Free Bumpy Roads - A Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery (Book 11) (The Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery Series) by Terri Reid

didn’t realize I was even on the Internet.”
    “Not only in the news, but there are a lot of discussions
about you on forums, especially paranormal forums,” Celia added. “Some of it’s
quite fantastic and some isn’t very flattering.”
    “Well, you can’t believe everything you read,” Mary replied
with a smile.
    Studying the woman in front of her, Celia wondered if she
was indeed some miraculous psychic who was led by spirit helpers to solve
murder cases or, on the other hand, if she was the crackpot detective wanna -be that others on a few Internet forums suggested.
    “Which should I believe?” Celia asked.
    Laughing quietly, Mary nodded. “Good question. I think the
best answer to that is that you need to determine for yourself who I am and if
I’m crazy or not,” she said with a self-depreciating smile. “I’m fine if you
want to reserve judgment for a little while. Work with me, but hold back if you
need to.”
    “So, what is it like?” Celia asked unexpectedly.
    “What is what like?” Mary asked , a
little confused at this turn in the conversation.
    “Dying.”
    Taking a deep breath, Mary nodded slowly and put her soft
drink on the desk. “Getting right to the heart of the matter, so to speak,
that’s fair.”  
    Sitting forward in her chair, she placed her elbows on her
desk and rested her head on her heads, meeting Celia’s eyes directly. “Well,
the getting shot part is not something I’d recommend. But the going to the
light part is…” she paused for a moment, looking down at the desk, trying to
find the right words. “It’s like having amnesia. You forget about any problems
or worries, you’re just free and walking toward something you know is going to
be great.   You have this amazing sense of
tranquility and peace…and there’s also a familiarity about it. Like you’re finally going home.”
    Mary looked up to find Celia’s eyes filled with tears. “And
then?” Celia prompted; her voice thick with emotion.
    “Well, for me, that’s where it ended,” Mary explained. “I
was given a choice and I choose to return and I suppose you know the rest of
the story.”
    “And you’ve been working with ghosts ever since?”
    “No, I’ve been working with people ever since,” Mary
replied. “It just so happens that some of them are dead.”
    Celia smiled. “I like that; it makes them seem less scary.”
    “When you get the chance to know them, most of them aren’t
scary at all,” she said. “They just need some help finding their way back
home.”
    Pulling out a tissue and blotting her eyes, Celia nodded,
“So, what should we do first?”
    Mary smiled.   It
seemed that Celia had already made her up her mind about her. She moved a
folder to the middle of her desk and opened it. “The first question I have is
about other cases that are similar to Courtney’s case,” she said. “If there
have been other disappearances, perhaps we can link things together and see if
there are any connections.”
    Pulling out her own folder, Celia
opened it and pushed it across the desk toward Mary.   “Although the police haven’t made any
connections,” she said. “I’ve been doing research on missing children,
especially girls, in the area and I’ve found quite a few that I think match the
profile.”
    Mary flipped through the newspaper articles from the various
small towns in the areas and the Amber Alert press releases attached to the
articles.   “Why don’t the police believe
these are connected?” she asked.
    Celia sighed. “Well, to be fair, I’ve never shown these to the
new police chief,” she admitted. “But the former police chief didn’t seem to have
any interest in these cases because there were in other smaller towns in the
county. And, we don’t have a database that links one jurisdiction to the other,
so the connections might get overlooked.”
    “But what about the FBI?   Wouldn’t they have linked the
disappearances?” Mary asked.
    Shrugging,