Dream Snatcher

by Clara Coulson

  “I guess.” Ella unfurls, planting her feet on the floor with an audible thump. Steadfastly ignoring the apologetic expressions from the rest of the team, she hops up from the chair, snatches her backpack from its spot against the wall, and tromps over to the door. She heaves it open, and it slams against the door stop so hard that the metal spring vibrates loudly for fifteen seconds straight. Ella can feel Mortimer’s eyes on her, his irritation like sunlight cast through a magnifying glass, a pinpoint focused at the base of her neck. She lets her lips quirk up, just a tick, in satisfaction.

  If he can be a dick, then so can she.

  When the door stop finishes vibrating, Riker fakes a cough, rises from his own chair, and catches up to Ella. He places his hands on her shoulders and coaxes her into the hall, then pulls the door shut behind him. Ella slips his grip for the second time today and stands motionless in the middle of the hallway until Riker comes to loom over her, less than a foot between them, a warning that he’s willing to drag her out of the DSI office the same way he dragged her to the diner. Only when Ella senses his fingers reaching for her bicep does she start walking toward the shitty elevators at the end of the hall.

  Riker sighs faintly, and follows.

  Ella refuses to push the elevator button, so Riker passes by her and does it himself. While they’re waiting for the painfully slow box to rise from the basement level, Riker observes Ella through the distorted reflection in the metal panel surrounding the elevator call buttons. When the elevator reaches the first floor, he summons the courage to turn around and look her in the eye. “I’m sorry about my captain’s behavior,” he says. “Mortimer is not the most…personable man.”

  “You don’t say?” Ella angrily taps her shoe against the tile floor. “I hate being treated like that. I’ve hated it all my life, and my mom—my mom—taught me not to stand for being dismissed that way, especially by older people, especially by older men.”

  The elevator chugs into place, and the doors open.

  Riker throws up his arm to make sure the doors don’t close prematurely and replies, “I understand where you’re coming from, but you need to pick and choose your battles. Butting heads with Captain Mortimer isn’t going to win you any favors. Whether you like it or not, as a civilian, you don’t have any power in the hierarchy of DSI. And as a minor, adults are bound to toss you aside whenever they get the chance. But you’re, what, sixteen?”

  She nods.

  “Ah.” He clicks his tongue. “You only have a year and a handful of months left before that second issue falls to the wayside, and your voice grows stronger alongside your right to vote. So give it more time, just a little more, and you’ll gain a lot of leeway to make demands in situations like the one you were in a minute ago. You’ll see how it—”

  “And what about the first issue?” she asks, stepping into the elevator.

  He blanks. “What?”

  “The first issue: that I don’t have any power in the DSI hierarchy?”

  “Oh.” He slips into the elevator beside her, and hits the button for the first floor. “Well, your age won’t change that. Only factor that could change that is getting a job with DSI, or maybe the mayor’s office, which holds sway over the department. There’s really no other way to gain more control…I don’t like that look on your face.”

  Ella drops her budding smirk and stares straight-faced at the closed elevator doors. “What look?”

  “Don’t get any dumb ideas, Miss Dean. You’ve got a future ahead of you that doesn’t involve being entrenched in supernatural warfare.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “I…” His stern tone falters. “I guess I don’t know for sure, but my assumption was that Abigail Dean wouldn’t have let her daughter get poor grades in school, and as such, said daughter would be heading to college in the near future.”

  “I’d be heading to college in the fall if it wasn’t for Sartell.”

  Riker looks at her curiously. “Did you skip a grade?”

  “Yep.”

  “Huh.” He adjusts the collar on his coat. “What school were you planning to attend?””

  Ella bites her tongue until it hurts. “Julliard.”

  “Julliard?” Riker lets that answer ruminate. “You’re into music?”

  “Piano.”

  “You must be pretty good, if you were aiming for Julliard.”

  “I was good. I haven’t played a note in six months.”

