Visions of Death Read online

  “You mean a world of the sixth sense?”

  She snorted. “That’s a good enough name for it, I suppose.”

  “Where were you the night before last?”

  “Where I always am. Having a party all by myself here in my luxurious apartment,” she snapped back.

  Ellis glanced down at the coffee table and saw a deck of tarot cards sitting next to an eReader. They appeared to be crudely constructed – definitely not a store-bought deck.

  “You use those?”

  She nodded. “I supplement my income during the summers doing readings for tourists.”

  “Are you successful at it?”

  She smoothened down her skirt. “I’m booked throughout the season. That’s how I’m able to afford this place during the winter months.”

  “You don’t do readings for the locals?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  “They afraid of you?”

  “You might say that.”

  “What reason would they have to be afraid of you?”

  “For the same reason women throughout history who didn’t kowtow to what the authorities decided was and wasn’t normal were feared.”

  “Are you saying your family were considered witches?”

  Dara gave him a sarcastic smile. “That’s one of the nicer things my family has been called over the centuries.” She sat back and crossed her arms against her chest. “We’re different, Deputy. We’ve always been different. Our abilities made sure of that. People don’t like different. It makes them nervous. So in order to justify their nervousness, they’ve called us all sorts of names and believed all sorts of crazy rumors.”

  “Such as?”

  She pointed to the kitchen. “I’ll show you my flying broom if you’re interested. Or my invisible familiar which I’ve heard is sometimes a cat. Sometimes a crow. It depends on who’s telling the story.”

  She was trying to be funny, but Ellis saw her pain beneath the words. And felt her ache of being ostracized.

  He picked up the tarot deck and looked them over. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen these particular cards.”

  “I designed them myself. I don’t like the traditional Ryder-Waite cards, nor do I like all the schlocky witchy-wizardy-

  dragons flying all over the place decks. So I made up my own.”

  He held out the deck to her. “Do a reading for me.”

  She jerked her head up and stared at him in surprise. Then her eyes narrowed. “I’m not a performing seal.”

  “I understand that.”

  “You just want to see if I’m full of shit, don’t you?”

  He looked at her and she once again felt her stomach flutter at the sight of his grey eyes gazing quietly at her. “How much do you charge for a reading?” Before she could respond, he shoved his hand into his pocket, withdrew his wallet and took out a few bills, placing them on the table between them. “That should cover it.”

  The challenge lingered in the air between them. Dara wanted to refuse. She resented that he expected her to show him she wasn’t a fake. At the same time, however, she knew enough to realize that telling him about her dream made her the number one suspect. How could she convince him of the veracity of her abilities, or the fact that she’d had the dream, if she refused to do a reading?

  Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Dara didn’t have a choice. She put her mug down and scooted over to the center of the couch, directly in front of him.

  “I don’t censor what I get,” she said. “I always assume that whatever information comes through needs to come through.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Ellis smiled.

  “Some people go to readings expecting to hear what they want to hear. I don’t work like that, hence that little speech I just gave you. Makes it easier for both of us if something - maybe something totally unexpected – comes up. You okay with that?” He nodded. “Shuffle the cards and when you’re ready, hand me ten face down from anywhere in the deck.”

  Ellis did as she asked. When he was done, she carefully arranged seven of the cards into what looked like a cross, with the last three cards creating a column to the right of the cross.

  “Have you ever had a reading?” Before he could respond, she chuckled. “No, of course you haven’t. No self-respecting cop would ever do something like this. I’ll therefore explain what I’m doing so you understand the process.” She waved her hand over the cards. “This is called the Celtic Cross. It’s one of the oldest, and for me the most accurate, spreads used in card reading. Each card tells part of an overall story that slowly comes together when they’re turned over. They all interconnect in some way to tell you what’s going on in your life at this particular moment.” She smiled at him. “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Dara flipped over the first card. “This is what’s going on inside you right now.” Ellis leaned forward and saw a crudely drawn man walking down a path, his gaze turned towards a grove of trees. “You’re on a quest of discovery. You’re looking for answers.” She put her hand up. “And before you say anything, I know what I just told you is pretty obvious. I mean, you are looking into who killed Mallory. Yet, at the same time, I’d say you’re also looking for answers to questions that have troubled you for some time now.” She flipped over the second card. “This is what’s going on around you.” The card depicted the same male figure standing before a huge boulder planted directly in his path. However, when Ellis leaned in to take a better look, he saw the boulder was slightly transparent. “You think you’re being obstructed, but you’re really not. You’re accustomed to doing things a certain way, but you’re on the Coffins now. Life here works on its own rhythms which go back centuries. You’re starting to realize it’s you who needs to change if you want to make your job and your life here a success. I should tell you, people respect you more than you think they do.”

  Ellis inwardly smiled. So far, she hadn’t told him anything earth shattering, or shared any information she couldn’t have gotten somewhere else.

