Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

by Don Pendleton

  I do not remember ending that telephone conversation.

  I just remember sitting there in the Maserati watching the smoke billowing up from the Spiritual Center of Light and trying to remember what had led up to this.

  That is where I was and the way I was when Stewart opened the door and slid in beside me.

  "You okay?" he asked gruffly.

  I assured him that I was—but hell I really did not know if I was or not.

  He said, tautly, "They got all the bodies out."

  I said, quietly, "That's nice."

  He said, "First look says they were dead before the fire."

  I replied, "Yes, I think that is probably correct."

  He asked, "What's been going on here?"

  I told him, "Beats the shit out of me, Paul."

  He said, "You don't know?"

  I said, "Right. I don't know."

  He said, "If you find out, will you tell me?"

  I told him, "Hell, you're the cop."

  He said, "Looks like another Jonestown."

  I asked him, "Another what?"

  "That religious cult that all killed themselves back in '78, the Jim Jones bunch. Another one of those."

  I said, "Oh, shit."

  He said, "Yeah. Numbs the mind, doesn't it."

  I said, "Tell me about it."

  He said, "I'll tell you about your friend Annie. I had just been on the horn with the jailer when you called me. She's had a little problem. A strange little problem."

  I should have been prepared for it but I was just sitting there mostly stunned and stupid. I said, "What strange little problem?"

  "Had to rush her to the infirmary. Had a hemorrhage."

  "Had what?"

  "Hemorrhage. They thought at first it was from the vagina. Turned out to be not quite that."

  "What do you mean, not quite?"

  He said, "It's baffling. Don't know what to make of it."

  I was losing the stuns, I guess. I said, "Let's both be baffled. What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Wasn't exactly vaginal. It was virginal."

  I repeated, stupid again, "Virginal?"

  "Yeah. Can you beat it? Thirty-five years old. Married four times. But the jail doctor says her hymen not only was still intact, but it was so extensive and so tough before the rupture that there is just no way that lady could have ever got laid. She would have needed surgery first. Can you buy that?"

  I'd already bought it.

  I was remembering a dream. Or whatever the hell it was.

  I heard myself asking Stewart in a dull voice, "It ruptured, huh?"

  He replied, "Well not spontaneously, no. She obviously had a little help."

  "A little help," I echoed.

  "Or else she helped herself. Just can't figure out why."

  I sighed, and knew why.

  I just did not know why all those people had to die, in the bargain.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Tutorial on the Mountain

  Sigmund Freud once remarked that religion is the most incurable form of insanity.

  Freud was pure atheist, I guess, so I'm sure he was thinking of the entire religious instinct.

  Of course, who really knows what insanity really is?

  Maybe you could turn it around and say that insanity is the strongest form of religious expression.

  Nobody really knows what insanity is. Even Freud, for all his acknowledged genius, was just a man; subject, therefore, to error the same as all men.

  North American Indians revered the insane. Most Europeans, I guess, have always abhorred them. They locked up their lunatics and threw away the keys, abused them terribly; maybe they were really just terribly frightened and insecure about the whole thing.

  Nobody really knows what it is all about. Certainly the crazy people live in a reality quite different from the common reality. That makes them a minority; it does not necessarily make them wrong within their own minority except as they wrong themselves. Maybe insanity is an entirely natural state of being, for those who are there. Maybe these folks just have a different window onto reality and find it too difficult to adjust to ours. Maybe all the electric shocks and drugs and other therapies can convert them to our view—but does that not also give them an unnatural window if it can be maintained only in that way?

  I know; I rationalize. I propose while God disposes. But shit, that is what my head is for. Isn't it? Isn't that what yours is for, too?

  But, you see—I am thinking... maybe I am crazy, too. I am thinking, maybe the psychic sense is just another form of mental derangement. None of that shit really happened. I dreamed it up. I went into some kind of asshole trance and fantasized a sexual experience with a woman who all the while was locked up across town, and I frolicked in my insanity while a dream burned and folks died all around me.

  Dear old Dad is no more than a fantasy extension of my own insanity, a delusion fed by rampant neurones out of place in space and time, out of touch with reality and monstrously out of context with that which is noble and good.

  I am thinking that, yes, but all the while I am thinking it I know this is bullshit. I did make love with Annie, or with some beautifully tangible essence of Annie, and I did have a genuine mystical experience.

  If that is insanity, then I'll take it.

  But don't ask how Annie projected herself from that jail cell into the sanctuary and that beam of light. Hell. I have had many out-of-body experiences myself, and I don't know how I do that. If we had to understand everything before we did it we'd all drop dead because nobody knows consciously how to make his own heart beat. It just does, and we go with it. Out-of-body, too.

