Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (8 page)

He stopped me at the door and turned me back
with a harsh aftershot. "We have a saying around here, Ford."

“
And that is...
?”

"If you're not for us, you're against
us."

So I gave him mine. "If
truth be for you, why then fear the false witness?"

He snickered and replied, "I'm not afraid of
you."

I said, "No reason you should be.
Unless..."

He scowled. "Unless what?"

"Unless I can project too."

He lost a couple of beats before replying.
"Can you?"

"Anybody can," I told him, and went on
out.

So maybe I'd made an
enemy. But not nearly so emphatically as had Reverend Annie. This
just did not seem like the Paul Stewart I'd always known. It was as
though all of David Carver's guts had been transplanted into his
boss and done so with rage and vindictive purpose. So maybe there
really was a case against Annie and maybe not.

You tell me.

Here is what Stewart had.

Annie's second husband was a Donald
Huntzerman. He was sixty, a successful retail merchant, she was
twenty-one and working as a cocktail waitress when they met.
Huntzerman had already suffered two heart attacks and was under
close medical supervision when they married. He owned a $100,000
life insurance policy which had been written many years before his
heart condition became evident. He bought Annie a new home in an
exclusive neighborhood and made her the beneficiary of his
insurance, but all other assets he brought into the marriage were
set aside by will for his grown children by two previous
marriages.

Huntzerman's family regarded Annie as a
fortune hunter. Why else would a beautiful girl many a sick man
three times her age? Others, though, noted that the pair always
seemed very happy and in love, and Annie apparently devoted
herself to his care. He had several moderate attacks requiring
hospitalization during the first two years, then died of a massive
hit just two months short of their third anniversary.

Annie wore widow's black
for precisely thirty days, then sold the house, collected the life
insurance, and took a world tour. Carver dug up a guy who signed an
affidavit to the effect that Ann Huntzerman paid his expenses to
Paris and Rome then abandoned him without funds or a return ticket
home. Another affidavit was signed by a mortician's assistant
asserting that "it took all our skill" to properly prepare the
deceased for burial services due to "numerous lesions about the
throat and wrists. It looked like this man had been kept tied like
a dog."

For the record, Carver
also had a statement from a nurse who provided live-in care for
Huntzerman, to the effect that her patient "tended to claw at" the
intravenous tubes which were attached at his arms throughout the
final two months of life. "We had to tie his wrists to the bed,"
she stated.

That is the whole file on Huntzerman, as
provided by Paul Stewart.

The next "victim" was
Larry Preston, a forty-year-old dry cleaner with a chain of stores
situated along the San Fernando Valley—mostly coin-operated but he
also had a very modern plant in North Hollywood and one in Encino.
According to David Carver's information, Ann Huntzerman was broke
and looking for work when she met Preston. They were married ten
days later and husband number three died almost exactly one year
after that when his service truck blew up on the Ventura Freeway.
The official investigation at the time blamed escaping naphtha from
a damaged container in the rear of the truck. Dining his own
investigation, Carver secured a statement from a man who had been
employed by Preston denying that the container had been damaged.
The employee stated that he had personally inspected the container
and placed it in the truck shortly before it exploded.

Again Annie came into a bit of money but she
had to fight for it. An ex-wife raised a claim and it took two
years to get the estate through probate.

She was apparently broke
again, though, when she married George Farrel, a respected
cinematographer with a number of Oscar nominations in his list of
credits. Again, he was considerably older but she was narrowing
those gaps through her own maturation; Annie was now thirty-one,
George was sixty-two. He retired several months after the marriage
and they spent a year touring the West in a motor home. Then they
took delivery on a new Mercedes in Europe and toured the Continent
for another year. The third and final year of the marriage was
spent in Southern California in George's home of thirty years, a
modest house in a modest neighborhood in Van Nuys, and neighbors
interviewed later by David Carver unanimously agreed that
"something was wrong" during that entire period. Apparently Farrel
had always been a gregarious and cheerful neighbor through the
years; now he hardly ever showed himself outside the house except
at night and would turn away without response when someone spotted
and greeted him.

