Clouded Vision (4 page)
While Keisha was seeing if Wendell would take the bait, giving her a chance to reel him in, she was thinking about her starting point. Her plan was to 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. OK, maybe that wasn’t true. The night Wendell’s wife disappeared she 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.
However, 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, seeming, 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’d have taken a jacket. She wouldn’t have left the house without a jacket. Not at 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 would lose her coat. Once you go outside, you know you need it.’ He sank back into the settee, looking annoyed. ‘I don’t see that 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 on to a table. They’re in a jumble, in no particular order. What I’m trying to do is like sorting those photos. Sitting here, now, in your wife’s home, holding something that touched her, I can start piecing together 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 told off. ‘I’m sorry. Go ahead.’
‘Melissa is terribly troubled.’
‘Well, of course.’
‘But this goes beyond what you would expect a daughter to feel when her mother goes missing.’
Garfield leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. He seemed really interested now. 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 sound 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. She was turning it around, letting him do some of the work, and feeding 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. ‘He’s thirty years old, has no job, and lives at home with his parents. When we learned Melissa was pregnant, we were upset. However we figured that if she’d found the right guy, settled down with him and had a baby, that would help her turn her life around. It might give her some stability.’
‘And your wife and Lester … I see tension here … on the fringes at least.’
‘Sure,’ Garfield said. ‘I mean, we’d both been hoping he’d rise to the occasion, 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 no-good layabout, she’d put pressure on him night and day to make sure he did the right thing. This didn’t include those times when she would be giving her own daughter hell for getting in this mess. Keisha wouldn’t give a guy like that a moment’s peace.
It seemed reasonable to assume that Eleanor Garfield might feel the same way.
‘Ellie tried to phone the father a few times,’ Garfield said. ‘But whenever she called his house, she got his mother.’ The man frowned. ‘Ellie was very upset about the whole situation.’
Keisha thought she might be picking up something else here. ‘Ellie
was
upset.’ ‘Whenever she
called
.’ Wendell had started using the past tense when talking about Ellie. 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 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 the fact that Wendell was starting to ask her questions. As if she might actually have answers. The hook was firmly set now. He wasn’t going to get away. It would be easy to start making him think that way, that maybe his wife had run into Lester and things had turned bad.
However, if Keisha went down that route, it might confirm suspicions that she guessed Garfield already had about her. He might be thinking that she was steering her vision whatever way he led her. She could come back to this later. It was best to go in another direction now and throw him something unexpected.
‘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. She took her hands off Ellie’s robe that was still in her lap and rubbed her forehead. ‘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 by 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 cheque?’
When Keisha had talked about Ellie being so very cold, he had to admit it had thrown him. However, when she hadn’t gone into specifics, he decided it didn’t mean anything. It was winter. It was cold. Big deal. It didn’t mean the woman was a geniune psychic. She had about as much talent at communicating with the missing and the dead as that weather lady on the six o’clock news did in predicting whether it was going to rain tomorrow.
But then she had mentioned the car. Why had she suddenly wanted to talk about the car? Then she said it was ‘definitely not on the road’.
She was right about that.
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. The water had to be forty or 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. Even if some fishermen snagged on to it with their lines, it wasn’t as if the car was going to float to the surface like an old boot. They’d have to cut their line and put on a new hook.
How could Keisha Ceylon know the car was not on the road?
It could be a lucky guess, as simple as that. But what if it wasn’t?
If it wasn’t, Garfield saw two possibilities.
One possibility was that this woman actually had the gift of second sight. He’d never bought into this kind of thing before, 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 neighbour?
So if Keisha had this gift, and she really had a vision about Ellie, then she knew something.
The second possibility – which was no more comforting – was that this psychic thing was an act, a total sham. It was just complete and utter rubbish. She had put on a performance, to cover the fact that, although she had information, it had come to her in a much less mystical way.
She had
seen
what happened, not in a vision, but with her own eyes.
Garfield thought about that as he went into the kitchen to find his cheque book.
