by Jo Macgregor
“Welcome to our home, Special Agent Mr. Singh. We’re delighted to meet you,” my mother said, all but curtseying. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
Singh shook his head. “No, thank you, ma’am.”
“This way.” I led him to the living room.
“How about a cup of herbal tea? I have ginger, fennel, ginseng, and ginkgo,” my mother offered. “Turmeric too. That’s excellent for inflammation, you know?”
“No, thank you, ma’am. I’m fine.”
“Have a seat,” I said.
“Yes, make yourself comfortable, Agent Singh,” my mother said. “My house is your casa.”
I glanced at Singh to see what he made of that. My mother had a habit of confusing words and phrases, and she could be difficult to understand. But his face remained politely blank.
Determined to be hospitable, she said, “Earl Grey?”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” Singh said.
“Would you like a cup of Earl Grey tea?”
Perhaps realizing that she was quite capable of listing every liquid refreshment in the house until he accepted one, Singh said, “A glass of water, if that’s not too much trouble.”
My mother hurried off to the kitchen, and my father settled beside me on the couch. Singh sat in the same spot he had on his previous visit, directly across from me with the coffee table between us.
“So, how can I help you?” I asked him.
“I’ve brought an item connected to an ongoing investigation in the hope that you might be able to provide me with information regarding it.”
My father made a small sound, drawing the agent’s attention. “You understand that … that these are just sort of vague impressions Garnet gets. I mean, it’s not like they’re real records of what actually happened.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad.”
My mother, who’d obviously been following every word of the conversation, called from the kitchen, “You’re like Cassandra, dear. Never to be believed in her hometown, that is the sad fate of a prophet.”
Singh gave me an incredulous look, but before I could deny any claim to being a prophet, he told my father, “I assure you, Mr. McGee, no one appreciates better than I do that these … visions are not reliable evidence.”
“If you’re so sure that you can’t get anything useful from me, then why the heck are you here?” I demanded. It was one thing for me to consider my visions unreliable. Hearing it described that way by others riled me.
Singh raised open hands. Perhaps I’m too desperate to rule out any possible line of inquiry, the gesture said, or perhaps I’m just a fool.
“What information do you hope to get?” my dad asked.
“Whatever your daughter is able to give us.”
I took a breath to speak, but my father wasn’t done grilling the agent. I guessed that having discharged his duty in warning law enforcement about the doubtful value of my gift, he now felt free to indulge his rampant curiosity about murder. “Do you have any idea who this killer is? Have you developed a profile on him? Do you know what his motivation is? Is he still active? Do you know if he’s even still alive?” he asked eagerly.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose any information about the investigation, sir,” Singh said.
“But you do have some theories? Any suspects?”
“Dad,” I said and gave him a look that told him to shut up.
My mother returned with a tray bearing four glasses and a pitcher filled with water in which floated a fistful of leaves and set it on the coffee table. “I added some sage for heightened memory, rosemary for clarity of mind, and” — she pointed at what appeared to be a piece of bark lying on the bottom of the pitcher — “cinnamon for intuition.”
After pouring a glass that contained more foliage than water, she handed it to Singh. I grinned. I bet he wished he’d accepted the offer of plain old coffee. If Ryan had been here instead of the agent, we would’ve exchanged a glance and then looked away quickly to avoid laughing. But Singh was a serious fella — he eyed the glass doubtfully. He’d been skeptical of my abilities and perhaps even of my sanity before he’d met my parents; whatever must he be thinking of me now? He said nothing, however. Placing the glass on a coaster on the table, he opened his briefcase and extracted a plastic evidence bag.
“Oooh,” my mother said, perching on the edge of an easy chair. “Is that it? Is that the thingamajig you want Garnet to lay hands on and get her reading from?”
“Did you find that at the dump site or the kill site?” my father asked.
Singh’s only reply was to give my father an assessing look. He handed me the bag, and I became aware of the unsettled state of my stomach. This was it, my chance to impress the FBI agent, to prove I was neither a deluded idiot nor an out-an-out fraud. Trying to calm myself, I took a moment to study the snap button inside the bag. It was small, round, and made of metal with raised lettering around the circumference mostly obscured by rust.
The button Singh had brought me in March had been made of wood and found on the body of Jacob Wertheimer, a young man who’d gone missing in 2009. When I’d touched it, I’d seen a vision of the killer’s hands doing horrible things to his victim and, just like when I’d touched a rib bone of the victim, I’d sensed an abyss of fear, darkness and evil which had left me disturbed for days.
I shuddered at the memory. Sensing that I might again be about to experience something similar, my body rebelled, urging my heart into a faster beat. A deep, primitive part of my brain ordered me to drop the bag, to flee and have nothing further to do with this.
I blew out a steadying breath and pushed the soles of my feet onto the carpet, as if that could keep me rooted in place. Then I opened the bag.
– 4 –
My mother sucked in a breath, my father covered his mouth with a hand, and Singh, unblinking as a cobra, watched as I closed my fingers around the button in my sweaty palm and concentrated. And got only the faintest of sensations.
