Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (21 page)

And then one of those nontextual events
occurred to really tizzy things. Or maybe it was purely
contextual, if you choose to accept otherworldly influences.
Marcia nearly drowned. She saw Karen standing there in the shadows
at poolside, and she was believer enough to ascribe some psychic
phenomenon to the event.

So—was Karen "out of control"? Or was
someone "operating" on Marcia, through Karen? We have to read
"someone" as Carl Powell, of course. And we can now view the
near-drowning as a crucial moment for Marcia and as the catalyst
that moved this drama into rapid climax.

TK remembers that when
Karen visited Marcia after dinner, that Saturday night, he left the
two women alone briefly at Marcia's request for a glass of water.
When he returned with the water, their heads were together in what
seemed at the time an intimate conversation. Moments later, Marcia
threw the water at Karen and emotionally accused her.

Apparently that was the "trigger." From that
moment, Karen was acting out a posthypnotic suggestion under
hallucinatory influences.

Carl Powell knew exactly where to look for
Karen—perhaps he checked with Marcia first?—on a small meadow
within a canyon where wild flowers grow, Karen's favorite retreat—a
place, now, in the imposed nightmarish shadows of Karen's
delusions, where werewolves and demons roamed the night. Maybe the
doc had good reasons for wanting to get there first, and
alone—suspecting what Marcia had done—or maybe he was just plain
scared out of his skull and wondering if his "experiment" had,
indeed, gone out of control.

I have not decided why Marcia had earlier
tried to plant a suspicion of Kalinsky in my mind, unless it was
just another try at scaring me off.

The little showdown over brunch was a
regrettable but necessary affair. I was still reaching for answers,
not really sure which way the thing was going to go. I had to find
the "operator." You may recall that I had found the code by
comparing doodles—Kalinsky's and Powell's—which definitely had me
tilted toward TK as the villain, and I have to admit that I went
into that little act prepared to react accordingly, the Walther PPK
still tucked into the waistband of my shorts.

TK told me, with obvious
embarrassment, "Sure, I knew he was using hypnosis. And I knew that
he had this trick word, but, shit, I swear to you I had never seen
the thing working, not to my knowledge at the time, for damned
sure."

He shivered, remembering. "Scares hell out
of me, to tell the truth. I couldn't do that. It's funny, though—I
knew, I mean I was sure that you were doing something, but I
couldn't figure out what it was. Besides, I was too much into what
was happening to wonder a lot about how. I never heard you say
'Elena Magdalena.'"

Karen immediately said, "Yes, I
understand."

TK gawked at her and whispered, "Oh
shit!"

I chuckled as I told him, "We'll get rid of
that, too, at the proper time. Tell her to wake up."

He was still whispering: "You tell her."

I said, "Can't. You're the operator. She
can't even hear me until you tell her that she may."

TK whispered to her, "Listen to Ash, honey.
Do what he says."

Karen turned to me and said, "Yes, I
understand."

I said, "Wake up, Karen."

She showed a beautiful smile and asked,
still in the earlier conversation, "Exactly what were we
doing?"

TK sighed and passed a hand over his eyes
and rested it on the bridge of his nose, inspecting his lovely ward
with an intent stare. He was clean, I was sure of that. Too bad I
couldn't have been that sure at noon on Sunday.

What threw me off was an
erroneous leap of mind. TK wanted the operator, yes, but because he
saw it as a way to protect Karen, as a control feature. I do
believe that Powell sincerely wrestled with his conscience over
that idea, as rightly he should have. We have seen the damage that
may be done by inept handling of that kind of power.

I believe, also, but not with any particular
conviction, that Powell did not deliberately hand over to Marcia
the keys to Karen's mind. Anyway, I prefer to think that way. Give
the dead the benefit of any doubt—Marcia easily could have wormed
her way into that situation without Powell's knowledge, or at least
without his connivance.

As for Powell threatening Kalinsky, during
the argument overheard by the bartender, Ramirez, to the effect
that Powell had incriminating evidence on Kalinsky—I simply have to
discount it as heated blustering on Powell's part, maybe as
desperate blustering by a very frightened man who might well have
entertained unfounded suspicions. My ongoing investigation found
no hint whatever that Terry Kalinsky had behaved irresponsibly or
criminally in any way.

There is a final, fat question concerning
Marcia. Why, after all that scheming toward her grand slam, did she
then turn about during the final countdown of days to propel Karen
into an action that would most certainly postpone, maybe forever,
the turnover of the estate to Karen?

Sigh. Another
noncontextual event? Maybe. Or maybe Marcia just wasn't smart
enough—or stable enough, within herself—to think through the
cause-and-effect logic of that. Maybe she simply panicked and
reacted blindly to what she perceived as an attack on her by her
erstwhile lover, Carl Powell—a woman scorned in the worst possible
way—and she was simply playing tit for tat. That is the way I am
reading it, for the record, if only because that reading provides
context of a sort—a context within a context, if you
will.

She was smart enough, though—after the fact,
anyway—to make sure that I knew that she was planning to run away
with the victim of her "murder by remote control."

That about covers the heavy stuff.

There are a few side issues still at large,
though. Such as the Valensa brothers. I have more or less accepted
their deaths as by natural causes, the same in both cases. The rare
genetic defect that hampered their full expression of life also
contained, I am told, some sort of built-in disconnect that
operates after a given number, of cell divisions—a sort of built-in
biological time clock that brings death in midlife. Both died at
the age of forty-six. In this connection, there is something eerie
yet also quite poignant in Karen's in-trance inference that Elena
knew the appointed time and had "come for them." But you figure it
out for yourself.

