Linwood Barclay

Clouded Vision

PROLOGUE

Ellie

She’d been dreaming that she was already dead. But then, just before her dream came true, she opened her eyes.

With what little energy she had, she attempted to move, but she was secured, tied in somehow. She lifted a bloody hand from her lap and touched her fingers to the strap that ran across her chest, felt its familiar texture, its smoothness. A seat belt.

She was in a car. Sitting in a front seat.

She looked around and realized it was her own car. But she wasn’t behind the steering wheel. She was buckled into the passenger seat.

She blinked a couple of times, thinking there must be something wrong with her vision because she could barely make anything out. Then it dawned on her that it wasn’t a problem with her eyes.

It was night.

She gazed out through the windshield, saw stars twinkling in the sky. It was a beautiful evening, if she overlooked the part about how all the blood was draining from her body.

It was difficult to hold her head up, but with what strength she still had, she looked around. As she took in the starkness, the strangeness of her surroundings, she wondered if she might actually be dead already. Maybe this was heaven. There was a certain peacefulness about it. Everything was so white. There was a sliver of moon in the cloudless sky, and it lit up the landscape, which was dead flat and seemed to go on forever.

Was the car parked on a snowy field? Far, far off in the distance, she thought she could make out something. A dark, uneven border running dead straight across the top of the whiteness. Trees, maybe? The thick black line, it almost had the look of a… of a shoreline.

“What?” she whispered quietly to herself.

Slowly, she began to understand where she was. No-not understand. She was starting to figure out where she was, but she couldn’t understand it.

She was on ice.

The car was sitting on a frozen lake. And quite a ways from the shore, as far as she could tell.

“No no no no no,” she said to herself as she struggled to think. It was only mid-December. The temperatures had plunged a week ago, and while it might have been cold enough for the lake to start freezing over, it certainly hadn’t been cold long enough to make the ice thick enough to support a Crack.

She felt the front end of the car dip ever so slightly. Probably no more than an inch. That would make sense. The car was heaviest at the front, where the engine was.

She had to get out of this car. If the ice had managed to support something as heavy as a car, at least for this long, surely it would keep her up if she could get herself out… She could start walking, in whatever direction would get her to the closest shore.

If she could even walk. She touched her hand to her belly. Everything was warm, and wet. How many times had she been stabbed? That was what had happened, right? She remembered seeing the knife, the light flickering across the blade, and then The knife had gone into her twice, she thought. And then everything had faded to black.

Dead.

Except she wasn’t.

There must have been just a hint of a pulse that went unnoticed as she was put into the car and buckled in, then driven out here to the middle of this lake. Where, someone must have figured, the car would soon go through the ice and sink to the bottom.

A car with a body inside it, dumped in a lake near the shore, someone might discover that.

But a car with a body inside it that sank to the bottom out in the middle of a lake, what were the odds anyone would ever locate that?

She had to find the strength. She had to get out of this car now, before it broke through the ice. Did she have her cell phone? If she could call for help, they could be looking for her out on the ice, she wouldn’t have to walk all the way back to Crack.

The car lurched. The way it was leaning, her view forward was now snow-dusted ice instead of the far shore. The moon was casting enough light for her to see the inside of the car. There was no sign of her purse, which was where she kept her cell phone. Whether she had a phone or not, that didn’t change the fact that she had to get out of this car.

Right now.

She reached around to her side, looking for the button to release the seat belt. She found it, pressed with her thumb. The combined lap and shoulder strap began to retract, catching briefly on her arm. She pulled it out of the way and the belt receded into the pillar between the back and front door.

Crack.

She reached down for the door handle and pulled. The door opened only slightly. Enough for freezing cold water to start rushing in around her feet.

“No, no,” she whispered.

As water started to fill the interior, the car tilted more. She had to put her hands forward on the dash to keep herself in the seat as the car shifted forward. With one hand on the dash, she pushed on the door with the other, but she couldn’t get it to open. The front part of the door, at the bottom, was jammed on the surface of the ice.

“Please no.”

The last crack she heard was the loudest, echoing across the lake like a thunderclap.

The front end of the car dropped suddenly. Water rushed in, swirling now around her knees. Then her waist. Her neck. Then everything became very black, and very cold, and then, in an odd way, very calm.

Her last thoughts were of her daughter, and the grandchild she would never see.

“Melissa,” she whispered.

And then the car was gone.

ONE

Keisha

Keisha Ceylon stared at the house and thought, Sometimes you can tell, just by looking at a place, that there’s hurt inside.

Sitting in the car with the motor running so she could keep the heater on, Keisha was sure her feelings about the house were not influenced by what she already knew. She told herself that if she’d been strolling through the neighborhood, and had merely glanced at this home, she’d have picked up something.

Despair. Anxiety. Fear.

Not that there was anything to distinguish the home from any other on the street, other than that the inch of snow that had fallen overnight had not been cleared from the drive, or the walk up to the front door. Plus the fact that the curtains were drawn, the blinds shut.

Keisha thought about what the man inside must be going through. How he was dealing with it. Whether he was at the point where he would be desperate enough to accept-and pay for-the extraordinary service she could provide.

She believed her timing was about right. This was always the tricky part. Knowing when to move in. You couldn’t act too quickly, but you didn’t want to leave it too late, either. If you waited too long, the police might actually find a body, at which point no distressed relative was going to care what kind of visions Keisha Ceylon might be having that would lead them to it. Fat lot of good they’d do then. You had to get hold of these people while they still had hope. As long as they had hope, they were willing to try anything, throw their money at anything. This was especially true when all the conventional methods-door-to-door canvasses, sniffer dogs, aerial patrols, neighborhood searches-had turned up nothing. That’s when the relatives were open to something a bit unorthodox. Like a nice lady who showed up on their doorstep and said, “I have a gift, and I want to share it with you.”

For a price, of course.

The other consideration where timing was concerned was the competition. If Keisha hesitated, if she didn’t get to the family soon enough, she ran the risk of getting beat by Winona Simpson.

That bitch.

Winona Simpson had been at this for nearly as long as Keisha. The whole “I have a vision” thing. But the thing with Winona was, she really believed. The woman was actually convinced she’d been blessed with some special power, this ability to see things that no one else could see. Drove Keisha nuts. And because Winona really believed it was her mission to help people in their time of need, she always undercut Keisha on price.

“I’m not in this to make money,” she’d informed Keisha a year and a half ago when they’d both had their sights set on a couple whose two-year-old daughter had wandered away and was believed to have drowned in a creek. “I want to help these people. All I ask is that they cover my expenses, which are minimal.”

“Bite me,” Keisha’d told her.

She got squeezed out of that one. And Winona had nailed it. Told the parents where she believed the kid was. But before they could get to the location, a father and son playing with a radio-controlled boat found the child’s body lodged under a bridge. Right where Winona had said it would be.

Keisha wondered how the hell she did it. She didn’t want to believe that Winona really had the gift, but some things were very hard to explain. Keisha was pretty sure Winona had not beaten her to this one.

The missing woman’s name was Eleanor Garfield. She was, according to the news reports, white, forty-one years old, five foot three, about a hundred and fifty pounds, with short black hair and brown eyes.

Everyone called her Ellie.

Ellie Garfield was last seen, according to her husband, Wendell, on Thursday evening, around seven. She got in her car, a silver Nissan, with the intention of going to the grocery store to pick up the things they needed for the week. Ellie had a job in the administrative offices of the local board of education, and she didn’t like to leave all her errands for the weekend. She wanted Saturday and Sunday to be without chores. And to her way of thinking, the weekend actually began Friday night.

So Thursday night was dedicated to errands.

That way, come Friday, she could have a long soak in a hot tub. After that, she’d slip into her pajamas and pink robe and park herself in front of the television. It was mostly for background noise, because she rarely had her eyes on it. Her primary focus was her knitting.

