Life to Life Read online

  Was Mary really a virgin?

  Why not.

  The first test-tube baby to arrive via our medical science did not appear until 1978. But it sounds like our angels have been using the technique for a very long time. And I would imagine that their methods, even way back when, would make our present state of the art seem primitive indeed.

  Did Maizey McCall have a miracle baby?

  Why not.

  I believe what we are calling it now, present state of the art, is surrogate motherhood. And not miraculous at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: A Trail of Debris

  Susan Alvarez was flat too pretty to be an assistant D.A. Soft and bouncy raven hair framed a flawless oval face and luminous eyes, tempting lips, a sometimes teasing smile. With all that, a very sharp mind. She shook my hand and escorted me into her office, sat me down, and went straight for the jugular.

  She asked me, in a soft melodious voice, "What exactly does a psychic consultant do, Mr. Ford?"

  I decided without even having to ponder it that I would be entirely up-front with this young lady; no games, no cutesy. So I replied, very soberly, "Depends on the case. If it's a missing person, I can sometimes pick up a trail if I can visit the last known whereabouts of the subject. Or if it's—"

  "What do you mean by 'pick up a trail'? What kind of trail?"

  I thought about that for a moment, then asked her, "Know how a bloodhound works?"

  She thought about my question for a moment before replying, "I'm not sure. Why don't you tell me."

  So I told her, in my own inimitable style. "Everything that is, smells. Even atoms smell. I smell. You smell. Each in our own unique way. Has to do with body chemistry. Has also to do with vibrational characteristics. An odor is a vibration. The animal brain possesses certain receptors that are stimulated by that particular kind of vibration. When those receptors are stimulated, the brain perceives odor. Okay, so far?"

  She smiled faintly and said, "Fascinating. Please continue.

  "Certain animal brains have developed particular sensitivity to those vibrations. Some animals are more sensitive to odors than to any other sense perception. A bloodhound is particularly sensitive and has highly discriminating odor receptors."

  I was finished there, but she said, "Yes?"

  So I took it all the way. "What a bloodhound follows is not an odor that lingers in the air, like perfume left behind in a room by a woman. If you've ever watched them work, the hounds are working the ground, not the air. They are following a trail along the earth. It is a trail of debris. If they were tracking you, it would be a trail of your debris."

  "What do you mean?"

  "All of us are shedding matter constantly. Dead cells, bacteria. Falls off of us in a fine cloud, all the time. And as we move, it leaves a trail. That's what the hounds follow."

  She shivered and said, "Ask a simple question..."

  I frowned and asked, "What was the question?"

  "I asked what you do."

  "Okay. I used the hounds as an example of olfactory sensitivity. But some brains, including some human brains, have a sensitivity to certain other vibrational characteristics that does not involve sensory receptors. Nobody in science has yet been able to explain exactly how this peculiar sensitivity works—or where the vibrations come from—but no serious scholar disputes the fact that it does work. And that is how I work."

  She smiled and said, "So you sort of stand around and sniff the air."

  "In a manner of speaking, yes. But not with the nose. You might say that I follow a trail of mental debris."

  She said, "Uh huh. Okay. Thank you. How's your batting average?"

  I said, "Surely Paul Stewart has briefed you on that."

  She colored slightly, twirled a pencil to cover it, quietly replied, "The final results are impressive, yes. But I was wondering how many dead ends you abandon before—uh before..."

  I helped her. "Before the processes of elimination finally give me a score, eh?"

  She colored even more. "Something like that, yes."

  I told her, "I am not a detective."

  She told me, "I know that."

  I said, "I was trained for intelligence work by the navy. And I worked five years at the Pentagon analyzing and synthesizing mountains of data that poured in constantly from around the world. I am also a cryptographer. So I have worked with puzzles in a formal sense. I still do that, but less formally. My psychic extention does not provide me with data."

  "What does it provide?"

