Chapter 42: Dots on a Map

Rebecca

As soon as Jimmy left I found myself sitting on my bed, still dressed in the jeans and shirt I had pulled on before he took me to the theater. Next to me on the bed was a DVD. I took it out to the living room and inserted it into my player. No good, it was a recordable; my player would not recognize it, and I don't have a DVD-ROM in my home computer. So now what? Well, there was always the computer at work. Okay, think Rebecca it's a dream; Jimmy drags you all over the world; hell your sister moves around on her own, just try it. I sat down and closed my eyes and concentrated on getting to my office.

I opened my eyes and found myself in my car. Okay, that is how I normally start out for the office. I closed my eyes again and when I opened them I was in the lobby of the Federal Building downtown. The building was empty, so I walked to the bank of elevators, pressed the button and a few seconds later the door opened. I entered the elevator and pressed the button for my floor. The doors closed but nothing further happened. I pressed the button again. Still nothing. Damn! What was I doing wrong? Jimmy made it all seem so easy. I certainly didn't remember ever getting on a plane to go to that tropical island of his. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my office once more.

When I opened them again I was standing just outside the door to my little glass walled cubicle. About time! I pulled on the door. Damn!It was locked. I checked and sure enough, my keys were still on the hook in my kitchen. Enough of this shit! I pulled my 9mm out and put three rounds through the glass door. The glass is thick but not bulletproof, there were three nice, neat, holes and a lot of shattering. I kicked through the now sufficiently weakened barrier until the hole was large enough to get through and went in, sat down at my desk and inserted the disk.

For the next, who really knows, but it felt like two hours, I sat and watched, and re-watched every second of the kidnapping, torture, and murder of two innocent girls. I made myself some notes, a long list of questions and then popped the disk out. I was tired; emotionally, physically, pick a category. Okay, maybe not physically since this was a dream after all, but I felt worn out. Have you ever had to sit for hours in a waiting room while a loved one was having surgery? The interminable waiting, wondering, and worrying, trying to keep a lid on yourself when you just wanted to do something? Not even close. I wanted to kill someone. I'm not sure who or where he was, but I wanted this bastard's head on a pole. I wanted to personally reach in and pull what passed for his heart out of his chest and hold it before his eyes as he died. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do. Not tonight anyway. Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow was tomorrow, and at the very least I could start gathering up some more of the scattered pieces that eventually I hoped to assemble into a picture that would help me find this piece of human debris, drag him down to the darkest hole I could find this side of hell and leave him there forever.

If it were up to me I would lock him up with some others I knew from over the years; family members of former victims who had taken the law into their own hands, not trusting the system to do its job right. Men, and occasionally women, who had found and killed the human nightmares that had destroyed their lives, fathers, husbands, boyfriends, siblings of people just like Diane McKenzie, Maria Pena, and Amanda Watkins. I rested my head on my desk for what seemed like just a few seconds.

I woke to find myself back in apartment, in my bed, once more wearing my nightclothes. I reached instantly for the pad in my nightstand and wrote the girls names down. I started writing down all the questions I had come up with in the dream. Then I got up. I thought about starting coffee but decided to pick something up on the way in instead. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Paul.

A voice answered on the third ring, "Freeman."

"Paul? It's Rebecca. How soon can you be in the office? Scratch that? How soon can you be packed for at least one, possible several days away and be at the office?"

"I keep a bag packed. Don't you?"

"Well, yeah, but I figured since this was your first field assignment you may not have had time to pick up some of the tricks. So how soon?"

"This time of morning? Maybe 30 minutes? A little longer if I hit traffic. What's up?"

"I need you to check two more names?"

"Two more? Tell me you're kidding."

"I wish I was. I got two more names from my source last night. I want them checked as soon as possible. I'm going to shower and grab something on the way in. I'm hitting Starbucks on the way; you want me to get you something?"

"Carmel Macchiato with an extra shot. How soon should I expect you?"

"An hour if I run into traffic. Don't forget your suitcase."

I gave him the girls' names, then headed for the shower. I should take my bag along just for show. I could make up a reason later why I couldn't go along. Or just tell him I wanted to see how well he did on his own. Worry about that later. I was dressed in my usual slacks and polo shirt, but I grabbed my 'bank' dress to take along for later. Jimmy should have no problem recognizing me in it. I checked my Glock and headed for the road. Fifty-three minutes later I pulled into the parking garage and took the elevator up to the office. "Oh sure, you work now," I thought. "Where the hell were you last night?" I half expected to find maintenance replacing the door to my office. That and Rod wanting to know just what the hell was so important that I felt it was necessary to destroy a perfectly good $600 glass door, a door that was coming out of my paycheck by the way? Fortunately, that was all just part of the dream and, with a quick twist of the key, my office door let me in. There was a message taped to the door. "Call me.—P"

I set down the coffee and picked up the phone. "Paul? Rebecca. Coffee's ready, what have you got?"

"Two hits: Amanda Watkins, Henderson, Nevada, two years ago; Maria Pena, Ventura California, last summer."

"Shit! Okay, bring me what you have and let's get started. My office isn't going to be big enough. I'll see if I can commandeer a conference room." It was going to be a long day and I had to be in the Inland Empire by 4:30. With traffic that meant I had to leave no later than 2:00 to get there early. By 2:30 I would never make it. Traffic in LA goes up on a logarithmic curve starting at about 2:00. It tended to double about every 10 minutes after that.

Since there were very few people around it was easy to find a room to work in. We might get booted later but for now space was ours for the taking. We laid out what we knew. My respect for Jimmy was going up quickly as I realized just how hard it was to try and work with what you had without giving away what you already knew. I'd seen the images, I knew what had happened, if it was anything like the McKenzie case, (and I had no reason to think that it wouldn't be) then it was accurate. But I couldn't 'know' anything until we 'found' the information. We took a break to attend morning briefing. I caught Rod's eye at one point and let him know that I needed to talk to him. When it was over I followed Rod to his office.