The Experiment of Dreams (18 page)

I
ain Marcus and Michael Bennet were close to the intersection of 295 and 40 at the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Iain called the surveillance team stationed outside Ben’s apartment, leaving the call on speaker.

“Good evening. Rose’s Roses.”

“It’s me. Have you heard anything?”

“No sir, Mr. Marcus, not since this afternoon.”

“Has he left the apartment?”

“No sir, not that we’re aware of. He’s been silent all day. We’re parked around the block with a clear line of sight to his car, and it hasn’t moved. We heard some mumbling this morning, something about having a headache and wanting to lie down. There hasn’t been any activity since. We presume he’s sleeping.”

Iain looked at Michael. He knew Michael could read the anger radiating from his eyes. He was furious at the incompetence of his surveillance team.

Presume … Presume!

Someone should be watching the door at all times, and they should never answer ‘not that we’re aware of.’ A simple
yes
or
no
is the only acceptable reply. But Iain bit his tongue. He would have to tolerate the unprofessionalism of his men, for now. He had no other choice; it was too late in the game to change the team.

“Did he talk to someone earlier? Was he on the phone, or was someone in his apartment with him?”

“No, sir; neither. He was mumbling. It was hard to make out. The shower turned on and off, a few doors opened and closed, and then he was mumbling, talking to himself. We could make out the comment about the headache, but that was it. Oh, and he dropped a glass of something hot, maybe coffee. We heard him shout like he was burned, and there was a crash. The audio from the microphone outside his window has deteriorated significantly since we were fully operational. We need to get in his apartment to run diagnostics. We could break a window again.”

Iain rubbed his temples. “We were lucky that worked the first time. If he calls his landlord we’ll be found out.” Months earlier, the team had thrown a brick through Ben’s window while he was at work. They showed up at his door early the next morning, wearing uniforms and carrying toolboxes, telling a very hung-over Ben that his landlord sent them to fix the window. The team did fix the window, as they said they would, but also installed a microphone in the high corner of the shade. “Besides,” Iain continued, “do you even know how to repair a glass window? Mark Stevenson was on the team back then, and he did the actual repair work.”

“I … no sir.”

Christ, he was lucky he wasn’t paying these guys to think. “Don’t do a fucking thing. Who’s stationed outside the door?”

“No one sir, we haven’t been given the order—”

“I gave you the order when I said we’re back at fucking Status One. Do you not understand—” He stopped short and took a deep breath. “Station someone outside his door. Now. Call me immediately if you hear or see anything. When I give the order for the team to break down, do it at once. The truck has to be stripped and dismantled, and the team is to disperse. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Iain hung up without saying another word.

Michael sighed from the passenger seat and closed his eyes. Iain’s old partner had really let himself go over the years. He had a tire around his belly, and his face was becoming wide at the neck. He was not the same soldier Iain had parachuted into Fallujah with in the dead of night, behind enemy lines and before the war had technically begun. Michael was old now—hell, Michael was old back when they were in Iraq—but he had really started showing his age the last few years.

The worst part, Iain thought, wasn’t that Michael was gaining weight or showing his age; it was that he was beginning to form his own thoughts and ideas. That was something that could
not
be tolerated. In the services, orders were never questioned, and emotions were never displayed. They were like stones back then, rocks—silent and hard, emotionless and strong. They did what was asked, no questions, no complaints, no regrets.

He’s becoming soft
, Iain thought.
Not the hard man he used to be, and certainly not the same person he was two years ago
.

Drapery Falls changed him—that much was for sure. Drapery Falls made Michael question his actions. It made him feel regret and sympathy, feelings not allowed in his line of work. He’d seen Michael kill grown men over a dozen times. Iain himself had a tally of seventeen direct kills; many more indirect, from orders he’d given to his men. He once saw Michael slice the neck of a Taliban informant tied to a chair without the slightest hesitation or show of remorse. The informant was screaming, “I family, I father! I America!” His words echoed off the rock walls in that small cave. Michael walked to the man, grabbed the little hair left on his head, and slid the blade of his knife across the man’s throat. Blood sprayed like water from a hose with a thumb pressed over it. They watched as the informant convulsed in the chair, gurgling and choking on his own blood, trying desperately to free his bound hands to grasp at the laceration that was quickly draining his life down the front of his chest.

