The Cupel Recruits (8 page)

‘Well, it’s not surprising they would note it; it was the kickoff day for the project.’ she thought to herself. Yet, somewhere down deep, maybe in the same cavern that housed her true knowledge of her parent’s vocation, Lela knew that was wrong. The project was big to her, and her Dad and brother were helping, but it certainly wasn’t the biggest thing going on in her parents’ life. It would be noteworthy on their calendar, but not a focal point. Within the same square, under the star and “The Day”, it said “see also Dossler Case". The format appeared to be to some reference material, maybe a legal case. She wrote the words on a sticky note and stuck it to her own laptop inside her bag so that she could research it later. With a final backward glance to the star, Lela turned off the interior lights, set the timer for the exterior ones, and exited the house.

She awoke the next day with “Dossler Case” on her mind and she lay awake in bed staring at a stuffed wolf carelessly thrown among the pillows she had cast aside from her bed to the floor to climb in the night before. The wolf was cocked half upside down, one ear pressed against the wall and staring at her with a dopey grin. He’d been a Christmas gift when she was eleven, and suddenly reminded her of a warm family Christmas. She arose, picked up Johann the wolf and carried him with her to the next room, the first time he’d been anywhere but the bed or the floor in years. He was no doubt excited by his field trip.

She sat Johann on her desk and stared at his one brown eye and one blue as she dialed the phone to the investigator whose card had been thrust at her the day of the accident. She hadn’t even reached out to accept it; the green eyed man with her, ‘Brett’, she corrected herself, had taken it from the investigator and put it in her bag, telling her it would be there later when she needed it. Due to the profile of the case, it ended up at the D.A.s office, though it otherwise would never have been routed there. The D.A. assigned was Felix Lee, an experienced investigator who was the “always gets his man” type. If they’d been living in the forties this guy would’ve been the one with the trench coat.

“We’re looking into multiple avenues,” he informed her, “but so far we see nothing to suggest there was anything intentional going on here.”

“Way to be noncommittal,” she responded. Lela’s frustration with lack of answers was apparent. She really just wanted to know how this could happen to her family, but came across as venomous, “Mr. Lee, if you can’t do your job, I assure you the new Governor will find someone who can,” she barked into the receiver. As soon as she hung up, she regretted it. She was not a very religious person, but the faith she did have guided her to know that God would not take her entire family without something more to it. Mr. Lee was doing his best to get to the truth. If that truth was that this was intentional, then whoever was responsible would pay, she thought. Johann’s cocked head mocked her.

“I know,” she said to the personified stuffing.

Still disgruntled and still carrying Johann around her own house by one worn front paw the next morning, Lela decided to check her email to see if James had responded. He seemed to be her haven whenever she felt really lost, and reaching out to him did seem to make her feel better even if the topics were just light banter most of the time.

He had responded, but upon opening the email, Lela was disappointed to see two short lines. “I hope you are doing better. Glad Bianca will be coming back next week.” She clicked it closed without any further discussion. “Whatever,” she said aloud. Johann the Wolf readily agreed with her assessment, as she expected him to. Already frustrated with the prior conversation with Investigator Felix Lee, now compounded by the fact that James didn’t seem to care, Lela felt desperate for answers, for some kind of forward movement out of the way she’d been feeling for days-In short, for hope.

She spied on the desk the card Governor Buck J. Jacob had given her “Phillip Harriman: Master Psychic”. ‘Well, dead people are this man’s business, right, so maybe I should at least try talking to him’ she thought. She was surprised how easily she was given an appointment for late that afternoon, since this man was supposedly heavily sought after by celebrities and booked months in advance. ‘Probably all PR’ she thought to herself ‘he probably works out of some strip center near the airport.’

She was surprised by two things in Phillip Harriman’s office. First of all, it was an older Victorian house in the antique district, very nicely furnished, yet warm and comforting in its feel. Secondly, that it contained religious icons from every major religion as well as artwork centered on angels, tranquility and some modern art. There were crystals placed subtly in the four corners of each room, on beautiful pedestals and colored with lights, so they appeared much more decoration than purposeful. Otherwise, the home appeared as any home, with a nice living room, a couple sitting rooms and an office that looked like it could have as easily belonged to a therapist or lawyer.

Phillip Harriman himself was no surprise as she had seen him before on her mother’s television, but his demeanor was much more affable and relaxed in person than when he was onstage. Phillip was about twenty-nine or so, but carried himself like a man of fifty. He had an air of wisdom and comfort with his place in the world beyond his years. He wore dark jeans and a long-sleeved maroon shirt with orange swirls subtly overlaid, like something a loyal surfer would wear. On his left wrist he wore a cancer bracelet and saw Lela eyeing it.

