Now You See Her

by Cecelia Tishy

  I flash to the private subdivisions and security patrols of my past. Luxury prisons. “Frank, I will not live shut in behind locked doors in Boston. Anyway, I was driven home in that fog, with visibility of about four feet.” I say nothing about the slammed front door, which Meg and I murmured about in cryptic tones. “Every intersection was a war of nerves.”

  He can’t disagree. “No, nothing reported on Dartmouth last night I know of. Nothing in the Back Bay.” Momentary relief. Maybe I only imagined the worst.

  “You okay, Frank?”

  His thighs strain the weave of his trousers. “Let me tell you, Reggie, no police department in this country thinks there’s enough personnel to do the job A to Z. The public wants blood, the media and politicians hammer you. Add a high-profile crime, like the Dempsey case, and everyone’s on us like buzzards.”

  “Sylvia Dempsey.” The woman murdered by the river. Is this the case for my psychic sense? “Do you have leads?”

  He shoots me a look. “Not you too.”

  “A person ought to be able to walk by the Esplanade at twilight without being bludgeoned.”

  “Forget ought.” He puts his mug down, takes a notebook from an inside pocket, and lays it on the coffee table between us. “Did you visit Boston in the crack years, Reggie?” This is not chitchat.

  “Crack cocaine years? No.”

  “In those years, Reggie, you stepped on crack vials like they were seashells on the beach. People set their families on fire. Mothers threw babies off roofs. The homicide rate went sky-high. We had a hiring freeze. Openings in the division, we couldn’t fill them.”

  This is not about Sylvia Dempsey. This is something from the past.

  “It got to be a blur,” he says. “Lowlifes and snitches angled for their own deals with cops and the DA. Notes got sloppy, and witnesses ran together in your mind. It’s probably hard for you to imagine that.”

  Me? One autumn I served on three ball committees and mixed up the Baccarat and Tiffany and Waterford table favors. Tragic at the time.

  “Don’t get me wrong, we got some real good convictions. We put away scum. But then a few particular cases—” He twists his wedding band. “You think those cases are over and done with, past history, but then you find an old notebook in a drawer, open it up, and a detail comes back.”

  The notebook on the table—I know this now—is coming my way in minutes. It will be the psychic prompt. I’ll be expected to hold it and to feel the extrasensory vibes, though there are no guarantees. I say, “So you have doubts about some of those cases.”

  “Yeah, doubts. I checked old notes and files on a case about a man named Henry Faiser. He’s doing twenty to life in MCI Norfolk for shooting a man we thought was trying to buy drugs. Faiser was twenty-one years old at the time. The victim was a white college student named Peter Wald.”

  “Faiser’s black?” He nods. “This happened close by?”

  “About half a mile away on a block near the turnpike on Eldridge Street. It’s a fancy condo high-rise now, but then it was three shabby houses and a body shop, which Vehicle Theft was already watching because they suspected stolen cars stripped for parts.”

  “A chop shop.” Again, he nods. I get no points for knowing this lingo. The notebook lies untouched.

  “Homicide was watching the house next to the shop. A crack house, we thought. A woman had died there, and the cause of death was heart failure, inconclusive as a criminal case. So we kept an eye on the house. The DEA was in it too.”

  “The Drug Enforcement Agency?”

  “Feds, so there were turf issues.”

  “But Henry Faiser shot and killed Peter Wald. That’s a fact?”

  “Faiser was known to be living in the house, and also known to be at the scene of the murder. A gun was found in the weeds in a vacant lot alongside the house. Ballistics proved it was the murder weapon. We had information that Faiser shot Wald in a dispute over a drug buy.”

  “Faiser was a drug dealer?”

  “A sometime dealer. Now and then.”

  “So he had prior convictions?”

  “He had arrests.”

  “Not convictions?”

  He shakes his head. “Charges were dropped.”

  “For lack of evidence?”

  He looks me in the eye, and the moment hangs. “Reggie, how many homicides do you think I worked so far in my career, twenty years a cop? Give me a number.”

  “One hundred fifty.”

  “Nowhere close.”

  “Two hundred?”

  “Over five.”

  “Five hundred murders.” I am stunned.

