The Devil's Dream: Book One (25 page)

How many times have we
spoken on the phone rather than in person? For how many years?
Fifteen? Five before Marley and ten after. When I should be holding
you at night, I'm curled up with our dog. There are worst things in
life, for sure, but it doesn't make any of this right. You were gone
192 days last year, do you realize that? One hundred and ninety two
days that your daughter didn't see you and that I slept alone. For
what? A bigger paycheck? Upward mobility with the all-important
F.B.I.? You sacrificed all those nights and days for those two
things, and more, you sacrificed me as well. I love you, Allison, for
who you were and who you are. I love you for your tenacity; I love
you for your dedication to the things you care about, but I can't
keep watching myself and our daughter falling further and further
behind to that dedication.

I think if Marley
wasn't here, if it was only you and I, then I could put up with this
forever. I could go to my job every day and not need you at home
every night. I could accept life that way and I could probably even
enjoy it. I won't sit here and watch it happen to Marley; I won't
watch her grow accustomed to the people in her life not being there
when she needs them. She wasn't even upset when you didn't come to
her chorus recital last week. I didn't say anything because...well,
why? To make you depressed? To hurt you?

She wasn't upset,
Allison. She accepted it as a course of nature: that her mother
wouldn't be there. I didn't even have to say anything; she didn't
mention it and neither did I. We rode home, her smiling and asking me
for McDonald's. I was barely able to sleep that night. That's what
this family has become. Mom is away and Dad will have to suffice.

I don't care in the
slightest about Matthew Brand or the cops he could possibly kill. I
didn't care when it first happened, and if anything, I care less now.
I don't care whether he lives or dies; I don't care whether anyone
else on the case does either. This man has taken away my family, has
broken it apart. I should hate him, probably, but I don't. He's
showed me what this is, our marriage, our family—it's a nuisance to
you.

I'm not saying you
don't love us, but I am saying if society didn't say we needed to
marry and have children, you would have been perfectly fine coming
home to an empty house and living out of hotels for half of the year.
You would have been content marrying your job and chasing these
criminals all over the country until you retired or died. We're
something that's nice to have when you're home, when you're at your
desk job, waiting on the chase to take off again—but once you're
out there, we don't matter. You don't want us to bother you. I don't
say this as any sort of insult, only as the truth as I see it.

I won't ask you to come
home, to give all of that up. That wouldn't be fair to anyone, not
me, not Marley, and not you. Would you hate your life? I don't know.
Would you resent me? Probably. That's not what marriage is; that's
not what love is. You give, when you're in love. So I'm going to give
you the life you want and do my best to give Marley the life she
needs. You and I have to separate, and I'll take Marley with me. She
won't expect Mom to come home because Mom won't live with her. I
don't want any long, fought out custody battle. You take her when
you're home; I'll take her when you're not. Hell, when you're home,
we can still do things as a family if you want.

I'm just not going to
leave her in this house anymore, a house where her mother should be,
but isn't.

If you decide you'd
rather have us than your career, I'll come back. I'll bring Marley
too. All I want more than anything else in life is to have us
together, as a family.

Your father told me
this might happen, after we were engaged but before we married.

He said, "You
won't be able to tame her."

"What do you
mean?"

"She's wild,
Jerry. Not like a shark, but maybe a wolf? A wolf's relatives are
tamed daily by humans. Your kids probably won't be like her, if you
raise them right. I won't say I raised Allison wrong, not by a long
shot, but there's something in her that won't let her quit. That
makes her reach and reach and reach. You won't be able to cut that
out of her, I don't think. Not you or your children, and that could
lead for a rough time down the road. Do you understand what I'm
saying?"

I told him I did and I
loved you, so that didn't matter to me.

I didn't have any clue
what he was talking about. I was in my early twenties and about as
knowledgeable as a Coke can.

I love you, Allison,
but I can’t continue on like this.

* * *

Jerry tore the paper
from the notebook, folded it into thirds, and set it down next to
him. He felt like he should be crying, but he wasn't. The images of
the destroyed restaurant had been replaced with smiling kids running
over a beach, an advertisement for a resort on some Caribbean island.

Was he going to leave
the letter for her?

Was he really going to
talk to Marley tomorrow, begin picking up their things and head to
his parents?

Was that really what
was best for his daughter?

He didn't know the
answers to any of those questions. The letter hadn't been completely
truthful. He didn't want to leave Allison at all; he was terrified of
it. He wanted her to wake the fuck up and see what she was missing
out on. He wanted her to come home at night and eat dinner and talk
and
live
outside of
her work. Jerry was angry with her and with himself for how far they
had let this go. Half a year spent on the road, and neither of them
really even spoke about it. It had somehow just become normal. He
wanted her to read the letter and he wanted her to come find him and
Marley; he wanted her to say that she wouldn't leave anymore, that
she would be the mother and wife they both needed.

Marley and he would
leave. Tomorrow, the day after at the latest. When Allison called, he
would answer and tell her what he'd done, tell her about the note.
Then he would wait and hope this gamble paid off. Hoped that she
realized what was more important: her family or her job.

The fire had nearly
consumed the building. Not much remained, and it would take dental
records to make sure the body Allison stood over was the person she
believed it to be. The only reason she thought the charred body,
whose head sat turned around on its spine, was Rally Allen was
because her husband watched the whole thing from the cop car at the
curb.

They had stayed at the
goddamn curb.