“It’s for my mom,” he said, gesturing to the bracelet. “She went to the next world last year.”

“I’m sorry,” Lela said, shaking his hand, “I’m Lela Aquila.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Aquila. Buck told me you’d be coming, or I told him, I can’t remember.” Phillip responded.

“You told him?” she asked

“Perhaps. I did see you in some of my readings for him. I think it’s why he wanted you to come, to see if you could trigger any better detail on what I was seeing,” he responded.

“What did you see me doing?” she asked.

“Readings are confidential, Ms. Aquila, and though he’s no longer here with us, he does still exist, so the confidentiality holds,” he said with a smile and an ease far surpassing her own on the topic of death. “Please, have a seat. May I get you a drink?” he offered.

“No thank you,” she declined

“I’m sorry to hear about your family, Ms. Aquila, I know it must have been quite a shock,” he began.

“Yes, it was,” she cautiously ventured out, “I was….hoping you might be able to help me better understand what happened.” Phillip closed his eyes and concentrated, breathing evenly and Lela heard a grandfather clock ticking in the next room. She remained silent for what seemed a long time, but was really less than a minute.

“To improve our frequency, you have three choices, we can either hold hands,” (he could see from the look on her face this was not her first choice. Lela did not hide her distaste well in any occasion, and this was no exception) “… which some people feel more comfortable with after they know me as a friend a little better,” he quickly added, “or you can hold a large clear crystal, or you can place your hands face down on the table and I can work around them,” he concluded. Lela liked the idea of keeping her hands to herself, so she opted to hold the crystal as she could hold it in her lap and keep her body coiled together. Phillip handed her a clear crystal about four inches by two inches and she held it tightly clasped between both hands.

“Please close your eyes and breathe evenly and think about the questions that you have and the free flow of information providing answers to those questions. Take as long as you like, and not until you’re ready do you open your eyes.”

Lela followed his instructions and after a few moments she opened her eyes. Phillip sat in a chair across from her with no obstructions between them and he himself had his eyes closed and was rubbing his thumbs against his fingers on both hands as if he were feeling a fabric. She wondered how long he’d stay like that when he interrupted her thoughts

“Stay focused, I’m getting to your wavelength. It’s…different than most others. I’m almost there.” Another moment passed and he opened his eyes suddenly and appeared very clear and directed, as when a radio scanning finally gets to the next station. “You’re marked.” he proclaimed.

“Some guy told me that a couple weeks ago. I thought maybe he was joking about my beauty mark, but he really wasn’t the joking type,” she advised, rubbing her cheek.

“No,” Phillip corrected,” he meant marked.”

“What do you mean marked?” she asked, uncomfortable talking about herself when she really only wanted information about her family’s death.

“For a higher purpose. Some people come into this world marked. We all have purpose, of course, but some people have a critical mission in this lifetime and it’s easy to see by those who know what they’re looking for.”

“How do they see it?
" she asked, curious but skeptical at the same time.

“A combination of factors,” he replied,
"For one, you have a gold aura, and then you have a different frequency than most, a higher one, that’s why I had trouble finding yours. I was looking too low at first.”

‘Gold aura, right’ she thought to herself and wondered why she had come. How could she leave without insulting this man? She couldn’t, she realized, and out of respect for Governor
Buck Jacob, she remained, but expected this man could be of little help. ‘What was I thinking?’ came her internal reprimand.

“Please, concentrate on your questions,” he pulled her back to attention and she obeyed, clasping the crystal a little tighter and allowing her brain to sift through images of the bus crash, her parent’s house, the funeral. Her hands began to feel warm and she swore she felt a slight vibration in the crystal, but rationalized she imagined it.

“Your brother left you something,” Phillip began, “in a blue and yellow folder, but it’s locked away. You need a key.” That got Lela’s attention and she leaned forward.

“Yes, I saw that,” she confirmed.

“You know, there are more papers that go with that, in another location, but you’ll have them in a few days,” he continued, “and your parents left you something too.”

“I didn’t see anything when I looked in their office, well, nothing they’d left, just a note on a calendar,” she denied.

“No, not the star, they left something specifically for you, not just something you happened to see. Does their house have an upstairs?” he queried.

“Yes,” she answered.

“It’s in the yellow room, upstairs, in the back of the house,” he paused, “Did that used to be your nursery?” he asked.

“Yes,” she again confirmed, and the crystal in her hand became very warm now and its vibration intensified.

“What is it you most want to know?” he asked. Lela hesitated and then came clean with this stranger about the largest question in her life.

“Was the bus incident intentional?”she began, “I mean, did someone plan to kill the people on that bus, and were they after my parents?”

