Who Killed My Daughter?

by Lois Duncan

  “How do you know?”

  “The Vietnamese didn’t do this, okay? The case is moving in another direction. We’ve found a witness to the chase that led up to the shooting.”

  “The chase!” My breakfast surged up to fill my mouth. The idea that Kait had been terrorized had never occurred to me. I had pictured her cruising down the road with the windows rolled up, humming along with the radio, reliving her nice evening with Susan, when all of a sudden she was no longer thinking about anything.

  That comforting illusion was now dispelled as I heard that her last conscious moments had been a nightmare. A truck driver named Eugene Lindquist had been making a delivery that night and had seen Kait chased at high speed by a gold Camaro. She had run a red light in her frantic attempt to escape and made a U-turn at the railroad tracks, but the Camaro had made one also and stayed behind her. Lindquist’s window was down, and he heard the driver of the Camaro shout, “You fucking bitch!” with a heavy Mexican accent. The truck driver had continued on to make his delivery, and on his way back had seen police officers and rescue personnel around the area. He had at first assumed that this was the aftermath of a traffic accident, but later, after reading about the shooting in the paper, had decided that what he had seen had been the preface to murder.

  “We’re going to have him hypnotized,” Gallegos told me. “We hope that way he’ll be able to come up with more details.”

  Lindquist was hypnotized twice, once on Friday, September 15, and again on Monday, September 18. Under hypnosis he was able to recall that the fleeing car was a Ford Tempo and the Camaro was an old model low rider with gray primer spots on the right fender and a red-and-white license plate. Although he had not seen the face of the driver, he thought he had dark hair. He’d had a better view of the man in the passenger’s seat, who was wearing gray jeans and tennis shoes and had a rifle between his knees with the butt on the floorboard.

  “What about the beige VW?” I asked Gallegos.

  “That was a false lead.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Forget the beige VW, it was a gold Camaro. A couple of Mexicans tried to come on to your daughter, and maybe she threw them a finger. It made them mad, and they took off after her to scare her. They were drunk and high and had a gun in the car, and it went off. It’s a terrible thing, but it happens more often than you’d think.”

  He told me not to share this new information with anyone other than the family, because if a description of the Camaro appeared in the newspaper, the killers would immediately get rid of the car.

  I phoned Robin in Florida and told her about Lindquist’s testimony.

  “It seems that the Vietnamese men may be innocent,” I said. “Gallegos agrees with the rest of the department now. He thinks it’s a random shooting.”

  “Not everybody in the department thinks that,” Robin said. “I talked with my friend Maritza yesterday. One of the homicide detectives is a longtime buddy of hers, and he told her there’s just no way Kait’s shooting was ‘random.’ He said it has the earmarks of a professional hit. Maybe it’s time you went to Betty Muench for a reading.”

  “There’s no reason for that,” I said, “You’ve already done it.”

  “But you might get something different from what I did,” said Robin. “You’d be utilizing a different field of energy and asking different questions. I only asked about Kait’s relationship with Dung. What I should have done was ask for a description of her killers.”

  “I can’t go to a psychic,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t, that’s all. It makes me sick just to think about it.”

  When Kait was in junior high school, she and a girlfriend had talked me into taking them to a psychic fair. Everything about it had felt like a con to me, and I’d found the commercial aspect of the gathering appalling.

  “If you won’t go, then I’ll have to do it,” Robin said. “I used up all my vacation time for the funeral. If I make another trip to Albuquerque, I’ll lose my job.”

  Her recording business had just started turning a profit, and her main source of income was an outside job at a credit bureau.

  “That’s blackmail,” I said accusingly.

  “It’ll only take an hour.”

  “All right, I’ll do it, but I warn you, it’s not going to work.” I resented being manipulated into doing something I didn’t approve of and was sure that my negative feelings would be counterproductive.

  I got out the phone book and looked up “Psychic Mediums” in the yellow pages. There were several listed, but Betty Muench wasn’t one of them. I did find her in the white pages, though, and made an appointment. When I identified myself as Kait’s mother, she recalled her session with Robin and told me to bring something with me that Kait had been wearing at the time she was shot.

  Kait’s purse and the plastic jar that contained her cross, watch, and earrings were in the top drawer of my bureau. The earrings were coated with blood, and I was tempted to wash them and then decided against it. After all, the blood was a part of Kait.

  My appointment with Betty was for two P.M. On the way to her house I stopped at a church, went into the chapel, and knelt in a pew near the altar.

  This isn’t my kind of thing, I told God silently. If it is Your will that Kait communicate with me, please, help her to do it. And if this whole thing is a farce, don’t let me make a fool of myself.

  When I left the church, I was feeling less apprehensive.

  The moment I saw Betty Muench, I experienced a bizarre sense of recognition. It wasn’t that I had met her before, I had created her; she was physically identical to the psychic detective, Anne Summers, in my novel The Third Eye. In that book I had described Anne as “unremarkable in appearance. She had a pleasant face, wide-spaced hazel eyes, and a mouth that was a bit too large to synchronize with her other features. Her hair was chestnut color and slightly frosted with gray.”

