The Psychic Adviser
The Psychic Adviser
Juan Moisés De La Serna
No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child. No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child. Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn't have much else to do. It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward. With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what's the point of getting ready?
The
Psychic
Adviser
Juan Moisés de la Serna
Translated by Viana e Viana Suprimentos LTDA
Tektime Editorial
2021
“The Psychic Adviser”
Written by Juan Moisés de la Serna
Translated by Viana e Viana Suprimentos LTDA
1st edition: January 2021
© Juan Moisés de la Serna, 2021
© Tektime Editions, 2021
All rights reserved
Distributed by Tektime
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PROLOGUE
No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child.
Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn’t have much else to do.
It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward.
With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what’s the point of getting ready?
Dedicated to my parents
Contents
Chapter 1. Dreams of Liberty (#ulink_0e383688-0265-500d-90ed-0a772246b775)
Chapter 2. Nothing makes sense (#ulink_9ef88cd4-3430-5b66-9eec-74bf99b9dc48)
Chapter 3. Travel to Johannesburg (#ulink_25257ff5-284b-530c-a0f3-e875bed455d6)
Chapter 4. The value of a life (#ulink_7740ac97-5f79-5677-8377-c0afc5c1fba3)
Chapter 5. The deal (#ulink_4fd53697-d346-55bf-b150-e267dd28ae48)
Chapter 6. Doctor Brain (#ulink_f954abe9-eb8f-5a74-b33e-3ff3bbfe15a5)
Chapter 7 Flight to Johannesburg (#ulink_9d29368f-9a4b-5ab3-a9ed-fce472531d23)
Chapter 8 The interview (#ulink_58d2220e-83f3-5fc0-9ce2-4a6899479649)
Chapter 9 The Sentence (#ulink_e15a5eb4-b873-50a0-b3b9-109bd44a4671)
Chapter 10. The kidnapping (#ulink_3bc1fe64-730b-5452-8e84-9aeb54aa84fe)
Chapter 11. The new future (#ulink_67ea4c2d-2292-5925-8f8d-5c3791384d8b)
Chapter 1. Dreams of Liberty
Life always begins
every morning at sunrise
and whatever your circumstances are
you can enjoy its heat.
Day after day goes by
and meaningless it seems
for some people the morning
a punishment is how it seems.
It all depends on the focus
this some say
the meaning of life
and how you want to live it.
No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child.
Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn’t have much else to do.
It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward.
With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what’s the point of getting ready?
So much has been written about me, pouring out all kinds of conjectures about my ideology and the political motivations that led me to that, and they even argued and gave opinions about my mental health, that I have decided to write my own version, perhaps it is not the truth that some could hope, very far from the conspiracy theories that so many like, but it is my truth, it is just how I lived it and it was what led me to the sad situation that I am now, condemned for life, confined and away from everything and of all, without more than a small cabin with a few belongings.
Fortunately, in this state there is no death penalty, so I have escaped certain death, since I would have been sentenced to die in a painful way, perhaps through a lethal injection, but sometimes I even wish that end instead of spending the life imprisioned.
The popular jury sentenced me to life imprisonment, as if that could somehow compensate what I did, perhaps they would hope that I would reflect and regret my actions as time passed, but these were not committed in a moment of outburst, nor carried by no kind of ideology or fanaticism.
Although I have never doubted my mental health, after months leading the same life, locked up here, knowing that the rest of my life will be exactly the same, with the same schedule day after day, I am no longer so sure of my strength mentally as this would take a toll on anyone’s health.
Also, my neighbors, if they can be called that, are not what is called an example of civility, so I cannot make any kind of friendship with these inmates, serial killers, rapists or terrorists. They are the worst of the worst, sentenced to life in this maximum security institution where there is no privacy whatsoever.
Yes, even if they had only assigned me to a normal jail, at least there I could have some life and privacy.
Here everything could be seen, and we never stopped being scrutinized by the guards, who seemed to be determined to know everything about us, as if the countless interrogations they had subjected me to at the time had not been enough for me to tell them everything I knew.
Now with time, I have doubts about some dates, or events that happened, that is why I have decided to tell my story from the beginning.
It is not that I want to justify myself or anything like that, I know that what I have done is, at the very least, unforgivable, and I am sure that the sentence I have is fair, only that the same routine becomes unbearable every day.
I don’t know how others do it, a lot has been heard from those who try to flee, or from those who end up taking refuge in a religion, but in my case I have no hope of salvation for my soul.
When one runs over someone while intoxicated, or has an accident by overturning the vehicle that he is driving carrying a score of passengers, causing the death of some of them, one can come to repent and ask for forgiveness to the victims, One can even justify oneself that it was not intended, and that, if the circumstances had been different, none of it would have happened, but it is not my case, it never was.
Nor is it that I consider or compares myself with one of those psychopaths, serial killers or terrorists, capable of killing in cold blood, without feeling any kind of remorse, or with those who seem to enjoy hurting others.
I am just a normal man who has made a decision, I do not know what to call it, perhaps the right word is “drastic”, but I am sure that anyone else in my place would have made it.
Some may see me as a kind of vigilante, as some newspapers have described me, or perhaps as enlightened, as others have described me, but I do not feel either one or the other.
If they asked me, I would say that I am a normal man doing what my conscience dictated, it is true that this may not be the best, nor the most appropriate, but it was the only thing I could do.
Now with time, I think that I could have other opportunities, other methods and ways of doing things, that did not lead to this end, but in those moments, perhaps due to pressure, it can be that, led by the circumstances, I had not seen any other option.
Many media have judged and condemned me, even before knowing my version, so in the trial on several occasions the judge had to silence those who wanted to recriminate my actions, with insults and even threats.
To tell the truth, this jail may not be so bad after all, since it protects me from such an agitated mass that wanted to take justice into their own hands, seeking to end my life, for an act of a few seconds.
I do not try to justify what I did, not even the consequences of my actions, although sometimes I doubt that my sentence is fair, since there are worse people who spend just a few months locked up and are released, as if they had already been redeemed from their sins.
The certainty that those are worse than me, is that in a short time they return to prison for a new crime.
On the other hand, I have only committed a single crime in my life, if it can be called that, a fact that has changed everything I had thought about my future.
Although they call me a lone wolf, I once had a house, family and friends, and I have nothing left of that now.
The only memory of my past are those newspaper clippings, which call me a cold and calculating murderer, one of the worst in history, compared to the anarchists, who have tried to change the history of a country based on guns or bombs.
And of course, my number, the one I wear on my clothes and by which they call me when a guard wants to address me, as if I had no name.
All my life I have been called by that name my parents gave me, and suddenly, since I came here, no one has ever called me that again.
Only my lawyer has ever called me by my name, well, I say my lawyer not to mention my lawyers, given the many that I have had and that have not lasted.
Public lawyers obliged by the bar association to give legal attention to even to the worst people, who, in my case, precisely because of what I had done, no one wanted to represent me and they looked for any excuse to leave the case.
Nobody wanted to see their professional career tainted with my case on their resume, something that bothered me a lot at first, since I live in a country where even prisoners are supposed to have the right, but I learned to accept it over time.
On the other hand, and to my surprise, there are other cases, equally despicable like mine, that due to the notoriety they arouse in public opinion, they even fought to defend them, whether they were multiple murderers or rapists, all for a good headline.
In my case, it is not that my crime is one of the worst, or maybe it is, but what I did not have was what is called good press, on the contrary, the media had primed me, they had scrutinized my intentions, my life, my relationships and even my history, and everything had been presented in a twisted way so that it seemed that I was born to commit that act.
Even when I had given an interview to explain my reasons, they had only uttered those phrases or words that supported my guilt, not letting the general public hear my version.
Hence, I have decided to write my memoirs, so to speak, that is, my version of the events that led me to be the media center of the country, as well as the most hated man of the moment, if this is something that could be measured somehow.
In my years in prison, I have seen many types of prisoners, but I don’t think there was any like me who had a clear conscience knowing that what they had done was fair and necessary, despite the sacrifice that it implied.
Day after day I remember that moment that changed my life and that of so many, for an act qualified as one of the most horrible that has been ever possible to commit.
Although from time to time a chaplain comes here hoping that I will repent, I always tell him that I have a clear conscience and although the means may not be the most appropriate, the purpose justified it.
In truth, no one knows what it feels like when everyone looks at you badly, and I don’t mean what the homeless person who lives on the street may feel and who just receives any attention from others; if not from the looks and feelings of contempt that they had never felt.
Since the police caught me, I went from being a person to being, I don’t know how to say it, but those looks, gestures and even the treatment I received were anything but cordial.
I do not even think that animals should be treated in this way, as if touching me supposed that some kind of infection for the policemen who were guarding me, avoiding looking at me, or if they did, it was with looks of contempt.
