Beyond Suspicion

11

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Cindy was staring into the eyes of a killer. Or at least it exuded a killer’s attitude. It was a two-pound Yorkshire terrier that seemed to think it could take on a pack of hungry Rottweilers simply because its ancestors were bred to chase sewer rats. Scores of color photographs were spread across the table before her. A dozen more images lit up the screen on her computer monitor in an assortment of boxes, like the credits for The Brady Bunch, all of “Sergeant Yorkie” and his adorable playmate, a four-year-old girl named Natalie.

Cindy’s South Miami studio had been going strong for several years, but she did portraits only three days a week. That left her time to do on-site shoots for catalogs and other work. The studio was an old house with lots of charm. A small yard and a white lattice gazebo offered a picturesque setting for outdoor shots. For reasons that were not entirely aesthetic, Cindy preferred outdoor shots when dealing with animals.

A light rap on the door frame broke her concentration. Cindy was alone in her little work area, but not alone in the studio. It had been five years since that psychopath had attacked her, and even though she was in a safe part of town, she didn’t stay after dark without company. Tonight, her mother had come by to bring her dinner.

“Are you okay in there, dear?”

“Just working.”

A plateful of chicken and roasted vegetables sat untouched on the table, pushed to one side. A white spotlight illuminated the work space before her. It was like a pillar of light in the middle of the room, darkness on the edges. A row of photographs stretched across the table, some of them outside the glow of the halogen lamp. The shots were all from the same frame, but each was a little different, depending on the zoom. In the tightest enlargement the resolution was little better than randomly placed dots. She put the fuzzy ones aside and passed a magnifying glass over the largest, clear image. She was trying to zero in on a mysterious imperfection in the photograph she’d taken of the little girl and her dog.

“You’ve been holed up in here for hours,” her mother said.

Cindy looked up from her work. “This is kind of important.”

“So is your health,” her mother said as she glanced at the dinner plate. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

“No one ever died from skipping dinner.”

She went to Cindy’s side, brushed the hair out of her face. “Something tells me that this isn’t the only meal you’ve missed in the last few days.”

“I’m all right.”

Her mother tugged her chin gently, forcing Cindy to look straight at her. It was the kind of no-nonsense, disciplinary approach she’d employed since Cindy’s childhood. Evelyn Paige had been a single mother since Cindy was nine years old, and she had the worry lines to prove it. Not that she looked particularly old for her age, but she’d acted old long before her hair had turned silver. It was as if her husband’s passing had stolen her youth, or at least made her feel older than she was.

“Look at those eyes. When’s the last time you had a good night’s sleep?”

“I’m just busy with work.”

“That’s not what Jack tells me.”

“He told you about my dreams?”

“Yes.”

Cindy felt slightly betrayed, but she realized Jack was no gossip. It was Jack, after all, who’d stuck with her through the darkest times. He wouldn’t have gone to her mother if he wasn’t truly concerned about her. “What did he tell you?”

“How you aren’t sleeping. The nightmares you’re having about Esteban.”

“They’re not really nightmares.”

“Just the kind of dreams that make you afraid to close your eyes at night.”

“That’s true.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“October.”

“That long?”

“It’s not every night. October was when I had the first one. On the anniversary of… you know-Esteban.”

“What does Jack say about this?”

“He’s supportive. He’s always been supportive. I’m trying not to make a big deal out of it. It’s just not good for us. Especially not now. We’re trying to make a baby.”

“So, these dreams. Are they strictly about Esteban?”

Cindy was looking in the general direction of her mother, but she was seeing right past her. “It always starts out like it’s supposed to be about him. Someone’s outside my window. I can hear the blanket of fallen leaves scuffling each time he takes a step. Big, crispy leaves all over the ground, more like the autumns they get up north than we have in Florida. It’s dark, but I can I hear them moving. One footstep at a time.”

“That’s creepy.”

“Then I walk to the back door, and it’s not Esteban.”

“Who is it?”

“Just more leaves swirling in the wind. Then one of them slams against the door, and bam, he’s suddenly there.”

“Esteban?”

“No.” She paused, as if reluctant to share. “It’s… Daddy.”

“That’s… interesting,” Evelyn said, as if backing away from the word “creepy” again. “You sure it’s your father?”

“Yes.”

“Does he come to you as an old man, or does he look like the young man he was when he died?”

