Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (22 page)

Here's the transcription
of that message: "Ash, this is Jim. I got your package. It ties
this thing. I rousted a guy from Ojai about ten years ago. Creep
named Campbell. He was manufacturing LSD up there, and it found its
way to some kids at UCLA. One of those kids had a bad one and
walked off a roof, ten stories up. I took it on my own to roust the
guy, off my turf, and blew the whole thing. Found his plant but no
hard evidence. Couldn't have made it stick, anyway. Didn't have
jurisdiction, and I broke every rule in the book. Guess I was quite
the hot dog back then. Make a long story short, I didn't nail
Campbell. But there was this scared-looking kid up there who wanted
out, so I brought her out with me. She was about five months'
pregnant. I brought her down here and checked her into a home for
unwed mothers. End of story. Or so I thought. Didn't make the
connection with this Jane Doeuntil... Shit, I was with the kid for
about three hours all told. I'd forgotten the whole thing. She
seemed familiar, yeah, but it was the resemblance to Vicky that
threw me off. Anyway, I wanted you to know...case is solved. My
thanks, buddy, and you can bill me for two days, but let's watch
those expenses. Let's keep in touch. Georgia would like to have you
for dinner some night soon."

Message number six was
from Cochran also. It was recorded at twenty minutes past three,
same afternoon. This is what he said this time: "Ash, Jim again.
Disregard that last. I fucking lied like hell, and it's no time for
lies, I guess. I'm afraid that Georgia and the kids may be in
extreme danger. I'm into some kind of crazy shit, and it's driving
me batty. That's why I called you in. It's your kind of shit. I
don't know how to handle it, and it doesn't make much sense to...I
mean, what kind of asshole goes to a doctor with cancer and then
stonewalls the symptoms? See, I'm apologizing for—well, no, I'm
not—I feel dumb for calling you in and then stonewalling you, but
I'm not apologizing for...uh, shit, Ash, I'm all screwed up. I'm
scared. I'm going to try to set this whole thing down right now, I
mean for period and end of paragraph, over, done with. But I'm just
a cop, I'm not a magician, and I think maybe a magician is needed
for this one. If I fuck it up, I want you to know...Georgia and the
kids...safe it for them. I hope you're a magician. Here is God's
truth, Ash. This Jane Doe's real identity is Maya Czeti—that's
c-z-e-t-i—I think it's Gypsy or something close. She's been coming
around all these years. All hours of the day and night. Not really
often until the last year or so. I mean, we didn't really see her
all that often, maybe two or three times a year. Lately, though,
this past year, it's been just constantly in and out. Driving us
nuts. We don't know how the hell she gets in the house. Just blam,
there she is, right through locked doors and windows. She comes to
talk to Vicky. We wake up in the middle of the night and hear them
in Vicky's bedroom. Vicky won't talk to us, never has, never a
word, but she sits in her room in the middle of the night and talks
a blue streak with this woman in some foreign language. They even
laugh and play games. Every time I tried to grab this woman, she
flat disappeared. I mean, blip and she's gone. For the past couple
of years it has been very obvious who this woman is. I mean, God,
you saw the resemblance yourself. Part of what I told you before is
true. I did meet her in Ojai, and I met her through this Campbell
creep. Okay, well, I didn't just meet her. We had a thing going for
several months. I don't know, I guess Vicky could really be my kid.
But I had no inkling of that when I took her in. Frank Valdiva
brought her to our attention. She'd been abandoned on the station's
steps. Frank knew we were trying to adopt. We applied for the
foster care, and Frank provided the inside track for us. I didn't
know—"

He'd used his full five minutes for that
one. The tone sounded and the recording stopped. He was right back
again, though, in message number seven. Also eight, nine, and ten.
I won't take you through that entire emotional outpouring. Much of
it was confused and almost incoherent, anyway. The poor guy had
been in a hell of a state, and it seemed to worsen as he went along
with the story. The gist of it, as I distilled the emotional
recordings, was that Cochran somehow had been personally involved
with Gordon Campbell and his place in Ojai. He hinted at a sex
cult with satanic overtones. Maya Czeti—whom we now know as
May-un-chee-tee—was but one of a constantly revolving "stable" of
highly sexed women who were, from time to time, available for
frolic in elaborately staged rituals. The details of this
particular part of the story sounded very close to my own
experience at Ojai, except that in Jim's version he acted as a
"procurer" for well-heeled playboys from L.A. who were delighted to
shell out heavily for such offbeat delights.

