had to do was point a finger at numbers four and five. Once targeted by Will, they were struck down with no effort on his part, Rashid by an enemy within his gates, Whitfield by an even more intimate enemy, the one who lived within his own skin.
'Pretty soon he won't even have to write letters,' Denis Hamill concluded. 'He'll just think his powerful thoughts in private, and the bad guys'll be dropping like flies.'
Funny, I thought, that we hadn't heard from him.
Tuesday morning I was up before Elaine, and I had breakfast on the table when she got out of the shower. 'Great cantaloupe,' she pronounced. 'Much better than yesterday.'
'It's the other half of the one we had yesterday,' I said.
'Oh,' she said. 'I guess it's the preparation.'
'I put it on a plate,' I said, 'and I set it in front of you.'
'Yes, that's just what you did, you old bear. And nobody could have done it better, either.'
'It's all in the wrist.'
'Must be.'
'Combined with a sort of Zen approach,' I said. 'I was concentrating on something else while I just let breakfast happen.'
'Concentrating on what?'
'On a dream I can't remember.'
'You hardly ever remember your dreams.'
'I know,' I said, 'but I woke up with the feeling that there was something this dream was trying to tell me, and it seemed to me it was a dream I'd had before. In fact—'
'Yes?'
'Well, I have the sense of having been dreaming this dream a lot lately.'
'The same dream.'
'I think so.'
'Which you can't remember.'
'It had a familiarity to it,' I said, 'as if I'd been there before. I don't know if it's the same dream each time, but I think I keep dreaming about the same person each time. He's right there, and he's looking very earnest and trying to tell me some thing, and I wake up and he's gone.'
'Like a puff of smoke.'
'Sort of.'
'Like your lap when you stand up.'
'Well…'
'Who is he?'
'That's the problem,' I said. 'I don't remember who he is, and no matter how much I try to remember—'
'Quit trying.'
'Huh?'
She rose, moved to stand behind me. She smoothed my hair back with the tips of her fingers. 'There's nothing to remember,' she said.
'Just ease up. So don't try to remember. Just answer the question.
Who'd you dream about?'
'I don't know.'
'That's okay. Imagine Adrian Whitfield.'
'It wasn't Adrian Whitfield.'
'Of course it wasn't. Imagine him anyway.'
'All right.'
'Now imagine Vollman.'
'Who?'
'The one who killed those kids.'
'Vollmer.'
'Fine, Vollmer. Imagine him.'
'It wasn't—'
'I know it wasn't. Humor me, okay? Imagine him.'
'All right.'
