The Dream Machine: Book 6, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (9 page)

“How about Alison?”

“How about Alison what?”

“Is she a lucid dreamer also?”

Zane was emphatic. “No. Absolutely not. No way.”

“You’re pretty sure?”

“McCloskey, take a second to think about it. She presented at this facility with some extraordinary claims of being able to dream about the future. The very first thing we had to do was test her capacity for lucid dreaming.”

“Okay, sure. But how do you rule something like that out?” I asked. “When you tested, she might have flunked on purpose.”

“We explored that from multiple angles and were able to rule it out conclusively.”

“How?”

He was losing his patience. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Sure you do,” I said. “And now’s the time, too. I’m here trying to help. Better we figure out now if something went wrong with your study than you waiting till you publish or patent or whatever you do.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “
You
are going to help me with a scientific study?”

“If you’ll let me. No, I don’t have your qualifications but I’m trained to spot the lie or identify the problem or see through bullshit. I have fresh eyes so you could open up to me.”

“You’re out of your mind, McCloskey. I’ve been doing this
for years
and you waltz in here one day, no credentials to your name, and think you’re going to help me?”

“What do you have to lose? At best, you can tell me
I told you so
. At worst, you issue spot before somebody else does.”

“Anyway, we ruled out lucid dreaming for Alison.”

“Take off your lab coat for a second and tell me what you think. Can Alison see into the future in her dreams?”

He tugged at his lapel. “This coat is always on, whether it actually is or isn’t.”

I nodded, sort of respecting him. I understood why he was being territorial though I didn’t like it much. If someone had threatened to lay bare everything I knew about the paranormal, I would have been defensive also. In one way or another, I’d spent a lifetime accumulating that knowledge much like he had gathered his and I’d want others to earn it too.

“Alison dreamed the car wreck in color, but the rape in black and white,” I said.

“Was that a question?”

“Sorry, Trebek. Didn’t know I was on Jeopardy. Do you know why one was in color and the other wasn’t?”

“I wouldn’t put too much stock in that. The dream machine, as advanced as it is, is still a prototype. It could just be that Alison was dreaming about a bedroom at night, a setting where there is no color. Or, so little color that the dream machine couldn’t pick it up.”

“Have Alison and White interacted?”

“Why would they?”

“Is that a no?”

“I believe she’s spoken to him a few times.”

“About what?”

“She wanted to know why he was a criminal.”

“What did he say?”

“Because the sky is blue.”

“Did you record their conversations?”

“Some of them.”

“I’ll need to review those.”

He folded his arms. “I’m going to be speaking to Agent Manetti about this. We are understaffed as is and you are wasting your time looking into White for no reason.”

“I’ll tell her myself.” I had had my fill of Zane for now. I checked my phone for the time. “Okay, doc. Here’s what’s going to happen. I want to talk to Zane right now.”

“Why?”

“Because I have some time to kill before I meet with Alison.” I gave him a shit-eating grin. “And I’m going to show Alison the two dreams.”

“McCloskey, there is no way I’m going to allow you to violate our parameters! You’ll invalidate the entire study!”

“This is going to happen.”

He was out of his chair. “You’re unbelievable, you asshole!”

I wanted to throw it right back at him. But I paused long enough to realize a cooler response would only aggravate him more.

So I said, “I know, right? Would you believe there is a beautiful woman willing to marry me?”

White was on the fifth floor by himself.

The guard posted by the elevator at the otherwise empty nurse station looked up from his crossword puzzle and conjured up his best suspicious look.

“I’m with Manetti.”

“McCarney, right?”

I saw behind his poor acting he knew my last name. It was a simple way to test my identity, but the simplest things are usually the best.

“Yeah, except it’s spelled with an l-o-s-k-e-y instead of a-r-n-e-y.”

His head rocked an inch to the left, giving me the all-clear. I walked down the empty hallway, past the empty rooms, till I reached the last door.

Another guard was posted at White’s door. He had greying hair and the look of a lifer cop who has spent most of his time watching, waiting, and seeing the absolute worst in people. He was a big, beefy guy that probably didn’t move too fast but hit harder than a breakup out of nowhere.

“I’m Eddie.” I offered my hand.

He stifled a yawn and nodded. “Manetti told me you’d be by. I’m Warwick.”

“Need a coffee?”

He shook his head. “I’m the late shift. My replacement is running behind schedule. Usually my head has already hit the pillow by now.”

“Warwick, huh? Like Warwick D—”

“Warwick Davis, the little person that played the Ewok and Willow. Yeah, never heard that one before.”

I smiled and nodded at the door behind him. “What’s he like? White.”

Warwick looked over his shoulder and had to think about it, like he’d never been asked to use words to describe a convict.

