Dream Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 4)
Dream
Walk
Book 4 of the
Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud
Mystery Series
Melissa Bowersock
Copyright © 2017 by Melissa Bowersock
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in an online review or one printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
First Printing
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover image by coversbydesign.net.
ISBN-13: 978-1548563288
ISBN-10: 1548563285
DEDICATION
This book is lovingly dedicated to author Ian Mathie, the best friend I never met. Ian loved Lacey and Sam and was eagerly looking forward to this fourth book. I am sorry he didn’t get the chance to read it. Or… maybe he’s reading over my shoulder right now. I hope so.
Books by Melissa Bowersock
The Appaloosa Connection
The Blue Crystal
Burning Through
Finding Travis
(No Time for Travis Series Book 1)
Being Travis
(No Time for Travis Series Book 2)
Fleischerhaus
Ghost Walk
(Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud
Mystery Book 1)
Skin Walk
(Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud
Mystery Book 2)
Star Walk
(Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud
Mystery Book 3)
Dream Walk
(Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud
Mystery Book 4)
Dragon Walk
(Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud
Mystery Book 5)
Demon Walk
(Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud
Mystery Book 6)
Goddess Rising
Lightning Strikes
Love’s Savage Armpit by Amber Flame
(Originally published as The Pits of Passion)
The Man in the Black Hat
Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan
Queen’s Gold
The Rare Breed
Remember Me
Sonnets for Heidi
Stone’s Ghost
Superstition Gold
DREAM
Walk
Melissa Bowersock
ONE
Do you really think we’re that stupid?
Lacey snorted as she read what came up on the screen of her laptop. Did you really think we wouldn’t check?
She was doing background checks for a private security company, going through a handful of applicant resumes. Background checks and process serving were the bread and butter of a private investigator’s job, and there was no lack of either to fill in the quiet time between meatier cases.
But really, she thought, how dumb can you get? The check for a Stephen A. Ross, he with the glowing resume, produced a hit on a sexual predator database. Granted his conviction was years ago and he’d served his time, but no, Stephen, you would not be hired by a company that often provided extra security at high school football games.
She slid the resume over to the “no” pile.
Next, she thought, picking up another resume. She tucked her dark red hair behind one ear and started her search for Brian W. Whithouse.
Her phone rang. She checked the screen: Sam Firecloud. She smiled as she pushed her laptop aside and answered her partner’s call.
“Hi, Sam,” she said cheerfully. She hadn’t talked to him in a few weeks, not since they’d cleared multiple ghosts out of an old Hollywood mansion.
“Hi, Lace. How you doing?” His familiar low baritone voice came easily over the phone.
“I’m good. You?”
“Uh, yeah, doing okay,” he said, but the hesitation belied that somewhat. Lacey’s ears pricked up.
“Why don’t I believe that?” she asked pointedly. It wasn’t like Sam to try to snow her.
She heard him exhale heavily. “No getting one past you, is there?” he asked with grim humor.
“Okay,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I’m all ears. What’s up?”
Sam paused, no doubt gathering his thoughts. Lacey had grown used to the Navajo’s slow, deliberate style, and waited patiently.
“I’m not exactly sure,” he said finally. “This is something new. At least it is for me.”
“Oh?” she prompted. Working with a medium who spoke to ghosts, she thought she’d heard it all. But if this was new to Sam, it would certainly be new to her.
“I’m, uh, having dreams. But I don’t think they’re just dreams. I think someone’s trying to reach me.”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you know who?”
“Yeah,” he said. She could hear the quiet dread in his voice. “I think it’s my ex’s little brother.”
Lacey let that settle in her mind. She knew Sam’s ex-wife and the mother of his two children. Christine LaRosa was an okay woman; remarried and a good mother. Lacey and Christine had been thrown together a handful of times and they got along fine. There was no jealousy between the two over their very different connections to Sam, and they shared a common concern for the kids, Daniel and Kenzie.
“I never knew she had a brother,” she said. “Does he live here in LA?”
“No, at least not lately. Last I heard, he was in Las Vegas. Not doing well, either. He got mixed up with some drug dealers a while back. He was doing a lot of meth.”
“Ugh,” Lacey said. “Not good.”
“No, definitely not. I probably haven’t seen him or talked to him in over a year.”
Out of habit, Lacey grabbed her small notebook and a pen and started taking notes.
“What’s his name?”
“Kyle Arredondo. He’s twelve years younger than me, so he’s twenty-eight.”
Lacey nodded, jotting down the information. “So what’s the dream about? What happens in it?”
