The Vision (9 page)

Mary was sitting up in bed. She used a flap of the dust jacket to mark her place in the book she was reading. “What did the good doctor have to say?”

“He thinks
you
are the poltergeist.”

“Me?”

“He says you were under stress—”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Especially you.”

“Was I?”

“Because you remembered about Berton Mitchell.”

“I’ve remembered about him before.”

“This time you recalled more than ever. Cauvel says you were under great psychological stress in his office, and that
you
caused the glass dogs to fly about.”

She smiled. “A man your size looks just too cute in pajamas.”

“Mary—”

“Especially yellow pajamas. You should wear just a robe.”

“You’re avoiding this.” He came to the foot of the bed. “What about the glass dogs?”

“Cauvel just wants me to pay for them,” she said airily.

“He didn’t mention money.”

“That’s what he was angling for.”

“He’s not the type,” Max said.

“I’ll pay half the value of the dogs.”

Exasperated, Max said, “Mary, that’s not necessary.”

“I know,” she said lightly. “I didn’t break them.”

“I mean, Cauvel isn’t asking to be paid. You’re trying to avoid the main issue.”

“Okay, okay. So
how
did I cause glass dogs to fly about?”

“Unconsciously. Cauvel says—”

“Psychiatrists always blame the unconscious.”

“Who’s to say they’re wrong?”

“They’re stupid.”

“Mary—”

“And you’re stupid for believing Cauvel.”

She didn’t want to argue, but she couldn’t control herself. She was frightened by the direction the conversation was taking, although she didn’t know why she should be. She was terrified of some knowledge that lay within her, but she couldn’t understand what that might be.

Standing like a preacher, holding his book as if it were a Bible, Max said, “Will you listen?”

She shook her head to indicate she found him too irritating to bear. “If I’m responsible for his figurines getting busted up, am I also to blame for the bad weather in the East, for the war in Africa, for inflation, for poverty, for the recent crop failures?”

“Sarcasm.”

“You encourage it.”

The tranquilizer was doing her no good whatsoever. She was tense. Trembling. Like a shallow-water, feathery sea anemone quivering in the subtle currents that preceded a storm, she was nervously aware of unseen forces that could destroy her.

Suddenly she felt threatened by Max.

That doesn’t make sense, she thought. Max isn’t any danger to me. He’s trying to help me find the truth, that’s all.

Dizzy, confused, on the verge of anomie, she leaned back against her pillows.

Max opened his book and read in a quiet but urgent voice: “‘
Telekinesis
is the ability to move objects or to cause changes within objects solely by the force of the mind. The phenomenon has most often and most reliably been reported in times of crises or in severe stress situations. For example, automobiles have been levitated from injured people, debris from the dying in fire-swept or collapsed buildings.’”

“I
know
what telekinesis is,” she said.

Max ignored her, kept reading: “‘Telekinesis is often mistaken for the work of poltergeists, which are playful and occasionally malevolent spirits. The existence of poltergeists as astral beings is debatable and certainly unproven. It should be noted that in most houses where poltergeists have appeared, there resides an adolescent with serious identity problems,
or some other person under severe nervous strain
. A good argument could be made that the phenomena often attributed to poltergeists are usually the product of unconscious telekinesis.’”

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “Why would I pitch those dogs around just when I was about to see the killer’s face in the vision?”

“You really didn’t want to see his face, so your subconscious threw those figurines to distract you from the vision.”

“That’s absurd! I
wanted
to see it. I want to stop this man before he kills again.”

Max’s hard gray eyes were like knives, dissecting her. “Are you sure you want to stop him?”

“What kind of question is that?”

He sighed. “Do you know what I think? I think you’ve sensed, through your clairvoyance, that this psychopath will kill you if you pursue him. You’ve seen a possible future, and you’re trying like hell to avoid it.”

Surprised, she said, “Nothing of the sort.”

“The pain you felt—”

“Was the pain of the victims. It wasn’t a foreshadowing of my own death.”

