Dream Eyes (31 page)

“Do it,” he said. “Now.”

Thirty-eight

S
he walked toward him through the seething fog of dreamlight.

“Don’t trip over the body,” he said.

“Where is it?” Gwen looked around.

“At your feet.”

She glanced down and then raised her fathomless eyes. “Yes, I see it now. That’s the trouble with entering someone else’s dream. I can usually grasp the big picture, but I have to depend on the dreamer for the little details.”

For some reason that amused him. “Little details like dead bodies?”

“Right. Okay, I’ve frozen the scene for us so that you can take your time examining events. Now, it would be very helpful if you gave me a tour.”

“Things don’t look quite the same as they do in the usual version of this dream,” he said. “I don’t feel the same, either.”

“That’s because this is a lucid version of the dream. You are aware that you’re dreaming. You can exert some control. Because of that perspective, the experience feels different than it would under normal dream conditions.”

“If you say so.”

“The tour, Judson,” she prompted quietly.

He looked around, getting his own bearings in the eerie dreamscape. The scene was frozen, just as Gwen said, but he knew exactly where he was. The timeline was clear. The explosion had not yet occurred. If it had not been for his para-vision, he would not have been able to see anything except the beams of light radiating from the two flashlights, his own and Spalding’s. The dead man’s flashlight had fallen from his hand. So had the crystal weapon.

The interior of the cavern was spacious. It stretched up into the darkness as far as twenty or thirty feet. But the entrance from the outside world was a tight, twisted passage barely large enough to allow a man to pass through.

With his senses heightened, he could see the pool that marked the entrance to the flooded portion of the cave. He was standing at the edge. The water was infused with a faint, acid-green radiance—the natural energy of the rocks made visible to his special sight. When he looked down, he could see the opening of the Monster’s throat below the surface.

“I’ve just used the ring to flatline Spalding’s aura,” he said. “The stone is still hot. The crystal gun went cold just before Spalding died. But it’s too late. The energy released by the gun and my ring has ignited the atmosphere. I can feel the growing heat and the instability. The aurora is forming.”

“Like the northern lights?”

“Yes. But this is composed of paranormal energy waves. I sense that an explosion will occur very soon. What I don’t know yet is if that explosion will be powerful enough to affect the normal wavelengths of the spectrum. But I do know that it might be strong enough to kill me or, at the very least, fry my para-senses. My intuition tells me that my only hope of riding out the blast is to go into the flooded portion of the cave. If I can get enough rock and water between me and the explosion, I might have a chance.”

“Where is the entrance to the flooded cave?” Gwen asked.

“I’d be standing on the rim of the pool.”

“Describe it to me,” Gwen said.

“They call it the Monster for a reason. The locals say it swallows divers whole. Some people say there is an exit to the sea, but no one has ever been able to explore it to the end. Only a handful of people have attempted to get through the cave system. Most were forced to turn back. Those that didn’t disappeared.”

“But at this point, you are not planning to swim out of here.”

“No. I just want to go deep enough to ride out the paranormal explosion I sense is coming. I’m already in my wetsuit because I was preparing to look for the dead analyst. I grab my gear and a flashlight and I go into the pool. I make it into the throat of the Monster. I can feel the explosion and hear it even though I’m underwater. There’s a shock wave from the blast, but the water and the rock protect me. When it’s over, I surface.”

“All right, we are now in that phase of your dream. You are surveying the dry portion of the cave. Tell me what you see.”

“Not a whole hell of a lot. Something about the aurora damaged my para-vision. I’m psi-blind.”

“Oh, my, I hadn’t realized you’d lost your other vision.”

“Took me damn near a month to recover. I wasn’t sure I would.”

“No wonder you retreated to that little town on the coast for a while,” she said. “And no wonder you’ve had a few bad dreams.”

“Speaking of which—”

“Right. Back to this dreamscape.”

“I’m psi-blind, but I’ve still got my normal vision and I’ve got the flashlight.”

“What does it show you?”

