Time to Time: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (Ashton Ford Series) (2 page)

Chapter Three:
 
A Problem in Graphics

I just could not get
to sleep. My eyes felt strained and strange but when I closed them, I would get
this flood of brilliantly colored images, mostly geometric shapes in a slow
tumbling motion almost like computer graphics displaying three-dimensional
images and slowly turning them this way and that for different perspectives but
always looking the same whatever the perspective.

I
fought that for about twenty minutes, then gave it up and slipped into a robe,
lit a cigarette, stepped out onto the deck, and stared at the phosphorescent
surf for a few minutes. It did not help a hell of a lot. The eyes were still
faintly burning and my vision slightly blurred when I went back inside—and now,
on top of it, I was getting these slowly tumbling golden triangles superimposed
over my open-eyed vision.

I
put on a pot of coffee and made an effort to understand what was happening.
Mental imagery is no new thing for me, not even involuntary imagery. But this
was different, and a lot more persistent than the stuff I'd become accustomed
to. This is right-brain stuff, you know. The nonverbal side of the mind. That
is where the emotions live, where creativity lurks, where inspiration and
intuition do their thing. Being nonverbal, it deals entirely with graphics.

I'd
been doing a lot of thinking lately as to whether the right brain creates the
graphics or if it merely acts as a receiver for graphics that are generated
elsewhere. You can make "elsewhere" whatever you'd like.

Carl
Jung hypothesized a collective unconscious that communicates with mankind via a
system of universal symbology. I have a good friend who is a highly successful
psychiatrist and also happens to be somewhat psychic. He seems to have settled
around a theory that the collective unconscious is actually that psychic
faculty present in all humans as a natural function of the right brain. In
other words, the whole human race is linked together sort of like a single huge
organism, with that linkage through the right brain. Which is his way of
explaining extrasensory perception. He thinks that everyone's right brain is
continually trying to influence the intellectual centers on the left side, but
that humanity long ago began relying more on the left brain than the right, and
that is why we have developed intellectually much more rapidly than we have
developed spiritually.

I'd
been giving some thought to that idea. Actually it could explain a lot more
than mere ESP; carried to the logical inferences, it would maybe explain the
constant inner conflict experienced by most people and the whole array of
mental illnesses that afflict the human race. It would be like
every
one has a split personality—split
right

down the middle
between left and right hemispheres, with the two as virtual strangers because
they speak different languages.

Most
all of the mystics complain of this curious dichotomy within the human
framework. St. Paul wrote lyrically of the problem: "For the flesh lusteth
against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary
the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would"
(Galatians 5:17). Remove that statement from its religious context and you're
talking modern psychiatry.

I
guess psychiatry was on my mind that night because I was wondering if I could
trust my own mental impressions.
Seeing
is a mental impression, you know. Had I actually seen the thing?

If
so—or even if not—what was I seeing now—and why was I seeing it?

I
had done some UFO research. And I knew that a respectable body of scientific
thought on the question was regarding the entire thing as purely mental
phenomena. Jung's damned symbols, I supposed. Which was not to say that the
UFOs were not
real
; just not real in
the physical sense. Constructs of the mind—of the collective planetary
mind—but very real, as such.

Well,
it was two o'clock and I was still thinking like that and trying to fend off
the slow-motion graphics that kept tumbling out of my head. I'd drunk the whole
pot of coffee and stubbed out far too many cigarettes. But I knew it would be
useless to try to take that stuff back to bed, so I showered and shaved and got
dressed, rolled the Maserati out, and drove up into the hills.

Don't
ask why I went that way. I don't know why I went that way. It is sheer
wilderness up there. There was nothing up there I'd lost or was looking for. I
thought.

But
I damn near ran down Penny Laker.

She
was stumbling along the highway up there above Pepperdine and she was stark
naked. I didn't know it was her at first, not until she looked over her
shoulder into my headlights. Then I had to chase her down on foot because she
started running as for her life. I grabbed her and had to fight her all the way
back to the car. She wasn't screaming, just grunting in total panic and
thrashing like hell with all four limbs.

