Dreams of the Dead

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  ALSO BY PERRI O’SHAUGHNESSY

  Show No Fear

  Motion to Suppress

  Invasion of Privacy

  Obstruction of Justice

  Breach of Promise

  Acts of Malice

  Move to Strike

  Writ of Execution

  Unfit to Practice

  Presumption of Death

  Unlucky in Law

  Case of Lies

  Keeper of the Keys

  Sinister Shorts

  Gallery Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Mary O’Shaughnessy and Pamela O’Shaughnessy

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Gallery Books hardcover edition July 2011

  GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Akasha Archer

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-4165-4973-4

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6064-0 (ebook)

  Dedicated to Nancy Elizabeth Mason, M.D.

  For bringing three precious lives into our lives,

  and for thirty years of friendship and caring.

  And, as always, Brad.

  —M

  To Harry Berger, Jr., an inspiration to many, and good friend.

  —P

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  The dreams of the dead are unimportant to the living. Once they were told to loved ones, turned into reality, and whispered in prayer, but now they were locked away. Silent and unreachable, such dreams are.

  Lake Tahoe lay passive under the long rays of the April afternoon, a repository of more than water. I tacked in an easterly breeze toward Meeks Bay with its still-snowy promontory. All around the lake the white Sierra peaks were the only witnesses to the small sailboat.

  Maybe the dead dreamed even more vividly now, with activated souls. That they no longer moved meant nothing.

  Why do modern people ignore these extended sunsets of their ancestors? I know the dead exist for a long time after death, as long as the disintegrating flesh and bone.

  Safe from possible pursuers and witnesses now, under control again, I screwed the lid off a second bottle of beer and drank some, guiding the tiller, the boat moving smoothly out to the spot I had chosen on his map. Some sages said the dead spent their time redreaming the time when they were alive. They wouldn’t know they were dreaming. They would fly, love, win the one they wanted in life. They would lose their teeth, not be able to find their lockers, be pursued by stupid trolls, think they were talking to the dead and living, fall harmlessly off cliffs.

  Maybe they relived death. I hoped Jim would. And I hoped this time he would feel the deaths of the people he had killed. Yes, why not? Dreams contain strong emotions. Jim would live the killings over and over and maybe even feel something unusual happening now—bewilderment, and distaste at being disturbed, removed from this frigid mountain bed.

  A scientist once said that after cremation much of the body is lost, not released to the air or anywhere. Where did it go? Cremation, then, would unnaturally and instantly kill the dreaming soul. Burial was the proper way to treat the dead, or plucking by vultures, or insufficient burning as at the Varanasi ghats, so the dead could have their centuries to dream as they returned particle by particle to the soil.

  I tied off the tiller, loosened the sails, and rattled the blue tarp as, grunting a little, I pulled and pushed the body up from the hold. The tarp was filthy but I felt little repulsion as I laid it onto the low, long seat, hard on my knees, my arms around it as if to embrace it and show it the glorious scene in which we were performing our parts in this drama. I felt I could almost hear him talking to me, whispering, moaning, trumpeting in a low register like an elephant, but it was only the flap of sails, the wind against the sides.

  This final burial would be worse than cremation, in its way. Maybe he knew he was going to lie on the frigid bottom forever, never decomposing, forever retaining a faint shadowy connection to one end of the spectrum of life. His dreaming flesh would be preserved indefinitely in the lake’s almost-freezing deep temperatures. There would be no release.

  And if dreaming meant reexperiencing the events of life, he would not wish to dream forever.

  The tarp unwrapped slightly at the top and I saw a clump of familiar brown hair. I propped myself against the open hatch to the tiny cabin and put out a gloved finger, touching the hair lightly. Something stirred within me even as I shuddered.

  Then I hardened my stomach muscles, crouched, picked it up tarp and all, and tipped the reeking thing into the lake. The boat was at the deepest fractured depth of the lake, about sixteen hundred feet, the second-deepest lake depth in the United States.

  Down there it would be utterly lightless.

  As it sank, last blue on blue, I took out a small, soft, flattened leatherbound book from my pocket and read an old poem I had chosen for this occasion:

  we are white floating

  in an unknown firmament

  our faces loom from the black

  then recede as impassive

  as winter branches

  our lips fall into disarray

  we stare harmlessly

  wide-eyed we dream—

  I didn’t feel like finishing. When I closed the book, I could no longer see anything over the side. I threw the book into the water, removed my gloves, leaned out over the lake, and washed my hands and face. The water cooled me.

  Then I reset the sails, freed the tiller, and headed back toward the Tahoe Keys Marina.

