The Gift of Illusion: A Thriller (4 page)

“It’s Lori. She’s been acting up. I don’t
know what her problem is.”

“What did she do?”

“I’ll explain when you get home.”

“I’ll try and get out of here as fast as I
can. But I can’t promise anything.”

“Okay.”

“Then I’ll see you when I get home.”

Carol hung up the phone and walked into the
living room. She glanced up the stairs at Lori’s bedroom and
wondered what could be going on with her daughter. What happened to
the polite girl who made good grades in school, the girl who
couldn’t go to sleep at night without being tucked in first?

9

James Ackerman arrived home from work over
two hours after his conversation with his wife. Carol sat on the
living room sofa reading a new rousing romance novel when he
emerged from the front door.

“Sorry, honey, but you know how these things
go,” he said, hurrying into the kitchen.

Carol kept her face buried in the thin
paperback and acted like she hadn’t noticed her husband’s sudden
arrival.

“I guess I’m a little late for dinner, huh?”
He waited for a response from his wife. Hearing none, he headed
into the living room. “Honey.”

“A little,” Carol said, not shifting her
eyes from the romance. “Actually, there was no dinner.”

“What do you mean? Didn’t you cook
tonight?”

Carol finally set the book down and looked
up at her husband leaning one arm against the crook of the kitchen
doorway.

“What’s the point? My husband wasn’t around
to eat and my daughter decided to go without food tonight.”

“Okay, what’s wrong with Lori?”

Carol left the sofa and walked toward James.
“I don’t know. But she’s been acting pretty strange lately.”

“Does this have something to do with
school?”

“Somewhat.”

“Okay, what?”

“Well, let’s see. For starters, I had to
drive her to school today.”

James walked back into the kitchen and
opened up the refrigerator.

“Why? What’s wrong with the bus?” he asked,
pouring a glass of iced tea.

“Nothing as far as I know. This morning she
purposely took forever getting ready so that she would miss the
bus.”

James squinted as he sucked back some very
sweet tea.

“She's having problems with her
friends.”

“Really?”

“That's what she said. She cried, James. She
got down on her knees and cried. She begged me not to make her
go.”

James shrugged his shoulders and stepped out
of the kitchen. “Well, she’s cried before when she didn’t get her
way.”

“I’ve never seen her cry like this.
Something’s wrong with her."

James sat down on the couch. “I'll have a
talk with her tomorrow."

“Well, there's something else," Carol
continued. "On the way home I caught her at the corner of Fairway
at the park.”

“She was at the park by
herself?
Where was Mrs. Mills?”

“I don’t think Lori ever went next door. I
haven’t talked to Brenda yet about it either. But the fact that she
was at the park by herself isn’t what’s worrying me. It’s the way
she acted when I found her. She never said a word, even though it
felt like she wanted to. Do you understand?”

James shook his head. "No."

“You should have seen her. Her face was pale
white. Her eyes were so glossy you would have thought they’d turned
to glass. At one point, I stopped yelling and just stared at her.
And she just stared back, with her mouth open, like she didn’t
remember who I was.”

10

Carol lay in bed with her eyes open. She
turned and looked over at the illuminated alarm clock sitting on
the nightstand.

It was almost midnight.

For at least an hour, she tried to clear her
thoughts, tried not to worry about her daughter. But right as she
would fall asleep, a horrible vision would pop into her
head—visions of disease, some even of death. Afterward, her heart
would race, her lungs would tighten, and her eyes would be open
again.

Fifteen minutes had passed before Carol
finally decided to close her eyes again, and that’s when she heard
the footsteps in the hallway.

She sat up in bed and listened.

The footsteps moved closer.

The hallway light now shined from underneath
the door.

Carol looked over at James sleeping soundly
beside her and wondered whether to wake him, but before she could
finish pondering, the bedroom door cracked open and her daughter
emerged in the light.

“Lori,” Carol whispered. “What are you still
doing up? You should be in bed.”

