Chapter 3
Sunday, Midmorning …
In her tent once again, Queenie searched for the spider. Found no sign of him. She placed her Open for Business sign outside, sat down at her table and waited for the customers to flow in. Business was slow today. Probably her punishment for having walked away when there was a line yesterday. She had needed the money too. These last few months had been slow and had barely paid enough to keep her going.
When Carlos walked in a half hour later, his face set as if determined to have something out with her, she smiled at him and said, “Thanks so much for letting me go home sick yesterday.”
He froze, and the smile fell off his face. “You were sick?” he asked cautiously.
She nodded. “All of a sudden, I felt like I would throw up. I didn’t think having those kinds of germs around this place would be very good for business. Not to mention the fact that vomiting isn’t an activity the public wants to see.” She spoke with an airy laugh. “But I’m feeling much better now.”
He took a cautious step back as if she had germs that would reach out and smack him one. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? We don’t want anybody here at the amusement park getting sick.”
“I wouldn’t have had breakfast with Betty just now if I thought that was the case,” she said gently.
“Okay. But you should have given me some warning. There was a line,” he whined. “And when we have a line like that, you know how much money we’re gonna make.”
She did know. She was the one who put the five-dollar bills into the jar. Sometimes she could easily do twenty customers in an hour. Maybe it wasn’t big money for a lot of people, but it was for her. Not that she got a whole lot of it. But all business was erratic. There was no rhyme or reason when there would be a good day or a bad day. If her crystal ball could tell her things like that, then she could manage her days off so they were most effective. But her abilities didn’t work that way.
As far as Carlos was concerned, she didn’t have any abilities. He was all about making it look like she did. The fact that she knew that just made it easier on her. He was also a germophobe, and that gave her irrefutable reasons for leaving the tent unexpectedly.
“I will next time, if I can.” She nodded. “Honestly, yesterday was so bad that I wasn’t sure I should stick around at all.”
Just then they could hear voices approaching from outside. His face lit up. “Hopefully it’ll be a good day today. You know? As we lead up toward graduation, we get a lot more people in here.”
“You mean, as the summer holidays come through,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not sure graduation has anything to do with it.”
“We’re running a bunch of ads geared toward the grads,” he said with a big smirk. “Offering them your abilities to determine what they should be doing in life.”
She stared at him. “You did what?”
He waved his hand airily at her. “That’s perfect for you. You do such a great job with that already.”
She shook her head. “I do for the people who seek me out naturally. I am not at all sure how that’ll work when they come in droves.”
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
He seriously did not understand how that strained her energy levels or how seeing difficult information hurt her on so many levels. But there was really no working with him. He had a mind of his own, and the bottom line for him was money.
He quickly backed away as the first person walked through the tent.
A young girl stood there and smiled. “Is it my turn?” she asked.
Carlos motioned toward Queenie. “She’s all yours. Make sure you ask one good question,” he cautioned, “because she really does have the answers.” And then he disappeared.
The girl looked even more excited than ever, if that was possible. She raced up to Queenie and jabbered about all the colleges she’d applied to, wanting Queenie to tell her which one she would get accepted to because she wanted to make plans. She was really hoping to move to that location soon, so she could spend the summer getting to know everyone. All her friends had heard already, so she figured the mail was just late, but her tone of voice rose up—almost in a panic.
Queenie stared at her, resignation deep in her heart. She was afraid to touch this girl’s hand because she could already feel the energy coming toward her. And how did she let the girl down easy? How did she let her know all the applications she’d sent so far were rejected?
“Have you applied to every one you wanted?” Queenie hedged.
“Well, there’s still the local one,” she said, “but I didn’t want to stay in town for the summer.”
“Why is that?” Queenie asked, looking for anything to give her a positive outcome. The local college would be a positive outcome. But the girl had to come to that on her own; otherwise it’d be a crushing disappointment.