  Photo of psychic Betty Muench

  I had written that description five years ago. Now an Anne Summers look-alike greeted me at the door, dressed in slacks and a pullover sweater, and I had the crazy feeling I had scripted the story of my own future.

  Betty told me that, although she was a professional channel, she rarely worked on crime cases.

  “It’s too frustrating,” she said. “The Albuquerque police won’t accept information from psychics, and it’s infuriating when they refuse to follow up on leads. Besides, there’s usually so much anger coming from crime victims that it’s a depressing experience to channel for them.”

  She said she’d done the reading for Robin only because she was a friend of Maritza’s, but having gotten involved, she felt obligated to finish what she’d started.

  Betty’s small home office was lined with bookshelves and contained two chairs, a desk, and an electric typewriter. She motioned me into one of the chairs, sat down at the typewriter, and drew some long, slow breaths.

  Finally she said, “I’m ready. You can ask your first question now. It seems to work best to start off by asking the deceased how she is and if she has a message for you. After that you can ask her about specifics.”

  I worded the first of my questions in the way she suggested, and her fingers started to fly across the keyboard. What she appeared to be doing was taking dictation.

  QUESTION: WHAT MAY I KNOW ABOUT THE WELL-BEING OF KAITLYN AT THIS TIME AND DOES SHE HAVE A MESSAGE FOR ME?

  ANSWER: There will be this initial energy which will feel like a kind of implosion. It will be as if the air is going out and there is this sense of energy over the ears and this will seem to be felt more strongly on the right side than the left. The right side holds the sense of the intellect, and there is now a kind of awareness in this intellect.

  “Kaitlyn realizes you’re trying to contact her,” Betty said.

  ANSWER: There will be then a white light which will show through a large keyhole, and there is a sense of one peering through as if decidin
g whether or not to come through it. There will be this energy which is Kaitlyn, and it will show that she will be in this time now very wary and not so trusting.

  There is, though, the assistance for her which would be hoped for. There is in this light that which is seemingly protecting her, and it will be that she will seem to open the curtain. There is this energy which will show that she is being guided in her thinking and there is the desire on her part and with approval that she will be able to convey that she will have known what will have been happening to her and that there will have been this which she can now understand but did not understand at the time of her demise.

  “The Deity seems to be encouraging her to respond,” Betty said. “That’s pretty unusual. Have you been praying about this?”

  ANSWER: There will be this that will show that she will have known that night of one who will have been looking for her, and that one will have had others looking for her. It will have had to do with some kind of message to be given to her which she did not want to hear. She will not have wanted to confront a certain situation, and this will have been the end result. There will be in this then the desire to have this also understood by others. She will want her killers—more than one—to come forth, and there will be a time soon in which they will be exposed, and there will not be any way to avoid this connection to her case.

  There will be this which will have been known by her, and she will have known what was about to occur, and she did not think that this could be as bad as it was. Thus her trust was misplaced. There will be in this time for her this kind of mistrust that was not there in her before. She will now have learned to qualify all things in her life, and thus her lesson was indeed learned and her life fulfilled, but she will now be dealing with certain karmic patterns which she alone will have to deal with. There will be those who will be caught and exposed, and it will be for this family to come to see and know what it is that she will have been dealing with in her final day.

  It will be for Kaitlyn to allow that there is a certain light around her which is paralleled in this one mother, and this light will be the line on which they can communicate directly. There is still this line open between them. There will be this energy which will allow Kaitlyn to update and renew information as it becomes more clear to her. There will have been in this mother-daughter situation this energy which will have to do with truth and communication, and thus this does not end now. There will have been this work with trust that Kaitlyn will have had and thus she will move again behind her veil and seek to continue to work her own energy. The mother may seek her out in mental thought and make a space by which they can communicate again themselves.

  “This seems to imply that when you become more emotionally stabilized and Kait learns how to transmit better, you won’t need a go-between to help you communicate,” Betty said.

  ANSWER: There is an image of a straight line that will seem to come down and then there will be wakes out from either side of it as if to try to show motion. There will be this which seems to move through water, and there will be this which will seem to be moving very fast, and this would have something to do with the energy of one who is leaving, departing, and there is a far and urgency in this as if to leave and not return. A long trip over the water is indicated in this image.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  QUESTION: WHAT MAY I KNOW ABOUT THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF KAITLYN’S KILLING—ABOUT THE CAR AND ANY PEOPLE INVOLVED?

  ANSWER: There is much light within on this. There is a kind of silver plate which will be seen lying down as though upon the hood of a car, and it will seem to have a kind of crisscross over it like some kind of embellishment. This is seen sideways and not straight on as a car might go. This image is transfixed in the head level of Kaitlyn, as if she will have perhaps seen this part of the vehicle just before she will have departed. There will be this that will show a kind of night image of two heads in the front of the vehicle and one short head in the back.

