Dreamscape (8 page)

Collins didn’t utter a word. He turned and walked out.

Thorpe leaned against the mirror. Every inch of his body ached. He couldn’t ever remember being this tired. Waiting drained him. Lately, his body survived off of adrenaline. The whole of his focus was to get here and find out what the hell was going on. Now he waited and observed her.

Almost half an hour passed before Jackson made his way into the observation room followed by Field Agent Charles Montgomery.

“We’re going to let her go home without any more questions today,” Jackson began. “You were right. We believe she’s the one that sent the letter.”

“Then why the hell are you letting her go without talking with her?”

“Because,” Field Agent Montgomery cut in, “she’s not going to give us any imperative information today. We picked her up as suspect not a witness. She was hesitant from the beginning. Our fear is that she won’t corporate if we continue pressing her today.”

“Why was she picked up in the first place?” Thorpe asked. “She is a person of interest. When did she become a suspect?”

“We’re looking into it,” Montgomery said. “I can assure you, we will find out what happened.”

“Look, Thorpe,” Jackson said. “Right now, we need to talk. Ramona Damsun had a friend drop off the letter to Montgomery. You may know him, an old acquaintance.”

They knew something he didn’t. The feeling was confirmed when the man in question walked into the interrogation room to lead Ramona Damsun out.

“What the hell is going on?” Thorpe turned to Jackson. “Jeffrey Dills? My cousin’s old partner. What’s he doing here?”

* * * *

Jackson rounded his desk and rubbed his eyes. The day had dragged on. He didn’t see it coming to an end anytime soon. He faced Thorpe.

“You know Jeffrey Dills,” Jackson said as a statement not a question. “He was the one who delivered the letter to Montgomery. He’d worked with Montgomery a few times before he retired from the Boston police department.”

“I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but get to the point.”

“He brought some letters in. Letters that Ramona had written. Look at this. Have you seen this before?”

Thorpe looked down at the paper Jackson handed him. The years vanished. The case came back, vivid, his first murder case at Dennis.

Etched in his memory was the mother, Claire Danucci, the pain he’d read in her eyes. She’d lost her husband the year before due to a car accident, just her and her two girls left. Brooke took it the hardest, Daddy’s little girl, the youngest, only twelve years old.

“She’s never really accepted her father’s death, but she’d never do anything like run away. We all are in counseling. Find her, Chief Thorpe,” Claire had begged.

Now Thorpe said, “Don’t need to review the case. Lived it.”

“Then let me get it straight so we can put it in perspective. The girl, Brooke, was depressed, lost touch with her friends. So when the evening of her sister, Lorraine’s, open house at school came round, Brooke didn’t want to go. Her mother gave in and let her stay at home.” Jackson looked up from the paper he held.

Thorpe said, “When her mother and sister returned home, Brooke was nowhere in sight. Her mother immediately got in her car and headed for the father’s grave site. Panic set in when her car headlights picked out her daughter’s bicycle.”

Thorpe answered the call. Upon reviewing the scene, her mother, shaking, had already contacted all of Brooke’s friends. Thorpe used his natural instincts. Immediately a call went out, contacting the state police and the FBI.

“All the evidence pointed to an abduction from the grave site, the bicycle, her Red Sox hat left on the ground. A witness, one of the neighbors, thought they saw a mysterious van around the time of the girl’s disappearance,” Thorpe continued. “The fact that she visited her father’s grave all the time gave concern that someone had stalked the young girl. The fear was that she was taken out of state. Another case in New Hampshire with similarities happened a few months before.”

For the last three nights I’ve had a dream, the same dream. And tonight, I feel if I don’t tell someone it will come again.

