“Look at her.”
Jim and Sturtevante stared at Kim's prostrate form. One of her hands remained on the poisonous poem while the other had let go of the parchment poem.
Jessica cautioned in a raspy whisper, “She's clearly in a trance state. You don't jerk a person back from where she is; it could cause serious problems.”
“But she's contaminating the crime scene,” muttered Parry.
“I'm responsible for the integrity of the crime scene, and I say let her fucking be.”
Approximately five minutes passed, during which they watched Kim's face and body for indications that she was going deeper and deeper into repose. Kim's body language clearly said that she was shutting down, simulating the state of the victim beside her. Jessica feared that if Kim simulated death too closely, she could fall into a comatose state from which she might never return.
Parry must have felt the same fear, as he whispered into Jessica's ear, “Maybe we ought now to carefully bring her around?” Jessica agreed. “Yes, perhaps we should revive her.”
Jessica drew nearer to the bed. Placing a hand over Kim, she was preparing to calmly urge her friend back into consciousness when she noticed the dizzyingly fast movement of the eyes beneath Kim's eyelids. What had appeared peaceful slumber was in fact filled with agitation. Her sleep proved fitful beneath the outward calm, as if disturbed by nightmare images. None of the others could guess the nature of Kim's journey into the mind of the victim, and none could know what clues she might carry back from her psychic journey.
Even though she was a scientist, Jessica believed in Kim Desinor's psychic powers because she had seen the miraculous work Kim had done in the past; she had learned from Kim that there truly were more things between heaven and hell than were dreamed up in scientific circles.
“Is she… is she okay?” asked Sturtevante.
“I've never seen her work before, but I've read of cases she's solved by tapping into the consciousness of living victims,” said Parry. “Like the one in Houston a few years ago. But this… tapping into the mind of a dead man; this looks damned dangerous.”
“Rest assured, she's the best,” Jessica replied.
Suddenly Kim's body began an epileptic-seizure-like paroxysm that first set her teeth gnashing and then chattering with the extreme cold she felt. Jessica felt the cold as well when Kim gripped her wrist, and her own body trembled in response. Jessica hugged her friend, providing the warmth that Kim's nonverbal gestures screamed out for.
“Are you… all right… Kim?” she asked between gasps, feeling the tip-of-the-iceberg effect, and at the same moment wondering how much cold Kim could withstand.
Kim could not for the moment reply.
“Get some blankets, hot coffee!” Jessica shouted. “And close that window!”
Sturtevante and Parry rummaged through the place for these items, Sturtevante making the coffee. Meanwhile, Jessica, still trembling, struggled to get Kim on her feet. Once she was standing, Jessica walked her in circles to get her circulation going, saying, “Keep moving, dear; walk with me.” The longer she held on to Kim, the colder she herself became, until her own teeth began to chatter.
In another few minutes, Kim and Jessica, wrapped in blankets, moved into the other room, far from the body. Here they drank steaming-hot coffee out of hefty mugs that once belonged to Maurice Deneau. The others stood by, their eyes telling Jessica how anxious they were for any tidbits of information that Kim might reveal, but Parry remained silent, hesitant about asking. Seeing is believing, and they had seen the psychic suffer during her time spent in trance.
Kim now appeared confused and disoriented. Unsure of her surroundings, she asked Jessica, “Wh-where are we?”
Jessica informed her.
The others watched as a strange, rust-colored rash that had shown up on Kim's cheeks and arms began to dissipate, these “stigmata like” signs disappearing as quickly as they appeared.
Kim looked about the kitchen area where they sat, nodded, and then complained, “Have a nasty, strange, rust like taste in my mouth.”
“That's Sturtevante's coffee,” said Parry, making light of it.
“No, this isn't coffee. It's something Maurice tasted before he died. It's metallic, like… like sulfur, only worse, coppery sulfuric taste.” She began nervously switching the coffee cup from one hand to the other, back and forth. “My stomach… doesn't feel so good. Tingling sensation in all my extremities, particularly these,” she said, holding her fingers up to the light as if they were on fire. She placed the coffee cup aside. “I fear I'll drop it. My fingers feel so numb.”
“Where you've been, I don't wonder,” said Jessica, sipping at her coffee.
“Exactly where is that?” asked Parry, one of Maurice's books in his hand. “Where precisely were you just then, Dr. Desinor. I mean when you were, forgive the phrase, 'in bed' with the… the victim.”
“Go ahead, say it,” Kim replied, “in bed with the dead.”
“All this morbid poetry, it's rubbing off on you, Kim,” Jessica joked.
“Judging from his diary entries,” Parry commented, “Maurice fancied himself a poet. He's written a lot of verse in his private journal. It's pretty maudlin stuff, about how he is too much put upon by the forces of this world, but I'll wade through it. Who knows… maybe it'll reveal something about him or his killer.”
Sturtevante insisted, “You going to tell us what you saw when you were in trance, Dr. Desinor?”
“Didn't see a thing, sorry.”
“Nothing? Not a thing?” the detective repeated.“Felt a great deal, but no, my mental eyes were closed. I saw no images, no faces, no visual revelations. Too overwhelmed, I suspect, by the feelings of the moment-which I suspect is how Maurice felt.”
“Then what did you feel?” pressed Sturtevante “Feel… what did I feel? Felt a gnawing, rat like pain in my abdomen; felt surprise, amazement, if you will.”
“Go on.”
“I felt dry-throated, my-or Maurice's-entire body went cold-cold as a parched desert in winter; felt my throat go arid as sand, like… like I was choking on dust, but this dust was laden with sulfur, or some such chemical. Next, I felt nausea and numbing and tingling all at once, especially in the hands and feet-fingers and toes, actually.”
“Anything else?” urged Sturtevante, clearly taking mental notes.
“Toward the end, I felt an overwhelming sense of calm replace the painful cold; the calm flooded over me, replacing any sensations of pain or discomfort. I was left with no sensations any longer. The ultimate sensation- peace and unfeeling.”
“Who said, 'Only the dead are at peace'?” asked Parry.
“The quote is 'Only the dead know peace.' Old Mexican saying, I think,” replied Jessica. “Else it came from an old John Wayne western.”
Jessica saw Jim smile at this. His boyish grin brought on flashes of memory for her-memories of times when each of them noticed every small detail about the other, from the way her hair fell across her cheek to the way he traced her lifeline on her palm. She recalled how, at one time, they could not get enough of each other, how the wine of endorphins fed their love-”the true nectar of the gods,” she had once told him. She wondered how they might begin to relax around each other after so much had happened between them. She wondered if it was possible to work a case alongside Jim, or if the two of them were foolish to try.
Sturtevante continued to interrogate Kim. “Then you're telling us that you saw nothing about the murder?” The detective's voice carried an edge like a knife blade. “You can't even tell us who wrote the poem left beside the body, or the poem on the body? If the two were or were not written by the same person?”
“I didn't say that.”
“What can you tell us, then, about the poetry on the parchment?”
“It's the work of the victim; his parchment, his pen, his words. I got those words again, pressing in on me- rampage and quark-and another word insinuated itself on my mind as well.”
“What word?” asked Jessica.
“Pre/light. “Like a preflight check you do on an airplane?”
“I can't say, only that it's somehow important. “You're sure the poem on the paper is Maurice's?” repeated Sturtevante.
