Beyond Recognition

“You’ve seen that hand. I know you’ve seen that hand.”

The other woman’s face took on a look of terror. “You’re a friend of his. His girlfriend? You’re checking up on me?” She allowed it to slip.

“You have seen him!”

“You’re lying to me,” Richland said, her eyes lowered dangerously. “Do not lie to me.”

“The hand,” Daphne repeated. “You’ve seen that hand. I know you have. I saw how you reacted. I can tell you’ve seen that hand. Why? Why have I come here to you?” She tried to sound as emotionally unstable and fearful as possible. “I could have gone to any psychic. Why you?” Feed the ego, she reminded herself, having used this same principle on dozens of suspected felons.

“Because I can help you,” Emily answered, the suspicion in her eyes lessened. “Tell me about the dream.”

Daphne asked, “Am I psychic? Is there a way to stop it, control it? I don’t like these dreams. I don’t want any more of them. Is that how it starts? A dream? Dreaming?”

“We all have the ability to glimpse the future,” the woman answered clearly. “We’ve all done it: thought of an age-old friend whom we haven’t seen in years just moments before the phone rings and it is that friend on the line. Worried for a friend or relative, only to discover something terrible-or even something wonderful-has happened. Although I’ll tell you this,” she said, as an aside. “The dark, the evil, is somehow more powerfully transmitted than the good. It has been said that people close to those who have died have experienced a pain or even fallen to the floor, which, when traced later, can be connected to the exact moment of this other person’s death. Skeptics call this coincidence. I call it the Power. The difference between those people and me-between you and me, my dear-is that I can summon the Power. I can harness it. Connect with it, at my choosing. But at its core, it is no different from your dreams. Yes, I can tell that you’ve connected during those dreams. Something in this man has stirred a place in you. There may be others with this same dream; there may be none. None of that matters. What matters is that you’ve connected. And yes,” she said-answering honestly? Daphne wondered-“so have I. I know the man. I’ve seen him. He has sat in that chair.”

Daphne leapt from the chair and bumped the table in the process, and although the psychic reached out a steadying hand, the tarot deck separated and spilled across the surface, and a single card fell to the floor. The psychic stared at the card-which was face down-and a growing menace filled the room. “I’m sorry,” Daphne apologized. But Emily Richland waved off her apology and, stooping, reached for the card and turned it face up.

“Death,” she announced, her eyes finding Daphne’s. “It can be a good card,” she said, “but not always.”

Death had occupied a place in Daphne’s life since she was a child. Through her years of study and soul- searching, and some time on the therapist’s couch, she had come to understand that death is an integral part of life, but as a child she was far from that knowledge, that understanding. For years she had identified with the character of Scout in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird (she had not read the book until a young adult): the young tomboy, raised in Kentucky bluegrass country, surrounded by wealth, privilege, and death. Her father, like Atticus, a defense attorney, had won and lost cases where men’s lives were at stake. Her first close look at death was when her pony, Dell, got colic and died on a Saturday night in August. Daphne had spent that night in Dell’s stall; despite everything done for her, the old girl cried out in pain and died, Daphne’s arms clenched around her sweet-smelling neck, tears pouring out.

Death had followed her closely from that day forward. Her dearest friend on earth, her neighbor Jon Crispell, had been hit head on, killed on his twelfth birthday, coming home from a fishing trip with his sixth-grade teacher, a close friend of the family. In college, a sorority sister, made drunk by an oversexed football player, fell backward out of an open window and broke her neck in the front lawn of the Phi Gam house. Janie Whimfiemer, Daphne’s roommate during graduate school, had traveled to Africa and died there in her sleep, the cause of her death never discussed, as if the reasons for death did not matter, only the event itself. Janie was flown home to Indiana in a metal casket. Daphne had met the plane along with the family, and this had been her first sight of an actual coffin. She could remember the horror of that day still. When she drew close to people, they died. So for years she had avoided that opportunity.

She looked down at the card and shuddered. “Death and I are old friends,” she said, the room noticeably colder.

Emily picked the card off the floor and restored the deck on the table. “Tell me about the dream,” she repeated.

“I never see his face, just that hand. There’s fire, a woman screaming.”

Emily nodded gravely. She’d witnessed that hand.

“I thought about going to the police,” Daphne said, “after reading about the fires. But what’s to tell?”

“They won’t believe you,” Emily said. Her voice sounded far off, and there was weariness in her tone.

Daphne hesitated and said, “You can see the connection, can’t you? The possible connection? A man with a badly burned hand, the newspaper articles. I’m sorry. I’ve never believed in this kind of thing-psychic phenomena- but now it has happened to me, now I’ve experienced it…. What I was thinking: Maybe you could make the call to the police for me.”

Emily swallowed dryly, her throat bobbing, eyes glassy. “I can’t help you. I wish I could, but-”

“But you can,” Daphne emphasized. “Of course you can. You’ve seen him, met him; he’s been here. You could call the police and tell them that.”

“I think we’re all done here. If that’s why you’ve come, there’s really nothing I can do.”

Daphne allowed a long silence to settle over them. Still maintaining eye contact, she said, “Maybe they would pay you for such information.”

Her lips trembling, Emily gasped hoarsely, “What?”

“It’s the car, isn’t it? My car? You see, I remembered that I had left mail in the front seat. That’s how you knew I belonged to the Northwest Medical Society, which is why you were guessing doctor.” The words hit Emily as small bombs. “You know I’m neat, that I keep things clean, because that’s the way I keep my car. That’s what gave you away. I thought it might be my appearance at first, orderly and all. But the comments about my fiance-the ring, of course-and mention of Corky-the young girl-threw me off. Kept me off balance for a moment. But Corky’s notebook is in the back of the car, and her name is on it. Whoever you’re working with told you the name, didn’t she-he? — but you elected not to use it.” Daphne stood from the chair.

“Sit down!”

She took two quick steps toward the door behind Emily and pushed it open in time to see the kitchen screen door thump shut. She heard Emily right behind her. Daphne reached the back door and pulled it open, but whoever had been there was long gone. Fast, she thought.

“Stop it!” Emily cried out.

Spinning on her heels, Daphne said loudly to the woman, “You have nothing to say about this!” She took a step forward, driving Emily back. “I make one phone call, and we bring you in on a handful of fraud charges. You’re out of business.”

“You’re a cop?” It was a question, but also a statement-a realization-at the same time.

They stood only inches apart, Daphne a full head taller. She searched the other woman’s eyes and asked pointedly, “Are you part of the arsons? Straight answer: yes or no?” Their eyes locked, darted back and forth in unison.

“No,” Emily gasped, eyes averted for the first time, head lowered in submission. Exactly where Daphne wanted her.

Daphne believed her, but she waited just the same, for the woman’s next movements and words would be the final test of her guilt or innocence, whether to take her downtown or leave her here and work with her.

“It was some kind of business deal. Drugs, maybe.” Emily glanced away, then directly back into Daphne’s eyes. She drummed her thigh absent-mindedly with her peach-glitter nails. “A decent amount of scratch involved-he was willing to pay the sixty for the chart. It was the date he was worried about, why he came to see me. People consult you for dates, you know: weddings mostly. One woman, I think it was because she was having an affair … or wanted to.” Emily appeared nervous and scared. Daphne fought off a grin of satisfaction. She lived for these moments. “Because of the astrology,” she said, pointing toward the neon window. “I do charts, you know. And I do have the Power.”