Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective Read online

  A skinny guy in a business suit lunged out of the sedan and rushed me. I took the angular momentum of that rush off the left hip and spun him on across the driveway and into the iron fencing. I paused briefly at the open doorway for a quick sniff of the inside atmosphere and threw a quick look over my shoulder to make sure the guy was not up and rushing again; he was not; I palmed the Walther and pushed on inside, all the guts at full wriggle now and prepared for most anything.

  Greg Souza did not come by his paranoia cheaply. Let me get this explanation into the record, right here. The guy earned his spurs in the craziest of all the crazy worlds possible. The international "intelligence" community has had its good press and bad; it has been idealized, crucified, and lampooned in every media form for many years now, and the paranoid agent who sees a conspiracy in every bush is probably the most hackneyed buffoon to ever grace a television screen. I poke fun at Souza myself, even though I know with the certainty of one who has been there himself that these guys do not get that way innocently. They do live in an insane world where there is no principle or ethic and no morality larger than the mission itself. It is a world in which success is always right and failure always wrong, and there is no price that will not be paid for success.

  Which is mainly why I got the hell out.

  And which was why, at that moment in the House of Isaac, my guts were fairly screaming with concern for Dr. Jen.

  Nor were they screaming for nothing.

  This very bland-faced, pleasant looking man was on both knees beside the Jacuzzi, Jennifer was in the Jacuzzi, totally submerged, and the guy was holding her under.

  He noticed my presence there just maybe a single heartbeat before I took his head in both of my hands and threw it across the wet bar. The body followed, but not exactly in a proper arc.

  I did not even look for the touchdown but had the spluttering, bug-eyed beauty in my arms and hauling even before the crash beyond the bar. She was okay; a little the worse for wear but alive and well enough, which maybe was more than could be said a few minutes hence if we had hung around to discuss the matter. I wrapped her in a towel and carried her out of there, carefully placed her inside the Maserati, and away we went without a backward glance.

  I thought I caught a glint of light reflecting from a metallic surface near some trees just below the drive as we flashed past that point but I was not positive I had seen anything at all, and it was no time for idle curiosity—nor was it necessary, with the Maserati beneath us. She lifted us up, up, and away—and I knew damned well that nothing on wheels behind us would so much as taste our dust until I was ready for that.

  We hit the Foothill Freeway at full scream and I did not throttle-back until I'd worked us through a briskly running traffic pack and had them all numbered in my rearview.

  Dr. Jen had spoken not a word and I'd had little opportunity to do more than toss her an occasional reassuring smile until that moment. But then I lit a cigarette and offered it to her. To my surprise, she accepted it and took a businesslike pull at it. So I lit another for myself and tried to wind the guts back into place.

  "You okay?" I quietly inquired.

  "Does mad as hell qualify?" she replied, just as quietly.

  I chuckled and said, "I'd be mad, too. You looked like hell, kiddo. Snot coming out your nose, eyes all bugged and terrified. Can't you find a better way to get your kicks?"

  She asked, "Did you kill him?"

  I shrugged as I replied, "Unless I've lost my touch."

  "How does that make you feel?"

  I shrugged again. "It was his nickel. How does it make you feel?"

  She did not reply to that but told me, "Ash, I'm really scared."

  "We're okay for now," I assured her.

  "I don't mean—I mean... Isaac. That man was looking for Isaac."

  "He seemed pretty busy with you," I commented.

  "He was trying to get me to tell him where Isaac is. I kept telling him I didn't know. And he kept pushing me back under. Why in the world would a man like that be looking for... ?" She made a lunge for me and held on for dear life. "My God but you were a beautiful sight to terrified eyes! Thank you, Ash. I don't know how to... just thanks, thanks."

  I asked, very quietly, "Where is Isaac, Jen?"

  "I don't know," she whispered.

  I said, "I believe that you do."

  "No. Please. I just don't know."

  But she did. She knew.

