Though my body was exhausted, my mind continued its incessant churn. Eyes closed, I pondered my ethical dilemma, an unusual and uncomfortable task for me.
I had taken Stratton’s money and assured her that I could derail whatever path Laura Bishop was on. Normally, that would take a few strategic phone calls, or text messages, or vague threats couched in phony solicitors’ letters. Sometimes I would use Fitch’s hacker skills and cause just enough cyber havoc to waylay a target. That usually entailed some fiddling with social media or posting damaging altered photos or videos. Nothing seriously harmful, unless my targets ignored the message. They never did.
In the case of Laura Bishop, could this be the mission the High Priestess had conscripted me to execute? What was Pento’s role in my current circumstances? Was Elizabeth Stratton connected to Malignity or was Laura Bishop?
“Maybe,” I murmured to myself, “but probably not.”
Then I remembered Laura’s eyes when she looked at me over the heads of the reporters. She was afraid, desperate even. She had looked to me for help, yet we had only met once. A chaos of emotions: desire, compassion, even anger welled within me. I heard the scratchy laugh of the High Priestess, and my rage ignited when I felt the familiar impossible squeeze upon my skull. When the constriction eased, I opened my eyes and found myself on the cold marble floor before the High Priestess’s dais.
I pushed myself to a sitting position and gave her the most disgusted look I could muster while groveling on the floor. I supposed it was fruitless and made no impression on her. It was then I realized what she reminded me of. Her face was like one of those silly movies where someone spies on people by peering through eyeholes cut into a walled painting. The face doesn’t move, but the eyes follow the quarry. Something was in her. The facade I was allowed to see was a shell, a grim costume. Something else inhabited the form.
“And this is the most you’ll ever see, human half-wit. It is all you could tolerate.”
“Then tell me,” I said as I hobbled to my feet, “is this place real? Am I really here, or is this a vision?”
“Let’s just say it’s real enough for our purposes.” She scratched out another chuckle. “We can’t tell you how to respond, but we can send you in the proper directions. Offer signposts and maybe, miraculously, you’ll make the proper choices.”
“First of all, if you keep treating me like a schmuck, I’ll respond like a schmuck. Secondly, why not just tell me what you want me to do and be done with it? I carry out whatever chore you want this dumb human to complete, and we can both be on our cheery way. I really hate that transition torture you make me go through every time I have to see you or Pento.”
“Pento?” Her unwrinkled, nail-less fingers were twitching slightly, like a puppet someone was trying to learn to operate.
I looked away from her perverted hand. “Yeah, the guy who smirks, makes useless comments, and shows me bizarre tableaus.”
She stared at me for a long moment then her eyes, somehow, darkened or intensified. “Now, I have something to say to you, so clear the moldering cobwebs from between your ears and listen.”
“My three cells of gray matter are at attention.”
“I suppose that was human sarcasm. Typical. But since we need you, I won’t punish you for insolence. Hear this: the Malignity has advanced swiftly during this time. As usual, it wields the double-edged sword of dogma and fear. The areas of your world we thought the Malignity couldn’t assail are now under siege, and you bumbling humans have no idea. However, we have many warrior lines and a few meddler lines like you. The warriors are overt, but the meddlers, by necessity and nature, work alone and behind the world stage.”
“Look, your, uh, Highness, I’m not really cut out for saving myself, much less the world. I have no idea what you mean by ‘lines.’ And something called the Malignity? That sounds like a disease, and if there is anything that scares me off, it’s disease. One time in college, I got a roaring case of mononucleosis and since then—”
“Enough!” She did a convincing, if jerky, eye roll. “You have no choice in this matter. Everything is in motion. Remember, human, what the cards have taught you. Go away. Use your skills for what they were designed.” I saw her hand flick. I was hurled again against the pillar behind her, and everything went dark for a couple seconds.
Then I was standing, facing a stone wall. Actually, my nose was only an inch from it, and I stumbled backward. I tripped over a large loose stone and fell with a vicious bang on my tailbone. I lay groaning and stared at the fake blue sky of the Theater. Convinced I had cracked a vertebra or two, I yearned for an icepack.
