Dream Man (17 page)

She was still gripping his shirt, and her eyes had taken on that faraway look they had had Monday morning, when she had recited a horror tale in a flat, emotionless voice. The trembling in her slight body had increased; he held her with both arms, trying to cushion her against the shock waves he could feel rippling through her.

“She has red hair,” she said in that small, ghostly voice. “She’s very pretty. She’s watching television, some old movie. She doesn’t know he’s there. He walks up behind her and stands there, looking down. He’s amused; how long will it be before she senses his presence? Too long. She’s a stupid cow, and he’s getting bored. He touches her neck, with his left hand, then slaps it over her mouth before she can scream. He loves that first moment of terror. The knife is in his right hand. He holds it to her throat.”

“Are you sure it’s the same one?” Dane asked. He desperately wanted her to say that she wasn’t certain.

“Yes. The movie is still on; it masks the noise. He makes her take off her pajamas and lie down on the floor. Couches are too cramped; he doesn’t like couches. He uses a condom. She doesn’t deserve his sperm. Slow and easy, slow and easy… let her relax, not be so afraid. Don’t hurt her, not yet, not yet.”

Dane anchored her to him, holding her so tight he expected her to protest, but she didn’t, all of her attention on her litany of terror. Chills rippled up his spine, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Oh, God.

“He’s finished. He’s on his knees beside her. She’s looking up at him, eyes wide and scared, but hoping. That’s good, that’s real good. He smiles at her, and her stupid mouth quivers, but she smiles too. She’s afraid not to, she thinks he’s crazy. Too stupid to live. He’s bored; this isn’t as much fun as the last one. Maybe he can liven her up. He sticks her a little and she squeals like a pig, and the race is on. Around and around the mulberry bush.”

“Jesus God,” Dane said, his voice hoarse. “Marlie, stop it. That’s enough.”

She blinked and refocused on him, and the expression in her eyes made him want to cry. The pallor of exhaustion lay over her face like a clay mask.

“You have to catch him,” she said in a drugged voice.

“I know. I will, honey. I promise.”

She turned her face in to his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Her body went limp in his arms. He looked down at her as she began breathing in a slow, heavy rhythm that signaled deep sleep. As quickly as that, she had slipped into uncon-sciousness. He wasn’t alarmed. After seeing her as she had been when he’d first arrived, this looked downright normal. He sat there for several minutes, his face grim as he considered the ugly ramifications. Finally he got to his feet, with Marlie still in his arms, and carried her into the bedroom, where he carefully placed her on the bed. She didn’t move when he pulled the throw away and re-covered her with the sheet. He refilled the cup with hot coffee, then resumed his seat and thought about what had happened tonight. He didn’t like any of it.

He glanced at the clock; it was after midnight. He called Trammell anyway. The receiver was fumbled upward on the other end and he heard a very feminine “Hello?” at the same time as Trammell was saying, “Don’t answer that!” Evidently two beers hadn’t incapacitated him
too
much, and evidently the canceled date had been rescheduled.

Then Trammell got the phone away from his lady friend. “Yeah?”

Dane wasn’t in the mood to tease him. “Marlie had another vision tonight,” he said without preamble.

“The same guy. She says he did another one.”

Trammell was silent for a shocked two seconds as the ramifications of it hit him, too. “Where?” he asked.

“Nothing’s been called in yet.”

More silence. Then he said, “This will prove one way or the other if she’s for real.”

“Yeah. She was in pretty bad shape. I’m at her house, if you need me. Dispatch is going to call if anything’s re-ported.”

“Okay. If she’s right… shit!”

Yeah, shit. Dane sat there drinking coffee, brooding. If Marlie was right, and the same guy who had murdered Nadine Vinick had done another woman, in the same way, they had big-time trouble. As bad as he had wanted the bastard, he thought he had been looking for a one-timer, he had hoped it was someone who had known Mrs. Vinick. He had thought it had been personal, though he hadn’t been able to find anything to indicate what that would have been. Multiple stab wounds usually meant someone was really pissed at the victim.

