The two memories were in direct conflict, but were equally as strong. There must, therefore, have been two events involved. He must have gone to Jake’s twice.
He was still trying to make sense out of his memories, and tie them to the dream, when he heard the wailing of a siren in the distance. Then there was another sound, as the telephone began to ring.
Alex got out of bed and put on his robe, then went down the hall to his parents’ room. Though their voices were muffled by the closed door, he could still make out the words.
“They don’t know,” he heard his father say. “All they know is that they’re bringing her in, and that they think she’s a DOA.”
“If you’re going down there, I’m going with you,” his mother replied. “And don’t try to argue with me. Valerie and I have been friends all our lives. I want to be there.”
“Honey, neither of us is going anywhere. I’m not on call tonight, remember? They called because they knew Valerie was a friend of ours.”
Slowly Alex backed away from the closed door and returned to his own room.
Valerie. He searched his memory, hoping there was another Valerie there, but there wasn’t. It had to be Valerie Benson, and she was dead.
Then, though he had no conscious memory of it at all, he knew why he had arrived at Jake’s twice.
He’d gone there once, and then left. After María Torres had spoken to him in Spanish, he’d driven away and gone to Valerie Benson’s house, and he’d killed her. Then he’d gone back to Jake’s, and sat down at the table with Kate and Bob and Lisa, and talked for a while.
And then he’d come home and gone to bed and dreamed about what he’d done.
But he still didn’t know why.
His parents were still alive, and he’d hardly even known Valerie Benson. He had no reason to kill her.
And yet he had.
He got back in bed, and lay for a while staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Somewhere in his mind he was sure there were answers, and if he thought about the problem long enough, he would figure out what those answers were.
He heard a door open and close, then footsteps in the hall. It was his mother. He heard her going downstairs, then, a little later, he heard his father following her.
For a few minutes he toyed with the idea of going downstairs himself, and telling them about his dream, and that he was sure he’d killed Valerie Benson, and probably Mrs. Lewis too. But then he rejected the whole idea. Unless he could tell them why he’d killed the two women, they surely wouldn’t believe he’d done it.
Instead, they’d just think he was crazy.
Alex turned over and pulled the covers snugly around him. He let his mind run free.
And, as he was sure they would, the connections began to come together, and he began to understand what was happening to him.
A few minutes later, he was sound asleep. Through the rest of the night his sleep was undisturbed.
“I’m telling you, Tom, the kids did it,” Roscoe Finnerty said as he and Jackson sat in the police station the next morning.
Neither of them had had any sleep, and all Tom Jackson really wanted to do was go home and go to bed, but if Finnerty wanted to talk — and Finnerty usually did — the least he could do was listen. In fact, with Finnerty, listening was all he really had to do, since Finnerty was as capable of posing the questions as he was of coming up with the answers.
“Lookit,” Finnerty was saying now. “We got two killings, same M.O. And we got the same two kids discovering both bodies. What could be simpler? And don’t tell me there’s no previous record of trouble with these kids. They were both up at that bash last spring, when the Lonsdale kid smashed up his car, and they were both drunk—”
“Now, wait a minute, Roscoe,” Jackson interrupted. “Let’s at least be fair. Did you give any of those kids a test?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then don’t tell me you’re going to stand up in court and tell a judge they were drunk, ’cause you ain’t! Now, why don’t we just go home and let the plainclothes guys do their job?”
Finnerty stared at his partner over the edge of his coffee cup for several long seconds. “You think we ought to just forget it?”
Jackson sighed, and stretched his tired muscles. “I’m not saying to forget it. I’m just saying we’ve got a job to do, and I think we oughta do it, and not butt in where we aren’t invited.”
“And leave that poor drunken slob locked up for something he obviously didn’t do.”
“Whoa up, buddy!” Jackson said, deciding that enough was enough. “You forgetting that the two events might not be connected at all? That we just might have two different perps here?”
“Oh, sure. Both of them apparently let into the house by the victims, and both of them strangled. And both of them discovered by the same girl, who happens to live in the houses where the crimes are committed. You ask me, that’s just a bit too much.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Jackson asked, knowing full well that whatever it was, it wasn’t going to involve going home and going to bed.
“For openers, I think we might have a talk with the other kids that were down at Jake’s last night, and see if they noticed anything funny about their friends.”
Her eyes puffy from lack of sleep, Carol Cochran stared at the two policemen on the front porch, then glanced at her watch. Though it was a few minutes past seven, it felt much earlier. But despite her exhaustion, she was sure she knew why they were here.
“It’s about Valerie Benson, isn’t it?” she asked.
The two officers exchanged a glance, then Finnerty nodded. “I’m afraid so. We … well, we’d like to talk to your daughter.”
Carol blinked. What on earth were they talking about? What could Lisa have to do with what had happened to Valerie? “I … I’m sorry,” she stammered, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jim, she thought. Call Jim. He’ll know what to do. As if he’d heard her thought, her husband emerged from the kitchen.
“Something wrong, honey?” she heard him ask, and managed to nod her head.
“They … they want to talk to Lisa …”
Jim Cochran stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind him. “Now, what’s this all about?” he asked. As briefly as they could, Finnerty and Jackson explained why they were there.
Reluctantly Jim invited them into the living room and asked them to sit down. “If she wants to talk to you, it’s all right,” he said. “But she doesn’t have to, you know.”
“I know,” Finnerty replied. “Believe me, Mr. Cochran, we don’t suspect her of anything. All we want to know is if she noticed anything last night.”
“I find it impossible to believe that Kate Lewis and Bob Carey would kill anyone,” Jim said, his voice tight. “Let alone two people.”
“I know, sir,” Finnerty said. “But I’d still like to talk to your daughter, if you don’t mind.”
“What is it?” Carol asked when Jim came into the kitchen a moment later. Jim glanced around the room, but only his wife and older daughter were there. Kim was nowhere to be seen. “I sent Kim up to her room and told her not to come down again until I came up for her. Now, what do they want?”
“It’s crazy, if you ask me,” Jim replied. “For some reason, they think maybe Kate and Bob killed Valerie, and they want to talk to Lisa about what happened last night. They want to know if she noticed anything strange about either one of them.”
“Oh, God,” Carol groaned. She sank into a chair, her fingers suddenly twisting at the tie of her bathrobe. Lisa, her eyes wide, was shaking her head in disbelief.
“They think Kate killed Mrs. Benson?” she asked. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”