Karma Visited

Karma Visited

By

Chelle Cordero

Copyright 2013 Chelle Cordero

Published by: Vanilla Heart Publishing on Smashwords

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Dedicated to:

Mark, for making my dreams come true

Acknowledgments:

To the usual suspects, the folks who have always had my back - my kids: Jenni & Jason, Marc & Trish; my sister, Bobi, my bff's Cheryl and C, and friend and publisher, Kimberlee Williams.

Karma Visited

by Chelle Cordero

My life changed after I died.

It’s not like I had any special powers.

They just didn’t understand me.

They underestimated me.

I had a gift.

Prologue

Sonovabitch! He hissed the expletive out loud. It was another dead end. It might have been more palatable if he didn’t know how much fun the fuckers were having at his expense. This was the second home invasion in less than a month, each time the perps left clues. The clues were too obvious to be of any real value, it was more like a game to the intruders, but they had to waste time checking them out just the same.

Dave looked around the small office. It didn’t look like his foul language had even jostled his partner. Tim could sleep anywhere leaning back in his chair with his head flopped back. It was a good thing the guy snored, at least you could tell he was still breathing, mused Dave.

Only two of the four desks were currently occupied, his and his partner’s. Two patrol cars were out in the small town. The day shift was the largest staff. It was a small squad room, their boss, Sheriff Ryder, had his own office and the secretary sat out in the lobby. Once upon a time he thought he had found heaven on earth, a nice small town where he could continue his law enforcement career without all the ugliness he saw as a detective in Chicago.

After eleven years he found himself becoming apathetic and detached after dealing with junkies, abused wives who kept going back to their husbands, missing kids that turned up dead on the side of a road, hookers who were terrified of disappointing their pimps, thieves and arsonists. His indifference became a way of life even when he wasn’t at the job.

Indifference destroyed his marriage too, although he had come to realize that while he missed the idea of being married, he certainly didn’t miss the woman he was married to. She had done him a favor the day she got fed up with missed dinners and cancelled social plans because of some case or other he was working on. Rose walked out and never looked back. He thought of going after her and then realized she really wasn’t that important to him after all. For a very brief few days he felt a bit like a heel. He didn’t have much of a chance to miss her or feel guilty for long, not the way she had her lawyer come after him. She wound up keeping most of what he used to own and it made leaving his old life behind a lot easier.

Maybe there was something wrong with his wiring to allow his marriage to dissolve so easily. His sister tried to convince him that with a fresh start maybe he would find the woman who would truly win his heart. He wasn’t exactly holding his breath. Dave had no plans to look for anyone special. If, and that was a big if, and when it happened, she would probably just drop from the sky anyway, It was that unlikely.

Meanwhile he had more important things to think about. These invasions. A trio of masked assailants broke into three area homes, so far nobody had been killed, but the home owner at the last one fought back and was pistol whipped pretty thoroughly in exchange. Catawai was normally a nice sleepy town, a bedroom community. It wasn’t too far a drive to Denver and Boulder where a lot of folks worked. Only a handful of folk actually had employment in the town, like him, in the Sheriff’s Department or one of the local small shops.

Fingerprints were collected at each of the homes that were broken into and neighbors were questioned in case anyone saw anything. The only fingerprints belonged to the family and no one had the foresight or curiosity to be looking out their window to keep watch over their neighbor’s home. It was a small enough town though for outsiders to stand out, which was odd because no one really had any recollection of strangers in the town.

Dave inspected the plastic evidence bag containing a garage door opener. It was a universal opener and stolen from a local resident to boot. Of course it was wiped clean. A clue with a serial number, only the direction the serial number took them held no relevance to the case. It wasn’t even one of the previous homes that had been broken into; it was taken from a car left unlocked at the local shopping center. The owner wasn’t even sure if it had been lifted or simply fell out of the car unnoticed. In the long run it just took valuable time that other clues might have been found. Dave assumed it was left behind as a tease, part of the usual nose-thumbing these home invasion perpetrators were doing towards the local law enforcement. They seemed so sure that they wouldn’t get caught.

Chapter One

Tears streaked down her cheeks and left lines on her soot stained cheeks. I rested my hand on hers and hoped she felt at least a little bit of comfort. The children were safe, she made sure of that. I let her know I admired her bravery. She appreciated the compliment, for just a moment, and then fear grabbed her again.

She stood again and tried to shake the bars free from the window. Safety bars. Those bars were meant to keep evil out and now all they did was trap her in. Luckily the little ones could squeeze between the wrought iron rods and she dropped them to horrified bystanders on the street. She understood that there was no way she could escape, but she was determined to save the children.

