Dream On (Dale Conley Action Thrillers Series Book 2) Page 6

  “Your episode the other night made The Ron & Roc Show.”

  He reached over to a nearby monitor and started a recording. On the screen were two DJs in a radio studio. Both were middle-aged. The larger one, Ron, wore a baseball jersey and cap. Roc was thinner with a mustache and wore a multi-colored striped shirt with suspenders.

  “And did you see anchor Adam Steele at Channel 16?” Ron said.

  “Oh, man, did this guy crap the bed or what? I’m gonna run the tape, but for those of you listening to the radio broadcast, you’ll just have to imagine a man awkwardly staring forward, like a broken robot,” Roc said.

  Roc pushed a button. The image of their radio studio was replaced with a Channel 16 newscast. Brittany Smalls—radiant as ever with her curly, brown hair and commanding presence—sat behind the news desk. She was finishing up a story.

  “And it was not until later that Barrington claimed the actions seconded Fidelity International’s earlier stance on customer relations. Fidelity has yet to release an official statement.” She turned to her right. “Adam.”

  The angle changed, revealing both Smalls and Adam, who stared to the side, head lowered, mouth open, eyes not blinking.

  A look of concern flashed over Smalls’ face. “Adam?”

  Adam didn’t respond. Didn’t blink. He remained open-mouthed, chin slowly drooping toward his chest. Smalls looked at the camera, back to Adam.

  “Adam!”

  Adam snapped to. He looked at Smalls, confused, then to the camera. He quickly shuffled his papers and focused on the teleprompter. He cleared his throat. “In other news, city council members have overwhelmingly—”

  The image of the broadcast ended, and The Ron & Roc studio was visible again. Ron stared forward with his head slumped to his chest, imitating Adam.

  “Looks like Channel 16 doesn’t discriminate against narcoleptics,” Roc said. “Good on ’em. What do you think Ron? Ron? Ron!”

  Ron jumped up, acting bewildered. “What? Who? How? Hey. Hi. I’m back. I’m good. Musta dozed off for a second.”

  “What are you doing wasting your time on radio, Ron? With that composure, you got yourself a future in television. Head down to Channel 16 and—”

  Bradford turned off the recording.

  “This is all over Portland, Adam. And with your performance tonight, I’m beginning to wonder if something is going on with you. How’s the family? You and Alicia doing alright?”

  Adam shifted in his seat. “We’re fine,” he snapped.

  “Drugs?”

  “Hell no.”

  “In ten years with us, you haven’t given us any grief. Exemplary. But I was the one who made you an anchor three years ago, so it’s my ass on the line too if this continues. I’m going to have to do something, So, please, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I just haven’t been sleeping well. I’ll get it together.”

  Adam shifted in his seat again. He was clearly uncomfortable, but his body language wasn’t that of a man whose career was on the line. It was that of a man with a secret. The Army, the banking world, the media. Bradford was used to men with secrets. But he would have never suspected that Adam Steele would be one of them.

  “I hope that’s true, Adam,” Bradford said. “I really do.”

  Chapter 12

  Fermin Voyles of the Clatsop County medical examiner’s office was a crotchety old fart, and crotchety old farts always amused Dale. That was why Dale liked SAC Walter Taft so much.

  Voyles was a bit older than Taft, and when Dale had called him up, requesting to see the body of Isaac Bennett at 10:30 that night, Dale found Voyles to be a bit grumpier than Taft as well. When Dale and Spiro arrived in her car at the office, Voyles waited for them in the darkened front entrance to the building, leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets. He was in his mid-sixties, gray hair, walrus mustache. The town was quiet. Seaside had gone to bed. The sky was black, the air crisp. The sound of insects and waves in the distance.

  “You Agent Conley?” Voyles said.

  “That would be me,” Dale said.

  The room was cold, and the lights flickered. Voyles pulled open a stainless steel door, and there were Bennett’s feet. A blast of cold air exited the chamber. Voyles pulled back the wheeled platform, and Bennett’s body rolled toward them.

