Isle of Wight Courthouse, Va. -- Some 25 miles west of Norfolk, in the center of what Virginians know as Isle of Wight County, and the rest of us would quickly recognize as the middle of nowhere, a rugged 4 x 4 bounces down sandy, barely discernible trails leading toward Rattlesnake Swamp.

Inside, four improbable companions peek through the dust at the forsaken, broken scape of woodland, choked by layers of sweet honeysuckle and shrouded in bleak stillness.

Three are armed, sober-minded men who look every bit like agents of the United States Secret Service. The fourth is a bleached-blond, matronly woman, heavily made-up and perfumed, and wearing a black evening dress.

Her name is Sonia Benser, and this seems as good a time as any to note that when she was 16 she was struck by lightning near her Baltimore home. It is said that those who are psychic, as Sonia believes herself to be, become even more empowered when struck by a bolt from the blue -- assuming, of course, they survive.

Suddenly, Sonia turns to Lawrence V. Kumjian, a steady, cautious veteran of 19 years spent hunting down counterfeiters and scanning crowds for potential threats to a president. "Here's where it gets hard to believe," he will admit later. For Sonia tells him that a fifth person has entered the truck.

"Dennis is with us," she says.

Dennis would be Dennis Ray Curry, a long-missing fugitive who represents the final loose end in one of the largest counterfeiting cases in Virginia history. Since late 1990, more than $4 million in fake 20s and 50s have been dug up from the swampy areas in this countryside; three counterfeiters have already been sentenced to prison terms.

The fourth suspected conspirator, Curry, is believed by agents of the Norfolk regional office of the Secret Service to have been murdered and buried, like a needle in an impossible haystack, somewhere out there in the swamp. Uncovering his body, they believe, may not only put to rest the counterfeiting case, but also help close an unsolved 1988 murder, to which Mr. Curry is also connected, of a drug dealer in rural North Carolina.

So they've tried just about everything to find his grave. They've brought in specially trained, cadaver-sniffing dogs; they've gotten the Navy to fly a jet over the vast swamp and take high resolution photographs; they've recruited a firm called Necro-Search -- highly sophisticated scientists trained in the detection of buried human remains.

And yes, as long as they were covering all the bases, they said "Why not?" and brought in Sonia Benser with her black dress and her perfume.

Actually, there was a little more to it than "Why not?"

An off-duty agent visiting Baltimore at Christmas heard about Sonia Benser and her willingness to use her psychic powers to help police. In February, Mr. Kumjian, Norfolk's resident agent in charge, decided to follow up, phoning her at her Glen Burnie apartment. Without identifying his agency or any particulars of the Curry case, he told her he was looking for somebody.

"And she said to me, 'He's dead, isn't he?' " he recalls. "I said, 'Yeah, we think so.' Her next remark was, 'He's in the water.' When I heard that, I thought, incredible. Then she said, 'You work for the government. Something to do with the president, and you can't tell me much about it.' "

For the next two months the skeptical Mr. Kumjian, who doesn't even read his horoscope in the paper, kept a careful log of his telephone calls to Sonia. During that time, she named the first and last initials of the victim's name, and correctly described him. She also gave the initials, correct first name and description of a person agents suspect in both the Curry killing and the 1988 homicide in North Carolina. She described a knife used in the murder, which fit with information agents had gleaned from sources -- as did her belief the victim had been killed "to keep him quiet."

And she repeatedly described a rocky, stump-filled area with murky water, barking dogs and a strong connection to the letter P.

Not long after, Mr. Kumjian did what 10 to 30 percent of the nation's police agencies do each year, according to various studies: He officially enlisted the help of a psychic.

"I'm very skeptical," he said at the time. "But she told us things she couldn't have known. The Secret Service doesn't normally look for bodies, and Sonia is just one of several unusual resources we're using. If, in fact, this man was murdered, we owe it to him and his family to do the right thing."

And so there they were in that 4 x 4, the three agents, the psychic and the spirit of a murdered man, creeping along through the swamp. At the close of the day, at the dead end of a long, winding trail that Sonia had directed them to, the vehicle pulled to a stop.

Spread before them, in the middle of the woods, was a large, open, swampy area cluttered with rocks and lots of tree stumps.

And a dog kennel filled with perhaps dozens of barking dogs.

And staring them in the face, a sign bearing the name of the kennel: Pons.

"The P!" said the psychic.

"Holy cow," said the agent.

Sonia's gift

Sonia Benser does not rely on crystal balls or cards when she does her psychic thing -- although once, she says, she tried reading Tarot cards but took the hint and quit when a breeze in a closed room blew them off the table.

Neither does she advertise, although she sees a steady stream of clients. They pay about $30 for a half hour and come to her Glen Burnie apartment from everyday walks of life as well as high profile places like the Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service, National Space Administration, Department of Defense and various local police agencies.

