Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (35 page)

"I don't know
how to respond to that," Jimmy said.  "I just know that the universe,
or reality, has decided that Sapphire and I can do this and maybe that we need
to be able to do this.  Maybe that's why I kind of feel like this might only be
temporary."

Things got quiet
between them.  They had dealt with the stuff that Jimmy had done that was well
beyond the scope of human understanding.  Death, on the other hand, and people
with guns, were very understandable.

"So,"
Jimmy said, already feeling the sobs and the tears burning at his throat and
his eyeballs.

"So,"
Tabitha repeated.  "George was shot, as you know.  He was dead before the
ambulance could get here."

Jimmy said,
"I know."

Tabitha sighed. 
"The sheriff arrested both Stan and Devlin Little, along with two others. 
One of them was found in the backyard buried up to his neck."

Jimmy said
nothing.  Tabitha gave him a pixie-ish stare over the top of her glasses, but
when she realized that he wasn’t going to give any more information, she
shrugged.

"They’re
saying all kinds of things about you flying and manipulating electricity, but
they aren’t saying anything about Sapphire or explaining why they were here
shooting up the place," Tabitha said.  "I told the sheriff what we
had been investigating and what we had found.  He agrees that the evidence for
Devlin having anything to do with Sapphire's death is slim, at best.  He
doesn't think he can officially charge him with that, but he thinks that he can
get him on George's death.  Needless to say, the town is in an uproar and
people are scared.  As you know, Devlin owns a lot around here and people are
afraid of losing their jobs and everything else."

“So, chief, what's
our next move?  Sapphire is still in my head and hasn't moved on.  So if we
caught the person that did it, why hasn’t she?"

"Maybe she
needs him to be convicted of her death," Tabitha said.  "No more memories
have come to her about that night?"

"I've been
sort of out of it the past few days, as you know," Jimmy replied. 
"We haven't talked.  I can hear this sort of buzzing in my head when she's
listening in or when she wants me to know she's around.  I can still hear it. 
And I am betting she would be talking to me if any memories had come up."

Tabitha chewed on
her bottom lip for a moment.  Her forehead creased and Jimmy realized she was
thinking, mulling over the facts and how things had played out in her head.

"I think we
need to find her body," Tabitha said.

Jimmy's eyes went
wide.  "What makes you think there's anything to find?  If what Jesse said
was true, she was washed out into the river."

Tabitha cocked her
head to the side and looked at Jimmy as if he were crazy.  "Did you
believe a word of what Jesse said that day we talked to him?"

Jimmy closed his
eyes and sighed again.  He shook his head.

"Me,
either," Tabitha said.  "I think we need to see what we can do about
finding her bones, or whatever else we can find.  I also think we need to find
her family."

"Didn't you
put feelers out to people at the FBI and stuff like that?" Jimmy asked.

Tabitha nodded. 
"Yes, but nothing has come back.  If there was a crime, it all happened
and was investigated locally.  They also didn't have everyone’s fingerprints
back then.  Well, maybe Hoover wanted to, but most of the FBI didn't and they
were certainly not worried about a teenage girl in high school."

Jimmy shrugged. 
"How do we find her?"

"First, I
think you two need to have a conversation.  Maybe just mentioning her body will
spark a memory.  If not, I have a friend who has a dog that has been used to
sniff out bodies.  Maybe he can find something, but that won’t be easy with the
river involved.  If not, I also have a friend who has one of those scanners
that they tried to use to find Jimmy Hoffa at Giants Stadium one time.  Maybe
we can use that."

"That's a lot
of maybes," Jimmy said.

"Do you have
a better suggestion?"

"OK.  OK. 
Just sayin'."

Tabitha stood up
and gave Jimmy a hug.  It was so sudden that it caught him off-guard, but it
also felt very genuine.  Then she patted his shoulders and exited the room. 
Jimmy sat back and closed his eyes and thought of Sapphire.  As he did, the
room began to lighten again, and crackles of energy like lightning etched their
way across the room.  A deep, rumbling bass sound filled the air and the light
got brighter and brighter.  Moments later, Sapphire appeared, her eyes wide, a
smile spread across her face.

Then she saw
Jimmy’s face, and her smile faltered. 

She ran to him and
collapsed into his arms.  They kissed, and the kiss deepened into a passionate
embrace.  They tumbled onto the bed and the air around them came alive; the
walls appeared to breathe, the ceiling expanded and contracted, and the world
itself seemed to change and alter as their passion grew.

They did their
best to forget what had happened, and, for a while, it worked.

After
all of the pyrotechnics, flash, and thunder had died down and Sapphire and Jimmy
had spent some time talking about what had happened, they sat on the bed
together, both of them worried. Sapphire was devastated about George and could
not stop apologizing.  Jimmy cried, and they held each other. When he broached
the subject of finding her body, her demeanor stiffened and a fearful glint
filled her eyes.

"I don't
know, Jimmy," she said.

"We have to
deal with it," Jimmy said.  "Finding it might also provide evidence
that could put Devlin Little away."

"I think his killing
George will do that," Sapphire said.

"Look, I know
you’re afraid that if we find out what happened to you that things between us
will stop.  I'm afraid of that, too, but it's what's right, Sapphire.  And
doesn't your family deserve to find some peace, too?"

Sapphire's eyes
filled with pain.  "I can barely remember my family.  I don't know what
happened to them…after."

They were silent
for some time, considering this fact.

"We need to
find it," Jimmy said.  "Do you have any idea where it might be?"

Sapphire shook her
head and began pacing.  The energy in the room suddenly drained, and it became
very cold.  She became indistinct and began to sort of flicker.

