The Third Eye (6 page)

“That’s sad,” Karen said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s sad.” Officer Wilson was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I was hoping that, maybe, you’d want to help us. If you could do a little ‘guessing,’ the way you did when the Zenner kid was missing, maybe you could tell us where to look for this one.”

“Karen’s no psychic,” said Mrs. Connors. “There’s no way in the world that she can do what you’re suggesting.”

“Maybe not. Then, again, who’s to say for sure? What’s there to lose by giving it a try?”

“It wouldn’t work,” Karen told him. “What I felt about Bobby was based on personal emotions. I wasn’t just worried; I felt responsible. With this girl, Carla, that wouldn’t be a factor. I’ve never even met her.”

“Will you just drive out to the house with me?” the officer asked her. “If you met her mother, looked around her bedroom…”

“That’s out of the question,” Mrs. Connors said. “Karen is not going to go to some strange house and play detective. The whole idea is ridiculous.”

The tone of voice was an echo from Karen’s childhood. It evoked memories of the hundreds of past occasions when decisions that pertained to her own welfare had been made without consulting her. The fact that her mother would, even today, assume the right to speak for her as though she were a puppet sparked an unaccustomed flash of rebellion.

“Really, Mom,” she said testily, “don’t you think that’s up to me?”

“I’ll have her back in a couple of hours,” Officer Wilson said. “If she doesn’t get any feelings about Carla’s whereabouts, then that will be the end of it.”

“And if she does? What then?” Mrs. Connors asked. “If, by some miracle, she
does
feel something,
does
manage somehow to point you in the right direction, then she’ll be marked for life as a freak.”

“That won’t happen,” Officer Wilson assured her. “Any information Karen provides for us will be confidential. It can
only be classified as guesswork, so no source needs to be identified.” He turned back to Karen. “Are you willing to give this a shot?”

“She is not,” Mrs. Connors said firmly.

Karen deliberately ignored her mother and looked the man in the eye.

“Yes, I am,” she said.

The Sanchez home was on the outskirts of
Albuquerque in the rural area referred to by its residents as the Valley. The drive there took them along the edge of the Rio Grande. The normally sluggish river, awakened from its winter lassitude by the heavy rains, was rushing brown and high.

Along its banks the cottonwoods were budding, their leaves a pale, almost translucent green in the morning sunlight. Small nameless flowers, which would have been called weeds if they had popped up unexpectedly on people’s lawns, dotted the landscape with splashes of purple and yellow, and the telephone wires running opposite the highway were strung with robins.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Karen said.

“No problem,” Officer Wilson responded easily. “If you can, great, but if not, no harm done.”

“Do you really believe that there are people who can do it on request like this? Even when they don’t know the children they’re looking for? That it’s not just on TV, but real?”

“If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have asked you to try it. One of those TV shows was based on a real person.”

“Have you ever actually known someone who could do it?” Karen asked him.

“Yes, actually. A good friend of mine. And I’ve heard about others.”

“The person you know, is he from Albuquerque?”

“It’s a woman,” Officer Wilson said. “And yes, she’s from here. Her name’s Anne Summers. She’s had a lot of success in locating people, especially kids. I don’t know why, but it seems like female psychics are more tuned in to finding children than men are.”

“Psychics.”
Karen repeated the word nervously. “I’m not a psychic. I’m a person who occasionally has lucky hunches. I still don’t know why you think I’ll have one now.”

“Maybe you won’t.”

“If this Anne Summers is so talented,” Karen continued, “why haven’t the police asked
her
to find Carla Sanchez?”

“She’s not available,” Officer Wilson said. “She’s working on a case in Texas.”

“A kidnapping?”

“A multiple kidnapping. Eight kids were taken from a day care center.”

“I think I read about that online,” Karen said. “Wasn’t it in one of the bigger cities, like Houston or somewhere?”

“In Dallas. Anne’s been down there a couple of weeks now.”

They drove on for another mile or so, and then Officer Wilson turned the car off the highway onto a dirt road bordered on both sides by pastures. Cows, some with newborn calves beside them, raised their heads from their grazing to follow the car’s progress along the rutted lane. The lushness of springtime closed in on them from all sides with walls of high grasses, green and thick and smelling of honeyed sunshine.