  “In the crack years, assault cases turned into homicides. I didn’t even see my wife, my boys. I missed their Little League, birthdays, our anniversary. Day and night we all worked, and we still got behind.”

  “You think Henry Faiser did not kill Peter Wald?”

  He sucks one cheek. “Does the name Jordan Wald ring a bell?”

  “Wald? The candidate Wald?”

  “State Senator Jordan S. Wald. He’s running for lieutenant governor.”

  “Carney and Wald?” I recall the names on the yard sign at the “haunted” house. A memory kicks in. My late Aunt Jo talked about a State Senator Wald who pushed legislation for tough environmental standards. It was one of her many causes. “Is Wald the environmentalist?” He says yes. “Was Peter Wald related to the senator?”

  “Peter Wald was his son. And into environmental causes too. An activist.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “It was a drug scene, Reggie, a dealer on every corner.”

  “Peter Wald was there to buy drugs?”

  “We never knew for sure.” Devaney’s face says otherwise. He blinks and lowers his gaze. A moment passes.

  “But there was pressure to find the killer,” I say. “And now, years later—how many years?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Thirteen years later, you’re not sure.”

  He pulls the knot of his tie, opens his collar but does not meet my eyes. “Let’s say as a veteran in Homicide, I know how easy it is to convict innocent people. Plus, there’s hepatitis in the prison system. Hepatitis B and C. It’s almost an epidemic. Prison health care isn’t exactly the Mayo Clinic.”

  The nub of it: Henry Faiser is in prison for a murder he maybe did not commit, and he’s seriously sick. Years after the fact, Devaney is bedeviled by guilt. “So you’ve opened old files and”— I swallow hard, the challenge before me on the table—“and an old notebook.”

  Here’s what’s next. Frank Devaney will put the notebook into my hands, ask me to hold it and to receive a psychic message. A feeling, an image, something. Will I have to tell him that my intuition is temporarily out of order?

  My mouth is dry as he lifts the brown tooled-leather notebook, clasping it like a prayer book. “I’ll turn to the particular pages,” he says. “You can hold it. That’s what your Aunt Jo did. I always had to give her something to hold.”

  My Aunt Jo, psychic number one, and me, the sequel, though I didn’t understand in childhood that my so-called overactive imagination was really a sixth sense. All those tests they put me through from third grade on—results inconclusive. No one would listen to my aunt’s explanation, which became the secret we eventually shared, aunt to niece.

  “Frank, let me say something up front. I want to be honest. The fact is, I’m not sure I can help you today. In that fog last night… well, maybe my sixth sense fogged up.”

  “Reggie, when it came to psychic abilities, your aunt was also modest. She never bragged. She never promised more than she could deliver. I appreciated that.”

  “I’m not my aunt.”

  “In the police department, sniffer dogs have more credibility than a psychic. If Homicide saw this, I’d never live it down.”

  Perspiration dots his brow. My armpits prickle. The notebook is in my palms, clasped in my fingers. Eyes closed, I try to focus, reach deep inside, imagine tha
t I am one with the notebook. I try not to hear Frank Devaney breathe.

  What happens? I think random thoughts—my son’s birthday later this month, I’m out of bananas.

  Reggie, prepare to admit the truth, I tell myself. It’s a setback but not defeat. There will be other cases. Frank Devaney will come calling again…so I hope. For now, honesty is crucial. “Frank, it’s not working. My sixth sense has come to a halt.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Eyes opened, I try to give back the notebook. He doesn’t take it.

  “Maybe you need time.”

  “Psychic messages don’t work on a timer.” I put the notebook next to him on the sofa.

  His eyes look both hard and sorry. “You’re positive?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, no hard feelings on this one, Reggie.”

  I force this out. “Of course not, Frank.”

  Slowly, he pockets the notebook and rises. I, too, rise, feeling like I’m made of wood. We move toward the door. I am rollerblading on the edge of self-pity, a crime-case Cinderella in a patch of rotting pumpkins. I say, “Maybe the moral of the story is, be careful when you clean out your desk.” He frowns. “That’s when the notebook surfaced, right? When you rooted through your desk?”

  “No. It’s when I got a letter from Henry Faiser.”

  “From prison? Telling you that he didn’t kill Peter Wald?”

