Greely's Cove (22 page)

Renzy!
Carl raised his hand to wave, felt a flood of childhood joy, then raced frantically down the hill. Renzy Dawkins waved back and threw his arms open wide.

The Grand Island Courier
August 10, 1985

GRAND ISLAND, NEBRASKA (AP)—A psychic led police Friday to the shallow grave of Carolyn Hudsten, 30, the Grand Island housewife and mother who had been missing for nearly nine months.

Robinson Sparhawk of El Paso, Texas, directed officers of the Nebraska Highway Patrol and the Hall County Sheriff’s Department to a wooded area near the Platte River south of Grand Island, where investigators found the body in a shallow hole covered with brush. The exact cause of death is uncertain, but Sparhawk has told police that Hudsten was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat or similar weapon.

“I don’t doubt that’s what happened,” said Lt. Joe R. Roberts of the Sheriff’s Department. “I’m sure the coroner’s office will confirm everything he’s said.”

Sparhawk would not comment to reporters, but others close to the Hudsten investigation say that the psychic visited the missing woman’s home, where he received “impressions” from items that had belonged to her.

“I don’t know how he does it,” Roberts said of Sparhawk, “but I know that he’s earned every cent we’ve paid him....”

The Battle Creek Daily Journal
March 15, 1983

BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN (AP)—The search for Danny Markins, 10, ended Wednesday morning in an abandoned barn near Penfield, where state police and Calhoun County deputies found the body of the boy, who had been missing since New Year’s Day.

Police won’t say exactly how they knew where to find the body, but the boy’s father, Andrew Markins, 36, told the
Daily Journal
that a psychic from El Paso, Texas, assisted with the case. As late as March 10, a state police spokesman had characterized the case as “verging on insoluble.”...

The Atlantic City Herald-Dispatch
September 9, 1980

PORT REPUBLIC, NJ (AP)—The nine-week search for Tracy and Twyla Langfeldt, the twin 14-year-old girls missing from this small, suburban community since early July, ended Sunday, when investigators found their decomposing bodies in the basement of a west-side Atlantic City house.

Kidnapping and homicide charges have been filed against the owner of the house, James P. Walterheimer, who surrendered quietly to police at the scene.

Sergeant Harold Klemp of the New Jersey State Police said that investigators retained the services of Robinson Sparhawk of El Paso, Texas, a self-proclaimed “forensic psychic” who is well-known in police circles. After examining objects that the Langfeldt twins had owned, Sparhawk directed police to the Atlantic City neighborhood where Walterheimer lives and eventually to the suspect’s house.

Investigators are now trying to determine whether Walterheimer could be connected to any of the other six disappearances of young girls from the Atlantic City area during the past year...

For the second time in an hour Robinson Sparhawk’s telephone rang, and as was his custom he let his answering machine kick in so that he could screen the call. Few things riled him more than telephone salespeople.

The voice that came through the machine at the sound of the tone was a welcome one, though it sounded nasal to his west-Texan ears. It came long-distance from New York City, sparking a vision of a bubbly woman who had lively dark eyes and a long black ponytail that should have been gray decades ago.

‘
Robbie, you old dog, I know you’re there, so just answer the damn phone, okay?
”

He answered. “Mona, darlin’, how’s my favorite witch?” This was not an insult, because Mona Kleiman was indeed a witch, one of the few real ones in North America. She was also president of the National Society for the Furtherance of the Occult Sciences, an organization that regularly featured Robinson Sparhawk as a speaker at its annual convention.

Mona was very well, thanks, and how about him, and what was he doing, and did he have time to talk?

“I’m finer than frog fur, darlin’. I’m just sitting here with Katharine in my sixty-foot double-wide, sippin’ a whiskey in front of the picture window, watching the stars come out.”

“
Katharine?
Who the hell is Katharine? Have you been holding out on me? Don’t tell me you’ve finally taken my advice and gotten yourself a girlfriend!”

“Now don’t go gettin’ jealous on me, darlin’. She’s an old buddy, that’s all, with big pointy ears and four big feet—probably outweighs you by forty pounds.”

“Are we talking about a dog?”

“Prettiest brown eyes you ever saw on a Great Dane, and smart as a whip. Ain’t too many pooches big and smart enough to fetch an old cripple his crutches when he needs ’em, but I swear to God, Katharine can do it.”

