It broke the mood. I shrugged, turned to go. “Not since I was a kid.”
“Wait.” The crack in her voice stopped me. I swung back. She was staring at me fixedly again, pupils still dilated, and said in an eerily distant voice, “Your father killed your dog.”
I felt a frisson slide down my spine. “Listen—”
“Your father killed your dog.”
“Because the dog had been hit by a car,” I said sharply. “He was badly hurt and in pain. My father had no choice.”
“So were you,” she said. “In pain. You knew what he was feeling. You felt what he was feeling. The dog. You saw the accident.”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t there.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I was on my way home from school. I didn’t see it.”
The color had drained out of her face. She put out a hand to steady herself against the washing machine.
“Are you sick?” I asked sharply. Or on drugs.
Even her lips were white. “You don’t see in black and white.”
I lingered in the doorway, caught on the cusp of wanting to go and wanting to stay. “What are you talking about?”
“You see in color. Too much color.”
I dropped the basket and made it to her before she collapsed. I hooked the chair with a foot, yanked it over, put her into it. She was all bones and loose limbs. She muttered an expletive under her breath, then bent forward. Splayed fingers were locked into light brown hair.
“What are you on?” I asked.
She shook her head against her knees. “No drugs.”
I stood over her. “This happen to you often?”
She muttered another expletive.
“Look, if you feel sick, I can get the wastebasket.”
“No.” She shuddered once, words muffled. “No, it doesn’t take me that way.”
Alarms went off in my head. “What doesn’t ‘take’ you what way?”
She heaved a sigh, sat up, pulled fallen hair out of her face. Her color was somewhat improved, but a fine sheen of sweat filmed her face.
I’d been married; I couldn’t help it. “Hot flash?”
She grimaced. “I wish. No . . . no, it’s just—something that happens.” She closed her eyes a moment, then looked up at me. “Would you do me a favor and help me to my apartment? I’m always a little shaky afterwards.”
“Is this a medical problem?”
Her hands trembled on the chair arms as she pushed herself to her feet. “Not medical, no.”
I hooked a hand under her arm, steadying her. “Come on, then. We’ll take it slow.”
She nodded. It looked for all the world like a rag doll’s head flopping back and forth.
I took her to her apartment, pushed open the door, and was greeted by three highly suspicious dogs. I wondered uneasily if I was about to lose my ankles, but she said something to them quietly and they stopped barking. The trio stood there at rigid attention, watching closely as I got her to an easy chair.
“Thank you,” she said. “Would you . . . would you mind getting me some iced tea? There’s some in the fridge already made.”
The dogs let me go to the kitchen, but only under close supervision. I hunted up a glass, found the pitcher of tea in the refrigerator, poured it full. The liquid was cloudy, and lemon slices floated in it. I sniffed suspiciously.
“It’s sweet tea,” she called from the other room. “No drugs. I promise.”
I walked back into the front room with the glass. “You psychic or something?”
She glanced at the dogs, who clustered around my legs, and reached out for the tea. “You’re a detective. Detect.”
A chill touched me at the base of my spine. “We worked with one or two in the department. I never believed there was any merit to them. Their claims. Their visions. I never solved a single case using them.”
She drank tea, both trembling hands wrapped around the glass. The sugar left a glistening rim along her top lip. “It’s a wild talent,” she explained. “It comes and goes in people. Very few can summon a vision at a given time, so it’s not surprising cops don’t believe what they say if they can’t perform on command.” She looked at the dogs. “We’re not a circus act.”
“Research,” I said dubiously. “Paranormal?”
She drank more tea, then smoothed the dampness from her lip with three steadying fingers. “Mrs. Landry asked me to read her cats. That’s how we met.”
Read her cats. If she heard my doubt, she gave no sign.
“Two of them were with her husband when he died. He was at home, you know. Mrs. Landry was out grocery shopping. She always worried that he was in pain when he died, that he was terribly afraid because he was alone.” Shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I did what I could.”
I kept my tone as neutral as possible. “You read her cats.”
“It was very sudden, his death. There was a moment of pain—he died of an aneurysm—but it passed. He was gone very quickly. He didn’t have time to be afraid.”
“The cats told you this?”
“No.” She set the drained glass down on the table next to the easy chair. “No. They showed me.” She saw the look in my eyes. “The same way your dog showed you, when he was dying. On your way home from school.”
I opened my mouth to reply but found myself unable.
“You don’t see in black and white,” she said. “You see in color. Or did. Very vivid color, in a much broader spectrum than anyone else. They are the colors of the mind. But you’ve shut them down. I think you must have done it that day, because it was too painful to see from behind your dog’s eyes. Or else you said something, and your father told you it was just your imagination. Parents often do that when they don’t understand what the child is saying.”
I murmured, “My wife says I don’t have any imagination.” Then I caught myself. “Ex-wife.”
“Most of us don’t get married. Or don’t stay married.” Her tone was dry.
“Us? You’re counting me in with you?”
