For the Nutley Police Department, the highways and water systems pose many problems. Closed in on all sides by neighboring towns, Nutley receives the bodies of victims who happen to have been disposed of in the New Jersey rivers that flow through the towns. The Nutley police are often relieved that Bleachery Pond is in Clifton's jurisdiction, for people often use it as a dumping ground for everything from dead animals to barrels to ordinary trash.
Chief Francis Buel, Nutley's chief of police, had worked eighteen years in the Nutley Police Department. Chief Buel liked order and sameness; in the eyes of his men his German heritage and his attitude toward people were closely linked.
A large, red-haired man, Chief Buel received Dorothy Allison cordially. It was January 3, 1968, and he was feeling tolerant in these first days of the new year.
Patrolman Don "Vic" Vicaro led the short woman into the chiefs office. Dorothy wore a blue polyester suit. Her brown hair was in beauty-parlor order, still giving off the scent of that morning's hair spray. Her eyes did little to hide the fear she had been living with for a month. She knew in her heart that what she was about to do was going to change her life irrevocably.
Left alone, Dorothy and the chief looked at one another. He sat behind his large, official Danish-Modern desk.
"Now, Mrs. Allison, what can the Nutley Police Department do for you? I trust nothing serious has happened?"
"No, everything is fine with me, I guess. It's just this kid I think has drowned, and I wonder if you might have heard about it."
"Did you see this child drown, Mrs. Allison?" The chief sat up in his large, padded chair.
"No, not exactly. I saw it, but not officially." Dorothy considered the best way to impart what she was trying to say.
"Did you or didn't you see a child drown?" the chief was trying to understand.
"I did. In my dreams. Or rather, in a vision," she stammered.
The chief's light red brows rose. "In a dream, you say? DO you often have dreams of this nature, Mrs. Allison?"
"No, not too often. I've had some incredible dreams in my lifetime, but not too many that I discovered to be real," she explained.
The chief looked at Dorothy. She seemed to be perfectly rational, though nervous and slightly excited.
"You mean you are psychic, right?" the chief asked.
Dorothy sighed. "I guess so," she said reluctantly, never having discussed anything of that nature with a stranger.
"I haven't had a moment's peace in a month," Dorothy began. "I saw this kid drown on December third, at six in the morning. I wrote it down when I woke up. Never before have I had a dream like that. It was so real that I felt it through my body. My right eye exploded and I had to wear sunglasses till last week."
"Exploded?" the chief asked.
"The doctor said a blood vessel broke from tension. The tension was the kid drowning, I tell you."
"What would you like me to do, Mrs. Allison?"
"Maybe you'd recognize the description of the little boy. Not you personally, of course, but maybe someone in the department knows about a missing kid."
"Mrs. Allison - " the chief began.
"Call me Dorothy, please," she interrupted.
"Dorothy, I want you to tell me about the little boy. Describe to me what you are seeing."
Dorothy wondered if his attentiveness meant that he believed in her ability to see, that he believed in psychics. She did not want him to think she was a crazy woman wandering in from the street.
She took a deep breath and her expression relaxed as if she had temporarily gone inside, like a snail, to find something. Her voice had a distant quality to it, though she looked directly at the chief.
"I see a little boy. Maybe five or six years old. It's hard to tell. He has blond hair and it's parted far over on one side, not like most kids. I see his poor little body in the water. His shoes are on the wrong feet and he's wearing a green snowsuit and a religious medal on his shut. His hands are clasped together, and I don't know what could have happened, but they look black, like they've been burned."
"Where is this boy?" Chief Buel whispered.
"In a pipe somewhere, like a sewer pipe. He's stuck. I think the pipe must be in a park, because I see some trees and a school."
Chief Buel sat back, absorbing the barrage of facts. He mentally scanned the latest reports and records regarding missing or murdered children. He must have had a gnawing feeling that the child Dorothy described might indeed be a little boy who was missing in Nutley.
"Chief Buel, the kid has got to be somewhere and maybe if you find this pipe he's in, you'll find him," she challenged him. "The pipe looks broken or crooked. I can't tell, really."
Chief Buel stood up. "Wait here a moment, Dorothy. I'll be right back." And his large frame exited through the door.
"Get me the missing-persons file," he said to his assistant, "dating back two months, I'd say."
Patrolman Vicaro asked the chief about the woman he showed into his office.
"Why? Do you know her?" the Chief asked.
"Not really. I saw her come in. She looked interesting, that's all," the officer replied. "Is she missing someone?" he inquired, pointing to the missing-persons file being handed the chief.
"No more than a few loose screws," the chief snarled. "She hasn't lost anyone. In fact, she's found someone. She thinks she's found a little kid who we might be missing. A kid who drowned, she says."
Vicaro's curiosity was piqued. "Hey, we lost a kid about a month ago, and we never found him. Remember three times into the stream in Booth Park in freezing cold weather? The kid who was playing with his brother ..."