One woman signed a lengthy
and rambling affidavit stating that several times she had been
turned away at the door by Ann Farrel, always with the excuse that
"George isn't feeling well." Number Four died from a fall in his
bathtub, near the end of that third year. According to the official
record, Annie had maintained a constant vigil at his hospital bed
night and day for three months then pulled the plug when her
husband was certified brain dead. A statement from a hospital
worker, elicited by Carver, claims that Annie exerted constant and
extreme pressure upon the board of physicians to get that
certification.

Farrel's estate cleared
out at just under $200,000. He had executed a new will earlier that
year leaving all to his widow although he acknowledged an adult son
born out of wedlock.

That is the whole ball of
wax, as revealed to me by Lt. Stewart. Is this a portrait of evil,
or what?

I did not know what the hell to think about
it.

But I have always been
slow to move squarely onto a point of view without wondering how it
would look from another angle. I wanted to hear Annie's own version
of the Ann Farrel story, and I wanted to do some checking around on
my own.

I also wanted another talk with Bruce
Janulski, Annie's personal secretary.

Because Bruce, you see, the gentle Adonis,
was George Farrel's illegitimate son. And that was a tie that
Carver had apparently missed, or else he chose to ignore it. Either
way, I wanted to know why.

Chapter Ten: From the Shadows of the
Mind

I went looking for
Janulski at church headquarters. It was very nice the way they'd
taken a decaying little shopping mall and converted it into a
spiritual center. Book and gift shops, classrooms, reading rooms, a
lecture hall, the church itself which had previously served as a
small supermarket, a chapel, personal quarters for Annie though she
did not actually live there, and a surprisingly upscale suite of
offices. Someone had also done some remarkable landscaping that did
not seem typical of a retail trade center. A quick scan of the
scheduled activities posted on a bulletin board out front indicated
that The Spiritual Center of Light was a very busy place indeed,
seven days a week, with fully a dozen or more consciousness-raising
events every day—even to weekend musical concerts and "sings." My
eyebrows rose at the scheduled performances for the upcoming
weekend; she could have booked those shows into the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion or the Greek and made a bundle. Or maybe she made
a bundle anyway, if these people performed for free.

I found the gentle Adonis
in the chapel fussing with a floral arrangement on the altar. He
looked up with a shy smile that grew as he recognized me and came
forward to greet me.

"Mr. Ford, how wonderful," he said
warmly.

This guy was so sweet he might melt if he
got wet. But it seemed genuine if nothing else and I could not help
but respond to that. I took him by the arm and walked him toward
the door as I asked him, "Have you heard from your boss today?"

He replied, "Well no, I have not, but she
told me last night—" his voice softened almost to a whisper "—that
she might go into retreat for a few days. But if there is anything
at all that I can do for you, I am certainly at your service."

I matched his own quiet tone as I told him,
"Me, you can't help, Bruce—her, maybe so. She needs all the help
she can get right now."

He batted his eyes at me and said, "I
certainly agree with that."

I steered him to an
invitingly shaded gazebo just outside the chapel and suggested that
he sit down. He did so, crossed his ankles, placed both hands in
his lap palms up, showed me a level stare. "You are preparing me
for some awful news," he said quietly.

"Yes," I said. "Annie's in
jail. She's been charged with three counts of murder. But Francois
Mirabel's attorneys are with her so I expect her to be released on
bail very quickly."

The blood drained from his face. He
whispered, "Good lord!" and raised both hands to his cheeks.

That told me what I really
wanted to know, first off; namely that he genuinely cared for the
lady. Otherwise I wanted to be his agent because a scene like that
one was Oscar material. I began to think I was going to have to
thump him on his back or something because all the breath had left
him and none was coming back in for the longest time. Finally he
caught it with a sob and tears began oozing from his
eyes.