The wind, a cool wind, the smell of the ocean. The ocean is close. A fog fills the air, and my eyes take time to focus. Beneath my bare feet the ground is wet and damp. I am not alone. An eerie glow from the setting sun…. I am standing under a large elm tree, branches hanging down close to the ground. I look around. A tall iron fence, painted black, encloses the surrounding area. Stones stand stiffly erect. It’s a cemetery. Epitaphs, homemade verses inscribed in the head stones. Through the haze, I get a transitory and elusive glimpse through the moonlight. As if an optical illusion, an object sits by an enigmatic gravestone.

A young girl, pretty, sweet, her long brown hair pulled back in a pony tail. She has a Red Sox hat on, a pink hooded sweatshirt with jeans and sneakers, and crouches. She’s directly in front of me at a gravesite. Her hand gently touches the headstone before her. She wipes her eyes and stands, returns to her bike behind her. She turns straight to me and smiles. I’m not afraid. She motions for me to follow as she starts peddling down the path.

I’m on a street, a cul-de-sac. The houses are older capes and ranches, quaint, shingled. There are two houses at the beginning of the street—Keene Street, the sign reads—across from each other. Two more houses are on the straight way and three around the circle. I catch sight of the girl. She’s in a garage, the gray house, number forty-seven. She doesn’t want to stay. I can feel her fear. She turns to leave, and a man, an older man—short, glasses, balding, overweight, wearing old blue work pants, red flannel shirt—grabs her arm. I can’t move, want to help, but can’t move.

I twist and twist, then I’m in the garage. The man returns, face distorted, slight manic smile, a prominent chin, forehead drawn with one dark eyebrow lifted, and intense dark eyes. He picks up the girl’s bike and crashes it into the side of his car. He puts it in his trunk. A cap…he throws a cap in the trunk? The trunk of an old brown or tan Chevy. He’s gone.

Terror seizes me, but from the darkness I hear a whisper, ‘Brooke, Brooke.’ I have to find the girl. Through the garage door into the small kitchen. The kitchen and dining room are empty. There’s no one around. The cellar door is cracked open. It’s cold, so cold, damp, and dark. Eyes have to adjust. Slowly, I walk down the wooden cellar steps—a dirty cellar. My feet touch the damp dirt—the floor is dirt. I hear her calling. She’s calling to me. She’s here. I’m led over to the corner. Boxes are thrown over an old broken trunk…under the trunk!

Stare at the spot. I can’t take my eyes off the spot. Flashes of scenes…man sitting in his car watching children get on the bus. He’s done this before. License. I see a license—Maryland. A name: Michael Richards. Step by step I make it over to the trunk and push it back.

Her body lies under the dirt, still as if sleeping. Her right arm is bent in an unusual position. Her body…she only has on a tee-shirt. Is the white shirt covered with blood from her head wound above her right ear? Hit with a blunt object… hammer, I see a hammer, that man’s hammer. I don’t want to be here; I don’t want to see this.

Then I flash to a young girl playing in a beautiful backyard. A man, tall, handsome smiles down at her. She hugs him tight. I don’t feel fear anymore; I feel peace, love, contentment. She’s safe, happy. Tell her mother that she’s where she has to be. Tell her mother.

Jackson waited until Thorpe finished reading. “Details. True?”

Thorpe nodded thoughtfully. “I ran the name through the system. Michael Richards had a warrant out for child molestation in Maryland. Had jumped bail. Changed his name—not too hard to do if you know the right people. Married a widow. Worked down at a local sub shop under the table; told everyone he was on disability.”

“Believe I know the type. Hard to detect, especially someone on the run. Couldn’t control his urge but had planned well enough ahead, set the stage to throw suspicion off of himself,” Jackson added, matter of fact. “You had him then, though, with this new information.”

“Got a search warrant, and it provided all the evidence we needed. The girl’s body was buried under an old trunk. Her right arm was broken. She’d died from blunt force trauma to her head. Later, he admitted he’d used his hammer. Paint from the bike was found on the back bumper of his car.”

Jackson looked thoughtful. “You know when I first came up to Boston, I told you that I worked with special cases and believed this case tied into the case I was working on in Florida?”

