Chapter 23
Tara caught up with Elizabeth at the preschool playground where their girls were chasing each other around the equipment in a game of tag that was being supervised by their teachers. The rain had abated and they were enjoying stomping in the shallow puddles as they ran after each other, their laughter filling the air.
“Hey, I was going to call you,” Tara called as she came to where Elizabeth was leaning over the sign-out page to pick up Chloe. “Dave’s out of town, so I wanted to know if you and Chloe want to join Bibi and me at that burger spot down the street from Uncle Vito’s?”
Uncle Vito’s was an Italian restaurant at the end of the strip mall that was close to Elizabeth’s house. The mall also held a Ralph’s grocery store, a coffee shop, a cleaners, and a UPS store along with several businesses that seemed to come and go with the economy. The burger spot was around the corner and down the street.
It was all Elizabeth could do to react normally. Thronson’s comments and insinuations had made her feel almost physically ill, so her first inclination was to decline. But the thought of heading back to the house was equally unattractive. Besides, she didn’t have a clue what she would serve for dinner. And the burger spot was cheap.
“Lots Of Beef,” Elizabeth said, forcing a smile.
Tara snapped her fingers. “That’s what it’s called. I can never remember. I know it’s early, but do you care?”
“Not at all. It’ll be nearly five by the time we get there,” Elizabeth said.
They collected Chloe and Bibi, although it was a bit of a wrangle as neither girl wanted to leave the playground. As they were leaving, Vivian came and picked up Lissa, and Jade got Little Nate, but though they invited them, neither could join them for dinner.
By the time Bibi was ensconced in Tara’s car and Chloe in Elizabeth’s, and they got the girls through their mopey meltdowns as they wanted to ride together and could barely stand it that they had to be separated, it was five. By the time they reached the strip mall where both restaurants were located, it was closing on five thirty and the early dinner crowd was filling up the lot.
Traffic was coming fast off the main street toward Uncle Vito’s and the cars were circling around like a pack of hungry wolves. Elizabeth was lucky enough to find a parking spot, though it was a bit of a hike to Lots Of Beef. Even so, she and Chloe arrived first and grabbed a table, waiting for Tara and Bibi who finally blew in about ten minutes later. In that short interim Elizabeth had gone back inside her head, Thronson’s words running around and around.
I showed a picture of you to the Tres Brisas staff. Two of them identified you as the woman at the hotel . . . I showed a picture of you to the Tres Brisas staff. Two of them identified you as the woman at the hotel....
“Want me to order?” Tara asked, breaking into her reverie. “What do you both want?”
As Chloe declared for chicken strips and a strawberry milkshake and Bibi ordered the same, scooting into the booth beside her friend, Elizabeth looked up at Tara, the words dying on her tongue as she really looked at Tara’s hair in its messy, blond bun, just like she wore hers.
I showed a picture of you to the Tres Brisas staff. Two of them identified you as the woman at the hotel....
“Do they have salads?” Elizabeth asked, pulling herself together.
“Kind of a chicken Caesar,” Tara answered, staring up at the menu, her face in profile.
“That sounds good.” When Elizabeth reached for her purse, Tara waved her away.
“We’ll settle up later,” she told her.
Thronson was just trying to scare you. Maybe you should talk to her after all. Risk her thinking you’re crazy as a loon.
Tara came back with their drinks and then waited at the designated pick-up spot, returning a few moments later with Chloe and Bibi’s chicken strips. “Salads are still coming up,” she said as she’d decided on the same thing as Elizabeth.
It wasn’t me. Lots of people look like me. . . . The woman at the hotel could be totally innocent . . . a complete stranger to Court and Whitney Bellhard . . . She doesn’t have to be the same one as the one on the freeway, if there even was one. What if . . .
Elizabeth’s thoughts shut down. Were overridden. A terrible vision overtook her and she suddenly stood up, nearly knocking over her chair. Tara was just bringing up the rest of their food order and she looked at Elizabeth in surprise.
“I have to go,” Elizabeth told her flatly.
“Go?” Tara looked at her in disbelief. “Go where? What do you mean?”
“Take care of Chloe. I’ll be back.”
And then she was running. Out of the burger joint and across the parking lot to Uncle Vito’s, racing among the cars, and causing people to stare.
Oh, God . . . oh, God . . . oh, God . . .
She barreled into the Italian restaurant, nearly knocking over a woman walking toward the restrooms. The woman glared at her and stomped onward.
“Get away from the windows!” Elizabeth screamed at the couple seated in the waiting area directly in front of the windows that looked straight toward the street entrance into the strip mall.
