A Vision of Murder (10 page)

“I thought this way would
intersect with the path earlier. It curves toward the tree line somewhere
around here.” He straightened and stared through the woods. “I think I see it
now.”

He pointed the way out, but I
wasn’t able to see where he was leading me from my spot behind him.

“Where’s Simms?” I asked.

He furrowed his brow, a
worried expression on his handsome face. “I don’t know. He said he’d be here.”
He shrugged wearily. “He’ll catch up. He’s much better at finding his way
around the woods than I am.”

“Didn’t he just move here?”
I was sure he hadn’t lived here very long.

Dunn nodded.
“A few years ago.
Right after they locked White up.” Dunn
paused and then continued. “He… I think he was dismissed from a case.
Some problem with collecting evidence.
I wish he’d been here
a few months earlier. If only he’d been involved in that investigation, well,
we might have more leads.”

The park seemed empty and
lonely. It was quiet and still. The branches seemed frozen in time, not a
breath of air stirred. I wiped the sweat from the back of my neck. Here and
there shafts of light broke through the limbs, revealing dust motes floating
above the foliage covered ground. It seemed as if we had walked for miles to my
weary legs. My hands were shaking as I stopped to lean against a tree. The
rough bark bit at the cuts on my fingers.

“How much
farther?”
I asked again.

“Not far now. The path’s
right there. Can’t you see it?”

I shook my head wearily. I
was of an average height, rather tall for a woman actually. But Dunn was quite
a bit taller. I pushed myself off of the large tree. The blood from my fingers
had seeped into the bark in two spots, staining it darkly. It looked like
raindrops being absorbed by the thirsty tree.

“And
that cannot be undone”

The cool air of the library
made Mrs. Dodd long for the sweater she had left in the car outside.
How
useless
, she thought. It would be stifling hot in the vehicle by the time
they got done here.

She had to give it to Sissy.
Her friend had searched doggedly through all the newspaper articles the library
had to offer. Though how much of a chore it was for someone who liked to gossip
as much as she did remained to be seen.

“Anything
interesting?”
Mrs. Dodd asked.

“Why yes, did you know that
Mrs.
Hollins
down the street was married before? And
never told a soul! Here’s the marriage announcement right here!” She jabbed her
pointer finger vehemently.
“And I
thought we were friends. That’s what you get for
trusting people who have only lived in town for ten years.”

“I mean anything else about
the psychic?” Mrs. Dodd said, trying not to sound disgusted. Her fingers were
poised eagerly over the notebook she had brought with her.

“Nothing yet, but we’re
almost up to date now.”

The afternoon sun slanted
wearily through the high window overhead, casting the nearby books in shadows
and beams of light. The dark wood of the shelves gleamed in the afternoon glow
around the two women as they sat hunched at the desk. The library was empty and
peaceful until Sissy erupted again.

“And she got a divorce!
Poor Mr.
Hollins
.
I bet he never
knew.”

Mrs. Dodd doubted that. He
was, after all, a very quiet man. “Maybe he just knows how to keep a secret,”
Mrs. Dodd muttered, too low for Sissy to hear.

Time passed slowly in the
library. The only marker Mrs. Dodd and Sissy had were the sunbeams outside.
They gradually climbed up the bookshelves, leaving ragged spines of old novels
in shadow as they crept upward.

“Finally,” Sissy announced
as she finished up the last of the newspapers, “we’re back to the present. I
swear, Velma, I feel as if I’ve relived my whole life going through these old
things. So many interesting things I never knew about those old families in
here. You know, the older ladies would never speak of the goings on like we do.
They left out so much good stuff.”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Dodd
murmured, not really paying attention.

“Why, I would say there are
probably dozens of old murders in our town alone that have never been solved.
Like my great uncle. Everyone just knew that crazy wife of his poisoned him,
but no one ever got around to proving it. And the Princes’ down the street.
Why, they had all those babies die in their family. They swore up and down it
was inherited, but it does make one wonder doesn’t it…” Sissy’s voice trailed
off and she covered her mouth, unsure of what to say.

“Like my Mary, I suppose
you’re saying? Only we didn’t have the convenience of genetics to fall back
on,” Mrs. Dodd replied, finger poised over her notebook.