“Of course.” She leaned back against the chair, slumping into it. “Thank you. The sugar helped. But I need to rest now.”
“You read me back there? In the laundry room?”
“No. I can’t read humans. Not clearly. But there were edges . . . pieces.” The bones stood out beneath the whitening skin of her face. “I’m sorry. I have to rest now.”
One of the dogs growled. Very softly. Almost apologetically.
I didn’t have to “read” him to know what he meant. I took myself out of the apartment and back to my own, where I opened the bottle of single malt I kept for special occasions. The first and only time I’d availed myself of it was when the divorce papers arrived in the mail.
Outside, I sat in the fraying chaise lounge and drank Scotch, remembering a dog, and a car, and the unremitting pain that ceased only when my father ended the dog’s life. But before that, in the final moment, I had felt the unflagging trust in the canine heart: the human will save me.
I swore. Downed Scotch. Fell asleep—or passed out—as the moon rose to replace the sun.
My neighbor opened the interior door just as I knocked on her screen door, and stared at me through the fine mesh. She wore nice slacks, silk blouse, a well-cut blazer. Hair was neatly brushed and shining, hanging loose to her shoulders. Makeup told the story.
“You’re going out,” I said inanely.
One hand resettled the purse strap over her shoulder. “I have an appointment.”
“Reading more cats?”
“As a matter of fact, no. It’s a Great Dane.”
“Should you be doing it so soon? I mean, it was only yesterday that you nearly passed out in the laundry room.”
“I’m fine.” Her eyes were cool, her tone businesslike. “Is there something I can help you with?”
I found myself blurting, “You can let me go with you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but that wouldn’t be a good idea.
”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t believe what I told you. You want to go only to prove to yourself I’m lying.”
I opened my mouth to deny it. Closed it. Shrugged. “Maybe so. I guess you are psychic.”
“Not really. This particular gift goes far beyond that.”
“But you told me—”
She interrupted. “I told you what you wanted to hear. You said you worked with psychics when you were a cop. What I do is different.”
“But you said ‘us.’ As in you and me.”
“Because it’s in you, too. Buried very deeply under years of denial, but there.”
“You can’t know that.”
Her tone was tinged with humor. “Of course I can.” Then abruptly, she pushed the screen door open one-handed and stepped back. “Are you coming in?”
“You have an appointment, you said.”
“Appointments can be rescheduled.”
“But—”
“You came here for a reason.”
It was very lame, but I offered it, anyway. “Cup of sugar?”
She smiled dutifully, but the eyes remained serious. “Come in.”
“Won’t the Great Dane be offended?”
“The Great Dane would just as soon be a couch potato.” She stepped aside as I moved past her. “It’s his owner who believes the dog knows something.”
“And it doesn’t?”
“Probably not. Sometimes dogs are just dogs. But this is California, home of the Great Woo-Woo, and some people identify a little too much with their pets.” She slipped the purse from her shoulder and put it on the console table behind the sofa. “I got over feeling guilty years ago. If it makes the owners feel better, it’s not wasted money.”
“You mean they hire you even if there’s nothing to read?”
“There’s always something to read.” She gestured to the sofa, then sat down in the easy chair. “But sometimes what I read is merely a dog’s inarticulate longing for food, or a cat’s annoyance with the fly buzzing around its head.” She smoothed the slacks over one knee. “What can I help you with?”
I glanced around. “Where are your dogs?”
“Outside, basking in the sun.” Her eyes were steady. “Well?”
“Can you read something that belonged to an animal?” I asked. “Like a—a food dish or something?”
“Sometimes. Is that what you want me to do?”
I drew in a breath, released it. Then dug down into the pocket of my jeans. I pulled out the collar. “This.”
She looked at it in my hand. A simple braided nylon collar, tan, stained dark in spots, the kind called a slip collar, with a metal ring at each end. You threaded the nylon through to make a loop and slipped it over the dog’s head.
I watched her eyes. The pupils went pinpoint, then spread like ink. Her hand came up, lingered; but she dropped it back to the chair arm. “Wait a moment. Please.”
She pulled a cell phone from her purse. Ten numbers were punched in. In a moment she was explaining quietly that something had come up and she’d have to reschedule; and, likely in answer to what was said, explained it was very important. Then she disconnected, dropped the phone back into her purse, and leaned forward.
Her hand hovered. I pushed the collar into it. Her fingers grasped it, closed tightly—and then spasmed, dropping it.
She was standing. Trembling. “My God—”
I looked at the collar lying on the carpet. Then at her.
“My God—” she repeated. “Do you know what that is?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I know what that is! But—” She broke it off, bit deeply into her lip, drew in a shuddering breath, then took a visible grip on her emotions. “If I do this—and yes, I know what you want—then you have to come with me. Put yourself behind the dog’s eyes.”
“Me? But I can’t do—”
“Yes, you can.” We stood three feet apart, stiff with emotion. The collar lay between us. “Yes. You can.”