  Dara flipped over the third card. “This is what you’re blocking.” She glanced at the card with two birds sitting on a tree branch facing each other. A slight grin tugged at her lips.

  “There’s a woman around you. Actually, I get the sense there’s more than one woman around you. One is romantically interested in you, but the card isn’t talking about her, so I’ll set her aside for now. Rather, the card is indicating that one of these women cares and worries about you like a friend would. She’s a person you can totally depend on. If you’d let yourself be that open to her, that is.”

  Ellis didn’t acknowledge her comment. She moved on to the next card. “This represents a gift from the angels, or for those who don’t quite believe in angels, a gift from the Universe.” She glanced up at Ellis. “Do you believe in angels, Deputy Martin?”

  “About as much as I believe in Santa Claus,” he answered back.

  To his consternation, he saw the grin on her face broaden. It was obvious she didn’t believe what he was saying. As if he was trying to convince himself of something that wasn’t true. Dismayed by what he considered impertinence on her part, he thought it best to let it go even as his annoyance lingered. He watched as she looked down at the card portraying the male figure standing in a field. He was looking up into the sky with a puzzled look on his face. Dara opened her mouth, then closed it as she tried to figure out how best to express herself.

  “Wow,” she finally said.

  “Wow?” he questioned.

  She nodded. “Yeah, wow. I’m not sure you’re going to want to hear this.”

  “Try me.”

  “Okay.” She spread her fingers over her lap. “You had an experience that really rocked your safe, little world. You’ve spent a lot of time trying to brush it under the rug because you can’t make sense of it, no matter how hard you’ve tried. This goes back to the first card, where I said you’re seeking answers that go beyond w
hat happened to Mallory. You like things orderly. Explained. Logical. But this wasn’t orderly. And it doesn’t fit into what you once believed to be logical or explainable. I’m sorry to tell you this, Deputy, but that’s never going to happen. What you experienced may not have been rational. Or make any kind of sense to you. But it did take place, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise.”

  She looked up and met his eye. “You really did see your dead partner. And he really did save your life.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ellis gave an involuntary start. It was the very last thing he’d expected to hear.

  He stared down at the card, unable to comprehend how in God’s name she got that information from a crudely drawn man staring up at the sky. Emotions ran through him – emotions he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in a long time. Through the haze of his turmoil, he realized she was still speaking.

  “You and your partner were very close. In fact, I’d say he was probably the closest friendship you ever had.” She glanced up at him through her lashes. “You’re not a very open person, Deputy. Relationships are tough for you. But he somehow managed to get through your armor enough for you to feel some sort of camaraderie with him.” She paused, then added in a softer voice, “It devastated you when he was killed. You blame yourself for his death because you had a premonition something bad was going to happen the day he died. You’ve been beating yourself up ever since because if only you’d listened to your gut, he’d still be here.” She looked back to the card. “You didn’t care anymore. You were so overcome with grief, you didn’t care if you were killed as well. But he cared. Even though he was dead, he knew you needed to live. That’s right, Deputy. The day that man took a shot at you, it was your dead partner who pushed you out of the way at the last minute. You know it was him because you saw him. You saw him standing right in front of you. And it’s been eating away at you ever since because it just doesn’t make sense. It refuses to fit into any of your neat, logical little boxes.”

  Ellis felt as though he’d been eviscerated, and his insides spilled all over the table. No one knew what happened that day. No one. He’d never mentioned it to anyone, never wrote it up, never uttered a word to another living soul.

  How the hell did she know?

  He barely heard the rest of her reading as she assured him he would be a success in his job. It wasn’t just his experience and dogged determination that guaranteed that success. It was what happened with his partner that allowed him to be open to the strange phenomena that shrouded the Coffin Islands and made his job more unique than even he could have realized when he was first hired.

  His willingness to accept the unexplainable was what made him so valuable to the islanders.

  He was meant to be here.

  Her words were lost on him as he desperately struggled to keep from leaving. The apartment suddenly felt as though it was caving in on him. He was finding it increasingly difficult to breath. Her voice continually slicing at the wound that was now reopened and festering.

  Yet he couldn’t go. He couldn’t show how much she’d thrown him. He needed to remain in control, no matter what it took. He therefore willed himself to calm down. To regulate his breathing. To ease the fear and panic roaring through him. As he slowly regained command of his emotions, he looked up to see Dara watching him.

  The reading was over.

  “So, how’d I do?” she asked with a slight smile on her face.

  He imposed a similar smile on his own face. “You didn’t see me solving this case?” he asked, forcing a note of jocularity he did not feel into his voice.

  “I don’t need the cards to tell me you’re very good at your job,” Dara responded. “You’re not going to rest until you find Mallory’s killer. It’s a challenge.” Her eyes met his. “And if there’s one thing you adore, Deputy Martin, it’s challenges.”

