sedona files - books one to three

by Christine Pope

  Hollywood types could be exhausting, but they did pay well.

  The waitress was loitering at the table when I returned. I practically had to push past her so I could slide into the booth, so I sent her a sideways glare. She pretended not to notice and went on, “Oh, New Mexico? Like, where they have the Grand Canyon and everything?”

  I saw Paul wince and guessed I didn’t have to worry about too much competition from the waitress. Not that I could claim to know him all that well, but what little I did know told me he probably didn’t have much patience for ignorance.

  “Actually, that’s Arizona,” he said. He looked over at me and asked, “Were you able to make your calls?”

  “Yes, thanks.” Some devilish impulse prompted me to add, “You really need to be more careful with your cell phone, dear. We’re not always lucky enough to be someplace where there’s a payphone.”

  Both Paul and the waitress caught the “dear,” but whereas she scowled and then mumbled, “I’ll check on your order,” before stalking away, he only grinned and shook his head.

  A little glint I hadn’t seen before flickered in his hazel eyes before he said, “Yes, dear,” and picked up his coffee.

  I fought back a grin of my own as I reached for a packet of sugar. For some inexplicable reason, I suddenly didn’t feel quite so nervous about the day ahead.

  Griffith Park, the site where the Observatory was located, already had cars and people swarming the place when we got there, even though we were a little early and the place wouldn’t officially open for ten more minutes. Still, we managed to snag one of the last parking spaces in the lot at the top of the hill, for which I breathed a secret sigh of relief. You could park farther away on one of the roads leading up to the Observatory, but from any of them it was quite a hike, and my feet were still tired from all the chasing around in heels I’d done the night before.

  “So what does this guy look like?” I asked, after we’d locked the car and joined the throngs massing outside the front entrance in anticipation of the doors opening. I’d forgotten how busy the place could be, even on a weekday; schools regularly brought up busloads of students, and today was no exception. I winced a little at the noise emanating from one particularly boisterous group of fifth-graders and tried to remind myself that I’d been that young once.

  “I have no idea.”

  “What?”

  His gaze swept the area briefly before returning to me. “We’ve only communicated through texts and a couple of forums online. I’ve never met him in person.”

  “So how do you know he’s who he says he is?” I crossed my arms and made my own quick scan of the crowds around us. No one looked suspicious, or even like a government agent in disguise, but that didn’t mean much…although I guessed the man who had chased us through the parking structure at the Sheraton Universal probably hadn’t disguised himself as a harried elementary-school teacher.

  “I suppose I don’t,” Paul replied, but he didn’t appear all that worried. “If this has all been an elaborate ruse to gain my confidence, however, I’ll be surprised.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Up until now, my movements have been very easy to track.” That glint was back in his eyes. “I don’t do much to conceal my activities. I speak at symposiums and conferences. I do book signings. Anyone who wanted to find me or communicate with me really wouldn’t have to go to the elaborate lengths my contact has gone.”

  “You wrote a book?” I inquired, a little impressed despite myself.

  “You mean you’ve never heard of Investigating the Unknowable?”

  I shook my head.

  “Intersections of Belief?”

  I lifted my shoulders.

  “Oh, well,” he said, in deprecating tones. “They’re quite popular in some circles. At any rate, within the UFO community, I’m fairly well-known. No need for cloak and dagger. A federal agent could have come along and picked me up at any time, which leads me to believe my unseen friend is most definitely not working for the government.”

  “So if you’ve never met, how is he going to know who we are?”

  “I assume from my book jacket photograph, or the photograph on my website, or — ”

  Raising my hands in mock surrender, I said, “Okay, okay, get it. You’re a big celebrity.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “Big enough. So where are we supposed to meet, exactly?”

  Paul smiled then. A few of the women in our vicinity shot him admiring glances, but he appeared not to notice. If he had been one of the other men of my acquaintance, I probably would have said he affected not to notice, but he truly didn’t seem to realize the effect he had on the female half of the population. Too busy looking for aliens, probably.

  He replied to me question by asking another one. “Where else but at the Cafe at the End of the Universe?”

  It was far too soon after that omelette to even think of eating anything else, but I did get some iced tea, and Paul bought bottled water so as to justify our taking a table up against one of the bank of windows that gave the café a breathtaking panorama of Hollywood, downtown Los Angeles, and beyond. The overcast had lifted a little, but the breeze coming off the ocean was still brisk.

  So soon after opening, the cafe was almost deserted. Later, after people had worked up a thirst from tromping up and down the Observatory’s innumerable stairs, the place would collect quite a crowd. Right then, however, except for a young woman with a laptop and an enormous cup of coffee, and another woman with improbable heels who was nursing a soda and rubbing the ball of a foot, we had the place to ourselves.

  A minute ticked by, and then another. I glanced at my watch. The contact was almost ten minutes late.

  “What if he doesn’t come?” I asked.

