The Devil's Dream: Book One (10 page)

Jerry put the phone in
his right hand, listening until Marley was out of earshot.

"Hey," he
said.

"What's going on?
What do you need her to get out of the room for?" Allison
answered.

Jerry closed his eyes
and leaned back into the couch. "This isn't working, Allison."

A pause came across the
phone instead of his wife's words.

"What do you
mean?" She asked.

"Marley. She's at
an age where you leaving isn't looked at as normal anymore, an age
where she's seeing that other girls' Moms aren't heading out every
few months on their job. She needs you here with her. I can't be a
mother and a father, Allison. I don't know how, and the next five
years are as crucial as any. If you stay gone, what if she shows up
here with a boyfriend and a positive pregnancy test when she's
fifteen?"

"Is this a joke?"

"No," he
said.

"What do you want
me to do? Leave work and come home because you're worried that me
being gone for a few weeks might cause her to become a teenage
parent?" The civility was falling away like snow at the
beginning of an avalanche.

"This isn't a
joke. You know what she was doing today when I walked into the living
room? She was pulling the blinds down and looking out at the street
because one of the kids at school told her Brand might come here to
get us. I told her that wasn't possible, but what the hell do I
know?"

Silence rather than the
anger followed. He couldn't even hear Allison's breathing over the
phone.

"How long does
this go on for? Not this case, but all of them? How many years before
they'll give you a steady desk? I mean, would you even take it or are
you really fine with this?"

"I thought we both
were," she answered. "I thought we both made that decision
years ago."

"It might be time
to rethink it. You can't answer my questions. You can't tell me when
this will be over, none of it, and that's not fair to Marley. She
hasn't asked yet, probably because she isn't understanding that far
into the future, but she will one day, and then what do I tell her?
Well, babe, we agreed before you were born that your mom was going to
run around with her job as long as she wanted and I'd stay here with
you."

"You decide to
bring all this up now? When I'm at the cusp of doing something really
big here, you bring up our daughter and have the nerve to say
something like that to me. It's not fair, Jerry."

"Is it fair to
Marley?"

"You couldn't wait
another month? You couldn't wait a goddamn month until this is over
and bring it up then?"

He opened his eyes and
leaned forward onto his knees. He didn't care if she was angry. He
didn't care if she thought he was being unfair, and he didn't care if
he actually was. He cared about Marley and about her complete lack of
control in this situation. She couldn't even call her mother when she
wanted. Marley had no choices here, except to listen to her parents
because they 'knew' best.

"In another month
Marley might not even be asking to call anymore. Is that what you
want?"

"Fuck you."

"What do you want
then?"

"I just want to do
my job for a little bit longer and then we can talk about all this.
That's what I want," she said.

"So you want
Marley and me to go on hold for a little while?"

"I want you to
keep up what we agreed until I can talk about it some more. Is that
too much to ask?"

"I don't know,
Allison. Maybe it is."

Matthew stood at the
side of the window and peered through the small break between the
wall and the blinds. He stood extremely still, not even a single
muscle twitching involuntarily. The police car didn't move, and
neither did the people inside. Street lights shone down every few
dozen feet, but other than that the world outside was dark. All was
at peace.

The house, too. A
single light burned in the hallway, a night light plugged in at the
bottom of the wall. Matthew had made his way through the near black
house silently.

The police outside
weren't asleep but they weren't exactly alert either. Matthew
imagined they were doing this because they had been told, not out of
any real sense that he would show up. Matthew looked far and long to
make sure they were the only police around, not wanting to be lured
in only to have a trap sprung on him.

He walked a mile to the
house, creeping through back yards and different neighborhoods. No
barking dogs and no insomniac neighbors heard him. Perhaps the years
spent unable to move in a gas induced coma had made him silent, or
perhaps he had always been this quiet, he didn't know.

He stood next to the
bed of a young boy with brown hair and a face that still carried baby
fat. The boy slept on his side, blankets kicked off his feet, and one
leg curled up underneath him. On the wall opposite the bed a sign
hung that said 'Jason's Toys' and beneath it a trunk.

So this was Jason
Welch.

Well
met.

Matthew moved away from
the window and to the side of the crib, looking down on the boy. He
reached in and rubbed his hand through the child's disheveled hair, a
smile growing across Matthew's face. He used to rub Hilman's hair the
same way.

"You'll have a
chance to meet him soon, Jason."

He walked from the room
and down the hall; his footfalls sounding more like feathers falling
than feet. The door to the room he wanted stood slightly opened and
maybe that was God shining down on him, because Matthew wouldn't have
stopped even if he had to turn the knob and open the door
himself—possibly waking the inhabitant up with unnecessary noise.
Matthew put the back of his hand on the door, pushed, and listened
for a creak. He wouldn't run if so; he would only be more alert. He
wouldn't run if the devil himself was inside the room with a smile
and a hard-on.

The door swung open and
no sound came.

Matthew Brand stood
next to Joseph Welch and his beautiful wife.

He approached the bed
with the same stillness as outer-space. This wasn't a boy below him,
but a grown man. Did he remember life twenty years ago? Did he
remember what the world seemed like under Clinton's presidency? Did
he remember life when his father was accused of murder and then set
free without even a reprimand? No. What this man knew of it he had
read in newspapers or been told. Matthew Brand might even be a myth
to him, someone who once existed but no longer did. Someone in a
distant past who no longer mattered, who had done his damage and was
now erased.

That's what no one
understood. Not his ex-wife. Not the man on this bed. Not the
politicians who had decided it would be best to freeze him like a
piece of meat in case they ever needed to thaw him for his brain.
They thought, somewhere in their heads—even if they wouldn't admit
it—that Matthew Brand had been apprehended and his mind's reign was
over. They thought that the world controlled him just as it did
themselves. They thought man didn't bend the world, that the world
bent man. That Matthew Brand had been tamed and his will finished.

