“You Elizabeth Chase?” He was holding the business card I’d given to the patrol cop that morning.
“Yeah, and you’re Detective …” I drew the word out, waiting for him to fill in the blank.
“Baxter.” He looked at me with a face that made me want to confess, even though I hadn’t done a damn thing wrong. I wondered how many years he’d been perfecting that trick.
I led him into my office, where he did a quick survey of the room. His eyes scanned my P.I. certificate and my doctoral diploma—a PhD in parapsychology from Stanford—and lingered on a framed letter from San Diego’s chief of police. The letter was a commendation for a kidnap case I’d cracked last fall.
“Your business card says you’re a psychic,” he said as he continued to read the framed letter.
“For lack of a better word.”
“You don’t like that word?” he asked.
“Hate it. Every time I hear it, I see embarrassing images of scam artists and phony hotline counselors. Don’t you?”
He was staring directly at my face now, studying me through narrowed eyes.
“They say you’re the real thing.”
“I am. I don’t tell people what they want to hear. And when I draw a blank, I don’t make stuff up.”
“If that’s true, I’m eager to hear what happened to the woman in the cove.” He stepped closer to get a better look at the books on my shelves. He was slightly shorter than me but exuded an easy confidence. No Napoleon complex here.
“Afraid it’s not that simple,” I said.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. How do you work the psychic angle?”
“It’s more accurate to say that it works me. I don’t control my psychic experiences, I just receive them. If I don’t receive anything, I’m as clueless as the next Joe.”
He arched a thick black brow. “You can’t summon visions at will, like they do on TV?”
“Receive, yes. Summon, no. Most of the time I have to investigate the methodical way, like everybody else. I can tell you how I found the body.”
“Okay.”
I repeated for Baxter everything I’d told the patrol cops earlier that morning. He sat in my guest chair and took notes on a small spiral pad. When I was done, he read the notes silently to himself as he chewed on the top of his pen.
“Anything else you know about this?” he asked.
“I know that the victim’s name was Wendy Woskowicz. She was a college dropout with a history of mental illness. She hadn’t had a permanent address for at least three years. Lived in an ’82 Dodge van with a pet pig named Tiny. Let’s see … she had a rap sheet of sorts … misdemeanor drunk-in-public and animal-control violations, mostly. Guess she and her pet pig had a habit of disturbing the peace.”
“You get all that in a psychic vision?”
“No. I made a few calls and searched a few websites.”
Baxter smiled as he pulled a box of Altoids from his pocket. I declined the mint he offered. He slipped one of the white tablets into his mouth and sucked thoughtfully for a few moments.
“So you’ve been digging,” he said.
“I wanted to know who she was.”
“Just remember you’re a witness here, not an investigator.”
“Witness. Got it.” I smiled at him and meant it. I liked the warmth I saw in his eyes. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet Baxter was a decent guy. Cynical, but decent.
“I have to tell you,” he said, “that I think the psychic thing is bull crap. I’ve never met a medium who told me a damn thing that wasn’t an educated guess.”
“I know what you mean. The real thing is pretty rare. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What was in that little pouch around the victim’s neck?”
He crunched down on his mint and shook his head. “You’re the psychic. You should be telling me.”
“I told you, I can’t summon my powers at will. What was in there?”
He got up to go. “Sorry, we’re not releasing that information.” I still can’t fully explain what happened the next morning. My Himalayan, Whitman, was napping on a sunny windowsill when something—a feline nightmare, perhaps—startled him from a sound sleep. He bolted from his perch and knocked a potted plant to the floor, where it shattered on the hard tile. As I was vacuuming up the soil, I heard a loud clattering in the machine that let me know I’d sucked up something metallic. I turned off the vacuum and gave it a vigorous shake to loosen the offending article.
A tiny key bounced onto the floor. From its round, hollow shaft and single notch, I recognized it as the key to a handcuff. Immediately I thought: This is from Wendy.
Before getting carried away, I looked for a logical explanation. After all, I did own a pair of handcuffs. I went to the closet and opened the box in which they were stored. The handcuffs were there, complete with the accompanying pair of keys. Wherever it had come from, the key in the vacuum cleaner wasn’t mine.
A candle and incense burner on a cabinet in my upstairs bedroom serves as my humble altar. I walked upstairs, placed the mystery key by the candle, and studied it for several minutes. I was wondering if I might be witnessing a case of telekinesis—mind over matter—similar to an incident from the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 in January 2000. The daughter of one of the crash victims had made a pact with her father: the one who died first would send a signal that all was well on the other side. After the plane went down in the Pacific, fishermen found Bob Williams’s red-and-gold Masons ring on debris they pulled from the ocean. That the ring was recovered at all seemed miraculous. The fishermen returned the ring to the victim’s daughter, who felt certain it was a signal from her deceased father.
Could this handcuff key be a message from Wendy Woskowicz? Lighting the candle, I said a prayer for her.
