The Witch and the Gentleman

by J. R. Rain

  I said, “Well, we had chalkboards when I was a kid, and I turned out fine. Just ask my therapist.”

  Now he did chuckle lightly, but, again, it seemed forced. “Same here, but that’s progress for you. I’ve never seen you before. Are you a parent?”

  “No,” I said, and now the nerves kicked in again, especially when I realized the significance of who he might be. “But I hope to be. You know, someday.”

  He looked at me oddly as he returned the eraser to the metal tray at the base of the board. I would have looked at me oddly, too.

  “So, what can I do for you?” He had moved over to his desk where he’d begun gathering paperwork and tucking it neatly into a file carrying case.

  I took in a lot of air. And I mean a lot. I held it and suddenly wished I was anywhere else but here. My God, I was a psychic at the Psychic Hotline. A personal trainer. I was good at both jobs. I didn’t confront people. I didn’t, in fact, know what the hell I was doing.

  So, I did the only thing I could think of. I plunged right in, perhaps stupidly or perhaps even bravely. I said, “I’m here about Penny Laurie.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. He continued shoving papers into his file holder. Or was he shoving them in a little harder now? With a little more vigor, perhaps? Probably not, but after a few seconds of what I thought was him clearly thinking through the situation, he began shaking his head sadly.

  “A tragedy,” he said, still shaking his head. Still shoving papers in his file.

  To me, his reaction wasn’t normal. Although not a trained investigator but a human who had seen her fair share of people on this planet, I felt that his reaction was calculated.

  Or maybe I had convinced myself that this guy was bad news, and was looking for anything to validate that assumption.

  Maybe.

  Or perhaps, I was just frustrated that I wasn’t getting any help from Millicent. Hell, even from Penny herself. No, I wasn’t a medium, but that certainly hadn’t stopped Millicent from reaching out to me.

  I needed help here. I was in over my head.

  But I wasn’t getting it. It was just me and Mr. Fletcher, and my own psychic intuition. My specialty of remote viewing wouldn’t do me much good here. But my other, less reliable, skills were letting me know that there was something here to be wary of.

  I could feel the latent buried within the classroom walls, the desks, the carpeted floor. Fear, I knew, had an energy signature that imprints deeply into the environment. So did love. So did death.

  But it was fear that I was feeling now.

  “Yes, a tragedy,” I said, heart racing.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Fletcher, finally looking up from his folder. He idly held a stack of papers in his hand. “Who are you again?”

  “I’m a friend of the family,” I said. Yes, I had thought long and hard about just how to answer that very question. It was the best reply I had.

  “Like I said,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “it’s a tragedy, but I do need to get going soon.”

  “You were one of the last adults to see her alive, Mr. Fletcher, so do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Actually, I do. Her murder has troubled me deeply, and, quite frankly, I haven’t been the same since. I would rather not open old wounds.”

  Now, he shoved the entire bulging file folder into a leather satchel, which he slung over one shoulder. He was leaving and he wasn’t talking. I knew I needed to say something that would keep him talking or get some kind of a reaction from him. “I’m sorry to open old wounds, Mr. Fletcher.”

  Now he was coming toward me. His shoulders seemed broader now, and he certainly didn’t look like any teacher I would want my kids to have, if I had kids.

  But I stood my ground, standing before the door and blocking it. “As it turned out, she didn’t go directly home after school.”

  He said nothing, just continued coming toward me.

  “I suspect she went to a nearby park, perhaps even the park she was dumped in. You see, she was mad at her mom, and didn’t want to go home. Maybe she thought she would be punished if she went home. I believe she was at this park when she met her killer, a man.”

  He stopped before me. He was shaking and doing all he could to control himself. His nostrils flared out. That he had anger issues was an understatement. “And you know this how?”

  “I’m a psychic, Mr. Fletcher.”

  He didn’t laugh. He didn’t shrug it off. He didn’t do anything that one might expect.

  Instead, his eyes darkened and he seemed to lower his shoulders a little more. He wanted to attack, I sensed it, could feel it, see it. And if he did, I knew there was nothing I could do to protect myself. Or, mostly nothing. I still had a knee, and he still had a groin.

  Instead, after a moment of staring me down with nothing but hate, he said, “Watch your back.”

  Then he brushed past me, and was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I was shaking.

  Shaking and shaken. Jesus, I thought, as I headed back to my car. Had I just confronted a killer? A real killer?

  I had; I was certain of it.

  My legs were still feeling a bit wobbly as I passed teachers and other staff walking the various hallways, and passed the occasional errant kid who was, I suspected, here for some after-school program or other. The parking lot was mostly empty, too, although there was a smattering of cars and some kids hanging out near the front entrance with a stern-looking woman. Late parents, I suspected. The woman, who had a very vice-principally feel to her, wasn’t pleased.

