The Dreaming Detective

The dream always starts with the smell of rain on hot asphalt.

I'm standing in a parking lot behind a strip mall. The dumpster is three feet to my left, green paint chipped to rust at the corners. A single fluorescent bulb hums above a back door, casting everything in that sick yellow light that makes skin look like wax paper. I don't know where I am. I never do. But I know why I'm here.

Someone is dead.

I walk toward the dumpster. My feet don't make sounds on the pavement. The rain hasn't started yet but it will, it always does, and when it comes it will wash everything clean and leave me with nothing but the memory of what I saw before the first drop hit.

The body is a woman. Dark hair fanned out around her head like ink spilled in water. She's wearing a red dress, the kind of red that doesn't belong in a place like this. Her eyes are open and they're looking at something I can't see, something past me, past the dumpster, past everything.

I kneel down. Her skin is cold. I touch her wrist and there's no pulse because of course there isn't, she's been dead for hours, I can tell by the way the blood has settled in her fingers. Purple and still.

"Who did this to you?" I ask.

She doesn't answer. They never do.

But her hand moves.

I jerk back. Her fingers curl into a fist, then open again. Her lips part. I lean closer, my heart hammering against my ribs, and she whispers something I can't quite hear. I lean closer still. Her breath is cold against my ear.

"Wake up."

I woke up.

The ceiling fan was spinning. Slow clicks, one after another, like someone tapping a fingernail against glass. My sheets were twisted around my legs and my shirt was stuck to my back. The clock on my nightstand said 3:47 AM. I lay there and let my breathing settle, let the dream drain out of me like water through a sieve.

Three forty-seven. That was good. That meant I had time.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a minute. The apartment was dark except for the blue glow of the router light near the floor. I stared at it until my eyes adjusted, then I stood up and walked to the kitchen.

The coffee maker was already set. I turned it on and the machine coughed and sputtered and began to drip. I leaned against the counter and watched the black liquid fill the carafe. My hands were shaking. They always shake after a dream. The doctor calls it an adrenaline dump. I call it the cost of doing business.

The woman in the red dress. I didn't know her name yet. I didn't know where that parking lot was. But I knew she was real. She was out there somewhere, or she had been, and by the time the sun came up someone would find her and call it in and the case would land on my desk because I'm the one who gets these calls.

Because I'm the one who dreams them first.

I poured the coffee black and drank it standing up. The bitterness cut through the fog in my head. I checked my phone. No messages. No missed calls. That meant the body hadn't been found yet. I had maybe an hour, maybe two, before the first patrol unit rolled through that lot and saw the green dumpster and the red dress and made the call that would pull me out of my apartment and into the world of the living.

I showered fast. Cold water. It helps with the shaking. I dressed in the dark because I didn't want to turn on the light and see my own face in the mirror. I know what I look like after a dream. Hollow. Hungry. Like someone who's been given a secret she didn't ask for.

The precinct was quiet when I got there. Four in the morning will do that. The night shift was running on fumes and the day shift hadn't started yet. I walked past the empty desks and the dead computers and the bulletin board covered in flyers for missing people nobody was looking for anymore. My office was in the back, a closet with a window that looked out at the brick wall of the building next door. I sat down at my desk and waited.

Captain Reyes called at 5:12.

"Carver," he said. His voice was rough. He'd been up all night or he'd just woken up. With Reyes it was hard to tell. "Got a body behind a strip mall on Seventy-Second. Woman in her thirties. Looks like a homicide."

"I know," I said.

A pause. I could hear him breathing. "You dream it?"

"Yeah."

"Anything useful?"

"Red dress. Dark hair. Parking lot behind a strip mall. Dumpster on the left side. Fluorescent light above the back door."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I'll send a car."

"I'm already here."

"Of course you are."

He hung up. I put my phone in my pocket and grabbed my coat. The dream was already starting to fade around the edges, the way dreams do, but I held onto the important parts. The red dress. The dark hair. The way her fingers curled into a fist and opened again.

And what she whispered.

*Wake up.*

Not her last words. Not a cry for help. A message for me. She wanted me to see her, to know her, to find the person who put her in that parking lot with her eyes open and her blood pooling in her fingers.

I walked out of the precinct and into the dark morning. The air smelled like rain. Not rain yet, but coming. I got in my car and drove.

The strip mall was exactly where the dream said it would be. A dry cleaner, a pizza place, a store that sold cheap phone cases and lottery tickets. The parking lot was empty except for two patrol cars with their lights off. They'd cordoned off the area with yellow tape. A uniformed officer stood near the dumpster, his face pale in the fluorescent light.

I ducked under the tape and walked toward him. He nodded at me. "Detective."

"Who found her?"

"Delivery driver. Said he was dropping off produce for the pizza place. Saw her legs from the truck."

"Where is he now?"

"In his truck. We got his statement. He's pretty shaken up."

I nodded and walked past him to the body.

She was exactly as I'd seen her. Dark hair fanned out. Red dress. Eyes open and fixed on something I couldn't see. I knelt down and looked at her face. She was young. Younger than I'd expected. Maybe twenty-five. Her skin was pale and her lips were slightly parted, like she was about to speak.

I touched her wrist. Cold. The blood had settled in her fingers the same way it had in the dream. Purple and still.

I looked at her hand. Her fingers were curled into a loose fist, not quite open, not quite closed. I leaned closer and saw something caught between her fingers. A piece of paper. Small. Torn.

I pulled on a glove and gently pried her fingers open. The paper was damp with dew but the ink was still legible. Three words, written in a hand that was shaky and urgent.

*Find the dreamer.*

I stared at it for a long time. The fluorescent light hummed above me. The smell of rain was getting stronger.

I looked at her face again. Her eyes were still fixed on that spot past me, past the dumpster, past everything. But this time I followed her gaze. I turned my head and looked at what she was seeing.

Nothing. Just the brick wall of the strip mall. A grate over a window. A faded sign for the dry cleaner.

I looked back at the note in my hand.

*Find the dreamer.*

She knew. Somehow she knew about me. About what I do. About how I find the ones nobody else can find.

And she wanted me to find someone else.

I folded the note carefully and put it in my pocket. The rain started to fall. Soft at first, then harder. The uniformed officer put up his hood. I stayed where I was, kneeling beside her, letting the water soak through my coat.

Her name would be on a driver's license in her purse. Her family would be notified by lunchtime. Her case would be mine, officially, by the time I got back to the precinct.

But the note wasn't about her. The note was about someone else. Someone she wanted me to find before it was too late.

I looked at her one last time. The rain was washing her clean, the way it always does in the dream. But this time I wasn't leaving with nothing.

This time she'd given me a name.

Not a person. A title.

*The dreamer.*

And I had a feeling I knew exactly who that was.