It is true that my act may be despicable, but even so, I do not stop being a person, who has committed a wrong act, but a person, after all.
But what hurts me the most of all is the issue of family, it is true that I did not have a close relationship with my closest family, but years have passed and I have not received a single visit, not even a note or letter, that has hurt me a lot.
I still get some invitation to a television program, to tell what happened from the point of view of the dramatization of my actions, that is, as a way to sell books or documentaries using my name and my actions, using for such purpose, actors who highlight a part of me that I’ve never had.
Envy, persecutory ideas or even insanity are the attributes that these actors usually exhibit who try to explain through the drama the events that some claimed could have changed the course of history.
And that is precisely where I agree with the journalists, my ultimate intention was precisely that, neither more nor less, to change the story, or, rather, to change the story that will come and nobody wants to hear about that.
They prefer to hear criminals who claim to hear voices that tell them to commit despicable acts, and even those who seem predisposed to crime from a young age because they suffered some kind of trauma, but my version is at least not very credible and therefore they prefer to ignore it.
Sometimes they have been compared me to a religious fanatic due to my convictions and justifications for my actions, although I have always said that it is not a religion, or to follow some written precept, if not a question of basic morality.
But when I had tried to explain how anyone else in my circumstances would have ended up doing the same, the journalists have even gotten up and interrupted the interview, as if I had offended them with my words.
That is, if you have a mental problem, or if you were traumatized as a child, society comes to justify and even “understand” any atrocity, but if it is a moral issue, they do not even listen to you.
I’d have liked to have made some kind of radio or television program around the issue, based on my precepts, to try to understand or at least discuss whether or not my actions were justified, but that had been so socially serious that no one would think of it.
The only things I had received were insults, threats and contempt from everyone, in such a way that when picking up the members of the jury who were going to judge me they found it difficult since most of the population was inclined to condemn me without even having started the trial.
And about the defense, that was another, no one wanted to defend me despite the fact that the constitution supported me in having legal advice, but there was no one who wanted to see their name stained with this case, not even those who liked to litigate against the interests of the government, or who, as they said, wanted to change the things.
It had to be a foreigner, one of those who studied in their country of origin and who requested at the time the validation of their degree, for which they had to return to supervised practices repeating the internship, who was the only one in the end who agreed to defend me, if you can call it that, for he was also sure of my guilt.
To tell the truth, I was too, at least I knew what I had done, how and why, and although I was not prepared for a life sentence, I knew that my actions were socially reprehensible and therefore that I had to pay for it.
Although I have not considered myself a religious person, I do believe that I have some solid moral values, adjusted to the society in which I have lived, being respectful of the norms and rules of coexistence.
Hence, despite how much they inquired about my past, they did not find those “symptoms” that criminals seem to have, such as petty theft, petty crimes, or transgressions of morals during childhood, to gradually increase in terms of its frequency and intensity during adolescence, until reaching its maximum expression in adult life.
But in my case they did not discover anything similar, which is why they always thought that I had an accomplice, that is, that there was a thinking head, and that I was only the executing arm.
They even argued that I had been brainwashed, or something similar, but all of the drug and psychological tests that I passed came back negative, I had not suffered any kind of external influence that would subdue my will or something like that.
I know they didn’t quite understand me, and that probably in other circumstances I wouldn’t either, but what I did was conscious and meditated.
Despite admitting my guilt, it is difficult to get up every day knowing that it will be exactly the same as yesterday and the day before yesterday, and also that it will be repeated tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, for the rest of my life.
Some prisoners, the most fortunate, are anxious for the days to pass so they can have a visit from a relative or loved one, but no one has visited me for a long time.
Since the conviction was handed down, not even the defense attorney has come to see how I am.
Just when there is a case review to be carried out, and because it is mandatory by law, a prison attorney appears to inform me that a committee must decide whether or not to keep the conditions of my sentence, a procedure that must be carried out, since my crime is unforgivable and for many years that pass I do not think they will forget it.
Perhaps it was not so bad at the end at all, because if they had tried and convicted me in the military field, they say the facilities are worse, since those who go there have a specific training in the art of war, what that makes them dangerous to their own people, and that, despite the fact that some journalists had tried to have me prosecuted in the military sphere, the judge did not understand that it was necessary.
Not that bad, I can’t imagine following a military schedule for the rest of my life, accompanied by convicts who are real killing machines, and that any bad look can be considered an assault.
It is not that I am one of those who seek a fight, or anything like that, but in such a small center, conflicts and misunderstandings are frequent.
On more than one occasion, a simple blow when going out to the yard has been enough to start a fight, which on the same day or in the future has meant that they have attacked and even killed one of those involved.
A situation that has led me to think that I am better off alone than with one of those small groups that are formed among prisoners, where a leader directs a part of the yard and those who pass through that area must obey his orders and even his whims.
At least that is how the majority of prisoners live it, those who have committed minor crimes, or who have little left to get out of jail.
In my case, locked up for life in a maximum security prison, there are hardly any riots, since the guards try to ensure that there are no more than two or three people in the yard at a time, thus avoiding confrontations or what is worse, letting them make some kind of plan, since these prisoners are really dangerous.
At the first in that world, I knew nothing, and I felt safe complying with the regularity that was established, and taking advantage of the free time to carry out some activity or to be in the library.
But on one occasion I was able to witness one of the prisoners being executed by others, apparently for no reason, and from that day on I preferred my cell to spend my free time.
That led me to become a great reader, since I didn’t have much else to do between those three walls, since the gate does not count.
And over time, I thought and decided to start writing, something that has led me to complete this book.
Chapter 2. Nothing makes sense
It had been several years since I managed to enhance my abilities, those that had brought me so many problems and that with practice and training I had managed to subdue.
At first those flashes came to me, which even made me lose consciousness, something quite uncomfortable since I even fell, with the subsequent consequences that when I woke up I was in pain and sometimes even bruised.
I don’t know why, but over time these experiences, so to speak, became more and more frequent, maybe due to the exigencies of circumstances, when I began my collaboration with the police. I don’t know if it works like that, but I started to get “answers” to the cases in which I was involved.
I think it was unintentional, so to speak, after the first case in which they told me all the sort of details and the evidence collected even showing me at the crime scene, I don’t know why, but that night I had, I don’t know how to define it, a nightmare.
At first I had attributed it to the impression of participating in a case, because of the amount of blood that I had seen in the images of the victim or that had been found on the knife, but something happened that I did not expect.
The next day I went to the police station early and there I asked to see that policeman to tell him about my nightmare, who from the beginning had laughed at me, saying I was a fraud, and he was trying to prove it with that case, in which he hoped me to fail.
“Good morning, I’ve come to tell you something,” I said as I entered the police station.
“Don’t tell me you’ve solved the case!” He said with a joking tone as he got up from his desk and with his hand invited me to come to the interrogation room.
Well, I had spent the last three days in that room, where they had shown me all kinds of images, evidence and conjectures about the events, the victim, the suspects… an infinity of data and details with which I expected… I don’t know… overwhelm me.
All with the intention of giving me the greatest facilities so that I would not have any “excuse” when I failed, or at least the police chief had told me so on several occasions.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s anything, but I’ve been sleeping badly for several nights.
“No kidding! That happens to all of us who are dedicated to solving crimes,” he commented as we entered the room and closed the glass door behind him.
“Yeah, well, I guess,” I managed to say, “but tonight was different.”
“On what?” He asked while with a gesture invited me to sit down.
“I, I don’t know how to tell him, but it’s as if all the information had been arranged in my mind and I had seen it as the entire sequence.”
“Congratulations, that happens to all of us, each case we see we have the same experience, that the disconnected data is sorted and… there it is, we see it.”
“Have you seen it too?” I asked, interrupting him.
“See? Of course, it’s the sequence of events.”
“No, I mean the killer.”
“The killer? What are you talking about?”
“What I’m telling you, I was, I don’t know what to call it, remembering… the data in the form of a scene… at first it was strange, because I couldn’t see clearly, it was as if it were night and everything was dark.
“Normal, you were dreaming at night.”
“That has nothing to do with it, I mean the scene, it was all very dark, and I felt, I don’t know, a little dizzy, I think I stood on a small bench because I couldn’t continue, then I threw up, but that didn’t make me feel better. Suddenly sitting there in the park, in that place, I heard a noise behind me. I don’t know what it was and I didn’t want to find out, but I had a strange feeling and panic washed over me.
»Perhaps it was that noise or the strong smell that came from behind, but as I could, I ran towards the entrance of the park, crossing several bushes, and suddenly, and not knowing how or why, I felt something grab me hairs tightly and pulled me until I fell on my back.