“Katharine the Great Dane. I don’t believe it.”

“Man’s best friend—next to woman. Hey, how’s this for a vision, sweet pea? Me and you gazin’ at each other over a pair of candles at Clemenceau in uptown Manhattan, sippin’ somethin’ light and white, pushin’ scallops into our faces and talkin’ high-class shit....”

“I’d love to be having dinner with you at Clemenceau right now, but there’s this small matter of several thousand miles between New York and El Paso, and anyway...”

Anyway, Mona had not called just to chat. She was worried about him. Like all real witches, she had ways of knowing certain things, or at least feeling them, whether through tarot cards or trances or crystal ball-gazing, Robbie could not guess. The ways of witches were beyond him, as strange and confounding as his own gift.

“Are you working on anything right now?” Mona wanted to know.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he confirmed, stroking Katharine’s massive head while she drooled on the spokes of his wheelchair. “Got a call from a police chief maybe half an hour ago, from some place up in Washington State—what the hell’s it called?” He flipped a page on a legal pad that lay on the cluttered desk before him. “Here it is. Greely’s Cove. Seems they’ve been having a run of disappearances up there, and the local boys are at the end of their rope. They mean to get themselves a psychic.”

“Robbie.” He listened to Mona clearing her throat. “Robbie, please don’t think me crazy, but do an old friend a favor and lay off for a while. Don’t take any new cases just now.”

“Oh, but darlin’,” he said, chuckling, “I
do
think you’re crazy; always have. That’s what I love about you: You’re crazier than an old sow with a bellyful of month-old apple peelings. Why in the Sam Hill would you want me to sit on my hands when I could be doing something useful? And lucrative?”

Mona explained, or tried to. For the followers of the Old Truth, she said, this was a special time, the ancient Celtic season of Imbolc, which had begun on February 2 at midnight. The Crook of Leo, a millennia-old star symbol, was visible in the heavens, signifying the Golden Sickle used by the Druids to harvest mistletoe, and—

“Now, Mona, you know I don’t hold with all that mumbo jumbo. I’m just a simple country psychic with legs like a pair of link-sausages. If I could handle a real job, I’d have one, like I’ve told you a jillion times. As it is, I’m barely making enough to keep Katharine in kibbles....”

“Shut up and listen. It’s a time of good things but also
bad
things, Robbie. There are forces abroad that can be—well, dangerous.”

Robbie snaked a rum-soaked cheroot from his shirt pocket, which he licked and lighted. “Okay, suppose I swallow all that craziness: What’s it got to do with me?”

“Whether you want to believe it or not, you’re a very special person—”

“That’s true. I’m handsome, urbane, cultured—”

“What matters is that you have the
Gift.
You’re one of the few who have the natural mental ability to tune in on the spiritual energy of creation. It’s a gift that makes you a very valuable human being, but it can also make you vulnerable, Robbie. Ever since the new moon rose ten days ago, I’ve been getting warnings about you, and I’ve been trying—”

“Warnings? From who?”

“You wouldn’t understand. Just believe me when I say that you could be in danger if you open yourself—” She broke off, hesitating, as though arguing with herself over how much to reveal. “If you expose your sensitive mind to something really evil. Anyway, it’s not forever. The season will pass, and when I get the all-clear, I’ll let you know.”

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you, darlin’?”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

Her tone became embarrassingly pleading, and Robbie got a vision of the pain in her eyes. This was most unlike Mona Kleiman.

“Okay, I believe you,” he lied, blowing out cigar smoke that made Katharine sneeze explosively. “If you want me to give it a rest for a spell, that’s what I’ll do. But you’ve got to promise to make it up to me, hon.” His lascivious smile was nearly palpable over the telephone line. In far-off Manhattan, an old witch giggled with relief.

They said good-bye, but not until Mona had extracted his promise to put in his customary appearance at the annual NSFOS convention, which was coming up in May.

After hanging up the phone, he swung his wheelchair around to face Katharine, from whose jowls dangled the glistening strings of drool that lovers of Great Danes call “hang daddies.”

