A Dream of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

a person and transport them to the nearest psychiatric facility if
they were deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. Derek’s grief and response
to it were natural, he needed to be with people who cared about him not stuffed
in a small room awaiting a psychiatrist. As long as someone stayed with him, I
wasn’t worried.
    A familiar voice from behind me let me know Kara was here. I
briefed her on the details and the inevitable question came, the one I had been
asking myself.
    “Why the guilt?”
    “I don’t know.” I looked around as if hoping a clue would
present itself. “Maybe he or his wife couldn’t have kids, maybe he lost a baby,
maybe-”
    “Maybe he just likes kids.”
    She had a point. None of the murders had happened in homes
with children. The first victim had kids but they had long ago moved out.
    “Pro-lifer?”
    She cast a glare of pure stupidity in my direction. “A
pro-life murderer?”
    “You’d be surprised how many people who are pro-life are
also for the death penalty.”
    Kara appeared lost in a tailspin of faulty logic. “We’ll
figure it out once we catch him, I guess.”
    All I could do was nod and hope it happened soon.

—4—
     
     
    Kara and I spent two hours scouring the crime scene while
getting in the way of the Forensics team, who in turn got in our way. I didn’t
expect to find anything. We never had and I knew little had changed. What we
were looking for was evidence of the one thing that had changed, the lipstick
message. The killer had taken the lipstick, presumably the victim’s, with him
when he left.
    The thought crossed our minds that the killer was a female,
purse carried, lipstick inside. But nothing pointed to this. All of the
profiling that had been done pointed to a male. Female serial killers were a
rarity and those that existed weren’t keen on targeting women. But regardless
of our beliefs until we knew for certain that the killer was male we couldn’t
rule out that we were chasing a woman. Or perhaps a couple? The physical force
required to subdue the women was more in keeping with a male, as was the
brutality of the killings. But what if the male had an accomplice?
    Questions that we couldn’t answer filled our minds and conversations
both at the scene and in our office following our return to the detachment,
fresh beverages and lunch in hand.
    “It has to be a man, everything points to a male.”
    Kara was certain, and while I strongly agreed with her, I
held onto my doubts.
    “Prove to me that Sasquatch doesn’t exist.”
    “I can’t. I just know it doesn’t.”
    “Why?”
    “We would have discovered it by now.”
    I smiled. The argument of skeptics. Not that I believed that
cryptids—the Sasquatch, the yeti, the chupacabra—roamed the earth. I just kept
asking myself, how can we prove that something doesn’t exist? I didn’t believe
in a higher power but believed in the possibility that one existed if only
because it had not been proven not to.
    “We have no evidence. How can we rule out a female killer with
no evidence to the contrary?”
    “I just . . . have a feeling.”
    “Good,” I replied through a mouthful of tea. I swallowed
harder than I should have and started coughing. Red faced and eyes filled with
tears I composed myself. “Hunches are important, you’d be surprised where a
hunch can take you. Just don’t let it blind you from other possibilities.”
    Kara nodded, unable to speak due to her laughing at my
misfortune as I began coughing again.
    With only a slice of pizza left in the box and no takers
amongst us, I closed it up and moved it to the very corner of my desk. The
single piece of pizza was the only thing that held it in balance.
    I tore the top page of my calendar and revealed the page
below it: June 8, 2011—remuneration; payment or reward. I doubted I would find
a way to use that one today.
    “Twelve forty-two,” Kara said aloud, a habit of hers I was
still getting used to. “Derek will be in at