Deadly Dreams

by Kylie Brant

  But she’d spent her career trying to make sense of them. Trying, finally, to put them to use. Because otherwise they existed only to torment.

  “Change of plans.”

  She jerked a little at Nate’s words. Looked up to see him striding toward her. “We’ll have to put off our next stops until later. Shroot came up with some possibilities for the location where that tape segment might have been shot.”

  As he headed back toward the center of town, Risa had his phone and was talking to the detective. “Z’s Place? Spell that, please.” She jotted it down with the rest of the possibilities on the notepad she’d pulled from her purse. “Ah. Zee’s Place. Address?” She scribbled down his answer. “What year phone book is that in? Is it in the current one? When did it stop appearing?”

  The man had found three places in all, one that was currently in existence and two that had apparently gone out of business in the mid to late eighties. “Nice job,” she said when he’d finished relaying the information. “Keep looking.”

  His response had her laughing in sympathy. “I’m sure Detective McGuire will figure out some way to make it up to you.”

  Nate shot her a narrowed look as she handed back his phone. “Your detective is ready to stab pencils through his eyes. Have a little empathy.”

  “I could always make it up to him by having you take his place.”

  “On the other hand, I’m sure he feels good about the assistance he’s lending to the investigation.” Her sympathy didn’t run quite far enough to sharing the thankless job. “Intrinsic reinforcement is really the most meaningful reward.” She spied a Starbucks up ahead. “Aside from good coffee, that is.”

  When he drove past the store, she shot him a look. His profile was expressionless.

  “Bu-u-t . . . I guess I can get along without it.” She went back to studying the notes she’d jotted down.

  “You know what we might need here?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Some sort of city historian or a book on commerce in the city. If the place in that picture hasn’t existed for a couple decades, there has to be a record of it somewhere. Doesn’t the historical society keep a history of neighborhoods?”

  “Probably. Or what about city tax rolls?” she suggested. “Problem is, we’ve got possible names of businesses across the street from the one we’re interested in.” The letters of the neon sign reflected in the window had to have come from that direction. “So first we have to match the name to that business. Once we find it, we have to see if someone remembers the surrounding area well enough to identify the place across from it.”

  “You make it sound like a piece of cake.”

  She decided sarcasm wasn’t a good tone for him. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the place is still in business. Or that it’s a settled neighborhood with people who like to talk about the good ol’ days. Hey, maybe we can track down a beat cop that used to work the area.” Traffic was a logjam. Risa had the thought that she could probably jump out of the car, jog back to Starbucks, order, and catch up to the vehicle before it had progressed more than a few blocks. Problem was, she needed the energy a good jolt of caffeine would provide before she could summon the energy.

  “Better chance of finding a longtime resident of the neighborhood than tracking down the officer walking a particular neighborhood beat twenty years ago,” he muttered. At the first opportunity, he turned off onto a side street, saying by way of explanation, “It’s longer this way in miles, but we’ll get there quicker by avoiding the traffic.”

  “A long shortcut.” She gave a nod. “Makes perfect sense to me.” As it would to any Philly native who’d spent an alarming fraction of their life in commute.

  Settling more comfortably into the seat, she closed her eyes. The day promised to be a long one, and it would seem even longer with no sleep.

  She’d already resigned herself to one with no coffee.

  Chapter 11

  The sudden deafening lyrics of Lady Gaga had Risa jolting up and forward, smartly rapping her knee against the underside of the dash. Rubbing the injured area, she sent Nate a glower. “A simple ‘we’re here’ wouldn’t suffice?”

  He grinned, turned down the radio. “I thought you’d like to wake up with a song in your heart.”

  “If I did, I’d pick an artist I actually like.” She gathered up the notes she’d taken while on the phone with Shroot as Nate jockeyed for a parking place.

  “What’s not to like?” To her shock, he sang the refrain from “Poker Face” in an amazingly bad baritone.

  His clowning was disarming. It was a completely different side of the taciturn detective. “I can’t believe you even know that song.”

  “Why? I like poker.” Slinging an arm over the seat, he performed a parallel parking job that would have dazzled a seasoned driving instructor.

  “You mean you like twentysomething artists singing about poker while half naked and hanging upside down from a trapeze.” The musician’s antics and costumes were a source of bemusement to Risa.

  “Hey, musicians suffer for their art. I’m there to suffer with them.”

  Because it would only encourage him, she hid her smile by starting to open the door. Then pulled it shut again when the blare of a taxi’s horn and a shouted curse warned her that the door was in danger of being taken off.

  The vehicle whizzed by them, Jiffy Kab’s finest offering her a one-fingered salute. “Maybe you should get out on my side,” Nate suggested.

  There was no dignified way to scramble across the vehicle’s front seat, so Risa opted for speed over grace. And wanted to smack the man holding the door for his undivided attention to her progress.

  Once she hit the sidewalk, she contented herself with an accidentally on-purpose elbow jab to the gut. “Oh, sorry,” she lied.

  “Uh-huh.” He slammed the door and locked it with the remote access fob. “Just for that I’m going to have to tell you that you snore.”