“You made that perfectly clear, Jackson. Where are you going with this?”

Jackson sighed, rubbed his forehead. “My first case I was on Sam Caldwell shows up out of the blue. There was no evidence to speak of. Within a few days, Sam had caught a break and we had the guy.”

“This is getting ridiculous. I’m not playing some kind of guessing game with you. Say what you want to say or I’m out of here.”

“Sam solved the case by using a psychic.”

Thorpe sat motionless for a moment. He eyed Jackson. The guy wasn’t kidding. He was dead serious. Thorpe stood. “I’m out of here. You’ve gone off the deep end here, Jackson. You use supernatural tips. You take stock in that crap.”

“Sit down, Thorpe. Think about what you just did last night. Explain that to me.”

Thorpe didn’t say a word but slowly sat back down.

“I know what this sounds like. It’s not like we advertise it. We use the information as any other information or evidence that we gather. We still have to use good old detective work. It doesn’t replace us. We only use it when we have nowhere else to turn.”

“So what does this have to do with me?”

“Be patient. I’ll try to explain.”

Jackson turned his chair and stared out the window. Thorpe stood and looked out too. The Boston skyline loomed. The gray sky added a certain gloom to the day. The snow lay white, never giving any indication of the peril it had caused the previous night.

Jackson turned back to Thorpe. “The real ones are few and far between, and the really good ones are rare. And then you have different levels of people’s abilities. Most predict things, see things that are puzzle pieces. They might be legit, but without someone or something to understand or connect to the information, it’s useless.”

“Well, now you think you have the person writing the letters. Go ask her and solve your case.”

Jackson didn’t smile. Had his patience had worn thin? “You have no idea how this works, so shut up for a minute. This serial killer we’re seeking isn’t a normal person. It’s our belief that at times a person becomes so evil, so detached from the real world around him, that he becomes possessed.”

“Now what are you saying? You believe in possession? The supernatural?”

Jackson’s chin set firm, and his tone reflected the seriousness that he took the matter. “Do I believe in demons and evil spirits? Yes, I’ve seen it.”

For once in Thorpe’s life, he didn’t know what to say. Too tired, too exhausted to argue, he asked, “So you came up here looking for a psychic?”

“I came to Boston not knowing exactly what I was looking for. When I met you with your background, I felt it was a good shot that you were connected in some way.”

“Hold on a minute. You think I’m connected in some way? What the hell do you think I know? I can tell you nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Like it or not, yes, Thorpe. I believe you’re connected.”

Thorpe squirmed in his chair. The conversation took a turn he hadn’t been prepared for. He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

“Not according to our source, an old recluse. He ‘saw’ that the one to help us would be found in the Northeast. What he said leads us to believe that this Ramona Damsun could be the dream walker we’ve been searching for.”

“I have no fuckin’ idea what a dream walker is. Or, for that matter, the kind of connection you believe I may be. What about your source? Why can’t he tell you what you’re looking for?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

Jackson flipped back this hand. “Another story. The old man was swimming in a river with his dogs. An alligator bit him. Died of an infection after he fought off the alligator.”

“You must be smoking something, Jackson, to expect me to believe any of this.”

“Then would you believe your cousin? Would you believe Rick?”

Chapter Six

Sleep had not come to Ramona that night. Dawn rested on the horizon. She rolled over. Her daughter lay sleeping soundly beside her. Ramona didn’t allow this often, but last night she’d made an exception.

She watched her daughter. Leila slept so peacefully, no bad dreams or worries to wake her. Ramona reached over and gently pushed a piece of fallen hair off of Leila’s face. Her purpose of living had been this child and had been since the day Leila’s father died, leaving her alone to protect his unborn child. The realization that they only had each other had been quickly understood.

Never a day went by that she didn’t think of Rick, his smile. He’d always smiled. Never a day went by that she well understood she’d never see that smile again. Questions gnawed within her.