The Devil's Dream: Book One (19 page)

"I ain't goin'
back in there," he said, smiling.

It took three years.
Three years of living in another world, a world of feelings that felt
like an alien species coming down to enslave her rather than
something that her mind should have processed naturally. Three years
of meetings and tears. Three years that weren't simply missing from
her life, but had effectively ended it. She was born again when she
left the institution.

In Linda's previous
life, she wouldn't have been able to even look at Matthew Brand. She
would have cowered in fear and begged him to not hurt her if he
showed up to claim her. She didn't know why the man in Florida,
Joseph Welch had wanted to see Brand, but regardless of his reasons,
she felt the same.

The police didn't want
Linda to have that chance. They wanted him to show but only so they
could apprehend him. Linda wanted him apprehended too, but she wanted
just a small chance to speak with him first. Because she was still
angry, at him, at Garret, at herself (although she didn't think she
hated herself any longer). Jeffrey Dillan wrote a book that explained
a side of her husband she never understood and a side of this killer
she thought impossible. So she wanted to talk to him, and tell him
that she might understand why he was doing this, but that he would
never have her. That she didn't allow anyone to walk over her
anymore; Linda fought too hard during those three years to cower now
because a hardship reared up from the darkness of her past.

That's what she wanted
to tell him. The same thing she wanted to tell Garret when she was
dead and at the white, shining gates of God's Kingdom.

You
can't control me
.

* * *

Allison watched Linda
Lucent walk down the steps and to her car.

"She just keeps
going to work every day as if nothing was out of the ordinary. When
she arrives, we have someone follow her up the elevator and sit on
the floor with her. Not directly in sight, but near the elevators."

"No one near the
stairs on the other side of her floor?"

"No. Normally the
other person remains in the car in case he needs to pursue."

"Put someone on
the stairs leading to her office. Go ahead and call it in now, I'd
like them there when we arrive."

Allison waited while
the cop in the front seat did as she asked. This woman was like a
tank, just going to bulldoze her way to hell's gate if she wasn't
careful. Allison admired it, but thought it probably—in the end—the
dumbest trait one could have. Complete belief in what she did,
regardless of who told her differently. If Allison wasn't here, this
woman would be dead in a day, and Linda Lucent would never, ever
think about thanking her for that service.

Lucent's car started
and pulled from the driveway, so Allison's—with two police in the
front seats—followed.

"You've seen
nothing else?" She asked for the third time.

"Nothing. The
house is silent twenty-four hours a day. No one in besides her, no
one out besides her. The guys in the back report the same."

"They're hidden,
right?"

"Yeah. Using that
fancy new digital camouflage."

Everything was pretty
tight. Unless she put a cop in Lucent's car, there wasn't much else
she could do to protect the woman. Now, she needed Brand to show up.
To make his grand appearance trying to outsmart the F.B.I., Allison,
and almost every piece of law enforcement the country possessed. She
thought Dillan would turn out right. Brand wouldn't be able to
resist. There was something in him that wanted to be known. Since a
child, he'd been told he was the greatest thing to ever grace Earth,
that no one could stop him if he wanted something. Told at eighteen
he was a disappointment because he hadn't changed the world yet. So
this? Fooling a group of cops? It would be too simple.

"You're sure she's
going to work?"

"Unless she's
changing her routine from the rest of the week, yeah. This is the way
she goes and the time she goes at."

Allison looked around
at the small roads of Durham. Stoplights and stop signs and gas
stations advertising the two for one special on two-liter cokes.

"What if a car
hits us?" She asked.

"Excuse me?"
The cop in the passenger seat asked. She couldn't remember his name,
would have to look at the tag on his shirt when they got out of the
car. They’d explained he was only on this beat for the day, the
normal cop on his day off.

"What if a car
were to hit us right now? Just plow into our side? Who would follow
Lucent then?"

"No one,"
Manning said from the driver's seat.