One by one she made sure that her charges would be alright, they were safe. And now it was time for her to die, but now the fear of how she would suffer terrified her.

Coughs seized her body as she sank back down to the floor and cried some more. Flames were licking the walls. There wasn’t much time left. We were both scared, but I knew I had no reason to fear for myself.

We could hear the sirens of the approaching fire trucks, but there wasn’t time. Her eyes were haunted as she looked at me and I prayed that the smoke would claim her before the flames. My prayers were answered. I sat still and stroked her limp hand and felt so sad that the girl’s last minutes were filled with terror.

As the burning ceiling above us sent flaming stalactites raining down, I knew she was at peace.

Annie bolted upright in bed and gasped as she tried to catch her breath. There were no flames and no smoke, but the smell still assaulted her nostrils. Her throat felt raw.

Scott muttered a curse word into his pillow. Her gasp disturbed his slumber. Thankfully he turned over and went back to sleep. She held her breath until she was sure that he hadn’t woken enough to demand his usual wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am anger sex.

Annie slid quietly from the bed and padded barefoot down the hall to the guest bathroom. She needed to be quiet so she wouldn’t wake her mother-in-law and be subjected to her belittling comments. Of course Dianne would be only too happy to complain to Scott and make sure that he reprimanded his wife appropriately.

She locked the bathroom door behind her and drank three bathroom cups of water. Then she sat on the closed toilet seat. Annie hugged herself and thought about her nightmare. Only it wasn’t just a nightmare, not her nightmare anyway, she knew that. Somewhere some young girl had just died in a burning apartment. And there was nothing Annie could do to save her.

Annie had these types of dreams ever since she was a little girl, she just didn’t always understand why. There was a time when she was normal and happy. There was a time when she had the love of two adoring parents and she felt like a princess. Then there was a night she was napping in the back seat of the family car, her parents’ lively laughter and conversation soothed and comforted her. Suddenly her mother screamed, her father yelled, and Annie was tossed in the back seat. She remembered sobbing and screams… and pain. There was heat and crackling and then nothing.

Sometime after she woke up in a hospital bed she heard the nurses talking about how she was pulled from the wreckage by the rescuers just before the car exploded. She arrived close to death because of burns and damage to her smoke-filled lungs, a minor head injury and other cuts and bruises she had just added to the pity everyone looked at her with. She was in the hospital for weeks.

Annie went home, not to the childhood home filled with happy memories of her parents, but to her mother’s elderly aunt and uncle. It was an old but comfortable farmhouse and Annie would play with her dolls while hiding behind the furniture. Her aunt always made sure she was taken care of before she would tend to her chores. There were days her aunt would offer coffee and donuts to friends in the country kitchen. One day when Annie was playing close by, she overheard her aunt whispering to a neighbor that Annie actually did die on the operating table and, through the grace of God, the doctors managed to bring her back.

She was so young and couldn’t understand why she had been able to come back from the dead but her mommy and daddy couldn’t. Annie believed it was absurd that her whole life since then was just borrowed time.

When her nightmares first started and no one understood why she woke up screaming so often, hospital counselors told her aunt and uncle that she was reacting to the loss and it was normal. When the dreams continued the doctors suggested that the minor head injury she suffered and the brief lack of oxygen when she coded might have left lasting problems. Soon everyone was convinced that her nightmares were all spawned by the trauma of her parents’ fiery car crash and they not so patiently dismissed her concerns for the strangers she claimed were in danger.

She knew early on that her dreams of devastation and calamity were more than mere memories or imagination, but she never had proof. As she grew older she found newspaper articles here and there that bore uncanny resemblance to her dreams. Most times she had to hunt for the articles, something the local library came in handy for; but then her aunt and uncle dismissed the similarity to her dreams by stressing how hard she had to look for the stories.

She didn’t understand how or why she was dreaming of actual events. No one believed her when she tried to tell them that people, unknown strangers, needed help. Annie was frustrated when she couldn’t find the details that could have proven that she wasn’t crazy. She learned at an early age that most of her dreams didn’t need to be spoken about, especially not the ones she couldn’t connect to actual events. She always hoped that the less she talked about the phenomenon, the more she would be believed when there was something she couldn’t let go of. Annie also hoped for the day people wouldn’t look at her with apprehension and pity.

She got older and the dreams continued. Some of the dreams were so intense that there was no way of hiding the effect they had on her. It was bad enough to see people suffering and dying, but she couldn’t do anything to help and she was frustrated. Without control and without the ability to help, her nighttime was filled with devastating nightmares.

School counselors suggested that her aunt bring her to a psychologist, he merely repeated the earlier diagnosis and prescribed mood enhancing drugs. The pills made her woozy and weepy, and the dreams still didn’t