Falling Awake(65)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Relax,” Ellis said, moving into the room before Dave could recover from his shock. “It’s complimentary.”

Dave stared at the gun. Fear made his mouth tremble a little. But he faced Ellis with rage and defiance.

“Are you going to kill me the way you did my sister?” he asked.

“I hate questions like that.” Ellis put the pistol back into the briefcase. “There’s no good answer.”

31

isabel’s first reaction was enormous relief. Ellis had been right, the man in the room was not Scargill or one of the ex-cons. Then she saw the anger and uncertainty in Dave Ralston’s face and her heart went out to him.

“Ellis told me about Katherine,” she said gently. “I’m so sorry, Dave.”

He sat rigidly in the chair at the small desk. When she had entered the room a moment ago, she got the impression that he planned to stick with the name-rank-and-serial-number approach to the formalities. But the mention of his sister’s name made him flinch. He stared hard at Ellis, who was lounging against the wall.

Ellis returned the stare from behind the impenetrable shield of his dark glasses.

“Yes, I know you suspect that Ellis might have killed Katherine.” Isabel went to the small counter that held the in-room coffee-maker, picked up the glass pot and filled it from the faucet at the small wet bar. She did not feel like a cup of coffee. She disliked the stuff. But the tension level in the room needed to be reduced as rapidly as possible. In her experience nothing could achieve that goal as quickly as the serving of food or drink. “But I can assure you that he didn’t do it.”

“How do you know?” Dave burst out.

At least he had spoken to her. That was progress. “Because I know him very well. Far better than you do, certainly. Ellis is not the type who would kill in cold blood, especially not a woman.”

“What makes you so sure?” Dave demanded.

She glanced at Ellis. He was making no attempt to get involved in the conversation. She got the impression that he was content to step back and let her deal with Dave. Just a couple of amateurs, in his view, she reflected. But, hey, everyone had to start somewhere, right?

She considered how to proceed while she got the coffee going.

“Ellis is an extreme dreamer,” she said. “I assume you know what that means?”

Dave’s eyes slid away from hers. “Katherine told me that they did a lot of weird dream research at Frey-Salter. All that Level Five profiling stuff.”

“Ah.” She flipped the switch on the machine.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dave muttered.

“Nothing, just that I get the impression that your sister talked to you about her work.”

“We were twins,” Dave said quietly.

“I see, well, as I was saying, I also work for the same agency indirectly as a sort of consultant.”

“Yeah?” Dave was clearly dubious. “What kind of consulting do you do?”

“I specialize in interpreting the dreams of people like Ellis here, who are very strong lucid dreamers. I probably interpreted some of your sister’s dreams this past year, although none of the individuals from Frey-Salter were ever identified in the dream reports so I can’t be certain of that.”

“What are you?” Dave asked. “Some kind of shrink?”

“I do a lot of counseling,” she said smoothly. “But the point here is that I’ve had a great deal of experience analyzing Ellis’s dreams. That’s why I feel that I know him well enough to assure you that if he had murdered someone in cold blood a few months ago, I would have sensed it in his dream reports.”

“Bullshit.” Dave made a disgusted sound. “Why would he have told you about a dream that would have incriminated him?”

She listened to the drip, drip, drip of the brewing coffee.

“After you’ve analyzed a lot of Level Five dream reports from one person over a span of time, you can’t help but pick up a good, working knowledge of his or her personality and character,” she said.

“Yeah?” Dave gave Ellis another wary look. “What if he was real careful about what he included in his reports?”

“If Ellis had taken to doctoring his dream reports in order to scrub out any references to an act of cold-blooded violence, I would have sensed that something was wrong.” She shrugged. “Granted, I might not have known precisely what he removed from the narratives, but I would almost certainly have realized that he was trying to disguise some aspect of the dream.”

“You’re that good?”

She smiled. “I’m a Level Five, too. Dave, listen to me. Ellis didn’t kill your sister. He’s trying to find the man who did.”

Dave said nothing, but she could feel his certainty wavering.

The small coffeepot was full. She removed it from the burner and poured the contents into the two cups emblazoned with the logo of the Seacrest Inn.

“Let’s try this from another angle,” she suggested, walking across the room to hand one of the cups to Dave. “What makes you believe that it was Ellis who murdered Katherine?”

Dave reached out automatically to take the cup, but his hand was shaking so badly he nearly spilled the contents.

“I think maybe he killed her because she found out that he was stealing Frey-Salter secrets and selling them. Maybe he’s the one who killed her lover, too.”

There was a short, stunned silence. Isabel looked at Ellis, waiting for his denial. He said nothing. If possible, he looked even more bored.

Dealing with the male of the species sometimes required an astounding degree of patience, she thought. She more or less shoved the second cup of coffee into Ellis’s hand. He frowned, but he took it.

“Ellis didn’t kill either of them,” she said.

“What did Katherine tell you about her lover?” Ellis asked.

“His name was Vincent Scargill,” Dave said slowly.

Ellis nodded. “That fits.”

Dave’s expression tightened. “She said they had to keep the affair quiet because she was afraid she might get fired if Lawson found out about it. She said it was always the woman who lost her job when workplace relationships came out into the open. She had seen it happen at Frey-Salter when Lawson himself got involved with a member of his staff. When the affair ended, the woman was forced to transfer to another position in some other agency.”

Ellis grimaced. “Have to admit, Katherine might have had a reason to be concerned after that incident, although I can’t see Lawson firing any Level Five. He hasn’t got enough of them as it is.” He drank some coffee and slowly lowered the cup. “Here’s what I think happened, Dave. I believe that Scargill faked his own death. Afterward, he contacted Katherine secretly and got her to bug Lawson’s office phone. When that was done, he killed her to keep her quiet.”