Dream Maker

by Charlotte Douglas

  Jared nodded. “I think we’ll arrive in time. I’ve had no dreams to indicate the killer is closing in yet.”

  She shifted uneasily against the restriction of the shoulder harness. Because he’d had no dreams, Jared had decided they had time to sleep last night—and to drive, rather than fly. According to Jared’s accounts, he and the killer usually reached the crime scenes at the same time, but maybe in this instance, things would be different. Evelyn Granger would remain hale, whole and hearty, and Jared would admit that his dreams were delusions.

  And she would be out of a job. The idea disturbed her—not because of the remarkable salary Jared was paying, but because she enjoyed being around him. Given enough time, she could fall in love with the guy’s lean good looks, quirky humor and quick mind. Even his misguided inclination to help others had its charm.

  Jared cast her a sideways glance before returning his attention to the road. “You still think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “Crazy is as crazy does,” she said with an apologetic smile.

  His face crinkled in a lopsided grin, creating a dimple in his cheek. “I guess this does seem like a wild-goose chase, heading south at the crack of dawn to track down a woman in a dream.”

  All morning, as Jared had steered the Volvo expertly along the mountain roads, questions about his story had niggled at her. “For the sake of argument,” she said, “let’s assume your premonitions are real.”

  “Isn’t that why we’re headed to Micanopy?”

  “To either prove them or disprove them.” She smiled to soften her correction. “But if you really are connected somehow to this killer’s mind, what do you know about him?”

  He pulled the Volvo into the passing lane and sped by an RV towing a compact car. “Not enough. I know he’s eaten up with hatred and revenge.”

  She shuddered at the image. “You mean, you think he’s a serial killer?”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t think so. His victims aren’t random. He seeks each one out purposely.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question. If I knew the answer, I might know who he is.”

  If Jared was delusional, he was firmly entrenched in his madness. “Did you check to see if Veronica Molinsky and Mary Stanwick had anything in common?” she asked, hoping to illustrate the error of his thinking.

  His answer surprised her. “Twenty years ago, when Pete Stanwick was a rookie detective, Larry Molinsky, Veronica’s husband, worked as an assistant state’s attorney in Stanwick’s jurisdiction.”

  “They worked together?” If Jared was making all this up, his derangement displayed a remarkable creativity.

  When the glare of the morning sun reflected off the back window of the car ahead, he removed his sunglasses from behind the visor and slipped them on. “That’s the odd part. Pete Stanwick and Larry Molinsky collaborated on only one case, right before Molinsky moved to Washington.”

  His statements sounded so calm and reasoned, she almost forgot she was dealing with a man who claimed to see a killer in his dreams. “Does that case tie Mary Stanwick and Veronica Molinsky together somehow?”

  He shook his head. “That was my first thought. But further investigation brought me to another dead end, literally.”

  “Another murder?” Her fear of his irrationality revived. The body count was growing too fast to believe.

  He laughed with a sharp, barking snort. “That depends on your view of capital punishment.”

  The twists and turns of his logic eluded her. “What do you mean?”

  He pulled the car into an exit lane, heading for a rest area. “I’m getting drowsy. I’ll explain over a cup of coffee.”

  He parked between a minivan and an ancient Lincoln Town Car. Sunlight filtering through new leaves bathed the spring grass of the picnic area in dappled shade. In the thick woods surrounding the rest area, late dogwood and redbud blossomed, creating an atmosphere of serenity. A wren warbled in a nearby hedge. Thoughts of murder and killers didn’t belong in such a place.

  She lifted a basket from the rear seat and headed toward a picnic table beside a magnificent spirea, heavy with snowy flowers. As she removed a thermos, cups and cinnamon rolls from the basket, a black Blazer caught her eye when it turned into a parking space on the other side of the rest rooms.

  A memory niggled at her brain. The man at the Brevard service station had driven a Blazer. No one exited the car, and its tinted windshield shrouded the vehicle’s occupants from view. She forced herself to breathe deeply and relax. Jared’s crazy dreams had made her paranoid.