Knitting had always been a hobby for her, but Ellie hadn’t shown much interest in it the last few years. However, according to a newspaper backgrounder who had tried to capture the essence of this missing woman, Ellie had gone back to it when she learned she was going to become a grandmother. She had made baby booties and socks and a couple of sweaters. “I’m knitting up a storm,” she’d told one of her friends.

But this particular week, Ellie Garfield did not make it to Friday night.

Nor did she, by all accounts, make it to the store on Thursday. None of the grocery store staff, who knew Ellie Garfield by sight, if not by name, recalled seeing her. Nor was there any record that her credit card-which she preferred to cash since she collected points-had been used that evening. Nor had it been used since. Her car was not picked up on the surveillance cameras that kept watch over the grocery store lot.

From Keisha’s reading of the news stories on the woman’s disappearance, and from what she’d seen on television, the police didn’t know what to make of it. Had Ellie met with foul play? Did she start off intending to go to the grocery store and then just decide to just keep on driving? Leave her old life behind and start a new one?

That seemed unlikely. Especially considering that she was about to have her first grandchild. What woman disappears on the eve of something like that?

Police tossed out the theory that she was the victim of a carjacking. There had been three incidents in the last year where a female driver stopped at a traffic light had been pulled from her vehicle. The perpetrator-believed to be the same man in all three cases-had then made off with the car. The three women had been shaken up, but not seriously hurt.

Maybe Ellie Garfield had run into the same man. And maybe this time things had turned violent.

On Saturday, Wendell Garfield went before the cameras, his pregnant daughter at his side. The girl was crying too hard to say anything, but Wendell held back his tears long enough to make his plea.

“I just want to say, honey, if you’re watching, please, please come home. We love you, Ellie, and we miss you and we just want you back. And… and if something has happened to… if someone has done something to you, then I make this appeal to whoever has done this… I’m asking you, please let us know what’s happened to Ellie. Please let us know where she is, that she’s okay… just tell us something… I… I…”

At that point he turned away from the camera, overcome.

Keisha almost shed a tear herself. It was time to make her move. She was willing to bet her tarot cards and Ouija board that Winona was watching this, thinking the same thing.

So that evening, Keisha took a drive past the Garfield home, which was set back from the street in a heavily wooded neighborhood. Got the lay of the land, as it were. Wanted to see whether the place was surrounded with cop cars, marked or unmarked. See if Winona’s Prius was on the street. Keisha spotted what she believed was one unmarked car, but that was it.

She decided to make her pitch Sunday morning. First thing.

You did this enough, it got pretty easy. It was the people themselves who fed you the vision. You started off vague, something like “I see a house… a white house with a fence out front…”

And then they’d say, “A white house? Wait, wait, didn’t Aunt Gwen live in a white house?”

And someone else would say, “That’s right, she did!”

And then, picking up on the past tense, you said, “And this Aunt Gwen, I’m sensing… I’m sensing she’s passed on.”

And they said, “Oh my God, that’s right, she has!”

The key was to listen, have them give you the clues. Give them something to latch onto, and then you were golden.

It wouldn’t be any different with Wendell Garfield.

Not that everyone bought into it. There was that one woman a few years back, the one whose parents and brother disappeared one night twenty-five years earlier when she was only fourteen. Cynthia, that was her name. You’d have thought if there was anyone who’d be willing to take a leap of faith with someone like Keisha, it would have been this woman. They even got as far as the TV studio, where they were going to film Keisha outlining her vision for Cynthia, and the moment she raised the issue of being paid, everything shut down. It was the husband. The teacher. As soon as Keisha wanted to be paid for her services, he started making out like she was some kind of con artist or something.

The prick.

But Wendell Garfield, she had a good feeling about him from the TV appearance.

Keisha was up early Sunday. She’d spent time the night before selecting the right outfit. Nothing too flashy, but you needed a touch of eccentricity somewhere. People figured if you could talk to the dead, see into other dimensions, you had to be a little off your rocker, right? Eccentricity was expected. So she went with the earrings that looked like tiny green parrots.

She got in her Toyota, hit the wipers to clear the dusting of snow from the night before. When she got to the Garfield house, she was relieved to see no police cars out front. It was always better if you could do this without the cops offering their opinion that you might as well set your cash on fire as hand it over to some shyster psychic.

Keisha sat in the car a moment, getting her head in the right place.

She was ready.

Time to go in and explain to the frantic husband that she could help him in his hour of need. She could be his instrument to help determine what had happened to his beloved Ellie.

Because Keisha had seen something. She’d had a vision. A vision that very possibly held the answer to why his wife of twenty-one years had been missing for three nights now.

A vision that she would be happy to share with him.

For the right price.

Keisha Ceylon took a deep breath, took one last look at her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and opened the car door.

Showtime.

TWO

Wendell

“So, what are you telling me, that there’s been nothing, nothing at all?” Wendell Garfield said into the phone. “I thought, I really thought someone… Well, if you hear anything, anything at all, please, please call me. I’m desperate for any kind of news.”

He replaced the receiver in its cradle. He had decided when he got up that morning that he would call the police first thing, see whether the news conference he and his daughter had done yesterday had produced any valuable tips.

The detective he’d just spoken to was not the one in charge of the investigation, but he claimed to be up to speed on what was happening. There had been only about half a dozen calls to the special hotline police had set up. None of them had been considered useful.

Wendell decided to make himself some tea, thinking it would help calm him. He hadn’t slept more than a few minutes all night. He was trying to remember, since Thursday, when this had all started, just how much sleep he’d had. Five, six hours maybe. Melissa had probably had a little more than that, if only because the pregnancy made her so tired.

Garfield hadn’t wanted his daughter to be part of the press conference. He’d told the police he wasn’t sure she could handle the stress. Melissa was seven months pregnant, her mother was missing, and now they wanted her to be on the six o’clock news?

“I don’t want to put her through that,” he’d told the police.

But it was Melissa herself who insisted she appear alongside her father. “We’ll do it together, Dad,” she told him. “Everyone needs to know we want Mom to be found, that we want her to come home.”

With some reluctance, he agreed, but only if he did all the talking. As it turned out, once the lights were on and the cameras in their faces, Melissa went to pieces. She tried to splutter “Mommy, please come back to us” but dissolved into tears and pressed her face into her father’s chest. Even he wasn’t able to say very much, just that they loved Ellie very much and wanted her to come home.

Then he made his appeal to anyone out there who might have anything to do with his wife’s disappearance. Please, tell us what’s happened. Send Ellie home to us.

And then he lost it, too.

He could hear murmurs among some of the newspeople, phrases like “good stuff” and “perfect” and “awesome.”

What despicable pieces of humanity, Wendell Garfield thought.

He took Melissa home with him, tried to get her to eat something. “It’s going to be okay,” he soothed her. “Everything’s going to be okay. We’ll get through this.”

She sat slumped at the kitchen table, her head nearly on the table. “Oh, Daddy…”

“Trust me,” Wendell said.

She stayed overnight, but around dawn said she wanted to go back to her apartment across town. Wendell wasn’t so sure that was a good idea, but Melissa insisted she could handle it. She wasn’t going to stay there. She’d come back and stay overnight in the room she used to live in. But she needed some time by herself, to think. Melissa shared the apartment with her friend Olivia, but Olivia was away right now, visiting her parents in Denver.

Wendell was awake at five-he’d never been asleep-and said he would drive his daughter back to her place.

Parked out front of her apartment, which was actually the top floor of an old house with a separate entrance, Wendell asked, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? Do you want me to wait?”

Melissa said no.

Even though she was only nineteen, Melissa had been living away from home three years. She was the first to admit she’d been a difficult teen from the beginning. She drank, used drugs, slept around. She ignored the limits her parents attempted to set for her.

