Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (21 page)

She smiled and said, "So
you sort of stand around and sniff the air."

"In a manner of speaking,
yes. But not with the nose. You might say that I follow a trail of
mental debris."

She said, "Uh
huh.
Okay. Thank you.
How's your batting average?"

I said, "Surely Paul Stewart has briefed you
on that."

She colored slightly,
twirled a pencil to cover it, quietly replied, "The final results
are impressive, yes. But I was wondering how many dead ends you
abandon before—uh before..."

I helped her. "Before the processes of
elimination finally give me a score, eh?"

She colored even more. "Something like that,
yes."

I told her, "I am not a detective."

She told me, "I know that."

I said, "I was trained for
intelligence work by the navy. And I worked five years at the
Pentagon analyzing and synthesizing mountains of data that poured
in constantly from around the world. I am also a cryptographer. So
I have worked with puzzles in a formal sense. I still do that, but
less formally. My psychic extention does not provide me with
data."

"What does it provide?"

"Call it intuition. Or whatever you prefer.
I think of it as a leap of the mind. This is what I depend upon
most frequently when I am formally consulting. Maybe you'd prefer
to think of it as a different way of manipulating data."

She said, rather curtly, "I prefer to not
think about it at all."

I shrugged and said, "Hey, it's your nickel.
You asked."

She said drily, "Yes, I did, didn't I. But
you did not really answer me, did you. I asked about your batting
average."

"I thought I was telling you about
that."

"No, what you told me was a lot of
double-talk about naval intelligence and data manipulation."

Well, what the hell. So much for
forthrightness and friendliness. She couldn't appreciate that. I
stared at her for a moment, then told her, "You really want to know
if I am psychic. If I read minds and tell fortunes and all that
good stuff. Right?"

She smiled without much humor and replied,
"Right."

I said, "Okay, but just remember that it's
your nickel. It's also your debris that keeps butting in between
us. But it's okay. He's going to call and ask you to dinner. Any
minute now."

Those dark eyes flashed and she said,
"What?"

"Let's refine that. Any second now."

Her telephone rang before
she could respond to me. She looked at the phone and looked at me.
I smiled thinly and nodded at the phone. She picked it up on the
fourth ring and spoke into it: "Alvarez... yes...uh huh...well let
me get back to you. Ten minutes. Okay?"

She hung it up, said to
me, “What were we...”

I said, "You know damned well what we
were..."

She said, "Lucky guess."

I said, "Okay. But wear the ruby earrings.
He really likes those."

She turned beet red; said, "Now wait a
minute."

I said, "Your nickel, remember. As an
after-dinner treat, put on that little lacey thingamabob you picked
up at Frederick's last week. He really digs that. And then—"

She leapt to her feet; commanded, "That will
be enough of that!"

I relaxed in my chair, reached for a
cigarette, said to her, "You demanded it, kid. Now, what do you say
let's talk about this ridiculous case you're pushing against Ann
Farrel."

But that was the end of our interview. The
D.A.'s pet prosecutor did not wish to discuss another damned thing
with me.

I advised Stewart: "You're
spurring a dead horse here, Paul. Annie hasn't killed anyone and
she has not conspired to kill anyone. Maybe some others have, but
not this side of the veil. I suspect that a masters' game is being
played here, but you can't indict—"

“
What kind of
game?”

“
Okay, maybe a very
limited masters' but still the same. Like World War II and the cold
war and—“

"Like what?"

"Like that but on a smaller scale."

"What the
hell
are you talking
about?"

"All the world's a stage, like Shakespeare
said; that's what I'm talking about. When things start getting a
bit dull, or a bit too distorted, they send the masters onto the
stage to liven it up a bit. So—" "World War II was not a play. It
was—"

"It was hell on wings, I
know, but look at how it moved the world. The technological
advances—my God, the advance of conscience and consciousness—the
awareness that brought on the Aquarian Age—it all started there
with Hitler and his court of freaks versus Churchill and Roosevelt
and their angels—and God what a stage! At no time in history had
there been so many masters in the game. Just count 'em, masters on
both sides, guys like—"

"Masters of what?"

"Of the
game,
dammit. Look at
them all lined up there. Shit, there was Hitler, Goering, Goebbels,
Hess versus Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and de Gaulle. That was
just the top line. Then you had—" "You forgot Mussolini and Tojo,"
Stewart said drily.

"No, Mussolini versus
Selassie was a subgame. It contributed, yeah, and there were other
submasters operating in the Pacific, but the real top line was the
Hitler complex. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were subgame events that
stole the whole show, from
our
point of view, but the real game was played in
Europe—and if Hitler had found time to get his nuclear program on
target, look out. It would have been balls and all over Europe, and
probably no more Europe. But I think a balancing factor stepped in,
there, and tipped the game toward the Pacific. See, there
was—"

"Ford!"

"Yeah?"

"What the hell are you doing? I don't give a
shit about your occult theories about World War II. I want to
know—"

"You want to know without listening, don't
you. Sorry, pal, doesn't work that way. You asked for my sensing.
Okay, I'm giving it the only way I know how. If you ask me to teach
celestial mechanics to an aborigine, I'm first going to have to
convince him that the stars are not just nightlights strung out for
his convenience by a thoughtful deity, aren't I."

"You calling me an aborigine?"

"That's exactly what you
are. That cop mentality of yours cannot begin to stretch off the
surface of this planet, can it. If you can't drink it, drive it, or
screw it, it doesn't exist for you, does it?"

"Watch it."

"You watch it. I'm tired of being called in
here for consultation and then ridiculed because you fucking
people can't pull your heads out of each other's asses. Do you want
my sensing or don't you."

"Keep your fucking sensing, asshole. I don't
need it. I asked you just as a courtesy. I've got this thing nailed
tight."

