Knowing (13 page)

“What in the hell are you doing?” she yelled, flicking off the lights one by one. “We don’t want to light this place up like a landing strip.” Searching through her bag, she brought out a large flashlight, turned it on and set it on the cooler.

“No fire either, huh?”

“No fire.”

“Their last name is Peal,” Harlan announced, pointing to a custom carved wooden sign that adorned the arch above the front door. It read: Welcome To The Peal’s Paradise!

“Shit,” Jane mumbled. “This isn’t a hunting cabin.”

“More like a love shack,” Harlan stated, motioning to a framed photo on the wall that showed a gray-haired couple in their seventies holding hands and standing in front of their tiny mountain retreat. The matte surrounding the Peal’s photo was shaped like a heart and across the bottom of the frame was a quote in gold relief: “The Opposite of Love is Not Hate. The Opposite of Love is Fear. Be Brave and Choose Love.”

Jane stared at the photo a little too long. The couple looked deliriously happy. They were the type of people, Jane figured, who probably met and married in their early twenties and somehow managed to navigate life’s ups and downs with grace and forgiveness. There was elegance in that design she mused—a rare and precious gift in our throwaway society. The longer she stared at the photo of the elderly lovebirds, the more she envied them. Love, it seemed, was effortless for these two.

Harlan gestured to the embroidered headrests on the leather recliners. One said “Millie” and the other, “Larry.” They were happily connected, Jane decided. Joined at the hip and the heart. The kind of couple where when one dies the other follows soon after—not so much from grief, but because their lifeline has been severed.

“You want to be Larry or Millie?” Harlan asked.

Jane turned to the recliners. “How about if I’m the woman for a change?”

Harlan plopped his large posterior into Larry’s chair and, like a pro, hoisted the chair back and the footrest up. “Now
this
is a comfortable chair.”

Jane noted a small bathroom behind a partition. Next to the composting toilet was a shower that she figured half of Harlan could fit into. But she wasn’t going to complain. They had a roof over their head, food to eat and a bathroom. Life was good. And when Jane turned to see a laptop computer on a tiny table near the kitchen, she factored that life just got better, thanks to Larry having Wi-Fi. Pulling out her computer, she was thrilled to find that there was enough of a signal to hijack. Harlan slammed eight raw eggs, a package of lunchmeat and a hunk of cheese while Jane eagerly made herself a hearty sandwich and washed it down with a bottle of water. She remembered the pack of cigarettes in her jacket pocket. Damn, that would taste like heaven, she thought. Nicotine fueled her thinking process, calming her while allowing better focus.

She hoped she still had a lighter somewhere in her leather satchel. As she rummaged through it, the manila file folder holding Wanda’s photo and information fell out and splayed across the wooden floor. Jane went to grab for the photo page but Harlan swept it up first.

“Who’s this criminal?” he asked.

“Nobody. Give it to me,” she replied with an edge.

He kept staring at the photo and name. “Hey,” he said, seemingly mesmerized. “She favors you, especially around the eyes.”

Jane grabbed the sheet out of his hands and returned it to the folder. “This is none of your fucking business!”

Harlan studied Jane. “Is Wanda your cousin? It’s okay if she is. I had a second cousin who did time for moonshine—”

“It’s not my cousin.” Suddenly, she felt flustered—a feeling she never allowed.

Harlan continued to eye her carefully.

“Stop staring at me, Harlan!”

But he kept staring. “Who is she? I can see you care about her—”

“I don’t care. I don’t even know her.”

“Bullshit, you don’t care! You wouldn’t be actin’ like this or carryin’ her photo in a folder if you didn’t—”

“She’s my half-sister.” As soon as the words fell from her mouth, Jane regretted it. “She’s living in transitional housing in Northern New Mexico.”

“You’re goin’ to see her, aren’t you?”

“I was. And then you stole my car.”

Harlan’s mouth dropped open. “Aw, hell, Jane. If I’d known you were headin’ out to see your kin, I’d never of jacked your ride.”