“My boyfriend broke up with me,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. She shoved her fist into her pockets. “But can’t you see that?”
“I can see a lot,” Queenie said cautiously. “Place your hand in mine, please.” She held her hand out, palm upward. The young girl laid her palm down on top of Queenie’s. An instant affirmation slammed into her. “I see you staying locally,” she said quietly. “And, no, I don’t see the same boyfriend back in your life.”
The young girl jumped back, pulling her hand away. She glared at Queenie. “That’s not what I want to hear,” she cried.
“I know that,” Queenie said. “Yet it doesn’t change the fact that’s what I see.”
The young woman gave her a hurt look and raced out of the tent.
At least she wasn’t sobbing. Queenie would take solace where she could.
Almost immediately a young man walked in, about the same age as the woman who just left. He smiled and said, “I don’t think you told her what she wanted to hear.”
She looked at him. “I can’t deliver good news when it’s not.”
His smile fell away. “People say you’re the real thing,” he said abruptly.
She shrugged. “I’d like to think so. I don’t deliberately mislead people. That was the problem with the girl who just left. She didn’t like the answers.”
He cast a backward glance, as if seeing the girl. “She’s a year behind me. I graduated a year ago and remember how she was pretty hung up on her boyfriend back then.”
Queenie could see the energy flowing from him toward the young woman who had run out before him. “Maybe you should talk to her,” she said with a gentle smile. “I can tell you right now that’s probably a very good match.”
Startled, he glanced at Queenie. “That’s not what I came here for.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes you get a little more than you asked for.”
He hesitated, almost shifting his weight from foot to foot, as if uncertain what to say.
She looked at him. “Place your hand in mine.”
He laid a hand atop hers. She could feel the pain and the frustration. Another face showed up in her crystal ball. Truly it was in her mind’s eye, but, for the sake of what she was doing, she always said it was the crystal ball.
“You’re worried about your brother.” She felt his start. But she clasped her hands around his, holding them in place. “He’s a drug addict. He’s taken too many chances.”
The young man froze in front of her, hope and fear worrying on his face.
She sighed and gently released his hand. “He has a tough road ahead of him,” she said quietly. “He does have the stuff inside him to make that journey. But he’ll need your support.”
She wasn’t sure anything she’d said was helpful, but the young man’s face lit up.
“Does that mean he’s done overdosing?”
“You need to get him into rehab,” she said. Instantly a name came to her. She pulled out a pad of paper and wrote it down. “Riverdale. Get him into Riverdale. If you can get him there, he’ll do much better.” She ripped off the piece of paper and handed it to him.
He looked down at it and said, “How am I supposed to pay for it?”
“Talk to them about their charity programs.” She smiled as the answers flowed. “They do help a certain number of cases for free. Most of these places do, but they don’t tell you about it.”
He stared at her in surprise. “They do?”
She nodded. “But, like I said, they don’t want anybody to know. Riverdale. You contact Riverdale on his behalf and get your brother down there for an assessment.”
He took a step back. “I didn’t tell you about anything like this.”
“I know.” She stared at him, her gaze steady and strong.
He took another hesitant step back, his mind obviously overwhelmed with the what ifs. And then he turned and bolted out the door.
She smiled until she realized she’d forgotten to ask him for the five dollars. She groaned. “Well, that’s your free one for the day,” she muttered. She didn’t blame the kid. He’d been a little too affected by what was going on to remember.
At the same time, she couldn’t keep doing that. She had to put food on her table somehow.
The morning continued on with more odd requests, odd people. Some days it was just girl after girl, looking for boyfriend information; other times mothers looking for information about their children and whether they could have another baby. Today it was everything.
There was a young man afraid to buy a house because the market was so unstable. Privately she thought the market had never been more stable, but she wasn’t a financial analyst, so what did she know? It was more a case of he was afraid his girlfriend wouldn’t move in with him because she wouldn’t like the house.
