On a Lee Shore 12 - Revelation

    Three o’clock in the morning.  Cold sweat.  Night terror.  Her open door let the rising flood of moonlight, deep on the floor outside, gush into her room in a torrent.  Black night behind the blinds of her windows and in the haunted, grasping trees beyond.  Her body shook in the wet sheets, the room spun and for a full minute she gasped for air, her lungs compressed, as she frantically tried to scream out.  

    “I’m awake!   Calm down.   Dammit!  Calm down!”  She lay frozen, not daring to move, her ears straining to detect any foreign noises in her room or in the bungalow made by the specter that had visited her.  After an eternity, she realized she was alone.  “It was just a dream.  All a dream.  I’m home.  In my bed.  Daddy’s the only one here.“  Relieved, she gave in to two or three jarring sobs that she let force her into a fetal position, which she held, her arms wrapped over her head, squeezing her body into a knot and shutting her eyes tightly, trying to force the fear and panic out.  

    How the does it happen?  How do memories in the subconscious brain re-emerge into the conscious? Is it simply a matter of chemicals shifting position?  Electricity redirected onto different circuits?  Neural impulses changing paths?  However it happens, as she slept that night, the details of the night of Katie’s death slipped out of the shadows, showed themselves and then slipped away again, leaving her with no direct recollections of the events but only memories of the dream now past, a strange ability to know of the thoughts of others in the dream, and the certainty that what the dream revealed was the truth.

    Alone in the dark room, she took inventory of the fragments of her dream.   In her dream Miles sat apart from the others that night, not drinking and watching… watching Katie.  Not drinking, staying alert.  Katie was talking to Chris, and Miles, she was sure, was intent on knowing what they were talking about.  A heavyset man also made an appearance, clumsily hitting on Katie, trying to buy her a drink.  And in the end, Miles had looked at the heavyset man and given him instructions, she knew, omniscient in her dream, with a single look.  His instructions were, “Yes, she’s the one.  Kill her.  Get rid of her for me.”

    It‘s true, she gasped to herself, Miles murdered Katie or, at least, arranged it.  Miles.  Her Miles. The fact asserted itself in her mind and wouldn’t be denied, no matter how much she wanted to doubt it.  At that moment, she was a seer, a psychic, her mind connecting to something in the natural world, that it couldn’t access in its conscious dimension.  Miles killed her.  Still she wanted to doubt but it wouldn’t let her go.

    She spent the rest of the night, lying still, piecing together the events of last few days - Miles' behavior, yesterday’s meeting with the Mark Hall, the FBI agent - while slowly emerging from the strange state of consciousness, it’s power over her gradually diminishing until departing, finally, at first morning light, but leaving her with an inescapable understanding of what had happened.  She reached for her phone on the nightstand and called Shannon.

    “What’s up?” Shannon mumbled groggily.

    “You’re going to think this is crazy, but I think I know what happened to Katie…”

    “What??”

    “I know, it sounds stupid.  But I’m sure.  I know it.  I know it.  Can you meet me somewhere?”

    “How about the beach?”

    “In an hour?”

    “An hour?!”

    “Yeah, please?”

    “Okay.”

    She got there well before Shannon and nervously paced the area of the beach where she felt Shannon would go to first.  It was only then that she considered the implications of her early morning vision beyond what had happened to Katie.  If Miles had done what she now believed he had done, what did he have in mind for her?  Shannon?  Her father?  Even Chris who was the last person Miles had seen talking to Katie?  Her first instinct was to doubt the accuracy of her dream - it was a dream after all.  Her second was to doubt her own sanity.  Her third was to seek shelter up near the dunes where she wouldn’t be so exposed out in the open.  Her eyes studied each approaching form, which, one by one, proved to be strolling retirees and beachcombers, until, at last, out of the haze of the early morning sun and salt spray, she saw a form that she recognized.  Closer and closer it came.  White t-shirt.  Black, knee-length, athletic shorts with a blue stripe down the side.  Dark skin.  Red, curly hair, pinned back.  Searching green eyes.  Shannon.

