Beyond Physical

by D Pichardo-Johansson

  Frowning, Carl said, “She can be in control of her physical reactions, but I’m sure that there must be a way to detect when she’s lying. Have you considering having her interviewed by a psychic, or someone who can read the electromagnetic field?”

  Richard uncovered his eyes and looked at Carl in disbelief.

  “Oh, please, you have to be kidding me! You and your ridiculous ideas!”

  Getting up from his seat, Richard paced angrily around the living room. “I’m sick and tired of you! All you do is warp my brain and confuse me. What for, Carl? What good are all your stupid theories in real life?”

  With an exasperated sigh, he turned to Carl and yelled, “Look at me! Am I any happier or better off now than when I first met you? I’m a disaster! Nana’s dead, I’m being forced to move away, my case is now stuck when I thought we were closing it, I lost Joy. How does this fit with your theories about being able to get anything you want ‘with the power of your thoughts’?”

  Richard slammed his hand against the couch, enraged. “Why did I have to meet you? I was happy the way I was, when I could sleep all night without having nightmares about my childhood, when I was changing women like changing socks. If it hadn’t been for you and your psychological and spiritual explorations . . .” Richard dropped himself onto the loveseat again and covered his face with his hands. “What good did it do me to learn to feel again, when now all I can feel is this terrible pain?”

  Carl remained silent.

  A long time had passed before Carl spoke. “My friend, it’s normal to feel discouraged when things aren’t going our way. But the fact that we can’t see the sun when it’s the night doesn’t mean that it ceased to exist.”

  Getting up from his chair, Carl sat next to Richard and put his hand on his shoulder. “Pain is as much a part of life as laughter is. Breathe it in and out. Like the pain you feel when you smash your fingers with a hammer, it’s temporary. Believe me, it doesn’t seem like it will ever go away, but it will. In the meantime, keep focused on your goal, detached from the details.”

  Richard shook his head. “There’s no point in talking to me right now, Carl.”

  He got up from his seat and walked away.

  Richard exited the house. The sky, which only minutes ago had been sunny and blue, had turned gray and dark, as a sudden thunderstorm had erupted. Only the lightning preceding the roaring of the thunder broke the darkness that almost mimicked the night. It was raining so heavily that he was already soaked when he made it to his car.

  He’d just climbed into his SUV when his cell phone rang. It was Samuel.

  “Richard, you need to come right away. The tech team has something for us.”

  * * *

  Richard and Samuel stood in front of the three men, one of them holding the Lords of the Universe pendant in his hands. Anxiety filled Richard’s eyes when he asked, “What is it? Is it a tracking device like I thought?”

  “No.”

  “A microphone, some form of transmitter?”

  “No.”

  “What is it? Tell us already!”

  With delight in his eyes, the man smiled. “It’s a pacemaker.”

  A heavy silence filled the room.

  “A what?”

  “It’s a highly sophisticated pacemaker-defibrillator. Similar to the devices that people with severe heart disease get implanted subcutaneously in their chests.”

  The man showed them with pride. “The device has a lithium iodine battery inside, which is still charged. These tiny things hold enough power to operate pacemakers for up to ten years. These devices register the heart rhythm constantly; and if an arrhythmia occurs, they deliver an electric shock to restore it.”

  The man hung the necklace from his neck. “See? The metal piece hangs more over the chest than the neck. And the clasp is weighted in a way that, no matter how many times you straighten it, it gets back into this position where it lies a little to the left. When the victims put the seatbelt on, it would lie exactly across it, putting it in close contact with the chest.”

  Richard raised his eyebrows. “On top of the heart?”

  “Yes. Inside the cord, there are electric wires, and in the back of it are two small areas to the right and the left that follow the Lead-1 of the electrocardiogram. But what blows me away is that this device is more compact than implantable versions, yet it has to be much more powerful if it’s intended to deliver the electricity from outside the skin instead of from leads lying directly on top of the heart.” He raised the pendant. “This tiny thing is at least as powerful as the plates of an external defibrillator, one of those used to restart the heart during CPR.”

