Not This Time
31
Strange Bedfellows
“ANGEL, I NEED YOU to wake up. Come on, now. You aren’t hurt. You just fainted. Wake up, Angel of Mercy.” Somewhere in the distance behind Ernie’s voice I could hear sirens. Someone had at least called the police when the shooting started.
Shooting!
That woke me up. I could hear Ernie’s voice, so he was alive. He said I wasn’t hurt. That left… I pushed myself up with Ernie’s help and my eyes tracked instantly to the two crumpled bodies on the sidewalk. The black Cadillac was gone. Ernie’s car was in the middle of the street. His gun lay next to it. Dragon’s gun was just visible, trapped beneath him.
“I need you to be able to tell the cops that I acted in self-defense,” Ernie said. “It’s important. They’ll believe you. Becci called them from my car. She’ll tell them, but she couldn’t see everything. You could. I have no idea who was driving Dragon’s car. I’m sure she’s long gone by now.”
“Ernie, I won’t lie for you,” I rasped.
“Do you doubt that you’d be dead now if I hadn’t acted?”
“No.”
“That’s all that’s necessary. Tell it like you saw it,” he sighed. “I’m not a killer, Angel. I’m just going to sit on the curb over there and wait. You’ll probably have to tell them what you were doing out here walking through a dangerous area by yourself after dark.”
“How did you know?”
“Becci spotted you and we circled around.”
Police arrived. Ernie was arrested. Dragon was dead, but he’d lasted long enough to put a round in his girl. I’d heard three shots. Police marked where I was when I fainted. Then there were lights brought in and yellow tape and plastic bags. More chalk. Photographs.
One shot hit the prostitute. One shot hit Dragon. Police found where the third shot had hit the pavement near where I’d fainted. Only one shot had been fired from Ernie’s gun. I had no idea what order the shots were fired in. Police asked repeatedly who shot first. I didn’t know. I was given permission to call home and Bruce came to pick me up. He had to park clear over by the clinic and walk to the scene, explaining to three different cops that he was there to pick me up. Neither he nor Lily questioned me when I got home. The children were asleep. They led me to a bath and gently washed me. They held me between them as I cried myself to sleep.
Dragon’s driver was apprehended just north of the Iowa state line. Becci was questioned and released, but Ernie’s car was impounded. Ernie had a good lawyer and was out pending further investigation. There would be an inquest and probably a grand jury.
The big question on everyone’s mind was why this ditsy woman—me—was wandering around in the park at night. I was eventually written off as an idiot do-gooder who thought she was invincible. Maybe that wasn’t such a far cry from the truth.
The investigation stretched through the winter. I was called before the Grand Jury and answered each question as honestly as I could with the memories I had of that night. Yes, I heard three gunshots. I saw Dragon lifting his gun toward me. No, I didn’t know who fired first. No, I didn’t see him kill the girl, I was already losing consciousness. No, I was not there to entice a showdown. Yes, I knew Ernie because our daughters went to school together. No, I had never seen him with a weapon before. And on and on. Why was I there? I was deep in thought about helping the neighborhood by installing new lighting in the park as we had done in Loring Neighborhood. No, I did not use drugs or make use of either the disposal units or the needle exchange program. Did I know Ernie was a pimp and that Becci was a prostitute? I had never seen either of them engaged in that activity and considered what the DA called common knowledge to be speculation—on advice of my attorney.
My testimony stretched out for three days. Everyone on the Grand Jury had questions for me and I only hoped that I’d been consistent in my answers.
I was conflicted.
My gut told me that Ernie was one of the things that was wrong with the community. Like Dragon—Eustis—he transported prostitutes to meet with their johns. I believed he pressured college coeds to turn tricks in exchange for his protection. I knew his white Lincoln cruised the park several times daily. But his daughter was a classmate of my daughter. Her mother was quickly becoming one of the people we saw on a regular basis. Every actual interaction I had with him was completely normal and neighborly.
Your honor, he couldn’t be a murderer. He’s such a nice guy. A good family man and never has a harsh word for anyone. I could just hear the family and friends of every mass murderer or shootist or bomber or rapist with those same words defending people you knew were the scum of the earth. You just knew it. Only you didn’t really know it.
I had to get something done, and by May, when the Grand Jury was dismissed without an indictment, I set to work changing the lighting in the park. I started with a door-to-door solicitation of the neighborhood. People had heard about the murders in the park and even some of the drug dealers were slow to return to it this spring. Everyone thought having more lights in the park was a good idea. I got the architect who drew up the plans for the Loring Neighborhood Park to draw up plans for the larger Washburn Park. The plans included opening up a few areas that had become overgrown with low brush between the stately trees. Those areas shielded spaces from being seen by the rest of the park. I took the plans to the Parks Board and in a surprising move, they approved them at the same meeting. I suppose it helped that I had an anonymous donation in hand to pay for it all.
Labor Day weekend, we turned on the lights and music in the park and held a celebration.
The key element in all this was to give the addicts, prostitutes, and dealers a sense of pride in their community park. Ernie helped. Throughout the summer, he had not just cruised the streets next to the park with his girls, he had walked through the park talking to the people who were there. By getting rid of Dragon, he had attained a sort of hero status. He played it down, but I had to admit that getting the new lighting approved for the park was as much because of him as it was my campaigning.
