Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (6 page)

Ignorance can be bliss,
yes. This guy had missed me by just a few minutes, probably. I had
left home at about a quarter after eight, for the meeting with
Souza. Gavinsky could have arrived on the scene by eight-thirty,
easy, a paid assassin, settling into the wait for his pigeon with a
scope and a silencer. If I had gone straight home from Griffith, I
would have walked blissfully ignorant into a simple hit. But who
wanted me hit? And why? On the other hand, who had hit the hitter?
And why? Surely not... No. This was not Greg Souza's style. If he
had wanted the guy out of the picture, and if he could get close
enough to slit his throat, then he would have chloroformed him or
hit him with some exotic state-of-the-art chemical, driven him up
into the hills somewhere, torched the car and shoved it over the
side. I'm not saying that Greg would do something like that, but
that's the way he
would
do it. Greg went to the same schools that I went
to.

I did some housekeeping around the scene
just to make sure there was nothing of me left behind, then I got
the hell away from there and took the beach way into my place,
threw some things in a bag, got the hell out.

My hands were shaking so I
had a problem unlocking the Maserati. I fired her up and did a
quick, quiet U-turn, went on down for a few blocks, pulled over to
the curb and did a quick fix on my nervous system—chemicals, yes,
but from the right brain, not from any streetcorner physician. Took
about forty seconds to get the rhythms into a strong alpha pattern;
another twenty seconds with that focus got rid of my shakes but I
came out of that feeling very agitated and disturbed about
Jennifer Harrel. Nothing specific, just a hazy sort of
apprehension.

I had been gone for about fifteen minutes
when I nosed the Maserati into the small shopping center; for some
reason, feeling more like Greg Souza every second, I did a quick
recon of the parking lot, checking out the dozen or so cars that
were parked there before I pulled up in front of the boutique. A
couple of browsers were inside, both women, but no sign of
Jennifer.

I went in, caught the clerk's attention and
jerked a thumb toward the dressing room. "She still in there?"

The clerk replied, "Why, no, she left quite
awhile ago."

I observed, with some irritation, "I've only
been gone fifteen minutes."

The woman told me, "Well I'm sorry. She
wasn't here more than five."

I said, "Look, this is serious. The lady may
be suffering a bit of shock. Did she go out of here on her own
steam?"

"I certainly did not kick her out, if that's
what you mean," she replied huffily. "After all..."

I said, "No no, I'm not implying—I'm just
worried about her. Did she leave here by herself?"

But I was already on this lady's list. She
said, icily, "I have more to do than try to keep track of
quarreling lovers. Stolen clothes, indeed."

So much for that. A small
diner and a bar were the only other businesses still open in that
center. I checked them both; negative. Then I saw the phone booth,
out near the street, and felt drawn to it. She'd been there, in
there, yes. No visible evidence, but the traces she'd left behind
for me were as palpable as a perfumed scent. As I stood there, my
hand on that telephone, one of the things did me and I knew I had a
lock on her. It was not a voice or a vision or anything like that;
I just "knew" where she'd gone, and I knew why, as though suddenly
remembering something that I had done myself.

She had called "Jack," at the Hughes
Laboratories, and asked to borrow a car. She had done that in a
mental frenzy approaching full panic, and the subject of that panic
was Isaac Donaldson. Then she had paced around that phone booth for
several minutes, agitation growing, eyes flaring to identify each
vehicle that turned into the shopping center. That was all I had.
It was enough.

I returned to the Maserati
and sent her back up the coast highway, across Malibu Creek and up
the hill inland past the Pepperdine campus. The controlled-access
drive leading into the Hughes complex was, yes, just a three-minute
trip. Plenty enough time to dispatch a car down the hill and beat
me to the shopping center. I wondered, then, however idly, if that
had been about the time I was playing with my alphas.