  Riker falls silent until the elevator releases them on the first floor. “Oh,” he mutters at last. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you’ll pick it up again though, sometime soon. It’d be a pity for all your hard work to go to waste. And I’m sure your mother—”

  “—would want me to pursue my dreams?” Ella finishes for him, exiting the elevator. “Yeah, like I’ve never heard that before.”

  “You know, you don’t have to be adversarial about everything, Miss Dean, in order to get what you want.” He loiters in the elevator threshold as Ella meanders farther into the hall. “And it doesn’t pay to have a chip on your shoulder when you don’t hold any of the cards.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He blinks. “About what?”

  “That I don’t hold any cards?”

  “I guess not.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “But it’s a fair assumption.”

  “Keep assuming, and see where that gets you.”

  “Why not? You already think I’m an ass.”

  She flips him off.

  He huffs. “Sign the log at the front desk on your way out.”

  “Sure, sure. And while I’m at it, you should—”

  “Just go home,” he moans in annoyance, “please?”

  Ella stops halfway down the hall. She slowly cranes her neck to peer over her shoulder at the handsome man whose nose she broke with the first punch she’d ever thrown in her life. She says, in the most threatening tone a sixteen-year-old girl can take, “I don’t have a home. Sartell took that from me too.”

  Then she storms off, passes the front desk without signing a goddamn thing, kicks the door open, and exits the ugly excuse for a building known as the DSI office.

  Chapter Six

  Ella almost runs face first into the man who killed her mother.

  After leaving the DSI building in what, she admits, is a childish tantrum, Ella skips the bus stop across the street from the office to walk off some steam. She continues down the road in this rundown neighborhood on the outskirts of Aurora, occasionally pausing to decipher graffiti sprayed across cinderblock façades or sneak a peek inside defunct businesses, show floors and display cases left empty, gathering dust. When she reaches the intersection with Parker Street, she waits for the minimal traffic to clear and ambles through the crosswalk, the heat of late afternoon emanating from the sticky asphalt. Back on the sidewalk, she makes a left, and heads down Parker toward a used bookstore she remembers visiting with a few of her friends sometime in middle school.

  The neighborhood has declined since then, the gaggle of well-to-do stores having moved closer to the growing business district in the center of downtown. All that’s left now is a few ramshackle duplexes and tenement-style apartments, a handful of bargain bin stores, and one school, situated at the far end of the street, that Ella can tell is on its last leg. The roof looks like it’ll cave in when the next strong thunderstorm rolls through the city. Ella will be surprised if the school reopens for the new year in August.

  Two blocks on, Ella stumbles across the bookstore. It’s a little shoddier than she remembers, the SAM’S BOOKS logo above the door weathered down by snow and rain, but there’s a flashing neon open sign in the display window, and all the shelves are still stocked, and there’s a man at the counter who seems faintly familiar. So she adjusts her backpack on her shoulder, checks her reflection in the display window to make sure she still looks like a student, and enters the store.

  The man at the counter—Sam, Ella assumes—gives her a passing glance wh
en the bells alert him to her entrance, then returns to working on the crossword puzzle in the newspaper sprawled across the countertop next to the cash register. Ella weaves her way through the cramped shelves, perusing the available titles; she’s not looking for anything in particular, but she did have a growing collection of crime novels on the shelf in her room…pre-Sartell attack.

  Somehow, most of her books got “lost” in transit to her father’s house. (She suspects her father threw them in the garbage when he sorted through her belongings while she was stuck in the hospital. And yet he still had the gall to complain about how much “junk” she brought along.)

  Anyway, Ella could use a few good books. To take her mind off what just happened at the DSI office, if nothing else.

  Honestly, she thinks, as she sifts through a few Michael Connelly titles on a high shelf, who does that Mortimer guy think he is? I’ve met cops and soldiers and even sleazy politicians with more tact in their treatment of teenagers than that jerk.

  She tucks two Harry Bosch novels under her arm and moves along to the next shelf, stockpiled with copies of the same three Harlan Coben books in various states of disrepair—one of them has a spine held together with masking tape. She digs through the pile until she finds the best copies of each, a few wrinkles in their covers and some dog-eared pages.