When she was sixteen, Ellie and Wendell decided they could take no more. They gave her an ultimatum. Live by the rules of this house, or get out.

She chose to get out.

Melissa found a place to live with Olivia. She dropped of school and got a job waiting tables at Denny’s. It turned out that getting kicked out of her parents’ house was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It forced her to get her act together. She didn’t have anyone else to take care of her, so she had to take care of herself.

She started to become responsible. Who would have guessed?

Ellie and Wendell were cautiously optimistic. Once Melissa got her head screwed on right, they figured, she could go back and finish school. If she did well enough, she might even have a chance at college, Ellie mused one evening. Maybe she’d even think about becoming a veterinarian. Remember, when she was little, how she said one day she’d loved to work with animals and “For God’s sake, Ellie, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Wendell had said.

Melissa would come over for dinner. Some of these get-togethers went better than others. One night, Melissa would tell them about how she was getting her life back on track and her parents would nod and try to be encouraging. But another night, Ellie, anxious to see her daughter’s rehabilitation move with more speed, would start pushing. She’d tell her daughter it was time — now — to stop being nothing more than a waitress and get back to school and make something of herself. Did Melissa have any idea just how embarrassing it was for her mother, an employee of the board of education, to have a daughter who was a dropout? Who hadn’t even completed the eleventh grade? How long was she expected to wait to see her daughter get on a path where she would amount to something?

Then they’d start fighting and Melissa would storm out, but not before asking out loud how she’d managed to live in this house as long as she had without blowing her brains out.

It always took a few days for the dust to settle.

Ellie and Wendell still kept their fingers crossed that Melissa was growing up. She held on to her waitressing job. She was saving some money. Not a lot. About twenty-five dollars a week. But it was something. And one day, talking to her mother on the phone, Melissa happened to mention that she’d been on a college website, looking at what qualifications you needed to enroll in the veterinary program.

Ellie was beside herself with joy when she told Wendell the news.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked. “She’s growing up, that’s what she’s doing. She’s growing up and thinking about the future.”

What neither Ellie or Wendell had counted on was that the immediate future would include a baby.

Melissa was already three months along when she broke the news to her parents. They did not, to say the least, take it well, but Wendell tried to find the silver lining. Maybe this meant Melissa would get married. She’d be a very young mother, but at least if she had a man in her life, a man who could look after her and the baby, wouldn’t that take some of the pressure off Ellie and him?

Then they found out about the man. It soon became clear that the only thing that might be worse than Melissa having this baby with no father on the scene would be having this baby with the father on the scene.

His name was Lester Cody. Thirty years old. A regular at Denny’s. He’d never hung on to a job longer than three months, and none of those had ever paid a penny more than minimum wage. Always ended up injured. Hurt his back. Threw out his shoulder. Sprained his ankle. But luckily, no matter how badly he might have gotten hurt, he could still play his Nintendo Wii. Lester lived in his parents’ basement, still had Spider-Man posters on his bedroom wall. His favorite hat was adorned with a plastic dog turd.

Ellie cried for the better part of a week before she was able to accept that her daughter was really going to have this child, that she was not going to marry Lester Cody, and that Ellie was going to become a grandmother.

“This baby’s coming,” she said to Wendell. “There’s not a damn thing I can do about it.” So she took up her knitting again.

Sometimes, it was all more than Wendell Garfield could stand. The tension between his wife and daughter, the relentless discussions Ellie wanted to have with him about what their girl was going to do with her life. And now all this new talk about the baby. How would Melissa manage? Would she need to move back home? Would the man who got her pregnant step up to the plate and accept some responsibility?

The discussions never stopped.

Wendell Garfield wondered if it was all this that had driven him into the arms of Laci Harmon, or if it would have happened anyway.

THREE

Wendell

They both worked at Home Depot, Wendell primarily in plumbing and Laci over in home lighting fixtures. They’d had coffee breaks together, talked about their families, the joys and-mostly-heartaches of raising kids. She had two boys, aged fifteen and seventeen, who did nothing but fight with each other. Laci confessed once, only half jokingly, that she wished they’d have one final no-holds-barred battle and kill each other.

Wendell laughed. He said he knew exactly how she felt.

He always found reasons to stroll through the lighting section.

Laci often seemed to be passing through the plumbing supplies aisle.

It started with friendly teasing, then double entendres. When Laci wandered by, she’d narrow her eyes and say she needed help with her plumbing. When Garfield was over in light fixtures, he’d bump into Laci on purpose and say he wondered if she could help him keep his light switch in the up position.

It was all in fun.

Then one day Wendell had been asked to assemble, for display purposes, a vinyl-sided utility shed. He was inside the nearly finished structure, tightening up some bolts to make sure the thing wouldn’t blow down in the wind, when Laci Harmon stepped inside, slid the door shut behind her, and placed his right hand on her left breast.

It was a Thursday. That night, when Ellie was doing the weekly grocery shopping, Wendell slipped away from home and met Laci at a Days Inn. They had been finding ways to rendezvous once or twice a week since then, always in places that were nicer than a vinyl-sided utility shed, although not always by much. Laci’s Dodge minivan, for example. Wendell longed for these moments away from home, away from the endless stresses that Ellie and Melissa provided.

He’d only just got off the phone with the police when it rang.

“Hello?”

“Oh, Wen, I just had to get in touch.”

“Laci, this isn’t a good time.”

“But I can’t stop thinking about you, about what you must be going through,” she said. She wasn’t whispering, which told Garfield that she was alone in her house.

“Where’s your husband? The boys?” he asked her.

“They’re out. It’s just me,” Laci said. “Wendell, you have to talk to me.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Have they found out anything? Do the police know what happened? I watched the press conference. I watched it at six, and I watched it again at eleven. It was very moving. You were very good, if you know what I mean. You held it together really well. I think if anyone knew anything, if they knew anything at all, they’d call when they saw that.”

“I just got off the phone with the police,” Wendell told her. “They haven’t received any good tips.”

“I feel… I feel so… it’s hard to explain,” Laci said. “I feel sort of guilty, you know? Because of what we’ve been doing behind her back.”

“They don’t have anything to do with each other.”

“I know that, but I keep thinking, what if someone finds out? What if someone finds out what’s going on between us, and they think it has something to do with what’s happened to Ellie? And if, God forbid, something has actually happened to Ellie, then how is it going to look if-”

“Laci, please, don’t go there,” he interrupted. “Maybe she just decided to go away for a while, clear her head.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. But I suppose it’s a possibility. I mean, they haven’t found her car or anything. If something had happened to her around here, you’d think they’d at least have found her car. We’re into the third day now.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It’s all part of the process. Some of the fuzzier details in my vision may come into sharper focus if I’m in possession of something that belongs to the person, something that’s come into close contact with them.”

“What do you need?”

“An article of clothing would be best.”

“Like her bathrobe or something?”

Keisha nodded. Wendell excused himself and went upstairs. A moment later, he was coming back down with a pink robe in his hands. It was faded and tattered from many years of wear.

“Thank you,” Keisha said, placing the robe in her lap and laying both hands on it. She ran her fingertips over the material and closed her eyes.

Several seconds went by without her saying a word. Finally, Wendell interrupted her trance state, saying, “Are you getting anything, or what?”

“Just a moment.” She opened her eyes. “I’m feeling some… tingling.”

“Tingling?”

“It’s a little bit like when the hairs go up on the back of your neck. That’s when I know I’m starting to sense something.”

“What? What are you sensing?”

“Your wife, she’s…”

“She’s what?”

“She’s cold,” Keisha said. “Your wife is very, very cold.”

SIX

Keisha

While Keisha was waiting to see if he’d take the bait and give her a chance to reel him in, she was thinking about her starting point. Cast a wide net to begin with, then narrow the focus. Why not start with the weather?

