Never Saw It Coming: (An eSpecial from New American Library)

by Linwood Barclay

  But you were compelled to be here. You simply had no choice.

  She saw the man pull back the curtain to get a look at her, and gave him the smile. Almost apologetic.

  Then the door opened.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Mr. Garfield?”

  “You a reporter? We did the press conference yesterday. There’s nothing else I have to say at this time.” He leaned out of the door, looking past her down to the street, wondering, maybe, if a news van was nearby.

  “I’m not a reporter, Mr. Garfield.”

  “What do you want, then?”

  “Let me give you my card,” she said, handing one to him.

  He glanced down at it. The card read:

  KEISHA CEYLON

  Psychic Finder of Lost Souls

  Under that, a web address and a phone number. “What the hell is this?” he asked.

  “Like it says there, I’m Keisha, and I’m so very sorry to trouble you at such a time. But I think, if you’ll be kind enough to give me a moment, you won’t regret my knocking on your door.”

  He looked at the card again. “Psychic finder. Sounds like total bullshit to me.”

  Keisha smiled. Not too much. Made the smile look just a little sad. “I encounter that a lot. Maybe it would be better if I just put the word ‘consultant’ on there, but that would be a misrepresentation of the type of service I provide.”

  “A consultant,” he said, slipping her card into his shirt pocket.

  “I consult for people who find themselves in situations such as yours, Mr. Garfield.”

  “So you’re what, some kind of psychic detective? Like that Medium woman on TV?”

  “Actually, a bit, yes.”

  “You have a nice day, Miss Cylon.”

  “That’s Ceylon,” she said, and put a palm on the door as he started closing it. “Let me ask you one thing before you send me away.”

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Are things going so well in the search for your wife that you’re willing to dismiss all other avenues?”

  She could see the hesitation in his eyes. She said, “I’m not going to kid you, Mr. Garfield. What I do, it takes a leap of faith, I know that. And I’m not always right. It’s not an exact science. But what if there’s a chance, maybe just one chance in ten—a hundred, even—that I can help you find Mrs. Garfield, isn’t that a chance worth taking? If it isn’t, tell me, and I’ll leave here and never trouble you again.”

  He held the door, frozen. It was wide enough that he could still see her, but not wide enough to allow her in.

  After several seconds of hesitation, he opened it wider. “Fine, then.”

  She stepped into the house. There was a small foyer, and a living room to the right with a couch and a couple of soft armchairs. A set of windows along the front, the blinds letting in very little light, and a second, smaller window, on the side wall, where the blinds had not been closed tight.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” she asked. It was always a lot harder for them to throw you out when you were sitting down.

  He pointed to an armchair. Before she could sit, she had to move a ball of green yarn with two blue, foot-long knitting needles speared through it. She tucked the bundle over to the edge of the chair.

  “Have you ever heard of me?” she asked as he took a seat across from her on the couch.

  “No,” he said.

  She nodded. “Well, it’s not as though I’m famous or anything. But I do have something of a reputation. Just last week I helped a couple find their son. He’d been depressed and they were worried he might do harm to himself. We found him just in time, too.”

  “My wife was not depressed,” Garfield said.

  Keisha nodded. “Of course. Every case is different.”

  He eyed her as though she might already have had a chance to pocket the silverware. “Why don’t you tell me what it is, exactly, that you do.”

  “As I said, I offer my services to people when they’re in crisis. When they desperately need to find someone. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions first before I start getting into how I do what I do?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I saw you and your daughter—Melissa, is it?”

  He nodded.

  “I saw you on the news, making your appeal. Asking for information about Mrs. Garfield, asking her, if she was watching, to come home so you could stop worrying.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I was wondering, what sort of tips have the police received since then? I’m assuming they’ve been in touch.”

  “There’s been nothing. At least nothing helpful. A couple of nuts called in.”

  Keisha nodded sympathetically, as though this was about what she expected. “And aside from waiting for tips, what other efforts have the police been making to find Mrs. Garfield?”

  “They’ve been trying to trace her movements since she left the house Thursday night. That’s the night she does the grocery shopping, but she never got to the store.”

  “Yes, I knew that.”

  “And her credit cards haven’t been used. I know they’ve been showing her picture around to all the places she usually goes, talking to her friends, talking to people she works with. All the things you might expect.”

  Another sympathetic nod. “But as with the tips, nothing very helpful. Is that what you’re telling me, Mr. Garfield?”

  “It would seem so,” he said.

  Keisha Ceylon paused for what she thought was a dramatically appropriate period of time, then said, “I believe I can help you where the police cannot.”

  “Is that right?”

  “The police do what they do, but they are not trained to—what’s the phrase?— think outside the box. What I offer is something more unconventional.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  She looked him in the eye. “I see things, Mr. Garfield.”

  His mouth opened, but he was briefly at a loss for words. Finally he said, “You see things.”

  “That’s right, I see things. Let me make this as simple and as straightforward as I can, Mr. Garfield. I have visions.”

