The Dream Machine: Book 6, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (20 page)

He shuddered. Even though he hadn’t been to church since high school, the old superstitious feelings welled up inside him. She couldn’t be God. There was only one God. And even if she
could
see into the future, that didn’t make her God.

Did it?

He got the urge to cross himself. But it had been so long since he’d done that…the gesture would have felt insincere.

“Please…I need to know she’ll be safe if I do this.”

Alison’s dull eyes narrowed in pain. “She will be. Now just fucking do it.”

Warwick knew it then. He was going to do it. He was going to do whatever this girl told him, because it meant his little girl would be safe.

Absently, he reached into his pocket to finger the copy of the key he’d made to White’s door…now all he had to do before he left was make sure the slit wasn’t locked.

***

Walking down the hallway to Alison’s room, we passed that guard, Warwick, headed for the elevators.

He nodded. “Hey, guys.”

There was something off about him. I stopped in front of him and put on my friendly face. “Hey, pal. What brings you down here?”

He only took a fraction of a second to think about his answer. But a fraction of a second is all the human brain needs to prepare a lie.

“Just saying hi.”

“To who?” Manetti folded her arms. She’d picked up on his vibe also.

Again that slight pause. “Alison.”

“You two are friends?” I asked.

He kind of laughed. “Yes. When she visits White we always talk, and one day I brought my daughter in to meet her…it’s awful what she’s going through.”

“What did you two talk about this morning?” I said.

“Just small talk.”

“About what?”

Warwick shifted his weight forward, assuming the posture of the aggressor. “Don’t brace me. You’re not even a cop, McCloskey.”

We did the stare-off until Manetti jumped in.

“If we ask Alison, will she give us the same answers?”

“Go ask her and find out.” Warwick shouldered past me and went to the elevators. Manetti and I shared a look before we continued to Alison’s room. Her door was open.

***

“Hi.”

This morning, Alison’s expression was neutral, her voice guarded. She watched us from behind those thick glasses, half-squinting to see us.

“Hi, Alison.” Manetti smiled. “We need a few minutes of your time.”

She kind of shrugged and looked away.

I approached and sat on the chair next to her bed. I powered on the tablet and brought up the list of kids that had been at the shootout from the police reports.

“I’m not feeling well today,” she said. “Could you make it fast?”

“Sure.” I offered her the tablet. “Read this list and let me know if you recognize any of the names on it. Thanks.”

She took it from me, warily. I watched her eyes as she read. As she got about halfway down the list, her eyes slowed like she’d landed on a name she recognized.

“No…they’re not familiar.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded and pushed the tablet back at me.

But I didn’t take it. “I want to show you another dream.”

“I don’t want to see it.” She looked away. “I shouldn’t have watched the other ones. I don’t want to mess up the experiment.”

“I’m only going to show you a clip. You’ll see about twenty seconds at most.”

Manetti added, “Dr. Zane approved it.”

“I don’t want to look, okay? Especially if it’s something horrible! I can’t stop thinking about that woman now…”

“Alison, we wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“No.” She let go of the tablet and I managed to catch it before it fell to the floor.

“Alison—”

“Get out of here! I’m not feeling well! I already told you that…oh God…” She clutched at her stomach and this was no act. Her face had turned green.

“Alison, do you remember your dreams?” I asked.

“Get out, get out out—”

“Do you remember your dreams?”

“get out get get get get get.”

I looked over at Manetti while Alison descended into incoherent babbling. Again I could tell this was no act. Her brain was scrambled.

“Len Schrive, Matthew Mollar, Len Schrive likes blueberry ice cream…”

They were two names from the list. Was she rambling or did she know these guys? Based on her earlier reaction when reading the names, I suspected she knew them. Which would fit in with what else we knew.

“…peanut butter and pickles and Matthew pantsed Len when they snuck into the girl’s room and that dog barked after the troll, the troll…the troll…blueberry ice cream…”

As if on cue, two nurses rushed into the room. They must have been watching her monitors and noticed something was out of whack.

“You two need to leave now!” one of them said.

Manetti and I obeyed. I snuck one last look at Alison as the nurses stood over her, trying to get her to calm down. Her eyes were unfocused and wandering and she continued to babble, the words making even less sense now.

***

“She doesn’t have much time,” Manetti said.

“Pretty awful to watch,” I said.

We both went quiet. There was nobody else in the atrium. Outside the rain and wind were picking up.

It was awful, but fixating on Alison’s impending demise wouldn’t get us anywhere. I sat back in the chair and stretched out, wondering when I’d next get a full night’s sleep again.

“She recognized names on that list,” I said.

Manetti nodded. “Absolutely did. I caught the eye-flicker.”

“So the question becomes—”

“Why doesn’t she want us to know she recognized the names?”

