Blood Dreams

Chapter Ten

MARC DIDN'T HAVE any logical reason for taking Dani with him when he went to talk to Marie Goode in his office, so he didn't bother trying to invent one.

He was just relieved Dani didn't ask.

That emotion lasted only until they went into his office, and Marie Goode rose from one of his visitor's chairs.

She was petite, almost waifish, with short dark hair and big dark eyes, and looked almost childlike in her waitress uniform.

Shit.

Marc exchanged a quick glance with Dani, and then they continued on into the room and he introduced the two women, offering no information as to who Dani was or why she was part of the interview.

Marie Goode was clearly too upset to worry about it. "Sheriff, did Deputy Walker tell you? About the necklace and the flowers? About somebody following me last night?"

"He told me, Ms. Goode. But I haven't had a chance to read your statement, so if you wouldn't mind going through it all again for me now? You believe someone began following you when you left work last night?"

"Well, I thought it was my imagination at first, but…"

Dani watched the younger woman continue to relate her experience to Marc, but a chill shivered over her skin when she realized that Marie's voice had faded, within a matter of seconds, into silence.

It had happened to Dani before-but only in her vision dreams. Then, while she slept, her mind seemed to accept these abrupt silences of the people and places and things around her, because something deeper than her dreams, deeper than her visions, understood that it needed to listen to whatever was happening far beneath the surface. To something more important. And it was almost always something vital to her understanding of the vision dream's true meaning.

But now her waking mind scrambled in panic, the knee-jerk, fearful reaction so quick that she very nearly missed that whisper of sound beneath the voices in the room, beneath the light, beneath what she could touch. Beneath what seemed real.

I want you.

She went still inside, the instinctive focus barely holding panic at bay. Her gaze shifted to Marc, and she wished desperately that it was his whisper she heard in her head. That she could believe it was his whisper.

It wasn't.

It was cold. It was hard. It was implacable.

And it was evil.

I want you, Dani. I'll have you. Even if you run. Even if you hide. No matter what he does to protect you. No matter what you dream. No matter-

"Dani?"

She realized she was on her feet in front of Marc's desk, half-turned toward the door. She also realized that Marie Goode was gone, that Marc must have just shown her out, because he was coming back from the door, frowning at her.

Dani sat down abruptly and fought to pull air into her lungs, as though she had been holding her breath for a long, long time.

"Dani, what the hell's wrong?"

"I-I don't-" She pulled herself together and did her best to hold her voice steady. "I thought I heard something, that's all. Did you assign a guard for Marie Goode? She's the right type, and if he's already watching her-"

"Of course I assigned a guard." He sat down in the other visitor's chair, still frowning at her. "What did you hear?"

"I said I thought I heard-" Again, she got a grip on herself, on the panic that was doing its best to overwhelm her.

"I'm not sure. Maybe my imagination. I thought I heard a whisper, that's all."

"A whisper? Someone trying to reach you? Psychically?"

"My abilities don't work that way."

"Just because they never have," he said slowly, "doesn't mean they can't. Psychic ability grows and evolves just like any other human ability does. What did the whisper say?"

"Marc, I don't-"

"What did it say, Dani?"

She didn't want to answer, but things were already so strained between them that she didn't want to make the situation worse. "He said… he wanted me. That he'd have me."

"Who?"

"I don't know who. Even if I'd heard his voice before, who can recognize a whisper?"

"All I know," Marc said deliberately, "is that it scared the hell out of you. So I'm guessing that even if you aren't sure, you suspect what you heard came from the killer."

"That's not possible."

Marc's frown was gone, yet his face managed to be harder than ever. "You're already… keyed on to this killer, right? Dreaming about him?"

She had never heard that particular terminology, but it did make sense to her. "In a manner of speaking."

"We both know it's all about connections with you. I assumed you were having the vision dreams because Miranda's a friend and there was a threat against her."

Dani hesitated, then nodded. "So did I."

"Any chance the killer keyed on you because of the vision dream? That he somehow caught one end of a connection straight back to you?"

