Dream Eyes

Twenty

Sometime later, he opened his eyes again when he felt Gwen slide out of bed. He knew she was trying to be discreet about it. Probably headed for the bathroom, he thought. But when he saw her put on the robe and lean down to pick up the map that had fallen to the floor, he realized something else was going on.

He levered himself up on his elbows. “Everything okay?”

“What?” Surprised, she glanced back at him. “Yes, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. A few minutes ago, I woke up and decided to try the road trip dream again. I went back to the start, back here to Wilby, and I saw a pattern.” She moved to the table and spread the map out across the surface. “But it was all wrong.”

Her urgency got through to him. He shoved aside the covers, sat up and reached for his pants. Zipping his fly, he crossed the room to the desk.

“Tell me about the pattern and what’s wrong with it,” he said.

“I assumed going into the dream that this was a map of towns and places that Evelyn intended to visit for research purposes. But there are too many towns marked.”

“There are only a half-dozen circled.”

“Yes, but that’s about four, maybe five too many. You see, Wesley operates with a tight budget. He doesn’t like to pay for airfare and lodging for a scouting crew to check out the location unless it promises to be good. It’s highly unlikely she would have selected six towns for the next episode of Dead of Night. And if she was working on a big project involving multiple locations, I think she would have talked it over with me and probably Wesley as well.”

He flattened his hands on the table and examined the six towns. “You’re thinking that there’s a connection between these locations? Some paranormal significance?”

“No, well, not exactly, at least not in terms of legends about haunted houses or paranormal vortexes. In my dream, Evelyn told me to go back to the beginning. That was my intuition reminding me that this is the same kind of pattern that she and I uncovered after Zander Taylor went over the falls.”

Judson’s senses stirred. “The two of you were able to identify some of the locations of his previous kills. You concluded that he had targeted people who claimed to be psychic.” He flipped the map over and looked at the six names that had been written there. “I need fifteen minutes on my computer.”

TEN MINUTES LATER he shut down the obituary page of the newspaper he had been studying and checked off the last name on the list that Ballinger had made on the back of the map.

“That’s it,” he said. “Six towns, six deaths, all by natural causes, all within the past eighteen months or so. The names of the deceased match the names on the map. But if someone has started killing again with the camera, there’s one big difference this time.”

“What?” Gwen asked.

“None of the victims was a practicing psychic, real or fake. According to the obituaries, none of them was making his or her living by claiming paranormal talents.”

“I don’t know why the pattern is different, but someone is killing again, the same way Zander Taylor did—by paranormal means.” Gwen drummed her fingers on the table. “Evelyn somehow stumbled onto the truth.”

“The murderer realized she was tracking him so he killed her?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Judson thought about it. “He took her computer and cell phone, hoping to get rid of any traces of her research that might lead the cops to him.”

“He couldn’t have known about the map and where it was hidden,” Gwen said. “Either that or he was unable to get into the mirror engine to retrieve it. I told you, not everyone can handle the psi in that machine. But this doesn’t make sense. Why the change in pattern?”

“We know that Taylor is dead,” Judson reminded her. “Different killer, different pattern, different kind of prey. But there will be something that these six victims had in common, trust me. We just have to find the common thread.”

“Whoever he is, he must be one of the locals here in Wilby,” Gwen said. “Someone who knew about Zander and decided to emulate him. Maybe a copycat killer?”

“Maybe. In addition to the likelihood that the killer is a local, we know one other thing about him.”

Gwen looked up from the map, understanding heating her eyes.

“The killer has enough talent to work the camera,” she said. “We’re looking for another psychic.”