“Now, don’t that knock the bung out of your pickle barrel,” he said, massaging the area behind the huge dog’s right ear. “It just goes to show you how a little old white lie can put somebody on top of the world again, right, girl?” Katharine licked her chops and whined as though she understood.

Robinson Sparhawk had no intention of turning down the Greely’s Cove case. Police Chief Stuart Bromton had said on the telephone that the city council had appropriated five thousand dollars in order to retain him, and an ad hoc citizens’ group had raised an additional five thousand as a reward for locating some or all of the missing people. Ten thousand dollars in all—nothing to sneeze at after the long dry period that he had just suffered.

Not that he needed a lot of money to sustain him. His mobile home was paid for, as was his VW Vanagon, which was outfitted with a power lift for his wheelchair and special controls that let him drive without need of his legs. His portfolio was healthy with mutual fund shares that were growing both in yield and capital value, which meant that his old age was taken care of.

Still, the extra money would be nice, though not as nice as the prospect of ending the boredom that always set in during periods of inactivity. He quit the wheelchair in favor of crutches and set about the task of packing for the long drive to Greely’s Cove, Washington, which he had estimated, from a quick glance at the road atlas, would take three days. Whenever possible, he drove to his jobs, since traveling by air inflicted incredible hassles on a man with crutches and a wheelchair in tow. He detested being the object of the special attention that airline attendants lavished on him with smiling pity in their eyes. Thanks to his useless legs, a simple undertaking like visiting the airborne lavatory was an ordeal, especially when there was turbulence. But the best reason for driving was that Katharine could come with him, which was nigh impossible on airplanes.

While packing, he thought about Mona’s warning and smiled to himself, but he failed to put it entirely out of his mind. She was, after all, more than a crackpot who called herself a pagan and a witch. She was a published scholar on the history of the occult, a sought-after thinker from whom serious historians often begged insights into the influence that followers of the Old Truth have exerted on history. She was as close to “legitimate” as any self-proclaimed witch could be, and a warning from her was not to be taken lightly.

This thought aroused disturbing recollections, ones he always shuffled to the back of his brain whenever they popped up, memories of those rare occasions on which he had gotten a psychic whiff of something “really evil,” as Mona would have termed it. Throughout his career as a forensic psychic he had encountered much ugliness, to be sure—the grisly leavings of child-killers, kidnappers, and serial murderers. But this comparatively routine brand of evil paled next to the kind that caused his guts to chum and his head to ache, the kind he had sensed only twice in his life.

From his earliest memory, Robinson Sparhawk had possessed the Gift, even as a freckled west-Texas lad who played with marbles and slingshots. He had never claimed to know how it worked, but he had fairly strong ideas about how it did
not
work. Spirits and ghosts had nothing to do with it, and most assuredly the Gift did not come from Satan.

Several years ago a fat-headed Assembly of God minister from Phoenix had charged that Robbie was a “creature of the Devil,” who was doing the Devil’s work. Robbie had countered with the fact that he had spent his entire adult life in the service of the lawful authorities, helping them locate missing people and putting the minds of bereaved families to rest. Did that sound like the work of a creature of Satan? Robbie had asked.

God works in strange ways,
the minister had pronounced piously,
and so does the Devil.

During his early childhood the Gift had never seemed very important to him. He simply possessed the ability to know things that he had no business knowing, and that was that. If one of his brothers lost a sack of marbles or a priceless baseball card, Robbie could usually find it without really trying, merely by using a feeling that came over him when he concentrated on the lost object. While his father was away fighting the war against Hitler, Robbie always knew exactly when a letter from the European Theater would arrive at the family home in El Paso. And once, just before the polio struck in 1945, his family lost its beloved golden retriever, whose name was Spike, and everyone feared that dognappers had pounced and spirited Spike away forever. While holding the dog’s leash in his hand, Robbie saw an image in his mind and ordered the family into the car. They motored outward from El Paso on Almeda Road, chasing a little boy’s vision of flowing water and shady trees. They found Spike in Ascarate Park on the bank of the Rio Grande, gamboling like a pup and chasing grasshoppers, just as Robbie had pictured in his mind. Though Robbie had been in school when the abduction occurred, the family accepted his explanation that two men had coaxed the dog out of the yard and into a pickup, and that Spike had bolted away into the park when the abductors had stopped on their way out of town.