December 29
Chapter 11
1
Sheppard snapped upright in the recliner, his heart hammering. Goose bumps raced up his arms, the hairs on his arms stood up, a kind of electrical current zipped through him.
His eyes darted around the front room, through the dim glow cast by a night-light. Goot: sacked out on the couch. Ricki the dog: curled up in her usual spot next to the stove. The laptop: still on the floor with dozens of file folders. Annie and Nadine: in the bedrooms. Nothing stirred. The only sounds he heard were logs crackling in the stove, an occasional sigh from the dog, and Goot turning in his sleep.
Yet his body screamed danger. He dug his SIG out from between the cushion and the side of the chair and quickly stood. He crossed the room, stood to the side of the door, listening. He turned the dead bolt carefully, then the knob, and pushed the door open. A biting cold blew through the open doorway and the scent of fresh snow, pine, and smoke swirled into the room. Sheppard eased himself around the doorjamb, gripping his weapon with both hands, and stepped outside.
He swung right, left, sighting along the barrel of the gun. Nothing. Wind whistled through the branches of the trees, snow flew into his face and melted instantly on his skin. A light burned in the Stevens’ kitchen window, the light Kyle King left burning, he said, so the souls could find their way home.
Sheppard shut the door to the cabin and stood against it for a few minutes, the cold eating up his bare feet, his bare arms, his bare heart. His arms dropped to his sides. He didn’t know what had spooked him, what had caused his body to slam into adrenaline overdrive. But now the adrenaline was rushing out of him and he felt old, used up, and totally useless.
The hours they had spent sifting through old cases, collating information, and making endless lists had amounted to nothing. He had slept for a few hours in the bedroom, then gotten up and gone back into the living room to work alone. But even in solitude, the math didn’t change. It all amounted to one big fat zero.
This is about you, not her, Nadine had said. He agreed with her. The fallout. But that didn’t make the task of finding leads any easier. Anyone he had put away could be a potential suspect. And if you included wives, husbands, lovers, and family members who might hold a major grudge against an arresting officer, then his possible suspects numbered in the thousands.
The MO didn’t fit anything in his current caseload, but it could fit any number of investigations he’d conducted over the last two decades. Every day people disappeared. Some never turned up, others turned up dead, some had clear motives and ransom notes, others didn’t. The longer it took him to find a lead—any lead, however insignificant—the colder her trail got for police methods and for a sensitive like Nadine, who might be able to pick up some emotional residue.
He suddenly heard screaming inside the cabin. Annie screaming.
Sheppard whipped around, barely aware that he had walked over to the Stevens house in his bare feet, without a jacket on, and raced back to the cabin. As he burst through the door, lights came on, Nadine was shouting, Goot was shouting, Annie was shouting, Sheppard was shouting—and the dog was barking. It sounded like a Latino family celebration, emotions running high in Spanish, then English, then in Spanglish, a weird combination of the two.
As Sheppard reached Annie’s bedroom, Nadine and Goot were already there, firing questions at Annie, and Annie was huddled on the bed, her arms wrapped around her head, as if to protect herself from the verbal assault. Ricki leaped onto the bed and pushed her snout against Annie’s thigh. Sheppard’s arms flew up and he waved the gun around and yelled, “Time out! Hey, time out, people!”
Silence. Annie peeked out from between her arms, leaped off the bed and ran over to him. She threw her arms around his waist, clutching him tightly, burying her face against his thin cotton T-shirt. Sheppard quickly tucked the gun in the waistband of his jeans and brought his hands down against her soft, tangled hair.
“Jesus, give her a chance to say something,” Sheppard admonished the other two.
“Where the hell were you?” Goot demanded to know.
“I thought I heard something outside.” His arms now rested against Annie’s back. “You okay, Annie? What happened?”
She slowly tilted her head back, looking up at him. “Mom. Mom was here.” Now she stepped away from him and faced Goot and Nadine. In a stronger voice, she said, “I felt her here. She kissed my forehead. She was OBE.”
