A Vision of Murder (2 page)

“No
matter how fast I run”

I felt drained after I left
the police station.
Tired and old.
It usually made me
feel that way and I had prepared myself beforehand, but still…. I wanted only a
glass of sweet tea and my back porch. The sun was still high overhead, but the
days were getting cooler. I stopped to check the mailbox.
More
bills.
The dry grass in my front yard seemed to crackle as I ambled the
short distance from the road to my house.

Flipping the lights on over
the meager furniture brought the shadows out of the corners. The dark scared
me… too many ghosts. I slid the curtains back against the wall and let the
afternoon sunshine flood into the room. I hurried into my room and changed
quickly into a light dress.

I did not have a lot of
furniture, but what I did have was of good quality. Most were antiques I had
inherited from my mother’s family. Old, heavy pieces built to withstand the
rigors of time. As I walked into the kitchen, I trailed my fingers over the
smooth wood of the old armoire I kept in the living room.

The kitchen was definitely
my favorite room of the house. It was always
bright,
a
shining yellow that the previous owner had left as a mark. I had
detested it at
first, but slowly, I
grew to
love it. It was never dark in here.
Never
dismal.
I thought of all the
nights that I had spent in this
kitchen,
nights
when the faces of the dead would haunt me. Even after their cases had been
solved and the victims had been put to rest, I was never left alone. One thing
I had learned is that families may say goodbye, but spirits never do.

I couldn’t help but smile at
the rows of plants I had in the windowsill. I carefully watered each before
filling a tall glass full of tea and stepping out onto the old wood porch. The
screen door slammed behind me.

“Why, Emily, you startled
me!”  Mrs. Robinson straightened above the old fence that divided our
property. I sat down on the top
step crossing
my
legs at the ankle and stretching them out under the sun.

“How are you, Mrs.
Robinson?”

“I’m well, but I can’t say
the same for my plants.”  She surveyed them with a critical eye. “They’re
all so thirsty.”

I took a sip of my
tea, savoring
the cool, sweet liquid. I squinted in
the bright sunlight. It seemed as if it should be hot outside, like it had been
every day this summer, but an icy wind blew over us suddenly as if to remind us
that the weather was changing. “It seems as if it’s cooling off. Maybe a
storm’s coming in?”  Mrs. Robinson shivered in response.

“As long as it
rains, I don’t mind.” She laughed and I smiled in response.
The white paint on my porch
was chipping in places and I brushed them off my dress as I
stood, leaving
my tea in the shade on the
windowsill. “I suppose I should get some gardening done, too.”

The afternoon passed
pleasantly as I puttered around my backyard. Mrs. Robinson kept me company from
the other side of the picket fence. It wasn’t until the sun was low in the sky
that the screen door to Mrs. Robinson’s house slammed shut.

To anyone that didn’t know
her, Mrs. Dodd appeared to be a sweet old woman. A careful crown of white hair
surrounded her head like a puff of cloud. Her clear blue eyes stood out from
her wrinkled face brightly. But I knew better than to fall for her sweet
exterior. She could be as sharp as a knife to anyone that she took a dislike to
and I had been one of her victims. I stood swiftly and went back inside my
house without glancing at her again.

When I had first
moved in she had practically worshiped me, a
sking me constantly about the cases that I had
solved and chattering nonstop all day. She was, for a time, one of my
followers. I could barely step outside without a small, gnome-like woman being
at my left elbow. She was a mystery buff, she told me eagerly, but then… she
had changed. She turned me into an enemy.
I remember
the day she finally snapped very clearly
.

I had just returned from
talking to the police, going over a kidnapping in the nearby big city. I was
tired. There was so much to do if I was going to get the child back safely. I
felt as if I was moving in slow motion as I approached my door.

“Yoo-hoo!” she had called,
her skinny arm waving eagerly overhead. I thought briefly about ignoring her,
but then sighed and turned towards her instead.

“Have you found that child
yet?”

I shook my head in
response. “
I’m quite tired, Mrs. Dodd. If you don’t
mind, I’ll go over it with you later. The details I can discuss, that is.” I
was
tired. I was tired of the way she acted lately. Her friendliness had changed
over the weeks to a sort of craftiness. Her knowing old eyes were always
watching. I knew that she attended church regularly. At first, I had thought
that all of her questions about my psychic abilities had been out of
friendliness or curiosity. Lately, I had come to suspect that it was out of
malice or hatred for the supernatural. Those were the only reasons I could come
up with for her change in behavior towards me.

She adeptly ignored my plea
for a later conversation that day. She was good at that. Her daughter smiled at
me in sympathy from the open window. I couldn’t help but grin back in response.

Suddenly I noticed the old
lady had stopped talking. She was staring at me, hard. Her friendly blue eyes
narrowed suddenly.

“What is it, Mrs. Dodd?” I
noticed her eyes were locked on the thin, filigree cross that I wore around my
neck. It was intricately wrought and quite beautiful. I had loved it the moment
I saw it.

“Where did you get that
cross?” The
old woman stretched out a thin finger
towards the
cross as
if to touch it.

I jerked away instinctively.
I didn’t like the look her in eyes.

“Mother, what are you
doing?”  Mrs. Robinson called from inside the house. She had noticed the
exchange and rushed to my aid as the old woman stared at me as if frozen.

“She’s not supposed to have
that.” The
old woman jerked
away
from her daughter’s grasp, glaring at me angrily now, almost hostile.