  Dale watched Spiro from the corner of his eye. At the house, when she had first seen the body, her reaction had been intense. Now, her response to seeing it a second time was clinical and subdued. The frigid, ghostly form of Bennett seemed to have zero effect on her. She was adapting quickly.

  A cloth covered Bennett from his feet to his neck. Dale pulled it back to the man’s waist and revealed the marking on his left forearm. A box of rubber gloves sat on a neighboring examination table, and Dale grabbed a pair and put them on. He gently pulled Bennett’s arm to the side.

  The writing on Bennett’s arm did extend further past what was revealed in the initial photograph.

  “Where it trails off like that,” Dale said, pointing at the area after the H, “Bennett definitely could have been trying to write something else. But the marker’s stroke is so wide.” He held his index finger up to the marks. The stroke was nearly as wide as his finger. “Can’t tell what he was trying to write.” Dale scanned the room then looked at Voyles. “Could I have a piece of paper and an ink pen?”

  Voyles gave him a funny look but walked over to a desk and retrieved the items. Dale nodded his thanks then pulled Bennett’s arm a little bit further to the side and put the paper against the arm.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Voyles said.

  “Nothing wicked. I promise. Tracing through the center of the letters to see what we get. Not the fanciest bit of forensic science, but it should get the job done.”

  Starting with the J, Dale used the ink pen to trace over the letters onto the sheet of paper. He kept the pen dead center in the middle of the marker strokes, and he kept flipping the paper up and putting it back down to check his progress, like a kid tracing a drawing. He slowed down when he reached the bumpy markings that followed the H. When he was done, he had a slimmer rendition of the letters that Bennett had written on himself.

  Dale looked at what followed the H. And he grinned. It was as he expected.

  “What do those bumps after the H look like to you now, Spiro?” Dale said.

  “Definitely an S at the end. And … maybe an A before that.”

  “I’d say it’s a U. Bennett wasn’t writing Joseph. He was writing Josephus.”

  “Who?”

  “Josephus,” Dale said, pronouncing the name Joe-See-Fuss. “A first century historian. He started out fighting as a Jew against the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman War and eventually switched sides and became the historian for his conquerors. We get a lot of our early Christian history from the works of Josephus.” Dale looked at the tracing in his hand. “And suddenly things became a whole lot more interesting.”

  Chapter 13

  Dale stood in the parking lot of the Sleepy Slumber Inn, leaning against Spiro’s rental car. It was overcast, and there was a bit of fog, but the morning sun was trying to peek through a little bit, so he had his sunglasses on. He watched Spiro’s door. He expected her any moment.

  The motel was about as impressive from the outside as it was on the inside. One story in height. The white paint was dingy. The doors and window frames were painted red, and in the blacktop parking lot was a small collection of tired cars awaiting the emergence of their frazzled owners. There was a grassy area in the center of the parking lot with a couple trees and a picnic table.

  Dale chewed a fingernail and looked at his watch then to the road. The driver was late. Dale sighed. He looked at Spiro’s door again. And what the hell was keeping her? Was the whole world except him running behind that morning?

  Finally Spiro’s door opened and she stepped out, putting her purse on her shoulder. She wore a black turtleneck sweater with a wine-colored skirt. The sw
eater had horizontal patterns going across the chest, whereas the sleeves and neck were pure black. The skirt, like the skirt she had been wearing the day before, fell a couple inches above her knee. It wasn’t as short as a minidress, but it was just short enough to be short.

  She dressed young for her age, but so did Dale with his love of T-shirt and jeans. So he wasn’t one to judge. In fact, the youthful look fit her damn nicely. It just seemed at odds with her temperament. Like her youthful turn of phrase last night.

  She walked up to him. “I slept like absolute shit last night. I swear, there were goddamn bugs in my bed.”

  Another day with Spiro. Dale rubbed his temples. “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.”

  Spiro frowned. “The hell are you talking about?”

  “In other words, good morning, sunshine.” He looked at his watch again. “What could be keeping the guy? He was supposed to be here three minutes ago.”

