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Scars Chapter 2 I started having nightmares again not long after our meeting with Miss Robideaux. Not bad ones. No yelling, no pushing Lynn outta bed. I woke up every time, like I always do, but I couldn’t remember what any of them were about. And then one morning I remembered it. Or part of it. I saw her face, just for a few seconds. I heard her whisper, “I see you…..” And then I was wide awake. It was just a dream. I’ve had lotsa bad dreams. Nothing to be worried about. But in the past year, I’d kinda forgotten about her. Not completely. I had feelers out in different parts of the country. Got bites once in a while; so far they’d all turned out to be dead ends. I just didn’t think about her every time I looked in the mirror, like I used to. Once in a while, something would remind me……and then I usually tried to put it outta my mind. Trying not to remember it, you know? She hadn’t been in the forefront of my mind. And now she was. “I see you…..” I could hear that voice, just like she was really there. Dreams are funny. I had the same dream for about three weeks…..sometimes I’d see her looking at me, sometimes all I’d remember was “I see you….” Once she laughed and reached for me. Just dreams…..but they bothered me. Then the dreams just stopped. Entirely. I slept good. For about a week. It mighta been the worst nightmare I’d ever had. We’re in a train station. Don’t know where, maybe LA. Lynn’s carrying Becky, I look around and Charles is gone. Go looking for him. Crowded, lotsa people walking around, and I can’t see him, can’t find him. Walking, walking……and there he is. He’s with somebody, on the other side of the station, a hundred yards away, this is one huge place, but I can see him perfectly. He’s with a woman……she has his hand, she bends down, lifts his chin…….turns her head and looks at me. And it’s her. It’s Arliss, same black hair, same smile. “I see you….” she says. Ohmygodohmygod. Arliss has Charles. I start to run, but I can’t get through, there’s too many people, and it’s like something’s pushing me back, and no matter how fast I run I never get any closer. Panic, like I’ve never felt before. My chest starts to hurt. I run and run…..forever it seems like……..she leans over, I see her kissing Charles on the mouth, she’s opening his mouth……..and then she’s taking something out of her pocket…..ohmygodohmygod…… I was sitting straight up in bed when I woke up. I could hear an echo in my head, like I’d been yelling. Lynn was standing a few steps away watching me. My heart was pounding, my chest hurt, I couldn’t breathe……. “Bud?” Lynn said. “Where’s Charles?” What if she was here? What if she got in the house? I stood up but before I got to the hall, a little head looked around the door frame. “I heard somebody yelling,” Charles said. “It woke me up.” I had him in my arms before he was done talking. “You’re OK. You’re OK.” I mighta squeezed him a little too much; he made a noise. Being hugged by a naked man was probably a new experience for him, too. It was impossible to leave the panic behind. I couldn’t do it. I could see Charles was OK, but “Where’s Becky?” Lynn looked confused. “She’s in her room---“ “Go get her—No—we’ll both go.” I made Lynn take Becky out of her crib, and bring her back into our room. Then I went to get my gun. It wasn’t in the drawer. I threw everything else out, but it wasn’t there. “Where’s my gun? She’s got my gun. Shit, she’s got my gun.” I was still carrying Charles, one arm around his back, his legs dangling. “Bud,” he said. “I can’t breathe.” “We’ve got to get outta here. She knows where we are.” I put Charles down on the bed and reached for my pants. “Bud,” Lynn said, “it was a dream.” “My gun’s gone!” “Nobody stole it. I moved it. I put it away.” Charles stood up on the bed. “Did you have a bad dream?” He patted me on the shoulder. “What was it about?” I looked at him for a minute. Lynn switched on the overhead light. “It was a nightmare,” she said. “It isn’t real.” “It was about you,” I said to Charles. I sat down on the bed; my pants were still in my hand. “Somebody was gonna hurt you.” I started to shake. “I’m OK,” Charles said. “See?” I looked at Lynn. “I need to know where my gun is.” “I’m sorry…..you don’t use it any more, so I put it away.” “I have to be able to get it if I need it.” I don’t know what Lynn woulda said next, cause right then I heard a door slam. Downstairs. In my house. “I suppose my gun’s downstairs.” Lynn looked scared and a little shamefaced at the same time. “No….it’s in the closet.” She went to the closet and got it while I put on my pants. I told her to put a chair under the doorknob, and I went out the bedroom door. There wasn’t anybody downstairs. I went through every room. Both the outside doors were locked. I couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Then I thought maybe she’d already gotten upstairs by the time I came looking for her. I asked Lynn if she was ok through the door, and when she said she was, I searched all the upstairs rooms. Nothing. The door slamming wasn’t my imagination. I heard it. Lynn heard it. There was nobody there now; I could only assume she hadn’t been coming in, she’d been going out……… The next day, after I calmed down, I could see there was no reason to assume it was Arliss in my house the night before. That was the nightmare talking. In the light of day, I couldn’t be sure that what we’d heard wasn’t something totally innocent. A car backfiring. A squirrel jumping on the roof. A branch from a tree falling on the house. But it made me think. All this time, I’d been looking for her, kinda half serious, not completely serious ‘cause I knew that’d upset Lynn. I’d always assumed if she ever found out I was alive, she’d wanna stay away from me. But what if……what if, while I was kinda looking for her, and trying not to think about her too much…….she was looking for me? How hard would it be? How much did she know about me? And did she have a reason to spend her time doing that, would she want to? And I’d been assuming she’d be in hiding, I guess. I’d been assuming she’d wanna stay away from places she’d been before. I figured she’d be laying low. But what if she wasn’t? Who could predict what a lunatic like that would do? I’d been looking for small clues. What if she was leaving big tracks and I wasn’t seeing ‘em, ‘causing I wasn’t looking? It