“Maybe you haven’t foreseen the danger consciously,” Max said. “But subconsciously, perhaps, you’ve seen yourself as a victim if you pursue this case. That would explain why you’re trying to mislead yourself with poltergeists and with talk about possession.”

“I’m not going to die,” she said sharply. “I’m not hiding from anything like that.”

“Why are you afraid to even consider it?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“I think you are.”

“I’m not a coward. And I’m not a liar.”

“Mary, I’m trying to help you.”

“Then believe me!”

He looked at her quizzically. “You don’t have to shout.”

“You never hear me unless I shout!”

“Mary, why do you want to argue?”

I don’t, she thought. Stop me. Hold me.

“
You
started this,” she said.

“I only asked you to consider an alternative to this business about possession. You’re overreacting.”

I know, she thought. I know I am. And I don’t know why. I don’t want to hurt you. I need you.

But all she said was, “Listening to you, I’d think I was never right about anything. I’m always overreacting or mistaken or misled or confused. You treat me as if I’m a child.”

“You’re treating
yourself
with condescension.”

“Just a silly little child.”

Hug me, kiss me, love me, she thought. Please make me stop this. I don’t want to argue. I’m scared.

He started toward the bedroom door. “This isn’t the time to talk. You’re not in the mood for constructive criticism.”

“Because I’m behaving like a child?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes you fucking piss me off.”

He stopped, turned back to her. “That’s like a child,” he said calmly. “Like a child who’s trying to shock a grown-up with a lot of dirty words.”

She opened her book to the page she had marked and, refusing to acknowledge him, she pretended to read.

* * *

She would rather
have suffered disabling pain than even temporary estrangement from Max. When they argued, which was rarely, she felt miserable. The two or three hours of silence that invariably followed a disagreement, and which were usually her fault, were unbearable.

She spent the remainder of the evening in bed with a copy of
The Occult
by Colin Wilson. As she began each page, she could not remember what had been on the page before it.

Max stayed on his side of the bed, reading a novel and smoking his pipe. He might as well have been a thousand miles away.

The eleven o’clock television news, which she switched on by remote control, headlined a grisly story about slaughter in a Santa Ana beauty salon. There was film of the blood-smeared shop and interviews with police officials who had nothing to say.

“You see?” Mary said. “I was right about the nurses. I was right about the beauty salon. And, by God, I’m right about Richard Lingard, too.”

Even as she spoke, she regretted the words, and especially her tone of voice.

He looked at her but said nothing.

She looked away, down at her book. She hadn’t meant to revive the argument. Quite the opposite. She wanted to get him talking once more. She wanted to hear his voice.

Although she often started arguments, she had never been able to initiate the conclusion of one. Psychologically, she wasn’t capable of making the first gesture for peace. She left that move to the men. Always. She knew that wasn’t fair, but she could not change.

She supposed that this inadequacy dated back to her father’s violent death. He had left her so suddenly that she still sometimes felt abandoned. All of her adult life she had worried about men walking out on her before
she
was prepared to end the relationship.

And of course she wasn’t ever going to be ready to end her marriage; that was for keeps. Therefore, whenever she and Max argued, whenever she had reason to worry about his leaving, she forced him to pick up the olive branch. It was a test which he could pass only if he would sacrifice more pride than she; and when he had done that, he would have proved that he loved her and that he would never leave her as her father had done.

The death of her father
was
more important than whatever Berton Mitchell had done to her.

Why couldn’t Dr. Cauvel see that?

* * *

In the dark
bedroom, when it became evident that neither of them could sleep, Max touched her. His hands affected her in the same way that the rapidly vibrating tines of a tuning fork would affect fine crystal. She trembled uncontrollably and shattered. She broke against him, weeping.

He didn’t speak. Words no longer mattered.

He held her for a few minutes, and then he began to stroke her. He slid one hand over her silk pajamas, along her flank, across her buttocks. Slow, warm movement. And then he popped open two buttons on her blouse, slipped his hand inside, felt her warm breast, his fingers lingering on her nipple only for an instant. She put her open mouth to his neck, against the hard muscle. His strong pulse was transmitted to her through her tender lips. He undressed her and then himself. The bandage on his hand brushed her bare thigh.