“I don’t know.” All the facts we had circled furiously around in my brain, as confused and violent as the winds in a hurricane. “Let’s just think out loud here.”

“Okay.”

I managed to smile. “Here’s my working hypothesis: when Alison dreams of the future, she always has some personal connection to it.”

I let Manetti think that one through for a second. She puzzled it out. “She knew the car. She’d ridden in it before when she was younger.”

“Right.”

“She knew some kids that were inside the store during the shootout.”

“Right.”

“But what about the storm dreams?”

I nodded. “Remember I said they all take place inside buildings? It’s like the storms are being observed by somebody.”

“Except that one that takes place outside.”

“That one
could
be from somebody’s vantage point. Or just from the vantage point of a place she’s familiar with, like the car. So she has a personal connection to these dreams.”

“I’m with you so far. It’s why we’re going to call these women that are Facebook friends with her.”

“So let’s assume we’re right. Her dreams of the future are based on something personal to her.”

Manetti thought about it. “And since she met us, she now has a personal connection to us.”

None of it made sense. Manetti and I had no reason to shoot each other. “The rape dream is kind of like her dream about us.”

“You’ve pored over the footage. I haven’t. So I’m relying on you here.”

I nodded. “Both of those dreams have static images. The camera, for lack of a better term, doesn’t move. And they’re basically black and white, where everything else is vivid and bright.”

“What does that tell us?”

“I don’t know yet.” We weren’t getting anywhere.

“Let’s change gears and come back to this,” she said.

“Time to make some calls?”

“Yes.”

We went back to the unoccupied office we’d used before. It had a whiteboard on the wall. Manetti started writing the names of the fifteen women in two columns on the board.

“Fifteen women. Let’s find her.”

“Okay.”

We divided up the list. We didn’t have much information on these women, other than the fact they’d filed charges or thought about filing charges either on assault or domestic violence grounds. I kept waiting for Manetti to hit a button on her computer that would pull up their personal information, but she explained to me that we needed subpoenas to get all that data. All we had was some contact information and a few last-known addresses.

“Tonight is a good night to sexually assault someone,” I said.

“That’s a weird thing to say.” Manetti had printed out what pictures we had of the women and was now busy taping them to the whiteboard.

“Granted. What I meant was—”

“The hurricane. It could get chaotic out there. Emergency services or local LE might not be able to respond. Maybe the power goes out. I get it. I was just busting your balls.”

“Good to know we still have that kind of relationship.”

“Eddie.” Manetti finished putting the pictures of the fifteen women up. “What we saw makes no sense. I agree with you. But what’s the harm in playing it safe? We’re assuming that all these other events are going to happen, we should assume the same here.”

“Yeah.”

She had more to say but I got the sense she didn’t want to argue. And I couldn’t blame her. I was being particularly difficult today. Time to chill the hell out and work the problem.

We started making phone calls. The first two women I called didn’t answer. I left them the scripted message Manetti and I had worked out before we started:

Hello, my name is Eddie McCloskey and I’m a special agent with the federal government. We need ten minutes of your time to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The third woman, McKenzie Strickland, answered. She was rushed, didn’t even say hello.

“Yes, who is this?”

“McKenzie?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Ma’am, my name is Eddie McCloskey and I’m a special agent with the federal government. I need to ask you some questions.”

“About what? I don’t have time for this.” In the background, somebody started screaming, followed by somebody else screaming. I was instantly panicked.

“QUIET!” McKenzie yelled, not bothering to cover the phone. “Ellis, or whatever your name is, I’ve got two, no three, screaming kids to take care of here. I really don’t have time.”

“Eddie,” I said. “We have reason to believe your…” I consulted what little information we had about her. “…ex-husband, Lorenzo, might try to harm you.”

“That’ll be difficult.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Lorenzo died last month. Overdosed, the son of a bitch. We’ve been divorced six months now, and you know how many times he sent me a check for child support?”

“Guessing not that many.”

“Right, Ellis. Now I have to go before these kids kill each other.”

“McKenzie, hang on a minute, is there anybody else—”

She hung up.

***

I connected with number eight on my list. A woman by the name of Jeannie.

“Actually, my ex is here right now,” she whispered into the phone.

“Hunter is there right now?” I motioned at Manetti, who’d taken a quick break from her calls.

“Yes.” Jeannie was still whispering. “Did he do something bad again?”

“We don’t know,” I said. “Now I have to ask you some questions, okay?”

“He told me he was different. That’s why I took him back.”

I wondered how many times he’d told her that and how many times she’d taken him back. Manetti sat next to me, and I put Jeannie on speaker.

“Jeannie, can you hear me?”

“Yes. You’re so loud, can you talk softer? I don’t want him to hear. He’s in the other room.”

On the other end of the line, I heard a man’s voice. “Jeannie, who the hell are you talking to?”

“Mags!” She shouted.