  His nod is long, slow, reluctant. “He writes every once in a while. To say he’s doing time for somebody else’s murder, yes.”

  We’re at the door. “Where’s the letter?”

  Devaney pulls a small envelope from his inside pocket. It’s addressed in the block letters of children and terrorists. “See for yourself.”

  I take the envelope, open it, unfold the single sheet, and read, “…wrong man… bad evidence…if you are a moral detective you must care and act…do something.” At the bottom, in huge letters: “HELP ME.”

  A short letter, it’s a disclaimer and a plea. It contains no real information, not one fact. I hold it at the edges between fingers and thumbs, reading and rereading top to bottom until I can recite those words verbatim, “…wrong man…moral detective…do something.”

  Devaney waits patiently. I’m still reading. Then there’s a shimmer, an optic flash. The moment hastens but stands still. Yes, I stare at lines of ballpoint ink, but through the paper I see a scene develop. The letter in my hand has turned as transparent as cellophane, and on the other side something swirls. Like a storm. Coils of red heat. The paper takes me there. It’s an oven, an inferno.

  I now pretend to read. I am posing with the letter, merely posing. Devaney thinks I pause to grasp the words on the page, but he is mistaken. My left side is hot. Below the rib cage is a burning. It’s painful. The hot coils sear and flash. It takes everything I’ve got not to cry out, to stand as if normal. The fiery storm scene engulfs me.

  “Reggie, are you okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, voice from an echo chamber. “Hot—”

  He takes the letter from my hands. I lean against the cool door frame. The coils begin to fade as he folds the letter, tucks it back in the envelope. No flames crackle in his mind.

  “Reggie, you okay? Are you sick?”

  I shake my head. “Just a feeling in my side, like something hot. Terribly hot.” Then I feel embarrassed. Suppose he thinks it’s a hot flash?

  Devaney leans close, looks hard at me. “I have something to tell you. The house, Reggie, the crack house where Henry Faiser lived—”

  “Yes?”

  “The day we arrested him, it went up in flames. The chop shop and all three houses on the block burned to the ground. Two bodies were found—homeless squatters. We never solved it.”

  “Oh.”

  “You felt that, Reggie. The heat. The letter did it. It means you can help, Reggie. Just like your aunt. I’ll get to work on this and call you.”

  Relief on his face. Relief in my soul. Bingo! Psychic is open for business. Hoo-ray. Saved. Deputized.

  Yet my rib…my rib is still hot. Moments pass as Frank Devaney welcomes me to the team. As I sign on gladly as his silent partner.

  Even after Devaney leaves, the rib is still hot. When my whole self is willing and able and eager, why this blaze? Listen to the body, say the experts. Suppose I do? Suppose it warns me, as I plunge ahead, not to walk through fire?

  Chapter Three

  I’m ready to take a midday walk to Eldridge Street for a crime scene survey—just as soon as my dog comes home. The radio’s on as I wash a few dishes, the violins and cellos full-throttle fortissimo. I turn it off, since Beethoven is the last thing I need at a stressful moment. The fact is, I’m jittery and my rib is pulsing. From the front window, I scan the scene on Barlow Square, where the trees are leafing out nicely in bright spring green. On the brick sidewalk, a dry cleaner makes a delivery and an older man in an argyle sweater fills his pipe. A woman carries a cardboard carton in from her car—a new toaster oven. It’s a calm city scene for suburban me, the twenty-five-year denizen of enclosed malls and culs-de-sac. Sometimes distraction is the best sedative.

  Seated in Jo’s study, I open my laptop and start “Ticked Off,” a hybrid etiquette and pet peeve column now running in seventeen suburban weeklies, three new ones signed on since last month. The weekly column was launched during my last corporate-wife posting in Oakton, Illinois—i.e., Chicagoland— where we had our biggest house. Where I had my smallest life, upscale as it was.

  “Ticked Off” was the hobby that has gained a life of its own. The sight of my name in print, the check payable to me—what a thrill! Who knew that one little op-ed piece on cell phone bad behavior would turn into a bona fide column? Who knew, for that matter, that “Ticked Off” would become a flotation device when my marriage crashed—or, to be precise, when I was ejected from what Martin “Icehouse” Baynes decided was the passenger seat? Never mind that my own idea was long-term partnership, my spousal role the family copilot.