"I don't know." God, I hope not. "Maybe. Or maybe, if it happened at all, it was somehow through Marie Goode. If he's watching her-"

"She isn't psychic," Marc said. "What if he is?"

Dani drew a breath and said, "I don't have to be an experienced investigator to know that if this killer is psychic, we're in very big trouble."

"Either way, whether he is or isn't, you're still scared as hell, Dani. Because he's touched a part of you not many people have touched. Whether you made the connection or he did, it's real. It exists. Do you think I can't see that? Do you think I can't feel it?"

"Marc…"

"We both know those kinds of connections aren't easily severed once they're made. And he could hurt you, couldn't he? He could come after you in a way that no physical barrier, no wall or locked door or bodyguard with a gun could stop."

Not something she wanted to think about, because it did scare the hell out of her. Especially since it eerily echoed the whisper she had heard.

Still, with forced lightness, she said, "I'm safe. At least until we find that warehouse." She heard herself say it.

She only wished she could believe it.

Gabriel pulled the Jeep off the otherwise deserted road and behind a tangle of some kind of vine he didn't recognize. "I hate it when somebody changes the rules," he grumbled.

We don't know that anybody did.

"Bullshit, we don't know. The SCU is supposed to be all but invisible here in this investigation, and he's about as visible as it gets."

You said he seemed inconspicuous.

"Seemed being the operative word. Temporary being a better one. Just as soon as this town wakes up to the knowledge that two of their own have been murdered, have been butchered, you can bet strangers are going to get noticed. And probably shot."

I think you're exaggerating. But best we keep a low profile and work as fast as we can.

"I heard that." He got out of the Jeep and paused beside it only long enough to dig a smaller backpack from the big duffel bag in the backseat, then locked up the vehicle. He moved through the woods along the road for twenty or thirty yards, then came upon the disintegrating blacktop drive leading to a fair-sized cluster of buildings that had once housed some kind of manufacturing plant.

What was manufactured?

"Details, details."

They might be important, you know that.

Gabriel sighed and shrugged the backpack off one shoulder. He opened a pocket and pulled out a map of the county that boasted numerous areas circled in red. He studied the notes scrawled in the margin for several moments. "Plastics."

Nothing more specific than that?

"Not on the map. But if I remember the research from yesterday, it was plastic hangers, something innocuous like that. Just a place that made useful things."

And got closed during a downsizing of the company. I remember now.

He replaced the map in the backpack and continued on his way, following the old blacktop all the way to the buildings. The first one he came to was so featureless he didn't have a clue what it might originally have been designed to house; all he saw was the big rusting padlock on the windowless door.

Gabriel turned the heavy padlock up so he could see the bottom and knew from the amount of rust that his picks would be useless; a hammer and chisel, he thought, wouldn't be able to cut through the years of rust.

"Hey, a little help here."

Sorry. My mind wandered.

"Well, wander it back, will you? Lock. And not one I can pick without a chisel. Or maybe some C-4."

Just a sec. Wait… There.

He heard the sharp click, and found the padlock opening in his hand. It was still rusty and unwilling, but it opened.

"Still got the magic touch, Rox."

Yeah, yeah. Check this place out and let's leave.

"You getting antsy?"

I also don't like it when somebody changes the rules. Be careful, Gabe. I have a bad feeling.

There were few things in the world Gabriel respected as much as his sister's had feelings, so he paused at the unlocked door long enough to get both a flashlight and a gun from his backpack. Then he put his shoulder to the door and forced his way into the derelict building.

Back in the conference room. Marc filled the others in on both the interview with Marie Goode and Dani's experience.

"I don't like this," Hollis said.

"Which?" Paris demanded. "And join the club. Marc, I hope you don't mean to leave Dani unguarded."

"I don't."

Dani didn't protest, just looked at Hollis and waited. She was trying very hard to pretend that she was unconcerned, that the slimy voice of a killer in her mind didn't terrify her to her marrow, and knew all too well that at least two people in the room were perfectly aware of exactly what she was feeling.