“Well, no shit, Harlan.”

Harlan considered everything. “So, when are we gonna see Wanda?”

“
We
are not seeing Wanda.
We
are more interested in figuring out who set you up and how to get your entire case thrown out.”

He smiled. “You really want to believe that, don’t you, Jane?”

“I do. Why in the hell would I still be here with you if I didn’t?”

He looked at her with compassionate eyes. “I keep tellin’ you I’m a dead man—”

“Stop saying that.”

“It’s true. Whoever’s after me ain’t gonna stop until they get what they want.”

“And I explained to you before that people are only after you if you know something, stole something or saw something. And you tell me that none of that applies to your case. But it
has
to apply. You don’t get the elaborate set-ups, Harlan, unless you are seriously wanted.”

“All they want is me dead, Jane. They tried to do me twice. Once in the motel room and once in that doctor’s office before I escaped.”

“The motel was to set you up with the black prostitute.”

“No, remember? I told you I heard footsteps comin’ down the hallway outside the room and I grabbed a chair and shoved it under the knob. They were comin’ for me, Jane!
Right then
! That’s why I yelled like I did to make a scene and force ‘em to leave. I called 9-1-1 and passed out. I’m tellin’ you, they would have took me right then.”

She shook her head. “
Why
? Why
you
? You’re not an HVT, Harlan. You’re not even…”

Harlan looked at her, waiting. “What? Smart?”

She turned away. “I didn’t say that.”

“I know.
I
said it. And it’s true. I ain’t smart. I’m the first to admit it, although it does seem that you’re on board with that line of thinkin’ too.”

Jane couldn’t believe how unabashedly secure Harlan was with his own mental shortcomings. “You’re not the sharpest tack in the box.”

He smiled. “I’m a few beers short of a six pack.” He cogitated on that one. “
Damn
, I wish I still loved the taste of beer.” He retrieved his bag of mystery items and sorted through it. The various prescription bottles fell out. “That reminds me, I got to take my pills.” He knocked back his anti-rejection drugs with a bottle of water.

“How many of those do you have left?”

“Enough.”

“How many days?”

He eyed the bottle through the orange plastic. “Four…maybe five weeks.”

And then what?
she wanted to ask, but she didn’t. She pointed to the bag. “Let me see it all again.”

Harlan handed it to her and she laid the contents on the wooden floor. There was the bag of pine nuts, a pinecone, the comical illustration of the Blue Heron, a piece of lapis with the faux gold imprint of the Eye of Horus, a dog-eared copy of
Autobiography of a Yogi
, a teeny bottle of sandalwood oil and an old cassette tape of a Patsy Cline album.

“Hang on, you got some more in here,” Harlan told her.

He handed her the key he said he found on the street, the ten-page newsletter titled “Eco-Goddesses” and that sparkly Easter card featuring the Angel Gabriel. Finally, he handed Jane his small, black spiral notebook. Jane placed them in a neat row on the floor and then stood over them, looking from left to right and back again in search of any clues. The pine nuts and the pinecone seemed redundant but maybe that was on purpose. Perhaps Harlan was drawn to these two items because whatever was guiding him wanted him to make sure he recognized their importance. Her eyes drifted to the book. She picked it up and turned to several pages in the front. The spiritual classic was penned by Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian visionary and Yogi who founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, California in 1920. His life’s work was to bring both awareness and appreciation of Eastern religion into the West.

In 1952, according to the text, Paramahansa Yogananda knew his death was imminent, even though he was only fifty-nine and in good health. On March 7th of that year, he attended a dinner at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. At the conclusion of the evening, he spoke of a “united world” of peace and loving partnership between nations. He then read from a poem, “My India,” and ended with the line, “Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves, and men dream God—I am hallowed; my body touched that sod.” At that point, he looked up and slumped forward, dead. His followers insisted that he chose that exact moment to exit his body, citing
Mahasamādhi
, the conscious and intentional act of leaving one’s physical body at the exact moment of spiritual enlightenment. While some conspiracy theorists claimed that the famous guru was poisoned by his enemies, his followers held fast to the understanding that their teacher left this life on his own accord.