The synthetic blue sky was partly obliterated by the wall that rose above me the distance of maybe ten or eleven stories. It was old, or at least it was manufactured to look old. There were green and orange fuzzy lichen patches dotting the wall. The structure replicated an ancient keep where castle residents would gather for protection and fight off invaders.
“It is one of my best creations, damsel. What do you think? Does it pass for the real thing?” Pento was standing over me with a proud grin.
“So help me up, already, and I’ll give your work a critical review.” I held my hand up, and he grasped it with his gloved hand. When I stood, I inspected his glove for a moment and asked, “Hey, Pento, do you have fingernails?”
“Do I have fingernails? I did not need any to build this tower. It is completely stone…or like stone.”
“No, not construction nails, fingernails, like these.” I held up my hand to show him my usually bitten nails and lurched. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“What is troubling you?”
“Where are my fingernails? Goddamn it, Pento, I need my nails. I can’t touch anything without fingernails. It gives me the willies.”
“I cannot create what I have not seen. I am not sure what you mean by ‘willies.’”
“Is everyone in this…this Theater like us? No fingernails, no breath, no whatever is supposed to make us alive? Make us human?” I was holding my hands straight down at my sides, avoiding the possibility of seeing my nauseating fingertips again.
“Oh, that other one, he whom you saw on the beach. He creates his share of things, like the swords, but I do not look closely at them. Maybe they have these…fingernails.”
“So do you create the High Priestess too? Is she a product of your imagination and carpentry skills?”
“The High Priestess? You must mean our Lady? Oh, no, no, no. She gives me leave to create the Theater. I am hers, her ally, her knight.” He did a twitchy imitation of a proud soldier.
“And who is the other knight allied with, the one with the big nasty sword?”
Pento shook his head, confused. “Who is he allied with? You should know. You must know He-Who-Comes-Before. If you don’t know him, all my work is for naught.”
“He-Who?” A metallic clanking shattered our conversation. An enormous sword shot from the tower and clattered within a yard from where we stood. I looked up just in time to see an ironclad knight pitch backward over the edge of the tower and crumple on top of the sword. He didn’t move. It was the same knight I’d encountered on the beach, the one who was going to execute Laura Bishop.
“Get me out! Get some help!” The shouting came from above. I looked up again. There she was, blond hair tangled, eyes wild, yelling something. I focused finally and heard her shout. I turned to Pento. He was gone.
“How do I get up there?” I hollered back as I started running around the tower, looking for an entrance. Finally, my chance to meet Laura Bishop.
There was no door, no stairway. The fallen knight had vanished along with Pento. I was alone, just over a hundred feet from Laura Bishop, and couldn’t find my way to her. I stopped running and looked up to her. She reached to me and tears streaked her cheeks.
“Please, help me, please.” Even from that distance, it was obvious that her eyes were wretched with fear. It was unclear if she was really looking at me or at something els
e in my vicinity.
Something tripped me to the ground, and I was flat on my back again. Everything shook like in a low-budget movie simulating an earthquake by shaking the camera. The artificial ground beneath me trembled. The tower began rocking back and forth like a kid’s block tower. It was collapsing and I was right under it. Laura’s blanched face swayed with the tower as I tried to crawl away, helpless to save her. With a defeated moan, the tower toppled, carrying Laura Bishop with it. Her scream and the rumble of the tower made me cover my doomed head with my arm while I waited for stones from the tower to flatten me.
And I waited. I lifted my arm from my eyes and found myself sitting in the San Juan ferry as it docked at Anacortes. A blast of the ferry horn mimicked the groaning mangling of the tower. The other passengers were returning to their vehicles, engaged in delighted conversation. I was almost alone on the passenger deck. One aggrieved gull ranted at me through the window.
I glanced at the exit to the car deck and saw a heavily armed security guard staring intently at me.
