“It’s a woman,” Officer Wilson said. “And yes, she’s from here. Her name’s Anne Summers. She’s had a lot of success in locating people, especially kids. I don’t know why, but it seems like female psychics are more tuned in to finding children than men are.”
“Psychics.” Karen repeated the word nervously. “I’m not a psychic. I’m a person who occasionally has lucky hunches. I still don’t know why you think I’ll have one now.”
“Maybe you won’t.”
“If this Anne Summers is so talented,” Karen continued, “why haven’t the police asked her to find Carla Sanchez?”
“She’s not available,” Officer Wilson said. “She’s working on a case in Texas.”
“A kidnapping?”
“A multiple kidnapping. Eight kids were taken from a day care center.”
“I think I read about that online,” Karen said. “Wasn’t it in one of the bigger cities, like Houston or somewhere?”
“In Dallas. Anne’s been down there a couple of weeks now.”
They drove on for another mile or so, and then Officer Wilson turned the car off the highway onto a dirt road bordered on both sides by pastures. Cows, some with newborn calves beside them, raised their heads from their grazing to follow the car’s progress along the rutted lane. The lushness of springtime closed in on them from all sides with walls of high grasses, green and thick and smelling of honeyed sunshine.
They crossed a bridge over an arroyo and made a second turn onto an even narrower road, which wound through a grove of scrubby trees. When they drew to a stop at last, it was in front of a run-down adobe house with a rusted Chevrolet van parked in the yard.
“We’re here,” said Officer Wilson, shutting off the engine.
For a few moments they sat unmoving. The absolute quiet of the countryside was hypnotic. The root of its stillness was in the absence of traffic noise; yet, once she had become adjusted to that, Karen found herself becoming aware of a number of gentler sounds: the clucking and scratching of chickens on the east side of the house. Birds, calling from the treetops. A tinkle of wind chimes, suspended somewhere out of sight in the branches above them.
Then, abruptly, the crash of a screen door and a volley of wild barking shattered the atmosphere. A small black-and-white terrier burst out of the house and came hurtling across the yard to throw itself full force against the side of the car. Close behind it followed a thin, dark-haired woman, obviously of Hispanic descent, who, in her way, seemed equally excited.
“Have you found her?” she called as she hurried toward them. “Do you have my Carla? Is she okay?”
“Call off the dog, please, will you?” There was an edge to Officer Wilson’s voice. “I told you the last time I was out here that you should keep it on a leash.”
“Do you have Carla?” the woman persisted as though she had not heard him.
“No, not yet. I mean it, Mrs. Sanchez. Please get that dog out of here. Shut it away someplace so we can get out and talk with you.”
“It’s only a puppy,” Karen said. “It doesn’t look dangerous.”
“I don’t like puppies. I don’t like dogs, period. Any shape or any size.”
“Come here, Coco.” The woman stooped and gathered up the leaping animal. “I’ll go put him in the toolshed, okay?”
“That’ll be great. Just make sure the door’s shut tight.”
They sat in silence while Mrs. Sanchez carried the dog, still yapping, around the corner of the house. When she returned a few moments later with her arms empty, Officer Wilson opened the door and got out of the car.
“There’s nothing new to report,” he said apologetically. “I’m off duty today and not here on official business. I thought, though, it might be a good thing for you to talk to this friend of mine, Karen.”
“I don’t need more talking,” the woman said. “What I need is my baby back. For a week now, she’s been gone! For a week now, she’s been off somewhere with that maldito, crying for her mama, wanting to sleep at night in her own room. God knows what kind of place he has her in! You’re the police! Why don’t you find her?”
“These things take time,” Officer Wilson said. “It’s tough tracking down somebody who has no ties. At least you know that it is Carla’s father. He’s not going to do anything that’s going to hurt her.”
“Carla needs to be home,” the woman said emphatically. “She needs to be home with her mama. She needs to be in school.”
