Chapter 2: Back to Work

"Boy, Allison wasn't kidding when she said vacation was over," Shannon said when we got together that night. We were in the cabana, sitting in the little sunken area with our feet in the warm water, watching the colorful fish swim below us.

"You call this a vacation?" I asked. "I've been looking every night for any hint of where the killer disappeared to; two nights a week taking Angela, sorry Amber, to see Bob, spot checking the other girls on the list just to make sure he hasn't grabbed someone else..."

Allison just had to chime in, "Yes, Amber, get used to it, stop thinking of Angela and focus on who she is now. We can't afford to make a slip about that. As for the rest, I can think of more than a few other things you've been doing. Not that I'm complaining mind you, and I think I can safely speak for Shannon when I say that it was time well spent. Besides, we all needed a break after what happened; you most of all."

"Oh you can definitely speak for me," Shannon said, "and you're right, we did need a break, especially you, Jimmy. It's been nice to be able to just kind of let things go for a while, but truthfully, I have been feeling a little guilty about not getting started helping Samantha."

I sighed. "Yeah, me too. But at the same time I felt like I needed to cut back for a while. After all the pressure of Angela's disappearance..."

Suddenly Allison stood up and shouted, "No damn it! There you go again! How many times do I need to say this; Angela is dead! Stop referring to her in the present tense. It wasn't 'the pressure of Angela's disappearance.' It was 'when Angela died!' Get it through that thick skull of yours. If you don't, you're going to make a mistake and say something at the wrong time. What would happen if you said something like that to Tim? I'll tell you what would happen, either he would think you were belittling what happened or, worse still, he might start to question why you said it like that? Look at me; do you think you could hold up if Tim started asking you questions about what happened? Do you?"

I couldn't look her in eye, and as soon as I turned away she jumped on me again, "See! You can't even look me in the eye when I ask you. There is no way in hell you are going to be able to look her brother in the face and tell him what he needs to believe. He can't know the truth! No one can. So whatever you need to do to get it straight in your head, do it, but bury her! I don't want to hear the name 'Angela' coming out of your mouth again unless we're discussing visiting her grave. Got it?"

Shannon's eyes were huge as she watched Allison berate me, and at the end she too dropped her eyes and looked away, unwilling to look at me. I didn't need to see the tears she was trying to fight back. Allison had made the necessary mental shift immediately, Shannon and I had been lapsing all summer. I took a deep breath and nodded my agreement.

"You're right, it's a bad habit and I've got to get a handle on it before school starts. It's a good thing Tim and I haven't been running together."

"You know that's an interesting point," Shannon said, turning back and changing the subject. Her eyes were clear and there was no sign of the distress of a moment before. Amazing what you can do in a dream. "Why did you stop? I mean running together; I know you're still running in the mornings."

"Tim stopped running."

"He what?" Allison asked. She had been stepping back down into the depression but she stopped suddenly and turned to me. "What do you mean Tim stopped running? You mean like, at all, stopped completely?"

"Yeah, pretty much. I kept waiting for him to call and set something up. I even tried calling him but he didn't return my calls. I ran into Cindy at the mall and she said he just stopped."

"That's not good," Shannon said. "Does Bob know? Did you talk to him about it?"

"No, I really didn't know what to do."

"Well my first thought would be kicking his ass," Allison answered. They were starting to remind me of my parents; sometimes it was like talking to one person in two bodies. "But he's a little too big for me and I love him too much to go quite that far, but slapping him upside the head just doesn't seem like enough. That's one more thing to add to our list of things to do, and it's going to be a long night already." She stepped back out of the pool and walked over to the white board that was suddenly on the wall just inside the door. She pulled a marker down and started writing as she continued, "Okay, first things first; We need to go check on Detective Shithead; just an observation run to see what we're dealing with. I think we've got a pretty good idea but when he finally pulls his head out of his ass and apologizes to Rebecca I want you ready to do something about it and I think that will be easier if you know what you're up against." She actually wrote 'Det. Shithead' on the board next to the number one.

