in it for priva
cy and to talk about all the things teenagers didn’t want their moms to hear. Sometimes, we even pulled weeds and measured the plant growth as the vegetables began to form.

  Now, these detectives were asking me if Staunton killed her. If I lied, he would be charged with murder. If I told the truth, the unlikely story would complicate their case, incriminate me in an attempt to kill him, and still be unprovable. What was I to do now? Ferris had been right. I needed a lawyer.

  I swallowed nervously, then said, “I saw him fire the gun. It was pointed at her.”

  “Oh-kay,” Moss responded. “So, you think he planned to kill her?”

  I hesitated, looking for the best way to phrase it. “I don’t know. He may not have intended to specifically kill Janna, but he aimed at her.” I couldn’t let an innocent man take the blame for this, but the truth was going to sound insane. “I don’t think Mr. Staunton wanted to kill her, but I don’t think he was acting of his own free will.”

  The detectives exchanged a look as they both appeared startled by my statement. “Can you explain that a bit?” Moss asked.

  “You’re not gonna believe it. But I think he was possessed.”

  “Uh huh,” Moss grunted and looked away with a frown on his face.

  To his credit, Hernandez kept eye contact and asked, “What makes you think that?”

  I pointed to his phone where he was recording and mouthed, “Turn it off.” Then waited until he did so before I responded. Since this was an official statement, they wouldn’t want my words recorded either. “Because I saw a spirit leave him after he screamed and clutched his chest.”

  “A spirit?”

  “Here we go again,” Moss muttered. “I knew it wouldn’t be simple with you involved.”

  “You asked!” I snapped back. “I said you wouldn’t believe it. But you know I see spirits, and some of them are evil.”