Dark Visions (5 page)

The fear was causing her to be clumsy. It
must have to do with all the unknowns. Why was Sarah breaking into
the Psychic Fair's property? Why were Dolan and Alex so interested
in her?

After the police took Sarah home, Dolan and
his assistant questioned her for almost an hour. It broached on
harassment. Nothing she said satisfied them. They were convinced
she knew more. Dolan said Sarah left a message at the admissions
desk for her. It was proof Esmerelda was involved with this young
girl in some way.

Esmerelda eased her heavy frame onto the
blanket covered chair that sat in a corner nook of her trailer. She
sipped raspberry tea as she tried to decide what to do.

What she didn't tell the others was how
Sarah reminded her of her own daughter, Denise. It was uncanny how
similar they were in appearance, except for the hair thing. And
what was that? Did the girl lose it because of some kind of
condition or did she pull it out herself?

When she looked at Sarah yesterday she
actually thought she was looking at a younger Denise. It broke her
heart because she hadn't talked to her daughter since her husband's
death.

John Hall had left everything to their
daughter. Not a penny was willed to Esmerelda. Her family had not
approved of psychic readings. They'd called it a sin.

Her husband's will was specific. A trust
fund was set up for Denise once John's company was dissolved. If it
was to be revealed that Esmerelda profited from any of it, the
trust fund was to be dispersed to charity.

It was this callousness that drove Esmerelda
out two years before her husband's death. They'd separated and
Esmerelda joined the Psychic Fair to travel with Dolan. She didn't
attend her husband's funeral and only talked to Denise when she
called to ask why she wasn't there.

That was almost twenty years ago.

When Sarah had walked into the fair
yesterday she couldn't help but stare. She thought she was looking
at Denise.

Her husband and daughter were a part of the
past.

Meeting Sarah and seeing Denise in her face
was more than a coincidence. It was time for mother and daughter to
talk. Something told her she would see her daughter again soon.

Esmerelda picked up her cell phone and
dialed information. Then she stopped, hit end, set the phone down
and leaned back in her chair. Maybe it was too late. She could try
tomorrow.

The remote was on the table. She picked it
up and turned the television on.

She flipped through channels until she got
to the news. The news anchor was pleading for the girl who pulled
her from the river to come forward. A story came on about a
kidnapping a few months back and how a teenager had intervened
there too.

She knew that sometimes Dolan helped locate
missing people. She couldn't count how many times he'd worked with
the police. He hated it though. It wasn't that he didn't like
helping children; it was the notoriety it gave him that he
complained about. The Psychic Fair would get busier after he was in
the newspaper for finding a missing child. People would swarm him
for help with lost loved ones. They would stay after the fair
closed, trying to get a chance to talk to Dolan.

An odd thought struck her. If Dolan could
locate kidnap victims, then why couldn't he just tell the police
where the culprits were?

Esmerelda leaned forward and set her cup on
the table before her twitching hands spilled it. Could it be that
Sarah knows something about this? That's why Dolan's name was in
her book. It would explain all the interest Dolan and Alex have in
her.

She had to talk to Sarah and evidently Sarah
wanted to talk to her.

A thump from the window behind her made her
jump.

She spun around in her chair just in time to
see the edge of a face disappear.

She got up from her chair and went to the
kitchen. In her baking supply cabinet she found a rolling pin. The
light switch was near the door. To turn it off would expose her to
the open window and whoever may still be out there.

Her hands shook to the point where she
almost dropped the rolling pin.

With the light on she was too visible. She
had to risk being in the open to turn it off.

She sauntered across the hallway, flicked
off the lights, and dropped down, her back against the door. She
sat there, listening for any sounds from the outside of the
trailer.

After a few moments of silence, she let her
breath wheeze out, chest pumping with the action of breathing.

The doorknob rattled. Her free hand covered
her mouth as a little squeak slipped out.

She looked up at the brass knob as it
stopped moving.

She edged away from the door with as much
stealth as she could muster.

She picked up her cell and dialed 911.

Chapter 9

The cigarette dropped into the ashtray where
she butted it out. She'd held it too long. Ashes had fallen from
the tip and now lay in her lap. She moved to brush them off,
smearing their fragile nature into the red skirt that covered her
thigh.

She looked up at the ceiling tiles of her
office and gritted her teeth in an effort not to lose control.

Documents lay before her on the desk in
disarray. She gathered them up and tossed them into a corner tray.
She picked up the phone and hit speed dial.

When the phone was answered, she wasted no
time. "Any word yet?"

"No, but I'm down at the motel sizing things
up."

"Do whatever's necessary. Just tell me if
it'll work or not."

"It looks like a fit. I think it'll work. We
just need to punch out one wall and set up a secure perimeter. Once
the subject is located here, we can finish the reconstruction. This
means we can move within a day."

"Call me with confirmation."

She rubbed a palm against her throbbing
forehead after hanging up. Pausing long enough to control her
breathing, she got up, grabbed her coat and flicked off the lights.
The lock clicked as she turned the key.

A brief image of her mother filled her head.
She stood on the doorstep of her office, eyes closed. Whatever
happened to her? Where was she now? And what made her think about
her mother?

Maybe it was that stupid psychic stuff she
always went on about. Maybe her mother planted a thought in her
head?

She laughed. Craziness.

Her mother had left for the circus many
years ago. At least that's what her father called the Psychic Fair.
He used to always ridicule her after she left. He'd say that it
wasn't 'mother knows best,' with Esmerelda, it was 'mother knows
everything'.

Rain started to hit the pavement. She
watched it, remembering she had read last week that rain fell at
approximately twenty-seven kilometers an hour.

She lifted her small purse over her head and
ran for the car. After getting in, she opened the glove box and
pulled out her Mickey. A small silver flask filled with ten year
old scotch.

