Night Visions (3 page)

WASHINGTON, D.C.
OCTOBER 3, 1982
6:27 P.M.

Christina Castinella hastily clears away her makeshift dinner, then stands aside as the client walks into her kitchen. He tries to get comfortable in the hard, boxy chair, but his lanky body won't fit. Something about him makes the entire apartment feel small. Looking at his watery eyes and worn black clothes, she wonders if this part-time job reading people's fortunes is worth dealing with all the wackos in D.C.

She has a gift, and with that gift comes responsibility, Grandmama still tells her. Every summer, when visiting Calabria, Christina spends most afternoons in Grandmama's kitchen, listening to the townswomen talk about family fortunes, sickness, and shiftless men. They gesture emphatically with each word and wear faded one-piece sundresses to hide their tired bodies.

As the sun sets, Grandmama's house becomes quiet, and
that's when the men start coming. They bring their sorrow, uncertainty, pain, confusion—asking these women to uncover answers with each card. Most find hope in their prognostications, believing with almost unquestioned faith. Even the parish priest, Father Grigio, who grumbles about these women in private and earnestly advises his congregation to find answers through God, never questions their readings. Rumor has it that he seeks their advice from time to time, but no one at the table mentions this.

When Christina was twelve, they taught her to use a deck. “It will guide you and others through hardship and loss,” they promised. Very quickly they realized that she was different. Her visions clearer, her predictions more profound. Soon the cards were almost incidental to her insights.

For her, the tarot is no more than a pastime, but a few months ago, she decided to advertise her fortune-telling skills in several local papers. She still has one year left at Georgetown, and her part-time job as a tutor doesn't even cover her long-distance phone bill, let alone tuition. So she turned to the cards.

Some of her clients are more interested in her long legs and tight button-down shirts than the future. But most are desperate for answers—needing them the way some need love. They are obsessed with a future they can't grasp or control, and Christina uses the Calabria deck for them.

Looking at this man, she decides to do the same. She doesn't usually make appointments on Sunday, but he was so insistent on the phone that she couldn't say no.
Anyway,
she thought after hanging up,
I really want tickets for the Police concert next month.

He quietly watches her shuffle and place the deck in front of him.

“Cut them with your left hand.”

He does so, and she begins turning them over. The Hanged Man, an inverse Wheel of Fortune, the four of swords—cards that speak of anguish and torment—the ten of swords, the Tower, Death…

The room gets darker as the sun sets, and the customer's still body and expressionless face blend into the growing blackness. She doesn't see him now as she's caught up in a series of images ignited by the cards. Music playing on a harpsichord, a stable smelling of hay and horse dung, a weathered statue casting its shadow over a tombstone, damp alleyways, thick fog, a sudden piercing scream.

Her breathing quickens.

“You're running through the dark. Your eyes burn, and you see some kind of light—silver flashes. Voices cry out in front of you, beneath you. Without stopping, you move. You're afraid to rest, because something is following you. No, it moves with you, with the rhythm of your footsteps, pushing against you. You turn to face it…but nothing is there. Well, not exactly, a feeling is, but it—I'm…I'm not sure….”

“Go on!”

“I can't. It doesn't make sense.”

“It does!” His voice sounds harsh. Then he softens it, as if to explain himself. “I have trouble sleeping.”

She pauses, confused. “Okay?”

“When I wake up, I can't remember things. I just feel tired from dreaming. That's why I came here. To find out if you could see what I see—to help me understand.”

“I just told you. I don't understand.”

“But you do. You're not like the others. You see these things too.”

She wants him to leave so she can get back to her frozen din
ner and glass of cheap wine. Putting her hands on top of the cards, she starts to gather them up and end the session—even if he doesn't pay. Who cares.

“Please. Just tell me what else you see. That's all I want.” He pulls out a hundred-dollar bill. “Just finish the reading,” he pleads.

She looks at him skeptically, then at the neatly folded bill on the table. “All right.”

He settles back into the chair with a strained smile and motions to the deck.

She passes her hands over the upturned cards and closes her eyes. Part of her is afraid of returning to the darkness, but she wants to get this over with quickly.

“The thing following you is very old. And there is a smell…something rotten.” She winces from the stench, then starts seeing faces—each twisted by fear. Tears falling up from their eyes. One after another, they rush forward with muffled cries. She doesn't know whether or not she is talking anymore. Her body seems to be moving through an unfamiliar hallway. She is in someone's home—blood splattered in arcs on the walls, across family photos, a light switch, a child's crayon drawing of a purple tree and two stick figures holding hands. She stops to unlock the entryway door. Light reflects in a mirror to the left, and she turns. It's not her. It's him, the customer, in the mirror looking back at her. She hears heavy breathing and distant notes struck on a piano.

Lost in these visions, she doesn't see the customer turning his head away from the cards and reaching into his black coat. He pulls out two long knives. Lurching out of the chair, he extends his arms across the table and tries to slice an oval-shaped mark into her chest. The knives pierce the skin of her breasts, pushing her backward. She feels her body hit the floor. With his left hand, he flips the table sideways and towers above her.