  Jared poured himself a cup of coffee, bit into a sweet roll, and lounged on the concrete bench with one foot on the seat and an elbow propped on the table, studying her. “See someone you know?”

  She shook her head and reached for the coffee. “Do you know anyone who owns a black Blazer?”

  His scrutiny burned her as she selected a cinnamon bun and took a tentative bite. “No. Do you?”

  “Uh-uh.” She lowered her eyes to avoid his while she sipped her coffee.

  “Then why does that Blazer have you spooked?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  He refused to relent. “In this instance, I don’t have to be a psychic to read your mind. Your feelings are written all over your very attractive face.”

  His compliment barely registered. She didn’t want to tell him about the man at the station. She didn’t even want to think about the threats. “I’m just tired. We were up awfully early.”

  “Tiredness didn’t drain the color from your cheeks.” He gazed across the picnic tables at the Blazer. “Maybe I ought to offer the driver some coffee.”

  As he started to rise, she grabbed his arm to hold him back. “No. It’s nothing. All this talk of killing makes me nervous, that’s all.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “And that’s why you’re staring at that Blazer as if it’s about to rush over here and attack you?”

  Her laughter eased her tension. “It’s not a big deal. When I stopped in Brevard before coming to your place, a man in a black Blazer warned me about you.”

  He set his cup down with a deliberate motion. “What did he say?”

  She shivered, remembering. “That women around you keep turning up dead.”

  His gaze froze, cold and formidable. “He mentioned me by name?”

  “Only after I asked if I was on the right road to your place.” She wished she’d never brought up the subject. Fear and suspicion had driven the beauty out of the morning. As if to reflect her thoughts, a cloud drifted across the sun, casting the picnic area in gloom. “He was a mean-looking character, who probably never heard of you and just wanted to rattle a woman traveling alone.”

  The coldness in Jared’s expression melted, and he reached out and hugged her to him. “Looks like he did a good job of that. But don’t let it bother you. You’ll notice dozens of black Blazers now. Remember how many white Broncos you saw after O.J.’s infamous ride?”

  She groaned at the recollection. “The trial of the century—and it seemed to last that long, too.”

  She sat on the bench with Jared’s arm comfortably draping her shoulder while she sipped her coffee. The easy companionship soothed her frazzled nerves. At the same time, the warmth of his body against hers generated a current of excitement and a heightened sense of anticipation deep in her abdomen. Unlike the men her grandmother had encouraged her to datemen from the “right” families—Jared Slater didn’t treat her like a hothouse lily one minute, then try to wrestle her into his arms for a kiss and a feel, the next.

  Not that the prospect of a little wrestling with him wasn’t pleasant.

  She reined in her fantasies and studied the black vehicle parked across the picnic area. Jared treated her like an equal, like an independent woman who knew her own mind. He hadn’t pooh-poohed her fears about the Blazer. He, above all, understood the tricks the mind played.

  “Speaking of trials,” he said, “I promised to tell
you about the one Pete Stanwick and Larry Molinsky worked on.”

  “Let me guess,” she teased. “It has to be a murder trial.”

  “The worst kind.”

  She grew solemn at the gravity in his voice. “How can one kind of murder be worse than another? Dead is dead.”

  His fingers tightened on her shoulder. “But some methods of dying are more horrible than others.”

  Overcast skies blocked the sun, turning the rest area into a secluded recess of shadows and silence. Hundreds of yards away, screened by thick hedges that muffled noise, cars and trucks whizzed by on the interstate. Beside her, Jared sat quietly, drawing circles in the red clay at their feet with a branch, as if reluctant to divulge the horror he’d discovered.

  In spite of her jacket, she shivered in the light wind. She was no longer dealing with data on a computer printout but with the lives and deaths of real people. The anonymity of her computer terminal could not protect her from a killer who stalked the land, dispensing death according to some strange prescription only he understood. Whether Jared had really connected with this killer in his dreams didn’t alter the fact that a murderer was out there, watching, waiting to strike again. If she and Jared could identify him, maybe other women wouldn’t have to die.