“You remember that guy in high school, who was always watching everybody else? You know the one who couldn’t even hide the fact he was waiting for his chance to fuck you over, any way he could?”

“I saw him every day in the mirror.”

Warwick’s eye twitched. “Anyway, White is a wild animal. Underneath that human disguise is probably a lizard licking its lips. He’ll talk to you like he’s a human being, but if you pay attention you’ll see that something is missing.”

I nodded. “Any chance he can break out of here?”

Warwick’s eyes bulged, like he’d taken the question personally. “No way in hell. This place is a fortress.”

“Right.” I stepped around him to get to the door. “Is he restrained?”

Warwick shook his head. “No, you—”

“Good.” I tried the door but it was locked.

“Hold on, pal.” Warwick’s hand was on my shoulder. I didn’t like it there. “The rule is: visitors can’t see White without one of us in there and White has to be restrained.”

“That’s two rules.”

I’d gone too far. Warwick’s lips disappeared and his face grew hard. “Listen, jerkoff, I don’t care who you are or who you’re working for. White is my responsibility, not yours. If he walks, it’s my ass. Now I’m at the end of a long night shift, my replacement is late, White is an asshole constantly looking for a way out, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not in the mood for taking shit from some shlub that just walked in here off the street.”

I didn’t want to smile but forced myself to. This guy’s job was difficult, sure, but I also wanted to say he’d made his own career choices like we all do. But that wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. Besides, he wasn’t looped into the bigger picture here. He had no idea Manetti and I were…I didn’t even have a word for it…were dream-shooting.

“Warwick, I’m sorry. Agent Manetti and I are moving fast on something and working off little sleep. Still, that’s no excuse.”

It took him a moment to nod and accept that. “Okay. Now let me do what I have to do and we’ll go in.”

Warwick backed me up and had me move farther down the wall so I remained in his peripheral vision. He knocked on the door.

“White, you have a visitor. Get over here.”

I couldn’t hear White’s response, but a moment later Warwick slid open a little panel in the door I hadn’t even noticed. It was big enough for a tray of food. White stuck his fists out of the slit.

“He can open that from inside?” I asked, incredulous.

Warwick shook his head. “Nope.” He pointed to the knob he’d used to open the slit. There was a lock in it. Some kind of mechanism preventing it from being slid open from the inside.

“But if he got it open,” I said, “he could access the knob from the outside.”

“Right.” Warwick shot me a death glare. “Except he can’t. So now if you’ll let me do my job.”

White waved his hands back and forth through the slit, as if to show his impatience.

“Come on, asshole,” Warwick said. “You know the drill. Hands behind you, dipshit.”

“Oh, sorry,” White said, like he’d genuinely forgotten.

White’s hands disappeared and came back out in fists again, only this time with their thumbs pointing down.

Warwick slapped a pair of cuffs on them and gave me a look. “See what I mean?”

I did.

***

A few minutes later Warwick reopened the door and admitted me into White’s room.

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but this was not it. There was a big hospital bed in the corner under a window, couch, coffee table, desk, reading lamp, and a shelf for books. A quick survey of the books revealed a common theme.

Erotica.

This was the furthest thing from a prison cell that White could have gotten.

The man himself I recognized. Not because I’d seen him personally before, but because I’d seen his type all day, every day, during my relatively short incarceration for drug charges many moons ago. He was like most guys that’d been inside. Eyes that held onto you for just a moment too long, that followed your every movement, that didn’t trust anything they saw. He was smiling at me, but it wasn’t real and wouldn’t be real for a long time, if ever. It had taken me almost a year to smile for real again after I’d gotten out, and I wasn’t even a career criminal like this guy.

White had a ruddy complexion and salt-and-pepper hair and a retreating hairline that gave him the proverbial fivehead. His eyes were blue, which was the only thing soft about his face. His one hand—hopefully the dominant one—was cuffed to the metal pole in the wall next to the couch where he was sitting. How long till he’d worked that thing loose, if it wasn’t already? Jesus this guy was halfway out the door and Warwick was acting like they had him on lockdown.

If White hadn’t been wearing his prison issue dull blue pants and shirt, nobody would have known he was a prisoner.

“You like my cell?” White asked, his mouth twisting into a smirk.

“I haven’t seen your cell,” I said. “This doesn’t count.”

I looked around the room. There was a closet on the opposite wall. At least they hadn’t given the guy metal hangers. Inside the closet was a two drawer dresser, I assumed for his uniforms, underwear.

“You’ve seen a cell before, I can tell,” White said.

I felt Warwick’s eyes on me. White had picked up on my prison air, but Warwick, the guy who’d been guarding men like this probably for a long time, hadn’t.

I turned back to White, looked him up and down as he sat on his couch. Time for a little needling.

“Don’t get up, White.”