"Sure you have. But the
nails have been driven into your own coffin. They'll laugh you out
of the fucking city with a fucking case like this one. You'll have
to go play subcop in Pomona or Chino, maybe even West Covina. And
even those guys out there will laugh you all the way to Death
Valley."

"We'll see who laughs last, asshole. These
victims were all tied so close together that—"

"That what?"

"Fuck you. I'm not playing your silly
games."

"You don't even
know
how
to play
my games, pal. Those close together ties you're so hot about were
forged in another world, on another stage. You don't even know
where it's at. You'd probably hang a conspiracy rap on Judas
Iscariot, wouldn't you?"

"Judas who?"

"The apostle who betrayed Jesus."

"Am I supposed to laugh, or what?"

"Sure, you may as well
laugh. You'd never understand that game, anyway. Couldn't have
worked without Judas. Very important role. And what about Pilate?
They
had
to
have
him
. What
was the crime? What had the poor guy actually done? How did they
make a case on that guy?"

"Get out of here, asshole. I got no time for
loonies."

"That's what you're doing
to Annie, you know. It's the same game on a slightly different
stage. Could even be the same masters at work."

"Get out of here, Ford!"

“
Or maybe from Joan of
Arc! There you go! Could be. Yeah. Could be.”

"Could be what?" he asked, interested
despite himself.

"Maybe you have a starring role and don't
even know it. Ever think of yourself as a master gamesman, Paul?
Ever glance into the mirror when you get up for the bathroom at
night and see odd little lights radiating from your head? Ever see
that?"

He was all cooled off, now—almost contrite.
And very sober. "You mean like just for a flash, for a second?"

"Uh huh."

"Yeah. It's a trick of the eyes,
right?—trying to adjust?"

I said, also very soberly, "No, it's your
aura. What colors have you noticed?"

"Oh well... shit, I don't
know. Reds and yellows, I guess. Mostly that. Mean
anything?"

"Depends," I told him. "Is this before sex
or after?"

"Shit, I don't..." He laughed suddenly,
said, "You're pulling my leg."

I really had not been
pulling his leg entirely, not all the way, but I laughed with him
and said, "I didn't mean that shit about cop mentality. Actually I
have a lot of respect for the police mind."

He said, "Yeah. I didn't mean mine, either.
But I still want your ass out of here."

So I took it out of there.

Took something else, too.

I had known that he'd
called me in just so he could pick my brains. And I knew that he
would give me nothing in return; not, that is, willingly. My task
was to goad him into consciously guarding it. So I could collect
the debris.

I collected some, yeah.

The case against Annie, I
learned, was not all that ridiculous. The lady was in very real
trouble.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Double Cipher

There was a direct connection between Herman
Milhaul, the hopeful transsexual, and Charles Cohan McSweeney,
pedophile.

This connection, as well as the individuals
themselves, seemed to be directly related to Ann Farrel and her
Church of the Light.

At the time of his death, while resisting
arrest for alleged misconduct at the center, a kiddie porn case was
pending against McSweeney—had been for about a year.

This case involved several reels of 16mm
film that had been viewed by vice squad officers at a film lab in
Hollywood.

McSweeney was not only the owner of that
film; he was also depicted in it, but as a much younger man.

The hard evidence—the film
itself—had mysteriously disappeared before the officers could seize
it, which explains the long delay in bringing formal charges
against McSweeney.

Herman Milhaul had been an employee of the
film lab.

He was also—get this—he was Clara Boone's
nephew and a member of her past-lives study group.

Get this, too: McSweeney
was a first cousin of Tony Mathison, Ann's late father. So that
makes Ann and McSweeney—what?—second cousins?

But don't hold your breath over family ties.
There are many of them here and I don't have them all sorted out at
this point. I can tell you this much, though. Milhaul was also
related in some way to McSweeney; also to—get this, now—also
directly related to Wayne Sturgis, who—you may recall—is now
married to Clara's half-sister Mary who already had blood ties to
Milhaul. So, in some kinky way that I do not understand at this
point, Ann was related to Milhaul.

Suds, yeah. Jim is John's
illegitimate son but Jill is really Jake's ex-brother,
Jason.

It gets worse than that, though

I have this picture in my
head. It could be a snapshot but more than likely is a frame from
that 16mm film. In the picture, a man and a little girl of five or
six are playing together. The man is in his late twenties, maybe
early thirties, but I know that this is McSweeney. He is playing
horsie with the little girl. McSweeney is on all fours, the child
on his back; he has a leather thong between his teeth, serving as a
bridle, and the child is merrily whipping him on his flanks with a
loose end of the bridle. Both are naked. The child is Ann Marie
Mathison.

I have a few more pictures like that in the
head. The play is not always the same and the principals are aging,
but they are always naked. I would say that the time span between
the frames represents five to six years.

I also have a somewhat foggy image of a
typewritten letter on Church of the Light stationery.

I do not have the whole letter but I have
the gist.

In it, someone is urging
Herman Milhaul to forget about going through with a proposed
sex-change operation. Milhaul is also being firmly turned down on a
request for $20,000 to pay for the operation. The name McSweeney
appears in the text of the letter.

There is another letter—more of a scrawled
note—that appears to be an emotional response to the first letter.
I do not have the wordage but the intent is clear. It is a
threatening letter.

Somehow connected to that scrawled note is
an idea of an old .357 Magnum Colt army revolver that once belonged
to Tony Mathison, Ann's father.

The rest of what I have,
at this point, is a sort of overlay pulling all that together. I
believe it to be an overlay provided by Paul Stewart's sensing of
the case. A police officer has been arrested and charged with the
murder-for-hire of Charles Cohan McSweeney—whether in reality or in
Stewart's mental prognosis.