Clouded Vision

by Linwood Barclay

  “So you think she just decided to drive away? Like to Florida or something?”

  “Laci, I don’t know, okay? I don’t have any goddamn idea.”

  His tone stopped Laci for a second. “You don’t have to get angry with me.”

  “I’m going through a lot right now. I’m just trying to keep it together.”

  “How’s Melissa coping?”

  “Not so well.”

  “What about that guy who got her pregnant? Is he still in the picture? Can he be there for Melissa at a time like this?”

  “She hasn’t heard from him. Honestly, I don’t think it would make things any easier for me if he was around.”

  “I was just—Oh my God, I just thought of something,” she said.

  “What?”

  “They’re not tapping your phone, are they? They’re not listening in?”

  He felt a chill run down his spine. Could they be? He could kick himself. It hadn’t even occurred to him until she mentioned it. He’d been doing such a good job being the distraught husband, he didn’t think there was any reason for the police to bug his phone. Sure, he knew the cops would probably be looking at him sooner or later, but he didn’t believe he’d given any indication that he was in any way responsible for his wife’s disappearance.

  “I mean, if they hear us, and know we’ve been seeing each other, then—”

  “Hang up, Laci,” he said.

  “—then they might think that you had something to do with it, you know, so that you could spend your life with me and—”

  He slammed down the phone. If the police had been listening, the damage had been done. They’d know he’d been having an affair. They’d know he and Laci had been seeing each other for weeks now.

  Not good, not good at all.

  Wendell was totally rattled. He tried to calm down, told himself he was going to get through this. He just needed to keep his wits about him. Even if the police found out he’d been sleeping with Laci, it didn’t have to mean he’d had anything to do with this business about his wife.

  They hadn’t found a body. Or her car.

  And he was as sure as he could be that they never would.

  Pull yourself together, he told himself.

  The doorbell rang.

  Jesus, he thought. They really were listening to his phone, and now they were here to question him about Laci, about whether he killed his wife to be with this other woman.

  He took a couple of deep breaths, composed himself, and strode through the living room to the front door. He pulled the curtain back first, to see who it was.

  It was not the police. It was a woman. With green parrot earrings.

  FOUR

  Keisha

  Keisha Ceylon was ready with her “I feel your pain” smile. First impressions were everything. You had to come across, first and foremost, as sincere. So you couldn’t overdo the smile. It had to be held back. You didn’t want to show any teeth. No empty-headed Stepford wife/Jehovah’s Witness smile that looked like it had been pasted on. You had to get into the moment. You had to believe you were on a mission. And you had to look as though you were sorry to even be here, that this really was the last place on earth you wanted to be.

  But you were compelled to be here. You simply had no choice.

  She saw the man pull back the curtain to get a look at her, and gave him the smile. Almost apologetic.

  Then the door opened.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Mr. Garfield?”

  “That’s right.” He leaned out of the door, looking past her down to the street.

  “My name is Keisha Ceylon. I’m so sorry to trouble you at a time like this.” She extended a hand. The man hesitated before he took it.

  “Yes, well, this is a very stressful time. Who are you … who are you with?”

  Keisha guessed, what with those parrots dangling from her lobes, Garfield wasn’t going to figure she was some plainclothes detective.

  “I guess I’m what you’d call a consultant,” she replied.

  “For who?”

  “I work for people who find themselves in situations such as yours, Mr. Garfield.”

  “You’re, what, a private detective?”

  “No. Perhaps, if I could come inside, I could explain it better to you?”

  When you were still on the front step, they could slam the door in your face. But once you were in the house, it was harder for them to get rid of you. She could see he was thinking about it.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the door wide. “Of course, come in.”

  He led her into the living room and invited her to take one of the chairs across from the couch, which was where he sat.

  “What was the name again?” he asked.

  “Keisha Ceylon. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.” Before she could sit, she had to move a ball of green yarn with two blue, foot-long knitting needles speared through it. She slid the bundle over to the edge of the chair.

  “I … I can’t say that I have. What is it that you do? I mean, what’s the nature of your consulting?”

  “As I said, I offer my services to people when they’re dealing with the kind of crisis you’re currently experiencing.”

  “Missing wives?”

  “Well, any kind of missing person. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions first?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I know you and your daughter made yourself available to the media yesterday to outline your concerns about Mrs. Garfield.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What sort of tips have the police received since then?”

  Garfield shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Keisha nodded sympathetically, as though this was exactly what she’d expected. “And what other efforts have the police been making to find Mrs. Garfield?”

  “Well, they’ve been trying to trace her movements since she left here Thursday night. That’s the night she does the grocery shopping, but she never went to the store.”

  “Yes, I knew that.”

  “And her credit cards haven’t been used. I know they’ve been showing her picture around to all the places she usually goes, talking to her friends, talking to people she works with. All the things you might expect.”

  Another sympathetic nod. “But so far, no leads. Is that what you’re telling me, Mr. Garfield?”