"Then we need to drop in on the guy in the SUV and make sure everything is okay there."

"Do you really think something may be wrong?" Shannon asked.

"I hope not, but I think there's a good chance. Jimmy was plenty pissed off when he went to see him that night." She wrote SUV next to number two. "Then we need to check in with Samantha, let her know what's been going on and that we're ready to get started working on her problem. I'm sure she'll understand. While we're there we can ask her if Frank has been having any problems." She wrote 'Sam' next to number three and then 'Bob-Tim' next to four. I thought she was done but she quickly added a number five and wrote 'Easy' next to it, "And before we do anything else, you are going to take us all to see Elizabeth Street. I don't know what you're afraid of but you've been putting this off for long enough."

I started to say something but she crossed her arms and gave me a 'go ahead, say something stupid' look. I shut up and nodded. She was right, I had been avoiding meeting with Elizabeth "Easy" Street, and I couldn't even say why.

Elizabeth Street had been on Rebecca's top ten list of potential targets for the killer. Before he grabbed Angela, (I guess I can call her that as long as I'm talking about the past, ) he had used Elizabeth to smoke Rebecca out. Detective "Shithead" Mikkelson had shot his mouth off to the press about the FBI watching a girl that had died in San Diego. She had also been on the list. The killer had sent Rebecca a newspaper clipping identifying the article in the paper as to how he knew she was looking for him. We couldn't prove it was Mikkelson but he was the only one in San Diego who knew, and once I bridged him it was no longer a question. The killer had used the Street girl to see how close a watch Rebecca was keeping. Right on cue, hours after the girl had disappeared Rebecca had rushed up to Fresno to start looking for her. If you watch television at all you know that most law enforcement agencies don't even take a missing person's report until someone has been missing for over twenty-four hours. But less than eighteen hours after 'Easy' disappeared, the FBI was already on the scene trying to find her. The killer had actually watched Rebecca working with the local authorities. Street had turned up in an empty house across the street from her home and Rebecca's interview with her had turned up some interesting information.

Elizabeth Street was the only person who knew about my abilities that I had not actually told myself. Through methods I'd rather not go into her, I managed to get a copy of Rebecca's top-ten list. The ten girls that, based on the profile we had put together, were the most likely to attract our killer. Once I had the list, I started visiting the girl's dreams to try and determine if they really belonged on the list or not. Somehow "Easy" had known when I was watching her, checking her out to confirm whether or not she deserved a spot on Rebecca's watch list. Qualifications for the killer's list included college scholarships in sports, good looks, an aggressive attitude, which seemed to go hand in hand with being scholarship material in most sports. All of the girls killed except one had met this qualification and we figured that was a mistake on his part. Her failure in that area had saved her weeks of torture but only by earning her a swifter death.

The last qualification was one that Street met easily. He liked girls with unusual sexual habits. The first victim, Diane McKenzie, had been a serious party girl; she liked a lot of attention. Number two, Amanda Watkins, had been the mistake. Not because of her sex life, although that was not what it appeared to be. Her problem was that she didn't fight at all, but submitted to anything and everything he did. The third girl, Maria Pena, was into presents and according to her sister, whored herself to whoever bought her the nicest gifts. Angela had been number four; she was sleeping with her brother, my friend Tim. The three fighters, Diane, Maria, and Angela, had lasted between three and four weeks each, Angela probably would have set a new record if the killer hadn't been worried about Rebecca finding him. All three had sustained severe injuries as the result of weeks of torture, abuse, and rape. Maria had three broken fingers, a cracked rib, and had dislocated a shoulder trying to get free. Angela had injuries at least as bad by the time Rebecca found her and the killer fled, blowing up the house to cover his escape and 'killing' Angela in the process. I'm sure he had been hoping to catch Rebecca in the blast as well.

