Death Perception

by Victoria Laurie

  ‘‘I’ll take the cot,’’ I said quickly. I knew Candice would have taken it without complaint just to prove she was tough. ‘‘I got a lot of sleep earlier and I’m pretty well rested.’’

  ‘‘Thanks, Abby,’’ my sister said. ‘‘Let’s just hope the sheets are clean.’’

  We got into the room and set our bags on the bed. The desk clerk came by a few minutes later with the cot and I began to unfold it as Cat put on her pajamas and got ready for bed. ‘‘Thank God I brought my silk pj’s,’’ she said. ‘‘I can’t bear the thought of anything else touching my skin.’’ Did I mention my sister isn’t just high maintenance? Her kind requires an oxygen mask.

  Candice had changed into a pair of yoga pants and a tank top. She was sitting at the small table in the room with her laptop. ‘‘Abs,’’ she said, ‘‘get changed and then come over here and we’ll see if we can’t put some kind of plan together.’’

  ‘‘Awesome,’’ I said, and turned to move into the bathroom when the quiet of our room was broken by a loud, hammering knock.

  ‘‘LVPD!’’ we heard a gruff male voice announce. ‘‘Open up in the name of the law!’’

  Chapter Nine

  All three of us froze. There was a heartbeat or two of silence; then the pounding started up again. ‘‘LVPD!’’ shouted the knocker. ‘‘Open up now!’’

  Candice was the first to move. She jumped to her feet, rushed over to me, and pushed me into the bathroom. Before closing the door, she said, ‘‘Do not make a sound and do not come out until I call for you.’’

  I hustled over to the tub and pulled the curtain closed, squatting down and trying to make myself as small as possible. I could hear muffled voices from the room: Cat’s high and squeaky voice of panic, Candice’s more calm and collected, and a male’s, low and full of authority.

  Then the tones changed. Candice’s seemed to grow angry and loud, while the cop’s seemed to become calm and soothing. I imagined that he already had Candice in cuffs, Cat was probably going along willingly, and any moment the bathroom door would be kicked in and I’d be pulled gruffly from the tub.

  My heart pounded against my chest as I waited for the inevitable, but the voices outside in the room continued and no one burst through my door. Finally, there was a gentle knock, and to my surprise, I heard Cat call, ‘‘Abs?’’ I peeled back the curtain as she opened up the bathroom door. ‘‘You can come out now,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Did the cop leave?’’ I asked, confused as to why she wasn’t in handcuffs.

  Cat chuckled. ‘‘No, that wasn’t a cop. Just Candice’s ex-husband playing a prank.’’

  My eyes widened. ‘‘Her ex-husband?’’ I said. ‘‘Candice was married?’’

  Cat nodded. ‘‘Apparently. He’s also a PI and he was out here doing surveillance when he saw us drive up. He said he couldn’t resist pulling a practical joke on Candice.’’

  I got out of the tub and followed Cat back out into the room. Sitting on the corner of the bed was a tall, lanky, great-looking guy with a square jaw and beautiful cheekbones. He wore a white T-shirt, a black leather jacket, and worn jeans. He reminded me a lot of James Dean. ‘‘Ah, the fugitive emerges,’’ he said as I came out into the room.

  ‘‘Lenny,’’ Candice warned.

  ‘‘Oh, I’m only joking, Candy, shit. Lighten up, would ya?’’

  Candice glared at him and you could sense the history wafting from the pair. My radar told me their relationship had been based on a whole lotta physical attraction and was pulled apart by that same passion. ‘‘Abby,’’ Candice said stiffly, ‘‘this is Lenny Fusco, my ex.’’

  ‘‘Hey,’’ I said when Lenny shot out his hand.

  ‘‘Glad to meet you,’’ he offered, giving me the once-over. ‘‘So, who you running from?’’

  ‘‘That’s it!’’ Candice said, and got to her feet. ‘‘You!’’ she announced, pointing to Lenny. ‘‘With me, outside, now!’’

  Lenny got up and muttered to Cat and me out of the corner of his mouth, ‘‘She was like that when we were married too.’’

  ‘‘I said now, Lenny!’’ Candice warned as she held open the door and motioned with her hand for him to exit.

  He grinned at us like he was completely unperturbed by Candice’s mounting temper and sauntered out of the room. Candice grabbed her coat and exited after him, closing the door firmly behind her.