I fully expected to hear back from Detective Baxter, and prepared to be called up for duty as a witness in the Wendy Woskowicz murder case. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the next morning’s paper reported that police were considering the possibility of suicide. The idea struck me as ludicrous.
This time it was my turn to drop in unannounced on Baxter, who worked at SDPD headquarters downtown. Having done a lot of business there over the years, I was on a first-name basis with the receptionist. She didn’t hesitate to give me a building pass—a plastic name tag on a cord that I draped around my neck.
I found Baxter talking on the phone in his eighth-floor office. When he hung up I said: “What’s this about suicide? You guys honestly thinking of ruling it that way?”
He ran a hand through his thick silver hair. “Not thinking about it. We already have. How’d you get up here?”
I flashed my pass at him. “May I ask why suicide?”
“Several reasons. One, the victim left a suicide note. Two, she had a history of depression. Three, the autopsy found a whopping 2.1 alcohol level in her bloodstream. Four, the day before she died, she gave her pet pig to her brother and asked him to take care of it. These are the things a person does before committing suicide.”
I took a minute to add it all up. “I’m sorry, I just can’t see a woman handcuffing herself underwater,” I said.
“That’s because you’re not mentally ill.” He kept a straight face but his eyes were laughing. “You’re weird, maybe, but not certifiable.” He motioned me to sit. “Where’d you get that building pass?” he asked as I lowered myself into a nearby chair.
“Oh, this?” I glanced down at the pass around my neck. “I cast a spell and materialized it out of thin air. Since when does a history of psychiatric problems automatically mean a person committed suicide?”
“We’re looking at her overall state of mind. It wasn’t just depression. She was losing a battle with alcoholism too.”
“But I can’t imagine—”
“Of course you can’t. It’s impossible for you or me to imagine doing what she did. But when someone has an extreme death wish, even horrifying suicide
methods start to look good. The way they see it, life’s a lot more painful than the brief suffering they’ll go through as they die.”
“Why am I not convinced?”
“Look, if she’d been tied down there with a rope, that would concern me. Tying yourself up is pretty hard to do. But it’s easy to handcuff yourself.”
“That’s weak, Baxter.”
“There were no bruises on her body. No signs of a struggle. And no one in the area saw anything unusual.”
“Of course they didn’t. The newspaper reported her time of death between four-thirty and five that morning. Not a whole lot of people up at that hour. Plus, it’s barely light out.” I thought back to the redness I’d seen on her wrists. “What about the lacerations under her handcuffs? Don’t they indicate a struggle?”
“Sad to say, but it’s likely she changed her mind after it was too late.”
I chewed on that for a while. “Where would a woman living out of her van get handcuffs?”
He shrugged. “Anywhere. They weren’t police quality. More like cheap imitations from a small manufacturer. Maybe she found them at a porn shop, who knows.”
He really was convinced, so much so that it was almost convincing me.
“So, about that leather pouch around her neck,” I said.
“What about it?”
“Did you find a handcuff key inside?”
I’d hit a nerve, because Baxter froze. “So you looked in the pouch when you were down there,” he said.
“No. As I said to the cops at the scene, I didn’t touch a thing.”
A smug smile crossed his face. “Okay. So you made a good educated guess.”
I decided not to tell him about the key that turned up in my vacuum cleaner. It was too hard to explain on too many levels. Not to mention that if the key in my house matched the key to the cuffs at the murder scene, I’d have some impossible explaining to do.
For the umpteenth time, my mind replayed the moment I discovered Wendy’s body. “Sicko,” I muttered.
Baxter’s brows shot up. “You talkin’ to me?”
“No. I’m talking about the person who locked Wendy Woskowicz to that chain and then put the key in the pouch around her neck, taunting her with it.”
“Creepy scenario, but I don’t think that’s what happened. I think she used the key to get the handcuffs open. She put a cuff on one wrist and put the key in the pouch. Then she swam out there, dove down, and locked the other cuff to the chain.”
“Pretty amazing feat for a woman with a 2.1 blood alcohol level.”
“An alcoholic is used to functioning at those levels. I’m telling you, if someone had chained her down there against her will, we’d be seeing some sign of a struggle.”
I imagined how a killer—or killers—might have done it. “Suppose they got her drunk and talked her into a sunrise scuba dive. They took her out, showed her the buoy chain, and before she knew what was happening, they handcuffed her to it. Then put the key in the pouch around her neck, just to torment her.”
“Yeah, okay. So where’s her scuba gear?” Baxter asked.
“They cut it from her body and left her there without oxygen.”
“Without putting a scratch on her,” he said sarcastically.
“She was drunk. The deed was done by the time she caught on.”
Baxter sighed and looked at his watch. I took the hint and got up to leave. “One more question,” I said at the door. “Isn’t it pretty standard to get two keys with a pair of handcuffs?”
“Yeah.”
“If one key was in the pouch around her neck, where do you think the other key is?”
“Moot question, Chase. The case is closed.”
