Gather the Sentient (18 page)

It was customary for them to accept invitations, especially from the elderly, so without so much as a nod between them, Mia found herself in a cluttered yet homey living area decorated with doilies and flea market tchotchkes, the product of a lifetime of accumulation.

As Phyllis rounded the corner into the galley kitchen, the top of her head was barely visible above the opening of the pass through.  “Have a seat on the sofa,” she called into the living room.

They were still getting situated when moments later, Phyllis appeared again with a tea service tray, complete with shortbread cookies.  “I don’t get visitors very often,” she explained, settling herself in the rocker beside them.

Politely, she and Jack helped themselves to cups of tea.  As Mia stirred in a teaspoon of sugar, she explained, “We’re here because we’re looking for some information about Ms. Garcia from next door.”

“She isn’t in any trouble, is she?”

“Oh no, not at all.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect so,” Phyllis nodded.  “She’s always been so kind to me.  Brings up my mail from time to time so I don’t have to climb the steps.  Drops off leftovers.  That sort of thing.”

“Has she been by recently?”

“As a matter of fact, no.  I haven’t seen or heard her in a few days.”  Her eyes widened in alarm as she began piecing together her own conclusions.  “Oh, my goodness.  Is she missing?”

“No, Ma’am, she’s not,” Jack consoled her.  “She’s fine.  But someone other than the police are interested in her whereabouts.  Has anyone unfamiliar stopped by?”

She was thoughtful, stirring her teaspoon absentmindedly around her cup.  “No.  No one’s been here to see me.  But two nights ago, or maybe three, I was putting lotion on my feet… You have to do that when you get older with bunions and all.”  She paused, unashamed, and returned her cup to the tray.  “I heard men’s voices just outside my door.  I couldn’t hear every word, but I could tell they were angry and they were looking for something.”  Understanding crossed her face.  “Were they looking for Carla?”

Affirmation laced with disappointment seized Mia.  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” she explained.  “Can you remember anything else about what you heard?”

Phyllis shook her head.  “When I heard them clomping back down the stairs, I thought about going over to the window to see if I knew who they were, but like I said, I had lotion on my feet, and I didn’t want to smear it all over the carpet.  I usually sit through two of my programs to make sure it’s completely absorbed before I walk around.”

With no further information to glean from Phyllis, Jack and Mia wasted no time in finishing their tea. After thanking their hostess for her time as well as the cookies, they returned to the hallway.

“We’re 0 for 2,” Jack said glumly.

“Let’s try one more door.  Maybe the third time will be the charm,” she said, already halfway to the apartment across the hall.

When the tenant appeared in the doorway, Mia strained her neck to meet his gaze.  Pushing seven feet tall and sporting a mane of unruly dreadlocks, he appeared to have recently washed ashore from a shipwreck.

“What can I do for you today, Officers?” he asked warmly in a thick Caribbean accent.

Mia held out her badge and introduced herself.  “We’re wondering if you’ve seen or heard anything unusual going on around the building in the past few days?”

“Are you asking ‘bout what’s going on with Miss Carla and that young girl stayin’ with her?”

Mia and Jack exchanged a glance.  “What exactly do you know about their situation?” he asked.

The man leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms in front of his chest, in an easy-going sort of way.  “She told me they had to go away for a little while but there was nothin’ wrong.  Is that the truth?”

“Yes and no,” Mia assured him.  “We’re actually here on their behalf.”

He nodded now, chewing on a toothpick as he considered his words carefully.  “What I know is that Miss Carla stopped by a few days ago, asked me to collect up her mail and water her geraniums.  She said she didn’t know when she was gonna be able to come back but hoped it wouldn’t be too long.  I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me where she was goin’.  Told me it wasn’t safe for me to know.”

“And since she left, have you noticed anyone unusual around?”

“Oh, yeah, I have.  Two nights ago, ‘round 10 o’clock, I heard some voices out in the stairs.  And I hear them a lot on account of these walls are so thin, but that night, I paid attention, because the voices stopped right outside a my door.  So I came a little close to take a listen, and I hear them talkin’ ‘bout Miss Carla’s girl, Andrea.  About how she was supposed to be there.  And oh, they was so angry about them not bein’ there.”

