The Devil's Dream: Book One (12 page)

He typed in Allison
Moore and began processing the results. His eyes took them in and his
brain catalogued them quicker than his hands could click the
track-pad. He drank in all of the information the Internet held on
her. After a time, he reached for the remote on the bed and put the
television on mute. The press conference ended and now that he wasn't
both listening to the T.V. and reading off his computer, he could
pick up information faster.

Every picture, every
story, every status update—Matthew read it all, building a woman in
his head as close to the real person as humanly possible.

Hours passed without
Matthew slowing. When he encountered a dead end, he simply started
elsewhere.

There was an end
though. There was always an end to the accumulated knowledge on a
given subject. Ten hours in, he put his computer aside side and
closed the lid. Allison Kyra Moore, the woman tasked with catching
him. The woman with a husband named Jerry and a daughter named
Marley. Matthew nodded, looking at the television still showing its
images silently. There had been a lot written on Matthew over the
years, but he doubted Allison had done her homework as he had. She
knew what people told her about him; she knew what a book or so said.
She couldn't live inside his head, not like he could hers.

She thought she knew
which state he was in, but didn't know much else. There were quite a
few states to choose from, but she was smart enough to know he wasn't
on the west coast, not after his idiotic call to Rally. She knew he
was east, but she probably thought Boston instead of Daytona. Go
after the wife, not the child. The one closest to the murder.

He felt that old demon
rise in him, coming from the ashes that he had hoped were buried deep
in the Silo. The demon that said,
tell
them. Tell them where you are and let them try to catch you. They
paraded your son's death around television, paraded all those god
damn cops when they were found not guilty. They paraded you across
that TV too when you were caught. So let them know where you are and
let them try to find you. They won't be able to. Not this time.

He shoved the demon
away, knowing it would end him if he let it. That prideful lust for
glory, for the world to know that he wouldn't be stopped, that as
long as he lived here they had no say in what happened.

"Not today,"
he said to the silent television. "Today you keep your mouth
shut."

Tomorrow equipment
would arrive. The warehouse was ready, looking like a laboratory
rather than an industrial cleaning shop. What was he to do? Risk
that? Risk his son again? Matthew hadn't seen his face in twenty
years outside a photograph or memory.

"No. That part of
your life is over."

He pulled the blankets
up to his neck, hoping it to be true.

David Stewart marked
down the fourteenth truck on his paper. He waved the driver through,
closed the window to keep the heat from pushing further in, and
looked down at the clipboard. Fourteen trucks, one day. Was that what
the man wanted?

"You see a lot of
deliveries coming in this place, over a day or over a week, I want
you to call me. You work this shift every day, right?"

"Yeah," David
told him. The job wasn't working for The Ritz, but it allowed him to
keep the Internet on at home and didn't drug test, so he kept showing
up.

"Well, if you see
a lot of stuff coming in, big stuff, nothing small, I want you to
call me. Just call me and tell me where it's going. That's all you
have to do."

The man's car had
rental plates on the back and he wore a hat and sunglasses. Clean
shaven, but unable to really see much besides those large black
glasses hogging up much of his face. It was pretty clear he didn't
want anyone seeing him but David didn't really care what he looked
like. He did care about losing the job, because he liked weed and
didn't like pissing in cups which a lot of other jobs around Daytona
made you do—at least all the jobs that paid as much as his current
one: security guard at an industrial office park.

"A grand for a
phone call?" David asked.

"A grand. I give
you half now. I give you half when I show back up and you let me
inside. I don't pay, you don't let me in."

David thought it
through. A grand would buy...maybe four ounces of primo pot. Primo.

"You ain't going
to tell anyone?"

"Tell anyone what?
That I paid you a grand to tell me when some people entered this
place? No man, I'm good. It's my fucking money I'm spending."

"Yeah. Yeah. I'll
do it. When should I expect this stuff?"

The man looked out the
front window of his car then, at the gate to the industrial park in
front of him.

"I don't know, to
be honest with you. I think soon, though. Definitely within a month."

"Alright, man.
Where's the money."

A white envelope
emerged from the car's window. "The number to call is on the
inside. Don't lose it. You got it? You lose the number, you lose five
hundred bucks."

"I got it, man.
I'll call."

Fourteen deliveries in
one day. A lot of things came through here, things that needed
washing, things that needed mending, and things that need building.
Fourteen trucks that size didn't just roll through all the time
though, not heading to the same spot.

David pulled his cell
phone from his pocket and the white envelope from his wallet where he
had kept it since spending the five hundred dollars.

Someone picked up the
phone call after a few rings.

"I think whatever
you're looking for just arrived," David said.

* * *

Jeffrey kept the
windows down and let the air rush around him. His hat sat on the
passenger's seat, the glasses too. He would put those on soon, but
for now he just wanted to feel this freedom, this air blowing at
ninety miles-per-hour as he rushed down the highway.

Fourteen trucks sounded
like his man. Fourteen trucks sounded like old Matthew Brand was
getting busy indeed. It had been a long shot and an expensive one
too. There were twenty industrial parks in the Daytona area, and a
lot more outside of that. He figured Brand wouldn't want to transport
his cargo far once he did his damage, so Jeffrey went to all twenty.
He greased wheels in each place, or as many places as he could. Some
wouldn't budge and there wasn't a lot he could do about that. He had
other things in the works, but if a lot of shipments showed up out of
nowhere at one of these places, it could mean Brand had begun
working.

Now this stoner from
Red Isles Industrial Park had called him and told him he was
basically hitting the lottery. He'd laid out the money a week ago,
not knowing if it would work and how long it would take, but—

God
damn it, it had worked!