Jane sat on the floor and flipped through the book, landing on a page that spoke about the bewildering months that followed Yogananda’s death. As reported in
Time Magazine
in August of 1952, the mortuary director at Forest Lawn Cemetery wrote in a notarized letter that “the absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramahansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience…No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death…No indication of mold was visible on his skin, and no visible drying up took place in the bodily tissues. This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one…No odor of decay emanated from his body at any time…”

Jane felt a shiver run up her spine. She instantly recalled the words of Stella Riche and how Harlan’s donor was “the most superior specimen” his doctor had ever seen, even after being shot in the head and dumped at the hospital’s front door. And there was that random comment Stella made about the donor’s body having no signs of age-related decay. Jane worried she was reading far too much into Riche’s comment but still…there had to be an odd connection between this book and Harlan’s donor.

She picked up the “Eco-Goddesses” ten-page newsletter and flipped though it. On the last few pages, there was a large black and white photo of fifty people standing in front of a field of vegetables. A banner in front of them read: Working Members of the Green Goodness CSA. Jane remembered hearing about CSAs—Community Supported Agriculture groups. Individuals or families buy shares in the participating farms and enjoy weekly baskets of fresh produce. But these organizations require a lot of volunteers to make them work, including farm hands, who often intern with the various farms to gain real-world experience. Jane stared at the photo in the same manner she examined a piece of evidence back at Denver Homicide. The names of everyone in the shot were squashed together at the bottom of the photo, as if the typesetter wasn’t given sufficient space to hold all the letters. Checking the address of the CSA, she noted it was located in the San Luis Valley, which was nestled in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. While she couldn’t be certain, Jane factored they weren’t far from the farm.

“Don’t you wish we had a cassette player?” Harlan asked her, distracting Jane.

“We do. I’ve got one in the car.”

Harlan handed her the Patsy Cline tape. “Check it out, huh?”

She took the tape and shoved it into her jacket pocket. Leaning down, she picked up the black spiral notebook. There were pages she hadn’t really examined that closely so she started flipping through it from back to front. Her eyes spotted a word and she returned to that page. “
SUNNY
” it read, in all caps and underlined. Jane’s mind drifted to the billboard featuring
Sunny and Son Farms
and their “Spud-tastic potatoes.” All caps and underlined told her that Harlan’s subconscious needed to emphasize it. But why? She turned a few more pages and saw the picket fence drawing with the arrow pointing to the word “blue.” Blue picket fence. Several pages after that was half of page of the letter “M,” with a heart symbol after the last letter.

She held the page up to Harlan. “This ‘M?’ Didn’t you say you had dreams about a woman whose name started with an ‘M?’ Someone you felt a lot of love for?”

“Yep. But so much more than love. I can’t describe it, Jane. It’s like we’re one person. I never felt that with anyone in my entire life and here I am feeling it in a dream with a woman whose face I can’t remember.”

Jane turned to the next page. There was just one word on it. Mike. She turned back to the page of “M’s” and then stared at Mike. “Shit…”

“What is it?”

“Military code. ‘Mike’ is code for ‘M’” A sudden thought crept into Jane’s head. “Golf Charlie,” she said to Harlan. You said that in your sleep. ‘G.C.’ Maybe that’s…” Jane stopped.

“What?”

“Your donor’s initials?”

“Or the guy who’s after me?”

“Possibly.” Her eyes fell to the glittery Easter card. She felt her heart suddenly race. “Golf…” she whispered. Jane looked at Harlan. “Gabriel?”

For a split second as Jane stared into Harlan’s eyes, something shifted. It was so quick that anyone else would have missed it. But it was there and it was precise and deeply felt. It was acknowledgement fused with fear and then laced with gratefulness. Harlan slumped forward, his huge fingers working their way through his chopped hair cut.