As they gaped at her in surprise, she grabbed up the young boy about three years old who was standing in front of them and ran for the interior of the restaurant. Shrieking, the woman leaped to her feet and charged after her. Her husband damn near ran over his wife in his own attempt to reach Elizabeth.
“Stop!” he yelled
At the same moment, a car smashed through the window with a roar of engines and shattering glass. A collective gasp and shriek ran through the crowd. People clattered from their chairs, running to safety as a green Buick flew forward, humping over tables and chairs before smacking into a pillar. The building shook. The alarm blared. Woowoowoowoo. Steam hissed from the radiator.
The boy in Elizabeth’s arms wriggled free and found his mother who was crying and gulping and shaking as if stricken with palsy. The father gazed at Elizabeth dully.
Elizabeth surfaced from the terrible scene in her mind, slowly focusing on reality—the elderly man slumped over the steering wheel of his car, the noise, the panic. She placed her hands over her ears and stepped toward the car.
“You knew,” the husband said. “You knew. . . .”
“I-I saw it coming,” she choked out. The truth.
People were gathering around the vehicle. Blood ran from a gash in the driver’s head. Elizabeth saw a man press 9-1-1 on his cell and hold it to his ear.
It took several minutes, but blessedly, someone finally cut the alarm. The sudden silence was immediately replaced by the sound of an approaching siren.
“Oh, my God . . . oh, my God . . . oh, my God . . .” the mother was saying over and over again, cradling her son and rocking him in her arms.
Get out.
Elizabeth stepped toward the door next to the shattered window. A crowd had gathered outside under a sky fraught with dark clouds and softly falling rain. A police car jerked to a stop and an officer stepped out. A woman. Officer Maya.
She saw Elizabeth the same moment Elizabeth saw her. “You were here when this happened?” Maya asked, surprised.
Elizabeth looked for her partner, DeFazio, but the officer was alone.
“He just accelerated,” a man nearby said, catching Maya’s attention. “Goddamn. I think he hit the gas instead of the brake.”
“Yeah, yeah,” a young woman with short red hair agreed. “That’s what he did.”
A chorus of voices followed, echoing the sentiment. Elizabeth moved away.
Get out. Get away. Get to your daughter.
She slipped away and walked rapidly across the parking lot back to the burger spot. She would have broken into a run except that it would have called too much attention to her. She was still thirty feet away from Lots Of Beef when Chloe burst outside and ran to her, heedless of anything but her mother’s arms.
Elizabeth scooped her up and Chloe pressed her face into her mother’s neck.
“What happened? What happened?” Tara babbled. She’d come outside with Chloe and was standing with a growing number of other patrons who’d heard the crash and slowly worked their way outside. Bibi was clutched to her side.
“An accident. I heard it happening,” Elizabeth said.
“How?” Tara asked, wide-eyed.
“They think this elderly man hit the accelerator instead of the brakes,” she said, ignoring the question.
At that moment, an ambulance pulled up outside Uncle Vito’s and two EMTs jumped out.
“My God,” Tara said.
“I wanna go home,” Chloe said on a gulp. Tears threatened.
Elizabeth said to Tara, “I owe you for dinner.”
“God, no. Forget it.” Tara suddenly reached over and hugged Elizabeth and Chloe. “I’m so glad you’re safe. When you ran out like that . . . and then we heard the crash . . .”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was scared. I just saw what was happening, and I had to get there.”
“I thought you heard it.”
“I did. I heard it.” Elizabeth clasped Chloe’s hand. “Thank you. So scary. We’ve gotta go.”
Tara nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Us, too.”
“I’ll call you.” Elizabeth didn’t have to tell Chloe to hurry as her daughter was practically dragging her away toward their car.
Chloe climbed into her seat and buckled herself in. “Mommy, I’m scared.”
Elizabeth could feel herself trembling as she adjusted her own seat belt and switched on the ignition. “We’re okay.”
“But that man in the car . . . he’s going to die, isn’t he?”
Elizabeth gazed at her sharply. “Not necessarily.”
“He is,” Chloe said, a hitch in her voice. “I saw it, Mommy. I saw it. . . .”
An hour and a half later, Elizabeth lay beside her daughter in Chloe’s twin bed, her arms around her, her cheek resting on Chloe’s blond crown as her daughter fell into a deep sleep. It was early, but Chloe had gone straight to bed, which said a lot about her frame of mind. Elizabeth stared through the soft darkness that was kept at bay by the night-light.
For years, she’d managed to stop the visions of pending danger by keeping a tight rein on her own emotions. At least, that’s what she believed. She could get mad, but not too mad, scared but not too scared, frustrated, but not too frustrated. It was something she’d learned as a child, a way to combat the strange sensations that had overwhelmed and frightened her, and it had worked most of the time.
