by Tim Dorsey
A black SUV left Interstate 4 behind in the late afternoon and began a meandering country drive that seemed to lead nowhere. Reevis’s Datsun was right behind.
The vehicles eventually rolled up a quiet street and parked in front of a tidy cottage.
“Here’s the plan,” said Nigel, laying out the details.
“It’s a stupid plan,” said Reevis. “And just when I thought my profession couldn’t sink any lower. Since when do journalists use psychics?”
“Cops hire them all the time,” said Nigel. “And the viewing public loves them! You’ll be a pioneer!”
“I’ll be a laughingstock!”
“You heard what your editor told you back at the office,” said the producer. “Just give it a try.”
“But whatever happened to the missing-woman case we were supposed to be working on?” said Reevis.
“That’s over,” Nigel said bitterly. “It got solved.”
“It did?”
“Tragically, she’s alive. Mid-life crisis. Been backpacking in Europe.” Nigel looked toward the front porch. “Ready?”
Reevis noticed the happy silk flag. “You sure we have the right address?”
Nigel nodded. “Been here before.”
“You have?”
“I was waiting until we arrived to surprise you.” Nigel eagerly rubbed his palms together. “There’s a second element that will put this segment over the top, television’s version of a daily double, combining two things audiences love the most. Not only are we consulting a psychic about a crime, but we’ll also have a confrontation with a psychic!”
“Please stop,” Reevis said weakly.
“No, seriously,” said Nigel, leading the way up the porch steps. “We paid her to work on a show before we met you, and you’ll never guess! The psychic was wrong!”
“I’m shaken.”
“So was I,” said the producer. “Last time she predicted the body would be found near water with sounds and lights. Just my bad luck that the victim in that case wasn’t dead, either. Turns out the girl ran away with her boyfriend for a few days. So here’s the deal: We start out like everything’s on the level; then, when she’s lulled into false confidence, you pepper her with accusations about the last case. It can’t miss! The scrupulous reporter uncovering a scandalous psychic hoax.”
“I feel ill.”
Nigel pounded and pounded on the front door.
“I don’t think anyone’s home,” said Reevis.
“There a car in the drive.” Nigel tried the doorknob. “Günter, it’s unlocked.”
“I draw the line here,” said the reporter. “I’m not a burglar.”
“Reevis, where are you going?”
“Back to the office.”
“Reevis? Reevis! . . .”
The door to the Datsun slammed, and the reporter drove off.
Nigel looked at his cameraman. “He’ll come around later for the voice-over. Let’s go inside and get some B-roll.”
Günter Klieglyte ran jiggling up the steps and barged through the door without knocking. They stood in an empty parlor.
“I know you’re back there!” yelled Nigel. “Come out now! We want our money back! . . .”
The cameraman ran forward in the dark room and tripped over something on the floor.
“Good God!” said Nigel. “It’s a body! Get a close-up!”
Down the Hall
Madam Bovary arched her back high in a prolonged tremor of ecstasy. Then she collapsed onto the mattress and hugged Serge hard around the neck. “My pirate!”
“You’re welcome.”
“But how was it for you?”
“Great.” Serge rolled off her and caught his breath. “I usually try to think of historic stuff to heighten the experience, but this time it was so vivid.”
“So you now believe in my skills at past-life regression?”
“The Eight Ball says definitely.”
“By the way, my real name’s Trish.”
“Pleasure to meet you— . . . Wait, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“From the other room. Listen . . .”
They both stared at the closed bedroom door.
“. . . We know you’re back there! Give us our money! . . .”
“Oh no,” said the psychic. “Not another.”
“Unhappy customer?” said Serge. “This happen often?”
“Only occasionally, but it’s never pleasant.”
Serge hopped out of bed. “This one’s on me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Let you relax and enjoy the afterglow.” Serge kissed her forehead and trotted toward the parlor. “Just a minute!”
Günter had the camera rolling on a close-up of a prostrate Coleman when Serge came skipping into the room wearing only black Miami Heat boxers. “How can I help you crazy kids? You’ve caught me in a great mood. Out of the blue, I just got fucked stupid by a smoking-hot babe that I only met a few minutes ago. So how’s your own day going?”
“Are you getting all this?” whispered Nigel.
Günter nodded as he kept his face against the rubber eyepiece and panned down to the underwear.
Nigel pointed at the floor. “Why did you kill this man?”
“Coleman?” Serge kicked him in the thigh.
The body sat up with a groan, then conked out again.
“He just has a different day planner,” said Serge. “Anything else?”
“Yes! I’m here to demand the return of two hundred dollars from a fraudulent session that hoaxed a respected media outlet and traumatized the parents of a missing girl.”
“That’s terrible!” said Serge. “I have to make this right!”
“Where’s Madam Bovary? We want to talk to her this very second!”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.” Serge sat down at the table and grabbed his Eight Ball. “She’s been recalled to the Mother Ship.”
“Do we look like saps to you? A UFO?”
“No, Parliament Funkadelic,” said Serge. “Backup singer, great pipes . . . It’s almost supernatural how that band keeps cropping up in my work.”
