That was Monday. Two days later she was back in Des Plaines and I was still doing paperwork for my fraud case. In the middle of a Zoom conference with the clients my phone buzzed with a text, but I could only glance at it while the client was talking.
Find out about the shirt, the text read. Call Anita if you have to.
After the call was over I had to read it over a few times to figure out what she meant. When it finally came to me, I spent another few minutes deciding what to say. Then I picked up my phone and called Detective Anita Sharpe.
“Jurgen? What’s going on?” Sharpe was always suspicious when I called her. “Vampires? Demons? I’m busy, so this better be apocalyptic.”
“I just need some information,” I said carefully. “It’s for Rachel.”
“For Rachel? Maybe.” Sharpe likes Rachel more than me. Most people do. To be fair, Rachel is cuter. “What is it?”
“The, uh, Rebekah Martinez murder? What color shirt was the victim wearing?”
Long pause. Then: “Why?”
I swallowed. “It’s for Rachel. I can’t tell you.”
“Come on, Jurgen. You can’t ask questions about a murder case and then tell me you’re not going to talk about it.”
“I promised Rachel. At this point I don’t know if this has anything to do with that case. The answer might mean nothing.”
“And if it’s something? This isn’t my case, but I can’t be sitting on information on someone else’s live case, Jurgen. You have to tell me.”
“Look, even if this does turn out to be a lead, none of your cop friends are going to believe where it came from, even if you don’t mention my name. And if you do tell them it’s from me, they’ll laugh you out of headquarters, right?”
“Your name does provoke strong reactions around here. Negative ones. But—”
“Look, If it turns into anything concrete, I’ll—we’ll work something out. But I have to talk to Rachel about that.”
I waited. Finally she groaned. “Hang on.” I heard her fingers tapping computer keys. “Accessing the case file . . . crime scene photos . . . let me see . . .” More clicking. “Okay. Light’s not great, but it’s a T-shirt. Light green, kind of like a St. Patrick’s Day shirt, maybe, but no shamrocks or anything. Does that answer your question?”
“I don’t know.” That was the truth, at least. “Let me call Rachel.”
“Tell her I said—no, don’t tell her I said anything. Just that I want to know what’s going on.” She hung up.
I took a gulp of water and texted Rachel. T-shirt was green.
A few minutes later: OK. Call you later.
I sighed. Curiosity is one of my strengths—or flaws, depending on who you ask. It’s a useful trait when you’re a reporter, like I used to be, and when you’re a private detective like I am now. But it can be frustrating when you can’t get all the answers you want.
So I got myself more coffee and waited for Rachel’s call.
Rachel got home at seven that night. She locked the door, hung up her jacket, and tossed her laptop case on the couch without saying a word to me. Then she went to the cabinet where we keep the liquor.
She’d texted me to say she couldn’t talk at work, so I’d waited as patiently as I could all day. Right now I was fighting the impulse to ask her what the hell was going on, but I managed to restrain myself as she poured herself a shot of Grey Goose and tossed it down her throat.
We rarely drink hard liquor. This had to be serious.
Rachel poured herself another shot and downed half of it. Then she looked at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
Rachel rarely apologizes for anything. I nodded. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She finished her drink. “Henry had another dream.”
“Another murder?”
“Yeah.” She sat down. “It was a man this time, young. Late at night again. Walking a dog again. Last night. It was—he said the guy was Black, in his 20s, with a Yorkie or something. He—Henry, or the guy he was dreaming about—he was walking down the street and stopped to talk to the guy about the dog, and then suddenly he just stabbed him. For no reason.” Rachel shuddered. “Henry could feel it. I could feel it when he told me. Like I was there watching him.” She opened the vodka again.
“What do you want to do?”
She poured another shot, but just looked at the glass. “I don’t know. Did you—what did you tell Anita?”
“That I was doing a favor for you and it was probably nothing. And if it turned out to be something, I’d—talk it over with you. She wasn’t exactly thrilled.”
“Yeah.” She drank some vodka, then shoved the bottle away. “Put that back. Is there anything for dinner?”
