“What do you mean?”
“She also studied the paranormal. That got me wondering whether you might have been tested.”
Audrey felt the muscles in her throat tightening. Suddenly she had trouble breathing.
“Are you all right?” said Cates, leaning closer, resting his hand on hers.
She nodded, trying to catch her breath.
“Here,” said Cates. “Take another sip of water.”
Audrey waved the glass aside. “If I’m really telepathic, then Zach is alive.”
Cates frowned. “Audrey, no one understands telepathy, if there even is such a thing.”
“But you saw—”
“I saw an as yet unexplainable phenomenon. Amazing. But don’t infer from that that you have really been in communication with your son.”
“If it wasn’t Zach, then I want to know what the hell it was.”
“Slowly. Everything will come with time.”
But Audrey refused to be dissuaded. “I don’t have time. And I still haven’t opened that last door.”
“No. And I don’t think you should just yet. You have a lot to deal with already. It’s going to take us several sessions before you’re ready to take that next big plunge. You’ve been extremely traumatized by your past. Your aunt Tara had that right. Reliving all of it at once would be too much.”
“I have this fear now that you were right, that a lot of what I lost wasn’t bad. That I needed to remember it!”
“What kind of childhood could it have been with a twin sister, and a brother, and a dog that didn’t have some happiness, Audrey? You’ve erased it all. The good and the bad. You’ve been robbed. Robbed of your childhood and of the right to grow up as an adult with a past. Good, bad, indifferent, it’s your past. It’s what makes you who you are, and now you can’t possibly know. Up until two minutes ago you didn’t realize that you might have an incredible gift. I know researchers that would pay a king’s ransom to have you in their program.”
“Please! Don’t do that. Don’t tell anyone.”
Cates held up both hands. “That’s the last thing I’d do. I was simply saying that you are a phenomenon. Surely Tara knew that.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t tell you why I’m sure. But I’m certain.” She nodded to herself. “I think if Tara did know, I’d know it.”
Cates’s face sank. “I was so certain.”
“What’s the matter?”
He shook his head. “I had devised this theory that Tara was studying telepathy, and perhaps other psi powers, and that she was using hypnosis to either try to improve upon them or discover what caused them.”
“So?”
“I figured perhaps Tara took you to live with her when she realized your potential.”
Audrey shook her head. “No. She came to get me because something bad was going to happen to me.”
Cates seemed to consider that. “In any case, I’d like you to come back in a week. I’ll have my receptionist set up another appointment for you.”
“All right.”
Cates walked her to the door. Before he could open it, she spun to face him, her eyes bright.
“You don’t believe in contact with the dead, do you?” she asked.
Cates frowned. “No. I don’t believe that’s possible.”
She smiled, slipping past him. “Neither do I,” she said.
“Audrey,” he said, catching her arm, “you kept mentioning the sound of a child’s feet. Running. Do you know what that was about?”
She frowned, thinking of the pain in her garden, the sound she’d heard echoing in the house. Suddenly she knew. “It was me,” she said. “I was running away. I could hear the sound of my feet giving me away. I couldn’t hide. And I couldn’t run. I was trapped.”
“By who? Your mother?”
She nodded. “I guess so,” she said, shocked at the feeling of grief the admission caused her.
36
“AN OLD FRIEND who has access to medical records called me last night.” Mac’s voice was loud enough on Virgil’s cell phone that he had to hold the receiver out at arm’s length. “Martha Remont was in and out of mental institutions in California for nearly ten years.”
“What for?”
“Some kind of child abuse. Let me see. Oh, this is good. She locked her kids in a room in the basement and didn’t let them out. She had three kids they know. The state of California finally granted Tara Beals custody of Audrey, but it was a long, drawn-out affair and pretty messy evidently. Martha later claimed Tara kidnapped Audrey, but Tara got custody.”
“Audrey says she did, basically, to save her from her mother.”
“Good thing, probably.”
“The state bust her?”
“It was the state that sent Martha to the mental institutions, yeah.”
“What happened to the other kids?”
Mac was slow answering. “Disappeared.”
“Think she killed them?”
“Probably, but the state didn’t have enough evidence to charge her on that one. They searched the house but all they found was a lead-lined basement where she probably kept the kids locked up. They never found any bodies, so they didn’t charge her. I guess they figured they had her locked away for life anyway.”
“So where is Martha now? Have you got any more information?”
“Same thing happened in California that happened everywhere. The state kind of lost track of mental patients when they couldn’t come up with the money to keep ’em locked up anymore. She got shuffled out in the early nineties. I tracked her to a residence in Sacramento. According to neighbors, she lived quietly there for five years. Two years ago she sold the house and disappeared.”
“Did she live alone?”
“No. She had a man in the house.”
“Anything on him?”
“Truck driver is all I got.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Why?”
“Audrey Bock’s neighbor drives a truck. He bought the house about two years ago.”
“Well, that’s a coincidence. But I’d say it’s still pretty slender evidence. I don’t have a name or anything on the guy. Neighbors didn’t remember much. He was a longdistance trucker. Gone a lot.”
