Falling Awake

  Ellis smiled. He was starting to like Farrell a lot.

  “And this Mapstone Investigations operation uses Isabel to analyze its agents’ dreams.”

  “You got it.”

  “Only one source I know of that would be likely to cough up enough money to finance a phony sleep research facility and pay people big bucks to solve crimes in their dreams,” Farrell concluded dryly.

  “What can I say?” Ellis unfolded his arms and widened his hands. “Your tax dollars at work.”

  Before Farrell could respond, Leila’s voice rose from inside the house.

  “No insurance?” she wailed. “What do you mean you don’t have any insurance? There must have been thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture stored in that locker.”

  “I had to make some cutbacks after I lost my job at the center,” Isabel mumbled. “The gym membership, my insurance policy—”

  “How could you do something so idiotic?” Leila demanded.

  Ellis straightened away from the post, yanked open the front door and walked back into the house.

  In the living room, Isabel was clutching Sphinx very tightly as she confronted Tamsyn and Leila. The cat had his ears flattened against his skull, annoyed with the fresh wave of commotion.

  “I don’t believe this,” Tamsyn declared to anyone who would listen. “How could you be so foolish as to store a fortune in fine furniture in a self-storage locker and then drop your insurance?”

  “I told you, I couldn’t afford it.”

  Leila jumped to her feet. “Why on earth did you buy it in the first place?”

  “Yes,” Tamsyn demanded. “Why buy a lot of expensive furniture when you don’t have a house for it?”

  Isabel said nothing. She just sat there, looking stubborn.

  Ellis had had enough. He moved, violating the zone of intimacy. He sat down beside Isabel and gathered her securely against his side.

  “It was for her dream house,” he said quietly. “Isn’t that right, Isabel?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  And then, for the first time since the events in the storage locker, she started to cry.

  Ellis wrapped his hand around her head and pressed her face against his chest.

  While Isabel wept, he watched Leila, Tamsyn and Farrell, challenging them silently to push him out of the zone. None of them moved.

  an hour later, she had recovered her composure. She curled on the sofa, Sphinx’s solid, warm body cuddled against her leg, and drank the wine Ellis had poured.

  “Thanks for getting rid of the others,” she said wearily.

  “You’re welcome.” Ellis spoke from the kitchen, where he was putting dinner together. “I was ready for a little privacy, myself.”

  “They mean well, but I’ve had about all the lectures on making poor financial decisions that I can take for one day.”

  Ellis dropped four slices of bread into the heated, buttered skillet. “Be fair. You gave them a hell of a scare today. They needed to blow off their shock and concern. The furniture and the lack of insurance were easy targets.”

  She was impressed. “That’s very insightful of you.”

  “Not really.” He slathered mustard on one side of each slice. “I’m probably just projecting. You scared the living daylights out of me today, too. I was ready to smash walls and yell, myself.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Only because there are too many other things to worry about. Maybe I’ll get around to it later, when this case is closed.”

  She turned the wineglass in her fingers, watching the play of light on the ruby red contents. “I guess I was a little obsessive about the furniture.”

  “Hey, you’re talking to a guy who has been told that he has a tendency to obsess, himself. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with being obsessive. Not when it comes to something that’s really important.”

  Isabel met his eyes across the room. “My furniture was very important to me. I bought it a few months ago. Walked into a furniture showroom one afternoon, saw the pieces and I just had to have them. I cleaned out my bank account to make the down payment and went into hock up to my eyebrows on my credit cards.”

  He dropped cheddar cheese onto the sizzling bread slices. “That accounts for your current cash-flow problems.”

  She frowned. “You were aware of my financial situation?”

  “I’m in that line, remember?”

  “Wait a second, are you telling me that you investigated my personal finances?”

  “It was just part of a routine check,” he assured her a little too smoothly.

  “Hah. I don’t believe that for a moment. More likely you and Lawson were worried that after I lost my job I might try to sell whatever I had learned about you and Lawson’s little dream operation to the highest bidder.”

  “I didn’t mention it to Lawson,” he admitted. “I knew it might make him a trifle nervous.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I wasn’t worried at all.” He glanced at her, smiling slightly. “But then, I know you a whole lot better than Lawson does.”

  She gave him a measuring look. “Are you telling me that it never crossed your mind that I might try to peddle some of your secrets in order to cover my debts?”

  He shook his head, concentrating on the toasted cheese sandwiches. “Call me a naive, easily manipulated dupe, but I just couldn’t see a woman who had advised me to read romance novels and stop eating red meat selling me out.”

  “Good thinking.” She took a sip of wine and lowered the glass slowly. “How did you know?”

  “About your dream house?” He reached for the spatula. “Not that hard to connect the dots.”

  “It doesn’t exist outside my dreams,” she said quietly. “But in my dreams I’ve designed and decorated every room. The furniture would have been perfect.”

  He slid the cheese sandwiches onto plates. “You’ll get that house someday. And you’ll find the right furniture for it.”

  “Think so?”

  “Yes.”

  He picked up the plates with the toasted sandwiches on them and carried them into the living room.

  She uncoiled her legs and sat forward. “That smells good.”