  "Call it intuition. Or whatever you prefer. I think of it as a leap of the mind. This is what I depend upon most frequently when I am formally consulting. Maybe you'd prefer to think of it as a different way of manipulating data."

  She said, rather curtly, "I prefer to not think about it at all."

  I shrugged and said, "Hey, it's your nickel. You asked."

  She said drily, "Yes, I did, didn't I. But you did not really answer me, did you. I asked about your batting average."

  "I thought I was telling you about that."

  "No, what you told me was a lot of double-talk about naval intelligence and data manipulation."

  Well, what the hell. So much for forthrightness and friendliness. She couldn't appreciate that. I stared at her for a moment, then told her, "You really want to know if I am psychic. If I read minds and tell fortunes and all that good stuff. Right?"

  She smiled without much humor and replied, "Right."

  I said, "Okay, but just remember that it's your nickel. It's also your debris that keeps butting in between us. But it's okay. He's going to call and ask you to dinner. Any minute now."

  Those dark eyes flashed and she said, "What?"

  "Let's refine that. Any second now."

  Her telephone rang before she could respond to me. She looked at the phone and looked at me. I smiled thinly and nodded at the phone. She picked it up on the fourth ring and spoke into it: "Alvarez... yes...uh huh...well let me get back to you. Ten minutes. Okay?"

  She hung it up, said to me, “What were we...”

  I said, "You know damned well what we were..."

  She said, "Lucky guess."

  I said, "Okay. But wear the ruby earrings. He really likes those."

  She turned beet red; said, "Now wait a minute."

  I said, "Your nickel, remember. As an after-dinner treat, put on that little lacey thingamabob you picked up at Frederick's last week. He really digs that. And then—"

  She leapt to her feet; commanded, "That will be enough of that!"

  I relaxed in my chair, reached for a cigarette, said to her, "You demanded it, kid. Now, what do you say let's talk about this ridiculous case you're pushing against Ann Farrel."

  But that was the end of our interview. The D.A.'s pet prosecutor did not wish to discuss another damned thing with me.

  I advised Stewart: "You're spurring a dead horse here, Paul. Annie hasn't killed anyone and she has not conspired to kill anyone. Maybe some others have, but not this side of the veil. I suspect that a masters' game is being played here, but you can't indict—"

  “What kind of game?”

  “Okay, maybe a very limited masters' but still the same. Like World War II and the cold war and—“

  "Like what?"

  "Like that but on a smaller scale."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "All the world's a stage, like Shakespeare said; that's what I'm talking about. When things start getting a bit dull, or a bit too distorted, they send the masters onto the stage to liven it up a bit. So—" "World War II was not a play. It was—"

  "It was hell on wings, I know, but look at how it moved the world. The technological advances—my God, the advance of conscience and consciousness—the awareness that brought on the Aquarian Age—it all started there with Hitler and his court of freaks versus Churchill and Roosevelt and their angels—and God what a stage! At no time in history had there been so many masters in the game. Just count 'em, masters on both side
s, guys like—"

  "Masters of what?"

  "Of the game, dammit. Look at them all lined up there. Shit, there was Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess versus Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and de Gaulle. That was just the top line. Then you had—" "You forgot Mussolini and Tojo," Stewart said drily.

  "No, Mussolini versus Selassie was a subgame. It contributed, yeah, and there were other submasters operating in the Pacific, but the real top line was the Hitler complex. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were subgame events that stole the whole show, from our point of view, but the real game was played in Europe—and if Hitler had found time to get his nuclear program on target, look out. It would have been balls and all over Europe, and probably no more Europe. But I think a balancing factor stepped in, there, and tipped the game toward the Pacific. See, there was—"

  "Ford!"

  "Yeah?"

  "What the hell are you doing? I don't give a shit about your occult theories about World War II. I want to know—"

  "You want to know without listening, don't you. Sorry, pal, doesn't work that way. You asked for my sensing. Okay, I'm giving it the only way I know how. If you ask me to teach celestial mechanics to an aborigine, I'm first going to have to convince him that the stars are not just nightlights strung out for his convenience by a thoughtful deity, aren't I."

