Fear Dreams
A Novel
J.A. Schneider
Publisher Information
Fear Dreams is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, institutions or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 J.A. Schneider.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, store in a retrieval system, or transmit this book, in any part thereof, in any form or by any means whatsoever, whether now existing or devised at a future time, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
For more information about the author, please visit http://jaschneiderauthor.net
Books by J.A. Schneider
EMBRYO
(A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 1)
CROSSHAIRS
(A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 2)
RANEY & LEVINE
(A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 3)
CATCH ME
(A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 4)
SILVER GIRL
(A Raney & Levine Thriller Book 5)
RAZOR SHARP
(A Raney & Levine Thriller Book 6)
For Bob, Matt, Danielle, Jean and Louise
Fear Dreams
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Author's Note
About the Author
1
The water was green. Swirling and thick with stirred-up silt. Too hard to see through, so her eyes squeezed shut but not fast enough. The blue shirt was drifting closer. It shouldn’t have been there in the water, Paul said they’d go away, these things she kept seeing, but the current smacked the shirt tight to her face and she couldn’t breathe. Her chest heaved, struggling for air, and then she woke, shaking, covered with sweat.
The heart, oh the heart, it hammered. Liddy gulped a ragged breath as she rolled to a dryer place on the pillow. Her eyes blinked, still seeing that shirt sweep away. Gone. Lost to someone.
For long moments she lay, waiting for the banging in her chest to slow. Then…
On the bed table sat a note. Liddy groaned and reached for it; read; put it back. Two crutches leaned on the near chair.
“Done with you,” she whispered to them. She’d been run over on June third. Her clock next to the note said it was August tenth. Nine weeks since the accident.
Be happy you’re alive, she kept hearing. Right, be thankful, she stormed at herself, fighting tears because of the damned dream. The cast was off, wasn’t it? The doctor said walk, gentle exercise. Rehab said ditto. Ten days ago she’d graduated from the track thing with the rails, walked all the way to the cake Reenie and Carol got for her to celebrate. Started to cry when they hugged her.
She was tired of crying, just sick of it. Today would be good if she had to break her leg all over again – whoops, crazy thought, watch that, don’t slide again. But isn’t it amazing, how relative things are? She was going out today, woo hoo, getting out of this drab place and apartment-hunting no less, and if she had to climb stairs or stumble off some curb it was her choice as opposed to having some drunk run her down. She stared at nothing; saw those terrifying headlights come at her again with their frantic horn blaring - but she shut it down fast; with something like a childish whimper forced her mind back to today.
She’d been learning to do that. Shut down bad things. But that wasn’t helping her memory come back, was it? Alex her shrink said that was counterproductive, she had to face the bad stuff in order to - oh screw Alex. She wanted to be happy. Today would be good. It had to be.
With a groan she got herself up, hobbled – mornings were the worst – to move the crutches to the back of the closet, then went into the bathroom. In the shower, the hot water stung her face and stiff body. Felt nice. Steam rose and billowed. Droplets started to cry down the glass wall.
Liddy stared.
Stopped shampooing. Her soapy fingers went to the glass, touched the face. A weeping face that melted under more droplets, then disappeared.
Push it down, just imagination, Liddy thought minutes later, holding her hair dryer. That’s what comes from spending too much time alone, in the apartment, in your head. Her mother used to tell her she had an overactive imagination. Paul still said that, but he understood. She was an artist, everything was visual; subconscious visual often saw and felt what surface minds didn’t. Paul the logical, facts-bound scientist was fascinated by creative people. “A painting?” he’d say. “You see what isn’t there yet and make it.”
Liddy reached to wipe the mirror; saw dark circles under dark eyes that hadn’t been sleeping enough. I used to be pretty, she thought, sighing – and then the hair dryer stopped. Just like that, switched off. She frowned at it, fiddled with its buttons. Nothing. She reached up to the plug, adjusted it – “Oh!” – and sparks zapped and flashed. Frightened, she drew back; put the dryer down. Left her hair half wet and hobbled back to the bedroom.
Someone was arguing somewhere. She went to pull aside the curtains and peered out. A woman’s angry voice and then a man’s, going at it from one of those windows across the way. Which one?
Liddy leaned to see, her heart thudding again. Nutty reaction but she couldn’t help it. Some couple probably just having a tiff…
She felt his arm reach past her cheek and hug across her chest. He loved to sneak up. “How’s my girl?”
“Argh, you scared me!”
She turned to Paul, inhaled and melted into him. They kissed; then she buried her face in his shoulder, remembering their love-making last night. Gentle and sweet, he’d been so careful not to hurt her. Out of habit, she reached to pat down a cowlick in his dark hair that was usually messy. He needed a haircut.
“Some couple over there is fighting,” she said.