  “How do you turn it on?” Richard was mesmerized.

  “Look at the clasp where the ends of the cord come together, It’s an on-off switch.”

  Samuel shook his head. “I don’t understand. Michael O’Hara was a healthy man. Why would he need to wear something like this?”

  Richard remembered pieces of a conversation he’d had with Joy months ago. “Unless . . . unless it was designed not to restart the heart, but to stop it.”

  The four men turned to him. Samuel asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Sam, I discussed this with a physician once. An electric charge delivered directly to the heart can disrupt its electrical conduction enough to make it stop immediately.”

  Samuel’s eyes widened. “Could it do that without leaving any evidence?”

  Richard nodded. “If the charge was not strong enough to leave a burn mark, it had to be delivered directly to the heart and timed to the electric wave in the electrocardiogram where the heart is most sensitive.”

  Raising his arms, Samuel exclaimed, “That could explain how the victims were killed!”

  Richard turned back to the tech. “You said this device needs to be activated manually?”

  The man assented. “There’s no infrared receiver to suggest there’s a remote control for it. They must have tried to economize space. The curious thing is that once you press the clasp button, it doesn’t turn on immediately. The EKG recording function starts right away, but it doesn’t fire the electric charge until fifteen minutes later.”

  “Fifteen minutes later?”

  “Yes. And once it fires, the device disassembles immediately. We’re still trying to figure out how it happens. It seems that some of the pieces are held together merely by magnetic forces, and the electric current disrupts this, making them come apart and fall off.”

  “Leaving little evidence. That’s why it was difficult to find in the other victims.”

  “In the case of O’Hara, the outer shell of the device must have gotten caught behind the seatbelt and didn’t fall off,” Samuel said.

  Richard reflected for a moment. “Thank you, gentlemen. You’ve done a great job.”

  As Samuel and Richard walked out of the office, Richard said, “I guess the next step is to confront Hayes with this assumption. This finding supports the suspicion that she gave an order from where she was in DC to somebody close to Michael O’Hara to activate the device shortly before he got in his car.”

  “And we know, though we still can’t prove it, that the person was Stephen Fox—if we can ever find where he’s hiding.”

  Samuel walked away. Richard remained quiet, assimilating the big step forward that his investigation had taken. What a difference a few hours could make. Carl was right after all. It was a matter of hanging on.

  He took out his cell phone and dialed his number.

  “Hey, Carl, it’s me.”

  “Richard! Are you talking to me now?”

  Richard’s voice was shy. “I’m calling to apologize about the way I talked to you earlier. Please don’t take anything I said personally. I was angry at the whole world.”

  “Don’t worry. Being a Master begins by not taking anything personally.”

  Sighing, Richard muttered, “You know how much I appreciate you and how I do take the guidance you give me seriously, don’t you?
”

  He could guess Carl was smiling on the other side of the line. “Seriously enough to take my advice and take a psychic reader to interview Hayes?”

  Richard laughed. “What? Can you read electromagnetic fields?”

  Carl’s voice turned serious. “No, but I know someone who can.”

  Chapter 36

  I can’t believe I’m doing this! Richard thought for the hundredth time that afternoon, as he headed to the contact visiting room at the County Jail with Laura Bonas. Carl had offered to visit Hayes in jail and have Laura eavesdrop on the conversation so she could “feel Hayes’s vibrational frequency,” working like a human lie detector. Richard thought he’d die of embarrassment if any of the other agents ever found out he’d agreed to such a ridiculous idea; but after his last explosion, he felt he owed Carl one. Sam had reluctantly agreed to meet them there.

  “Absolutely not! I can’t watch through TV screens!” Laura argued with a diva attitude as they went through security clearance. “I need to be in the same room with the subject in order to get a reading.”

