Falling Awake (31 page)

Somewhat to Isabel’s surprise, Ellis slipped off his dark glasses before replying.

“On the floor,” Ellis said. “Very close to where Katherine was found. I think what bothered me was that this was the only issue of the magazine in the place. There’s no subscription label so I assume she bought it at a newsstand. Was Katherine interested in nature and wildlife? I didn’t see any other books or magazines on that subject in her place.”

“Oh, shit,” Dave whispered in a strangled voice. He could not seem to take his eyes off the cobra. He appeared to have been transfixed by the creature. “Oh,
shit
.”

Ellis watched him closely. “Talk to me, Dave. Is it the magazine or the snake that interests you?”

“The cobra.” Dave’s stunned expression gradually transmuted into anger. “That was the symbol of his avatar.”

“Explain,” Ellis ordered.

Dave put the magazine on the desk very carefully, as though he feared the cobra might strike. “Katherine played one of those big, online fantasy world games, the kind that thousands of people can play at any given time. They call them massively multi-player games.”

“Go on,” Ellis said.

“The one Katherine liked involves a world of towns and cities. The players have various powers and skills. They compete to rule the urban zones. Each player gets an avatar.”

“An avatar is a computer-generated character in the game?” Isabel asked.

“Right.” Dave did not look away from the cobra. “The players give their avatars whatever personality traits or quirks or temperaments they choose. They also select symbols or heralds for their banners and shields. You know, like the knights and nobles did in medieval times.”

Isabel shuddered. “Talk about a setup that allows people to act out their repressed side.”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “It’s supposed to be a game of strategy but a lot of the players go overboard. They really get into the life they create online. It’s like an endless Level Five lucid dreamscape.”

Isabel noticed Ellis’s brows climbing at that comment but he kept silent.

“I’ve read about that syndrome,” she said to Dave. “Some players don’t play the game just to win, they play it to have a life. Through their avatars they form relationships with other players.”

Dave swallowed visibly. “Sometimes people get really intense, all right. That’s what happened to Katherine about three months ago.”

“After Scargill’s death,” Ellis said quietly.

Dave nodded. “Yes. I tried to tell her that she was getting way too involved but she wouldn’t listen. She had introduced Scargill to the game when they were dating, you see. It was one of the things they did together. I guess playing the game after his death was her way of hanging onto his memory. But one day a couple of weeks before she was killed—” He broke off abruptly.

“What happened, Dave?” Isabel asked.

“She suddenly sounded a lot better. More like her old self. I
thought she was coming out of her depression. I figured maybe she was seeing someone new.”

Ellis’s expression sharpened. “Did you ask her?”

“Sure.” Dave looked at the photo of the cobra. “She said she wasn’t seeing anyone new but that things were definitely looking up. She said she didn’t want to talk about it on the phone but she promised to tell me everything the next time we got together.” He exhaled slowly. “I never saw her again. Two weeks later she was dead.”

Isabel touched his shoulder gently. For a moment no one spoke.

After a while Ellis reached out and took the magazine from Dave’s grasp.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “You’ve confirmed some of my own conclusions and you’ve given me some useful information. Now I’ll tell you what I know and what I think I know.”

Dave’s throat worked but Isabel could see that he had himself under control.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“Technically speaking, some of what I’m going to tell you comes under the heading of classified information,” Ellis said quietly. “At least as far as Lawson is concerned. But you already know a lot more than you’re supposed to know about the work that’s done at Frey-Salter so I’m not going to worry about it. In any event, you’ve got a right to be informed about what is going on.”

“You mean, what
you
think is going on,” Dave said.

Ellis’s mouth curved faintly. “Yeah. What I think. Okay, here’s how I see it.”

He gave Dave a quick, concise summary of events. As far as Isabel could tell, he left nothing out.

“Everyone except me is satisfied that Scargill is dead,” Ellis concluded. “They think I’m obsessed with a dead man. But my theory is that Scargill is still alive.” He pointed at the cobra. “And you’ve just given me a little bit of proof that supports my version of events.”