I felt pretty good about the progress we were making in that neighborhood. I still had some big ideas and I sat in my office working on a plan the next Monday with Charlotte and Robin playing together on the floor. I looked over at the two toddlers and watched as a tower of Legos came tumbling down.
And I froze.
I looked at my desk calendar. September 10, 2001. And there was nothing I could do. I was the only person in the world—well, other than those who were preparing to do it—who knew what was going to happen tomorrow morning. And I’d sealed my prediction in an envelope in Janna’s office.
What if someone found out I knew? Homeland Security was well-known in 2016—simultaneously the most scorned and most feared. They never seemed to be able to prevent anything from happening. Numerous statements had been made over the years that said the perpetrators of various terrorist acts had been on a so-called ‘watch list.’ It never seemed to help. Still, the general populace was terribly afraid of their ‘Big Brother’ presence. They saw everything you searched on the Internet. They read your personal health records. They randomly stopped people in airports. Scorned for their impotence and feared for their omniscience.
I needed to get that envelope back from Janna and destroy the contents.
Lily and Bruce were both at work. Emily was at school. I packed Robin and Charlotte into their car seats and headed for my psychiatrist’s office.
“We don’t usually meet until Thursday,” Janna said when she came from her office between appointments. “Is this an emergency?”
“No. Yes. In a way. I need… Please…” I looked around the waiting room at those awaiting their appointments and at the receptionist. No one ever spoke to anyone else in a shrink’s waiting room. There were half a dozen therapists in the Family Counseling clinic. There always seemed to be someone waiting. Janna went to the receptionist and spoke softly to her before opening the door to the interior hallway.
“Bring the babies and come back to the office,” Janna said. I followed her down the hallway to her office and turned the toddlers loose in the little play area she had blocked off. They always wanted to explore as soon as they were set down. I kept looking at the file cabinet as I got them situated. “Take a deep breath,” Janna said. “The babies are safe. You are safe. Tell me why you are panicked.”
The past year had been hard and Janna had helped me sort out my feelings about being saved from rape and death by a man I believed to be a pimp. I had then worked with him to make the park a safer place, though we almost never spoke to each other. My conflicting attitudes and emotions had me going in circles most of the winter and part of the summer. But even in that, she hadn’t seen me as close to a real panic as I was now.
“I need the letter from my file.”
“What letter?”
“The one I wrote last year when you asked for predictions. Janna, I need it! I need it now!”
“Deep breath. It’s perfectly safe. See? The cabinet is still locked.”
“Janna, I need it. You can’t know. No one can know that I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Don’t try to trick me!” I yelled. Both babies looked up and started to pucker up to squall. “Shh. Shh. It’s okay, babies. Mommy’s okay.”
“It’s that important?”
“Janna, they’d lock me up for knowing. They’d lock you up until they found out all about me. They’d take away my babies! Please, Janna. Please, give it to me,” I begged. She went to the file cabinet and unlocked the drawer, withdrawing my folder.
“You have me really intrigued now,” she said. “I’d forgotten about it. ‘Don’t open until after September 11, 2001.’ What is it?”
“You’ll know tomorrow,” I whispered as I took the envelope from her. “Only you won’t really know. You will never have seen—never have known. You can only guess what I was referring to.”
“Are you more relaxed now?” she asked as I stuffed the envelope into my shirt.
“Better,” I said. “I’m sorry, Janna. You must have had another appointment. I burst in on you and…”
“Hush. You got all settled down, so don’t invent problems that don’t exist. If you are ready, you can go solve more of the real problems that we have outside in the park and the neighborhood now. You can do this.”
“Yes. I can do this. I’ll make this the best neighborhood ever.”
“Is it cool enough for a fire in the fireplace?” Lily asked when she got home Monday night. It was a rhetorical question. The answer made no difference. A fire was burning brightly and I was reading the latest Harry Potter adventure to our enrapt children.
I was the only one who knew what I had used to start the fire.
September 11 came and went. Knowing the shock was coming didn’t help me not be shocked. Lily came home from work to take care of the little ones while I went to Emily’s third grade class to help the teachers.
Thursday, I went for my regular appointment with Janna. We sat together on the couch and held each other as we cried. She knew, once and for all. She knew I had seen the attacks in my first life. But she had no knowledge of what I knew—no evidence. My counseling took a different bent from that point. She no longer assumed I was dealing with a vivid dream. She did a lot of research on dealing with ‘prophetic personalities’ and the concept of foreknowledge. Not that she hadn’t studied it before, but now she had a renewed fervor for helping me cope.
Of course, she wanted to know if there were other big catastrophes we should be prepared for. I knew now that I didn’t want to tell her about wars, nuclear accidents, tidal waves, or who was going to be the next president.
“Minnesota is going to be one of the states that passes a law allowing gay marriage,” I said smiling. Her eyes got big.
“Not really!”
“Really. And not long after, the Supreme Court will recognize gay marriage and require all states to permit it. It won’t end discrimination and hatred. It will be challenged by every religion. But, when I died, it was still the law.” That got us off the subject and onto how I dealt with the lesbian aspects of my life with Bruce and Lily. After nearly ten years, I could no longer conceive of my life without them.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I left the office, knowing that I wouldn’t be going back often. My foreknowledge of events that I was helpless to stop was not a gift. Mostly, it was better to just forget.
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