Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (26 page)

I was not all that sure what I would find
there. I did expect to find Janulski...but I did not know what else
to expect.

Well...I should have known.

This was, after all, the only Golgotha in
town. And Golgotha was named in the Bible as the place where Jesus
was crucified.

The crosses from the old
movie set were still in place. They had built them with small
platforms placed at the proper height on which the actors could
rest their feet while crucified and there was portable scaffolding
at the rear to facilitate an easy on and off.

Janulski was up on the
middle cross. He had draped a bedsheet or something like that from
the crossbar and it was covering him from the neck down.

I cautioned Stewart to
remain in the shadows at the bottom of the mound and I went on up
alone.

I guess Janulski heard my approach because
he called out in a trembly voice, "Who is there?"

I went on to within a few paces from the
base of the cross before I stopped and lit a cigarette. I took my
time at that; wanted him to get a good look at my face. Then I told
him, "Surely you know who is here."

He had a kind of crazy
look in his eyes. I could see him perfectly, every feature in clear
detail. I guess he could see me okay, too, because he replied, "I
knew who you were when first I laid eyes on you."

I said, "That's nice. Who am I, then?"

He warned me, "I have a gun. Don't come any
closer."

I had been edging forward
when he said that. I glanced back toward the bottom of the mound
where I had left Stewart. I could see him, vaguely, and I knew
that he could see me even better than I could see him. I just hoped
he could hear, as well.

I told Janulski, "You don't need a gun for
me, pal. I just came to talk."

"Too late for that," he said
emotionally.

I replied, "Yeah. I caught your work at the
center. Why'd you have to do that, Bruce?"

He said, "It is over."

I said, "Sure is. For those folks, anyway.
Why?"

"It was their choice," he told me.

"So what did they prove?"

"Nothing to prove," he replied. "Something
to accomplish."

"What was accomplished, then?"

He wet his lips with his tongue and said, "A
quick return. We could yet succeed."

I asked, "Succeed in what?"

He said, "You know what."

I said, "It was your game
all the time, wasn't it. Not Annie's game. Your game. Her spotlight
but your stage."

"Let it be," he said.

"I can't let it be, pal.
Too many people are dead. You know you can't play the game that
way. You blew it. What was it? The Mirabel money? Was that so
tempting?"

"I lost the way," he said humbly. "Don't rub
it in."

"Come down and let's talk about it."

"You know that I cannot come down."

The poor guy was sweating, the face all
beaded and dripping with it; I knew that he was under severe
stress. And I did not know what was beneath that sheet.

I urged him, "We can do it
better than this. Come on down."

"I cannot come down."

"Why did you want McSweeney dead?"

He grimaced. "Pervert! He would pull it all
apart. For a sexual thrill. He needed to die. He had to die."

"Herman, too? Herman had
to die?"

"Of course he had to die! You know who those
two were!"

No, I did not, but I let it pass to ask him,
"How'd you game it?"

He smiled, coughed
lightly, replied, "Patrolman Malloy was with us."

Malloy, eh? With an M. I glanced again
toward Stewart; said to Janulski, "Malloy did not get Herman."

He smiled from the cross.
"You did."

I said, "You son of a bitch."

He said, "Be kind."

"I said, "You be kind.
Tell me about the other cop, my friend David Carver."

"Not mine," he replied. "Selma did that.
They didn't like it, either. They called her home over that."

“
Why did she do
it?”

"She was afraid for Annie. But Carver was,
you see, connected. It was a hideous mistake."

"Why did Maizey have to
die?" I asked him. "She was old. How could she hurt
you?"

"She lost the way long ago."

I asked, "How long ago?"

He replied, "Very long ago. She and all her
followers. They began with us. But she wanted Annie for
herself."

"All she wanted was a daughter," I told him.
"A natural daughter."

He laughed, choked again, spit something
from his mouth; said to me, "Then she went about it the wrong way.
Annie was never hers."

I asked, "Whose was she?"

He spat again and said nothing.

So I tried again, "Was she Clara's?"

Those eyes were really getting crazy, now.
He said, "Stop this. I know who you are. You're the hit man this
time, aren't you. I know that you despise me. And I know why you
were sent. You overruled me, didn't you. You killed it."

I told him, "I don't know
what the hell you're talking about. But I don't despise you. I pity
you. Because you are the one who lost the way. You blew the game
again. Who are you? Are you Judas?"

He laughed a hollow laugh. "I was never
Judas."

I told him, "You are not going to save the
game this way."

He told me, "The game is never lost. The
game goes on. Only the players change."

I told him, "Wrong. Only the game changes.
The players are never lost. You're going to remember that, when you
wake up."

He laughed again, but very weakly. "Am I
asleep, then?"

"This time, yes," I told him. "You are
asleep. What happened to Annie's husbands?"

He said, "They were carefully selected."

"Baby-sitters?"

"You could say that."

"Were you Peter?"

"Do I look like a Peter?"

I said, "No. You look more like an
Esther."

He repeated that weak laugh; spat again;
told me, "My mother this time was called Mary Magdalene. Don't you
know me, Elijah?"

I said, "You've got it all wrong, pal. I was
never Elijah."

He laughed, hung his head, and became very
still.

I turned to look at Stewart.

He came slowly up the mound; said to me,
"You people are giving me the shivers. I think he passed out. Let's
get him down."

But Bruce had not passed out.

Bruce was dead.

