Richard Doetsch - Half-Past Dawn

As Jack continued to ponder the implications of the Cotis priest’s identity, he turned his focus to the other items before him. He put aside the prayer necklace and picked up the bejeweled dagger, ornate and deadly, its hilt covered in rubies and sapphires that glimmered under the lights of the highway. There were the two red prayer books, which, according to Griffin, held secrets and answers to mysteries that many desired to gain. But Jack’s eyes were drawn to something else, two drawings, incredibly lifelike.

Jack picked up the first, and his world began to spin.

“Jack, I know this isn’t the time, but if we’re to help you find Mia, we need to know what we don’t know. What aren’t you telling us? What are all those things?” Frank pointed to the object in Jack’s lap. “You go running off into the Tombs with this Cristos, leaving me not only to try and figure out where you are but to save your ass… twice, I might add. Then the cancer bombshell gets dropped in our laps, we overlook the insane-asylum thingy-”

“Pull over,” Jack said quietly.

“What?” Joy said. “No, we don’t have time to-”

“Pull over!”

Joy threw the wheel hard right onto the shoulder, locking up the brakes in an angry skid stop.

Jack leaped out of the car.

Frank threw open his door in a fit of rage. “What the hell was that all about?”

“You think I know what’s going on?” Jack shouted.

“More than I do!” Frank yelled back.

Jack yanked up his sleeve, pointing at his tattoo. “I think we’ve got this all wrong. I think we are being played. I don’t know how. I don’t know who’s pulling the strings, but there is a bigger picture here that we are not seeing.”

“What are you talking about it?”

“These items that Mia so desperately wanted hidden away… the murder she was investigating-the man is Cristos’s father.”

“You sure?”

“The necklace that Joy mentioned before, the one I gave to Mia, I didn’t know it at the time, but it was sent to me by the same man, this Marijha Toulouse.

“OK, as much as that is freaking you out, at least now we’ve got something to sink our teeth into.”

“I think we know only what people want us to know. As I said, we’re being played.” Jack reached back into the car and pulled out the two drawings.

“Played by whom?”

“Explain to me how this was in the case at least two days ago.” Jack shoved the first drawing into Frank’s face.

“What the hell?” Frank said as he backed up, annoyed by the closeness of the image. He glared at Jack before finally turning his attention back to what he now realized was a picture. His eyes slowly focused on a drawing, done in ink and charcoal pencil by an expert hand. The detail was intricate and refined, as if replicating a photograph. It was an outdoor scene, nighttime, a rushing river under a dark, cloud-ridden sky, and then he saw the body, the face pale, still, eyes open yet devoid of life. There was a bullet wound in the upper left chest. The face was dotted in small wounds, the hair and the clothes soaked.

An impossible drawing that predated its subject.

When Jack’s eyes first fell on the drawing, he shrugged it off. As the DA, he had received countless threats on an almost weekly basis. Whether by phone, by letter, or in person, they were always turned over to the police and found to be nothing more than attempts at intimidation. So, when he saw the image, even though he was shocked at the detail, at the near-photographic realism of the depiction, his reaction was minimal. He understood how it must have disturbed Mia, seeing him depicted as dead, understood how it scared her. He had not once told her of the numerous threats he had received. He never wanted to worry her, much in the same way that she minimized the dangers of her own job.

But when he looked closer, his mind exploded in a wave of disorientation. For the image drawn days early and sealed away in Mia’s box depicted him in the exact condition he was in early that morning, lying on the riverbank, a bullet in his chest, the cuts on his face, a spot-on match down to the smallest detail. It was as if the hand of fate had rendered him on the canvas, as if everything that transpired the night before was his destiny.

He was a pawn, or at least Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole.

He studied the picture again, its exacting detail down to the clothes he wore, the rushing river that lapped the bank. And that’s when he saw the shadow. It was next to him, faint yet distinct. Whoever had drawn the picture with foresight, with an attention to exacting detail, they were sure to include the singular shadow… there was someone else there.

Jack didn’t believe in fate; he didn’t believe in God or the hereafter. He didn’t believe in magic, ghosts, answered prayers, or superstitious mumbo jumbo. Yet this day had thrown it all into question. He refused to believe it, and so he cast the facts aside and focused on Mia.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Frank said. “This is some trick. Cristos must have slipped it into the case to mess with your head.”

“He never had the case; no one has touched the case since I put it down in the Tombs two days ago, before I was shot, before I crashed through the guardrail and awoke on the riverbank.”

Frank stared at Jack, lost for words before finally realizing. “You didn’t make us pull over to show us this picture. What the hell is going on?”

Jack held out the second drawing. Frank stared at it but didn’t touch it, as if doing so would somehow render it real.

What troubled Jack far more than the fateful image of himself was the one in the second drawing. The picture was of a beach, the first rays of morning peeking over the horizon; gulls hung suspended in the air, scampered along the sand in search of food; gentle waves lapped the sandy shore. And on the rocks was a woman’s shattered body. Jack felt his heart crumble in his chest. No doubt drawn by the same hand, it was a depiction of the future in much the way Jack’s image had been rendered. But this picture drew everything Jack was doing into question, casting doubt on his chances of success, of ever saving his wife. For the picture of the dead woman was of Mia, her lifeless body awash in the first light of dawn.

• • •

“Cristos said that our lives are preordained, that certain people within his religion can remember the future in the same way we remember the past.”

“Bullshit,” Frank said from the passenger seat. They were back in the car, heading north, with Joy at the wheel.

“I agree,” Jack said. “But then how do you explain the drawing of me?”

“Why do I need to explain it?”

“If there’s truth to them, then Mia will die at dawn tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe that. The picture of you on the riverbank, what do you see?”

“I see me lying dead on the riverbank.”

“But are you?”

“The newspaper said it-”

“But you’re not, and neither will Mia be if we find her. So let’s keep focused on that instead of all this mysterious magic bullshit. Cristos filled your head with nonsense. Quit dwelling on the words of a psychopath. It’s making you sound crazy.”

Jack said nothing, letting his friend’s words sink in. They finally did, and he smiled.

“No offense, Jack,” Frank said, “but the FBI and Cristos weren’t after those drawings of you and Mia. Not to downplay them, but they are not the earth-shattering type that conspiracies are built around.”

Jack nodded. “No, they were after these.” He held up the two red books, handing one to Frank. “Prayer books.”

“Prayer books?” Frank said as he looked through it. “Why the hell would they be after prayer books?”