  Spiro gave him a look. “What are you, nuts?”

  Dale held up a finger, shushing her. Because he had heard it. He cocked his head to the side, stuck his ear out closer to the road. Yes, that must be it. A truck. And like that, a tractor-trailer loaded with vehicles pulled into the parking lot.

  “Finally,” Dale said and rubbed his hands together, not even attempting to contain the shit-eating grin that stretched across his face.

  After a few tense, worry-filled minutes of monitoring the truck driver as he manipulated Dale’s vehicle off the trailer, there now sat before Dale and Spiro a gleaming, orange sports car. All angles and lines and shiny curves and fat, hungry tires. Arancia. She called out to Dale, begging, pleading for a drive. Dale quickly signed a paper on the truck driver’s clipboard and gave it back to him.

  “Gillian Spiro, I’d like you to meet Arancia.” He motioned grandly toward the mechanical marvel in front of them.

  “What the hell is this thing?” Spiro had one leg kicked out and her arms crossed. She looked like she’d just heard a terribly offensive joke. She frequently bore that expression—the look of subtle victimization.

  “A De Tomaso Pantera,” Dale said.

  Arancia was more than just a car. She was a force of nature. She was a revelation. A way of being. A spiritual awakening. She was power and beauty and elegance personified. She was clean—spotless and pure—but she was also dirty. Oh, was she dirty. Pure, filthy magnetism.

  Dale opened the passenger side door. “Hop in.”

  Spiro got in, and Dale shut the door behind her. He was practically skipping as he made his way to the other side. He slid down into the black leather driver seat. Ahhh. This was where he belonged. He put the key in the ignition and started the engine. It came to life with a roar.

  “Holy shit,” Spiro said.

  “Damn right.”

  Spiro looked behind her, where the eruptive sound of Arancia’s awakening engine had come from. The De Tomaso Pantera was a mid-engine car, and its fire-breathing, 330-horsepower Ford 351 Cleveland V8 was mounted right behind the seats.

  Dale lowered his head and looked over his sunglasses at Spiro with a maniacal gaze. He did his best impression of a 1950s horror movie scientist, belting out a cackling, demented laugh then revved the engine loud and dumped the clutch. Arancia thrashed from behind, tires squealing, smoke rising, the smell of rubber seeping into the cab. Then the limited slip differential grabbed hold of the concrete, and Arancia shot forward, throwing Dale and Spiro’s heads back into their seats. Spiro screamed.

  Arancia roared east down I-84. Chinookan University was a few miles outside of the city proper, and endless pine trees zipped by on either side of them, looming over the road. In the distance was the peak of Mount Hood, blue in the morning light.

  Dale settled into his seat. It was going to take them a little while to get to the university. He hated adding boring, curve-less Interstate miles to Arancia, but at least it was a scenic drive. Stunning, actually. Beautiful vistas in every direction. The stuff of calendars.

  He adjusted his sunglasses. A few minutes had passed since they had left the motel, and the silence was getting awkward. He broke it.

  “What do you do for fun, Spiro?”

  He decided to go the friendly route. There had been a lot of talk of sliced throats and religious conspiracies. It would be good to have a moment of brevity. Plus, the professional bond into which they’d been conscripted had been icy cold from the beginning. He was hoping to thaw it out a bit.

  She whipped around on him. “Excuse me? A little personal, don’t you think?”

  “Geez, Spiro, I’m not flirting with you,” Dale said and sighed. “Just chitchat.”

  “I’m not much into fun,” she said and turned to face the windshield again. “I enjoy charts. Graph paper. Numerical lists.”

  Dale looked over at her. Then back to the road. Then back to her again. “Exciting stuff.”

  “To each her own. Most fun involves people. And I’m not a people person.”

  Dale could respect that. He was a bit of a loner himself.

  “May I ask what it is you like about lists and charts?”

  “They’re precise,” she said. “Organized. They won’t let you down. And they’re universal. Everything can fit into a chart.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Everything.”

