She might have admitted as much, but his next words sent her mind spinning off in an entirely different direction.
“There are some things you didn’t tell me about Lynn Vaughn’s murder,” he said as he put distance between themselves and the guy who’d so rudely knocked them out of whatever fantasy they’d been sharing.
“Oh great. You can’t deal with kissing me, so you’re switching back to Lynn Vaughn?” she said, hearing the grating sound of her own voice.
“Can you?” he asked.
He had a point. She’d ended up in his arms with very little provocation, and she’d started touching him in ways that were totally inappropriate. She had no excuse for that, other than her own emotional instability.
She sighed. “Okay, we can get back to business. What do you want to know?”
“You told me that you’d have dreams about bad things happening to people you knew, and they’d turn out to be true.”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying that you knew Lynn Vaughn?”
The question had edged into territory she didn’t want to explore with him. “Why do we have to keep talking about this?”
“Because I’m going to have to call the police if we don’t.”
Chapter Four
The threat had the effect Mack must have been striving for. “I didn’t say it, but I did know her. She and I went to high school together.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
He looked at her, then turned back to the road. “It could be. Any detail could be.”
When she said nothing, he asked, “Were you close?”
She sighed. “We weren’t best buddies, but we knew each other. I know that when she graduated, she went to the University of Maryland in Baltimore. She became an emergency room nurse.”
“Did you keep in touch with her?”
“No. I kind of avoided Gaptown. I think you can figure out why.”
“Yeah. But why do you think Lynn reached out to you? Did she know about your dreams?”
“I didn’t advertise it. Nobody knew. Except Mom.”
“Would she tell anyone?”
“She kept it between us, because she didn’t want people to know there was something weird about her daughter.”
A FEW MILES AWAY, Fred Hyde was touring the funhouse making sure everything was ready for the evening’s entertainment. He’d had a very satisfying time selecting the exhibits. He’d used some of the same ones as for his last guest. Others were new, and he’d taken down the funhouse mirrors. Those were too much of a cliché. Now he was trying to decide if he was going to use a witch’s face or a demon for the pop-up display on the first floor.
The witch had worked very well. But it might be amusing to give the green-and-purple-faced demon a try.
Still pondering the choice, he went back through his music selections, most of which he’d pulled from the soundtracks of slasher movies, although he also liked that spooky “Night on Bald Mountain.” He’d mixed and matched the tracks, and he hummed along as he listened to some of the cuts, then decided on the disc that started with the Night of the Living Dead and continued on to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
After he’d satisfied himself with the preparations, he went downstairs to look at the woman who was sleeping in the cell he’d constructed in the basement. He’d built the walls of cinder block, and the door was reinforced, so there was no chance of escape.
The woman on the narrow bunk inside was lying on her back, her blond hair fallen across her cheek. As he stood over her, he suppressed the urge to brush it back.
Better not touch her until he was wearing his gloves and his Locard suit. Well, it wasn’t anything official. That’s what he called it. Locard was the French forensic scientist who’d first pointed out that when two objects touched, each would leave traces of themselves on the other. But that wasn’t going to happen with his suit made out of neoprene.
He took a step back, still staring at the sleeping woman. He’d drugged her, and she wasn’t going to wake up for several hours. Plenty of time for him to go out to dinner, then put on his outfit. He’d be wearing it when he let her out of the cell, and then the games would begin. Of course, there might be fibers from the cape. But that didn’t matter. He’d bought it at a vintage clothing store in Boston, so nobody was going to connect it with murders in western Maryland.
After making sure the door to the cell and also all the doors to the house were locked, he climbed into his SUV and drove to an area down by the Potomac River where there were some shops, artists’ studios and restaurants. The Chamber of Commerce or some other group was sprucing up the town, but they’d left some major messes. Right down by the river was a half-demolished brick building that used to be a dye works. It dragged down the whole area. And there should be more restaurants to choose from. He’d had Italian for dinner last time before the fun. This time he was going to try that place where you could get Maryland crabcakes and barbecued ribs.
MACK HAD CONTINUED DRIVING as they talked, and Jamie looked up to see that they were on a road that ran parallel to the CSX train yard where more than a hundred freight cars were parked.
“Where are we going?”
“You said the funhouse was in Gaptown. Maybe we can find it.”
“Gaptown’s a big place.”
“Not like say, Baltimore or Washington. Maybe you’ll have some…insights.”
“Okay.” She took in a sharp breath.
“What?”
“I do remember hearing a train whistle in my dream.”
“Which means it could be down here.”
“No. The train goes right through town. There are even bridges over the tracks on the west side—the elegant part of town. You can’t get away from CSX. The railroad’s been here since before the company bought the Chesapeake & Ohio.”
“Then which way should we go?”
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