Dave sat down slowly, shaken. “I still don’t understand why you think the magazine proves anything. Katherine probably bought it as a sort of keepsake because it represented something she shared with Scargill.”

“That may be why she purchased it but I don’t think that’s why I found it where I did on the floor. It was located only a short distance from where she fell, Dave. I believe that she managed to grab it just before she was shot. The impact of the bullet probably caused her to drop it. That’s why there’s no blood on it.”

“Wouldn’t Scargill have noticed it and recognized his own game avatar?”

“The magazine was facedown when I found it,” Ellis said softly. “My hunch is that Scargill never saw the cover.”

Dave studied the magazine as if he were trying to read a half-forgotten language that could be deciphered if he just worked at it. “The police said the place had been vandalized as well as burglarized.”

“If I’m right, Scargill tore up Katherine’s apartment in order to simulate an out-of-control murder-robbery. He’s a game player, remember. But now that we know the magazine had some personal meaning for her, what are the odds that Katherine would have been killed with it practically in her hands?”

Dave’s eyes lit with understanding and savage pride. “She did her best in the last moments of her life to name her killer.”

“I think so, yes,” Ellis said.

Dave dropped his head into his hands. “She left the clue for me. She must have known that I was the only one who could make sense of it. I did eventually go to her apartment to help Mom and Dad pack up her things but by the time we got there the place had been cleaned.”

“You mustn’t feel bad, Dave.” Isabel put her hand on his shoulder. “Even if you had seen the magazine immediately after the killing and understood its significance, it’s highly doubtful that the police would have paid any attention to you.”

“Because Scargill is officially dead and cremated,” Ellis reminded him softly.

Dave raised his head, his face bleak. “This is crazy.”

“No, it’s not,” Ellis said. “Not if you go with my theory that Scargill is still alive. Then everything else falls into place.”

There was a long silence. Both men drank their coffee.

Ellis set down his empty cup. “How did you find me, Dave?”

Dave had gone back to staring at the picture of the cobra. He seemed distracted. “What?”

“How did you locate me?” Ellis repeated patiently. “I wasn’t deliberately trying to hide but not very many people know that I’m here in Roxanna Beach.”

“Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.” Dave shrugged. “I tracked you online. It wasn’t that hard. You may be some kind of hotshot secret agent when you work for Frey-Salter but the rest of the time you maintain a legitimate business identity. You’ve got corporate credit cards, a driver’s license and a Maserati, for crying out loud. How hard could it be to find you? Especially since, like you said, you weren’t trying to hide.”

Ellis smiled, evidently satisfied. “Are you as good as Katherine was when it comes to computers?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Because I’ve hit the wall when it comes to online research and I can’t trust my usual sources. I need some help.”

“I’m still not completely sure you’re the good guy in this thing,” Dave muttered. He flicked a speculative glance at Isabel. “But I agree that finding that picture of the cobra in Katherine’s apartment does point toward Scargill.”

Ellis checked his watch. “I’m in a hurry here. Want to help me find your sister’s killer or not?”

“You know the answer to that,” Dave said.

h
alfway through the first session of “Tapping into the Creative Potential of Your Dreams,” Isabel knew she had a disaster on her hands. An atmosphere of restless boredom had enveloped the seminar room five minutes into her lecture. One man in the first row had gone to sleep. Most of the other attendees were glancing at their watches every few minutes. Tamsyn, observing from a seat at the back of the chamber, appeared increasingly concerned.

Okay, so I’m not cut out to be an instructor of the Kyler Method. Another career path down the drain. So what else is new?

The fact that half her mind was fully occupied in wondering what Ellis was doing was not helping her stay focused on the job at hand.

She glanced at the clock. Half an hour to go. She would have
given anything to walk off the stage but she knew she had no choice but to plow ahead.

“People tend to recall only the dreams they have just before they awaken and very often not even those. But researchers are convinced that most of us dream actively all night long. You can prove this easily enough by waking people up at various points during the night and asking them about their dreams. Trust me, they’ll tell you. Probably more than you really want to know.”