He leans down, as if to whisper something, and his face becomes feral. Teeth bared. Eyes bulging with intensity and saliva stringing from his mouth. He sucks in his breath with a hiss. Wildly, instinctively, she kicks her legs out, hitting his left shin and knee. He falls on top of her. Air explodes out of his mouth—his lips almost touching her ear and his coarse, unshaven face scraping against her cheek. He is still.

She can feel the sticky warmth of his blood seeping through her shirt and mixing with her blood. She turns her head and vomits. The apartment is almost entirely dark now, and through the pounding in her temples, she listens to the nighttime noises of the street outside. Car engines and loud conversations, bicycle bells and jackhammers. They seem far away. She thinks about calling the police, getting help. But not yet, she tells herself. I need rest.

I need sleep.

OCTOBER 4, 1982
3:20 P.M.

She doesn't remember calling the police—only that they are in her apartment when she wakes. The skin on the customer's face looks like an ancient slab of marble, and one of the coroners touches it before zipping up the body bag.

Detective Jacobs scribbles something in his notepad, then asks for the discarded clothes. She leads him to the bedroom, where he lifts them off the floor with latex gloves and places them in a plastic bag. She doesn't recognize her white top, which is still damp with blood.

“Chris…tina” He writes slowly and with strained concentration. “C-a-s-t-i-n-e-l-l-a. You must be Italian.”

“How could you tell.” She leans back on the couch and looks at the poster of Italy hanging on the wall behind him. Her head is still throbbing, and she worries about passing out. “I feel dizzy.”

“The paramedics are going to take you to the hospital now. You hit your head pretty hard in the struggle, but the wound on your chest is superficial.”

The taped bandages above her chest itch, and she looks down at the front of her shirt. No blood seeps through the white gauze.

“I'm still unclear,” Jacobs continues, “as to how you stabbed him.”

“I…I didn't. He fell, I think. I'm not sure.”

He waits for her to say more, but she simply lowers her head.

“You need some rest, Miss Castinella. Hopefully, you'll be able to remember more about what happened later this afternoon.” He stands. “I'll stop by the hospital in a few hours.”

“Who is he?” she asks, her voice shaking.

“We're fairly certain he's responsible for six murders in this area since September. You're lucky to be alive.” The EMT walks over to Christina and helps her up.

“Six murders?” The number seems wrong somehow.

Detective Jacobs watches her leave, then returns to the investigators, who are taking photographs and collecting evidence in the kitchen.

7:12 P.M.

She gets out of the cab and decides to walk up M Street before going back to her place. The sidewalks are damp from a light rain that is still falling from the charcoal-gray sky. After being
questioned by Detective Jacobs at the hospital, she started to remember more. The hallway with those blood-stained pictures. And that music, haunting, calm, insistent.

As Christina thinks more about the man in her kitchen, she wonders whether he was really trying to kill her. After throwing her to the floor, he leaned close as if to whisper. Maybe he said something that she didn't hear. Were his lips moving? Then he fell on top of her—on top of his knife. He tried to hold her still with the weight of his body and one free hand. The other gripped the knife. She could feel his closed fist against her sternum. But he didn't try to get up. He didn't strike or stab her again. He only struggled to keep their bodies together, holding himself against her until he died.

At the hospital, the doctor took some of her blood to run tests, and for the first time she started worrying about AIDS. What if he was sick? What if some disease will kill her after all? She won't know until the police conduct an autopsy on the killer. Even then, will she really be sure?

She stops in front of a newsstand, looking at the rows of shiny magazine covers. A new image comes to her, one she has not seen before. A woman surrounded by withered trees that are upside down. No. She is upside down, hanging by her feet, each arm stretched out by rope attached to other trees. Thick, arthritic branches twist above her, dangling her body like a puppet. Her legs are crossed, suspended from a single rope, and her back is torn from being dragged across the ground. On her front, blood drains slowly from a circle carved into her torso. Her body sways slightly.

Christina's eyes tear up. “What's wrong with me?” she mutters. Then she hears a man's voice—the vendor has turned on a shortwave radio. It's a news update on NPR.

“Pianist Glenn Gould died today at the age of fifty. A contro
versial artist, Gould was perhaps most famous for his recordings of Bach's
Goldberg Variations,
which he recorded twice—at both the beginning and the end of his career….”

An excerpt from one of these recordings begins playing, and Christina immediately feels numb. A wave of nausea passes over her as she recognizes the music from her vision.

“Goldberg,” she says aloud, and the vendor turns to her, puzzled. Suddenly, she feels the need to run—from the images, the sounds, the rainwater. Along the brick sidewalks leading back to her apartment, the name Goldberg repeats in her head, and the music follows her like her own shadow on a sunny afternoon.

FRIDAY

T
he doorbell rings, followed by two quick knocks. Samantha knows immediately that it is Frank. The heaviness of his knuckles against the thin plywood door—it's a sound she has been waiting to hear for months. Too many times she mistook the footsteps of a neighbor or a knock on the door across the hall for him. Sometimes she just opened the door, as if he would be standing there one day, penitent and miserable without her. Instead, he found her on a street corner, right where he expected her. And so the knock this morning comes as no surprise.