  She studied the address on the notepad, looked up to compare it to the street they were on. “No. I don’t.”

  “Why do women all say that?” he asked reasonably as they fell into step together. Almost immediately he had to step aside to allow an elderly lady and her two yapping Pekinese to go by. Catching up with Risa again, he continued seamlessly, “It’s not like you’d know you were snoring if you’re sleeping.”

  “Without casting aspersions on your vast experience with unconscious women . . . I wasn’t asleep.”

  His answering snort said it all.

  “I was dozing,” she emphasized. “Partially aware at all times.” There wasn’t a chance on earth that she’d fall asleep in the presence of anyone else. The dreams appeared at random intervals and could be difficult to explain to others. Her ex had known only that she had occasional nightmares, which she could usually attribute to bad take-out. She’d never told Mac Langel about the dreams that haunted her. Doing so had never even occurred to her. Risa was sure that said something rather sad about her three-year marriage. But if her own mother hadn’t understood them, how could she have expected Mac to?

  Adam Raiker was the only person on earth she’d entrusted the truth to. And him only because there were no secrets left unburied in the grueling series of employment interviews for Raiker Forensics. She’d fully expected her admission to eliminate her from the running. Been more than a little shocked when it hadn’t. And gratified that he hadn’t treated the news as proof that her worst fears were true: that the visions made her a freak of nature.

  “Zeke’s Food Plaza?” She stood in front of the storefront he led her to and looked at it dubiously before casting a considering look at the businesses across from it. Both sides of the busy street were bordered with strip malls. Tucked into the one across from them was a nail parlor, a dog-grooming salon, and a fabric shop. The enormity of their task struck her again.

  Zeke’s was surprisingly busy, and it took a few minutes before the harried-looking checker looked their way. “Help you?”<
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  Nate flashed his shield. “Looking for some information on the neighborhood. How long have you worked here?”

  “Dunno.” The woman scratched one pockmarked cheek. “Eighteen months?”

  “Is there anyone who’s been here longer? Is the owner around?”

  In lieu of an answer, she merely bent the stem of the store microphone at her checking station and said, “Zeke. You got people who want to see you on station two.” Obviously thinking she’d done her duty, she began checking out the customer waiting in her aisle.

  “Send them back to the meat counter.” The order blared on a speaker across the store. The clerk jerked a thumb toward the rear of the place to indicate the location, and they headed across the store.

  Nate unwrapped a stick of gum and placed it in his mouth. He offered her the pack and she shook her head. It was hard for her to imagine a place like this as it must have been decades ago. There had certainly been no strip malls in evidence in the scene from the video.

  Zeke, however, would have been in his prime at the time it was shot. Easily pushing seventy, his eyebrows boasted more hair than did his head, and his expression was set in dour lines. He looked like a man who expected the worst out of life and whose expectations were consistently met. They had to wait for a woman to dither over the merits of lamb or beef for her dinner party before he wiped his hands on his stained apron and ambled their way. “You looking for me?” His faint accent pegged him as a displaced New Yorker.

  Nate briefly explained their purpose while he waited with barely concealed impatience.

  “Been here since ’89. Before that the place was another food mart, but it was mostly produce. I bought the place next door and expanded to this paradise you see before you today.”

  “I’m sure there have been a lot of changes over the years,” Risa said conversationally.

  The man made a rude sound, sent a quick glance at the two other customers that had come up to the counter and were waiting. “Changes ain’t usually for the good, know what I mean? Strip malls sprouting up all around me. If I hadn’t owned this place free and clear, they’d have put me right out of business when the developers started sniffing around with their fancy ideas. Wanted to buy me out, but I told them, ‘Nope, I’m staying put. Why don’t you find some other neighborhood to ruin?’ Instead they’ve got me penned in with scrapbooking stores and tattoo parlors.”

  “I’ll bet a lot of businesses sold out when the developers made them an offer,” Nate observed pleasantly. “You remember the name of the ones across the street when you started here?”

  “Sure, there was Juno’s, a great little steakhouse. And a mom and pop dry-goods store. What the hell was it?” His eyes rolled upward, as if consulting the heavens. “Dacy’s, that was it. Had a Sinclair gas station over there on the corner.” He jabbed an index finger to indicate the direction.

  At the mention of the steakhouse, Risa felt a spark of interest. “I noticed your sign out front. Is it original?”

  “Naw.” The man did a visual check on the waiting customers again. “My nephew talked me into replacing it a few years back. Nothing wrong with the old one, if you ask me.”

  “Was the original sign neon, by any chance?”

  The suggestion garnered Zeke’s full attention. “Neon?” He glared at Risa. “Does this look like the kind of place that advertises in neon? You know what neon signage says?” Obviously the topic got him worked up. “It’s says cheap. Fly by night. Neon says booze and women. You don’t put neon on a family grocery store. My old sign was hand painted. Liked it a lot better than the one up now, to tell you the truth. ’Scuse me.” He stomped away to bless the waiting customers with his sunny disposition.

