The Devil's Dream: Book One (13 page)

The lights of a vehicle
approached and the noise in Jeffrey's ears ceased mattering. The
tired ache in his muscles disappeared. The lights, slowly winding
around the curve, became all important. An old Buick pulled through,
the street lamps not penetrating its windows, revealing only
blackness inside. It rolled right by the tree without slowing,
heading forward another hundred yards and stopping right in front of
the warehouse Jeffrey had come to watch.

"Here he is,"
Jeffrey whispered, pulling up the binoculars hanging from his neck.
He put them to his eyes and waited on the car door to open.

A bald man emerged from
it. Facing away from Jeffrey, he walked to the door, unlocked and
opened it.

Jeffrey let his breath
out, realizing he'd been holding it all in his lungs.

He watched the man walk
in, touching huge boxes that were as tall as basketball goals and as
wide as trucks. The man took his time touching, letting his hand run
along the wood as if it was a lover's face. He still didn't turn
around, didn't let Jeffrey get a look at his face—only the back of
his head.

"Just turn. Just
for a second. Show me it's you, Matthew."

He kept walking through
the warehouse, a glittering, metal room with bright lights that shone
down and illuminated everything. He walked slowly, his legs moving
with a grace that reminded Jeffrey of a butterfly landing on flowers
for a few seconds before taking off.

Eventually though, the
man walking through the warehouse, touching the boxes like they were
children instead of wood, did turn around.

Jeffrey Dillan saw
through his binoculars.

He saw Matthew Brand.

The
Devil's Dream

By Jeffrey Dillan

Chapter
7

The
blessing of Matthew Brand's life, perhaps a blessing for the world
given what he might have done otherwise, was that he did not witness
his son's death. Matthew saw Hilman in the morgue. He watched
Hilman's body descend into a hole in the ground and then watched
people pile dirt on it. All of that is horrible enough, but at least
he didn't see the boy die.

Hilman
Brand would have gone to Harvard. He said his end goal was to go into
politics, but he'd like to try his hand in medicine first. At the age
of seventeen, Hilman thought the most good could be done as a
politician. He wanted a fairer society even though he might have been
bit young to understand such things. The kid was bright, not
valedictorian in his high school class, but in the top five. He
worked hard and he genuinely enjoyed learning. Hilman was destined
for Harvard, both as a legacy and the adopted son of Matthew Brand.
Once there he planned on majoring in biology and he would have done
well. Bright kids with a love for learning and a willingness to stay
up late rarely performed poorly in school, or life for that matter.

Hilman
met a girl named Julie at Harvard—white like his mother and
father—with parents who didn't mind her interracial dating. The two
met his junior year and managed to stay together his senior year as
well. They thought his leaving for med school would be difficult, but
they didn't consider breaking up. She started her senior year while
he started Johns Hopkins Medical School. They saw each other once a
month and made love when they did, using a fierceness that only the
young and much missed can muster. She graduated and moved in with
him, working at a marketing agency. He began his residency and again
their time together was short, but they married anyway, and visited
with his parents on Thanksgiving and hers on Christmas. His dad, who
had been such a strong force in Hilman's life became less and less as
school moved on and his life with his wife grew. They spoke regularly
enough, every other week or so, both of them catching the other up on
what they were doing, and his dad was proud of his son. When he
completed his residency and passed his boards, Hilman took a picture
hugging his mother, his father, and his wife, and that was one of the
happiest days of his life.

He
went to work, taking very little time off for any kind of break.
Loans were nonexistent for Hilman—money had never been an issue—and
while he wanted to help those who had less, he knew how far removed
he was from their circumstances. Maybe both were reasons why he took
in people who couldn't afford his services, both trying to help and
issues with himself never having experienced poverty.

Hilman
grew older and had children with his wife. Their skin was light
coffee and they were beautiful. Hilman's father continued ripping
along, creating, inventing, and discovering. Hilman's medical
practice grew until at one point he decided that it was time to work
on his childhood dream. Politics. He found friends and relatives
willing to help and began the American Politician's Right of
Passage—grassroots campaigning. He was trying for a Senate seat,
the first time in twenty years the spot held no incumbent.

Hilman's
advantages were vast because his father was Matthew Brand. With the
name recognition came the ability to raise money easily. Being able
to say your adviser was the smartest man to ever live didn't hurt
much either.

Hilman
won the race and life changed again for him and his family. They went
to Washington D.C., moved into a new apartment and received a new
salary. His children, two of them at this point, went to a new
school. Hilman learned as fast as he could, meeting people and doing
his best to remember why he came to Washington. He was introduced to
the most important people in either party, and he attended their
dinners and get-togethers. Everyone wanted to invite him because
everyone wanted the possibility that Matthew Brand might show up at
one of their campaign events.

He
cosponsored legislation and his children grew older. Entering middle
school and high school, the world they knew was far away from the one
Hilman thought of helping in his younger years. The crux of his bills
always focused on the poorest in society though. He donated money to
charities like United Way and The Heifer Organization. His wife
became even more involved in the charities, serving on boards and
helping fund-raise throughout the year.

