A Vision of Murder (5 page)

“I didn’t,” Mrs. Dodd said.
She would just have one after Lorene went to bed, as usual. It would help keep
her awake as she watched the psychic’s house that night.

She had to admit, the hot
stew was delicious as the rain and wind whipped against the house. “I’m
surprised you believe in psychic powers, Lorene.”

“Well, mother, it’s not that
I exactly believe in them. I just don’t think about it either way. If she can
solve the cases, does it matter how she does it?”

Mrs. Dodd thought it did.
Especially if….
“I don’t think she’s psychic.”

“Then how did she solve those
cases mother? Really, it’s a proven fact. I can’t argue with facts and
results,
can I?  That doesn’t take any of your
imagination that you’re always complaining I don’t have-”

“But-”

“Mother, I think you would
like her if you gave her a chance. Maybe you could even help her. You should be
an expert with all those mysteries you read.” Lorene smiled slightly at her
stew. Mrs. Dodd knew that her daughter was only teasing her.

Patronizing me again
, Mrs. Dodd thought,
that’s
it. That’s the last time I’ll talk to her about that psychic.

“You know what popped in my
mind today?” Mrs. Dodd knew she was treading on dangerous ground, but she
couldn’t stop herself.

“What?”

“I was just thinking of
Mary.”  The change in Lorene’s expression was astounding. Quick anger
flitted across her face.

“Mother, I told you. I don’t
want to talk about her.”

“You blame me for her
dying,” the old woman insisted. Everyone had at the time.

“Yes, mother! Sometimes I
do!
If you hadn’t babied her so….
If she hadn’t been
so spoiled…” Lorene’s voice was waspish. Her words cut Mrs. Dodd as sharply as
a knife.

“But sometimes…” Lorene’s
voice trailed off. Mrs. Dodd could barely hear her whisper. “Sometimes, I blame
myself. I should have been more… careful. I’ve always felt badly that you were
blamed for it. Sometimes, the guilt…. You couldn’t help it,” she finished.

The daughter covered her
mother’s hand with her own.

They ate the rest of their
meal in silence.

“A person’s soul will linger”

The storm built overhead as
we raced down the road. The cars and trucks that had littered the street
earlier were gone, leaving the streets empty and desolate. I didn’t like the
feeling in the clouds as Beardsley Lane approached ahead.

We slowed down markedly as
soon as we turned onto the road. The eerie light was dimming as the sun sank
low somewhere behind those dark, heavy clouds. Here and there, windows luminous
with light beckoned me near from far away. The car crawled slowly down the
road.

Detective Dunn stared out at
the storm, commenting now and then on the weather. Simms was concentrating on
the road ahead.

“What do you think, Dunn?
This road going to wash out?”

“I’d say so. It always does
when it storms
bad
and this one looks like it’s
gonna
be a whopper.” He twisted in his seat to face me.
“Any feelings on this road?”

I shook my head silently.
Not
yet,
I wanted to say,
but soon
. I could feel it approaching even
now, stronger than the storm. She was close now.

“Let’s try the next road,” Dunn
said and Simms followed his orders without remark. Rain gurgled by in the
ditches on the side of the road as we approached the end of Beardsley Lane.

And there was the sign. It
twisted and bent in the blowing wind as if struggling to free itself from the
post that held it in place.

The sign flapped in place,
glimmering in the lightning flash.
The lightning struck nearby, causing me to jump. The
past and present seemed to be merging.

“This is it,” Dunn
announced, staring at my face.

Simms slowed and parked by
the side of the road.
The girl lingered by the trees, smiling, before
ducking under the branches.
I glanced involuntarily to the spot where she
had
stood,
almost expecting to see her ghost there,
but it was bare.

“So you think this is it?”
Simms asked
,
peering out of the rain slicked window.

“Yes. I know it is,” I
replied. “Are we going in now?” I was trying to screw up
my courage, but my hand was shaking as it gripped the door handle.

“Not yet,” Simms said. “We’ll
let the storm clear first. I think we’ll have a few minutes of calmer weather
around six-thirty or seven, before the next front comes in.
If
it’s alright with you to wait?”
I was surprised he bothered to ask my
opinion.

“That’s fine with me.”

By my guess, it must have
been around five-thirty. I sighed and relaxed against the seat, grateful for
the reprieve. But try as I might I couldn’t drag my eyes away from that spot
for more than a few minutes at a time.
The spot where she had
disappeared from the world.