"Calm
down," Jimmy said.  "You're losing your hold on things.  Relax."

He stood up and
grabbed her on her next pass by the bed.  She flung her arms around him and he
held her tight.  They kissed, and it was like all of the other times, only more
real than ever before.

"Better?"
Jimmy said.

Sapphire nodded. 
"Better."

"Now, stay
calm," Jimmy said.  "Just sit down and think.  Does anything come to
mind?"

Sapphire sighed
and sat down on the edge of the bed.  After a few moments, she closed her
eyes.  Her breathing grew steady and slow as if she were falling into a
trance.  She shook her head.

"I remember
it being cold," she said, her voice sounding strangely distant.  "I
remember being outside and being so angry.  I couldn't stop talking to Jesse
about how unfair it was that we got kicked out.  I remember being in the
car."

She shook her head
and her brow creased, as if she were thinking hard.  Her breath caught in her
chest.

"I don't
remember what happened," she said.  "The car stopped and it was cold
again and I remember shouting."

Her face creased
with pain.

"I remember
hurting and being scared."

Her breath caught
again, as if in a sob.  Then her breath started again, fast, filled with fear.

"I remember
it being cold.  Water.  I remember water.  Something else.  Something cold and
wet."

Her breath hitched
again and she sobbed.

"I was
scared," she said. "I remember being so afraid.  Then it was dark and
things made no sense. I was there, but not there.  I could sort of see and hear
things, but not respond to them.  I was so scared.  Time seemed to fly by and
then slow down at the same time."

Her eyes flew open
and Jimmy saw that they were shining with tears. 

"I'm
sorry," she said.  "I can't remember anything else."

She sobbed.  Her
chest was rising and falling, her breath hitching and catching in her chest. 
Jimmy came to her and knelt down in front of her.  She held out her arms and he
enfolded her within his own.  They kissed, and then that kiss stretched out as
they lay on the bed.

Together, they
made the pain stop.

Sapphire
simply vanished a couple of hours later.  Jimmy lay in bed, staring at the
ceiling for a time. His head was spinning, and he could still smell Sapphire's
perfume on his skin. After a while he stood up and got dressed and headed out
into the hallway.  When he got downstairs, he saw that the windows had been
boarded up and the broken glass was gone.  There was a spot beneath the table
that had probably been stained where George lay, but it was clean now.  Tabitha
was in the kitchen, and when she saw Jimmy she came over to him.

Jimmy told her
what Sapphire had told him.  Tabitha agreed that it was not much.

"I think she
may have been buried in the mud beside the river," Tabitha said.  "I
think she was held under and drowned, and then buried along the banks of the
river."

Jimmy cocked his
head to the side. "How do you come to that conclusion?"

Tabitha sighed. 
"From what I can tell, spirits tend to become attached to the location
where they were left.  There are exceptions and some spirits seem to find ways
to disassociate themselves, but Sapphire seems to have stuck to that location
for a reason.  I think her body was left there, buried."

"It makes
about as much sense as anything else," Jimmy said.  "How do we find
it, though?"

Tabitha smiled. 
"We search underground."

The
air was much cooler than it had been the other night, Jimmy thought as he
shivered standing near the bridge.  Inside his head, the buzzing sound that
indicated Sapphire was awake and listening was growing.  He was trying hard to
keep his thoughts to himself, however.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that what
he and Tabitha were doing would upset her.

Tabitha stood on
the banks with Jimmy.  Nearby was a man with a gray beard bundled in a coat
that, despite the cooler air, Jimmy felt was a bit extreme.  A dog on a leash
was sniffing the ground furiously.  The man’s name was Ned, and the dog—Champ,
a German Shepherd—was a trained cadaver dog.  Ned insisted that the dog's nose
was so well trained that even human bones that had been buried beneath the mud
beside the river for more than fifty years could be detected.

Jimmy was not so
sure, and he was not entirely convinced that this was something that they
should even be doing.  The buzzing in his skull got louder for a moment, and
Jimmy put a hand to his forehead.  He was still so tired.  That last little
reality-bending adventure had nearly wiped him out entirely. 

Jimmy?
Sapphire said inside his mind. 
What are you doing?

Not now,
Sapphire
, Jimmy said. 
Please, just trust me
when I say that you don't want to know.

The buzzing diminished
a bit, but Jimmy sensed that he had hurt her feelings.  They had always been
very forthcoming, and the last time someone had lied and tried to cheat her,
well, she had ended up dead.

"Got
something!" Ned yelled.

Jimmy snapped his
head up and looked over.  Across the small river on the muddy bank, Champ was
turning in circles; he had found something.  Ned was smiling.

"Good job,
Ned and Champ," Tabitha said. "How sure are you that they are human
remains?"

Ned shrugged.
"Human remains are what he's been trained to find, and when he's on the
job, he doesn't go looking for the bones of squirrels.  We found something or,
should I say, someone.  Whether or not it's the girl you're looking for and how
much we found, I have no clue."

Tabitha grabbed
the shovel she had brought with her and cast an eye at Jimmy.  Jimmy grabbed
the second shovel that Tabitha had handed to him when they had gotten into the
car earlier.  The fact that the woman seemed to carry around shovels was a fact
that he was trying to ignore and not let bother him.  At the same time, just
how much actual digging did the editor of the small town newspaper actually
need to do?

They trudged
across the river.  The water was low and the current was mild.  Jimmy's feet
sank in the muddy bottom, but the two of them crossed fast and easy.  Jimmy
tried to think of the river filled with rushing water, the way it had been the
night Sapphire died.  He shook his head, trying to clear the thought; he did
not want Sapphire to pick up on that.