Chapter Seven
The prime attraction of my getaway house, Tranquility, was its isolation from the rest of the distracting world. But that was also its curse. Usually, when I was there, I’d use my laptop or my mobile device to catch up on culture and the news. But my immersion into the cards, Fitch’s visit, and the meeting with Elizabeth Stratton distracted me from the outside world.
When I left the house that Sunday, I had no idea that the entire Washington State Ferry System was under siege. Dogs and federal agents were combing through each car that rode a ferry, and the agents were asking passengers questions, mostly about who they had seen while on board. By the time they got to me, I had an anxious belly and could feel a stiff headache coming on.
After studying my driver’s license, they rummaged in the trunk of my Lexus and stared into my backseat. The agent was all business with her heavily equipped belt that included a gun. She was not a woman to cozy up to, so I mirrored her seriousness.
“Ms. Rosten, I’m going to show you an artist’s drawing of a man. Could you tell me if you saw him anywhere on this boat today?” She produced a clipboard and held it before me. “Take a good look and think hard. Did you see him today anywhere?”
My hand pressed on the open door of my car where I had rested it. I needed to sit down. I needed to breathe. The picture was of a burly bald man with a nondescript face, but his muscular neck sported a swastika. It was the man from the vision I’d had eight years previously. The man who wanted to kill Laura Bishop.
“Uh, uh…” I had no words. How could I tell her that I’d seen him in my vision years ago?
The agent was watching me closely. “Do you know this man, Ms. Rosten? It’s important you tell me what you know.”
I had to shake off my shock. “Oh, I’m sorry, Officer. It’s the swastika. I’m Jewish, you see. Holocaust history in my family, you know. So seeing a swastika is sometimes upsetting. And I’m a little under the weather anyway.”
She watched me for a few painful seconds, then nodded. “Okay, well if you can think of anything to tell us, here’s my card. Call me.”
“Sure, of course, Officer.” She turned to walk away, but I reached and tapped her arm. She swirled around and I asked, “What did this man do? Can you tell me?”
“He murdered three people at the Smith Tower last night and was last seen on a Washington State ferry.” She turned and strode to the next car.
Show no emotion, I thought. Don’t let her see you scared. I fell back into my car seat and thought about the trip to the Theater I’d just experienced. A crumbling tower, just like the tarot card called the Tower. It was often interpreted as the destruction of the world or lifestyle we’ve become familiar with.
“Oh shit,” I murmured, “three people dead.” The murders were in the Smith Tower. The Smith Tower housed Laura Bishop’s office.
I turned on my phone and tried to call Fitch. No answer, so I left a terse message for her to call me about the Smith Tower incident.
I activated the Internet browser on my phone to see what the press was saying about the murders. Very little. Three people brutally murdered the previous evening at the Smith Tower. No names released pending notification of the next of kin. The investigation was open and ongoing. In short, they knew nothing. There wasn’t even a mention of the man having been seen on a ferry or the identity of the witness who helped authorities devise a drawing of the suspect.
I needed Fitch to dig around, and Fitch was incommunicado, probably swaggering around her dungeon delivering punishment to a devoted and willing slave.
My anxiety escalated, and heartburn sizzled inside my esophagus. I would have begged one of the security officers for some Maalox, but they looked just as pained as I did. I pressed the acupressure point on my stomach that sometimes worked to relieve my chronic heartburn.
I burrowed into my car seat and settled in for the wait to exit the ferry. To escape the torture of my own mind and fears for Laura, I thought about what I had learned while at Tranquility and what I hadn’t learned. Surely, Laura Bishop and Elizabeth Stratton were connected in a way that made Stratton vulnerable, probably politically. Bishop was an attorney, so maybe she had represented Stratton at one time and learned sensitive information. Maybe they were related by family? Hopefully, Fitch would uncover some of that information.
The thought of Fitch reminded me of the vandalism done to her car. Nothing had been stolen, so it was either random mischief by some losers or a warning. I wasn’t hopeful of the former motive. Fitch’s description of the stalkers’ car appeared to match the description of the black SUV that was waiting for Stratton when she left my house. The car vandalism was probably a warning. But why? Why would Stratton feel like she needed to warn Fitch or, more likely, me? I was a paragon of discretion.