  Let the dead dream. Let the living act.

  PART

  ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Sandy Whitefeather walked into the inner office, closed the door, and sat down in one of
the orange client chairs, wearing her usual expression of firm dignity. On the phone with a probation officer who was preparing a sentencing report for one of her criminal defense clients, Nina raised her eyebrows, but Sandy’s expression did not alter.

  The secretary and lone staffer in the Law Offices of Nina Reilly, Sandy ordinarily stood at Nina’s desk, so either she was tired or some cataclysm was afoot. Since at 8:00 a.m. Sandy usually was well into her fourth cup of coffee, she probably wasn’t tired. She had been hard at work when Nina arrived, and Nina had meant to ask her what was bringing her into the office so early these days, and why she would close out the file on her computer whenever Nina came near.

  Outside, the weather had turned cloudy, the thick white clouds that meant they would have snow. This was the tumultuous season, as the mountains left winter and moved into spring.

  “Sorry, gotta go. Call you back later,” Nina told the officer, and hung up. “So?”

  “Scumbags have been sitting in these chairs for four years now,” Sandy observed. She wore a belt with small silver conchas and tan leather cowboy boots under a long skirt. A member of the Washoe tribe, Sandy had lately gone country-western in her dress, and the appearance of a snorting stallion in the parking lot one night would not surprise Nina.

  “They do the job.” Nina got up, spun one, and tried not to notice the ugly brown stain not exactly adorning its back. When had that got there?

  “We need new chairs. Comfortable. Leather so they clean easier.”

  “That’s low on the list.” Nina indicated the stack of files and phone messages stacked neatly on her desk. “Today, we work on generating cash, not spending it. As I recall, you told me Friday that we are low on the accounts receivable front, no surprise, considering that nobody in town has a dime to litigate these days.”

  “Fine, if you like cooties.”

  “So hire a steam cleaner. Do we need to have this conversation right now? Is that why you came in? I’m working.”

  “I saw brown leather chairs at Jay’s Furniture over in Reno this weekend. Four hundred apiece, but your clients can rest their heads and they won’t have to put their arms on this cold chrome.”

  “No money for extras now.”

  “How about if you could make five thousand bucks in ten minutes?”

  Nina waited, but Sandy sat, arms crossed. Unable to stand it any longer, Nina asked, “New client?”

  “Someone we know awaits outside.”

  “Who?”

  “Philip Strong.”

  “Strong?” Nina felt a nasty stirring in her gut. For two years, she had tried to put that name out of her mind.

  “Jim Strong’s father.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s over.”

  “You’d think.”

  “What did Philip say?”

  “He’ll pay a big retainer for a problem he has.”

  Nina covered her eyes with her hand.

  “You look peaked. Maybe you ought to see a healer. I know one up at Woodfords everyone says—”

  “Philip Strong’s waiting in our outer office?”

  “Marched right in five minutes ago. I was busy writing something important, but he didn’t mind interrupting. Says it’s urgent.”

  Nina heard herself, voice higher-pitched than usual. “I don’t want to.”

  “You may not want to, but you oughta. Listen. You have an appointment with Burglar Boy in twenty minutes. Just hear Philip out and I’ll scoot him away when you’re done.”

  “Send him upstairs to John Dominguez.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Claims he needs to consult with you. Only you.”

  “Why is he here?”

  “No details, but I’m thinking it’s about his ski resort.”

  Paradise Ski Resort. Nina pictured the lodge up the mountain behind town, the enormous stone fireplace, handsome people pulling off their rigid boots, downing hot toddies, beers, and champagne, singing loudly, throwing arms around each other before eventually venturing out into the night, heading for their rented condos or a long night of gambling. Straddling the border between Nevada and California, a neighbor to Heavenly Ski Resort, Paradise was a hidden gem. The lifts cost less, the lodge had delicious food, and the runs rivaled world-class Heavenly in their variety.

  Those really in the know, though, remembered that two years earlier the resort had seen a serious family tragedy, one Nina didn’t care to remember.

  “I don’t know why, but the phrase deep pockets popped up in my mind the minute I saw him,” Sandy continued. “You should fit him in.”

  Nina leaned back in her chair. The sharp sunlight of Lake Tahoe in March lanced through the window. Only a few miles to the east in Nevada, across the Sierra massif, in the high desert, the sun reigned most of the year. Outside in the well-plowed street of the mountain town, old Hummers and other full-size trucks and SUVs tankered by as though the price of gas had never been close to five bucks a gallon, the vehicles spattered brown with slush.

  Nina made her palm into a stop sign. “I never want to hear Jim Strong’s name again.”