“It’s a cross, mother.
Anyone can wear one.”  Mrs. Robinson colored red in the face as she tried
to pull her mother towards the house.

“Give it to
me,” the
old woman demanded, stretching a gnarled
hand out towards me. I covered the cross with my own hand.

“You give that to
me.” She
lunged
towards me, but her daughter restrained her, begging her to come in the house.
I retreated swiftly to my own home, the woman’s angry shouts still ringing in
my ears.

“You witch!” Her shrill
screams flooded the neighborhood with a ringing as clear as church bells. “I
knew you were a bad one! From the moment you came! Psychic!” she said
contemptuously. “I say evil.
Evil!”
 

Her screams turned to sobs
shortly after.
I saw from the corner of my kitchen,
Mrs. Dodd’s daughter leading her sobbing into the house, her arm around the old
woman’s shoulders.

   
Several
neighbors were gathered in the street, muttering to each other. A few of the
Baxter children were laughing. Their mother hurriedly shushed them and tried,
unsuccessfully, to herd them into their home. I watched it all from the safety
of the shadows in my living
room, scared and alone.

But this
time, it
was different. No one was staring at my
house with suspicion. They were glaring at the old lady. She had angered too
many people in the neighborhood with her old- fashioned ideas. She never
hesitated to push her views on others and many who had been embarrassed by her
had grown to hate her with a vengeance.

The next
day, neighbors
who had barely nodded hello to me
before went out of the way to be friendly, some even coming over to introduce
themselves
. Although I didn’t form any lasting friendships
with my neighbors, besides Mrs. Robinson, I felt a peace come over me that I
hadn’t known before. I knew then that I was safe.

The next morning found me
back at the police station. I felt strangely anxious and I wasn’t sure why. A
great weight had settled in my stomach as I tried to choke down breakfast and
it steadfastly refused to shift.

Detective Dunn met me at the
door of
the station, walking
me inside. In his
hand he held a large
white bag, stained
red in
one corner. I tried not to stare, but it reminded me strangely of something. He
held up the bag for inspection, grinning
widely.
“Jelly
donuts. Kind of cliché, I know.”  Some of the jelly seemed
to have dripped onto his
shoe, staining
it a
dark red.

An overwhelmingly sweet
smell engulfed me as he thrust the open bag in my
face.
“Help
yourself.”

“No
thanks.”
My
stomach twisted and turned. I held up a hand in
rejection. “I’m
actually not feeling too well.”

His brow furrowed in
concern.
Rolling the bag up tightly,
he
tucked it under his arm without regard to the jelly still
dripping out.
“I’m sorry, did you catch something?”

“No.” I took a
deep breath. “Yesterday… doing a reading
like
that….
It exhausted me.
It
really takes it out of me.” He nodded in sympathy, but didn’t say anything. I
guess it would be hard to identify with my problems.

 I didn’t like the way
he was peering so closely at my face. I knew I had deep, dark circles under my
eyes. I turned almost away from him as we fell into step down the hall.

He opened the door for me. I
paused and tucked my loose hair behind my ears. I was reluctant to go inside. I
didn’t want to face what was to come.
Detective Simms
already sat behind the table, grinning up at me like a fiend.
A demon meeting a comrade with delight.
I groaned
inside, imagining
all the tests he would probably
put me through today.

The room was exactly the
same which
oddly surprised me somehow. The day
before I had been struck by the strong feeling that nothing had changed in that
room for years, and yet, the very next day I was shocked to find it the same.

I smoothed my skirt down
over my
knees, shifting
uncomfortably in the
hard chair.

“We’ve got some
pictures we would like for you to look at…. If that wouldn’t be too hard on
you,” Detective Dunn was quick to add.
I met his glance appreciatively.

Detective Simms
stared back and forth between us, grimacing. “And what’s wrong with you?” 
He held his hand out impatiently for a
donut
.

“Nothing.
I mean, I just don’t feel
that well.”

“I hope this isn’t going to
affect your visions.” He said it mockingly, but I could sense a bit of concern
in his voice.
So they don’t have any leads
, I thought.

I relaxed a little and ventured
a small
smile. “Where
are they?”

Detective Simms raised his
eyebrows, but didn’t say anything as he tossed the pictures onto the table.
Seeing them made me almost physically ill.

A young woman seemed to
stare back at me with almost closed eyes….

Wide eyed, the young woman
stared at her killer, shock spilling over all of her features as the sharp
knife found its target. Blood ran in rivers over the floor as she slumped to
the
ground, clinging
at the killer as if
trying to pull herself back up. Her blue eyes were filled with such surprise….

I created identities for the
perpetrators of crimes based mainly on the crimes that were committed. It’s how
I referred to these beings that flooded my mind, keeping them separate from
myself, only inviting them in when required. This was definitely murder and I
thought of the perpetrator as The Killer.

The killer laid her gently
on the floor. The girl’s head
reclined back. “Why?”
she whispered,
but received no response.

“She was stabbed,” I said,
before shuffling through the pictures quickly, forcing myself to glance at each
one.

As expected, none of the
pictures showed any indication of how she may have died. Most were close shots
of the victim’s face and one was of a curled hand. The looks on the detective’s
faces confirmed what I had said.

Detective Dunn leaned back
in his
seat, letting
his breath out slowly. I
was relieved to see that Simms was looking at me with a new respect, though
still guarded. I felt I could almost read his mind…
maybe
she’s the real deal, or maybe she’s just a good
guesser.