“The first one was a week ago. I dreamed of Kyle floating in the air in front of me. That’s all. When I woke up, I remembered it, thought it was weird, but wasn’t particularly alarmed. I’ve never… gotten information through dreams before. Matter of fact, most of the time I don’t even remember them.” He paused, and Lacey waited. “Then, two nights ago, I dreamed about him again. It started the same way, him floating in front of me, but then it changed. I saw him trapped inside a box. All folded up, kinda. He couldn’t move, and it was dark. He was crying.”
Lacey wrote it all down. Dreams, she knew, had a way of fading over time, even very emotional ones. But once she was sure she had it all, she knew she had to ask the hard question.
“Do you think he’s… dead?”
Sam’s low sigh came over the phone. “Yeah, I do.”
She expected that, although she wasn’t sure why. This was new territory for both of them.
“Have you told Christine?” she asked softly.
“Not yet. I kinda don’t want to until I’m sure, but…”
“How are you going to be sure?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “I am pretty sure, but I’d like to think I’m wrong.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Lacey said. It was her turn to sigh. “Has she mentioned him lately? Talked to him at all?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Once he got heavy into
drugs, he dropped out of sight mostly. Only time he’d surface was when he was in jail and needed bail money or just needed money in general. Then, whether he got what he wanted or not, he’d drop out of sight again.”
Lacey knew the pattern. While she had worked for the LAPD, she’d run into it over and over.
“Where are their parents? Still alive?”
“Their mom lives in Phoenix. Divorced. Their dad exited the scene years ago.”
Unfortunately, all too typical for a family disconnected by time, distance and drugs. Modern family, indeed.
“Have you tried reaching him?” Lacey asked.
“Yeah. It rings but never gets picked up, never goes to voice mail. I tried his girlfriend, too, at least the last one I knew about. She didn’t answer, either, but I was able to leave a message.”
Lacey tapped her notebook with the pen. It wasn’t much to go on.
“So… what are you thinking?” she asked gently.
She could hear him breathing. It was normal for him to take his time, but this felt different to Lacey.
“I’m, uh, not sure.” He laughed once, without humor. “This is totally new to me. Weird. I’m not sure where to go with it. I guess I just wanted to bounce it off you and see if together we could make some sense of it.”
Lacey appreciated the vote of confidence. She knew Sam valued her opinion, but he seldom articulated it.
“Okay,” she said, tossing the pen aside. “Let’s look at it this way. Forget he’s a relative, sort of. Forget you know him. If someone else came to you this way—just a random stranger—what would you think of it? What would be your first reaction?”
“Huh,” he said. “I’d think they were asking me to help them. And I’d think they were dead.”
Yeah, she thought. Me, too. She let Sam have a moment with that realization.
“Okay,” he said, sounding resigned. “That’s the way of it, I guess. I’ll call Christine. See when was the last time she heard from him, find out where he was.” He paused. “If this turns out to be what we think it is, are you up for it? There won’t be anyone paying us for our work on this.”
“I know,” she said. “But it won’t be the first time we’ve done pro bono work, and probably won’t be the last. At least we got that nice bonus after the Hollywood case.”
“Yeah, although we could run through that pretty quickly if we have to go to Vegas.”
“Eh.” She shrugged, even though Sam couldn’t see her. “It’s what we do. Can’t leave the guy hanging out in the ethers. If a spirit needs help to move on… who they gonna call?”
“Us, apparently,” he said, laughing again. This time it sounded more relaxed. “Okay. Let me call her and see what I can find out. I’ll get back to you.”
“I’ll be here,” she said. “And Sam?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. For your loss and for Christine’s.”
He was quiet for a heartbeat. “Thanks, Lacey. I appreciate that.”
~~~
TWO
He didn’t get back to her for a couple days. Lacey thought about calling him, but decided to give him the space he needed. She couldn’t imagine his having to call his ex-wife and say, “Guess what?” That would suck big time. Then telling the kids their uncle was dead? She didn’t envy Sam his talent right then.
When he did call, Lacey was standing in front of the refrigerator, trying to decide if she wanted yogurt and an apple for dinner or cheese and crackers. It was too hot to cook. Summer was coming on with a vengeance.
“Hey,” she said as she picked up his call.
“Hey, yourself,” he answered back. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out dinner that doesn’t involve cooking. What are you doing?”
“Pulling into your parking lot. Wanna go out to eat?”
Lacey held the phone away and looked at it suspiciously. “What? You’re—?”
“Double-parked out front. Come on.”
Her shock only abating somewhat, she kicked herself into gear. “Okay. Be right out.”
She keyed off the phone and tossed it into her purse, scooped up her notebook and only glanced at her reflection in the mirror in the entry. Hair combed? Sort of. Good enough.