“I can heat up some lasagna. Or we can order out.”
“Start nuking. I’m hungry now.” She stood up, stretched, and headed to the bedroom to change.
Over our microwaved lasagna I asked, “Does anyone at the center know?”
“I report everything to my supervisor. Dr. Stenholtz.”
“Does he know . . .”
“That I’m psychic? No. I told one guy, another student. Ravi. I got a feeling about him, and it turns out he’s kind of psychic too. Mild precognition. It doesn’t do him much good in Vegas, but it saved his mother from getting hit by a car once.”
“So today, when you found out about the green T-shirt—”
“I tried to tell him. He said it was a coincidence.” She shrugged. “Which, okay, it could be, except I know Henry’s dream is more than a dream.”
“You want me to check on that murder? The second dream?”
Rachel nodded. “After dinner.”
She cleaned up the table while I headed to the office. I needed only a few minutes to find the story.
Dennis Simms, 22, had been stabbed to death in Bucktown, a neighborhood close to Logan Square where Rebekah Martinez was killed. The story included a picture of a young Black man smiling.
“No mention of the dog,” Rachel said.
“The cops might be trying to keep it out of the papers so they can corroborate false confessions.”
“Or they don’t want people to think there’s a serial killer targeting dog walkers.” She grimaced. “If people can’t walk their dogs, some apartments are going to get pretty messy.”
“Tell me about both dreams again.”
“I’ve got them on tape, but they’re back at the center.” Rachel closed her eyes. “They’re both pretty much the same. He’s walking down the street. He sees the girl, or sees the guy. The girl, he walks up behind her and grabs her shoulder just as she’s turning around, and stabs her in the back.” She shivered. “The guy, he’s walking toward him and he stops humming—he’s humming a song or something—”
“What song?”
Rachel shook her head, irritated at the interruption. “I don’t know. He didn’t say, I didn’t ask him. Anyway, he stops humming and says, ‘Nice dog,’ and the guy says, ‘Thanks, his name’s Roscoe.’ And then he stabs the guy in the chest.” Rachel rubbed her eyes. “That’s when Henry wakes up. Right when they get stabbed.”
“Makes sense. I usually wake up right before the vampire bites me.” I saved the article. “Want me to talk to Sharpe again?”
She hesitated. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. If Henry does have some kind of psychic connection with the killer, we have to find out from him. Even if the police believed that, they’d traumatize him with their questions. Plus, there’s rules, like I said. And Stenholtz probably already has me on a list.”
I had to ask. “There’s no chance Henry could be sneaking out and committing these murders himself? Is there?”
I expected a punch. Rachel just shook her head. “It’s a secure facility, there are guards and key cards and cameras everywhere. Plus, it’s in Des Plaines. Unless someone’s picking him up outside and driving him into the city, he couldn’t possibly make it here and back on his own. And if you knew him—” She sighed. “He’s been violent in the past, yes, but I don’t think he’s capable of something like that. We studied serial killers. He doesn’t fit the profile. At all.”
I nodded. “Okay. You don’t go back until next week?”
“Yeah. Ava will be working with him. She’s another student, Ava Winters. We both report to Stenholtz. I’ll talk to her tomorrow to see if Henry has any more dreams.”
“Sounds good. You at home tomorrow?”
Rachel yawned. “Yeah. Class on Friday, but I’ve got a ton of work to do for school and for clients, too, so don’t bug me.”
“Me? Bug you? Never.”
Now she punched me. But she laughed. “Do we have any ice cream?”
The next morning I was lining up interviews for a sexual harassment case I’d just been hired for—a sleazy executive had been hitting on younger female employees for years, allegedly. Rachel was feverishly trying to finish a website redesign for a client of her own when my phone buzzed.
“Uh-oh.” I turned to her desk. “Sharpe.”
“Shit.” She swung around in her chair. “Okay. Answer.”
“Good morning, Detective Sharpe!” I put the phone on speaker. ”What can I do for you today?”
“I want to know what you know about the Martinez murder. Right now.”
I looked at Rachel. She rolled her chair over to my desk. “Hi, Anita, it’s Rachel.”
