Cat and Mouse

how?
    “I was reading some of Dr. Cross’s detective logs on the way here,” I told the grandfather. “Gary had a recurring nightmare. It took place here on your farm. Are you aware of it? Gary’s nightmare at your farm?”
    Walter Murphy shook his head. He was blinking his eyes, twitching. He knew something.
    “I’d like your permission to do something here,” I finally said. “I’ll need two shovels. Picks, if you have them.”
    “And if I say no?” he raised his voice suddenly. It was the first time he’d been openly uncooperative.
    And then it struck me. The old man is acting, too. That’s why he understood so much about Gary. He looks off into the trees to set his mind and gain control for the next few lines he has to deliver.
The grandfather is an actor! Just not as good as Gary.
    “Then we’ll get a search warrant,” I told him. “Make no mistake. We will do the search anyway.”

Chapter 86

    “ W HAT THE hell is this all about?” Sampson asked as we trudged from the ramshackle barn to a gray fieldstone fireplace that stood in an open clearing. “You think this is how we catch the Bug-Eyed Monster? Beating up on this old man?”
    Both of us carried old metal shovels, and I had a rusted pickax also.
    “I told you —
data
. I’m a scientist by training. Trust me for about half an hour. The old man is tougher than he looks.”
    The stone fireplace had been built for family cookouts a long time ago, but apparently had not been used in recent years. Sumac and other vines were creeping over the fireplace, as if to make it disappear.
    Just beyond the fireplace was a rotting, wooden-plank picnic table with splintered benches on either side. Pines, oaks, and sugar maples were everywhere.
    “Gary had a recurring dream. That’s what brought me here. This is where the dream takes place. Near the fireplace and the picnic table at Grandpa Walter’s farm. It’s quite horrible. The dream comes up several times in the notes Alex made on Soneji when he was inside Lorton Prison.”
    “Where Gary should have been
cooked
, until he was crispy on the outside, slightly pink toward the center,” Sampson said.
    I laughed at his dark humor. It was the first light moment I’d had in a long time and it felt good to share it with someone.
    I picked out a spot midway between the old fireplace and a towering oak tree that canted toward the farmhouse. I drove the pickax into the ground, drove it hard and deep.
Gary Soneji. His aura, his profound evil. His paternal granddaddy. More data
.
    “In his bizarre dreams,” I told Sampson, “Gary committed a gruesome murder when he was a young boy. He
may
have buried the victim out here. He wasn’t sure himself. He felt he couldn’t separate dreams from reality sometimes. Let’s spend a little time searching for Soneji’s ancient burial ground. Maybe we’re about to enter Gary’s earliest nightmare.”
    “Maybe I don’t want to enter Gary Soneji’s earliest nightmare,” Sampson said laughing again. The tension between us was definitely breaking some. This was better.
    I lifted the pickax high and swung down with great force. I repeated the action again and again, until I found a smooth, comfortable, working rhythm.
    Sampson looked surprised as he watched me handle the pick. “You’re done this kind of fieldwork before, boy,” he said, and began to dig at my side.
    “Yes, I lived on a farm in El Toro, California. My father, his father, and my grandfather’s were all small-town doctors. But they continued to live on our family horse farm. I was supposed to go back there to set up practice, but then I never finished my medical training.”
    The two of us were hard at work now. Good, honest work: looking for old bodies, searching for ghosts from Gary Soneji’s past. Trying to goad Grandfather Murphy.
    We took off our shirts, and soon both of us were covered with sweat and dust.
    “This was like a
gentleman’s
farm? Back in California? The one you lived on as a boy?”
    I snorted out a laugh as I pictured the
gentleman’s
farm. “It was a very small farm. We had to struggle to keep it going. My family didn’t believe a doctor should get rich taking care of other people. ‘You shouldn’t take a profit from other people’s misery,’ my father said. He still believes that.”
    “Huh. So your whole family’s weird?”
    “That’s reasonably accurate portrait.”

Chapter 87

    A S I continued to dig in Walter Murphy’s yard, I thought back to our