This time the boy stayed silent.
Gates stood. “Mr. Kiefer, I realize you don’t trust me. I can understand that. I don’t imagine you or your family has ever had much use for policemen. I want to say one more thing and then I’m going to leave.” He walked down to the foot of the boy’s bed and stood facing him directly. “I don’t want to harm or disturb you or your mother in any way. I am only, and I mean only, interested in finding the Parker girl and helping her family, because they’re in a world of hurt.” He paused to let that remark settle. “If, at some point, you feel you can help us with this investigation in any way, I would deeply and sincerely appreciate it.” Gates gave a good-bye nod and turned to leave.
He was halted at the door by Kiefer’s voice. “I felt like she was trying to get a message to me,” Murray said, possibly addressing Gates but looking at Janochek.
Janochek leaned up in his chair but did not reach out to Murray or speak. Gates didn’t turn around. Stood by the door.
“I felt like I could hear a girl crying. I didn’t know who it was.”
Gates heard a quick hitch in the boy’s breathing and then what sounded like a long inhale.
Murray continued, “When I walked around the cemetery, the crying seemed to be coming from Craddock’s grave. When I got close to it, I felt like she was telling me what had happened to her. Telling me she had been killed. Pearl guessed that she might be in there with Craddock.”
Janochek bowed his head.
Gates still had not turned around. “So,” he said, “have you ever had a hunch like that before?”
“No. Not exactly like that. No,” Kiefer answered.
Gates turned then. “Did you know Nikki Parker?”
“I had probably seen her at school in a rally or something.”
“Ever speak to her?” Gates asked.
Murray shook his head, no.
“Why did you think the girl you were sensing was Nikki Parker?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I think I pictured … I don’t know.”
Janochek seemed like he wanted to break the tension. “Pearl may have figured that out. She led me to check Craddock’s burial date,” he said.
Gates had come back to the foot of the bed. “The part I don’t understand, but that I’d really like to, is if you didn’t actually know the Parker girl, how could you think she was trying to get a message to you that she was dead and buried in the cemetery?”
“I told you!” Murray realized he was almost yelling. “I told you. It was a hunch.”
The more he listened, the more Gates felt the Kiefer kid might have killed her. One thing for certain, he was going to call Drummond and go for an exhumation order on Craddock. He considered reading the boy his rights but decided against it with Janochek there as a complicating presence.
Janochek stood. “What if the boy is clairvoyant?”
Gates whirled on him. “My God! Not you, too?”
Janochek held up his hands as if to shut off the diatribe. “Murray isn’t claiming to be clairvoyant,” he reminded Gates, his voice loud, probably carrying out into the hall. He took his volume down a notch but kept the intensity. “I’m asking you a civil question. You keep saying you want to get to the bottom of this, but you keep rejecting an obvious explanation. Surely you’re aware that police all over the world have occasionally used psychics to assist with investigations.”
“No wonder you work in a cemetery!”
Janochek seemed to get harder and taller. “Take that back,” he said.
Gates hadn’t realized how contemptuous he had become. His tone of voice. Good thing hospital rooms don’t require a shovel. He took a breath to steady himself and apologized. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate and uncalled for. This case seems to be bringing out the worst in me.”
“No,” Janochek said. “I know you’re just trying your best to do a good job here, but I think you’re letting personal prejudices close you off to some possibilities.”
“So what do you think I’m missing?” Gates asked.
“Well, first, the obvious suspect is that lunatic who attacked us in the cemetery yesterday. Why was he so agitated and out of control? What was he doing there in the first place?”
“One of his favorite drinking places is just over the hill at the rodeo grounds,” Gates said. “He was blitzed and came into the cemetery to raise hell. Drummond, the RPD investigator, says office buzz is the guy had something shady going with Kiefer’s mom, and Kiefer interfered somehow. The guy, Billup, was out for revenge.”
“Out for revenge in front of three other people? You’re going to attack an idea like clairvoyance when you carry bullshit theories like that around in your hat?”
“Hey, the guy was crazy drunk! You expect him to make sense?”
“No, damn it, I expect you to,” Janochek said. He looked around the room like he wished he could calm down a little more before he said anything else.
“All right,” Gates said, wiping his forehead with his forearm. “Make your point.”
“Do you know what clairvoyance is?” Janochek asked.
“No,” Gates said, holding back his definition of new-age horseshit.
“Well, neither does anyone else,” Janochek said. “It’s a way of knowing that hasn’t been explained, that’s hard to study, that happens sometimes, and even the people who get the information don’t really know how they know what they know.”
“Great,” Gates said. “And I’m supposed to do what with this data?”
“Just listen,” Janochek said, “for a couple of minutes more.”
Gates signified his willingness by lifting the annoyance from his face and giving the man his attention.
“First, you know extrasensory perception does occasionally occur. You’ve probably had premonitions or a sixth sense once or twice yourself, but this happens for some people more than others. What if Murray, here, really doesn’t know exactly how he got this information about Nikki Parker? That may not make it any less valid. My daughter and Mr. Kiefer might not always lead with the factual truth, but they’re not sociopaths, and they certainly didn’t have anything to do with the Parker girl’s disappearance.