It was winter, after all. Everybody was cold. Wherever Ellie Garfield was, it only stood to reason she’d be feeling chilled. Okay, maybe that wasn’t true. The night she disappeared, Ellie could have steered her car south and headed straight to Florida. She could have been there in a day, and by now might be working on a pretty decent tan.

But the thing was, Keisha wasn’t all that concerned with where this man’s wife really was. She just wanted to offer him some possibilities. And in return, make her money.

“What do you mean, cold?” Garfield asked. He seemed, for the first time, intrigued.

“Just what I said. She’s very cold. Did she take a jacket with her when she left Thursday night?”

“A jacket? Of course she took a jacket. She wouldn’t have left the house without a jacket. Not this time of year.”

Keisha nodded. “I’m still picking up that she’s cold. Not just, you know, a little bit cold. I mean chilled to the bone. Maybe it wasn’t a warm enough coat. Or maybe… maybe she lost her coat?”

“I don’t see how she could lose her coat. Once you go outside, you know you need it.” He sank back into the couch, looking annoyed. “I don’t see where this is very helpful.”

“I can come back to it,” she said. “Maybe, as I start picking up other things, the part about her being cold will take on more meaning.”

“I thought you had a vision. Why don’t you just tell me what the vision was instead of rubbing your hands all over my wife’s robe?”

“Please, Mr. Garfield, it’s not as though my vision was an episode of Seinfeld and I can just tell you what I watched. There are flashes, images, like fleeting snapshots. It’s a little like dumping a shoebox full of snapshots onto a table. They’re in a jumble, no particular order. What I’m trying to do, it’s like sorting those pictures. Sitting here now, in your wife’s home, holding something that touched her, I can start assembling those images, like a jigsaw puzzle.”

“You’re pulling a fast one here. I think-”

“Melissa.”

“What?”

“Melissa. That’s your daughter’s name, correct?”

“That’s no big trick. Her name’s been in the paper.”

“I’m not trying to impress you with knowing her name, Mr. Garfield. I’m trying to tell you about the images, the flashes.”

Garfield looked as though he’d been scolded. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

“She’s terribly troubled, Melissa is.”

“Well, of course.”

“But this goes beyond what you would expect a daughter to feel when her mother goes missing.”

Garfield leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees. Really interested. Keisha thought maybe she’d struck some sort of nerve here. All she was doing, really, so far, was telling Garfield things he already knew, things everyone knew. It was winter. He had a pregnant daughter. It was logical she’d be upset. In another minute or so, she’d get to the next stunningly obvious thing-the car. But first, she wanted to feel Garfield out about his daughter’s pregnancy, which was pretty hard to miss during the TV coverage.

“What do you mean, it goes beyond?” he asked.

“Something about the baby…”

“What about the baby?”

“Tell me about the father,” Keisha said. Turning it around, letting him do some of the work, and getting him to feed her a few more nuggets to work with at the same time.

“Lester Cody. A useless son of a bitch.” Wendell Garfield shook his head in anger and frustration. “Thirty years old, no job, lives at home with his parents. When we learned Melissa was pregnant, we were upset, but we figured, if she’d found the right guy, settling down with him, having a baby, that would help her turn her life around, give her some stability.”

“And your wife and Lester… I see tension here… on the periphery at least.”

“Sure,” Garfield said. “I mean, we’d both been hoping he’d step up to the plate, but I don’t see that happening.”

“Ellie… did Ellie confront him? I’ve seen some flashes that would seem to indicate that.”

Flashes, yeah. Keisha knew that if she had a daughter who’d been knocked up by some asshole, she’d be in his face night and day to make sure he did the right thing, at least at those times when she wasn’t giving her own daughter hell for getting in this mess. Keisha’d be all over a guy like that.

It seemed reasonable to assume Eleanor Garfield might feel the same way.

“She phoned him a few times,” Garfield said. “But any time she called his house, she got his mother.” The man frowned. “Ellie was extremely upset about the whole situation.”

Was Keisha picking up something else here? Ellie was. Any time she called. Had Garfield already given up on finding his wife? Was he already thinking she was dead?

Keisha told herself she was reading too much into the comments. Garfield was talking about incidents that had happened in the past. So speaking of his wife in the past tense, that made sense, at least in this context.

“Do you think that maybe Lester is involved in my wife’s disappearance?” he asked her.

She liked that. Him starting to ask her questions. Like he thought she might actually have answers. The hook was firmly set now. He wasn’t going to get away. It would be easy to start taking him down that road, that maybe his wife had run into Lester and things had turned bad, but if she did that, it might confirm suspicions she guessed Garfield already had about her. That she was steering this whatever way he led her. She could come back to this later. Best to go in another direction now. Throw him a curveball.

“The car,” she said.

“What?”

“I keep seeing something about the car.”

“Which car? Lester’s car?”

“No, your wife’s car. A Nissan.”

“That’s right. A 2007. It’s silver. What about the car?”

Keisha closed her eyes again. Took her hands off the robe that was still in her lap and rubbed her temples. “It’s… the car’s not on the road.”

Garfield said nothing.

“It’s definitely not on the road. It’s… it’s…”

Garfield seemed to be holding his breath. “It’s what?” he asked, suddenly impatient. “If it’s not on the road, then where the hell is it?”

Keisha took her fingers away from her head, opened her eyes, and looked the man squarely in the eye.

“I think this is where we have to talk about my fee, Mr. Garfield. I believe I’m closing in on something, and it’s going to require all my powers of concentration. I don’t want to be distracted, wondering whether you’re going to do the right thing.”

He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and over his teeth.

“You’ll take a check?”

SEVEN

Wendell

When she’d talked about Ellie being so very cold, he had to admit, that had thrown him. But when she hadn’t gotten into specifics, he figured it didn’t mean anything. It was winter. It was cold. Big deal. Didn’t mean the woman was some fucking genius psychic. She had about as much skill communicating with the missing and the dead as that weather lady on the six o’clock news did predicting whether it was going to rain tomorrow.

But then she went and mentioned the car. Why had she suddenly wanted to talk about the car? And then she went and said it was “definitely not on the road.”

She sure had that right.

That car was at the bottom of a lake. No one was going to find it, not for a very, very long time, if ever. Water had to be forty, fifty feet deep there, he bet. It was probably already covered over with ice. It had gotten even colder since Thursday night. It’d be spring before there was a chance of anyone finding it, and even then the odds seemed pretty remote. Someone would have to be diving, right there, to come across it. And even if some fishermen snagged on to it, it wasn’t like the car was going to float to the surface like an old boot. They’d have to cut their line, put on a new hook.

How could Keisha Ceylon know the car was not on the road?

It could be a lucky guess. Simple as that. But what if it wasn’t?

If it wasn’t, Garfield saw two possibilities.

One, this woman actually had the gift. He’d never bought into this kind of thing, but who knew? Maybe some people really were born with special powers. Maybe this woman did have visions. How else could you explain that story about Nina, the little girl kidnapped by the neighbor?

So if she had this gift, and really had a vision about Ellie, then she knew something.

Or the other possibility-a no less disturbing one-was that this psychic thing was an act. A total sham. Complete and utter bullshit. A performance, to cover the fact that the information she had had come to her in a much less mystical way.

She had seen what happened. Not in a vision, but with her own eyes.

Wendell thought about that as he went into the kitchen to find his checkbook.

She could have been there. She could have been at the lake that night. Maybe she lived in one of the cabins that lined the shore. On his way up there, Garfield had felt confident that would not be a problem. Most of the places on the lake were seasonal. This time of year, the cabins were boarded up. By the end of November, most everyone had turned off the water, poured antifreeze into the pipes, put out the mousetraps, spread around the mothballs, covered over the windows, and headed back to their comfortable homes in the city, no plans to return until spring.