I was parked in the shadows just below the
Hughes entrance when the small silver sedan made its cautious exit
and poised there for a moment before turning out onto the
northbound lane. I could not see the occupant of that car but I
knew that it was her. I had a lock, so I did not even have to
follow too closely.

She was heading north along Malibu Canyon
Road, streaking toward the Ventura Freeway, no doubt. She would
not go west from there. She would go east. I knew it, could almost
feel the map spreading through her mind.

Jennifer was going to Isaac.

And so, about damn time, was I.

Chapter Seven: Eyes Up

I was running about a half-mile off
Jennifer's rear bumper, surging closer for visual contact at each
freeway interchange just for damn sure, as we crossed the entire
Los Angeles basin from northwest to southeast—and that is a hell of
a run. The Ventura Freeway merged into the Foothill at Pasadena,
that one into the Corona Freeway near Pomona, streaking south by
southeast from that point on Interstate 15 to join I-15E at
Murietta Hot Springs—and, by now, we are rolling due south through
minimally populated countryside, dairy farms and horse ranches,
climbing into a high valley with the Santa Ana Mountains to the
west and the San Jacinto range east—an area of beautifully
sculptured "mashed potato" hillocks scattered about at random,
formed as a high desert in some dim geological era but now
responding to the stubborn hand of man to yield square mile upon
square mile of citrus and avocado, a lush agricultural bounty which
reminded me that fanning remains California's number one
industry.

But I was reminded, also,
that I was getting deeper and deeper into backcountry while the gas
gauge on the Maserati was falling faster and faster toward pure
air—and this car has never been known to run on psychic energy, so
I began looking for a refueling spot. I pulled off at Rancho
California, a small town that has been growing steadily the past
few years with the lure of country estates within commuting
distance from the coast. Jennifer kept on truckin' south so I made
just a quick pit-stop that give her maybe a three-to-five-mile
lead. By now we are in a totally different weather situation. The
air is dry and transparent, skies clear and moonlit, and I am
beginning to enjoy this tour of the countryside.

I had consulted a road map
during the pause at Rancho California because I really had only a
very vague sensing of relative position. Best I could make it, I
was about thirty miles due east of San Juan Capistrano and the
Pacific, roughly fifty miles due north of San Diego on the old
US395 route, now I-15, and just a few miles north of the junction
with state route 76 which climbs eastward toward Palomar Mountain.
I had "known" since the beginning of this trek that Palomar was our
goal. I had to admit that this was probably the fastest route but
if I had been setting off on my own I would undoubtedly have taken
the coast route to Oceanside then SR76 into the
interior.

As it worked out, I found
myself "on my own" very shortly after the refueling stop. I didn't
understand what was happening, at first; it just seemed that my
"lock" with Jennifer was weakening. Yet I knew from past experience
that this could not be the result of distancing. Distance
apparently has no effect on psychic energy; I can leap to London or
Paris at the speed of light, in my mind, and so can you. A mere
four or five terrestrial miles of separation between attuned minds
would not affect that linkage.

Yet I was losing her and I
knew it. Let me see if I can explain that, to at least some
approximation of ordinary experience. If you have ever had your car
radio tuned to an FM broadcast while driving cross-country, you
have probably noticed a "fringe area" at the outermost range of a
particular station, an area in which the broadcast volume begins to
subside or to waver, sometimes gaining strength again as you climb
to a higher elevation, sometimes disappearing altogether-and
sometimes you may experience a Ping-Pong effect between two
stations at the same wavelength, where first you hear one station
and then the other, back and forth like that until you finally
leave one station's influence altogether and your radio "locks on"
to the other.

That is sort of like the
problem I was having with Jennifer. I was losing the "lock"—but
unlike radio waves, which are affected by distancing, my "mental
wavelength" should have an infinite range, so I could not
understand why I was having the problem. At first. I could only
presume that she had turned east onto the little two-lane state
highway 76 toward the Pala Indian reservation and Palomar, since
she had blinked-out on me and I was strictly on my own at that
point.

