River's Edge (12 page)

A
s tired as Blair was from her all-nighter, she found herself unable to sleep when she went home. Anger seethed through her at the things Cade had said, but more than that, she felt stark disappointment that he’d walked out on her.

They’d argued before, but not in the last month, since the two of them had gotten closer. She’d wondered if they still had that kind of fight in them. His accusations made her livid. Did he doubt her faith because of a headline? Did he consider her a superficial Christian because she hadn’t had time to study what the Bible said about psychics?

She tried to swallow back her anger and, taking his challenge, went to get her father’s Bible. She took it to her laptop, sat at the kitchen table, and pulled up her Bible program. She keyed in a few words and began flipping through the Scriptures that spoke on the subject of psychics.

Deuteronomy 18 had much to say on the subject. She turned to that place in her father’s Bible, and read aloud.

She sat back and stared down at the page. It was clear what God thought about the practices of people like Carson Graham.

But did that mean that he was a fake? If he didn’t get his vision from God, where
had
he gotten it? What had given him the power to see where Lisa’s body lay?

She closed her Bible and stared at a spot on the table. Maybe Cade’s suspicions were right. Maybe Carson had inside knowledge that had nothing to do with psychic powers. Maybe he
had
been involved.

She checked more of the passages that came up on her computer screen. In 1 Samuel 28 Saul had consulted a medium, and the woman brought up the dead Samuel, who prophesied Saul’s death. If that woman had the power to bring someone back from the dead, was it just a one-time fluke for God’s purposes? Had she been a fraud up until that point, then been stunned when Samuel appeared? God had used a donkey before to speak his truth. Was it so far-fetched that he might use a woman he considered wicked to speak Samuel’s prophecy?

Or did she really have special powers apart from God, who would never have gifted her with something he considered detestable?

She read about the spiritists and magicians who couldn’t recite Nebuchadnezzer’s dreams, and how Daniel did so through
the spirit of prophecy. Had those spiritists been able to do so before?

Finally, she found the passage in Acts 16 in which a fortune-teller followed Paul around for days, yelling out that he was a “bond servant of the Most High God.” She had spoken the truth, yet Paul had turned around and cast a demon out of her. Immediately, she’d lost her power to tell fortunes.

So what did that tell her? She got up and walked around the kitchen, trying to think it through. Apparently some psychics really did have demonic power to do the things they did, though it sounded like they could not see the future. Deuteronomy 18: 21–22 said, “You may say in your heart, “How will we know the word which the
L
ORD
has not spoken?” When a prophet speaks in the name of the
L
ORD
, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the
L
ORD
has not spoken.”

If they really had power to see the future, then they wouldn’t ever get it wrong.

But did they have the power to see visions of things that had already happened? Did demons, who knew the evil that had already happened to Lisa, put that vision into Carson’s head?

She went back to the Bible, determined to mold her anger at Cade into something productive. She would study until she got to the bottom of this, and then she would show Cade that his implications about her faith were unjust and untrue.

Knowledge could only help.

L
isa’s fertility doctor, Alan Sims, the one who had worked with her and Ben through their long, arduous struggle to have a child, wasn’t at his clinic. His receptionist told Cade that Sims had taken the day off to attend Lisa’s funeral that afternoon.

Cade found the man’s home on Cape Refuge—a three-story Tudor-style house situated on an acre in one of the more upscale neighborhoods in town. Since he’d been personally interviewing everyone who’d been scheduled to see Lisa on the day of her murder, he needed to talk to the doctor to see if he had any insights to give him about her death. It was the kind of thing McCormick might have done better, but he was tied up reviewing the evidence that had been taken from Lisa’s car and body, so Cade had come himself. It was welcome work since he couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in his office, stewing about Blair’s article and dealing with phone calls from the press.

He rang the front bell and waited. After a moment, the doctor himself answered. “Chief Cade?”

“Dr. Sims, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but your office told me you’d taken the day off. Do you mind if I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, come on in.” Sims was unshaven and smelled of whiskey. Barefoot and wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and a pair of jeans, he led Cade into his living room. A shirt lay wadded on the couch, and several pairs of shoes and socks lay on the floor. A plate, several glasses, and some wadded napkins cluttered the coffee table.