  A small laugh erupted from him. “Visions?”

  Keisha was very careful to maintain her cool. “Yes,” she said simply. Draw him out. Make him ask the questions.

  “What, uh, what kind of visions?”

  “I’ve had this gift—if you can call it that, I’m not really sure—since I was a child, Mr. Garfield. I have visions of people in distress.”

  “Distress,” he said quietly. “Really.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “And you’ve had a vision of my wife? In distress?”

  She nodded solemnly. “Yes, I have.”

  “I see.” A bemused smile crossed his lips. “And you’ve decided to share this vision with me, and not the police.”

  “As I’m sure you can understand, Mr. Garfield, the police are often not receptive to people with my talents. It’s not just that they’re skeptical. When I’m able to make progress where they have not, they feel it reflects badly on them. So I approach the principals involved directly.”

  “Of course you do,” he said. “And how is it you get these visions? Do you have, like, a TV antenna built into your head or something?”

  She smiled. “I wish I could answer your questions in a way that everyone would understand. Because if I knew how these visions come to me, I might be able to turn them off.”

  “So it’s a curse as well as a blessing,” he said.

  Keisha ignored the sarcasm. “Yes, a bit like that. Let me tell you a story. One night, this would have been about three years ago, I was driving to the mall, just minding my own business, when this … image came into my head. All of a sudden I could barely see the road in front of me. It was as though my windshield had turned into a movie screen. And I saw this girl, she couldn’t have been more than five or six, and she was in a bedroom, but it was not a little girl’s bedroo
m. There were no dolls or playhouses or anything like that. The room was decorated with sports memorabila. Trophies, posters of football players on the wall, a catcher’s mitt on the desk, a baseball bat leaning against the wall in the corner. And this little girl, she was crying, saying she wanted to go home, pleading to someone to let her leave. And then there was a man’s voice, and he was saying not yet, you can’t go home yet, not until we get to know each other a little better.”

  She took a breath. Garfield was trying to look uninterested, but Keisha could tell she had him hooked.

  “Well, I nearly ran off the road. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder. But by then, this vision, these images, had vanished, like smoke that had been blown away. But I knew what I’d seen. I’d seen a little girl in trouble, a little girl who was being held against her will.

  “So, in this particular situation, because I did not know who the actual people involved were, I made a decision to go to the police. I called them and said, ‘Are you working on a missing girl case? Perhaps something you haven’t yet made a statement about?’ Well, they were quite taken aback. They said they really couldn’t give out that kind of information. And I said, ‘Is the girl about six years old? And was she last seen wearing a shirt with a Sesame Street character on it?’ Well, now I had their attention. They sent out a detective to talk to me, and he didn’t believe in visions any more than I would imagine you do. Maybe they were thinking I might have actually had something to do with this girl’s disappearance, because how else could I know those kinds of details? But I said to him, talk to the family, find out who they know who’s really into sports, who’s won lots of trophies, particularly football trophies, maybe even baseball, and the detective said, yeah, sure, we’ll get right on that, like he was humoring me. But then he left, and he made some calls, and within the hour, the police had gone to the home of a neighbor who fit that description, and they rescued that little girl. They got to her just in time.” Keisha paused. “Her name was Nina. And last week she celebrated her ninth birthday. Alive, and well.”

  Total bullshit.

  Keisha clasped her hands together and rested them in her lap, never taking her eyes off Garfield.

  “Would you like to call Nina’s father?” she asked. “I could arrange that.” She didn’t think he’d take her up on the offer, but if he did, she had Kirk on standby. If Garfield called, Kirk would pretend to be the father of the little girl who’d disappeared. He’d say how they owed their girl’s life to Keisha. He’d done this one other time for Keisha—not with a missing person case, just a woman who wanted a reference before she let Keisha read her palm—and he handled it okay. The trick was, keep the call short. Kirk was the kind of guy who couldn’t keep track of the lies he’d told, and the more questions there were, the more likely he was going to trip himself up.

  As Keisha had suspected, Garfield was not interested in confirming her story. “No, no, that’s okay,” he said. “But that’s quite a tale.”

  Keisha detected sarcasm, but not as much as she might have expected.

  “Still, I’d totally understand,” she said, “if you’d like me to leave. Perhaps you’ve got me pegged as a con artist. There are plenty out there, believe me. If you don’t want me to share my vision with you, I’ll leave right now and you won’t hear from me again. And I just want to say, I hope the police find your wife soon, Mr. Garfield, so that you and your daughter can get your lives back to normal.”

  She stood. Garfield was on his feet too, and when Keisha extended her hand, he took it. “Thank you for your time, and I’m so sorry to have troubled you.”

  “What will you do?” he said. “I mean, if you’ve had this so-called vision, and I’m not the kind of person who buys into that sort of thing, what will you do now?”

