Six Seconds (6 page)

13

Blue Rose Creek, California

After repeated attempts, a woman finally answered Maggie’s call to Madame Fatima.

She listened to Maggie’s request and told her to call back the next day, which Maggie did.
“Madame says not today. Call tomorrow.”
“If I could just come and talk to her, please.”
“She has little time to help. Call tomorrow.”
“Please, I need to see her. Please. I beg you.”
Maggie heard a second voice in the background then a hand covered the mouthpiece muffling a conversation between two people at the other end of the line. Then the woman said, “Madame says you may call back this afternoon, around three.”
Maggie thanked her and, with spirits lifted, resumed work at the bookstore.
She restocked shelves and was taking care of orders when a customer jingled her keys to get her attention before thrusting a napkin at her with a title scrawled on it. The woman reeked of cigarettes.
“I need this damn book
right now
for my sister’s birthday.”
After Maggie’s computer search showed it was out of print, the woman left muttering.
“What’s the G.D. point of a bookstore!”
Maggie was used to rude customers. Shrugging it off, she glanced at her watch. Nearly three. Her turn to take her afternoon break. She went to the children’s section and approached Louisa to cover for her.
“Did you see him, Maggie? He’s here again. He was in history and politics, but I lost him on the third floor.”
“Who?”
“The creep who pretends he’s reading.” Louisa stepped up on a toadstool and scanned every aisle she could see from the Enchanted Story Corner.
“Don’t be so paranoid. This is a bookstore. I’m going on my break, okay?”
“He stares at us all the time. I’m going to tell Robert to tell the creep to leave.”
“I’ll be back in fifteen.”
Maggie went to the public phone outside the staff room near the coffee shop. As Madame Fatima’s line rang, Maggie’s heart filled with anticipation. Would this lead her to Logan? She whispered a prayer. How had her life reached the point where she needed a re luctant mystic to help her find her son and husband?
I don’t care. I’ll do whatever it takes to find them.
Maggie fought her tears as the line was answered and she identified herself.
“Yes, Madame says come tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, Maggie, at seven.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you so much.”
“There is no certainty she can help you in any way, you understand?”
“I understand.”
“You must come alone. Do you agree to come alone?”
“Yes.”
“Madame says to bring a personal item of your hus band’s and one belonging to your son. Something they’ve touched many times, something metal if possible.”
“Yes.”
“Here is the address and directions. Do you have a pen?”
“Yes.”
Maggie jotted the details on the back of the page Stacy Kurtz had given her, folded it and put it in her pocket and returned to work, never noticing that the man Louisa had called “the creep” had been standing an aisle away in the magazine section.
He’d had a direct line of sight to Maggie.
During her phone call, he’d been reading
The Econo mist.
Or so it seemed.

14

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

It was time to face his crime.

As Graham drove south he looked west beyond the skyline to the jagged peaks silhouetted against the setting sun, standing there like a monumental truth.

Hang on, he told himself.
He made good time escaping the fringes of the me tropolis and its cookie-cutter suburbs. Some forty minutes south, he exited Highway 2, taking a paved, two-lane rural road that twisted west into the foothills.
His pulse quickened as he mentally counted to what awaited him.
One kilometer, two, three, four, five…
He tightened his grip on the wheel then pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.
He needed to do this. Confront it, even if it pierced him.
He turned off the ignition, got out and walked to the site.
A plain white wooden cross marked the spot where Nora took her last breath.