“Your finger,” she said.

“It’ll be fine.”

“The cut might come open,” she said. “It might start to bleed again.”

“Sshhh
,
”
he said.

He was not in the mood to be patient, and although she hadn’t said a word, he sensed she was equally anxious. He rose above her in the lightless air, as if taking flight, then settled over her. Although she had expected nothing more than the special joy of closeness, she climaxed within a minute. Not intensely. A gentle rush of pleasure. However, when she came a second time, moments before he finished far down inside of her, she cried out with delight.

For a while she lay at his side, holding his hand. Finally she said, “Don’t ever leave me. Stay with me as long as I live.”

“As long as you live,” Max promised.

* * *

At five-thirty on
Wednesday morning, in the middle of a nightmare vision of the killer’s next crime, Mary was catapulted from sleep by the sound of gunfire. A single shot, ear-splitting, too close. Even as the
boom
was bouncing off the bedroom walls, she sat up, threw off the blanket and sheet, swung her legs out of bed. “Max! What’s wrong? Max!”

Beside her, he switched on the lamp, jumped up from the bed. He stood, swaying, blinking.

The sudden light hurt her eyes. Although she was squinting, she could see there was no intruder in the room.

Max reached for the loaded handgun that he kept on the nightstand. It was not there.

“Where’s the pistol?” he asked.

“I didn’t touch it,” she said.

Then, as her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the gun. It was floating in the air near the foot of the bed, floating five feet above the floor, as if it were suspended from wires, except that there were no wires. The barrel was pointed at her.

The poltergeist.

“Jesus!” Max said.

Although no visible finger pulled the trigger, a second shot exploded. The bullet tore into the headboard inches from Mary’s face.

She panicked. Gasping, whimpering, she ran across the room, hunched as if she were crippled. The gun traversed to the left, covering her. She came to a corner, stopped. Trapped. She realized she should have gone in the opposite direction, where she could have at least locked herself in the bathroom.

The third shot smashed into the floor beside her feet. Bits of a throw rug and splinters of wood sprayed up.

“Max!”

He grabbed at the gun, but it slid away from him, rose and fell and swung from side to side, bobbled and weaved, forced him into a clumsy ballet.

She looked for something to hide behind.

There was nothing.

The fourth shot passed over her head, piercing a framed, glass-covered watercolor of Newport Beach harbor.

Max connected with the pistol, clutched it. The barrel twisted in his hands until it was pointed at his chest. Sweating, cursing, he struggled to pull the weapon from a pair of hands that he couldn’t see. Surprisingly, after a few seconds, the unseen contestant surrendered, and Max staggered backward with the prize.

She stood with her back to the wall, hands to her face. She couldn’t take her eyes from the barrel of the gun.

“It’s safe now,” Max said. “It’s over.” He started toward her.

“For God’s sake, unload it!” she said, pointing at the gun in his hand.

He stopped, stared at the pistol, and then took the magazine out of the handgrip.

“All of the bullets should be taken from the clip,” she said.

“I doubt that’s necessary if I—”

“
Do it!
”

His big hands were shaking as he took the bullets from the magazine. He placed all of the pieces on the bed; pistol, empty magazine, unspent ammunition. For a minute he studied the items, as she did, waiting for one of them to rise off the blanket.

Nothing moved.

“What was it?” he asked.

“Poltergeist.”

“Whatever it was—is it still here?”

She closed her eyes, tried to relax, tried to
feel
. After a while she said, “No. It’s gone.”

Wednesday, December 23

10

Percy Osterman, the
Orange County sheriff, opened the door for Max and Mary, motioned for them to go ahead of him.

The room was gray. The paint was gray, the floor tile gray, the windowsills gray with dust. A set of gray metal storage shelves was bolted to one wall, and the wall opposite the shelves contained a lot of built-in file drawers with burnished steel fronts. The few pieces of furniture were fashioned of tubular steel and gray vinyl. The screens over the ceiling lights were gray, and the fuzzy fluorescent illumination transformed the scene into a chiaroscuro print.