"That's got to
change as well. We'll need two cars on her. One like us, up close,
and one coming from much further behind. If Brand got some idea out
of a movie and decided to just take us out with an armored truck,
there wouldn't be anything stopping him from pulling away and going
after her next. Can you have a car arranged for the ride home this
afternoon?"

"We should be able
to."

"You ever have a
ride along with an agent before, Overton?"

That was his name.
Overton. Fred Overton.

"No, my first
one," he answered.

"They like to tell
us what to do," Manning said, glancing in the rear view to smile
as he said it. Allison smiled back for a second before her eyes found
Lucent's car in front of them again.

* * *

Matthew knew two things
were true about cops. They were all the same when they wore the badge
and they were all human beings, as different from the half that wore
the badge as ants from elephants, when the badge came off. When they
wore it, the world looked like one large felony, ready to be arrested
or gunned down if the moment arose. When the badge sat on their
nightstand, they had financial fears and cared about who won the
Super Bowl just like the rest of the country. When the badge was off,
they were normal citizens.

The thing that occurred
to Matthew on his ride to Durham, was that if the cops were busy
watching everyone else, who was busy watching the cops? The answer
was obvious. No one. No one would ever watch the cops because Matthew
wasn't after cops anymore. He was after the cops' families. The cops
were the protectors, the ones that no one needed to worry about. The
realization, albeit juvenile and something he should have seen long
before, made Matthew understand how this all would happen. It was a
get out of jail free card that would only work one time. Afterwards,
that game was over.

Also, there weren't a
lot of other options.

Linda Lucent, for all
practical purposes, was as locked down as the people hidden in hotel
rooms waiting for this to end. Twenty-four hour surveillance,
multiple people on her at all times in multiple places. There was no
back door entry to this house; that had been a one-and-done too.
Linda was poor bait to anyone that possessed even a brain stem,
because the risk of capture was too high. Impossibly high. Matthew
couldn't stop seeing the reward though, even as he followed her to
work and followed her home, watching the police and detecting no
discernible way to get around them. Their eyes were so transfixed on
Lucent that they wouldn't miss a feather falling from the sky if that
feather didn't belong, if a bird had not flown above them just
seconds earlier. He was the only one watching the watchers though.
Not even the F.B.I., this Allison Moore, had done anything to make
sure they were safe. All eyes, maybe in the collective country, were
watching what happened with Linda Lucent.

So at four in the
morning, Matthew Brand walked up to the steps in front of Robert
Horner's apartment. The sun still rested below the horizon and the
entire complex was dark. Matthew stood there for a few minutes,
looking at the door, deciding if this was the only way. He ran
through calculations in his head, running plans through formulas that
ended in probabilities of success. Every one he found, everything he
could see, ended in a lower chance than what he was about to attempt.
He could see no way around it. Everything ended in disaster. Except
this. This kept him out of prison, out of a gas chamber, and out of
the realm of picking strangers on the street. To get where he needed
to be, he had to start here, in front of this door. To get his son
back, there was no other place in the world he could be.

He didn’t want to do
this, didn’t really want to murder someone that wasn’t directly
related to the web of Hilman’s death, but there were no other
choices to make. For Hilman, unfortunate deaths had to happen. Even
this one.

He pulled the two
pieces of metal from his pocket and put them in the deadbolt. A few
minutes later, he felt the near silent slide of the bolt working its
way backward. He took the metal pieces to the knob, and listened as
the door unlocked completely.

Matthew stepped inside,
cool air rushing his face, masking the mugginess outside. He closed
the door behind, hearing the barely audible click and nothing else in
the apartment. Horner's work shift started in five hours. He would
wake in three, go to the gym for a hard workout and then head back
here to put on his blues and the badge that rested somewhere in this
house. Matthew placed the two pieces of metal into his pocket and
pulled out another—much different than the other two. This one a
razor blade and not made for picking locks.

He crept through the
apartment, passing the living room, the kitchen, and finally entering
the hallway that led to the bedroom where Horner slept.