They didn't understand
and how could they? His will wasn't theirs. His mind wasn't theirs.
They saw the world as it was and he saw it as it would be—a setback
was not the same as being stopped.

The boy he'd seen
twelve years ago in a bed very similar to this one had grown up into
a strong man. One with a family that probably loved each other. Let
them love, then. For a few more days. Let them get all their love out
into the world, or as much as they possibly could, because love—for
them—would end very soon.

* * *

"Yeah, I wouldn't
call it lying, Agent Moore. I would call it protecting my interests.
One can't be too careful around cops today, if you hadn't gotten that
memo."

"Yeah, well, I
think a judge would call it lying and I think he might have some
sanctions for someone obstructing justice."

"Oh, goodness. I
keep forgetting how just you are, Agent Moore. I keep forgetting that
you're on the side of the good guys, practically a knight—albeit a
female knight—riding around on your white stallion prepared to
protect the people. By the way, have you happened to find out where
our friend, Mr. Brand, is hiding?"

"Your notes will
be at the address you gave me?"

Jeffrey heard the
woman's voice change. Good. He wanted it to change. She thought of
herself as the shot-caller and everyone else here to take orders. She
wasn't actually in charge of shit and at least part of her knew it.
Matthew Brand controlled things right now and that was why she should
shut up about obstruction of justice charges. She might be able to
get him on it, but it would be a long fight and in the end Brand
would have cut up a dozen people.

"I don't know,
which address did I give you? My mind's fuzzy from the flight,"
Jeffrey smiled into the phone, wishing the bitch on the other side
could see it.

"I assure you this
isn't a joke, Mr. Dillan."

"And I assure you,
Agent Moore, this whole investigation is going to be one of the
biggest jokes in the history of law enforcement. You'll find my notes
at the address. Now, my turn. What do you have for me?"

There was a pause on
the other side of the phone. Jeffrey took a second to reorient
himself, actually looking out the windows of the car instead of
driving on auto-pilot. Palm trees and rain, which wasn't exactly what
he wanted. His windshield wipers sent the water droplets flying off
his car, but more replaced them immediately. Summer in Florida wasn't
all glamour, despite popular conception. Afternoon showers all summer
long and Jeffrey had driven right into one. It would make a good
opening to the book. In a life intent on finding happiness, full of
good times and noodle salad, rain had come again.

"Right now we
think he could be heading to six cities. Realistically, four. All of
them across the east coast."

"What are they?"

"Boston, Durham,
Atlanta, and Daytona."

The large stone sign
written onto the grassy side of a bridge, huge like the Hollywood
letters, flashed in Jeffrey's mind—'Daytona Beach'.

"Why?"

"Family members
live in all of those cities. If what his ex-wife told us is true,
then he's going back to work. We didn't try much rehabilitation on
him in that cell, so it would make sense."

"What do the
police presences look like in those cities?" Jeffrey asked. This
mattered, the rest were just questions to figure out what they knew.
If cops were crawling around the city like ants on a carcass then
things were going to be much harder for both Brand and Jeffrey.

"We're trying to
keep it strong but quiet, behind the scenes. We don't want to scare
him into hiding."

"Well, I'm pulling
into my little vacation resort right now. We'll have to continue this
conversation later. Please feel free to call whenever, Agent Moore."

He hung up the phone
without waiting to hear anything back.

Jeffrey parked the car,
looking around at what he had called a resort. There were palm trees,
all of them sticking out of the gray asphalt. Nothing else at this
place resembled anything of a resort. The motel in front of him had
rooms where the doors faced the parking lot rather than inside
hallways, and Jeffrey knew that the doors would open with old metal
keys instead of plastic cards. This is where he would write his book,
and that was fine with him. He didn't want the ability to order room
service or little drinks with umbrellas being brought up to him every
hour. Here, if he wanted hooch, he'd have to go out and get it
himself. Plus, drinking in a shit hole like this was just depressing.

He was in the right
city, now he needed to find out where the grandson lived. Then he
would just wait. Sooner or later Brand would show up and if Jeffrey
looked a little harder than the cops, he would see him.

The book would sell,
Jeffrey understood that. His agent understood it too. The only thing
that troubled them was the potential for backlash at what would
transpire. Jeffrey was going to watch it happen. He'd tell the story
second by second, writing it down, and looking on as people died.

Jeffrey opened the car
door and stepped out into the rain.

Who was he to stop
someone like Brand? Who was anyone to attempt halting perhaps the
greatest experiment in Earth's history? A man had dedicated his life
to bringing back someone he loved, and just because Jeffrey had the
ability to report him, tell on him, he should? He had already thought
about what he would say on the talk shows, on the news programs, in
front of a grand jury if it should go there. It was the police's job
to catch criminals; it was Jeffrey's job to observe what they did.
More, this wasn't a criminal like Charles Manson, this was a man who
loved what he had lost—and if no one else in the world could deny
him that, which apparently they couldn't—who was Jeffrey to do it?
A mere writer with one book to his name. No, he wouldn't sacrifice
genius for the world's morality.

When photographers went
out into the wild, intent on capturing the safari in their lenses,
they didn't interrupt nature. They were there to observe, just like
Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Dillan had
balls, without a doubt, but Allison thought he may have overestimated
how big they actually were. She asked about the files' location
because she wanted to test his arrogance, not that she had any doubt
of their location—they had all been picked up five hours before she
even called Dillan.

He wasn't quite on
Dali's level of conceit, but close. She liked that because it made
him predictable. She knew he had taken quite a large stash of files
with him on his 'vacation', the agents reading through them were
already noticing huge gaps. She could think of a few reasons why he
would take those files, but light reading wasn't one of them.