Dream Man Read online

“Nothing’s been called in yet.”

  More silence. Then he said, “This will prove one way or the other if she’s for real.”

  “Yeah. She was in pretty bad shape. I’m at her house, if you need me. Dispatch is going to call if anything’s reported.”

  “Okay. If she’s right … shit!”

  Yeah, shit. Dane sat there drinking coffee, brooding. If Marlie was right, and the same guy who had murdered Nadine Vinick had done another woman, in the same way, they had big-time trouble. As bad as he had wanted the bastard, he thought he had been looking for a onetimer, he had hoped it was someone who had known Mrs. Vinick. He had thought it had been personal, though he hadn’t been able to find anything to indicate what that would have been. Multiple stab wounds usually meant someone was really pissed at the victim.

  But another victim, killed with the same MO, meant they had a psychopath in Orlando. A serial killer. Someone without conscience, someone who acted only according to his own weird rules. Worse, it looked as if he was an intelligent serial killer, taking pains to leave no evidence behind. Serial killers were a real bitch to catch under any circumstances, and a smart one was almost impossible. Look at how long Bundy had killed before he’d finally made a mistake.

  He couldn’t do anything but wait. He couldn’t investigate a murder that hadn’t been reported, a body that hadn’t been found. Until a victim turned up, all he had was a vision by a burned-out, trauma-damaged psychic. He believed her, though; his gut believed her, and that was frightening in itself. A cold corner of logic in his brain was still saying “wait and see,” but logic couldn’t dissipate the knot in his stomach.

  He knew the terminology. Escalating sexual serial killer. He tried to remember if there had been any unsolved stabbing murders in Orlando before Nadine Vinick, but none came to mind, at least none that resembled it. Either the guy had just recently started murdering his victims, or he had moved in from another city. If a killer moved around, kept the murders spread out over different jurisdictions, cops might never figure out that it was the work of a serial killer because they wouldn’t have the other murders to compare the method to.

  If Mrs. Vinick was his first victim, then to have killed again so soon the guy had to have gone totally out of control, and they would soon have a bloodbath in the city. An escalating killer started out slow; there might be months between his victims. Then the killings would start getting closer and closer together, because that was the only way he could get his rocks off, and he wanted it more and more often. Only a week between victims signaled an incipient rampage.

  And he couldn’t do anything except wait.

  When would the body, if there was a body, most likely be discovered? Maybe the husband worked third shift, like Mr. Vinick. Maybe that was the common denominator, that the husband was gone nights. If so, the discovery would be in the morning, say from six until eight. But if the lady lived alone, it could be a couple of days or longer before anyone missed her enough to check on her. Hell, he’d seen cases where people had been dead for weeks before anyone noticed.

  Wait.

  He looked at the clock again. Five after two. The coffee was gone, and he drank so much of the stuff that it only worked as long as he was pouring it in. He was tired; his eyelids felt like sandpaper.

  He looked at Marlie’s couch, and snorted in dismissal. He was six two, and the couch was five feet. He’d never been into masochism.

  He peeked into the one room in the little house that he hadn’t seen, wondering if it was a spare bedroom. It wasn’t. This was where she stored odd pieces of furniture, luggage, boxes of books. It wasn’t as cluttered as the main rooms in his home usually were.

  The only bed in the place was the one Marlie was sleeping in. He supposed he could go home, but he didn’t want to leave her alone. The lock on her door was ruined. He didn’t know how long she would sleep, but he intended to be there when she woke.

  He hesitated for only the barest second, wondering what she would say if she woke up with him in bed beside her, but then he shrugged and went into her bedroom. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved at all.

  He stripped down to his shorts, tossing his clothes over the rocking chair, and placed the pistol on the bedside table. His pager went right beside the pistol. There was only the one table, and Marlie was lying on that side of the bed. Dane scooted her over, then without even a twinge of conscience, slid in beside her and turned off the lamp.

  It felt good. Contentment spread through him, a warm antidote to the worry of the last few hours. As big as he was, the double bed felt cramped to him, but even that had its good points because Marlie was so close to him. He put his arms around her, holding her cradled to him with her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Her slight body felt soft and fragile, and her breath moved across his chest with the lightest of touches.

  He would be willing to lie awake for the rest of his life, if he could protect her from what she had gone through tonight. She had told him, Officer Ewan had told him, the professor had told him, but until he had seen it with his own eyes, he simply hadn’t realized how traumatic it was for her, how it hurt her, how much it cost her.

  What a price she had paid! He knew the toll it took on the human spirit to see so much ugliness, day in and day out. Some cops handled it better than others, but they all paid, and they had only normal sensitivities. What must it have been like for her, feeling everything, all the pain and rage and hate? Losing her empathic ability must have been like being rescued from torture. Now that it was evidently coming back, how must she feel? Trapped? Desperate?

  Desire pulsed in his loins; he couldn’t be around her and not want her. But stronger than desire was the need to hold her close and protect her, from the horrors within as well as those without.

  He slept until eight, and woke instantly aware that the pager hadn’t beeped at him during the night. Neither had Marlie stirred. She lay limply against his side, her very stillness a gauge of her exhaustion. How long did this stupor normally last?

  He showered, figuring she wouldn’t mind the use of her bathroom and towels. Then he shaved, using her razor and swearing when he nicked himself. Then he went into the kitchen and put on another pot of coffee. He was beginning to feel as comfortable in Marlie’s house as he was in his own. While he was waiting for the coffee to brew, he measured the ruined front door for a replacement. He had just finished that when the phone rang.

  “Heard anything?” Trammell asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “What does Marlie say?”

  “She hasn’t said anything. She’s been asleep almost since she came out of the vision last night. She managed to tell me what she’d seen, then passed out.”

  “I thought about this for hours last night. If it’s a serial killer …”

  “We’ve got trouble.”

  “Should we tell Bonness what we think?”

  “We’d better. After all, he believed Marlie before either of us did. We can’t do anything until the murder is verified, but we should keep him informed.”

  “We’re going to feel like fools if no one’s found.”

  “I hope so,” Dane said grimly. “I honest to God hope I feel like the biggest fool walking. That would be a hell of a lot better than the alternative.”

  Trammell sighed. ’I’ll talk to Bonness,” he volunteered. “How long are you going to be at Marlie’s?”

  “I don’t know. At least until she’s capable of functioning on her own. All weekend, the way it looks.”

  “Wipes her out, huh?”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” A thought occurred to him. “And while you’re out and around today, I need you to get a door for me. Marlie’s isn’t very secure.”

  *

  The voice pulled insistently at her, refusing to let her rest. It was a very patient voice, though relentless. On the far fringes of consciousness she knew that it was familiar, but she couldn’t quite recognize it. She was tired, so tired; she just wanted to sle