“OB what?” Goot asked.
“Then you wouldn’t feel her kiss you,” said Nadine.
“Hello,” Goot said. “Could someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Goot always talked with his hands; one moment they were in midair, palms open, as though supplicating the gods, and the next second they were fixed to his hips and then his fingers were running through his hair.
“It means out-of-body experience,” Sheppard replied, drawing on knowledge he hadn’t realized he’d had.
Nadine shook her head and leaned against the wall. “And it’s something Mira has never been able to produce at will. If you felt your mother kiss your forehead, she wasn’t OBE, Annie.”
“You already said that, and she was OBE,” Annie argued. “I know what I felt.”
“Excuse me,” Goot said, his hands flying around now, unrooted, wild. “Please explain out of body in ten words or less.”
“Carajo, “Nadine murmured, running her hands over her face.
“It’s when the soul or spirit leaves the body.” Annie paced restlessly around the room now, Ricki on the bed, watching her. “It’s what happens in near-death experiences. It’s what happens sometimes in meditation, during sex, in pain, in heightened states of awareness.”
Goot looked blankly at Annie, then rolled his eyes and ran his hands over his face. “Oh, yeah, that explains it all.”
Sheppard went over to the other bed, sat at the edge of it, and rubbed his frozen feet. He listened to Nadine’s explanation about OBEs. Even though Goot came from a family of Cuban santeros—practitioners of a mystical religion that involved trance states and all sorts of odd rituals—his eyes glazed over. Sheppard could see it. Goot honestly didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“He doesn’t get it.” Annie plopped down on her bed. “He just doesn’t get it.”
“Hey, I get it.” Coot sounded irritable and angry now. “The soul goes and does its woo-woo shit. But it’s also possible, Annie, that you were dreaming.”
“I was not dreaming,” Annie shot back. “I know the difference between a dream and what I experienced.”
Nadine gathered her long salt and pepper braid behind her head and, in a soft, patient voice, began to speak in Spanish. This time she kept her explanation grounded. She told him the story of Robert Monroe, a radio executive who, in the late ‘50s, began having spontaneous out-of-body experiences. He would stretch out to nap, she said, and would sometimes experience a cocoon of vibration around his body, and suddenly he would be elsewhere, flung out of his body like a wad of paper from a rubber band. Monroe, a left-brain type, thought he was crazy and undertook an exploration of what was happening to him.
Eventually his experiences became a book, Journeys Out of the Body, and he went on to establish the Monroe Institute, where people could learn to do what Monroe did. “The CIA became interested in Monroe’s work and its psychic spy program, Stargate, actually grew out of his discoveries.”
The book Nadine mentioned was one that Mira had given Sheppard way back in the early days of their relationship. He had read a chapter and thought it was so far out there that he hadn’t finished it. Mira had given him two other books by Monroe as well and he hadn’t read those, either. He felt ashamed of that now, of his unwillingness to dive into the unknown with an open mind.
“El espiritu se va,” she finished with a flick of her wrist.
The spirit leaves.
Goot obviously understood this. “Spirit walking,” he breathed.
“Finall
y,” Annie said, obviously exasperated.
Nadine continued. “Monroe mapped states of consciousness, Goot. He described it as being on an interstate and getting off at certain exits to see what was there. One of the spots he found, which he called Focus 21, was a place between this world and the next, where it was possible for the living to visit the dead. He also traveled to parallel worlds. I remember one scene in particular that he described, where he ended up in a place with two suns.”
“So what’s it mean?” Goot asked. “Why’s Mira spirit-walking?”
“To tell us that she’s alive,” Sheppard replied. Or because she’s dead, he thought, but didn’t say it. “She’s trying to communicate with us. I know that I felt something out there in the living room. It’s what woke me.”
Goot combed his fingers through his hair. “We need more than spirit walking, amigo. We need directions to where she is.”