“Did they go inside?”

“Ya!  They went inside.  Saw ‘em with my own eyes, pickin’ the lock and walkin’ right in.”

Jack’s brows stitched together disapprovingly.  “And you didn’t think to call the police about someone breaking into your neighbor’s place?”

The man scoffed.  “By the time the police arrive, those men are gone, and who do you think the police are gonna suspect then, huh?”  He thrust his own thumbs into his chest.  “The reefer black guy from across the hall, that’s who.  Naw, man, I stay outta stuff like that.  It’s none a my business.”

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she knew the guy was right.  Sometimes the easy suspect turned out to be the only suspect.  Unless of course she was on the case and could vouch for the state of someone’s soul.

“Okay,” she told him, “since you didn’t call in the intrusion, at least tell me you got a good look at the guys.”

“Oh yeah,” he said.  “I can tell you what they looked like.  Mean lookin’ SOBs.  All teeth and tats.”

She had to laugh at his description considering his own demeanor was equally domineering.  Jack handed him Alejandro’s photo.

“Now that’s it.  That’s one a the dudes right there.  Seen his face plain as day.”  He handed the photo back as if it pained him to hold it.  “Told ya he was nasty lookin’.”

Now that Alejandro had been positively identified at Carla’s apartment, Mia was overcome by a sense of urgency.  It was imperative for them to track him down before he discovered where Andrea was hiding, and as they plodded down three flights of stairs to the ground floor of the building, she recalled Jose’s request.

“Hey, Jack,” she said as they slid into the car beside one another, “I feel like going fishing, and I’m thinking it might be time to chum the waters with some bait.”

CHAPTER

32

THOMAS

Tuesday, September 27

Baltimore

“I can’t believe you printed all these out,” Mia laughed as she thumbed through the considerable stack of papers atop Mildred’s kitchen table.

Thomas pulled his tablet out of his messenger bag and powered it up.  “I don’t know how people operate straight from digital files.  I need to be able to see and feel what I’m working on.”

“You just like using a Sharpie to cross off names,” she said, eyeing up the pile of markers in the center of the table.

“There’s something spectacularly satisfying about crossing something off a list,” he told her without a drop of sarcasm in his voice.

She pulled a chair up beside him, closer than it needed to be, and their legs brushed into one another.  He loved sharing space with her, and since she’d dropped plans with Chelsea to spend the evening alone together, he knew she still felt the same way about him.

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of psychics in the file from Les Joplin, Mia’s psychic guru, he’d called her that afternoon from the university’s copy center, as he watched sheet after sheet of the printed file stacking up like pancakes at an IHOP.   Les hadn’t pared down the list, at Mia’s request, in case they needed to contact someone who wasn’t necessarily part of the prophecy.  She didn’t want to rule out using another psychic’s power to assist them in their search.

Mia booted up her work issued laptop, and as she logged in through numerous firewalls, commented, “With access to the police database, we should be able to find out the birthdays for all the Americans on the list.  The foreigners are going to be a little trickier, but I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

They began the laborious process of inputting name after name into the system, searching for a birthday match.  After about an hour they began recognizing patterns with names and locales.

“Here’s an Edith.  Skip her?” Thomas asked.

“Yeah.  There aren’t any 25-year-old Ediths living in Tampa.”

“How about Horace Flannigan from Boston?”

“Skip him,” Mia said.

They’d found six psychics born in their birth year, but none on their exact date.  Felicia, Max, Tanner, Ashley, Kayla, and Desiree.

“What do you think someone with retrocognition can do?” he asked, reading the notation beside the name Helen Greenly.

“It’s sort of the opposite of your precognition.”  She looked up from her computer to look at him, the soft light of the screen illuminating her face.  “But instead of getting a feeling about what’s about to happen, like you do, they get a feeling or an understanding about something that’s already happened.”

“Like the people who work with the police to help solve crimes by seeing what took place in the past.”

“Yes.  Exactly.”

