From the Grave--A McKenzie Novel Page 23

  “Contact Leland Hayes.”

  “I told you before,” Hannah said. “I can’t just Google his name. I can’t dial him up. I need a personal attachment to draw on. Besides, haven’t you heard? I’m a phony.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Your friend Commander Dunston did, in no uncertain terms.”

  “It’s possible he’s had a change of heart.”

  “Is that because we found Ruth Nowak?”

  “We didn’t find her. Kayla Janas did.”

  “Are you calling me a fake again, McKenzie?”

  “No, I’m calling you a journeyman ballplayer. It’s like the kid they have playing shortstop for the Minnesota Twins these days. He’s pretty good. Actually, he’s very good. But he ain’t Derek Jeter.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Hall of Fame baseball player, won four World Series rings with the Yankees. Never mind.”

  You’re killing me, Hannah.

  “My point is, you’re inconsistent,” I said. “From everything I’ve learned, though, you are honest. An honest woman. Except for the Leland Hayes reading. Only I think that was all about impressing the TV producer who was sitting in your audience at the time and taking notes.”

  I expected an explosion of anger and denial. Instead, Hannah stared quietly at me before turning her head and staring quietly at her mother. Esti squirmed for a few moments before rising to her feet.

  “It was necessary,” she said. “I told you.”

  “It was not necessary,” Hannah replied. “I told you.”

  “It all worked out.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Yes, actually,” I said. “It did.”

  Both women looked at me.

  “It was on the Monday before the reading that you heard from the production company that they would begin immediately filming a pilot episode against the possibility of turning your life into Model Medium. You wanted to give them something dramatic, but not all of your readings are dramatic, are they? Sometimes you can’t deliver. Only this time you felt that you needed to deliver, so you hired Karl Anderson to hedge your bet.

  “Anderson researched the people who were going to be in the audience and found Ryan. He quickly learned about Leland, about the robbery, about me, and about the missing money. It took him all of a half hour to get the grisly details. I know because that’s how long it took me to do the exact same thing with my own computer. It was just too good a story not to tell, a dramatic way to end your reading. How could you not use it?”

  “It was all my idea,” Esti said.

  “I have no doubt, but it was Hannah who did the emoting.”

  “I’m embarrassed by all of this,” Hannah said.

  “The thing is—you hired Anderson the day before the reading. Not the week before, not the month or the year before. Based on that and what others have told me about you and your readings, I’m willing to believe that this was a one-off.”

  “Mr. Anderson doesn’t work for us anymore,” Hannah said.

  As far as we know.

  “Still, you need to be careful about stepping over the line,” I said. “I speak from experience, Hannah. You step over the line once, it becomes easier to step over it again.”

  She nodded, yet I had no idea if she understood what I was saying or not.

  “It probably would have all ended there,” I said. “Except you didn’t count on Shelby Dunston being at the reading, a dear friend of mine. Like any good actress, though, you played out the scene for your audience—the woman with the clipboard. A couple of days later, I went to see you. ’Course, you were expecting that; Shelby had warned you. That’s why you had me checked out, why you were ready with Agatha and Mr. Mosley.”

  “No,” Hannah said. “They did come to talk to you. I didn’t fake that.” She took a deep breath and finished her thought with the exhale. “I don’t expect you to believe me.”

  Hannah is just trying to salvage at least some of her reputation, my inner voice said. Unless … If Anderson didn’t tell Hannah about Agatha and Mr. Mosley … Did they really come from the other side to see you?

  I shook my head to dislodge the thought.

  “I saw Anderson at the Minnetonka Community Education Center,” I said.

  “That was my doing,” Esti said. “After the way Ryan attacked my daughter at the reading, I wanted him to watch out for her. She wasn’t supposed to know.”

  “I didn’t know,” Hannah told me. “Not until you came to the house that one time. I didn’t tell you I knew Anderson because…”

  “You were embarrassed,” I said.

  “Yes. And a little ashamed.”

  “When I told you that a second psychic medium had confirmed what you told Ryan at the reading, that surprised the hell out of you.”

  “To say the least.”

  “Kayla Janas is Derek Jeter. She has crazy skills, you’ve said so yourself. She was able to conjure Leland—I still don’t know how that’s done. Except Leland didn’t actually tell Ryan that he’d trade the cash for my head until after Ryan asked if that’s what Leland wanted. It was you who planted the idea in Ryan’s head, and it was Ryan who gave it to Leland through Kayla. Fortunately, Ryan’s a good guy despite everything that’s been done to him. He blew Leland off. Only I didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “That’s when you saw another opportunity.”

  Again Hannah stared at her mother.

  “A way to score more points with the production company,” I said. “Find the money. Save me from Leland Hayes. On camera. That’s why you kept Anderson on the job. That’s why you invited me to the festival in time to hear your less scrupulous pals chant my name.”

  “I didn’t do that,” Hannah insisted. “I promise you I didn’t.” She turned to glare at Esti. “Mother?”

