The Dream Machine: Book 6, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (21 page)

She put in on speaker. “Hello?”

“Is this Agent Manessi?”

“This is Agent Manetti, yes.”

“Manetti, sorry. This is Veronica Cheney returning your call.”

“Veronica, thanks for calling back.”

“So…how can I help?”

I walked to the whiteboard and circled Veronica’s name and pointed at the name of her ex. Manetti nodded.

“We’re investigating a series of violent crimes and wanted to ask you some questions about Tyler Carmichael.”

Her voice squeaked up an octave. “What about him?”

“Have you been in contact with him recently?”

“Uh, sort of, I guess you could say.”

“What does that mean?”

“Look…” I could hear her taking the phone away from her face for a moment. Then she came back on. “…I’m at work right now. Can I call you back in a minute after I find a place to talk?”

“Yes. Please call us right back. We’re working against the clock here,” Manetti said.

The call ended.

I said, “The mere mention of Tyler just about gave her a heart attack.”

Manetti nodded. While we waited in silence for the call-back, I went over everything again in my head. All of Alison’s visions were through people or things she had personal connections with. They were all in color, with the two notable exceptions being the rape dream and her vision about me blowing Manetti away in the middle of a hurricane. There was something bothering me about that, the discrepancy between color and lack of color, and come to think of it, the qualitative differences between the dream sets. Again, those two dreams were static and almost detached. All the other ones were dynamic. Lots of movement, especially the shootout which was almost unintelligible. And very personal. Very specific. It was like the difference between a first person narrative and a third person, limited perspective.

Her phone rang. “Veronica?”

“Sorry, I work in a cube so can’t really talk openly on the floor.”

“That’s okay. I appreciate your calling us back. With me on the phone is my partner, Eddie McCloskey.”

I’d graduated from consultant to partner. Big step.

Manetti went on. “So let’s talk about Tyler for a minute. You heard from him recently?”

“Not exactly…what is this about?”

“Veronica, I wish I could share more details with you but we’re in the middle of an investigation so I really can’t. I’m sorry. Now what do you mean you didn’t exactly hear from Tyler?”

She made a noise on the other end of the line that sounded suspiciously like shivering. “He’s creepy. I broke up with him about nine months ago, but he, you know, he kept coming around. You know. I had to file a TRO against him. He got real pissed off at first but later apologized and said he understood. That’s what he’s like, you know. Tyler flies off the handle at the slightest thing and the next day he’s very sorry. Dating him was like being with two polar opposite guys.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Actually not that long ago, maybe a few weeks. He showed up at a bar me and my roommate go to a lot. When I confronted him, he was sweet and apologetic, he said his friends had picked the bar out and he’d tried to get them to go elsewhere but they knew some other girls that were going to be there. So there was nothing he could do, really.”

He could have stayed home, I didn’t say.

Veronica was still talking. “He was pretty nice and kept his distance. I thought maybe he’d turned a corner.”

Manetti said, “Is that what you mean when you said you sort of heard from him?”

“No. You see, my roommate…this is hard to explain.”

“It’s okay, Veronica. Just walk me through it.”

“Okay, it’s not as weird as it sounds…anyway, he and my roommate, Mia, they actually used to date. You know, before me and him.”

“Okay.”

“They were always fighting. Or screwing. Effing or fighting, I used to say. They dated a long time ago and she broke it off. Fast-forward a couple years and I ran into him at a bar and we sort of hit it off…at first it was great, we never argued but over time he kept trying to involve Mia more and more in what we did. It got to a point where he wanted to take the both of us out and suggested…you know.”

“I understand.”

Veronica sighed. “By then we were fighting a lot. I mean,
a lot.
There were times when I thought he was only dating me to stay close to Mia, but then there were times I was sure he was insanely in love with me. You wouldn’t believe some of the things he said…”

“Veronica, I’m real sorry to bring up the past like this but I need to know how your relationship with him ended.”

She sighed again. “Okay. It’s just hard, you know. He could tell I was unhappy…I couldn’t hide it anymore and that’s when he started holding me hostage.”

“What do you mean?”

I had that feeling. This was it. This was our woman. And if Tyler hadn’t stopped by last night, that meant he hadn’t struck yet. We had a chance at stopping this.

Veronica took a long time to answer. “Emotionally, you know? At first he was vague about it, saying he didn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have me, and then, later? Later he just came right out and said it: he’d kill himself if we broke up.”

There was another long pause and when Veronica spoke again, her voice was thick.