I was forced to consciously break the energy
link as I approached the tiny village of Pala, which is within the
reservation. "Forced" the same way you may be forced to turn off
your radio during an electrical storm: the background noise simply
becomes so loud and disturbing that you cannot tolerate it.

This was not my first encounter with an
Indian reservation. I had experienced disturbing "hits" before in
the vicinity of Indian holy grounds but never anything like this.
For lack of a better explanation, at the time, I decided that the
interference could be the result of special properties of this
particular Indian area, and I made a mental note to look into that
closer one day.

At any rate, I lost my
lock on Jennifer and I did not get it back. Don't ever bet your
life on a psychic's infallibility—and do not ever trust any psychic
who claims to be one hundred percent all of the time. The thing
simply does not work that way. We do not command it. It commands
us, and we can only humbly respond; start feeling arrogant about
"the power" and you lose it damned quick. Keep that in mind during
your own tentative explorations into psychism, and particularly
keep it in mind when consulting any self- proclaimed
"psychic."

So—I was running on my
own, at night, in unfamiliar country, when I began the ascent up
Palomar Mountain, over six-thousand feet to the peak, from near sea
level—a winding and twisting two-lane blacktop with numerous
switchbacks. Moreover, I began to note patches of snow as the climb
continued, then banked snow along the edges of the road, and icy
spots on the roadway itself. So there was really no thought toward
any attempt to overtake Jennifer; I was simply trusting the earlier
reading that Palomar was the destination, while taking great care
that the Maserati make it all the way without incident.

I did not encounter a single vehicle along
the way from the moment I left the state highway and began the
climb along the country road up the mountain, nor were there any
signs of life whatever until I hit the national park area at the
five-thousand-foot level. At that point, a small rustic complex
housed a cafe and market, both closed for the night, and a roadway
signboard informed me that I was still six miles from the
observatory. I pulled into the parking area and lit a cigarette,
got out of the car and stretched my legs, wondering what the hell I
was going to do when I reached the end of the road; I had given no
thought to that, had never been to Palomar before, really knew
nothing about the place.

I did know that Cal Tech
(the California Institute of Technology) owned the facility, and I
recalled reading something to the effect that the Carnegie
Institution shared administrative responsibilities and had
something to do with research priorities. The 200-inch Hale
telescope which had been installed there during the 1940s had been
the world's largest optical instrument until just recently, when
the Russians completed a 236-inch reflector; Palomar, though,
continued to be the free world's chief "eye on the heavens,"
capable of "seeing" to the edge of the known universe, more than
one billion light-years distant.

So much for that, what I knew about Palomar.
I had no idea whatever of the layout of the physical facility.
Accessibility, security... none of that.

While I was stretching my legs and wondering
about things like that, a woman came out of the market and locked
the door from the outside, looked at me, at my car, back at me
again in some quick sizing-up, then called over to me, "Sorry,
we're closed."

I replied, "Yes, thanks, I noticed your
sign. Just stretching the legs."

She observed, amiably, "Cold tonight."

I said, "Sure is."

She continued to stand at the door, watching
me with probably more curiosity than anything else. "Observatory is
straight ahead," she informed me.

I said, "Thanks. I was
following Dr. Harrel. Guess I got a little behind. Lots of ice,
back there. Be careful, if you're heading that way."

"Oh no, I live on up the road," she replied.
"A car went by just a couple of minutes ahead of you, so you're not
far behind." She was moving toward the far side of the building; I
presumed she had a car parked back there somewhere.

I called after her, "People actually live up
here?"

She laughed as she
returned that one and disappeared around the corner. "More than
you'd think."

More than anyone would think, yes. I could
not remember when I had felt more isolated from the rest of
humanity. The silence seemed absolute, pure and pristine, and the
darkness unmarred by human presence. Which, I guess, is why this
mountaintop was chosen as the site for the eye on the universe.