“Could be Merle Coonts,” said Virgil, shaking his head.
“Could be a lot of people. Have you got anything else on the guy?”
“No. He let me search the house and basement. But it wasn’t a thorough search.”
“Either he’s real cocky or he’s innocent.”
“I didn’t get the feeling of innocence. It was something else. The guy’s a creep.”
“What else can I do for you, Virg?”
“You’ve done a lot. Thanks, Mac.”
“Guess that gets Tara off the hook, then.”
“Sounds like it,” said Virgil.
Arnold? Daniel? Ernest? Cooder had always liked the name Ernest. Liked the way it made a man sound. Like you could trust him. But was that the boy’s name?
His old work boots sounded a tight rhythm on the pavement, but he ignored the sound, focusing on the gnawing in his brain. It wasn’t just the names. Something else just as bothersome scratched at his mind like a bit of flotsam scraping against a dock piling, but was it something he knew, or something he felt?
A lot of times Cooder got the two mixed up. He was never sure if he knew a storm was blowing in because he’d overheard someone say it, caught a brief bit of weather reporting on someone’s radio—at the diner, for instance—or if he just knew those kinds of things. But he was uncannily good at predicting the weather, so good that people often asked him his opinion of the long-term forecast. He could feel the pressure dropping now, like he’d just taken a long step off the edge of a tall building. It was going to be clear and seasonable for a little while, but there was one hell of a storm blowing in.
He never slowed his pace as he hiked down th
e back slope of the hill. The land opened out into a wide valley and a battered old farmstead sat moldering to his right. A satellite dish on top of the barn was silhouetted against the sky. Suddenly his mind seemed unusually clear. He breathed in clarity like thick air and the invisible substance flowed through his brain, opening synapses that had lain dormant for decades, leaving him standing on the side of the road, staring at the house but not knowing why. He was a receiver, waiting for a transmission.
After what seemed minutes, but might have been an eternity, some part of Cooder’s brain registered the sound of an approaching automobile, and he recalled Virgil’s warning, glancing down at his feet to ascertain that he was not in fact standing in the middle of the road again. The Camry rounded the far curve and then slowed slightly as it passed the farm. Squinting, Cooder could make out the dark-haired male driver and, as it drew alongside, he saw the pretty blonde passenger, and for just that instant the veil of syrup that had him locked in place parted. He felt as though somehow he and the woman had just been introduced. But the strange sensation was more than just recognition.
He and the woman had touched each other.
∗ ∗ ∗
Audrey was stunned, breathless.
As they passed the old farmhouse now, she’d stared straight ahead, trying to find a quiet place in her mind. Trying to hold back her fear and reach out for Zach at the same time. If she wasn’t insane, if he was there, in that house, she was going to find him. But to Audrey’s dismay, Richard slowed and perused the old house curiously, and her terror began to overpower her sense of purpose. She wondered if Richard was just waiting for her to scream at him to hurry up, but the closer they got, the more intent Richard’s gaze seemed.
Suddenly Audrey found herself drawn away from the presence of the old house toward the figure standing like a heavy-set mannequin off to her right. Sandy hair blew wildly about the man’s vacant face. But as the car flashed by, their eyes met and Audrey gasped, not quite understanding why.
She hadn’t been afraid of the man. Although he was weird-looking, like a vagabond, there was no menace in his face. Something strange and somehow wonderful had passed between them, some bond beneath the level of consciousness. Had it really happened? She glanced back but the hill was already behind them and Richard was turning up their driveway.
“Who was that?” she asked.
He glanced over at her. “The bum? I have no idea. I’ve seen him around. He walks a lot.”
The sun was just setting as they entered the house and Richard flipped on the kitchen lights. He stared into Audrey’s eyes for a moment and then sent a meaningful glance toward the cabinet where she had placed the Halcion.
She shook her head.
“Are you sure?” said Richard.
“Doctor Cates agreed,” she said, stretching the truth. “I’m going to work through this with his help.”
Richard tried not to frown.
“He’s helping me, Richard. He really is.”
“Okay,” he said, kissing her lightly before wandering off into the living room. The sound of a basketball game rattled down the hall.
37
BABS FLIPPED THE TAROT CARDS with the expertise of a Vegas shark, snapping them onto the table between soft and runny candles. The flickering flames were numerous enough to summon a thin bead of sweat on her wrinkled brow.
She’d done a thousand readings over the years, but rarely for herself. She knew enough about the supernatural to realize that she didn’t want to know her future. Others, half-believers, could take bad news and call it hocus-pocus. Of course they learned in the end, but then it was too late.
Babs, on the other hand, was a full believer—in the cards and other things—and she knew that the cards didn’t lie. They might not be direct. They might reveal the truth in layers that were difficult for the ordinary mortal to understand. But they didn’t lie. That was why she was performing this reading for herself for the fourth time in as many hours. Because sometimes they were direct.