Nigel pounded the séance table, sloshing fluid in the Eight Ball. “I want to see some hard cash immediately!”
“Tell you what,” said Serge. “I’ll give you a top-shelf session at no charge, and if you aren’t satisfied, money back, no questions asked.”
“Who exactly are you?”
“Madam Bovary’s mentor, the Calico Kid,” said Serge. “Ready for my cosmic report?”
Nigel and Günter gave each other hopeful looks.
“Okay,” said Nigel. “But no funny stuff!”
“You mean like this?” Serge held his hands toward the kerosene lamp, casting a shadow puppet on the wall of a tap-dancing penis.
Nigel elbowed Günter.
“I’m getting it,” whispered the Bavarian.
“Now then,” said Nigel. “We’re working a four-year-old missing-persons case, probably a murder. Owned a motel with her husband and—”
“That’s a trick question,” said Serge. “She’s probably still alive.”
Nigel recoiled. “How’d you know?”
“I’ll do you one better,” said Serge. “A murder that hasn’t even been reported yet.”
“Really?”
Serge gazed strenuously into his Eight Ball. “I see a body in pine needles on the floor of the Apalachicola National Forest. Drive precisely five-point-seven miles from the Sopchoppy spur into Tate’s Hell, and walk two hundred yards east-southeast until you come to a log with a big mushroom-looking fungus. Despite being discovered far from open water, the body will be near a deep-sea transmitter, with a jaw-spreader in the mouth and stomach contents including earthworms and possibly Mallomars. He has a history of working in the health care field, but never fulfilled early aspirations of founding a network of pick-your-own catfish farms in an attempt to woo the affections of the second-chair bassoon at the M
et. That Eight Ball is shaky on whether that last part is prescience or coffee, so no money back there.”
Nigel and Günter just stared with open mouths.
“What? Cat got your tongue?”
“H-h-how do you know such specific details about an unreported homicide?”
“Let you in on a little secret if you promise not to put it on the air.” Serge leaned in like they were old pals. “It’s the art of making the general seem specific. Earthworms, sonar equipment, jaw-spreaders? I mean, come on, when haven’t you seen that?” He sat back and grinned.
“Uh, so . . .” Nigel muttered nervously. “You wouldn’t have a name for this murder victim, would you?”
African clicking sounds.
Chapter 17
A Few Minutes Later
Serge shook his Eight Ball and called to the bedroom. “Coast is clear!”
The psychic came out and took a seat at the table. “How’d you get rid of them?”
“Gave ’em what they wanted. I’m a student of character that way.” He set the black ball down and opened the new book he had purchased at the gift shop. “What do you think of this stuff?”
“Crystals?” She grabbed her own clear ball from the middle of the table. “I’m on the fence, but some people swear by them. There are hundreds of varieties with their own vibration levels and energy fields, giving each one specific gifts similar to patron saints: peace, love, creativity, decision making.”
Serge flipped pages. “I loved crystals when I was a kid, but I was looking at little bitty ones with the microscope I got for Christmas. In fact, I used it to examine the whole house. That microscope opened a whole new world for me! I was so excited: ‘Mom! Come quick! You have to see this stuff magnified! All kinds of crazy little creatures are running around!’ Then she’d take a peek and ask what she was looking at. ‘Mom, it’s what you made for dinner.’ That was the end of my microscope period.”
A cell phone rang. Trish checked the caller ID. “It’s the spiritual center’s referral line.” She got up to take it. “Hello? . . . No, I’m sorry, but I’m not taking any more customers today . . . No, I’m sure . . . Well, if it’s an emergency, there are plenty of others on the board who would be happy to see you . . . What? . . . Wait, your voice. Who is this? . . .”
“. . . Then I got a telescope,” said Serge, “and I could literally read a newspaper through our neighbor’s living room window, but I was still too young to process the bedroom scenes . . .”
Madam Bovary hung up and walked to the table.
“What is it?” asked Serge. “Another unsatisfied customer?”
She steadied herself as she sat back down.
“Good God, what’s wrong? You look terrible, and I’m not even psychic.”
“He found me again.”
“Who?”
“My ex. He just called from the spiritual center and is on his way over.”
“Then we only have a few minutes.” Serge noticed her shaking uncontrollably. “I’ve seen the previews to this movie before, so give me the quick version.”
“I’ve called the police, got restraining orders, moved ten times, legally changed my name, but it’s never enough. Once, he even found me through public records when I hooked up to the city water. Except this time I thought I was so far off the grid he wouldn’t stand a chance. But just now he said he saw me on TV when I did that cold-case segment.”
“TV!” said Serge. “That’s the opposite of off the grid.”
“I know, I know, but I’ve never been east of Colorado before. Who would have thought he’d see that show—”
“Has he ever hit you?”
“Hit me, choked me, thrown me down stairs, burned me.” She turned her arm over, and Serge cringed. “Swears he’s going to kill me.”
“If you don’t go back with him?”
“No, says he’ll do it someday anyway, just doesn’t feel like it yet. When we were out west, detectives came around one day asking about his missing first wife, and that’s when I finally split for Florida.”