No one laughed at the small joke.

A man seated in the third row raised his hand. She had noticed him earlier, in part because he was one of the few men in the room with a beard. His was closely cut, with a stylish flair that accented the handsome angles of his cheekbones and jaw-line. The other reason she had picked him out of the crowd was because he was one of the few people who seemed genuinely interested in her lecture.

“Yes?” she said brightly, so desperately grateful to him for showing some interest that she wanted to hop over the first two rows and kiss him on both cheeks. “You had a question, sir?”

“I was just wondering,” he said in a low, resonant voice, “why we don’t remember many of our dreams?”

“Theories vary but one that sounds reasonable to many researchers is that we simply aren’t paying much attention while we sleep. We don’t focus on a dream unless it happens to be particularly vivid or unless it contains a strong emotional element.” She held up a notepad. “Which brings me to the first step in the process of tapping into the creative potential of your dreams.”
She paused for effect, as she had learned in her instructors’ classes. “Take notes. Keep a pen and a pad of paper beside your bed. Or try a recorder. Whenever you wake up in the middle of the night, write down whatever you can recall of your dreams. Your goal is to create a dream log.”

She waved the pointer with a flourish, trying to regain the attention of some people in the back row who were chatting among themselves. The tip of the wand moved across the top of the podium, sweeping her carefully arranged notes to the floor.

For a moment everyone in the room, including her, stared at the fallen note cards.

“Excuse me.” She crouched and frantically gathered up the cards.

The murmur of conversation in the back row got louder.

She staggered erect and put the cards back on top of the podium. Gripping the edges of the stand she looked out at her audience, half of which was now engaged in low-voiced conversations. Someone’s cell phone rang. Just to make matters worse, the person took the call.

I don’t believe this,
she thought.
It’s just a really bad dream. Okay, maybe not as bad as a crime scene dream, but darn close.

With an effort of will she gathered herself. Thirty minutes to go.

“Step two,” she said through gritted teeth, “is to look through your dream log at the end of each week. You will be searching for recurring themes and ideas, but my advice is not to waste time on the more traditional interpretive approach, which relies on symbols. In the old days of dream research it was felt that every
element in a dream actually meant something other than what it appeared to be. If you dreamed about a closed door you were experiencing a fear of change. If you dreamed about a mirror in which you cannot see your reflection you were worried about how others see you, and so forth.”

The man with the neatly trimmed beard raised his hand. “What’s wrong with taking that approach? I’ve always heard symbols are important in dreams.”

In the back row, Tamsyn gave a tiny, negative wave of her hand and shook her head. Not hard to interpret those symbols, Isabel thought. Tamsyn wanted her to leave the topic and get back to the discussion of dream logs.

But she couldn’t ignore the one person in the class who was actually paying attention, she told herself. She smiled at the bearded man.

“The idea that our dreams contain critical symbols that must be interpreted is extremely ancient and comes down to us from a variety of cultures,” she said quickly, trying to rush through the explanation. “It was strongly reinforced in the twentieth century by Jung and Freud and others who took a psychological approach to dream research.”

Another hand went up. She pretended not to notice.

“It is extremely risky to put too much emphasis on symbols in dreams for the simple reason that there are as many interpretations of various symbols as there are people who try to interpret dreams,” she continued. “While some analysts would see that closed door I just mentioned as a symbol of fear of change,
others would interpret it as the rational barrier that stands between our civilized nature and our deepest, most primitive thoughts and repressed desires.”

The woman who had just raised her hand spoke up loudly.

“But the door must mean something,” she insisted.

Isabel spread her hands. “It could be just a door with no particular significance at all. Maybe one you noticed out of the corner of your eye earlier in the day when you walked down the street. That’s the problem with dream symbols. If you attempt to use them to interpret the meaning of your dreams, I suggest that you do not rely on a dream encyclopedia or theories of universal archetypes. Instead, think of the objects and events in your dreams in terms of personal context.”