The adventures of Casper franklin, psychic detective

With a roar the wave crashed into the rock and coated me in a fine salt sheen, the beach was black and jagged, the pacific ocean white and churning below.
 
The waves recede for a moment , pulling crabs and seaweed deeper into the rock bed before raging anew, all life is on loan, the very cradle that we sleep in would rather we be crushed and ground down.
 
"I know that look Cas, you're running a narrative and it's probably spiraling into some nihilistic dead-end."

I didn't notice his approach but then again he was right I was much too absorbed in my own thinking. Puzzles to crack and motives to sort out, half of my job is standing in spots like this and letting my intuition pull me along to the solution.

 "We checked up on your lead, you were right Diane was running with a pretty heavy crowd, slumming it on the weekends going to bars and parties. Some of the stories we heard were too wild to believe."

I looked at my companion and noted how he held himself too straight, avoided eye contact with me, he was a detective through and through so he was used to fighting for the facts. It was understandable he would be thrown off by me.

"Believe them Detective, daddy's little girl had a taste for the wild side, in fact talk to some of his bodyguards, don't let him know of course. They followed her a few times to make sure she wasn't doing drugs, they just found out the only thing she addicted to was sex. Keep it from the boss, of course, but they talk about it amongst themselves."

The ocean rumbled and I looked back to the gray sky and the mass of clouds that rolled against the air currents, building themselves into a frenzy until the strain was too great.

I took the offered envelope and put it in my coat pocket, it felt heavy enough they wouldn't rip me off and I didn't really need the money in the first place.

"Yeah, we'll do that."

I couldn't hear him walk away over the waves and the wind, I closed my eyes and held out my arms.

 The field was all around me, connected to my fingertips by small colored wires, all the knowledge and emotion of humanity contained on a separate plane.
A guru in china once told me that everyone sees it different, if they can see it at all, a field of lights, a glowing sphere made up of smaller spheres, waves of color against a velvet back-drop.

My fingers bean to tingle and then pinch and I smiled in expectation, the rain fell on my upturned face as the weave worked its way into my blood.

Her picture was in my mind before I could envision anything else, proper and beautiful, the daughter of a wealthy dangerous man. Her heart shaped face was framed by blond curls, she looked eighteen against her twenty three years. A woman that age should have a career or finishing up college especially with her money.
Diane wasn't doing any of those things, I saw flashes of naked bodies, rough and ugly, screams and moans and then something like a record scratch I could feel in my inner ear.
That wasn't good, if I couldn't get a read that meant she was dead, or indisposed, right now this was a missing person investigation but if I told them she was dead it would be a whole different beast.

I held myself in that state for a few more minutes, rocking back and forth where I stood and feeling the tightly wound coils in my other state. It was useless she wasn't there, only residual information.

A huge house in the hills of Hollywood,
Sirens and lights passing overhead
the sickly rotting hay smell of burnt heroin

Something was wrong, it wasn't my gig, hell I didn't even know her last name, but weeks of study and meditation and I felt like I knew her intimately. If I called the detective and told him what i knew he would hand the investigation over to his superiors and that would be that, someone else's mess.

My eyes opened slowly and I shuddered as the wires left my fingertips and my hearing returned, the waves sounded off like cannons in parade and the rain was lashing my face, carrying more slat to my lips.

It was up to me.