“He’s kind of ghostly. I just know it’s him.”

“Do you talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“What about?”

“He wants Jack.”

Her mother coughed, then cleared her throat. “What do you mean, he wants Jack?”

“He wants Jack to come and play poker with him.”

“That’s…” The word “interesting” seemed to be on the tip of her tongue, but it didn’t suffice. “I can see why you’re not sleeping. But we all have strange dreams. Once I dreamed I was talking with a man who was supposed to be your father, but he looked like John Wayne. He even called me ‘pilgrim.’”

“This is different. It’s not that Esteban shows up at my back door looking like Daddy. It’s more like one thought drifting into another. It’s as if Daddy comes in and takes over the dream, forcing me to stop thinking of Esteban.”

“That sounds normal. Don’t people always tell you to think happy thoughts when you want to stop scaring yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you’re lying in bed at night thinking of this man who assaulted you. And your mind drifts to happy thoughts of your father to make you stop.”

“That was my take on it, too. But it still frightens me. Especially the way he seems to be asking for Jack.”

“What does Jack say about that?”

“I haven’t told him that part. Why freak him out?”

“Exactly. And why freak yourself out? Esteban is dead. Whatever he did to you, he can never do it again.”

“I know that.”

“You can’t let him creep into your dreams this way.”

“It’s not that I let him. I just can’t stop him.”

“You have to force yourself to stop.”

“I can’t control my dreams.”

“You must.”

“Can you control yours?”

“Sometimes. Depending on what I read or think about before I fall asleep.”

“But not all the time.”

Evelyn seemed ready to argue the point but stopped, as if realizing that she wasn’t being honest. “No, I can’t always keep them under control.”

“No one can. Especially when dreams are trying to tell you something.”

“Cindy, don’t spook yourself like that. Dreams are a reflection of nothing but your own thoughts. They don’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

“That’s not true. This dream I’m having about Daddy and Esteban is definitely trying to tell me something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’ve had the same dream in the past, and every time I have it, something bad happens. It’s a warning.”

“Don’t do this to yourself. It’s only a dream, nothing more.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

Her mother just lowered her eyes.

“Before Daddy died,” said Cindy, “you had that dream. You knew it was going to happen.”

“That’s overstating it, sweetheart.”

“It’s not. You saw his mother carrying a dead baby in her arms. A week later, he was dead.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Aunt Margie told me.”

Margie was Evelyn’s younger sister, the family big-mouth. Evelyn blinked nervously and said, “I didn’t see it. I dreamed it.”

“And why do you think you dreamed it?”

“Because I was worried about your father, and those worries found their way into my dreams. That’s all it was.”

Silence fell between them, as if neither of them believed what she’d just said. Cindy said, “I get this from you.”

“Get what?”

“The ability to see things in dreams. It’s something you passed on to me.”

“Is that what you think? You have a gift?”

“No. A curse.”

Their eyes locked, not with contempt or anger, more along the lines of mutual empathy. Her mother finally blinked, the first to look away.

“Don’t stay here too much longer,” she said. “Try to get some sleep tonight.”

“I will. As soon as Jack gets home.”

Her mother cupped her hand along the side of Cindy’s face, then kissed her on the forehead. In silence, she stepped outside the glow of the spotlight and left the room.

Cindy was again alone. Her eyes drifted back toward the photographs before her, the shots she’d taken of a little girl and her dog. She was relieved that her mother hadn’t asked any more questions. She wasn’t sure how she would have explained what she’d been doing. Lying never worked with her mother, and telling her the truth would only have heightened her worries. The dreams alone were strange enough.

Imagine if I’d shown her this.

One last time, Cindy ran the magnifying glass across the enlarged image before her and held it directly over the flaw. An amateur might have been puzzled, but she was looking through a trained eye. In Cindy’s mind, there was absolutely no mistaking it. She extended her index finger toward the photograph-slowly and with trepidation, as if putting her hand into the fire. Her fingertip came to rest in the lower right-hand corner.

It was there, in this one photograph out of ninety-six shots she’d taken outside her studio, that a faint shadow had appeared.

A chill ran up her arm and down through her body. She’d examined it from every angle, at varying degrees of magnification. This wasn’t a cloud or a tree branch bending in the breeze. The form was definitely human.

“Daddy, please,” she whispered. “Just leave me alone.”

She tucked the photograph into an envelope and turned out the light.