  “I suppose,” she said, “I’ll go to the police with what I know, and see if there’s anyone there who cares. Sometimes, though, that can have a negative effect. They’re not always as receptive to my involvement as they were when I called them about Nina. I’ve found they have a tendency to get their back up, and the tip you give them is the last one they follow up.” She smiled. “They can be somewhat dismissive of the skills I bring to the table. I hope, for your wife’s sake, they don’t take that attitude.”

  “So you are going to the police,” he said, more to himself than to Keisha.

  “Again, thank you for—”

  “Sit down. You might as well tell me how this works.”

  Eight

  What the hell was he to make of this woman?

  Wendell Garfield didn’t know what to think. Did Keisha Ceylon really have visions? Her telling of that story about the little girl was pretty convincing, but it wasn’t enough to persuade him she was legit. There was something about her, though, that was hard to dismiss.

  And worrisome.

  His mind raced through the possibilities. The woman was trying to shake him down, plain and simple. He had a feeling that, even though they hadn’t gotten around to the topic of money, it was just around the corner. What better mark than a husband desperate to find out what had happened to his missing wife? Wouldn’t plenty of people in his position be willing to engage a psychic, a medium, a spiritualist, a paranormal expert—whatever the hell this woman wanted to call herself—even if they believed, at best, there was only a one in a million chance she really knew anything? Isn’t that what someone who truly loved his wife would do?

  Or maybe she wasn’t trying to con him. Maybe she really believed she could do what she claimed. It was possible she was here out of a sincere wish to help. It didn’t have to mean she actually had some psychic gift. She could be a well-intentioned nut. Deluded. Her visions could be the product of a twisted, disordered mind.

  And then, of course, there was a third possibility: She was the real thing.

  Garfield considered that the least likely prospect. But what if, somehow, for reasons he was not yet privy to, she was on to something? Did he want her talking to the police?

  Not really.

  The smartest course, for now, seemed to be to hear her out. See what she had to say.

  Once Keisha was back in the chair, with Garfield sitting across from her, he said, “First of all, let me apologize if I was rude earlier.”

  “Not at all. I understand that what I do, the talent I have, is difficult for many people to get their heads around.”

  “Yeah, well, I have to admit, I have my doubts. But then again, I very much want to know what’s happened to Ellie. I love her so much. This is just so unlike her, to disappear this way. Totally out of character. And it’s been so hard on Melissa.”

  “Is she here?” Keisha asked.

  “Not at the moment. She doesn’t live here. She’s been staying the last couple of nights, but went back to her own place this morning. I’m going to pick her up later.”

  “She’s not very old to be living on her own,” Keisha said.

  “When Melissa was younger, she didn’t care much for observing our rules. So we all agreed it would be a good learning experience for her to try living on her own.”

  “I see,” Keisha said. “And when I saw her on the news, it looked to me as though, that she might be—”

  “Yes, she’s pregnant.”

  Keisha forced a smile. “Isn’t that wonderful.”

  Garfield couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Yeah, it’s terrific. I don’t really want to talk about Melissa. If you’ve got something to tell me about Ellie, if you’ve got some damn vision you want to share, then let’s get to it.”

  “I get the feeling you’re not going to be very receptive to anything I may have to tell you.”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. Go ahead.”

  “There is another matter we need to talk about first.”

  “Here we go.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve been waiting for this. What’s it going to cost me, to get a glimpse of this little vision of yours?”
/>   Keisha adopted a look of great patience. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Garfield?”

  “I work at Home Depot,” he said.

  “They provide you a salary for that?”

  “Indeed they do.”

  “I bet you have to be very knowledgeable to work there. You have to know about so many things. About paint, and lumber, and plumbing and appliances. All the different kinds of screws and nuts and bolts? Am I right? They don’t pay you just for the work you do. They pay you for what you know. For your experience.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s no different with me,” Keisha explained. “This is my livelihood. I have a gift, and I’m offering to use it to help you. But I don’t provide a service without some reward for my knowledge and experience. If you were to hire a private detective to assist you in locating your wife, you wouldn’t expect him to put in his time and use his experience without compensation.”

  “Oh, of course not.”

  “I’m pleased to hear you say that.”

  “And what sort of money are we talking here, Ms. Ceylon?” he asked.

  “One thousand dollars,” she said, not being the slightest bit shy about it.

  His eyebrows went up. “You’re not serious.”

  “I believe the sum is reasonable,” Keisha said.

  He thought about it. “I’m not a rich man.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I’ve taken that into account.”

  “So there’s a sliding scale? You take a look at the house and the kind of cars in the driveway, and if you see a Beemer you jack the price up? What the market will bear and all that?”

  She started to get up once again. “I think I’ll just be on my way, Mr. Garfield, if that’s okay with—”

  “How about this,” he said. “You give me a hint of what your vision’s all about, a little sneak peek, and if it sounds credible to me, then I’ll give you five hundred dollars. And if the information you have leads to my finding Ellie, I’ll pay you another five hundred.”

  She considered his words a moment, then said, “I will tell you about a few of the initial flashes that have come to me. If you wish to hear more, how the images evolved, then I will tell you everything for the full amount of one thousand dollars.”