After several months of
that Cochran discovered that Campbell was also into mind-altering
drugs, and apparently there actually had been an incident in which
a college student was killed while under the influence of
Campbell's stuff. Jim's affair with Maya Czeti—despite a language
barrier—had meanwhile ripened to the point that he was seriously
considering leaving Georgia to set up housekeeping with Maya.
Apparently the only thing that saved the marriage was Maya's
refusal to leave Ojai. Jim thought that she was afraid of Campbell,
that she was thoroughly under his influence. But he left her there
when he discovered the LSD connection, and tried to put her out of
his mind. Apparently he did that rather well, because he says he
did not see her again until Vicky was nearly a year old, and then
Maya was no more than a wraith who invaded the Cochran home
occasionally to visit her child, and he did not actually get a
good look at her until during the repeated visits of the past
year.

He was strongly concerned
by this time and went to Ojai for a showdown. Gordon Campbell was
still doing business at the same stand, but Maya was not. This was
nine years after Vicky was born. Campbell insisted he had not seen
Maya during all those years and denied any knowledge of a child. It
appears that Cochran had a talk with Oom-ray-key- too, whom he
first confused with Maya, but he did not tell me what they
discussed.

He ended the emotional
recital with the confession: "I killed her, Ash. I know damned well
I killed her. It wasn't premeditated. She just made the mistake of
barging in one night while I was retiling Vicky's bathroom. I was
standing there with a crowbar in my hands. Suddenly there she was.
God, I feel...ashamed...but it was like swatting a fly you've been
trying to nail all day. There she was and there I was. I swung at
her, guess I figured the bar would just pass right through her. I'd
already decided she had to be a ghost. But she was flesh and bone.
Flesh and bone, pal, and I was a killer. I know damned well she was
dead. I've seen enough of that to know it when I see it. She was
totally wasted. I panicked. You know the rest, and you know that
she came back. I don't know how the hell she did that. I'm
wondering now if Campbell is not the jerk I always thought he was.
I thought all the mumbo jumbo was just part of the shtick, but now
I don't know. She is still not dead, Ash. Even though somebody
wasted her again yesterday—Campbell, I think—but God knows why.
Anyway, I told you I need a magician. Maybe what I need is a
priest. Because she is not dead.

I saw her, not thirty minutes ago, with
Vicky. Now I'm scared as hell for Vicky. You said something—you
said— you tumbled to something, I forget what you said, I just want
you to know it's for real. I'm going to try to put a cap on this
thing. If I can't, Ash...if I can't do that, I'm relying on you to
finish it properly. And I'll haunt your ass all the way through
hell if you don't. But no fee, asshole. You owe me this one."

I owed him this one, yes.
He was reminding me of a time several years earlier when he
casually mentioned to me something about kids and their "made-up
friends." He had not been specific, nor had he seemed particularly
worried at the time, and I had forgotten the incident entirely
until this reminder. I had assured him that it was entirely natural
for children to invent nonexistent companions, to converse with
them and play games with them, have tea parties with them. I even
told him it was a natural part of their creative development:
"Don't worry about it."

He should have worried about it.

And, yes, I owed him this one.

Chapter Thirty-One: In the Eyes
of a Child

I spent the next hour and
twenty minutes playing with my computer, this time with a telephone
modem and an illicit hacker's directory listing access codes to
various official and unofficial data pools. I don't really believe
in invading private records, and I try to avoid that, but I figure
that government data banks belong to the people, and I am one of
those people, so I use them when it is really important that I do
so.