»I don’t know if it was because of the fall or why but I couldn’t lift my head off the ground, it’s as if something grabbed me and suddenly I saw him clearly, it was the postman, the one who had come home so many times to bring me a package, The one who made the delivery at 10 in the morning, and who had always been so kind, but now he looked different, I don’t know, his face was disfigured, his eyes were out of their sockets and he did nothing more than tell me to shut up, and that smell was getting so intense and nauseating, until…
“Until what?” Asked the chief of police, who was pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“You’re not going to believe it.”
“Go on, go on, so far I haven’t believed anything, so go on.”
That lascivious comment didn’t surprise me, as I had already gone through the disbelief of many who made fun of what was happening to me, without trying to help me understand it.
“Well, I am still, at that moment, and I don’t know how I saw myself on top of my body, about a meter and a half, and I was able to contemplate the scene from a distance, without feeling any suffering, even though that person was raging with my body.”
“Wait, wait,” he said as the coffee he was drinking spilled over him, staining the table with it. “What are you talking about?”
“Once he was done, he took the body and put it in a bag, I don’t know where he would have got it, but it was quite large, and he carried me like a sack of potatoes.”
“Then he took me to the exit of the park, around the south corner where he had a silver car, well gray, I’m not sure because it was night and only the light from the streetlight broke the darkness.
“He got me in the trunk and was driving quite slowly through the city, and when he was out of the vicinity he pressed the accelerator, and he stayed that way for about three hours until he reached some quays.
“Once there, he headed for a turnoff that said, ‘Danger alligators,’ and kept driving for half an hour, I think. All this next to the swamps.
“Once, in the middle of nowhere, because there was no nearby construction to be seen, he stopped the car, took my body out and threw me out with a bag and everything, closed the car and left.
“I stayed there for a period, for… I don’t know, a few days, and then I left the place, I went up.
“What are you talking about?”
“Of what I saw, I have already commented, of what I have dreamed of.”
“But have you listened to yourself?”
“Yeah right, why?”
“You just accused someone with a first and last name, told me where the crime took place, and how he disposed of the body.”
“Yes, I have.”
“And without a proof?”
“Well that’s not my job.”
The commissioner, without saying a word and still with the coffee spilled on the table, left the room with great shouts.
I stood there motionless without knowing what to do, I understood that I had done the right thing by telling him what I had seen, but I did not understand his reaction.
From the chair I saw how he began to give orders left and right, and how the police from the police station began to move from one side to the other, some literally ran out of the police station, others picked up the phone and all of this I was a immobile spectator.
I could not understand what all the fuss had come to be and if I had to withdraw or wait to continue the interview in that room.
I made the move to get up and go, but the commissioner saw me at this and, returning to the doorway, said in an authoritative voice:
“Don’t move from there.”
I did so, and well, several hours passed, and despite the fact that I looked everywhere as the policemen came and went, all very nervous, surely, due to the shouts of the boss, until at a certain moment I saw entering the police station two of the policemen who had run away, and they were coming with a third man.
“It’s him, it’s him,” I screamed, I don’t really know why.
“Get him out of here,” said the commissioner to one of his subordinates, pointing at me.
So in an instant I found that they had expelled me from the police station, if you can call it that, and without ceasing to guard me, they had kindly invited me to the cafeteria across the street where they had made me sit and wait.
Although I asked several times, the policeman did not want to tell me what he was doing there, or how long he would remain, only that he must be sit and silent.
I don’t even know how long I was there, but I took the opportunity to eat, since I hadn’t had anything to eat when I left so early for the police station to tell the police chief about my dream, so I ate and waited.
It was all so strange, but hey, I had nothing better to do than wait there, I don’t really know what, but the police chief had ordered it that way, and that’s why I had, I don’t know whether to tell him an escort, but on two occasions I asked him to take me out of that place and he didn’t let me go anywhere.
And it was all so strange that even the policeman who was guarding me offered to pay for my food, that was really weird! But I understood that it was a good sign, if I had been a, I don’t know what to tell it, a common prisoner, He would have never made that offer.
Despite this, I thanked him, but I understood that I had to pay for my meal, so I did.
Hours passed, and despite my continual questions to the policeman, he didn’t seem to care about time, he was just there, in front of me, sit, and quiet.
Personally, I think he would have more interesting things to do, but that is what he had been told to do and he did so.
At one point the walkie talkie that he had in his pocket sounded, which I had barely noticed, and the order was clear:
“Bring him.”
“Come on” he said, getting up from the place and not giving me time to finish my coffee.
After three cups, one could have waited a little longer, but he hadn’t, he had received orders and everything now had to be in a hurry.
So we went back to the police station, and they took me back to the glass room that they used as an interrogation room.
“Well, you’ll say,” I commented to the police chief when he entered the room where had remained in a corner that…, I don’t know how to say, guardian who had accompanied me and had not taken his eyes off me.
“How did you know?”
“What?” I asked without knowing what he meant.
“Don’t play dumb, how did you know?” he asked again.
“As long as it’s not more specific, I don’t think I can answer you.”
“We found the body,” he stated as he put some photos on the table.
“Ah, it’s her!” I said as I watched her. It was the first time I saw this kind of photos, it is true that on television they are showing them at all times, either in the news or in the police series, but it is different when you have it right in front of you.
At the moment it made me, I don’t know, a knot in my stomach, a bad body, something entered me that … I couldn’t help but vomit on one side.
“Easy, easy, that happens to everyone the first time,” said the commissioner as he handed me a box of tissues.
“Excuse me, it was the impression.”
“Yes, I still remember my first time, unfortunately for me it was not some photos, but a joke, so to speak, from my fellow colleagues. They thought it would be funny to go to the cemetery at night to show how brave we were, and… at a certain point they threw me into a hole, shallow, but where there was an uncovered coffin. For sure they had prepared everything for the occasion, but the impression of seeing a body from so close, in the cemetery, in the middle of the night, and illuminated with the flashlights that we brought, I assure you that it is quite an experience.”
“I guess,” I managed to say as I wiped my face and hands and threw the paper on the floor to cover up what I had stained.
“Don’t worry, they’ll clean it up shortly, and well, tell me how did you know?”
“What?” I asked again, understanding now that it was about the case that hours ago I had shared my dream of.
“How did you know about where he threw her?”
“I don’t know, I just told you what I saw.”
“It has taken us several hours and the help of various experts to narrow down the area, based on the speed, model and weight of the vehicle.”
“What?” I asked in amazement.
“Sure, how do you think we do things? We don’t leave anything to chance here. Locating the suspect was easy, you gave us his name and his profession, you practically led us to him. Then we searched his house and found nothing, while we looked for his car, and coincidentally he had it in the workshop, for I don’t know what problem with the shock absorbers.”
»We went to the repair shop, with the appropriate court order, and there we realized that the vehicle was not there because of what he had told us, but that he had requested the odometer to be rectified.
»I am not sure what he would mean by this, but that did not make our work more difficult, since the shop had recorded the number of kilometers before carrying out the requested handling.
“We looked carefully at the trunk, and we didn’t find any trace, not the slightest, not a single hair, but hey, we had to try.
“So we focused on where you told us, by speed, direction and distance, and we’ve been combing the area for the last few hours, until we’ve found the body.
“Wow, you are effective,” I commented in amazement.
“We just do our job, but now we have a problem.”
“A problem?” I asked surprised, as he had told me that they had already caught the culprit and that they had recovered the body.
“Yes, we have to prove that it was he and not someone else who threw her into the pond.”
“What about the DNA I’ve seen so many times on television?”
“No DNA, at least that we’ve found.” There is no trace in his house, neither in the vehicle and all we have is the body and the knife, which I already knew when I showed him the evidence in the case, he does not have any fingerprints or DNA of the aggressor.
“And what do you want me to do?” I asked, puzzled.
“We need something, no matter how little, something that helps us catch him, if not, in less than 24 hours we will have to let him loose and that despite having the body.”
“So you believe me? You do think it’s him.”
“Yes, I believe you, I don’t know how you did it, but I believe you. His testimony does not stand, he has been lying to us since we arrested him, and no one is able to determine the day and time of the crime, that is, he has no alibi, but we cannot place him there either.”
“Maybe yes,” I said after briefly remembering the dream.
“How?”
“Do you remember I told you that he had taken the body out of a park gate?”
“Yeah, what about that?”
“Well, the car was parked there, someone must have seen it, and with that they can place it in the vicinity.”
Without saying anything, the policeman left the room and began to shout, just as he would have done a few hours before.
After an hour or so he came back in and said with a big smile.
“We’ve got him!”
“Did anyone see the parked vehicle?”
“Better, there’s a jewelry store nearby, and they have a camera recording the display, since you don’t know what? You can see him removing the body, well the bag, and depositing it in his vehicle.”
“Wow, how lucky to have that camera.”
“Yes, this is enough to prosecute him, as there is evidence to judge him for the crime.”