  “Then I suppose I can take you to a planetarium show,” Paul replied imperturbably.

  “Seriously.”

  “I am being serious. I’ve heard they’re very good.”

  If it had been anyone else, I probably would have given him a good dose of annoyed side-eye. But, despite having slept in the same room together, I didn’t feel as if I knew Paul well enough to do such a thing. I settled for scowling and sipping at my iced tea as I stared out at the L.A. skyline. Far away I thought I saw the faintest glimmer of gold as the clouds near the coast parted and allowed a few rays of sunlight to catch in the waves off Santa Monica.

  “Who’s she?” came an unfamiliar voice, and I turned away from the window to see a scruffy-looking individual with a few days’ growth of beard and wearing an oversized military surplus jacket staring down at us.

  “This is Ms. O’Brien, whom I mentioned in my message,” Paul said.

  The young man — who was probably in his middle twenties at most, even with the beard — summoned up a scowl that put mine to shame. “I didn’t know you were going to bring her.”

  “Hi, nice to meet you,” I said, and stuck out a hand.

  He recoiled as if I had hit him with a stun gun, and instead pulled out the table’s free chair so he could sit down. Pointedly ignoring me, he said to Paul, “How do you know she can be trusted?”

  Of all the — “I’m right here, you know.”

  “We wouldn’t know about any of this if it weren’t for her,” Paul pointed out. Although his voice still sounded level, a little twitch at the edge of his jaw line seemed to indicate he was just a bit irritated.

  The stranger shrugged. “Okay, fine.” He swung the battered leather messenger bag he wore over one shoulder onto the table. I barely had time to get my iced tea out of the way. A second later, and it would have been splattered all over my front.

  A few choice words rose to my lips, but I decided it was probably better for me to keep quiet and not provoke him. No wonder the guy hid out on message boards and forums and didn’t get out much — I’d seen better manners from a two-year-old.

  He pulled a laptop out of the messenger bag, opened up the computer, and be
gan typing in some rapid-fire commands. What exactly he was doing, I couldn’t tell, because the strings of characters that moved across the screen didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. Not that that necessarily meant much, since my level of computer skills allowed me to set up spreadsheets for my business and hack some basic CSS for my website, and that was about it.

  “There’s been a lot of chatter,” he said. “You two stirred something up. Sounds like they’ve got people all over L.A. looking for you.”

  Wonderful. So much for doing a little Nancy Drew work and then heading home at the end of the day. I knew that Ginger’s and my schedules didn’t always overlap, so most likely she probably hadn’t yet even realized that I hadn’t come home last night, but if I were absent too much longer, she’d notice I was missing. And since Ginger wasn’t the type to sit around and do nothing, she very likely would call the police.

  Or, even worse, my mother.

  I shuddered a little and made myself focus on the scruffy stranger — who, I just realized, had never even told us his name.

  “Any concrete leads?” Paul asked.

  “Not that I can tell. They searched her apartment and her office, but I don’t think they’ve found anything. They’re more than a little pissed at the way you disappeared into thin air.”

  Well, that was something. Who knew I had such a talent for a life of crime? Maybe I’d gone into the wrong line of work. Psychic powers could probably be a big asset when robbing banks or running Ponzi schemes.

  “Good,” said Paul, with a sort of grim satisfaction. Then, “Persephone, why don’t you explain what brought you to see me?”

  I really didn’t want to, not with the way I practically felt the irritation pouring off the stranger in waves. Funny how I could sense his emotions so easily, when Paul might as well have been a closed book. That was just how it worked — my abilities ebbed and flowed based on the vibrations of those around me, and Paul was one of those I tended to regard as a neutral energy, one that didn’t give off any discernible tells. Unlike this young man, whose name I suddenly knew was Jeff Makowski, and who I also knew ran his underground operations from a ramshackle Craftsman house in the Silverlake district.

  “I thought you already told him,” I protested.

  “Just the bare bones. Go on.”

  A strong pull of my iced tea to fortify me, and then I said, “Well, Jeff, I had a client come to see me yesterday — ” He blinked when I said his name, but otherwise didn’t react. “ — And he told me his girlfriend was possessed by an alien…” From there I went into as complete a description of my encounter with Alex Hathaway as I could remember.

  When I got to the part where Alex said she’d changed after getting a spray tan, Jeff held up a hand to stop me. “A spray tan.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Jeff drummed his fingers on the tabletop and looked over at Paul. “Thoughts?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Could be something in the tanning spray. Easy way to get into our system, through the pores. The aliens could have infected the spray with a virus that allows them to infiltrate a human’s system — ”

  “You mean like the black oil?” I cut in. It had been a recurring plot device in The X-Files, a gooey substances the aliens used to infect people with some sort of mind- and body-altering virus.

  Both men’s heads swiveled toward me, staring as if I were the one who had suddenly sprouted antennae.

  “Hey, you’re not the only ones who watched The X-Files, you know.”

