Blood Dreams

Chapter Eight

Thursday, October 9

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND why Bishop and Miranda sent you," Dani said.

"Careful, or you'll hurt my feelings." Hollis Templeton was on her feet, leaning forward with her hands on the conference table as she stared grimly down at crime-scene photos taken the previous day.

"You know what I mean. I told Miranda all about the dream, all the details I could remember. She told you, didn't she?" Dani was too worried to be able to hide it. "Yeah."

"Then what the hell are you doing here? I mean you instead of another agent. If what I saw is how this thing ends, then you're there. In a burning building with the roof caving in. Going down into a certain trap, to confront a-a deadly evil. Don't tell me you signed on for something like that."

Hollis straightened and offered the other woman a rueful smile. "I didn't know what I was signing on for when I joined the SCU. I don't think any of us did. And it has certainly been an adventure I could never have imagined back when my life was normal."

"An adventure is one thing," Dani pointed out, "but willingly stepping into a situation that will likely end in your violent death is just-just-"

"Stupid?"

Dani lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. "Well, isn't it?"

"I don't see you going anywhere."

"That's different."

"Is it? Why?"

"Because it's my dream, dammit."

Hollis was still smiling faintly. "And do your dreams always come true?"

"The precognitive ones do."

"All the time? Absolutely, one hundred percent the way you dreamed them?"

"Well… there are always little things different."

"And some things are symbolic?"

"Sometimes. All right, a lot of the time. But the major elements, the ones that don't change, are almost always literal. And one thing that's been utterly consistent in this dream every single time is the way it ends. We go down into the basement of that warehouse with the roof caving in behind us."

"And then?"

Dani blinked. "Like I said, that's where the dream ends."

"So you have no idea what happens next?"

"Well… no."

"Then you've really just seen the stage set. All the players in their parts, the atmosphere thick with smoke and menace, everything primed for a really tragic ending."

"That's not enough for you?"

Hollis smiled. "Believe me, I have strong feelings about not dying. Very strong feelings. I'll tell you all about it someday. In the meantime, if I've learned anything during my stint with the SCU, it's that the universe puts us where we need to be, when we need to be there. As for your vision dream, the warning is duly noted. Clearly it's a bad situation all the way around. Unless we can change it, of course."

Dani frowned at her.

Hollis took a chair on her side of the conference table. "Dani, I know you guys inside Haven don't have the same rules, the same watchwords, hell, maybe not even the same beliefs as we do in the SCU. But there's a truth we've learned to rely on, one I'm pretty sure you know as well as I do."

Reluctantly, Dani said, "That some things have to happen just the way they happen."

"Exactly."

"And our fiery deaths are on that list?"

"I don't know. And as you've just admitted, you don't really know either. Not for sure. Because if you knew for sure that's the way this whole thing would end, you wouldn't still be here."

It was true, but that hardly helped. Dani hated feeling responsible for the fate of others and was already regretting that she had shared her vision dream with anyone other than Paris.

Except…

Miranda had known without having to be told. Oh, she had asked Dani for details but also made it clear that she and Bishop had seen something with their shared precognitive ability, and whatever they had seen had brought her to Dani.

That didn't really help Dani's worry or her sense of guilt either. The weight she had been aware of during the vision dream, the pressure bearing down on her, had become a conscious thing now, a waking thing, as though something dark and heavy loomed just above her head.

She was afraid to look up, afraid she would actually see something there.

Trying to ignore that oppressive sensation, she said to Hollis, "Okay, then. Why did Miranda go back to Boston and send you down here?"

"Because those were the logical next steps to make if she knew nothing of your vision, if she just continued along the path she was on before coming to Venture and talking to you. She couldn't stay here, obviously; no prominent member of the SCU could be here, not officially, not with the Director watching like a hawk."

"I get that. That she couldn't stay."

Hollis nodded. "If she'd been missing from the task force in Boston more than twenty-four hours, it would have been noticed. Questions would have been asked. And her and Bishop's quiet maneuvering to track this killer all these weeks without the Director realizing what they were doing would have been for nothing."