“Who?” Paul leaned and his large hazel eyes looked past her. Across the way, on West 83rd with a narrow space between for a lower building, the windows were all blank with shades pulled halfway, air conditioner boxes rattling on this hot and sleepy August Sunday.
“I don’t see nuttin’,” he teased, straightening. “You sure you heard with those ACs going?” His smile was wonderful as he held up his bakery bag. “Find my note?”
“Yes, mmm, smells wonderful.” Liddy smiled.
“Fresh cro
issants and bagels.” He put his arm around her. “You good? Feets moving? C’mon, let’s eat.”
2
In the kitchen he sat her down, piled the bakery eats into a linen-napkin-lined basket, and reached for the coffee. “Dig in,” he said, pouring into her cup. “You sure you’re up for today?”
“Oh yeah,” she replied. “I am so ready to get out.”
“Cool,” he said, sounding a little ridiculous since before all this it was hardly a typical response. He was a serious scientist, bordering on nerdy if he weren’t good-looking, but since the accident he’d been practically straining to be “up” and encouraging. He’d hauled back her easel, draftsman’s table, and art supplies from the studio she’d been co-renting with other artists in an old warehouse on West 47th. Tons of effort, and it hadn’t helped her much emotionally. One day, having no luck with her painting and hurting in her pillow-piled chair, Liddy cried to move out of their stodgy Upper West Side to a more artistic neighborhood. Soho? Tribeca? She’d asked before in the over four years they’d been married and he’d balked - those neighborhoods were more expensive – but on the day she cried he’d practically flown out the door. Made forays and looked at apartments and warmed to the idea. Paul Barron, neuroscientist, was suddenly not that guy in the white coat obsessing about Halothane and Propofol and molecular weights and formulas. He’d been talking to Soho-ites; announced that he liked the vibe and was discovering his artistic side, too. Lo, now he was smearing butter across his croissant and calling it a comet.
“Beth called while you were asleep,” he said, turning on their kitchen TV, flipping around, muttering “news, same old news.”
“What’s the word?” Liddy nibbled a raisin bagel.
“Three new elevator places in Soho she wants to show us. You didn’t like any of the others she showed me?”
“Liked them, didn’t love them.” The places he’d seen with Beth Liddy had seen online. Studied every room, little terrace, nook and cranny.
“Okay, well these sound good.” Paul turned off the TV, pulled a map of lower Manhattan closer. “Two just reduced their prices, last minute hoping to grab people trying to get settled before school begins. August is a good time to move.”
“Elevators make places more expensive and I told Beth I don’t need one.”
“Your leg.”
“I’m healed. Just stiff in the mornings and at my drawing board sometimes. Besides, they’ve got me doing stairs at rehab.”
Bethany Harms was Liddy’s friend from their art school days who’d decided she was a no-talent, had given up becoming the next Georgia O’Keefe for the artistic thrill of selling real estate. Paul was reading some notes he’d scribbled from her call. “One place on Mercer – kinda expensive…a loft on Greene Street, price not terrible, third place on Sullivan - oh, she did mention a loft on Prince Street that’s less expensive but unfortunately a walkup. Third floor.”
“Let’s take the walkup.” Liddy said; then hesitated, meeting Paul’s eyes as if suddenly feeling guilty. She hated the fact that she was timid. Why couldn’t she be like other women and say, Dammit, I want to move!
“I still feel bad,” she said. “I pressured you into this.”
“Nahhh.” Paul smiled and got up for more coffee.
They’d discussed it before, and Paul was adamant. They’d saved from the years that they’d stayed here in what had been his bachelor pad, and he and his workaholic research partner Carl Finn were close to a breakthrough at the lab with Big Pharma salivating. Their work was at NYU anyway, just blocks north of Soho – why hadn’t he thought of this?
“And big news,” Paul said with a flair as he re-filled each of their mugs, made a fuss stirring in just the amount of milk Liddy liked. “I’m going to sell the boat.”
Liddy stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. It’ll sell fast and it’s equity till it does. It was a ridiculous expense anyway.”
“But you love that boat.” It was a thirty-four foot sailboat named Seafarer that had belonged to Paul’s father, and was all he had. A sad man, he’d practically lived in it after his divorce, had spent his winters sailing to Key West where he’d lived like a bum, then had sailed up and down the Florida coast before drinking himself to death.
Liddy looked fretfully out their kitchen window. It offered a glimpse of the Hudson if you leaned out. “Now I feel doubly bad. You’re selling the boat for me, aren’t you? So we can afford Soho.”
“No. It’s just time to move on, evolve.” He squeezed her hand, then went back to his map of lower Manhattan.
“It’s why you moved here in the first place, to be close to it,” Liddy fretted. They were just five blocks from the 79th Street boat basin.
Paul waved a hand.