“Hi, Rachel. What’s going on?”
“It’s—I had Tom call to ask you about that T-shirt. Because—you know I’m in grad school, right? I’m working out in Des Plaines, at a mental health center—”
“With a boyfriend like Jurgen, you need all the help you can get. What’s the point? This is about a mental patient?”
I broke in. “What’s going on, Anita? Why are you calling us?”
She sighed, as if controlling her natural inclination to yell at me. “Because there was another murder last night that looks related to the Martinez case, and if there’s a serial killer wandering around, we need everything we can get.”
“Dennis Simms?” I asked.
She took two seconds before answering. “Yes. What do you know?”
I looked at Rachel. She frowned and took a deep breath. “One of the patients there has dreams. He dreamed about Rebekah Martinez’s murder. And then this second one, Dennis.”
“Was Simms walking a dog when he was murdered?” I asked.
“Why?” She was being cautious.
“Because he was walking a dog in the dream,” Rachel said, glaring at me for interrupting. “Just like the first one. But the story we read didn’t mention a dog—”
“Yeah, that got held back. Cruz made the connection right away. It’s not my case, but word gets around.”
“Ron Cruz?” I’d run into Detective Ronaldo Cruz on a previous case, involving a demon possessing two bodies at once. “I know him.”
“Yeah, and he knows you. If he knew I was talking to you, he’d throw my coffee in my face. But stopping crime is kind of our job, even if it means listening to stories about mental patients dreaming about murders.” She paused. “Who is he?”
Rachel looked at me, then took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you. Without a court order.”
We could almost hear Sharpe clench and then unclench her jaw. “Okay. I get that you’ve got HIPAA and all kinds of other regs to follow. But this is about a murder case—”
“It’s about a dream,” I cut in. “Is the department really going to go get a court order for a mental patient’s dream?”
“You called me, Jurgen,” Sharpe snapped. “You asked for my help. At some point this goes both ways. This is my job.” She hung up.
I looked at Rachel. “You okay?”
She stared at my phone for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. God, what am I supposed to do?”
“Do you want me to—”
Rachel’s phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans. She dug it out, frowned, and answered. “Yeah? Is she okay? Yeah, that’s fine.” She hung up. “They want me to come in tomorrow. Ava’s having a baby and it came early.” She shrugged.
“Are they paying you for this?”
“It’s an internship. The pay will cover the car we bought. Maybe.” She punched my shoulder lightly. “But it’s valuable experience! It’ll look great on my résumé! And all that crap.” She sighed. “I can’t wait until I graduate.”
“Me too. I mean, if you’re happy, I’m happy—”
“Shut up.” She punched me again, but then gave me a kiss. Then she pushed me away. “Leave me alone. I’ve got work to do.” And she headed back to her desk.
I watched her sit down, then went back to my case.
There’s an old man. He’s walking an old dog, like a bulldog. It’s funny, like they’re brothers, both wandering down the street, neither of them walking straight.
The music and the laughing from the bars is loud. No one pays attention to the man and the dog. No one pays attention to me. I’m just humming, down the street behind them. They don’t notice me. Nobody notices me.
Old dog. Old man.
A girl leans over, drunk, to pet the dog. The old man watches her, smiling, then pulls the dog down the street. The girl grabs her boyfriend’s arm, about to fall over. She doesn’t even see me as I walk by.
The old man looks around. The dog lifts one foot, but the old man yanks on the leash, and pulls him into an alley.
Good.
I’m in the alley, humming, and the old man doesn’t see me because he’s picking up his dog’s poop. The dog sees me. It growls at me.
The old man turns and says something. I can’t hear him.
I’ve got the knife. But the dog pushes against the old man’s leg, and he falls over, and instead of getting him in the chest I only get his arm.
There’s blood. The dog starts barking. The old man is on the ground now screaming like a little baby with blood all over him and the dog is barking at my face.
I kick it. I try to again but it almost bites me. Goddamn it. Fucking dog.
The old man is still screaming. It hurts my ears along with the barking. I have to run away.
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