I
don't know at what point in all that my own mind stopped its graphic tumbling,
nor do I know with any precision how I got Penny into the car and calmed down
enough to drive her away from there. I do know that I saw a shooting star move
directly across our path as we were descending the mountain, then another a
moment later, moving in the opposite direction. At that point, I know, my
graphics had turned off.

I
took off my shirt and wrapped Penny in it, then I took her to my place.

She
was a basket case, mentally. Didn't seem to know where she was or who I was or
even who she was. She'd become entirely docile, doing whatever I suggested
without argument or resistance of any kind.

I
took her in the house and put her to bed, inspected her for physical hurts and
found none. She was asleep before I could get her tucked in good.

I
went straight to the telephone and called Ted Bransen. He answered the second
ring with a sleepy voice that turned a bit nasty when I asked him if he knew
where his wife was.

He
snarled, "I told you, dammit, that you're working this through me!"

I
was too drained and confused to snarl back. I just replied in a very meek
voice, "Call me if you are curious about her," and hung up.

He
called back about twenty seconds later and yelled, "She's not in her bed!
Do you know where she is?"

"She's
in my bed, pal," I told him, and hung up again. This time I turned off the
ringer.

It
was, I figured, about a twenty-minute drive at that time of night from his
house to mine.

Meanwhile
I was tired as hell and fading fast. I felt curiously lethargic, drained,
spent. I don't get that way often, no matter how long the night.

So
I went to the bar and splashed some bourbon onto an ice cube, took it to the
picture window overlooking the Pacific.

It
was damned pretty out there, star-spangled above and phosphorescent below, just
enough wind to make some caps atop the surging waters.

Gradually
I became aware that there was just a bit too much glow out there. I'd looked
out that window often enough in all kinds of weather to recognize a different
quality to this night.

The
glow continued growing until finally it was suspended right out there in front
of me along the water line. It was oval-shaped and about twelve feet across. I
swear the damned thing waved at me; it sort of wobbled in the air, like a bowl
bouncing around when you set it down too hard. And then, maybe just to show me
where my graphics had originated, it sent me another golden triangle tumbling
gently through my head.

Then,
instantly, it became an identical golden triangle, slowly inverted itself with
the point skyward, and shot straight up without a sound.

I
was still staring at the place where it had been when another "shooting
star" whizzed across the horizon, far at sea.

Some
things the thinking mind simply refuses to process. Mine was definitely
beginning to balk at the whole thing.

Take
away the saucer, even, and there is too much to process.

I
took my bourbon onto the open deck and stretched out with it on a chaise,
allowing my eyes to find their own way into those star-spangled depths
suspended above my head.

Nothing
was real; that was my illumination of the moment.

All
was illusion.

But
still I was wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into this time.

Chapter Four:
 
Etchings

Either Penny Laker is
a master at disinformation or someone around her is. Published background
information on this superstar is a beautiful study in contradictions. She has
been variously reported as a native of Illinois, Scotland, Ireland, Australia,
Canada, and Iceland. Depending upon where she was born, her age might be
somewhere between thirty-three and thirty-nine. She got her start as an actress
either on Broadway, at Burt Reynolds's theater in Florida, on the London stage,
in an Italian movie, or in San Francisco in a porno film.

She
appeared on the Hollywood scene ten years ago with a supporting role in a much
ballyhooed picture that was a box-office flop but nevertheless launched Penny
Laker with rave reviews, comparing her with the best in the business. She has
been one of the "hot properties" in a highly property-conscious town
ever since, but that is not the end of disinformation. Perhaps one of the most
written-about stars in the modern era, no two stories agree as to the details
of that mercurial career.

It
appears that she met Ted Bransen during her third year in Hollywood—but that's
not certain—and they were married either in Mexico City or Monte Carlo or
Zurich, take your pick. It was the first or third marriage for both, and Penny
has either two or three grown kids somewhere in Europe or South America.

