Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton

father while still
gripped by the guilt generated within the subconscious."
    "You see it as a guilt trip, then."
    "That is the destructively
moving force, yes. And, of course, in this case compounded by
feelings of guilt over the untimely death of both
parents."
    "Why would she feel guilt over that?"
    "Because," he replied, pausing to belt the
second shot, "she thinks she killed them."
    I said, dumbly, "What?"
    "Thinks she put a bomb on their boat. TJ had
been in bed, sick with the flu. Elena had already made plans to
take the boat out that day. TJ began feeling better and joined her
at the last minute. Karen backed out at the last minute, tried her
best to keep TJ home too. The boat exploded in flames forty feet
out of the slip. Karen thinks she did it."
    I said, "Shit." Then I belted my second and
added, "So what do you think?"
    "I think," said my new drinking buddy, the
mystic shrink, "that it is all very tragic."
    Enter, now, our mutual good buddy and keeper
of souls, Terry Kalinsky. He is in a hell of a dither.
    "Thank God I found you guys here!" he
yelled. "We got a hell of a problem!"
    Powell placed the bottle on the floor beside
the bed and surged to his feet. "Is she ?"
    "Naw, shit, it's Karen
again! She came in to see how Marcia was doing and Marcia flipped
out, said all kinds of crazy shit. Karen ran out into the goddamn
night and is right now wandering around the neighborhood somewhere
all alone in the damned dark. I sent all the men out looking for
her—very quietly, we don't want the guests in on this and
..."
    Powell was already moving toward the door. I
was staggering around trying to find some clothing.
    "... I'm just hoping you guys have some idea
where she may have gone. Jesus Christ, it's pitch dark out there
and that kid—"
    I grabbed him by the chin to shut him up.
"What did Marcia say to her?"
    "Aw, some crazy shit about—said Karen tried
to kill her, said she saw Karen watching her as she dived into the
pool—crazy, it's crazy!"
    "How did Karen try to kill her, Terry?"
    He laughed, almost hysterically. "By psychic
force, I guess, if you want to believe that shit. Marcia said Karen
held her under by psychic force. Can you believe that shit?"
    I could, yes.
    I could believe that shit.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Ten: Maxim
     
    Is it possible to kill with the mind? It has
never been done, to my knowledge, under laboratory conditions—nor
have I heard of anyone in modern times being hauled into court
charged with psychic murder or manslaughter—but the literature of
mankind, including holy writ, is rich with examples of human
preoccupation with just that sort of power.
    Consider, if you will, the witch scare of
early America—which, at its height, was but an extreme realization
of a centuries-old terror exported to the New World from England.
Consider also the voodoo priests who rule certain religious
convictions of the Caribbean area, also ages old and imported from
Africa.
    I toss these two up as ready examples for
easy recognition by almost any literate person, but there are
thousands more, and they have their roots in virtually every
culture on the planet.
    Of course such
preoccupations today are instantly labeled, by those in the know,
as superstitious clap trap. And maybe they are. We do not have to
look much farther than our television sets to realize that a
leading human trait is suggestibility, and that there are always
those among us who will seek to exploit that trait to their own
advantage. That could well be the real story behind today's
shamans, witches, and other black magicians, as well as
religionists of various hues.
    But a pure scholar or scientist will want to
know a lot more than the evidence available today is able to tell
us about the origins of ideas in the human belief system. We may,
as a species, be naturally suggestible or gullible—but what made
us that way?
    Can a shaman wield power
over any individual who has no living or genetic memory of an
actual "supernatural"