A woman wanted Queenie’s advice on a weight-loss-and-training program. That one really surprised Queenie. She tried to explain to the woman that the program wasn’t necessarily the best option, given the money involved. But she hadn’t been interested in Queenie’s answer. She was looking for validation of her own choice. There was only so much Queenie could say.
By the time she was ready to take a break, she quickly flipped the Open sign to Closed and headed to the coffee stand. There was one thing she did like, and that was her caffeine. She’d been told by enough people that she should stop drinking it, but it was one of the few comforts in her world. And she wasn’t up to letting that go too.
Time to get food, right, Reese?
He didn’t answer, but a light laugh filled her mind.
She chuckled.
She grabbed a coffee and a hot dog, and headed back to her tent. She stepped inside to see a man with his back toward her. Her voice sharp, she said, “The sign says I’m closed.”
The man turned and looked at her. “Hello, Queenie.”
*
Kirk stared at Queenie, hating the fear on her face as soon as she saw him.
She stared at him, walked around to the table and sagged into the chair. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice trembling.
He stroked a hand through his hair. How did he explain when he wasn’t even sure himself? They had so much history. So many highs, so many lows, such a mess of a relationship, so much pain and ugliness … He’d done his damnedest to weather it all, but, in the end, it had broken them. He wasn’t even sure what words to give her to make her feel more at ease. “Your email.”
He could almost see the wave of fear falling from her shoulders like a shawl she took off and laid on the chair behind her. Why? What was she afraid of?
“What about it?” she asked. “I told you all I knew.”
“Did you?”
She glared at him, getting her spunk back.
He loved that. She was never the kind to stay down for long. Even when she was at her absolutely most broken, she’d come out in the ring fighting. Unfortunately it seemed like she’d been fighting everyone, even him. All he’d tried to do was help her, but she couldn’t tell who was helping and who wasn’t. She’d sent him away, and, to his everlasting regret, he’d gone.
She nodded. “He was only here for a couple minutes. He laughed at me because I was bothered by a spider, but he left, outraged at my words.”
His heart slammed against his chest. “You told him something that upset him?” He watched the regret whisper across her face.
“I didn’t think before it came out,” she said. “I was so upset at what I saw that I said something to him about him already knowing the owner was dead.”
Kirk leaned over, placed his hands firmly on the table in front of her and glared at her. “Did you in any way indicate you knew he’d murdered this woman?”
Her face went blank. And then she shrugged. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know. You know what it’s like when I get the visions. They come and they go. I grasp bits and pieces, but I don’t record everything.”
He looked around at the table she worked behind and the absolutely ridiculous headdress sitting on the side of it. “What the hell are you even doing here? You have talent, real talent, and you’re sitting here, acting like some charlatan.”
“I’m doing what I do because it’s what I do,” she said, her tone hard. “I don’t exactly have much in the way of career options. Nor can I keep working for the police when they’ve decided I was half-cocked and unstable. Plus they never paid for my assistance either—they didn’t want anyone to know they were listening to a psychic. So … that doesn’t work. … At least not anymore.”
He hated the note of accusation in her voice. He understood it, but he hated it. “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” he said.
Her smile, if anything, went more blank. She stared at him, her eyes, as always, huge wells of deep midnight blue. For the longest time he would succumb to the lure and completely bury himself in those eyes, in her life, their love all-encompassing, their passion all-overwhelming. When they made love, it was completely transported to something else. They forgot their surroundings; they forgot everything but what they were feeling. He wondered if her psychic ability had wrapped him into her same weird slice of life because it never felt the same before or after. He’d had relationships since, more to help him forget what he’d lost, and had never found anything even close.
“Why do you keep putting yourself in danger?” he cried out in frustration.
She looked at him. “Are you serious? Look where I am. What danger am I in?”
“You called out a murderer.”
“I don’t know that for sure,” she said instantly. “Besides, I was … off. … That damn spider had me off my game, so the murderer surprised me.”