  Marty, it seems, saw it differently. For him, I was to learn, a wife meant twenty-five years of cargo to be jettisoned when Ms. Trophy appeared. My era was done, finis, when Marty got Celina, one year older than our daughter, Molly, who is now twenty-three. In any case, “Ticked Off” is now modest steady income to be counted on. Serendipity, never knock it.

  I’m finally past the jitters and settling into writing the column—a reader-suggested topic of women who file their nails in public—when an ungodly roar erupts outside, a sonic throbbing with firecracker accents.

  My jumpiness doesn’t trigger because this time I know what’s up. I dash to the window and see the familiar chrome and cherry fenders, the bubble helmet and leathers, the gloved fingers on handlebar controls. I watch the motorcycle ease to the curb and back against it. This Harley is rigged with a dog seat. Sitting up in a harness thing, wrapped in a blanket, the dog has a brown-white-black furry head, floppy ears, and the blunt muzzle and nose of a beagle.

  I spring out. “Biscuit. Sweetie.” My voice is swallowed by the engine roar.

  This black, white, and tan bundle of energy is my dog. Correction: half mine. Formerly my aunt’s, she was jointly bequeathed to me and to this biker, who cuts the engine and dismounts, visor up. Standing by the chrome exhaust, I struggle with the harness straps, a Gordian knot. I am exasperated beyond words. “How can you—”

  “How can I what?” He pulls off the helmet. This is R. K. Stark, who stands like a highwayman, a Colossus of Roads, in his biker leathers.

  “This harness contraption, it’s dangerous.”

  “Custom-made, a stroke of genius.”

  “A dog’s hearing could be damaged by the noise. You didn’t consult me. What about our deal?”

  He deftly frees the dog, who jitterbugs into my arms and licks my fingers. As I hug her and scratch her warm belly, my dogdander allergy acts up, the same allergy that plagued me for years while raising the children with retrievers, one Lab and one golden. I sniff
but coo, “Sweetie—”

  “Sweetie? Did I hear sweetie?”

  Caustic as always, this man wants to turn a sweet animal companion into a Call of the Wild. Meaning that our philosophies on dog care are as different as day and night. Stark stows the harness contraption in the saddlebag. Biscuit darts toward a puddle in the gutter.

  “Biscuit, no.” On Stark’s order, the dog halts, comes when he calls her, delights at his gruff “Good dog” and the tug at her ears. I am practically forced to invite him inside. The two of us have issues to discuss, such as fleas, ticks, and kibble.

  “Coffee on?”

  To a normal person, you’d say yes and issue a polite invitation. But Stark strips manners like bark from a tree. I call it the Stark effect.

  “Coffee on?” he repeats. “Pope Catholic?”

  “How fresh?”

  “Since last Tuesday.”

  At her kitchen water bowl, Biscuit laps furiously, doubtless dehydrated from the foolish motorcycle ride. I pour Stark a mugful of hot coffee, slide the sugar bowl, and wait as he spoons in his usual five. His cropped hair and trim mustache are ginger, his eyes gray as the North Atlantic. He’s over thirty. His scent is unfiltered Camels. And muscles—the man might as well live at a gym.

  Literally, he might. I can contact him only on his cell phone and suspect he’s close to homeless. Or never sleeps. For two years, he lived rent-free in my Aunt Jo’s basement, jobless, practically a derelict. He’s supposedly working off his debt of gratitude to Jo by “helping” me, mostly, it seems, by showing up at odd times.

  One of which saved my life. Truly. Stark is brusque and about as sensitive as a boiled owl. My neighborhood grocers call him a thug, and they may well be right. Credentials? Don’t ask. I don’t even know what his initials, R. K., stand for, and he keeps me off-balance by showing up and vanishing like a Cheshire tomcat.

  But in my two months here on Barlow Square, Stark has shown uncanny skill where my welfare is concerned. It’s as if one of my son’s boyhood action figures has come to life to watch over me. What I know for sure is, the man’s tongue is alkali, but his deeds are heaven-sent. Stark has been a rock. So far.