  From Jeff I got a sense of extremely grudging respect, while Paul was still a blank — although he did give me an encouraging nod.

  “Okay,” Jeff said. “So we’ve got the possibility of the spray at a tanning salon being contaminated with an alien virus. Do you know which one?”

  “Which one what?”

  “Which tanning salon she went to.” The exasperation was back. He gave me a glance of narrow-eyed irritation, as he added, “Try to keep up.”

  I didn’t have time to count to ten, so instead I sipped my iced tea. That way, I wouldn’t risk throwing the cup at his head. “I’m afraid my session with Mr. Hathaway wasn’t that in-depth.”

  “I’ll see if I can look him up. You have an address?”

  “No. Since I didn’t charge him for the session, I didn’t get any more information than his name. I did get the impression that he was local, so I’m guessing the salon his girlfriend went to was also in the area.”

  “I’ll look him up, see if I can narrow it down.”

  He began tapping away again, and I lifted my eyebrows at Paul. He only shrugged, but something in the tilt of his head told me he expected me to show some patience. All right, I’d try to be patient, but if Mr. Makowski started slinging insults again, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Both Paul and I looked questioningly at him. He stopped typing and turned the laptop around so we could both see the screen.

  “That your guy?”

  I stared at the image, fighting the sick sensation that rose in my stomach. The face was slack and pale, bloodless. At first glance you barely saw the black hole in his temple, or the ring of livid flesh that surrounded it.

  Now I understood why I had sensed that wave of cold when Alex’s shoulder had brushed mine. I’d known something terrible was about to happen, but that could have meant a variety of things, from a fatal car crash to an IRS audit. And while I didn’t feel quite ready to acknowledge the connection between his visit with me and his subsequent murder, it was clear that he hadn’t lived more than a few hours after I had spoken with him.

  The omelette somersaulted in my gut, and I stood up from the table. I knew I had to get some fresh air or risk being sick right then and there. Without a word I rushed for the door and then made my way out onto the terrace that ran alongside the west wall of the cafe. A cool breeze, tangy with ocean salt, washed over my face, and I took in deep gulps of air, willing the food to stay down, trying with all my might to keep that image of Alex Hathaway’s blank, dead face from my mind. I wasn’t very successful at the latter, although the nausea subsided after a few seconds.

  “Persephone.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Paul standing a few feet away.

  “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m — well, ‘fine’ isn’t exactly the right word, but I’ll manage. It was just — unexpected.”

  For a few seconds Paul didn’t say anything. He stepped toward me, then hesitated. “The police report says he was found this morning, but apparently he was killed yesterday in the late afternoon.”

  “I know.”

  A flicker of surprise moved over his features. “You saw the time of death?”

  “I didn’t have to.” I shifted so I faced him fully. There were a few people out on the terrace, but none of them were close enough to hear what we were saying. “I knew when he left my office that he didn’t have long to live.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Because I hoped I was wrong.” I shoved my icy fingers into my jacket pockets. “I’m not one hundred percent accurate. I make mistakes. Not often, but I do. And so when I felt the cold when I touched him, I tried to tell myself it was nothing.”

  “Couldn’t you have warned him?” There was no reproach in his voice that I could hear, only a desire to understand my actions.

  “I could have — and I doubt he would have believed me, considering I struck out pretty spectacularly during our session. Anyway, if I’ve learned anything, it’s when it’s your time, you go. This isn’t like giving advice on whether to go out on a second date or buy a certain stock. Death can’t be cheated.”

  Again he was silent. After a pause, he nodded. “All right. Are you ready to go back in?”

  “Sure, as long as Jeff doesn’t bring up any more show-and-tell. And just how did he get that photo, anyway? It had to have come from the LAPD’s servers.”

 
; “And I’m sure he’d like to know how you learned his name. I suppose you both will just have to acknowledge that you have certain…talents…and leave it at that.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I followed him back inside the cafe and resumed my seat. To my surprise, Jeff seemed rather subdued. I’d been sure he’d mock me for my precipitous flight from the table, but maybe even he had his limits.

  “Right,” he said, as if I hadn’t interrupted the conversation at all. “I got the address, and it turns out there are four tanning salons within a quarter-mile radius of Alex Hathaway’s apartment. One called SunGold, another called Paradise Tanning, one named Golden Age, and a day spa called Lotus.”

  I must have let out a little sound of surprise, because both men shot questioning glances in my direction.

  “Er — I go to Lotus,” I explained, and then, as they sent disbelieving looks at my fish-belly-pale skin, “Not for tanning. I get my eyebrows done there.”

  “Eyebrows,” Jeff repeated, as his own lifted slightly.

  “Good eyebrows are very important,” I assured him, and he made a sound of disgust.

  “So you know the people there,” Paul cut in.

  “Yes. I’ve been going for the past two years.”

  “Good.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone, then slid it across the table toward me. “I think it’s time you made an emergency eyebrow appointment.”

  CHAPTER SIX