“Explain.” His voice was direct and hard, uncompromising.
She shrugged. “It wasn’t much. Just something unusual.” At his look, she groaned and explained about the spider’s and this man’s arrival at the time. “I don’t know. I’m still not myself,” she muttered.
“But you were sure enough that you contacted me.”
Her back stiffened, and she just glared at him.
He was sorry for making it sound so heartless. He knew she came from a place of deep pain, and he wished he could do something to help her. But there wasn’t anything. He’d already tried many times. “Back to this man. Can you describe him?”
He watched as she closed her eyes and gave him a recital. “Six foot two, at least 280, most of it chest and belly. Blustery, arrogant, the world is his, and the rules don’t apply to him.”
“Anything else?”
“Going slightly bald on the top. His hair is dark, almost black, but gray’s etching in. His face has a florid complexion, definitely a double chin, dressed well. The child was more easily identifiable.”
“What child?”
“He came in with a small boy, holding his hand.”
“What can you tell me about the boy?”
“Five-years-old, wearing jeans with the cuffs rolled up, sneakers that had little lights when he walked.” Her voice softened as she described the child. “Plaid shirt. He wasn’t happy. He didn’t like being in the tent, and he didn’t like it when the man got angry. He flinched at the tone of voice the man used, and, when they turned, he was dragged out of the tent by the big man.”
“What did he tell you exactly?”
“He asked if he would get the property he was after.”
Kirk listened while she continued with the message she gave him.
“Tell me what you saw in your vision.”
“A woman, early fifties, maybe blond hair, longish, floating around her head. She was just beneath the surface of the lake, maybe an hour’s drive from here. Her property borders a lake. There’s an old home. She’s slim, maybe too slim. But she’s at peace.”
“What do you mean, she’s at peace?”
“Her face is peaceful.” Queenie stopped, confused. “At least it feels that way.”
“She’s dead,” he said. “Right?”
Queenie nodded. “She’s dead. And it was not a natural death.”
“How do you know that?”
“Her throat has been sliced,” she said quietly. “But it’s still not enough for you to go on. It never is.”
He stood back, his fingers jiggling the coins in his pocket as he studied her. “Something’s different this time though.”
She stared at him. “What?”
He lifted his gaze to a point in the tent behind her. “I had a young woman come in, reporting her mother as missing. Her property borders a lake. And it’s about an hour out of town.”
Queenie stared at him. Then she held out her hand. He hated this part. It didn’t always happen when they touched—and it never happened, at least he didn’t think it ever happened, when they had sex—but, when she wanted to know something, it was her way of accessing it. He stared down at her hand.
“Scared?” she challenged.
He extended his hand and placed it on hers, hating she could still get that response from him. It wasn’t that he was scared; it was—
“It’s her,” Queenie said softly. “It’s her mother.”
“Every time you do that is so damn freaky.” Cautiously he added, “So you’re saying, if we go to that property … How will we find the mother’s body?”
Queenie gave a sad smile. “She’s under the lake’s surface. You won’t see her unless you are almost on top of her. But she’s not close to her property. She’s on the far side of the lake.”
“How did she get there?”
“He used the woman’s boat, rowed it across and dumped her out. Other houses are around. He believes nobody saw him.”
“Believes?” he pounced. He watched her eyes unfocus, going wide and black. Another process of hers that always unnerved him. “Who?” he asked urgently. “You know we need witnesses.”
But no answer was immediately forthcoming.
He slowly went to pull away his hand, but she grasped it firmly. He waited, not sure what she was up to. With Queenie, one never knew.
Her voice changed, became someone else’s voice. A man’s voice. “Somebody else saw him,” she said, almost trancelike.
He stared at her, instinctively pulling back, but she wouldn’t let Kirk go.
“Somebody not of this world. Somebody with abilities like mine. Somebody who’s watching him.”
“Watching who?”
“Watching the killer.”