    “This better not be a joke.”

    “I swear to God…”

    Cara had intended to start at the beginning and give an orderly account of the last two day’s events, but instead she excitedly launched into the details, darting back and forth idiotically between last night’s dream and her conversation with Mark Hall, until Shannon, exasperatedly, slowed her down.

    “So… it came to you last night that Miles ordered some guy to kill Katie?  In John Steven’s… the night she died.”

    “Yes.  That night’s been just a blur for me until this dream… I got so drunk that night.  I guess it’s always been there.  I can see Miles doing it:  looking at Katie then to that fat guy.  Do you remember that fat guy?”

    “Vaguely.  Balding.  Little goatee.”

    “Yeah.  And then the other night when you and Miles were arguing Katie about that night at John Steven’s… Miles lied.  He said he was drunk but I know he wasn’t… he didn’t drink anything but Diet Coke.  I remember thinking it was strange then.  It was the conversation, I had with this guy Mark, the FBI agent that must of triggered all this.  And oh… he was there that night too!”

    “The FBI agent was there?  That night?  At John Steven’s?  What?  Before Katie was killed?  That can’t be a coincidence.”

    “Yeah, he told me he was and at first I didn’t remember him.  But now I do.  I was talking to him.  But I was so drunk…”

    They stared at each other.

    “He’s following Miles… investigating him, maybe…” Shannon said,  “Or… he’s investigating you because he knows you’re with Miles.”

    “Yeah, like I told you, when I was leaving the police station, he walks me out to my car…  then he just asks me what I know about Miguel Mariposa - Miles’ father - and that he knows I’m seeing Miles.  That was it… and he had this look in his eye like he didn’t want to say more… and then he tells me to be careful. ”

    “Here’s what he’s doing.  I know it.  He’s gotta be investigating something that Miles’ father is involved with.  You know… we’d always heard that he was some big connected guy or something… and he’s identified you as being on the inside - he must want you to watch him.”

    “Me?”

    “Yeah, he wanted to plant all that in your head… so you’ll watch Miles and, I suppose he’s hoping that you’ll report what you see back to him.  That’s it.  The guy’s taking a risk.  What if you just go and tell Miles all he told you and Miles warns his father and they just pack up their little show and leave?”

    Cara thought for a while.

    “I know why he’s not worried about that,” she said.  “The last thing he said to me before I left the police station was, ‘Did you know your father is a associate’, or did he say ‘former associate of Miguel Mariposa?’”

    “Shit.  He’s got you. Doesn’t he?” said Shannon.

    “Yeah, I better keep everything he’s told me to myself, because he’s got something on my Dad.”

    Cara sank down into a heap in the sand, covered her face with hands and cried. Shannon crouched down behind her and put arms on her shoulders, barely able to keep the tears back herself.

    “What is going on?  This can’t be happening.  What am I supposed to do?  What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Cara blurted out, nearing panic.  “I come down here to try to help my Dad out, I mean… he’s become this hopeless drunk… and now this…  What is he involved in?  Something big enough to get somebody killed?  You gotta help me, Shannon, help me think what to do.  You gotta help me. ”

    “I’ll help you…” said Shannon calmly.  “I will… This is good… in a way… because now we can do something… We’re gonna work with this guy Mark - at least we’re gonna try. Here’s the thing.  I think I know why they killed Katie.  Remember, Miles didn’t just lie about being drunk that night.  You busted him in a lie before.  Remember?  At the beach, the morning of the day Katie was killed.  Miles told you he was going to be one place, but Katie saw him up at Swan’s Wharf where Johnny keeps his boat.  She saw Miles and a bunch of other guys unloading something off a boat…”

    “That’s right!  And she said that he looked at her like he wasn’t too happy to see her.”

    “Yeah.”

    “Jesus…” stammered Cara.

    “I also remember Katie saying that one of them was a cop.”

    “Well, they're smuggling something.  Something valuable enough... or incriminating enough... to kill for.”