Read Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective for Free Online Page B

beside me
wearing only a damp towel, hair wetly tousled, brooding.
    As we turned again
westbound along the coast, she very quietly bent the silence with
an almost musing observation. "What am I going to do, Ash? I'm
naked. Don't even have a hairbrush, a toothbrush—nothing. I can't
run around in this condition."
    "The operative idea
there," I suggested, "is 'run around.' You can do that. Be
thankful. The other stuff is mere process. I'll run in up here
someplace and get you something to wear, cosmetics, whatever you
need. Pad and pencil right in front of you. Make a list. Sizes,
too, please."
    She gave me a long,
searching look, then sighed and went to work on her list of needs.
That lasted for about twenty seconds. Then, with pencil poised
above the pad and her attention apparently pointed that way, she
softly inquired, "Does it bother you? That you have killed that
man?"
    "Maybe two of them," I corrected her, in
about the same tone. "But I thought we already covered that."
    She said, "No. You just shrugged it
off."
    I told her, "I hit a deer
once. With a car. Bounded out of the darkness and froze in my
headlights, not ten feet in front of me. Didn't even have time to
move my foot off the accelerator before the impact. It bothered me.
Yeah, it bothered me."
    "Is that an allegory?"
    I tossed her a smile and said, "I guess.
Some things are simply unavoidable. You regret it. But you can't
take it back. And there's no sense in wearing a hair shirt all your
life because of it."
    "But it does bother you,"
she decided quietly.
    "If I think about it. Sure. It bothers me.
Every death bothers me. It always seems wrong. Yet I know..."
    "You and Isaac would, I believe, speak the
same language."
    "Glad to hear that."
    "Yes. He says that death is implicit in
birth, yet it always comes as a surprise; it is always resisted,
always resented, and always improper..."
    I finished the quotation, for her. "There is
no such thing as a proper death."
    She gave me a delighted smile. "You have
read him."
    I replied, "It has been a
long time. But he keeps coming back, little by little."
    Dr. Jen seemed pleased as punch about
that.
    I told her, "Better finish your list.
Shopping center just ahead."
    But her needs were simple. A few basic
cosmetic items, comb and brush, sandals, jeans, pair of panties and
a bra, blouse. I knew a small boutique just a few minutes from my
place where all of it could be had. Took me just a couple of
minutes to round it all up, then I added a small overnight bag and
a simple purse to the list and used the telephone while the clerk
wrote it up. Just wanted to see if anyone was home at my place. I
let it ring about six times, hung up, paid for the purchase, and
told the clerk a bald-faced lie. "Someone stole my friend's clothes
out of the car while we were on the beach," I explained. "She's out
there in the car, right now, shivering in a damp towel. Could she
use your dressing room to...?"
    Why of course, certainly, no problem.
    I left the purchase on the
counter while I returned to the Maserati and told Jen, "Someone
stole your clothes at the beach. There's a dressing room inside.
You're welcome to use it. The stuff is paid for. Take your time. I
need to check something out. Be back in ten minutes;
promise."
    She seemed a bit doubtful about the whole
thing but gathered the towel around her, slid out of the car, and
walked with surprising dignity in bare feet and towel to the shop.
I escorted her to the door, kissed her forehead, and repeated, "Ten
minutes."
    The returning smile was a bit uncertain but
she went on inside. I was in the Maserati and out of there while
the clerk was showing her to the dressing room. I had no memory
whatever of any "Hank Gavinsky" but I wanted to see the guy for
myself if indeed he did exist and if indeed he was waiting to "see"
me.
    He did, and he was—well,
sort of. And, yes, I recognized that face when I saw it—though
probably I would not have if we bad merely bumped into each other
on the