Dream Man (36 page)

“She fought him?”

“Looks like it. Her knuckles were bruised. Pity she didn’t manage to scratch his face; that would have given us an identifying mark.” Though it probably would have gotten her fingers cut off like Nadine Vinick’s, but he had never told Marlie that little detail. If she didn’t see it in the vision, he certainly wasn’t going to add to her burden of knowledge.

“Won’t his face be marked? Maybe she cut his lip. Was there any blood other than hers?”

“Not that we’ve been able to identify,” he said carefully. He tried not to think about the savage butchery, the vast amount of blood that soaked the room. Finding a few alien drops of blood wouldn’t have been feasible; it would have taken pure dumb, blind luck, and luck hadn’t been their best friend so far. If it hadn’t been for Marlie, they wouldn’t have a clue even now.

“But there should be a bruise, or a fat lip.”

“That was Friday night. A cut lip heals quickly, and isn’t all that noticeable anyway. A bruise can be minimized with ice, and covered with makeup. This is a smart guy. He’ll know all the tricks.”

“But you’ll catch him anyway.”

“Yes,” Dane said grimly. “I will.”

Carroll Janes stared at the Sunday morning newspaper in infuriated disbelief. The police sketch was eerily accurate, though of course, it showed him completely bald rather than with thick blond curls. He crushed the paper and threw it aside. For the first time, he felt a twinge of alarm, and that made him even angrier. The police weren’t supposed to get this close to him! Oh, they wouldn’t catch him, but they shouldn’t even know this much. Who had seen him? He would have sworn he had been unobserved. Had that stupid bitch had a security camera somewhere? He couldn’t believe it, for if she had, it would have shown him the first two times he had entered the house, unless, of course, she had been so stupid that she never checked the tape. The police would have, even if she hadn’t. No, there hadn’t been a camera. He would have discovered it, had there been.

How had this happened? What had gone wrong?

He took comfort in the fact that, as usual, he hadn’t left any forensic evidence behind. No hair, no skin, no finger-prints, no footprints. The knife belonged to the victim, and had been left at the scene. He had taken no trophies, nothing that could link him to the scene. He was safe. But someone had seen him. He had slipped up—totally unacceptable—and someone had seen him. To atone for his error, he would have to correct it. He would have to find this person, and eliminate him—or her.

“Will you go with me over to the Elrod house?” Dane asked.

Marlie stared at him, so stunned for a moment that she couldn’t believe what he’d asked. To actually go into the house… Her mind reeled away from the idea. It was bad enough to see it in her mind; to walk into that blood-soaked room was more than she thought she could bear. Dane’s mouth set in a hard line as he saw her sudden loss of color. He clasped her shoulders so she couldn’t turn away. “I know what I’m asking,” he said harshly. “I know how much it will cost you. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need your help. We’re all stumbling around in the dark here, and you’re the only light we have. It’s a long shot, but maybe, if you were at the actual scene, you’d be able to pick up more about him.”

The last scene she’d been at had been when Dusty had been murdered, when she had lain helplessly and watched as Gleen butchered a terrified, equally helpless little boy. She had lived with the memories ever since; it wasn’t fair of Dane to ask her to add to those memories. He knew what she’d been through, but he hadn’t lived it, so he didn’t know the torment as intimately as she did. She stared up into those fiercely determined hazel eyes, feeling the force of his will batter at her. She could withstand him, she thought dimly. It was much more difficult to withstand the silent entreaties of Nadine Vinick, of Jackie Sheets, of Marilyn Elrod. She could see all of them, their shades crying out for justice.

Why hadn’t she been able to get into
their
minds, instead of his? He had to select them in some manner; maybe one or all of them had known his name. But instead it was his mental energy that had reached out and tapped into hers, forcing her to feel his evil. But she had once before been in the victim’s mind, had felt Dusty’s death, and it had nearly killed her too. What would it have done to her to have mentally endured that pain and terror again?

“Marlie?” Dane shook her lightly, forcing her to focus on him.

She squared her shoulders, bracing herself. She couldn’t turn her back on this now any more than she could have at the beginning. “All right,” she said steadily. “I’ll go with you.”