I did my best to push Wendy Woskowicz from my mind and tend to my own work. I was doing an investigation for a high-tech manufacturer, tracking down a disgruntled employee who’d erased the company’s hard drives. The company directors were eager to find the former systems analyst they now called Hell Boy, since his tantrum had caused a $3 million loss in revenue.
But Wendy Woskowicz wouldn’t go away. Granted, she didn’t come to me as a specter in the night, rattling her chains. But every morning I’d see the handcuff key on my dresser and churn with the feeling that her case wasn’t settled. I began to obsess about her suicide note. What had she written? I wanted to read her words for myself, if for no other reason than to come to peace about her death.
I shelled out ten bucks for a copy of the police report on Wendy’s drowning. Her brother, Joseph Woskowicz, was listed as next of kin. He lived in Normal Heights, a mixed neighborhood north of downtown.
The house was a 1920s bungalow, refurbished and neatly landscaped. Like a crafty telemarketer, I picked dinnertime to ring Mr. Woskowicz’s bell. A wholesome-looking man in his mid-thirties answered the door. He wore the classic white-collar uniform: khakis and a button-down shirt. With his conservative demeanor and haircut, he bore only the faintest resemblance to his late sister. The resemblance was there, though, in his wide green eyes.
“Joe Woskowicz?”
“Yes?”
“My name’s Elizabeth Chase. Sorry to disturb you at home. I’m the woman who found your sister in La Jolla Cove.”
His eyes got even wider. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes,” I said.
He came out of his daze. “Sure. Come on in.”
He led me into a small but pleasant sitting room—hardwood floors polished to a bright shine—and offered me the comfort of a large leather armchair.
“Please, have a seat.” He lowered himself into the chair facing mine. “It must have been pretty traumatic, finding her that way.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know the police have closed the case, but I’m having a hard time getting my own closure.”
“Me too, but it’s only been a week. It’ll take time. For both of us.”
“Are you convinced she killed herself?” I watched him closely. He’d passed his interview with the police department, but he hadn’t passed mine.
“Yeah, I guess. Wendy wasn’t a well person. Even as a kid she was difficult.” His shoulders sagged. “She really went downhill after she dropped out of college. Started living on the street. Or the beach, to be more accurate.”
“When was that?”
“About three years ago. I did everything I could for her. Psychologists, psychiatrists, rehabs. Tried to find her jobs, support groups, you name it. A year ago, I pulled away. I had to, for my own sanity.”
The guy’s torment was palpable. He sounded like a man struggling to convince himself that he wasn’t somehow at fault for his sister’s death. Or like a man who was flat-out guilty.
“So you believe she killed herself,” I said, rephrasing my earlier question.
“I guess so. I mean, she had a hard life.”
He paused and looked away, a stoic expression on his face. But the emotions roiling inside him were broadcasting loud and clear to my solar plexus. Beneath Joe’s guilt, I sensed a mother lode of unexpressed grief.
“The police said all the evidence pointed to suicide,” he said at last.
Living on the street—or in Wendy’s case, the beach—carried certain risks, particularly for a substance abuser.
“Any possibility she got into trouble over a drug debt?” I asked.
“No. Wendy refused to put drugs in her system, including antidepressants. The irony is, if she’d been open to drugs, she’d probably be alive today.”
“So I take it there was a lot of despair in the note she left.”
“Note?”
“Detective Baxter told me she left a suicide note.”
“Oh, that. It wasn’t a note, really. More like a diary entry.” He went into the back of the house and came out with a dogeared journal. He flipped through the pages and handed the open book to me. “This is it,” he said.
The entry was written in a slanting
, uneven hand:
I guess the years and escapades have finally done me in. I’m sorry I’m letting so many people down. People who love me. But I don’t love myself anymore, so what’s the use? Going down, down, down …
“Down, down, down,” I read.
“That’s the part the police picked up on,” he said.
“She doesn’t come right out and say she’s killing herself, though.”
“Not in so many words, but—”
We were interrupted by a banging noise coming from the back of the house.
“That’s Tiny,” he said. “She wants in.”
I followed Joe into the kitchen. Outside, an enormous gray pig on tiny cloven hooves stared through the sliding glass door, impatiently switching her tail. This was no pot-bellied piglet. Tiny weighed a hundred pounds if she weighed an ounce. Much of her mass hung in flabby folds from her neck and belly. She jammed her flat, round snout against the glass and kicked the door with a foreleg.
Bang.
“All right, all right, just a second.” Joe slid the door open. With surprising grace, the pig trotted right up to me. She plopped her fat bottom on the floor like a dog and looked longingly into my face.
“She wants to be petted,” he said.
“I see.” I scratched Tiny’s ears and she blinked thoughtfully. Scientists say that pigs are the fourth smartest creature on the planet, behind humans, apes, and dolphins. This pig had more going on behind her eyes than a lot of people I knew. “What a charmer,” I said.
“Isn’t she? I think having to give up Tiny was the final straw for Wendy. This pig was her soul mate.”
“Did she have to give Tiny up? I thought she left the pig with you voluntarily, because she was planning to take her life. Tying up loose ends and all.”
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