  ‘‘Charming guy,’’ Cat said.

  ‘‘I can’t wait to hear about that love story,’’ I said.

  ‘‘She’s an interesting woman,’’ Cat added.

  ‘‘Something tells me we haven’t even cracked the surface,’’ I agreed.

  Cat stretched and yawned and regarded me with droopy eyes. ‘‘I’m beat.’’

  ‘‘Go to bed,’’ I said. ‘‘And thanks for coming to my rescue, Cat.’’

  She gave me a big squeeze and hurried off to her bed, where she put in earplugs, donned a sleeping mask, and was snoring softly in less than five minutes. I had to admire my sister’s ability to fall asleep fast, but then, looking at the clock on the nightstand, I realized it was four thirty a.m. Eastern time. No wonder she was tired.

  Meanwhile, I pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil from my backpack. While I waited for Candice to come back, I figured I could work out my radar and try to get a bead on Dutch. I sat with the paper in my lap and closed my eyes. When I felt calm and centered, I called out to my crew.

  People often ask me what it feels like to interact with your spirit guides. The best that I can describe is that it feels like a warm blanket that gets thrown over your shoulders and a very fuzzy feeling of the presence of other entities around you.

  It isn’t, however, an overly descriptive encounter. I don’t really know what my crew looks like. Through years of interaction I’ve been able to identify them by the energy they emit; for example, my main guide, who is the speaker for the rest of the group, someone named Samuel, has a sort of protective energy that is patient and kind, even when I’m throwing a hissy fit in his direction.

  The problem is, the language of intuition is less than clear. It’s mostly made up of pictures, threads of thought, songs, pop-culture references, and a hodgepodge of emotions. And sometimes—okay, make that most times—what I’m shown doesn’t easily translate into English.

  As a professional psychic, I’m a decent translator, but sometimes there isn’t a good frame of reference for what I’m being shown, either because it hasn’t occurred yet or because my client refuses to cooperate. Think of it like I get to stare into a murky pond and describe what I’m seeing, ‘‘I see seaweed and maybe some logs,’’ but if my client won’t think about how seaweed and logs relate to his or her life, it can make for a frustrating session.

  Case in point, the week before Dutch and I came to Vegas, I’d had a session with a client and the image I saw was a large tree. On the tree branches were what looked like name tags. Easy enough, I thought, and asked my client if she had been researching her family tree.

  ‘‘No,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Has anyone else been researching your family tree, then? Maybe a sister?’’

  ‘‘I’m an only child.’’

  ‘‘Cousin? Aunt? Some other relative?’’

  ‘‘No, absolutely not,’’ she insisted. ‘‘No one has been researching our family tree.’’

  I went back to my crew and asked for more info. They showed me one branch on which dangled several name tags, and one of those name tags got an X through it and was ripped off the tree. My translation? ‘‘I get the feeling like someone connected to you may actually be researching their family tree, and there’s been an error of some kind. Maybe who they thought was their uncle isn’t really their uncle. They keep showing me that a mistake has been made.’’

  ‘‘That makes no sense to me,’’ she insisted, causing me endless frustration. Finally, at the end of the session when I turned it over to my client to ask me questions, she actually said to me, ‘�
�The whole reason I came here was to ask you if you knew if I was adopted. I keep looking at my birth certificate and it doesn’t add up— the seal doesn’t seem real—and I can’t find a record of my birth from the city records, and whenever I asked my mother about it before she passed, she clammed up and refused to talk about it.’’

  I know.... I know.... There are days when I realize I’m not charging enough. So while I was anxious to try to use my radar in any way possible to locate Dutch, I also realized that because intuition is always open to interpretation, I could get that interpretation wrong and send us on a wild-goose chase.

  The way to limit any misinterpretations was to ask the right questions. Samuel, I thought, show me what happened to Dutch.

  I felt a slight thump on the back of my head and goose bumps immediately rose along my arms. Dutch had been hit hard across the back of the head.

  Show me where he is right now, I asked.

  My mind’s eye filled with the same scene I’d seen earlier. Dutch’s gravestone, Here lies Dutch Rivers.... My heart skipped a beat. Is he dead? I asked, holding my breath.