She prefers to do her "readings" in late afternoon and early evening in her modest apartment, which she shares with her husband, Cliff, an administrator for State Use Industries in the Department of Corrections. Almost every inch of their home is adorned with New Age-style paintings of castles or fantasy characters and tiny figurines of angels and fairies.

A woman of eclectic interests, Sonia writes poetry, songs and short stories, and regularly sings the blues at Phillips restaurant in the Inner Harbor. Her inch-thick resume describes her as a lecturer, character actress, dancer, emcee, singer and comedian. A member of the Screen Actors Guild, she has appeared in TV commercials for beer, the U.S. Navy and pantyhose. She notes that among her better features are "excellent legs and eyes."

"I've been described by some people as from the cat family because of my green eyes and long legs and the way that I walk," she says. "I don't hurry along like some people do."

At Halloween she will often ham it up for a local TV station at a haunted house. And, at year's end she delivers a list of predictions to radio and television stations. While her success rate is high, the predictions are broad, as in this past December's list: China and Korea have to be watched closely; California may have a large earthquake in 1994; the Orioles will have a better year.

Typically, she tells friends where to look for their missing car keys or misplaced bowling trophies; she'll stand in line at the grocery checkout and feel the spirit of the cashier's dead mother and pass along a message; she helps people decide whether to go or stay, marry or not marry, or whether they'll get promoted.

"You come here, you sit down, I ask your name and birthday, that's all," she explains. "A clairvoyant impression starts coming into me. You accept it or you don't accept it. My work is very spiritual. I feel God has allowed me to see these things."

Yet there are clients, she says, who won't make a decision without calling her. When she goes to a restaurant, people follow her into the ladies' room to ask for a reading. Sometimes she finds it exhausting. "My doctor says psychic energy takes sugar from the brain," she says.

And the thing is, just as you are about to dismiss her, she will tell you something about yourself that she couldn't know.

"When I saw Sonia, she said things about my mother no one else knew," says Angie Hammond, a Howard County professional who preferred her workplace not be divulged. "She knew my first name, knew where I worked and knew I took the train. She's spooky."

"There was no possible way she could have known what she said about me," echoed Yolanda Czarny. "She told me about my job and told me about a man I would meet six months before I met him."

And when she did the same kind of thing to Mr. Kumjian? "The hair on the back of my neck," he says, "was standing on end."

In search of a body

Dennis Ray Curry was the kind of guy who would always surface, says Mr. Kumjian. Until January of 1991 he'd always made contact with family and friends. "All of a sudden that stopped. He was just gone."

The 28-year-old laborer had no money and, according to informants, a guilty conscience over witnessing the 1988 killing in North Carolina. It made him a liability to somebody, says Mr. Kumjian, "and there is a very strong feeling here in the office that he was killed."

But just a feeling. No evidence, nothing really, except word from informants and old-fashioned police hunches.

Those are the classic last-resort circumstances in which police turn to a psychic, says Marcello Truzzi, an Eastern Michigan University sociology professor who is co-author of a book that examines the relationships between police agencies and psychics. Their success rate is "low in terms of producing the body or getting the culprit," he says. "But the issue is not probability. If it's a dead-end situation, even if you've got only a 2 percent chance of success, you might go with it."

The Department of Justice in California, he says, recommends the use of psychics in extreme cases. "The issue is not whether psychics are psychic, but whether they can help," says Dr. Truzzi. "Obviously, sometimes they have helped. Some people have a pretty good box score."

And so Sonia Benser, donating her time to the cause, found herself in Norfolk, scanning an aerial photo of the areas where agents had recovered the buried counterfeit money, and where Curry and a suspect were known to have hunted.

"I had this overwhelming feeling as I put my hand on that map," she says. Whether psychically or coincidentally, her finger touched the house Curry had disappeared from with dinner on the table.

"We found it very strange," says Mr. Kumjian. "It was a random putting down of her finger on the map. It would have been a heck of a coincidence." She then insisted that a larger map be brought out, showing areas north of the photographed section. On this map she pointed to Rattlesnake Swamp, another of the areas Curry had frequented -- although agents knew he had, in fact, hunted all over the county. Out on the road in the 4 x 4 that day last month, they went first to Curry's house.

A sign from above

"In the sky, on the corner near the roof," says Sonia, "was a cross made out of smoke or the contrails of airplanes. I believe in symbols. I said, 'Look, isn't that strange? A perfect cross.' I knew then I was on the right trail."

After searching several locations without success, the agents drove her to Rattlesnake Swamp, and there found the kennel with the dogs and the Pons sign.

