Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 01 - Echo Park (4 page)

The room was darker now. I could almost see the energy transfer from the TV to the remote, and into Carla. Mack frowned a little at the game on the TV, which faded in and out because Carla was drawing power from the remote and it interrupted the cable signal. Still, he kept quiet and hovered, watching the game, and then watching us.

Julie gasped as Carla’s form materialized, shimmering softly at first, then appearing more solid. Julie looked into Carla’s face with a deep-rooted recognition. Her eyes flitted down to the girl’s fatal wound, a tear running down her cheek, but even Julie seemed to understand that Carla was in no pain. Not anymore.

“
Hi,” Carla said simply.

Julie glanced down at their entwined fingers. “Hi…” Then she reached for Carla and hugged her. “Hey, Carla!”

I couldn’t stand it. I needed another beer. I crossed the room into the kitchen.

Mack followed. “Very nice reunion,” he offered. He could never stand to see me cry. “Have I ever told you that you’re very good at what you do?”

“No, but thanks,” I answered as I removed the cap and took a few large swallows.

“
Well, you are. I think I’m going to wait just outside, though. Let the TV keep recording the game for me.”

“
Sure thing.” I watched him glide, mid-air, to the front door and pass through it. Tough old dog, he could be so sweet at times. He didn’t care for too much emotion, though. It made him duck out. It was probably related to something in his past that he didn’t want to face or discuss. Least of all with me.

Back in the living room, Julie and Carla were now deep in conversation. I leaned against the wall and let the magic unfold for a moment or two, but I knew Carla couldn’t stay materialized forever.

“Carla,” I said gently, “I’m so glad you’ve found each other.”

“
Me, too!” Carla beamed. “Thank you, Pauline. This is why I didn’t go Home, like my mother did.”

Julie gasped. “You stayed because…?”

“I just had to find you, Julie,” Carla said. “I couldn’t leave without finding my soul mate.”

“
Soul mate?” Julie had that confused look again. I sighed, and explained about soul mates. Carla nodded and interjected with her own affirmations.

“
Has the Light come for you, Carla?” I had to get down to business, whether I wanted to or not.

“
Yeah,” the girl said, “but I didn’t go.”

“
You know, that light will come to you less frequently, the more you reject it.”

Carla nodded. “Yeah,” she said again, “I kinda got that feeling.”

“Carla!” Julie exclaimed. “You don’t want to be stuck here forever, do you?”

“
No…” the girl answered, “but I just had to see you.”

“
And,” I offered, “I think we have a mystery to solve here. We want to find out who killed you and your mother, dear, so we can set things right.”

At this, Carla sighed. “My mother…I don’t remember her so much. Less as time goes by…how long has it been?”

“Since you both died?” I asked.

“
Yeah.”

“
About three months,” I told her. “And, if you’re losing memory of her, then the sooner you tell us what happened, the better.”

Julie was serious now. “I, for one, would like to know who killed you, and why.”

Carla sighed. She was shimmering a little now; a sign that she could fade. “It’s such a long story. I don’t know what you need to know.”

Julie was trying to keep hold of Carla’s grasp. She didn’t want to lose this connection any more than I did.

“Well,” I offered gently, “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

Chapter Six

Carla settled down next to Julie, their hands still interlaced. I sat across from them in the chair that Mack had tipped over. Mack had drifted back in and floated just above the floor near me. Carla glanced at him, a question on her face.

“Would you rather he not be here?” I asked her.

“
No, it’s okay. He knows a lot of it anyway. He’s my friend.”

I looked up at Mack, whose expression was stoic now. “You’ve known her and you didn’t tell me?”

“I know a lot of souls,” Mack responded. “How am I supposed to know which ones you’re interested in?”

“
Is the other one back?” Julie asked, looking straight at Mack without realizing it.

“
Yes. He wants to hear this, too. Is that all right with you?”

“
I guess so, as long as Carla’s okay with it,” Julie responded a little nervously. “But please, ask him not to overturn any more furniture.”

Mack chuckled now as I said, “He can hear you, darling.”

“I’ll be good,” Mack said, and Carla related this to Julie.

I took a sip of my beer, trying to make it last. I was too ashamed to pop open another one in front of a client. “All right Carla, tell us about yourself, and how you and your mother came to be killed.”

Carla closed her eyes for a moment, focusing. When she opened them, she began her tale. “Ever since I can remember, Mom was always in trouble. She was always in some kind of mess, and she spent a lot of time trying to get out of them. Even when I was little, she would leave me at an old friend’s house for days sometimes, trying to clean herself up. Her friend wouldn’t let her stay there while she was using. We probably could have lived there if Mom had ever been clean for more than a couple of days.”

I could tell this wasn’t going to be easy, for her to tell or for us to listen to. But I nodded my head in encouragement and waited.

“We never had the best relationship,” Carla continued. “Yeah, she was my mom, but we weren’t that close. No, that’s not right. She was my mother and I loved her, but we kind of…saw things differently. You know? There was a good year or so, after the first time she went to rehab, that we got along great. The rehab place helped her get a job at a thrift store and we lived in one of those residence motels for sober people. But then, she started getting into trouble again and lost her job. And then we lost our place to live because she kept failing the drug tests. After that, she was never clean for more than a couple of days, and that was only because when she had money, it went for drugs. We ate, sometimes, out of the garbage bins just outside fast-food restaurants.” She grimaced.

Carla spoke like a girl well beyond her years. Maybe she’d had the last three months to think about her previous life. But I had the feeling she’d always been a wise child. An o
ld soul
, that’s what she was. I sensed that she’d been much smarter in life than her mother had been.