But when she’d seen the footbridge collapse, she hadn’t yet learned to hide her ability. She hadn’t realized how people would react. She hadn’t known they didn’t possess the same ability, so she’d shouted and shouted about it. No one listened until it actually fell, but when it did, her father and mother looked at her closely in a way that frightened her. She overheard them talking.
“Who are her parents?” her mother had demanded in a quivering voice. “We didn’t ask enough questions.”
“You’re making too much of this,” her father had answered, but Elizabeth heard the awe and concern in his voice.
Her father started questioning her, and then he wanted her to do it again . . . to predict something, anything. That had sent her mother over the edge and the fights between them escalated until her mother moved out and left them. She made a half-hearted attempt to take Elizabeth with her, but Elizabeth didn’t want to leave her school and truthfully, Joy Gaines seemed just as happy to leave her.
Her father had wanted her with him, seeing some get-rich-quick scheme with his psychic daughter, but she never saw another vision, as far as he knew. He grew impatient with her. His money-making scheme had gone up in smoke and she’d sensed that he’d grown to resent her. Whether he knew that she’d purposely started hiding her reactions to such visions, she couldn’t say, but he definitely lost interest in her as a person . . . if he’d ever really had any.
She’d stayed with him because she didn’t know what else to do, and even through community college and the last two years at UC Irvine, she’d kept in touch with him. But after that they drifted apart. He didn’t want her unless she was special, and she didn’t want him.
Court wooing her with no knowledge of her past had been like throwing a lifeline to a drowning person. She’d loved him for it. Or at least thought she had. She wondered if it had been more gratitude than love, but it didn’t matter. Their union had produced Chloe and as soon as she was born, everything had been better. Court had wanted to meet her father, and though Elizabeth had been reluctant, she’d made the effort. But the two men hadn’t liked each other.
Takes one to know one, she thought.
Elizabeth hadn’t had a vision throughout most of her marriage and she’d begun to think she was cured of the ability. But then Little Nate had nearly fallen off the jungle gym and she hadn’t been able to sit by and let that happen. Jade had known Elizabeth couldn’t have seen Nate falling from her angle of vision, especially seconds before it happened, and had mentioned it in front of their friends. But Elizabeth had brushed it off and everyone thought Jade was making too much of it.
All was well again, but then the deaths started occurring. And now the car through the restaurant . . .
Slowly, Elizabeth removed her arm from beneath Chloe’s sleeping form and eased herself from her bed. She tiptoed out of the room and paused in the doorway, looking at her for long moments.
But that man . . . he’s going to die, isn’t he? He is. I saw it, Mommy . . . I saw it. . . .
She sees things, too, Elizabeth thought, her arms prickling with gooseflesh.
Knock, knock, knock!
Elizabeth gasped and her heart lurched. The sharp staccato sound made her damn near jump a foot. It came from her front door. Someone was on her porch. A hand at her chest, she glanced at the kitchen clock and saw it was only a little after eight. God, it seemed like a year since the accident at the restaurant and she and Chloe had raced home.
She walked quickly toward the door before they could knock again and peered through the peephole. Her heart lurched in fear. Detective Thronson stood on her front porch again. For a moment, Elizabeth thought about not opening the door, but she had a feeling Thronson knew she was home. Being cowardly wasn’t going to help. She would just be putting off the inevitable.
Drawing a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, she flipped on the outside light and opened the door a crack, blocking entry to her house with her body. No more playing nice with the police. She had Chloe to consider, and she didn’t trust this detective or any of the police, for that matter. They were trying to force the facts to fit the supposed crime rather than the other way around.
“Yes?” Elizabeth said, schooling her expression though her pulse was pounding in her ears.
“You don’t want me to come in.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“My daughter’s asleep. I want to keep her that way. Whatever you have to say, just say it.”
“I talked with Officer Maya. You saw her at the restaurant accident this evening.”
Elizabeth hung onto the edge of the door with a death grip. “That’s what this is about?” she asked, hearing how squeaky her voice sounded. She’d suspected that it was. The people in the restaurant were bound to give her away and Officer Maya had recognized her. “Not the polygraph test?”
“No. Officer Maya interviewed a couple who say you saved their son and them from injury, maybe death, by your quick response.”
“I just saw the car coming, that’s all.” She had to bite her tongue not to say more, some kind of explanation that would just backfire and incriminate her.
“Before anyone else saw it.”
“I guess so.”
“Before the car was in sight, according to a dozen eyewitnesses.”
“I’ve heard eyewitnesses are the worst at recall.” Elizabeth could feel hysterical laughter bubbling up and held it back with an effort.