That was my first contribution to solving a case, the first of so many that I no longer remember the number.
What I did not have time to explain on that occasion or in the successive ones in which I had that type of dream, is what I saw a posteriori. I don’t know why that part no longer interested them, it’s as if the police just wanted to know what had happened to the body, or where the kidnapped person was, but nothing of the rest that I saw.
But for me, that was the most enriching thing, if it can be called that, knowing that, whatever the circumstances of the last moment of life, then you continue living, or at least that is how I had experienced it.
A life outside the body, but not like when we dream, and we think we are flying, something that some call a splitting or a departure of a part of ourselves.
This was something else, it is as if the person were really alive, because they thought and felt, saw and listened, but without a body.
I don’t know why, but what I understood to be the most important thing, hardly anyone paid attention to me when I tried to tell it, arguing that my mission, if it can be called that, or my collaboration had ended from the moment I had given a response to the request, that is, to discover who had been, or where the person kidnaped or their body was.
To tell the truth, after a while collaborating with different authorities, there was not much that surprised me, the names and surnames of those involved did change, and perhaps also the methods, but the motivations, so to speak, did not change.
From there I learned that we are not so different from animals despite what we may think, and that our instincts rule over a good part of our behavior, especially that one which can be considered as deviant.
And, above all, that invisible evil that nobody talks about or wants to talk about, mental health, and its diseases.
I do not know the data, nor the percentage, but most, if not all of those who were involved in this type of act, I do not know how I would define them, but they were not very well.
I don’t know what came first, if those unnatural acts or the mental health problem, what was clear to me is that they were not very normal, and that was evidenced, for example, when they had been caught and tried to… I don’t know how to say it, justify their actions with excuses that were not supported in any way, how would you justify a kidnapping, or a murder?
Personally, I believe that acts like this do not have any kind of justification, no matter how much the other person had done something or stopped doing something before.
I suppose that not everyone sees social norms in the same way, but they are there precisely to protect us from each other, to avoid coexistence problems, and it is something that we all learn from childhood.
It would be useless to buy a vehicle if when someone wants to come and take it because they want to, or, for example, who would go to work, if later the employer can decide not to pay because that day they have made that decision?
The laws and regulations are there for something, and the police to enforce them.
To tell the truth, on more than one occasion I have had problems with the police, not because I did something improper, but because I knew too much and clearly, they thought that I could be the architect, the accomplice or at least the thinking head of that act of the one who gave notice to the police so that, as far as possible, they would do their part to prevent it, because yes, I could say that he had two types of experiences, well, they were the same and with the same content, only that Some were before the act happened and others after.
With the former, it was the most difficult for the police to listen to me, not because they did not want to protect citizens, but because they said that until the act had been done, it was not a crime and therefore it was not their responsibility to do something about.
For me, these were all legal technicalities that did nothing but endanger a person, whose suffering could have been avoided.
But after insisting so much and what I had predicted happened on several occasions, the commissioner made a small trap, well, I don’t know if it can be called that, but it was an intermediate solution between paying attention to me and doing nothing.
Legally, until the crime was committed, they could not intervene, but what they did was open a kind of file with all the information that I provided, they studied it thoroughly and did to find out about the people involved and the place of the events, and once they checked everything, then they did a kind of preventive surveillance, both of the victim and the aggressor, or rather the future victim and the future aggressor, and of course it worked, on more than one occasion they had arrested the… future offender, when he was about to commit the crime, or even at the very moment of committing it, for example when it was a kidnapping.
And well, then it was time to justify the police chief in court, what they were doing in that area at the precise moment they were needed, but hey, he always got out of the situation arguing that they have had an anonymous call advising of it.
Actually, it had not been a call, nor had it been anonymous, but I understand that this way I avoided having to give more explanations of the account.
Well, he had said that he had two kinds of experiences, before and after. The difference between the two is that the first one came to me without looking for it, so to speak, that is, I don’t really know how it works, but it is as if the victim gave a cry and I was able to catch it, but this before it happens.
Despite the fact that I have asked many “specialists”, each one has given me a different explanation, arguing that somehow I had a connection with those people, or that the cry had been captured by an unconscious part connected with I don’t know what flat … well, whatever it was, it seems that this person was looking for me to help her from the future and with my intervention I managed to avoid that suffering.
The other way is for the police to contact me and ask me to participate in a certain investigation.
This is how they taught me all the evidence they had, and they told me all the conjectures and lines of investigation that they had followed and I, without knowing how that same night or in the following nights I dreamed of the case.
At first I thought that they had suggested me with so much data, but I don’t know why it worked, that is, what I was experiencing then was related to the case, and so I could come the next day to provide new information that was sometimes so valuable that managed to close it by catching the culprit.
To tell the truth, I did nothing but dream, sometimes daydreaming, and sometimes in bed.
Although I personally preferred the second, since the first implied an occasion that I was exposed to falls and injuries.
Of course, since I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I have not driven, since I do not know what can happen if I go behind the wheel and have one of those absence seizures as they call them, or worse, an attack.
In order to avoid damaging someone, I had to resign myself to using public transport for my trips, a situation that did not pose any greater inconvenience to me than leaving about half an hour earlier to be able to catch the bus on time.
But what has been said, the police have always been, I don’t know, suspicious of my abilities if it can be called that, in fact, on more than one occasion I have had to make demonstrations when a visit from another police station came requesting police cooperation to solve a case that they had not been able to close.
Be that as it may, I have always tried to cooperate in everything that has been requested of me, since I consider that what I have is not something for me, so, if it can provide a benefit to others, welcome.
I know why at first they accused me of it, those who dedicate themselves to living off the pain of others, saying that they were capable of connecting with the victims to receive this or that message for their relatives, and almost always were words of consolation saying that they were at peace and that the suffering was over.
I understand that these were words of great value for distressed family members, but that they were of little use to the police in determining where the body was.
But hey, I am not going to be the one to judge what others do and why they do it, I only know that I have tried to be very transparent with the authorities, what I received I told them, whether they liked it or not, of course, always with the intention of helping in what I could, although they did not always see it that way.
I remember once when I affirmed that there was no crime, it was about a teenager who had called her parents requesting a ransom and they asked me to try to locate her before they paid, because sometimes after payment, the kidnapper tries to erase the clues to their crime, and even ending up with the person for whom they had just collected the ransom.
This was one of those sought after dreams, in which they had given me as much information as possible about the case, phone numbers, names, and even the follow-up they had made to the closest circle to see if any were involved.
Despite this, I could not capture anything, and it was the first time that happened to me and so a week passed, and every day I approached the police station to report my lack of connection, and they told me if there was something new or not, after which I spent hours reviewing that documentation in search of that connection with the victim, but nothing, the days passed and I had nothing, so one day I went to the police station and with a firm tone I said to the commissioner.
“There is no such abduction.”
“What did you say?”
“Yes, I haven’t seen anything, I don’t see the victim, and it’s the first time this has happened to me. I don’t think she’s kidnapped.”
“But what are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”
“No, I’m very sure what I’m saying, if the kidnapping had taken place I would have captured something, a connection.”
“You and your things… are you sure that what you say you have still works?”
I thought for a moment, wondering if there could be something wrong with me that would prevent me from continuing to use my powers, but I did not remember that I had done anything different from what I used to do, not a strange food or anything, and I had not had any symptoms to tell me that I could be sick and that would justify not having that connection, so after thinking about it I affirmed:
“It’s not me, it’s the victim, she doesn’t communicate, so I don’t think it’s a kidnapping.”
That day was one of many that the head of the police station threw at me with his words out of tune, seeming to forget all the times that I had collaborated and that my information had been useful, but now it seems that he was upset that I could not solve a single case.
Well, with a very clear conscience I went to my house and stayed there for a few days until the police chief knocked on the door.
That surprised me because normally he called me at the police station when he wanted to tell me something, but hey, there he was, and I didn’t know the reason for his visit.
“Good morning boss, do you want to come in?”
“No, it’s a quick visit, you were right.”
“About what?” I asked without knowing what he meant.
“The girl, the teenager who had been kidnapped, the one who didn’t communicate with you had faked her kidnapping, well, there never was a kidnapping, she went with her boyfriend to Las Vegas and when the money ran out between the two of them they thought to say that she was kidnapped so that her parents could send money for him to continue playing with. And no, don’t tell me you already told me.”
“Not at all, I’m glad the case was solved.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said as he left the door waving goodbye.
I don’t know how many times he had to agree with me and admit that my abilities were fine, but that was the first, and that’s why I won’t forget it.
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Juan Moisés De La Serna
No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child. No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child. Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn't have much else to do. It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward. With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what's the point of getting ready?