  Esti shook her head vehemently. “No,” she said. “No. McKenzie, whatever you think of me, you must know I’m not so foolish as to involve so many people in a, in a…”

  “Lie?” I asked.

  Could that be real, too—all those psychics chanting your name? Is Leland that powerful? Maybe you should rethink this.

  “In any case, finding the money, that’s what the meeting at the Dunston house was all about,” I said. “At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. You might have your own narrative, and you’re welcome to it. Reveal it on TV. I don’t care.”

  Esti sat down. She folded her hands and set them on her knees and leaned forward.

  “What do you care about?” she asked.

  “I want to find the money, too. Partly for Ryan’s sake. Partly for my own reasons.”

  “Will Ryan agree to a reading?” Hannah asked.

  “No. We had a long discussion about that last night. He wants the money found because he thinks it’ll help him move on with his life. Except he doesn’t want to have any contact with his old man ever again. Plus, he’s concerned about being seen on TV, about having his name mentioned on TV. He said his life was tough enough already without him becoming even more of a curiosity.”

  “Are you willing to go on TV?” Esti asked.

  “I was afraid you’d ask that question. I really don’t want to. I was hoping we could do this on the sly, and after we find the money, then you could bring in the TV people, give an interview, explain it all as dramatically as you like in front of the cameras while you hand over the cash to the insurance company.”

  “No,” Esti said.

  “No?”

  “If you want us, if you want Hannah, to do this, then you’ll do it on our terms.”

  “Mother,” Hannah said.

  “I insist.”

  “I could always go to Kayla Janas,” I said.

  “The inexperienced twenty-year-old girl who sees dead people?”

  “She’s very gifted,” Hannah said.

  “She’s a child playing with matches.”

  I would have been annoyed by the argument against Kayla except I
had already made it in my head before I called the Braatens.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay, what?” Esti wanted to know.

  “I’ll appear on TV, but only if it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “It will be. You’ll need to sign some releases before we begin.”

  Are you really going to let them make you a reality TV star?

  “As long as it’s understood that Ryan’s name is not to be mentioned, not once,” I said. “You need to guarantee that.”

  “This is all moot anyway,” Hannah said. “I cannot bring Leland Hayes over from the other side if he doesn’t want to come. Even if Ryan had agreed to cooperate, I still wouldn’t be able to make that promise.”

  “Leland isn’t on the other side,” I said. “You told me yourself that you thought he was earthbound.”

  “It doesn’t matter where he is. I still need someone or at least something with a personal attachment to him, and even then, what if he refuses to come through, what if he refuses to answer our questions? I’m the one who’s going to look like an idiot—like a fraud. Not you.”

  “That’s where the threat comes in.”

  “How do you threaten a spirit?”

  “I tell him that if he doesn’t do what we ask, I’ll buy his house and burn it to the ground, let the Minneapolis Fire Department use it for practice.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” I asked. “I know where the sonuvabitch lives.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I drove to Ventura Village earlier than I needed to—and no, it wasn’t because I was excited about the prospect of being on TV. It’s true that I did spend more time than usual making sure I was dressed just right and my hair was just so, but that was because, well, appearances matter, don’t they?

  There were two vehicles anchored in front of Leland’s battered old house, a small white delivery truck that looked like something the U.S. Postal Service might use and a sparkling black TV van. I parked a half block in front of them and walked back. A young woman with a clipboard, the same woman I had seen at the Twin Cities Psychic and Healing Festival, moved to intercept me.

  “You’re McKenzie,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She offered her hand and I shook it.

  “I’m Jodi Steffen,” she said. “I’m one of the producers. There’s something that I need you to do for us, but not now. In a minute.”

  We moved closer to Leland’s place. The sun was starting to dip toward the horizon, and it bathed the house in a golden light. Instead of making it appear inviting, though, the sun highlighted the structure’s many imperfections, giving the impression that it was even more dilapidated than it was. There was a man recording the imperfections with a handheld camera, shooting them from a wide variety of angles. Meanwhile, a second man was setting up a bank of shaded lights on thin telescoping posts behind the branches of a tree, the lights aimed at the front windows of the house.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “That’s our special effects guy,” Jodi said. “He’s setting up GV shots that’ll make the house look dangerous—trees casting menacing shadows on the wall, that sort of thing. We’re trying to create an ominous atmosphere.”

  “I find it disconcerting that you have a special effects guy on a reality TV show,” I said.

  “You’ve never heard of the observer effect?”

  “The theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes the phenomenon?”

  “Listen, general view shots are anything that looks interesting, that helps create a sense of time and place,” Jodi said. “They tell the viewer what part of the year it is, if it’s hot or cold, what kind of neighborhood we’re in, if the structure is old or new or in between, if the place is scary. They provide the editors with the necessary tools to help build an edit, to help move the story along.”

  I found that disconcerting, too, but kept it to myself.

  We passed the white truck. It was filled with lights, grip stands, small sandbags to keep the stands from falling over, tripods, rags and frames, reflectors, generators, electric cords, microphones, and a lot of other equipment I couldn’t identify.