I
call all that not sloppy reporting but disinformation. Someone was doing this
on purpose, to a calculated effect.

I
am not exactly a babe in the woods in such matters. I am not really a detective
and I may not even really be psychic (because I still don't know what
"psychic" is) but I do have a pretty good grounding in the informational
sciences and I held down a desk in the Pentagon at the Office of Naval
Intelligence for several years. My family name is not really Ford but I am an
Ashton via my mother. Nobody but Mother ever knew who my father was, and I'm
not sure that she knew—but she told me once in a moment of candid humor that I
was a "son of the Ford," which is navy talk from a family with all
its proudest moments in naval service.

One
of my ancestors was politically influential in the selection of Annapolis as
the site of the U.S. Naval Academy, but the naval heritage goes even beyond
that. Anyway, "son of a gun" is an old naval term denoting an
illegitimate child, and it stems from the early days when civilian women served
domestically on vessels of war. Since the guns were always emplaced at the
vessel's center of gravity, it was beneath these guns that such women crawled
to deliver their misbegotten offspring; thus, children of questionable
paternity were referred to as "son of the gun."

I
know that I was not born in my mother's Ford Fairlane so she was undoubtedly
referring to my conception therein. It was either an item of delicious memory
or ironic humor that the name on my birth certificate is Ford. Don't ask why I
was not properly given my legal name, Ashton, at the rear instead of at the
front; Mother was sensitive about that and always managed to change the subject
when I brought it up. Maybe there was a problem with my grandparents. I
wouldn't know; I never met them. My mother never married and I was raised in the
Ashton naval tradition, hence Annapolis and the obligated service that
followed.

I
give you all that just so you know where I'm coming from when I tell you that
it appeared to me that the real Penny Laker was very well concealed behind an
entirely effective disinformational cover. It is easier for women than men to
get away with something like that because few women die with the name they were
born to, and there is traditionally less legal identification of women as they
move through life.

I
was thinking about all that, of course, as I waited for Ted Bransen to come
claim his naked wife from my bed. And I do not mind admitting that I was
feeling a bit defensive about that confrontation with Bransen. He can be a real
jerk. And I did not have a really coherent story to give the guy. So how do I
explain Penny Laker naked in my bed to her jerk of a husband?

As
it turned out, it was a needless worry.

Ted
Bransen did not come for his wife. He sent another.
Quite
another. She introduced herself as Julie Marsini and told me
that she was Penny's personal secretary. I could buy it because I'd seen her
before and wondered about her before. I'd also seen her workout suit, or one
like it, in a shop window on Rodeo Drive; she looked like she'd just come from
Jane Fonda's body salon or some such. Think of understated beauty, a woman who
takes no obvious pains either to enhance or conceal the natural
endowments—almost like one of the gray people who are always around yet hardly
noticeable, young but not too young, pretty but not dramatically pretty, well
built but not seductively displayed, interesting but not overpoweringly so. She
had absolutely raven-black hair, worn neatly at less than shoulder length, and the
darkest eyes I'd ever seen set into such fair skin. Beautiful mouth. Nice
hands—expressive, without exaggerated movements—delicate and artful but also
entirely capable. A soft fabric handbag with a silkrope draw was slung casually
from one shoulder.

I
also liked her no-nonsense manner, which still managed to be conveyed
graciously.

"Thank
you for calling, Mr. Ford. May I see her now?"

"Wait
a minute," I said. Guess I was still hung up on my Ted Bransen defenses.
"Don't you want to know why she's here?"

"If
that is important, I'm sure she'll tell me. She is all right?"

I
rubbed my temple as I replied, "Far as I can tell, physically, yeah, she's
fine. But she was totally disoriented when I found her, and we've had
absolutely no conversation. Sleeping like a baby for the past hour."