“We’ve enjoyed the boat but we need a bigger place anyway, and why shouldn’t it be where you’ll be happier and I’ll be closer to work? The restaurants in Soho, my God. This could be a blast.”
“Carl would have to find another boat to borrow,” Liddy said drily.
“Yeah well...” Paul shrugged and checked his watch. “Beth wants to meet us in forty minutes. Think we can make it?”
3
Thirty blocks away, just before noon, all hell broke loose at the West 54th Street police station. Two detectives were already turning the air blue as others showed up for the bad news, and Kerri Blasco paced with her face crumpling. “How could this happen? How the hell could this happen?”
Her partner Alex Brand touched her arm as she flew past, half weeping as she turned, paced back, and stopped before their squad room’s monitor. The others gave her looks that were just as frustrated as they resumed watching the tape, the whole catastrophic arrest scene that had wrecked months of work. The vile, sadistic psycho who raped and brutally beat his victims to death was going to walk free - on a technicality! Witness statements down the drain. Weeks of canvassing, police affidavits and warrants and stakeouts without number, a whole case Kerri and Alex had built, down the drain.
Buck Dillon, another homicide detective, gave Kerri a sympathetic tilt of his head that said hey, they’re hurting too.
She exhaled hard. Yeah, they were hurting. Slumped in their chairs, two uniformed young cops who had chased and caught the slime, subdued him sustaining injuries as they grappled him face down onto the hood of their patrol car - best place, right in front of their dash cam. The tape was running, the audio blared yells and obscenities as one of them hollered the Miranda.
“You have the right to remain silent…”
Groaning obscenities about their mothers as the sicko’s scraped, bleeding head bounced around.
“Anything you say…if you cannot afford an attorney…do you understand?”
More yelling, and the filthy, sweaty head of Ray Gruner bobbed as it dropped to the hood.
They’d brought him in. Given him soda and wiped the scrape on his lolling head. He hadn’t requested a lawyer, and since he hated women Kerri had gone in alone to interrogate him. The tape had just reached that part. Kerri’s heart pounded. She’d been exhausted and sleepless before this, so decided to drop into a chair too; for a whole minute watched herself with Gruner in the interview room. Couldn’t stand it. Got up again and resumed pacing. Watching, hearing herself.
“You like to hurt women?”
Gruner leaned back, his pale, inhuman eye-slits mocking her. He was cuffed but managed to bulge his steroid pumped muscles under his black T-shirt.
“I asked, do you like to hurt women?”
His lips curled into a sneer. Bad teeth. He reeked in the small room.
“Makes you feel powerful, huh? Making women bleed, beating them to death?”
He thought that was funny. Rolled his eyes as if recalling fun times. “Blow me,” he spat.
Kerri laid her folder on the table. Opened it, withdrew a paper document and a photo, slid the paper across the table to him.
“Your mother did tricks too, didn’t she?” Kerri tapped the pa
per.
The smirk disappeared. Became an icy, killer glare.
“You lived with her in a one-bedroom. You were five when she was first arrested. Where’d she leave you when she was balling her clients? On the couch, maybe? On the other side of the thin wall where you could hear everything?”
He shifted. The corners of his mouth turned down, way down. His phosphorescent eye-slits glared at Kerri’s throat, then south to her open-collared white blouse. She’d pulled her dark blond hair out of her ponytail and let it drop past her shoulders. She was about the same age – thirty-four – his mother had been when she was robbed and shot by one of her johns. Now Kerri pushed his mother’s photo to him.
“She was pretty, wasn’t she?” Kerri leaned further across the table, closer to him. “Big, smiling, beguiling eyes. Did you wish she paid more attention to you? Did you hear the moans and bouncing and thudding of the sex she was giving?”
He glared.
“As you got older, did you wish you were in bed there with her? Did you wish you, too, were in her, like all those men who came and didn’t give a shit for you?”
His chair crashed back as he lunged, shrieking, “Bitch! I’d kill you worse than I did that Selena whore. I’d twist your arms off first!”
The others were on him fast, forcing him back down. They had him. Kerri remembered gulping her breath back in giant heaves and leaving the room thrilled. Another evil was removed from the streets. Now they could rejoice, catch up on sleep, grin to each other on hard teamwork finally ending well.
Until their Lieutenant Tom Mackey, with a sorry, frustrated face, saw the tape and shook his head.
Gruner hadn’t been properly Mirandized. The unis who’d taken him down had pounded him. Yes, yes, his head bobbed and dropped during the Miranda, but was that a nod? For sure it wasn’t a verbal yes. It could be argued that they’d beaten him into a confession.
They were screwed. It was over. Someone muttered that a public defender had arrived and was taking Gruner out, back to the streets. Someone else switched off the monitor. Silence closed in on the whole squad room, beyond depressing.
Fear Dreams Page 1