  “What do you want to guess that his nephew got a similar earful when they were discussing new signs for the business?” she said as they strolled toward the front of the store. She stopped by the checker again on the way by. “You don’t sell hot coffee by any chance, do you?”

  The woman never lost a beat in the items she was scanning. “Got cans and bags in aisle five.”

  Risa sighed and followed Nate out the door. The day wasn’t starting out very promising. At the risk of mirroring Zeke’s attitude, she had a feeling it’d get worse before it improved.

  Several hours later she was ready to wrestle McGuire’s cell phone away from him and toss it into oncoming traffic. He regularly used it to check in with the detectives on the task force, and with the station house. Shroot occasionally called with updates whenever he found another business name that might fit the letters they’d given him. As a result, even though they’d made five stops so far, their list had actually grown longer.

  Nate reached over and took the notepad out of her hand, studying the addresses. “Let’s try this one next.”

  She looked at the one he’d tapped and frowned. “That’s nowhere close to here. I thought we were working in enlarging circles to avoid crisscrossing all over the city.”

  He’d already backed out of the lot they’d been parked in and was waiting for a break in traffic so he could turn onto the street. “If I don’t miss my guess, that address puts us in the vicinity of the one Randolph gave us for Juicy. Since he hasn’t seen fit to grace us with his presence yet, I thought I’d stop by and extend a personal invitation.”

  “None of the men you’ve put on it have been able to locate him,” she pointed out. It didn’t much matter to her one way or another. The stops they’d been making had taken on a mind-numbing sameness. “What makes you think you’ll have better luck?”

  “Probably won’t,” he admitted, making a quick turn onto the street when he saw his chance. “But like I say, his address is close to that name on the list. We can kill two birds with one stone. I have orders from Morales to go easy on him if and when he does surface.”

  “Because of Vice’s plans for him?”

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, he did a deft lane switch. “They’re definitely interested in what Crowley might be able to give them on him, yeah. I don’t envy them trying to hold Crowley in check, though. The first sign of trouble and he’s likely to shift loyalties.”

  Again he got off the more congested street and began taking side streets to his destination. She had a vague sense of where the next address was. Unless city renovation had recently made its mark, the area was crime ridden, with dilapidated project housing and tired tenements hemming weary storefront vendors. “Used to be a great gym in the area of this address,” she recalled aloud. “A bit closer to Temple University, maybe. A bunch of us from the force used to work out there when I was a rookie.”

  “The Ironhouse Gym. Yeah, I knew that place. I had a membership for a while. Got tired of having my hubcaps missing every time I got back to my car, though.”

  Oddly, the remark made her nostalgic. “Yeah, we used to lay bets on whose car would get hit. I actually met my ex there.” The memory didn’t generate tender feelings, but the circumstances around the meet did. “Humiliated him on the court in front of his buddies.”

  “He was a cop, you said.” His tone was carefully even. “Did you keep his name after the divorce?”

  “Never took it.” She watched the general appearance of the buildings flanking the streets erode with each block. “Didn’t see the point.” She sometimes wondered if she’d known intuitively it wouldn’t last and had wanted to save herself the headache of switching back. The thought was vaguely depressing. She might have entered the marriage for all the wrong reasons, but she liked to think she’d gone into it with some level of commitment.

  “What’s his name?” His tone was entirely too casual as he slowed the car for the members of the pickup baseball game to scatter from the street. “Maybe I’ve run into him.”

  With well over six thousand police officers in the PPD ranks, it was doubtful, but she told him anyway. “Mac Langel.”

  His expression was shocked. “You were married to Mac Langel?”

  “Relatively briefly. Watch that kid.” />
  His attention switched back to the street, where a girl who couldn’t have been more than four was darting out in front of him. “Mac Langel. Wow.”

  Pursuing the topic was a mistake. Intellectually, Risa knew it. But there was a load of disapproval layered over the disbelief in his voice. She blamed the poor choice she was about to make on hunger and lack of sleep. Not to mention, she never had gotten that coffee. “You know him?”

  “A little.”

  After that reaction, she’d expected a bit more detail. “Sounded like more than a little.”

  He turned into a deeply rutted parking lot wedged against a Thai restaurant. “Enough to know you were way out of his league.”

  The unexpected compliment softened something inside her. Just when she thought she had him pegged, he could take her unaware. “Thanks. And just so you realize I caught it, nice dodge.”

  He hesitated long enough to put the vehicle in park. Turn off the ignition. Then he faced her. “Okay. He’s an idiot. Got a chip on his shoulder and a constant need to prove himself. I don’t like playing with him or against him on the court. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be partnered with him. You had a lucky escape.”

  Shrugging, she said only, “It was a long time ago. I was looking for . . . permanence, I guess.” Something that had always been sorely lacking when she was growing up. “We seemed to have a lot in common.” Oddly, she appreciated the rude sound he made at that. She’d come to realize that when it came to values, at least, she and Mac were continents apart. “What about you? Any former spouses you’d like me to rip on?”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Never been married. Had someone serious a few years ago. Then I had to take over guardianship of my nephew and she bolted.”