The Devil's Dream: Book One (21 page)

His hand white knuckled
the butt of the gun, gripping harder each time she spoke of
him
,
of Brand. It was her, her husband, her fucking life that took Matthew
from him in the first place. Now she was going to sit here and judge
him?

"What right?"
He asked, his voice low but spreading across the silent house with
ease.

"This has nothing
to do with rights, only what I want. That's what I didn't know all
those years that I lived with Garret. That I could want things and
those things mattered. I want your son to come back, I want to help
bring him back, and then I want him to kill himself while you watch.
You took away my husband because he took away your child. I want to
take away your life because you're going to take away mine. Hopefully
it all works out."

Matthew stepped into
the kitchen, forgetting about the hot water or the cup of hot tea by
her hand. It took all of him not to pull the gun up and end her right
there in the kitchen, to put a bullet through her head and walk out
the front door while the F.B.I. scrambled to get inside. He kept the
gun pointed down, shaking in his hand.

Linda picked the tea up
and took a slow sip of it, dropping her eyes from Matthew as she did.
She swallowed and placed the cup back before looking up. "Let's
get this over with. Do what you came to do."

Matthew walked forward,
and with all the force he could muster, brought his gun down on her
forehead.

The
Devil’s Dream

By Jeffrey Dillan

Chapter
Seventeen

Andrew
Malone retired after he caught Matthew Brand. He wasn't an old man,
but he was old enough. He was also a hero. He stopped a villain that
the world had never had contact with before, one different from the
Hitlers and Stalins, one who lacked the lust of Gacy. One who could
have made Einstein stare in wonderment at the magic he performed with
physics. Andrew Malone arrested Matthew Brand on a Friday, the
weather just about as cold as it would get in Utah during the winter.
Snow piled up in the woods and Andrew Malone looked on through a pair
of binoculars at what had to be Brand's lair.

The
Unabomber would have admired the landscape. A log cabin in the center
of a forest. All the trees surrounding the cabin must have been
yanked from the ground years ago because only white, powdery snow
grew across the property. Still, Brand couldn't see what was coming
for him, not with the snow falling from the sky in such heavy
amounts. Two hundred armed F.B.I. agents hid in the forest
surrounding the house.

The
cabin was big, especially for being in the wilderness. Whether he
built it himself or bought it off someone, I was not able to find
out. There were papers saying both happened and in the end neither
panned out. The house, high enough for five stories but only having
one, could have been gifted from God directly to Matthew Brand for
all the records it held.

Guns
were aimed at the cabin with one man, Andrew Malone, holding the
bullhorn.

The
press told a story that made Andrew Malone a genius. Perhaps he was,
but not here. He didn't arrive at this house in the middle of the
Utah Mountains with forests surrounding it because of any extra brain
matter inside his head. He arrived because, from all evidence,
Matthew Brand wanted him to. Brand was always talking, to anyone that
would listen, bragging about his conquests. He spoke with people who
inhabited his victim's daily paths. He loaded videos on-line that
racked up hundreds of millions of views. All of his actions point to
a man who wasn't reckless, but wanted the world to see him for what
he was—a true genius, taking his vengeance on a society that took
all he ever cared about. The final cryptogram was hidden from the
press at first and sent directly to Malone's office; it took exactly
seventeen days to decipher—Hilman's age at his death. The police
arrived at the cabin on December 14th, the day of his son's birth.
The police reports show their arrival at 6:56 AM, five minutes before
Hilman's birth certificate confirms his time of birth. Brand decided
exactly when he wanted them to show, and even though he couldn't see
with the snow falling around him, he had to know they were out there.
He created that cryptogram with complete faith that the best
cryptographers in the world would have the F.B.I. out in the cold at
that precise time. Some might say it’s impossible, that only a
deity could manage such a feat. Still, there they were, exactly as he
wanted them. Either he planned it, or else the entire universe must
be nothing more than a coincidence.

Andrew
Malone arrived when he was supposed to and he screamed into the
bullhorn.

"MATTHEW
BRAND, YOU ARE SURROUNDED. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR."

The
noise echoed across the cleared woods, snow covering the ground as if
this was some naturalistic painting instead of a killing ground.

Even
now, it is still hard for me to imagine what Brand thought would
happen. Did he think he would somehow be able to get away? Did he
think he would be able to kill them? Or did he just want them to see
what he had been able to do? There was no way out of the corner he
put himself in, and yet, he orchestrated all of it—a suicidal
puppet master.

The
police looked on at the house seeing no movement from inside.

"BRAND,
WE'RE COMING IN," Malone screamed into the open land.

He
gave a hand signal and his men launched three rounds of tear gas two
hundred yards. Two smashed through windows and the other hit the side
of the house, letting out its poison there. They waited, watching as
the gas poured out of the broken windows, filling up the cabin. They
waited for Brand to come out, snot and tears running down his face,
screaming for relief.

Nothing
happened.

Finally,
the gas canisters emptied and all of the agents were left staring at
a house full of poison, but no idea of what else it contained.

"Move
in," Malone said and they did. A huge circle of federal law
enforcement officers enclosed on Brand's laboratory, taking sure
steps, wearing gas masks and pointing automatic weapons directly at
the log cabin in front of them. Everyone knew Malone wanted the man
alive. It was unsaid, but Malone wanted a picture with himself and
Brand on every newspaper in the country. This was a mission based on
capturing Brand, not killing him.

Men
knelt in the snow, their knees destroying the perfect landscape.
Twenty weapons surrounded the only the door into the place.

Four
men swung a battering ram and the wooden door was reduced to
splinters and stray logs. Gas poured out and the cops poured in.

They
ran through the single large room that contained everything a house
should, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bath, all of it in one open enclosure
like a studio apartment in downtown Chicago rather than a cabin far
away from civilization.