Where he’d killed her.
A car hurtled by, kicking up a gust that nudged him closer to the roadside memorial for her. Nora had taught the fourth grade. They’d met when he was in Traffic and had come to talk to her class about safety.
Safety.
He pushed away the irony and touched the cross. Caressed its smooth surface. It had been erected by her students who’d adorned it with artificial flowers, pic tures, small stuffed toys and printed notes protected in clear plastic sandwich bags.
We love you and we miss you, Mrs. Graham,
one said.
We’ll be together with the angels,
said another.
The epitaphs pulled him back to that night.
They’d gone to a Flames game because they’d needed some time together. And between them, she was the bigger hockey fan. He’d been working a lot of double shifts on a joint-forces operation with Calgary city police. A stress-fest, costing him sleep. He’d yawned throughout the game.
“I can drive if you’re too tired,” she’d offered as they crawled with the postgame traffic from the parking lot.
“I’m good.”
It took longer than usual to get to the expressway.
From there it was fine. It was a clear night. No snow. The roads were dry. The heater was blowing a gentle current of warm air to offset a slight chill. It felt so good being with her. It was tranquil and as they left the city Graham fell quiet.
“You okay there, buddy?” she asked.
He yawned again.
“Yup.”
As they got off the highway, heading into the foot hills and deeper into the darkness, she gazed up at the constellations, naming them for him.
“Cassiopeia, Cepheus…”
Her soft voice, the hum and warm air relaxed Graham.
“Ursa Minor, Draco, Ursa Major…”
A perfect moment and it lulled him to surrender to his exhaustion.
The last things he remembered—
“DANIEL!”
The car was vibrating, her hand seized his arm.
“DANIEL!”
They’d gone off the road. He’d tried to correct it but overreacted, turning the wheel too sharply. The car rose, then they were airborne, rolling over and over, pave ment, grass, metal crunching, glass breaking, dirt, lights and stars, all churning into nothingness.
He’s on the ground looking at their overturned car, its headlights pointing in odd directions. He smells gasoline. The rad’s hissing. He sees her in her seat with the deployed air bag, head turned all wrong, like a bad joke, like a rag doll.
Someone is screaming.
Screaming her name.
It’s him.
Everything blurs.
Emergency radios, sirens and he’s on a stretcher moving fast.
So fast.
Something’s pounding the air.
It’s deafening.
He’s flying. Ascending. Glimpsing strobing lights below. A galaxy of suburban lights wheel beneath him.
Next, a powerful antiseptic smell. Starched bed linen against his skin. He’s alive but not right. Sore but numb. A tube connects his arm to a bag of liquid on a pole. Faraway, hollow voices echo his name.
“Mr. Graham?”
He’s not dreaming.
“I’m Dr. Simpson. You’ve been airlifted to our hospital. You’ve been in an accident, Mr. Graham. You’ve got broken ribs, lacerations and a mild concus sion. Nod if you understand.”
His head brushes against the pillow.
“Your wife was hurt badly. Her injuries were extreme. I’m very, very sorry.”
Graham’s heart slams against his chest.
“The paramedics did everything they could but she never regained consciousness. Her neck was broken. Her internal injuries were massive. I’m so sorry.”
The earth quakes.
“And the baby.”
Baby? What baby? It is a mistake. It is a dream because they don’t have a baby.
“She was three weeks along and may not have known she was pregnant.”
A blood rush roars in his brain, the universe cracks and darkness coils around him, crushing him with the realization.
HE’D FALLEN ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL AND KILLED HIS WIFE AND THEIR UNBORN CHILD.
Now, all he had to keep him alive was his guilt.
It’s why he’d gone to the mountains. To distribute the last of Nora’s ashes then use his gun to be with her and their baby.
What else was left?
Standing there alone in the prairie night, the burden of his guilt forced him to his knees. Aching for her, he gripped the cross. “Nora, I am so sorry. Forgive me. Tell me what to do. Please. Tell me what I am supposed to do now?”
He searched the stars for the answer. It was delivered on a gentle breeze, resurrecting what had happened when he’d gone into the river to save the girl.
He’d heard Nora’s voice.
“Keep going, Daniel.”
This was his answer.
This case would be his redemption because his wife’s voice was not the only one guiding him.
“Don’t—daddy.”
So much was garbled and drowned by the river. He didn’t comprehend all of what Emily Tarver was trying to tell him. But now he believed in his gut that the key to unlocking this tragedy was in her dying words…and any break that heaven would allow.
Graham’s cell phone rang.
“Corporal Graham, this is Prell. Just spoke with FIS. Just wanted to advise you that they pulled clear latents off the Tarver vehicle and got hits through CPIC. We have a name. Are you ready to copy?”
Graham hurried back to his car.