“I can’t get to sleep,” Lori said
softly.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Can you come tuck me in?”

“Oh, sure, honey,” she said, swinging her
legs off the bed. It had been weeks since she had last tucked her
daughter in. She missed it.

James woke, rolled over, and asked: “Where
are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

Lori was already lying in her bed when her
mother entered the room. Carol walked over to the bed and grabbed
the sheets to pull over her daughter.

“I’m glad you decided to talk to me,” she
said. “I was getting worried about you.”

“Don’t worry, Mommy. I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear. Would you like a kiss,
too?”

Lori nodded.

Carol smiled and leaned over to kiss her
daughter.

11

Not seconds after her mother left the room,
Lori started to feel different.

Every nerve in her body tingled in an
uncontrollable dance. Her hands shook incessantly like branches on
a tree with the coming of a violent storm. She could feel her heart
pounding inside her chest. The room became piping hot and within a
matter of seconds sweat gleamed atop her body.

She jumped out of bed and opened a window.
The sixty-five degree temperature outside did little to cool her
and her skin acted as a repellent to the wind. She collapsed back
on the bed and gasped for air. Her bed sheets became saturated with
sweat as the room temperature continued to rise. Her whole body
shook, every muscle vibrating back and forth like an anarchic
guitar string.

Heat rushed to the surface of her body.

Skin blistered, popped.

Her bladder released some of the building
pressure and a puddle of urine soiled the white sheets between her
thighs.

She could no longer hear the breeze rustling
through the curtains. All she could hear was her heart pounding
faster and faster and louder and louder inside her chest.

Until the darkness overwhelmed her, and
silence everlasting

Chapter Two

1

Elmwood Police Department.

“Winters,” called Police Chief Donald
Stevens from across the building.

Isaac grabbed a cup of coffee and made his
way to the other end of the precinct. Stevens sat down behind his
desk as Isaac arrived at the doorway.

“Take a seat,” said the husky black man with
a thick, boisterous mustache.

Isaac sat down in a red leather chair at the
other end of the desk and watched the chief gnaw at the eraser end
of a pencil, scanning a manila folder.

Stevens slid the folder across the desk. “I
have something I want you to see.”

Inside the folder were a half a dozen black
and white photographs. Isaac perused the photos and then looked up
at his superior. “Okay. What's the deal?”

“The deal?” the chief repeated. “Doesn’t
this look strange to you?”

Isaac flipped through the photos again. He
couldn’t tell if anything was strange or not, most of the photos
were almost entirely blackened and seemed a touch out of focus.

Stevens slid another photo across the desk.
It was of a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old. A school
photo. "This is Lori Ackerman. In those photos is what's left of
her."

“That black smudge is a little girl?”

"Yes."

"She burned to death. That's horrible."

“Notice the outside edges of the bed are
still in pretty good shape and almost nothing else in the room was
even mildly damaged.”

Isaac couldn’t believe his eyes. If Stevens
was correct, all that remained of the little girl was just ashes on
a bed. How does the famous nursery rhyme go again:
ashes, ashes,
we all fall down?

“Is that a foot draping off the bed?”

Stevens leaned over the desk and glanced at
the bottom of the present photo. “Yes,” he said, then reclined back
in his chair.

Isaac rubbed at the two-day stubble on his
chin and shook his head with an uncommon case of disbelief.

“Let me ask you something.”

“Shoot,” said Isaac.

“What kind of fire could do something like
this?” The chief raised his eyebrows with a half excited, half
suspicious look on his face.

Isaac didn’t answer. He had no idea.

“A controlled one, perhaps?”

Isaac finally looked up from the photos. “No
accident, huh?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Stevens said, scratching
at the roof of his forehead. “All I know is what I see in those
photos. And it looks pretty damn hard to believe.”

“Well, yeah,” Isaac said, trying not to seem
too surprised, if there were such a feeling. After twenty years in
law enforcement and numerous investigations little surprised him
anymore. This morning, however, these strange photos, reminded him
of the old days. Days better left forgotten.

