“Which is what you did when Pat Harvey was with you,” he said.
She nodded. “She took me into Debbie’s bedroom, showed me photographs of her, and then she took me to the rest stop where the Jeep was found.”
“What impressions did you get?” I inquired.
Staring off, she thought hard for a moment. “I can’t remember all of them. That’s the thing. It’s the same when I give readings. People come back to me later and tell me about something I said and what’s happened since. I don’t always remember what I’ve said until I’m’ reminded.”
“Do you remember anything you said to Mrs. Harvey?”
Marino wanted to know, and he sounded disappointed.
“When she showed me Debbie’s picture, I knew right away the girl was dead.”
“What about the boyfriend?” Marino asked.
“I saw his picture in the newspaper and knew he was dead. I knew both of them were dead.”
“So you been reading about these cases in the newspaper,” Marino then said.
“No,” Hilda answered. “I don’t take the newspaper. But I saw the boy’s picture because Mrs. Harvey had clipped it out to show me. She didn’t have a photograph of him, only of her daughter, you see.”
“You mind explaining how you knew they was dead?”
“It was something I felt. An impression I got when I touched their pictures.”
Reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet, Marino said, “If I give you a picture of someone, can you do the same thing? Give me your impressions?”
“I’ll try,” she said as he handed her a snapshot.
Closing her eyes, she rubbed her fingertips over the photograph in slow circles. This went on for at least a minute before she spoke again. “I’m getting guilt. Now, I don’t know if it’s because this woman was feeling guilty when the picture was taken, or if it’s because she’s feeling that way now. But that’s coming in real strong. Conflict, guilt. Back and forth. She’s made up her mind one minute, then doubting herself the next. Back and forth.”
“Is she alive?”
Marino asked, clearing his throat.
“I feel that she is alive,” Hilda replied, still rubbing.
“I’m also getting the impression of a hospital. Something medical. Now I don’t know if this means that she’s sick or if someone close to her is. But something medical is involved, a concern. Or maybe it will be involved at some future point.”
“Anything else?” Marino asked.
She shut her eyes again and rubbed the photograph a little longer. “A lot of conflict,” she repeated. “It’s as if something’s past but it’s hard for her to let it go. Pain. And yet she feels she has no choice. That’s all that’s coming to me.”
She looked up at Marino.
When he retrieved the photograph, his face was red. Returning the wallet to his pocket without saying a word, he unzipped his briefcase and got out a microcassette tape recorder and a manila envelope containing a series of retrospective photographs that began at the logging road in New Kent County and ended in the woods where Deborah Harvey’s and Fred Cheney’s bodies had been found. Hilda spread them out on the coffee table and began rubbing her fingers over each one. For a very long time she said nothing, eyes closed as the telephone continued to ring in the other room. Each time the, machine intervened, and she did not seem to notice. I was deciding that her skills were in more demand than those of any physician.
“I’m picking up fear,” she began talking rapidly. “Now, I don’t know if it’s because someone was feeling fear when these pictures were taken, or if it’s because someone was feeling fear in these places at some earlier time. But fear.”
She nodded, eyes still shut. “I’m definitely picking it up with each picture. All of them. Very strong fear.”
Like the blind, Hilda moved her fingers from photograph to photograph, reading something that seemed as tangible to her as the features of a person’s face.
“I feel death here,” she went on, touching three different photographs. “I feel that strong.”
They were photographs of the clearing where the bodies were found. “But I don’t feel it here.”