  As Richard picked up his cell phone from security, he noticed his battery was so low the ringer was muted. He had a lost call and a text from Samuel. The text read, Breaking News. Fox is dead. I’m heading to confront Hayes.

  Confused, Richard arrived at the contact visiting room and found Samuel and Carl were already there. Hayes was crying.

  “What happened?” Richard asked Carl.

  “Your partner says Fox opened fire on two policemen ordering him to stop his car, and they had no choice but to return fire. He showed Rachel the picture of Fox’s dead body.”

  As Hayes sobbed, Samuel addressed her, “I’m sorry for having to show this to you, but this was the only way to confirm what we suspected. It’s true; Fox was your lover. He was the person you were protecting in this crime—the executor of your order to kill Michael O’Hara.”

  Sobbing violently, she nodded.

  Samuel got up from his chair and walked toward Richard, dragging him with him to the opposite end of the room. Richard was too baffled to react.

  “Richard! We have the mastermind; we have the motive of the crime; and with the finding of the necklace, we have the weapon. And now we know who the executor was! Do you realize what this means?”

  Richard reacted. “The O’Hara case is closed!”

  Samuel hugged Richard effusively. “We did it, man! Under your leadership. You have a brilliant future ahead of you. I always knew it!”

  Richard felt the room was spinning in slow motion: Samuel hugging him, Carl standing in solemn silence, the image of Rachel Hayes still crying at the table. He then saw Laura Bonas standing in front of them, shaking her head. She looked disturbed.

  “She’s lying! This is a trap!”

  Samuel turned to her, frowning. “I forgot you were bringing this crazy lady! What are you talking about, woman?”

  Her eyes were as lost as usual, but this time there was terror in them. “Her tears are fake! She’s making you believe the dead man was her lover, and it’s not true. He was set up, and the real murderer is still free!”

  She walked in the direction of Hayes and rolled a chair in front of hers. Holding her cuffed hands, she looked straight into her eyes, narrowing hers.

  “Mr. Fields was right; the man you are protecting is your lover! And you’re communicating with him somehow!”

  Hayes gaped at her. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Sssshhh!” Laura’s expression was turning into fear. “Oh no. This is worse than I thought.”

  Hayes let go of Laura’s hands and got up from her chair. “I refuse to speak with this woman. I want to get back to my cell, right now!” Richard noticed her tears had stopped.

  A security guard rushed to escort Hayes out of the room.

  With a terrified expression, Laura turned to Carl and Richard. “This is terrible! This woman would go to any extreme to protect the man who helped her. Right now he’s wiping clean any tracks which could lead to his capture, and that includes getting ready to kill the few people who knew about their relationship.”

  Richard took a step in her direction. “Can you see who?”

  Samuel shuddered. “Richard, have you lost your mind? Do you really believe that this psycho has the psychic powers she claims to have? We’re not wasting more time following her delusions. This case is closed!”

  A long silence invaded the room.

  Laura walked to the table where Hayes had been sitting and ran her fingers over it.

  “Do you remember, Mr. Fields, that I was sitting here months ago, when you interviewed me the first time?”

  “How could I forget that day?”

  Her fingers stopped on a spot on the table.

  “Do you remember what you asked me to do that day?”

  “I asked you to perform a miracle—to make a tree grow out of the table to prove your powers.”

  “And what did I say?”

  “You said it was useless because, without faith, I wouldn’t be able to see it.”

  She sighed. “Not all miracles come as earth-shattering events from rumbling skies. They also come disguised as small coincidences we need to act on. And sometimes the biggest miracle is having faith when it seems absurd to have it. “

  She took her hand off the table.

  “Mr. Fields, open your mind to receive the miracles.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Richard walked toward the table. His heart stopped for an instant. The fake wood knot she’d been covering with her finger was shaped as a tiny tree. He could hardly discern it, but it was there.

  He gasped.

  She smiled.