“Spalding’s body. His flashlight is nearby but it’s dead. The explosion destroyed it. I see the crystal weapon, too. It rolled over there by that pile of rocks. But I’m not paying a lot of attention to the body or the weapon because I’ve just realized that I’m going to have to swim out through the underwater cave system.”

He stopped because there did not seem to be much point describing the endless nightmare that was the long swim out of the cave.

“How do you know which direction to swim?” Gwen asked.

“In the water I can feel the current. It’s slight but steady. I follow it.”

“Not knowing if you’re going to come to a narrow place in the cave that you won’t be able to get through,” Gwen whispered.

Even through the dreamtime atmosphere, he could hear the shiver in her voice.

“I didn’t have any choice,” he reminded her. “Let’s finish this dream therapy thing.”

“Sorry. Sometimes I get a little too caught up in a dreamscape. Okay, I think I’ve got the lay of the land, so to speak.”

“Context.”

“Exactly, context. You are about to go back into the water to make the long swim out to the sea but you are still at the surface, looking at the dry portion of the cave. Do you catch another glimpse of the object that you know is important?”

“Yes.” Excitement rushed through him. “Yes, now I see it. Something small and white that doesn’t look like it should be there.”

“Take a closer look at the object.”

The dream sequence shifted fluidly around him. He looked away from the frozen curtain of aurora energy and turned to focus on the shadows that shrouded the dreamscape.

“It’s over there on the other side of the pool,” he said. “It looks like the corner of a piece of paper. I can only see a small edge. The rest is hidden under a rock.”

“Hidden?” Gwen pounced on the word. “Are you sure?”

“There’s no way it could have landed where it did by accident. It’s near the spot where they murdered him.”

“Who?”

“The analyst.” Judson came out of the dream on a rush of adrenaline and psi. “He wasn’t dead yet, but he knew he was going to die. He tried to leave a message for whoever came looking for him. I have to get back into that cave.”

“You’re going to swim back through those flooded tunnels?” Gwen asked.

“I don’t think that will be necessary. In case you hadn’t heard, my father runs one of the biggest mining engineering companies in the world.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Gwen wrinkled her nose. “I keep forgetting you’re one of those Coppersmiths.”

“If there’s one thing Dad knows, it’s how to dig through hard rock. Opening up the entrance to the cavern will be a walk in the park for him. Probably won’t take him more than a few days to get a crew and equipment in place.”

“Gee, solve a couple of murders here in Wilby, and then it’s off to the Caribbean to solve a few more paranormal crimes involving strange pharmaceuticals and mysterious weapons.” Gwen sighed. “You live an interesting life, Judson Coppersmith.”

“Yeah, my calendar seems to be filling up lately.” The image flashed across his senses. And suddenly it was all there, each piece falling neatly into place. “Damn. Should have seen it earlier.”

“What?” Gwen asked.

“The answer is on the calendar.”

Thirty-nine

T
he town of Wilby rolled up the streets at an early hour. The handful of restaurants were all closed by ten. The last pickup pulled out of the parking lot of the Wilby Tavern shortly before midnight. The staff left twenty minutes later.

Judson waited until the darkest part of the night, and then he went in through the rear door of Hudson Floral Design. He was partially jacked. To his psychic vision, the knives, shears, pruners, snips and thorn strippers arrayed on the workbench gleamed like so much medieval weaponry. The glass vases on the shelves glittered with an acid-green crystalline light.

He moved into the front area of the shop and made his way behind the counter. The door of the small office was closed, but it was unlocked. People who lived in small towns got into some very bad habits when it came to security.

The interior of the office looked much as it had when he and Gwen had talked to Nicole. The torn and mutilated photos were still tacked to the walls.

He crossed the small space and took down the large picture calendar. The first, second and third of August were all marked with the same note.
Feed
dogs
.

He took out the list of dates he had brought with him. The
Feed dogs
notes appeared exactly where he expected to find them throughout the year.

The faint, muffled sound of a shoe on the rear steps of the shop sent his senses into full sail. The ring on his hand burned with the heat of a miniature paranormal sun. There was time to get out through the front door of the shop.

He left the office and went around the counter. He was reaching for the doorknob to let himself out into the street when he realized that there were two people on the back steps, not one.

