The Emissary

by Patricia Cori

  Mat escorted Jamie to the seat next to his. “It is my pleasure to introduce our consultant for the Deepwater operation, Ms. Jamie Hastings. I know y’all are gonna join me in welcoming her to our happy little family here today.” Mat had this amazing gift of being able to weave sarcasm through his thick Texan drawl like needlepoint.

  No, they were not. A few of the men nodded stiffly—others could not even fake it.

  Mat was visibly annoyed with the rude behavior. He was, after all was said and done, a Texas gentleman, and he expected the same from his team. “I have already filled you in on Ms. Hastings’s remarkable feats and track record,” he announced sternly. “I have assured her that my decision to fly her in from San Francisco, just to meet with y’all, has nothing to do with her needing to seek anybody’s endorsement here today.”

  Relaxed, knowing there was nothing she needed to prove, Jamie sat back comfortably in her chair, observing the men and their collective body language. She knew she was anything but welcome, and found it almost amusing how men inevitably showed their weakness by being aggressive and resistant to women in positions of authority.

  Didn’t they realize how transparent they were?

  After working with macho cops at LAPD, and the Pakistanis, she knew all about what she affectionately referred to as the “testosterone dilemma.” Hence, they didn’t faze her at all. She was there because the chairman of the board had begged for her help, and she assumed that the executive directors were just going to have to get their heads around it. From what she could discern from Mat’s behavior, he would have liked them to be okay with it, but it was going to be their problem if they were not.

  Mat leaned back, pointing the laser at a large navigational map of the Pacific Northwest. “The Deepwater is in port in Vancouver, and we begin our explorations very soon now: here, farther north than we’ve been until now, covering new ground. We have carte blanche from the Canadians to open this new area, and we’re going farther out, significantly distancing ourselves from the coast.”

  As Jamie observed and listened, she was struck by the fact that Mat was pointing to a place on the map where the words ORCA SANCTUARY were written in ink. Breaking protocol completely, she interrupted Mat at the onset of his presentation, right in the middle of his speech.

  “Excuse me, Mat,” she blurted out, “but you’ve got an Orca sanctuary in the middle of your target zone? Am I seeing that right?”

  Jamie Hastings had just interrupted the chief executive officer of USOIL, in the middle of an executive directors’ meeting. Mat was not amused. No one else had ever dared to do that: it was simply unthinkable. Jamie challenging Mat in front of these men, in the inner sanctum of the boardroom, was emasculating. It was a question she certainly could have asked him in private, rather than blasting him in front of his colleagues.

  One of the executive directors, Jeb Richardson, almost laughed out loud. He was the most conservative of them all, and the least cooperative. He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a snide remark to the man seated next to him. “Like I always say, a woman’s got to be a bitch in bed and a slave in the kitchen.” He coughed, concealing a laugh, but he projected exactly what he was thinking to everyone in the room.

  He was the most unapologetic sexist in Texas.

  Mat bristled, sharing enough of Jeb’s views on women to imagine what he thought of Jamie. He didn’t need this antagonism from her, breaking down what he was trying to establish in her favor. Where was her “heightened sensitivity,” now?

  “Yes,” he answered, dismissively, “there are a few stretches where the whales have the right-of-way, but that won’t be a problem.”

  “No? How do you figure?” Jamie demanded. Terms had been clearly defined just days prior, when he was courting her into the deal, and she was not going to let it go, regardless of how this Jeb character or any of the others dismissed her.

  Mat tried not to lose his patience, but, at the same time, he had to maintain his posture in front of the men. “Well, now, Ms. Hastings, I mean we can avoid it.”

  Jamie would not be dissuaded. “I need to be real clear with you and everyone here present that, if you want me out there, we’re going to have to stay far away from any whale migration routes and this sanctuary.”