Three, really, as Hollis's words made clear.

"Having that sort of contact with evil is about as bad as it gets," she said to Dani, her tone matter-of-fact even though there was sympathy in her expression. "Did the connection feel solid?"

Dani forced herself to think about it and finally shook her head. "Not really. As a matter of fact, it ended very abruptly." When Marc said my name.

"You've never been telepathic," Paris noted. "Even within an established connection, it's more feelings than thoughts."

Dani carefully avoided looking at Marc. "This was both-sort of. Cold, hard, complete sentences. But sort of like an echo." She shook her head. "I can't remember all the details of my vision dream; maybe this was just that, a leftover echo of something I hadn't consciously remembered."

Marc looked at Hollis, brows raised. "Possible?"

"Sure. It could also be possible that Dani's abilities are evolving, or that either she or the killer somehow established a connection between them. Or…"

"Or what?" Marc demanded.

Dani knew what he was asking and also knew he didn't want to suggest to Hollis to anyone that the killer might be psychic, as he had speculated. She was grateful when the other woman frowned and shook her head.

"Or… let me think about that for a while."

"Do I have a choice?" Marc asked wryly.

"Not really." She softened that with a smile, which quickly faded. "The other thing I don't like is the increasing evidence that our killer is changing or has changed, fundamentally. Marie Goode is the right physical type, right age, right everything he likes. But to… make his interest in her so obvious strikes me as a completely new element. Letting her hear his camera, leaving the roses, and-" She frowned at Marc. "What about the necklace?"

"Shorty reported in as we were leaving my office. It looks like the necklace might be the one Becky Huntley was wearing when she disappeared. No prints. In fact, chemical traces show it was recently cleaned, with ammonia or one of those jewelry-cleaning solutions you can buy in any jewelry store. Description fits. Her parents will have to I.D. it to be sure."

"Please don't give me that job," Jordan murmured.

"Harry's going. Hollis, if it is Becky's necklace, what does it say about this bastard? Leaving a trophy from one victim in the home of a potential victim he's stalking?"

She was frowning, and her tone was almost absent when she said, "I'm no profiler, remember. Not officially, anyway, though Bishop has made sure most of us know more than the average shrink about the psychology of killers. I'll have to fill him in on the latest, and quickly. In the meantime, what this latest twist tells me about the killer is what I said, that he's continuing to change, to evolve."

"His M.O.?"

She nodded. "And that means something happened to change him. Something's different in him, in his life, the way he thinks and feels. Assuming he can feel, that is."

Marc suggested, "Maybe he changed because he was forced to leave Boston. Maybe the experience of becoming hunted himself made it more… imperative… for him to see himself as the hunter again."

Dani said, "So more care in that part of his ritual. More-elaborate steps before catching his prey. Following, taking pictures, maybe even, in his mind, courting her."

"Yuck," Paris muttered.

"It may help us," Hollis pointed out. "Until that necklace is identified by Becky's parents, we won't have a strong tie between Marie Goode and the killer. But if it is identified as hers, then for the first time we may be a step ahead of this bastard."

"Do we make that obvious?" Jordan wondered. "I mean, have our watchdog presence around her obvious to the killer?"

"It's a risk either way," Marc said. "For my part, I'd rather err on the side of protecting a potential victim."

Hollis looked at him steadily for a moment, then nodded. "Your call."

"And I run the risk of him just moving on to another potential victim. That being the case, I say we find him before he moves on. So, what do we know about him?"

"We know the type of victims he chooses."

Jordan said, "Um… I started to bring this up earlier, but if you saw Karen-"

"I know. A blonde, with blue eyes. And according to her missing persons report, Becky Huntley was a blue-eyed redhead."

"Both the right type otherwise, though," Marc said slowly. "Small, delicate in build. Becky was barely eighteen."

Paris said, "You can change hair color with dye or a wig. And tinted contact lenses are usually enough to change eye color. Would he go that far?"

"To fulfill his fantasy, satisfy whatever need is driving him? I'd guess yes," Hollis said.

Marc said, "And Bishop's guess?"

