“He’s buried,” Jonas says, which is a nice generic beginning, but Schroder knows it’s only going to get a whole lot more accurate. “Out of the city, but not far. Half an hour away perhaps. I sense . . . I sense water,” he says, then slowly shakes his head, “no, not water. Darkness. Damp darkness. The ground is exposed. It’s wet from the rain. I see . . . I see a shallow grave.” He tilts his head, like Lassie listening for children stuck down wells, only Lassie had ethics. “North,” he says. “North and . . . west a little.”
Jonas Jones opens his eyes. He looks directly into the camera, just the right amount of happiness in his features because he’s been able to help, just the right amount of sadness the occasion demands, all mixed in with a pinch of looking drained—being in touch with the spirit world is bound to take its toll. He doesn’t blink. “I have a very real sense of what happened to Detective Robert Calhoun,” he says. “I believe I can . . . yes, yes, I believe I can lead us to him. I . . .” he squeezes his eyes closed and tilts his head the other way, grimacing slightly as if in pain, proving once again the burden of being a gifted psychic, Schroder guesses. That and always knowing the lotto numbers. “I think I know where he is.”
“Where?” Schroder asks, frowning slightly, looking serious, playing the part.
“It’s hard to explain,” Jonas says, but then goes about explaining it anyway. “He’s calling to me. He wants to be found. He wants me to find him,” he says, stressing the word me because after all it’s Jonas that’s having the vision, not any one of these four-dollar-a-minute psychics you find on the other end of a phone line at two o’clock in the morning helping you with your love life.
“That’s good,” the director says, and Schroder thinks they might cut that last line, otherwise it suggests that if Jonas can’t find other murder victims they don’t want to be found.
“I didn’t go over the top?” Jonas asks.
“It was perfect,” the director says. “Let’s pack up and get this show on the road.”
The show gets on the road a few minutes later, starting with the parking lot. In the hour and a half they’ve been inside the morning hasn’t gotten any warmer. It’s sunny, thank God, but it’s still the kind of cold that makes you wonder just what temperature frostbite kicks in. He brings up the rear, the others ahead chatting contentedly among themselves, the way tight-knit groups do who have worked plenty of times together before. Jonas climbs into the driver’s seat of a dark blue sedan, which is two years old at the most. One camera operator sits in the passenger seat, and the sound guy sits in the back. The director and the lighting intern take a separate car, the second camera operator sitting in the passenger seat so they can shoot footage of Jonas’s car driving through the city. Schroder takes his own car, driving alone. It’s creeping up toward noon and he’s already tired. He needs to do something—he can’t carry on like this. Can’t be the whipping boy for a guy shooting what Schroder knows ought to be as appealing as late-night shopping shows. He just doesn’t get it, never will, and hates that he’s helping to make it more credible.
They head north. The view of the city changes as they pass through different suburbs, old houses next to new, new houses next to shops—the style of Christchurch evident at every turn. It’s his city, a city many of the people here have a love/hate relationship with. He remembers reading that most people die within a few miles of where they were born. They either never leave the city, or they go out into the world and come back many years later. He wonders if it’s true. It’s something he’s been thinking about a lot since last December when he almost died. Well, for a few minutes back in hot, sunny December he actually did die if you want to get all technical about it. He can’t shake the memory of it. It’s wedged down deep like a splinter buried beneath a fingernail that he can’t tweezer out. His hands were cuffed behind him and his head was held down in a bathtub full of water. When he died, he saw no light at the end of a tunnel, felt no peace, and then he was brought back. Since then he’s been seeing the world in a slightly different way. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like raising his kids in it. Doesn’t like the memory he has of his lungs flooding with bathwater.
He turns on the radio and flicks through various stations looking for one where people aren’t talking about Joe or the death penalty, then tries to find one where there is music and not ads, then gives up. The damn CD player doesn’t work since his daughter dripped water into it a year ago hoping to, as she said, make the music clearer. He guesses he’s lucky any of it works. Could be that’s the balance the city has struck with him—it drowns him and fires him and takes his CD player away, but he can have all the AM and FM he could want.
Kent sent them the GPS location of the body. It was accurate enough to get him and Jones to the farm earlier this morning. They had shared a car ride out there just before nine. Schroder had driven. He didn’t like the idea of Jonas being in control of the car in case he was suddenly struck down by a vision of Elvis. The problem is Jones decided to be in control of the conversation instead. It takes a brave man to say the things Jones was saying, and on the drive Schroder started to wonder where the line was between being committed for speaking to the dead and going on TV to help the public for a fee. What is insanity for some is showmanship for others, he guesses.
So Jonas Jones had rambled on for the twenty minutes they’d been together in the car. They had both worn thick jackets and hiking boots and the conversation dried up when they made the trek from the car to the grave. It wasn’t difficult to find where Calhoun was buried. Turned-over dirt was one big clue, footsteps leading all the way from the road another. So he and Jonas spent thirty minutes doing what Schroder thought was a pretty good job of hiding the fact anybody had been there within the last twenty-four hours. It had been an eerie feeling out there, and one that was spent mostly in silence. Jonas had been happy. Schroder had been sad. He was at the grave of a former cop, a man who had fought the same war; they had been brothers in arms and now Calhoun was the prop in some cheap parlor trick and Schroder had made that happen. The sun had come through the trees, none of which had any leaves, and hit the ground, burning off some of the moisture so it looked like rising steam. It was a good location for a TV shoot. The cameras were going to love it. He knew that’s what Jonas Jones, Psychic had been thinking. Whereas Schroder had been thinking about physics. About leverage and exertion and the effect an event can have on another. He was thinking about how hard it would be to dig Calhoun up and replace him with Jones. He was thinking about how that would make him happy, but Jonas sad. He was thinking about driving Calhoun to the morgue where he would be treated right. The dead man deserved more from both of them.
Of course he hadn’t done that. Instead they had finished up, using branches to break up the footprints on their way out. Back at the car they threw their jackets into the backseat and used cold, soapy water and rags to wash down their hiking shoes because they needed them to be clean for the shoot. Then they had left. They hadn’t spoken on the way back to the TV station. Jonas had been busy writing down notes in his journal. His mind had been racing. He’d been putting together his script.
Now they are heading out there again. They have to pull over a few times on the way for Jonas to clutch his head and tell the camera he was being drawn toward Calhoun. It was like he was dialing in the dead policeman on a receiver.
It’s like I’m being pulled toward him, it’s an actual physical feeling. He had seen Jonas write that line down, and no doubt he’ll be using it now.
When they get to the paddock they park up on the road and get out and into position and then it’s lights, camera, action. The cameraman shoots footage of them pulling hiking boots on, Jonas looking up into the camera at the time and saying, “I believe Detective Calhoun is around here somewhere.”