  Chapter Six: The Lock

  I moved from the Foothill to the Simi Valley Freeway and ran on west to Topanga Canyon then took that surface route south for roughly twenty miles to the coast, which put me down about halfway between Santa Monica and Malibu. If you are unfamiliar with the area, Topanga Canyon all the way through the Santa Monica Mountains is a tortuous course and heavily traveled, so the going was relatively slow and it was nearing eight o'clock when we hit the coast highway. Throughout that tense journey, however, we had traveled in silence, with not so much as a word between us. Which gave a lot of thinking time, and I certainly needed that. Jen needed it too, apparently—curled up beside me wearing only a damp towel, hair wetly tousled, brooding.

  As we turned again westbound along the coast, she very quietly bent the silence with an almost musing observation. "What am I going to do, Ash? I'm naked. Don't even have a hairbrush, a toothbrush—nothing. I can't run around in this condition."

  "The operative idea there," I suggested, "is 'run around.' You can do that. Be thankful. The other stuff is mere process. I'll run in up here someplace and get you something to wear, cosmetics, whatever you need. Pad and pencil right in front of you. Make a list. Sizes, too, please."

  She gave me a long, searching look, then sighed and went to work on her list of needs. That lasted for about twenty seconds. Then, with pencil poised above the pad and her attention apparently pointed that way, she softly inquired, "Does it bother you? That you have killed that man?"

  "Maybe two of them," I corrected her, in about the same tone. "But I thought we already covered that."

  She said, "No. You just shrugged it off."

  I told her, "I hit a deer once. With a car. Bounded out of the darkness and froze in my headlights, not ten feet in front of me. Didn't even have time to move my foot off the accelerator before the impact. It bothered me. Yeah, it bothered me."

  "Is that an allegory?"

  I tossed her a smile and said, "I guess. Some things are simply unavoidable. You regret it. But you can't take it back. And there's no sense in wearing a hair shirt all your life because of it."

  "But it does bother you," she decided quietly.

  "If I think about it. Sure. It bothers me. Every death bothers me. It always seems wrong. Yet I know..."

  "You and Isaac would, I believe, speak the same language."

  "Glad to hear that."

  "Yes. He says that death is implicit in birth, yet it always comes as a surprise; it is always resisted, always resented, and always improper..."

  I finished the quotation, for her. "There is no such thing as a proper death."

  She gave me a delighted smile. "You have read him."

  I replied, "It has been a long time. But he keeps coming back, little by little."

  Dr. Jen seemed pleased as punch about that.

  I told her, "Better finish your list. Shopping center just ahead."

  But her needs were simple. A few basic cosmetic items, comb and brush, sandals, jeans, pair of panties and a bra, blouse. I knew a small boutique just a few minutes from my place where all of it could be had. Took me just a couple of minutes to round it all up, then I added a small overnight bag and a simple purse to the list and used the telephone while the clerk wrote it up. Just wanted to see if anyone was home at my place. I let it ring about six times, hung up, paid for the purchase, and told the clerk a bald-faced lie. "Someone stole my friend's clothes out of the car while we were on the beach," I explained. "She's out there in the car, right now, shivering in a damp towel. Could she use your dressi
ng room to...?"

  Why of course, certainly, no problem.

  I left the purchase on the counter while I returned to the Maserati and told Jen, "Someone stole your clothes at the beach. There's a dressing room inside. You're welcome to use it. The stuff is paid for. Take your time. I need to check something out. Be back in ten minutes; promise."

  She seemed a bit doubtful about the whole thing but gathered the towel around her, slid out of the car, and walked with surprising dignity in bare feet and towel to the shop. I escorted her to the door, kissed her forehead, and repeated, "Ten minutes."

  The returning smile was a bit uncertain but she went on inside. I was in the Maserati and out of there while the clerk was showing her to the dressing room. I had no memory whatever of any "Hank Gavinsky" but I wanted to see the guy for myself if indeed he did exist and if indeed he was waiting to "see" me.

  He did, and he was—well, sort of. And, yes, I recognized that face when I saw it—though probably I would not have if we bad merely bumped into each other on the street. I had left the Maserati a block back and came up on his blind side by foot. The car displayed a rental company decal and was parked some fifty feet off my driveway; the window on the driver's side was down and the radio was playing soft music with the sound of KBIG, a popular "easy listening" L.A. station; the guy looked half asleep.