Sitting
in the middle of the room, on the floor, with giant metal canisters
surrounding him, gas permeating the air, and tubes of wires lining
the floor, Matthew Brand wore a gas mask himself, smiling beneath it.
Smiling and weeping, with a single switch in his hand. The switch's
wire wound away from him, meeting those other tubes. He looked on at
the army there to take him in, sobbing but unable to stop grinning.

Later,
they searched the house multiple times. They found no explosives, no
guns, no possible way to defend against the onslaught of federal
agents that he called there.

The
switch in his hand was to turn the whole thing on. To ignite the
canisters that held cops suspended in limbo between life and death,
to take their soul—as Brand would describe it to me later—and put
it into the glass enclosure that sat behind him. The thing was a
perfect sphere, all the wires from the room eventually leading to it.
Brand brought them there to see his final work, to see what they
hadn't been able to stop, and I suppose, what he believed they
couldn't stop even then.

His
thumb moved to the switch.

As
he prepared to begin a new life, the cops looking at the insanity
decided they weren't ready to see where exactly the universe ended.
Either as a hive mind, or because they heard one bullet fire before
any others, everyone in the room opened up. Bullets tore through
everything that had been so painstakingly created, ripping through
the large metal containers, shattering the glass globe, putting holes
into every wall and wire they came in contact with. Matthew's hand
moved the switch and he was met with the sound of twenty guns firing
at once. His finger continued trying the switch, back and forth, back
and forth, until the guns stopped and he sat there, with more brains
than anyone in the world, wondering how his son wasn't behind him.

Then
a gun butt connected with the back of his head, and the next thing
Matthew Brand saw was a jail cell.

Had Jeffrey not been
three screwdrivers deep, he probably would have stayed at his car. He
would have filled up quietly on the other side of the gas station,
and then waited for Brand to pull off. He wouldn't have tested his
luck.

The world now knew what
Jeffrey had known early yesterday morning.

He had followed Brand
as far as he dared, leaving the motel parking lot a few minutes after
Brand's car pulled off and staying far enough back that only Brand's
taillights could be seen in the distance. There was a real
possibility Jeffrey would lose him, but he could always find the
trail again in Florida. Instead, he kept up enough to see the
apartment complex Brand entered, and then Jeffrey went straight,
leaving the killer to do what he wanted. He didn't wonder too much
why Brand was there, it would come out soon. Whatever was happening
wouldn't be kept quiet for long. Instead, Jeffrey went to the first
bar he found open and ordered a beer, waiting an hour or so before
returning to the neighborhood. He went back for one reason, to see if
he should hang around Durham or head back to Daytona. If Brand's car
was there, chances were he would come back for it; if it wasn't,
Lucent would end up in the trunk and on a straight line back to
Brand's laboratory.

The beat up car was
there, street lights shining, looking lonely in the darkness.

Jeffrey parked his own
car in another lot in the complex and waited.

Brand returned that
night, around ten, and transferred something from one trunk to the
other. He drove off and Jeffrey followed.

He shouldn't have
opened the liquor bottle, either one really—the orange juice only
reminded him of the vodka and the vodka sung to him like the sirens
of old. He opened it though, setting both bottles—one after the
other—in his lap and poured himself the first screwdriver. He
looked up periodically during his bar tending to make sure he could
still see the rusted, gray car. Four cars ahead, driving at an even
sixty-five miles per hour. Jeffrey drinking for a solid two hours
before Brand pulled off the interstate to fill up.

Jeffrey shouldn't have
gone in. He should have pissed in an empty cup or pissed on himself.
Under no circumstances should he have followed the man into the
store.

But he did.

He watched as Brand
went to the cashier, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. The
wig he wore hung out of a hat, looking shaggy, and the sunglasses
kept anyone from being able to see those blue eyes that every
television in the country showed hourly. The radio played in
Jeffrey's car, and it sounded like someone had poured gasoline over
the entirety of the United States and threw a lit match onto it. All
stations interrupted whatever music or person was regularly scheduled
every fifteen minutes to update listeners on the manhunt.

Jeffrey walked past the
person who murdered four people last night and went to the bathroom.
He finished up, washed his hands, and turned to leave.

It was then, for the
first time in his entire life, that Jeffrey understood fear.

His hand pulled the
door open, and the wigged killer stood in front of him.

Brand's sunglasses were
on, so Jeffrey couldn't see his eyes, but both men looked at each
other. He should have just passed, just said
excuse
me
and walked on as if there was nothing to look at.
Instead, he held the door and stared, seeing Matthew Brand for the
first time in ten years.

Five seconds passed
before Jeffrey's alcohol saturated brain understood the mistake in
near perfect clarity. In those five seconds, his life changed
radically.

"I'm sorry,"
he said, dropping his eyes to the floor and making a side stepping
motion around Brand.

The man didn't move,
but let him pass.

Jeffrey walked as fast
as he could without running, his head down, not turning around to see
if Brand was following him. He found his car, started the engine and
left the parking lot, just barely glancing back to see Brand standing
at the gas station's door, watching his car drive away.

Jeffrey pulled off
miles down the road, after having driven at ninety for ten minutes or
so. His hands were shaking too bad to grip the wheel any longer. He
pulled into a deserted grocery store, opened his door, and puked up
all the booze intended for his liver. He kept gagging long after all
the liquid ran across the ground, feeling the rush of stomach acid
working its way up his throat. He pulled both his feet out from the
car and put them on the ground, dropping his head between his knees.

Life was over.

There wasn't anything
else left to do but head back to California, go inside his mansion,
and wait on Brand to show up. He wouldn't try to pretend that he had
somehow eked by without being noticed. Sunglasses or not, both men
looked directly into each other's eyes and knew the other.