“Why would he do that?” They’d handled a couple twisted cases earlier on. Cases he still had trouble sleeping with. The last thing he wanted was to have another one.
“It’s a game to him.” She opened her eyes, dropped his hand and stared at him, her eyes coming around, focusing on Kirk. “I didn’t just say that, did I?”
He nodded. “Oh, hell yeah, you did.” He shook his head. “But I sure wish you hadn’t. You need to tell me who he is.”
“I don’t know,” she said in a flat tone. “I don’t know who he is.”
“How is that possible? He just took over your body, spoke the words you were thinking.” Shocked, he whispered, “Can you make sure he can’t connect again?”
She gave a broken laugh. “I didn’t expect to connect now. … How can I stop him if he tries again?”
“Did you learn to protect yourself at all?” he asked. “You always talked about needing to do more of that.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of work in that area. You’re right. The next time he tries, maybe I’ll stop him, now that I know he’s there.”
“Next time?” he asked, his heart sinking. “How do you know there will be a next time?”
“He’s not done,” she whispered, her eyes huge wells of grief. “He’s a killer himself. And he’ll kill again. But now that he knows I’m here, he wants to show me what he can do.”
He sobbed gently in his bed in his dark little room in the basement. His tiny body shook with pain. There was blood on his face, his hands. … He wanted to leave, … but the door was locked. It was always locked now. He’d wanted, begged, to go to school, but Daddy said it wasn’t going to happen.
That made him all the sadder.
One of the big spiders walked across the boy’s pillow.
He whispered, “Please help me. Please … find someone to help me …”
The spider walked closer. Then a second one and a third one.
“Please,” he cried brokenly. “There has to be someone who can help.”
Now dozens of spiders appeared. He watched with a happy smile as they waded through his blood to get to him, then over him and the bed to the wall, where they climbed up and out the crack in the window, like soldiers of the night.
“Find her, … please.”
*
Well, as a contact went, she hadn’t been receptive. But she hadn’t been scared. Interesting how she’d connected to one of his subjects. He hadn’t seen that coming. She’d tried to shut down her defenses on him. But she wasn’t very skilled at that. She was one of those bleeding hearts, always open to helping others but not really capable of helping herself. She didn’t understand danger when it was there inside her already. And that was the fun part. All of this, all of her efforts to shut him out were for naught. He could step inside any time because, of course, he already was inside.
What he wanted to do was watch her, keep an eye on her, see what was happening.
He zapped out of that space, back over to the little family he’d been following for a few weeks now. He watched as the wife packed up her husband’s sandwiches. Her husband would go to work again, though he was sick, sick, sick. But he would keep trying. He had to do the right thing.
The Watcher grimaced. “These bleeding hearts.” The world was full of them, and they were all useless.
As the wife went to fill the coffee thermos, the Watcher made the wife’s hand reach for the white powder in the tub beside the coffee. She put another healthy spoonful inside the coffee and stirred it. Then she quickly closed the container with the white stuff and put it back on the shelf.
The Watcher smiled. “Just like a good little wife.” He watched as she packed up the rest of the food and carried it out to her husband. “Sweetheart, you be careful today. And please, if you start to feel sick at all, come home.”
Her husband leaned over, kissed her on the forehead and said, “I promise.”
The Watcher looked on as the two of them hugged briefly and then separated. The little girl at Mommy’s side, tugging at her hands, said, “Daddy is sick, isn’t he?”
The woman smiled down and nodded. “Yes, he is.”
“The doctor says they can’t fix him, right?”
The mother nodded. “But we can’t lose hope. We love him very much. We have to stay positive.”
At that, the intruder just laughed. The man was dying. Still, he’d die from shock if he understood what had happened to him in the first place. And by whom.
The intruder wasn’t putting his own career in danger. He watched the woman gather up her child in her arms, the two of them crying gently. That was perfect. The Watcher really did love a good sob story.