Free The Devil's Dream: Book One by David Beers Page B

security databases, which are
connected to local law enforcement databases across the country.
Basically cops can search for warrants across state lines because we
don't compartmentalize that information. Our systems are also
connected to the Internet. You know all that, obviously, but The
Silos are part of the system. They're connected. We can feed them
information and they can even search for things they might need to
know. Is the criminal they hold a diabetic? If body temperature
drops, they can scan any number of medical journals to understand
exactly what might be happening. They are doctor, jailer, and nurse.
The Wall couldn't exist without that access. It would take constant,
twenty-four hour supervision, and even then we might kill the people
we're trying to keep alive."
    "He had access to
everything?" Allison asked.
    "All of it, and
the time to utilize the systems. The time to search and create a
plan. He probably didn't even release himself until he had everything
he needed."
    * * *
    Joe pulled the drapes
back a bit and looked out on the street.
    The black car was still
there, a Chevrolet Impala, relatively new, still sitting at the end
of his driveway. He could see two men in it, and one of them gave him
a thumps up from the driver's side. Joe returned the salute.
    He let the drape fall
back into place and turned around to look at his living room.
Everything was as it should be. No one in the house. All the windows
and doors locked. The police parked outside. Everything as it should
be.
    Joe laughed quietly.
Nothing was as it should be when you had to check police off the
list. The moon was up and the baby was asleep, although he doubted
the same of Patricia. He didn't know if she would be able to sleep
until this guy was apprehended, killed this time if the world cared
about any justice. She might not even stop worrying if they locked
the man up, certainly not if they put him in one of those science
fiction jails again.
    He worried too, but not
for himself as much.
    He wanted to meet this
man.
    Brand had been someone
to pity when his child died. He morphed into someone to fear when he
announced his plans. Then, when Joe's father disappeared, he became
the boogey man—a monster that could get anyone at any time. They
buried Joe's father when Joe was fifteen, and Brand became someone to
hate. Someone to rage against. Someone to put all his feelings on;
Joe had someone to direct his grief at. Most people have to be angry
at God when someone they love is taken. Joe was angry at Matthew
Brand. Joe hated Matthew Brand, had dreamed about taking a fucking
axe to those clear glass containers they kept the creeps in. Letting
all that gas out and then laying into Brand with the axe after.
Splitting his skull open and not stopping there, just continually
chopping until his bones turned to pieces, and then mush, so that you
couldn't tell the difference between brain and bone. Just a gray
soup.
    That went on until he
was in college, and he let the anger go—not completely, but enough
to realize other things in life mattered besides revenge. The rage
faded further after he met Patricia, and still further after their
marriage. With the birth of Jason, he possessed too much in life that
he loved to be holding all that anger and hate. All that madness. He
had let it go.
    Joe walked to his chair
in the living room and reclined on it.
    The anger wasn't gone
though; that's what he was realizing. The anger still lived inside
him, and he had only put it in a closet. A deep closet with lots of
jackets and clothes to muffle its screams and then he locked the door
with chains and a padlock. The anger probably could have stayed there
forever, understanding its place and that all its screams and rage
weren't going to free it. Until now. Joe had heard the noises in that
closet building ever since the first news story. Building up to a
cacophony of voices inside his head, all of them screaming at one
person.
    Matthew Brand.
    Joe didn't really