  "You calling me an aborigine?"

  "That's exactly what you are. That cop mentality of yours cannot begin to stretch off the surface of this planet, can it. If you can't drink it, drive it, or screw it, it doesn't exist for you, does it?"

  "Watch it."

  "You watch it. I'm tired of being called in here for consultation and then ridiculed because you fucking people can't pull your heads out of each other's asses. Do you want my sensing or don't you."

  "Keep your fucking sensing, asshole. I don't need it. I asked you just as a courtesy. I've got this thing nailed tight."

  "Sure you have. But the nails have been driven into your own coffin. They'll laugh you out of the fucking city with a fucking case like this one. You'll have to go play subcop in Pomona or Chino, maybe even West Covina. And even those guys out there will laugh you all the way to Death Valley."

  "We'll see who laughs last, asshole. These victims were all tied so close together that—"

  "That what?"

  "Fuck you. I'm not playing your silly games."

  "You don't even know how to play my games, pal. Those close together ties you're so hot about were forged in another world, on another stage. You don't even know where it's at. You'd probably hang a conspiracy rap on Judas Iscariot, wouldn't you?"

  "Judas who?"

  "The apostle who betrayed Jesus."

  "Am I supposed to laugh, or what?"

  "Sure, you may as well laugh. You'd never understand that game, anyway. Couldn't have worked without Judas. Very important role. And what about Pilate? They had to have him. What was the crime? What had the poor guy actually done? How did they make a case on that guy?"

  "Get out of here, asshole. I got no time for loonies."

  "That's what you're doing to Annie, you know. It's the same game on a slightly different stage. Could even be the same masters at work."

  "Get out of here, Ford!"

  “Or maybe from Joan of Arc! There you go! Could be. Yeah. Could be.”

  "Could be what?" he asked, interested despite himself.

  "Maybe you have a starring role and don't even know it. Ever think of yourself as a master gamesman, Paul? Ever glance into the mirror when you get up for the bathroom at night and see odd little lights radiating from your head? Ever see that?"

  He was all cooled off, now—almost contrite. And very sober. "You mean like just for a flash, for a second?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Yeah. It's a trick of the eyes, right?—trying to adjust?"

  I said, also very soberly, "No, it's your aura. What colors have you noticed?"

  "Oh well... shit, I don't know. Reds and yellows, I guess. Mostly that. Mean anything?"

  "Depends," I told him. "Is this before sex or after?"

  "Shit, I don't..." He laughed suddenly, said, "You're pulling my leg."

  I really had not been pulling his leg entirely, not all the way, but I laughed with him and said, "I didn't mean that shit about cop mentality. Actually I have a lot of respect for the police mind."

  He said, "Yeah. I didn't mean mine, either. But I still want your ass out of here."

  So I took it out of there.

  Took something else, too.

  I had known that he'd called me in just so he could pick my brains. And I knew that he would give me nothing in return; not, that is, willingly. My task was to goad him into consciously guarding it. So I could collect the debris.

  I collected some, yeah.

  The case against Annie, I learned, was not all that ridiculous. The lady was in very real trouble.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Double Cipher

  There was a direct connection between Herman Milhaul, the hopeful transsexual, and Charles Cohan McSweeney, pedophile.

  This connection, as well as the individuals themselves, seemed to be directly related to Ann Farrel and her Church of the Light.

  At the time of his death, while resisting arrest for alleged misconduct at the center, a kiddie porn case was pending against McSweeney—had been for about a year.

  This case involved several reels of 16mm film that had been viewed by vice squad officers at a film lab in Hollywood.

  McSweeney was not only the owner of that film; he was also depicted in it, but as a much younger man.

  The hard evidence—the film itself—had mysteriously disappeared before the officers could seize it, which explains the long delay in bringing formal charges against McSweeney.