All along, says Sonia, "Dennis kept on coming in to me and showing me his hands had been tied and saying, 'crisscross, crisscross.' "

In one of his incarnations to her, Sonia says, Curry told her he was in a culvert. She got the strong feeling of something rounded and metallic, perhaps a well. A few minutes later, on another trail, one of the agents noted that on the spot where they sat, watching deer prance across a shallow swamp, a natural gas pipeline had been buried.

"I knew it! That was it. I said, 'It isn't a well, it's a pipeline!' "

The next day, agents drove Sonia to North Carolina where she met Curry's parents. In the presence of the agents, she told the mother that her son had appeared to her and said he had huge scars on his left leg.

"That's right," the woman said. "He's been in several accidents."

Then she told the father his left leg hurt him. "You're right," he said. "It does." Finally, the father asked, "You think Dennis is dead, don't you?"

"I think he is, yes," Sonia said.

When they were leaving, Sonia hugged the woman. "She looked at me and I said, 'You know, that was from Dennis.' And she said, 'I know.' "

Later, Mr. Kumjian would say only, "I have a hard time with that stuff."

In Ann Arbor, Mich., where he heads the Center for Scientific Anomaly Research, Dr. Truzzi also describes himself as a skeptic. "That doesn't mean I'm a denier of a psychic's ability, just a doubter," he says. "I'm willing to grant a small probability there may be something to this."

And whether or not they are valid, he says, he believes most psychics "are sincere people, not con artists. They believe they have these abilities."

Dealing with doubt

In Glen Burnie, dressed as usual in a black dress, Sonia says her standard ploy with doubters is to begin telling them things about themselves. "You're born with senses and you accept your senses as being part of your body," she says. "You don't question that. I didn't question the fact I could do this."

She started telling other people things about themselves as a small girl. "My grandmother died when I was about 5 and I used to feel her spirit around me and see her," she says. "Children are not inhibited like adults. They have not been taught to say there is no spirit world, so it's a natural thing for children to see spirits."

How does she do it?

"I've got a direct hookup to the spiritual world," she says, laughing, "like an invisible telephone." Then she grows serious. "I will not predict death, though. I have no right to predict death. My job is to help people see the light."

With or without Sonia, Mr. Kumjian had long planned to conduct one last intense search of the area. And thus, two weeks ago, after Sonia had gone back to Baltimore, a dozen carloads of state police, Secret Service agents, volunteer dog handlers and volunteer scientists descended on Isle of Wight Courthouse. They fanned out and concentrated on five areas Mr. Kumjian felt were most logical.

Sonia's site at Rattlesnake Swamp was the sixth, and the last to be examined.

"As a scientist, I have very mixed feelings about psychics," says Clark Davenport, a geophysicist from Denver, who is a member of the Necro-Search team. "Of course from a law enforcement standpoint, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't."

Indeed, says Dr. Truzzi, "if a psychic tells you to go look in the bush and it doesn't cost you anything, you would have to be an idiot to at least not peek in the bush." Of course, he adds, "if a psychic tells you to dig up a whole field . . . forget it."

The scientific approach

Mr. Davenport's team is skilled at determing whether an area of ground has been disturbed. A grave will contain different foliage than an undisturbed section around it. Also, overturned earth disrupts the magnetic properties of earth adjacent to it, and those anomalies can be detected easily.

During the day, both the cadaver-sniffing dogs and the scientists agreed that a patch of woods behind Curry's house had been disturbed and could be a possible gravesite.

At about 6 p.m. the long motorcade finally made its way along the dusty road to Rattlesnake Swamp. The water had receded since Sonia's visit, but one of the dogs, handled by Sharon Jones of Dogs East, reacted to a spot where Sonia had once pointed. The excitement was short-lived, as other dogs and the scientists found nothing unusual in the area. Ms. Jones said even she thought it an unlikely gravesite because the area was so filled with stumps.

So much for psychics.

That left the spot behind Curry's house, and this past week, two agents began digging. But it was a disappointed Mr. Kumjian who reported later that the men had gone four feet into hard clay and found nothing.

So much for scientists.

"Well," says Mr. Davenport from Denver, "in the end you may have negative information. It may not be there, but you know it's not there. And that can be information that is used positively." Today, with two of the three convicted counterfeiters already out of prison, the case remains open, and will be updated from time to time.

"No, I have no regrets about bringing her down," says Mr. Kumjian of Sonia Benser. "I felt it was something we needed to do. And you know, there's always a possibility she's right and we can't find anything because of decomposition or animals carrying off bones."

In fact, agents do have one final hope: a piece of bone found in a culvert in front of Curry's house. The local medical examiner says it could have human characteristics. It is being studied.

In Glen Burnie, of course, there is no doubt.

"Whether or not the body is there I think the murder occurred there," says Sonia, whose friends call her Sunshine. "Something happened there."