Chapter - Two
The voice on the other end of the phone sounded formal and practiced.
“Hello, is this Sarina Conti?”
“Yes it is?”
“Ms. Conti, my name is Detective Holden.”
“Hello, Detective Holden. Why are you calling me detective? And why at this time in the morning?”
“Ms. Conti. I’m sorry but I have some distressing news for you. I have reason to believe that your sister, Ann, was murdered a few hours ago.” Detective Holden stopped and let the silence fill the space between them. He wanted to leave some space for Sarina to react before he got into the logistics of what was to come next. But with no response forthcoming, he plunged on. “I am so terribly sorry to give you this news and even sorrier that I have to ask you to please come down this morning and identify a body of a middle-aged woman that I believe to be Ann.”
The name “Holden” seemed familiar but she was taken off guard by the other information. There was a long pause on the line.
“Are you there, Ms. Conti?” he asked.
“Uh, yes … I suppose I can meet you ...” Sarina’s voice dropped off, not knowing how to respond. After she regained composure she asked, “How did you get my number and why do you think the dead woman may be my sister?”
“It’s complicated and I’ll explain more when you come down to the station. Please accept my condolences. Do you know where the precinct is?”
“Yes, I know where it is and I can meet you there ...” Sarina asked in a shaky voice
“Are you all right, Ms. Conti?” asked the detective.
“I just received a call at 6:30 a.m. from a man who said someone who may be my sister is dead! No, I’m not alright!” Sarina was in tears and felt the room begin to spin. This was so far out of left field and she was shaken to her core. She let out a sigh.
“Do you need a ride, Ms. Conti? I can arrange for an officer to pick you up.” Detective Holden was feeling a bit awkward in conveying the news to a person he had met so many years ago and was not certain if she remembered him. He was gifted at being professional and also at keeping his feelings under control.
Sarina declined the offer of a ride. “I can make it there on my own. I’ll be there in an hour” This would give her time to collect her thoughts and attempt to piece together the bizarre start to her day between the threads of her dreams and this phone call.
“Okay, I’ll see you in an hour. You sure you’re alright?” he asked, aware that the news he just delivered was indeed bizarre.
Sarina steadied herself in the doorway of her bedroom and the spinning room began to slow and Sarina answered, “Yes, I’ll be fine.” She pressed the end call button on her cell phone, tossed it onto her bed, and walked into her bathroom knowing full well that she was far from being fine.
A hot shower felt soothing and Sarina was remembering her sister, who may now be dead, as she wept with her left hand against the tiles. She dropped the soap from her other hand when she heard the whisper of one of the names from her dream, “Riley.” Then a faint female whisper. “Be careful dear one some beings you will meet are authentic and some are not.”
Sarina spun around. “WHO SAID THAT?” she shouted.
There was no answer. Sarina froze in silence sobbing, gasping in great heaps of air as she stood in the shower until the water turned cold and she was again able to move. She finally pulled herself together, dried off, and dressed for her visit with Detective Holden at the city morgue.
As Sarina dressed, she sensed something or someone near and felt cold air brush against her bare skin raising goose bumps, almost as if it were moving through her. She stood frozen in place and then recoiled as it seemed to swirl around her creating a wisp of cold air as it circled around. Sarina wanted to run, to flee from this sensation and yet it was not unfamiliar to her and, surprisingly, somewhat comforting. Sarina found the strength to dress, collect her things, and walk out the front door, shaken but calm with the idea of a protective presence unseen yet felt. She thought of her sister, Ann, and wondered if this sensation was Ann reaching out from the spirit world but was not sure.
Sarina’s enthusiasm for astrology, numerology, and past life work made her aware that this experience might also be from other lifetimes and may mean something greater than the present. Her grasp of past life experiences helped her understand the gravity of this situation. Sarina had sought out counsel from intuitive psychics earlier in her life who offered her insights about her own past lives. Sarina ultimately trained in the field of past lives and had researched stories of people who had had these experiences and they tended to fit a pattern and she was beginning to put these patterns together for herself. Many accounts described how cold wispy air was sometimes associated with a type of visitation of a person’s spirit from another time. She wasn’t sure if this was Anne’s spirit from another time, if it related to her own dream, or if it meant something entirely different, but Sarina felt it must be something greater then even she knew. How was it greater, she wondered? What does it mean? She so wanted to rush to her library of books to look this up before she left her apartment but realized time was short.
Sarina left for the morgue trying to connect the familiarity of the names from her dream. Along the way, the idea of her sister’s death found her overcome with a grief so palpable that several times it stopped her in her tracks as if she had walked into something thick and solid. So many years had passed since those days before her father had left and she recalled how she had blamed Ann for her own issues with her father. Her remorse combined with the news of Ann’s improbable death made Sarina almost double over and be sick as she remembered those sorrowful days. Sarina loved her sister but never had the maturity to face her own shit and absolve Ann of what Sarina had wrongly decided was Ann’s fault. If she could only have a conversation with Ann one more time before … Ann was dead, or so she had been told.