  My left side felt thick and heavy, and I let out the breath... but sucked it right back in when my right side began to feel the teensiest bit of lightness. My lower lip trembled. Dutch wasn’t dead, but he was definitely dying. Please, Samuel, I begged. Help me find him!

  I was shown a sketch pad. I opened my eyes and looked down. In my lap was the pad of paper. I held my pencil over the pad and waited for my mind to fill with an image. I saw a large tree, very much like the one I’d seen for my client the week before complete with the name tags on the branches. I made a rough sketch of the mental image and waited for more information. In my mind’s eye the tree began to change. It turned from something like an oak tree to a palm tree and the name tags shifted off the branches of the oak tree onto the coconuts of the palm tree.

  I sighed heavily. This was making no sense. Draw... came into my mind. Samuel wanted me to draw the image. I flipped the page of my pad of paper and drew the image of the palm tree. At the root of the palm tree in my mind’s eye was a large rock. I penciled this in, but I kept feeling it was wrong. I closed my eyes and focused on bringing the rock closer. And that’s when Dutch’s gravestone entered my thoughts. I felt tears sting my eyes. ‘‘I don’t understand,’’ I whispered. ‘‘Samuel, are you telling me that I won’t be able to find Dutch until it’s too late?’’

  ‘‘Hey, there,’’ Candice said, coming through the door, and my eyes snapped open. ‘‘Who you talking to?’’ she asked when she saw that Cat was fast asleep.

  ‘‘No one,’’ I said, and wiped my eyes.

  ‘‘You okay, Abs?’’ she said, looking at me critically.

  ‘‘We need to find him, Candice,’’ I said, and more tears spilled down my cheeks. ‘‘My crew is insisting that we have very little time.’’

  Candice’s mouth pressed into a thin line. ‘‘I promise you, I will do everything I can to help.’’

  I swallowed hard. ‘‘Thank you,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Come on,’’ she said, motioning me over to the small table. ‘‘Fill me in on everything and we’ll form a game plan.’’

  * * *

  Candice and I talked until the sun began to rise. She had dark purple circles under her eyes by the time I called it quits and insisted that we both get a little shut-eye.I woke up a few bleary hours later to Candice shaking me gently. ‘‘Hey,’’ she said. ‘‘Abs, wake up.’’

  ‘‘Wha’s up?’’ I mumbled.

  ‘‘Where’s your sister?’’

  ‘‘Wha... ?’’ I said, blinking at her.

  ‘‘Cat,’’ Candice said in a tone that meant business. ‘‘She’s not here.’’

  I sat bolt upright and looked around the room. ‘‘Where’d she go?’’ I said, now fully awake.

  ‘‘I don’t know. She’s gone and the car’s gone. I’m thinking she took it to run an errand or something.’’

  I threw the covers back and got stiffly out of bed. ‘‘I didn’t hear her leave,’’ I said. ‘‘Is there a note?’’

  As if on cue, the door to the room opened and in pranced my sister, carrying two big bags that smelled like heaven. ‘‘Morning, ladies!’’ she said brightly. ‘‘I thought you might like some breakfast.’’

  Candice gave me a look that suggested I needed to lay some more ground rules with my older sister. I returned her look with a shrug of my shoulders. You didn’t so much control Cat as just pray a lot that she didn’t get into too much mischief. ‘‘Catherine,’’ Candice said, turning to help her with the bags. ‘‘We appreciate the food, but next time, please let one of us know where you’re going.’’

  ‘‘I was only gone for a bit,’’ Cat said, giving Candice a wounded look. No one could pout like my sister.

  ‘‘Yes, but Abby and I were worried. We’re not on vacation here, remember?’’

  ‘‘Oh, fine,’’ Cat said, handing me one of the bags. ‘‘I promise to leave a note next time.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Candice insisted, looking Cat dead in the eyes. ‘‘You’ll ask me if you can go, and I will probably say no. If Abby and I needed to make a quick getaway, we’d be hard-pressed without a car.’’

  That hit home with Cat. ‘‘Oh, God!’’ she said. ‘‘I didn’t even think of that!’’

  ‘‘Which is why we need to discuss where each of us goes from now on.’’

  ‘‘Got it,’’ said Cat with a smart salute.

  I hid a smile. Candice had her hands full with that one. ‘‘Thanks for the food,’’ I said, trying to make peace.

  ‘‘I found this kitschy little diner about five miles from here.’’