Laura Bishop. I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and groaned, “Oy, yoy, yoy.” The thought of her sent my heart into schoolgirl palpitations. I hadn’t seen her in years, and the palpitations were caused by the Laura in my visions. I barely knew her. Why such distress? No, it wasn’t distress. It was need, desire. I hadn’t felt that strongly for any woman since Dossie Goldberg when I was seventeen. At least I got to touch Dossie Goldberg. But Laura Bishop was a whole different situation. She was a vision and a grown woman, beautiful in her blond allure. She was an out lesbian but somehow connected to Stratton. When she had looked at me in that trance-induced press conference, I could see her want for me matched mine for her. I was frightened and confused. I realized my thoughts were becoming jumbled and unfocused.
Tap, tap. I lifted my head from the steering wheel and looked to my left. The same female federal agent was watching me, her brows pinched together with concern. The gun on her belt somehow made me feel safe instead of evoking my usual horror fit over firearms.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” she asked.
I nodded and pointed to my belly. “Just a little sensitive stomach. I’ll be better when I get on the road.”
“Sorry about the delay. It was necessary, but you’re free to leave now. Hope you feel better.” She waved me forward. For a few crazy seconds, I didn’t want to leave the ferry and the safety of that officer’s gun. My headache ratcheted to a new level of agony.
*
When I finally arrived at my condo, I unpacked, made some medicinal tea, and then sat in my study to call Fitch again. This time, she answered. Legal pad and pen at the ready, I asked what she had found out about Laura Bishop and, possibly, her connection to Elizabeth Stratton.
“They worked together,” Fitch said, “at the local law firm of Meyers and Gaines. Except when Stratton was there, it was Meyers, Gaines, and Stratton. That was more than eight years ago. Stratton left the firm and her lucrative partnership to enter politics. She married the odious asshole Jerry Greenfield about the time she left her law practice.
“Maybe coincidentally, maybe not, Bishop left the firm about the same time. She then opened her own prac
tice, Bishop and Associates. She’s incredibly good at her work. Big cases, family law for the well-to-do of Seattle.”
“Any idea why she left Meyers and Gaines?”
I could hear Fitch’s keyboard clicking. “I entered, by a nifty back door, into their employee files.” Knowing Fitch, she entered through a cyber crawl space rather than a back door. “Bishop had stellar reviews, and interestingly, all of them were signed by Stratton. Those files rightly predicted that Laura Bishop was on her way to being a crackerjack attorney.”
“Any hints about their off-record relationship other than employee slash boss? Personal animosity with each other?” I was scribbling the information on the pad while I talked.
“Not from here, but I have ways to get to old e-mails. Want me to dig around?”
“Hmm, go ahead, but don’t kill yourself doing it. When you have a little more on Bishop, focus on Stratton. I want to pay Laura Bishop a visit. Maybe she’ll be willing to open up to me.” I hoped Fitch didn’t hear the nervous quaver in my voice.
“She’s a babe, Dev. I wouldn’t mind her opening up to me or my handcuffs.”
“You shameless pervert.” Fitch was pissing me off. The thought of her being with Laura in any intimate way made me clench my jaw. “Is there any information regarding her current love life?” Now I was being shameless.
“None, but I haven’t looked deeply into her personal activities yet. I do know she comes from money, and both parents are alive but estranged from each other. The rest of her biography I’ll turn to once I’ve started the search for archived Meyers and Gaines e-mails and any Stratton dirt.”
“Perfect as always, Fitch old girl. And where does Laura Bishop live?”
“Her condo is located two blocks from your condo, for your stalking convenience.”
“Aren’t you funny.” I wrote the pertinent information on my pad, thanked Fitch, and promised I’d call her when I learned more about the lovely and disturbing Laura Bishop. Finally, I asked Fitch to investigate the incident at the Smith Tower the previous evening. It was my priority question, but I felt reluctant to let Fitch know I cared about Laura.
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