Franklin pondered the details of the murder in the newspaper article. He read and reread the account of the burglary and the subsequent 911 call leading to the discovery of the body. He looked for any facts that might contradict the details in his dream. He searched his mind for any evidence or even a rationalization to explain his knowledge of this crime, a knowledge that seemed far more detailed than the account in the paper.
Could his dream of the murder have been coincidental? Had it simply been concocted by his imagination from bits and pieces he may have heard or read or seen—a dream that was just a dream and no more? If so, where did he read or hear or see these details? He couldn’t remember. Was the dream somehow a clairvoyant emissary reporting a future horror that only his mind’s eye witnessed and not his physical being? He had never experienced any sort of premonition or psychic event before. Or, he thought with much trepidation, was it possible that the dream was part of an insidious plot hatched by his subconscious mind to secretly make him aware of something he had really done while sleepwalking and subsequently forgotten? That the dream was simply a mental cover-up to hide actions that his conscious mind could not endure? No, that was unthinkable. He dismissed that possibility with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head.
He returned again to the article. There must be something there that would prove he could not have been involved. He found few facts in the newspaper about the murder that contradicted his dream, but not many that supported it either. The newspaper didn’t mention scissors as the murder weapon or the tattoo on the woman’s hip. There was nothing to conclusively prove that it really happened the way he saw it in his dream. How did he know that the body he found under the bridge and reported in the 911 call was even the same woman that was murdered in his dream?
Franklin stood and turned to the large mirror on the wall behind his sofa. He studied his reflection for at least a full minute. He didn’t look like a killer.
“Did you do it?” he said to his reflection, half in jest. “Did you kill that woman and think it was a dream? You don’t even know who she was; why would you hurt her?”
“You know who she was,” the reflection said.
Franklin looked around the room, trying to determine if he had just heard a voice or if his mind was playing tricks on him.
“You know who she was,” the reflection repeated.
“What—no, I never saw her before,” Franklin whispered to the mirror, cocking his head to see if the reflection’s lips moved.
“Think about it,” the reflection said. “Earlier that week, outside Dr. Klein’s building?”
Franklin backed up a step, still doubting his eyes and ears. Although he moved back, the reflection remained where it was.
“On the front steps?” the reflection said.
“Was that the woman who was murdered, the woman that had been crying in Dr. Klein’s office, the one I spoke with in the tavern last week?” Franklin asked. He was no longer challenging his senses.
His reflection smiled.
“But I couldn’t have hurt her; I was home in bed,” Franklin said unconvincingly. “I never left my house.”
“You woke up in your car in your driveway.”
“But that was almost a week before the murder. It was a dream. She was alive the next day.”
“What makes you think you didn’t drive back to her house a week later, kill her, and dispose of the body in the stream?”
“But I was in Dr. Klein’s office for more than an hour after she left; I couldn’t have followed her home. How would I know where she lived?” Franklin said in a last attempt to counter his fears with reason.
“You don’t know what you did,” said the reflection. “You can’t even tell when you’re awake or asleep. You went back to her neighborhood just last night and then found the body in the stream where it had been dumped. Where you dumped it. How could you find the house, the bridge, and the stream if you hadn’t been there before?”
“It was a dream, just a nightmare. I never touched her.” Franklin pressed both hands over his ears to block out any response from the reflection that contradicted what he needed to believe.
“If it was only a dream, why do you feel so guilty?” the voice said in a calm yet forceful tone.
“No, you’re wrong. I had no reason to hurt her,” said Franklin as he ran from the living room to his bedroom and slammed the door. He sat panting on his bed, searching his pockets for his handkerchief to dry his eyes.
He jumped to his feet and dropped his handkerchief when he heard, “She looked a lot like Myra.” The reflection was now in the wall mirror over his dresser. “No one would blame you after what that bitch did to you. She took half of everything you owned, and now that she spent it all, she wants more.”
“But I’m not a violent man,” he shouted. “I would never hurt anyone.” Franklin stood, facing his accuser with new resolve.
“You hate her; you wished she was dead,” the reflection chided. “You said so.”
“I don’t hate Myra,” he yelled. “I didn’t mean what I said. She had good reason to leave me. It was my own fault. You’re wrong, I don’t hate her; I hate you!” He ripped the clock radio from his nightstand and threw it at his reflection in the wall mirror. The mirror cracked, and large pieces of glass fell from the wall with a crash. In the pieces left standing, Franklin could see a partial figure looking back at him. It looked like a man who was losing his mind.
Franklin looked at his wristwatch—7:00 p.m. The time didn’t really matter since he couldn’t go another minute without talking to someone. He would call his friend Hyrum. Any voice other than the one in the mirror would calm him, and maybe Hyrum had information that would help. He dialed the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hyrum, this is Franklin. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No, no, we just finished dinner. You’re saving me from helping with the dishes. By the way, how did your date go the other night?”
Hyrum’s familiar wink was implied in his voice.
“Fine, fine. The reason I called was to ask if you read the article in today’s paper about the murder in Silicon Springs.”