"And you're here because…"

"Because I was the logical team member to send. I haven't been a full-fledged agent for all that long, so I'm well under the Director's radar. I wasn't on another case. I haven't been with the task force. As a matter of fact, I'm still officially on leave, after the last case I was on ended… painfully."

Dani asked a silent question with lifted brows.

"I got shot."

"You-"

Hollis waved away concern. "I'm fine. I heal fast. Which is a good thing, apparently, because I hold the distinction of being the member of the SCU wounded the most times in the line of duty. Technically, the only member ahead of me on the list is Bishop, because he died. Death trumps multi-wounded."

Dani blinked. "You're not serious."

"No, being dead really does top being multi-wounded. Quentin decided. You draw even with dead only when you've been wounded a dozen times or else spend at least a month in a coma."

Dani hadn't met Quentin, though since he was one of the more infamous members of the SCU she had certainly heard things about him. She really wanted to meet him. "That's not what I meant. Bishop died?"

"Well, just for a little while. A few minutes. I'll have to tell you that story sometime too. It's a doozy."

"I'll bet."

Paris came into the conference room and closed the door behind her. "Marc's on his way" she reported. "The preliminary forensics from the crime scene are just coming in, so he's bringing them."

"Oh, joy" Hollis said. "I just love starting out my day with crime-scene photos and forensics reports on a grisly murder." She half-stood to reach into an open box of donuts placed incongruously beside the photos. "And a jelly donut. I can handle most anything as long as I start my day with a jelly donut. Or cold pizza."

Dani hadn't spent much time with Hollis-in the flesh, so to speak-but she had quickly realized that the other woman's seemingly flippant attitude was a combination of genuine humor and the darker gallows type common among cops and soldiers.

One could summon a grim laugh, or one could drown in the horror of an unspeakable crime. Hollis would always summon a laugh.

So would Paris.

"Are there any left with sprinkles?" Paris asked, going to the coffee station set up on one side of the conference room. "I need caffeine and sprinkles to get going. And Dani got me up and out of the house too early for either."

"Two left with sprinkles. Dani?"

Feeling her stomach twist, Dani shook her head. "I'm good, thanks."

"No, you aren't," Paris said as she joined them at the table. "Your nerves on an empty stomach are never a good thing." She produced, as if from thin air, a tall lidded paper cup and a straw. "One of Marc's obliging deputies got this for you. A vanilla milk shake."

"I hope you thanked him for me."

"I did. Drink up."

"Interesting breakfast," Hollis commented, preparing to bite into her donut.

"Her vision dreams come with a touchy stomach," Paris explained.

Dani said, "Miranda told us most of the psychics they've found over the years tend to pay some price, physically, for the abilities they have."

Hollis nodded. "True enough. Lots have headaches, some blackouts, even short-term memory loss. A few use up energy so fast it's like their abilities are more powerful than their own bodies. Scary stuff."

"Do you pay a price?" Dani asked.

"Headaches, though usually not bad ones. And when there's a storm, I feel like one giant exposed nerve. All that electrical energy, according to Bishop."

"Not fun."

"No."

Dani shrugged. "I get off pretty easy."

Paris said, "With the vision dreams, maybe. But it sure as hell drains you when you do the dream-walk thing."

Hollis looked interested. "You can dream-project? That's rare."

"What I do isn't really dream-projecting. I mean, I can't enter other people's dreams," Dani explained. "Just pull them into mine. Sometimes. But I'm not very strong at it."

"Want to qualify that a little more?" Paris asked dryly.

"Well, it's true and you know it. I can't pull just anybody in: there has to be a connection of some kind. Besides, I'm out of practice."

"Just because you spent ten years trying to deny-"

" Paris."

Her sister lifted her hands in a helpless gesture directed at Hollis. "She doesn't like to talk about it. But the truth is that until we teamed back up to work with Haven, Dani went out of her way to avoid… connecting… with anybody. So she is out of practice, and that ability is a rusty one; we've only been able to use it a couple of times in the last year or so."