But another victim, killed with the same MO, meant they had a psychopath in Orlando. A serial killer. Someone without conscience, someone who acted only according to his own weird rules. Worse, it looked as if he was an intelligent serial killer, taking pains to leave no evidence behind. Serial killers were a real bitch to catch under any circumstances, and a smart one was almost impossible. Look at how long Bundy had killed before he’d finally made a mistake.

He couldn’t do anything but wait. He couldn’t investigate a murder that hadn’t been reported, a body that hadn’t been found. Until a victim turned up, all he had was a vision by a burned-out, trauma-damaged psychic. He believed her, though; his gut believed her, and that was frightening in itself. A cold corner of logic in his brain was still saying “wait and see,” but logic couldn’t dissipate the knot in his stomach.

He knew the terminology. Escalating sexual serial killer. He tried to remember if there had been any unsolved stabbing murders in Orlando before Nadine Vinick, but none came to mind, at least none that resembled it. Either the guy had just recently started murdering his victims, or he had moved in from another city. If a killer moved around, kept the murders spread out over different jurisdic-tions, cops might never figure out that it was the work of a serial killer because they wouldn’t have the other murders to compare the method to.

If Mrs. Vinick was his first victim, then to have killed again so soon the guy had to have gone totally out of control, and they would soon have a bloodbath in the city. An escalating killer started out slow; there might be months between his victims. Then the killings would start getting closer and closer together, because that was the only way he could get his rocks off, and he wanted it more and more often. Only a week between victims signaled an incipient rampage.

And he couldn’t do anything except wait.

When would the body, if there was a body, most likely be discovered? Maybe the husband worked third shift, like Mr. Vinick. Maybe that was the common denominator, that the husband was gone nights. If so, the discovery would be in the morning, say from six until eight. But if the lady lived alone, it could be a couple of days or longer before anyone missed her enough to check on her. Hell, he’d seen cases where people had been dead for
weeks
before anyone noticed.

Wait.

He looked at the clock again. Five after two. The coffee was gone, and he drank so much of the stuff that it only worked as long as he was pouring it in. He was tired; his eyelids felt like sandpaper. He looked at Marlie’s couch, and snorted in dismissal. He was six two, and the couch was five feet. He’d never been into masochism.

He peeked into the one room in the little house that he hadn’t seen, wondering if it was a spare bedroom. It wasn’t. This was where she stored odd pieces of furniture, luggage, boxes of books. It wasn’t as cluttered as the main rooms in his home usually were.

The only bed in the place was the one Marlie was sleeping in. He supposed he could go home, but he didn’t want to leave her alone. The lock on her door was ruined. He didn’t know how long she would sleep, but he intended to be there when she woke.

He hesitated for only the barest second, wondering what she would say if she woke up with him in bed beside her, but then he shrugged and went into her bedroom. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved at all.

He stripped down to his shorts, tossing his clothes over the rocking chair, and placed the pistol on the bedside table. His pager went right beside the pistol. There was only the one table, and Marlie was lying on that side of the bed. Dane scooted her over, then without even a twinge of conscience, slid in beside her and turned off the lamp.

It felt good. Contentment spread through him, a warm antidote to the worry of the last few hours. As big as he was, the double bed felt cramped to him, but even that had its good points because Marlie was so close to him. He put his arms around her, holding her cradled to him with her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Her slight body felt soft and fragile, and her breath moved across his chest with the lightest of touches.

He would be willing to lie awake for the rest of his life, if he could protect her from what she had gone through tonight. She had told him, Officer Ewan had told him, the professor had told him, but until he had seen it with his own eyes, he simply hadn’t realized how traumatic it was for her, how it hurt her, how much it cost her.

What a price she had paid! He knew the toll it took on the human spirit to see so much ugliness, day in and day out. Some cops handled it better than others, but they all paid, and they had only normal sensitivities. What must it have been like for her, feeling everything, all the pain and rage and hate? Losing her empathic ability must have been like being rescued from torture. Now that it was evidently coming back, how must she feel? Trapped? Desperate?