  I slid the Walther around the doorpost and nuzzled it into his ear as I said, softly, "Bang—you're dead."

  He sure was. Already. Throat cut, ear to ear. And not too long ago. Whoever did it was either as quiet as a cat or was able to approach as a friend: a blood-soaked sniper's pistol equipped with silencer and scope lay in his lap; death had indeed come, here, as a total surprise.

  So much for my hastily conceived plan of action, concocted during the journey through Topanga Canyon. I had hoped to have a bit of gentle conversation with this guy—a very candid conversation, at gunpoint—which could get directly into the heart of whichever "misunderstanding" had sent him to my door. The only thing left of that idea now was to elicit as much information as possible from the corpse. But it was such a messy one, and I did not want this guy's blood on my hands or any bloody fingerprints anywhere. I did manage to get the coat open and to extract a slim wallet from an inside pocket without violating the scene in any visible way. But I learned little from the wallet, except that Gavinsky was traveling under the identity of Walter Simonds. He carried a Maryland driver's license and a couple of credit cards under that name. Except for several large bills, there was nothing else. I replaced the wallet in the inside coat-pocket, then went to the other side of the car for a look at the glove compartment. Car rental papers in there were under the same name. The car had been rented at Los Angeles International Airport. An area map, supplied by the rental agency, had been marked with a highlighting pen to show the route from LAX to Malibu. The car had been checked out at seven-twenty that morning. That did not compute. Why had Gavinsky marked a route from LAX to Malibu even before I was into the case? And, if his visit had nothing to do with the case of the missing scientist, then what was it concerned with? Why had he been sitting there just outside my door all day with a sniper's piece in his lap? Obviously the guy had been dispatched to dispatch me. But, for God's sake, why?

  Ignorance can be bliss, yes. This guy had missed me by just a few minutes, probably. I had left home at about a quarter after eight, for the meeting with Souza. Gavinsky could have arrived on the scene by eight-thirty, easy, a paid assassin, settling into the wait for his pigeon with a scope and a silencer. If I had gone straight home from Griffith, I would have walked blissfully ignorant into a simple hit. But who wanted me hit? And why? On the other hand, who had hit the hitter? And why? Surely not... No. This was not Greg Souza's style. If he had wanted the guy out of the picture, and if he could get close enough to slit his throat, then he would have chloroformed him or hit him with some exotic state-of-the-art chemical, driven him up into the hills somewhere, torched the car and shoved it over the side. I'm not saying that Greg would do something like that, but that's the way he would do it. Greg went to the same schools that I went to.

  I did some housekeeping around the scene just to make sure there was nothing of me left behind, then I got the hell away from there and took the beach way into my place, threw some things in a bag, got the hell out.

  My hands were shaking so I had a problem unlocking the Maserati. I fired her up and did a quick, quiet U-turn, went on down for a few blocks, pulled over to the curb and did a quick fix on my nervous system—chemicals, yes, but from the right brain, not from any streetcorner physician. Took about forty seconds to get the rhythms into a strong alpha pattern; another twenty seconds with that focus got rid of my shakes but I came out of that feeling very agitated and disturbed about Jennifer Harrel. Nothing specific, just a hazy sort of apprehension.

  I had been gone for about fifteen minutes when I nosed the Maserati into the small shopping center; for some reason, feeling more like Greg Souza every second, I did a quick recon of the parking lot, checking out the dozen or so cars that were parked there before I pulled up in front of the boutique. A couple of browsers were inside, both women, but no sign of Jennifer.

  I went in, caught the clerk's attention and jerked a thumb toward the dressing room. "She still in there?"

  The clerk replied, "Why, no, she left quite awhile ago."

  I observed, with some irritation, "I've only been gone fifteen minutes."

  The woman told me, "Well I'm sorry. She wasn't here more than five."