I opened my eyes, and my mother, positively thrumming with excitement, asked, “What did you see, dear? Did you hear anything? Pick up any evil vibrations?”
“Not really. I just got a vague impression of … anger. And pain, maybe?” I said uncertainly. I met Singh’s gaze and shrugged, feeling guilty. Maybe he’d come all the way to Pitchford for nothing. Maybe I’d lost the ability to read objects.
My mother slumped back in her chair in unmistakable disappointment and frowned at the pitcher of water. “Perhaps I should’ve added a pinch of peppermint.”
“I wonder,” Singh said, glancing from her to my father, “if Garnet would be able to concentrate better if we were alone?”
My mother stood up at once, regretful but still eager to help. “I’ll go upstairs to my bedroom and lay a crystal grid. It’s directly above this room, so it should potentiate the vibrations. Amethyst, celestite, and quartz should turn the trick, I think.”
Singh directed a look of such complete blankness at me that I knew exactly what he was thinking: WTF, lady? I had no answer for him.
Instead, I turned to face my father, who hadn’t moved. “Dad, don’t you have something else to do, somewhere else to be?”
He stood up. “Yes, of course. I’ll go rinse my rods.”
A flicker of bewilderment crossed Singh’s impassive features.
“He means his fishing rods,” I explained. “He was away on a fishing trip until last night.”
“If you need me, kiddo, you’ll find me in the basement,” Dad said, leaving the room with my mother, who was wondering out loud whether it would be a mistake to exclude malachite.
As soon as we were alone, Singh jerked his chin at the button still in my hand. “Can you tell whether that’s connected to the killer with the last button I brought?”
I closed my eyes again and, concentrating as hard as I could, tried to feel with the fingers of my mind for any link to the other murder, the other victim. When I opened my eyes, I tried t
o put into words what I’d intuited. “There’s a … a resonance. I get ‘the same but different.’ Where did you find this one?”
He hesitated, obviously reluctant to give me any information. Eventually, he said, “With a body.”
“But not on or in its mouth.” It wasn’t a question.
Neither confirming nor denying this, he pulled a different evidence bag out of his briefcase and handed it to me. “Let’s try this one.”
I placed the first button on the table and peered at the dark-green button inside the baggie. It was about an inch in diameter and made of plastic, with a raised edge around the circumference and a crosshatch pattern scored on its upper surface. Four holes punctured the center. I was about to open the bag when a slight movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I glanced up just in time to see my father ducking back around the entrance to the living room, where he’d obviously been eavesdropping.
“Dad!” I yelled and heard a mumbled apology and footsteps retreating down the hall.
“Your father is very curious about all this,” Singh said.
“Yes, he’s very … protective of me.” I said nothing about his killer hobby; Singh didn’t need to know the full extent of my family’s strangeness.
I tugged the ziplock of the baggie open and tipped the button into my hand, then closed my eyes and focused. My palm grew warm, and the skin on my scalp tightened. The image I saw was faint and brief but enough to tell me that this button was definitely from one of the Button Man’s victims.
I opened my eyes. “Okay, I didn’t see much. And what I did see wasn’t very clear.”
Singh raised an eyebrow, like he thought I was already preparing excuses for a failure to see anything.
“It was a hand, a male hand, pushing this button into a man’s mouth.”
Singh’s blank expression gave me no clue as to whether I was on the right track.
“Did you find the button in the skull of the skeleton, maybe in the jaw area?” I asked, remembering something my father had once told me. “Did you know that the Greeks used to place copper coins in the mouths of the dead so they would have fare for the ferryman on the River Styx? They had to pay him to take them across the river to the world of the dead.”
“Is that so?” His tone could not have sounded less interested.
“I’m just wondering what the button in the victim’s mouth could mean to the killer.”
“Did you see anything else?”
“Give me a minute.”
Holding the button between both my palms, I clasped my fingers, slowed my breathing, and tried to empty my mind of all distracting thoughts and worries. When my full attention was fixed on the curves and ridges pressing into my skin, I re-entered the vision I’d seen moments earlier.
Hands, white as death-lilies in the darkness.
Two hands, left and right.
The left hand touches the stubbled jaw of a young man. His skin is pale, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted. A white object lies beside his head.
No fight, now. No fear left. No problem.
The thumb of the hand pushes between the young man’s lips, pulls out, pushes back inside. Thrusting in and out of the mouth. Then it pulls down the jaw, holding it open in a silent scream, while the fingers of the other hand slide a green button over the teeth and into the mouth, then push the jaw up, pinching the lips closed between thumb and forefinger. Tugging them into an obscene pout.
The vision dissolved into formless clouds of gray. Swallowing rising bile, I opened heavy eyelids to find Singh watching me carefully.
“Well?” he demanded when I dropped the button on the table.
“Do you want to know what I saw or what I felt?” I asked, my voice breathy.
“What you saw.”
I poured myself a glass of the ridiculous water, and between sips, I told him exactly what I’d seen, no more and no less.
When I finished, he asked, “Can you describe the hands?”