  Jared tossed the stick aside and stood, rammed his hands in his pockets and stared unseeingly past the busy lanes of traffic. “Twenty-seven years ago, a serial killer stalked women in Massachusetts. Not only did he commit murder, but he tortured his victims before they died.”

  This was no delusion. Jared sounded like a researcher who had done his homework. “And Pete Stanwick caught him?”

  He nodded. “Stanwick had just been promoted to the criminal investigation division and partnered with Sam Witek, a twenty-year veteran of the force. Together the two of them tracked the murderer down, Ozzie Anderson, a dirt-poor day laborer with a psychotic hatred of women. Detectives Witek and Stanwick gathered an ironclad case against Anderson, a whole truckload of irrefutable evidence.”

  She let him talk because he seemed to need to, but doubted that decades-old crimes had any relevance to the man they sought. “Where did Larry Molinsky fit in?”

  “Molinsky was the prosecutor in the case.”

  “And he persuaded the jury to convict Anderson?”

  Jared poured himself more coffee and sat next to her. “Anderson never went to trial in Massachusetts.”

  “Are you saying Ozzie Anderson is still out there, killing women?” Her alarm regenerated and her gaze flew to the Blazer, whose driver had yet to make an appearance.

  He gave her knee a reassuring pat. “Relax and let me finish. In their investigations, Witek and Stanwick tied Anderson not only to the Massachusetts murders but to several in New Jersey as well. They encouraged Molinsky to have Anderson extradited to stand trial in New Jersey.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there was no death penalty in Massachusetts. They wanted to make sure Ozzie Anderson paid with his life for his crimes.”

  She quivered again in the early-morning breeze. “Let me guess. He was given a life sentence instead, let out on parole, and now for revenge, he’s killing the wives of the men who caught him.”

  “Wrong.” Jared loaded the thermos and cups into the basket and picked it up. “After twenty years of delays and appeals, Ozzie Anderson was finally executed by the state of New Jersey almost three years ago.”

  She followed him to the car. “Surely you’re not suggesting the ghost of Ozzie Anderson is now wreaking its revenge?”

  Jared placed the basket in the back seat, then turned to her with a rueful smile that accented the handsome lines of his face. “And you think I’m delusional?”

  She shrugged, then slid onto the front seat as he held the door. “Makes about as much sense as anything else you’ve told me.”

  He leaned inside the car, his face inches from hers. All thoughts of murder and mayhem vanished in the gleaming light of his eyes and the scent of him—all spicy soap and leather—that filled her nostrils.

  “It’s elementary, Dr. Watson,” he said with a wider grin that stirred butterflies in her stomach. “Ozzie Anderson is a dead end, in more ways than one. There’s either some other association between Mary Stanwick and Veronica Molinsky, or their connection through their husbands is simply a tragic coincidence.”

  If she stared any longer into those deep brown eyes, she would do something on impulse she might later regret. To avoid his gaze, she pulled her shoulder harness taut and concentrated on the clasp at her hip. At the sound of her door closing, she expelled a sigh of relief. Seconds later, Jared climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  “Maybe Evelyn Granger’s the key,” she suggested, then blinked with surprise. If she truly believed anything concrete would result from his self-described wild-goose chase, she was as crazy as he was.

  “If Evelyn knew both Mary and Veronica, then we’ll know we’re dealing with more than coincidence.” He backed out, passed the parked Blazer, and drove onto the on-ramp, checking over his shoulder before entering the interstate.

  She leaned against the headrest with closed eyes. She was losing her mind, buying into his story like this. Poor Evelyn Granger. Jared had pulled her name from a hat with his convoluted search for a Victorian house. All they would probably accomplish would be to scare the woman to death.

  She heard Jared flick on the radio and a catchy country tune with improbable lyrics—something about a bad dog who gets no biscuit—filled the car. The nonsensical words were as incongruous as her agreement to help Jared on his quest. He’d called her Dr. Watson. She felt more like Sancho Panza. The only difference was that Don Quixote’s windmills never killed anyone.

