The Loveliest Dead (5 page)

She opened her eyes less than a minute later, frightened by what she had seen: an unusual bloodstained knife that had glowed with an odd light. She tried unsuccessfully to describe it to Mrs. Reeder, who gave her a pad and pen and told her to draw it. The knife appeared to have two handles—like a pair of scissors, but without the finger loops—and a single narrow blade. Mrs. Reeder said she’d never seen anything like it. The vision made no sense to Lily, and that evening, she called Mrs. Youngblood in Colorado and told her about it.
 

“The knife wasn’t at all familiar to you?” Mrs. Young-blood said.

“No, I’ve never seen a knife like that before in my life.”

“And you say you smelled bananas?”

“Yes. Is that normal?”

“There is no such thing as normal. Prior to a powerful vision, some people will smell roses, or burnt toast. My ears start ringing before it happens.”
 

“It’s happened to you?”

“Only a few times. But enough for me to know it will happen to you again.”

“Again? Why?”

“Because you don’t understand what you’ve seen. It will keep happening until you understand its significance and can do something about it.”
 

“
Do
something about it? But what am I supposed to do?”
 

“I don’t know. That’s what you’re going to have to figure out. Remember when I told you the gift comes with responsibility?”

“Yes.”

“Well, significant visions like this usually require something from you. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. When you do, you’ll know what to do. And even if you’re not sure, you’ll figure something out. I have faith in you. You should, too.”
 

The vision occurred again later that same week, even more vivid than before. This time, Lily saw a narrow, serpentlike dragon intricately carved into each of the handles. The third vision was the worst, because Lily saw the knife’s blade sink to the hilt between two bare female breasts, not once, but again and again, eighteen times, and each bloody stab was accompanied by a horrible scream. She also noticed three initials crudely carved near the very bottom of one of the handles: O.J.B.
 

“Maybe it’s got something to do with the stabbings in Redding,” Mrs. Reeder said.

“Stabbings?” Lily said. “What stabbings?”

Mrs. Reeder showed her an article in the
Record Searchlight
. Four young women ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-four had been brutally stabbed to death in the past seven months. Forensics had determined the shape of the blade used in each murder, but other than that, the article said the police had no leads. The next day, during her lunch break, Lily was listening to the news on the radio when she heard that a fifth stabbing victim had been found that morning, a twenty-year-old nursing student. She had been stabbed eighteen times in the chest and abdomen.
 

It was then that Lily understood what Mrs. Young-blood had meant. As difficult as it may be to explain to the police, she felt obligated to tell them what she had seen in her vision. There was a chance that a detailed description of the knife could help their investigation. So Mrs. Reeder drove her down to Redding, about an hour south of Mt. Shasta. On the way, Lily told her that she did not want to draw any attention to herself—she was afraid the press would turn her into a freak show. When they arrived at the police station in Redding, Mrs. Reeder would not let her say a word until she had explained to the detective that Lily was a gifted psychic who wanted no recognition for what she was about to tell them. She insisted that if the information was useful to them, they were to respect Lily’s privacy and keep her out of the press. Lily drew for the detective a detailed picture of the knife she had seen, including the carved dragons and the initials on the handle.
 

It turned out that the knife Lily had seen in her visions was a Filipino butterfly knife, or balisong. According to forensic evidence, the shape of the blade matched the one that had been used in all five murders. The police went to every store in the Redding area that sold exotic knives. The proprietor of a small knife shop remembered seeing a Filipino butterfly knife about eight or nine months earlier—a man had brought it in to have one of the broken handles repaired. The proprietor specifically remembered the carved dragons and the three initials on the handle. The customer had paid his bill with a credit card. A search of the store’s records uncovered the man’s name and address, and the police went to his house to question him. When they knocked on the front door, he ran out the back to escape but was apprehended just a block away. A warrant was obtained to search his house, and police found jewelry owned by all five of the victims—trophies from the killings—and the Filipino butterfly knife. The murderer’s name was Oliver Jackson Burke. At a press conference, the police attributed their apprehension of the killer to an anonymous tip.
 

The Vicodin was starting to kick in, and the headache left over from the vision began to recede. Lily sat up on the edge of her bed and opened her bedstand drawer. Inside was a half-empty package of Oreo cookies. She plucked one of the cookies up and popped it into her mouth.
 

During the two weeks she’d had the visions of the butterfly knife, Lily had become quite ill. She’d been unable to sleep, lost her appetite to persistent nausea, and even had dropped several pounds. She hoped that did not happen again.
 

God knows I could stand to lose some weight now
, she thought as she chewed the cookie. She washed it down with a few swallows of ice water. She took a deep breath and clenched her fists to stop the stubborn trembling in her hands. She knew the best thing to do was get back to work and not dwell on it. It would return soon enough, with more details, more information. She could try to figure out what it meant then. Lily left her bedroom and went back out front to the store.
 

CHAPTER THREE

Thursday, 10:33 AM.
 

On Thursday morning, Jenna and Martha went for a drive around Eureka and made note of the locations of various stores, the mall, the hospital. It was a gray, rainy day and the chilly air smelled of the sea. They stopped at Humboldt State University in Arcata and walked leisurely around the campus as Jenna tacked cards to bulletin boards offering her editorial and typing services to students to make a little extra money.
 