Nadine jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “It’s in there. In those files. And when it gets light, Annie and I need to do our own spirit walking. Down to the barn, into the house. C’mon, mi amor” She put her arm around Annie’s shoulder. “You come sleep with me.”
Annie got up from the bed, a teen in her cute frog pajamas, and Ricki followed the two women into the other bedroom.
“So?” Goot asked. “You slept enough?”
“Yeah, let’s go to work.”
2
Annie lay awake beside Nana Nadine, her arm hanging over the side of the bed, fingers sliding through Ricki’s fur. She knew that what she had experienced had not been a dream. Her mother had been here, in the cabin, and no one and nothing would convince her otherwise. But it didn’t mean she was alive.
She turned on her side, trying not to let her fear overpower her. If her mother could come to her, then why couldn’t she go to her mother and get the kind of concrete information that Sheppard needed to find her? Annie didn’t know if she could do that alone, but if she and Nadine attempted it together, boosting each other’s signals, they might be able to do it.
“Nana Nadine,” she whispered. “Are you still awake?”
“And thinking the same things you are.”
Annie raised up on her elbows. “I have an idea.”
“Me too. We should divorce Shep.”
Annie understood that Nadine was furious with Sheppard, that she blamed him for what had happened to her mom. But she didn’t want to talk about her fury. She wanted results. “If you and I can combine our energies, we can locate Mom and get the information Shep needs to find her. I think we should try it.”
Sheets rustled. Nadine sat up, turned on the bedside lamp, looked at Annie. Her salt-and-pepper hair hung over her shoulder in a single thick braid, her sleepy dark eyes regarded Annie with a mixture of love and puzzlement. “It’s extremely difficult to get details like locations, road names, towns, the kind of thing you’re talking about, mi amor.”
“Okay, so we should try for anything that Shep might be able to use. But we need to try it together. We’ll be each other’s booster rockets.”
“We should get sleep so tomorrow we can read the site in the barn.”
“We can still do that. But right now, let’s try this. Like you and Mom taught me.”
Nadine thought about it a moment, then leaned against the headboard, folded her legs lotus style, and picked up the pad of paper and pen on the bedside table. She set the items between them on the bed. “You remember how you’re supposed to breathe?”
“Sure.
“Okay, move up next to me.” She patted the mattress.
Annie scooted up to the top of the bed, leaned back against the headboard, and she and Nadine joined hands. They began a yogic breathing exercise that Nadine had taught Annie when she was four or five, alternate nostril breathing that brought both hemispheres of the brain into sync with each other.
“We’re asking for information about Mira’s whereabouts,” Nadine began in a quiet, even voice. “As I begin to count backward from ten, our levels of relaxation and receptivity increase threefold with each number. Ten... we’re feeling very, very relaxed and that relaxation moves up through the soles of our feet and into our ankles, our calves. . . . Nine... the relaxation now slips up into our knees, our stomachs. . .”
Annie knew that Nadine used this technique for self-hypnosis, that she had tapes of her own voice that she listened to on nights when she couldn’t sleep. And what a wonderful voice it was, smooth and silky, warm and safe. Annie felt herself slipping down, down, down, until she was no longer aware of Nadine’s voice, of the numbers, of anything except the noise of her own breathing.
An open elevator door appeared on the inner screen of her eyes. She stepped inside; the doors shut. Although there was no sensation of movement, the numbers lit up overhead, and when one burned brightly, the doors opened and Annie stepped out into moonlight.
Everything seemed blurred, indistinct, and she sensed her monstrous fear crouched in the peripheral shadows, ready to leap out at her and tear her to shreds. I’m safe, nothing hurts me here. Her vision suddenly cleared and she saw moonlight glinting against a frozen river. To her right, barren trees, branches gnarled like arthritic hands in the moonlight. To her left, tall pines. She turned slowly until she was facing a house.
Wooden, an A-frame. Large.
Her mother, she knew, was inside that house.
She moved toward it, looking for any identifying numbers, landmarks, something concrete she could bring back to Shep, but didn’t see anything. This house was in the middle of nowhere.