“He
scared
the living shit out of me, and he made me feel guilty too. I believed everything he said, that he was going to hurt himself, maybe even kill himself. I knew if I broke up with him that might happen, but I was so miserable…”

She couldn’t go on. She stopped to cry. Hearing her like that broke my heart. Even Manetti’s typically stony face went soft.

“Veronica, I’m very sorry.”

We let her cry. It seemed like the right thing to do. She’d get through this conversation in her own time, not on our schedule.

She managed to get herself together. When she spoke again the words came out rapid fire, almost like she was rushing to get them out before she broke down again.

“I-was-so scared-and-so miserable-and…eventually I realized that-he-was-either going to drag me down with him or I was going to end it. I-couldn’t-be-responsible for whatever he did…I just had to take care of myself.

“I did it over the phone on a night when I knew Mia would be home. I couldn’t sit around in the house all alone, knowing how pissed off he was and knowing he might come over. I did it with her in the room with me, it was the only way.”

“You did what you had to,” Manetti said.

“That was nine months ago. Initially he was very sweet and stayed away. He left little comments on Facebook that were references to me, about how he wished I was happy and what a great person I was…I thought maybe we could be friends…but…look, long story short, he started going mental again. He started coming over uninvited and I had to file the restraining order. It was getting creepy.

“I didn’t see him again till that night at the bar a couple weeks ago. I thought all this was over but…remember how I said he and Mia had dated before?”

“Yes.” Manetti just gave me a look. We both knew this wasn’t going anywhere good.

“Well, I’m not exactly sure how it happened but they ended up seeing each other again a few nights later. One thing led to another…I told her to stay away from him, I told her…”

Veronica was close to tears. I was holding my breath. All I could do was hope the dream wasn’t about Mia. What if we were too late?

When Veronica spoke next, there was a hard edge to her voice. “I told her to stay away but she got sloppy drunk and screwed him. The next morning when she woke up, she realized she’d made a mistake and told him she couldn’t see him again…he apparently pinned her against the wall in his living room…he’s very dangerous.”

“What happened to Mia?”

“She got out of there before something
really
bad happened. But since then he’s been calling her, emailing, texting. She’s thinking about getting a new number. God I was so pissed off at her. You know? I warned her, and she knew better. She was letting this guy back into not just her life, but also mine. We had a
huge
blowout and she might move out…”

“What does Mia look like?” Manetti asked.

“Kind of like me. People mistake us for sisters a lot. We’re both tall, blond, thirty-one…she has a little fuller figure than me but that’s about the only difference. We really do look related.”

I looked at the picture we had of Veronica. Among the fifteen photos we’d taped to the whiteboard, now that I was looking at it more closely, hers was the one that resembled the woman in the dream the most. Resembled, though. It wasn’t an exact match. If Mia looked
like
her, then…

“Have you talked to Mia today?” Manetti asked.

“Actually, it’s funny you mention that. We had a really big fight last night over the phone. I tried reaching her this morning but she didn’t answer. I tried her at work, but her colleague said she’d called out…oh God, I assumed it was because we were fighting—do you think something happened?”

Manetti didn’t answer the question. “Tell me about your house. It has two bedrooms?”

“I inherited it from my grandparents. Mia and I have been friends forever and when it passed to me, I wanted a roommate to help with rent and, you know, for company. We’ve been living together for awhile, I can’t believe it might be over because of that asshole.”

“Do you have any pictures of your bedroom on your phone or maybe on Facebook, that you could send us?”

“Why?”

“Veronica, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’m going to anyway. We got a tip. Somebody sent us some pictures of a bedroom where they’re planning to…
assault
a woman.”

“Oh my God, that’s disgusting!”

“So do you have some pictures you could send me?”

“I…don’t. I’d have to go home.”

“Can you describe your bedroom to us?”

“It’s a room, you know, I’ve got a twin-sized bed, a dresser, a bureau, and it’s a complete mess. There are at least three layers of clothes covering the floor, and I keep all my old art supplies out, you know, the easel, the scratch pads, drawings, and my cat post is in there.”

“Cat post?”

“Yeah, you know those things they build for cats to play and jump on and scratch? They look like tiny jungle gyms covered in carpet.”

Her description wasn’t lining up with the image we had of the bedroom in question. Manetti asked the next question.

“What about Mia’s bedroom? Can you describe that to us?”

“Oh it used to look exactly like mine, a complete mess, like a bomb had gone off in there. She has a night stand and a bureau and a lot of posters.”