“Yes, I did,” Hyrum said in a slow, drawn-out manner. “This area used to be a safe place to—”
“Hyrum, you mentioned last week that Dr. Klein had some attractive patients. Do you remember if the woman in the newspaper, the one that was murdered, was one of them?”
Franklin knew that Hyrum always spoke slowly and deliberately; he chose his words well and pronounced every syllable carefully. However, this pause before answering was uncharacteristically long. “No,” he said. “I can’t say that I ever saw her before. Why do you ask?”
“No real reason,” Franklin said. “I just thought she might have looked familiar. I thought I might have seen her in your building, and since you work there—”
“Would you like to meet somewhere for a drink?” Hyrum asked. “I wouldn’t mind getting out of the house for a while.”
“Maybe another time, Hyrum. There are a few things I have to do.”
“Suit yourself. I’m here if you want to talk.”
Franklin opened his wallet and dumped all the cards, pieces of paper, and money out onto the bed. He rummaged through them until he found Dr. Klein’s business card and dialed the number.
***
Ruth Klein rarely enjoyed the benefits of modern technology. There was something about computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices that just seemed to conspire against her, and this new software she was trying to install on her laptop was no exception. It was designed to take the recordings of her patient sessions and automatically transcribe them into files and download them to her computer. There would be no need for her to type.
“What a great idea,” she had said to the salesperson at Software City.
With this electronic wizardry, she could eliminate all the tedious, time-consuming corrections to her typing and spelling. It would make her life easier.
At least that’s what the salesperson had told her. Right now, it wasn’t going well.
“What do you mean that operation cannot be completed at this time?” she hissed at her computer. “That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Ruth shut down and then restarted her computer, hoping that a brand-new beginning might make a difference. When the computer rebooted, she tried to open the new software again. “Shit,” she cried as she received the same error message: The operation you requested cannot be completed at this time. She pounded the desk with her fist and then picked up her laptop. Ruth held it high over the desk, paused, composed herself, and then gently placed it back down. She was getting nowhere. She usually pulled the plug on her copier at the office and then plugged it back in when that mechanical prima donna refused to cooperate. She began to try the same cure for this obstinate contraption.
“Even if it doesn’t solve the problem, I’ll at least get some satisfaction from yanking your cord,” she said. As she reached down to pull the plug from the wall, she heard, “That’s not going to work, Mom.”
Emma stood in the doorway of Ruth’s home office wearing a pink robe with Hello Kitty on the front. Her strawberry-blond hair, still wet from her evening shower, was wrapped in a towel resembling a turban.
“Emma, how long have you been standing there?” Ruth asked, trying to remember if she had used any language she wouldn’t want her eleven-year-old daughter to have heard.
“Not long, I just thought I would try to save your computer from the same fate as the telephone you couldn’t figure out.”
“That was an accident. It fell from my hand while I was looking out the window,” said Ruth, blushing.
“It’s more likely it committed suicide after the way you yelled at it.” Emma chuckled. “Pulling the plug won’t help; it has a battery. May I see what you’re doing?”
Emma sat down next to Ruth at her desk and pulled the computer to a comfortable position in front of her.
“It’s no use,” Ruth said. “This software is defective. I’m going to take it back.”
She paused, amazed as Emma’s tiny fingers flew over the keyboard, opening and closing applications and adding lines of text as she referenced the installation instructions in the user manual.
Ruth leaned over her daughter and smiled. She could smell the scent of fresh peaches from Emma’s shampoo. She moved close to the back of her neck, brushing it with her lips as she inhaled deeply. Moments like this will be gone all too soon. They need to be savored, and then indelibly written in memory for a time later in life when memories are far more abundant than experiences.
“That tickles.” Emma giggled as she raised her shoulders and wrinkled her nose, never missing a keystroke as she squirmed in her chair.
“OK, it should work now,” Emma said as she turned and ran from the room, dragging her feet in slippers—Ruth’s slippers—much too big for a child’s feet.
“The salesperson said even a child could install it,” she yelled after Emma. “He should have said only a child could install it.”
“I’ll expect something extra in my allowance envelope this week,” Emma said as she disappeared into her room.
Ruth sat staring at the door through which her young daughter had just disappeared. Emma not only demonstrated skill with a computer but exhibited poise and maturity far beyond her eleven years. “Well, at least she gets her good looks from me,” she said under her breath.
The sound of her cell phone interrupted her thought. Ruth could tell by the ring tone that it was a business call rather than personal. “I’m getting good at this technology stuff,” she gushed.
Ruth did not usually take business calls at home after business hours. It wasn’t fair to Emma. This was her home too. Of course, Ruth’s business did involve human suffering, and if someone was in dire need of psychiatric help, it would be unprofessional to refuse them.
Ruth then thought it might be about Sylvia Radcliffe. She had told Lieutenant Peirce to call her if he received any new information about the murder. She could let it go to voice mail; it was probably just a robocall anyway. A digital panderer looking for a donation to the campaign of whatever political flavor of the month was running for office. They’re as bad as those telemarketers who dial every number exactly at dinnertime just looking for some unsuspecting kindhearted person to swallow their mouthful of mashed potatoes and jump at the chance to buy a magazine subscription to Guns & Ammo. They have a lot of nerve disturbing people at home. Isn’t there a law to prevent this invasion of privacy?