  “What about a sunset? Or the bond with a pet? Or the first hill of a rollercoaster? You can’t fit those things into a chart.” He felt a little cheesy saying that, but he did believe it. Dale was a very pragmatic person, but he also saw the value in the abstract.

  “Everything fits into a chart.”

  Dale shook his head. “If you say so. Then tell me this. What’s his name?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy who broke your heart and ended your faith in people.”

  “He didn’t break my heart. I broke his.” She looked out the passenger-side window and watched the trees for a moment. “And his name was Calvin Dunnett,” she said without turning from the window.

  Dale turned to her. She continued to look outside, faced away from him. Since he’d met her, she had seemed like the type who was always somewhat serious. But now she was more than serious. She was dark. It was time to lighten the mood.

  “Come on,” Dale said. “You gotta like something other than graph paper. What are your favorite movies?”

  “I like Casablanca.”

  “I said ‘movies.’ Plural.”

  “I like Casablanca,” she said again.

  Dale laughed. “Okay, good choice. A classic. Bogey. Ingrid Bergman. The plot reveals. Dialogue. It’s perfection. I’m surprised it’s your favorite, given it’s one of the greatest love stories ever told. You don’t seem the type.”

  Spiro shook her head. “It’s not a love story. It’s a realistic story. Nobody wins in Casablanca. The love story would be if Rick and Ilsa got on that plane. Rick did the practical thing. He evaluated the situation, and he did what was best for the world in its current state during the war.”

  “No way. He didn’t do it just for practicality. He did it because he loved Ilsa. He knew that Laszlo loved her too, and he knew that she loved Laszlo and that she would regret if she didn’t stay with him. ‘Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow,’ as he said. Rick sacrificed himself.”

  “You could argue that,” Spiro said. “But there were still no winners.”

  “There were plenty of winners. Laszlo and Ilsa got their love, and Laszlo continued his fight. And Rick won too. He and Louis, at the end—when he said that they were beginning a beautiful friendship.”

  “Yes. It was the start of a beautiful friendship ... between two scoundrels. And Laszlo and Ilsa ended up together for the necessity of his cause not love. Remember how she reacts when Laszlo tells her he loves her? Like I said, Casablanca is realistic. Nobody wins.”

  Dale realized then that this was Gillian Spiro’s entire world view. Nobody wins. To Dale, that was a depressing thought indeed, but
it seemed like it was some kind of solace to Spiro. After all, when you couldn’t be happy, you couldn’t get sad. Dale was a realistic man, and he certainly wasn’t what Louis in Casablanca would call a sentimentalist. But he was a bit of an idealist.

  Unlike Spiro, he liked to think that people did win sometimes. Even if they were only convincing themselves they’d won.

  Chapter 14

  It was a nice office. Dale looked around the room and, remembering his days in his previous life as a journalist and fiction writer, thought it would have made a perfect writing space ... aside from the religious paraphernalia. It was a cozy, little space. Wood paneling on the walls, Venetian blinds over the single window to the left, through which were glimpses of the beautiful, green campus. A set of bookshelves bent under the weight of dozens of texts. Behind the desk was a painting of Jesus.

  They were waiting on Professor Robert Lockhart. He was due to arrive at any moment. Dale walked over to the window and looked out. Even with the sky being not so pretty, the campus sure looked nice. Perfect grass. Stately trees. Crisscrossing paths with students heading this way and that. On the other side of the room, Spiro was looking over the books on the shelves. Dale left the window and walked toward her.

  “Look at all this hocus-pocus nonsense,” she said as she scanned over the titles. “They call this academia.” She scoffed.

  “Just be gentle when he gets here, alright? So, I’m curious—what was Calvin Dunnett’s big offense?”

  She turned to him. “He had OCD.”

  “And he gave it to you?”

  Spiro shot him a look. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder. He let me know early on, and at first, it worked out well with my being a psychologist. But then he started getting jealous, paranoid. And I wasn’t going to have that.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Oh yes. Very much. Almost immediately. It took him forever to love me back. He finally told me he loved me. Then the next day I tried to break up with him.”