  She raised one eyelid and observed Jared’s strong, slender fingers on the steering wheel, tapping in time to the music. Even his hands had character. Maybe that was why she felt so attracted to him. He might be crazy, but he had his principles and was willing to place himself at risk to help others.

  She closed her eyes and pictured him in her mindtall and slender, with latent power, lean and handsome features, and a shock of hair across his forehead that gave him a deceptively boyish look. Tall, dark, handsome—and probably nuts, into the bargain. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

  “You asleep?”

  Even his voice delighted her with its depth and timbre, sending a tingle through her. She opened her eyes and sat up. “With all that coffee in me, I’m wired for the next few hours. Want me to drive for a while?”

  “Is your seat belt fastened?”

  She detected a sense of urgency in his tone. “I fasten it automatically every time I get in a car. Why?”

  He pressed the accelerator and the Volvo shot forward. “We’re being followed.”

  She twisted in her seat and looked behind them. The front end of a black Blazer filled their rear wind-shield. With a burst of speed, the Volvo pulled away, but the Blazer soon caught up with them again.

  Jared fixed his gaze on the road ahead. “He pulled out behind us when we left the rest area.”

  “He’s been following us all this time?” Perspiration slicked her palms, and she wiped her hands on her jeans.

  Jared gripped the wheel until his knuckles whitened, and set his handsome jaw into a hard line that caused a vein to pulse in his neck. “He hung back in the traffic. As soon as we left the other cars behind, he speeded onto our tail.”

  Her heart hammered in her throat and all the oxygen seemed squeezed from her lungs. “Maybe all he wants is to pass us,” she said, not really believing it.

  “I tried slowing down to let him around,” Jared said between clenched teeth, “but he slowed, too.”

  She searched the highway ahead—a long, deserted stretch with trees in the median blocking the view of the oncoming traffic lanes. “Where’s the highway patrol when you need them?”

  “He’s trying to pass,” Jared said. “Maybe he’ll keep going and leave us alone.”


  The needle on the speedometer dropped to eighty miles an hour as Jared eased off the accelerator, but they still hurtled like a bullet down the highway, and the countryside outside her window blurred. Tyler’s feet pressed against the floorboard in an instinctive braking motion, and she gripped the edge of the seat as the Blazer veered toward them.

  “My God!” she screamed. “He’s going to hit us!”

  As the Blazer slammed into the side of the Volvo, she screamed again. The force of the impact threw her against her seat belt, wrenching her shoulder and neck.

  With superhuman strength, Jared held the car on the road, but the Blazer’s driver didn’t give up. Again he jerked the Blazer into the left side of the Volvo, shoving it into the emergency lane.

  Her panic grew as the Volvo barreled along the shoulder. Gravel spat from beneath the wheels as Jared fought to bring the car under control. Its right wheels hit the edge of the pavement, jarring every bone in her body. In a few seconds of deadly silence, the road noise ceased as the Volvo lifted off the ground and rotated in the air.

  They were both going to die.

  She strained against her shoulder harness as the car catapulted, and the world turned upside down. When the car crashed onto its roof, her seat belt yanked her back into her seat, and the air bags inflated, enfolding her in darkness.

  Chapter Six

  Smothering darkness, penetrated by horrible, cackling cries that made his skin crawl, engulfed Jared. He’d seen pictures of hell, but he’d never imagined what it sounded like. Gradually the blackness lifted, and a cushion of crushed grass vibrated beneath him as vehicles thundered past. He wasn’t dead, after all.

  Then the stench hit him, and his stomach recoiled with nausea.

  “Take it easy, son,” a man’s voice drawled. “Help’s on the way.”

  Jared opened his eyes to see a tanned leather face set with brilliant blue eyes beneath the brim of a battered straw hat. A blinding, pulsating glare surrounded the hat like a shining crown.

  Jared squeezed his eyes shut, fearful that his visual hallucinations had returned. When he opened them again, the man, dressed in faded overalls and a flannel shirt, stepped from between him and the bright morning sun and knelt beside him. His sunlit halo disappeared, but fluttering bits of white filled the air. Snow again, in May?