Allison couldn't get
over that. The two police officers hopped over the barrier between
the sidewalk and the patio, tried to bring the couple with them, and
when she refused, they simply ran with the man and let her walk into
the building. Allison would lose her job for this, probably tonight
or tomorrow, but she would make sure those cops in that car did too.
The woman lying at her feet, looking like some kind of barbecued meat
left far too long over the grill, deserved better than this. Rally
had tried to do their job for them. While they hid in their car and
watched the building burn, she had come inside and tried to kill the
man intent on killing the rest of the world.

They taped off the
building, but the city outside wasn't going to allow any privacy. The
network vans were here, all of their star reporters standing in front
of the smoking shack and giving reports of Matthew Brand's newest
strike. He had come for his wife and now she was dead. Matthew Brand?
Oh, he walked off with barely a knife wound to his stomach. No
sightings of him anywhere. Her boss, Art Brayden, was flying in now,
and when he got here, Allison would be relieved of her duties. She
showed up here for two reasons: appearances and Rally deserved
it—there wasn't really any use in her being here. She wouldn't be
allowed to do much else, and to be honest, she didn't know what else
to do. She was at a loss, hopelessly outmatched. They all were.
Malone had been given Matthew on a plate and everyone in the bureau
knew it. They might bring him in to consult now, if for nothing else
than to quiet down the growing furor. What would he be able to do?
What would any of them be able to do? The man they were after came
and went like a ghost, showing up with disaster to every spot he went
before disappearing back into the night as if he'd never existed. An
entire nation mobilized for him, and he burnt down this building by
himself, killed his ex-wife, and from what witnesses told the
investigators, ran off with a knife in his stomach.

Let them fire her.
She'd done all she could here.

Cops walked around her,
all wearing rubber gloves and looking just about as busy as they
could. Only Allison stood staring at the mess.

* * *

"You know what
happens here, don't you?" Art Brayden asked.

Allison nodded, sitting
in back of the large black sedan. She wanted to end up here one day,
except sitting where Art sat instead of her spot, his body taking up
space as if he actually owned the car and it wasn't a gift from the
taxpayers. She had hoped to one day be driven around by someone, and
to have ten agents just like her reporting upwards. That was gone now
though, those hopes burnt up in the restaurant.

"I'll be honest, I
don't think you're the right person for this job. I'm not going to
say there's nothing you could have done, because buildings don't just
burn down on their own. I think you're a good agent though, just not
right for this."

He looked at her and
there was that at least. He could have looked out the window or at
his feet, or straight ahead, but he met her gaze.

"What's going to
happen next?" Allison asked.

"For you or for
the case?"

"Both."

"You'll go back to
Arizona and be reassigned to something else. I'm not going to stick
you on a desk job or anything like that. The case? I'm going to be
taking it over and probably bringing Malone back on."

Allison sighed,
breaking their eye contact and looking out the window. "I
figured that would happen."

"At the very least
it'll take some of the heat off me, and that's about all I can really
ask for right now. I don't know if he'll be able to help, I doubt it,
but he seems to think he can. It's probably just bluster though. You
got anything you can tell me that you haven't already?"

It was a few seconds
before Allison spoke.

"I don't think you
can stop him. I've been on this for almost two months and he simply
does what he wants. He's too smart. You might want to let him finish
this. Let him grab whoever he is going to and do whatever science
experiment he wants, and stop chasing him. You put out a press
release saying he's been apprehended and hope that he takes that as a
truce. A few missing people come up here and there, and maybe he
brings his kid back and maybe he doesn't, but you probably won't hear
from him again. That's what you should do, give up."

"You know we
can't."

"Why not?"

"Because if it
leaks, everyone in the F.B.I. will have to find new jobs. From the
people who empty the trash to the director. You might be right, but
it still can't be our move."

"Then I guess you
hope he dies from the wound Rally gave him. Other than that, I don't
know how you stop him."

"Alright, Allison.
Thanks for everything. Call me when you get home."

Art looked away from
her, releasing her from the car, from this horrible conversation. She
looked at him again, wanting to cry, to release all the anger pinned
up inside her, but she couldn't. The tears weren't there and she
certainly wouldn't release that anger in this car in front of this
man. She was going to get out of the car and go back to her hotel.
There, she would pack her things and find the first flight home she
could. By late tonight, or early tomorrow morning, she would be home
with her family and all of this would be over. For her. For the rest
of the world, Brand was still out there, still after someone, still
ripping through the world like a tornado with no end.

It didn't matter to
Allison anymore. Her part was over.

* * *

The string hung loosely
through the eye of the needle, and the needle rested between two of
Matthew's fingers. A sawed off wooden broom handle set between his
teeth, his jaw clamped on it. His eyes were red and his face pale,
his bald head pouring sweat down his cheeks. The flesh on his stomach
was red and inflamed, looking like a small mouth with all of its
teeth bashed out. The knife hadn't destroyed anything vital, but it
definitely nicked some things. This wasn't a flesh wound. Rally
hadn't known what she was doing, but Matthew was still lucky he
wasn't coughing up blood form internal bleeding.

He had a bottle of
rubbing alcohol and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He needed both and
knew they were going to hurt worse than just about anything Matthew
had ever experienced. No doctors, no hospitals, no modern medicine.
There were a few small blessings: first the knife she found had been
a small kitchen blade, and second, the body suit had taken much of
that blade, with only his flesh ending up wounded—the vital organs
protected. He only needed to patch up his gut and then hopefully
everything would heal. He needed antibiotics, but thought he could
get those from a drug store with a bit of forgery. Then it was in
God's hands, because his own were going to be completely full.

He placed the needle on
the sink and picked up the clear bottle of rubbing alcohol. He
unscrewed the cap and with his free hand opened up the wound. Red,
irritated flesh looked out at him, angry at what he'd allowed to
happen. It was swollen, so swollen that he couldn't see a hole
really, only red meat staring back.