  Eventually we halted a few yards away from Leland’s house. A well-dressed woman, only a few years older than Jodi, was standing in front of it just outside the cyclone fence. The FOR SALE sign had been moved so that it was peeking over her shoulder. There was a camera with a microphone mounted on its side pointed at her face. A second camera was pointed at Hannah Braaten. Hannah was holding a notepad that she kept referring to while she spoke to the woman. The director I had met at the psychic festival was sitting in a canvas chair a few feet behind Hannah and the first cameraman. He was wearing a set of headphones and watching a small video screen mounted on a folding table that revealed what the cameras were filming.

  Jodi pressed an index finger against her closed lips and gestured for me to follow her to the black TV van. The door was open, and we leaned inside. There was a man sitting on a stool in front of a bank of CCTV monitors. He was also wearing headphones.

  “This is Mission Control,” Jodi said.

  I could hear Hannah and the other woman talking over a pair of speakers as they were being filmed. It turned out that the woman was the real estate agent who had given the production crew permission to film Leland’s house. She was telling Hannah that she’d heard all of the stories—the rumors, she called them—about the house being haunted. It was her hope that Hannah and her people would finally disprove the rumors once and for all.

  “Nothing we do is scripted,” Jodi said. “The only moments that are planned are the scenes between the performers and the people they’re interviewing. That’s standard while shooting any story, even documentaries. We use the interviews to establish the history of the house, to set the scene, if you will. If you had arrived a few minutes earlier, you would have seen the interview we filmed with a neighbor who claims to know the history of the house, who knows some of the people who have been haunted.”

  “Big black guy with a dog the size of his foot?” I asked.

  Jodi smiled in recognition. “He was great,” she said. “Very colorful. We’ll need to bleep half the things he said, but that’s okay. It adds”—she paused as she searched for the correct word—“authenticity.”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to give an interview,” I said.

  “No. We have something else in mind for you.”

  “Something else?”

  “You’re going to be the innocent. The naïve victim lacking experience with spirits and the bad things they can do who seeks the help of the heroic yet world-weary psychic medium.”

  I started to laugh. The tech working the control panel turned his head and glared at me. I put my hand over my mouth to tone it down.

  “You think I’m joking,” Jodi said. “Hannah said that you would be in the house with her, that we’d hear you and film you. She also said that you absolutely refuse to be questioned on tape. So how else are we going to introduce your character? How do we justify your involvement? The plan is for Hannah to record a voice-over that’ll explain your part in the story. You won’t say a word. Okay?”

  “I thought you said that all of this was unscripted.”

  “We don’t fake anything, McKenzie. Other crews do; we all get that. But we don’t. At the same time, the execs put pressure on us to keep it interesting and action-packed. That’s what all the GVs are about. That’s a major reason why we film at night, forget the so-called witching hour.

  “You might have also noticed if you watch these kinds of shows that only the highlights of a paranormal investigation are shown on-screen. The audience doesn’t see us sitting in the dark all night waiting for something to happen. They don’t see us poring over hours of video to discover if anything paranormal was captured by the cameras. To keep it exciting without altering the actual content, we employ narrative tricks. Which brings me to what we need you
to do…”

  A few minutes later, I was in my Mustang and slowly circling the block. Jodi wanted to film me driving down the street, parking, stepping out of the car, and walking toward Leland’s house.

  “We’re establishing your character,” Jodi said.

  All I could think of was a story I once heard about the actor Steve McQueen and how he practiced getting out of his Mustang over and over again so that he’d look super cool while doing it in the film Bullitt.

  I positioned my own Mustang at the end of Leland’s street and slowly drove down it, refusing to look at the camera as I had been instructed. I eased into the designated parking spot, turned off the engine, and opened the door. I slipped out, twisting my body so that I was looking over the roof of the Mustang toward the camera beyond. I paused for a moment as if searching for something, eased along the side of the car until I had room to close the door, and moved slowly toward the house, all while trying to keep my face expressionless. I left my leather jacket unzipped despite the crisp winter air, and it flapped open as I walked.

  Jodi slowly applauded when I reached her. “Very nice,” she said.

  “Are you sure? I could do it again.”

  What is wrong with you? my inner voice wanted to know.

  “We’re good,” Jodi said.

  Next, they filmed me walking up to Hannah, who was waiting next to the gate of the cyclone fence. I extended my hand and she shook it, and we chatted, and then she hugged my shoulders as if we were friendly, yet not quite friends.

  “How was that?” I asked.

  Have you no shame?

  After being assured that there was no need for retakes, I zipped my jacket and leaned against the fence. The sun was close to setting. Hannah moved to the director’s side and they began a spirited back-and-forth. The director kept glancing at his watch. Hannah kept gesturing with her hands as if there were nothing to worry about. After a few minutes, the director called my name and offered his hand. I walked up to him and shook it.

  “Good to see you,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you clear on what you need to do?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Good. I like spontaneity.” He glanced at his watch some more. “Now if only the other one would show up.”