1
San Diego was still asleep, shrouded in the cool gray mist that settles along the coast when temperatures drop. I turned into the University Medical Center parking lot and claimed the kind of space you only find at 4:30 in the morning. The hospital wasn’t fifty yards away, but the fog was thick enough to blur the edges of the main building. Fog this dense always made me think of my mother’s Crawling Eye. When I was small, I used to wonder how Mom knew about the childish misdeeds I thought I’d concealed so well. How did she find out I’d snitched the candy, not brushed my teeth, read with a flashlight under the covers after lights out? “I have a crawling eye,” she’d say. “It slithers through the crack under your door and watches you when you think I’m not looking.” In my little-girl mind it became a monster, this Crawling Eye—a giant, bloodshot orb that lived on foggy hillsides and slinked through the darkness to peer in my window. I smiled as I got out of my truck. Perhaps my second sight was my own version of the Crawling Eye, inherited from my mother.
In the misty darkness overhead I could hear but not see power lines buzzing, set off by the heavy moisture in the air. It was a disturbing sound. I wrapped my jacket across my chest and hurried to the entrance. A man’s figure, silhouetted in the mist by the bright lights behind him, stood at the top of the hospital’s wide cement steps.
“You,” Scott Chatfield said as I trotted up the stairs, “are an angel to come at this hour.” His red hair was slightly disheveled, but a vibrant band of energy glowed around his head and shoulders, signaling to me that he was fully awake and aware, despite the early hour. I’d been well into grade school before I learned that these bands of light weren’t visible to everyone. Sometimes I see colors in the bands, but not this morning.
“Is this business or personal?” I heard the urgency in my own voice. All the way to the hospital I’d been combing my memory for acquaintances we had in common, hoping that tragedy hadn’t struck. Again.
“Business,” he said.
The muscles deep in my chest relaxed.
“Well, thank God for that.”
He realized then that I’d taken his urgent call personally because his mouth dropped open and he slumped apologetically.
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay.” I was still drinking in the relief.
“I was so absorbed in our little drama here I completely forgot—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I assured him. I genuinely liked Chatfield. It wasn’t his fault that the case that had brought us together had ended so badly. He’d sent me a thoughtful card after McGowan’s death.
“You’re really okay?” His voice was soft, concerned. “I mean, you’re working again and everything?”
“Looks that way. So tell me about this little drama.”
“This is sort of a lame excuse for my being such an abrupt jerk, but I was calling you from a cellular when the press got here. Didn’t want details flying over the airwaves. David’s going to have a tough enough time with damage control as is, without me throwing juicy tidbits to piranha newscasters.”
“Tidbits about what? And who’s David?”
“A lawyer friend of mine with a hell of a case on his hands here. I’d love to help him out, but I can’t take this on now. I’m investigating a homicide up in Barstow. In fact, I’ve got a meeting there this morning.”
“Hence the urgent call to me.”
“Yeah. Also because you’re perfect for this case, which is truly strange. David asked me jokingly if I could refer a psychic detective …” he paused to smile “ … and I said that, as a matter of fact, I could. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
The glass doors of the lobby slid open as soon as our feet touched the rubber doormat. In my haste to get to the hospital I’d thrown baggy chinos and a roomy tunic over skimpy silk pajamas. The smooth underthings against my skin felt out of place and slightly scandalous.
A news photographer with a Sony television camera perched on his shoulder stood just inside the hospital doors. Tape was rolling on a conversation between a reporter and a uniformed police officer.
“Looks like a feeding frenzy,” I mumbled.
Chatfield didn’t even glance their way as he led me with determined footsteps toward the far side of the lobby where a man in a rumpled trench coat leaned against the wall. The man stood straight as we approached and looked to me hopefully.
“David Skenazy,” he said, extending his hand. “Thanks for coming down.” Skenazy was hovering somewhere around forty but was going for a younger look, his dark brown hair cropped short on the sides, a shank of curls tumbling from the top. He exuded intensity, as if he had enough energy for two people.
“Elizabeth Chase,” I said, returning his firm squeeze.
Chatfield looked at his watch.
“I hate to play matchmaker and run, but I’ve got to hit the road. It’s a three-hour drive and—”
“Go on, get outta here,” Skenazy teased in a Brooklyn accent.
We said our good-byes, and Skenazy and I watched Chatfield exit the lobby doors.
“Now there,” Skenazy said, “goes a seasoned professional. I call him at 3 A.M. and ask if he knows a psychic detective. An hour later I’m standing here talking to one.”
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
Skenazy dropped the getting-acquainted mask and his smile disappeared.
“There was a murder last night at the Mystic Mesa gambling casino. My client was arrested at the scene. He was admitted to this hospital about two hours ago.”
“Your client was injured?”
“Not exactly. At the time of the arrest he was overdosing on tranquilizers. He was completely unconscious when the body was found. The medics managed to revive him in the ambulance. He had the presence of mind to have me called when he got here.”
“The Mystic Mesa Casino is on the Temecu Reservation, isn’t it?”
Skenazy nodded and headed toward the elevator bay.
“That’s got to be an hour away,” I said as I followed behind him. “Why’d they bring him all the way down here?”
David pushed the up button.
“You ever wonder what happens to violent criminals who are too wounded from a day’s work to be taken to jail? Stabbed drug dealers, burned arsonists, bullet-riddled bank robbers?”
“Never really thought about it,” I admitted.
“They end up at hospitals with county contracts to accept custody patients. My client is upstairs being baby-sat by an armed guard.”
“Why the heavy security?”
“The nature of the crime. It was … ugly.”
There was a ding and we looked up, but the elevator was going down.
“Ugly how?” I asked.
Skenazy swiped upward at the hair tumbling onto his forehead.
“He was found unconscious in one of the beds at the Mystic Mesa Hotel. The casino manager was lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the bed....