I figured this time was
important. I hit the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the
Bureau of Vital Statistics, and the Franchise Tax Board for
information on the various principals of this case. Then I figured
what the hell and went into some credit-reporting services and a
large escrow house, plus some local government files.

I developed some interesting information in
that search, then I took another hour trying to synthesize the more
promising elements toward a coherent sensing of certain
interrelationships.

And the thing got curiouser and
curiouser.

For one thing, Alison Saunders appeared to
have sprung from nowhere about the moment she became May-un's
therapist.

For another, both Jim Cochran and Frank
Valdiva were living far beyond their means, had been for years.

Gordon Campbell, on the other hand, showed
an entirely pedestrian profile. Middle-class, conservative,
scrupulously paid his taxes and his bills, lived simply.

Georgia Cochran still
belonged to the Screen Actors Guild and apparently spent a lot of
time in fitness salons and acting classes, served on several
charities. She also paid a lot of medical bills, above and beyond
the family's medical insurance coverage.

Vicky-Victoria and Manuel-Manuel Cochran
both attended special-education classes in public school. Both
were "good" students. Vicky had a behavior problem. Manuel was
considered brilliant in "reading comprehension and reasoning with
words."

To no surprise whatever,
Maya Czeti did not officially exist.

I dug out a backup pistol, an old World War
II Luger, and loaded two extra clips for it, then made a few phone
calls. One to Alison, a dinner date for eight o'clock. Another to
Georgia Cochran, an appointment at her home for seven. Then I
called Gordon Campbell's place in Ojai, spoke to Oom, arranged a
midnight meeting. Finally I called Captain Valdiva at his office.
He was not in. I left a message. Then I hit the shower, stood in it
until the water ran cold, lay down naked on my bed, and encouraged
alpha rhythms for thirty minutes, got up refreshed, shaved and
dressed for the evening, and was on my way by six.

It was not the best time
to be making one's way crosstown in Los Angeles. The coast highway
was a mess, Santa Monica was a mess, Brentwood and Beverly Hills
were purely crazy, Hollywood was beginning to idle back a bit by
the time I reached that point. I arrived at the Cochran home ten
minutes late. I hate that. In Los Angeles, though, you learn that
punctuality is not a virtue; it is a mere stroke of luck. No matter
how you may plan a crosstown drive, at whatever time of day or
night, the chances are equal that you will arrive a half hour early
or a half hour late. And yet the highway system here is unequaled
anywhere in the world. But so is the automobile density.

So I figured ten minutes
late was pretty good, but I still hated it. Someone else did too.
Manuel-Manuel was impatiently awaiting my arrival. Game little
kid. He was at my door and opening it for me even before I could
kill the engine.

"I was getting worried," he told me.

I said, "Sorry, pal, the traffic was
intense."

He said, "Yes, I know. I figured that was
the problem."

A uniformed cop got out of a patrol car that
was parked at the curb in front of the house, came over to check my
ID. Manuel vouched for me. The cop grinned and returned to his
post.

I picked up Manuel and held him in one arm
while securing the Maserati. He was surprisingly light. I've held
heavier babies. I told him gruffly, "Don't bitch. You're not too
old to be carried."

He replied, "Well, I really am, but we'll
probably get inside a lot faster this way. It's okay, I don't mind.
I've learned to accept my limitations."

I said, "They're all purely physical, kid,"
and meant it. This guy was eight years old going on thirty. "How's
your mom doing?" I asked as we approached the house.

"I guess she's doing very well," he replied
soberly. "They say it sometimes takes a while for tragedy to soak
in. I think she's in the numb stage."

Indeed. Eight years old. I told him,
remembering what he'd told me about the meaning of his name, "God
is here, Manuel."

He said, "Yes, I know. I'm glad I'm here
too. Death is harder on women, they say, because they are
biologically closer to life. I can handle this better than they
can."

This could have been a dialogue with a
fifty-year-old enlightened one. And maybe it was. I rang the door
bell as I told him, "Just don't try to handle too much, pal. We all
need to vent the emotions now and then."