He wasn’t needled. White brought up his arm. The metal of the cuffs and holding bar tinked. “Can’t get up. Usually my manners are pretty good.”

“I’ll bet.” I took a chair on the other side of the coffee table. Warwick remained standing, somewhat behind me and to my left.

“And you are?”

“Who do you think I am?”

White studied me. “I know who you’re not.”

“Who am I not?”

White inclined his chin toward Warwick. “You’re not a member of this crackpot team of guards.”

“Enough, White,” Warwick said. “Or maybe I’ll take your Kindle away.”

“A reader, huh?” I motioned casually toward his book shelf. “I’m guessing you do your reading in spurts, no pun intended.”

White smiled. “Gotta occupy myself somehow, right?”

“Why not spend your free time with the other patients?”

“Lab rats is a better word for it. These people aren’t being treated. They’re being
tested
. So Dr. Asshole can get more patents and make a shit-ton of money. He doesn’t actually care about these people.”

“So you never talked to any of the other people around here?”

“Do I look like I’m allowed?”

“You’re allowed visitors. Obviously.”

“Who’s going to come see me?”

“You tell me.”

“No.” He shook his head. He wasn’t stupid. Just the opposite. He knew I was in here because I wanted something. “You tell me.”

I didn’t have time to play games and draw what I needed out of him. “What did you and Alison talk about?”

“Why do you care about her?”

I crossed one leg over the other. “I’m interested in you, not her.”

He laughed. “For somebody that’s been inside, you’re a bad liar.”

“What did you talk about?”

“How badly I wanted to nail her.”

I grimaced. I couldn’t help it. She was fifteen years old. The thought of this guy in a room with her, talking dirty…my stomach did somersaults and anger filled me.

“Just kidding.” White smiled that un-smile again. “She’s underage, I’d never do something like that.”

“Right. Because you have scruples.”

White casually looked away, like we’d just casually struck up a conversation in a coffee shop. “She wanted to know more about me.”

“What about you?”

“Why I was a criminal.”

“And why are you?”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t important. “Everybody wastes their time trying to answer why. That’s not the most important question.”

“What is?”

“How.”

I sat back, let the silence grow. He was unaffected by it.

White brought his feet up and sat cross-legged on the couch. “We are what we are. Long as we’re paying attention to ourselves, we have that figured out by high school. Why is useless. Why explains but doesn’t do shit for you.”

“Where’d you read that?”

He laughed. It was a real laugh. “Most people spend their entire lives trying to change, or going through the motions and not getting anywhere. Because they all forget a zebra can’t change its stripes.”

“Instead of trying to change, you embraced the shittiness of yourself.”

“If I’m born this way, you’re born that way, and Warwick is born another way, then good and bad are just constructs.”

I hadn’t expected the conversation to go in this existential direction. “Good and bad exist because we have choice.”

“We do, and we don’t. I like stealing. I
want
to steal. So I have a choice to commit the act or not, but what I can’t change is me. I will always want to steal, no matter what I do.”

“With that attitude…”

“Come on, you look smarter than that.”

“Do I?”

“You think pedophiles really have a choice?”

I stood. “Well, White, you’ve really given me a lot to think about. By the time I get back to the elevator, I’ll probably have already figured out why you’re wrong with enough time leftover to laugh about it too.”

He sat forward as far as his chain would allow. “Why did you ask me about Alison?”

“Because she’s interesting, unlike you. You’re just a maggot, White. You’ve thought up this puerile philosophy to justify your poor decisions, absolve you of your guilt, and give you cognitive cover for continuing to be an asshole. So long. If we ever run into each other, I’ll make sure to warn everybody within shouting distance that you’re slime.”

“You think I feel guilt?”

“Sure. Everybody does, eventually.”

“Ah, the self-righteous air of the converted sinner.”

“Yep, pretty much. Makes me a hypocrite, but I’m okay with that.” I headed for the door.

“Alison is God.”

My hand stopped before it touched the knob. “What?”

“She can see into the future. Only God can do that.”

My visit was a break from his probably dull routine, so he was just baiting me to stay longer. On the other hand, maybe he’d open up about what they actually discussed.

I turned and folded my arms. “God, huh?”

He nodded and his eyes flicked over to Warwick. “That’s right. She sees into the future.”

Next to me, Warwick squirmed a little bit. I guessed he was religious and this conversation made him uneasy. The thought of a teenaged girl being God or seeing into the future ran afoul of his deeply-held beliefs.

I was about to continue the conversation, but Warwick cut in. “Don’t listen to this asshole, Eddie.”

I hid a wince. I hadn’t wanted White to know anything about me, not even my first name. This guy was the type who’d come a-calling later, if he ever got out. Just out of spite, he’d find a way to screw you.