Sleepwalker (37 page)

...looking crazily about, for someone, something, to emerge from the intense blue light.

Suddenly, a figure. A dark silhouette. Kneeling down, hands reaching out.

Abruptly, the light disappeared. At first he was blinded, his sights filled with dark oscillating blotches. But soon they dissipated, allowing Richard to see the person crouched before him, by the bag, the closed zipper in her hand.

Pam.

Richard tried to speak, to apologize, but only tears came forth.

She wore no expression, contemplating him with unblinking eyes as if sizing him up, then silencing him with a terse finger across his lips. She stood, taking him by the hands, guiding him back into the bed. At her mercy, he lay down...

…was I sleepwalking..?

…her hands gently caressing his skin as she drew herself against him. Succeeding a moment of silence, as Richard’s pounding heart began to ease, she whispered in his ear, “From now on you do exactly as I say. And Richard...never go into my bag again.”

He began to say something but she silenced him with a kiss.

After checking into the
Jamesway
Inn, Leonard and Kevin walked to the diner across the street to get some food, while Reese stayed behind to catch up on the goings-on back in Fairview. They spoke a bit about Earl’s experience, how Pamela Bergin wouldn’t get very far in the
Bledson
Hills police cruiser, and what they’d eventually ask her once she was finally brought in.

“The amount of questions I have are endless. I couldn’t even begin to list them all.” Leonard paid for the food while Kevin collected three tins of sandwiches and fries. They walked back across the street to room 12, where Reese, sitting on a cot he’d set up, had just hung up the phone. The look on his face was dour.

“Bad news?” Leonard asked.

“No news, really. No
spottings
of anyone suspicious or any additional witness accounts. George has the samples he collected from Samantha
Sparke’s
house on their way to the city. He’s checking out Pamela Bergin’s place at the moment. And listen to this interesting item: remember Gregory from Culver who dug out the 911 files? I had him check out the hospital to find out exactly why Samantha
Sparke
was there today.”

“And?”

“She was in group therapy. I got a doctor on the phone who says her file reads paranoid schizophrenia, among a few other mental illnesses I can’t pronounce. From his experience with her, he said that she was convinced that someone was after her. She even went so far as to change her appearance, wearing a wig, getting breast implants, tanning three times a week, changing her makeup and clothing. She even had plastic surgery on her lips and face last year. No vanity case,
nuh
-uh. She was hiding behind a false appearance.”

“What made her think she was being stalked? I don’t remember any reports coming in to the station. I definitely would have remembered.”

“You’re right. I checked into it. Nothing. Not so much as a cautionary phone call. You know why? Because she told the shrink, the group, that her stalker was a ghost. That he came to her only in her dreams.”

“Holy shit.”

“Sound familiar?”

“Delaney suspected poltergeist activity with
Sparke
. Is it really possible?”

Reese waved a hand in the air, his mouth creased thin with disbelief, maybe a touch of frustration. “Please, Len...listen to yourself. Try not to let the bizarre nature of the case sway you towards any form of irrational assumption. There’s a logical explanation, and motive, for everything. These events included. My guess? Samantha
Sparke
went through a lot of personal torment, within a very short span of time. First she lost a child, then she was attacked in her bedroom in the middle of the night. There’d have to be adverse effects on someone with such poor fortune.”

A tiring silence filled the room. Reese disappeared into the bathroom. Kevin sat on one bed, Leonard on the other. He looked at the phone for a moment, thought of calling Janice to let her know where he was, what he was doing, when he would be home, but didn’t so much as move. He wasn’t positive he had any answers to those questions, so he decided against making a mockery of himself in front of his associates; he simply wouldn’t know what to say to her, or how to say it. Leonard
was
committed. But unfortunately for Janice, it was to his job and not his family. Besides, he wasn’t certain that they were committed to
him
. Not at all.

I have my cell phone with me. She hasn’t called me. So why should I call her?

He leaned back on the bed, cracked his neck, then looked over at Kevin. The young cop was already asleep, his gun on the nightstand next to the bed, a half-eaten sandwich in the tin beside him. Reese was still in the bathroom, the shower water running. Leonard could hear his feet squeaking against the porcelain tub.

Leonard closed his eyes, rubbed them, his dinner uneaten. He felt the mattress pressing against his back as sleep quickly took over, his mind and body finally settling in for the night, closing out the chapter to one of the longest days of his life.

Later. It could have been minutes, might have been hours. Richard awoke again. This time, calm. His eyes found the gap in the curtain, the moon’s beam replaced with a slightly brighter hue, its course parallel: a ray of light branching into the room, finding the bed, the sheets that kissed Pam’s tossed hair upon the gray pillow. He remained silent, twisting away from her in attempt to find the edge of the bed, to escape her unfettered influence on him once again.

She caught him by the arm, purposefully below the bandage as to not cause him any undue pain. Her touch was tender, warm. Caring. It was this gentle kindness that earlier, upon bringing him back into the bed, dispelled the cold pain, the fear that rode his ultra-sensitive nerves. A rather disparate tendency of the Pam who showed up at his condo this morning.

It was as if they were
two very different people...

She pressed against him, nestling herself into a spoon position. He could feel her heartbeat, a rhythmic pounding he perceived as an intimate gesture, an offering of comfort, an apology perhaps for the violent behavior she displayed at the condo--a way to show him that the
old
Pam was back again. He accepted her approach and pressed back against her. In his lethargic state he felt her unclothed body against his. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, everything felt
right
.