"Wait! I do remember," the chief's eyes brightened. "Get me the file and come into my office. Don't mention anything about this case in front of the woman. We'll see how much she can tell us first," he instructed the patrolman.
Patrolman Vicaro looked the part of an Italian crooner, with his salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back, his gravelly tobacco-laden voice, a blue star-sapphire pinky ring, and a pack of cigarettes neatly tucked in his socks. Raised in a house of four families, he had become a cop in 1954 after serving in the army, a time when being a cop meant elevating oneself to first-class citizenship.
As a kid Vic had seen movies in which hypnosis had been used, and it had stimulated his fantasies. He sensed the mind was a wonderous machine, and that hypnosis might be the key to it. That curiosity was heightened while serving in the army, when he saw a stage show in which hypnosis was performed on members of the audience.
One day, after he had left the service, he was walking around New York City when a book on hypnosis caught his eye in a shop window. He bought the book, read the entire thing that night, and the next day practiced on Ms brother.
When Vic left the service, the country's economic situation was not good. His trade had been laying carpets and tile floors, and he had hoped to expand it into a business of his own. But the economy did not allow for people without financial means to begin businesses. His father, who had come to the United States from Italy when he was two, had been a laborer all his life, working his way into the society and gaming the respect of others.
When Vic's post-army alternatives looked slim, it was his father who suggested he go into police work. Reluctant to don another uniform, Vicaro took the exams anyway and passed. He was a patrolman.
Chief Buel reentered the office.
"When is your birthday?" Dorothy asked him.
"My birthday?" the chief repeated as if a difficult question had been posed. "Well, my birthday is August third."
"Ah! A Leo," Dorothy pronounced. "I'll have to be careful," she said. She wondered if asking him the time of his birth would be too brazen. The thought was interrupted by the arrival of Patrolman Vicaro.
In the next half hour Dorothy recataloged the details of her vision, giving the chief and Vicaro a chance to mentally compare notes with the case they had on hand.
Vicaro queried Dorothy about various aspects of her
life and her familiarity with Nutley. He discovered through brief interrogation that she did not know the Kurscics family, the surname of the drowned five-year-old on file, nor was she at all familiar with the Kurscics's neighborhood, or Booth Park for that matter. Vic was surprised Dorothy had never actually been in Booth Park, the largest, most attractive land area in the town.
"My kids always play around the corner at Nicholas Park. We're a one-car family," she explained.
When she heard the name "Kurscics," she simply asked, "Is that the little boy's last name?"
Chief Buel explained that, yes, one of their missing cases was a little Polish boy named Michael Kurscics. That was all they told Dorothy at that time.
Twenty minutes later Chief Buel, Dorothy, and Vicaro were driving in a police car, while two policemen followed in another car: Buel's escape car.
Dorothy's heart halted in mid-pulse when the patrolman sitting in the front seat turned to her and asked, "Have you ever been hypnotized?"
"No, I never have," she gasped. "I don't think I've ever wanted to be hypnotized, either."
The policeman saw she was frightened. "It's really nothing," he told her. "If I know how to hypnotize people, it can't be too difficult. I went to school to learn to use hypnotism in police work. We use it all the time," he lied.
"You do?" Dorothy wanted reassurance. She was surprised that hypnotism was used in Nutley.
"Oh, sure. It helps people remember things they might otherwise think they forgot. Like where the little boy's body is right now."
Chief Buel interrupted at this point, not sure he wanted his cop to hypnotize Dorothy. Never having worked with a psychic before, he might not have been comfortable with what he might find in her mind. However, he admitted to himself that he had seen some interesting work done with hypnosis, and Dorothy's description did sound too close for comfort.
"Mrs. Allison," Chief Buel said. "I assure you that hypnosis is a routine affair and not harmful. Perhaps if Vicaro hypnotizes you right here in the car, you might be able to direct us to Michael Kurscics's body."
Dorothy's mind reeled with images of levitation from the Ed Sullivan Show, and sleepwalking horrors from films and television. "But these are the police," she thought to herself. "If I can't trust them, who can I trust?"
"You want to hypnotize me right here in the car?" she asked.
"If that's okay with you," Chief Buel said.
"Sure," Dorothy finally agreed.
Buel looked at his watch. "It's twelve-thirty now. Why don't you tell some of the men to go on to lunch," he said to the policeman driving the car. "I'll hang around for another couple of minutes to see what comes up. Otherwise I'll be back at the station around one-thirty."
Vicaro switched places with Chief Buel, and Dorothy leaned on the door, stretching her short legs on the floor. She tried to seem calm, wanting to help the police in understanding her dream. If hypnosis would bring them closer to a solution, then she would participate, in spite of her fears.