Dani concentrated on drinking her milk shake, hoping to quiet the uneasy rumblings of her stomach.

"But the abilities still affect you physically," Hollis noted, watching her.

Dani shrugged. "It's a nuisance, mostly. But it's a temporary nuisance, not a regular occurrence."

"So you usually don't have the same vision dream more than once?"

"Oh, I've had them more than once. And the third time, as they say, is the charm."

"Then it comes true?"

"Then it comes true. But I've never before had the same one nearly every night for weeks on end." Dani lifted her milk shake in a slightly mocking toast. "Which also explains why I take very, very seriously the feeling of doom this particular vision dream creates in me."

"Marc, you'd better take a look at this."

"I've just about hit my quota of sickening this morning, Jordan," the sheriff said as he rose from the chair behind his desk. "Forensics reports. Teresa was right, dammit; we have pieces of two vics, not one. We won't get a DNA match for a while, but… Shit. Just tell me you don't have more of the same to show me."

"What I've got to show you is just plain weird," his deputy told him flatly.

"Christ. What is it?"

"Shorty said he made the comment to you that maybe this killer was drawing us a picture or something out there. With the blood and-everything else at the scene."

"Yeah, I remember."

"Well, he got to thinking, apparently. Even before he talked to you about it. Wondered if maybe there was a pattern in that mess none of us could see-at ground level."

After a moment, Marc said, "I'm all for initiative. So where did he take the shot?"

"The roof. There was a ladder in the garage, he said. I didn't ask too many questions."

"Because he got something?"

Jordan took another step into the office and held out a photograph. "It wasn't obvious until he did some digital work this morning, removing all of us, the equipment, everything that altered the scene from how the killer actually left it. But it's obvious as hell now."

Marc studied the photo for only a moment, then swore under his breath and picked up the closed folder on his blotter. "Come on. Time for you to meet the rest of the team."

"There's a team?" Jordan followed the sheriff from his office and down the hallway toward the conference room, adding in a lowered tone, "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"You'll like the team. You won't like what they have to say."

"I saw Paris out here a little while ago."

"Yeah."

"Dani too?"

Marc nodded.

"Since when do we work with civilians?"

"Since now." Marc paused at the door of the conference room and gave his chief deputy a steady look. "Remember all those stories your grandmother used to tell you?"

The sick feeling that had been twisting in Jordan 's gut since he'd first seen Shorty's overhead shot of the crime scene intensified. "Yeah, I remember. Are you telling me-"

"I'm telling you to keep an open mind." Marc opened the conference room door, adding, "And brace yourself."

"That's a good forensics guy you've got there," Hollis said absently about ten minutes later as she studied the photo pinned to the bulletin board on one side of the conference room. "He thought outside the box."

"But how far outside the box?" Dani realized everyone was looking at her inquiringly, and added, "Could the killer know somebody would have the bright idea of getting an overhead shot? I mean, could he count on that?"

"And did he need to." Hollis nodded. "Could be it was a little secret just for himself he thought nobody would discover. Something he could gloat over in private. I'm betting when we catch this guy, he'll have lots of pictures. Maybe other trophies, but definitely photographs of his… work."

Marc asked, "Because this scene was so obviously staged?"

"Because it's staged so well. So precisely. In my former life I was an artist, and I can tell you this scene was composed, for want of a better word. The natural elements already present, the hardscape and landscape, have been used to balance and enhance his… embellishments."

Jordan, sitting at one end of the conference table and trying hard to avoid looking at the crime-scene photos spread out too close to him, said, "Is how or why he left the message as important as the message itself? I mean, look at it. And somebody please tell me it doesn't mean what I think it means."

He had been introduced to the federal agent but was still trying to figure out why the FBI would have someone here unofficially rather than officially. If, that is, the "sign" left by the killer meant what he thought it meant.

What he really, really hoped it didn't mean.

Dani said to Hollis, "It still isn't enough, is it? To take to the Director? To bring the task force down here?"