As far as unusual sexual habits went, Elizabeth 'Easy' Street, was overqualified. It turned out that her nickname, "Easy," was one she picked out for herself and her reputation was a smokescreen to cover her true purpose. Regardless of the purpose, Easy lived up to her nickname quite well. Male or female, singles or in groups, Easy wasn't shy about who she was or what she wanted.

In truth though, Easy believed she was a personal servant of God Himself and sex was the tool He had given her to do His work. Yeah, I know what you're thinking but she makes a pretty convincing case for herself, I'll tell you about that another time.

Ever since Rebecca had told us that Easy knew we had been watching her dreams and even knew our names, we had talked about going to visit her, but for some reason we never got around to going. I don't recall ever making a conscious choice not to go; we just always found something else we needed to be doing. Now, it looked like the choice was being taken out of my hands. One way or another, I was going. It probably wouldn't be tonight, but it would be soon; and it was pretty much a given that the girls would be going with me. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed that it was in fact a good thing. Meanwhile, we had plenty to do tonight already.

Once I bridge someone the first time it's almost automatic any time I want to do it again. If I need to see a particular person all I have to do is think about them and if they are asleep and dreaming, I can feel them in my head; sometimes even see what dream they are in. Immediately I knew that Mikkelson was not available, for whatever reason he just wasn't reachable. Usually that just means that they are not dreaming yet. I set a 'tickler' of sorts in my head to let me know when he showed up and moved to the next target on the list.

I had encountered Raymond Parry the very first time I took Allison for a ride in my new truck. We were on our way to show it to Shannon and then we were all going out for breakfast. I was about twenty feet into an intersection starting a left turn when a huge black truck ran the light and I had to slam on the brakes. It was one of those big Ford SUVs, I don't remember what they call them; with a lift kit, big all-terrain tires and a 4x4 sticker on the back corner. Even after I hit the brakes, he still had to swerve to miss taking my front end off. As he blew by with his horn blaring I briefly made eye contact. It wasn't much but it was enough that I knew I would have no problem bridging him later. Even as fast as he was going he would have been able to stop in time for the light. Instead he had risked killing me and my sister. As the truck roared away I saw a little head pop up to look back at us out the rear window. He had his kids in the truck! A voice in the back of my brain somewhere screamed that this asshole needed a lesson. I don't generally pay attention to that voice; it tends to be a little hot headed and quick to jump to conclusions, but in this case...

"That was close!" Allison said. I guess I took too long to answer because then she asked, "Jimmy? Are you okay?"

I realized I was still sitting in the intersection staring at his rapidly disappearing taillights; I checked traffic and drove on through the intersection. "Yeah, I'm okay. Can you believe that guy? He could have killed us! The front end of that tank would have come right through your window." I was shaking so bad from the anger that I pulled over just up the street to give myself time to calm down. I took a couple deep breaths, hugged Allison for a couple minutes while I contemplated how close I had just come to losing her, and tried to swallow the rage that had flared up inside me. Finally it subsided and I put the truck back in gear and head off to pick up Shannon and go to breakfast.

Mark was majorly jealous of the new ride. "Dude, I hate you. Here I'm working my ass off, bumming rides from my mom and my friends, you don't even have a job and you swing a ride like this. How do you do it?"

"Actually, a friend of my dad's turned us on to one of those Federal property seizure auctions. Dad took me and it was a great deal so he bought it and now I make payments to him. I think the contract says something about being his gardener until the grandkids graduate from college." Yeah, it was big stretch, the friend was mine, not his, and aside from helping me set up the account to make the payments, Dad's involvement was limited to driving me to the auction and being old enough to actually bid and sign paperwork.

