Free Dreamscape by Carrie James Haynes

Thorpe,” Jackson said. “Right now, we need to talk. Ramona Damsun had a friend drop off the letter to Montgomery. You may know him, an old acquaintance.”
    They knew something he didn’t. The feeling was confirmed when the man in question walked into the interrogation room to lead Ramona Damsun out.
    “What the hell is going on?” Thorpe turned to Jackson. “Jeffrey Dills? My cousin’s old partner. What’s he doing here?”
     
    * * * *
     
    “Give me time,” Jackson said. He closed the door behind him. “I just found out this information. Sit down.”
    Thorpe had no intention of sitting. He pushed back the chair. “Think I’ll stand.”
    Jackson shook his head. “Sit down, Thorpe.” Jackson shoved the chair under Thorpe.
    Jackson rounded his desk and rubbed his eyes. The day had dragged on. He didn’t see it coming to an end anytime soon. He faced Thorpe.
    “You know Jeffrey Dills,” Jackson said as a statement not a question. “He was the one who delivered the letter to Montgomery. He’d worked with Montgomery a few times before he retired from the Boston police department.”
    “I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but get to the point.”
    “He brought some letters in. Letters that Ramona had written. Look at this. Have you seen this before?”
    Thorpe looked down at the paper Jackson handed him. The years vanished. The case came back, vivid, his first murder case at Dennis.
    Etched in his memory was the mother, Claire Danucci, the pain he’d read in her eyes. She’d lost her husband the year before due to a car accident, just her and her two girls left. Brooke took it the hardest, Daddy’s little girl, the youngest, only twelve years old.
    “She’s never really accepted her father’s death, but she’d never do anything like run away. We all are in counseling. Find her, Chief Thorpe,” Claire had begged.
    Now Thorpe said, “Don’t need to review the case. Lived it.”
    “Then let me get it straight so we can put it in perspective. The girl, Brooke, was depressed, lost touch with her friends. So when the evening of her sister, Lorraine’s, open house at school came round, Brooke didn’t want to go. Her mother gave in and let her stay at home.” Jackson looked up from the paper he held.
    Thorpe said, “When her mother and sister returned home, Brooke was nowhere in sight. Her mother immediately got in her car and headed for the father’s grave site. Panic set in when her car headlights picked out her daughter’s bicycle.”
    Thorpe answered the call. Upon reviewing the scene, her mother, shaking, had already contacted all of Brooke’s friends. Thorpe used his natural instincts. Immediately a call went out, contacting the state police and the FBI.
    “All the evidence pointed to an abduction from the grave site, the bicycle, her Red Sox hat left on the ground. A witness, one of the neighbors, thought they saw a mysterious van around the time of the girl’s disappearance,” Thorpe continued. “The fact that she visited her father’s grave all the time gave concern that someone had stalked the young girl. The fear was that she was taken out of state. Another case in New Hampshire with similarities happened a few months before.”
    “Everyone was checked out? Friends, neighbors, family?” Jackson asked. “And nothing came up, no leads, no clues?”
    “Not one,” Thorpe said. “Then the letter came.”
    “The letter you have in your hand?”
    Thorpe nodded. It was the same letter he had in his file. Even after all these years he had it memorized.
     
    For the last three nights I’ve had a dream, the same dream. And tonight, I feel if I don’t tell someone it will come again.
    The wind, a cool wind, the smell of the ocean. The ocean is close. A fog fills the air, and my eyes take time to focus. Beneath my bare feet the ground is wet and damp. I am not alone. An eerie glow from the setting sun…. I am standing under a large elm tree, branches hanging down close to