I guess I will always wonder, though, about
my own doctor, my drinking buddy who came to my place in Malibu
that Friday night to check on Karen. Guy was only about forty, in
apparent good health, but dropped dead with a coronary attack
during a party at a neighbor's house. I hate nontextual
complications when working in a logic pattern, but there you
go—those things do happen—real life ain't a movie.

As for TK, I have to tell
you that we have become friends, if not exactly drinking buddies.
He's a bit too rigid for my buddying tastes, but he really is a
pretty good guy. He brokered out at a hundred mil as his share of
Highlandville—can you believe that?—but the record shows that he
had appreciated the estate four times that during his eleven years
at the helm, so what the hell. Despite his own independent status
as a very rich man, he remains on with Karen as of this writing,
supposedly until she gets her feet firmly onto ground, but I think
the guy will die there.

All the intrigue on that Saturday night with
the legal eagles and the conservancy trick was really a brilliant
stroke, and I have to give the guy credit. He had been greatly
concerned about Karen's mental health, of course, especially
considering the family history—which is why he brought Powell on
board, in the first place—then the stuff Powell started feeding
him was enough to cinch a growing panic.

Karen had indeed been showing visible
symptoms of all the hardball ailments described by Powell—but, of
course, and I believe this with all my heart and mind, all but
about one percent of those hardball ailments had been engineered by
Powell in his clumsy invasions of her person. It is all to TK's
credit, though, that he had a contingency plan all set up to
forestall any emergency situation and to give his charge all
possible protection under the law. She still enjoys that
protection, by the way, and we have a sympathetic judge who has
been fully clued-in to all the happenings out there; Karen is going
to be okay in the legal department, and she will be certified sane
and ready to accept all of life's responsibilities most any day
now.

As for Karen, herself, I do not mind saying
that this is one of the loveliest and most lovable women I have
ever known. She was not half bad with all her problems; now that
she is blossoming out into her true self, the girl is simply
devastating. There was no Electra complex there, by the way, and
certainly no latent nymphomania, not unless there is something
essentially unhealthy about a good, strong sex drive.

In that particular connection, and no pun
intended, it was a remotely controlled Karen who went seeking a
sexual surrogate, of course, so I will forever be thankful that I
did not fall in with that error. You may recall—I may have
mentioned, earlier—that I never felt "right" in that situation. I
have learned, since, that Karen had not experienced orgasms because
she had never experienced the sexual embrace. She thought about it
a lot, sure, anyone will, anyone who has a normal drive, and it was
probably this sort of fantasy-play shadowy stuff that Powell seized
upon, unable himself to distinguish reality-memories from
fantasy-memories.

Anyway, let me assure you
that Karen is whole and healthy in matters of sex as well as all
the others. It would not be proper to mention this, here, except
that—as you must have already surmised—I have changed all the names
here for reasons of privacy and confidentiality. Karen and I have
had several long, philosophical discussions on the subject of
"cosmic sex"—and, of course, you will remember that we had one of
those soul-bonding experiences early in our relationship.
Relationship, yeah, we have one of those. I think we are about
ready, in fact, to give cosmic sex a whirl—and, frankly, I can
hardly wait to try my own theories.

I guess there is a final item awaiting
disposal. JQ. A hell of a guy, I think, and I wish I'd known him in
the flesh. Is he actually Karen's biological father? Hell, I don't
know. Not sure enough, anyway, to integrate any of that into
Karen's new personality. For the purposes of this particular
lifetime, how could it possibly matter, anyway, at this stage of
things?

Karen knows that she has been greatly loved
and cherished, and who can ask for more than that?

What prompted the last-minute change of
heart concerning his estate? I simply cannot say. The mere
existence of that document, though of no legal significance
whatever, has scarred forever the sensitivities of Terry Kalinsky.
That is about the only effect I can find. And I have pointed out to
TK that any number of emotions could have been working at that
dying and tortured mind, none of which would have to have roots in
a distrust of Kalinsky, himself.

JQ could have been worried about Elena.
Maybe, and this is a strong possibility, he could have seen
something in the maturing Marcia Kalinsky that set his teeth on
edge and turned his thoughts to counter-measures. Or, possibly, he
was worried that his own son would assert himself as a man, upon
the father's death, and move bitterly against a patently unfair
division of the estate; given that situation, all manner of
scandalous dirt could have titillated the nation for years.

See—it's not a script, it's real life.

And real life is never all that certain.

Unless, of course ...
well, if you take the whole bag ... I mean, what is life,
anyway—where does it begin and where does it end, really, or does
it ever do either one? What the hell is really going on here, in
this place only perceptible by, and probably largely created by our
sensory apparatus?—what does it all mean?—where are we all
headed?

I don't have the answer to any of that, mind
you.

But, uh, I have a new drinking buddy.

I do all the drinking, but I somehow get the
feeling that he smacks what passes for lips in some other reality
and enjoys the process as much as I do.

And maybe, just maybe, one day he will drop
another book at my feet—and who knows what answers I may come up
with, then.

Okay. That's about it. Got
to go, now. Have a date with Karen. We're driving up to Zodiac for
the weekend. In pursuit of truth. Yeah. The cosmic
truth.

'Til later ... see you around.

###

About the Author

Don Pendleton (1927-1995)
is creator of The Executioner: Mack Bolan Action/Adventure series
and the Joe Copp, Private Eye Mystery Thrillers.

He also co-wrote, with his
wife, Linda Pendleton, the nonfiction books To Dance With Angels
and Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness, and
the crime novel, Roulette.

Don Pendleton, (1927-1995)

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