I wasn’t sure how much time
had passed, perhaps I had even dozed, when Dunn said, “So… do you mind if I ask
you a couple of questions?
Just out of curiosity?”

“What?”  I
jerked awake, but his whispered comments did not seem to reach Simms, who snored
loudly and moved a little in his sleep.
Thank goodness I didn’t have another
nightmare.
My face flushed as I thought of how that would have been to have
suddenly started screaming who knows what in this car. I couldn’t afford to let
myself fall asleep again.

The grille cast shadows
under Dunn’s eyes as he stared at me. I gripped the cage with white fingers,
anxious suddenly to be out of the car and in the storm outside.

“I said,”
his
voice interrupted my thoughts, “do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“What do you want to know?”

“When did you first start
having these… powers?”

I took a deep breath. It was
a long story. “It started when I was a child. A good friend of mine went
missing. She had been… murdered.” I couldn’t see Dunn’s eyes clearly, but I
thought I saw a glimmer of sympathy. “For days and days they looked for her. I
was in shock. I didn’t know what to think. I knew… inside…I knew the whole time
she was lost. I went over and over and over the last time I saw her, but it was
so hard to remember.” Dunn leaned close as I barely whispered my story to him.

“They thought I had gone…
crazy.
Then…
I saw her. I saw her clearly in my mind.
I knew exactly where she was and I was able to point the police in the right
direction. I was right. She had been murdered.
Viciously
murdered.
And I saw the whole thing.”  I paused and he didn’t push
me to continue, which I was grateful for.

“They were able to recover
her body. They called me a hero.” I laughed slightly and raised my hands. “I
didn’t understand why I was a hero until much later in life. I didn’t know how
important it was to the family to have answers, even if the answers weren’t
good.” I stopped, her parents faces entering my mind. It had been so horrible….
“And then, I didn’t have another vision for years.”

“I’m sorry,” Dunn said.
“That sounds so tragic. I can’t imagine going through that. Did they ever find
who did it?”

“Yes, they did. They found
him. He was sent to prison. He died there.”

“When did you start having
visions again?” Dunn asked.

“Well, I thought that part
of my life was over, that it had been a one-time thing that would never happen
again. It had been years. I had just lost my mother,” I sighed. “I was alone in
the world. I wasn’t anything to anybody.”

That was the worst time in
my life. I thought of my old home and how empty it had felt. I had been utterly
and completely alone, unsure of what to do, what my place was in this world.

“Well, what happened? Did
you start having visions again?”

“A child went missing in a
nearby community. I read about it in the paper. I knew… I
knew
where she
was. I led the police right to her. The look on the mother’s face as her baby
was handed back to her, the tears streaming down her face as she thanked me
again and again. I knew I had to continue.” Dunn nodded in agreement. “After
the second time, I focused all my energy on what I had to do. It wasn’t always
pleasant, but I couldn’t just stop. I returned several children to their
parents safely. That was really important to me.”

“I began to make
a living off of what I was doing, enough to support myself.”

“As time passed, my
abilities increased. I began to be able to do murders. I moved as I needed to,
though I stayed fairly close to home till now, going to towns where I knew that
a murder would be committed.”

“Then, I visited Temple
while working on a case. I felt as if I had been on a long journey, but that I
was finally home.”

Dunn nodded sharply. “Well…
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I hope… I hope you don’t move on. I hope you
can stay here.”

I smiled slightly at him.
“I’d like to. It’s nice here. It makes me feel as if I could forget the past
and just start over.”

Simms shifted in his seat,
snoring loudly. We burst out in laughter, the tension breaking. I didn’t like
to visit my past and rarely even let my mind wander to it, but it was important
to me, somehow, that Dunn should know.

The storm pounded on
overhead. I was amazed that Simms could sleep through it, and then I wondered,
was he sleeping? Had he been faking sleep while Dunn and I spoke? It seemed
like something he would do.

Then it happened. I chanced
to glance at what I had come to think of as her spot when lightning flashed. I
saw her, for a moment, I saw her standing there, looking at me, her eyes dead.
I screamed.

Simms jerked awake with a
start, grabbing at his gun. Dunn, who had started to doze himself, yelled and
started out of the car.

“No, no… come back!”

“Who was it? What did you
see?” Both of the detectives stared at me, alert and ready.

“It was nothing.” They both
looked at me incredulously. “It was… a vision. I thought I saw her, standing
there.” I pointed towards the woods.