“Mom, are you going to answer that?” asked Emma, peeking back into Ruth’s office from the doorway.
Ruth looked up, her mind slowly returning to the present, and said, “Sure, honey.” Maybe I’m the one in dire need of psychiatric help.
Ruth smiled, waved at her daughter, and pushed the button on her phone. “Dr. Ruth Klein, may I help you?”
There was a long pause, and then she could hear someone breathing into the other end of the phone. Just as she decided that this must be the beginning of an obscene call and was about to hang up, a voice said, “Dr. Klein, this is Franklin Jameson. I’m sure I’ll be dead before our next appointment on Tuesday.”
16
The headline of the morning newspaper read, “LOCAL WOMAN MURDERED DURING BURGLARY.” Lieutenant Peirce read the entire article to ensure that it did not contain any mention of the yellow rose tattoo on the victim’s hip or the scissors, which had now been confirmed as the murder weapon. The newspaper story purported that the victim had returned home, interrupted a burglar, and a struggle ensued, resulting in her death, but Sam was skeptical. There had been many unsolved burglaries in the area. Most had the same MO and were probably the same burglar, but the thief had never been violent. The cruelty with which the woman was attacked seemed personal. Sam wasn’t buying the “victim of circumstances” theory.
He leaned back in his chair and tossed the paper with its carefully edited details of the crime onto his desk. It was a common police practice to hold back certain critical facts of the case from the public. There was always the possibility that a suspect might divulge information during an interrogation that was not commonly known. Of course, this ploy was only useful assuming that he could find and arrest a suspect to interrogate. Peirce hoped restricting the facts of the case would at least help weed out the usual wackos who showed up at the police station to confess to every crime published in the newspaper.
The case was getting colder by the minute. Sam reached down and picked up the brown cardboard evidence box sitting on the floor. He placed it in the middle of his desk and lifted the lid. Sam rubbed his hands together, and then he stood and began to remove the sealed plastic bags of evidence from the box. Each clear bag was labeled with the case number, date, time, location found, and a description of the item it contained. Below the evidence label was a chart documenting the chain of custody.
The first bag Sam removed from the box contained an audio tape of the 911 call identifying the location of the body. The label read: Quality of recording, level two. The anonymous caller had obviously tried to disguise his voice and succeeded. There would probably be no voiceprint match from this fuzzy recording, even if the suspected caller was found. Sam placed the plastic bag on the left side of his desk. He handled the bags very carefully. They were tamper-indicating bags, which had intricate, weblike patterns in the clear plastic that would show stretch marks if an attempt were made to open them. Rough handling could be mistaken for an attempt to penetrate the bag. Even an extreme temperature change, suggesting that someone may have tried to open a bag’s seal by heating or freezing, would call into question the integrity of the evidence.
Next he removed the bag containing the murder weapon. The label stated that there were no fingerprints on the scissors and that the blood was type AB, the same type as the victim. Nothing new there. The small piece of blue fabric caught in the joint of the scissors didn’t match any other fabric in the victim’s ho
use and was a common blue cotton cloth with no identifying marks. It could have been from the killer’s shirt, but if true, the killer would have burned the shirt by now. It looked like another dead end.
Sam lifted out an evidence bag containing a plaster cast of a shoe print taken from the muddy bank of the stream where the body had been found. The mud had been so soft and the detail of the casting so poor that the make and even the size of the shoe were indeterminable. At the bottom of the box were bags containing soil samples from the bank of the stream and photographs of tire prints from the road near the stone bridge. The soil was common to most of the state, and the tire tracks were of a very popular brand and size of tire. He signed and dated the chain of custody label on each bag and placed them back in the box. There was nothing here that he could consider hard evidence, nothing that would move this case forward.
“I’m going for coffee, Lieutenant. Can I get you one?” asked Holloway as he poked his head into Sam’s office.
“I’m all set,” Lieutenant Peirce said with a sigh. “You find out anything from the victim’s ex?”
“From the ex-boyfriend or the ex-husband?” asked Holloway.
“Which do you think?” asked Lieutenant Peirce in an aggravated tone.
“Something bothering you, Lieutenant?” Holloway stepped into the office and observed that the lieutenant’s usual cup of coffee had been replaced by a juice box. A slice of whole-wheat toast occupied the spot on his desk usually reserved for two cream-filled donuts. He chuckled, slightly shook his head, and then replied, “Both exes have solid alibis, and neither had anything helpful to say.”
“Write up the interviews and put them on my desk before the end of the day.”
“Yes, sir,” said Holloway as he exaggerated a salute.
“I’m sorry, Holloway. I’m having an off day,” said Peirce as he waved a dismissive gesture with his hand.
At the coffeemaker, Holloway overheard two officers commiserating about the lieutenant’s foul mood.
“It’s not you,” Holloway said. “I think he’s angry because his girlfriend won’t let him have any more coffee.”
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