The
Psychic
Adviser
Juan Moisés de la Serna
Translated by Viana e Viana Suprimentos LTDA
Tektime Editorial
2021
“The Psychic Adviser”
Written by Juan Moisés de la Serna
Translated by Viana e Viana Suprimentos LTDA
1st edition: January 2021
© Juan Moisés de la Serna, 2021
© Tektime Editions, 2021
All rights reserved
Distributed by Tektime
https://www.traduzionelibri.it (https://www.traduzionelibri.it)
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Please contact CEDRO (Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre) if you need to photocopy or scan any fragment of this work. You can contact CEDRO at the website www.conlicencia.com or by the phone at 91 702 19 70/93 272 04 47.
PROLOGUE
No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child.
Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn’t have much else to do.
It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward.
With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what’s the point of getting ready?
Dedicated to my parents
Contents
Chapter 1. Dreams of Liberty (#ulink_0e383688-0265-500d-90ed-0a772246b775)
Chapter 2. Nothing makes sense (#ulink_9ef88cd4-3430-5b66-9eec-74bf99b9dc48)
Chapter 3. Travel to Johannesburg (#ulink_25257ff5-284b-530c-a0f3-e875bed455d6)
Chapter 4. The value of a life (#ulink_7740ac97-5f79-5677-8377-c0afc5c1fba3)
Chapter 5. The deal (#ulink_4fd53697-d346-55bf-b150-e267dd28ae48)
Chapter 6. Doctor Brain (#ulink_f954abe9-eb8f-5a74-b33e-3ff3bbfe15a5)
Chapter 7 Flight to Johannesburg (#ulink_9d29368f-9a4b-5ab3-a9ed-fce472531d23)
Chapter 8 The interview (#ulink_58d2220e-83f3-5fc0-9ce2-4a6899479649)
Chapter 9 The Sentence (#ulink_e15a5eb4-b873-50a0-b3b9-109bd44a4671)
Chapter 10. The kidnapping (#ulink_3bc1fe64-730b-5452-8e84-9aeb54aa84fe)
Chapter 11. The new future (#ulink_67ea4c2d-2292-5925-8f8d-5c3791384d8b)
Chapter 1. Dreams of Liberty
Life always begins
every morning at sunrise
and whatever your circumstances are
you can enjoy its heat.
Day after day goes by
and meaningless it seems
for some people the morning
a punishment is how it seems.
It all depends on the focus
this some say
the meaning of life
and how you want to live it.
No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child.
Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn’t have much else to do.
It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward.
With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what’s the point of getting ready?
So much has been written about me, pouring out all kinds of conjectures about my ideology and the political motivations that led me to that, and they even argued and gave opinions about my mental health, that I have decided to write my own version, perhaps it is not the truth that some could hope, very far from the conspiracy theories that so many like, but it is my truth, it is just how I lived it and it was what led me to the sad situation that I am now, condemned for life, confined and away from everything and of all, without more than a small cabin with a few belongings.
Fortunately, in this state there is no death penalty, so I have escaped certain death, since I would have been sentenced to die in a painful way, perhaps through a lethal injection, but sometimes I even wish that end instead of spending the life imprisioned.
The popular jury sentenced me to life imprisonment, as if that could somehow compensate what I did, perhaps they would hope that I would reflect and regret my actions as time passed, but these were not committed in a moment of outburst, nor carried by no kind of ideology or fanaticism.
Although I have never doubted my mental health, after months leading the same life, locked up here, knowing that the rest of my life will be exactly the same, with the same schedule day after day, I am no longer so sure of my strength mentally as this would take a toll on anyone’s health.
Also, my neighbors, if they can be called that, are not what is called an example of civility, so I cannot make any kind of friendship with these inmates, serial killers, rapists or terrorists. They are the worst of the worst, sentenced to life in this maximum security institution where there is no privacy whatsoever.
Yes, even if they had only assigned me to a normal jail, at least there I could have some life and privacy.
Here everything could be seen, and we never stopped being scrutinized by the guards, who seemed to be determined to know everything about us, as if the countless interrogations they had subjected me to at the time had not been enough for me to tell them everything I knew.
Now with time, I have doubts about some dates, or events that happened, that is why I have decided to tell my story from the beginning.
It is not that I want to justify myself or anything like that, I know that what I have done is, at the very least, unforgivable, and I am sure that the sentence I have is fair, only that the same routine becomes unbearable every day.
I don’t know how others do it, a lot has been heard from those who try to flee, or from those who end up taking refuge in a religion, but in my case I have no hope of salvation for my soul.
When one runs over someone while intoxicated, or has an accident by overturning the vehicle that he is driving carrying a score of passengers, causing the death of some of them, one can come to repent and ask for forgiveness to the victims, One can even justify oneself that it was not intended, and that, if the circumstances had been different, none of it would have happened, but it is not my case, it never was.
Nor is it that I consider or compares myself with one of those psychopaths, serial killers or terrorists, capable of killing in cold blood, without feeling any kind of remorse, or with those who seem to enjoy hurting others.
I am just a normal man who has made a decision, I do not know what to call it, perhaps the right word is “drastic”, but I am sure that anyone else in my place would have made it.
Some may see me as a kind of vigilante, as some newspapers have described me, or perhaps as enlightened, as others have described me, but I do not feel either one or the other.
If they asked me, I would say that I am a normal man doing what my conscience dictated, it is true that this may not be the best, nor the most appropriate, but it was the only thing I could do.
Now with time, I think that I could have other opportunities, other methods and ways of doing things, that did not lead to this end, but in those moments, perhaps due to pressure, it can be that, led by the circumstances, I had not seen any other option.
Many media have judged and condemned me, even before knowing my version, so in the trial on several occasions the judge had to silence those who wanted to recriminate my actions, with insults and even threats.
To tell the truth, this jail may not be so bad after all, since it protects me from such an agitated mass that wanted to take justice into their own hands, seeking to end my life, for an act of a few seconds.
I do not try to justify what I did, not even the consequences of my actions, although sometimes I doubt that my sentence is fair, since there are worse people who spend just a few months locked up and are released, as if they had already been redeemed from their sins.
The certainty that those are worse than me, is that in a short time they return to prison for a new crime.
On the other hand, I have only committed a single crime in my life, if it can be called that, a fact that has changed everything I had thought about my future.
Although they call me a lone wolf, I once had a house, family and friends, and I have nothing left of that now.
The only memory of my past are those newspaper clippings, which call me a cold and calculating murderer, one of the worst in history, compared to the anarchists, who have tried to change the history of a country based on guns or bombs.
And of course, my number, the one I wear on my clothes and by which they call me when a guard wants to address me, as if I had no name.
All my life I have been called by that name my parents gave me, and suddenly, since I came here, no one has ever called me that again.
Only my lawyer has ever called me by my name, well, I say my lawyer not to mention my lawyers, given the many that I have had and that have not lasted.
Public lawyers obliged by the bar association to give legal attention to even to the worst people, who, in my case, precisely because of what I had done, no one wanted to represent me and they looked for any excuse to leave the case.
Nobody wanted to see their professional career tainted with my case on their resume, something that bothered me a lot at first, since I live in a country where even prisoners are supposed to have the right, but I learned to accept it over time.
On the other hand, and to my surprise, there are other cases, equally despicable like mine, that due to the notoriety they arouse in public opinion, they even fought to defend them, whether they were multiple murderers or rapists, all for a good headline.
In my case, it is not that my crime is one of the worst, or maybe it is, but what I did not have was what is called good press, on the contrary, the media had primed me, they had scrutinized my intentions, my life, my relationships and even my history, and everything had been presented in a twisted way so that it seemed that I was born to commit that act.
Even when I had given an interview to explain my reasons, they had only uttered those phrases or words that supported my guilt, not letting the general public hear my version.
Hence, I have decided to write my memoirs, so to speak, that is, my version of the events that led me to be the media center of the country, as well as the most hated man of the moment, if this is something that could be measured somehow.
In my years in prison, I have seen many types of prisoners, but I don’t think there was any like me who had a clear conscience knowing that what they had done was fair and necessary, despite the sacrifice that it implied.
Day after day I remember that moment that changed my life and that of so many, for an act qualified as one of the most horrible that has been ever possible to commit.
Although from time to time a chaplain comes here hoping that I will repent, I always tell him that I have a clear conscience and although the means may not be the most appropriate, the purpose justified it.
In truth, no one knows what it feels like when everyone looks at you badly, and I don’t mean what the homeless person who lives on the street may feel and who just receives any attention from others; if not from the looks and feelings of contempt that they had never felt.
Since the police caught me, I went from being a person to being, I don’t know how to say it, but those looks, gestures and even the treatment I received were anything but cordial.
I do not even think that animals should be treated in this way, as if touching me supposed that some kind of infection for the policemen who were guarding me, avoiding looking at me, or if they did, it was with looks of contempt.