They crossed a bridge over an arroyo and made a second turn onto an even narrower road, which wound through a grove of scrubby trees. When they drew to a stop at last, it was in front of a run-down adobe house with a rusted Chevrolet van parked in the yard.

“We’re here,” said Officer Wilson, shutting off the engine.

For a few moments they sat unmoving. The absolute quiet of the countryside was hypnotic. The root of its stillness was in the absence of traffic noise; yet, once she had become adjusted to that, Karen found herself becoming aware of a number of gentler sounds: the clucking and scratching of chickens on the east side of the house. Birds, calling from the treetops. A tinkle of wind chimes, suspended somewhere out of sight in the branches above them.

Then, abruptly, the crash of a screen door and a volley of
wild barking shattered the atmosphere. A small black-and-white terrier burst out of the house and came hurtling across the yard to throw itself full force against the side of the car. Close behind it followed a thin, dark-haired woman, obviously of Hispanic descent, who, in her way, seemed equally excited.

“Have you found her?” she called as she hurried toward them. “Do you have my Carla? Is she okay?”

“Call off the dog, please, will you?” There was an edge to Officer Wilson’s voice. “I told you the last time I was out here that you should keep it on a leash.”

“Do you have Carla?” the woman persisted as though she had not heard him.

“No, not yet. I mean it, Mrs. Sanchez. Please get that dog out of here. Shut it away someplace so we can get out and talk with you.”

“It’s only a puppy,” Karen said. “It doesn’t look dangerous.”

“I don’t like puppies. I don’t like dogs, period. Any shape or any size.”

“Come here, Coco.” The woman stooped and gathered up the leaping animal. “I’ll go put him in the toolshed, okay?”

“That’ll be great. Just make sure the door’s shut tight.”

They sat in silence while Mrs. Sanchez carried the dog, still yapping, around the corner of the house. When she returned a few moments later with her arms empty, Officer Wilson opened the door and got out of the car.

“There’s nothing new to report,” he said apologetically. “I’m off duty today and not here on official business. I thought,
though, it might be a good thing for you to talk to this friend of mine, Karen.”

“I don’t need more talking,” the woman said. “What I need is my baby back. For a week now, she’s been gone! For a week now, she’s been off somewhere with that
maldito
, crying for her mama, wanting to sleep at night in her own room. God knows what kind of place he has her in! You’re the police! Why don’t you find her?”

“These things take time,” Officer Wilson said. “It’s tough tracking down somebody who has no ties. At least you know that it is Carla’s father. He’s not going to do anything that’s going to hurt her.”

“Carla needs to be home,” the woman said emphatically. “She needs to be home with her mama. She needs to be in school.”

“We
are
going to find her, Mrs. Sanchez. Believe me, we’re doing the best we can.” He went around the car to the passenger’s side and opened the door for Karen. “This is Karen Connors. She’s going to help us.”

“Help, how?” challenged Mrs. Sanchez, regarding Karen suspiciously. “She’s not a policewoman. She’s just a girl.”

“Karen finds children,” said Officer Wilson. “Last week she found a boy who was missing. His parents were just as worried about him as you are about Carla. Karen closed her eyes and thought about him, and she was able to tell us where he was.”

Mrs. Sanchez’s expression altered slightly. Her dark eyes
flickered with a sudden glint of something that could have been either hope or fear.

“
Una bruja
?” she questioned softly.

“No, not a witch, a ‘guesser.’ A special kind of guesser.”

“You guess right?” Mrs. Sanchez asked Karen. “You can guess where Carla is, and she will be there?”

“I can’t make any promises,” Karen said. “You can’t count on anything. I knew the missing boy, but I don’t know Carla. I don’t even know what she looks like.”

“Her mother has a photograph,” Officer Wilson said.

“It’s her school picture,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “She looks so beautiful. Come inside, and I show you.”

The inside of the Sanchez home proved to be as unassuming as its mud-brick exterior. The front room was sparsely furnished, containing only a sagging, overstuffed sofa, two worn chairs, and a large television set. The walls were plastered and painted white, and they were hung with an assortment of pictures depicting religious subject matter.