Jeffrey turned the
music up in his car, letting Tom Petty's ragged voice out into the
air around him.

He would write the book
and maybe, with a little luck and a lot of daring, Brand would see
his kid again.

Times were good,
indeed.

* * *

"You're sure they
all went to the same place?"

"Look at the
clipboard," the kid said to him, actually putting it through the
guard's window.

"Okay, okay. What
number was it going to?"

"A-forty-six."

"How long has it
been since the last delivery?"

"Two hours. The
last truck left about thirty minutes ago."

"And no one else
has been in?" Jeffrey asked.

"Not for that
area."

Jeffrey nodded. "Here
ya go," he said, handing another white envelope through the
window. The kid took it and opened it up, but didn't start counting.

"All right, you
want to go in? I can't let you into the building; I'd lose my job for
that, but I'll let you drive around."

Jeffrey nodded. "That's
fine. Open the gate."

It opened, slowly
pulling along the track that held it in place. Jeffrey drove his car
through. His heart wasn't racing and the excitement he felt on the
road minutes before had disappeared. Trepidation enveloped him,
because he knew that when he saw the warehouse, once he knew it was
Brand's, he wouldn't be able to turn back. The closer his car wheels
took him, the better he understood that he would be observing the
cheetah take down antelopes. He would be inside, not just trying to
find an opening.

A quick thought came to
him.
Jail time.

The idea came and went
since he had decided to hunt down a convicted serial killer and write
a book on him.

Jeffrey pulled his car
into a parking spot, looking at the large metal building in front of
him. A box, more or less, with a metal garage door separating
whatever lay inside from the world.

Jail
time.
He didn't know the rules to this and he hadn't asked
his lawyer. He'd been too busy getting down here, too busy casting a
net to think about this question. He could pull out his cell phone
right now and call that bitch F.B.I. agent, let her know he had done
all her work for her. The whole chase would probably end within six
to ten hours and he would go back home to his vodka and orange juice.
The book would be over. Brand
would die.

Those two phrases
replaced jail time.

The
book would be over. Brand would die.

Something very similar
to the Scales of Justice began in his head, with jail time on one
side, the book and Brand on the other. Other phrases were added as
necessary.
Aiding and abetting.
Fame. Criminal. Television circuit. Brand's son gone forever. Cop
killer.
He looked out at the building in front of him as
the scales weighed his strange justice.

In the end, it wasn't
even close.

Jeffrey got out of the
car, leaving the door open and the engine running.

The building stood
three stories high, with windows looking out on the second and third
stories, which wouldn't help Jeffrey look in. He walked around the
outside of the building, looking for doors. He found nothing. No
opening. The place was sealed.

That
means you can still leave. You haven't seen anything. Just get back
in the car, drive through David the Security Guard's domain, and head
home.

Jeffrey did go back to
the car, discarding those thoughts. He needed to talk to the night
security guard. He'd paid the man off earlier of course, in case the
deliveries came at night, but now he needed twenty-four hour access
to the park. He needed to be able to wait and watch, because Brand
would show up sooner or later.

* * *

Matthew handed his card
to the security guard, waited as it was scanned, and then the gate
before him opened. He put his car in drive and went forward, rolling
his window up.

Everything had arrived.
Two days, twenty five deliveries. It worried him, that many delivers
in such a short time span, but the other options were unacceptable.
Buying what he needed completely assembled would let the world know
where he was fast. The other option was to wait: stretch the
deliveries out over an entire year before he began his work. He spent
twenty years on this moment. Ten researching and ten in a cell. He
wasn't going to waste any more time, which eliminated that idea. So
the deliveries were necessary and if they caught him, if a pack of
police were sitting at his warehouse waiting on him, well then he
would meet his son in whatever afterlife came next.

He drove the road back
to his warehouse slowly, looking for anything that might not belong.
Everything was quiet, the street lamps casting their golden glow down
on the dark road. He saw his building ahead, and if cops were waiting
on him, they were doing an excellent job of hiding.

No, they hadn't found
him.

He walked from his car
to the garage door, typed into the electronic keypad holding the door
closed, and slid the door up. Metal against oiled metal, the sound
echoing out into the night. Matthew stood in front of his warehouse
and understood again—remembered, really—that this was his
destiny. That the huge boxes in front of him were why he was born.

Tears pricked his eyes
and he didn't wipe them away.

This was it. There
would be no other chances, no other escapes and no more luck. All the
years before this, from his time as a child studying to his last day
in that cell, all of it had been for this. To open these wooden
crates, take out the objects and put them together, then to create
the life that was stolen from him. Matthew Brand stood in front of
his kingdom.

He walked in, placing
his hand on the wooden boxes that held the tools he would use. There
were tools for birth here, tools for death, and tools for protection
in case anyone unwanted decided to show.

Soon, now.

Soon, Hilman.

* * *

Jeffrey had climbed a
damn tree and now spread out across one of the branches. He held on
like a child playing cops and robbers, trying to hide from the other
kids who would come and shoot him with imaginary guns. This wasn't a
game though and he wasn't a child. He was a grown man spying on
another grown man, and doing it in the most ridiculous way he could
imagine. There wasn't any other choice; he paid the cab driver who
dropped him off, paid the security guard another five hundred, and
then walked the half mile back into the industrial park. He looked at
bushes, behind corners, any number of places to try and keep out of
sight. Only the tree worked—high enough so no one would look at it,
close enough to make sure he could see anyone that showed up.

He kept headphones in
his ears and a Podcast playing on his phone, spending hours on the
tree. Sometimes he lay across the branch, other times he would sit
up, trying to keep his muscles from cramping. Hours passed and
Podcast after Podcast played.