The Witch and the Gentleman (13 page)

“Because I implicated him in the murder of Penny Laurie.”

Smithy continued staring at me. I continued picking at my nails. Outside, a child cried incessantly. More cop cars appeared. A fire truck. Dozens, if not hundreds, of bystanders. Smithy and I were mostly hidden within a circle of Beverly Hills finest.

“What evidence do you have?” he asked.

I’d been having a hard time thinking straight. I’d gone into a sort of shock, while sitting there on the ground shaking and fighting for breath while a man bled out near my feet.

Not just a man. A
child killer
.

“
Nothing that would stand up in court.”

“
So, tell me about it.”

I did, as best as I could. I told him about the dream and the clover field. That Penny might not have been on her way home at all, that she might have, in fact, gone to a nearby park to sulk and think and to silently hate her mother in the way that only a ten-year-old girl could.

“You don’t think she was picked up on the way home from school?” he said.

“
No, I don’t.”

“
But she always went straight home, every day. This has been corroborated.”

“
Not that day.”

“
How can you be so sure?”

For the first time, I looked at him. “I’m not sure.”

“And you decided to come here alone?”

“
Yes.”

“
That was reckless.” He refrained from saying
stupid
. Why kick a girl when she was down?

I nodded, feeling sick all over again. “I had to know for sure.”

“And do you know for sure?”

I held his gaze. His eyes were bigger than I remembered. “Without a doubt.”

“Without a single doubt, you believe that William Fletcher killed Penny Laurie?”

“
Yes.”

“
Did he say as much?”

“
He threatened me,” I said. “Then followed up on his threat.”

Smithy took in a lot of air, and his little man-child chest filled up. No, he wasn’t a big man, but he had a big presence. “We’ll check him out thoroughly.”

I nodded. “Good.”

I pressed my thumb and fingers into my closed eyes, doing my best to soothe a thumping headache, and saw an image of a blue box buried in Mr. Fletcher’s back yard, under a flat marking stone. I also saw inside the box and my heart sank.

Find the dog, and you will find your answers.

With a heavy heart, I told the detective about the box, finishing with, “I think you’ll find all the evidence you need inside.”

“Inside the box?”

“
Yes.”

“
Under a stone?”

“
Yes.”

“
In Fletcher’s back yard?”

I nodded, exhausted. “Yes, detective.”

“Should I ask how you know this?”

“
It just came to me.”

“
Of course it did. And why wouldn’t the killer’s identity just come to you, too?”

“
Because that’s not how this stuff works.”

“
It’s not?”

“
No, apparently not,” I said.

“
Explain it to me, then.”

“
Can I explain it another time?” I asked, rubbing my temples now. “I need a shower and to sleep and a place to cry for the rest of the night.”

“
First, give me the Cliffs Notes version,” he said, “then you can cry all you want.”

I sighed, rubbed my eyes again, and said, “Some things have to play out, Detective. They have to play out naturally, in their correct place and time. The spirit world does not exist to give us answers all the time, whenever we need them. We are forced to live a little, to experience a little, and to discover on our own, with occasional prodding from the other side; that is, if we go too far down the wrong path.”

Smithy blinked exactly three times over a course of about a minute, before he said, “That might have been the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but...”

He paused. I waited.

“...but it just might make some sense.”

“
It does,” I said, “in a way.”

“
So, what happened with Fletcher? I mean, how did he go from running you down to outside his window and dead? And how did you not get hit? Every witness claims they saw you get hit.”

“
I wasn’t hit,” I said.

“
Then what happened?”

“
I can’t tell you,” I said.

“
I really think you should.”

I looked at him and shook my head. “I can’t, Detective. Not now.”

“Why?”

“
Because I’m not sure what happened myself.”

“
I’m going to need more than that for my report, Ms. Lopez.”

I shook my head again. “You’ll get the answer someday. Maybe.”

He didn’t like it, but he kept it to himself, which I appreciated. We were both silent. Outside, we heard excitable voices, officers barking orders, and saw a whole lot of curious faces. Something else occurred to me.

“
Will you be talking to Peter Laurie about this?” I asked.

Smithy looked at me for a long moment, his mustache twitching ever so slightly. His piercing eyes softened, and he said, “About Peter Laurie...”

Chapter Twenty-eight

I rapped on the front door.

I had come unannounced, which, under the circumstances, I had thought was best. I waited, and as I did so, I scanned the yard, noting again its perfectly manicured lawn and well-maintained garden. I noted again the “For Sale” sign out front, and the Realtor’s lock box attached to a nearby water pipe. It was attached, in fact, to the water handle, which was currently pointing down in the “off” position. Which meant, of course, the interior of the house had no water, either.

I was about to knock again, when I heard heavy footsteps approach from the other side. With each slow step, my heart increased in tempo. As it did so, that familiar, electrical current formed around me, that tell-tale sign that a spirit was nearby.

Who’s here with me?
I asked.

I didn’t, of course, get an answer, although I suspected I knew exactly who was here.

The door opened slowly and there stood Peter Laurie, as tall and forlorn and miserable as ever. As far as I knew, Peter had no knowledge of the events that had happened just hours earlier at Clover Field Elementary.

