Free Six Seconds by Rick Mofina

garbled and drowned by the river. He didn’t comprehend all of what Emily Tarver was trying to tell him. But now he believed in his gut that the key to unlocking this tragedy was in her dying words…and any break that heaven would allow.
Graham’s cell phone rang.
“Corporal Graham, this is Prell. Just spoke with FIS. Just wanted to advise you that they pulled clear latents off the Tarver vehicle and got hits through CPIC. We have a name. Are you ready to copy?”
Graham hurried back to his car.

15
    Bonita Hills, California
    Maggie battled to keep her hopes in check. As she threaded her way through the freeway traffic,
her stomach tensed.
Would her nightmare ever end?
Would she ever see Logan and Jake again? Where
were they?
Each day had passed without news. Nothing from
police. Nothing from the courts. Nothing from the sup
port groups, Logan’s doctor, Logan’s school or the private
investigator. Nothing from her amateur Internet search
ing.
Not a word from Jake or Logan.
Nothing but deepening anguish.
Dammit, why did Jake do this?
Maggie searched the traffic in vain for answers.
Whatever it was, maybe Jake just needed time to sort it
all out. Maggie consoled herself with that explanation,
hoping with all her heart that Madame Fatima would
work a miracle tonight.
But who was she?
    Maggie had called Stacy Kurtz, who’d pressed her police contacts for more information, urging Maggie to keep what she’d learned confidential.
    The woman was known as Madame Fatima Soleil. She’d descended from French gypsies who’d fled per secution in Senegal and roamed Europe in the early 1900s. Her family tree branched into northern Quebec and Louisiana’s bayous.
    As a young woman working in the cafés of Germany, Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia reading tea leaves, Fatima had told a Czech police official’s wife that her youngest daughter would nearly drown within one year. Some ten months later, the girl was on a school trip in Rome where she was found at the bottom of the hotel pool. She was pulled unconscious from the water and had barely survived.
    The girl’s mother told her husband, a skeptical, case hardened detective. But months later when the ten-year old son of a Russian diplomat was kidnapped for ransom in Prague, he sought Fatima’s help.
    Fatima met the boy’s parents, spent time in the boy’s bedroom, then told Czech detectives to search a specific spot near a riverbed in the St. George Forest, an hour northeast of Prague. They found the boy buried alive in a coffin equipped with an air pump. Police traced the pump to the point of purchase, then to his abductors and arrested them at gunpoint.
    At her request, Fatima’s role was never ever made public. And she’d refused any money. Later in life, her reputation, known only to a few in police circles, accompanied her when she’d moved to California. She’d planned to retire on a small inheritance, but agreed to help California police when they called upon her.
    There’s the exit for Bonita Hills.
Maggie signaled.
At the first red light, she consulted her directions.
    She was close to the Serenity Valley Mobile Country Club, where Madame Fatima lived alone in a sixty-by forty-foot mobile home. She had a tiny, neat-as-a-pin yard with a flower garden beneath a large picture window and a big awning that shaded much of her house. The stone walk invited Maggie to the side porch where she rang the doorbell.
    She was greeted by a woman who was less than five feet tall but had a solid frame under her Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants.
    “I’m Helga, Fatima’s friend.” She directed Maggie to a cloth-covered dining table in the paneled living room and kept her voice low. “Please sit down. You should know that she is not well and has very little time left, so you must—”
    “Helga!” An unseen voice whisper-wheezed from the dark paneled hallway leading to the rear. “Come get me.”
    Helga left Maggie who peered down the hall after her, not believing her