  Puffing out a frustrated breath as the memory of Mortimer’s infuriating conduct replays in her head again and again and again, she arranges her books into an organized stack and takes them up to the checkout counter. Sam scans her books and loads them neatly into a brown paper bag with a cleaner version of his store logo on it while Ella digs her wallet out of her backpack. The whole stack of books is only ten dollars, so she hands the man a twenty. As she’s waiting for change, she glances out the window, at the street beyond. There are only three pedestrians on the sidewalk. What a sad neighborhood.

  Books in hand, change in pocket, Ella exchanges pleasantries with Sam the bookstore owner and heads back outside. If she’s not mistaken, there’s another bus stop two blocks farther down Parker, so she won’t have to go anywhere near the DSI—

  Someone power walks directly into Ella’s path as she’s stepping out the door. She reels back to avoid the collision, but her bag of books slips out from under her arm and smacks the man in the shin. He stumbles to a stop and looks down, the hood of his gray sweatshirt hiding his expression as he stares at the bag. He cocks his head to the side in mild confusion, like he was so engrossed in his thoughts he didn’t even notice another human being had invaded his personal space. Reaching down, he scoops up the bag and partially turns toward Ella, enough that she can glimpse the lower half of his face—a dark, grungy beard and chapped lips. He offers the books to her and mumbles in a scratchy baritone, “My apologies.”

  Ella hesitantly collects her books from the creepy man, concerned this might be some kind of con to snatch her and stuff her into an unmarked white van in an alley. Everybody’s heard at least one horror story on the news, a young girl getting kidnapped in broad daylight. But as Ella clutches the bag to her chest, the man makes no aggressive moves toward her, so she throws up her best fake smile and replies, “No problem. I should’ve looked both ways before I walked out.”

  The man plasters a similar forced smile on his unwashed face. “Have a good day.” He nods as a parting note, then resumes his quick, determined march down the street without sparing Ella another glance.

  Ella watches him go, unsettled. There’s something familiar about that guy, but I can’t put my finger on it…

  She freezes. In the middle of the burning sidewalk. On a scorching day at the end of May. She freezes solid, as a wisp of an unfinished conversation reconstructs itself inside her head. Mortimer’s conversation. The one he was trying to hold with his team before he noticed the teenage girl who didn’t belong, curled up in a chair by the window. What had he said? Something about a fake call…about a man in a…

  We received some additional information on that false emergency call. The neighborhood canvass turned up a witness, Wanda Scalzi, who claims that a tall white man in a gray hooded sweatshirt made the call from a payphone near Stein’s Market. We have her with a sketch artist now, but it looks like…

  A tall white man in a gray hooded sweatshirt. Like the guy Ella just ran into.

  A tall white man with a grungy beard. And presumably sunken eyes, hidden by the shadow of his hood. Like Abraham Sartell in his mugshot from the case file.

  Sartell.

  Sartell was standing less than two feet from Ella.

  Sartell picked up Ella’s books and apologized to her.

  Sartell is still close enough (so close, so close, so close) for her to catch up to him.

  Calmly, Ella unzips her backpack and shoves the bag of books inside. Then, on absolute autopilot—because her brain cannot comprehend the off-kilter world around her—she locates Sartell at the intersection, waiting for the light on the crosswalk to change, and with slow, measured steps, walks toward the mad wizard who murdered her mother in a rain of fire.

  Chapter Seven

  Ella gets bitten by two wasps while spying on Abraham Sartell.

  From the bookstore, she follows him toward the DSI building until he sits down on a low brick wall holding back a steep embankment leading up to a cottage-sized house at the end of a crummy residential neighborhood. To avoid suspicion, Ella ducks into an abandoned Laundromat one block west of the house, and crouches behind an empty metal rack. With the sun shining down at an angle over the roof of the Laundromat, Sartell won’t be able to look directly through the window Ella is peering out of—too much glare. She sets her backpack on the floor, up against the rack, and digs out of its depths a disposable Kodak camera she bought last week.