"That's it." With a sigh, Hollis added, "Bishop is a gifted profiler in more ways than one, but even he's struggling to reconcile the differences between these first two murders in Venture and the previous dozen in Boston. And the new information is not going to help clarify things."

"He hasn't had much time, after all," Dani commented.

Hollis shrugged. "He's had a couple of days since I saw Becky. That's usually enough time for him to at least get a sense of a killer or a change in one, especially a killer he's already spent months studying. But this monster is off the charts. Off even Bishop's charts."

To the room at large, Jordan said, "I don't know Agent Bishop, but for some reason that little nugget of information scares me more than anything else."

"Then you have good instincts," Hollis told him soberly. "Because Bishop has seen evil up close and personal more times than any of us would even want to know about-and this guy, this killer, is something new."

"New how?" Marc asked intently. "In viciousness? In cunning?"

Jordan offered, "Even given the carnage we saw yesterday, and granting it was as bad as I ever personally want to see, there are countless books and, hell, Web sites devoted to serial killers who were pretty damn vicious and cunning. Cannibals, necrophiles, and animals who did things to their victims so incredibly evil I hope there aren't names for them."

Hollis was nodding. "Yeah, the law-enforcement and psychological case studies are full of their work."

Repeating his question, Marc asked, "So what about this killer is new? What makes this killer so unusual that even a huge task force headed up by the FBI's top monster hunter hasn't gotten close in months of trying?"

Hollis hesitated for a long moment, then said slowly, "The belief has always been that when we do I.D. this killer, we'll discover in his background, his past, what we find in the personal histories of virtually all serial killers. Abuse, dysfunction, possibly some sort of head trauma early in life, things like that."

"If you want me to feel sorry for this bastard-"

Hollis waved that away. "No, no. Most of us also believe that serial killers are born with something missing, whether you call it a conscience or a soul, which enables them to be far more monster than man. We don't know whether that missing component is all it takes, or whether the individual could live a perfectly normal life-at least outwardly-without hurting anyone at all. If his or her childhood environment was nurturing and positive, and there was no trauma, there's at least the possibility that the person would never commit evil acts."

"But?" Marc was still watching her intently.

"But. What we are fairly sure of is that the missing component, coupled with either childhood trauma and abuse, a head injury, or some kind of intense emotional and psychological shock virtually always produces something evil. A serial killer, rapist, pedophile, arsonist-even a terrorist. The inclinations were there, the instincts, the needs. And something happened, over time or in a single traumatic event, to bring them to the surface."

"I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop," Marc said.

"Sorry to take so long getting to it. Here's the thing. From this point on, we're in that off-the-charts territory. We have theories. We have a few SCU case studies of situations we felt were borderline or that didn't allow us enough time for any real examination or understanding of the personalities involved. But we don't have proof. Hell, we don't have anything close to proof."

"Hollis-"

She held up a hand. "Marc, trauma-in childhood, or as an adult-can also trigger psychic abilities. In fact, some studies have shown definitively that the areas of the brain inexplicably energized in most psychics are the same as those inexplicably active in serial killers."

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You're telling me we've got a serial killer operating in my town and he's psychic?"

As if, Dani thought with brief, dim amusement, he had not already considered the idea himself.

"It gets worse," Hollis said. "The SCU has psychics who are extremely sensitive to fluctuations in electromagnetic fields and can detect unusual psychic activity, even at a distance; we call it being very plugged in to the universe."

"Okay. And so?"

"And so, from reports he's received from those psychics in this general area, Bishop suspects our unknown subject is one of only a handful of psychics we've ever encountered who has more than one primary ability. Not secondary or ancillary abilities, but each as powerful and fully developed as any of the others. We don't even know how many abilities are possible or which ones he might have. Maybe he's a telepath and a seer and telekinetic with the ability to heal. Maybe less. Maybe more. He could be a living, breathing miracle, created out of the same unknown horror that triggered his compulsion to kill. Undiluted evil-times ten. And none of us, not even Bishop, has ever faced anything like that."