Dream Man

Ivan Schaffer arrived, in the crime scene van. He unfolded his long, lanky body from behind the steering wheel as Dane and Trammell walked to meet him.

Ivan wasn’t in a good mood. He scowled at both of them. “I don’t know why I had to personally handle this one. I have good people on duty. Why did Freddie insist that I be here?”

Evidently Freddie had sensed something unusual all the way around, bless her. Dane wondered if her husband would break his nose if he kissed her. “This one’s special,” he told Ivan, helping him unload his kits and equipment. “For one thing, the scene’s untouched. You’re the first person in.”

Ivan halted. “You’re shitting me.” His eyes began to gleam. “That doesn’t happen.”

“It’s happening this time. Don’t expect it again in your lifetime.”

“What do I look like, an optimist? Okay, what’s the second thing?”

Trammell was coolly studying all the murmuring bystanders. “The second thing is, we think it was done by the same guy who did Nadine Vinick.”

“Ah, jeez.” Ivan sighed and shook his head. “God, I wish you hadn’t told me that. That’s big trouble, but I guess you already know that.”

“We’d thought about it. Is this all your stuff?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Okay, let’s see what we have.”

Dane called Officer Marbach to go in with them. A patrolman who had done that good a job deserved to be included. Marbach was young, not long out of training, and was pale under his tan. But he was steady as he detailed his actions for them, even telling them the body’s approximate distance from the front door.

“Can the body be seen from the street when we open the door?” Freddie asked, she and Worley having joined them.

Marbach shook his head. “There’s a little entry, with the living room to the right. I had taken one step in before I saw her.”

“Okay. Ivan, it’s your show.”

Ivan opened the door and went in. The rest of them followed, but stopped in the small entry hall and shut the door behind them. The television, tuned to an all-movie channel, was currently showing a Fred-and-Ginger. It was too loud, as if Jacqueline Sheets had been a little hard of hearing. Either that, or the sound had been turned up to drown out her screams. Ivan punched the power button and the screen went to black, filling the room with blessed silence. Dane and Trammell, standing in the entry, looked at the television. It was a thirty-five-incher, very modern and sleek, set on a pedestal.

None of them said anything. Ivan silently began his collection ritual.

From their viewpoint, only the upper half of the body was visible. She was nude, and her torso looked as if it had been savaged by a wild animal. The pattern of blood completely circled the couch, splattering over walls and carpet, and Dane remembered the odd phrase Marlie had used: around and around the mulberry bush. But it hadn’t been a bush, it had been the couch. Why had she used those words? Had they been something the killer had said, or thought? Had the bastard been amused by Jacqueline Sheets’s fight for her life?

The door opened behind them and Lieutenant Bonness came in. He looked at the gore and turned white. “Oh, Jesus.” The first scene had been more gruesome, but they had looked at it as a onetime deal, unconnected to anything else. This time, however, they knew better. Now they were looking at it as the work of a madman who would do this again and again, murdering innocent women and devastating the lives of their families and friends, until they could stop him. And they knew that the odds weren’t in their favor; serial killers were notoriously difficult to apprehend.

But this time, Dane thought grimly, they had something the killer couldn’t have anticipated. They had Marlie.

Worley said, “Dane, you and Trammell have a look around. You know what you’re looking for.”

“That’s why you and Freddie should do it,” Trammell said. His thoughts had run the same as Dane’s, but then they almost always did. “Just tell us what you find, and then we’ll have a look ourselves.”

Worley nodded. He and Freddie briskly began their methodical search of the house. Ivan summoned the fingerprint team, and they began dusting every hard surface with black powder. Soon the house was crowded with people, most of them standing about, some of them actually working. Eventually Jacqueline Sheets’s body was bagged and removed. Dane could hear the clamor of reporters’ voices outside, see the glare of television lights. They wouldn’t be able to keep the lid on it much longer, but he thought nothing much would be made of a second stabbing within a week. If there was a third one, though, no reporter worth his or her salt would let it pass as coincidence. Even if there were no similarities in the cases, there would be enough interest to warrant a “special segment,” whatever the hell that was.

Bonness took Dane and Trammell aside. “If it looks like the same guy did it—”

“He did,” Dane said.

“Everything’s just the way Marlie described it,” Trammell added. “Even the type of television set.”

“Any way she could have had any prior knowledge? I know, I know,” Bonness said, holding up his hands. “I was the one who originally thought she could help us, and you guys were the ones who thought she was an accessory, but this is a question that needs to be asked.”

“No,” Dane said. “We established that there was no way she could have been at the crime scene of the first murder, and I was with her last night. She called me when the vision started, and I drove straight to her house.”