  A part of Ella’s brain is screaming at her for playing such a dangerous game, demanding she go back to her father’s shitty house and mope around in her room until Riker and his colleagues catch Sartell on their own. But another part of her is filled with dread for the DSI agents—because Sartell is up to something. He must be. Why else would he have made the fake emergency call? Why else would he be here now, right in DSI’s back yard, where any of their agents could spot him while driving or walking by?

  Sartell is making the next move in his vengeance campaign. And since the last move he made resulted in the horrific death of Abigail Dean…Ella can’t let this go. She can’t. As much as Mortimer pissed her off, as much as Chantel tried to subvert her desire to testify, the DSI agents aren’t awful people who deserve to die. They’re the good guys, and Sartell is the criminal, hands down. They need to win, and he needs to lose. But right now, it appears Sartell has the upper hand. He’s targeting Riker’s team, and they don’t know.

  Maybe, Ella thinks, I can figure out what he’s up to and take the information to Riker. How’s that for “holding no cards,” hm?

  Really though, she’d much rather drop an anonymous tip. Problem is, she doesn’t know any of DSI’s phone numbers. Nobody thought to give her a business card in case she needed to contact them in the interim before the trial. Like with most adults, they assumed a sixteen-year-old girl would have a minimal role—if any—in bagging and convicting Sartell.

  Ella doesn’t begrudge them for not predicting she’d literally run into the guy in the street.

  But she does begrudge them for not covering all their bases, just in case.

  Because not only did they accidentally put themselves in danger, but now Ella has to hunker down in this dingy, ransacked husk of a Laundromat, with wasps flying around her head and spiders crawling across her feet, and pray she can get away with stalking a wanted murderer. If Mortimer doesn’t thank me for this, no matter how it turns out, so help me god, I’m going to punch him harder than I punched Pretty Boy McGee.

  Ella waits, legs slowly cramping, until Sartell pulls a bundle of papers out of his sweatshirt pocket. She can’t read them from a whole block away, so she braces the camera against the railing of the rack, makes sure
the flash is switched off—because that would be a stupid way to get caught—and snaps several shots as the wizard rifles through the pages. About ten minutes later, Sartell tugs up his sleeve, revealing a watch, and checks the time. Then he suddenly stuffs the papers back in his pocket, rises from the stunted brick wall, and jogs down the street. Straight toward Ella.

  She ducks under the windowsill, Sartell’s shadow cast long and distorted across the empty room as he passes by. When he’s gone, she scrambles up and tracks him with her eyes as he heads two blocks down the street, jaywalks across, and shuffles into the parking lot of a gas station that has one working pump and a sign missing half its numbers and letters. Ella expects him to enter the building, maybe to hide or find a better stakeout position, but Sartell stops short of the door, between a freezer full of ice bags and a free magazine stand. Ella squints to see what he’s doing—digging through his pockets, pulling out small objects, slipping them into…

  A payphone.

  He’s using a payphone.

  What sort of game is he playing? she wonders.

  But she doesn’t have to wonder for long.

  Sartell makes his call, speaks into the receiver for under thirty seconds, hangs up, and then enters the gas station’s pitiful excuse for a convenience store. About three minutes later, after Sartell has had plenty of time to find a good vantage point, a black van drives out of the lot behind the DSI building and speeds off down the street. The van flies by Ella, who catches a glimpse of Chantel at the wheel, with Mortimer seated next to her, and passes the gas station without slowing down, the passengers none the wiser to the fact that their most wanted felon is watching their every move.

  When the van is four blocks away, Sartell emerges from the convenience store. He observes the van as it halts at a light and checks his watch again. After the light turns green, and the van continues on, Sartell produces the same stack of papers, plus a pen, and scrawls a series of notes in the margins of a couple sheets. Once he wraps up his note-taking, he stows his papers and pen in that same sweatshirt pocket, rounds the side of the gas station, and jumps a fence that encircles a lot dotted with piles of large-grade gravel.