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 being spotted would not be a problem. Most of the places on the lake were seasonal. At this time of year, the cabins were boarded up. By the end of November, almost everyone had turned off the water, poured anti-freeze into the pipes, and put out the mousetraps. Once they had spread around the mothballs, and closed up the shutters, they headed back to their comfortable homes in the city. They would have no plans to return until the spring.
Garfield now had to consider the possibility that one of the cabins had been occupied. Maybe someone had been looking out of their window that night and noticed a car with no lights on, being driven out on to that new ice with only a dusting of snow on it. That sliver of moon gave all the light anyone would need to get an idea of what was going on.
Someone could have seen that car creep out there and stop. Someone could have seen a man get out of the driver’s side, with an actual broom in his hand. Someone could have watched as he attempted to sweep away the tyre tracks as made his way back to shore.
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. The waiting had been like agony. For a few moments there, standing out in the freezing cold, he was convinced the car was not going to go drop through. He had begun to think that it was going to sit there, and that it would still be there in the morning when the sun came out.
It would still be there with his wife’s dead body still strapped to the passenger seat.
He’d been talking, earlier in the day, to some customers at the Home Depot store, a couple of fellows who lived up this way. They’d said the lake was starting to freeze over pretty quickly, and 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 on the ice. However, they didn’t think that would happen until at least February, and only if the temperatures stayed well below freezing.
He didn’t think much about it at the time, although the conversation had come 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. Maybe she had been that someone watching from one of those cabins. When the story about his wife hit the news, she had put it all together.
And now she’s here, trying to squeeze money out of me, he thought. It was 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,’ she 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 instead.
But using this whole psychic nonsense, that was pure genius. She knew enough to get him curious, to get him worried enough that he’d pay her some money to find out just how much she really knew. Then, once she had the money, she’d keep things just vague enough so that he’d always be left wondering. She’d never have to give away what she knew. She’d never have to admit that she was there. She’d never have to say that, if she wanted to, she could put him in prison 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.
After her father dropped her off and she went up to her apartment, Melissa felt light-headed and sick.
She’d been inside the door only a minute when she suddenly felt very ill. She ran into the bathroom, and dropped to her knees in front of the toilet. She got there just in time.
She cleaned herself up and found herself looking 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. She might have had more sleep than her father, but not much.
Melissa rested her hand on the top of her very pregnant belly, rubbed it, and felt something move around beneath her hand. Then she felt her body begin to shake, her eyes start to moisten. With 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. She’d like to just get under the covers, pull them up over her head, and stay that way for ever. 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 spun totally out of control in the last year. It didn’t seem to her as if it was going to get any better.
She thought about the press conference. She remembered 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 and how it had almost hurt. 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. The tears were genuine. She hadn’t been able to stop. She was so terribly sad. In fact, she was 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 as 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. She was 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 doing the car-jackings, maybe he did this. It could have been any number of things. The world is full of disturbed people. The police will have all sorts of theories, and if they never solve it, they never solve it.’
‘OK.’
‘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, and 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 as if someone’s watching you all time. You should behave in a way that means you can never be ashamed.
She turned on to her other side, then back again. It was so hard to get comfortable because of the baby. Finally, she threw back the covers and put her feet on the floor. She 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, if she should call a lawyer. But she didn’t know any lawyers. She didn’t want to pick one at random out of the phone book. 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, and make herself presentable. Before she stepped under the water, she phoned for a taxi. She asked for it to be outside the house in an hour.
She was standing on the curb when the yellow cab came around the corner. When she got in, the driver asked where she’d like to go.
‘The police station,’ she said.
‘OK,’ he said, then laughed. ‘I was thinking maybe you were going to say the hospital.’
‘I’ve got another couple of months to go,’ she said. ‘I’m not having a baby in your taxi.’
‘That’s good to know,’ he said and put the car in gear.
She didn’t say anything for the rest of the journey. Mostly, she just thought – about how angry her father was going to be with her.