The only spots of brightness in the room were the well-scrubbed porcelain sinks and the slanted autopsy table, which was fiercely white with polished, gleaming stainless steel fixtures.

The sheriff was all hard lines and sharp angles. He was nearly as tall as Max, but forty pounds lighter and far less muscular. Yet he did not appear wasted or weak. His hands were large, boney, almost fleshless, the fingers like talons. His shoulders sloped forward. His neck was thin with a prominent Adam’s apple. In his pinched, sun-browned face, his eyes were quick, nervous, a curious pale shade of amber.

Osterman’s frown was ominous, his smile easy and kind. He was not smiling when he opened one of the six large drawers and pulled the shroud from the face of the corpse.

Mary stepped away from Max, moved closer to the dead man.

“Kyle Nolan,” Osterman said. “Owned the beauty shop. Worked there as a hair stylist.”

Nolan was short, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested. Bald. A bushy mustache. Shave off the mustache, Mary thought, and he’d look like that actor, Edward Asner.

She put one hand on the drawer and waited for a rush of psychic impressions. Although she didn’t understand how or why, she knew that, for a time after passing away, the dead maintained a bubble of energy around them, an invisible capsule that contained memories, vivid scenes of their lives and especially of their last minutes. Ordinarily, contact with the victim of a murder, or with the victim’s belongings, would generate a torrent of clairvoyant images, sometimes clear as reality and sometimes hopelessly blurry and meaningless, most of them dealing with the moment of death and with the identity of the killer.

In this case, for the first time in her experience, she sensed absolutely nothing. Not even a shapeless flurry of movement or color.

She touched the dead man’s cold face.

Still nothing.

Osterman closed the drawer, opened the one next to it. As he folded back the shroud, he said, “Tina Nolan. Kyle’s wife.”

Tina was an attractive but hard-faced woman with brittle, bleached hair that her husband should have found professionally embarrassing. Although they had been closed hours ago by the coroner, her eyes had come open again. She stared at Mary as if she were trying to impart some dreadfully important news; but in the end she provided nothing more than poor Kyle had done.

The woman in the third drawer was in her late twenties. She had once been beautiful.

“Rochelle Drake,” Percy Osterman said. “Nolan’s last customer for the day.”

“Rochelle Drake?” Max said. He came closer, peered into the drawer. “Don’t I know that name?”

“Recognize her?” Sheriff Osterman asked.

Max shook his head. “No. But . . . Mary? Does that name mean anything to you?”

“No,” she said.

“When you foresaw these killings, you said you thought you knew one of the victims.”

“I was wrong,” she said. “These people are strangers.”

“That’s odd,” Max said. “I’d swear . . . well, I don’t know
what
I’d swear . . . except this one’s name . . . Rochelle Drake . . . it’s familiar.”

Mary was not paying much attention to him, for she perceived a familiar electricity in the air, a stirring of psychic forces. The Drake woman was going to provide what the other bodies should have offered but didn’t. Mary opened her mind to the psychic emanations, made herself as receptive as she could, and put her hand on the dead woman’s forehead.

Wicka-wicka-wicka!

Wings.

Startled, Mary pulled her hand away from the corpse as if she had been bitten.

She felt wings, leathery wings, shuddering like the membranes of drums.

This isn’t possible, she thought frantically. The wings have something to do with Berton Mitchell. Not with this dead woman. Not with the man who killed her. The wings have to do with the past, not the present. Berton Mitchell couldn’t be involved in this. He hung himself in a jail cell nearly twenty-four years ago.

But now she could smell the wings as well as feel them, smell the wings and the creatures behind them—a dank, musty, musky odor that nauseated her.