But Garfield now had to consider the possibility one of the cabins had been occupied. Maybe someone had been looking out the window that night and noticed a car with no lights on being driven out onto that new ice with only a dusting of snow on it. That sliver of moon was all the light anyone would need to get an idea of what was going on.

Someone could have seen the car creep out there and stop. Then seen a man get out of the driver’s side, with an actual broom in his hand, and watched as he attempted to sweep away tire tracks as made his way back to shore.

And then someone could have seen that same man stop and look back, waiting, waiting for the car to plunge through the thin ice.

Garfield shuddered at the memory. It had been agonizing. For a few moments there, standing out in the freezing cold, he was convinced the car was not going to drop through. That it was going to sit there, and be there in the morning when the sun came up.

With his wife’s dead body still strapped to the passenger seat.

He’d been talking earlier in the day to some customers at Home Depot, a couple of fellows who lived up this way, who’d said the lake was starting to freeze over pretty quickly, that you could already walk out on it, but it wasn’t thick enough to take any real weight yet. Some winters, when the ice got thick enough, they’d actually race cars out there, but they didn’t see that happening until at least February, so long as the temperatures stayed well below freezing.

He didn’t think much about it at the time. But the conversation came back to him later that night.

After it had happened. After she was dead.

When he needed a plan.

Maybe Keisha Ceylon had been there, at the lake. Been that someone watching from one of those cabins. When the story about his wife hit the news, maybe she put it all together.

And now she’s here, shaking me down for money, he thought. Not quite blackmail. If she were that direct, if she were to say to him, “I saw what you did, and I’ll go to the police with what I know unless you pay me,” that would be taking quite a risk. For all she knew, he wouldn’t pay her off to keep her quiet.

He’d just kill her.

But using this whole psychic shtick, that was pure genius. She knew enough to get him curious, to get him worried. Worried enough that he’d pay her some money to find out just how much she really knew. Then, once she had the check, she’d keep things just vague enough so he’d always be left wondering. She’d never have to tip her hand. She’d never have to let on that she was there, that if she wanted to, she could put him away for the rest of his life.

Well, Keisha Ceylon wasn’t nearly as clever as she thought she was.

Wendell Garfield wasn’t interested in taking any chances.

EIGHT

Melissa

After her father dropped her off and she went up to her apartment, Melissa felt woozy. And nauseated.

She’d only been inside the door a minute when she suddenly felt very ill. She ran into the bathroom, dropped to her knees in front of the toilet. Made it just in time.

She cleaned up and peered at herself in the mirror. Her hair was dirty and stringy, and there were bags under eyes. She’d hardly slept in the last couple of days. More than her father, but not much.

Melissa rested her hand on the top of her very pregnant belly, rubbed it, felt something move around beneath it. Then she felt her body begin to shake, her eyes begin to moisten. All the crying she’d done in the last few days, she couldn’t believe she had any more tears in her, but they just kept on coming.

She wanted to crawl into bed and never wake up. Just get under the covers, pull them over her head, and stay that way forever. She didn’t want to ever have to face the world again.

It was all so terrible.

She couldn’t stop thinking about her mother, about her father, about Lester, about the baby, about how her life had spiraled totally out of control in the last year. How it didn’t look to her like it was going to get any better.

She thought about the press conference. About how strongly her father had felt she should not be a part of it.

“Don’t do this,” he’d told her. “Don’t put yourself through it. It’s not necessary. I can handle it.”

“No, I should do it.”

“Melissa, I’m telling you-”

“No, Dad, I have to do it. You can’t stop me.”

She recalled how he’d gripped her arm, how it almost hurt. How he’d looked into her eyes. “I’m telling you, it would be a mistake.”

“If I don’t do it,” she’d said, “people will think I don’t care.”

And so, reluctantly, he had relented. But he was very firm with her. “Let me do the talking. I don’t want you saying anything, you understand? You can cry all you want, but you’re not going to say one word.”

So she hadn’t. She wasn’t sure she could have, anyway. Just as he’d guessed, she cried. And the tears were genuine. She hadn’t been able to stop. She was so incredibly sad. And not just sad.

She was scared.

She knew her father loved her very much. She believed that in her heart. But it didn’t give her comfort. Not now.

He’d told her what to say. He’d rehearsed it with her.

“Your mother went shopping and that’s all we know,” he’d said. “She went off like she always did. Anything could have happened. Maybe she ran off to be with another man, or-”

“Mom would never do that,” Melissa had said, sniffing, trying to hold back the tears long enough for her father to drill into her what her story was going to be when the police talked to her. Because the police were going to want to talk to her, she could be sure of that.

“-or maybe that guy who’s been going around doing carjackings, maybe he did this. It could have been any number of things. The world is full of sick people. The police will have all sorts of theories, and if they never solve it, they never solve it.”

“Okay.”

“The main thing is, you just don’t know. You have no idea. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

She crawled into the bed, lay on her side, rested her head on the pillow. She grabbed a couple of tissues from the box on her bedside table and dabbed her eyes.

“I can’t do this,” she said to herself.

What was it her mother used to tell her?

“You have to live your life like someone’s watching you all the time. Behave in a way that you will never be ashamed.”

She turned to other side, then back. It was so hard to get comfortable because of the baby. Finally, she threw off the covers and put her feet on the floor, sat there on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.

“I can’t do this,” she said again. “I have to do what’s right. No matter who it hurts.”

She wondered, should she call a lawyer? But she didn’t know any lawyers. She didn’t want to pick one at random out of the phone book. And was there really any point? If her plan was to tell the truth, did she really need one?

Melissa decided to take a shower first, make herself presentable. Before she stepped under the water, she phoned for a taxi. Asked for it to be out front in an hour.

She was standing on the curb when the yellow car came around the corner. When she got in, the driver asked where she’d like to go.

“The police station,” she said.

“Okeydoke,” he said, then laughed. “I was thinking maybe you were going to say the hospital.”

“I got another couple of months to go,” she told him. “I’m not having a baby in your cab.”

“Good to know,” he said, and put the car in drive.

She didn’t say anything the rest of the way. Mostly, she just thought. About how angry her father was going to be with her.

NINE

Keisha

Garfield seemed to take a long time in the kitchen, but when he returned he had a check between his thumb and index finger. Keisha smiled as she took it from him, glanced down at it, saw that it was for the right amount. She folded the check once and slipped it into her purse.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Fine, fine,” he said. “I couldn’t find a pen.”

“You should have asked me. I have a couple in my purse here.”

“I finally found one. In the drawer.”

“Well, that’s okay.” She put her purse down on the floor next to the chair. “Shall I continue?”

“Would you like some coffee?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine, thank you.”

“I was actually just about to make a cup of tea when you knocked on the door. Tea?”

“No, thank you.”

Garfield sat down on the couch. “So, do you live around here?”

Keisha wondered what was going on. She’d brought Garfield right up to the edge of the cliff with that thing about his wife’s car not being on the road. She had him then. He was curious, no doubt about it.

It was the ideal moment to hit him up for the money.

So off he’d gone to the kitchen to write the check. And now he was back, ready to continue, and he’s asking her if she wants coffee? Tea? Asking her where she lived?

She wondered, was he stalling for time? Had he called the police while he was out of her sight? Told them there was this crazy lady here, trying to exploit his situation for money?

Keisha didn’t think so. She’d have heard something if he’d tried that. He was no more than ten feet away the whole time, just on the other side of the wall. And the doorway between the living room and the kitchen was open the entire time.

“I’m sorry, what was the question?” she asked.

“Where do you live?”

“Not far from here,” she said. “The other side of town.”

He nodded pleasantly. “Have you lived there long?”

“I moved up here a couple of years ago.”

“Where from?”

“Connecticut. Near New Haven.”

“Do you have a summer place?”