“Harlan?” Jane said carefully.

He looked up at her. “That’s his name. I can feel it,” he quietly admitted.

Jane didn’t want to believe it could be that easy. But there it was. With nothing but a feeling to back it up, she agreed. “Okay. Now all we need is a last name that starts with ‘C.’ An Italian sounding last name.” This is when a cigarette was useful to Jane. She hadn’t had a cigarette in weeks but the need for nicotine was starting to intrude on her ability to focus. A few puffs, she lectured herself, and then she’d toss it away.

Harlan announced he was going to take a shower. Since he was starting to smell rather ripe, Jane didn’t have a problem with his plan. She stood up, feeling the ache of the last couple days settle in her low back. If sixty was the new forty, based on the way she felt, thirty-seven must be the new eighty. The walls of the tiny house felt as if they were closing in on her, so while Harlan took the five foot walk to the sliver of space Millie and Larry called their bathroom, Jane ducked outside with her computer.

Unable to find her lighter, she hunkered in the Mustang with the driver’s door wide open, and shoved the car lighter into position. That was just one of the many advantages, she reasoned, for owning an old vehicle; car lighters weren’t politically correct any longer and had been replaced with the jack for the iPod. All well and good, Jane thought, but you can’t light a cigarette with an iPod. The lighter popped out of its socket, signaling it was ready with its glowing red tip. What a beautiful ritual, she reckoned, as she ceremoniously unwrapped the pack of cigarettes, lifted the top of the pack and pulled back the foil liner. Holding the pack to her nose, she drank in the fresh tobacco aroma, earthy and rich with subtle undertones of wet dirt. Sliding the cylinder from the pack, she stared at it a little too long. “I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered to it as she pressed the tip between her lips. Returning the pack to her jacket pocket, she reached for the car lighter. There was a moment of guilt as she drew the burning red lighter toward her. Jane made a promise to herself that she would quit after her recent health scare. But it was organic tobacco, she reasoned. And yet, there was a slight giddiness—a sense of doing something bad—as she held the lighter to the tip of the cigarette and sucked in that first intoxicating hit. She closed her eyes and felt the nicotine bathe her nerves in a soothing blanket of serenity. Two more deep, invigorating puffs and she felt the familiar release of endorphins that spurred her forward and enhanced those powers of deduction.

Turning to her computer, Jane logged onto the bookmarked motor vehicle website that she used frequently on the job. She typed in “AGA 171,” the plate she memorized off the ominous black sedan from the
Anubus
crime scene. The plate was registered to a private corporation called “ODIN” that had a fleet of automobiles. Jane first thought that ODIN was an acronym but after a quick Internet search, she realized the corporation was named after the ancient Norse God. One text stated that, “Worship of the god Odin was related to Norse and Germanic Paganism. His role as a Norse god was closely connected to war, bloody battles, victorious outcomes, death and rage while blending ancient magic and prophecy into the hunt.” Jane fixated on that last word:
hunt
. Her eyes then drifted to the words “magic” and “prophecy.” Reading further, she learned that Odin sacrificed his eye in order to gain the “Wisdom of the Ages.” While Odin also had links with poetry and inspiration, he was more commonly associated with “fury, madness and the lone wanderer.” Jane sat back and looked into the black sky above her. She was always blown away by some of the names people choose for their companies. When they dipped into names with less than admirable qualities, she questioned their intent. Nobody would seriously name their corporation, “Satan,” “Hell,” or “Chains of Torture” but they had no problem choosing a pagan god that carried the baggage of darkness and was known for “sowing strife and starting wars.”