It is true that my act may be despicable, but even so, I do not stop being a person, who has committed a wrong act, but a person, after all.
But what hurts me the most of all is the issue of family, it is true that I did not have a close relationship with my closest family, but years have passed and I have not received a single visit, not even a note or letter, that has hurt me a lot.
I still get some invitation to a television program, to tell what happened from the point of view of the dramatization of my actions, that is, as a way to sell books or documentaries using my name and my actions, using for such purpose, actors who highlight a part of me that I’ve never had.
Envy, persecutory ideas or even insanity are the attributes that these actors usually exhibit who try to explain through the drama the events that some claimed could have changed the course of history.
And that is precisely where I agree with the journalists, my ultimate intention was precisely that, neither more nor less, to change the story, or, rather, to change the story that will come and nobody wants to hear about that.
They prefer to hear criminals who claim to hear voices that tell them to commit despicable acts, and even those who seem predisposed to crime from a young age because they suffered some kind of trauma, but my version is at least not very credible and therefore they prefer to ignore it.
Sometimes they have been compared me to a religious fanatic due to my convictions and justifications for my actions, although I have always said that it is not a religion, or to follow some written precept, if not a question of basic morality.
But when I had tried to explain how anyone else in my circumstances would have ended up doing the same, the journalists have even gotten up and interrupted the interview, as if I had offended them with my words.
That is, if you have a mental problem, or if you were traumatized as a child, society comes to justify and even “understand” any atrocity, but if it is a moral issue, they do not even listen to you.
I’d have liked to have made some kind of radio or television program around the issue, based on my precepts, to try to understand or at least discuss whether or not my actions were justified, but that had been so socially serious that no one would think of it.
The only things I had received were insults, threats and contempt from everyone, in such a way that when picking up the members of the jury who were going to judge me they found it difficult since most of the population was inclined to condemn me without even having started the trial.
And about the defense, that was another, no one wanted to defend me despite the fact that the constitution supported me in having legal advice, but there was no one who wanted to see their name stained with this case, not even those who liked to litigate against the interests of the government, or who, as they said, wanted to change the things.
It had to be a foreigner, one of those who studied in their country of origin and who requested at the time the validation of their degree, for which they had to return to supervised practices repeating the internship, who was the only one in the end who agreed to defend me, if you can call it that, for he was also sure of my guilt.
To tell the truth, I was too, at least I knew what I had done, how and why, and although I was not prepared for a life sentence, I knew that my actions were socially reprehensible and therefore that I had to pay for it.
Although I have not considered myself a religious person, I do believe that I have some solid moral values, adjusted to the society in which I have lived, being respectful of the norms and rules of coexistence.
Hence, despite how much they inquired about my past, they did not find those “symptoms” that criminals seem to have, such as petty theft, petty crimes, or transgressions of morals during childhood, to gradually increase in terms of its frequency and intensity during adolescence, until reaching its maximum expression in adult life.
But in my case they did not discover anything similar, which is why they always thought that I had an accomplice, that is, that there was a thinking head, and that I was only the executing arm.
They even argued that I had been brainwashed, or something similar, but all of the drug and psychological tests that I passed came back negative, I had not suffered any kind of external influence that would subdue my will or something like that.
I know they didn’t quite understand me, and that probably in other circumstances I wouldn’t either, but what I did was conscious and meditated.
Despite admitting my guilt, it is difficult to get up every day knowing that it will be exactly the same as yesterday and the day before yesterday, and also that it will be repeated tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, for the rest of my life.
Some prisoners, the most fortunate, are anxious for the days to pass so they can have a visit from a relative or loved one, but no one has visited me for a long time.
Since the conviction was handed down, not even the defense attorney has come to see how I am.
Just when there is a case review to be carried out, and because it is mandatory by law, a prison attorney appears to inform me that a committee must decide whether or not to keep the conditions of my sentence, a procedure that must be carried out, since my crime is unforgivable and for many years that pass I do not think they will forget it.
Perhaps it was not so bad at the end at all, because if they had tried and convicted me in the military field, they say the facilities are worse, since those who go there have a specific training in the art of war, what that makes them dangerous to their own people, and that, despite the fact that some journalists had tried to have me prosecuted in the military sphere, the judge did not understand that it was necessary.
Not that bad, I can’t imagine following a military schedule for the rest of my life, accompanied by convicts who are real killing machines, and that any bad look can be considered an assault.
It is not that I am one of those who seek a fight, or anything like that, but in such a small center, conflicts and misunderstandings are frequent.
On more than one occasion, a simple blow when going out to the yard has been enough to start a fight, which on the same day or in the future has meant that they have attacked and even killed one of those involved.
A situation that has led me to think that I am better off alone than with one of those small groups that are formed among prisoners, where a leader directs a part of the yard and those who pass through that area must obey his orders and even his whims.
At least that is how the majority of prisoners live it, those who have committed minor crimes, or who have little left to get out of jail.
In my case, locked up for life in a maximum security prison, there are hardly any riots, since the guards try to ensure that there are no more than two or three people in the yard at a time, thus avoiding confrontations or what is worse, letting them make some kind of plan, since these prisoners are really dangerous.
At the first in that world, I knew nothing, and I felt safe complying with the regularity that was established, and taking advantage of the free time to carry out some activity or to be in the library.
But on one occasion I was able to witness one of the prisoners being executed by others, apparently for no reason, and from that day on I preferred my cell to spend my free time.
That led me to become a great reader, since I didn’t have much else to do between those three walls, since the gate does not count.
And over time, I thought and decided to start writing, something that has led me to complete this book.
Chapter 2. Nothing makes sense
It had been several years since I managed to enhance my abilities, those that had brought me so many problems and that with practice and training I had managed to subdue.
At first those flashes came to me, which even made me lose consciousness, something quite uncomfortable since I even fell, with the subsequent consequences that when I woke up I was in pain and sometimes even bruised.
I don’t know why, but over time these experiences, so to speak, became more and more frequent, maybe due to the exigencies of circumstances, when I began my collaboration with the police. I don’t know if it works like that, but I started to get “answers” to the cases in which I was involved.
I think it was unintentional, so to speak, after the first case in which they told me all the sort of details and the evidence collected even showing me at the crime scene, I don’t know why, but that night I had, I don’t know how to define it, a nightmare.
At first I had attributed it to the impression of participating in a case, because of the amount of blood that I had seen in the images of the victim or that had been found on the knife, but something happened that I did not expect.
The next day I went to the police station early and there I asked to see that policeman to tell him about my nightmare, who from the beginning had laughed at me, saying I was a fraud, and he was trying to prove it with that case, in which he hoped me to fail.
“Good morning, I’ve come to tell you something,” I said as I entered the police station.
“Don’t tell me you’ve solved the case!” He said with a joking tone as he got up from his desk and with his hand invited me to come to the interrogation room.
Well, I had spent the last three days in that room, where they had shown me all kinds of images, evidence and conjectures about the events, the victim, the suspects… an infinity of data and details with which I expected… I don’t know… overwhelm me.
All with the intention of giving me the greatest facilities so that I would not have any “excuse” when I failed, or at least the police chief had told me so on several occasions.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s anything, but I’ve been sleeping badly for several nights.
“No kidding! That happens to all of us who are dedicated to solving crimes,” he commented as we entered the room and closed the glass door behind him.
“Yeah, well, I guess,” I managed to say, “but tonight was different.”
“On what?” He asked while with a gesture invited me to sit down.
“I, I don’t know how to tell him, but it’s as if all the information had been arranged in my mind and I had seen it as the entire sequence.”
“Congratulations, that happens to all of us, each case we see we have the same experience, that the disconnected data is sorted and… there it is, we see it.”
“Have you seen it too?” I asked, interrupting him.
“See? Of course, it’s the sequence of events.”
“No, I mean the killer.”
“The killer? What are you talking about?”
“What I’m telling you, I was, I don’t know what to call it, remembering… the data in the form of a scene… at first it was strange, because I couldn’t see clearly, it was as if it were night and everything was dark.
“Normal, you were dreaming at night.”
“That has nothing to do with it, I mean the scene, it was all very dark, and I felt, I don’t know, a little dizzy, I think I stood on a small bench because I couldn’t continue, then I threw up, but that didn’t make me feel better. Suddenly sitting there in the park, in that place, I heard a noise behind me. I don’t know what it was and I didn’t want to find out, but I had a strange feeling and panic washed over me.
»Perhaps it was that noise or the strong smell that came from behind, but as I could, I ran towards the entrance of the park, crossing several bushes, and suddenly, and not knowing how or why, I felt something grab me hairs tightly and pulled me until I fell on my back.