“I’ve just got the one place, Mr. Garfield, and I live in it all year long. Do you want to hear what I have to say or not? I mean, you’ve paid me. I’m guessing you’d like to get your money’s worth.”

He gave her a go-ahead wave. “By all means.”

“As I was saying, I’ve been seeing some kind of flashes of the car your wife was driving.” Keisha still had her hands on the pink robe, occasionally kneading the fabric between her fingers. “The silver Nissan.”

“You were saying that the car was not on the road. If it’s not on the road, where do you see it?”

Keisha closed her eyes again. “It’s not a parking lot. I guess that would still count as being on the road, in a way. I’m not seeing it in a garage.”

“What about water?” Garfield asked. “Do you see any water?”

Curious, Keisha thought. He’s just asked if I have a summer place, and now he mentions water. She’d been thinking about Florida earlier. Maybe Garfield was thinking the missus had taken off for Miami. But then again, she’d already put it out there that Ellie Garfield was very cold, so if she raised Florida as a possibility, she was going to get caught in a contradiction.

Stick with cold. So if it’s cold, the water… could be frozen.

She opened her eyes for a moment, then closed them again. “It’s funny you should mention water. I was seeing something, something shimmery, that I thought might be water, but I was thinking maybe it was actually ice.”

“Ice,” Garfield said.

This time, she kept her eyes open. “Yes, ice. Ice in a glass? Ice at a skating rink? Ice, like, on a lake? Does ice of any kind have any significance to you? Any significance where your wife is concerned?”

“Why should it mean something to me?” A defensive tone had edged into his voice.

“You were the one who mentioned water.”

“And then you mentioned ice. I didn’t mention ice.”

“But it seems to have some meaning for you,” Keisha insisted. “I could see it, in your expression.”

“Why would you say ice on a lake?”

“That was just one of the kinds of ice I mentioned. But I can tell there seems to be a connection there.”

Garfield stood up. He took a few steps to the right of the couch, then turned and paced in the other direction. He was stroking the end of his chin, pondering something.

“What is it?” Keisha asked.

He paced back and forth one more time and then stopped. He looked at Keisha, studied her a moment, then pointed an accusing finger in her direction. “Maybe it’s time you just leveled with me.”

“Leveled with you about what?”

“About what’s really going on here.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Garfield, but I’m not sure I understand.”

“This whole psychic mumbo-jumbo act you’ve got going on, that’s a load of bullshit, isn’t it?”

Keisha sighed. “I told you, if you want to call Nina’s father for a reference, I have no problem with that. I’m happy to give you the number.”

“You got somebody all set up to take the call? Someone who’ll tell me what I want to hear?”

Keisha shook her head and gave him a bruised look. Trying to appear disappointed, hurt. But what she was thinking was, At least I’ve got the check. Smart thing to do would be to get to the bank when it opens tomorrow morning and cash it, before Garfield has a chance to phone and put a stop payment on it.

“I’m very sorry you’d think that of me, Mr. Garfield. Just when I thought we were making some progress.”

“Whatever you know, whatever you think you know, it’s got nothing to do with visions or communicating with the dead or goddamn tea leaves. Whatever you know, you found out some other way.”

“I assure you, I-”

“Would you please hand me my wife’s robe? I don’t want you touching it anymore.”

“Oh, sure,” Keisha said. This certainly seemed to suggest that they were done.

“Thank you,” he said, gathering the robe up into a ball.

Keisha reached down for her purse. She set it into her lap, made sure it was zipped tight at the top, and started to stand.

Garfield said, “No, don’t go yet.”

“I can’t see what possible point there would be in staying any longer, Mr. Garfield. It’s clear you think I’m some kind of con artist. I’ve been at this too long to take offense. That is how some people react, thinking that what I do is a sham, and if that’s your conclusion, then I’m happy to be on my way.” Thinking, Don’t ask for the check back.

“Did I offend you? I’m very sorry if I did that.” He didn’t look at all sincere.

“You just accused me of having someone standing by to-to lie to you about my successes. Wouldn’t you expect me to take offense at that?”

He was still pacing, still fondling the robe, doing something with it, like it was a mound of clay he was shaping into something. Keisha watched as he took a few steps one way, then the other. It struck her that this was how he formed his thoughts, by making these little journeys around the room.

“You are very clever, I have to give you that,” he said.

Keisha said nothing. She was starting to get an inkling of what was going on. She should have caught on a little sooner.

“Very, very clever,” he said, stepping over to the window, pulling back the curtain to get a look at the street. This put him off to one side and slightly behind Keisha, and she had to twist around in her chair to see him. “I’d like to apologize. Forget what I just said. Why don’t you carry on, let me hear some more about your vision. ”

“Mr. Garfield, I’m not sure-”

“No no, please, go on.”

Keisha put her purse back down on the carpet and rested her hands by her thighs on the seat cushion. “Would you like me start again with the ice? Or move on to something else?”

“Why don’t you just say whatever comes into your head.”

Keisha had a bad feeling. She couldn’t recall dealing with anyone like this before, someone who’d seemingly lost interest in what she had to say, wanted her to leave, then had an abrupt change of heart. Judging by his tone now, she didn’t believe he was even interested in anything else she had to say.

He just didn’t want her to leave.

Something was very wrong here. She thought she had it figured out.

It’s him. He did it.

It explained his strange behavior. Keisha wanted to kick herself for not realizing it sooner. She’d been at this long enough, of course, to know that when a wife was murdered-or missing-the husband was always a prime suspect. It wasn’t very often people were killed by strangers. They were killed by people they knew. Wives were killed by husbands. Husbands were killed by wives.

The man had moved away from the window and was taking a route behind Keisha’s chair. She was going to have to turn around to keep her eye on him.

“On second thought, sure, tell me about the ice.”

What threw her off was the televised news conference. She’d figured, first of all, that if the police strongly suspected Garfield had offed his wife, they’d never have let him go before the cameras. Would they? She had to admit, Garfield was good. Those tears had looked real. The way he took his pregnant daughter into his arms to comfort her, that was pretty darn convincing, too.

Not that it had never occurred to Keisha that the people she preyed upon could be something other than innocent. Guilty people often made the best targets. They could be so eager to prove they were as much in the dark as everyone else that they leapt at the chance to pay to hear what she had to say.

Telling themselves, I look so innocent. A real murderer would never do this, right?

Maybe that explained why Garfield, at first, agreed to listen to her. But something had happened during their conversation. Things had shifted. He’d become anxious. Had she actually hit on something? By accident?

Was it when she said his wife was cold? When she said something about the car being off the road? Had those comments been close enough to the truth to make Garfield think she was on to something?

It was time to bail. Maybe-and she couldn’t believe she was even thinking of this-even give him back his check. Say something like, “You know what? Whatever vision I may have had, it’s gone. I’m not picking up anything. The signals have faded. The flashes, they’re over. So I think the best thing to do would be for me to return your money and I’ll just be on my-”

But just then, a flash of pink before her eyes. Not a vision this time, though. It was the sash, from the robe.

And now Garfield was looping it around her neck and drawing it tight.

TEN

Melissa

Before Melissa would tell her story to the detective, whose name was Marshall-which struck her as kind of funny, a policeman named Marshall-she wanted assurances that the police would go easy on her father. “There are, what do you call them, extenuating circumstances?”

Marshall, seated across the table from her in the interrogation room, said, “It’s kind of hard for us to make promises where your dad is concerned when we don’t know exactly what it is he’s done.”

“I don’t want to get him in trouble,” Melissa said. “Even though I know that’s probably what’s going to happen.”

“But he knows something about what really happened to your mother,” Detective Marshall said. “That is why you’re here.”

“Sort of,” Melissa said. “You know what? I know I only just sat down, but I really have to pee.”

“Sure, okay,” Marshall said. “Let me show you where to go.”