15

Bonita Hills, California

Maggie battled to keep her hopes in check. As she threaded her way through the freeway traffic,
her stomach tensed.
Would her nightmare ever end?
Would she ever see Logan and Jake again? Where
were they?
Each day had passed without news. Nothing from
police. Nothing from the courts. Nothing from the sup
port groups, Logan’s doctor, Logan’s school or the private
investigator. Nothing from her amateur Internet search
ing.
Not a word from Jake or Logan.
Nothing but deepening anguish.
Dammit, why did Jake do this?
Maggie searched the traffic in vain for answers.
Whatever it was, maybe Jake just needed time to sort it
all out. Maggie consoled herself with that explanation,
hoping with all her heart that Madame Fatima would
work a miracle tonight.
But who was she?

Maggie had called Stacy Kurtz, who’d pressed her police contacts for more information, urging Maggie to keep what she’d learned confidential.

The woman was known as Madame Fatima Soleil. She’d descended from French gypsies who’d fled per secution in Senegal and roamed Europe in the early 1900s. Her family tree branched into northern Quebec and Louisiana’s bayous.

As a young woman working in the cafés of Germany, Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia reading tea leaves, Fatima had told a Czech police official’s wife that her youngest daughter would nearly drown within one year. Some ten months later, the girl was on a school trip in Rome where she was found at the bottom of the hotel pool. She was pulled unconscious from the water and had barely survived.

The girl’s mother told her husband, a skeptical, case hardened detective. But months later when the ten-year old son of a Russian diplomat was kidnapped for ransom in Prague, he sought Fatima’s help.

Fatima met the boy’s parents, spent time in the boy’s bedroom, then told Czech detectives to search a specific spot near a riverbed in the St. George Forest, an hour northeast of Prague. They found the boy buried alive in a coffin equipped with an air pump. Police traced the pump to the point of purchase, then to his abductors and arrested them at gunpoint.

At her request, Fatima’s role was never ever made public. And she’d refused any money. Later in life, her reputation, known only to a few in police circles, accompanied her when she’d moved to California. She’d planned to retire on a small inheritance, but agreed to help California police when they called upon her.

There’s the exit for Bonita Hills.
Maggie signaled.
At the first red light, she consulted her directions.

She was close to the Serenity Valley Mobile Country Club, where Madame Fatima lived alone in a sixty-by forty-foot mobile home. She had a tiny, neat-as-a-pin yard with a flower garden beneath a large picture window and a big awning that shaded much of her house. The stone walk invited Maggie to the side porch where she rang the doorbell.

She was greeted by a woman who was less than five feet tall but had a solid frame under her Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants.

“I’m Helga, Fatima’s friend.” She directed Maggie to a cloth-covered dining table in the paneled living room and kept her voice low. “Please sit down. You should know that she is not well and has very little time left, so you must—”

“Helga!” An unseen voice whisper-wheezed from the dark paneled hallway leading to the rear. “Come get me.”