She looks at the clock: 6:45
A.M
.

Samantha closes her book and places it on the bedside table. She can feel the heat from the lamp that has been glowing for hours. She knows better than to read in bed, but last night she couldn't stop thinking about Frank after their conversation, about Catherine.

Her body feels weary, in part from yesterday's workout, but mostly from months of sleeplessness and nightmares. She had
hoped that working longer hours, not eating after 6:00
P.M
., and using her bed exclusively for sleep would help. But she can't stop mulling over her problems and getting so anxious that her eyes won't shut. She still worries about her father's health, about her clients at the legal clinic, about Frank's move to Washington. And the man who attacked her over two years ago seems to linger at the edge of every dream. Watching. Waiting to strike again.

Sometimes she wonders if loneliness is to blame. If she never stops being lonely, then what?

She opens the door.

“Hi, Sam. Sorry to come by so early. I just got a call from the San Francisco PD. They found Catherine's rental car in a parking lot along the Presidio. And a body.”

“Is it hers?” she asks without being sure if she really wants the answer.

“No, it's someone else's—a man's. I'm on my way there now.” He pauses, looking down at his black leather shoes. “Can you come?”

Nothing at first, then disbelief. “Why would I want to do that?”

“You might be right about her—that she's alive somewhere in the city. This is our best chance of finding her, Sam. We can go over there, take a quick look at the scene…. You might see something I'd miss.”

“I doubt it.” Another pause. Her head falls to the right, and she folds her arms in front of her chest. “Besides, I have an appointment this morning. I can't miss it.”

“I'll get you there. I promise.” His voice softens, and he looks directly into her eyes. “Look, this is the first physical evidence in the case, and I could really use some help.” He runs his right hand through his pale hair, then looks away. “I've never done this before.”

She watches his body. The fine hair on his forearms, the thick wrists. She remembers the contours of his chest, hidden now beneath a white dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, but once suspended above her in the dark. Solid and strong. She searched for his face with her hands. A groan—the sound of pleasure without words—guided her lips to his.

No.

She wants to say no. She wants to say,
You can't just pick and choose when you want me in your life
. She wants to shut him out—treat him as he has treated her for the last six months. But she isn't ready for that, not yet. She can still see Catherine's face watching from the photos.

“I'll grab my coat.”

 

Catherine's rental car, a black Pontiac Sunfire, was left at the edge of a parking lot with the passenger door facing the rough waters of the bay. Pairs of joggers run along the coast toward Fort Point, and a handful of fishermen stand on a short L-shaped pier. They mostly concentrate on the fishing lines that tug and sway against the current, but every few minutes, one looks at the gathering of police. Only fragments of the Golden Gate Bridge are visible through the fog. Its peaks jut above the clouds like shark fins.

The thick, moist air dampens Samantha's face as soon as she steps out of the car. She can see a few officers working closely on the Sunfire, taking photographs and spreading dust to lift fingerprints. As she and Frank move closer, a man with dark skin and gapped front teeth orders the others to get back to work. They have been standing around a body a few feet from the car. The body is a uniformed officer.

“What happened?” Frank asks.

The dark-skinned man turns. “Oh, him. That's Officer Kincaid. He…passed out.”

“Passed out?”

“Yeah, he's new on the job. Who are you?”

“Frank Bennett. This is Samantha Ranvali. We're investigators with the Palici Corporation.”

“Detective Snair.” He shakes Frank's hand indifferently. “I was under the impression that you'd be alone.” While waiting for an answer, he looks over Samantha's body with an obvious mixture of disapproval and desire. He notices the rum-colored skin of her neck, and the silver necklace dangling between her small breasts.

“Well, I'm not. May we?” Frank glances at the empty car.

“By all means.”

“What about the body? On the phone, you said there was a body.”

“Yeah, underneath.” Snair coughs. His eyes never lift to Samantha's face.

A thick rope runs through the open windows of the backseat and wraps underneath the car. Samantha steps ahead of Frank and squats, placing both hands on the damp asphalt. She looks under the car between the tires. A man's body hangs there, unevenly, like a discarded marionette. His arms have been stretched out at ninety-degree angles from his torso—each wrist tied to part of the car's frame. Another rope dangles from the front end, where his feet have been bound together and fastened to part of the engine. His hands are bluish from the lack of circulation, and his forehead appears burrowed in the asphalt. The dark shadow of the car and lack of sunlight distort his face. Only his bright-white jawbone is clearly visible. She turns away abruptly, wondering if she is ready for this. Then she notices a small, oddly shaped object by the rear tire. Putting her left knee on the ground for balance, she looks closer.

It takes her only a few moments to recognize it. She stands abruptly.

“Sam,” Frank says tentatively, “what is it?”

“A tooth,” she whispers.

A trail leads from the car to the parking lot entrance—not from leaky oil or transmission fluid, but from the body being dragged against the cement. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, hoping the cold air will keep her from being nauseated.

She should have said no.