“Evil,” Bunny said firmly, and Latovsky felt the hair on his arms stir.
“Getting kind of cosmological here, aren’t we,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“No one ever said the truth had to he mundane.”
“Okay, as long as we’re pissing on the mundane,” Latovsky said, feeling himself start to blush, “how about my psychic?”
Latovsky brought her into Bunner’s office at 10:00 a.m. It was Saturday morning, the phone was quiet, no patients went in or out, Mrs. Meeker was not on the front desk wearing her pink cotton cardigan over one of her starched blouses, and for the first time since Terence Bunner had opened this office eight years before, the place looked dismal to him.
He hadn’t realized the carpet and furniture had gotten so worn, or that the drapes needed cleaning. Mary had picked the fabric, which was off white with bright green vines of some kind trailing down it. But the green had faded, the off-white was a greasy-looking yellow. The windows were grimy and his desk could use refinishing.
He saw all this tor the first time, and the woman sitting across the desk from him didn’t brighten things up any. Her face was gray; there were circles under her drab brown, slightly bloodshot eyes. He thought she must be about thirty-five, but she could have told him fifty and he wouldn’t have been shocked. She looked exhausted, and something else that he didn’t like to say because it wasn’t very scientific: She looked heartsick.
Dave Latovsky’s psychic.
Bunner had trained himself to really look at people, take in details and remember them. He looked at her now. Her clothes were good, but her purse was the real tip-off. It was large, black leather, with a discreet F on the small gold catch—Fendi or Ferragamo, which meant that the purse probably sold for eight hundred to a thousand. She was wearing flat shoes with rubber soles, not sport shoes like LA Gear or Nike or any of that crap, just plain rubber-soled flats. Old ladies’ walking shoes with a thousand dollar purse. And the little bird pin on her sweater was heavy gold, with a half-carat diamond for the eye.
She was rich. Or her husband was. Her wedding ring was a plain gold band, the heavy kind you bought at Tiffany or Van Cleef & Arpels. Her slacks were good wool, well worn, with the knee torn out of one leg, and he got a peek at a large flesh-colored Band-Aid. She had fallen and skinned her knee like a six-year-old.
Latovsky had told her Bunner’s name, but not the other way around. Bunner took a fresh tape out of the desk drawer, labeled the time and date, May 8, 1993. Then he said, “I’d like to record this, if you have no objection, Ms...” He waited for her to say her name.
“It’s Mrs.,” she said. Her voice was low-pitched and pleasant, the only pretty thing about her.
“I have no objection as long as you don’t use my name,” she went on. “I don’t even want you to know it.”
Bunner nodded, slid in the cassette, and pushed the record button. He said, “I heard most of the story: You claim you were in front of a house when you ‘saw’ a woman die miles away. Is that right?” She nodded.
“You were nowhere near the site?”
“No.”
“That’s confirmed,” Latovsky said. “Mel Wright says she left his place at quarter to eleven. He remembers the time because he was so bitched off about not having enough business to stay open. She couldn’t have covered all that ground and called 911 by eleven twelve. It’s not possible.”
“I see,” Bunner said. Pretty slim evidence for Latovsky to suddenly start believing in psychics.
He took her slowly through the story. It ended in the driveway, with her on her knees in the gravel (which explained the torn slacks and Band-Aid). She’d seen the woman, seen blood soaking the pine needles, seen the man’s shoes and the cuffs of his trousers, then seen his back as he rushed down the path through the woods.
“Probably to the road,” she told Bunner.
“Probably? You didn’t ‘see’ the road?”
“No.”
“But you saw everything else. The woman, the man’s feet and back, the trees, the shed. Even though you were miles away.”
“That’s right.”
“But not the house foundation, not the road.”
“No. They were outside the... frame.”
“Frame?”
“The frame of the picture.”
“Hmmm.” Bunner didn’t think she was lying to weasel out of having left a woman to die. But that didn’t make her psychic either.
“You really saw all that?” he said.
“Not just saw it. Heard it, smelled the pine needles and...” She hesitated.
“And what?”
“The blood,” she said looking down.
“I see.” Bunner fiddled with a pencil because he didn’t know what else to do. The tape hissed slightly in the machine as it recorded nothing.
He looked up at Latovsky. “I don’t know what you want me to ask.”
She said in that lovely voice, “He wants you to confirm what he can’t get himself to believe or not believe. I don’t think you’ll do it with questions, Doctor. I’m not crazy, I won’t act or look as if I am. But not being crazy doesn’t mean I saw a woman die from miles away either, does it?”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t.”
“Then why don’t we stop wasting time. You don’t know my name, the lieutenant’s given me his word that he’ll never tell you, so... hold out your hand.”
Something started beating wildly in Bunner’s middle.
He didn’t move.
She said, “I won’t hurt you.”
He raised his hand from its resting place on the desk and looked at it as if he’d never seen it before. She waited patiently, then smiled at him, and he realized she’d probably be pretty after a few hours of rest. Very pretty: the kind who’s beautiful on some days, so-so on others, and very drab on days like this. He looked intently into her tired brown eyes and didn’t see anything at all to frighten him. And he grinned and thought, Okay, big-time scientist, M.D., Ph. D., third in your class at Cornell, give the lady your hand.
He stretched it out toward her and she reached for it with a pale hand, with tapering fingers that looked almost like a child’s. She was younger than she looked if he could believe the evidence of the hand reaching for his. He felt himself tense, the way he sometimes did when crossing a rug in winter to turn on the light, knowing a shock was inevitable. Their fingers touched; nothing happened. Her fingers slipped along his, and she took his hand in hers, then let him go and sat back in the chair.
Nothing happened.
“I’m sorry. I’m very tired,” she said, and he relaxed. It was an excuse, the great grandaddy of all excuses. I’m tired, Harry, I’ve got a headache. No fuckee tonight, Harry. He had gotten an excuse, not revelations from beyond the normal confines of time and space, and he was immensely relieved.
Then she said, “There’s one you’re most worried about.” Her eyes slid closed like a kid who can’t stay awake any longer. “I can’t get his name, but you probably don’t want me to know it anyway. He tried to kill himself last spring. You were his doctor then, you’re still his doctor, and you’re afraid he’s going to do it again. It was the real thing last spring. He slashed the undersides of his arms from wrist to elbow. It wasn’t a plea for help, a cry for love, attention, and understanding—he really wanted to die. He still really wants to die, and as the days get longer, the water changes color on the lakes, and the mountains start to green up, dying is all he can think about.
“He’ll try again. This week or next, toward the end of the week. Thursday, Friday, close to the weekend, because it’s spring, and he can’t believe he has the right to see another spring, enjoy another weekend with his wife and little girls. And you can’t understand what’s behind it. You’ve been at it for months trying to dig it out of him. He knows, of course, but he doesn’t know. Half forgot it ever happened. He can’t allow himself another spring, another weekend, because he killed his mother.”