After breakfast we had gone back to our house to hang out for the day. That night Allison and I went to pay a little visit to the driver of the black truck. The first step for me is always the same; I have to learn about my subject. Studying the girls Rebecca was watching had taught me not to go on first impressions. Learning the truth about Elizabeth Street had been a major slap in the face. Now I looked deeper before I made decisions about people. Besides there was always the chance that I was wrong about what had happened. Maybe he had a legitimate reason for almost killing the woman I love.

Raymond 'Scary' Parry had gotten his nickname playing defensive tackle in college. At six-foot-eight and two hundred-eighty pounds, he was something you didn't want to look up and see if you had a football in your hands. He was a good player but he was missing that certain little spark that would have opened the door to the big leagues. Fortunately he was smart enough not to rely on his body to get him through life and had majored in business. Three years after graduation he was running his own warehousing and distribution company and married to the woman who had started out as his secretary. Ten months later she presented him with twin girls and retired to the life of a stressed out home maker. The girls were now five and Daddy dropped them at kindergarten every day on the way to work. Life after football had mellowed Parry in some areas, but other areas made up the slack. He was a solid type-A, highly motivated personality. He didn't ask anything of his employees that he was not willing to do. He expected them to put the same 110% that he did into everything they did. He was as generous with his praise as he was with his criticism; he'd been known to fire people by 11:00, then take them to lunch and rehire them before he got back. His record was firing the same person three times in one day. Now he was married to her so I guess that means he works for her now. All of the aggression everyone thought he left on the football field years ago had actually been gathered up and pressed into a little piece of plastic two inches by three, his driver's license. If there was one place that Raymond Parry had kept and continued to live up to the nickname, 'Scary, ' it was behind the wheel of a car. His loving wife, Christine, rode him constantly on his driving. She worried about letting him drive the girls to school, but since it was on the way to the office it really didn't make sense for both of them to make the drive.

My approach was simple. I just wanted to let him see what could have happened, try to make him realize the risks he was taking not only with his own life, but the lives of everyone else on the road. I let him relive the events of the morning that had led up to the near disaster. He went through his normal morning routine, hitting the snooze button repeatedly until the second alarm clock, the one on the dresser on the other side of the room, went off. Then the race was on; shower, grab a cup of coffee and a piece of toast for the road, and try to get to work in time to spot anyone coming in late. Christine had been up for an hour before he finally dragged himself into the shower, so the girls were already dressed and fed. He lifted them into the back seat of the truck because they couldn't climb up by themselves, the flag dropped and the morning race was on. He rolled through the stop sign at the end of the block, flooring the accelerator to engage the turbo-charger on the big diesel engine and forcing the approaching sedan to brake hard to avoid hitting him. I let the scene progress through the morning drive until he came to the intersection where we had almost met. At this point I made a few changes. This time as I slammed on my brakes and he slammed on his horn while swerving to miss me, a little girl on a bicycle rode into the intersection from the other side. Suddenly Parry was forced to swerve back hard the other way to avoid her. The big truck was never designed with hi-speed handling in mind and the sudden weight shift on the high riding suspension caused the rear wheels to break loose. The big off-road tires just didn't have the necessary grip on the hard, dry pavement. He still might have been okay if he hadn't hit the brakes while trying to correct the slide. Suddenly the truck was going sideways and one of the big tires contacted the concrete island separating the north and southbound lanes. The lift kit meant that the center of gravity was significantly higher than the manufacturer intended it to be and made the truck much more vulnerable to roll over, which it did, the twisting of metal and breaking of glass accompanied by the screams of his two little girls as the truck rolled hard onto its side. As expected we found ourselves back on the beach as Raymond Parry woke up with his big heart pounding in his chest and the echoes of his babies' cries ringing in his ears.

That was it; just enough to get his attention and hopefully get him to take a hard look at his driving habits.

Shannon went with us for the check up trip. We weren't really sure what to expect but nothing could have prepared us for what we found.

