Famous Last Words

But the name Henry. Water. A necklace. The stuff the psychic said …

“Is there anything I can do or say,” Wyatt said, “to talk you out of going to see this Fitzgeorge woman?”

I took a shaky breath and straightened my cardigan, trying to think up a reply.

“Right,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t think so. Then can you do me a favor?”

I glanced down at the floor, my resolve slipping away.

And then he said, “Let me come with you.”

The parking lot was deserted — Wyatt insisted we wait until everybody else had gone home, so there was no risk of our being seen together.

I was halfway to his silver Prius before a couple of thoughts tumbled into my head at once. Firstly, that maybe Wyatt was the murderer and here I was, hopping into his car. Secondly, I was still supposed to be mad at him. In fact, since the moment we met, I’d never not been mad at him.

I stopped walking and turned to him. “Just to be clear … you’re not the killer, right? If you are, you have to tell me. Murderer’s honor.”

He raised a single eyebrow and unlocked the car doors. “You coming or not?”

“Yes, coming.” I opened the door and climbed in, tossing my backpack into the backseat. When I was all buckled in, I looked over at him as he plugged Leyta’s address into his GPS. “So tell me again why you offered to go with me?”

He glanced at me before pulling out of the parking lot. “I had a feeling you’d try to take a bus or something —”

“A cab, probably,” I said. “If I tried to take a bus, I’d end up in Kansas.”

“Anyway, I thought it would be better if I drove you.”

“But you don’t believe in psychics.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“And you don’t even want me to go.”

“No,” he said again. “I don’t.”

We stared at each other for a second before he pulled his eyes away to look at the road.

“Then you haven’t answered me at all. Why are you doing this?” I asked. “You clearly think I’m crazy.”

“I never said you were crazy. I said you must be imagining things. But in retrospect, maybe that was a little dismissive.”

“Harsh might be a better word. Insensitive …”

He gave his head a frustrated shake. “You can’t be angry with me for not believing in something I have no experience with, okay?”

We turned down Hollywood Boulevard, which was thick with sightseers. There were costumed characters everywhere — Spider-Man, Superman, Catwoman, Elmo, the Statue of Liberty, a guy in metallic paint pretending to be a robot…. They looked weird and fake even from a distance, but people were still lining up to get their pictures taken with them.

“There’s the Chinese Theatre,” Wyatt said as we drove by a building that looked like a pagoda. “It’s pretty famous. Have you been yet?”

“No. I heard it’s not much to see. Movie stars have tiny feet.”

He snorted. “All of them?”

“Well, let’s see, Wyatt. Let me consult my list of famous people’s shoe sizes right here and —”

“Why are you reacting that way?” he asked.

“Why do you have to pick everything apart?” I shot back.

He sighed and checked the mirror as he changed lanes. “Okay, forget it. I was only trying to make conversation, but I guess I shouldn’t bother.”

I glanced over at him. He looked a little hurt. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was nice of you to try. But talking to you is so … complicated.”

“What does ‘complicated’ mean to you?”

“In your case?” I said. “It means you don’t know when to let things go.”

He adjusted his air vent so it blew away from him. “Yeah, I can see that.”

I gazed out the window as the navigation voice instructed us to turn left in two hundred feet. We’d passed from the crowded, garish boulevard into a residential neighborhood where the tiny houses were small and crumbling. Each one was unique, but they all shared the qualities of age and neglect: chipping paint, cracked windows, limp curtains, drooping chain-link fences.

“I don’t like letting go of things,” Wyatt said in a thoughtful voice. I realized he’d been thinking of my words this whole time. “Not until I understand them.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“What’s the number on that duplex?” he suddenly asked.

I craned my neck to see it. “Fifteen-oh-one.”

“Then we’re here,” he said, pulling into a spot in front of a decrepit building. “Let’s go find out what the future holds.”

Leyta Fitzgeorge was about thirty, tall, and wispy thin, with long waves of mouse-brown hair. She wore a forest green polo shirt that said GAME WORLD with a pair of khaki pants.

“Sorry about the shirt,” she said. “I know it detracts from the mystique and all. I have to leave for work pretty soon.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m Willa, and this is my … classmate, Wyatt.”

“You work at Game World?” Wyatt asked.

She nodded. “I can match any customer with their perfect game. I’ve never had a return.”

Wyatt scoffed.

She took out her phone. “Want to call my manager and ask?”

“No,” he said, looking a little shocked by the suggestion.

Leyta’s teeny apartment was clean and pleasant. The carpet was old and worn in places but free of stains. The pictures on the walls were posters of paintings in cheap plastic frames. The only one I recognized was Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The air was scented with traces of ci

“Sit, please,” she said, pointing us toward a blue velour recliner in front of a small table. On the other side were two folding chairs. Those four pieces of furniture pretty much filled the living room.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” I said, sitting on one of the folding chairs.

“That’s fine,” she said. “You need it, I can tell.”

“You can tell?” Wyatt said, his voice painted with skepticism. “Really? How?”

I turned to him. “Do you mind? This is my appointment.”

“It’s okay.” Leyta waved a hand in his direction. “Let him talk. That’s his flow. His journey.”

“Yes, Willa,” Wyatt said, leaning back and folding his arms. “Let me flow on my journey, please.”

I gave him a dirty look and then turned my attention back to the psychic.

“So,” she said. “You said you have questions about the future … but that’s not completely true, is it?”

“You don’t have to be a psychic to deduce that,” Wyatt said. “She’s a terrible liar.”

“Wyatt, buddy,” Leyta said, “shut your flow for a minute. Okay, Willa. You don’t want to talk future. You want to talk past. Things that are done that can’t be undone.”

“Right,” I said. “I need to know about the murders.”

She sat back and frowned at me. Like, big-time frowned. “Honey, what are you into?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just have questions —”

She held up her hand and clucked her tongue. “You don’t have questions. You may not realize it, but what you have is answers. And that’s not all you have.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. What about the murders? Why come to me?”

“Because you talked to the police,” Wyatt said.

Leyta ignored him and kept her gaze on me. “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

“The necklace,” I said. “I know there was one. I’ve seen it in my … my visions. And I know about Henry. And water.”

Her expression didn’t change, but there was a shift in her energy. All of a sudden, she was very interested. “Is there a smell? Acrid, like somebody spilled a whole bottle of vinegar?”

“No,” I said. “Sorry. I never noticed that.”