“So far any reasonable source from which the
fire could’ve evolved hasn’t been found, and I find that even
harder to believe.”

Isaac set the photographs down on the desk
and took a small sip of coffee.

“Who’s covering the investigation?”

Stevens smiled, his black mustache widened.
“You are,” he said, pointing his finger across the desk.

Isaac sighed. This was not what he wanted.
Today he had planned a busy schedule of sitting around and
pretending he was on vacation, like usual.

“Take the folder with you. I want you to
start right away, you know, while the dust is still fresh.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, the parents are staying at the
Goodnight motel off Fairway. Do what you do best. You never
know.”

As Isaac was leaving the office, Stevens
yelled, “Oh, and take Simmons with you.”

2

Isaac didn’t care much for the idea of
toting all two hundred and fifty sweating pounds of Daniel Simmons
around with him, while being constantly bombarded with every
goddamn obnoxious question Simmons could think to ask. He had no
idea how Simmons became a detective, but he hadn’t been one for
long. One day, like the pesky itch at the bottom of your foot that
only comes after you’ve put on your shoe, the fat man just
appeared. At first nobody questioned Simmons’s ability as an
investigator, it was only after they worked with him a couple of
times that something started to smell fishy, and it wasn’t just the
white undershirt slapped over his back.

Daniel Simmons was forty-two years old, only
four years younger than Isaac, and yet seemed to have no experience
in the field. He knew nothing of how to search for clues or
properly contain evidence, which was mighty peculiar since he
carried the same badge as the most decorated men on the force.

All of this was a big deal to most, but
Isaac really didn’t care. Big deal if Simmons didn’t know the first
damn thing about being a detective. Ever since Linda’s death, Isaac
cared less and less about doing the noble work, about being the
world's shit
pickeruper.
The only problem Isaac had with
Simmons was the excessive diarrhea from his mouth.

“So what are we doing?” Simmons asked from
the passenger seat of the black Dodge Charger.

“We’re going to 2420 Maria Avenue.”

Simmons wiped a hand down his dark brown
mustache then glanced over at Isaac. A puzzled grin rose on his
face. “Well, I know, but—”

“Look, I know what you mean. And I don’t
know exactly what we’re doing either. I’m in the dark as much as
you. I guess we’ll both find out when we get there. Did you see the
photographs?”

“Photographs?” Simmons repeated with the
half assed, puzzled grin on his face. The grin was a Simmons
trademark, one hundred percent his own.

“You didn’t see them?” Isaac asked again,
glancing over at Simmons.

The heavy man still wore the ridiculous
Muppet grin.

“No. I guess I’m a little more in the
dark.”

“Well, you can’t tell much from the photos
anyway.”

“I'd still like to see them.”

What made the photos horrifying was not what
you saw, but what you didn’t see, and in this case, what you didn’t
see was the young girl’s body. The ash leftover of eleven-year-old
Lori Ackerman rested inside a large hole where the fire had burned
through the mattress. A space about six inches around the bed
appeared untouched, still white, and other than the half melted
lampshade from the nightstand, everything else looked fine, at
least in the photographs.

“They’re in the back seat in the
folder.”

Simmons reached back and snagged the folder
between his middle and index finger. Then he removed the six black
and white photographs and sorted through them.

“Damn,” he said almost immediately. “Is that
a foot?”

“Yeah, that’s a foot.” Isaac didn’t even
have to look. Yes, he remembered a foot, just one. The right foot
he had thought.

He watched Simmons flip through and examine
each of the photos. He wondered if the look of disbelief on
Simmons’s face was the same look he had given Chief Stevens back at
the precinct.

“What happened?”

“A fire happened.”

“When?”

“Last night. About midnight, I think. Those
photos were taken very early this morning.”

“Who was it? In the photos, I mean,” said
Simmons, sliding the photos back into the folder.