He stopped and waited. The back door opened. The beam of a flashlight speared across the back room and into the front of the shop.

“Hello, Poole,” Judson said.

Buddy Poole moved into the room. Gone were the old-fashioned gold-framed reading glasses, the folksy plaid shirt and the red suspenders that he wore when he was behind the counter of the Wilby General Store. Tonight he was dressed head-to-toe in hit-man black.

Poole was not alone. He had Nicole with him. Her wrists were bound behind her back. Her mouth was taped shut. She stared at Judson with wide, terrified eyes. Buddy held a gun to her temple. With his other hand, he aimed the flashlight at Judson.

“Put the gun down, Coppersmith,” Buddy said. “Or I’ll kill her now.”

Judson set the weapon down very carefully on the floor and straightened slowly.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” Buddy said. “When you left the inn tonight, I figured you were up to something. I wondered if you were headed for my place. Thought it might be fun to see if you could handle the dogs. But when you didn’t drive out on Falls View Road, I realized you were probably on your way here instead. I picked up this bitch just in case I needed some leverage.”

Nicole whimpered.

Buddy gave her a violent shove that sent her crashing into the wall. She groaned and slumped to her knees.

Buddy ignored her. He watched Judson with psi-hot eyes. “How did you put it all together, Coppersmith?”

“The old-fashioned way,” Judson said. “I started connecting dots. You mentioned that Nicole fed your dogs while you were out of town attending the crafts fairs. When Gwen and I came here to talk to Nicole, I noticed the calendar over her desk. Three days in August were marked,
Feed dogs
. You were gone for those three days, supposedly attending a crafts fair. But one of those dates, the second, was the day you murdered an old lady. I just finished comparing the rest of the dates of the kills. They match up to the dates when you were out of town, the dates when Nicole was scheduled to feed your dogs.”

Buddy snorted in disgust. “Unfortunately, that’s how Evelyn put it together, too. I got that much out of her before she died.”

“You took her computer and cell phone.”

“I wanted to see if Evelyn had called or e-mailed anyone else about her suspicions. There was only the one e-mail sent earlier that night to Gwen Frazier. I knew she would probably arrive later and find the body, but I didn’t see any harm in that. I was sure that even if Oxley had his suspicions, he would focus on Gwen as a possible killer.”

“Then I showed up.”

“I knew you might be a problem, especially if you started asking questions. Louise has been a risk for years. Crazy and getting crazier by the day. By then I knew I no longer needed her, so I got rid of her, hoping that would be the end of the matter. I figured all I had to do after that was wait, because sooner or later you and Gwen would leave town and things would return to normal. But tonight I realized you weren’t going to give up and go away.”

“You’re the demon Louise Fuller feared,” Judson said. “The father of her only child.”

Buddy snorted. “She tried to use my own son to kill me.”

“Why not? Zander Taylor was a chip off the old block.”

“Except for the crazy gene,” Buddy said. “He got that from his mother.”

“Nah,” Judson said. “Like father, like son. Psychos, both of you.”

“Bullshit.” Fury flashed in Buddy’s eyes. “I’m a professional. I do it for the money. Zander was a gamer. I swear, he was obsessed. Once he got a taste of his kill-the-psychic game, he couldn’t control himself. Sooner or later, he would have been caught. I knew I’d have to get rid of him when he started killing right here in Wilby two years ago. But Gwen Frazier took care of the problem for me. Gotta tell you, that was convenient.”

“You went to the lab as soon as you heard that Taylor had gone over the falls. You found the camera. That must have been a big relief. You knew your secret was probably safe, but the incident left you with some unanswered questions, didn’t it?”

“I knew that Zander didn’t jump to his death, at least not intentionally. He lived for the game. All I could assume was that there was some kind of struggle and Gwen got lucky.” Buddy narrowed his eyes. “I don’t suppose you know how that happened, do you?”

“Sure,” Judson said. “I know exactly what happened. You’re right—your son was not a suicide. He attacked Gwen and she defended herself. Taylor lost the struggle and went over the falls.”