Jane recalled the number on the
Anubus
: 121. Strangely, when Harlan counted how many tattoo cards Alex had on his wall, it was also one hundred and twenty-one. These types of repetitive number sequences fascinated Jane. It always felt like the invisible hand that hung close by and attempted to direct Jane’s progress by forcing her to see what she otherwise might not have noticed. Taking the bait, she opened a bookmarked site she’d used on another case that featured the occult symbology of numbers. It didn’t take Jane long to uncover the meaning of “121.” Next to the number was the Egyptian “Eye of Horus,” the same ancient symbol imprinted on the piece of lapis in Harlan’s mysterious bag. She felt her gut tighten. There was yet another
sync
. The text read: “121: The Age of Horus is a 2,000 year cycle beginning in 1904 in which the black
magick
master of evil, Aleister Crowley
,
stated the world would dive into ‘a time of force, fire and blood…of unparalleled freedoms and rampant chaos.’”

Jane sat back in the driver’s seat and took a hard drag on her cigarette. Between the nefarious ODIN and the fact that a bus incongruously named
Anubus
sported a number that was linked to chaos, she got the distinct feeling that whatever was on the other side of this insanity was veiled and treacherous. Jamming the cigarette between her lips, she looked up and saw Harlan cross in front of the light beam emanating from the flashlight inside the tiny house. Returning to the computer, she decided she needed to lighten the mood. She opted for a quick search on heart transplant patients who felt connected to their donors. To her shock, there were dozens of websites and articles that relayed stories of patients who openly conceded that they felt the “presence” of their donor “within them.” One fifty-five-year-old woman received a heart transplant and quickly began craving beer and snack foods she hated prior to her surgery. She also started having dreams of running with a ball on a high school football field and feeling the hard tackle from behind. But the woman’s next comment really got Jane’s attention. “I had other dreams where I’d be making out with a seventeen-year-old girl,” she wrote, “and I’m happily heterosexual.” It wasn’t until this woman was able to meet the family of her donor that things finally began to make sense. She found out she had the heart of an eighteen-year-old football player who died in a car crash after one of the biggest games of his short life. But none of it really sunk in until the family introduced her to their son’s former girlfriend. She instantly recognized the girl as the one from her dream.

There were hundreds of these testimonials and Jane read through a few with growing interest. Their similarities were stark, all of them confessing to feeling as though they “shared a body with another soul.” For some patients, this acknowledgment helped move them toward a greater spiritual spectrum; for others, it complicated their lives and made them feel as if their lives and memories had been hijacked by an intruder. For those patients, unexplainable fears and phobias plagued them. One man was convinced that his donor died in a boating accident because he became strangely terrified of open water and boats and had frequent nightmares where he was drowning. The fact remained that each of the donors was usually young, vibrant, relatively healthy and were either murdered or died suddenly in an accident. One case discussed a fifty-six-year-old man who was able to describe the exact manner in which his donor was murdered and could even draw the face of the murderer. Another startling case involved a five-year-old girl who received the heart of another child. Months after her transplant, she “recognized” the father of her donor in a shopping mall and ran up to him, calling him “Daddy.”

“Maybe they don’t know they’re dead,” one transplant patient wrote, “and they’re continuing to live through me.” A chill descended down Jane’s spine. “It’s like they’re trying to talk to me,” the same patient explained, “but I can’t translate their thoughts and desires into anything I understand.” A forty-nine-year-old woman who received a heart transplant went so far as to visit a psychic to discern what her donor was desperately attempting to convey. “The psychic held my hands,” the woman wrote, “and she gradually felt the donor come through me and speak to her.” Jane took another hit of her cigarette. “Jesus,” she murmured, taking another look up at the house. Returning to the text, she read, “The psychic told me she saw images flashing in front of her and it took a few minutes to get them to slow down so she could understand them. But once she did, she could clearly describe to me what the donor’s life was like and even how he died.”

Jane took another hard hit on her cigarette. She recalled how just touching Harlan’s leg the night before sent an electrical current through her and a blaze of blurred, staccato images in front of her eyes. This was crazy, she thought, as she sucked down another cool hit of nicotine. But as screwy as it seemed, the more Jane read about all these strange experiences, the more she realized Harlan might not be crazy after all. It
was
valid, even though many of the shared testimonials were given by people who refused to be photographed or did not want their last names to be printed. There was a still a social stigma attached to what these patients were silently experiencing. It trod in territory reserved for religion and higher spirituality but it still didn’t neatly fit into any compartment.