“I’m willing to bet my entire life on that. Think about it. Murray says he’s got hunches, use your own!”
Silence settled over the room as both men seemed to be considering. After a minute, Gates nodded to Janochek. “Okay. I’ll take that idea seriously. But while I’m thinking about it today, I need the answer to one more question. Where were each of you the afternoon and evening of October seventeenth?”
That question seemed to drop the temperature of the room by fifty degrees.
“Murray and I have nothing more to say to you, Deputy. If you have any more questions for us, you’ll have to wait until our lawyer is present.” Janochek turned his back on Gates and stared out the window.
DIRECT CONNECTION
It wasn’t until after Gates left that Murray realized he had been practically holding his breath for the past ten minutes. His muscles were rigid and his side felt worse.
No one had ever stood up for him the way Janochek had just done. No one. Besides his mother’s tinny pride about the idea that he would graduate from high school, no one had ever made an effort to understand and support him. He was feeling appreciated by a living person.
Murray noticed that Janochek was back in the armchair, reading a paperback. What about this clairvoyance stuff he had been telling Gates about? Was that what was happening? Murray really had no idea. He believed it was just the way he was wired. Honestly, he was glad. He actually loved Dearly and Blessed and Edwin. They were his friends, and he could count on them.
He put those thoughts aside when he remembered Gates’s question. Did the Deputy really think he did it? Or that Janochek had something to do with it? He knew that all this confusion was his fault, his unwillingness to tell anybody but Pearl what he was doing. The last thing in the world that he wanted right now was for Janochek to b
e hurt because of him.
* * *
The next time Pearl visited, she called Murray “D.C.”
“What’s that mean?” Murray asked.
“Short for ‘Direct Connection,’” Pearl explained, “because you’re our hotline to Nikki. Perfect, huh? But other people will think it’s about Washington or something.”
“Hmm.” Murray thought it over. He was touched. Earlier it was “Ol’ Wounded-in-Action,” now “D.C.” He’d never had the kind of friend who’d give him a nickname.
“Okay, I guess,” he said, “but only between us.”
“Sure,” she said. “So, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he said. She raised her eyebrows. They both laughed. “Not really,” he said. “Yeah, go ahead.”
Pearl scooted an inch or two closer, leaned forward, and rested both of her hands on his bedcovers. “What do you think is truly happening when you talk to dead people? Do you think they really talk back to you?”
Murray looked her in the eye. “Pearl, I swear to God, I don’t know.”
“Well…,” she said, but she didn’t finish her thought. When Murray dozed off again, she was still beside him.
THE UNTURNED STONES
From the hospital, Gates drove directly to the Whiskeytown overlook. He walked through the visitors parking area to the bordering low stone wall, where he could sit and see the water below. Too cold. He went back to the car and got his coat and a blanket to sit on. There were no other cars. He was alone.
Rage. Impotent rage. For a moment, he thought about gambling, how some slots or some bets could smother his anger, give him a rush and he’d feel no pain. Never made things better, he remembered. He pushed the thought out of his mind.
He picked up his cell phone and called Mental Health. Told the operator that he was a sheriff’s deputy and that he needed to speak with Peggy Duheen, briefly but immediately. She came on the line within the minute.
Gates told her about Kiefer. Could he be psychotic? Did she know of other people who had delusions about talking with dead people?
She said that was impossible to answer without a full psychological evaluation, and even those could be inconclusive. She said that sometimes adolescents have their first psychotic break in their teens, often in response to some increase in family stress or academic pressure. They usually become disorganized and uncommunicative. They have audio hallucinations or delusional ideas, grandiose or persecutory. In her experience, they usually fervently deny that anything is wrong with them, even after they’ve been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Gates thanked her profusely and let her get back to work. He made himself look closely at the water. Time to be still and gather his thoughts. The lake reflected the cloud cover, made it seem silver. He saw black silhouettes of birds in the distance, crows, he thought.
What Peggy had described didn’t sound like what he knew of Kiefer. Gates felt worse than useless. In his frustration, was he starting to attack people who tried to help him? As a law officer, he would certainly need to completely eliminate Janochek and Kiefer as suspects, but he didn’t think they were culpable. And, after talking to Peggy, he didn’t think Kiefer was crazy.
He was mad at himself. Was he so close-minded that he had become blind? Maybe Janochek was right. Maybe the Kiefer kid was on to something. The burial date was a hell of a strong coincidence. Could he afford to dismiss it?
He had seen a couple of people who claimed to be psychic on talk shows or on late-night TV ads. They were slick. Charlatans. Those people couldn’t be more different from the poor Kiefer kid. The boy was shy, scared, hell, scarred by his home life. The kid was a dweeb. But what if Kiefer really did see something and was afraid to tell him?
No stone unturned.
He was going to have to take this theory to Drummond. Tenacious, no-nonsense Drummond. Gates hated to bring up the idea of clairvoyance with him. If Gates was off-base, he would never get away from the teasing. Probably even a new nickname. “Night of the Living Gates.” “X-file.” “Poltergates.” He cringed.