The man's only crime
was his job. Which was to say, he had committed no offenses here.
Matthew breathed silently in the dark hallway, seeing the open door
before him. Time was short and growing shorter by each breath.
Either
do it or get out of this apartment.

Matthew walked down the
hallway quickly, his feet sure and silent. No sounds from him or
anything else, except the man breathing in his sleep.

Ten feet away.

Eight feet.

Five.

Three.

Then Matthew was there,
standing over a man who would help bring his son back. In the end,
nothing else mattered.

He brought the blade
down across Robert Horner's throat, a deep incision that left no
possibility of a flesh wound. He dragged it through the skin and
connective tissues, going deep to slice the vocal chords too. Blood
spurted up in long, warm streams, landing on Matthew's face, causing
a stark contrast with his strained, pale skin. He didn't pull the
blade out, but dug in deeper, cutting through all resistance.
Robert's eyes blurted open, his mouth shrieking in pain that no one
would hear because he could no longer speak. Instead, a gurgling
noise came from his mouth, followed by the same dark flow of blood
that ran from his neck.

Matthew pulled the
blade out with a jerk, splattering blood against the wall behind him
as his hand flung back.

A few more seconds of
gurgling.

A few more pumps of
blood as Robert's heart finally got the message that Robert was,
indeed, dead.

Matthew looked down at
his work, the first work he'd ever done not directly in his son's
name, not directly in retribution for Hilman's murder. A life taken,
one that wasn't at fault. Different than the child because the child
showed another man what real pain felt like. That child was the
eventual progeny of a murderer. This man, he'd only been assigned the
wrong case and happened to live alone. No one would look for him
tonight. No one would look for him until Linda Lucent was missing,
because people didn't look very hard for low level beat cops, and
Robert would be forgotten about.

"I’m sorry,"
Matthew said, his hands at his sides. "I am. It was…necessary.”

If this brought Hilman
back, if it brought him a step closer to talking to his son, then the
world could burn around him. The entirety of the human race could
fall if that was what was necessary. He brought the hand not holding
the blade to his face and roughly smeared both the blood away.
This
was necessary. Even if he didn't want it, innocents might
need die so that Hilman could live.

Matthew walked away
from the body to the closet, opening the door and turning on the
light as he walked in. He saw the beautiful blue of a policeman's
uniform hanging in front of him. He undressed, showered, and after
cleaning his razor, made some alterations to the wardrobe. When he
finally dressed, he was undoubtedly a Durham police officer. He
wasn't Robert Horner, but he was a cop.

Now, in the patrol car,
the other cop was making a joke and Matthew laughed along with it.

"They like to tell
us what to do."

A few seconds later,
with everyone silent, the cop in the front seat said, "I'm just
giving you a hard time, Agent Moore. We'll get the second car out
here by this evening at the latest."

"No harm, no
foul," she said from the back.

Matthew found this
particular agent, this Allison Moore to be an interesting creature of
sorts. He thought she must have made a good manager, if a poor
detective. She saw the weaknesses around her, and fixed them without
angering anyone.

"Do you think he's
coming?" Matthew asked.

"He's too smart.
He's not showing up here with all of us around," the cop next to
him answered. "The problem is, as soon as we go back to our
everyday lives, he'll strike then."

"I'm not sure,"
Moore said. "I think he will come. Soon, too."

"Well, he won't
make it very far if he shows up here. I just hope we don't have to
kill him before we cuff him."

Matthew rode along,
watching the car in front of him, seeing the woman's head turn this
way and that as she navigated to work. How many years had she been
allowed to live while his boy rested in the dirt? Such a weak waste
of humanity, and yet all these resources were being used to protect
her, even now. He wanted to scream at the cop next to him, tell him
to pull up next to her and Hilman be damned, he'd fire a few rounds
into the car and be done with the heifer. He would then have to fire
a few rounds into everyone in his car and somehow find his way out of
downtown Durham drenched in blood.