“Someone could have been
there,” Dunn said. “I’m going to check it out.” He climbed out of the car
quickly.

“If you’re going, I’m coming
with you,” Simms said.

“But what
about me?
You’re just going to leave me here?”

“Here!” Simms locked the
doors. “We’ll be back in a minute. You’ll be fine here.” He slammed the door
and ran after
Dunn,
the two of them disappeared into the
woods, their heads ducked against the lashing rain.

Time seemed to go even
slower as I waited there alone. I couldn’t leave the car because of the locks
on the back doors. I waited for them to return, staring down at the floorboard
and trying not to look at the spot where the girl had stood.

I could see her now, in my
mind’s eye, drifting slowly around the cops as they stomped through the woods,
sliding and stumbling in the wet grass and mud. She would have no such problem.
Her spirit would be drifting melodically through the dripping branches and
kudzu covered trees, winding through the tangled underbrush as silver rain
drops fell through her.

She would circle them,
watching them, hoping that they found her body and released her from her
watchfulness. The damp and cold would be home to her by now, waiting for so
long to be found. And then… then she would feel me, know I was near. Her head
would jerk quickly around as if she had caught my scent.

And then she would come,
drifting silently through the trees, leaving the men to their own stumbling
devices in the dark woods. She would glide soundlessly to her spot at the edge
of the trees and stare down again, spotting me this time. Her silver white
light would trail behind her as she came down out of the woods, drifting slowly
down the hill to the car waiting below.
To me.

I grasped my head in my
hands, refusing to look up. I would go crazy if I saw her there, standing
outside of my window, “Please, please go away!” I pleaded, rocking back and
forth on the narrow seat, my head still clasped in my hand. “Leave me alone!”

She would reach for the door
and she would struggle to clasp it in her hand.
A hand that
would no longer be made for this world.
She would get angrier and
angrier as she struggled to reach me! And then….

The door flew open suddenly,
lightning flashing behind it. A pale, narrow hand reached into the car towards
me. I shrank back from it.

“Are you coming?” I heard
Dunn’s voice above me. “It looks like this might be the only break in the storm
tonight.” He held his hand out for me and I took it gratefully, shaking.

“What’s wrong? Were you
scared here?” Dunn asked. “Be careful, it’s slick mud right here and a ditch. I
hope we can get the car out.” He surveyed the area critically.

I had to jump, but I made it
without falling into the tepid water beneath. It was barely drizzling and the
wind had died down. I hadn’t even noticed while I had been imagining the dead
girl.

The grass was slick
underfoot and I was wearing flats, but I was able to keep my footing. It was
very, very dark. The clouds overhead, though not releasing the torrents they
held, still masked the moon. Dunn’s flashlight waved to and fro, crazily over
the grass, as we bumbled our way up the hill.

“Where’s Simms?” I asked. I
slipped and fell to my knees, covering my hands and arms in mud. Dunn helped me
up, but he couldn’t resist a smile as he shone the light on my mud streaked
clothes. I tried to push a strand of loose hair behind my ear and ended up
leaving a streak of mud along my cheek as well. He didn’t even try to keep from
laughing that time and I was surprised to hear another voice joining in.

I was laughing. I hadn’t
laughed in so long… years maybe. But now I was. I laughed until I couldn’t
stand anymore, collapsing on the ground again. I felt tears pricking my eyes,
but I pushed it back. Dunn helped me to my feet again and we progressed.

“We must be crazy,” Dunn
said, as we stood at the edge of the trees. “This isn’t a time for laughter.” But
I think we both knew, we had been laughing out of nerves. Shortly we would be
faced with a corpse and all that it entailed.

We hesitated slightly at the
tree’s edge. “So where did you say that Simms was?” I asked again. I wasn’t
sure why, but I wanted to know where he was in these trees.

“He’s somewhere off to the
left of us,” Dunn said. “I told him I was coming back for you. We should find
him soon.”  He stepped through the thorn bushes that covered the hillside
on this edge. It wasn’t exactly where the girl had stood, but I knew we could
make our way over there.

“We need to go that way.” I
pointed out to Dunn. He nodded in response.

The brambles pulled and tore
at my pants and shirt, little fingers trying to keep me away from her. I felt
as if they were warning me, trying to edge me back to the tree line. But I
struggled and jerked my way clear. I made my way forward, determined to go on.
It was time for her body to be found.