“I’ve heard enough.” Serge ran to the window and checked out the curtains. “Shit, he’s here. Do you have a car?”
“It’s around back.”
“Hopefully he’ll think the Corvette’s yours. Lock yourself in the bathroom and don’t come out! Now! . . . Oh, and what’s his name? . . .”
Feet ran down the back hallway. Others came up the front steps. Serge ran to the kerosene lamp and turned down the flame. Then he quietly unlocked the front door. “What an episode.”
Outside: “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in!”
Quiet.
“What? No answer? Is that any way to treat the love of your life?”
The ex tried the knob. “You’ve got to be kidding. This is too easy.” He slowly opened the door and poked his head inside with a bad Jack Nicholson impersonation. “Heeeeeeeere’s Johnnnnnnny!”
The parlor was ultra-dark as he crept inside. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
More svelte steps across the Tibetan carpet. Trip. Thud. “What the hell?”
“Ow!” said Coleman. “I’m trying to sleep.”
The kerosene flame came back to life.
The ex looked up from the floor. “Who the hell are you?”
“Calico Kid Serge. And you must be Gil.”
Gil stood back up and aimed a pistol. “Are you the current loser fucking my wife?”
“No,” said Serge. “Well, not for the last half hour.”
“Son of a bitch!” Gil stormed across the room and pointed the gun between Serge’s eyes. “You’re a dead man!”
Serge put a hand to his mouth and yawned.
“What’s the matter with you? I have a gun!”
“But I have the Eight Ball!”
“What?”
Serge shook the water in the novelty item. “Its power is much greater.” He held the ball’s fortune-telling window toward Gil’s face. “See?”
“Where?”
“There.” Bam. Right in the nose.
It’s not the injury as much as disorientation. A pain source so close to the brain is magnified. Involuntary blinking. Whatever else your hands were doing, they can’t help but drop everything and fly to the center of your face . . .
Ten minutes later . . .
Serge tugged hard on a stretch of rope and yelled down the hall. “You can come out now.”
A wedge of light appeared as a door cautiously opened. “Is it safe?”
“Completely.”
It was indeed safe, but Trish grabbed her heart anyway at the sight of Gil. He was fit to be tied—and he was. The work with the rope defined overkill. Dozens and dozens of loops like a woman left on the railroad tracks in a silent movie. A tube sock duct-taped in his mouth.
“Forget you ever saw this,” said Serge. “I just have to wait for nightfall, and you’ll never have to worry about him again.”
Several Hours Later
A ’62 Ford pickup sat on the shoulder of a rocky road in the Apalachicola National Forest. Two men in overalls began hiking into the woods as the sun went down.
“I sure likes that Serge,” said Willard.
“Mm-hmm,” said Jasper. “Leavin’ us all his expensive gizmos like he did.”
“We’s gonna corner the worm-grunting market fer sure!”
“Where is that stuff, anyway?”
“Claimed it was in the same spot where we laid eyes.”
“I think it’s just behind those trees over there.”
More walking. Moss and peat and toadstools. As they rounded a cluster of pines, the top of the sonar pole came into view.
“Yep, this is the place,” said Willard. “Right where he told us.”
A few more steps.
Willard froze and Jasper bumped into him from behind. “Why’d you stop?”
“Holy infant Jesus! Is that what I think?”
“Looks like a body,” said Jasper.
City folk would have hightailed it out of there, but the brothers had seen a lot of dead stuff in the woods over the years. They crept forward.
“Gross. Look at his mouth.”
“Who you think it is?”
“He’s got a name tag,” said Willard.
“Looks like it’s from an assisted-living center. Says ‘Preston.’”
“Ain’t that the name of the guy who was taking care of Aunt May?”
They paused and looked at each other: “Serge.”
And this is where city folk definitely would have called the police. But back in the hills, you learn early not to wait for someone else to supply the justice. They thought the deed was extreme, but they understood.
“We best get rid of this fella before Serge finds his pecker in a wringer.”
“Least we can do for him.”
They fetched the shovels from the pickup and went to work. Breaking through the forest floor demanded serious back work, but beneath that, the soil was rich, moist and cooperative. They knew they had to go deep because scavenger animals would follow the scent and undo their efforts.
Digging went on into the early night, and a lot of earthworms were flung aside in flying spadefuls of dirt. Finally Willard rested one arm on the end of a shovel and wiped his grimy brow with the other. “Think it’s good enough?”
They were both standing in the rectangular hole, and Jasper stared eye level at the ground all around. “Nothin’ can burrow this far. Give me a boost.”
They got out of the pit and caught their breath. Then they stood at opposite ends of the body, grabbing wrists and ankles, and shuffled back over to the hole. They began swinging Preston.
“On three,” said Willard. “One, two . . .”
Suddenly running footsteps crackled through the leaves, and they were blinded by bright lights.
“Why’d you kill him?” yelled Nigel.
The wide-eyed brothers froze with the body in their hands.
Cassadaga
A psychic peeked out the curtains. “Sure looks dark enough.”
“It’s not just darkness.” Serge shook the Eight Ball. “It’s also waiting for all the nosy people to go to bed.”
Trish jumped as her cell phone rang again.