Helga left Maggie who peered down the hall after her, not believing her eyes.
A thin, feeble woman, bent by age and deterioration, emerged from the darkness. One gnarled hand gripped a cane. Her free arm was hooked around Helga’s neck. The stronger woman supported her as she inched for ward.
Fatima was wearing an emerald muumuu and a green head scarf. Maggie detected the smell of jasmine as Fatima eased into a chair at the table, the silver cross hanging from the chain around her neck captured the twilight.
Maggie sat across from Fatima thinking that she re sembled a concentration-camp inmate. The skin on her face was wrapped tight to her skull behind oversize glasses. Looking beyond them, Maggie met fierce dark eyes as Fatima’s ghost of a smile liberated the tips of crooked brown teeth.
“It’s finished for me,” Fatima said, pulling off her kerchief revealing that her hair had fallen out. Small islands of down were all she had left. “The cancer. Not much longer for me. You are Maggie?”
“Yes.”
“Your husband has taken your son away and you wish to find them?”
“Yes, he’s a good man but he’s mixed up about—”
Fatima’s palm stopped her.
“Did you bring me something that belongs to each of them?”
Maggie reached into her bag for Logan’s pirate key ring and Jake’s penknife which she’d retrieved from the sofa where they were forever losing things. A fond memory flickered in the corner of her mind as she placed them in Fatima’s hands.
“My glass please, Helga.”
Helga placed a glass with ice chips next to Fatima.
“We shall begin,” Fatima said. “Whatever you hear or sense, you must not move or speak, or be afraid. If I ask questions, answer only yes or no. Say nothing more. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“The window and the candle please.” Fatima put some ice chips in her mouth. “The ice cools my throat and stomach.”
Helga lit a white candle, placed it in the center of the table, then drew the heavy curtains. Calm filled the room as Fatima extended her arms, resting her hands on the table, her skeletal fingers caressing the key ring in one hand, the penknife in the other.
Helga removed Fatima’s glasses for her. Maggie noticed the jasmine smell intensifying. The candle flame quivered in Fatima’s eyes while she continued ca ressing the knife and key ring. A sound akin to soft lowing flowed into the room before Maggie realized its source.
Fatima.
She was humming, creating a surreal aura; candle light haloed around her round head as she began to sway, her gaze fixated on nothing as if she were search ing another dimension, seeing other lives and other worlds.
All the while, Fatima never ceased massaging the knife and key ring, increasing her ardor with each passing moment, drawing energy from them, as if sensing the very thoughts Jake and Logan may have left on them.
Fatima shut her eyes.
Her body began to bounce up and down slightly as she continued humming.
“I see a truck.”
Maggie caught her breath.
“A big truck,” Fatima said. “Near mountains.”
Fatima began bouncing slightly as if she were there in the cab of a rig.

Maggie felt Logan near. Felt his presence. Detected his scent!
“Logan! Honey, it’s Mommy! Where are you?”
“Shush.” Helga touched Maggie’s wrist.
Fatima’s humming stopped.
Maggie had trespassed on the moment.
Fatima’s work resumed. She continued rubbing the items in her outstretched hands, continued humming and bouncing as if a passenger in a rig.
Fatima’s head snapped back.
Maggie gasped.
Fatima’s body jolted as if punched by a powerful force. It jerked again, nearly throwing her from the chair. Fatima’s hands let the knife and key ring slip to the table as jolt after jolt shook her in her chair.
Maggie’s skin tingled.
Fatima’s eyes bulged to the point of nearly bursting. Her pupils rolled back in her head, leaving only the whites.
She was motionless.
Each minute melted into the next, devouring time in huge chunks before Helga blew out the candle and drew back the curtains.
Fatima began coughing.
Helga brought her a fresh glass of ice chips and Maggie watched Fatima’s jaw work as she crunched them. The older woman’s body was depleted as Helga slid her glasses back onto her head then helped replace her head scarf.
“We’re done,” Helga said. “Thank you, Maggie. You may leave.”
“Fatima, did you see my husband and son?” “I saw nothing that will help.”
Maggie’s jaw dropped.
“You saw something, didn’t you?”
Fatima searched for her cane.
“You have to help me, please, tell me what to do?” Maggie asked.
Helga helped Fatima from the table.
“Please, Maggie.” Helga nodded toward the door. “We’re done.”
“Yes,” Fatima whispered, “I must sleep.”
“That’s it?”
“You must leave,” Helga said.
“No! Wait, please, you have to tell me what you saw. You have to help me!”
Fatima extended her shaking hand to Maggie’s, then dropped Logan’s key ring and Jake’s penknife into it. Fatima’s eyes held Maggie’s for an intense moment.
“No one can help, especially me.”
“What are you saying? What does that mean?”
“You should pray.”
“Pray for what? I don’t understand.” Helga was closing the door on her. “Please, you have to help me! You can try again! Please!
I felt Logan with us!
I know you saw something!”
Maggie stepped from Fatima’s mobile home and the locks clicked behind her. She leaned against the door, slid to the landing and buried her face in her hands.