  “Glad to see your appetite is returning.”

  She picked up one of the sandwiches and took a large bite. “The mustard was a stroke of genius. Where did you learn how to make these?”

  Shadows moved in his eyes. “My mother used to make them when I was a kid. I helped her sometimes. It’s as close to serious cooking as I ever get.”

  She tore off a bite to feed to Sphinx. “You can make them for me and Sphinx anytime.”

  Ellis watched her eat the sandwich. The darkness receded from his expression.

  “It’s a deal,” he said.

  the phone rang just as they finished the last of the sandwiches. Ellis took the call. Isabel listened closely and understood that he was not happy with the news he was getting.

  He finished speaking and ended the connection.

  “That was Detective Conrad of the Roxanna Beach PD, the person assigned to investigate the fire.”

  “I gathered that much.” She brushed crumbs from her fingers.

  “The name of the guy they arrested at the scene is Albert Gibbs. His lawyer got him out on bail about fifteen minutes after they booked him. An hour ago he was found dead in his trailer. Overdose.”

  Her mouth went dry. “Oh, my God.”

  “He lived in a park about fifty miles from here.” Ellis rested his forearms on his thighs. “Apparently he was so happy about getting out of jail that he went straight home and shot himself full of some extra strong junk.”

  She watched his face. “You’re thinking that is rather a convenient conclusion, aren’t you?”

  “I’m thinking it sounds like Vincent Scargill from start to finish. He finds real losers, manipulates them into doing his dirty work and then he gets rid of them.”

  “What’s Detec
tive Conrad’s theory?”

  “He’s looking for the neatest solution, naturally. Turns out Gibbs had a history of arson-for-hire. Did time for it about three years ago. The detective thinks he was hired to set the fire today but that your locker probably wasn’t the intended target.”

  “So who does he think hired Gibbs?”

  Ellis shrugged. “Presumably one of the other renters who probably wanted to get rid of some incriminating evidence stashed in one of the units. But between you and Tom, the plan fell apart. Tom noticed the missing lock and called you. One thing led to another. Gibbs panicked, knocked Tom unconscious and shoved him into your locker. Before he could get out of the yard, you were there, demanding to know what was going on. So he tried to get rid of you, too.”

  “Why does the detective think Gibbs just happened to pick my locker?”

  “He’s not sure but at the moment he’s assuming that your locker just happened to be located near the one that Gibbs was hired to destroy. Gibbs probably figured that if the fire started in your space, it would look more like an accident and less like it had been set to damage evidence.”

  “Got it.” She propped her ankles on the coffee table and went back to what had become her favorite hobby lately, petting Sphinx. “So much for Conrad’s theories. Let’s return to our own paranoid, sadly deluded view of this case. Why would Scargill tell Gibbs to target my furniture?”

  “Damned if I know.” Ellis frowned and got to his feet. He went to stand looking out the window. “But I think it’s clear that it was your furniture, not you. The only reason you were there at all was because Tom called you. Maybe it was a message to me.”

  “Scargill’s way of letting you know that he might go after me if you don’t back off?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hmm.” She studied her toes. “Why not just kill me? Or you, for that matter?”

  “Two words: Jack Lawson.”

  “Ah, yes. He is the eight-hundred-pound government Bigfoot in this thing, isn’t he?”

  “He’s that, all right. As it stands now, Lawson thinks I’ve got some serious psychological issues. He believes that I’m cracking up slowly but surely because of what happened a few months ago and the way it affected my dreaming. At the moment, he’s still convinced that Scargill is dead.”

  “But if he decides otherwise . . . ?”

  Ellis closed the drapes and turned to look at her. “If you or I get killed in the course of this investigation, it’s a sure bet that Lawson will decide that maybe I was right all along. He won’t quit until he gets answers, and he’s got the resources to rip Scargill’s cover, whatever it is, to shreds.”

  “I see.” She swallowed. “Presumably Scargill knows this?”

  “He does.” Ellis turned back to the window. He braced one hand on the wooden frame. “You know, Albert Gibbs’s death raises a question that’s been bothering me for a while.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve always wondered how Scargill finds all the losers he uses. And how he got so damn good at manipulating them. Hell, if he’s still alive, he’s only twenty-two years old. You don’t learn tricks like that until you get some mileage under your belt.”

  She drummed her fingers on the sofa cushion, thinking about that. “I couldn’t begin to guess how he locates them but as far as motivation goes, I imagine most of them would have been happy to do whatever he wanted if he paid them enough money.”

  “Not necessarily. A guy like Gibbs, who needed cash for dope, maybe. But not some of the others. Not McLean, the demented fool who kidnapped his ex-wife and hauled her off to his compound in the mountains. A couple of the other kidnappers didn’t strike me as being particularly interested in money, either. They were too lost in their own delusional worlds to pay much attention to mundane things like cash. None of them demanded ransoms. All of them had other motives for the abductions.”

  She tilted her head back against the cushion. “Where are you going with this, Ellis?”

  “Maybe I’ve been missing something in the profiles of the people he uses. I need to look at those guys from another angle.”

  “What other angle?”