“We are going to find her, Mrs. Sanchez. Believe me, we’re doing the best we can.” He went around the car to the passenger’s side and opened the door for Karen. “This is Karen Connors. She’s going to help us.”
“Help, how?” challenged Mrs. Sanchez, regarding Karen suspiciously. “She’s not a policewoman. She’s just a girl.”
“Karen finds children,” said Officer Wilson. “Last week she found a boy who was missing. His parents were just as worried about him as you are about Carla. Karen closed her eyes and thought about him, and she was able to tell us where he was.”
Mrs. Sanchez’s expression altered slightly. Her dark eyes flickered with a sudden glint of something that could have been either hope or fear.
“Una bruja?” she questioned softly.
“No, not a witch, a ‘guesser.’ A special kind of guesser.”
“You guess right?” Mrs. Sanchez asked Karen. “You can guess where Carla is, and she will be there?”
“I can’t make any promises,” Karen said. “You can’t count on anything. I knew the missing boy, but I don’t know Carla. I don’t even know what she looks like.”
“Her mother has a photograph,” Officer Wilson said.
“It’s her school picture,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “She looks so beautiful. Come inside, and I show you.”
The inside of the Sanchez home proved to be as unassuming as its mud-brick exterior. The front room was sparsely furnished, containing only a sagging, overstuffed sofa, two worn chairs, and a large television set. The walls were plastered and painted white, and they were hung with an assortment of pictures depicting religious subject matter.
The stars of the display seemed to be Jesus blessing the children and the Virgin Mother in various attitudes of prayer.
On top of the TV, in a metallic dollar-store frame, there stood an eight-by-ten enlargement of a solemn-faced girl of grammar school age. Her eyes were dark and luminous, and her thick black hair fell almost to her waist. She was as pretty as her mother had indicated. She also looked shy and sweet and vulnerable. She did, indeed, appear to be a child who should be “home with her mama.”
“It’s her last school picture,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “This time she didn’t blink. Last year when they took the picture her eyes were closed.”
“This picture is lovely,” said Karen.
“She’s pretty, yes?”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Could Karen see Carla’s room?” asked Officer Wilson. “If she could spend some time around Carla’s things, she might be able to… well, to ‘guess’ a little better.”
“The best thing she likes now is her bike,” Mrs. Sanchez told them. “Her papa bought it for her when he got into town this last time.”
“Where is the bike?” the officer asked her.
“It’s not here now. They took it with them. I guess she wouldn’t go without it. They didn’t take anything else, not her clothes, not anything, but they took that new bike.”
“That’s okay,” Officer Wilson said. “It’s the older things that work the best for this. What about her toys and her favorite clothes? Are there things she’s had since she was a baby?”
“Come, I’ll show you,” Mrs. Sanchez said.
Carla’s bedroom was hardly more than a cubicle, but, perhaps for that very reason, there was a coziness about it. There were Mickey Mouse curtains on the windows, and the narrow youth bed was covered with a hand-embroidered spread. On the pillow, there rested an obviously well-loved teddy bear that might once hav
e been buttercup yellow but was now a shade more closely resembling apple cider. The only other furnishings consisted of a straight-backed chair and a dresser with a mirror over it. On the walls there were framed pictures of the same religious subjects that were displayed in the living room.
Karen glanced helplessly about her.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“That’s up to you,” Officer Wilson told her. “What Anne does is sit in the room alone for a while and think about the person she wants to locate. She looks at the clothes and belongings. She touches them. She calls it ‘getting vibes.’ ”
“You get vibes on Carla,” Mrs. Sanchez said eagerly. “We’ll wait outside. When you get through, you come out and tell us where Carla and her papa are.” It was apparent from the altered tone of her voice that she was actually beginning to believe in the possibility of this hoped-for miracle’s occurring.
“I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee anything,” Karen said. “I can’t believe, I mean, I just don’t think—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Officer Wilson told her. “Just think of it as an experiment. Either it works or it doesn’t, okay?”
“Okay,” Karen said.
