“Fuck you, Jack. Be worried for yourself.”
She opened her car door and got inside. The door slammed, the engine fired, and she squealed out of the parking lot like a drag racer.
As the orange taillights disappeared into the night, Jack returned to his car and locked the doors, his mind awhirl. He’d just finished the most bizarre conversation of his life, and four little words had given him the uneasy sensation that it wasn’t over yet.
Exactly what had Jessie meant by
He started his car and pulled out of the lot. He hated to admit it, but Theo’s favorite song was playing in his head.
11
•
Cindy was staring into the eyes of a killer. Or at least it exuded a killer’s attitude. It was a two-pound Yorkshire terrier that seemed to think it could take on a pack of hungry Rottweilers simply because its ancestors were bred to chase sewer rats. Scores of color photographs were spread across the table before her. A dozen more images lit up the screen on her computer monitor in an assortment of boxes, like the credits for
Cindy’s South Miami studio had been going strong for several years, but she did portraits only three days a week. That left her time to do on-site shoots for catalogs and other work. The studio was an old house with lots of charm. A small yard and a white lattice gazebo offered a picturesque setting for outdoor shots. For reasons that were not entirely aesthetic, Cindy preferred outdoor shots when dealing with animals.
A light rap on the door frame broke her concentration. Cindy was alone in her little work area, but not alone in the studio. It had been five years since that psychopath had attacked her, and even though she was in a safe part of town, she didn’t stay after dark without company. Tonight, her mother had come by to bring her dinner.
“Are you okay in there, dear?”
“Just working.”
A plateful of chicken and roasted vegetables sat untouched on the table, pushed to one side. A white spotlight illuminated the work space before her. It was like a pillar of light in the middle of the room, darkness on the edges. A row of photographs stretched across the table, some of them outside the glow of the halogen lamp. The shots were all from the same frame, but each was a little different, depending on the zoom. In the tightest enlargement the resolution was little better than randomly placed dots. She put the fuzzy ones aside and passed a magnifying glass over the largest, clear image. She was trying to zero in on a mysterious imperfection in the photograph she’d taken of the little girl and her dog.
“You’ve been holed up in here for hours,” her mother said.
Cindy looked up from her work. “This is kind of important.”
“So is your health,” her mother said as she glanced at the dinner plate. “You haven’t eaten anything.”
“No one ever died from skipping dinner.”
She went to Cindy’s side, brushed the hair out of her face. “Something tells me that this isn’t the only meal you’ve missed in the last few days.”
“I’m all right.”
Her mother tugged her chin gently, forcing Cindy to look straight at her. It was the kind of no-nonsense, disciplinary approach she’d employed since Cindy’s childhood. Evelyn Paige had been a single mother since Cindy was nine years old, and she had the worry lines to prove it. Not that she looked particularly old for her age, but she’d acted old long before her hair had turned silver. It was as if her husband’s passing had stolen her youth, or at least made her feel older than she was.
“Look at those eyes. When’s the last time you had a good night’s sleep?”
“I’m just busy with work.”
“That’s not what Jack tells me.”
“He told you about my dreams?”
“Yes.”
Cindy felt slightly betrayed, but she realized Jack was no gossip. It was Jack, after all, who’d stuck with her through the darkest times. He wouldn’t have gone to her mother if he wasn’t truly concerned about her. “What did he tell you?”
“How you aren’t sleeping. The nightmares you’re having about Esteban.”
“They’re not really nightmares.”
“Just the kind of dreams that make you afraid to close your eyes at night.”
“That’s true.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“October.”
“That long?”
“It’s not every night. October was when I had the first one. On the anniversary of… you know-Esteban.”
“What does Jack say about this?”
“He’s supportive. He’s always been supportive. I’m trying not to make a big deal out of it. It’s just not good for us. Especially not now. We’re trying to make a baby.”
“So, these dreams. Are they strictly about Esteban?”
Cindy was looking in the general direction of her mother, but she was seeing right past her. “It always starts out like it’s supposed to be about him. Someone’s outside my window. I can hear the blanket of fallen leaves scuffling each time he takes a step. Big, crispy leaves all over the ground, more like the autumns they get up north than we have in Florida. It’s dark, but I can I hear them moving. One footstep at a time.”
“That’s creepy.”
“Then I walk to the back door, and it’s not Esteban.”
“Who is it?”
“Just more leaves swirling in the wind. Then one of them slams against the door, and
“Esteban?”
“No.” She paused, as if reluctant to share. “It’s… Daddy.”
“That’s… interesting,” Evelyn said, as if backing away from the word “creepy” again. “You sure it’s your father?”
“Yes.”
“Does he come to you as an old man, or does he look like the young man he was when he died?”
“He’s kind of ghostly. I just know it’s him.”
“Do you talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“He wants Jack.”
Her mother coughed, then cleared her throat. “What do you mean, he wants Jack?”
“He wants Jack to come and play poker with him.”
“That’s…” The word “interesting” seemed to be on the tip of her tongue, but it didn’t suffice. “I can see why you’re not sleeping. But we all have strange dreams. Once I dreamed I was talking with a man who was supposed to be your father, but he looked like John Wayne. He even called me ‘pilgrim.’”
“This is different. It’s not that Esteban shows up at my back door looking like Daddy. It’s more like one thought drifting into another. It’s as if Daddy comes in and takes over the dream, forcing me to stop thinking of Esteban.”
“That sounds normal. Don’t people always tell you to think happy thoughts when you want to stop scaring yourself?”
“Yeah.”