“Excuse the mess.” He grabbed some newspapers off of a chair so Cade could sit down. “My maid is AWOL, and my wife has been in Europe for the past week. It doesn’t usually look like this. This thing with Lisa really shook me up. I haven’t even been able to think clearly.” He sat down on the couch, and Cade took the chair. “You build a relationship, you know? She wasn’t just a patient. She was a friend.”

“I can imagine,” Cade said. “I’m afraid I didn’t know her very well myself. Dr. Sims, could you tell me about the last time you saw her?”

He set his elbows on his knees and raked his hands through his hair. “That was the day before she disappeared. I saw her every day last week. We were doing daily sonograms so we’d know exactly when she ovulated. We had to know when we could harvest her egg. Timing is critical.”

“Did she ever mention any problems or turmoil in her life? Or anyone she might be afraid of?”

“Not really. Fighting infertility is a very long road and it’s not always pleasant. The Jacksons had a lot of disappointments and were under quite a bit of stress, not to mention all the drugs that she was on and the pressure that Ben was under with the election.”

Cade thought of those letters again. “Did Lisa ever express concerns about her marriage?”

“Not really. I know he had asked her to wait until after the election to do the last IVF. But she felt panicked, like her time was running out. Every month counted. I had noticed a little
more tension between them lately.” He stopped, ran his hands down his face, and looked at Cade over his fingertips. “Chief, do you think he killed her?”

Cade wasn’t going to answer that. “Was there anything in Ben’s character that would make you think he was capable of that?”

His hands went back through his hair. Cade noticed they were shaking. “You never know what anyone’s really capable of, do you?”

A
nd now to comment on this bizarre murder case in Cape Refuge, Georgia, Vince Barr of the
Observer
joins us via satellite. Welcome, Vince.”

Blair caught her breath and turned up the television. Had FOX News really asked the sleazy tabloid reporter to talk about Lisa’s case?

“This morning your paper called this case to the attention of the national media,” Shepherd Smith said. “It seems that this woman named Lisa Jackson turned up missing just days ago, and then her car was found in the river.”

“That’s right, Shep,” Vince said, as if he was a regular on their show instead of some two-bit paparazzi looking for an alien behind every bush. “And the interesting thing about this case is that a psychic is the one who led the police to her body. He apparently was given a sweater that belonged to Lisa, and from that he got a vision. He told her closest friend where her body could be found.”

As he spoke, FOX flashed pictures of Lisa Jackson on the screen.

“And the sheriff listened to him, and indeed, her body was found there, in her car.”

“He’s not a sheriff!” Blair bit out to the television.

“Tell us about Lisa Jackson,” Smith said. “I understand she was a real estate maven in the area.”

“She was, and a very popular one, at that. Her business partner is former model Rani Nixon—”

“Rani Nixon? One of the highest paid models in Manhattan just a few years ago. So that’s where she wound up.”

“That’s right. She went into business with Lisa when she retired from modeling.”

Blair couldn’t imagine what he thought Rani had to do with anything, but she supposed that had probably been a part of his pitch to FOX when he’d tried to sell them the story.

The photos of Lisa stopped flashing, and the camera went back to Vince. He looked like he’d dyed his hair overnight. He’d been decidedly grayer yesterday.

“Lisa and her husband had been married for twenty years,” he went on, “and by all accounts, seemed happy. They had gone through years of infertility treatments and were, in fact, about to do their third in vitro procedure when Lisa disappeared.”

“Vince, in your article this morning, you said that the husband’s footprints were found at the scene where her car went into the river.”

The helicopter footage of the search for Lisa’s body came on, then the tape from across the river, and then closer up of when he’d taken pictures of the body. Blair thought of grabbing a vase and slamming it into the screen, but she decided to wait until she saw him face-to-face.

“Yes. They found shoes in his house that matched the prints.”

“Is this confirmed?”

“Anonymously. I got this tip from a very reliable source.”

“And they’re putting her time of death at midmorning, isn’t that right? So do they think he just drove her car there with her dead body in it and pushed it into the river in broad daylight?”

“The site where she went in is a pretty isolated area on the river. He could have easily done it without anyone seeing him. And apparently did.”

“Have any arrests been made yet?”

“Not yet, Shep. Understand, this is a very small sheriff’s department, used to dealing with car thefts and parking violations. If it weren’t for Carson Graham’s psychic reading, they’d probably still be searching for her.”