“Jeannie.” I kept my voice low. “Can you send me pictures of your bedroom?”

“What?”

“I can’t explain to you how we get this information, but we received pictures of a room where something bad is going to happen. We want to compare.”

“I don’t understand…you think something bad is going to happen in his mobile home?”

“Don’t you have an apartment?” I consulted the notes and read the address to her.

“The landlord didn’t extend my lease. He said I caused too many problems and the police were always here. But that was over a year ago, it wasn’t fair.”

“Jeannie!” That guy’s voice again.

“Jeannie, can you send me a picture of the bedroom?”

“Okay, but this is his place so it’s messy and there are…well, there are dirty posters hanging up in it…”

Manetti and I shared a look. This wasn’t our woman, assuming the dream was accurate. The bedroom in the dream had been in a house, much larger than that in a mobile home. It couldn’t be Jeannie.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Just send me a couple pictures when you get a chance.”

“Okay, I will. But I have to be careful. He doesn’t like me talking to cops.”

I just shook my head. We hung up and sat back. “Even if she’s not the woman Alison dreamed about, I’ll bet you a thousand bucks she’s headed down the same path.”

Manetti nodded. “I know. But we can’t save everybody. It’s harsh but it’s the truth. At least we’ll get pictures and be able to eliminate her from the pool.”

So far Manetti had spoken to five women and ruled three of them out based on the information they shared or the pictures they sent. One of the women had told her she wanted to talk to her attorney first before sending anything to
the government.
Another had hung up, thinking Manetti was some kind of pervert trying to get pictures of their bedrooms.

We kept going. I called everybody else on my list and got through to a few. But most didn’t answer. By lunch time, we’d ruled out six of the fifteen.

“I’m going to the cafeteria,” Manetti said. “Can I get you anything?”

“Yeah. A solid lead.”

She smiled. “I’ll get right on that.”

She left the office and I sat back. I checked my phone for missed calls, in the off chance I hadn’t felt the phone vibrate or hear it ring even though it had been sitting on the desk right in front of me. Of course I hadn’t missed any calls.

I could call all these women again, but considering they hadn’t answered the first time and hadn’t gotten back to me yet, I figured it was better not to come off like a stalker.

My eyes drifted back to the tablet. While I was waiting, there was plenty of dream footage to watch.

I logged back into the server. The folder I’d last viewed was still open. I skipped ahead to the day after Alison dreamed about the shootout. Manetti came back with a chicken wrap and sat behind the desk.

***

When you’re doing data analysis, a part of your brain shuts off. You step outside of yourself. You’re still watching and picking up on things, but a part of you goes to sleep. Even though Manetti was sitting four feet away and making calls, I didn’t really see or hear her. My eyes stuck to the screen and the images washed over me.

Nothing significant jumped out at me. Alison’s dreams from the next night didn’t include any that appeared to be visions. Her mind jumped from one subject to the next: a dog, a roller coaster, a deck of cards, a boy that was trying to kiss her, her parents, some doctor delivering probably bad news…she even dreamed of her email again. I watched as she opened the same one multiple times. There were no words in the body of the message and I couldn’t make out the address of the sender. But I could see her cursor move over the attachment to the email as she clicked it open.

I was about to turn it off and start making calls again, but this time I stayed with the dream long enough to see the picture that opened.

A dark bedroom.

“Manetti.”

Manetti came around the desk. “What’s this?”

“Alison’s dreams from a couple weeks ago. Look familiar?”

She leaned in to get a better look at the image within an image. “It looks like our bedroom.”

“Right.” But there was something different about the bedroom, like the shot was being taken from a different angle. Lower to the ground.

“Is it the same one?”

“I think so.”

“So Alison was dreaming about this bedroom
before
this week?”

“Yes.” I stopped the dream so the image of the bedroom was frozen on my screen. “She was dreaming about email.”

“About email?”

I nodded. “Opening a message, and then opening an attachment on the message. This is what popped up.”

Manetti said what I’d been thinking. “Somebody sent her a picture of the bedroom that she later dreamed about?”

“What are the chances?” I said.

“Maybe pretty good.” Manetti shook her head. “Or her dreams are like everybody else’s, right? She dreams about what she does during the day, like checking email, and then incorporates elements from other things into the dream. Maybe this is just stream-of-consciousness.”

“Maybe.” A bunch of alarms were going off in my head now. “Maybe somebody did send her a picture of this bedroom. And that gave her a personal connection to the room, so she could later dream about it?”

“But why didn’t she say anything about the email or picture when you showed her the dream? She should have recognized the room, right?”

“Just like she recognized the names on that list I shared earlier. She’s holding things back.”

“What?”

“She wants us to believe in her. To think her dreams are the real deal. Maybe she’s scared of being discredited?”

Before we could further that train of thought, Manetti’s phone rang.