It had taken me a few hours to get here. I had to shower and cry and get dressed and cry some more. I had never, ever seen someone die before. Even a sicko child killer. It had been too much. Just too damn much.

Hell, it was still too much.

Anyway, I had needed to be alone, and then I’d needed to make a few phone calls.

“A lovely surprise, Ms. Lopez,” said Peter with his usual warmth. Ever the gentleman.

“
I hope I didn’t disturb you,” I said, stepping inside as he ushered me in.

He was, of course, wearing the same suit and tie. I had thought the man had dressed impeccably, or didn’t have much variation to his wardrobe. I had thought wrong.

We were standing in the foyer. The spiral staircase was before us. The paintings were everywhere, as were the statues. Nothing had been touched. Peter was still holding his stomach. I motioned to it. “Are you feeling any better?”

“
I wish I could say yes, but, sadly, no. I really should go see a doctor.”

“
How long has the pain been going on now?”

He looked at me, blinked, shrugged. “Why, I don’t know. Quite a long time, I suppose. I really should go see a doctor.”

“Yes, you just said that.”

“
Did I?”

“
Yes.”

He blinked at me, and sighed. “Let me tell you, my memory isn’t holding up well these days.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “So, why don’t you go to the doctor, Peter?”

“
I just...” he shrugged again, gave me a long look. “I just don’t care enough, I suppose.”

“
You don’t care enough about your own health?”

“
Nothing much matters to me anymore. Not since...”

His voice trailed off and I nodded. He didn’t need to finish his sentence. I knew what followed “not since...”

I said, “Tell me, Mr. Laurie, why are you moving?”

He looked at me for another long moment. “The house...it’s so big...and I’m all alone now...surrounded by painful memories. I need to start somewhere fresh. I need to move on, I guess.”

I nodded. I couldn’t have agreed more. “Do you still go to work, Mr. Laurie?”

“
I thought I’d told you I’d taken a leave of absence. Didn’t I tell you that? Boy, I really can’t remember much these days.” He rubbed his face, moving his hand over the same three-day growth he’d been sporting for the past two weeks. His hand moving over his whiskers, I noticed, didn’t make any sound. “Are you here with news about my daughter?” he asked.

“
I found your daughter’s killer today.”

He snapped his eyes up, inhaled sharply. He seemed about to take my hand, or grab me about the shoulders, or perform some other form of physical contact, but refrained. He was, of course, the perfect gentleman. Or something. “Please, Allison, tell me who it is. Tell me everything.”

And so I did. I told him all about my dream, about the connection to her school, about my theory that Penny never went straight home. I told him about my meeting with her teacher. I paused there and Peter Laurie seemed to be holding his breath. Tears came to his eyes and then spilled down his cheeks.

“
Her teacher?” he asked finally.

I nodded and relayed the conversation I’d had with Mr. Fletcher...and then the attack in parking lot. As I spoke, I felt nauseated, knowing that a man was dead by my hand...a man who’d died only hours ago.

Sweet Jesus, help me.

Peter sensed my own pain and confusion and did something that surprised the hell out of me...and maybe even him, too. He reached out and hugged me...only it wasn’t any kind of hug I’d felt before.

It was then that I knew.

That I knew.

*  *  *

We were sitting on his couch, holding hands.

We had been sitting like this for some time. Ten minutes, perhaps. Maybe longer. We were both dealing with a lot of shit.

“
My daughter...she came to you in a dream?”

“
Yes. I believe so.”

“
Did she...did she look okay?”

“
She did.”

He inhaled deeply, although I didn’t hear any actual air passing over through his open mouth. His hand, I noted, was soft and pulsated with energy. If my eyes had been closed and I had been asked to describe what I was touching, I would have said a pile of cotton, with a soft electrical current passing through it.

He said, “I haven’t seen my daughter since the morning I left for work two years ago.” He motioned toward the kitchen before us. “I kissed her forehead there, but she didn’t kiss me back. She had stuck out her lower lip. She always did that when she was mad. I had, of course, taken her mother’s side of their silly argument and my baby girl was mad at me. I had ruffled her hair and laughed and told her I loved her. At least...at least, I said that.” He shook his head sadly. “You know, for someone losing his memory, I sure remember every detail of that day. It’s all I have, in a way. It’s my last memory of her alive.”

“
I’m sorry you had to go through this, Peter.”

“
I’m more sorry for her. And angry. So angry. I want to kill the bastard all over again. I want to kill him a million times, each death more painful than the last.”

His words hit me hard and as his discordant energy crackled through me. I tried to forget the man lying on the concrete, gasping and drowning in his own blood.

Peter looked at me. “And it was definitely her teacher?”

“
It was.”

“
Do we know this for a fact?”

“
We will soon.”

He nodded. “I met him once, at a parent-teacher conference. He seemed...intense. I almost pulled my daughter from his class. I guess I should have...”

He released my hand and wept into his own. I nearly hugged him, nearly put my arm around him, but I refrained, afraid of what I might feel.

Finally, Peter sat back and nodded and breathed deeply, and this time, I heard a ragged sound pass over his lips. The house, I noted, was absolutely silent. Not even the hum of a refrigerator. It had been unplugged, of course. After all, no one needed it. No one living, at least.