What if the man who murdered Rochelle Drake and the others was not possessed by the spirit of Richard Lingard? What if, instead, he was possessed by the soul of another psychopath, by the spirit of Berton Mitchell? Wasn’t it conceivable that Lingard himself had been possessed by Berton Mitchell? And when Barnes shot Lingard, perhaps Mitchell’s spirit moved on to another host. Perhaps she had unknowingly crossed the path of an old nemesis. Perhaps she would spend the remainder of her life in pursuit of Berton Mitchell. Perhaps she would be compelled to follow him from one host to another until he finally found the opportunity to kill her.

No. That was madness. She was thinking like a lunatic.

Max asked, “Is something wrong?”

Wings brushed her face, her neck, shoulders and breasts and belly, fluttered against her ankles and up her calves and then against her inner thighs.

She was determined not to succumb to fear. But she was also half convinced that if she didn’t stop thinking about the wings, they would carry her off into everlasting darkness. A ridiculous notion. Nevertheless, she turned away from the morgue drawer.

“Are you receiving something?” Max asked.

“Not now,” she lied.

“But you were?”

“For an instant.”

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Nothing important. Just meaningless movement.”

“Can you pick it up again?” Max asked.

“No.”

She mustn’t pursue it. If she did, she would see what lay behind those wings. She must never see what lay behind those wings.

Osterman closed the drawer.

Mary sighed with relief.

* * *

Sheriff Osterman went
with them to the far corner of the municipal parking lot, where they’d left their car.

The December sky was like the morgue—shades of gray. The fast-moving clouds were reflected in the polished hood of the Mercedes.

Shivering, Mary put her hands in her coat pockets and hunched her shoulders against the wind.

“Heard good things about you,” Osterman told Mary in his peculiarly economical way of speaking. “Often thought about working with you. Pleased when you called this morning. Hoped you’d come up with a lead.”

“I hoped so, too,” she said.

“Foresaw these murders, did you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Those nurses in Anaheim, too?”

“That’s right.”

“Same killer, you think?”

“Yes,” she said.

Osterman nodded. “We think so, too. Have some evidence of it.”

“What sort of evidence?” Max asked.

“When he killed the nurses,” Osterman said, each word sharp and quick, “he busted up some stuff. Religious things. Two crucifixes. Statuette of the Virgin Mary. Even strangled one girl with a rosary. Found something similar in this beauty shop case.”

“What?” Mary asked.

“Pretty ugly bit of business. Maybe you don’t want to hear it.”

“I’m used to hearing and seeing ugly things,” she said.

He regarded her for a moment, amber eyes hooded. “Guess that’s true.” He leaned against the Mercedes. “This woman in the beauty shop. Rochelle Drake. She wore a necklace. A gold cross. He raped her, killed her. Tore the cross off her neck. Pushed it up . . . inside of her.”

Mary felt ill. She hugged herself.

“Then he’s a psychopath with some sort of religious hangup,” Max said.

“Appears so,” Osterman said. He looked at Mary and asked, “So where do you go from here?”

“Down to the shore,” she said.

“King’s Point,” Max said.

“Why there?”

She hesitated, glanced at Max. “That’s where the next murders will take place.”

Osterman did not seem surprised. “Had another vision, did you?”

“Early this morning,” she said.

“When will it happen?”

“Tomorrow night,” she said.

“Christmas Eve?”

“Yes.”

“Where in King’s Point?”

“On the harbor,” she said.

“Pretty good-sized harbor.”

“It’ll be near the shops and restaurants.”

“How many will he kill?” Osterman asked.

“I’m not sure.”

She was so
cold
, colder than could be accounted for by the California winter day and the wind, cold in the pit of her stomach, cold in her heart. She was wearing a stylish but thinly lined calfskin coat from North Beach Leather. She wished she’d chosen her heaviest fur.

“Maybe I’ll be able to stop him before he kills anyone else,” she said.

“You feel a responsibility to stop him?” Osterman asked.

“I won’t have peace of mind until I do.”

“Wouldn’t want this talent you’ve got.”

“I never asked for it,” she said.

A truck rumbled by in the street. Osterman waited for the noise to die down.