  In that moment, Mat realized he had set himself into a trap: how to keep Jamie on board while holding his position of authority? All eyes were on Mat, waiting to see how he was going to handle this woman who they had heard, through Louise’s grapevine, was a “pain-in-the-ass, liberal female from San Francisco.” She had stepped right into the stereotype.

  “Yes,” Mat said, tightly, “we will be careful to avoid any collateral damage.”

  “Collateral damage? Where have we heard that term before? Sorry, Mat—either the whales have your full protection, and this Orca sanctuary and all whale migratory routes remain off-limits completely, or I can’t do this. I will have to back out.”

  Mat looked around the room. He felt he was being usurped, his credibility waning. The meeting was a disaster—Jamie was not playing ball with him at all, making him look small in front of his peers. “I assure you we will stay clear of the whale sanctuary,” he said, through clenched teeth. “Now do you mind if we move on?”

  Jamie continued to press him. “I have your word on that?”

  Mat clenched down so hard you could see the muscles in his jaw contracting. “Yes, you have my word.”

  They all sat waiting for Mat to put Jamie in her place, as he would have done to any one of them, but to their amazement, he held back. That never happened in Mat Anderson’s boardroom.

  “I tell you what … if you gentlemen will accompany our guest to the dining room, I think a few drinks are in order. Let’s lighten things up a little, and then we can continue this over lunch.”

  He motioned to them to leave the room. Jamie looked at him, quizzically.

  “I’ll be right with you, Ms. Jamie—I’ve got a few urgent matters to clear off my desk before lunch. You just tell the boys all about your time down in L.A. Let them in on the kind of work you did for the police,” he said, winking.

  Everyone stood and started for the door. It was a welcome reprieve from the highly charged environment of the meeting room. After the last executive closed the door behind him, Louise came in with a stack of memos that had to go out that morning. She put the pen in his hand and stood next to him while he signed each one. Despite the pressures of the moment, these were documents that could not wait until after lunch.

  Once she was out the door, Mat picked up his cell phone and speed dialed the number 2. He held it close to his mouth, almost whispering into the phone. “I want you to keep a very, very close eye on Jamie Hastings,” he said, furtively. “And tell that boy Sam to be cool or I’ll yank him, even if we need his daddy’s pull up there on the Hill.” He hung up immediately, and went off to join the others, hopeful that a few drinks and a little Texas-style hospitality would be enough to break the ice wall that had formed around Jamie.

  To his amazement, by the time he entered the dining room, Jamie had managed, like magic, to turn things around. The men were captivated, engaging her. She was recounting the story of the famous serial killer, Willie Hynes, who had terrorized four states on the West Coast and brutally murdered seventeen young women, before the Los Angeles Police Department finally turned to Jamie for help, and officially hired her as a psychic investigator for the department.

  Hynes remained one of the most elusive serial killers in history. A girl would go missing without a trace and then, days later, the police would get a call, directing them to the body. He never left a trace of evidence at the crime scene. He was meticulous: no blood, no prints, nothing. Police forces from L.A. all the way up as far as Seattle were absolutely stumped. After seventeen murders, covering four states, no one had come up with a single clue or lead to follow. Empty-handed, with nothing at all with which to appease the good citizens of the entire West Coast, they had had to admit that the trail f
or all the murders had gone absolutely cold.

  Jamie stopped talking when Mat walked up to the table, deferring to him, but he insisted she continue, seating himself at the head of the table. The only man without a drink in his hand was Jeb. By now, he was so openly annoyed with what he perceived as psychic fairyland that he just could not contain himself any further. He wanted to dismiss Jamie completely and cut the floor out from under her.

  “Let me guess,” he said, condescendingly, “you’re saying you solved that case?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Little ol’ you, up against the police power of four different states?”

  “Well … I was not ‘up against’ them. We worked together; LAPD headed up the investigation, since most of the murders happened in their jurisdiction.”

  “And you worked for LAPD?”

