Bull's Eye: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #3

Chapter 33

Zandra almost misses it on the way out of the room, but there's a pre-paid debit card next to a note on the counter by the sink. No signature on the back. She signs the card and slips it into one of the deep pockets of the purple gown. Had she more time, Zandra might've gleaned something useful from the card's presentation, but the dollar amount is what matters most.

Outside the hospital, she stops to lace her shoes a bit tighter next to a sign that says "Weapon-Free Zone." That reminds her to feel for the lawnmower knife in the makeshift sheath.

All good.

She flags down a taxi with a bored-looking driver. He perks up when Zandra hops in.

"They let people out of hospitals looking like that?" the driver says.

"I'm not in the mood," Zandra says.

The driver looks surprised by the pushback.

He shouldn't. He's got the sort of face that suggests he's been slapped by every woman he's ever talked to.

"Jeez, lady, you don't have to stomp on my balls. I was just jokin' around. Might make your day easier to look in a mirror, I'm just saying," the driver says.

I don't have time for this.

"Fuck it. I'll walk," Zandra says.

"Wait, wait, wait," the driver says. "You're, like, the psychic, right? That one from the murder thing?"

How do I even answer that?

"Sure. From the murder thing," Zandra says and narrows her eyes.

"How about this? Just to show you I'm a nice guy, I'll swap you a ride for you telling me my fortune," the driver says. He looks back at Zandra with the rear-view mirror and winks. "If where you're going isn't too far, you know."

Who the hell still winks? What is that?

"Soma Falls," Zandra says, nearly choking on the words.

The man with scars on his face will dump Herman's body there. That's not a divine revelation. That's just Gene's sense of humor.

"Oh, great, so I won't be out too much money for this," the driver says. He guides the taxi onto a side street. "That sound good? The swap?"

We're already on the road. It's not like I have a choice. I'm up against the clock, or I'd open the door and roll away from this creep.

Zandra gave the driver a rundown within the first 30 seconds of plopping down in the backseat of taxi. It's not good.

The "tell" is in the hair on the back of the driver's head. Granted, it's one of the only parts that Zandra can see on the 40-something driver's body, but it's enough to complete the picture. His thin, brittle spikes of hair. His puffy face in the rear-view mirror. The heat in the cab turned up too high for the gentle weather outside. The constant shifting in his seat.

Hyperthyroidism.

Zandra could be wrong, but that's beside the point. It's all about the odds. Even if the odds of her diagnosis aren't as good as what a doctor could offer, there remains one, safe, universal bet: everyone will have a health crisis at some point. The footprints of that walk to crisis may look different from one person to the next, or even change shape along the way, but that vicissitude is where Zandra thrives. Every malady either leads to or is a result of a health crisis. All she needs to do is lob the right medical grenade, because she only needs to be partially accurate.

Here we go.

"Do you worry often about your health, child?" Zandra says, toggling her tone into that well-worn gear of pseudo intellectualism. It's a loaded question meant to guide the rest of the conversation. Who doesn't worry about their health?

"Yeah, you know, I worry about that, yeah," the driver says.

He's primed. Now to ease him in with something both specific and general. There's no better combo in this business. Pair soft language with hard words, and you can get anyone to believe anything. Politicians do it all the time by packing "tough talk" inside of arguments that either don't mean anything or don't make sense.

"When you worry about that, child, is it because you feel like something is off?" Zandra says. She rubs her palms together for effect.

"Actually, yeah, that's exactly it," the driver says.

Maybe he knows about his condition. Maybe he doesn't.

"Do you think you're overweight?" Zandra says. She's careful to dance around the question. It's not important if he actually is overweight, just that he thinks he is. It's a trap door she can exit.

"Well, everyone could stand to lose a few pounds, you know," the driver says.

Good. Now to yank the hook into his jaw.

"Do you ever find yourself gaining weight and you don't know why?" Zandra says. "In the past couple weeks or months or so, especially. Think back. It could've been a couple pounds or more."

"I don't know how you knew that, but yeah, that's right," the driver says.

Because "the past couple weeks or months or so, especially" is the tell you should've picked up on but didn't, because you want to believe me. This dumbass is textbook.

Don't think that "smart" people can't fall for this stuff, either. They crave confirmation bias, too. Find out what that is, blow it up and toss them into the crater of their own egos. No one is immune.

And now to up the anticipation with this guy, keep him in close for the big reveal.

"Would you like to know what this all means?" Zandra says and gives a sarcastic wink in the driver's direction.

"Oh, yeah, you know, that's what I want, yeah," the driver says.

"What it means is that you have..," Zandra says but stops. She glances out the window as the taxi passes the charred husk of Sneak Peek. It's still a mess. City services haven't bothered to so much as kick a brick off the sidewalk. She dabs her watery eyes by pretending to hack into her sleeve.

Don't give them an inch. Not one inch.

"I have what?" the driver says and looks at her in the rear-view mirror.

Looking up from her sleeve, Zandra forces a smile toward the mirror and says, "It means that you have nothing to worry about, child. Your health is your greatest asset, and it looks to stay that way."

The driver returns the smile and says, "Wow, really? And here I thought there was something wrong. I might just cancel that check up with the doc next week."

Yeah, maybe you should.

"You've nothing to fear, child. Live your life. Enjoy it," Zandra says.

The taxi eventually makes its way to the park at Soma Falls. Zandra instructs the driver to stop the taxi at the entrance and let her walk the rest of the way. She tells herself it's because she doesn't want to announce her arrival, but in truth she doesn't want him to see her lose her composure.

Back at this godforsaken place again.

The taxi pulls away, and Zandra shuffles down the road toward Stevens Point's iconic waterfall. She can hear the stream falling over the rocks and into the pool where David's body was found years ago.

Now, 25 years later, it seems history is repeating itself.