I said, "Hey, it'll be okay."

He grabbed a handkerchief and went after the
tears while he told me, "I'm sure that it will be, Mr. Ford, thank
you. It's just that I have been arrested too, and let me tell you
it is not a pleasant experience. I cannot bear the thought of her
being subjected to such indignities. Oh my God!"

"What?"

"The strip search! Did they do that to
her?"

I said, "I think it's one of the routines,
Bruce."

Funny thing, there. He didn't even want to
know who'd been murdered or why Annie had been charged. He was just
totally focused on...

"They give that job to the perverts, you
know. I suppose with a woman they even violate her vagina."

I said, "I don't believe so. You're thinking
of drug searches and—"

"No, no, what do you think they're looking
for in jail?"

At least the tears had stopped flowing. I
told him, "Whatever, Bruce, Annie can handle it. She is handling
it. But we have to—"

"I'll just confess to the murders myself,"
he said, giving me an up-and-down look. "I won't let them drag her
through that."

I said, "If you're going to do that, don't
you want to know who it is you killed?"

"Do you detest me, Mr. Ford?"

It was my turn to give him the up and down.
Actually the question was from so far out in left field that it
took me a moment to assimilate it. I replied to that, "Why the hell
should I detest you? I barely know you."

"Yes, but you knew immediately that I am
gay, and don't deny it. I saw it in your face the other night. It
was just as obvious to me, you know, that you are straight. But I
don't detest you for that."

I didn't know why he went
for my throat that way and at that particular moment, but he'd
caught me with my buried prejudices exposed and twisting slowly in
the wind—and, yes, I was feeling just a tad defensive when I told
him, "To each his own, pal, has always been my motto. I don't ask
anybody what they do behind closed doors and furthermore I don't
give a damn what they do."

"Yes, but you still see gayness as a sexual
perversion. Don't deny it."

I told him, very
patiently, "I do deny it—but I resent being called upon to do so.
Actually I think that celibacy is the only perversion of the sexual
instinct. To paraphrase a popular song of some years ago, the music
goes round and round and it comes out wherever it can. So long as
it comes out, okay. Okay?"

I guess it was not okay.

"You miss the entire
point, Mr. Ford. Will you please look at me? Look at me! What you
see is what I am. I am not having sex with anybody right now. As
far as you know, I have never had sex and maybe I never will. So
what are you looking at? What are you seeing?"

I tried again. "Bruce, I see a very sweet
guy who acts for all the world like a very-sweet girl. Maybe that
puts me off just a bit. But I think none the less of you."

"Oh really?" He was giving me the
arched-eyebrow gaze. "Then why do you talk to me like I'm some kind
of idiot? Why do you patronize me?"

I said, "How do you know I don't treat
everyone the same way?" Hell, maybe I did.

He flexed those tremendous shoulders and
told me, "I could break you in two if I wanted to."

I mildly warned him, "Don't try. You could
get surprised. Anyway, why would you want to? How have I hurt
you?"

"You haven't hurt me, Mr. Ford," he replied.
"But you and I need some very serious conversation and I want to be
sure that our minds are connecting when we do. I don't want you to
think of me as an idiot and I do not want you patronizing me."

I thought about that for several seconds
then told him, "Okay, maybe you're right. I apologize if I've come
at you that way. I would not consciously do that. So maybe there is
something down in the subconscious that—"

"There certainly is," he
said, interrupting my apology with a solemn smile. "A moment ago
you said that I act like a very sweet girl. That tells a lot about
the way you've been conditioned to think about people like me. I am
not a girl, you see, and I would not want to be a girl. Also,
however, I am not a boy...and I would not want to be a boy. Your
understanding of these distinctions could be crucial to your
understanding of Reverend Annie's difficulties. Frankly I was very
surprised when the guides recommended you. I mean, after I found
out who you are, and all."