Iain’s experiences at war taught him that death was unfathomable to most, even to the hopelessly dying. Their eyes show their desperation—that look of shock, bewilderment, horror, and dread. Iain and Michael watched the man until he stopped twitching, and his eyes hazed over. Then they turned away as Michael cleaned his knife with a cloth torn off the man’s filthy robes.

Michael killed that man because he had to do it. The interrogation was over, and they were at the point when the informant had to die—despite any promises made to the contrary. There was no other way, and Michael knew it. He carried out his job with unflinching resolve. There was no room for sympathy or remorse.

So why now? Why the sympathy? It didn’t make sense.

When Iain watched the playback of Ben’s dream, it struck such a personal chord that he felt lightheaded and nauseous. If Ben remembered the entire dream, and not just the small fragments he currently recalled, he would see Michael in the passenger seat of the car as it drove through the heavily wooded area outside of Drapery Falls, New York.

Iain remembered the events of that night as if they happened only yesterday, and they played out in Ben’s dream exactly as Iain remembered.

Iain could see it all now: the headlights swerving along the dark road, illuminating the hazy rain, and the signpost on the side of the road reading Drapery Falls. Iain remembered parking behind Spaulding Grocers, the only grocery store in that shithole, one-gas-station town. The only thing in Drapery Falls that piqued any interest, the only reason Iain Marcus and Michael Bennet would ever visit such a piece-of-crap town, was because of Ethan Moore.

A younger Iain Marcus and Michael Bennet approached Drapery Falls in the dead of night.

He parked behind Spaulding Grocers and killed the engine. They would go the rest of the way on foot.

He asked Michael, “You ready?”

Michael nodded and stepped out of the car, clenching a black duffel bag in his hand. They tightened their jackets against the cold and the wind, as the light rain covered them from head to toe in a fine layer of mist.

It was almost three in the morning, late enough for the one pub in Drapery Falls to be long closed, and the patrons and staff home and in bed. Nothing stirred. No lights glowed behind shuttered windows. The only sound besides the wind was the rhythmic creaking of a wooden sign, shaped to resemble a giant tooth, swaying in a breeze outside Dr. Woodrow’s Dental Practice.

Iain moved quickly toward the residential section of town, to the side street where Ethan Moore lived. He felt vulnerable out in the open, but driving any closer could have caused a stir in the peaceful community.

His hat protected his face from the rain, with the water building up to form small droplets on the rim that fell before his eyes. Michael stayed a few steps behind, both men silent and swift as dark ghosts as they entered the landing to Ethan’s apartment building.

The door to the ground level was unlocked. Ethan lived on the second floor of the four-room complex, and the men crossed the entryway to the staircase in the back, trailing droplets of rainwater behind. They stopped before apartment 19C. Michael put his thumb over the peephole of the apartment opposite—19D—and Iain went to work picking the lock to Ethan’s door. After no time at all, the small tools found the right pins and the handle turned free. Iain put the tools in his pocket and removed the pistol from the holster under his arm.

He carried a Sig Sauer Mosquito because of its small size and hoped he would not have to use it. Guns were messy. He removed the silencer from the inside pocket of his coat and twisted it onto the barrel.

Iain slid into the room, followed by Michael. They shut the door, locking it behind them, and moved quickly, scoping out the dark room. The living room and kitchenette were empty, and the bathroom was cold and silent. Michael positioned himself next to the windows in the living room, watching the street below for movement as Iain slipped into the bedroom.

Ethan must have heard a noise, or maybe he was awake before they entered, because when Iain stepped into the doorway, Ethan was watching. The room smelled of sweat and sleep, and the air was stagnant.

“Iain.” Ethan threw the blankets off his body. The boy was quick, not trying to bypass Iain at the door, but rather leaped for the window on the far side of the room. But Iain was a trained soldier. He darted with one large step and grabbed Ethan’s arm with his left hand and yanked him backward, hard. Ethan collapsed over his own feet and sat kneeling on the ground, naked except for his underwear, and at the mercy of Iain Marcus.