That didn’t match either.

“Is Mia staying somewhere else right now?” Manetti asked.

“She’s thinking about it, I mean…actually, she cleared her room out because she was ready to leave.”

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

“It’s pretty bare?” Manetti asked.

“Yes. She packed up all her clothes and things but left the bed and the furniture because they weren’t hers. So right now it’s just the bed, the night stand, and that bureau. I mean, it looks like a guest room.”

Manetti and I nodded at each other.

“What’s your address?”

The driver flipped a switch and a siren sounded as we rocketed down the highway. Cars began parting to get out of our way.

Veronica had given us the number for Mia’s cell phone. I tried it again but it went to voicemail. I’d already left her two messages.

“No answer.”

“How much time do we have?” Manetti asked the driver.

For once he spoke. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but when he spoke in a toneless, neutral accent, I was surprised.

“Fifteen minutes.”

He poured on the speed. The rain hammered the car and the wind, especially on the highway, pushed us. More than once I felt the wheels start to lose their grip as he took a bend dangerously fast, but every time he managed to keep the car going. Faster and faster.

“I think this is it,” I said.

“It doesn’t exactly fit.” Manetti had her gun out and was checking the action.

“Right.” I didn’t want to think about that right now. I just wanted to get to the house and make sure Mia was safe. Outside the day grew darker. Although it was only one o’clock, the heavy storm clouds had practically turned day into night. Which
did
fit in with the dream. In the vision, the bedroom was dark, no light coming from the window. If she didn’t have any lights on, had her door shut, and it was storming like this outside, it would look like night time.

Manetti finished with her gun and put it back in the holster at her hip. “Alison is connected to Veronica Carmichael through Facebook. They’ve traded a few feel-good, impersonal messages. It looks like Veronica is very active in volunteering, looks like she had cancer when she was a child so that explains why she and Alison are tied. But Mia and Alison aren’t. They’re not even friends on Facebook.”

“It’s bothering me too,” I said. “But we still don’t understand how this works. Take the car crash for example. Alison didn’t know the girl that was driving the car. She knew the girl’s aunt from a few years ago and had been in the car. Maybe Alison can have a degree of separation between her and these people she’s dreaming about.”

Manetti nodded. “We’ll figure it out.”

That was more like her. I was glad to see the uncharacteristic pessimism from earlier gone. “What about the tack unit?”

“We’ll get there before them,” the driver said in that clipped, almost toneless voice.

“That’s okay.” Manetti looked at me. “We got this.”

***

It was a street full of older homes. It reminded me that Veronica had inherited this place from her grandparents. As we skidded to a stop in front of number four-two-three, a two-story bricked affair that screamed nineteen-fifties, I jumped out of the car.

Quickly, I scanned the street. I all but expected to see Tyler lurking behind a bush or hunched over behind a steering wheel, pretending to read a newspaper. But I saw nothing or nobody suspicious.

In the distance, thunder rumbled and the sky lit up briefly. Manetti’s hand rode her hip as we bounded up the lawn. It was four steps up to the front porch, but I did that in two strides. We were both soaked from the rain by the time we got to the door and Manetti knocked.

I watched the street while we waited for somebody to answer. We waited a good fifteen seconds.

“Check the back?” I said.

She nodded. “I’ll go. You stay here.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the one with the gun.”

And when she said that, I immediately regretted not grabbing mine before we headed out. Standing here on the porch unarmed, with a rapist possibly lurking, I felt like a dope.

Manetti zipped down the stairs and signaled the driver as she rounded the house. She moved fast and was gone in the blink of an eye.

I knocked on the door again. “Mia, are you in there?”

I put my ear up against the glass of the side light and listened intently. I thought I could hear somebody in there but it was difficult to say with the rain pounding and the thunder booming and my own panicked mind playing tricks on me.

I figured Manetti was around the back by now. Crossing the porch, I stuck my head out to peer around the side of the house. A wall of rain poured down on the streets now. Several large puddles had formed in the washout along the side of the house. I didn’t see Manetti anywhere. Veronica’s property backed up to another property and I could see that house in the distance, maybe seventy yards away.

Manetti came back around the side. Her hair was slick with rain and her jacket was soaked. She avoided the larger puddles but still made splashes with her tiny feet everywhere she stepped.

She called out, “Locked!”

I went back to the front door, figuring I’d try one more time. As I brought my hand up to knock, the curtain behind the side light moved out of the way.

I froze.

There was a gun pointed at me.