Within minutes the patrolman had relaxed her into a deep trance. Her nervous breathing was now quieter, as if an inner metronome had changed tempo for slower music. Her head rested against the window.
"What do you see, Dorothy?" he asked.
"An old broken-down house on a huge empty lot. No one is living in it. There's a "No Trespassing" sign on the door."
"You mean the old shack across the highway?"
"Yeah, the one we call the haunted house."
They drove on and parked beside a large, empty lot where the last house stood in an area that would soon be developed for shopping. It was now blanketed in snow. The windows of the two-story wooden structure were boarded up, and the porch looked dilapidated.
"Is Michael Kurscics's body near here, Dorothy?" inquired Vicaro.
"No, not now," she replied. He began to wonder where this might lead them. "What do you see now?"
"I see a room full of books and papers all over a big desk. There's a tall blond woman walking back and forth, like she's waiting for someone. She lives between two cemeteries ..."
"Dorothy, wait a minute. I think you're picking up things from the area that have nothing to do with the kid. Let's move to another area," Vicaro suggested.
Chief Buel motioned, to Vicaro. "I'm leaving," he said. Then in a low voice, "You better know what you're doing. I'm leaving her in your hands. Let me know if anything comes up."
Chief Buel drove away with one of his men. He must have wondered about this woman who seemed such a bundle of energy and nerves, seeing a little kid drown and then coming to the police with the information. He must not have felt comfortable working with a psychic, if indeed she proved to be psychic. He had not built his reputation on being lenient and liberal, and was not sure he wanted his name associated with the woman.
Vicaro was feeling frustrated. "Let's go to the place where we know the kid drowned," he said to the driver, "Maybe you're not seeing things right," he suggested to Dorothy.
Dorothy was hurt by the questioning.
Several minutes later they parked near the beginning of Booth Park, fifty feet from the bridge Michael and Pat Kurscics had played on that drizzly December 3 Sunday morning-the morning of Dorothy's dream. It was here that the police had begun their search, dragging the water which two miles downstream emptied into the Passaic River. The Nutley police had been aided by the Essex County Park Police, including a pair of skin divers, in a day-long search of the river. Assisting in the search were volunteers of the Nutley First Aid Squad and Civil Defense group.
All these men together had found nothing in the swollen river, whose current they clocked at faster than thirty miles. Even the paint can, which seven-year-old Pat Kurscics reported had lured his younger brother to the edge of the water, had disappeared.
Dorothy knew none of these facts.
Vicaro once again put Dorothy under hypnotic trance.
"Okay, can you hear me, Dorothy?" he questioned.
"Yes, loud and clear," she confirmed.
"Describe Michael Kurscics to me, if you can."
Dorothy squinted as if a bright light confronted her. "I see him. Oh my God, he looks so still and dead. There's a light around his body. He's not moving right now. He's stuck in the pipe."
"Is he stuck right here, near the bridge?" the officer pursued.
"No, I don't see the bridge. I see the school and a broken pipe. A crooked pipe. At least it looks broken."
Vicaro brought her out of the trance. He decided that enough had been done for one day, and she obviously wasn't going to find the boy that day. Something, he felt, had to be done to clear her vision.
"Are there any broken pipes that you know of in the park?" Dorothy asked the patrolman.
"Not that I know of, but I'll have it checked out. Maybe the chief will know."
When Dorothy and Vicaro appeared in the police parking lot, she felt weary and cold. The temperature had dropped below freezing and her feet were frozen.
Vicaro turned to her. "Do you mind if I give you a call later, or drop by your house? Maybe we could try again tomorrow, or whenever it's convenient for you."
"Sure. Let me know what tune you boys want to come by and I'll fix you lunch. How's that?"
Vicaro smiled to himself. It's hard to think that this little lady is making all this up, he thought.
"You get some rest, and maybe we'll find the kid's body tomorrow. I think you know where he is," Vicaro concluded.
Dorothy was pleased to hear him confirm his belief in her dream. Sharing it seemed to ease the burden, but she was still frightened for the child. More than fear, she felt a constant sadness. Sadness for a boy she did not know, whose family had meant nothing to her before December 3, and whose death still haunted her daily existence. She had a gnawing feeling that it she had acted upon her dream a month earlier, the boy might have been saved. Then again, there was the chance that her dream had nothing to do with Michael Kurscics, at all.
"Why me?" she asked herself
as she drove past the large Hoffman La Roche complex of buildings, known locally as the "Pill Box." "Why did I dream about this kid when there're all these people around who might have recognized him?" The ghastly image in her mind would not budge from its place, wherever that place might be.
She was stymied by the little bridge where Vicaro her the child had drowned. She had no picture of that place in her mind. Nowhere in her dreams had she seen the little footbridge. Nor did she recognize the surrounding area. The scene of her dreams did not resemble any spot she had seen in the park that day.
Dorothy Allison - A Psychic Story Page 4