Steven Harper - Nightmare

"No," Kendi interrupted. "I want to help. He did awful things to her, and I don’t want him to do it again to someone else."

"Let’s at least go somewhere else," Mother Ara insisted. "Maybe get something to eat. It’ll help us to concentrate on our bodies and dampen the emotions."

The three of them decided to meet at a nearby restaurant. The canopy of talltree leaves kept them reasonably dry as long as they stayed under the branches, but they had to dash across the open spaces between the trees. They arrived at the restaurant damp and breathless.

It was a little early for lunch yet, and Tan got them a booth at the back where they could talk in privacy. The restaurant was warm and dark, and the server was friendly. Mother Ara refused to let anyone discuss the case until their food had arrived. Once they had all eaten a little, Tan put her recorder on the table, and they described what had happened. Kendi was glad to discover that Mother Ara had been correct-it was easier to remain level-headed about the entire thing with some food in him.

"My earlier suspicions were correct, then," Mother Ara said. "The killer has a very strong will, and he can attack people by forcing a new shape on the turf in Dream. That’s hard to do."

"Agreed," Tan said. "Most Silent simply aren’t this powerful, just like most people don’t have the physical strength to kill someone with their bare hands. Good thing, too. Otherwise Dream killings would be far more common."

"He knows the victims," Kendi put in. "I think he even …loves them? Or thinks he does. I felt that."

"So did I." Mother Ara sipped thoughtfully at her drink. "Though he may not know them personally. He may be stalking them without actually meeting or talking to them first."

"My research tells me that most serial killers do stalk their victims," Tan said. "If this one can find his women in the Dream, it means he may have touched them in the real world. That, and the fact that he’s doing his little finger trick, means he’s somewhere on Bellerophon. A relief."

"A relief?" Mother Ara asked.

"Yes. It’ll make him easier to catch." Tan tucked a stray strand of black hair back into her braid. "Imagine if he were on another planet. We’d never have a hope."

"What was the number fourteen?" Kendi said. "He wrote it on her forehead."

"He wrote the number twelve on the forehead of Iris Temm," Mother Ara pointed out.

"Is he numbering them-his women, I mean?" Kendi asked, startled. "If he is, there must be a number thirteen our there somewhere."

Tan gave him an appraising look. "We were thinking the same thing yesterday. Pretty smart."

Kendi felt his face grow warm at the praise and he hid behind his juice glass.

"There have only been three other Dream murders." Mother Ara put her elbows on the table. "Prinna Meg, Wren Hamil, and Iris Temm."

"Which means there are either a lot of victims we don’t know about-and they aren’t necessarily on Bellerophon-" Tan said, "or maybe he isn’t numbering his victims but is doing something else. Maybe he’s using only even numbers for some reason."

"I think there’s a dead body somewhere that no one’s found yet," Kendi said. He took a long drink of fruit juice. It was slightly tangy, just as he liked it, and he wondered about the strangeness of it. Less than a day ago he had watched a woman murdered and today he was drinking fruit juice. Vera Cheel would never drink fruit juice again, and that made him sad and angry, even though he had never met her. Not really.

You’re being stupid , he told himself. You don’t even know if she liked fruit juice . Still, the feelings remained. He pushed the drink aside.

Mother Ara sipped from her own glass again. "What do the women have in common? We’ve been over it before, but is there something we’ve overlooked?"

"Female, adult, Silent, associated with Children of Irfan." Tan ticked her fingers. "Ages have varied from young adult to middle age. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to where they live, either, or to the dates or times he kills them. If he was friends with all four of them, we should be comparing lists of people the victims were acquainted with."

"We need more information." Mother Ara glanced at her fingernail. "It’s early yet. Maybe I should take another look at the murder scenes."

"You?" Tan raised her eyebrows. "You’re a consultant, Mother Ara, not an investigator. And Kendi here is just a witness."

"I can help," Mother Ara said. "I know how the Silent mind works-"

"And I don’t?" Tan said.

"Your partner isn’t Silent," Mother Ara pointed out. "I’m another Silent you can bounce ideas off and who might catch something you miss. It can’t hurt to have me along."

"Me, too," Kendi put in quickly.

Both women turned their gazes on him. "Kendi," Mother Ara began, "you can’t think-"

"You just said that I’m an important witness," Kendi interrupted. "And you said that if the killer finds out about me, my life could be in danger, right?"

"Right," Mother Ara said warily.

"So it would be safest if I stayed in the company of the police-Guardians," Kendi said.

"I could assign someone to guard you," Tan said.

Kendi winced and tried not to show it. The idea of someone following him around all day and night-no. For one thing, it would be difficult to talk to Ben. "I can help, too. I saw things no one else did, and I felt some of the things-" a cold shudder passed through him and he tried to hide that, too "-some of the things the killer did. I might notice something the two of you miss."

They argued further, but in the end, Tan agreed that it couldn’t do any harm for Kendi and Mother Ara to look around the murder scenes. Tan paid the bill and got up.

"Since you’re both so eager," she said, "let’s start with Iris Temm’s house."

"She died a year ago," Mother Ara said as they left the restaurant. The rain had let up, though the heavy clouds remained. "Hasn’t the place been sold?"

Tan shook her head. "Only living relative was a sister. Woman can’t bring herself to go into the house yet or have someone dispose of the stuff inside. It’s stood vacant."

The trip to Temm’s house involved three slippery walkways and a gondola ride. Kendi rested his chin on the gondola rail and watched green forest coast by below. The air smelled of rain and leaves. A bit of excitement grew inside him. Ben would probably be impressed that the Guardians had taken Kendi into the houses of two murder victims in one day, and Kendi could hardly wait to tell him. Then a bit of guilt stabbed him. These women were dead, and all Kendi could think about was impressing Ben? All life, he was selfish. Still, he found himself looking forward to going back to Mother Ara’s house and seeing him.

They finally arrived at Iris’s tiny house. The windows were shut and the door was locked. Wet, dead leaves were scattered about the porch. Tan pressed her thumb to the doorplate and the lock clicked open. Kendi took a deep breath and followed Mother Ara inside.

It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloomy interior. The air was stuffy and smelled faintly sour. After a moment, Kendi made out a living room filled with second-hand, mismatched furniture and an upright piano. A patina of dust coated everything. Kendi half expected to see a skeleton lying on the couch and chided himself for being ridiculous. Temm would have been buried long ago. Still, a vague feeling of unease crept over him. This was a dead woman’s house, and it had been left just as it was on the day she had died. The Real People told ghost stories, and he shivered at the thought of encountering a pale, angry Iris Temm with a number twelve dripping scarlet down her forehead.

Tan opened a couple windows. The fresh air helped clear away some of Kendi’s unease but didn’t entirely erase it. "Look around," she said. "You can touch anything you want-the techs have been through half a dozen times."