»I don’t know if it was because of the fall or why but I couldn’t lift my head off the ground, it’s as if something grabbed me and suddenly I saw him clearly, it was the postman, the one who had come home so many times to bring me a package, The one who made the delivery at 10 in the morning, and who had always been so kind, but now he looked different, I don’t know, his face was disfigured, his eyes were out of their sockets and he did nothing more than tell me to shut up, and that smell was getting so intense and nauseating, until…
“Until what?” Asked the chief of police, who was pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“You’re not going to believe it.”
“Go on, go on, so far I haven’t believed anything, so go on.”
That lascivious comment didn’t surprise me, as I had already gone through the disbelief of many who made fun of what was happening to me, without trying to help me understand it.
“Well, I am still, at that moment, and I don’t know how I saw myself on top of my body, about a meter and a half, and I was able to contemplate the scene from a distance, without feeling any suffering, even though that person was raging with my body.”
“Wait, wait,” he said as the coffee he was drinking spilled over him, staining the table with it. “What are you talking about?”
“Once he was done, he took the body and put it in a bag, I don’t know where he would have got it, but it was quite large, and he carried me like a sack of potatoes.”
“Then he took me to the exit of the park, around the south corner where he had a silver car, well gray, I’m not sure because it was night and only the light from the streetlight broke the darkness.
“He got me in the trunk and was driving quite slowly through the city, and when he was out of the vicinity he pressed the accelerator, and he stayed that way for about three hours until he reached some quays.
“Once there, he headed for a turnoff that said, ‘Danger alligators,’ and kept driving for half an hour, I think. All this next to the swamps.
“Once, in the middle of nowhere, because there was no nearby construction to be seen, he stopped the car, took my body out and threw me out with a bag and everything, closed the car and left.
“I stayed there for a period, for… I don’t know, a few days, and then I left the place, I went up.
“What are you talking about?”
“Of what I saw, I have already commented, of what I have dreamed of.”
“But have you listened to yourself?”
“Yeah right, why?”
“You just accused someone with a first and last name, told me where the crime took place, and how he disposed of the body.”
“Yes, I have.”
“And without a proof?”
“Well that’s not my job.”
The commissioner, without saying a word and still with the coffee spilled on the table, left the room with great shouts.
I stood there motionless without knowing what to do, I understood that I had done the right thing by telling him what I had seen, but I did not understand his reaction.
From the chair I saw how he began to give orders left and right, and how the police from the police station began to move from one side to the other, some literally ran out of the police station, others picked up the phone and all of this I was a immobile spectator.
I could not understand what all the fuss had come to be and if I had to withdraw or wait to continue the interview in that room.
I made the move to get up and go, but the commissioner saw me at this and, returning to the doorway, said in an authoritative voice:
“Don’t move from there.”
I did so, and well, several hours passed, and despite the fact that I looked everywhere as the policemen came and went, all very nervous, surely, due to the shouts of the boss, until at a certain moment I saw entering the police station two of the policemen who had run away, and they were coming with a third man.
“It’s him, it’s him,” I screamed, I don’t really know why.
“Get him out of here,” said the commissioner to one of his subordinates, pointing at me.
So in an instant I found that they had expelled me from the police station, if you can call it that, and without ceasing to guard me, they had kindly invited me to the cafeteria across the street where they had made me sit and wait.
Although I asked several times, the policeman did not want to tell me what he was doing there, or how long he would remain, only that he must be sit and silent.
I don’t even know how long I was there, but I took the opportunity to eat, since I hadn’t had anything to eat when I left so early for the police station to tell the police chief about my dream, so I ate and waited.
It was all so strange, but hey, I had nothing better to do than wait there, I don’t really know what, but the police chief had ordered it that way, and that’s why I had, I don’t know whether to tell him an escort, but on two occasions I asked him to take me out of that place and he didn’t let me go anywhere.
And it was all so strange that even the policeman who was guarding me offered to pay for my food, that was really weird! But I understood that it was a good sign, if I had been a, I don’t know what to tell it, a common prisoner, He would have never made that offer.
Despite this, I thanked him, but I understood that I had to pay for my meal, so I did.
Hours passed, and despite my continual questions to the policeman, he didn’t seem to care about time, he was just there, in front of me, sit, and quiet.
Personally, I think he would have more interesting things to do, but that is what he had been told to do and he did so.
At one point the walkie talkie that he had in his pocket sounded, which I had barely noticed, and the order was clear:
“Bring him.”
“Come on” he said, getting up from the place and not giving me time to finish my coffee.
After three cups, one could have waited a little longer, but he hadn’t, he had received orders and everything now had to be in a hurry.
So we went back to the police station, and they took me back to the glass room that they used as an interrogation room.
“Well, you’ll say,” I commented to the police chief when he entered the room where had remained in a corner that…, I don’t know how to say, guardian who had accompanied me and had not taken his eyes off me.
“How did you know?”
“What?” I asked without knowing what he meant.
“Don’t play dumb, how did you know?” he asked again.
“As long as it’s not more specific, I don’t think I can answer you.”
“We found the body,” he stated as he put some photos on the table.
“Ah, it’s her!” I said as I watched her. It was the first time I saw this kind of photos, it is true that on television they are showing them at all times, either in the news or in the police series, but it is different when you have it right in front of you.
At the moment it made me, I don’t know, a knot in my stomach, a bad body, something entered me that … I couldn’t help but vomit on one side.
“Easy, easy, that happens to everyone the first time,” said the commissioner as he handed me a box of tissues.
“Excuse me, it was the impression.”
“Yes, I still remember my first time, unfortunately for me it was not some photos, but a joke, so to speak, from my fellow colleagues. They thought it would be funny to go to the cemetery at night to show how brave we were, and… at a certain point they threw me into a hole, shallow, but where there was an uncovered coffin. For sure they had prepared everything for the occasion, but the impression of seeing a body from so close, in the cemetery, in the middle of the night, and illuminated with the flashlights that we brought, I assure you that it is quite an experience.”
“I guess,” I managed to say as I wiped my face and hands and threw the paper on the floor to cover up what I had stained.
“Don’t worry, they’ll clean it up shortly, and well, tell me how did you know?”
“What?” I asked again, understanding now that it was about the case that hours ago I had shared my dream of.
“How did you know about where he threw her?”
“I don’t know, I just told you what I saw.”
“It has taken us several hours and the help of various experts to narrow down the area, based on the speed, model and weight of the vehicle.”
“What?” I asked in amazement.
“Sure, how do you think we do things? We don’t leave anything to chance here. Locating the suspect was easy, you gave us his name and his profession, you practically led us to him. Then we searched his house and found nothing, while we looked for his car, and coincidentally he had it in the workshop, for I don’t know what problem with the shock absorbers.”
»We went to the repair shop, with the appropriate court order, and there we realized that the vehicle was not there because of what he had told us, but that he had requested the odometer to be rectified.
»I am not sure what he would mean by this, but that did not make our work more difficult, since the shop had recorded the number of kilometers before carrying out the requested handling.
“We looked carefully at the trunk, and we didn’t find any trace, not the slightest, not a single hair, but hey, we had to try.
“So we focused on where you told us, by speed, direction and distance, and we’ve been combing the area for the last few hours, until we’ve found the body.
“Wow, you are effective,” I commented in amazement.
“We just do our job, but now we have a problem.”
“A problem?” I asked surprised, as he had told me that they had already caught the culprit and that they had recovered the body.
“Yes, we have to prove that it was he and not someone else who threw her into the pond.”
“What about the DNA I’ve seen so many times on television?”
“No DNA, at least that we’ve found.” There is no trace in his house, neither in the vehicle and all we have is the body and the knife, which I already knew when I showed him the evidence in the case, he does not have any fingerprints or DNA of the aggressor.
“And what do you want me to do?” I asked, puzzled.
“We need something, no matter how little, something that helps us catch him, if not, in less than 24 hours we will have to let him loose and that despite having the body.”
“So you believe me? You do think it’s him.”
“Yes, I believe you, I don’t know how you did it, but I believe you. His testimony does not stand, he has been lying to us since we arrested him, and no one is able to determine the day and time of the crime, that is, he has no alibi, but we cannot place him there either.”
“Maybe yes,” I said after briefly remembering the dream.
“How?”
“Do you remember I told you that he had taken the body out of a park gate?”
“Yeah, what about that?”
“Well, the car was parked there, someone must have seen it, and with that they can place it in the vicinity.”
Without saying anything, the policeman left the room and began to shout, just as he would have done a few hours before.
After an hour or so he came back in and said with a big smile.
“We’ve got him!”
“Did anyone see the parked vehicle?”
“Better, there’s a jewelry store nearby, and they have a camera recording the display, since you don’t know what? You can see him removing the body, well the bag, and depositing it in his vehicle.”
“Wow, how lucky to have that camera.”