“Thefts and parking violations!” Blair threw the remote across the room, then went to the set and punched the power button to turn it off. Hadn’t Cade solved four murders in the past few months? She couldn’t watch another moment. She hoped Cade hadn’t seen that. He would be more enraged than he already was, and she didn’t blame him.

Suddenly she realized that she wasn’t angry at him anymore. Her feelings of defensiveness over him spoke volumes.

How dare that man minimize Cade’s competence?

She thought of what Cade had said about her making Carson Graham out to be a hero. He was even more of a hero now, and he would probably be invited onto every news show in the country after this.

Could Cade be right about his involvement being more than just a psychic vision? Could the psychic have had something to do with Lisa’s death?

She decided her first interview of the day would be with Graham himself. She called him, and he answered on the first ring.

“Carson Graham. How can I help you today?”

She swallowed. “Carson, this is Blair Owens. I was wondering if I could come by and talk to you this morning.”

“Would you like a personal reading or is this newspaper business?”

She rolled her eyes. “Newspaper. I’d like an interview.”

“Well, certainly.” His syrupy, soft voice was reminiscent of a funeral director. “I have some time right now if you could come
on over, but I can only spare a few minutes. I’m getting quite a large number of media requests today.”

She hurried over and pulled up into the gravel parking lot of the old house, situated on Ocean Boulevard just off of the Tybee Bridge, one of the busiest roads on Cape Refuge, where every gullible soul who came in or out of town would see his sign. She shivered as she looked up at the place, wondering if she should be afraid. She could be walking into danger on several levels. If Carson was a fraud, and really was involved in Lisa’s death, he could be dangerous. And if he wasn’t a fraud but a real psychic, were there demons hovering around him? She wished she knew more about the spiritual aspects of his “gift.”

Carson Graham met her at the door. “Blair, so good to see you.” He took her hand in both of his. “Come in, dear. Would you like coffee? Coke?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

Withdrawing her hand, she looked around at the candles clustered around the room, their light flickering eerily against the wall. The smell of incense almost made her sneeze.

“You sure keep it dark in here.”

“That’s for privacy and concentration. I’ll open the drapes if you’d like.”

She shrugged, as if she didn’t care one way or another, but she was glad when he did. As light filled the room, she realized it didn’t look nearly as elegant as she’d thought. Dust particles danced on the sun rays, revealing the scratches and age in most of the cheap furniture. Shabby without the chic.

He sat down across from her. “Thank you for the headline today, Blair. It was such a pleasant surprise. My work is usually done behind the scenes. I don’t expect that kind of credit.”

She cleared her throat. So Cade was right. “I just reported the facts. But today I was thinking about doing a piece on the process behind being a psychic. Where you got your gift, how you’ve developed it, what exactly you see…that kind of thing.”

“Of course. And I’m glad you used the word
gift
. It really is that, you know. A
gift
from God.”

Blair hadn’t expected that. Her eyebrows came up. “God, huh? So you believe God is the one who gave you this power?”

“Of course he did. He’s the one who opens my eyes to see, if you will.”

Blair jotted that down.
Eyes to see.
Bible lingo. “So tell me about your average vision. How does it work?”

He shifted in his seat. “Well, to tell you the truth, it comes in different ways. Usually, I’ll take my subject’s hand, and impressions just begin flooding my brain.” He reached out for her hand. “May I?”

“Maybe some other time.”

He laughed softly. “Oh, a skeptic, huh? Well, you know, I don’t always
have
to touch that person to get those impressions. Sometimes they come without it. Like now, for instance. I’m sensing that you’re in love.”

She tapped her pencil on her pad and hoped her scars weren’t flaming. “Is that right?”

“Yes. I sense that it’s a strange feeling to you, because in the past you haven’t let yourself be that vulnerable. And you never thought romance was in your cards. But let me tell you, Blair. It is.”

Part of her wanted to follow this lure—see if he could tell her where her relationship with Cade would lead. But wasn’t it becoming common knowledge? After their first kiss, which happened in front of dozens of police officers, hadn’t word spread all over the island?

“You’ve been hurt in the past. You’ve suffered intense grief.”

She sighed and propped her chin on her hand. “Come on, Carson. Everybody in town knows I lost my parents.”