Melissa went to the bathroom and a couple of minutes later they were back sitting across from each other. Melissa had one hand on the table and the other on her belly.

“I really love my dad,” she said. “I really do.”

“Of course. And I bet you love your mom, too.”

Melissa looked down.

“Melissa,” Detective Marshall said gently. “Can you tell me… is your mother still alive?” She mumbled something so softly he couldn’t hear what she’d said. “What was that?”

“No.”

“No, she’s not alive?”

“That’s right. But if I tell you everything, you have to promise to be nice to Dad. Because he’s a good man, really.”

“Like I said, Melissa, without knowing the facts-”

“I don’t want to get him into trouble. He’s already going to be really mad at me.”

“We can make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me, but he’s going to be super pissed.”

“I can certainly understand that,” the detective said. “But I’m guessing you’re thinking that sometimes you have to do what’s right.”

“Yeah, I guess that is kind of what I’m thinking.”

“And you want to do right by your mother.”

“Yeah, I’ve kind of been thinking that, too.”

“Why don’t we start with you telling me where your mother is.”

“She’s in the car.”

The detective nodded. “This would be your mother’s car. The Nissan.”

“That’s right.”

“And where’s the car, Melissa?”

“It’s at the bottom of the lake.”

The detective nodded again. “Okay. What lake would that be?”

“I don’t know the name of it, but I think I could show you how to get there. It’s about an hour’s drive, I think. Although, even if I take you there, I don’t know where exactly it is in the lake. And the ice has probably already frozen over. It’s been cold. I just know she’s in the lake. In the car.”

“Okay, that’s okay, we have divers for that kind of thing.”

Melissa was surprised. “They can go in the water even when it’s super cold?”

“Oh yeah, they’ve got these special wetsuits that help keep them warm.”

“I couldn’t do that. Swim in freezing cold water. I can’t even go in a pool unless it’s like eighty-five or ninety.”

Marshall gave her a warm smile. “That’s my wife. It’s got to be like a sauna before she’ll get in. So, Melissa, your father, he put the car in the water?”

“Yep. He drove Mom’s car out onto the lake, where the ice was thin. And then he waited for the car to go through.” She started to tear up. “And then it did.”

“How do you know this, Melissa? Did your father tell you what he did?”

“I saw it. I saw the car go through the ice.”

“Where were you?”

“I was on the shore, watching.” A solitary tear ran down her cheek. She bit her lip, trying to hold it together. “I feel real bad, but I also feel a bit better, you know? Coming in here and telling you what happened.”

“Of course you do.”

“It’s not the kind of secret I could keep.”

“Melissa, you realize we’re going to have to go out and talk to your father, but I need to ask you, does he keep any guns in the house?”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s never been interested in guns.”

“We just don’t want to have to hurt him, you know? When we go out there. We want to be able to bring him in peacefully. Do you think he’s dangerous?”

She was puzzled by the question, and shook her head. “Dad’s not dangerous. I mean, it’s not like he’s ever killed anybody or anything.”

“You mean, before your mother.”

“Oh, he didn’t kill my mother. Is that what you were thinking? I guess I should start at the beginning.”

ELEVEN

Keisha

When Keisha Ceylon saw the pink sash drop past her eyes, she reached up instinctively to get her fingers between it and her neck. But she wasn’t quick enough. Wendell Garfield wrapped it tightly around her throat and began to twist.

“I swear, I don’t know how you know, but you’re not going to tell anyone,” he said.

Keisha clawed at the sash, her fingernails ripping into her own skin as she tried to loosen his hold on her. But the satiny ribbon was already cutting deep into her neck.

Garfield was leaning down over her, his mouth close to her right ear. His breath was hot against her cheek.

She tried to say something, to scream, but with her windpipe squeezed, nothing came out. Not a sound. She felt her eyes bulging. She kicked at the floor, dug into the carpet with her heels.

Keisha Ceylon knew that she was going to die. She didn’t need any vision for that glimpse into the future.

Any second now, she thought, it’s going to be over. Maybe I had it coming. Ripping people off, taking advantage of them when they were at their most vulnerable. I’m getting what I deserve.

Didn’t make her feel any better about it, though.

She gave up clawing at her throat and dropped her hands to her sides.

“You must have been there,” Garfield said through gritted teeth. “You had to be watching. That’s the only way I can figure it. You were up there, you saw me put the car on the ice, you saw it go under, and then you figured you could blackmail me. A thousand today, another thousand next week, and then the week after that, until I had nothing left.”

He had the ends of the sash twisted several times around his palms and kept pulling. Keisha could feel herself starting to lose consciousness. She wondered what he would do with her body. Hoped he wouldn’t put her in the lake along with Mrs. Garfield.

She didn’t like the water.

In the seconds just before she figured she was going to black out, her fingers dug into the seat of her chair.

Her right hand brushed up against something.

Something soft, almost furry.

Yarn.

And as her fingers fumbled across the yarn, they landed on something else. Something long, and narrow, and pointed. Like a stick, or a needle.

A knitting needle.

In the last second Keisha had before she blacked out, she grabbed hold of the knitting needle with her right hand and swung it up and over her shoulder. As hard as she could.

The scream was only an inch from her ear. And it was horrific.

As the grip on Keisha’s neck slackened, she tumbled forward out of the chair. She collapsed onto the floor, wheezing and gasping for breath. She was on her knees. Air rushed into her lungs so quickly it hurt. Her gasps would have been loud enough to hear from anywhere in the house, were it not for Wendell Garfield’s cries of agony.

Keisha, even as she struggled to get her breath back, had to turn and see what she had done.

The knitting needle was sticking straight out of Garfield’s right eye. Blood poured from the socket, spattering the right side of his face. Judging by how much of the needle remained exposed, Keisha figured that a good four to five inches of it was buried in his head.

But he could see her with his left eye, and, still screaming, he started coming around the chair after her.

Keisha struggled to her feet and tried moving for the door. But she hit her knee going around the corner of the coffee table and stumbled, allowing Garfield to get close enough to clamp his hand onto her arm.

“You bitch!” Garfield said, although there was so much blood in his throat it sounded as though he was gargling.

Garfield yanked so hard on her arm that Keisha went down to the floor again. She ended up sprawled on her back. Before she had a chance to roll away, he landed on top of her, straddling her.

He didn’t have the sash anymore. He was going to have to make do with his hands.

He leaned forward, the knitting needle still sticking out of his eye socket, blood dripping onto Keisha, and got his fingers and thumbs around her neck. She flailed about, but his hands had her neck pinned to the floor.

She started blacking out again. With her last ounce of strength, she shot the heel of her hand straight up against the end of the knitting needle.

She drove it into Garfield’s head another three inches.

There was another scream, and then, for a moment, he seemed to freeze above her. His grip on her neck relaxed, his arms went weak, and his body collapsed on top of her.

This time, Keisha didn’t even take time to get her breath back. She pushed frantically at his dead body until it was off of her, crawled a few feet away, and then, once she was able to breathe normally again, decided she was entitled to take a moment and become hysterical.

TWELVE

Melissa

“You’re sure you don’t want a lawyer?” Detective Marshall asked.

“I’m positive,” Melissa Garfield said. “I’m going to plead guilty to everything.”

“Then you have to sign here. And here.”

Melissa scribbled her signature.

“Okay. Now, why don’t you start from the beginning.”

“You see,” Melissa said, “instead of going shopping first, Mom decided to visit me. She’d do that once in a while, just drop by without calling or anything first. She’d say, ‘What, a mother can’t pop in and visit her daughter?’ She comes in and I’m in the kitchen, cutting up some celery and carrot sticks to put in a salad because I’m actually trying to eat the right things so the baby will be healthy, you know, even though I’d rather just be eating pizza and burgers, but I’m trying, okay? I’m really trying.”

“Sure,” the detective said.