“Male.” Whether I’d been able to tell from the appearance or whether it was just a feeling, I was certain those hands hadn’t belonged to a woman. “White-skinned. No wedding ring. I would guess left-handed.”
“Anything exceptional about the hands? Like a scar or a mole?”
“Nope.”
“You said the victim was dead. How could you tell?”
“His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving.”
“He might just have been unconscious.”
“Ah, well, that’s where my pesky feelings come in.” I gave Singh an expectant look, wanting the satisfaction of forcing him to ask about my sensations and intuitions, but he said nothing, and after a few more seconds of silence, I caved. “Since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you,” I said. “There was a deadness there.”
“A deadness?”
“Yes, an absence of life. A deep emptiness, a cessation of all life-emanating vibrations,” I said, laying the mystical terminology on thick enough to make my mother proud and Singh exasperated.
Looking like he was suppressing a sigh, he reached for his glass of water, clocked the vegetation floating around inside of it, and set it back down. “The hands that were holding the button, do they belong to the same man in the visions you claim to have had about Wertheimer’s death?”
Claim to have had? “You want my gut feel?” I asked.
Singh gave the slightest of nods. It was as much encouragement as I was ever likely to get from this die-hard cynic.
“Well then, gut feel, yeah, it’s the same guy.” I set my glass back down on the tray. “Do you know when this victim went missing?”
He said nothing.
“I think it wasn’t that long ago. Am I right?”
No reply.
Singh was beginning to piss me off. It wasn’t fair that our communication here was all in one direction. I had a growing need to rattle his self-assured silence. Placing the tips of my fingers against my temples, I rolled my eyes upwards and lowered my lids slightly, hoping he would see only the whites of my eyes.
In the most ethereal voice I could muster, I said, “I think he went missing sometime in the last two years. What’s that?” I asked as though listening to an inner voice. “Twelve and sixteen. Ah, I understand. Thank you!” I opened my eyes and said confidently, “He definitely didn’t go missing before December 2016.”
Singh’s eyes bugged. Too late, he schooled his features back into their usual impassivity. “How did you— what makes you say that?”
“Just a feeling,” I said, needling him further. “It felt more … fresh than the other visions.” Also, the white object lying on the ground beside the victim’s head was an Apple Airpod. Those had been released just in time for Christmas in 2016. I remembered because my father had offered to buy me a pair for my Christmas present, but thinking they looked ridiculous, I’d asked him for a donation to a new phone instead. Now, seeing Special Agent Just-the-facts-ma’am Singh at a complete loss for words, I smiled. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
He didn’t deny it. Running a finger around the inside of his collar, he asked, “Was there anything else?”
I glanced at the two buttons on the table, then picked them up, and holding one in each hand, attempted another reading. I had to push aside the images from the newer button and try to direct my focus to what might lie between them.
I was more certain this time. I slipped the buttons back into their baggies. “There is some kind of connection between them. I felt it as a kind of closeness. But I couldn’t say if that was literal or figurative. I wonder … Was the body this came from” — I held up the baggie with the green plastic button — “found near this one?” I held up the other.
Again, he didn’t answer my question, but I had a feeling I was right.
“They were, weren’t they? This one matched the pattern of previous victims, but this one didn’t. Were there only the two bodies?” I gasped as a sudden thought intruded. “Are these from that new site with all the bodies?
The one in the Nash Stream Forest?”
He took the baggies from my hands, his lack of denial as good as a “yes.”
“They are, aren’t they?” I pressed. “What was different about the first one? Did all the others have buttons on them? How many victims did you find?”
He returned the baggies to his briefcase, closed the lid, and clicked the locks shut.
“Let me touch things from the other victims, and I’ll be able to tell you more,” I said.
“No,” he said baldly.
“How about a bone from one of the skeletons?” There was a note of pleading in my voice. “That green button … that murder was recent. Is he still active? You’ve got to stop him, and I can help you, if you’d just allow me!”
“We don’t typically allow civilians to assist us in our investigations, unless they are experts, qualified, legally recognized experts,” he clarified nastily. “Or unless they were direct witnesses to the crime.”
“Then what was this today?” I challenged. “You’ve seen what I can do. You know it’s legit.”
“Why do you even want to be involved? Investigations into serial killers are ninety-five percent brain-rotting tedium and five percent life-threatening danger.”
“I’m going back to Boston tomorrow, but you can still get hold of me on my cell. I’d be willing to travel to Rutland to assist you, if that’s what it takes.”
“You know, Ms. McGee, law enforcement takes a dim view of people who appear too curious about a particular crime or who are too persistent in trying to insert themselves into the investigation process. Because you know who typically does that?”
“Nice, kind, helpful people?” I suggested.
“Suspects, that’s who.” He stood up to leave, thanking me for my time.
I trotted behind him to the front door. “I wouldn’t tell anyone I was helping you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. And if you give me more information or more access to the investigation, I’m pretty sure I could give you more insights.” Lowering my voice a notch, I added, “Quid pro quo, Agent Singh.”