It was with a sense of awe that he listened to Mia sharing her knowledge of psychic abilities.  He had a lot to learn from her when it came to knowing not only the names for what other people could do but how their abilities shaped them fundamentally.

“How about this one – Chase Watkins.  Says his abilities lie in psychometry.  What’s that?”

Mia continued to type.  “Psychometry is the ability to touch an object or a person and learn something about it through that connection.  So, for example, if someone with the gift of psychometry came across the shirt I was wearing when I was held captive in the warehouse, they might be able to see the basement or sense how I was feeling when I wore it.”  She glanced up at him then.  “It’s all very personal.  And Sarah Burke is a no.”

He crossed Sarah’s name off the list with his red Sharpie.  “So you think that’s the name for what I can do?  Precognition?”

“As you describe it and as I’ve witnessed it, it’s really the only known ability that fits.  The fact that you can only sense when something bad is going to happen, as opposed to good things or random neutral things, makes it a little unique.  But yeah, I think precognition describes what you do pretty well.  Except for the weird shielding thing you can do.  I have no idea what that’s about.”

He considered the label ‘precognition’ and decided it might take some time for it to settle into his definition of self.  He’d been labeled many things during his life – unworthy, unstable, vagrant, loser.  Precognitive didn’t seem like such a bad addition to the list.

Thomas flipped to the next sheet of paper, having eliminated another column of possible prophecy members and handed it to Mia.  “How much do you know about precognition?”

She shrugged.  “Only what I’ve read.  I’ve never actually met one.”  She paused, reconsidering.  “Well, besides you,” she added.

“And most can sense all sorts of events, not just bad ones?”

“I think that’s typically the case.”

He drummed two markers against the table as a new understanding dawned on him.  “So what if I’m not unique?  What if I’m just untrained?”

Her fingers froze over the keys, and she turned to face him.  “Untrained how?”

The idea was just solidifying in his own mind, and he found it difficult to put what he was thinking into words.  “It’s just that, my entire life I was surrounded by bad stuff.  Stuff I needed to avoid.  Like my abusive foster parents and kids who bullied me.  So maybe the focus of my ability grew into what it’s become as a result of my personal experiences, like you said.  Maybe I can sense when good things are about to happen, but I just haven’t trained myself to notice.  Because really, what good does it do to know if you’re about to have the good fortune of catching the last blue line bus for the night?  It’s a lot more important to know if there’s a thief waiting in the back to pick your pocket.  Right?”

She stared at him, unblinking.

“Right?” he repeated.

Instead of responding, she slid off her chair and into his lap in one swift motion, her legs wrapping around his torso so their noses touched.  And then she kissed him.  Tenderly at first, and for a moment, he was caught off-guard, wondering what he’d said to elicit such an amorous response.  But as she began kissing him more forcefully, running her fingers through his hair, he forgot to care.  For several moments he was able to ignore the fact that he and Mia were making out in his mother’s kitchen while she watched television in the adjacent room.  But when he felt the coolness of her hands underneath his shirt against the heat of his chest, he forced himself to pull away.

“We really need to get our own place,” he whispered into her ear, her hair draped across his face.

“Someday,” she whispered back, returning to her seat at the table but not to the keyboard.  “You think it’s possible?  That you might have the ability to sense more than just trouble?”

“I don’t see why not.  I think I might just need to start focusing more on the positive and see what happens.”

She looked at him then, deeply, in a way which made him feel valuable and worthy of her love.  “Because what I was thinking is that maybe we could figure out a way to use your gift to help us find the other members of the prophecy.”

It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that his abilities could be tapped for any other purpose than his own personal well-being.  That others could benefit from his intuition felt almost like a spiritual revelation.

“But how?”

She shook her head.  “I don’t know yet.  We’re gonna have to work on it.  Together, if you’ll let me help.”

She turned back to her computer then, and he could tell she was still thinking about harnessing the power of his precognition.  He flipped through the stack of remaining names, noting how many other psychics were listed as having precognition when Mia gasped.

“Holy crap, Thomas.  I think I may have found one.”