  “That’s right,” she replied, getting back to her story. “The only evidence they had on him was what we call ‘the signature.’ Serials always leave one for the police—it’s part of the power trip behind the killing. That’s all the police had. Sixteen dead girls, their bodies thrown into the woods or on a beach, and each time they would find a little white plastic chess piece next to the body.” Jamie continued, enthralled in her own story. “After the last murder, the sixteenth, Martin Kaszlow—he’s the chief of LAPD—received a one-word letter from the killer. It simply said, ‘checkmate.’ The killer knew the police had nothing. They believed that he felt he had won the game and … this ‘checkmate’… they hoped it meant he was done—that the game was over. In fact, six months passed with no further incidents—at least none that fit Hynes’s pattern. Then, out of the blue, another young girl—she had been missing for forty-eight hours—was found with her throat cut, in the Hollywood Hills. This time,” Jamie said, “they found a black chess piece—the king—jammed into the gash across her throat. He was back. And now he wanted more attention, so he upped the stakes—more gore, more violence.”

  Mat belted back his drink. “Ugly business,” he said, grimacing.

  “As you know, gentlemen, there are sixteen white pieces and another sixteen black pieces in the game. He was letting the police know that he was going to murder another fifteen girls: daring them to stop him … playing this game serials love to play with their minds.”

  The waiter interrupted with a tray of hors d’oeuvres and started to hand out menus, but Mat stopped him, and told him to bring another round of drinks.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Well, that’s when I first got called in for consultation. Marty heard about some of my work at the Stanford Psychic Institute and he asked me to come down and give them a hand—sort of like Mat has done.”

  “Bingo,” thought Mat. “One major PR point scored for Jamie.”

  “That was sort of it, really. Once I held that black king in my hand, I saw the tattoo—The Black King, written across the killer’s chest—just as clear as day. That’s how we identified him. I saw the house, too, and … well … I just managed to lead the police right to him.” She took a drink, looking as if she wanted to forget the pictures that had surfaced in her mind, looking back at her from the bottom of her glass. “There, they found all the grisly evidence they needed to convict him and put him away for life.”

  “Give us a break,” Jeb said, openly defying her. “You can’t seriously be telling us that, after years of these unsolved murders, all you had to do was hold this piece of plastic in your hand and the murders were solved!”

  “I am dead serious,” she replied, dramatically.

  With all her other talents, Mat was discovering, Jamie was a master storyteller. She had the track record and the proof to back up everything she was saying, and she clearly did not feel she had to impress anyone. She spoke her truth, from the gut, and that truth was compelling and real. He didn’t speak or try to intervene. He knew that no matter how impossible it was to understand how or why, Jamie had these extraordinary abilities and such an incredible truth about her that even the most determined skeptics amongst them could not help but consider the possibility that she was for real.

  They had at least fifty-three reasons to believe her.

  The more his colleagues became absorbed in her story, the more belligerent Jeb became. He was in complete denial. Despite the facts, which, knowing Mat, had obviously been verified, Jeb refused to believe a word of anything she had to say. He did everything he could to deflect attention away from her and to disrupt her stories of specters and psychic visions.

  For some reason, he saw Jamie as his adversary. “So, the next thing we know, y’all are gonna start reading everybody’s palm or something, is that right?” He was smug and condescending, doing his best to discredit her.

  “I’m not a fortune teller,” she said.

  “Ah, you mean you’re not going to read my horoscope?”

  “No, but what I can do is to give you a chance to speak to Billy. He’s here.” Suddenly, she jolted. Jamie’s body became quite rigid. She sat bolt upright in her chair. Looking straight into his eyes, she reiterated, “Billy is here.”

  Jeb looked like he had been hit by lightning. He turned ghostly white, almost as if he were in shock. His only son, Billy, the only thing that had ever made sense in his life, had died in a car crash when he was only twelve years old. Jeb was behind the wheel, two sheets to the wind after too many Jack Daniels he’d downed at the bar before picking the boy up from basketball practice.

