Dream Eyes

walls.
    He crossed the small space and took down the large picture calendar. The first, second and third of August were all marked with the same note.
Feed
dogs
.
    He took out the list of dates he had brought with him. The
Feed dogs
notes appeared exactly where he expected to find them throughout the year.
    The faint, muffled sound of a shoe on the rear steps of the shop sent his senses into full sail. The ring on his hand burned with the heat of a miniature paranormal sun. There was time to get out through the front door of the shop.
    He left the office and went around the counter. He was reaching for the doorknob to let himself out into the street when he realized that there were two people on the back steps, not one.
    He stopped and waited. The back door opened. The beam of a flashlight speared across the back room and into the front of the shop.
    “Hello, Poole,” Judson said.
    Buddy Poole moved into the room. Gone were the old-fashioned gold-framed reading glasses, the folksy plaid shirt and the red suspenders that he wore when he was behind the counter of the Wilby General Store. Tonight he was dressed head-to-toe in hit-man black.
    Poole was not alone. He had Nicole with him. Her wrists were bound behind her back. Her mouth was taped shut. She stared at Judson with wide, terrified eyes. Buddy held a gun to her temple. With his other hand, he aimed the flashlight at Judson.
    “Put the gun down, Coppersmith,” Buddy said. “Or I’ll kill her now.”
    Judson set the weapon down very carefully on the floor and straightened slowly.
    “How did you know I was here?”
    “I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” Buddy said. “When you left the inn tonight, I figured you were up to something. I wondered if you were headed for my place. Thought it might be fun to see if you could handle the dogs. But when you didn’t drive out on Falls View Road, I realized you were probably on your way here instead. I picked up this bitch just in case I needed some leverage.”
    Nicole whimpered.
    Buddy gave her a violent shove that sent her crashing into the wall. She groaned and slumped to her knees.
    Buddy ignored her. He watched Judson with psi-hot eyes. “How did you put it all together, Coppersmith?”
    “The old-fashioned way,” Judson said. “I started connecting dots. You mentioned that Nicole fed your dogs while you were out of town attending the crafts fairs. When Gwen and I came here to talk to Nicole, I noticed the calendar over her desk. Three days in August were marked,
Feed dogs
. You were gone for those three days, supposedly attending a crafts fair. But one of those dates, the second, was the day you murdered an old lady. I just finished comparing the rest of the dates of the kills. They match up to the dates when you were out of town, the dates when Nicole was scheduled to feed your dogs.”
    Buddy snorted in disgust. “Unfortunately, that’s how Evelyn put it together, too. I got that much out of her before she died.”
    “You took her computer and cell phone.”
    “I wanted to see if Evelyn had called or e-mailed anyone else about her suspicions. There was only the one e-mail sent earlier that night to Gwen Frazier. I knew she would probably arrive later and find the body, but I didn’t see any harm in that. I was sure that even if Oxley had his suspicions, he would focus on Gwen as a possible killer.”
    “Then I showed up.”
    “I knew you might be a problem, especially if you started asking questions. Louise has been a risk for years. Crazy and getting crazier by the day. By then I knew I no longer needed her, so I got rid of her, hoping that would be the end of the matter. I figured all I had to do after that was wait, because sooner or later you and Gwen would leave town and things would return to normal. But tonight I realized you weren’t going to give up and go away.”
    “You’re the demon Louise Fuller feared,” Judson said. “The father of her only child.”
    Buddy snorted. “She tried to use my own son to kill me.”
    “Why not? Zander Taylor was a chip off the old block.”
    “Except for the crazy gene,” Buddy said. “He got that from his mother.”
    “Nah,” Judson said. “Like father, like son. Psychos, both of you.”
    “Bullshit.” Fury flashed in Buddy’s eyes. “I’m a professional. I do it for the money. Zander was a gamer. I swear, he was obsessed. Once he got a taste of his kill-the-psychic game, he couldn’t control himself. Sooner or later, he would have