  But if you need some official documentation, there does exist quite a bit of covering literature. Look it up. Wouldn't hurt you. Such as the case of Alphonse de Liguori. He was the founder of an eighteenth-century Christian monastic order. In the year 1774, this monk who was later canonized fell into a trance while fasting in his monastery which was located four days travel from Rome. He came out of the trance to announce the death of Pope Clement XIV and claimed to have been at his deathbed. It was later confirmed by others who attended the pope's final hours that Liguori indeed had been present, that he had spoken to them, and that he had assisted in the last rites for the pope. So go figure it.

  Of course this stuff is not reserved for religious professionals—but I do think a certain religious orientation is required before it can happen. John Donne, for example, the seventeenth-century poet who gave us, among many other beautiful things, "send not to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee," reported seeing in Paris a wraith of his wife carrying a dead child within the same hour that his wife in London delivered a stillborn son.

  Similar experiences are mentioned by such as Lincoln, Goethe, and Shelley in which the "wraith" is the observer's own double.

  All of the cases recorded in the literature on the subject seem to involve individuals who are otherwise known to possess strong spiritual qualities. Are all such people nuts? If so, we should all be so nuts. It would be a kinder world.

  Well, of course, I did not mention any of this to Stewart. He probably would have suspected, anyway, that I dreamed it up just to explain what had happened to Annie in her jail cell.

  I did follow him to police headquarters where I dictated a statement and signed the transcript. After that, we sat around and talked for a while.

  Like some other cops I've known, Stewart seemed to be married to his work. It was, by now, eight o'clock in the evening and I knew the guy had been there at least since eight that morning.

  I had not really known Stewart before this case. I was getting to know him and like him. Another reason why I kept a lot of stuff to myself. It is not too smart to say too much too soon to people who have never really been exposed to this sort of thing. You get a reputation, that way, and it precedes you wherever you go; establishes a bias against you; be advised, if you dabble: do it quietly. Folks loved Annie, sure, but that was because she was
discreet. She showed them a few of her lighter tricks, and they loved it. But the whole bag would have scared the shit out of them; they would have said she was nutty instead of gifted, and there would go the ball game.

  So when Stewart asked me, point blank, "Is that woman really psychic?"—I replied only that I could validate certain specific instances of strong psychic ability.

  He asked, "What was she trying to pull, do you think, doing something like that to herself? Making some kind of statement?"

  I looked at my feet and replied, "Maybe. Maybe not."

  "Don't give me that," he protested amiably. "It was a stunt, wasn't it. I've heard of these people down in the Philippines, these so-called psychic surgeons, who were caught with their fingers in a bucket of chicken guts. I mean, supposedly they were pulling that shit out of their patients without cutting on them. But it was all rigged. Maybe her, too. Maybe one of the lawyers smuggled something in."

  "Something like what?" I inquired mildly. "A chicken's hymen?"

  He laughed and said, "Well, I don't know how she did it. That's why I'm asking you."

  I showed him my hands. "Women have been working that con since Eve, haven't they. I don't know how they do it. Ask one."

  He said, "Already did. Asked my wife. She told me this story her grandmother told about a young girl who'd lost her cherry to another guy before her wedding day. She was terrified. It was a big deal, back then. So she managed to delay the wedding until she was on a period. Stuffed her vagina with gauze, screamed like hell when the kid tried to penetrate her, jumped up and ran into the bathroom and removed the gauze behind the locked door. So she had the bloody evidence. And she held the groom off, pleading soreness, until her period was over."

  I chuckled and said, "We made them do it, you know. Our fault entirely."

  He said, "Sure, but that's not the point. How'd Annie do it?"

  I suggested, "More to the point, why would she?"

  He frowned; said, "I don't know. And I'm afraid to find out."

  I shuffled my feet about for a moment then asked, very offhandedly, "Think it's somehow connected to what happened at the center?"

  He replied, "How could she set up something like that? Surely those lawyers wouldn't... And she's been incommunicado except for them. Why would she do something like that?"

  I said, "Maybe you're reaching too far. We don't know yet why the center staff did that to themselves. Maybe we should wait until the facts are in."

  "Yeah," he said quietly. "We don't even know if they did it to themselves." He glanced at the clock. "Christ, we should be getting the autopsy results by now. What the hell are those people doing? Don't they know that all the eleven o'clock news people back East are dying to hear?"

  I suggested, "The coroner is going to be very careful on this, Paul. We could get nothing 'til morning. So why don't you go home and strike up an acquaintance with your wife and kids?"

  He looked at the floor and said, "They can't take me at a time like this."

  I said, "Or you can't take them?"

  "Either way," he said, "it's the same thing."

  "Not exactly," I said, and told him good night.

  I had to get out of there. Cops all over the L.A. area were searching for Bruce Janulski. I wanted to search, too. And I had a better way.

  I was beginning to get my head back together after the stunning events at the Center of Light, and the realization came that I was a bit smarter than before. In fact, I had developed my theory of the case by the time I left Paul Stewart's office that night.