Jenna had majored in education in college, with plans to teach grammar school, but her heart had never been in it, not really. She had met David and her plans had changed. But she was an excellent editor and typist, and when their financial troubles had begun in Redding, she had offered her services for reasonable prices to students at Shasta College and had made a surprising amount of money as a result. There seemed to be no shortage of students looking for help and willing to pay for it.
 

Back at the house, Martha went to her bedroom to take a nap, and Jenna called Dr. Reasor’s office in Redding. She told the receptionist, Kristen, that it was very important she talk to Dr. Reasor as soon as possible. She briefly explained what had happened the day before and expressed her concern. The receptionist took Jenna’s number and said the doctor would get back to her as soon as he could, probably during his lunch break.
 

While she waited, Jenna got a hammer, a Phillips screwdriver, and a package of hollow-wall anchors and went upstairs to the bedroom. She carried a couple boxes of framed family photos out into the hallway.
 

The upstairs hallway was papered in off-white, which had yellowed over the years, with an ugly repeating weeping willow pattern. Jenna hoped to get rid of it someday. The hallway was, to Jenna’s taste, too narrow, but worse than that, it had only one overhead light, which made it too dark. With bare walls, it looked long and bleak.
 

She knelt beside the boxes and began placing the photos gently on the hardwood floor. She looked at each one as she removed it from the box, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the hallway’s poor light, and separated the ones she wanted to hang in the hallway from those she would hang elsewhere. Jenna had a dozen framed photos in two stacks on the floor when she pulled another from the box and froze.
 

Jenna slowly moved off her knees to a sitting position on the floor, legs crossed, as she stared at the picture. A knot tightened in the pit of her stomach and tears stung her eyes. She remembered the day well.
 

In the picture, she and David were seated on the bench of a picnic table with the remains of a KFC meal spread out on it. Their backs were to the table, the Sacramento River behind them in the distance, the sky a clear, brilliant blue. They were in Caldwell Park in Redding. Josh sat between them holding a string with a red-and-silver Mylar balloon attached that read, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” All three of them wore colorful paper party hats, and David held a colorful whistle in his hand. It was Josh’s second birthday. His cake— chocolate with white frosting, orange and green dinosaurs on top, from the Costco bakery—was on the table and had not been cut yet. A candle in the shape of a two stood unlit in the center of the cake. Josh was grinning happily. He had her blond hair and his father’s big deep-brown eyes, her crooked smile and his father’s straight nose.
 

Miles had been a wailer when he was a baby, but Josh had been so quiet—Jenna remembered getting up repeatedly at night just to make sure he was still breathing. And she remembered that early morning when he had stopped breathing in her arms.
 

Mommy
—
 

Although she tried to hold it back, a sob wrenched its way out of Jenna as she put the picture on the “elsewhere” stack. Taking a deep breath, she took another framed photo from the box, this one of Josh staring in awe at a neighbor’s kitten in the yard in front of their old apartment building.
 

Three years sounded like a good piece of time, but as she looked at the picture, it seemed like no time at all. The years dissolved and Jenna felt as if she had just lost Josh all over again. She continued to sob as she took another photo from the box.
 

Josh grinned at her from the back of a pony at the Shasta District Fair. It was the last picture taken of him before the headaches got so bad that he didn’t go out much anymore.
 

Mommy
—
 

Jenna sniffled and sobbed some more. Movement caught her eye and she raised her head. The murky hallway was fractured through the tears in her eyes, but she saw a small figure standing at the other end. It was very small, no more than three feet tall, wearing a little jacket with a hood that covered its head. It stood un-moving, well back from the pool of dim illumination cast by the single overhead light, a mere shape, facing her.
 

She stopped crying, stopped breathing for a long moment as she stared at the blurry figure. With the knuckle of her left index finger, she wiped one eye, then the other, and blinked rapidly several times until her vision cleared.
 

The shadowy sillhouette of a hooded child stood at the other end of the hallway, still and silent.

Jenna thought of Josh looking at her that last time, his puffy eyes so intense.

Mommy
—
 

Her voice was throaty and broken. “Juh ... Josh? Is that you? Josh?”

The dark little figure spread its stubby arms wide and began to hurry jauntily toward her. But it did not make a sound—no footsteps on the hardwood floor, no happy child’s cry, only silence.
 

The telephone chirped and so startled Jenna that she tossed the picture into the air and yelped as her head jerked around toward the open bedroom doorway. The picture crashed onto the “elsewhere” stack and the glass in the frame shattered.
 

When Jenna looked down the hallway again, the small figure was gone. She stared at the spot where it had stood a heartbeat ago as the telephone continued to trill a second and third time, her lips parted, teary eyes wide. Her heart pounded so hard, she felt it in her fingertips.
 

There was a child standing there, Jenna thought. A toddler. Just now. I couldn’t have imagined that. Could I?

Mommy
—
 

She realized the answering machine was about to pick up and it was probably Dr. Reasor returning her call. Clearing her throat, she got to her feet, hurried into the bedroom, and picked up the cordless receiver.
 

“Hel—Urn, hello?”

“Jenna? Dr. Reasor calling.”

“Dr. Reasor, urn ... thank you for calling. I, uh ... I was just, uh ...” She cleared her throat and sniffled.

“Is everything okay?”

She cleared her throat again and assured him that yes, everything was okay, as she tried to collect her thoughts. She told him what had happened the day before with Martha.
 

“Is that normal?” she asked. “I mean, should I be concerned that she, uh ... well, that she’s seeing things?”