Linwood Barclay: Clouded Vision

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.

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.