Dream Man

Dane anchored her to him, holding her so tight he expected her to protest, but she didn’t, all of her attention on her litany of terror. Chills rippled up his spine, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Oh, God.

“He’s finished. He’s on his knees beside her. She’s looking up at him, eyes wide and scared, but hoping. That’s good, that’s real good. He smiles at her, and her stupid mouth quivers, but she smiles too. She’s afraid not to, she thinks he’s crazy. Too stupid to live. He’s bored; this isn’t as much fun as the last one. Maybe he can liven her up. He sticks her a little and she squeals like a pig, and the race is on. Around and around the mulberry bush.”

“Jesus God,” Dane said, his voice hoarse. “Marlie, stop it. That’s enough.”

She blinked and refocused on him, and the expression in her eyes made him want to cry. The pallor of exhaustion lay over her face like a clay mask.

“You have to catch him,” she said in a drugged voice.

“I know. I will, honey. I promise.”

She turned her face in to his shoulder and closed her eyes. Her body went limp in his arms. He looked down at her as she began breathing in a slow, heavy rhythm that signaled deep sleep. As quickly as that, she had slipped into unconsciousness. He wasn’t alarmed. After seeing her as she had been when he’d first arrived, this looked downright normal.

He sat there for several minutes, his face grim as he considered the ugly ramifications. Finally he got to his feet, with Marlie still in his arms, and carried her into the bedroom, where he carefully placed her on the bed. She didn’t move when he pulled the throw away and re-covered her with the sheet.

He refilled the cup with hot coffee, then resumed his seat and thought about what had happened tonight. He didn’t like any of it.

He glanced at the clock; it was after midnight. He called Trammell anyway.

The receiver was fumbled upward on the other end and he heard a very feminine “Hello?” at the same time as Trammell was saying, “Don’t answer that!” Evidently two beers hadn’t incapacitated him too much, and evidently the canceled date had been rescheduled.

Then Trammell got the phone away from his lady friend. “Yeah?”

Dane wasn’t in the mood to tease him. “Marlie had another vision tonight,” he said without preamble. “The same guy. She says he did another one.”

Trammell was silent for a shocked two seconds as the ramifications of it hit him, too. “Where?” he asked.

“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 one-timer, 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.