Page 46 of D for Dead

They had been talking about them before she’d headed off to bed. Having read them all, Jake was convinced there was a connection to the murders. He had pretty much talked Amy round to the same conclusion. Finding out a murderer had been following her career, writing to her, would be enough to bring on a nightmare.

‘How old are you? In the dream I mean.’

‘I don’t know. I’m just me.’

‘But you’ve been having the same nightmare for years.’

‘Yeah, since I was in my teens, maybe fourteen, fifteen. It stopped when I was in my early twenties and started again the other night.’

‘You ever talk to anyone about it? Try to find out the trigger?’

Amy pulled a face. ‘My parents knew I had bad dreams.’

‘But they didn’t know what caused them?’

‘I guess they figured adolescence.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘I’d ask them for you, but they’re dead.’

Jake already knew that, but he didn’t say so, instead he nodded. Amy had written the books a killer was copying, a killer he was trying to catch. He knew a lot about her. That her parents had been killed in an automobile accident when she was twenty-two, that she was an only child. He knew she had grown up in Montana, attended Washington State University for a year before dropping out; that she had moved to Oregon after her parents died to stay with her college roomie, Heidi Pearce.

It had to be tough losing your only family at a young age.

He was lucky, he guessed, coming from a big southern family. He still had both his parents, one set of grandparents, plus aunts, uncles, an older brother, two sisters and a myriad of nieces and nephews. He might have moved to Oregon, but he held them close, making regular visits, speaking to his mom every week; he couldn’t imagine the network not being there.

‘You’ve never talked to anyone professionally?’ he asked.

Amy’s hazel eyes flashed angrily. ‘What, you mean like a shrink?’

‘A therapist.’

‘It’s the same thing. I don’t need a head doctor. I’m not nuts. It’s just a dumb nightmare.’

She got up from the table, took both their coffee cups into the kitchen and dumped them in the sink. She stood with her back to him, shoulders tense.

Jake wanted to go over to her, soothe out the knots.

Cut it out, Sullivan. Keep it professional.

He forced himself to stay seated.

‘I’m not calling you nuts.’ He kept his tone neutral. ‘I think it would help to talk to someone. You’re dealing with a lot right now, which is probably why you had the nightmare. I think it would help you to talk things through with someone.’

‘Yeah? And what would you know?’

‘More than you’d think.’

That had her turning, looking at him curiously.

He paused for a long moment, debating, clenched and unclenched his fist, wishing for a cigarette. He didn’t talk about this stuff with anyone other than close family. Amy Gallaty was a person of interest in a crime he was investigating.

This is wrong, Sullivan.

‘I saw a therapist for a while,’ he told her, ignoring the nagging voice in his head telling him he was making a mistake. ‘It was a work thing,’ he added, a little abruptly, when her eyes widened.

‘Okay.’

He wasn’t prepared to give any more than that.

‘There’s a guy here in Juniper. Doctor Paul Shinnick. I think you should go talk to him.’