She continued to research the subject, landing on a website that discussed the more spiritual aspects of the heart. “The heart has a unique intelligence,” she read. “It holds memory and speaks to us in a language all its own.” From what she gathered, the heart communicated “at the speed of light.” When two people are deeply and faithfully connected to each other, an electromagnetic pulse—unseen by the eye or simple machines—bonds them together and affects the two of them forever, no matter how far apart they are. “Even death cannot separate them,” Jane read, “for they have merged into one vessel.” She swallowed hard. How incredible, she thought.

There were other articles that fascinated Jane. One of them had to do with Native Americans and other tribal groups throughout history eating the beating hearts of animals and humans after they’d been sacrificially slaughtered. “The ritual was meant to take in the imprinted energy of the deceased’s heart,” the article stated. “
Great power
is thought to result if you consume the heart of an animal or person who is considered profoundly wise and adept. Their soul joins inside you and operates in union.” Jane cringed. She knew someone on the police force when she was starting out who used to take two weeks off every fall to hunt elk on the Flat Tops in Colorado. Upon his return to work one day, she recalled him regaling other officers with the usual hunting stories that involved driving for hours into nowhere, setting up camp, and then spending hours of silence in trees or hidden by bushes. But on this occasion, he vividly described nailing a six point elk and upon reaching the animal, found it clinging to life. He slit open the elk’s chest, cut out the heart and ate it. “It was still warm and beating,” she remembered the guy telling the group. He claimed he felt “invincible” after that experience. Jane quietly noticed the change too. But she also noted a strange impatience and jumpiness in him that hadn’t been there before. Adrenal stress, she told herself at the time. When an animal doesn’t fall after it’s shot and runs for a while afterward, it’s said that the meat is tainted with fear. The animal’s last memory is of terror and running for its life and somehow, that changes the texture and flavor of the meat. Could it possibly also imprint that energy of fear and terror onto the person eating it, Jane wondered.

As gruesome as ritual sacrifice is, something about the primeval practice moved Jane to do a search. Her computer took a second to spit out the websites, as if the idea of the subject matter even disgusted her hard drive. The first few links dealt with the ancient Mayans and Aztecs but the sites further down on the page were eye opening to say the least. The BBC featured an article, reporting on how the ritualistic killing of children in Uganda “as sacrifices for wealth and good health” was on the increase. The practice, which was almost unheard of before 2007, suddenly had an upswing in 2008 with police investigating twenty-five ritual murders of children. In 2009, that number increased to twenty-nine. Who was instigating these horrific killings? According to the BBC, the country’s “new elite” were the source, eagerly paying “witch doctors” large sums of money for the promise of health and wealth. One witch doctor charged $390.00 for an animal sacrifice. But the price was “steep” for “the most powerful spell—a child.”

The ash began to lean heavily on Jane’s cigarette. She tipped it outside the window before crushing the cigarette into the cold dirt with her cowboy boot. Taking another quick check toward the house, she determined that everything still seemed calm. She felt inside her jacket pocket for the cigarette pack and touched the Patsy Cline cassette tape Harlan gave her. The cover was missing, leaving just the bare, well-played tape with a song label lightened by age. She could barely make out the title of the album, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and kind of distinguish a few of the songs. Turning the cassette over, Jane noticed a yellow highlighter pen had been used across one tune. It was right before “Honky Tonk Merry-Go Round” so Jane inserted the tape and forwarded it until she hit the highlighted song. Patsy’s perfect pitch crept through the Mustang’s speakers.

“If I could see the world through the eyes of a child, what a wonderful world this would be. There’d be no trouble and no strife, just a big happy life, with a bluebird in every tree.”

She sat back and continued to listen to the tape.