"Then
maybe we shouldn't disturb her." That voice fit the rest of
her—understated strength, properly concerned, but unemotional, coolly
modulated.

I
said, "She's, uh, in my bed. It's the only bed in the house." I
glanced at my watch. "It's three o'clock. I have a big day coming
up."

My
shrinking sense of hospitality gave her no pause. "Could you go to a hotel
for the rest of the night? Of course we would cover your expenses."

I
said, "No dice. My bed is not for rent. Speaking of which, why didn't
Bransen come? Or has this sort of thing become too routine for him?"

She
showed me a briefly disappointed look, then replied, "That could be highly
confrontational, couldn't it? Why should he want to embarrass either of
you?"

I
shrugged and said, "Well, maybe I've misread the guy. I expected him to
come in here breathing fire and screaming accusations."

She
smiled, barely, as she told me, "I can understand your position. Rest
assured that there are no suspicions of... romantic indiscretion."

I
asked her, "Do you always talk like that?"

"Like
what?"

"The
perfect executive secretary."

She
laughed lightly, said, "Thank you," and broke eye contact.

I
showed her to the bedroom. I'd left a small bedside lamp on and the lighting in
there was sort of mellow. Penny was lying just as I'd left her—flat on her
back, head straight on the pillow—but she looked different somehow, almost
ghastly pale in the muted light. Totally still, no signs of breathing, she
looked like a corpse.

I
had halted just inside the bedroom door. Julie went on to the foot of the bed
and spoke a single word so softly that I could not be sure what it was, but I
assumed she'd called Penny's name because she responded immediately in an
equally soft voice, though without opening her eyes.

Julie
turned to me and said, "We'll be right out."

I
suddenly felt like an ass. I told her, "Hey, I can sleep on the couch
if..."

"No,
no," she replied, "it will be fine now. Just give us a minute
please."

"She
lost her clothes somewhere," I said.

"No
problem."

No
problem, okay. But can you understand how very strange I was feeling about all
this? Forgetting the saucers, even—forget I even mentioned them—does the
strangeness translate here? I had chanced upon a Hollywood superstar staggering
naked along a deserted road in a remote area in the middle of the night. Other than
that bare fact, there was no evidence of foul play or physical harm of any
kind—except that the lady was confused and disoriented. So I take her to my
home and put her to bed and call her husband, who a short time earlier had
evinced a strong concern for her well-being.

So
does the husband come tearing in to collect her naked body from my bed? Hell
no. The lady's secretary comes, and then the whole thing is just cool business
as usual with "no problem."

Well
it was a hell of a problem for me.

I
skulked around the kitchen for about ten minutes, expecting each moment to
bring Julie back out with a semiconscious superstar staggering along beside her
draped in a sheet or some such.

Instead
I got two very lively and cheerful—not to mention beautiful—women dressed
identically in workout suits. So I guess you can easily conceal one of those
things in a woman's handbag, even the ballerina-style shoes.

Penny
stretched up from her toes to plant a moist kiss on my chin. "Thank you,
Ashton," she said in a perfectly normal voice, and with about the same
emotion one would use to acknowledge a simple courtesy.

I
muttered, "Don't mention it."

"I'll
call you later."

"Please
do that."

Julie
gave me an enigmatic smile and they departed arm in arm.

I
stepped outside and watched the car pull away, half expecting to get another
look at a saucer.

In
fact, I stood stock-still for fully two minutes
waiting
for the saucer. It did not show. Back inside, I saw no
evidence of any of it. The bed was neatly made with no appearance of having
been occupied that night.

I
didn't know what the hell to think. But I must have been pretty heavily into
it, because I realized with a start that I was standing at the big picture
window onto the sea with no memory of walking in there. That's where I found
the evidence. Not through the window but inside the window itself, in the
glass, a peculiar etching or some such, about the size of my fist: a perfect
triangle. It's still there. Come see it someday, if you'd like.

I
did not need to look at it all that much.

The
damn thing was already etched into my brain.