Beneath that sheet we found him naked and
bleeding from various wounds. He had nailed his feet to the
platform. He had nailed one hand to the crossbar and then impaled
himself onto the upright with a long carving knife. And obviously
he'd done all that quite some time before we arrived on the
scene.

A banner draped across the
shoulders was inscribed:
free annie for
she is without sin.

I do not know who the hell that guy was,
life to life. But he'd played his masters' game to the bitter
end.

And, even with all the errors, and even with
all the confusion over sexual roles, he had died a hell of a
man.

Epilogue: Casefile Wrap-up

Well, I will leave it to
you to fill in your own blanks on this one. Already I have said
more than should have been said. Guess I could clear up one
important point, though, about this reincarnation stuff. Among the
most popular Western theories on the subject is the idea of
repeating life after life in company with certain groups with whom
the individual has become strongly attached. Within the group, the
various individuals take on differing relationships from one life
to the next. Your father in this life, for example, could have been
your son or brother or best friend in a previous one. To the
theorist, this occurs whether or not you happen to believe in it.
Ordinarily you would never be aware of these deeper relationships
but it is believed in certain quarters that it is possible to
become aware and even to remember certain events from past lives.
Even certain antagonistic personalities, it is said, return to the
stage time after time in an attempt to work out on earth the
difficulties between them.

I do not know as much as I would like to
know about all that. In the aftermath of this case, even, I feel
very much ill at ease with the subject and not really inclined to
buy anything yet. As for who I am or was, all I know about myself
is that I was named for the car in which I was conceived—and please
note that I have not changed my name to Studebaker or Buick.

The trouble with coming to
terms, you see, is very evident even in the transcript of this
case. I do not feel with any certainty that these people knew any
more than I knew. I mean, they were still human beings—not gods or
angels—and still had to cope with the human situation. No matter
how convinced they may have become, through certain experiences,
that they were on some vital mission from the stars or wherever,
they still had immense doubts, weaknesses, temptations to
stray.

I mean, look at the record—Jesus himself
begged that the cup be taken away.

So none of us really know
with any certainty what is really going on here on this planet. I
have to allow the same for Bruce Janulski and his troops. He had a
game going, sure, but how much came from his own misunderstanding
and self-delusion? You will have to answer that for yourself. I can
tell you that Bruce was really the brains and the moving force
behind the Center of Light. I have discovered that Annie is simply
too far into the spiritual path to have any business sense at all.
If you asked her for a dime, she just might give you a hundred
dollars; for a shirt, her whole damned wardrobe. That is what
became of all the money she came into from the various
marriages—she simply gave it away.

Janulski came along and
changed all that. He was the force behind incorporating as a
nonprofit organization and he was the energy that manifested itself
in the Center of Light activities. Annie may sit beneath a tree all
day and meditate but Bruce was there to keep the tree
watered.

As for the game he was
playing, or thought he was playing...who knows? As I have already
suggested here, if it was truly a masters' game at play, something
very important had to be at stake—something a hell of a lot more
important than the self-aggrandizement of a few playful spirits
from that other world. So if it really was a game, what was at
stake? What has the world lost if an important game has failed? I
would not even suggest an answer to such a question, but I would
point out that every prophet since Nostradamus has predicted
world-shaking events in store for the turn of this century—which,
you may have noted, is not now that far away. To suggest that the
human race needs no outside help would sound a little foolish,
don't you think? The two powerful nuclear powers are still at
standoff and rattling missiles at each other; we continue to
systematically poison our atmosphere and our oceans; there is very
little peace anywhere; the economic gap is ever-widening between
the haves and the have-nots; and ordinary people everywhere seem to
be becoming less and less concerned about anything or anybody other
than themselves. So you go figure if we could use some help or
not.

Well...with all that, I am
happy to be able to close out this transcript on a happy note.
Annie has been out of jail for the past three months and it seems
doubtful that she will ever return. She has been getting a lot of
favorable press and money has been flying in from around the world
for her legal defense fund, but I doubt that she will have to spend
much of that. She also has friends in court, now—and I heard just
yesterday that the D. A. is going to move for dismissal of charges
as soon as some of the furor dies down. Bruce's grandstanding
suicide, by the way, did not hurt her a bit in that
regard.

She and Francois have
become just friends. She even calls him Uncle Frank again, and he
seems quite content with that.

Oh, he got a replacement for Annie for his
satellite-TV investment, one of the new young born-again
evangelists out of Barnum and Bailey. I am sure he will clean up,
just like all the others.

As for Annie...well, what can I say? Annie
will forever be Annie, I guess, and I am sure she will be adored
all the days of her life by a great many people.

And, uh, I was visiting
with Dear old Dad just the other day. As a result of that little
visit, I've had to take another look at my evaluation of the
masters' game.

It is quite possible
that—after all was said and done—no matter what Bruce thought he
had going or for whatever reason—I think it may just be possible
that it was Annie's game, after all, all the time.

My father who is in heaven, or wherever,
told me just the other day, you see, that Ann Marie is three months
pregnant.

Of course, he has to be
wrong about that.

As Annie told me from her hospital bed, it
did not happen really; that flesh is still virgin flesh, with or
without hymen.

But I have been wondering
if there could be such a thing as a spiritual surrogate father. Or
would it be, let's see...a physical surrogate father for a
spiritual mother? Or, let's see, would it be...?

Hell. You go figure it. And have a nice
day.

###

About the Author

Don Pendleton (1927-1995) is
creator of The Executioner: Mack Bolan Action/Adventure series and
the Joe Copp, Private Eye Mystery Thrillers.