  ‘‘Moe’s?’’ Candice asked.

  ‘‘Yes,’’ Cat said.

  ‘‘They make the best pancakes on the planet,’’ Candice said fondly.

  Cat pulled the bag I was looking into out of my hands and handed it over to Candice. ‘‘Then dig in!’’

  * * *

  We ate breakfast, which was in fact delicious, and talked about our next move. ‘‘This is going to be tricky,’’ Candice explained. ‘‘If Robillard is intent on finding Abby, then he’ll already know we’ve come into town and that we’re helping her hide. That means we won’t be able to move around without extreme caution. It also means we won’t have the luxury of being able to interview people out in the open. In other words, this can’t be the open investigation that I’d normally conduct, so to get to the bottom of things, we’ll have to work covertly, off the record and under the radar.’’

  ‘‘Where do we start?’’ Cat asked as she dived into her scrambled eggs.

  Candice reached for her own notepad and flipped to a diagram in the back. ‘‘We start at the top, with Abby’s first impression about the kidnapper, or is it kidnappers?’’ she asked, looking at me.

  I checked the radar. ‘‘Kidnappers, plural,’’ I said. In my head I saw the number two. ‘‘There were two of them.’’

  Candice wrote that down. ‘‘Good. Now, your impression was to start with family, right?’’ I nodded. ‘‘So we need to do background checks on the son, Ricky, and the mother and the daughter, along with some extended family.’’

  ‘‘They’re all in Spain,’’ I said. ‘‘Ricardo is from Spain and according to his wife, he’s got a couple of sisters who still live there.’’ My radar chimed in again, and I saw that image of the oak tree in my head, with an emphasis on the lower branches. ‘‘My feeling is this is closer to home—immediate-family scenario.’’

  ‘‘Cool. Now, we’ll also want to look at Delgado’s business associates.’’

  ‘‘Why?’’ Cat asked.

  ‘‘Because one of my theories is that Ricky got tired of being in his old man’s shadow. He starts banging Ricardo’s girlfriend and maybe he thinks he’s a player and can take over for dear old Dad. Abby, didn’t you say that Delgado’s wife suggested that Ricardo was having an affair with his partner’s wife?’’

>   ‘‘Yeah, but I’d be cautious about that info,’’ I warned. ‘‘Paloma Delgado strikes me as someone who calculates everything she says and does. I don’t trust her.’’

  ‘‘Noted,’’ Candice said, scribbling a few more notes.

  ‘‘Can I ask a question?’’ Cat said.

  ‘‘Sure,’’ Candice and I answered in unison.

  ‘‘Why did I need to bring twenty thousand dollars to this party?’’

  The corner of Candice’s mouth twitched up. ‘‘We’re in Vegas, baby. Nothing here is free, and that includes intel.’’

  ‘‘We have to pay to get the information we want?’’ I clarified.

  Candice pushed her container of half-eaten pancakes away. ‘‘We will. See, there are two types of people in Vegas. Those who want to be noticed, and those who definitely don’t. You can float it either way here, but it’s expensive. That’s why we need the cash.’’

  ‘‘How are we going to get this information?’’ Cat wanted to know. ‘‘I mean, who are we going to pay?’’

  ‘‘I’ve got a friend in town that I used to work with. He’s the best because he’s quiet about it. But he’s pricey. If I’m going to cut through the bullshit and find out what we’re really dealing with ahead of the Feds, I’m going to have to pay him some large coin.’’

  I looked at my sister and reached out to squeeze her arm. ‘‘Thanks again for offering to put up the money, Cat.’’

  She gave my hand a pat. ‘‘Of course!’’ she said. ‘‘I’d only spend it on shoes anyway.’’

  ‘‘What about Jane Doe at the hospital?’’ I said. ‘‘How do we find out about her?’’

  Candice looked over her notes and sighed. ‘‘I haven’t figured that out yet, Abs. Unless you can get me some fingerprints, I’m not sure how I’m going to dig into discovering who she might be and what her connection to Dutch is.’’

  ‘‘Ohmigod!’’ I said. ‘‘I totally can help with that!’’ Excitedly I reached for my backpack and yanked out my cell phone. Punching in some numbers, I waited with my knee bouncing away until I heard the line picked up. ‘‘Johnson,’’ I heard Milo say.