Falling Awake(40)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

She got the feeling that observation was important.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Another long moment slipped past. She realized she was holding her breath. And then Ellis inclined his head once, very deliberately, in acceptance of her terms.

“Right.” He extended his legs and braced his elbows on the arms of the chair, fingertips pressed together. “You are now officially assisting me in this investigation.”

She tried not to let her eagerness show. Composing herself, she folded her arms on top of the closed manual and assumed a serious, attentive expression.

Ellis tapped his fingers together once. “I told you last night that Vincent Scargill is supposed to be dead.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“No.”

She waited.

“The first thing you need to know about this case is that Lawson and Beth think I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession,” Ellis said neutrally. “They believe I’m suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress syndrome and that it has affected my Level Five dreaming capabilities in such a way that I’ve created a fantasy version of what really happened to Vincent Scargill.”

“I’m listening.”

He fixed his gaze on the bay. “You know how Scargill came to work at Frey-Salter.”

“Dr. B. found him and sent him to Lawson.”

“Scargill was twenty at the time.” The corner of Ellis’s mouth turned up slightly in a humorless smile. “He reminded me of myself at that age. Young and eager. Excited as hell to find someone who understood what he could do with his dreams. Downright thrilled to be working in a real-life super-secret government agency. Couldn’t wait to prove himself.”

“Go on.”

“Scargill followed the usual training path at the agency. He did some assisting, practiced with mock cases and took the weapons and self-defense classes. He got his first big case a few months after he started. It was a kidnapping that was referred by one of the Mapstone Investigations affiliates. Scargill did a Level Five dream and solved it very quickly. The victim was rescued and the kidnappers were apprehended. As usual Beth’s people got the credit. That’s how it works.”

“There’s never any mention of Lawson’s agency or the work his people do.”

“No. But back at Frey-Salter, Scargill was definitely a rising star. Lawson was very, very pleased with him.”

“And?”

“Scargill liked being a star. But on his next assignment, things didn’t go so smoothly. No big surprise. He hadn’t had much experience, after all. But he was furious when Lawson called me in to take over the investigation.”

“I think I’m getting the picture here. Young, eager recruit doesn’t like having his case turned over to the old pro.”

“I prefer to use the term ‘pro’ without the qualifier,” Ellis said dryly.

“Right. Sorry. Pro it is, not old pro.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. As it happened, neither Lawson nor I realized just how intense Scargill was when it came to showing the boss that he was the number-one dream hunter.”

“Is that what Lawson calls his agents?”

“No. Lawson calls his agents agents. Dream Hunter was Vincent Scargill’s somewhat romanticized description of his job.”

“Got it.”

“About six months ago Lawson figured Scargill was ready for another case. He gave him a kidnapping. The situation was similar to the first one that Vincent had solved so spectacularly a few months earlier. Lawson had a theory that Scargill might have a special aptitude for that kind of crime.”

“Do the agents specialize in certain kinds of crimes?” Isabel asked curiously.

Ellis nodded. “Some of them do. They develop a feel for a type of criminal activity just as criminals develop a certain pattern and style in their crimes. In any event, Scargill did a dream and solved the case almost immediately. Lawson was impressed and gave him another assignment. Scargill came up with the answers overnight. He was on a roll. Within a three-month period he racked up half a dozen successes. He didn’t even need any assistance when it came to analysis and interpretation.”

She thought about that. “So I didn’t see any of his dream reports?”

“No. Like I said, the guy seemed to be a natural.”

“And you began to get suspicious?”

“It just seemed too good to be true,” Ellis said. “When I heard about Scargill’s track record, I told Lawson there was something wrong. He didn’t want to believe me. He was convinced that Scargill had a unique type of talent.”

“What did you do?”

“I went into an extreme dream and came up with a few leads. I checked them out on my own because I knew Lawson wasn’t interested and I didn’t want to alert Scargill.”

“What did you find?” she asked, intensely curious.

“Information that indicated that Scargill had staged at least some of the crimes that he later pretended to solve.”

“Oh, jeez.” She swallowed. “Are we talking serious crimes?”

“Kidnappings and abductions. He seemed to specialize in them.”

“You said he solved the crimes. I don’t get it. If he was the perpetrator, who got the blame for committing the abductions?”

“That was the really clever part,” Ellis said softly. “Because the cases were always successfully closed. Problem was, a pattern started to appear there, too. In the last four the bad guys all wound up dead. They all conveniently took their own lives before they could stand trial.”

A cold feeling descended on her. “Scargill murdered innocent people and made it look as if they were the ones who committed the crimes?”

“That’s just it, they weren’t innocents. They actually did commit the crimes. What’s more, they all had long-standing criminal records coupled with long-standing mental health problems. I think Scargill must have had some way of identifying the kind of people he could set up. Then he worked on them individually, taking advantage of their dangerous, unstable natures to prod them into the kidnappings.”

She drew a deep breath, a little stunned. “And afterward, no one was surprised to learn that those people had gone off the rails. Probably not surprised by the suicides, either.”

“It was a brilliant piece of game playing on Scargill’s part.”

“But didn’t the law enforcement authorities see the same patterns that you did?”