  Sandy nodded. “Neither does Philip, I’m thinking. Look, he’s one of the few people left in this town with money.” Sandy scratched at the metal arms of the chair, then leaned forward to see the result of her handiwork. “But what strikes me is that you need to know what’s going on here even if we don’t accept him as a client.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cuz if it’s about his son, it affects you. You’ll get lassoed into his stuff sideways if you’re not careful. At least find out why he came.” Sandy had the strongest fingernails of any human on the planet, it appeared. They continued scratching on the chair arm in one tiny place. The chrome began to disappear as though she were using a tiny Brillo pad.

  “Direct him upstairs.”

  At the door, Sandy turned once more to Nina, her eyebrow cocked into a final question mark.

  “Tell him I’m sorry,” Nina said. The door closed, and Nina went to the tiny mirror by the door, examining the blowy hair, the darkness under the eyes, the brown eyes that now appeared almost amber, translucent in the reflection from the light behind her.

  No one had ever hated her, hurt her, or scared her as Philip Strong’s son had. Nina would never recover from the blows, never. Knowing Jim would never come back helped her to sleep at night. She walked a few more steps to the corner of the big window, where she liked to look out over her personal shimmering sliver of Lake Tahoe.

  In the outer office, voices competed for airspace, Sandy’s mostly prevailing. Nina recalled Philip Strong as a quiet man, and Sandy seldom raised her voice, so why all the shouting? A crash made her rush to open her office door and take a look.

  Sandy, feet stuck to the floor, sturdy as a tripod, gripped the back of Strong’s parka like a bouncer. Sure of her hold, she shoved him implacably toward the door. Strong grabbed the jambs, preventing her from propelling him out, yelling, “I need to see her!”

  “Sandy?”

  Sandy paused and looked back at Nina, eyes her usual cold coal black. “Told him you had other plans for him. Upstairs.”

  “I’m not leaving!” Philip cried. “This is important, damn it!”

  Sandy’s grip tightened. Nina, recalling some old business between Philip and Sandy’s mother, something vague, something that probably made Sandy nuts, said, “It’s okay, Sandy.”

  Sandy held tight. Was that a hank of hair stretching between the fingers of her left hand? Philip yelped again. “Really?” Sandy asked after a few moments of Philip’s twisting left and right, bubbling with anger but unable to free himself from her hold.

  “Yes,” Nina said.

  Sandy let go.

  Philip, caught off guard, nearly fell to the floor, tried to regain his balance, and set a hard hand against the wall to steady himself. He pulled a hand through his thinning hair as if to recapture his lost dignity.

  Sandy adjusted her belt and brushed off he
r skirt.

  Then they both looked at Nina. “I found a minute,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Strong righted himself and said, “Sorry, Sandy.”

  “Hnf.” Sandy went to her desk and plopped down to a ringing phone. While she answered it and Philip Strong tucked his shirt back into his pants, Nina took a good look at him.

  He had aged. Thick, dark hair that once curled around the bottom half of his skull had diminished to wispy white strands since she last saw him. He had lost weight in two years. He must be in his sixties by now. Even so, he maintained an attitude of physical health, wearing a red parka and jeans that accentuated stringy, once athletic legs. He stared back at her as if he’d forgotten what she looked like. He looks haunted, she thought.

  “Come in,” she said, holding the door.

  Almost as the door clicked shut, he was saying, “I have news, Nina. It’s killing my family. It might kill you, too. But you need to know.”

  She tensed. A threat, not even two minutes into the conversation. She had been right to want him upstairs, not here, in her face, frightening her.

  “Jim’s alive. My son’s alive.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Nina felt her insides turn out. Her heart slapped against her chest. She knew Jim was dead. What his father said, what he believed, couldn’t be true. She shook her head, smiled slightly, resumed breathing, and waved for Philip Strong to sit down.

  He swiped a sleeve across his sweating forehead. The office, kept at a stable sixty-six degrees by Sandy, the energy czar, was not warm.

  “Why do you think that? Jim’s been gone for years. It makes no sense. None,” she said, going around to her chair.

  “I know he hurt you and your family. I imagine how hard this must be for you to hear.”

  “He’s in contact?” No way was this possible.

  “He’s out of the country, but, yes, he’s in contact.”

  “Where?” Pulling out her yellow pad, she wrote down the date, March 27, the time, 8:25 a.m., and that she was having a conference with Philip Strong, taking notes, a nice normal, routine thing.

  “I can guess your immediate reaction. Nothing will bring your husband back. You don’t want to get involved with my family again. You’d prefer never to see me again.”