“It’s hard to see,” he said, “there’s something in the way. It wasn’t an outright murder, but there is an impression of some type of intent to it.” Phillip tried to focus in more specifically on the empty gap in his vision, but the harder he tried to open the gap, the more elusive it seemed. Lela’s hands started burning and a vibrational pain shot up her left arm like a sharp muscle pain. She dropped the crystal and grabbed her left wrist with her right hand.

“Ow!” she cried out. Phillip looked at her warily.

“That hurt?” he asked almost accusatorily, out of surprise. No client had ever had a painful experience in his care, though he’d heard of his colleagues trying some more advanced divination techniques having similar experiences.

“Yes!” she replied, continuing to rub her arm up to the elbow. It would hurt for two days, as it turned out. She’d been shocked by a socket helping her Dad install a lamp at the age of ten, and the aftereffect felt similar. Phillip leaned down and retrieved the crystal from the ground. It was still fairly hot and he held it briefly and absorbed its remaining warmth, but it was cooling and no longer vibrating in his hands. He rolled it between his hands and stared off to vacant space to his left.

“You have another gem with you,” he declared and looked directly at Lela, “like a ring or necklace with an unusual stone maybe,” he scanned her body for the item he was looking for.

“No,” Lela denied, “I’m not even wearing any jewelry today. I felt too crappy to care,” she continued bluntly. Phillip concentrated and appeared as if he might be listening to a song playing quietly in another room.

“No, it’s here. It’s small, but it’s here. A rock or gem. Your brother gave it to you,” he corrected her. Lela suddenly recalled the small piece of mineral she had taken from Gabriel’s office, in its tiny plastic cage in her purse. She retrieved it and produced it to Phillip who examined it carefully. He held it and closed his eyes, focusing on the mineral.

“I can’t get anything off of this. It’s been altered in some way. We need one in its raw form, not treated or scanned or changed in any way,” he told Lela.

“Why?” Lela asked.

“I’m not sure, but it’s important. And…this is why you had the reaction with the crystal. This mineral interacted with it and basically acted like an amplifier. I didn’t know you had it with you,” he suggested, to be sure she knew his process was not the cause of the mishap.

“I’d forgotten about it entirely,” Lela revealed, “not that I would have even thought to mention it had I remembered.”

“You need to return with more of this in its natural state. I think it will help us see more clearly and that I may be able to see the cause of the bus accident,” Phillip didn’t realize he was dangling a diamond carrot to Lela. She knew she would wonder her entire life what happened to cause the bus to go over the guardrail and any clues, no matter how small, would be a great help with that.

“I’m going to where it’s mined. I can bring a piece back,” she offered.

“I see you in the northern part of Africa,” he said.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Look deeper,” he said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“When the team is mining?” she inquired.

“I’m not sure, I just get ‘look deeper’. Well, you’ll call me when it’s time and we’ll continue. I’m sorry I couldn’t see more today,” Phillip sincerely apologized. He knew there were no guarantees with an ability such as his, but he did truly feel like he was letting people down sometimes, like a singer who gave a concert and only played their newest songs and none of their well-loved hits. Lela thanked Phillip and shook his hand and turned to go, still rotating her left arm back and forth a bit.

“Ms. Aquila,” Phillip interrupted her departure, “He can’t always communicate with you when he wants to.”

Lela knew instantly that he was referring to James and also knew somewhere in her gut that he was right. She gave a half hearted smile and nodded in assent and left

As she left out the front door, she walked across the Victorian wraparound porch with multiple rocking chairs and began to descend the steps. She had not seen a hidden figure rocking to her left.

“What a racket,” Brett announced, his green eyes piercing her solitary thoughts in a way that was accidentally intrusive, “Let me guess, come back with even more money and I’ll be able to see everything for you.”

“I didn’t pay him anything,” Lela countered, defensive and a bit insulted, “He is a friend of the Governor’s and I came by to see him regarding a conversation the Governor and I had before he passed.” The statement was accurate, though incomplete, but Lela didn’t owe anything to this man and his invasion into her privacy was not appreciated.

“Mr. Davies,” Lela emphasized the formality as a reminder not to be overly familiar without invitation, “I do appreciate your assistance on the day of the accident, er, incident, but your commentary is neither required nor appreciated.” Brett could tell he’d offended her and was dismayed at his gaffe. His intent had been to be charming, but he came off as cocky. Still, he would not backpedal and appear weak.

“Well, it’s your time, Ms. Aquila,” he mirrored her formality, “Still, I’d bet he’s a snake oil salesman after something.” Lela couldn’t help but think to herself that he had asked for some of the mineral, but, of course, did not share that information with Brett.