Byron Starr - Doppelgänger

James closed the office door behind him; he was the last one to arrive. Bill was seated behind his desk, and Sam and Emilio were seated across from him.

Not long after Bill had left for the Ellises’, James called in to tell Bill about his dream. After finding that Bill wasn’t in, he looked Emilio up in the phone book and called him. He had just started explaining everything to Emilio when Emilio’s pager went off, no doubt calling him out to Bob Ellis’ house. The last couple of days of being able to tell his horrible dreams to someone had worked as a sort of therapy for James, and he desperately wanted to talk to someone. He thought about trying to look up Sam’s number and talking to him, but decided against it. James went back to his couch and tried to go to sleep. It seemed he had just dozed off when the phone rang. He looked at the clock: 7:45 a.m. No, he’d slept at least an hour, maybe two. It was Bill. He asked if James had seen what had happened to Larry’s dogs. When James said he had, Bill told him to come into town immediately. When he arrived, Debra had directed him to Bill’s office.

“Have a seat, James,” Bill said.

James took one of the folding chairs from behind the door, opened it, and had a seat.

“Sam thought we needed to have a little meeting of the minds,” Bill said, then nodded to Sam.

Sam cleared his throat; the throat clearing turned to a cough, which led to more coughs. Sam began to turn red. Emilio reached over and began to pound him on the back. Sam took a drink of his coffee and started to talk again, but found his voice gone. After another couple of sips, he was able to speak in a hoarse voice. “Sorry about that. What I needed to say was that we’re back at square one with this thing. I can replace the dogs within a week — wouldn’t be as good of a team, especially without Larry, but they could still be replaced. However, after what happened Monday, I’m not so sure the dogs will work anyway. Quite frankly, I’m stumped. We weren’t successful tracking it. And, if there’s a pattern to this thing’s killings, I’ve missed it. You two,” Sam pointed a pair of thick fingers at Emilio and Bill, “have worked on this case longer than I have, and you,” he pointed at James, “seem to be able to see things about this thing that the rest of us can’t. What I need is for us all to put our heads together and see if we can’t come up with something — anything — that might be useful.”

For a brief moment no one said a word, then James spoke up. “Well, I think it’s odd how the thing always knows what to attack and where to find it.”

Everyone looked at James. Bill and Emilio had a fairly well concealed but still apparent look of surprise on their faces. This made James hesitate.

“Please, continue,” Sam helped.

The last few weeks had made tatters of James’ nerves. He felt his cheeks grow warm and realized he was blushing; this in turn made him embarrassed about the fact that he was blushing like a schoolboy and made his cheeks turn even redder. He began to feel lightheaded, so he hid his head in his hands.

Sam had just opened his mouth to coax James into talking when James, without raising his head from his hands, started again. “In one of my dreams it saw my prints where I had snooped around at the Perrett place. Four days later it shows up at my house, which is over five miles away, and murders Angie and Jimmy.”

After mentioning their names out loud for the first time in over a week, James began to feel tears well up in his eyes. He fought them back, then raised his head, wiping away any possible sign of tears with his hands as he moved them away from his face.

“Then it killed Greg when he was the only person left who believed me,” James continued. “Then, after the dogs came close to catching it, the thing traveled all the way out past Liberty to take care of them. It’s weird enough that it noticed the dogs were a threat, but it’s downright unbelievable that this thing knew where to find them.”

There was another brief moment of silence, then Sam spoke. “I fully agree that what happened to the dogs seems to be too much of a coincidence, and I must admit the circumstances surrounding the killing of your wife and child are quite odd. But, I think that even if the truck driver is right, and there was something at the corner when Deputy O’Brien ran out in front of him, I still think O’Brien’s incident was just a case of he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean three murders had already been committed on that road, so we already know it was prowling there.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t normally sit and wait at intersections for its victims.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“It sat in those woods for over an hour, waiting. Then, when Greg passed by on his way to check out the crime scenes, it watched the car closely, not like the other dozens of cars that passed by while it was sitting there. Then it waited at the intersection for Greg to return. Y’all have a record of when he stopped at Mr. Youngblood’s, don’t you? How long was it between the time he called in and the time I started raising the roof?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll check,” Bill said.

“Well, however long it was, that beast waited quite some time for him to come back, then attacked him. It wasn’t random at all.”

“What about Sharon Perrett, William Youngblood, Alma Carroll, and Don and Lisa Chamblin?” Sam asked.

“Random attacks, I think. I guess it was hungry,” James said, “although Emilio said that the Chamblin attack might have been a decoy.”

Emilio’s eyebrows shot up. He put his hands out in front of himself and waved them defensively. “What I said was, if your dreams were right, and this thing was staking out Newton, then maybe when it attacked the Chamblins it was trying to throw us off.”

James caught the defensiveness of Emilio’s posture and statement and began to wonder if they were telling him everything. He thought about asking them what they had been talking about before he came in the room, but he held his tongue.

“I guess if this creature’s smart enough to do half of the things it’s done, it’s smart enough to know how to run a red herring across a trail,” Sam commented. “So, we all agree this thing is smarter than the average bear, so to speak.” No one laughed at his weak attempt to lighten the mood, so Sam continued, “Does anyone have any idea how to go about catching or killing the thing?”

There was another long pause, then James spoke again. “It’s got a new den. It seems to be an abandoned building of some sort; it seemed to have been painted white at one time, but the paint is flaking. It takes longer for the beast to reach town than it did before, so I imagine this place is pretty far back in the woods. If I can get a good enough look at the building, maybe I can identify it and we can catch it while it’s at home nappin’.”

“This is a possibility,” Sam said.

“We can try tracking again,” Emilio said, then added, “of course, like you said, we will have even less of a chance of catching it without Larry and his dogs.”

“If this damn thing’s as smart as it makes out to be,” Bill added, “we can probably count out being able to track it with dogs. I think the only real chance we’ve got is if James here can wake up from one of his dreams in time to tell us where that thing is right before or during an attack. And even then we’d have to have a unit right there. The thing seems to work fast.”

“You’re probably right, Bill,” Sam said, then asked, “Any more ideas?” He looked around and got no response other than a shrug from Emilio.

Sam said, “All right then. If y’all think of anything else, for Christ’s sake I’m all ears.” He turned to Bill, “That’s all I wanted to say.”