I felt saliva drying in my mouth. “You think I didn’t try? Hell, we were all ready to try anything by then! I took that thing home with me, practically slept with it, and never saw a single thing. Never felt anything.” I sucked in a breath and admitted it for the first time in thirty years. “Not like with my dog when I was a kid.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do this alone.”
“I don’t know how. I shut it away, just like you said. My parents told me I was imagining things . . . that I’d had a shock, and they understood, but that I couldn’t let it upset me so much.” I made a gesture of futility with empty hands. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“I’ll help you. But you have to agree to come with me. All the way.” Her eyes were unexpectedly compassionate. “You were a cop once. You’ll have to be one again.”
After a moment I nodded. “All right.”
She sat down on the carpet and gestured for me to do the same. The collar lay between us. “We will reach out together, and we will pick it up together.”
“Then what?”
“Hold it,” she said simply.
“How will I know if it’s working?”
“You will.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“It will.” She saw something in my face. She extended her left hand. After a moment I closed my right around it. “Now,” she said.
I saw our free hands move out, move down, then close upon the collar. I felt the braided nylon, the slightly frayed strands where something had rubbed, the cool metal rings.
And tasted—
—blood in my mouth. Blood everywhere. It splattered my legs, matting fur together; drenched my paws. Leathery pads felt it against the sidewalk, slick and slippery, drying to stickiness. I smelled it everywhere, clogging nostrils, overwhelming my superior canine olfactory sense.
Movement. The scent, the sharp tang of human surprise, fear, panic. Hackles rose from my neck to the base of my curled tail in a ridge of thick, coarse hair. I heard a man’s voice, a blurt, a bleat of sound, shock and outrage. Another man’s breathing, harsh and rasping; smelled the anger, the hatred, the cold fury that overwhelmed any comprehension of what he did beyond stopping it, stopping them; ending it, ending them; ending HER—
—crushed grass, leather, torn flesh, perfume, aftershave—
—aftershave I knew—
—had lived with—
—it was him, HIM, the man, the man I knew—
Knife. Long blade, red and silver in the moonlight. A woman on the ground, slack across the concrete, pale hair a tumbled mass turning red and black and sticky.
—I know the man—
—the man who once fed me, walked me, petted me, praised me—
HIM. But what is he—
So much blood.
Everywhere.
Blood.
—and the other man, falling. Bleeding. Breath running out. Two bodies on the ground.
Blood is everywhere.
I lift my voice in a wailing howl.
In the moonlight, I see him turn. In the streetlights, I see him look at me. Black face. Familiar face.
Knife in his hand.
Blood on the knife.
Blood is everywhere.
He turns. Walks away. Back into the darkness.
I bark.
But he is gone.
Two bodies on the ground.
I bark and bark and bark—
I yanked my hand away from hers, let go of the collar. Felt rage well up. “That son of a bitch!”
She was white-faced and shaking. Like me, she had released the collar. It lay again on the carpet. “That poor woman.”
“And the kid,” I said. “Poor guy, wrong place at the wrong time, like everyone said.” I closed my eyes, then popped them open again as the memory, the smells, threatened to overwhelm me. “I was the dog.”
“Yes.”
“We saw what he saw. The Akita.”
“He w
as the only witness,” she said, “except for the murderer.”
“That son of a bitch . . .” I rocked back, clasped hands on top of my head. Breathed noisily. “And it’s not admissible.”
“Double jeopardy,” she murmured.
“But I know now—we know . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut.
Her voice was very quiet. “You left the department after the trial. That was the case that went bad.”
I opened my eyes. “After the lawyers got through with us, I had no heart for it anymore. We knew we had the evidence. But they played the department. Played the media. And cherry-picked the jury.”
Tears shone in her eyes. “You took the Akita’s collar home. To find out the truth.”
I grimaced. “I was desperate. I knew even if it worked, even if somehow it worked, no one would believe me. Are you kidding? But I thought maybe it would give me a lead if I could put myself there that night, behind the dog’s eyes—find something we missed, something no one could manipulate . . .” I shook my head. “Nothing. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the magic anymore.”
She smiled. “Is that what you called it?”
“Magic? Yeah, as a kid. Hell, I didn’t know what it was. I still don’t. It’s as good a word as any.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I nodded. “Yeah.” Then the world revolved around me, began to gray out. “Whoa—”
“Lie down. I’ve got some energy bars in my purse. Lie down, Mr. Magnum.”
“Mag—” Then I got the reference. Laughing, I lay down as ordered, sprawled on my back. Heard the rustle of torn paper peeled away. Felt the nubbly surface of a granola bar shoved into my hand.
“Eat it. Then eat another. In a few hours you may feel like getting up. It’s just backlash from the energy expenditure. It’s always best to do this on a full stomach, but, well . . . sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.”
I bit off a hunk of granola bar. “What about you?”
Her words were distorted. “I’m already eating mine.”
I lay there a moment, chewing. Contemplating. “Will my life ever be normal again?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so.” I finished the first bar, accepted a second from her. “It’s a curse, isn’t it?”
Murder by Magic Page 2