Raymond Parry woke slowly, the steady beeping of his heartbeat monitor the first sensation his mind could focus on and identify. Automatically he tried to turn his head to find the source of the sound but the neck brace wouldn't let him turn far enough to see it. Just trying caused a wave of pain that blurred his vision and threatened to send him back into the darkness he had just left. He closed his eyes and focused on riding out the pain. Years of football had taught him how to focus beyond the body's immediate sensations. Finally the wave of sensation passed and he could open his eyes again. His vision seemed somehow different but he couldn't put his finger on what was wrong. It didn't take long to figure out where he was, the various tubes and wires within his limited field of vision, the rails on either side of the bed, all spelled hospital. But how had he gotten here?

It all came back in a rush, the little girl on the bike that came out of nowhere as he swerved to miss the kids in the truck, only in this dream he hadn't quite missed her. He could see the panicked expression on her little face as she disappeared below the line of the trucks hood. The thud of the impact; her helmet, which had not been strapped on but just sitting on her head like a hat, flying away like a Frisbee. Gabby and Tabby's screams mingled with the sound of rubber trying in vain to regain traction as the truck bucked and fought his every effort to control it. The swerve turned into a spin, suddenly he was facing back toward the intersection and he saw the mangled pink bicycle crumpled in the roadway. His eyes tried to find the girl's body but before they could, both tires on the passenger side impacted the center island and the truck went over hard. The world slowed down and he could watch as the truck rolled over the island and the roof was suddenly collapsing, windows shattered and suddenly the screaming changed as one voice cut off, the spin continued and suddenly a second impact changed the motion as the first of the oncoming cars slammed into the truck. His head was whipped sideways by the second impact and then everything had gone dark.

By now his heart monitor was screaming as the memories triggered an adrenaline surge and it fought the drugs in his system. The girls! Where were the girls? A nurse came in to check on him and he tried to ask a question but found that he couldn't talk with his jaw wired shut.

Time flashed forward, the pain was lessened thanks to whatever the doctor injected into his IV. His communication was limited to blinked yes or no responses to the doctor's inquiries. What was wrong with his vision was the lack of depth perception due the fact that he had only one eye left to look through. The neck brace would be his constant companion for the next couple of weeks. If he had been able to see on the left side he would have found out that the cast extended the entire length of his arm and up over the shoulder. The whole thing was suspended from a metal framework attached to the bed.

A week passed and still no one came to see him. Where was Christine? She hadn't been in the truck with them; surely she would have come to see him by now. Finally the door opened to admit someone besides a doctor. A man in his early fifties entered and closed the door.

"Mr. Parry, my name is Hendricks, I'm with the public defender's office, and I have been assigned to represent you. The doctor says it will still be several weeks, perhaps months before you are ready to stand trial. I know you can't answer but I thought you should know the charges against you. You are charged with manslaughter in the death of Tracy Russell, as well as felony child endangerment and negligent homicide in the deaths of your two daughters."

Shock at the lawyers words quickly turned to grief and pain, and tears streamed down Parry's face. His sobs only triggered more waves of pain throughout his body. Ignoring his client's obvious distress the lawyer went on.

"I understand that this is a shock and I do understand but I think it's best to get this part over with as quickly as possible. As I said I have been assigned by the public defender's office because your wife refused to seek adequate counsel for you. Once I was assigned to your case I was immediately contacted by Mrs. Parry's attorney who served me with papers informing you that your wife is seeking immediate dissolution of your marriage. She has requested that you do not attempt to contact her in any way. Your condition being what it is and the fact that you will likely spend the better part of the next several decades in prison makes this rather a moot point but I am required to pass the information along. I will leave a card with your doctor and as soon as you are able to communicate either verbally or in writing he will contact me so that we can start working on some kind of defense. Your insurance took care of the injuries to the three people in the other two cars in the accident. I'll tell you about them when you are feeling more up to it; they're really not important considering everything we have to deal with. The Russells are really the only ones you have to worry about. Your wife has retained separate counsel for the civil suit.