He made an impulsive turn to face her. She turned as well, pressing her warm buttocks against his groin. He felt himself slip free from his boxers, an influence of her roaming hand. She followed with a fitted thrust, and suddenly they were one. He, within her. She, filled with him.

To Richard, it was like the first time all over again, all memories long
lost
of that momentous event, yet renewed with a fresh and exhilarating sense of awareness. All his physical pain vanished, and he relished in the pleasure, a pleasure previously unfelt in his thirty-five years, every beat and rhythm coming naturally with no awkward attempt to work them out.

With Richard’s senses heightened, he could hear the gentle rumbling of a generator in the walls, could feel the cool autumn breeze seeping through the edges of the curtained window, could see the sliver of light seeping through the curtain. He felt as if he were in chamber of pleasure floating amid the harsh reality of the outside world, their moments of ecstasy a shroud of protection from the time that ate away at their lives.

The room was no longer buried in darkness, as more light crept inside from along the edges of the curtain. Daylight, making its entrance and falling upon their writhing forms as if intending to spotlight the momentous event.

In an adept move, Richard grasped Pam’s thigh and brought her leg over his waist, twisting himself on top of her. Here in this position he could see her face clearly, her eyes shut, her mouth drawing in gasps of air, tiny ones that progressed into deeper inhalations as their tempo increased. Her facial features triggered an indescribable eroticism in him, her lips pouting to taste the finest red wine, her eyes like onyx, her nose quivering with pure want and desire. She was irreproachably sensuous, limitlessly unparalleled in her beauty. Here he saw her for the very first time, the
real
Pamela Bergin who in the past gave herself to him physically, was now offering herself on a higher emotional level.
This
was what he’d always wanted from her--what she always wanted from him. This spontaneous joining was not an act of sex, but an incalculable most satisfying display of love.

Pam
loved
him. That was why she came back for him.

Perhaps sensing his burning desire for her, she finally opened her eyes and gazed deeply into his. Richard felt energized at this new level of intimacy. He looked away from her perfect face, lifted himself up so his eyes could explore her damp body, from her svelte shoulders to her smooth breasts and taut waist. The light in the room grew generously, as did their love-making, until both of them were breathing heavily across each other’s cheeks to the point where they could no longer endure the crescendo of bliss overrunning their bodies, and they both cried out in unison, everything in their world seeming to jump and quake Richard thrust one last great time and released himself into her.

And then everything that made up their world flowed away into quiet heaven, setting the room into a breathy silence. They remained in an unmoving position for a period of time until he finally withdrew from her and turned on his side to face her, his head touching hers, their breaths commingling. Neither of them spoke, and in time they began to drift off towards sleep again. His body shuddered with involuntary pleasure and he smiled at her, whispering, “
Pamela Bergin, who are you?
”

He closed his eyes and rolled onto his back, his body once again begging for rest as his mind weaned its way back into the dream-world, realizing now that he finally,
finally
, was able to spend the night with Pam.

It wasn’t until after he fell asleep that she responded to his question, and Richard could hear her soft voice calling to him in the middle of a peacefully loving dream :

“My real name is Heather.”

After awaking at six AM, Leonard showered, shrugged back into his stale uniform--it didn’t feel all that snug on his refreshed body--then spent a half hour sitting by Reese as he talked with detectives on the case in Fairview. Nothing new had turned up in the search for clues. Police from Fairview and Culver were still scouring the area, having gone door-to-door for most of the night until it was learned that
Sparke
was dead and Pamela and her mystery accomplice were most likely long out of town. All-county notices were dispatched to precincts and stations within a two hundred mile radius. Pictures of Bergin and
Sparke
began popping up on local news broadcasts, with talk of a reward being offered, although Reese, who would have been the one to set any sort of bounty, knew nothing of it.

“The dogs came up with a scent in the woods near Hemmingway Park,” Reese said. “They trailed it all the way to Samantha
Sparke’s
house, but that’s where it ended. Her car was found early this morning at the bottom of the trough in
Bledson
Park.”

“
Sparke
must’ve taken it,” Kevin said.

“Or our other suspect.”

Leonard cleared his throat. “Or both of them. Remember, most clues point to a plot-triangle gone wrong, so we can assume that
Sparke
and the third person must’ve fled Samantha’s together...remember George pointed out two sets of footprints there? And he was no doubt thinking that he was in trusting company, when actually our third person and Bergin were in cahoots with one another all along...
against
Sparke
.”

Kevin was checking his face in the mirror above the dry sink outside the bathroom. He spoke while manipulating a new zit. “So
Sparke
and the third person killed Delaney, then went to Samantha
Sparke’s
house where they killed her, although that might not have been part of the plan given the messy scene they left behind. After that they drove up here for reasons still unknown where our third person lured
Sparke
into the woods, killed him, and was picked up soon thereafter by a waiting Pamela Bergin.”

“That seems to be where we’re at right now,” Leonard said, frustration riding his voice like a choppy wave. “It would explain Samantha’s fear of being stalked, of course putting aside her paranormal rationalizations, and would more than likely provide us with clues as to what happened two years ago when she was beaten in her bed.”

Reese said, “We’ll have to pull all those files out once we get back to Fairview.”

“Which is when?”

“Pretty soon, I’d gather. At this time Sheriff Porter has nothing new for us. The Forensics team is still up on the hill.
Sparke’s
body was taken to the Veteran’s Hospital in Drayton where they’re performing a full run of tests. I don’t think they’ll find anything we don’t know already, unless something truly unusual shows up with either Delaney or Samantha. But that’s doubtful.”