Sarina straightened up, wiped her mouth, and resumed her unsteady walk. She arrived at the front door of the morgue, took a deep breath, and pulled open the heavy glass door. She walked in and went through the formalities of signing paper work.
She found Detective Holden and introduced herself. “I’m Sarina Conti,” as she reached out to shake his hand. “You must be Detective Holden.”
“I am,” he said as he took Sarina’s hand. Although Sarina’s hand was chilled from the walk, Detective Holden was sure he felt a mild shock when they touched. He then thought about how dry it was in the morgue and figured that the charge was likely from static electricity in the air. Yet somewhere, buried deep in his sub-conscious was a knowing that the electrical shock or pulse was the same as the one he had felt from Ann long ago.
They walked into the chilly room and stood by the morgue’s cold chambers. Detective Holden glanced at Sarina who winced at the thought of what she was about to see.
“Are you ready for this, Ms. Conti?” he asked. She nodded. The detective pulled open the chamber and revealed the body of her sister, and, with tears in her eyes, Sarina affirmed the worst.
Sarina felt a spin of uncertainty as she looked at the body of the woman who was indeed her 50-year-old sister, Ann, as the names from her dream grew louder in her head. The percussive review of these names in Sarina’s head made her feel a sense of frustration even in the face of the tragedy of her sister’s death. Through my past life training I understand the sensation of names resounding in the head and ought to know what is happening. But I can’t hold onto anything I have learned, she thought. The repetition and volume seemed to increase as the names were chanted over and over again. She had no idea what the names in her dreams meant or how they might be related to her sister’s murder, if at all. But given how insistent and loud the voices had become at the sight of Ann’s body, Sarina felt sure they must and wondered if Detective Holden could also here the names being chanted.
However, that mystery would have to wait. The fact that this indeed was her sister lying in the chamber hit her
hard and the lights in the room seemed to dim. How long had it been since she talked with Ann? Months? Years? Sarina leaned against the chamber and broke down.
“Are you alright, Ms. Conti?” asked Detective Holden, trying to comfort Sarina as best he knew how. Although his I.Q. was quite high, his E.Q. was average on its best days. So in a situation like this, offering emotional comfort was indeed not the detective’s strong point. He was remembering his first encounter with Sarina and Ann thirty years ago. He was as unprepared now as he was then for this sort of thing. Detective Holden felt as awkward as ever in that moment.
“Yes, just give me a minute, and please, call me Sarina.” she said. This was all happening so fast. Sarina steadied herself and took a few deep breaths. So many thoughts were swirling in Sarina’s head, but she was used to dealing with many thoughts and emotions at one time. She was gifted in this way or maybe cursed depending on how she thought about it. The names from her dream were still so loud in her head that she looked at the detective to make sure he wasn’t hearing them as well. Then she composed herself, confident he must not have heard them.
Detective Holden closed the chamber and he and Sarina walked outside, down the street and into the precinct. He turned off his phone, closed the door and offered Sarina a seat. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you. A cup of tea if you have it, preferably herbal.”
Detective Holden fumbled at the coffee station in the break room and shouted back. “I have ginger or peppermint.”
“Peppermint is fine,” she said.
He offered her a Styrofoam cup. “Sugar or milk?” he asked as he walked back in holding a packet of sugar and non-dairy creamer.
Sarina looked puzzled. Who takes milk or sugar in herbal teas, she wondered. “Just the tea.”
Detective Holden, seeing that Sarina seemed to have composed herself, began a barrage of questions at Sarina. He was anxious yet with a strange twist of compassion that never seemed to work well together for him. Detective Holden was less comfortable showing his feelings when it came to interviewing women. He had a soft spot for the feminine and yet he always wanted to be professional; he wanted to be in control of the interview. So he kept these feelings of compassion at bay. He had trained himself to recognize any emotions he might have and to bottle them and put in a cork to contain them so that they wouldn’t cloud his logical judgment of the situation.
He remembered the time he had been in Sarina and Ann’s home more than thirty years ago. He did understand the feelings he had experienced then. He wanted to express those feelings of compassion and sympathy but he just didn’t know how. What made expressing those feelings even harder was that his line of work as a detective had taught him well how to be stoic and expressionless. But somehow, this situation felt different. He had no idea what that meant, different. He stuffed that into a mental cubby to mull over later. For now, they were still at the precinct in his office and Detective Holden had questions that needed to be asked.
“How long has it been since you last saw your sister?” he asked.
Sarina answered “I’m not sure, maybe five … or six years.”
“Did she live in the city?”
“I’m not sure … maybe just south of here ... Mountain View ... I think.”
“Was she involved in any religious cults or mystical groups?”
Sarina began the process of searching her memory of her father and recalling how Ann and he were so close, working on something long ago shrouded in mystery. “It seems to me that my sister was involved in some work with my father involving the Mayan calendar. I was only sixteen years old at the time and none of what they were doing included me.”
“You mentioned Ann and your father were working together. Where is your father now?”