  Sure he’d lost his mind, he held Samuel’s arm and pulled him toward them. “Sam, do you see what I’m seeing? Do you see a tiny tree-shape in the middle of this table?”

  “What?” Samuel looked at him as if he was crazy. “What are you talking about? That looks nothing like a tree.”

  Richard turned to Carl. “Carl?”

  He nodded. “I see it, Richard; I see it, too.”

  Richard walked toward Samuel. “Sam, I can’t give you a logical reason why, but I need you to stop for a second and review our theory one last time. If Rachel Hayes was trying to protect the real executor of the crime, then she must be protecting whoever took the final step to turn on the pendant-defibrillator to make it work—someone who was with Michael O’Hara fifteen minutes before he died.”

  Samuel raised a hand. “And now we know it was Fox, at his campaign office. We’ve always known that the day he died, O’Hara was coming back home from his office after working late.”

  As a sudden realization hit him, Richard shook his head. “No, he wasn’t! There’s no way he returned to the office to work that day. That was the night Joy asked him for a divorce!”

  Samuel looked at him, puzzled. “What are you talking about, Richard?”

  “I know this from Joy, Samuel. Michael O’Hara left his house, enraged after a fight with her and—quoting her words—‘hours later policemen were knocking on her door telling her that he and his car were at the bottom of the Indian River.’”

  Richard pondered. “Who could he have gone to see in between? Samuel, if your wife told you she wanted a divorce, and you were heartbroken, where would you go?”

  Samuel shrugged. “To your house, probably, to get drunk and curse the woman with my best friend—”

  Samuel stopped abruptly—his eyes widening. “Charles Clark, O’Hara’s best friend!”

  Richard felt his heart drop. “Sam, Joy is meeting him tonight! He’s supposed to be handing her a contribution check to support the Hospice House.” He stopped, his voice becoming more high-pitched, “And she was Samantha McKinney’s . . . Hayes’s psychotherapist—probably the only other person who knew she was having an affair with him, not Fox. And now Joy is on her way to . . . oh, God!”

  Richard ran out of the room, ignoring Samuel’s voice calling him. He picked up his gun from the locker in
a rush and ran as fast as he could to his car.

  Chapter 37

  “Please, Joy! Answer the phone! Answer the damn phone!”

  Richard knew chances were she was looking at his name as the incoming call and ignoring the call on purpose. Now, as he sped dangerously through the city streets, trying to reach the old campaign building, he regretted not having explained the situation to Samuel and asked for his help. He reached for his work phone to call him and realized his battery was dead. Tossing that phone to the back of the car, he tried to remember Sam’s number to call him with the disposable phone. After a few failed attempts at dialing with one hand while driving with the other one, he realized he’d lost cell signal.

  Damn it! He cursed in his mind, turning around the corners in the narrow streets, thinking that only someone as naïve as Joy Clayton could have gone to such a bad neighborhood when it was about to get dark without questioning the intentions of the person inviting her.

  Now, as he approached his destination, he could see her red car in front of the building and knew it was faster to catch her and talk to her in person than to get someone else to call her.

  He saw her in the distance, standing in front of the door, ringing the bell. It was not too late! He drove straight to her; but before his car was close enough for her to see him, the door opened, and she disappeared inside.

  Richard hit the brakes, almost crashing against the building. He then jumped out and ran to the door. It was locked. He hesitated, debating between ringing the bell or banging on the door, when he heard Joy scream inside.

  He pulled his gun from his belt and shot the door lock, breaking it. He then kicked the door open and stomped in, holding his gun up.

  “FBI! Freeze!” he yelled.

  His heart skipped a beat. A huge man held both of Joy’s arms to her back while another pointed a gun at her. In a corner of the room stood a third man. They all wore black.

  The three men were startled to see him arrive. For what seemed like an eternity, nobody moved. The only noise breaking the silence was the sound of Joy’s agitated breathing.