“
I guess so.” Carla read my thoughts. “I was smarter than she was, and it frustrated me. She had a learning disability, a reading one, but other decisions were hard for her, too. I can see that now, but when we were alive, I didn’t understand it, how hard it was for her to even fill out a job application, and then, if she managed that, all the steps to even get it turned in. I mean, she was my mom, right? She was supposed to take care of me. But she didn’t know how to do things with more than a few steps.”

“
Oh, Carla,” Julie whispered.

“
Anyways,” Carla continued, “Mom was still always trying to get ahead. She’d always tell me that soon we would be living a good life. That I could go to a good school. Take horseback riding lessons or ballet. I don’t know how she ever believed this would happen, but at some point, I stopped believing her dreams because they became lies to me.”

She sighed and continued, “Just before we were, you know, killed, we got kicked out of our last friend’s house because my mom stole from them. We were out on the street, and Mom was desperate.”

“You were homeless?” Julie exclaimed.

“
Yeah. It wasn’t as hard for me as it was for Mom. I could ditch school, I could do whatever I wanted. I could have anyways, if I didn’t have to keep an eye on my mom.”

“
So, what brought you to
that
house?” Julie asked. “The one that I’ve been having nightmares and visions about?”

“
Sorry about that,” Carla answered with sincerity. “I just didn’t know how else to find you, Julie. I was kind of haunting you.”

“
This is all very sweet,” Mack interjected, “but the girl’s only got so much time to stay materialized.”

“
Right,” Carla agreed. “Okay, well, Mom decided we needed some fast cash, and she started dealing drugs.
Again.
Heroin this time, as it was easier to come by, and brought a good profit. And you didn’t have to deal with meth-heads, at least, that was what Mom said. That heroin was somehow better than meth, and had safer people in the dealing end of the business.”

Her tale of woe got worse and worse.

“So, we went to the heroin dealer to pick up some more to sell. The guy wouldn’t front it, but somehow Mom got the money to pay for it; she had a ‘plan.’ You always have to try a little bit of what you’re selling, so you know what you’ve got. How strong it is, what it’s been cut with. Also, you want the dealer to try it, so you know you’re not getting crap.”

Carla shivered, if a spirit could shiver, recalling that fateful day that ended her life. “My mom started flirting with the creep. She talked him into mainlining with her. I was watching, and I saw that my mom made herself a much weaker dose. They did it together, and in a few minutes, the guy was out cold. My mom took the
H
—the heroin—and she kept her money, too. And she ransacked his place and found some more money he’d stashed away.”

The girl wasn’t even aware of us now; she was reliving the past as if watching an intense movie. I could see some of it in my mind, and I bet Mack could, too, but Julie stared at Carla with a hand over her mouth, horrified and silent.

“I told her, ‘Mom, this is a really bad idea, you don’t go messing around with dealers, especially if you don’t have a home.’ But she didn’t listen. She told me to shut up, that she knew what she was doing. What could I do?”

Carla threw her hands up as if we could have given her an answer. “I didn’t have anywhere to go. I mean, Pauline, you’ve got a nice place here, but I don’t—didn’t—know anyone like you where I could go with
her
. You can’t even stay in the shelters if you are on something. They won’t let you in. You see, I grew up on the
other
side of Echo Park. It’s a world apart from your hilltop.”

I understood what Carla was talking about. Echo Park was one of the more unique areas in Los Angeles. East of downtown, north of East L.A., Echo Park was a mixture of old history and new culture. My apartment building, seated on top of a grand hill and overlooking the busy streets below, was a fairly posh area. I was surrounded by original but renovated classic Victorian homes, and the streets were lined with ancient trees, some at least a hundred years old. Neighbors knew each other here, although I kept to myself more than most.

Down below, however, lay a different Echo Park—a separate city, it seemed, crowded in places with liquor stores on every corner, gangs, drugs, and even some hookers. The lower quarters were still rich with culture, cafés, and funky thrift shops; vibrant and alive during the day. But people could get into trouble down there at night if they weren’t careful. It chilled me to the bone to think that this twelve year old knew so much about hard drugs and street life.

“
We left before he woke up,” Carla told us. “Then Mom
did
freak out, like I hadn’t told her what would happen. Within a few hours, we got tipped off that people were looking for us. We had to figure out a way to lay low.”

“
So, you were trying to break into this house…?” Julie asked.

Carla sighed. “Yeah. It belonged to a friend of Mom’s who was out of town and she had said something on Facebook about going on vacation. When we went to the library to use the restroom—which we did several times a day because it was clean and safe—Mom used to use the library computer and look on Facebook for old friends. And see what they were up to, just for old times’ sake. I think she missed her high school years. Like, this was her only good friend from high school, long before her drug problems got bad and here her old friend was, blabbing about her upcoming vacation and boarding her dog, so we knew her house would be empty. Mom was ashamed to let her old best friend know how bad off we were. I remember feeling awful about breaking in, or trying, to the house. But it was the only safe place we could think of. Mom still had both the money and the stuff on her. We were both scared. And then, when we were trying to break in,
he
came.”

The girl sat quiet, reliving the scene we all had witnessed. None of us knew what to say.

Finally, Mack spoke. “I guess that’s all she wrote. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Carla nodded. “I saw the light, the stairway came, after…you know.” She gingerly touched her gunshot wound. “Mom ran straight for it.”

“But you didn’t,” I stated.