I pointed the K-Bar at the dead man. "Strip him," I said. "Give me his clothes. Especially that coat."
She did, and it didn"t take her long. It wasn"t the kind of work you wanted to linger over if you were Janice Ravenwood, if every sc.r.a.p of clothing you touched coughed up a dark panorama of psychic impressions.
I changed quickly. The guy was a little bigger than me, but the fit was close enough. Apart from a little blood on the shirt, the clothes were dry. That was what mattered most.
I didn"t care about a little blood. As far as I was concerned they were my clothes now. The dead man didn"t need them. Neither did his ghost-a dark, thin shadow that cowered outside, howling in the rain.
I ignored the dead man"s screams.
The coat felt good, and warm.
"How do I look?" I asked.
"F-fine," Janice said.
"Great. Now get a coat for yourself, or rain gear if you"ve got it. I don"t want you to get wet."
"Where are we going?"
"Across the River Styx," I said. "Just the two of us."
5.
The rain fell harder now, sheeting across the highway. The storm was getting worse, and it showed no sign of letting up anytime soon. No way did I want to rely on a busted-up Toyota that had been to h.e.l.l and back when Janice"s new Ford Explorer was ripe for the taking.
The self-important scribbler didn"t need it now. I was doing the driving. Janice rode shotgun, though that was a laugh. She wouldn"t have touched a gun if one lay in her lap. She was that scared.
Maybe she was scared enough to tell the truth.
"I was supposed to be Circe"s ghostwriter, if you can believe that," Janice began. "She had an offer in the high six figures from a publisher who wanted her autobiography, and she handpicked me to write it. How could I refuse? Slice up a pie like that, there was plenty left for me. My agent negotiated the deal and managed to make it a little sweeter. In fact, she b.u.mped us over the million dollar mark. When it came to Circe Whistler, she said there was a lot more money in channeling the living than channeling the dead."
"Celebrities sell," I said.
"All I wanted was the money."
"There are lots of ways to make money."
"You"re right. If you can kill people and and cut off their heads, I"m sure the job offers just roll right in."
"Spare me the wounded sarcasm. You"re a smart woman. I"m not much on metaphysics, but I read a chapter from one of your books. You can write."
"You know how hard it is to sell a book?" Janice asked, and it wasn"t the kind of question that called for an answer. "It"s hard. I know. I couldn"t sell my first two. I had to publish them myself. I lost money on both of them. If it wasn"t for my gift, I would have starved."
Her talented hands rested on her thighs, silver bracelets gathered like manacles. I knew Janice wasn"t lying about her powers. When it came to psychic impressions from physical objects, I had no doubt that she was the real deal. She had to be. One touch from her fingers and she"d known all about my knife and the things I had done with it. There was no way she could beg, borrow, or steal that information from anyone on earth, living or dead.
But with a wild talent like that, I didn"t understand how money could have been a problem for her. "Seems to me that you could have made plenty of money with your powers alone," I said.
"Sure. But people don"t want to know the truth. Not really. They can"t take it. The truth isn"t worth a dime. It"s ugly. Pretty lies are the things that sell."
"And you sold more than your share."
"That"s right. Pretty lies were my stock and trade. Bring me a couple grand and your dead husband"s pipe, and I"d give you a show. I"d sit you down in a cozy little new-age parlor in front of a roaring fire, and I"d hold that pipe in my hands, and I"d close my eyes as if I were closing them for the very last time. I"d pretend to contact my spirit guide, Natasha Orlovsky, one of the Cliffside witches. Never mind that Natasha was never a witch at all, just a scared teenager who was hanged as a result of ma.s.s hysteria. Never mind that I"d never seen Natasha"s ghost, or that the Natasha I pretended to conjure up was a recycled character from a historical horror novel I sold under a pen name for a quick two grand.
"Never mind any of that. I"d close my eyes, and I"d smile, and I"d whisper a few lines of college Russian. Then I"d tell my client what she wanted to hear, whispering in soothing tones that her dear departed husband was so happy in the afterlife, so glad that his widow had remarried that nice fellow who owned the hardware store, so pleased that she"d spent that extra fifteen hundred bucks for a burial plot near a fountain because listening to those sweet little songbirds splashing around sure did make his eternal slumber a lot more comfortable.
"If that was what the old lady wanted to hear, that was what I"d tell her. And I"d hold on to her dead husband"s pipe, even though holding it was like swallowing poison. I"d think of the two grand the old lady had in her purse-the same amount of money I got for a horror novel that took four months of solid work to write. And while I thought of the old lady"s money and how fast I was going to make it mine, I could almost taste the dead man"s tobacco in my mouth, and I could almost feel that rough little lump growing inside my cheek, the one that turned into a cancer that the doctors hacked off along with a good chunk of jawbone.