But it wasn’t okay. She realized that as soon as he and Mrs. Sanchez had closed the door behind them, leaving her alone in Carla’s tiny bedroom. The expression in the eyes of Carla’s mother had been too abruptly trusting. The woman was desperate; she was ready to clutch at straws.
It’s not fair, Karen thought resentfully. I didn’t realize what I was getting into. That man has no right to put me in this position.
But she was now committed. There was no way at this point that she would be able to get out of the predicament. She had to make an effort, and, as Officer Wilson had said, it would either work or it wouldn’t. Actually, it wasn’t totally inconceivable that she might be successful. After all, she had found Bobby. On that occasion, though, the vision had come of its own accord, springing effortlessly into her mind. To accept a spontaneous revelation was one thing. It was different to set out deliberately to try to create one.
Officer Wilson had suggested that she look at the clothes. Well, she could do that much at least. It would probably be as good a way to start as any.
Crossing the room to the closet, Karen opened the door and peered inside. There were only a few garments hanging from the crossbar: a winter parka, a couple of cotton school dresses, and at the back, in a plastic dry cleaner’s bag, a white lace dress that had undoubtedly been worn by Carla at her First Communion.
Tentatively, Karen ran her fingers over the thin material of the parka. Carla must have spent some chilly days, she thought sympathetically. She touched the school clothes and then, with the uncomfortable feeling that she was intruding where she had no business, she took down the hanger that held the Communion dress.
Shoving back the protective covering, she lifted the folds of material to her face. With her eyes tightly closed, she tried to visualize Carla in the dress. It was easy to imagine what she must have looked like. With her huge eyes aglow and the soft mouth smiling, the child must have been as radiant as an angel.
Karen could imagine the picture, but she could not see it. The face in her mind was only a reflection of the image in the photograph; there was no reality to it, as there had been with her vision of Bobby.
The starched lace was scratchy against her cheek, and the heavy odor of dry-cleaning chemicals assaulted her sinuses. It was obvious, Karen thought ruefully, that any “vibes” she might get from Carla were not going to be found within the confines of this closet.
Karen replaced the hanger on the bar and carefully adjusted the dress so that it hung without wrinkles. Shoving the closet door closed, she went back over to the bed. She started to sit down, and then, on impulse, took off her shoes and stretched herself full length on top of the spread.
Picking up the toy bear, she hugged it against her chest as Carla must often have done.
Again, she closed her eyes.
She lay there for a long time, waiting. Nothing happened. No sudden detailed vision came springing to greet her. The bed was soft and unevenly lumpy, and the bear smelled of chewing gum. Then, as moments passed, it began to take on another, less pleasant odor, like the faint, rank stench of moldy dampness and rotting leaves.
The room was chilly—strangely so, since the day itself was not. Karen shivered and resisted the urge to slide in beneath the covers. The thick adobe walls of the Valley houses not only insulated against the cold of winter but they also did an effective job of keeping out the gentle warmth of springtime.
Cuddling the bear closer, she focused her thoughts determinedly on Carla. Somewhere she existed, a fragile, sweet-faced child in the company of the man who was her father. Where are they now? Karen asked herself, reaching out with her mind as far as she could, holding it open, waiting for an answer.
Time passed. Still nothing happened.
At last, feeling ridiculous for having allowed herself to be persuaded to attempt this feat, she got up from the bed, smoothed the spread, and set the bear gently back on the pillow.
Then she went out into the living room to break the news to Carla’s mother that the experiment had been a failure.
CHAPTER 7
“I shouldn’t have agreed to go there,” Karen said. “I’ve never felt so dumb in my entire life.”
They were driving back along the road by the river. It was a replay in reverse of the trip that they had made that morning, except that now the sun was high in the sky and the feeling of hopeful anticipation that had brightened the earlier trip was sadly missing.
“It was worth a try,” Officer Wilson said. “Things aren’t any worse now than they were before.” He paused, and then said, a bit too casually, “About the dog…”
“The dog?” Karen repeated blankly.
