The Seeing

Chapter One

It was just after two o’clock in the morning when the little girl sat upright in bed, eyes wide and staring, and began to scream.

Ellie Groves, the child’s baby-sitter, scrambled from the big chair where she had been dozing in front of the flickering, sign-off pattern of the television set.

As the sharp screams from the bedroom subsided into a series of desperate sobs, Ellie stumbled across the shadowed living room, calling the child’s name in a voice that revealed her own fear and confusion.

Jessica Mallory, four years and five months old, sat erect on her narrow bed in a tangle of sheets and blankets, an expression of tension and dread on her pale face. A thin, whimpering sound came from her throat and tears filled her staring eyes.

“Jessica! Jessica, what is it?” Ellie said, sitting beside the child and pulling her into her arms.

“They are dead! They’re both dead! My mommy and daddy are dead!”

It was then that Ellie Groves noticed the time, ten minutes past two, the illuminated hands of the bedside clock glowing through the darkness of the room.

In the light spilling from the hallway, Ellie could see Jessica’s clothes on a chair, laid out for the morning — red corduroy overalls, a white T-shirt, socks and a small pair of red tennis shoes. She was comforted by the friendly look of the room — red-and-white checked curtains with fringed tie-backs, a small brass replica of the Liberty Bell, a Snoopy poster thumb-tacked to the wall and curling at the edges, and a row of picture books on the window sill.

Ellie Groves felt her own heartbeat slowing down. With a sigh of relief, she said, “Jessica, it’s all right. You just had a bad dream. I’ll do what my mother used to do when I was little. She’d blow in one ear and that bad old dream would go out the other, and I wouldn’t even remember it when I woke up the next morning.”

“It wasn’t a dream — I saw it happen,” Jessica said. She had begun crying- again, hopelessly and helplessly, and Ellie could feel the child’s heart pounding like a tiny hammer against her body.

“Mommy was so frightened that she woke me up,” Jessica said, the words muffled by her sobs. “Hold me, please hold me, please!”

“Of course, I will, Jessica. Of course I will!” Ellie said, feeling the shudders coursing in spasms through the little girl’s body. “It was just a bad dream—”

“No, they’re dead. My mommy was calling me. My mommy was afraid,” she said, her hysteria rising to an ominous intensity.

Ellie Groves was seventeen years old, a junior in high school, and intelligent enough to know she was facing a situation she couldn’t handle alone. The Mallorys had lived in this suburb of Philadelphia for only a few months and had left no phone numbers for her to call in case of an emergency. No friends, no doctor, no minister. Just a note on their flight plans. Because they needed a baby-sitter for this one weekend, the couple had called the student placement bureau at Ellie Groves’ high school. Daniel Mallory had business in Detroit, and he and his wife Monica had flown there yesterday and were returning early this morning.

The baby-sitter thought of phoning her own father, but she guessed he would say something such as, “Just hang on, honey. I’ll be right there.” It would take him at least a half hour to reach the Mallory apartment, and Ellie knew she shouldn’t wait that long because Jessica was fighting her now, struggling and shaking her small head frantically, dangerously close to shock or convulsions.

Gathering the child in her arms, Ellie hurried to the phone in the front room and asked the operator to connect her with the police. Within seconds, she was speaking to a dispatcher and within minutes after that a squad car with its dome-light flashing pulled into the dark, quiet street and parked near the three-story apartment building.

The two men seemed to fill the small living room with their cheerful, reassuring bulk — a gray-haired sergeant with a gentle voice and a young patrolman who made notes and who, it seemed to Ellie, would prefer to face an armed mugger in a dark alley than this strangely distraught child.

Sergeant Kelly talked as seriously to Jessica Mallory as he might have to a deputy chief at City Hall.

“Just let me ask you a question or two, if I may,” he said. “First of all, if I’ve got it right, you went to bed about the usual time. Around nine o’clock?”

The child’s agitation had subsided. Now she lay across Ellie’s lap, limp and slack in her arms. Her face seemed empty of emotion. Even her enormous, dark eyes, polished with tears, were absent and withdrawn, as if she were staring at something other than the familiar objects around her — commonplace furnishings given a lightness and gaiety by a scattering of tasseled pillows, brightly framed travel posters and a window of green, hanging plants.

After hesitating, the little girl nodded.