"I"d feel the dead man"s hate as his wife pretended she needed something from the hardware store, when he knew she only wanted to cry on the shoulder of the cross-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.d who owned the place. I"d feel all of it, just the way the dead man had felt it.
"In a finger snap, I"d live the day his wife came home with the news that the cross-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.d was hiring her twenty hours a week. She hated to go to work, but she didn"t see how they could turn down the income. And she was right about that. They did need money. He couldn"t work anymore. h.e.l.l, no one wanted to go to a barber who was missing half his face.
"So he wasn"t going to stop her from working. Or blowing the cross-eyed son of a b.i.t.c.h in the back room. Or whatever else she was getting paid to do. Because with her out of the house he could spend the long afternoons sucking on his pipe with the little a.s.shole mouth the doctors had left him. Holding that sweet smoke in his mouth while he imagined his wife bent over a display of garbage disposals, giving it up for the cross-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.d she"d marry as soon as she buried his cancer-ridden corpse in a boneyard with a fountain that attracted flocks of birds which would no doubt s.h.i.t all over his tombstone at every opportunity."
Janice drew a deep breath and held it. If she wanted to confess, I"d let her. Maybe the time had come.
"That was why you didn"t shake my hand when we first met," I said. "And why you didn"t want to touch the backpack."
"I can"t stand to touch anything anymore. That"s what ruined me as a medium. After a while I couldn"t hold the pain, and smile, and tell those pretty lies. It started to burn me down. I knew I had to make a change."
"What about your third book? It was a big hit, wasn"t it? You must have seen some money from that."
"And I earned every penny. To make the kind of sales my publisher expected, I had to do a book tour. That meant dozens of interviews, and lots of people wanting to test me."
"Lots of little old ladies wanting to hand you their dead husbands" pipes."
"Exactly. I came home from the tour with a deal for another book, but I was burned out. I locked myself in the house for a couple months. I tried to write, but I was completely blocked. I couldn"t stand to go out. Complete strangers seemed to know everything about me." She laughed. "It was my own fault. Like every neophyte celebrity, I"d given it up to People. They printed all my pretty lies, but that wasn"t enough. People wanted more. They always want more, until they"re done with you. All I wanted was to be left alone.
"That was when Circe Whistler entered my life. I knew she lived in Cliffside, but we"d never met. She called me out of the blue and suggested we get together for lunch at her place. Somehow, I felt that I could talk to her. Or maybe it was just that I"d been cooped up alone for so long, I would have talked to the first person who showed me some sympathy. Anyway, I trusted Circe instantly. By the time lunch was over, I"d spilled my guts. I told her everything."
"Why?"
"I think...." Janice hesitated. "I don"t know why...but I think that somehow Circe saw right through me, and she made me talk. I started to think that maybe...well, just maybe there really was some truth to the things that Diabolos Whistler preached, and maybe Circe, being his daughter-"
I laughed. "Now, that sounds like the prettiest lie of all."
"I know! It sounds crazy. I don"t believe it-not in my head, anyway. But my gut tells me something else."
"Okay. Say you"re not lying. Say Circe seduced you with dark promises of juicy book deals and large royalty checks. But something else must have happened, something that brought you to the point where you found yourself picking up the guy who cut off her father"s head."
"When you put it that way, I wonder what happened myself."
Janice was quiet for a while. I left her to her silence, and I kept my eyes on the road. I didn"t want to miss the turnoff. The rain was hammering now. Loud, hollow, ringing on the truck cab like it was empty, like we weren"t inside it at all.
I flicked the wipers on high. They whipped back and forth, fast and sure, beating like purposeful metronomes.
The sound made me uneasy. I felt like I was marching in step, like something beyond my control was directing my actions.
Those thoughts were for someone like Janice Ravenwood. I tried to banish them from my mind, but they stayed with me as I raced forward through the storm, as the wipers lashed back and forth, keeping time, setting the pace. The tempo didn"t slow, and neither did I. Not long enough to gather my thoughts or consider my actions. The wipers beat time, and my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal, and the truck roared forward, carrying us to a place we had to go, the only place I could go.
Then, just as quickly as it had come, the moment ended. Janice started talking again, her voice more confident now, as if she had come to terms with the things she had to say.
"I don"t know how Circe manipulated me," Janice said. "If she has some kind of special power, I could never sense it. When I touched her, I didn"t get anything that wasn"t already apparent. It wasn"t so much what I felt as what I didn"t. With Circe, it always seemed that a piece was missing somehow. Touching her was like seeing everything, but not seeing anything at all. I couldn"t decide if there was something she was hiding, or something she didn"t have.