“DAMMIT, DETECTIVE!” Sarina caught herself, “Give me a moment.”
He sat back. “I’m sorry, Ms. Cont … - I mean Sarina. Take as long as you need ...”
Sarina sighed. She knew this about herself. When her thoughts began to overlap her feelings, Sarina became imbalanced. In response, she lashed out at whoever was in firing sight. She remembered a lover who coined this her “Sharpie moment.”
The Sharpie moment related to the colored markers she kept neatly organized in clear plastic boxes by size and color using separators inside the boxes. In a moment of distraction, she would grab one of those boxes and the lid would inadvertently flip open, sending the markers flying everywhere. This mini-disaster would result in a loud “DAMMIT” for everyone to hear. In complete and utter frustration, Sarina would take several deep breaths, bend over, collect the scattered markers, and purposefully replace them in their proper order.
When Sarina realized she had just experienced a Sharpie moment with the detective, she let out a quirky chuckle. Sarina remembered how this was the signal that she was being barraged by too much information. She was suffocating into the chaos of her thoughts. They became so entangled that nothing made sense and the amygdala part of her brain switched to fight or flight. Sarina was most definitely a fighter and there always seemed to be collateral damage to those who were close to her
She had not experienced a Sharpie moment in quite a while and she wondered if she ought to explain this to the detective. She sighed, looked at the detective, and mumbled, “Sharpie moment.” Detective Holden raised a quizzical eyebrow. She felt a bit self-conscious and told him the story. Detective Holden sat back and grinned moved by Sarina’s vulnerability.
“So to answer your question about my father, he left when I was sixteen and my sister, my mother, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“What year was that?”
“1981”
“What was your father’s name?”
“His name was, is … Jack.” Sarina put her hand to her mouth as she spoke his name.
Detective Holden took notice of Sarina’s movement. “So, you have no idea if he is alive or not?” A blank ashen look engulfed Sarina’s face. Jack was one of the names in her dream. The detective stared at Sarina not knowing what she was thinking. He was about to comment on her expression, but before he was able to, Sarina turned away.
Detective Holden paused, still wondering why Sarina looked as if she had just put a piece of a terrifying puzzle together. “Did I say something that flustered you?” he asked.
“No I was just … Nothing. What was your question?”
“You have no knowledge if your father is alive or not?”
“That’s correct detective. Why are you asking me all these questions?” Sarina asked.
Pressing forward, convinced that Sarina was not going to share something he said, “Before you arrived, I tried to piece together how it was that your sister ended up on the steps of St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic church, naked with no identification, save for a bracelet in one hand and a crumpled note in the other, no marks on her body and no sign of suicide. The coroner’s office was able to perform a preliminary autopsy, as is customary in the case of apparent homicide, and found zero traces of any substance that might have led to her death. We won’t know for sure how she died until a full autopsy is performed.”
Sarina did not respond even as the detective noticed her eyes grow larger in response to his statement.
“I’ve looked into various cults and extreme religious sects over the past years and found some information, but as I apply that research and my homicide training as a detective to this situation, I come up with nothing.” Detective Holden went on, “I was hoping you might be able to supply me with more information so I might discover other and better paths to explore. Do you have any information that might be important?”
Sarina shook her head as she acknowledged the question, but her gesture implied to the detective that she was being less than forthright with him.
“The cult you mentioned before, the one you believed your sister and father were exploring. Have you ever looked into what it might have been? Did you ever ask you mother about i
t?”
“My sister was found on the steps of a Catholic church?” she replied now weeping uncontrollably again.
“Yes,” the detective said now unable to contain his own emotions. He handed Sarina his own handkerchief as he took some deep broken breaths. Holden was feeling a sense of compassion for Sarina, likely stemming from his encounter with her 30 years ago. After giving her some time to release some of her grief and pain, he asked Sarina again, “What about the work Jack and Ann were doing?”
“Thank you.” Sarina gulped. She was still dabbing her eyes with Detective Holden’s handkerchief that somehow comforted her. “When I became an adult, I tried to find information about any cult operating around the time my father left. I never found anything to connect him with whatever work he was doing. My mother never spoke of it to me, so I don’t know if she knew anything about it.”
“What about your sister. Did she ever say anything to you,” asked Holden, now back on his detective track.
“Not that I can remember. She left the house a year after my father disappeared and moved to the West Coast.” Sarina was hoping that her emotional state might hide her lie.
“And the last time you saw her, five or six years ago, you said she may have lived in Mountain View?”
“Yes, that’s right. We talked about many things but she never gave me her address.” Sarina was thinking how odd that was but it didn’t occur to her until just now.
“What did you discuss?”
“We chatted about our lives and played catch up. She told me about her relationships and her career and I told her what I had been doing over the past few or so years.”
“So she knew you lived in the city?”
“I guess so. Neither of us actually shared that we were living so close and ought to see each other more often. It was like that wasn’t supposed to be part of our conversation. Does that seem odd detective?”
The Song_A mysterious tale of the Mayan spirit world and the Mayan calendar Page 6