Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

Death had followed her closely from that day forward. Her dearest friend on earth, her neighbor Jon Crispell, had been hit head on, killed on his twelfth birthday, coming home from a fishing trip with his sixth-grade teacher, a close friend of the family. In college, a sorority sister, made drunk by an oversexed football player, fell backward out of an open window and broke her neck in the front lawn of the Phi Gam house. Janie Whimfiemer, Daphne’s roommate during graduate school, had traveled to Africa and died there in her sleep, the cause of her death never discussed, as if the reasons for death did not matter, only the event itself. Janie was flown home to Indiana in a metal casket. Daphne had met the plane along with the family, and this had been her first sight of an actual coffin. She could remember the horror of that day still. When she drew close to people, they died. So for years she had avoided that opportunity.

She looked down at the card and shuddered. “Death and I are old friends,” she said, the room noticeably colder.

Emily picked the card off the floor and restored the deck on the table. “Tell me about the dream,” she repeated.

“I never see his face, just that hand. There’s fire, a woman screaming.”

Emily nodded gravely. She’d witnessed that hand.

“I thought about going to the police,” Daphne said, “after reading about the fires. But what’s to tell?”

“They won’t believe you,” Emily said. Her voice sounded far off, and there was weariness in her tone.

Daphne hesitated and said, “You can see the connection, can’t you? The possible connection? A man with a badly burned hand, the newspaper articles. I’m sorry. I’ve never believed in this kind of thing-psychic phenomena-but now it has happened to me, now I’ve experienced it…. What I was thinking: Maybe you could make the call to the police for me.”

Emily swallowed dryly, her throat bobbing, eyes glassy. “I can’t help you. I wish I could, but-”

“But you can,” Daphne emphasized. “Of course you can. You’ve seen him, met him; he’s been here. You could call the police and tell them that.”

“I think we’re all done here. If that’s why you’ve come, there’s really nothing I can do.”

Daphne allowed a long silence to settle over them. Still maintaining eye contact, she said, “Maybe they would pay you for such information.”

Her lips trembling, Emily gasped hoarsely, “What?”

“It’s the car, isn’t it? My car? You see, I remembered that I had left mail in the front seat. That’s how you knew I belonged to the Northwest Medical Society, which is why you were guessing doctor.” The words hit Emily as small bombs. “You know I’m neat, that I keep things clean, because that’s the way I keep my car. That’s what gave you away. I thought it might be my appearance at first, orderly and all. But the comments about my fiance-the ring, of course-and mention of Corky-the young girl-threw me off. Kept me off balance for a moment. But Corky’s notebook is in the back of the car, and her name is on it. Whoever you’re working with told you the name, didn’t she-he? — but you elected not to use it.” Daphne stood from the chair.

“Sit down!”

She took two quick steps toward the door behind Emily and pushed it open in time to see the kitchen screen door thump shut. She heard Emily right behind her. Daphne reached the back door and pulled it open, but whoever had been there was long gone. Fast, she thought.

“Stop it!” Emily cried out.

Spinning on her heels, Daphne said loudly to the woman, “You have nothing to say about this!” She took a step forward, driving Emily back. “I make one phone call, and we bring you in on a handful of fraud charges. You’re out of business.”

“You’re a cop? ” It was a question, but also a statement-a realization-at the same time.

They stood only inches apart, Daphne a full head taller. She searched the other woman’s eyes and asked pointedly, “Are you part of the arsons? Straight answer: yes or no?” Their eyes locked, darted back and forth in unison.

“No,” Emily gasped, eyes averted for the first time, head lowered in submission. Exactly where Daphne wanted her.

Daphne believed her, but she waited just the same, for the woman’s next movements and words would be the final test of her guilt or innocence, whether to take her downtown or leave her here and work with her.

“It was some kind of business deal. Drugs, maybe.” Emily glanced away, then directly back into Daphne’s eyes. She drummed her thigh absent-mindedly with her peach-glitter nails. “A decent amount of scratch involved-he was willing to pay the sixty for the chart. It was the date he was worried about, why he came to see me. People consult you for dates, you know: weddings mostly. One woman, I think it was because she was having an affair … or wanted to.” Emily appeared nervous and scared. Daphne fought off a grin of satisfaction. She lived for these moments. “Because of the astrology,” she said, pointing toward the neon window. “I do charts, you know. And I do have the Power.”

“The sixty bucks. Cash or check?”

“Honey, do I look like I’d take a check? Gimme a little credit here.”

Daphne’s hope for a quick and easy solution slipped away. So did her hope that this woman would soften for very long. Then a second thought occurred to her. “The car. His car.”

“A truck.”

“His truck,” Daphne corrected. “Description?”

“Light blue. Old model. Maybe ten years old. White camper shell, not in good condition.”

“The dates?”

“October second the first time. I checked the papers on the third. Nothing much had happened. No fire ,” she emphasized.

The Enwright fire had occurred September tenth; Heifitz, October fourth. “The second? You’re sure?” He might have set the accelerant for a future fire, she thought.

“Positive. And then again just-” She caught herself.

“ When? ” Daphne shouted.

“This last weekend,” Emily answered. “Saturday.”

Daphne’s pounding heart occupied her chest painfully. The timing seemed off-too rushed-unless October second had accounted for Heifitz. In which case, what was the significance of the weekend just past, another victim yet to come?

Daphne said, “We need to talk to this man with the burned hand. We need your help.”

“You could have just offered me the scratch. We’d been jake. I’d have told you what I knew. But now … this. I don’t like this. I don’t like the way you do business.”

“You helped us before,” Daphne reminded. “Was that the Power, or was that smoke and mirrors?”

“You remember that?”

“We credit you on the case report.”

“People talk when they’re in that chair. What can I tell you? They open up. And you know why?” she asked, shoving Daphne back and away to create some space between them. “Because they want to believe. They don’t believe in much anymore, but they’ll believe in me because they want to. They open up to me.”

Daphne understood. The detectives she saw as clients were no different. Solid at first, tight, unwilling to share. And then little by little she convinced them to believe in her, and suddenly the dam unleashed and they were spewing intimacies about impotency, suicide wishes, abusing their children, stealing from their day job. An endless laundry list of failures, both personal and private, and all because they discovered a sanctuary, a person willing to listen without judgment-they believed. Daphne realized that she and this woman before her were not so very different. The thought troubled her. “I need everything you have on the man with the burned hand.”