12th of Never

Chapter 78

CONKLIN TURNED AWAY from the dead man’s partially submerged body and saw Claire Washburn coming toward him in the watery gloom. Her scene kit was in hand and three techs trailed in her wake.

“Hey, cowboy,” she called out. “Where’s your partner?”

Conklin said, “You got me. She’s a mom first these days. I keep getting her voice mail. So what happened, Claire? You ducked out the back door and Dr. Morse doesn’t know you’re missing?”

“If we didn’t have a ten-car smashup on the freeway, he’d be here instead of me. Hey, Charlie,” she said. “How goes it?”

“What I love about this job is that it’s always different. Take a look at that.” Charlie Clapper pointed to the hole in the wall, six feet off the ground, water flowing through it as though it were a fire hose. He said, “Could be that the shot went wild, or could be it was deliberate, so that everyone’s mind would go to the six hundred million gallons of water coming into the tunnel, not to the vic or the shooter.”

“I hope someone’s going to put their finger in the dike,” Claire said, looking at the stream. “Meanwhile, I need to get a look at the DB.”

Conklin stood beside Claire as she photographed the body and the wound. He said, “I think I know this guy.”

“You do? Tell me about it,” she said.

“This English professor came in to see us a couple of weeks ago. He said he’s been having these dreams.”

Claire moved around the body, got another angle on the head wound. “What do you mean, ‘dreams’? I’ve been a little out of the loop since Faye Farmer was boosted from my freezer.”

“This professor had dreams of people being murdered. First time, it was a woman who liked to shop at his local grocery store. He described her down to her toenail polish. Bang, she takes a hit in the ice cream section. Just what he dreamed.”

“So you’re saying this professor sees dead people? But he sees them when they’re alive?”

“Something like that. So a few days after the supermarket hit, the professor comes in again. This time he’s dreamed that a female streetcar driver on the F line took one through the forehead. He described her as blond-haired. Even described advertising inside the car.”

Claire said, “Richie, if you’re waiting to ID this man, let me put your mind at rest. I’m not turning the body in this swamp. Lyle, call Henry, tell him to hurry up with that stretcher.”

“Just turn his face,” Conklin said. “I’ve got to see if this man is the professor.”

“You’ll get your chance later. I’m gonna process this body by the book, and that means back at the office.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“If you must. So the blond-haired streetcar driver was murdered like the professor dreamed?”

“Well, that’s the weird thing. The victim was a streetcar driver. She did take a shot right between the eyes, but she wasn’t blond. She was a black woman, had black hair.”

“So he got it wrong, but at the same time not that wrong,” Claire said.

“Correct,” said Conklin. “Then he came in yesterday with another dream; this time his dream takes place right here. He’s moving along the walkway, then he hears a gunshot. But he tells me he didn’t see anyone get hit. So I say, ‘This isn’t a murder case.’ And he said that if I wasn’t going to help him, he was going to come to the aquarium and see if he could pick the shooter out of the crowd before he pulled the trigger.”

“Maybe he did see the shooter, huh? And that’s why he got shot.”

“From behind?”

“Well, maybe the killer recognized him.”

Clapper trudged through the water, past the guys on a tall ladder and under the divers who were inside the tank, pressing something that looked like a piece of neoprene against the hole in the glass.

Charlie held the butt of a gun with his gloved fingertips.

He said, “Inspector, look at this. We found it at the far end of the walkway. It’s drenched, but I can still smell that it’s been fired. This is going to be our murder weapon.”

“Excellent,” said Richie. “Good job.”

“Unless, of course,” Clapper said with a wink, “I’m dreaming.”