Four
years as a Senator and someone brought an interesting proposition to
Hilman. Would he be interested in a run for President? He spoke with
his wife and his kids about it; he brought his father and mother in
for their thoughts. Everyone said go for it. He had the legislative
history to make him look serious and didn't yet have the baggage that
comes with decades of serving in congress. Go for it. Run for
President. So he did. He started a year early, and he began the same
way he had his Senate campaign, by simply talking to people. He
talked to them about their wants and about what he could do for them.
He talked to the rich and poor alike, drumming up money from the rich
and taking what the poor could afford to give him—support. He moved
through the primaries dodging accusations; at one point someone even
saying Hilman was his father's Manchurian Candidate. For the most
part, like much of Hilman's life, it was smooth sailing on a large
boat. He made it through the primaries and a man who had grown from
an adopted black child found himself on a national stage debating a
white man in front of millions of viewers. He practiced for hours
before the debates, learning the methods his opponent would use to
discredit him, learning what he needed to say himself to discredit
his opponent. When the debate came, there wasn't a lot the other side
could do. Hilman's time had simply come. He won a majority of the
popular vote and became President of the United States of America.

All
of that was quite possible. He might even have had some pretty strong
accomplishments as President, perhaps keeping us out of wars that
other Presidents seem eager to jump into. The kid's future, at
seventeen years old, held infinite possibilities both because of his
father and himself.

Instead,
at five o'clock on a Friday evening, the sun was heading down from
its day long travels and Hilman was heading home. He walked on the
sidewalk, his pants not sagging horribly but a bit baggy. He wore a
large jacket and a hat with a flat bill. More than all of that,
Hilman, at seventeen wasn't a Senator or a doctor. He was a black kid
who dressed like a black kid.

Hilman
was heading to one of the best neighborhoods in New York, however the
area he walked through to get home wasn't it.

Two
cop cars pulled up and the kid who had a 4.0 in high school didn't
slow. Why would he? He had done nothing wrong, except for both being
black and walking through a less than desirable neighborhood.

See
them, if you can, the cops calling out to Hilman.

"Hey!
Come here for a second!"

Hilman
stopped, turned around and looked at the four cops, all wearing
bullet proof vests under their uniforms. They were looking for a
black kid, someone accused of rape actually, and what do you know?
The other guy had worn a big jacket the night the rape occurred.
Hilman looked at them, his head cocked slightly to the side, and then
with an arrogance he surely learned from his father, he turned around
and kept walking home.

"Stop!
Now!" Someone shouted, each of the cops reaching for their guns
as if he had turned on them instead of away from them.

They
ran up on the kid, weapons drawn.

"Put
your hands above your fucking head."

Hilman
smiled at them. An arrogant little grin that probably said a lot,
that he knew the differences between the four policeman and himself,
that he knew who was in the right.

Instead
of putting his hands above his head—which the media went on and on
about for a month afterward—

"Well,
had he just put his hands up, he'd be alive right now. You need to
listen to cops, they're not here to hurt you unless they think you're
going to harm them."

"A
black kid dressed like a thug and then refusing to listen to police,
what do you expect is going to happen?"

"The
young man, plain and simple, was resisting arrest. They didn't know
he had nothing in his pockets; they had to react as if he was an
armed criminal."

—
He
put his hands in the pockets of that large jacket.

The
police didn't wait for him to remove his hands. They let loose a
barrage of bullets on Hilman. His jacket exploded in a storm of white
cotton, sprays of blood misting out over the white pieces of fabric.
Bullets caught him in his face, neck, and torso. His hands came out
of his pockets then, flailing, holding only air. They let loose a
total of thirty-seven bullets between four men, and in the end,
Hilman fell to the ground dead. Out of thirty-seven released,
twenty-eight were removed from Hilman's body and eight more were
found to have gone straight through his tissues, entering and exiting
him.

Hilman
Brand could have been President. He had the family ties, the brains,
and the work ethic to make something like that happen. Instead he
died on a sidewalk with numerous punctures to his vital organs. He
died alone. He died scared. He died long before he should have.

Matthew thought he
understood how addicts felt. He knew how stupid it was, how dumb he
had to be to do this a second time. He'd taken precautions, as many
as he could, but that meant nothing when it came right down to it.
Encrypting his computer's IP address would help, but it wouldn't be
impossible to crack. It would be hard to do, but not impossible. His
encryption could be reverse engineered. No matter what he did,
someone might be able to undo it.

Still, he had his
headphones on and plugged into his computer. He was ready to use the
hotel's Internet connection to call his ex-wife.

To call Rally, his drug
of choice.

What the hell did he
have to say to her? What could she have to say to him? He knew the
answer revolved around nil, but it didn't matter, because he missed
her. Had they shot down his wife instead of his son he would be doing
the same exact thing he was now. He would be hunting the people that
killed her so they could give her life again. So yeah, he was an
idiot for risking everything to speak with her, but he couldn't help
it any more than he could stop this quest to speak with Hilman again.

He dialed the number
and listened to the phone ring in his ears.

Don't
let her answer.

Don't
let her answer.

But she did, because
the police would have made her.

"Hello?" She
said, her voice sounding tired. More, exhausted even.

"Hey, Ral."
Tears came to his eyes, sitting in the dingy hotel room he rented by
the week.

"You shouldn't be
calling me."

"I know. I can't
help it though."

"You're going to
end up dead this time, Matt. Especially if you keep doing stupid
things like this."

"That would be for
the best, right?"

A long pause came over
the line. "Yeah," she answered. "Probably."

"God, I love you,"
he said, the tears coming down his face.

"What are you
doing?" Rally asked.

"Just sitting
here."

"Where?"

He laughed. "Room
219, the Sheraton in Las Vegas. You should be able to find it by
traveling I-19 west from where you're at."

Another long silence,
but Matthew didn't feel any awkwardness in it.

"You know I'd tell
you if you promised not to turn me in."

"I know, but I
won't."

"Are they there
now?"

"They're not here,
but the phone's tapped. They're probably listening and trying to
trace you if they can."