  “The way I do potential investors and start-up entrepreneurs before I decide whether or not to fund their projects. I need to find out if there are any connections that I’ve overlooked.”

  He swung around and went to his briefcase. She watched him take out a small computer.

  “While you’re doing that, I’ll take a look at some of Belvedere’s research reports.” She sat forward and scooped up the nearest stack of papers. “I know how he worked. Maybe I’ll spot something you missed.”

  “Good idea.” He sat down at the counter and powered up the computer. “I’m getting that nasty feeling you get when you know you’ve missed something important in a Level Five dream.”

  27

  an hour and a half later, Isabel closed the file she had been reading and tossed it onto the coffee table. Collapsing back against the sofa cushions, she removed her glasses and absently stroked Sphinx, who was a warm, heavy weight on her lap. The big cat purred contentedly.

  “Some enterprising soul could probably make a fortune selling Belvedere’s papers as a cure for insomnia,” she announced. “I think he was so determined to be taken seriously that he deliberately wrote the dullest, most boring, most academic-sounding prose possible.”

  “That was my impression when I was reading those files earlier.” Ellis studied the computer screen, looking impatient.

  “Got anything?” she asked.

  “Maybe. I told you all of these guys did time at various jails and prisons.”

  “Yes.”

  “Turns out that at least three of them spent some time in a place called the Brackleton Correctional Facility back in the Midwest. I’m checking to see if any of the others did stretches there, too. It’s going to take a while.”

  “I thought you said Scargill used people who lived in various places around the country. They didn’t all come from the same region or even the same state.”

  “That’s true. But it’s not unusual for overcrowded or under-funded prison systems in one state to ship prisoners off to another state to serve out their time.” He punched a key. “It’s possible these guys all went through the same facility.”

  “Would they have been there at the same time?”

  “No.” His mouth hardened. “That’s the bad news. All of them did time in recent years but none of them did it at precisely the same time. I checked that out a few weeks ago. There’s no way they would have been behind bars together, unfortunately. That would have been too easy. Still, if I can link them all to the same prison, I might be able to find other connections.”

  She studied the intense, focused lines of his body. It was getting late and he had made no mention of returning to the Seacrest Inn to sleep. Was he planning to spend the night here? If so, he had not mentioned it. She was pretty sure she would have remembered a comment like that.

  Idly, she continued to pet Sphinx. “Is this how you always work?” she asked. “Fill your head with as much information as you can get about the crime and then go into a Level Five dream state to try to get some insights?”

  “Yeah.” He hit another key and then got to his feet, rotating his right shoulder in a familiar way. “Never figured out a more efficient method. What about you?”

  “Same process. That’s why it was so frustrating working with Dr. Belvedere’s mystery clients.” She made a face. “I could never get all the information I needed to give a really good interpretation. I had to wing it on several occasions.”

  “Your work is brilliant, even when you don’t have a lot of context,” Ellis said. “It’s no wonder Lawson wants to bring you into Frey-Salter.”

  She smiled slightly. “Not going to happen. Think he’ll sign a contract with me once he’s convinced that I’m serious about going independent?”

  Ellis was amused. “I don’t think he’s got any choice. You can
name your own terms. My advice is to make him pay top dollar for your services. That’s what Beth does.”

  She rubbed the spot directly behind Sphinx’s ears. The cat purred louder and seemed to grow heavier and warmer on her lap. “I like the sound of that.”

  Ellis studied Sphinx. “Think cats dream?”

  “Who knows? If you accept the traditional Freudian view that dreams are a form of wish-fulfillment, a way of living out the sort of fantasies that we repress when we’re awake, it doesn’t seem likely. After all, cats pretty much do what they want to do. They don’t have a lot of problem with repressed fantasies.”

  “They do seem to act on their Inner Cat urges whenever they feel like it, don’t they?”

  She nodded, looking down at Sphinx. “The same thinking would apply to the classic Jungian theory, too. Jung held that dreams are a product of some collective unconsciousness featuring various archetypes and metaphors.”

  Ellis studied Sphinx. “Can’t see a cat bothering with archetypes and metaphors.”

  “Then, of course, you’ve got your modern neuropsychologists. Some of them think animals do dream but others are convinced that dreaming is a cognitive function that develops as the brain grows and develops. They point to the fact that there’s little evidence to suggest that babies dream, and they claim that the dreams of very young children are generally quite bland. They think that dreaming gets more intense and more coherent as children mature. That idea leads to the speculation that animal brains probably lack the cognitive capacity to dream.” She stroked Sphinx. “At least in a way that we would recognize as true dreaming.”

  Ellis smiled. “Dreaming may be a human thing, huh?”

  Sphinx flicked his tail in an annoyed fashion but he did not bother to open his eyes.

  “Maybe.” Isabel scratched Sphinx’s back at the base of his tail. “Then you’ve got another group of neuropsychologists who are very big on the activation-synthesis theory. It holds that dreams are merely the result of random signals sent from the most primitive part of the brain stem during sleep. The brain is designed to organize whatever data it receives so, even in sleep, it tries to connect what are essentially dots of meaningless static into coherent images, no matter how strange or bizarre.”