  “It would seem so,” he said.

  Keisha Ceylon paused for what she thought was a dramatically appropriate period of time, and then said, “I believe I can help you where the police cannot.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The police have employed all the typical methods that you would expect,” she said. “They do what they do, but they are not trained to, what’s the phrase? Think outside the box. What I offer is something more unconventional.”

  “And what is that, exactly?”

  She looked him in the eye. “I see things, Mr. Garfield.”

  His mouth opened, but he was briefly at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry?”

  “I can see things,” she repeated. “Let me make this as simple and as straightforward as I can. Mr. Garfield, I have visions.”

  A small laugh erupted from him. “Visions?”

  Keisha was very careful to maintain her cool. Don’t get defensive. Don’t overplay your hand. “Yes,” she said simply. Draw him out. Make him ask the questions.

  “What, uh, what kind of visions?”

  “I’ve had this gift—if you can call it that, I’m not really sure—since I was a child, Mr. Garfield. I have visions of people in distress.”

  “Distress,” he said quietly. “Really.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “And you’ve had a vision of my wife? In distress?”

  She nodded solemnly. “Yes, I have.”

  “I see.” A bemused smile crossed his lips. Keisha had expected this. “And you’ve decided to share this vision with me, and not the police.”


  “As I’m sure you can understand, Mr. Garfield, the police are often not receptive to people with my talents. It’s not just that they’re skeptical. When I’m able to make progress where they have not, they feel it reflects badly on them. So I approach the principals involved directly.”

  “Of course you do,” he said. “And how is it you get these visions? Do you have, like, a TV antenna built into your head or something?”

  She smiled. “I wish I could answer your question in a way that someone could understand. Because if I knew how these visions come to me, I might be able to find a way to turn them off.”

  “So it’s a curse as well as a blessing,” he said.

  Keisha ignored the sarcasm. “Yes, a bit like that. Let me tell you a story. One night, this would have been about three years ago, I was driving to the mall, just minding my own business, when this … image came into my head. All of a sudden I could barely see the road in front of me. It was as though my windshield had turned into a movie screen. And I saw this girl, she couldn’t have been more than five or six, and she was in a bedroom, but it was not a little girl’s bedroom. There were no dolls or playhouses or anything like that. The room was decorated with sports memorabilia. Trophies, posters of football players on the wall, a catcher’s mitt on the desk, a baseball bat leaning against the wall in the corner. And this little girl, she was crying, saying she wanted to go home, pleading to someone to let her leave. And then there was a man’s voice, and he was saying, ‘Not yet, you can’t go home yet, not until we get to know each other a little better.’ ”

  She took a breath. Garfield was trying to look disinterested, but Keisha could tell she had him hooked.

  “Well, I nearly ran off the road. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder. By then, this vision, these images, had vanished, like smoke that had been blown away. But I knew what I’d seen. I’d seen a little girl in trouble, a little girl who was being held against her will.

  “So, in this particular situation, because I did not know who the actual people involved were, I made a decision to go to the police. I called them and said, ‘Are you working on a missing girl case? Perhaps something you haven’t yet made a statement about?’ Well, they were quite taken aback. They said they really couldn’t give out that kind of information. And I said, ‘Is the girl about six years old? And was she last seen wearing a shirt with a Sesame Street character on it?’ Well, now I had their attention. They sent out a detective to talk to me, and he didn’t believe in visions any more than I would imagine you do. I think maybe they were thinking I might have actually had something to do with this girl’s disappearance, because how else could I know those kinds of details? But I said to him, ‘Talk to the family, find out who they know who’s really into sports, who’s won lots of trophies, particularly football trophies, maybe even baseball,’ and the detective said, ‘Yeah, sure, we’ll get right on that,’ like he was humoring me. But then he left, and he made some calls, and within the hour, the police had gone to the home of a neighbor who fit that description, and they rescued that little girl. They got to her just in time.” Keisha paused. “Her name was Nina. And last week she celebrated her ninth birthday. Alive, and well.”

  Total bullshit.

  Keisha clasped her hands together and rested them in her lap, never taking her eyes off Garfield.

  “Would you like to call Nina’s father?” she asked. “I think I could arrange that.” Keisha didn’t think he’d take her up on the offer, but if he did, she had Larson, her boyfriend, on standby to take the call.

  “No, no, that’s okay,” Garfield said. “That’s quite a tale.”

  Keisha looked away then down at her hands. Trying to be modest.

  “But I totally understand,” she said, “if you’d like me to leave. Perhaps you’ve got me pegged as a con artist. There are plenty out there, believe me. I don’t know whether you’ve been contacted by a Winona Simpson, but she’s definitely one to watch out for. If you don’t want me to share my vision with you, I’ll leave right now and you won’t hear from me again. And I just want to say, I hope the police find your wife soon, Mr. Garfield, so that you and your daughter can get your lives back to normal.”