"Our first lunch was like that. She invited me to her home. At the time, everything seemed so casual. Looking back, it seems the whole afternoon was calculated to put me at ease. Even though I made a lot of money on my third book, the first two had put me into debt. In the end, I barely broke even. Circe knew that. She had what I wanted-a big house, material things-and she knew it. Visiting Circe"s home, enjoying good food served on fine china...it seemed that the world she inhabited was my deepest dream realized.
"I told her that. As I said, I told her everything-all about the stress caused by my gift, and the way the book tour had drained me...all of it.
"And then it was Circe"s turn. She"d just been on the cover Newsweek, and the media attention was pretty intense at the time. She talked about that. And then she told me about her family. Her father and her sister, and the things they believed and the things she didn"t. She said that they were destroying her plans for the church, draining the fortune her father had built in the sixties, and she wanted to be free of them."
"I guess she got her wish," I said. "And you helped her do it."
"Yes, I did. And I would have gone on helping her. After the Newsweek story, the autobiography was the next big step on Circe"s promotional plan. Working on it, I spent more time at Circe"s house than my own. She set up an office for me at her place. Every day I"d talk to Circe, write about her. At night, I dreamed about her. I began to feel that, in a way, I was her."
"Or the woman she pretended to be."
"Yes. Her wants became my wants. Her needs were my needs. When I did something for her, I felt that I was doing it for me, too."
"Right down to chauffeuring a hit man."
She nodded. "It seems so obvious now. Circe knew what I wanted out of life. The funny thing is, I never knew what she wanted. Not really. She pretended to tell me everything, but even though I felt as if I were living in her skin at times, I never understood the needs behind her actions. I never had a clue. Even after ghosting her autobiography, I really didn"t know Circe Whistler at all."
I swallowed hard. Janice"s words were hitting too close to home. Once upon a time I"d shared a meal with Circe Whistler, too. I couldn"t help remembering it, and the things we"d done in her father"s bed in the shadow of that meal.
That night Circe Whistler gave me what I wanted.
The next morning she tried to kill me.
The turn came up quick. I nearly missed it. Mud splattered against the wheel wells as I downshifted. The rear end started to drift, but the tires dug in and kept us on the road.
"I feel better," Janice said. "Thanks for listening."
I choked back laughter. The grove was coming up soon. I parked the Explorer at the trail head, turned off the lights, and killed the engine.
Bleak shadows waited under the redwood boughs. Fat raindrops dripped from the branches and splattered against the truck cab like hammer strikes.
Janice"s voice was a whisper. "Can I ask you a question?" Sure.
"Are you going to kill me?"
She stared at me, waiting for an answer.
After a minute, she started shaking.
I opened the door and stepped out into the storm.
"Let"s go," I said.
6.
As it turned out, the bodyguard"s coat was overrated.
I stood on the bridge, soaked to the skin. Janice was just as wet-she"d climbed out of the Explorer looking like a model for an L.L. Bean catalog, and now she looked like she belonged in a homeless shelter. Still, she seemed younger somehow-her makeup washed away, her blonde hair plastered to her skull, her delicate hands holding an oversized flashlight that made her seem childish.
Thunder boomed above-an angry bear"s growl.
"This is crazy," Janice said.
"Maybe," I said.
She aimed the flashlight at my face, eyeing me like I was a hungry grizzly. I was hungry-hungry for things she could tell me. I had a lot of questions, but now that we were here I wasn"t sure how to go about asking them.
I decided to tell Janice as little as possible. "There"s someone who spends a lot of time here," I began. "I want you to tell me about her."
"This is a bridge. G.o.d knows how many people have crossed it. You can"t expect me to pick up an impression of just one of them. That"s not why you brought me here, is it?"
I told her that it was.
I explained that doing what I asked was her only chance to stay alive.
And then I told her about the little girl.
Some of my words were lost in thunder, but Janice heard enough. "You"re telling me that the little girl you"re looking for is dead?"
"She"s a ghost."
"Oh, G.o.d."
"Like I told you before: I see ghosts."
"I sensed your power when I touched your knife. It was nothing more than a glimpse really, but I saw enough to convince me that you were telling the truth. I would have never believed it before that. I thought you were trying to scare me with all that talk about seeing Natasha Orlovsky"s ghost. You just don"t seem like the type."
"I"m not. When it comes to the supernatural, I"m a pretty hard sell. There"s not much I believe in, really. But I do believe what I see."
"I wish I could see the things you"ve seen."
She sounded as dreamy as a schoolgirl with a crush, and I had to laugh. "Don"t be so sure about that."