“King’s Point used to be in my jurisdiction,” he said. “Two years ago they voted in their own police force. Now I can’t poke my nose in unless they ask. Or unless a case that starts in the county ends up on their doorstep.”

“I wish I could be working with you,” Mary said.

“You’ll be working with a jackass,” Osterman said.

“Excuse me?”

“Chief of police at King’s Point. Name’s Patmore. John Patmore. A jackass. He gives you trouble, tell him to call me. He kind of respects me, but he’s still a jackass.”

“We’ll use your name if we have to,” Mary said. “But we aren’t entirely without influence down there. We know the owner of the
King’s Point Press
.”

Osterman smiled. “Lou Pasternak?”

“You know him?”

“Damned good newspaperman.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Quite a character, too.”

“A little bit of one,” she agreed.

The sheriff offered his hand to Mary, then to Max. “Hope you two do my job for me this time.”

“Thanks for your help,” Max said.

“Don’t hesitate to ask for more if you need it. It’s been my pleasure.”

As Mary got into the Mercedes, a gust of wind sang in the power lines overhead.

* * *

They reached King’s
Point at two-thirty in the afternoon. Their first glimpse of it, as they topped a rise in the road, was from high above the harbor.

The sky was low. Thick gray clouds scudded inland. A mile offshore the ocean was shrouded in mist; and closer to the beach formidable waves churned beneath half a dozen scuba-suited surfers, fell frothily onto the sand, and exploded into spray against the stone breakwaters on both sides of the harbor entrance.

The town was on the Pacific Coast Highway, a few miles south of Laguna Beach, in a perpetually smogless pocket of sunshine and money. The sun was in hiding today, but the money was everywhere evident. Houses on the verdant hillsides were priced from $75,000 to $500,000, nearly all of them with well-manicured decorative gardens and ocean views. Waterfront homes with docks were not as expensive as those in Newport Beach, but real estate brokers had no time for would-be customers who flinched at a base price of a quarter million dollars. In the flat land between harbor and hills the houses were cheaper—there were some apartment buildings, too—but even they were expensive by most standards.

The travel guides said that King’s Point was “charming” and “quaint” and “picturesque,” and for once they were telling the truth. The lawns were lush and green; the many small parks were filled with palms of all varieties, oleander, jade plants, magnolia trees, schefflera, dracaena, olive trees, and seasonal flowers. The houses were well cared for, freshly painted every year or two as protection against the corrosive sea air. Businessmen were required to forgo the most offensive neon signs, and were forbidden by law to paint their stores in anything but soft natural tones.

The residents of King’s Point appeared to think that with the proper local ordinances they could keep out everything that made the rest of the world a less desirable place to live. And they
did
keep out much that was tasteless, cheap, and gaudy.

But they can’t keep out everything they don’t want, Mary thought. A killer has come in from outside. He’s walking among them now. They can’t use local ordinances to keep out death.

From spring through early autumn the population of King’s Point was sixty percent higher than in the winter. During these vacation months the motels were booked weeks in advance, the restaurants raised their prices except for locals who were recognized, the shops hired extra help, and the white beaches were crowded. Now, two days before Christmas, the town was quiet. When Max turned off the main highway onto a city street, they encountered very little traffic.

King’s Point Police Headquarters was a single-story brick building of absolutely no architectural period, style, charm, integrity, or responsibility. It looked like an oversized, flat-roofed storage shed with windows. Even three blocks from the harbor, in the flats below the hills, in a limbo between the highest-value real estate parcels—waterfront and view—it was no credit to its neighborhood.

Inside, the public reception room was depressingly institutional: brown tile floor, muddy green walls, washed-out green ceiling, strictly utilitarian furniture. Tax money had purchased three desks, six-drawer filing cabinets, IBM typewriters, a copier, a small refrigerator, a United States flag, a glass-fronted case full of riot guns and pistols, a dispatcher’s corner with radio—and a civilian secretary (Mrs. Vidette Yancy, according to the nameplate on her desk) who was in her fifties, a woman with tightly curled white hair, pale skin, bright red lipstick, and an enormous bosom.