“Sometimes they’re incredibly accurate.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. . . .”
“Why don’t you start with the truth? You know something about all of this. I don’t know what it could be, but I’ve been around a long time, and I know when people are lying or covering up, and I think you’re doing a little bit of both.”
“I just saw the car coming. I heard it.”
The detective stared at her. “What happened to your husband?” she asked, changing direction.
“I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t on that freeway. . . .”
“You know something. Something you’re not saying.”
“No.”
“Yes. Tell me what you know,” the detective suddenly urged. “Get it off your chest.”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Elizabeth said on a half laugh. “You wouldn’t.” She could feel herself cracking apart, wanting to confess, needing to let it all out.
“Try me.”
“I can’t.”
“Just say it.”
“I wished them dead, okay? All of them. Court . . . and Mazie . . . and even that officer that gave me the speeding ticket. Daniels. I was angry at all of them, and I wished them dead. And now they’re gone. They are dead.”
Thronson was staring at her, her expression unreadable.
“And that’s not all,” Elizabeth whispered, her legs feeling like jelly. “GoodGuy. He cut me off in traffic and flipped me off and it infuriated me and . . . and I . . . wanted to kill him. Just drive him off the road.”
“Good guy?” the detective asked carefully.
“His name is Channing Renfro. I didn’t know it at the time. His license plate is GoodGuy.”
A deep line grooved between Thronson’s brows. “You’re talking about the homicide at Fitness Now!? You’re saying that was you?”
“God, no. I just wished it! All of it! Do you understand? I wish things, and they happen!”
Detective Thronson stood up straight and rested her hand on the butt of her gun. She stood frozen for several moments, apparently unsure quite how to proceed.
The hysteria that had been building inside Elizabeth finally spilled over and she bent forward and started to laugh. Great, sobbing gulps of crazed mirth that she knew would dissolve into tears eventually. She was dizzy with exhaustion. She didn’t give a damn what the detective thought, or Jade, or anyone else who knew the truth from here on out. She was glad she’d said it. Glad.
It took several minutes before she pulled herself together, and it was only the thought of Chloe and what she would think if she should awaken and find her lunatic mother losing it. Straightening, she heaved a deep sigh and faced the detective wearily. “So arrest me if you will, if wishful thinking is a crime.”
“You’re saying you did not cause your husband’s death, but you—”
“Wished it. Yes. And Mazie’s accident. And I didn’t shoot Officer Daniels, but it wasn’t long after our court date that he was shot and killed.”
Thronson was clearly nonplussed. “To be clear, you feel responsible for these deaths, but you didn’t actually act on them. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Yes.”
“And you saw the car coming at the restaurant, or heard it, even though no one else did.”
“Yes. I knew it was going to hit.”
“You say your daughter is asleep?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“So, you’re not going anywhere tonight.”
“Detective Thronson, if you want to arrest me, you’re just going to have to do it. Otherwise this conversation is over. I’ve told you the truth about what I know and what I feel, and I know it sounds crazy, but there it is. That’s all. That’s all there is. I’m sorry Court’s dead. I’m sorry they’re all dead. I don’t know how it’s my fault, but it kinda feels like it is, even though I did nothing to hurt them.”
“Except wish them dead,” the detective repeated slowly.
Elizabeth nodded. “That’s right.”
Thronson was clearly having a very tough time with everything Elizabeth had said, and why not? When she heard the words escape her lips she knew how crazy they sounded.
“I’m going to leave you,” Thronson said. “I’d like to do that polygraph test soon. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll put it together and call you.”
Elizabeth lifted a hand and let it drop. She felt as tired as if she’d run a complete marathon.
“Don’t go anywhere,” the detective warned as if she thought Elizabeth was suddenly a flight risk. “Or, I’ll find you and I will arrest you—on suspicion of homicide.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Thronson slowly turned away from the door, and then seemed to hesitate a moment, looking back, but she finally stepped down the porch stairs and crossed the road to her black Chevy Trailblazer.
Elizabeth closed the door and hesitated a moment herself, then she headed for the wine rack and a bottle of chardonnay.
Dear Elizabeth, my love,
I watched you tonight. I saw what you can do! You are amazing and so beautiful. Are you receiving my mental messages? I’m sending them to you. Concentrating. I know you can hear me. Should I send this pile of missives so that you know how I feel? I love you so much I ache inside. We’re connected, you and I. Almost like family except my emotions run so much deeper than that. Desire . . . yes. I’m consumed with it, but there’s a spirituality between us, the kind that exists only through purest souls. Soon the unveiling will happen and we will be transcended.
My love . . . I don’t deserve you and yet, there is no one like me for you. We have always belonged together . . . always.