Hollis picked up a marker from the table and went to the bulletin board. With quick, sure strokes, she highlighted what they could all see, a message left for them in blood and viscera.

The shape was a bit rough but unmistakable: a five-pointed star. And in the center was a ragged but all-too-clear number: 14.

Paris murmured, "Guess he wants to be a star."

"He already is," Hollis said. "In his own sick, unspeakably twisted way."

"He must have picked that place, that particular backyard, very carefully," Marc said. "And not just because it belonged to a vacant house. The hardscape and landscape there almost formed a star without his… additions, just like you said. He didn't have to do much to connect the dots."

"So it's a message?" Dani ventured. "I mean, besides the obvious one?"

Jordan drew a deep breath and let it out very slowly and quite loudly, not speaking until he was absolutely sure everybody in the room was looking at him. Then, displaying what he felt was the patience of a saint, he said, "Speaking of messages. The number. Fourteen. Somebody please tell me it doesn't mean what I'm afraid it means, that he doesn't have another twelve victims lined up."

The first thing Marc had told the others in the room was the information that forensics placed blood and tissue from two separate victims at the scene, so everyone was aware of that.

Hollis cleared her throat and looked steadily at the deputy. "I'm afraid it's worse than that. He's giving us his box score-so far. The two victims here make fourteen."

"He's killed twelve other women? In Venture?"

"No, he killed the first twelve somewhere else. In Boston, we believe."

"Jesus. This is the same killer? The one all over the news who went on a rampage this summer and ended by butchering a senator's daughter?"

"We believe so, yes."

Jordan blinked, but before he could ask the obvious question, Marc said, "Unfortunately, we can't call on the task force set up to hunt this animal down."

"Why the hell not?"

Hollis said, "Because it isn't the same M.O. Because we have no proof it's the same killer."

Jordan gestured wordlessly at the photo pinned to the bulletin board.

She shook her head. "He never numbered them before, as far as we know. Not the crime scenes, not the victims. In fact, we never had a crime scene before, just… dumping grounds where he left his victims. Nobody ever saw him, and the task force was never able to find any forensic evidence pointing to even a potential suspect.

"So, to an… unbiased… investigator, that number could mean anything. It could mean, as you guessed, that he plans on killing at least another dozen victims. It could also be a number important to him and him alone, for reasons we can't possibly know yet. Hell, it could be his birthday, or an anniversary, or no more than a number he picked out of the air just to have fun with the cops."

"You don't believe any of that," Jordan said.

"I told you what I believe."

Jordan cocked his head slightly to one side, never taking his gaze off the federal agent. She was very attractive, which he had of course noticed immediately, but there was something else, a quality about her he couldn't quite put his finger on. A kind of serenity, perhaps, as if nothing in life ever would or ever could surprise her. Or maybe it was the sense he had that her sharp blue eyes saw the things around her with a clarity he could only imagine.

Whatever it was, he found it intriguing.

Very intriguing.

"Okay," he said slowly, "so why do you believe it? If the M.O. here is different, if there isn't enough evidence to convince the task force or, I gather, the Director of the FBI that this is the same killer, then how come you're so sure?"

Hollis turned her head and looked at the sheriff, lifting a brow.

"He'll believe you."

"Well, that'll make for a nice change." Hollis looked back at Jordan and said matter-of-factly, "We've been using psychics to track him since Boston. We had placed him in the general area of Atlanta when one of our mediums was contacted two days ago by your first victim, Becky Huntley. When her picture came up on the missing persons database, well…"

Dani said, "John and Miranda didn't mention that yesterday."

"They didn't see the need to go into specifics then and there." Hollis shrugged, then offered Dani a faint smile. "I would have gotten around to it eventually, though."

"Because you were the medium," Marc said, his tone not the least bit questioning.

She nodded. "I was the medium. It's another reason I was picked for this job." She looked again at Dani. "Another reason I had to be here. Because Becky contacted me. And when a victim gets in touch, that's pretty much a gilt-edged invitation from the universe to come to the party."