Desire pulsed in his loins; he couldn’t be around her and not want her. But stronger than desire was the need to hold her close and protect her, from the horrors within as well as those without. He slept until eight, and woke instantly aware that the pager hadn’t beeped at him during the night. Neither had Marlie stirred. She lay limply against his side, her very stillness a gauge of her exhaustion. How long did this stupor normally last?

He showered, figuring she wouldn’t mind the use of her bathroom and towels. Then he shaved, using her razor and swearing when he nicked himself. Then he went into the kitchen and put on another pot of coffee. He was beginning to feel as comfortable in Marlie’s house as he was in his own. While he was waiting for the coffee to brew, he measured the ruined front door for a replacement. He had just finished that when the phone rang.

“Heard anything?” Trammell asked.

“Nothing.”

“What does Marlie say?”

“She hasn’t said anything. She’s been asleep almost since she came out of the vision last night. She managed to tell me what she’d seen, then passed out.”

“I thought about this for hours last night. If it’s a serial killer…”

“We’ve got trouble.”

“Should we tell Bonness what we think?”

“We’d better. After all, he believed Marlie before either of us did. We can’t do anything until the murder is verified, but we should keep him informed.”

“We’re going to feel like fools if no one’s found.”

“I hope so,” Dane said grimly. “I honest to God hope I feel like the biggest fool walking. That would be a hell of a lot better than the alternative.”

Trammell sighed. “I’ll talk to Bonness,” he volunteered. “How long are you going to be at Marlie’s?”

“I don’t know. At least until she’s capable of functioning on her own. All weekend, the way it looks.”

“Wipes her out, huh?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” A thought occurred to him. “And while you’re out and around today, I need you to get a door for me. Marlie’s isn’t very secure.”

The voice pulled insistently at her, refusing to let her rest. It was a very patient voice, though relentless. On the far fringes of consciousness she knew that it was familiar, but she couldn’t quite recognize it. She was tired, so tired; she just wanted to sleep, to forget. The voice had pulled her from oblivion before. Why didn’t it leave her alone? Fretful-ly she resisted the disturbance, trying to find the comfort of nothingness again.

“Marlie. Come on, Marlie. Wake up.”

It wasn’t going to stop. She tried to turn away from the noise, but something was holding her down.

“That’s right, honey. Open your eyes.”

Surrender seemed easier; she didn’t have the energy to fight. Her eyelids felt like stone, but she forced them open, and frowned in confusion at the man who was sitting on the bed beside her. His arms were braced on either side of her, holding the sheet tight; that was what was preventing her from moving.

“There you are,” he said softly. “Hi, honey. I was getting worried.”

She couldn’t think; everything was fuzzy. Why was Dane holding her trapped like this? Her confusion must have been on her face, because he smiled and lifted one hand to smooth her tangled hair back from her face. “Everything’s okay. But you’ve been asleep for a long time, and I didn’t know if it was normal or not, so I decided to try to wake you up. It took some doing,” he added wryly.

“What… ? Why are you here?” she mumbled, trying to sit up. He sat back, releasing the sheet, and she struggled into an upright position. It took so much effort that she ached. What was wrong? Had she been sick? The flu, maybe; her bones ached so, that could be the explanation. But why was Dane here?

“If I had to make a guess,” he said, his voice pitched to a soothing rumble, “I’d say your need for the John has to be critical. Can you make it there?”

When he mentioned it, she realized that he was exactly right. She nodded and clumsily pushed the sheet away. He stood so she could swing her legs off the bed. She didn’t have many clothes on, she thought weakly as she sat on the edge looking down at her bare limbs, but she just didn’t have the strength to care.

She tried to stand and sank heavily back onto the mat-tress. Dane bent and lifted her easily in his arms. Her head drooped into the curve of his shoulder and neck, and the position seemed so comfortable that she let it stay there.

She heard the hum of the air conditioner. The air was cold on her bare skin, and the radiant heat of his big body was heavenly as he carried her… somewhere. She closed her eyes.

“No you don’t,” he scolded, putting her on her feet. Her heavy eyelids opened and she saw that she was in her own bathroom. “Make an effort, honey. Now, can you manage by yourself or do you want me to stay in here with you?”