Once she had agreed, he didn’t waste any time. Within five minutes they were on their way. It was just after noon; churches had let out, and children were swarming as they drove through the upscale neighborhood where the Elrods had lived. She sat silently, her eyes on her hands as she tried to prepare herself. She didn’t know what to expect; maybe nothing, maybe she would relive the vision, maybe she really would sense something new.

And maybe she would look in the mirror and come face-to-face with a killer. She knew him, knew that he killed without remorse. He enjoyed it. He gloated over his victims’ pain and terror. He wore a human form, but he was a depraved monster who would keep killing until someone stopped him.

Dane pulled into a driveway. The house was sealed with yellow crime scene tape. Though it had been twenty-four hours since the body had been found, neighbors stood in small knots pointing and gawking, rehashing the few details they had gleaned from television and newspaper reports, and adding new gory ones from the multitude of rumors that raced through the neighborhood.

“We think he entered through the garage, when she went out early in the evening,” Dane said, keeping a firm hand on Marlie’s elbow as they went up the walk to the front door. He held up the crime scene tape for them to duck under. “Because the power was off when she got home, the electric garage door opener wouldn’t work. She left the car in the driveway and entered through the front door. The alarm system didn’t work, either, because of the power outage, but it wouldn’t have helped in any case: It wasn’t connected to the door from the garage into the house. People can make some of the dumbest decisions, for the dumbest reasons. Mr. Elrod said that particular door wasn’t connected so they would have a way of entering without having to fool with the alarm code. They might as well have put a sign on it saying ‘Criminals Enter Here.’”

He talked steadily as he unlocked the front door and ushered her inside. The alarm system had been turned off, because there had been so many people coming and going the day before. Marlie took a deep breath. The house looked deceptively normal, except for the black powder dusting every slick surface. It had been a very nice, upscale home at one time. She wondered if anyone would ever live here again, if Mr. Elrod would be able to sleep in this house, or be able to sell it if he couldn’t. Perhaps it could be unloaded on some unsuspecting snowbird newly migrated from the North. In her opinion, it should be razed.

She looked around at the spacious, open, high-ceilinged rooms. There was a sense of airy coolness; it must have been a wonderful place to live. The downstairs floors were either polished hardwood or designer tile. She wandered silently through the rooms, trying to force herself to relax and let her mind open, but she couldn’t lock out the dread of going upstairs. She didn’t want to, but knew that she would have to.

Maybe if they waited another day; she wasn’t fully recov-ered from the vision. Maybe that was why she couldn’t open the mental door that would allow the impressions to enter. She glanced at Dane, then abandoned the suggestion that had been on her tongue. He hadn’t been following her every step, but remained in the doorway of each room while she prowled it. His face was grim, his expression shuttered as she had never seen it before. There was something curiously remote about him, as if he had shut himself off from any appeal she might make.

“Anything?” he asked, seeing her look at him.

She shook her head.

He didn’t push her. He didn’t urge her to try harder. He didn’t try to hurry her, or tell her to go upstairs to the scene. He was just there, waiting, implacable.

But when she put her hand on the railing and her foot on that first step of the staircase, he caught her arm. His gaze bored into hers, an expression she couldn’t quite read flickering in his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not enjoying this, but I’ll make it.”

“Just remember,” he muttered. “I’m not enjoying it either.”

She looked at him questioningly. “I never thought you were.”

Then she went upstairs. He was right behind her, his tread silent, his presence as solid as a wall. Where had the killer waited for Marilyn to come home? Her vision hadn’t quite picked up on that; it had begun when he had begun trailing her through the dark house. Maybe, when the electricity had gone off, he had left his hiding place and made himself comfortable where he could see if anyone drove up. She stopped in the hallway and closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to read any leftover energy. Cautiously she opened that mental door, and a buzz of static assaulted her. She slammed the door shut and opened her eyes. She had gotten an impression of many people, of much activity; too many people had been here since the murder, blurring the image.

The door at the end of the hall stood open. That was Marilyn’s bedroom. Marlie walked steadily toward it, and once more Dane caught her arm. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said abruptly. “You don’t need to go in there.”