“Iain, listen … I made a mistake.” Iain loomed over Ethan, black as night in the shadowy room. Droplets of rain fell from his jacket to form a dark circle around him on the carpeted floor. Iain noticed Ethan’s gaze jump from his eyes to the silhouette of the pistol in his gloved hand.

Ethan looked back to Iain’s face. Fear, sleep, and uncertainty, emanated from deep within Ethan’s eyes. He was sweating all over, and Iain could smell the ripe smell of fear and adrenaline wafting in the air.

Before Ethan had a chance to speak again, Iain leaned forward and pressed the palm of his left hand over Ethan’s face, covering his mouth and pushing him backward against the floor.

Ethan was making sounds like,
“Hmmmpphh,”
and as Iain predicted, Ethan’s hands came up to grab at his wrist, trying to pry his palm away from his airway. Iain slipped the pistol into his pocket, and when he took his hand back out, he was holding a thin syringe. He removed the plastic cap with a flick of his thumb and pointer finger and injected the needle into Ethan’s left arm, right below his bicep. He pushed the fluid into Ethan’s vein before the boy realized what was happening.

The entire motion was flawless. Ethan’s eyes went wide, and his muscles twitched and slackened. His grip on Iain’s wrist loosened, and Iain watched as the boy’s eyes fluttered upward and his eyelids shut. Ethan’s underwear darkened as he wet himself.

Iain dragged Ethan back to the bed and covered his body before he soiled himself further.

“
Michael
,” Iain hissed, looking into the living room where Michael remained at the window, gripping his own silenced pistol—a Sig Sauer just like Iain’s—in one hand and the duffel bag in the other. When Iain whispered, “Clear,” Michael holstered his pistol, and they both waited patiently in complete silence, listening for movement in the neighboring apartments, but there was no noise to be heard.

Then Michael opened the duffel bag, and they went to work. Iain made additional puncture wounds in Ethan’s arm, in the veins in the hollow of his elbow, and several in the webbing between his toes. They planted syringes throughout the apartment, and stuffed empty baggies laced with heroin in the coffee table drawers, and in the garbage next to his bed. One bag, half-full, was left open on the bedside table along with a twisted and burnt spoon and a used syringe.

All of this was just in case the fire did not erase things properly.

They located the shoebox Ethan kept hidden under a loose floorboard—the box stuffed to the brim with thousands of dollars in cash, paid to him by Mr. Kalispell for his work with Lucy. They emptied the cash into the duffel bag. That amount of cash would certainly raise eyebrows at the precinct if found, and Ethan’s death might be further investigated.

They used plastic spray-bottles, used for houseplants, to spray the drapes, the floor, the bedding, the cabinets, the kitchen counter, and the walls, with a thin mist of gasoline. Iain removed the batteries from the smoke detector, replacing them with duds. Michael went to the kitchen, put a frying pan on the stove, and cracked an egg inside. He lit the stove as Iain placed an empty pizza box only inches from the flame, and stacked several newspapers from Ethan’s recycling bin precariously close to the pizza box and all along the kitchen counter. They made a sort of trail of flammable materials, from the counter to the furniture, to the drapes, to Ethan’s bed, where they sprayed the carpet and mattress with gasoline, and stacked books from Ethan’s bookshelf under the bed. They were sure to only use a fine mist of gasoline, to lessen the risk of the fire being determined as arson.

The last thing Iain saw as they left the apartment was a dark trail of smoke emanating from the edge of the cardboard pizza box.

Walking fast down the street, Iain turned only once at the end of the block to see the faint orange glow of fire illuminating the otherwise dark windows of Ethan’s living room. He thought he could vaguely hear a fire alarm going off in one of the neighboring apartments. The fire was spreading faster than anticipated. Iain even thought he felt a rush of warm air, but that was most likely just a figment of his imagination.

The entire complex would be ablaze before the fire department in that shithole town could scramble together a truck. Still, though, the neighbors should be waking up soon and calling the police.

They quickened their pace.