  Before I say more about that, though, I need to be certain that you are with me in this matter of the so-called masters' game. We are talking reincarnation, of course, but consider what I have to say before you make up your mind as to how you want to feel about that. There are, it seems, almost as many reincarnation theories as theorists in the Western world—so let's just make sure we understand the terms.

  Most people raised in the Christian faith have little if any understanding of these ideas; most who now embrace Christianity will have nothing to do with these lunatic ideas.

  It is true that the metaphysical system which is now in place as Christianity admits no debt to reincarnationist theories, except a belief in some Christian quarters that all the saved souls will rise from their graves and be restored at the day of judgment. There is considerable and persistent dichotomy in this particular area, however, and therefore considerable confusion among many devout Christians as to just what Jesus has in mind for them when they die. This is due chiefly to the fact that Jesus himself was not a Christian and would not understand, either, the new metaphysics that are supposedly based on his teachings.

  Jesus was a Jew. He was a very devout Jew and obviously well educated into the liturgies and the traditions of Israel. I believe that he was also a psychic, or—at the very least—particularly sensitive to the needs and aspirations of his own people. He was also a hell of a logician, and his command of semantic symbology was positively brilliant. How better get the attention of hardworking fishermen intent at drying and repairing their nets on a hot Mideastern day than to suggest to them, "I will make you fishers of men." And how much cooler and quieter win the confidence of a frightened woman outside the gates of a remote village, surprised by male strangers as she labors to draw water from the well which then must be carried upon the shoulder all the way home (and how many tiring trips each day?), than to promise that woman, "I can give you living water."

  He had their rhythms, see, and he had their moods. He knew who they were and where their heads were because he was one of them and because he was smarter than most.

  And because he believed the traditions.

  He knew who he was; he knew who they were; and he had a sensing of his own destiny.

  And maybe a whole lot more.

  In Luke 9, the story of the transfiguration, he had gone to the mountain with three disciples to pray. As Jesus was praying, the others saw that "the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem."

  Moses and Elijah were, of course, greatly revered teachers in the Jewish tradition—but both had died centuries before. The phrase appeared in glory is typically used in scripture to describe a Godly or angelic manifestation. The "departure" at Jerusalem refers, of course, to the death of Jesus. "Which he was to accomplish" speaks, I think, for itself. This was a strategy session.

  The very next day, Jesus gathered his disciples and said to them, "Let these words sink into your ears; for the Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men."

  It is later reported, in that same chapter of Luke, that "when the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem."

  The same story, in Matthew 17, tells an important detail that for some reason did not survive in the Luke narrative. As they are coming down the mountain after the meeting with Moses and Elijah, Jesus commanded the three disciples who witnessed that to say nothing of the vision "until the Son of man is raised from the dead."

  One of the disciples then asked Jesus, "Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?"

  Jesus replied, "Elijah does come, and he is to restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of man wdl suffer at their hands."

  Matthew then tells us: "Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist."

  Is this a masters' game or not? If Elijah returned as John the Baptist, is this a reincarnation or not?

  As a matter of fact, all devout Jews of the period believed that their prophets returned in life after life to guide them. The conference on the mountaintop among Jesus, Moses, and Elijah is not at all startling in Jewish tradition. This was an entirely normative transaction in the lives of the prophets.

 
; And now the entire Christian edifice is built upon the proposition that Jesus entered Jerusalem with every expectation of dying there and being lifted up to heaven; furthermore, he was careful to follow the tradition, even as to his entry into the city (Matthew 21):"This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

  “Tell the daughter of Zion,

  'Behold, your king is coming to you,

  humble, and mounted on an ass,

  and on a colt, the foal of an ass.'

  "The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them."

  Nobody ever said that a masters' game was an easy one. But sometimes it's the only game in town.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Game of Masters

  Remember the trouble I'd had breaking the tutorial? Well it had all come together somewhere down inside the labyrinths of mind, maybe after bumping against the stuff I'd filched from Paul Stewart earlier and the conversation with Dear old Dad after my phantom cavorting with Annie. I checked the context with the fragments of older records picked off the bonfire pile before the destruction of the center, and I am entirely satisfied in my own mind that I have reconstructed the message as it was intended to be understood.

  Before I give you that, though, here is the other stuff I promised you when I told you about Carver's connection to Annie via Donald Huntzermann, who was Carver's maternal grandfather. It is rather intricate and amazing stuff, but try to keep in mind the game that we are tracking here. Don't bother about trying to unscramble these relationships; just remember that they exist.

  Charles McSweeney was a first cousin to Annie's late father, Tony Mathison, so second cousin to Annie.

  Herman Milhaul, sometimes also known as Esther, was distantly related to McSweeney and had figured in a molestation charge when Herman was ten years old. He testified to a relationship spanning several years but later recanted and the case against McSweeney was dropped. Some sort of relationship evidently continued through the years because Milhaul worked at the film lab that was involved in processing and copying McSweeney's old 16mm film that figured in the kiddie porn case still pending against McSweeney at the time of his death.