“The mutt back there at the Sanchezes’. You must have thought I acted pretty weird.”
“Lots of people don’t like dogs,” said Karen.
“Yeah, but… well, here I am, a cop. I’m supposed to have it all together, right? And then I overreact like that. Well, the thing is—” He drew a deep breath. “I got mauled by a Doberman when I was a kid. We were over visiting some friends of my parents, and my older brother and I were out running around in their backyard. The dog belonged next door. I guess it wasn’t used to noisy kids. It went into some kind of frenzy and jumped the fence and tore right into me. It was a terrifying experience. I’ve never been able to get over it.”
“That’s terrible!” exclaimed Karen. “Were you badly hurt?”
“My left arm was mangled. For a while, they thought they might have to amputate. It took two operations to get things fixed, and I’ve still got plenty of scars. The crazy thing was that Steve was closer to the fence than I was. The dog ran straight past him and threw itself on me.”
“Your brother wasn’t bitten?”
“No, and he should have been. He pulled the dog off me and never got so much as a nip. That’s how it’s always been with Steve, though. He’s the family Wonder Boy—everything he touches turns to gold. He’s currently at the top of his class in law school, married to another law student who looks like a movie star. When they graduate, they’re going into practice with my father. They’ve got the perfect kid, too; he could be in baby-food commercials.” He took his left hand off the steering wheel to glance at his watch. “Do you want to stop somewhere and pick up a sandwich? You never had breakfast.”
“I’d like that.” Karen suddenly realized that she was, indeed, very hungry. “Thanks, Officer Wilson.”
“Rob.”
“What?”
“My name’s Rob. I’m off duty right now, so you can just call me Rob, okay? If we take the next exit, we should run smack into a Burger King.” He smiled at her.
“That sounds great,” Karen said. But then… it didn’t.
“No, let’s not,” she contradicted herself. “Let’s stay on this road.”
/> “The restaurants are all closer to town,” Rob said.
“I’m sure I remember passing a McDonald’s on our way out here.”
She heard herself making the statement with bewilderment. It was a blatant lie. There were no fast-food places in this area.
Rob obviously knew this. He glanced at her sharply but did not comment.
The silence between them lengthened uncomfortably until Karen finally broke it.
“I don’t know why I said that.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t want you to turn,” Karen said. “I don’t know why. I felt like I had to give you some sort of reason, so I said that stupid thing about McDonald’s.”
“I’m not going to turn,” Rob said. “I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go.”
“It’s not much farther. A mile or so down this road is all, and then to the right. You’ll be turning onto a dirt road like the one that led to the Sanchez place, but it will be narrower.”
She was issuing directions without even thinking about it. The instructions she was giving made no more sense to her than they must to Rob. Karen knew little or nothing about the geography of the Valley. The few previous times that she had been out there had been back in her childhood when her mother had driven her out in the fall to buy apples and pumpkins. She had no memory of any detours on those occasions. The fruits and vegetables they had come for had been on prominent display on stands along the highway.
There was no explanation, either, for the tension that she was feeling. On one hand, she did want Rob to keep on driving in the direction they were headed and to take the turnoff she had indicated. On the other, she wanted him to take her home. The feeling of apprehension was coming out of nowhere, but it was increasing so rapidly that she was beginning to feel weak and a little nauseated.
Was she feeling a reaction to the pressure she had been under at the Sanchezes’? If so, why hadn’t she experienced it sooner? In Carla’s room, surrounded by the child’s possessions, she had felt nothing.
The white lace dress, which must surely have symbolized an important occasion in the little girl’s life, had stirred no response from her whatsoever. The yellow bear, tattered with loving, had lain in her arms like a rock. If Carla was missing her bear and reaching out with her mind to recall its comforting softness, Karen had not felt any awareness of such longings. Bobby’s terror she had experienced as though it were her own. Carla’s emotions were not coming through to her at all.