  I said, "Look, this is serious. The lady may be suffering a bit of shock. Did she go out of here on her own steam?"

  "I certainly did not kick her out, if that's what you mean," she replied huffily. "After all..."

  I said, "No no, I'm not implying—I'm just worried about her. Did she leave here by herself?"

  But I was already on this lady's list. She said, icily, "I have more to do than try to keep track of quarreling lovers. Stolen clothes, indeed."

  So much for that. A small diner and a bar were the only other businesses still open in that center. I checked them both; negative. Then I saw the phone booth, out near the street, and felt drawn to it. She'd been there, in there, yes. No visible evidence, but the traces she'd left behind for me were as palpable as a perfumed scent. As I stood there, my hand on that telephone, one of the things did me and I knew I had a lock on her. It was not a voice or a vision or anything like that; I just "knew" where she'd gone, and I knew why, as though suddenly remembering something that I had done myself.

  She had called "Jack," at the Hughes Laboratories, and asked to borrow a car. She had done that in a mental frenzy approaching full panic, and the subject of that panic was Isaac Donaldson. Then she had paced around that phone booth for several minutes, agitation growing, eyes flaring to identify each vehicle that turned into the shopping center. That was all I had. It was enough.

  I returned to the Maserati and sent her back up the coast highway, across Malibu Creek and up the hill inland past the Pepperdine campus. The controlled-access drive leading into the Hughes complex was, yes, just a three-minute trip. Plenty enough time to dispatch a car down the hill and beat me to the shopping center. I wondered, then, however idly, if that had been about the time I was playing with my alphas.

  I was parked in the shadows just below the Hughes entrance when the small silver sedan made its cautious exit and poised there for a moment before turning out onto the northbound lane. I could not see the occupant of that car but I knew that it was her. I had a lock, so I did not even have to follow too closely.

  She was heading north along Malibu Canyon Road, streaking toward the Ventura Freeway, no doubt. She would not go west from there. She would go east. I knew it, could almost feel the map spreading through her mind.

  Jennifer was going to Isaac.

  And so, about damn time, was I.

  Chapter Seven: Eyes Up

  I was running about a half-mile off Jennifer's rear bumper, surg
ing closer for visual contact at each freeway interchange just for damn sure, as we crossed the entire Los Angeles basin from northwest to southeast—and that is a hell of a run. The Ventura Freeway merged into the Foothill at Pasadena, that one into the Corona Freeway near Pomona, streaking south by southeast from that point on Interstate 15 to join I-15E at Murietta Hot Springs—and, by now, we are rolling due south through minimally populated countryside, dairy farms and horse ranches, climbing into a high valley with the Santa Ana Mountains to the west and the San Jacinto range east—an area of beautifully sculptured "mashed potato" hillocks scattered about at random, formed as a high desert in some dim geological era but now responding to the stubborn hand of man to yield square mile upon square mile of citrus and avocado, a lush agricultural bounty which reminded me that fanning remains California's number one industry.

  But I was reminded, also, that I was getting deeper and deeper into backcountry while the gas gauge on the Maserati was falling faster and faster toward pure air—and this car has never been known to run on psychic energy, so I began looking for a refueling spot. I pulled off at Rancho California, a small town that has been growing steadily the past few years with the lure of country estates within commuting distance from the coast. Jennifer kept on truckin' south so I made just a quick pit-stop that give her maybe a three-to-five-mile lead. By now we are in a totally different weather situation. The air is dry and transparent, skies clear and moonlit, and I am beginning to enjoy this tour of the countryside.

  I had consulted a road map during the pause at Rancho California because I really had only a very vague sensing of relative position. Best I could make it, I was about thirty miles due east of San Juan Capistrano and the Pacific, roughly fifty miles due north of San Diego on the old US395 route, now I-15, and just a few miles north of the junction with state route 76 which climbs eastward toward Palomar Mountain. I had "known" since the beginning of this trek that Palomar was our goal. I had to admit that this was probably the fastest route but if I had been setting off on my own I would undoubtedly have taken the coast route to Oceanside then SR76 into the interior.