  Not a day went by that he didn’t think of that moment of impact, and when he watched, helplessly, as his son died in his arms. For all intents and purposes, he died too. Jeb Richardson sealed his heart that day; he closed his mind. He cursed god, gave up on his dreams, and turned away from love altogether.

  Enraged, he leaped out of his chair, staring at Mat. “What the hell kind of game is this?” he screamed. “My boy is dead and buried.”

  Mat just said, “You know me better than that, Jeb.” He, too, was having a hard time getting his head around what had just happened.

  “How the hell do you know about my Billy?” he yelled accusingly at Jamie.

  The men sat there, in disbelief, trying to understand what was happening, and waiting for what Jamie would say next. They could feel the cold of the paranormal encounter—they were in it, all of them, along with her.

  “Please, sit down. I need everyone to just stay calm. He’s here. Billy is here for you. Help me bring him through.”

  Visibly shaken, angry, and confused, Jeb sat down.

  Jamie was gentle: her voice was so soft, it was just more than a whisper. “He is begging you to please stop beating yourself up over the accident. He’s alive, he’s happy where he is … except for your suffering—he can’t bear to see you in the dark.” Suddenly, her voice changed into the voice of a child. “Please forgive yourself, Daddy-o. I’m here, I’m always close to you … you just can’t see me. I love you, Champ.”

  Upon hearing those words, his son’s voice coming from Jamie’s own mouth, Jeb lost it completely: all his walls came crashing down and, with them, the prison doors of his shame and guilt swung open. In front of all his peers, his boss … in front of the woman he was afraid could indeed reach him, he put his head into his hands and sobbed like a baby. It was a scene no one could have remotely imagined—never in a thousand Texan years.

  If ever there had been a doubt for any of them that the soul survives death, or that some people can reach through the veil and connect the living with those who have passed over, then surely Jamie had dispelled it all. All their resistance was out the window.

  Jamie Hastings was “in.”

  She got up from her chair and went to Jeb to comfort him. Like a loving mother, she put her arms around his shoulders, holding him, silent, allowing all those years of pain to finally flow freely—allowing Billy to put his arms around his dad, one last time. In that intimate moment, it was as if nothing else mattered and no one else was in the room.

  Overwrought with so much emo
tion—the guilt and his unbearable sorrow—Jeb scrambled clumsily to extract his wallet from his jacket pocket. From it, he pulled out a photo of the beautiful little boy Jamie had just seen sitting next to him, his hand shaking almost out of control. He held it up to her.

  It was signed: I love you, Champ.

  8

  The Deepwater

  Jamie would have very little time in San Francisco before she would have to leave again, embarking on her big adventure out at sea. She had only just returned from New Zealand, after so long away, and already she was being pulled from home again. How she had missed hanging out with her mother, going to shows together … socializing with friends. She wanted to fit back in, as much as she ever had or could, and have a personal life. Yet, as much as she longed to set down those roots, with time to dedicate to a number of important projects, including the whale foundation, she seemed to be in some way destined to a life of endless travel. She was forever being called to duty on levels she herself did not fully understand, living out of mismatched suitcases she had never learned to pack efficiently. She sighed at the thought of another flight, another journey, and more time away from the home she so loved, but never managed to enjoy—at least not for any significant stretch of time. And yet, deep down inside, she was thrilled at the prospect of being on a ship out in the Pacific, knowing something important was going to happen out there.

  Something was already stirring beneath the waves.

  Her mother used to say Jamie had “wanderlust” and that she would never settle down and, indeed, she never really had. The very idea of “settling” in any way, shape, or form held no appeal whatsoever. Some great relationships had come and gone, winding and bending like the path she walked, until they could no longer bend far enough to flow in the direction of her life—and then they would snap. Inevitably, the men she met and fell in love with were never able to handle the intensity of the life she needed to live, and so she walked away—time and time again—until finally she realized that her mother was right. There could be no “settling.”