'And that is all I am up for today,' Lila said flatly. She wasn't speaking to either Cree or Jack, just telling it to the world at large: Enough. Still she held herself rigid. The way a hunted rabbit freezes, Cree thought, hoping it will disappear into the background.
And then Lila exploded: 'Isn't that enough? I mean, doesn't that give you the general idea? You want more? What is the point?' And she broke suddenly, a tree going over in a gale. She folded over her knees, crying wrenchingly.
Agonized for her, Cree almost went to her side. But some instinct told her to wait. And after a moment Jack took the initiative.
He bent and held her shoulders and rocked her tenderly. 'Come on now. Let's get out of here. Let's go home. Come on, darlin'.'
For a long time Lila stayed bent double as if her back had cracked under the strain. And then she unfolded without a word and numbly let him lead her out of the house.
9
Cree got back to her hotel room feeling sticky and nauseous. Lila's wrenching tale had shaken her. The tension was contagious, and when they'd emerged from Beauforte House into the baking heat of daylight, Cree realized that she'd been sweating heavily the whole time.
Throughout Lila's narrative, Cree had picked up her feelings, resonated with them to an unprecedented degree. And Lila's experiences were fantastic. They didn't jibe with anything Cree had encountered in her own work or with accounts from any other legitimate researchers of parapsychology.
If Edgar were here, he'd ask her to put words to the feeling – both a good friend's curiosity about her special talents and a scientist's recommendation to try to articulate even the most subjective experience.
The only thing she could compare it to was the one time she'd seen a tornado. She and Mike had been driving to visit his parents in Southern Illinois and had heard the warning on the car radio, telling them that funnel clouds had been sighted nearby. Cree thought it would be fun to witness one of nature's most powerful phenomena. So despite Mike's misgivings, they pulled over and got out to sit on the hood of the car, where they had a good view of seemingly endless wheat fields beneath a troubled sky. First the light turned a sick yellow as the clouds clotted at the horizon, fraught with occluded lightning. Around the car, sudden turbulences followed pockets of calm so still they felt airless. The scattered trees along the road alternately shivered and then sagged submissively, and the grain fields dimpled and cratered and went still again as if some gigantic, invisible creature had landed and rolled and bounded up again. Then an obscene nipple formed in the overcast and suddenly a snake of cloud was there, groping toward the earth a couple of miles away. And as the funnel vortex solidified and began to rove, Cree had recognized her own arrogance: That mindless hunger and power wasn't fun or interesting or anything but terrifying, and there was nothing in her thoughts but a prayer the rooting snout wouldn't turn her way.
That's how Lila's psychic 'weather' felt.
And the scariest part was that she knew Lila had quit before recounting the really bad stuff. Lila had a lot more to tell.
The three of them had driven back to the Warrens' lakeside house, where Cree recovered the polygraph harness and other gear. Lila clearly needed to rest, so they didn't discuss anything, but Cree made an appointment to meet them at their residence again later in the afternoon. On the way back to the hotel, she had stopped at a restaurant and stared at the lunch menu for ten minutes before realizing she couldn't eat anything.
Now it was just one o'clock and she felt used up, shaky, sick.
She was about to take a shower, try to scrub away the feeling, when the phone rang.
'I'm just checking in to see how our cash cow is doing.' Joyce's pragmatic-sounding New York voice, so good to hear. 'Do you think there's something there for us?'
It took a moment for Cree to decide what to say. ' I 'm not sure. We've got a really traumatized witness. So far, I'm thinking this is probably psychological. But we were just at the house, and I did, you know… pick up that… there might be something…'
'You're sounding very faint, Cree. I can hardly hear you.'
Cree made an effort to speak into the receiver: 'I think this might be a case where the witness has other issues, maybe even a brain disorder. We were just at the house… I haven't looked at her tapes yet.'
'You don't sound too good. You taking care of yourself?'
'I'm okay.'
Joyce made a skeptical sound. 'So is New Orleans as terrific as they say? Hint, hint – don't you need me to come help with research?'
'Not yet. We'll see, maybe I'll have a better handle on this by tomorrow.'
'All right. In the meantime, I've got that list of research resources you asked me to compile. New Orleans is very into its history and architecture, so there's quite a bit – historical societies up the proverbial ying-yang, universities, museums – '
'Great. Well, e-mail it to me. Also, Joyce, there's a murder case I'd like to know more about. Took place two years ago – a New Orleans TV news anchor, Templeton Chase. Can you do a search on that and prepare me a brief?'
'Love to,' Joyce said. And she meant it: Joyce loved the forensic dimensions of their cases and was very expert at digging. Cree didn't look forward to Joyce's reaction when she found out the murder was unsolved but figured her love of investigation would bring her around in the end.
'Look for something in your mail tonight,' Joyce said. 'Let's see
… in other news, Ed called, he's excited about the situation there. I gave him your hotel number, so you'll probably hear from him. Your sister called, ditto. Oh, yes, and that Mrs. Wilson left a message while I was away from the desk. What're we going to do about that, Cree? I mean, I know this is a weird field anyway, but – a dog?' She signed off with a wet-sounding kiss.
There was a lot to do before meeting Lila and Jack at four. Cree made a mental list. Several times since touring the house with Lila, Cree had caught herself gripping her own wrists and anxiously kneading them, a gesture of Lila's she'd unconsciously appropriated. Yeah, you needed to identify with the client, but you couldn't do any good for a person who was going to pieces if you went to pieces along with her. So, first on the list, very definitely: Get shit together.
That meant taking a shower and spending half an hour naked on a towel on the floor. Deirdre was the one who had suggested she try yoga as a countermeasure for the dangerous confusions of her work, and it had proved a real help. Cree's routine began with pranayama, breathing exercises that focused her mind on the simple act of drawing air deep into her body and exhaling completely. Now she was able to shed some of the whirlwind thoughts and emotions, and after a few minutes a glow of energy began to burn in her stomach, just below her belly button. Once the breathing rhythm and the tummy-ckfera glow were well established, she segued into neck rolls and other basic stretches, and then moved through a series of asanas, holding each position until the warmth spread up into her chest, her neck and scalp, out her limbs and into every muscle and nerve. She finished by sitting in lotus position, hands held on her lap in the dhyana mudra, mind just hovering. A vast silk banner rippling gently in boundless space, buoyed in the subtlest uprising breeze, she thought. Then she let go of that, too. Found a timeless time of no words, no images at all.
And after a while she was back. By the time she unhooked her ankles from her thighs, her skin had goosebumped from the hotel room air-conditioning, and she felt pretty sure she could handle the rest of the day. She got up and put on some comfortable clothes.
She cleared the desk of tourist literature to make room for the polygraph register and tape recorder. Then she turned on her laptop and plugged in the portable roll-paper fax machine Edgar had adapted. When the computer had booted up, she opened a program that imported data from the register's tape and exported it as digital data the fax printer would convert to graphic images. The little machine began its stuttering mumble and started spooling out paper. A quick glance at the first foot or so told Cree that everything was working as it should: five jagged lines superimposed on an index grid measuring intensity levels against the passage of time.
They'd been in the house for just over half an hour, so it would be a long scroll; Cree figured it would require