Today's drink would be stronger than on most
other days.

The rain sounded like a small machine gun as
it pounded the roof. She held the flask a moment, listening to the
rhythm of it. Water seeped down the back of her neck from her wet
hair.

The alcohol had lost its grip on her months
ago. She'd only recently started again. Her long and trusted
friend, Mickey, had traveled in her glove box the past few days for
just such a moment.

Her cell phone started chirping. She
recapped the flask and tossed it into the glove box, shutting it
hard.
Maybe some other time
, she thought as she answered the
phone.

"Yeah?"

"It'll work. One hundred percent. Everything
measures perfect."

"Good. Send them in. Get it ready for the
delivery. You know the drill. Do it quietly. I want no one to even
know you're there. Understood?"

"I'm on it."

She hit the end button and tossed the phone
on the passenger seat.

She found herself staring at the glove box.
Her mother came to mind again. She wondered if she was still alive.
Imagine if her mother knew what she'd done with the trust fund left
to her. If only her mother knew that she made more money now than
the trust fund ever gave her.

She reached over and opened the glove
box.

Chapter 10

People normally stare at her face or probe
further to see if she had any hair. For the last hour, as she
walked toward her appointment with another kidnapping, she hadn't
noticed anyone paying extra attention to her. Her shirt sleeves
dropped below the elbow. Her bandanna was a red one tonight. The
one she usually wore to do her notebook's bidding.

Sarah was watching the passersby more than
they watched her. There was the danger Esmerelda talked about, but
there was also a sense of foreboding she was feeling. Like somehow,
she
was being watched.

She thought about her mother and felt
remorse from their fight. She hated lying to her mom.

Maybe it was the call that was spooking
her?

To top it all off, Mary couldn't be trusted
either. An earlier precognition had told her to use Mary, so she
did. But she wasn't comfortable about it.

The streets in this area were getting
busier. She was a few blocks from downtown. About a thirty minute
walk to Birk Street

She passed by a store front and stopped. She
needed to know the time and she'd left her watch at home in her
hurry to leave. The crumpled paper came out of her pocket with a
little protest. She opened it to the entry.

Tonight. 9:23pm. Birk Street North Face.
Kidnapping
.

She slipped the paper into a large pocket
below the knee area in her pants. Too bad she couldn't just call
the police and tell them what was going to happen. Let them handle
it. That was their job anyway. But she knew the answer to that. She
hated cops. Ever since the cop who used to babysit her years ago
had done things to her. She shivered at the memory. She'd never be
able to trust a cop. Ever.

Thinking about her ordeal only made her want
to pull. She stepped into the store she'd been standing in front
of, checked the clock mounted on the wall and stepped back out to
the sidewalk.

8:30pm.

She reached up and pushed the red bandanna a
little above her ear. Stray hairs tumbled out. Savoring the moment
as she continued toward Birk Street, she took her time easing them
from their roots. She could almost feel the exact moment when the
follicles disengaged.

She dropped her hand and stuffed it into her
pants pocket. The hairs she'd claimed from her scalp were entwined
through her fingers. She rolled them around, trying to quell her
nervousness.

She didn't want this, nor did she ask for
it. She didn't want the police in her life either. Sitting in their
cruiser earlier had been horrible. It made her feel weak.

She was weak once.

Despair, loneliness, depression.

After the incident with the babysitter she
remembered how she withdrew for a while. He'd told her that his
fellow officers had his back. They'd be watching her. If a cop ever
took a statement about what happened between them, they'd throw it
in the garbage when she left. He even nodded and waved to a fellow
officer in her presence.

Sarah shook her head back and forth.
Memories of those days always rattled her. This wasn't the best
time for that, but they were like some kind of memory tumor.

She came up to a busy intersection, crossed
on the green and headed south.

There were a couple of dark years after
that, where her depression went unnoticed by her parents. They only
got juiced about the decline in her school report cards.

And now her entire eyebrows and lashes were
gone. Most of her forearm hair was missing along with small amounts
of pubic hair.

Her mother had taken her to the doctor to
find out why Sarah was losing so much hair and they'd misdiagnosed
it as
Alopecia areata
. Then they thought it was a fungal
infection. A few years back a new doctor diagnosed her with
trichotillomania
. This meant she was a "puller". Other
people were cutters, but Sarah was a puller.

The doctor prescribed Zoloft, which she
refused to take because she enjoyed being alone, depressed. She
didn't want to be like everyone else; happy and fake. The dark
moods were something she didn't want to discard. They'd become a
companion. A form of comfort.

Besides, it wasn't like she wanted a lot of
friends because she couldn't do some of the basic things friends
did, like swimming in a public pool. Everyone would notice the hair
loss and she wouldn't fit in.

Sarah had never fit in.

In the beginning she tried to only pull from
the regions of her body that were less noticeable, staying away
from her head. As hair thinned, it became harder to find quality
strands. Then her head was fair game, starting above the nape of
her neck where it wouldn't be seen as much and it spread from
there.

She wondered if she pulled all her hair out,
would her parents notice her then? Would they stop arguing about
her?

Sarah slowed up about a block and a half
from Birk Street. She had to collect herself, get her thoughts back
to the job at hand. She wiped a tear away and took a couple deep
breaths.

After a moment she started walking again.
What did
North Face
mean? Was the victim going to face north
or be on the north side of the street? Then she recalled Birk
Street ran east and west. It was a relatively short street,
intersecting with the entertainment district.

Within minutes she walked up to the corner
of Birk and Acton Street. A theatre on Birk was showing the new
movie with Al Pacino. To the left she saw a convenience store and a
Topper's Pizza. People were milling around the pizza shop waiting
for the late show.