She barreled through the door and swept the parking lot with her eyes. There. Blue truck. She trotted to it and climbed in on the passenger side. He immediately put it into gear and pulled out onto the street.
Lacey looked around. She’d never been in his truck before. He always insisted she drive when they worked a case together. She noted the dust across the dashboard, the old, flattened Happy Meal box on the floor, but otherwise it wasn’t bad.
She glanced over at him. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with Sam?” she asked.
He chuckled, the corners of his mouth only lifting slightly, as if the muscles there were unused to the activity.
“You’ve done more than your share of driving,” he said. “Time for me to step up.”
“Okay.” She still eyed him. The features of his copper face returned to their normal expressionless arrangement. Ordinarily she might have plied him with questions by now—how did it go with Christine? What did he find out?—but this time she let it go. She felt a distinct uneasiness from him and let him drive in silence.
She was further surprised when he pulled into the parking lot of a trendy sports bar restaurant. Usually they liked to discuss cases in simple, quiet diners. Inside, however, he directed the hostess to seat them as far from the bar as possible.
Lacey checked the menu quickly. Lots of designer burgers; she settled on the bacon and Swiss. Sam, surprisingly, ordered the mushroom and provolone. As the disinterested twenty-something waiter left for the kitchen, Lacey studied Sam.
He looked tired. She guessed he wasn’t sleeping well, not with his midnight visitor. There were dark smudges under his eyes. Communing with dead people couldn’t be easy, but especially so when it was someone he knew, as well as someone who sought him out in such an unconventional way.
She reached out and brushed the fingers that held his glass of iced tea with the back of hers.
“So?” she prodded gently.
He took a long draw on his iced tea and sat back against the cushion of the booth. “Christine couldn’t reach him, either, or Courtney, his girlfriend. She said the last she knew, they’d been in Vegas. That was last year sometime. He’d needed money and she refused to send any to him. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell her what he needed it for, but she figured it was drugs.”
“Tough love,” Lacey said, nodding. “And I’ll bet she’s kicking herself over it now.”
Sam’s eyes were dark, unreadable pools. “Yeah. Big time.”
Lacey sighed. “Tough love is tough for everyone,” she said. “But Christine isn’t responsible for what her brother does—or did.”
“I know.” He turned his glass on the table top, making wet rings of the condensation that slid down the sides. “But you know the drill. Older sister, tasked to care for her younger brother while they were growing up. Even as they got older.”
“Yeah. That dynamic isn’t easy to shake off, even as adults. I’m sorry she’s going through that.”
“And,” Sam said more forcefully, “I have no idea where that leaves us. Where would we even start to look for him?”
“Hmm.” Lacey drummed her fingers on the table, thinking. Suddenly their server arrived with their meals, and she had a few moments to pull her thoughts together as they all jockeyed plates around. She doused her fries with ketchup while Sam only salted his and the waiter, satisfied, rushed off.
“First thing, I guess, would be to file a missing person’s report. The next thing would be to check out any John Does the police have waiting for identification in the morgue. At least this would get the paperwork started and the Las Vegas police would have a description to work with.”
Sam studied Lacey as she spoke, his dark eyes latched onto her green ones. She co
uld hope that her matter-of-fact way of describing the process might bring comfort, if only because it gave them a path forward, but she suspected it also put a “final” stamp on any last hopes.
“I would say the next step might be to get in touch with any friends or acquaintances to see what they could tell us,” she continued. “But it sounds like there may not be many of those.”
“None that I know of, beyond Courtney,” Sam said.
About as she figured. “Jobs? Work locations?”
Sam shook his head. “I doubt it, but I can ask Christine.”
“Okay.” She toyed with a French fry, dabbing it into the ketchup. “Beyond that,” she said, “I can’t think of anything except going to Vegas and seeing if the proximity provides you with any more impressions.”
Sam made a rude noise. “Needle in a haystack.”
“Pretty much,” she agreed. She hated the hopeless sound of her own voice. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you and Christine make the missing person’s report and once that’s done and on record, I’ll give a call to the Las Vegas PD. I could call Homicide, although we’re not sure we’re dealing with a murder, yet, are we?”
“Not totally, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet,” Sam said.
“And/or,” she continued, “I could call their Vice Department, see what they can tell me about the drug hierarchy there. You said Kyle was doing meth?”
“Yeah. As far as we know.”
“Trouble with that,” she said, “is that everyone and his brother makes meth. His supply may or may not have come from an organized dealer.” She sighed. “Well, we can start with this, at least. See if we can turn up any more information.”
Sam nodded, taking a bite of his burger and chewing thoughtfully. As he swallowed, he met her eyes again. “Thanks, Lacey. I appreciate your help with this. It means a lot.”
“We’ll just hope it pans out,” she said.