The First Prophet (17 page)
Thomas Kipp, 30, has been missing from his Miami home since last Thursday. A popular
teacher at Eastside High School, Kipp had been recently reprimanded by the school
board for unconventional teaching methods after parents
complained that he was spending too much time on New Age topics as well as such controversial
subjects as parapsychology.
His students claim that Kipp had a “knack” for predicting the future, though no evidence
exists to support this.
Police have no leads in the disappearance.
Sarah nodded slowly. “Another missing psychic.”
“There’s more,” Tucker said, and reached past her to tap a few keys briskly. On the
screen appeared another newspaper article, this one dated August 12, 2006.
A Nashville man was killed yesterday when his car went out of control and crashed
into a concrete embankment. Due to the resulting fire, tentative identification was
confirmed by dental records. The deceased was Simon Norville, 28, a part-time carpenter
who claimed to be a psychic and frequently augmented his income by reading tarot cards
for tourists.
Alcohol is suspected as the cause of the accident.
“But he was killed,” Sarah said. “He isn’t missing.”
Silently, Tucker leaned forward and tapped keys again. This time, the article was
dated April 24, 2007.
Philip Landers, 34, was killed Saturday when a friend’s twin-engine Cessna he was
piloting
crashed moments after takeoff near Kansas City. Landers, a struggling artist, earned
extra income in carnival work, proclaiming himself to be a mind reader.
Alcohol is suspected as the cause of the crash.
“They’re eerily similar,” Sarah admitted, “but—”
Still silent, Tucker keyed up yet another article, this one dated July 2, 2010.
Beverly Duffy, 40, was killed yesterday when her Los Angeles home caught fire and
burned to the ground. Ms. Duffy, locally famous for reading tea leaves and selling
“love potions,” had recently and correctly predicted the San Jose earthquake, which
had garnered her considerable media attention.
Friends say the attention upset her.
Investigators suspect a careless cigarette for the fire.
“A house fire,” Sarah murmured, shivering as she thought of her own gutted home.
“One more body burned beyond recognition,” Tucker said.
She leaned a little away from him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that either you psychics are peculiarly accident-prone, or else something
very suspicious is going on. You’re dropping like flies.”
He reached out to the computer again, this time holding a key down so that Sarah could
watch article after article scroll slowly past. She couldn’t read the individual articles,
but words and phrases jumped out at her.
Car crash…accidental electrocution…lost while skiing…drowning…house fire…a fall from
a ladder…robbery…plane crash…apparently struck by lightning…fell while mountain climbing…vanished
while hiking…body burned beyond recognition…no body found…no body recovered…
The deaths and disappearances ranged back more than ten years and were spread over
dozens of different cities in states from coast to coast. And there were so many of
them.
“All psychic?” Sarah whispered.
“So they—or those closest to them—claimed.”
She looked at him mutely.
Tucker raised a hand as if he would have touched her, but let it fall and leaned back
on the couch. “I wanted to see if it hit you the same way it did me. Obviously, it
did.” His voice was dispassionate.
“All…accidents. Manufactured accidents?”
“I’d say it was a good bet.”
“Then someone
is
killing some psychics—and taking others.”
“I’m afraid so. They all look like accidents or simple disappearances, Sarah, nothing
overtly suspicious about any of them—until you start tying them together. You saw
a fraction of the number of articles I’ve found so far. In every major city I’ve checked,
at least a dozen psychics
have been killed or turned up missing in the last ten years. Now, I don’t know a lot
about the law of averages, but assuming the psychic population of this country is
as small as I think it is, there seem to be a disproportionate number of them dying
or vanishing.”
“And nobody’s noticed?”
“Why would they? Like I said, the deaths all look accidental—or at least explainable.
Nothing to alert law enforcement or catch anything more than the momentary attention
of the public. And scattered over years. The way people always die in big cities,
and with depressing regularity. Nothing to send up a flag or make anybody look closer,
especially given the huge territory and sheer number of law enforcement jurisdictions
involved. I was looking for a pattern, but I knew what that pattern was supposed to
be. And I found it—no natural deaths. No heart attacks or strokes or cancer. Most
of these psychics were young, under fifty, and all of the ones who died, died violently.”
Sarah drew a breath and got to her feet in a slightly jerky motion. Avoiding his intent
gaze, she carried her cold coffee back to the kitchen area and poured it into the
sink. Chilled, she refilled the cup with hot coffee. Still not looking at Tucker,
she said, “What about the disappearances?”
“Well, bear in mind that I’m just getting started on this. Given a few days or, better
yet, weeks, I bet I could really turn up something. So far, what I’m finding is that
the psychics who’ve disappeared tend to be younger than the ones killed—I’m talking
kids and teenagers in many
cases. For those under eighteen, the police end up calling some of them runaways and
most of the rest unsolved abductions. No witnesses, no good suspects…and no bodies
ever found. And, let’s face it—those kinds of cases, unless the kid is famous, just
don’t linger in the headlines. They’re too damned common these days, even with Amber
Alerts keeping them in the news for a while.”
“I know. Pictures on milk cartons.”