“Oh, Velma, of course I
didn’t mean that. Everyone, just everyone knew that you didn’t have anything to
do with that.”

“It’s all in the past now,
Sissy. Nothing they said bothered me then and it doesn’t bother me now.”

“But don’t you wonder
sometimes….”

“I wonder all the time, but
it doesn’t help. Besides…” Mrs. Dodd sighed,
“
in
my experience, wondering just leads to more wondering.
I’d rather leave it alone.”

Sissy nodded, swallowing hard.
“Well,” she continued, changing the subject while she gestured to the book,
“it’s all there.
Case after case that she solved or helped to
solve.
You can’t make things like that up.”

“No, I suppose you can’t,”
Mrs. Dodd answered back, her lips pursed thoughtfully.

“You have to face facts,
Velma,” Sissy continued. “Look at the list of crimes that she assisted with. I
could see her guessing her way through one or two of these cases, but all of
them? No, there’s only one way that she could have known. She’s a psychic. The
sooner you start believing in her, helping her, and stop fighting her, the
better.”

Mrs. Dodd stared at the list
in front of her. “I suppose you’re right, Sissy.”

She looked up to find Sissy
staring at her, eyes wide. “Did you just say I was right?”

Mrs. Dodd struggled to
suppress a small smile. “I did.”

“I do believe that’s the
first time you’ve ever said that to me!” Sissy exclaimed, smiling widely.

“Well, in over half of these
cases, the suspect was never caught,” Mrs. Dodd said. “It would be nice to
bring the guilty party to justice.”

“I’m so proud of you,
Velma!” Sissy continued, standing up stiffly. She paused to stretch slightly,
glancing around to see if anyone was there to notice such unladylike behavior.

“No one’s here,” Mrs. Dodd
said. She slipped her notebook with all of her notes into her purse. “You can
be as unladylike as you please.”

I felt a sense of foreboding
come over me as we walked through those woods. I suddenly felt that, this time,
everything was not going to work out. Disaster loomed on the horizon of the
future, waiting to overshadow the breaking days that lie ahead. What was to
befall me, I could not see, but that was the moment that I first felt the dark
cloud rise behind me, the cloud that so often followed meekly behind, bending
to my will. I felt it rise with sudden inclination against me and began to
overtake me. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see it there, in solid
form.

“What’s wrong?” Dunn asked.
No dark mass stood behind me, accompanying me through the woods, drifting
ominously over my footprints.

“Do you see something?” he
continued, turning to come back to me as I stood frozen in place.

“No,” I choked out. I felt
for his hand, gripping it tightly in my own. It felt like a link that I could
depend on.

He turned me to face him,
one warm hand on my shoulder and the other still gripping my own. “Tell me the
truth, Emily.” His blue eyes seemed to bore into mine. I noticed lines in his
face that I hadn’t seen before, like a decorative façade crumbling at the
edges.

“It’s coming fast now.” My
eyes unwillingly drug back behind us, to the path we had broken through the
woods. “I thought it would never
happen,
that it
wouldn’t catch up to me. But, for the first time in my life, I have a bad
feeling that the end is coming.” My gaze shifted to his, my eyes pleading with
him to help me. “It feels… suddenly, it feels as if this is going to be my last
case.” And oddly, I found that part of me wished it was.

“Emily! Don’t say that!”
Dunn shook me.

“It’s true, Dunn,” I
half-sobbed. “I want to stop, so badly! I want it all to end. I can’t take it
anymore! The ghosts, they’ve been waiting on me and around me. It’s getting to
be too many of them. They’re getting stronger and stronger and I’m just getting
weaker and weaker.”

Dunn’s
eyes strained in the pale, filtered light of the woods.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help
you. I don’t see anything… just… come back to me…” he pleaded.

“I’m here,” I said, but I
still searched the woods urgently. I felt as if I was going crazy. Dunn slipped
his arms around me protectively. The danger seemed suddenly real and all around
me, suffocating me. I closed my eyes and concentrated, pushing it away with all
my might.

I felt it fade slowly.
“We’re almost there, Emily,” I heard Dunn’s voice as if from far away.

“I know.” My stomach rolled
once.

I felt him shift his grip
and he half lifted, half dragged me along. He stopped and checked his watch.
“We need to get there now,” he said, an urgency in his voice that hadn’t been
there before.