The sergeant then asked her what time she’d had her supper, whether or not she’d taken a doll to bed with her and other gentle, amusing questions, which Ellie realized had no special significance but were the big sergeant’s way of gaining the child’s confidence.

“All right, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” the sergeant said. He glanced at Ellie. “Now what time was it you said Jessie woke up?”

“It was just a little after two o’clock, about ten minutes after,” she said.

“Then the best thing we can do is call the airport and make sure this little lady’s mother and father are having a nice, quiet trip.”

He asked if the Mallorys had left their flight plans, and when Ellie Groves gave him the information — Central Airlines, Flight 61, leaving Detroit at twelve-fifteen — the sergeant went to the phone and asked the operator for Central’s information counter at the Philadelphia airport.

“I don’t blame you for feeling frightened,” he said, after dialing the number. “I’ve had some pretty bad dreams myself and I can tell you I was plenty scared.”

Then he spoke into the phone, a harder edge to his voice. “This is Sergeant Kelly, Philadelphia police, Sixteenth District. Who’m I talking to?”

“Jim Taylor, Central Airlines, Sergeant. What can I do for you?”

“Well, Mr. Taylor, this is no emergency, you understand. But I’d appreciate it if you could give me the present status and whereabouts of your Flight 61 out of Detroit.”

“I’ll check on that, sir. Just hold on a minute.” After a brief delay, the airlines clerk came back on the line. “That flight is on schedule, Sergeant. Should be landing in Philadelphia in about one hour and fifteen minutes. The aircraft has just been handed over to the radar control facilities at Pittsburgh.”

“So everything’s going smooth and easy,” the sergeant said and smiled at Jessica Mallory, who watched him intently with tear-bright eyes.

“Everything is routine, Sergeant,” the clerk said. “Weather and visibility excellent, there’s no turbulence, no electrical storms in the area. You got someone coming in on Flight 61, Sergeant?”

“Well, not exactly. I was checking for a friend...”

“Tell your friend that everyone on 61 will be in Philadelphia right on schedule.”

“Thank you, Mr. Taylor.” Sergeant Kelly replaced the phone and smiled again at Jessica. “You heard that, I guess. Your mother and father are just fine, so’s everybody else on that plane. Now you’d better hop back to bed so you’ll be...”

The sergeant’s smile suddenly felt stiff on his lips. There was something in the girl’s eyes, a concentration that made his casual words of reassurance sound like pointless echoes in the now silent room. “—You’ll see, dearie,” he went on, making a clumsy gesture with his hands. “You’ll be having breakfast with them in the morning.”

“Mallory, that’s an Irish name, isn’t it?” Patrolman Ross asked Sergeant Kelly. The two policemen were walking along the quiet street toward their black and white squad car at the curb about a half block from the Mallory apartment.

“Sure it is,” the Sergeant said. “A good old Irish name which probably accounts for that kid’s imagination.” He shook his head. “But those weren’t imaginary tears.”

As the two men reached the car, they saw the light above the dashboard phone blinking. The sergeant lifted the receiver, pulled it through the open window on the driver’s side and said, “Sergeant Kelly, Car 219.”

“Sergeant, I’ve got a call for you on a civilian loop,” a police dispatcher said, “I’ll patch it through.” The connection was made and the voice said, “We’ve located Sergeant Kelly. Go ahead, Central...”

“Sergeant, this is Jim Taylor at the Philadelphia airport.”

Sergeant Kelly frowned at the phone, startled by the tension in the clerk’s voice. “Yes, what is it, Mr.—”

“Goddamn it, Sergeant, did you have some information that we didn’t? Did you know something about that—”

“Now hold on,” Sergeant Kelly said. “Just settle down. What are you trying to tell me?” He heard people shouting in the background, the sound almost drowning out Taylor’s voice. “Speak up, man! Speak up!”

“It’s down, I tell you. Almost before I hung up talking to you, we got the flash. Flight 61 disappeared from the Pittsburgh radar screen...”

“What does that mean, Taylor?”

“Flight 61 from Detroit to Philadelphia crashed about a minute later, ten miles north of Harrisburg.” Taylor’s voice suddenly rose sharply. “It broke up and burned, with everybody dead. While we were talking about it...”

Sergeant Kelly felt the sudden, uneven stroke of his heart. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” he said softly, and looked up through the autumn-bare trees to the lighted windows of the Mallory apartment.