  Herman Milhaul had been an employee of the film lab.

  He was also—get this—he was Clara Boone's nephew and a member of her past-lives study group.

  Get this, too: McSweeney was a first cousin of Tony Mathison, Ann's late father. So that makes Ann and McSweeney—what?—second cousins?

  But don't hold your breath over family ties. There are many of them here and I don't have them all sorted out at this point. I can tell you this much, though. Milhaul was also related in some way to McSweeney; also to—get this, now—also directly related to Wayne Sturgis, who—you may recall—is now married to Clara's half-sister Mary who already had blood ties to Milhaul. So, in some kinky way that I do not understand at this point, Ann was related to Milhaul.

  Suds, yeah. Jim is John's illegitimate son but Jill is really Jake's ex-brother, Jason.

  It gets worse than that, though

  I have this picture in my head. It could be a snapshot but more than likely is a frame from that 16mm film. In the picture, a man and a little girl of five or six are playing together. The man is in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, but I know that this is McSweeney. He is playing horsie with the little girl. McSweeney is on all fours, the child on his back; he has a leather thong between his teeth, serving as a bridle, and the child is merrily whipping him on his flanks with a loose end of the bridle. Both are naked. The child is Ann Marie Mathison.

  I have a few more pictures like that in the head. The play is not always the same and the principals are aging, but they are always naked. I would say that the time span between the frames represents five to six years.

  I also have a somewhat foggy image of a typewritten letter on Church of the Light stationery.

  I do not have the whole letter but I have the gist.

  In it, someone is urging Herman Milhaul to forget about going through with a proposed sex-change operation. Milhaul is also being firmly turned down on a request for $20,000 to pay for the operation. The name McSweeney appears in the text of the letter.

  There is another letter—more of a scrawled note—that appears to be an emotional response to the first letter. I do not have the wordage but the intent is clear. It is a threatening letter.

  Somehow connected to that
scrawled note is an idea of an old .357 Magnum Colt army revolver that once belonged to Tony Mathison, Ann's father.

  The rest of what I have, at this point, is a sort of overlay pulling all that together. I believe it to be an overlay provided by Paul Stewart's sensing of the case. A police officer has been arrested and charged with the murder-for-hire of Charles Cohan McSweeney—whether in reality or in Stewart's mental prognosis.

  The point of it all, in the police mind, is that McSweeney and Milhaul had been engaged in an extortion plot with Annie the victim. She fought back, but in a method not sanctioned by law.

  I had other stuff—all too vague and uncertain to bring out at this point—involving other people in Annie's past.

  I will give you just this one little morsel, as a promise of things to come:

  Annie's second husband, Donald Huntzermann, had several children from an earlier marriage, all of whom were apparently quite bitter about his marriage to young Ann Mathison. One of these was a daughter, Mildred. Mildred had married a man named Samuel Carver—and that marriage produced a son, David, who grew up to become a cop.

  There you go.

  Frankly, I did not know where to go with this damned case. It was almost a total confusion in my mind. Where there was not confusion, there was bafflement. What the hell was going down, here?

  Oh, I had a sensing, sure, a feeling. But you don't just let yourself leap off to an insane conclusion, not if you can help it. I was trying my damnedest to help it. But I did not know where to go for that help.

  So I went back to the Center of Light, which was deserted, and I sat in the gazebo for a while studying my notes on the tutorial that had come down during my earlier visit.

  Think I told you that I used to do some work in cryptography. Analytical cryptography demands a pretty good understanding of semantics. In logic, semantics is a study of the relation between signs and symbols and their meanings. In linguistics, it is a study of the meanings of speech forms, and particularly with regard to the evolution of language.

  Cryptography today, as it is practiced by the various world governments, is largely done by machine. But a lot of that stuff is doubly encoded. You break a code with your machinery, for example, and get a message that reads, "The cock crows thrice." So what the hell does that mean? This is where the analyst comes in, and he'd better have a good semantic feel for language and lingual symbology.