The first time she had been shaken but not panicked. She’d stared at the cards for long moments, catching her breath, taking in the fullness of them. Tarot cards could not be interpreted correctly if the adept only read into them the separate meaning of each card. That was strictly for base amateurs. Each card played off the other, each lay revised the lay before, until with the final card, the complete reading could be revealed by a skilled professional.
But that first deal of the tarot had been even more uniformly ominous than the one she had done for Audrey Bock, until with the fall of the last card, Babs could barely breathe. Never in her years of working with the occult had she seen anything remotely like it. She stared suspiciously at the deck in her hand, but she had shuffled it herself before the reading.
She brewed herself a large pot of tea and forced herself to eat a healthy breakfast of sprouts and tofu. By the time she finished she had almost convinced herself that perhaps she had misread the cards both times. It was possible. After all, a reading was just an interpretation. If she was depressed or distracted, it might have happened.
She did another reading. This time she used only the twenty-two cards of the major arcana. She wasn’t interested in subtlety.
The cards fell differently this time, as of course they would, but the conglomerate effect was the same. Death. Horrible death in her future. Not just in the future, either. Today. She dropped the rest of the deck as though it were a hot iron and backed away from the table, pulling her eyes away from the cards with great difficulty. Even as she hurried into her bedroom, the picture of the reaper with glowing eyes shining beneath his dark hood and his wicked-long, sharp scythe wrapped in skeletal hands, flashed repeatedly on the front of her brain.
A walk. A nice brisk walk would clear her mind. But as she strode purposefully out onto the porch that afternoon, clutching a thin cotton scarf around her shoulders, she’d stopped in the pale sunlight. What if she was hit by a car?
She’d glanced quickly up and down the street, lifting her chin to peer farther along at the hospital parking lot. One or two cars passed slowly, but they remained on the street. None threatened to leap the curb and run her down, and was that a horrible enough death to match the message in the cards?
She thought not. No, the cards had foreseen something peculiarly gruesome and painful for her and she couldn’t imagine what that might be. Babs was not a reader of Stephen King or his ilk. She didn’t follow the tabloids or study every story on serial killers or watch those types of movies. In fact Babs hadn’t been to a movie since The Sound of Music, but she did have an ample imagination nonetheless, and it was working overtime as she stepped down onto the walk in front of her home and tried to decide what to do.
Doris. I’ll go see Doris.
And so she did. By the time she reached the Milche house, she had managed to attain a certain level of calm. Enough to let herself in quietly—since Virgil wasn’t home and she knew Doris was in no shape to answer the door— catch her breath and straighten her plaid skirt. She tiptoed up the stairs and found Doris watching a game show. Doris barely had the strength to register surprise when she saw someone unexpected standing on her threshold.
Babs was astonished at how fast Doris had slipped downhill. Had it really been only a couple of weeks since she’d last seen her? She looked like death itself. If it was possible, she seemed to have lost even more hair and her eyes, sunken before, were now positively entombed in the depths of their sockets. Her withered hand, as she lifted it to welcome Babs, shook like a leaf in a windstorm. For a moment Babs forgot all about her own problems and dropped onto the bed to comfort her old friend.
Doris’s voice was raspy as a leaky radiator. “I missed you, Babs.”
“I missed you, too, Doris. You’re looking good.”
“Don’t give me that baloney.” Doris forced a weak smile. “Won’t be long now.”
“Don’t say that.”
“True. But I don’t worry about it. Pastor comes by
every day now. I’m right with Jesus.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Are you right with him, Babs?”
Babs tried to be right with everyone. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, The Great Spirit, the entities that inhabited the earth. But when it came down to it, had she been wrong all along? Was there a final decision that had to be made? That thought bothered her. What if there was only one God and he was the jealous kind the pastor kept whining about?
“I think so.”
“Don’t think so. You got to know. ’Course you got a little more time than I got.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
So Babs told her. Doris’s eyes seemed to slide to the front of their sockets and when her jaw dropped, Babs had the uncomfortable sensation of staring all the way down her inflamed and constricted throat. She wondered if that was what the gateway to hell looked like.
“Need to tell Virgil,” said Doris.
“Why? There’s nothing that he can do about it, Doris. And he wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“You saying it’s set in stone?”
“When the cards speak like they did today, it is.”
“I don’t believe that. Christ gives all of us choices in this life.”
“I can make all the choices I want as to how my soul is set before I die. I can die a good woman or a bad one. But the cards say I’ll be dead before the next sun rises.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m trying to make my peace with it.”
“It’s hard.”
“How did you do it?”
Doris rubbed the back of her neck and closed her eyes for just a second. “I prayed a lot. And I had Virgil. Much as he thinks he’s not a comfort to me, he is. I’d meant to ask you to keep an eye on him after I was gone….”
“Sorry.”
Doris shrugged. “Marg will take care of him.”
“That must be soothing for you to know.”
“She’s a good woman.”
“I suppose. You know her better than me.”
“Of course, she always thought you were a bit off.”
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