“Marilyn Elrod didn’t need to die, either,” she replied. “Neither did Nadine Vinick or Jackie Sheets, or any of the other women he killed before moving here.” She gave him a wintry smile and tugged her arm free. “Besides, I’ve already been in there, remember? I was there when it happened.”

Four quick steps carried her into the room. She stopped. She couldn’t go any farther without stepping on dark brown bloodstains. There was no way to avoid them; the blood was spattered all over the carpet, the walls, the bed, though the largest stain by far was the huge one beside the bed, where Marilyn Elrod’s life had finally ended. But she had fought him all over this room, and left her own blood as her witness. About ten incense candles in their tiny glass pots still sat on the dresser; it was in that mirror that Marlie had seen the killer, looking at him through his own eyes.

She had to open that mental door again, to perhaps glean some other snippet of information. Marilyn deserved that she at least try.

“Don’t talk to me for a minute, okay?” she said to Dane, her voice soft, almost soundless. “I want to think.”

Maybe the energy was in layers, with the most recent on top. She closed her eyes, picturing the layers, giving them different colors so she could more easily tell them apart. She had to block out that top layer, the one peopled with detectives, uniformed officers, photographers, forensic squads, the multitude who had swarmed the house after Marilyn’s death. They had been trying to help, but they got in the way. Mr. Elrod had been here, too, adding another level of energy.

She assigned blue to the policemen and related others, and red to Mr. Elrod. The killer’s color was black, the density evil and thick, resisting any penetration of light. Marilyn… Marilyn’s color would be a pure, translucent white.

She formed the picture in her mind, seeing the layers, concentrating on them so all else was forgotten. She existed only inside herself, pulling inward so her ability wouldn’t be diluted. Very delicately she peeled off the blue layer and put it to the side. Next came the red layer, very thin because Mr. Elrod hadn’t contributed much, harder to handle. It, too, went to the side. Only black and white were left, but the layers were so entwined that she didn’t know if she could separate them. Killer and victim, locked together in a life-and-death strug-gle. Marilyn had lost that fight. Very clearly she saw that if she tried to pull the layers apart, she might damage them, damage the information they held. She would have to leave them as they were.

Now was the time to open the door. She mentally stepped into the layers, like stepping into a mist, wrapping the energies around her. She let them surround her, soak into her pores. And then she opened the door.

The blast of evil was suffocating, but nothing she hadn’t felt before. She forced herself not to retreat from it, to examine it, while fighting to keep it from overwhelming her as it had the first time. She couldn’t let herself be sucked into reliving the murder, or the effects would be so debilitating, she wouldn’t be able to continue.

The evil layer writhed around her, but bits of white kept touching her, distracting her. She pushed the contact away, intent on reading every black energy wave.

There was nothing new, no mental clue about how he had selected Marilyn as his victim. A touch of white jolted her again. There was something compelling about it, an insis-tence on gaining her attention. Marlie held back. She couldn’t experience Marilyn’s death. She simply couldn’t. But the white layer pressed more strongly. The evil of the killer was pushed aside. Marlie saw it clearly in her mind, and was astonished, for she hadn’t done it. She looked back to the whiteness, and that break in concentration was enough to let the white energy in.

Panic squeezed her heart as sheer terror seized her. And then a sense of calm seeped in, a quiet soothing.

She stood bathed in the translucent whiteness. This wasn’t the energy of Marilyn’s last moments, of her terrified, pain-filled struggle for life. This was the energy of afterward, and it wasn’t in the past. It was here. It was now.

There were no spoken sentences, no actual words. Marilyn wasn’t suffering anymore. She seemed peaceful. But there was a sense of inconclusiveness; she was reluctant to leave. Justice had not been done, the scale was still unbalanced, and Marilyn couldn’t leave until her killer no longer stalked innocent women in the night.

Don’t worry,
Marlie whispered in her mind.
He made a mistake. Dane will catch him now.
Though the reassurance was welcome, it made no differ-ence. Marilyn would linger until a resolution. A noise tugged at Marlie’s consciousness. It was irritating, but insistent. Instinctively she recognized its source, and her automatic response.