Time seemed to freeze as we
struggled through the woods. I felt the darkness retreating from me, lingering
only at the edge of the shadows, but my fear, deep inside, was the same.
Why
did it come on so urgently this time? Forcing me to stop in the middle of the
woods?
In front of Dunn?
Question after question
ran through my mind, but I didn’t stop to think about anything. My whole goal
was to get to the trail.

Finally, after what seemed
like an eternity, Dunn stopped.

“Simms? Is that you?” Dunn
called. No answering reply rang back through the woods.

“Are we there?” I asked,
straightening and pushing the hair out of my eyes.

He shifted to look at me for
a moment.
“Almost.
I found the path.” He pointed to a
narrow trail just visible through the underbrush.

“Simms?” he called out,
louder.

“Yes?” His voice was loud
behind us. We both jumped.

Whirling, Dunn faced him,
one hand on his holstered gun.

“Whoa
there, Dunn.”
Simms held up one hand.

“Sorry,” Dunn said,
releasing his tight grip. His fingers were white where they gripped my wrist.
He wiped the sweat from his brow. “I thought I heard you in front of us. I
could
of
sworn I saw you for a second there.” He was
jumpy. I decided it must have been due to my influence. Speaking of dark things
as I had just done does not lead to anything good.

“Wasn’t me,” Simms said,
shaking his head.

“Well,” Simms continued,
turning towards me, “you ready?”

I only nodded in response.

“Where have you been?” Dunn asked
as he led the way deeper into the woods. I saw the tree in the bend in the
distance.
We must be coming at the body from an angle,
I thought.

“Working
on some paperwork.
We got the warrants. We can start searching today if need be. Maybe she’ll have
some extra information for us. I’d sure like to avoid accusing as many people
as possible in a town as small as this. It seems like everyone is related to
someone else.”

The underbrush was broken in
several places where the policemen were slowly creating a new path through the
woods. I thought it ironic in a morbid way that it ended where her life had. I
felt a vague urge to continue on past the dismal area to make a new path back
to the road.

“Here we are,” Simms said,
breaking the stillness and tension that had descended on us when we reached the
place. Fresh turned dirt covered the ground in several spots where policemen
and detectives had searched for clues. I could only assume that they weren’t
many for them to find.

“Anything?”
Simms asked hopefully. I smiled
at him before beginning.

“I’m sensing…” I began
before the vision filled my mind.

A bare white bone stretched
out over the ground, raised above the skeleton’s head. The fingers were curled
softly in the dead grass.

I imagined her in the form
she had been in when just killed, patching the flesh back over the bones in my
mind’s eye. The shirt, black and green plaid, was rolled at the cuff’s just
enough that a bracelet….

“The bracelet’s gone,” I
said suddenly, my voice ringing out loudly in the still woods. “The killer took
it.”

“What bracelet?”

“In both my visions of her
after she had just died, she was wearing a bracelet. Was it on the body when
you found it?” I
asked,
my voice urgent.

“No, there wasn’t a
bracelet.”

“Can you describe it?”

“It was a heart with some
type of stone in the center of it. Silver I think. Not expensive.”

“The killer took it,” I
repeated. What I said was true, but they seemed doubtful.

“If you could just describe the
killer…” Dunn said, frustrated. He was staring hard at me, but I refused to
meet his gaze.

“I guess that’s it for
today,” Simms said regretfully.

“We could try something
else,” I broke in. They both looked at me in surprise. I was desperate. They
had to find that bracelet. The whole case depended on it.

“You said before,” I
started, “that John Carson White saved clothing and items from his victims. I
saw a bracelet in one of my visions. Maybe this is important. Maybe I would
have stronger visions off of that item.”

“But don’t you see?” Dunn
asked. “It would be even harder to find a bracelet than a person. He could have
hidden it anywhere. If we find it, then yes, it will help. But until then….” He
lifted his hands helplessly.

“What is it that you wanted to
try?” Simms
asked,
a watchful expression on his face.

“I could try again to follow
the killer out. Now that I’m in this spot, this place, I may be able to. It
would have been better if I could have done it before but….”

“We couldn’t bring you here
while they were still processing it. You know today was the soonest you were
allowed here.”

“I know. But now… we could
try,” I offered.