By now Parry's pain and anguish were too much to bear and for the fourth time in two weeks he woke up sobbing in the arms of his wife who had spent the last several minutes trying to wake him from the obvious nightmare. He seemed to be having them a lot lately.

One of the little things I picked up while trying to save Angela was the ability to 'hold onto' someone as they wake. It's like a part of me is pulled along to wherever the dream is originating. In this case I didn't stay long but returned to the beach where the girls were waiting for me. They were sitting on the wicker couch with tears streaming down their faces. I had no trouble understanding what they were feeling. Even watching the nightmare Mr. Parry was living with had hurt. I knelt on the floor and pulled them into a group hug, my own tears mingling with theirs.

Not knowing what to say I knelt there just holding them and trying to figure out what had happened. The relatively minor vision that I had visited on Parry had somehow grown into a something that could only truly be described as a nightmare. I didn't even want to think what Mikkelson was seeing after all this time.

How had this happened? Why had it happened? I didn't really have time to try and analyze it as Shannon stated the obvious.

"We have to fix this."

"You think?" Allison said with barking laugh. "Thank you, Captain Obvious. Fixing it is the least of our problems."

"Our problems?" I asked. "You mean my problems."

"No. You may have to fix it but it's still our problem; and fixing it is going to be, should be, relatively simple."

"Why simple?" Shannon asked.

"He had no problem at all stopping Samantha's nightmares. I don't really see him having a problem with this either. The tricky part is that he has to go in person; I think this is going to require actual interaction. At least I think that he'll have to actually contact Parry and tell him that the nightmares are going to stop."

"With Samantha, he gave her the bracelet," Shannon said, "A physical object that was tied to stopping her nightmares; what can he give this guy?"

"How about a ticket?" I answered with a smile. Allison, always the quick one, grew her own grin and nodded. Shannon looked back and forth between us for a second and suddenly she was smiling too.

"I love you," she said. "You're going to go in as a cop and pull him over before he gets to the intersection, aren't you?"

"I think it's perfect," Allison said, kissing my cheek. "You're so smart."

"Thanks, but if I was really that smart this never would have happened."

"Jimmy, don't beat yourself up over this. Yes, it's bad. It's downright awful. But you had no way of knowing that this was happening. Nothing like this has ever happened before, not even when we did the job on Frank Watkins, and if anyone deserved it, he did; far more than either of these guys. The question is why it happened to them and not to him."

"I have no idea. But I plan on spending some serious time trying to figure it out. You're right though, if this was going to happen I would have much rather it happened to Frank than to these two guys. I just wanted to teach them a lesson; him I really wanted to hurt, actually planned to hurt, just not right away and not like that. My idea of hurting him is ruining his little party once and for all. Hopefully putting him and all his pals behind bars for the rest of their lives."

"I don't see that happening no matter what you do," Shannon said. "Even if you could prove that he was involved in that girl's family getting killed you'd have to prove they all knew about it and even if you could somehow pull that off, I don't see them getting life sentences. Not in today's courts. Maybe long sentences, but nothing like what you're thinking."

"But we have to get them all." I said. "If we don't put them all away the ones that are out will still be free to retaliate against anyone who helped us."

"It's even more complicated than that," Allison said. "Remember when we talked to Bob about abusive situations? He said that many families chose to endure the abuse rather than lose everything by putting their abuser away. Evil as they are, most of these people are the financial life blood of their families. Stopping them is going to put their families in serious straits. Not to mention that some of them, probably several of them, may not be doing this by choice. Remember what Samantha said about Dr. What's-his-name ... um, Hendricks?"

"What?" I asked.

Shannon answered the question for her, "That he was always gentle and caring with her and Amanda and that she thinks he may be being forced to participate. Did you notice that was the same name the lawyer in Parry's dream used?

"Have you noticed that you two are starting to act a lot like Mom and Dad?" I asked Allison.