“Go.”
“Drum, it’s Gates.”
“Yeah, well, nothing new out of Billup yet, but we’re grinding on him.”
“This is about something else.”
“Another case?”
“No, the Parker girl. Uh, what do you know about clairvoyance?”
“What do you mean?” Drummond was starting to sound impatient.
“What if we got some useful information on the Parker girl’s whereabouts from an extrasensory source?”
“Hey, Rome, I’m real busy here. Let me call you back.”
“No, no, give me another minute. This could be important. What if the Kiefer kid is actually clairvoyant? What if he learned somehow where the Parker girl was buried? Wouldn’t it be worth checking out? Haven’t we always been willing to examine any detail that might be relevant? Kiefer thinks she’s buried at Forest Grove. Couldn’t we get an exhumation order based on that possibility?”
Gates didn’t hear anything except the hiss of his cell phone. He wondered if Drummond had hung up.
“Gates, I tell you I’m seriously busy and you hold me up for this Twilight Zone bullshit? What is the matter with you? We got a suspect. We’ll crack him and find the body. You don’t need to go loco on this.”
“Drum, what if we already know where she is?” Gates could feel sweat running down the inside of his shirt, wetting his collar, tickling his back. “Are you saying you’re not willing to go to any lengths?”
More silence. “Drum, look, hey, the CIA has experimented with it. How crazy can it be?”
“If you think a question like that deserves an answer, you’re around the bend.”
“Drum, we go back a lot of years.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Look, you want to write the request in your name from the sheriff’s department, I’ll ask Haggarty to take it to the judge, but I won’t stump for it. You turn out to be right, you get the credit.”
“All right. Thanks, Drum, but I don’t want the credit. I want to nail the bastard.”
“Yeah, me, too. Hey, I got to run. Talk to you later.” Drummond broke the connection.
* * *
Gates couldn’t sleep that night. Every time he asked himself what he knew for sure and certain about the Parker case, he felt sick. Everything was circumstantial: A shaky eyewitness with no lineup identification. A car that matched the eyewitness’s description but was clean of any physical evidence. A suspect, a fellow law officer, for shit’s sake, who denied everything. No body. No motive other than possible sex-related violence.
Had he even asked the right questions? Had Haggarty or anyone else combed the girl’s high school acquaintance list for big-necked guys with big white sedans?
Maybe there was some coincidence that brought Nikki to her death. Billup driving past the gym at the very moment the pretty girl was walking out into the rain? But what if Billup was just an asshole and not a guilty asshole? Gates remembered the case conference at Mental Health. What if Billup was in a blackout, in a lusty rage, and couldn’t remember that he went after the girl and killed her? What if there was a wholly different situation in play? What else could have been going on that nobody had tipped to?
The following morning, shortly after he got to work, Gates called Haggarty and left a message asking him to run a DMV search on the high school students and staff who drove white sedans.
He got the next idea from Peggy Duheen. He called to thank her for her help yesterday and to offer a date soon for coffee or ice cream to show his gratitude. She asked him for news on the case, and he told her about the cemetery shooting; the troubling lack of hard evidence; and his lingering questions about motive, coincidences, and even the car.
“What car?” she asked.
“We think the suspect was driving a white American sedan with a whip antenna.”
“Well, hell,” she blurted, “I used to drive a white sedan with a whip antenna, so
you might as well arrest me right now.”
“I haven’t widened my perp list to include women yet, but when I do, you’re as good as jailed,” he laughed. “You mean you drove one for the County?” he asked, curious about her remark.
“No, I meant that up in this heat, from Sacramento north, everybody and his dog has a white car,” she said. “And whip antennas? My ex was into HAM radio and, when we were together, both our cars had whips. And there’s citizens band and those new satellite radio things that have some kind of special antenna. I was just struck how looking for a car like that might produce a stadium full of suspects.”
Gates missed her next few sentences while he was busy cursing himself. He was thinking that his assumptions might get an innocent person killed one of these days. He said a hasty good-bye and called Haggarty again. This time, he reached him in person.
“Hag, did anyone check citizens band or mobile HAM radio licenses? Don’t you have to have one to operate those things in your car? Any male CB hobbyists or satellite radio buffs in Parker’s high school crowd or in the campus neighborhood?”
“Crap on a post, is this Gates again?” Haggarty was harried and irritated. “Mr. Gates, I do not work for you. You already got me heading the DMV shitlist. They said one more request and I’ll never drive again in California. Do the sheriffs have any investigators or any damn personnel that can actually use a computer? Do it yourself and call me when you know something.” He hung up.
Gates was embarrassed. Haggarty was right. He called the high school and asked for a quick meeting with the principal and clerical staff in regard to the ongoing Parker investigation.
* * *
They met in the principal’s office. “I’m following up on some information we’ve received regarding Nikki’s disappearance, and I was hoping you all could help me narrow down a lead. Is there anything like a citizens band radio club or a satellite radio club here at school?”
Dead Connection Page 15
