Tortured Dreams

“Dr. Cain?” Reece asked.

  “Sorry, I just don’t know what I find the most disturbing about that passage.”

  “We’ve checked…” McMichaels started.

  “There is no Revelations 22:22. Revelations ends with chapter 22, verse 21. Making your own bible passage is a bit off. Making it sound authentic is creepy. And I’m tired and might be reading too much into it. Mind if I keep a copy of the Revelations passage?”

  “Not at all,” Reece handed me a photocopy of it typed out.

  “Now, Dr. Cain,” McMichaels started talking again, “what we really want, is your help. There should be another murder soon, within a week or so. When it happens, we’d like you to look at the scene while it’s still fresh, see what you can see.”

  “Sure,” I put the passage on the table.

  “You might pack an overnight bag and have it ready to go the moment the call comes in. At this time, we don’t have enough to stop him; we don’t have enough to even pick up his trail. He isn’t striking in the same locations.”

  “So he could pop up just about anywhere,” I nodded once.

  “Pretty much, we’ll come by tomorrow,” Reece got up.

  I stood with them, waved good bye at the door and came back to my couch with a sense of relief. Nyleena also joined me, her face still hard set. Her eyes were no longer cold.

  “You have a bad habit of killing people who attack you,” she said after a couple of seconds. “Do you think working with the police is a good idea?”

  “I’m not a serial killer Nyleena, just a survivalist and sociopath. Besides, maybe if I help, a few of them will leave me alone.”

  “Or you’ll attract more when your face suddenly appears in the USA Today and New York Times.”

  “There is that,” I met her eyes for a second, “somehow, I know this is right.”

  “I know, you seemed to connect to those two. You don’t do that very often,” she sighed in resignation.

  “What was the big deal with the Revelations passage?” We had been silent for a long time when Nyleena asked.

  “It’s coherent, well planned, authentic sounding,” I told her.

  “But I know you and that isn’t why you asked for a copy.”

  “It was his subject choice and words. Dreams, Evil, Defender of Mankind, that seems odd.”

  “Holy…” Nyleena took a deep breath through her nose and frowned at me, “maybe you should wait for the next one.”

  “The next what Nyleena? The next serial killer who comes knocking on my door to sell me satellite TV and then realizes I’d be fun to cut up? Despite what you think, it isn’t a life I picked. They’re moths and I’m the flame. If I do this, if I see it from the inside, maybe there won’t be a next time. Maybe the light will be extinguished.”

  “Unlikely,” Nyleena gave me a long hard look, “ok, do this. But I’m guessing this is a recruitment and this case is your trial by fire. I’ve heard of these guys. They are a bit reckless and they are stationed in Missouri, near the Fortress. They live in that fancy, secured, all police neighborhood. They are the bogeymen of serial killers. A bit loose and on the fringe. Malachi would fit in perfect with them.”

  My only two real friends in the world did not get along. Malachi thought that Nyleena didn’t understand the way the world worked and Nyleena thought it was wrong for a psychopath to work for the FBI. Of course, they had been feuding long before that. It was just their newest reason to fight.

  “You think it is aimed at you?” Nyleena asked.

  “No, I think we are just jittery because my life is what it is,” I shrugged at her.

  Nyleena took a strand of her long, raven colored hair and began to twirl it. It was graying in streaks, but she had managed to avoid grabbing any of the gray. I never knew how she managed.

  “Ok, we’ll go with that for now,” she returned the shrug and stood up.

  “What now?”

  “Now, we have dinner, if I can remove that image from my brain.”

  “You’ve seen worse.”

  “That’s true. I keep considering becoming a vegetarian as a result.”

  “You’d be a terrible vegetarian,” I smiled at her and relaxed a bit. The storm was over. Her anger and fear were still there, but they weren’t going to surface now. Since it hadn’t happened, everything seemed right with the world again.

  “Where are we ordering from?” I asked.

  “I found a pan and made pasta.” Nyleena informed me.

  “Oh,” I thought for a moment. “You found a pan where?”

  “Under the sink.”

  “Toss out the pasta, we’ll order out.”

  “Why?” Nyleena asked.

  “I only have two pans and they were both in the dish drainer when I was attacked. Since blood made it to the counter, both of them should have been pitched. So, why was there a pan under the sink?”

  “Think someone brought it?”

  “I could have bought it and forgot, but why take that chance,” I was paranoid out of habit.

  “As paranoid as you are, I’m surprised you let others fix your food.”

  “Well, I tried eating at home, every meal, every day and found I had to do a lot of dishes. Besides, it would be just as easy to poison bottles of spaghetti sauce at the store as it would be to poison a pizza from the place down the road. The difference is that if it is from the place down the road, they are more likely to get caught than if they just randomly hit bottles of spaghetti sauce at the store.”

  “Why does your paranoid logic make sense?”

  “Because you’ve known me for a long, long time,” I told her. “And because some, including you, would say that my paranoia is somewhat justified.”

  “Stop, that freaks me out. Crazy people should not sound that rational. Ever,” she gave me a wicked grin that made her gray eyes light up.

  “Since I fixed pasta, I’m ordering pasta,” she grabbed her cell phone and speed dialed a place down the road. It was amazing that she had those numbers programmed into her phone.

  “If it had something to do with me, Reece and McMichaels would have figured it out, they seem smart and capable. They have my file, I’m sure it has my full name.”

  “Not many men know that most mothers’ pick names for their meanings as well as the lyrical sounds of them and their uniqueness,” Nyleena gave me look, “even if you spelled it all out for them, I still am not sure they would get it.”

  “You think it was actually meant for me?”

  “No, I think you are right, we read too much into it because we are jittery and jumping at shadows.”

  “Should I tell them I have plans to move back to Missouri at the end of the month?”

  “Yes, they should know. If this thing drags on, if you don’t catch him this time, they will need to know where you are.”

  “Think they can catch him?”

  Chapter 7