Skin Deep

51

Steve had that dream again.

There was no buildup, no foreplay. He was straddling the woman as she lay naked on her bed, her red hair spread under her like brushfire. Digging into his palms were the opposite ends of a black nylon that he pulled with all his might, causing the loop to cut into her neck, making her face swell grotesquely under him, her nose seeming to inflate toward his, her eyes bulging to the popping point, her mouth emitting a high, shrill, jingling sound.

The PDA ringing from his night table shocked him awake.

And he said a silent prayer that he was awake. He had begun to hate the thought of going to bed, of risking having that dream again. It made him fear for his own sanity—fear that he was the person in those nightmares. Fear that those dreams weren’t imaginings but memory.

Through the dark he could make out that the digital clock said 4:24, and his first thought was Dana: something was wrong. He was instantly alert.

“Hey, Steve,” Captain Reardon said. “Sorry to wake you at this hour, but I’ve got some bad news. Pendergast’s dead.”

“What?”

“Committed suicide. The guards found him about an hour ago. He tore off the sleeve of his shirt and wrapped it around his neck and the bed frame.”

“Christ! Where the hell was the guard?”

“He’d just finished his rounds and must have gone out for a coffee or something. The last time he had checked, he was sound asleep.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Yeah, a tough break. But it might be his way of confessing without having to face the music and the prospect of life in prison.”

“Yeah.”

“I know you thought he was the wrong man. But the way I look at it, if he wasn’t capable of rising above the shit, he was in too deep.”

“Did he leave a note?”

“No.”

“It just doesn’t feel right.”

“Nothing does at four in the morning. But on the bright side, maybe it vindicates Neil and gets us out of the tree.”

“Yeah.”

“Unit meeting’s at nine. Go back to sleep, and when you wake up things will make sense.”

“We can only hope.”