The stars of the display seemed to be Jesus blessing the children and the Virgin Mother in various attitudes of prayer.

On top of the TV, in a metallic dollar-store frame, there stood an eight-by-ten enlargement of a solemn-faced girl of grammar school age. Her eyes were dark and luminous, and her thick black hair fell almost to her waist. She was as pretty as her mother had indicated. She also looked shy and sweet and vulnerable. She did, indeed, appear to be a child who should be “home with her mama.”

“It’s her last school picture,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “This time she didn’t blink. Last year when they took the picture her eyes were closed.”

“This picture is lovely,” said Karen.

“She’s pretty, yes?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Could Karen see Carla’s room?” asked Officer Wilson. “If she could spend some time around Carla’s things, she might be able to… well, to ‘guess’ a little better.”

“The best thing she likes now is her bike,” Mrs. Sanchez told them. “Her papa bought it for her when he got into town this last time.”

“Where is the bike?” the officer asked her.

“It’s not here now. They took it with them. I guess she wouldn’t go without it. They didn’t take anything else, not her clothes, not anything, but they took that new bike.”

“That’s okay,” Officer Wilson said. “It’s the older things that work the best for this. What about her toys and her favorite clothes? Are there things she’s had since she was a baby?”

“Come, I’ll show you,” Mrs. Sanchez said.

Carla’s bedroom was hardly more than a cubicle, but, perhaps for that very reason, there was a coziness about it. There were Mickey Mouse curtains on the windows, and the narrow youth bed was covered with a hand-embroidered spread. On the pillow, there rested an obviously well-loved teddy bear that might once have been buttercup yellow but was now a shade more closely resembling apple cider. The only other furnishings
consisted of a straight-backed chair and a dresser with a mirror over it. On the walls there were framed pictures of the same religious subjects that were displayed in the living room.

Karen glanced helplessly about her.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“That’s up to you,” Officer Wilson told her. “What Anne does is sit in the room alone for a while and think about the person she wants to locate. She looks at the clothes and belongings. She touches them. She calls it ‘getting vibes.’ ”

“You get vibes on Carla,” Mrs. Sanchez said eagerly. “We’ll wait outside. When you get through, you come out and tell us where Carla and her papa are.” It was apparent from the altered tone of her voice that she was actually beginning to believe in the possibility of this hoped-for miracle’s occurring.

“I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee anything,” Karen said. “I can’t believe, I mean, I just don’t think—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Officer Wilson told her. “Just think of it as an experiment. Either it works or it doesn’t, okay?”

“Okay,” Karen said.

But it
wasn’t
okay. She realized that as soon as he and Mrs. Sanchez had closed the door behind them, leaving her alone in Carla’s tiny bedroom. The expression in the eyes of Carla’s mother had been too abruptly trusting. The woman was desperate; she was ready to clutch at straws.

It’s not fair,
Karen thought resentfully.
I didn’t realize what I was getting into. That man has no right to put me in this position.

But she was now committed. There was no way at this
point that she would be able to get out of the predicament. She had to make an effort, and, as Officer Wilson had said, it would either work or it wouldn’t. Actually, it wasn’t totally inconceivable that she might be successful. After all, she
had
found Bobby. On that occasion, though, the vision had come of its own accord, springing effortlessly into her mind. To accept a spontaneous revelation was one thing. It was different to set out deliberately to try to create one.

Officer Wilson had suggested that she look at the clothes. Well, she could do that much at least. It would probably be as good a way to start as any.

Crossing the room to the closet, Karen opened the door and peered inside. There were only a few garments hanging from the crossbar: a winter parka, a couple of cotton school dresses, and at the back, in a plastic dry cleaner’s bag, a white lace dress that had undoubtedly been worn by Carla at her First Communion.

Tentatively, Karen ran her fingers over the thin material of the parka.
Carla must have spent some chilly days,
she thought sympathetically. She touched the school clothes and then, with the uncomfortable feeling that she was intruding where she had no business, she took down the hanger that held the Communion dress.