  She stood up. Garfield was on his feet, too, and when Keisha extended her hand once again he took it right away. “Thank you for your time, and I’m so sorry to have troubled you.”

  “What will you do?” he said. “I mean, if you’ve had this so-called vision, and I’m not the kind of person who buys into that sort of thing, what will you do now?”

  “I suppose,” she said, “I’ll go tell the police what I know, and see if there’s anyone there who cares. Sometimes, though, that has a way of backfiring. It doesn’t always work out the way it did with Nina. I’ve found that the police have a tendency to get their back up, and the tip you give them will end up being the last one they follow. I hope, for your wife’s sake, they don’t take that attitude.”

  “So you’re going to the police,” he said, more to himself than to Keisha.

  “Again, thank you for—”

  “Sit down. You might as well tell me how this works.”

  FIVE

  Wendell

  Wendell Garfield didn’t know what the hell to make of this woman. Did Keisha Ceylon really have visions? The story about that little girl was pretty convincing, but it wasn’t enough to persuade him Keisha was legit. There was something about her, though, that was hard to dismiss.

  His mind raced through the possibilities. The woman was trying to shake him down, plain and simple. He had a feeling that even though they hadn’t gotten around to the topic of money, it was coming. What better mark than a husband desperate to find out what had happened to his missing wife? Wouldn’t plenty of people in his position be willing to engage a psychic, a medium, a spiritualist, a paranormal expert—whatever the hell this fraud wanted to call herself—even if they believed there was only a one-in-a-million chance, at best, that she really knew anything? Isn’t that what someone who truly loved his wife would do?

  Or maybe this woman wasn’t trying to con him. Maybe she really did have visions. Maybe she truly believed she had some kind of connection to people in trouble, and was here out of a sincere wish to help him. But maybe what she had wasn’t a gift. Maybe she was a nut. Deluded. Her visions were nothing more than the product of a twisted, disordered mind. Hallucinations.

  And then, of course, there was a third possibility: She was the real thing.

  Wendell considered that prospect highly unlikely. But what if, somehow, for reasons he was not yet privy to, she was onto something? Did he want her talking to the police?

  Not really.

  The smartest course, for now, seemed to be to hear her out. See what she had to say.

  Once Keisha was back in the chair, with Wendell sitting across from her, he said, “First of all, let me apologize if I was at all rude before.”

  “Not at all. I understand that what I do, the talent I have, is difficult for many people to get their heads around.”

  “Yes, well, I have to admit, I have my doubts. But then again, I very much want to know what’s happened to Ellie. To find out where she is. I want her to come home. And I suppose it doesn’t make sense to discount what you have to say until I’ve had a chance to hear it.”

  Keisha smiled, nodded. “I think that’s very wise of you.”

  “So, if you want to tell me your vision, then what the hell, let’s hear it.”

  “I truly appreciate your open-mindedness about this. I would have felt terrible, not being able to help you in your time of need.”

  “Okay, then. Go ahead.”

  “There is one other matter to deal with first.”

  Here we go, he thought.

  “This gift that I have is also my livelihood,” Keisha explained. “I’m sure, if you were to hire a private detective to assist you in locating your wife, you wouldn’t expect him to put in his time and use his experience without compensation.”<
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  “Of course not.”

  “I’m pleased to hear you say that.”

  “And what sort of money are we talking here, Ms. Ceylon?” he asked.

  “One thousand dollars,” she answered, not being the slightest bit shy about it.

  His eyebrows went up. “You’re not serious.”

  “I have a rare gift,” Keisha said. “I believe it’s worth much more, but it would be my pleasure to help you for that sum, which I think is quite reasonable.”

  He thought about it. “I’m not a rich man.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I took that into account when I quoted that fee.”

  “I see. There’s a sliding scale? You take a look at the house and the kind of cars in the driveway, and if you see a Beemer you jack the price up? What the market will bear and all that?”

  She started to get up. “I think I’ll just be on my way, Mr. Garfield, if that’s okay with—”

  “How about this,” he said. “You give me a hint of what your vision was all about, and if it sounds credible to me, then I’ll give you five hundred dollars. And if the information you have leads to my finding Ellie, I’ll pay you another five hundred dollars.”

  She considered his words for a moment, and then said, “I will tell you a bit about my vision, and if you wish to hear more, then I will tell you everything for the full amount. One thousand dollars.”

  He let out a long sigh. He could only imagine what she must be thinking. His wife is missing, and he’s going back and forth with her like he’s buying a new Toyota. He was worried how that might look, so he said, “All right, then, we have a deal.”

  “I’m very pleased,” she said. “Not just because we’ve reached a satisfactory arrangement, but because I do very much want to be able to help you.”

  “Yeah yeah, fine.”

  “Do you have something of your wife’s that I might be able to hold?”

  “What for?”

  “It helps.”

  “I thought you’d already had your vision. I don’t get why you need something of my wife’s to hold on to.”