“It’s like she was checking up on me all the time. She was always asking me these questions, like what’s happening with Lester and was he going to marry me and was he going to help take care of the baby and maybe I could move in with him and his mom and dad and she’d be able to help me look after the baby, like I was really going to do that, right? And then she wanted to know if I’d applied to the veterinarian school I was talking about because I happened to mention it, you know, and I said not yet, but I was thinking about it and she said what’s the holdup? Couldn’t I just go on the computer and press a couple of buttons and I’d be registered and if it was that easy I should just go and do it now and I said, Jesus, will be you just give me some room to breathe, you know? I got a baby coming in a few weeks and I got a lot on my mind and, okay, maybe I’m thinking about it, but do I have to do something about it right this very fucking second? And she said, it’ll take you like two minutes so why don’t you do it and I’ll cut up your celery and your carrots for you and she tries to take the knife from me and I don’t know what happened but I kind of snapped or something, you know?”

“I hear ya,” the detective said.

“So, like, I don’t know how exactly it happened, but the knife sort of went into her, and then I guess I must have put it into her a second time, and then she looks at me and she’s all like, what have you done, and then she falls down and she doesn’t move or anything.”

“So what did you do then? Did you think about calling for an ambulance?”

“I guess I went all crazy for a while, you know? But I managed to call my dad.”

“Okay.”

“I said, something’s happened to Mom, you have to get over here, and he said, is it a heart attack or something, and I said no, and he said I should call 911, and then I said that I’d kind of stabbed her, and then he was all ‘What?’ And he said I shouldn’t do anything and he’d be right over.”

“To help you out.”

Melissa nodded. “So he got over real soon, and he was kind of all freaked out, and he took one look at Mom and could see that she was dead, and he said he had to think. I asked him, was I going to go to jail, was I going to have my baby in jail? And he kept telling me to shut up, that he was thinking, and then he got this idea. He carried Mom out of the apartment the back way and got her into her car, and then he told me I was going to have to follow in his car, drive along after him. And I followed him up to this lake, and he put the car on the ice and it went through and I guess I already told you about that part.”

“And then what happened?”

“Dad came back to my place and cleaned up. There was blood everywhere. It was horrible. It took hours to clean up the blood. I couldn’t do it. I stayed in my bed, under the covers. I couldn’t stop shivering. When he was finished, he told me everything was going to be okay. He said I wasn’t going to have to go to jail.” She smiled sadly. “He said he loved me very much and he wanted everything to be okay for me. He said I’d done a bad thing but sometimes people make mistakes and he didn’t want my whole life to be ruined, you know? He’s a really good dad. He said the police would just think Mom ran away, or maybe she got killed by that carjacker guy, but they’d never really know what happened because they’d never be able to find Mom’s car. And if the police didn’t know what happened, they couldn’t really charge anyone.”

She shook her head. “He’s going to be so mad at me. Because he did all this to protect me, and now… well, here I am. But I just… I can’t do it. I feel bad about what I did. I really loved my mom.”

Detective Marshall reached out and touched her hand. “I know.”

“Is my dad going to be in a lot of trouble?”

“Well, I’d have to say yes. But with the right lawyer, and a sympathetic jury… A lot of them will understand the lengths a father might go to, to help his daughter. He might have to go to jail, but maybe not for a long time.”

“Not as long as me.”

Detective Marshall nodded. “You might be right about that.”

For the first time since she’d been in this room, a shadow of a smile crossed Melissa’s lips. “That’d be okay. Just so he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life in jail. That wouldn’t be fair. He’s not that old a guy. He’s got a lot of time left.”

THIRTEEN

Keisha

She wasn’t calling the police.

She knew it was self-defense. She knew it wasn’t murder. But she didn’t have any confidence that the police would see it that way. Not once they started looking into her background. Saw her convictions for fraud back in 1999 and 2003 in Connecticut. Started figuring out what kind of scam she’d been hoping to run here with Wendell Garfield. Even if the guy did murder his wife, they’d find something to pin on her.

Keisha hadn’t told anyone she was coming here. She’d put her boyfriend on alert, said he might have to do the Nina shtick, but she never told him where she was going, who she was going to see. And the Garfield house, it was on a street where the houses were pretty spread out. She thought there was a good chance no one had seen her get out of her car and go into the house. If she could get out of here and back into her car unseen, she’d be all set.

Fingerprints.

She wondered what she’d touched. The robe, but it wouldn’t hold a fingerprint. Surely the cops couldn’t lift a print off the fabric of the chair.

Just to be sure, she wiped down the coffee table, any other surfaces she thought she might have touched. There was plenty of blood around, but none of it was hers, so she thought she’d be okay where DNA was concerned.

Once she got home, she’d get out of these blood-soaked clothes and burn them.

Keisha had a good feeling about this. She believed she could walk away from this and no one would ever know she was here.

Wendell Garfield, sprawled out across the floor, certainly wouldn’t be talking.

She’d have to wear a scarf at her neck for a few weeks. She’d caught a look at herself in the mirror. There was an ugly purple ring around her throat.

“No more of this,” she promised herself. “No more.”

This was a message, no doubt about it. Keisha had never been a particularly religious person, but this sure felt like it was a warning from the Man upstairs. “Knock it off,” He was telling her.

She was going to knock it off.

“Lord, just let me walk out of here and I’m yours,” she vowed.

She took one last look at the room, at Garfield’s dead body, just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. She was good. She was as sure as she could be.

Keisha slipped out of the house, wiped down the door handle on her way. She was halfway across the yard when she happened to reach up and touch her ear.

There was nothing dangling from it.

She reached over and touched her other ear. The parrot earring was there. But the other one, it was gone.

It had been lost in the house.

“Oh God,” she said under her breath. She had to go back in.

She went back to the door, stood there a moment, steeling herself. She went inside, took in the scene all over again. She started by the chair where she had been sitting. Patted around it, stuck her fingers down into the cushion cracks.

No luck.

She looked at the coffee table, scanned the carpets. The earring was nowhere to be seen.

There was only one place left to look.

Keisha got down on her knees next to the body, slipped her hands under him, and rolled him over. The carpet was completely soaked with the blood that had poured out of Garfield’s eye.

She spotted a small bump in the pool of blood. She stuck her fingers into it and lifted up her earring. The parrot looked like a seagull caught in a red oil spill. She dropped the earring into her purse and went back out the front door.

Got in her car.

Got her keys out of her purse.

Keyed the ignition.

As she was driving away, looking ahead, she saw a police car turn the corner.

No no no no.

As it approached, Keisha wondered how visible the bloodstains splattered across the front of her dress were. Would the cop notice them as they passed each other? Why hadn’t she gotten these windows tinted?

The police car got closer. Two officers inside. A woman behind the wheel, a man riding shotgun.

Just look ahead, she told herself. Like you don’t care. Be cool.

The cars met.

As the police car slid past, Keisha was certain no one looked over. She kept her eyes front. Then, seconds later, she glanced in the rearview, expecting the patrol car’s brake lights to come on. The car to turn around. To come after her. Lights flashing.

Nothing happened. The police car drove on, pulling over to the shoulder out front of the Garfield house.

Keisha put on her blinker, turned left at the corner.

Home free.

Lesson learned.

FOURTEEN

Winona

She’d drifted off during a National Geographic special. Something about the rain forests. She’d never been all that interested in the rain forests.

But only a few minutes into sleep, Winona Simpson woke with a start.

Her heart was pounding. She reached under the various necklaces she always wore and put her palm between her breasts, felt the rapid beating.

That was some nightmare.

So real. So frightening.

No, she thought. Not a nightmare.

Something else.

She’d had a vision. That was the way they often came to her. As she slept.

Winona blinked a couple of times, trying to bring the images in her head into focus.

She drew in a sharp breath.

“Oh, Keisha,” she said. “What on earth have you done?”