He nodded soberly. “Exactly. Unsolved and, after a while, with no leads, little hope,
and precious little manpower to devote to them, pretty much going cold. Most of the
families try to keep the searches going, keep the public aware, but…other people move
on. And those kids are just plain gone.”
Donny Grant was big for his age, which is why the other members of his Richmond neighborhood
baseball team had elected him to be center fielder. He threw too wildly to be a pitcher,
but his long legs could cover a remarkable amount of ground quickly, which, as any
true baseball fan could tell you, counted for a lot.
Still, he didn’t really like to run, so maybe he didn’t move fast enough when his
best bud, Gabe Matthews, hit a rocket to deadaway center field. The vacant lot wasn’t
big enough to hold it.
“Go get it, Donny,” their pitcher Joe Singer yelled disgustedly as he watched Gabe
happily kick the half-full cement bag that was second base as he passed. “I ain’t
got another ball, you know!”
“I thought you had at least two,” Gabe shouted, and cackled at his own wit as he jumped
on home plate with both feet.
“Fuck you!” Joe turned and put his hands on his hips as he watched Donny pick his
way gingerly through the gap in the old board fence as he went after the home-run
ball. “Shake a leg, Donny!”
Donny needed very little encouragement to move faster. He didn’t much like the adjoining
vacant lot, overgrown with weeds and brambles and rumored to be the site of drug deals
and the occasional gang brawl.
So he moved quickly, bent over as he swiped at the ground with his glove in a wide
arcing motion. Where the hell was the thing? It couldn’t have gone much farther, surely—
“For Christ’s sake, Donny!” Joe yelled again.
Donny half turned in order to yell back a choice insult he’d just thought up, and
promptly tripped and fell flat on his ass.
Jeez, this place has more roots and vines than a jungle.
He put his ungloved hand down to boost himself up, and froze for an instant before
instinctively jerking his hand up. That wasn’t a vine, and it sure as hell didn’t
feel like a root.
He looked down and for a moment had no idea what he was looking at. Then he got it.
Oh. A woman’s hand.
He knew it was a woman’s hand because the nails were painted a pretty pink color.
And there was a ring on one finger, a delicate little rose; it was caked with dirt
now, of course, but still pretty.
She seemed to be almost pointing up at him, her pointer finger extended while the
others were gently curled. Pointing at him, almost beckoning him to come closer. Without
thinking, he bent closer.
That was when he realized that her wrist ended at the ground because the rest of her
was under it. That was when he realized she was dead.
That was when Donny Grant wet his pants and began to scream.
Slowly, Sarah said, “Then…we
are
talking about a conspiracy.”
“I hate to admit it, and I can’t even begin to imagine why it’s happening, but I think
so. It would take more than one person to cover up any murder or disappearance, and
by definition that makes it a conspiracy. I can’t think of another explanation.”
“Who?”
Tucker let his breath out in a long sigh. “I don’t know. But if this is an organized
effort, we’re talking something so big and complex that it almost defies belief. It
does defy belief. Think of the cost. Think of the manpower. I mean, they have to be…monitoring
the media, for one thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sarah, how do you think they found out about you? Six months ago, you were mugged,
but there was no mention in the papers of psychic ability. It was just later, weeks
ago, that the Richmond papers picked up the story. And what happens soon after? You
realize you’re being watched. And your house burns down. And somebody comes in the
night to kill you.”
“You mean they’ve got people just…reading the papers looking for mention of psychics?”
He nodded toward his computer. “The high-tech version. Using computers and keywords,
you can search through a hell of a lot of newspapers, blogs, and other social media
even in a single day. Could be an automated system. But even so, you need people to
monitor, to weigh and consider what they find—and do something about it. A lot of
people, assuming they don’t go after one psychic at a time. It would have to represent
a huge investment.”
“So what’s the payoff?” she realized.
“Exactly. Why are they taking some psychics—and killing others? What are they doing
with the ones they take? What is the threat, or the reward, that makes these actions
necessary? In other words—what the bloody hell is going on?”
To Sarah, the possibilities were terrifying. It was one thing to believe that an anonymous
someone
was after her, but to suspect that her enemy was organized on a national scale, ruthless
and frighteningly efficient, and had been taking and killing psychics for more than
a
decade, was the most chilling thing she had ever even imagined.
She avoided his steady gaze and looked into her coffee cup instead, and said the first
thing that came into her head. “Lewis was a cop. If even cops are involved in this…if
even cops are expendable…then how can we begin to fight them?”
“We begin with information,” he answered promptly. “We gather the pieces and put them
together until we have a complete picture, until we understand what’s going on.”
“While we’re on the run from them?”
Tucker shrugged. “We may be running from them—or running toward something that might
help us understand who they are and what they’re doing. We won’t know until we get
there.”
“I still think…I’m still afraid that the end of this journey for me will be death.”
“I know,” he said. “I think that’s why you can’t see where it is we’re supposed to
end up. You don’t want to see, because you’re afraid you’ll die there. But you won’t,
Sarah. Margo’s fate as you saw it was changed. Your own fate as you saw it will not
happen the way you saw it. We’re going to change it.”