  There is this sense of an image which she gets so briefly that it is almost nonreal. This will seem to evoke some sort of recognition in her, and it is as if she is not afraid, someone she will seem to recognize and know. There will be no panic in her at this moment. There will be this that will show this car turning off to the left as if to drive away.

  Then there is an image of something which will be like the handle on a plastic brush. It is long with a square at the end. This seems to follow this car out the side, alongside this car moving away with it. This sense of recognition will have to do with something that is long-standing with her and thus no need to question this in her mind, no sense of any need to avoid or evade. Some recognition in this adds to her sense of frustration at her own misplacement of trust.

  “The cross isn’t a hood ornament,” Betty said. “It’s like metal stripping on the hood of the car. It’s odd that Kait can see it, because she has to be looking down on it. That seems to indicate the car’s low to the ground. It’s one of those funny cars that bounce up and down a lot.”

  “You mean, a kit car?” I asked.

  “No, I didn’t mean that. It’s one of those low-slung cars like the Mexican kids drive.”

  “A low rider?”

  “That’s it. That’s what they call it—a low rider.”

  QUESTION: WHAT MAY I KNOW AT THIS TIME ABOUT THE ENERGY AND IDENTITY OF THE KILLER, SPECIFICALLY THE PERSON, LOCATION, AND PRESENT SITUATION OF THIS BEING?

  ANSWER: There is a sense of three people involved and that there will be a kind of triangle and that these will be split up and going in many directions now. There will be this energy which will show that one is going west and one is going south and the other is going northeast. There will be this which will permit the overlay of a kind of triangle and this is some kind of protection by which they function. There is in this an energy of deceit and a different set of values about the meaning of life. There will be this that has not value of life in it. There is a hidden agenda in this and she will have been one to have come into this triangle in such a way that she will not have truly suspected the depth of the deceit. There will be in this then for her a lesson about trust. She will have had much to do in this time and she will have exposed herself at every turn. There will have been in her relationship with these three this which she will have not had a grasp on.

  There is in the one going west a sense of going over the waters as if going over the seas. There is in this one going south that which will seem to stop at the border with a fear of entering into this southern nation of Mexico, as one who has a fear of the Mexican energy. There will be in the one going in the third direction, that one who will seem to have the least guilt in all this, a sense of going in the direction of Chicago. He would appear to have a contact there who would lend support, and there is no shame or even knowledge in this one. This one would then be able to involve others innocently again, and this could be perpetuated again.

  “In other words, this isn’t the end of it,” Betty said. “Before this is over, somebody else may be killed.”

  ANSWER: There is no sense of this having now anything to do with this area of Albuquerque. There has been the elimination of the vehicle, which seems to be going with the one to the south. All are running now, and there is a sense that the one going over the waters is the one who will have the most guilt, and this will bring about the solution which ultimately this family will come to know.

  Betty gave me the original copy of the reading and put the carbon in her file. Then she picked up, in turn, each of the items I had brought with me—the jewelry Kait had been wearing and some things from her purse—to see if she could “read” anything from Kait’s “energy.”

  These were the impressions she got from the items:

  KAIT’S SUNGLASSES: “These send prickles up my spine. I feel that Kait looked at her killer through these glasses. Since the shooting took place at night, she must have seen her killer on some previous occasio
n.”

  KAIT’S EARRINGS: “There’s a sense of her head turning quickly from side to side. The earrings swing sharply. There’s a last sensation of them having a kind of life of their own.”

  KAIT’S CROSS: “She falls forward, bending at the waist, and the cross also moves and gives a last sensation as it strikes her chin.”

  KAIT’S LIPSTICK: “Was there any indication that she was crying that night? Not in her final moments, but before that?”

  KAIT’S WATCH: “I get a lot from watches. They absorb a great deal of energy, because people wear their watches all the time, not just on special occasions. Kait looked at this watch over and over that night. The time of nine o’clock was very strong in her mind. There’s a sense of her knowing where she was going, a destination she wanted to reach by nine. There’s a suggestion of a kind of setup. She will have been seemingly leisurely in her route, and then there is this overtaking and a sense of surprise, as if she expected one of these people to be somewhere else.”

  KAIT’S GRADUATION PICTURE: “I don’t do well with photographs. What I get is vague and symbolic. There’s an image of a door opening up partially to see who is there, as if someone is looking at Kaitlyn and does not open the door to her. It’s an occurrence that happened that evening, a visit incomplete and information incompleted, a clue she was looking for missing and no cooperation.”

  “Don’t expect the police to accept this,” Betty warned me. “If you share it with them, they’ll chalk you up as a crackpot, You’re going to have enough problems establishing credibility without giving them that ammunition to use against you.”

  8

  BY THE END OF our session I felt certain Betty Muench was no charlatan. If I hadn’t been convinced by her obvious sincerity and the fact that she wouldn’t let me pay her, the speed with which she typed had allowed no time for composition. As a professional writer I was aware of the need to pause at the end of each sentence to word the next one. Betty had not paused once.