“Yes, this is enough to prosecute him, as there is evidence to judge him for the crime.”
That was my first contribution to solving a case, the first of so many that I no longer remember the number.
What I did not have time to explain on that occasion or in the successive ones in which I had that type of dream, is what I saw a posteriori. I don’t know why that part no longer interested them, it’s as if the police just wanted to know what had happened to the body, or where the kidnapped person was, but nothing of the rest that I saw.
But for me, that was the most enriching thing, if it can be called that, knowing that, whatever the circumstances of the last moment of life, then you continue living, or at least that is how I had experienced it.
A life outside the body, but not like when we dream, and we think we are flying, something that some call a splitting or a departure of a part of ourselves.
This was something else, it is as if the person were really alive, because they thought and felt, saw and listened, but without a body.
I don’t know why, but what I understood to be the most important thing, hardly anyone paid attention to me when I tried to tell it, arguing that my mission, if it can be called that, or my collaboration had ended from the moment I had given a response to the request, that is, to discover who had been, or where the person kidnaped or their body was.
To tell the truth, after a while collaborating with different authorities, there was not much that surprised me, the names and surnames of those involved did change, and perhaps also the methods, but the motivations, so to speak, did not change.
From there I learned that we are not so different from animals despite what we may think, and that our instincts rule over a good part of our behavior, especially that one which can be considered as deviant.
And, above all, that invisible evil that nobody talks about or wants to talk about, mental health, and its diseases.
I do not know the data, nor the percentage, but most, if not all of those who were involved in this type of act, I do not know how I would define them, but they were not very well.
I don’t know what came first, if those unnatural acts or the mental health problem, what was clear to me is that they were not very normal, and that was evidenced, for example, when they had been caught and tried to… I don’t know how to say it, justify their actions with excuses that were not supported in any way, how would you justify a kidnapping, or a murder?
Personally, I believe that acts like this do not have any kind of justification, no matter how much the other person had done something or stopped doing something before.
I suppose that not everyone sees social norms in the same way, but they are there precisely to protect us from each other, to avoid coexistence problems, and it is something that we all learn from childhood.
It would be useless to buy a vehicle if when someone wants to come and take it because they want to, or, for example, who would go to work, if later the employer can decide not to pay because that day they have made that decision?
The laws and regulations are there for something, and the police to enforce them.
To tell the truth, on more than one occasion I have had problems with the police, not because I did something improper, but because I knew too much and clearly, they thought that I could be the architect, the accomplice or at least the thinking head of that act of the one who gave notice to the police so that, as far as possible, they would do their part to prevent it, because yes, I could say that he had two types of experiences, well, they were the same and with the same content, only that Some were before the act happened and others after.
With the former, it was the most difficult for the police to listen to me, not because they did not want to protect citizens, but because they said that until the act had been done, it was not a crime and therefore it was not their responsibility to do something about.
For me, these were all legal technicalities that did nothing but endanger a person, whose suffering could have been avoided.
But after insisting so much and what I had predicted happened on several occasions, the commissioner made a small trap, well, I don’t know if it can be called that, but it was an intermediate solution between paying attention to me and doing nothing.
Legally, until the crime was committed, they could not intervene, but what they did was open a kind of file with all the information that I provided, they studied it thoroughly and did to find out about the people involved and the place of the events, and once they checked everything, then they did a kind of preventive surveillance, both of the victim and the aggressor, or rather the future victim and the future aggressor, and of course it worked, on more than one occasion they had arrested the… future offender, when he was about to commit the crime, or even at the very moment of committing it, for example when it was a kidnapping.
And well, then it was time to justify the police chief in court, what they were doing in that area at the precise moment they were needed, but hey, he always got out of the situation arguing that they have had an anonymous call advising of it.
Actually, it had not been a call, nor had it been anonymous, but I understand that this way I avoided having to give more explanations of the account.
Well, he had said that he had two kinds of experiences, before and after. The difference between the two is that the first one came to me without looking for it, so to speak, that is, I don’t really know how it works, but it is as if the victim gave a cry and I was able to catch it, but this before it happens.
Despite the fact that I have asked many “specialists”, each one has given me a different explanation, arguing that somehow I had a connection with those people, or that the cry had been captured by an unconscious part connected with I don’t know what flat … well, whatever it was, it seems that this person was looking for me to help her from the future and with my intervention I managed to avoid that suffering.
The other way is for the police to contact me and ask me to participate in a certain investigation.
This is how they taught me all the evidence they had, and they told me all the conjectures and lines of investigation that they had followed and I, without knowing how that same night or in the following nights I dreamed of the case.
At first I thought that they had suggested me with so much data, but I don’t know why it worked, that is, what I was experiencing then was related to the case, and so I could come the next day to provide new information that was sometimes so valuable that managed to close it by catching the culprit.
To tell the truth, I did nothing but dream, sometimes daydreaming, and sometimes in bed.
Although I personally preferred the second, since the first implied an occasion that I was exposed to falls and injuries.
Of course, since I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I have not driven, since I do not know what can happen if I go behind the wheel and have one of those absence seizures as they call them, or worse, an attack.
In order to avoid damaging someone, I had to resign myself to using public transport for my trips, a situation that did not pose any greater inconvenience to me than leaving about half an hour earlier to be able to catch the bus on time.
But what has been said, the police have always been, I don’t know, suspicious of my abilities if it can be called that, in fact, on more than one occasion I have had to make demonstrations when a visit from another police station came requesting police cooperation to solve a case that they had not been able to close.
Be that as it may, I have always tried to cooperate in everything that has been requested of me, since I consider that what I have is not something for me, so, if it can provide a benefit to others, welcome.
I know why at first they accused me of it, those who dedicate themselves to living off the pain of others, saying that they were capable of connecting with the victims to receive this or that message for their relatives, and almost always were words of consolation saying that they were at peace and that the suffering was over.
I understand that these were words of great value for distressed family members, but that they were of little use to the police in determining where the body was.
But hey, I am not going to be the one to judge what others do and why they do it, I only know that I have tried to be very transparent with the authorities, what I received I told them, whether they liked it or not, of course, always with the intention of helping in what I could, although they did not always see it that way.
I remember once when I affirmed that there was no crime, it was about a teenager who had called her parents requesting a ransom and they asked me to try to locate her before they paid, because sometimes after payment, the kidnapper tries to erase the clues to their crime, and even ending up with the person for whom they had just collected the ransom.
This was one of those sought after dreams, in which they had given me as much information as possible about the case, phone numbers, names, and even the follow-up they had made to the closest circle to see if any were involved.
Despite this, I could not capture anything, and it was the first time that happened to me and so a week passed, and every day I approached the police station to report my lack of connection, and they told me if there was something new or not, after which I spent hours reviewing that documentation in search of that connection with the victim, but nothing, the days passed and I had nothing, so one day I went to the police station and with a firm tone I said to the commissioner.
“There is no such abduction.”
“What did you say?”
“Yes, I haven’t seen anything, I don’t see the victim, and it’s the first time this has happened to me. I don’t think she’s kidnapped.”
“But what are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”
“No, I’m very sure what I’m saying, if the kidnapping had taken place I would have captured something, a connection.”
“You and your things… are you sure that what you say you have still works?”
I thought for a moment, wondering if there could be something wrong with me that would prevent me from continuing to use my powers, but I did not remember that I had done anything different from what I used to do, not a strange food or anything, and I had not had any symptoms to tell me that I could be sick and that would justify not having that connection, so after thinking about it I affirmed:
“It’s not me, it’s the victim, she doesn’t communicate, so I don’t think it’s a kidnapping.”
That day was one of many that the head of the police station threw at me with his words out of tune, seeming to forget all the times that I had collaborated and that my information had been useful, but now it seems that he was upset that I could not solve a single case.
Well, with a very clear conscience I went to my house and stayed there for a few days until the police chief knocked on the door.
That surprised me because normally he called me at the police station when he wanted to tell me something, but hey, there he was, and I didn’t know the reason for his visit.
“Good morning boss, do you want to come in?”
“No, it’s a quick visit, you were right.”
“About what?” I asked without knowing what he meant.
“The girl, the teenager who had been kidnapped, the one who didn’t communicate with you had faked her kidnapping, well, there never was a kidnapping, she went with her boyfriend to Las Vegas and when the money ran out between the two of them they thought to say that she was kidnapped so that her parents could send money for him to continue playing with. And no, don’t tell me you already told me.”
“Not at all, I’m glad the case was solved.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said as he left the door waving goodbye.
I don’t know how many times he had to agree with me and admit that my abilities were fine, but that was the first, and that’s why I won’t forget it.
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Juan Moisés De La Serna
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: TEKTIME S.R.L.S. UNIPERSONALE
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child. No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child. Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn′t have much else to do. It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward. With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what′s the point of getting ready?