  Where Mr. Fletcher had gone off to, I didn’t know, but as I drew closer to the parking lot, and as the stern-looking woman turned to glance at me, a cold wind blasted over me. And I mean blasted. I shivered violently. The stern woman frowned at me. Apparently, shivering was frowned upon at Clover Field Elementary.

  I’d experienced such sensations before, and many of my psychic friends would tell me that such unexpected blasts of cold air were spirit activity. I didn’t know, but I appeared to be the only one affected. I smiled weakly at the woman and slipped past her and the kids and into the parking lot.

  Samantha Moon had told me that she possessed a sort of inner warning system. A warning system that actually sounded in her head when danger was near. I suspected that all vampires had this, as, according to her, it was the earliest indicator that she had any psychic abilities. I didn’t have such an audible warning system. But something was going on with me now. Most notably, the hair on my arms was standing on end.

  ‘Watch your back,’ Mr. Fletcher had said.

  As I moved through the parking lot, aware that something was happening around me, aware that the very air around me seemed to be crackling with electrical energy—spirit energy—I shoved my hands in my pockets, hunched my shoulders and headed for my Accord.

  Something’s going to happen, I suddenly thought.

  I was on high alert, reaching out with all the psychic skills I had. Most curious was that I was feeling a buildup in energy around me. A different kind of energy. Nature energy. Universal energy. It was gathering around me, swarming around, filling me.

  What the hell is happening?

  Somewhere nearby, I heard a car’s engine rev loudly. Wait, not nearby.

  Directly behind me.

  I spun in time to see a Ford Mustang peel around a turn in the parking lot. Although the windows were tinted, I could still see Mr. Fletcher behind the wheel.

  The car came at me shockingly fast, bounding, veritably leaping forward. I could dive to the side, yes, but he could turn the steering wheel, too.

  I had seconds to decide, and, really, it wasn’t much of a decision.

  I did what came to me naturally.

  What had come to me naturally throughout time and space, throughout lifetimes and incarnations. I gathered the surrounding energy that had been building around me, waiting to be used, ready to be used.

  I gathered it and stood my ground, and as
the car approached, and as the driver’s eyes widened with both alarm and pleasure, I threw my hands forward and released the energy.

  * * *

  I wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

  Yes, I was a witch. Yes, I had developed those skills in past lives, over the centuries. But that didn’t mean I knew what was going to happen in this life.

  And boy, did it happen.

  Raw power blasted from me like a cannon shot. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. I saw it as a shield in my mind, and that’s exactly what it was.

  An invisible shield.

  The Mustang slammed into it, or rather, it slammed into the Mustang—I was never sure which—but either way, the front end of the vehicle crumpled completely. The back end lifted up...and Mr. Fletcher, who wasn’t wearing his seat belt, went flying through the front windshield.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I was in the back of Detective Smithy’s squad car.

  William Fletcher’s body still lay on the concrete, in exactly the position I’d left him in after I’d rolled him over, after I tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the blood that pumped from the gash in his neck. He had gone through the window face-first. The windshield had won. The blood pooled instantly, and he was dead within minutes, bleeding out, despite my best efforts.

  I wept throughout, as did the other teachers nearby, some of whom were shrieking and doing all they could to keep the remaining students away.

  The squad car door opened and Detective Smithy slid in next to me. He pulled the door shut gently and looked at me. I was staring down at my hands, at the blood under my now-broken index fingernail. I absently picked under it, flicking the congealed hemoglobin away as Smithy silently watched me.

  “You okay?” He’d already asked me that a dozen times, and so had the paramedics. No one, apparently, could believe I wasn’t hurt.

  “I’m fine.”

  Again, he didn’t believe me. No one believed me. “What happened out there?”

  “He tried to run me down.”

  “Fletcher?”

  “He’s the one who’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Smithy nodded. Homicide detectives, I figured, rarely got their feelings hurt. “Why?”

  “Because I implicated him in the murder of Penny Laurie.”

  Smithy continued staring at me. I continued picking at my nails. Outside, a child cried incessantly. More cop cars appeared. A fire truck. Dozens, if not hundreds, of bystanders. Smithy and I were mostly hidden within a circle of Beverly Hills finest.

  “What evidence do you have?” he asked.

  I’d been having a hard time thinking straight. I’d gone into a sort of shock, while sitting there on the ground shaking and fighting for breath while a man bled out near my feet.

  Not just a man. A child killer.

  “Nothing that would stand up in court.”

  “So, tell me about it.”

  I did, as best as I could. I told him about the dream and the clover field. That Penny might not have been on her way home at all, that she might have, in fact, gone to a nearby park to sulk and think and to silently hate her mother in the way that only a ten-year-old girl could.

  “You don’t think she was picked up on the way home from school?” he said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “But she always went straight home, every day. This has been corroborated.”

  “Not that day.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  For the first time, I looked at him. “I’m not sure.”

  “And you decided to come here alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was reckless.” He refrained from saying stupid. Why kick a girl when she was down?