“But your scars have caused you no end of grief, haven’t they? You put on the air of a tough broad, but the truth is that all you’ve ever really wanted was someone of your own to love you.”

Now she knew her scars were flaming. She felt her chest tightening, her heart ramming against it. “Could we get back to the interview?”

“This
is
part of the interview, Blair. I’m showing you how this works.”

“I didn’t come here for a reading. I’m here as a reporter.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t charge you. He is going to marry you, you know.”

Her heart jolted. “Who is?”

“This person you’re in love with.”

She stared down at her notepad as an unexpected wave of anger surged up inside her. Why Graham’s words angered her so, she wasn’t sure. Tapping her pencil on her paper, she gritted her teeth. “On the day after Lisa’s disappearance, Rani Nixon came to see you. Is that right?”

“Yes,” he said with a condescending smile. “She gave me Lisa’s sweater. I took it home and sat alone, right here in this room, holding that sweater. And that’s when I saw where she was.”

“So, did you go into a trance or something? An out-of-body experience?”

“No trance. I just saw impressions of her in her Lexus, going into the water. Very similar to the one I see of you in a wedding dress.”

She stared down at her notes and forced herself to go on. “How did you know exactly where on the river she was?”

“I just knew. It’s very hard to explain, Blair. I saw her dead in the water, and I just knew exactly where it was. Half a mile east of the Bull River Bridge. I know it sounds crazy. But that’s the way it is.”

She thought back over those Scripture passages she’d read this morning. “Carson, you mentioned that your power came from God. What religion are you?”

He seemed to stiffen. “I’m not really into religion, Blair. Not organized religion, anyway. I worship God in my mind. My body is his temple. And I like to think that the people who come to me for readings, whether it’s here or at my show, feel that their experiences are very close to religious experiences.”

That was telling. So his belief in God was ethereal. “Do you believe in heaven?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What about hell?”

“I believe in a hell on earth. How else can you describe poverty, death, depression?”

“No hell,” she jotted down. “Okay, so how about Satan?”

He chuckled as if he knew exactly what she was getting at. “Are you trying to figure out if I’m demon possessed?” He seemed genuinely delighted. “Look at me, Blair. Do I look evil?”

She had to admit he didn’t. A little silly, maybe, but not evil.

“My power does not come from the Devil or demons, Blair. I’m gifted by God. It’s as simple as that. God wanted Lisa to be found, and so he used me to do that.”

Blair jotted that down verbatim, but didn’t know if she would use it in her article. Cade was right. There would be readers who would conclude that Carson was a prophet from God.

“Blair, I think that God wants you to be happy, and he’s going to use me to help you with that, too.”

Again, anger pulsed through her. How dare he try to hit her vulnerability—and in the name of God!

“He’s already thinking about marriage, Blair. This man you love can’t imagine a life without you. I see a proposal in your very near future.”

Her heart began to swell with hope, but then she remembered the Scripture. She wasn’t supposed to listen to a psychic or believe in his prophecies. Besides, if he could really read Cade’s feelings right now, he would see only anger…not romance.

“I have to go.” She got up and shoved her pad back into her bag. “I think I have all I need.”

“You work too hard, Blair. Yet you have the potential to turn the
Journal
into a daily paper of great import. I advise you to hire a staff to help you and shoot high. I can already see the
Cape Refuge Journal
in a four-story building with dozens of employees. You’re familiar with the old South Farm Insurance Building, aren’t you? I see the
Journal
occupying that building, Blair.”

She paused for a moment and looked up at him. She had never thought of using that building. It was too big. It seemed too soon to think that big.

“You must not be hindered by your logic.”

It was as if he could read her thoughts.

“I see your circulation being far greater than the population of this island. You must be bold, fearless in your expansion. You must make daring decisions without looking back.”

She felt the pull of his vision, the hope of his promise…

... and suddenly realized how seductive his words could be. No wonder millions of dollars a year were spent on psychic hotlines.

She started to the door, and he followed her. “You should come to my show one night. Then you could really see me in action. You could be my guest.”

“Maybe sometime I will. Thanks for the interview, Carson.”

“So will this be in Friday’s issue?”

“Maybe. I don’t know for sure.”

She got to her car and pulled out of the parking lot as fast as she could. As she drove away, she understood how easily people could be taken in by him.

He told them exactly what they wanted to hear.