Annie went up to the steps to the front door and wondered how she was supposed to get inside. She wasn’t sure about the rules of the place where she traveled now. Maybe there weren’t any rules. Maybe the rules were the same. She turned the knob and the door creaked open and she slipped into a spacious living room. Moonlight streamed through the top of the picture windows. Art on the walls. Colorful furniture.
She called to her mother in her mind, and a soft, feminine voice said, She’s in the cellar. Annie’s head snapped toward the sound of the voice and a short woman with shiny black hair walked out of the shadows. Was this her fear in human form? Annie tensed, but then the woman spoke. I’m Rose. Can you remember that? Rose. It’s important, honey.
I need an address, Rose. For this place. I need something tangible.
River, Rose said. Northern Georgia. Now quick, there’s not much time. And she gently clasped Annie’s hand and they instantly were in another room, a basement, that was what it felt like to Annie. Her mother lay on a bed, arms and legs strapped down, her hair so damp it was plastered to the sides of her head. She operated on your mother, Rose said. The sight of her mom like this, so still, strapped down, held prisoner, shocked Annie out of the state of mind where Nadine had taken her and she suddenly snapped forward, gasping for air, her eyes wild, startled. The room was utterly dark and Nadine’s soft snores rose and fell in the quiet.
What’s going on?
Terrified, Annie fumbled for the lamp switch and the light flared and Nadine rolled onto her back and Ricki lifted her head, yawning sleepily. “Why’s the light on?” Nadine murmured.
“You—you turned it on earlier. When we were talking. When we decided to boost each other’s signals, when you did the countdown for the hypnosis.”
Frowning, Nadine lifted up on her elbows and shook her head. “Annie, after you swore your mother was spirit-walking, you came in here with me and we went to sleep. I didn’t do any hypnosis, mi amor.”
“You did. You even said that we should divorce Shep.”
Nadine sat all the way up now. “No, I didn’t say that. But it sounds like a good idea.”
“You picked up the pad and pen and put them between us. Here. On the bed.” Annie jerked back the covers. No pad, no pen.
“They’re here.” Nadine gestured at the bedside table and, yes, there they were, a yellow pad and a blue pen.
“Oh, my God,” Annie whispered, and rubbed her hands over h
er face. “I was dreaming within a dream. And I saw her, Nana Nadine. I saw my mom. Strapped down. In a basement.” She tried to hold the images in her mind, of the house on the frozen rive, in the moonlight, in northern Georgia. And Rose, a woman named Rose.
Can you remember that? It’s important, honey.
“What else?” Nadine asked.
Annie’s hands dropped away from her face. She glanced over at Nadine, scribbling frantically on the yellow pad. “I—I don’t know. There was other stuff, but I can’t remember. Mom… Mom looked bad,” she finished in a whisper, and began to cry.
Nadine gently cupped Annie’s face in her hands. “You did great, Annie.”
“But it’s not enough information for Shep to find her.”
“It’s a start.”
Chapter 12
Mira woke, sheathed in sweat, the stink of her body thick in the air. The T-shirt she wore stuck to her skin, her hair clung to her neck, her wrists felt glued to the straps. And her legs. She knew they were strapped down, that she was beneath a house somewhere, like in a cellar or a basement, that the wacko had operated on her, that she had been elsewhere.
With Annie?
It felt right, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t seem to be sure of much of anything at the moment.
The sweat.
My fever broke.
If she was on the mend, then why didn’t she pick up anything from the straps? The bed? The sheets? The pillows? Everything that touched her should have been communicating something to her, information about this crazy woman, about her motive, about who and what she was.
Gone, it’s gone.
Mira pressed her palms flat against the sheets and shut her eyes. She lay there for a few moments, adjusting her breathing, waiting for an image to surface, for information to pour into her, waiting for an inner shift. Instead, her physical body seized her attention—a full bladder that ached, discomfort and a nagging throb in her thigh, a growling stomach, the pressing need to get up and move around.
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