  I nodded, feeling sick all over again. “I had to know for sure.”

  “And do you know for sure?”

  I held his gaze. His eyes were bigger than I remembered. “Without a doubt.”

  “Without a single doubt, you believe that William Fletcher killed Penny Laurie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say as much?”

  “He threatened me,” I said. “Then followed up on his threat.”

  Smithy took in a lot of air, and his little man-child chest filled up. No, he wasn’t a big man, but he had a big presence. “We’ll check him out thoroughly.”

  I nodded. “Good.”

  I pressed my thumb and fingers into my closed eyes, doing my best to soothe a thumping headache, and saw an image of a blue box buried in Mr. Fletcher’s back yard, under a flat marking stone. I also saw inside the box and my heart sank.

  Find the dog, and you will find your answers.

  With a heavy heart, I told the detective about the box, finishing with, “I think you’ll find all the evidence you need inside.”

  “Inside the box?”

  “Yes.”

  “Under a stone?”

  “Yes.”

  “In Fletcher’s back yard?”

  I nodded, exhausted. “Yes, detective.”

  “Should I ask how you know this?”

  “It just came to me.”

  “Of course it did. And why wouldn’t the killer’s identity just come to you, too?”

  “Because that’s not how this stuff works.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, apparently not,” I said.

  “Explain it to me, then.”

  “Can I explain it another time?” I asked, rubbing my temples now. “I need a shower and to sleep and a place to cry for the rest of the night.”

  “First, give me the Cliffs Notes version,” he said, “then you can cry all you want.”

  I sighed, rubbed my eyes again, and said, “Some things have to play out, Detective. They have to play out naturally, in their correct place and time. The spirit world does not exist to give us answers all the time, whenever we need them. We are forced to live a little, to experience a little, and to discover on our own, with occasional prodding from the other side; that is, if we go too far down the wrong path.”

  Smithy blinked exactly three times over a course of about a minute, before he said, “That might have been the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but...”

  He paused. I waited.

  “...but it just might make some sense.”

  “It does,” I said, “in a way.”

  “So, what happened with Fletcher? I mean, how did he go from running you down to outside his window and dead? And how did you not get hit? Every witness claims they saw you get hit.”

  “I wasn’t hit,” I said.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I can’t tell you,” I said.

  “I really think you should.”

  I looked at him and shook my head. “I can’t, Detective. Not now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not sure what happened myself.”

  “I’m going to need more than that for my report, Ms. Lopez.”

  I shook my head again. “You’ll get the answer someday. Maybe.”

  He didn’t like it, but he kept it to himself, which I appreciated. We were both silent. Outside, we heard excitable voices, officers barking orders, and saw a whole lot of curious faces. Something else occurred to me.

  “Will you be talking to Peter Laurie about this?” I asked.

  Smithy looked at me for a long moment, his mustache twitching ever so slightly. His piercing eyes softened, and he said, “About Peter Laurie...”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I rapped on the front door.

  I had come unannounced, which, under the circumstances, I had thought was best. I waited, and as I did so, I scanned the yard, noting again its perfectly manicured lawn and well-maintained garden. I noted again the “For Sale” sign out front, and the Realtor’s lock box attached to a nearby water pipe. It was attached, in fact, to the water handle, which was currently pointing down in the “off” position. Which meant, of course, the interior of the house had no water, either.

  I was ab
out to knock again, when I heard heavy footsteps approach from the other side. With each slow step, my heart increased in tempo. As it did so, that familiar, electrical current formed around me, that tell-tale sign that a spirit was nearby.

  Who’s here with me? I asked.

  I didn’t, of course, get an answer, although I suspected I knew exactly who was here.

  The door opened slowly and there stood Peter Laurie, as tall and forlorn and miserable as ever. As far as I knew, Peter had no knowledge of the events that had happened just hours earlier at Clover Field Elementary.

  It had taken me a few hours to get here. I had to shower and cry and get dressed and cry some more. I had never, ever seen someone die before. Even a sicko child killer. It had been too much. Just too damn much.

  Hell, it was still too much.

  Anyway, I had needed to be alone, and then I’d needed to make a few phone calls.

  “A lovely surprise, Ms. Lopez,” said Peter with his usual warmth. Ever the gentleman.

  “I hope I didn’t disturb you,” I said, stepping inside as he ushered me in.

  He was, of course, wearing the same suit and tie. I had thought the man had dressed impeccably, or didn’t have much variation to his wardrobe. I had thought wrong.

  We were standing in the foyer. The spiral staircase was before us. The paintings were everywhere, as were the statues. Nothing had been touched. Peter was still holding his stomach. I motioned to it. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but, sadly, no. I really should go see a doctor.”

  “How long has the pain been going on now?”

  He looked at me, blinked, shrugged. “Why, I don’t know. Quite a long time, I suppose. I really should go see a doctor.”

  “Yes, you just said that.”