  As the Boston Whaler chugged calmly back to Sarke Island, Ellis sat at the wheel in a state of troubled unease. It was a still night, with a brilliant canopy of stars filling the dark sky. The light waves and bright constellations receded into the background, victims of his need to make sense of Dara’s reading.

  Once again, he heard her words describing the events of the day that changed his life forever. He still couldn’t understand how she’d known. There was no record, written or otherwise, of the event. Only he and his partner knew what happened.

  And his partner was dead.

  An image of Patrick Hennessey sprang into his mind’s eye. The man’s lopsided, sarcastic grin, the red hair and broad accent that proclaimed him, even without the name, as an Irishman from Boston. The long black trench coat that he loved to wear, insisting it made him irresistible to the ladies. The funny little gesture he always made after a long day as he and Ellis bade good-night to each other. It was the same gesture Ellis saw that day when he realized he’d been pushed out of the way of an oncoming bullet by unseen hands. Lying in the dirt, trying to figure out what had just happened, he’d looked up to see Pat smiling down at him, his black trench coat lying still against him despite the wind rushing in from the broken windows, his hand to his forehead, making that silly knuckled salute before he abruptly disappeared.

  By all rights, Ellis should have died that day. The killer he’d been tracking had ambushed him in the dark, abandoned warehouse. But Patrick had saved his life. He’d pushed Ellis out of the way and saved the life of a man who’d had a death wish that day.

  It was a memory seared into his consciousness. A memory he’d tried to convince himself never happened.

  But in his heart and soul, he knew it had.

  You needed to live.

  He recalled awakening every night for the next month after the incident, reliving the image of Patrick standing before him in the gloomy warehouse. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t explain it. To say he’d suffered some kind of shock or PTSD was an oversimplification. After studying it from all angles, he always came to same uncomfortable conclusion.

  He’d seen the ghost of his best friend who had stepped in and saved his life.

  He remembered trying to bury himself in his work, but he’d lost his appetite for it. Law enforcement was all he knew, but he could no longer do it as an NCIS investigator. The ad looking for a deputy for the Coffin Islands was a godsend. The remoteness of the islands, and the fact that he’d be working pretty much on his own satisfied his solitary personality. And eased the buried fear that he’d lose another partner in the line of duty. A loss perpetuated by his own negligence.

  It was close to 9 pm when he arrived at the dock on Sarke Island. He hadn’t come any closer to figuring out how Dara knew about Patrick. The only explanation was the simplest.

  She truly was psychic.

  But did that absolve her of the murder of Mallory?

  As he tied up the boat and walked up the hill towards the Seaview Hotel, on whose grounds his bungalow was located, he went over what little he knew about the case.

  Mallory was at least 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed approximately 115 pounds. Dara stood at 5 feet, 3 inches and was at least forty pounds overweight. Did she have the physical strength to overpower the taller girl, haul her body out to the pond, throw her into a boat, row out to the middle of the water and throw her overboard? Did she have the emotional strength to sew up Mallory’s eyes and mouth?

  Without a search warrant, he hadn’t been able to look through Dara’s apartment to see if she had any fishing line to match the line used to sew up Mallory’s eyes and mouth. Then there was the logistics of where the body was found. Had Dara taken care of that problem by luring Mallory out to Watson Pond? Yet that presented another issue. What possible reason could Dara have come up with to compel Mallory to see her in the first place, much less meeting her at such an unlikely spot as Watson Pond? Despite Dara’s insistence that none of the locals came to get readings from her, had Mallory’s desperate situation driven her to do the unthinkable and seek out the island’s misfit?


  If that were so, why lie about it? What could have occurred between her and Mallory that she’d need to keep it hidden?

  By the time he reached his cottage, he was no closer to figuring it out. All he could do was wait for Rob to complete the autopsy. If it showed the young woman had been drugged, it would at least explain how she’d been so easily overpowered.

  Ellis lived in a one-bedroom bungalow that stood behind the hotel on a bluff overlooking the ocean. It was scenic and peaceful, and he found it the perfect place to mull over his investigations without risk of constant interruptions.

  He took a shower, threw on a pair of sweats and set about stoking the fire in the fireplace before he settled down with a can of soda and a ham sandwich on stale bread. When he was wrapped up in a case, he had a tendency to forget to eat, which included buying groceries at the local market.

  He took two bites of the dry sandwich and threw it down in disgust onto the paper plate. Wiping his hands on his napkin, he heard his cell ding. It was a message from Rhys.

  Checked my records. The last time someone came in with a hand injury was just after Christmas when Mrs. Ferguson cut her hand while dicing some onions. If your killer did hurt themselves, they wisely decided not to seek medical treatment.

  Although he hadn’t expected Rhys to find anything, he was nevertheless disappointed. Reaching for his computer to jot down his thoughts and sketch out possible scenarios, he heard a sharp rap on his front door.

  “Come in!” he called out.

  The door opened and Chandra Bauer walked in, a covered pan in her hand.

  “I figured you could use a hot meal.”

  “What makes you think that?”