was something to think about…….. I spent two days in the office on the phone. Guess what I found? Big tracks. Trail started in Montana. Worked it’s way through Minnesota, Wisconsin, then a jump, picked up in Kansas. Missouri, then Texas. A trail of dead bodies with the same general MO. Men slashed in specific ways, and then killed with odd weapons. A screwdriver once, and a steak knife, but mostly scissors. Sometimes small portions of the body were missing. Ear lobes, or toes. Small things. Sometimes blood types at the scene that didn’t match the victim. Other kinds of fluids that told the investigators there was a woman involved. But never any motives, no suspects. And then I got a tip about a recent murder in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The officer in charge in Las Cruces didn’t care what rank I was, he didn’t care if I was working on 1000 related cases, he didn’t have time to talk to me at all, until I described the cuts on his latest homicide’s body to him over the phone. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then, “How the hell do you know that?” “I look at the same thing in the mirror every morning.” That’s when he started to get excited. He wanted me to get on the train right away. He was talking fast, he kept saying we didn’t have much time, finally I got him to shut up long enough to tell him I couldn’t leave my family at the moment, and he said, “But we don’t have enough to hold her past Thursday. We’re gonna have to let her go if you don’t identify her.” That’s when I started to get excited. “You mean you’ve got her? Why didn’t you say so? Are you sure it’s her?” “Hell, no, not a hundred percent, that’s why we need you to come up here.” He had her. Jesus Christ. Lynn didn’t want me to go. She didn’t want to let me out of her sight. But she didn’t want them to release her, either. She suggested we all go together. I had visions of the train station in my dream………. I convinced her Charles shouldn’t miss school. It was a short trip, I could drive there in six or seven hours, ID the suspect, and be back in time to put Becky to bed. I told her I wouldn’t be gone long enough for her to miss me. She put her arms around my neck. “I miss you already.” I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Lynn’s kisses. I left early the next morning. I kissed Lynn, and walked out the door; got in the car and turned the key. And sat there. Had a bad feeling. You ever get those? When you don’t think you oughta do something, and you don’t know why? No reason. You just feel…….nervous about it. Worried. I told myself it was the damn nightmare still bothering me. I had to go. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if Arliss was set free because I couldn’t take a little drive. I felt like I wanted to go back in the house and put my arms around Lynn and kiss her again and hold her real tight. Like I was gonna be gone a long time. Like…… Stupid. I was spooking myself. All because of a dumb dream. Or maybe Lynn had me spooked, with her talk about terrible things always happening when I went somewhere. I put the car in gear and backed it out of the driveway. I made pretty good time. Got there about 2:00. Sheriff Birkestrand was a nervous fella, always moving, couldn’t stand still. I guess he’d been watching for me, ‘cause he came outside to meet me before I even got outta the car. Shook my hand a coupla times. “You, uh…..you got the same……” he motioned toward my chest. “I think maybe I should………What I mean is, you described it over the phone, but it might not really be the same as my guy. You know? So I think maybe I oughta—“ “I came down here to look at your suspect. Let’s do that.” “OK, well, I guess I can verify the markings later. I’ll have to do that, you know. Otherwise your ID doesn’t mean anything.” That bad feeling didn’t go away on the way to Las Cruces. If anything it got worse. My skin was crawling; my head was starting to hurt; and this guy just wanted to stand and chat. “Talk about that later. Where is she?” “You want me to set up a lineup? It won’t take any time at all—“ “What’s your problem? I don’t need a fuckin’ lineup. I just need to get a look at her. Can we do that?” I guess I offended him. He didn’t say anything after that. Just led the way into the lockup. I didn’t have to ask which one was his suspect. There was only one prisoner in the women’s section. She was pretty and she had black hair. But she wasn’t Arliss. “Not her.” I turned around and walked back outside. He followed me. “What do you mean it’s not her? You didn’t stay long enough to get a good look.” “I know what she looks like.” “How long’s it been since you saw her? Maybe you don’t remember exactly.” I turned around. “I remember.” He took a deep breath. “Shit.” “Yeah.” It wasn’t panic I was feeling, not exactly. More like a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Didn’t have any reason for it, but I felt like I shouldn’ta come. I shouldn’ta left Lynn there alone. I called our house on the sheriff’s phone. Nobody answered. I called the shop. Nobody answered. I called Patty’s house. Nobody answered. I called the station. Herbert was there. He didn’t understand at first what I wanted him to do. After I explained it a coupla times, he said he’d do his best to find out where my family was. Thought about it a minute or two, then took a deep breath and called Lucius. No answer. Jesus Christ, where was everybody? Didn’t wanna upset Arbutus, but I was running outta people to call. She answered. “Thank God, finally somebody who answers their phone. Listen—“ “No, honey, I want you to listen first. I hope you’re on your way home. What?” She put her hand over the receiver; talking to somebody else, I guess. “Arbutus, listen—“ “Your wife wants to talk to you.” Thank God. Thank God. “We got a strange phone call,” Lynn said. She sounded out of breath. “I feel silly now, but it scared me.” I understood that. “It was a woman. She asked for you, called you Wendell. When I said you weren’t there, she laughed, and said to give you a message.” I almost didn’t need to hear it. I knew what Lynn was going to say. “She said to tell you she sees you. She said, ‘Tell him I see him.’ And then she hung up. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but there was something about it—“ “I know,” I said. “Stay there. I’m coming home.”
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