Fever Dream by Dennis Palumbo Read Free Book Online Page A

in a giving mood. He retook his seat behind the desk and gestured at me.
    “Now that you and Detective Lowrey are here, we can get down to business. But make it fast. I have to give a speech on the North Side in less than an hour.”
    Lowrey and I found chairs and sat. As we did, Fletcher began scooping up some papers from the desk.
    “You want me to step outside, Lee? Since this is police business?”
    “Hell, stay if you want. Besides, don’t you have this room bugged, anyway?”
    The two men shared a knowing smile, excluding the rest of us in the room. They had that easy banter, the cool familiarity, of the select. The entitled. The best and the brightest, in Halberstam’s famous words.
    “Now, then.” Sinclair massaged his knuckles. “Before we begin, let me get everyone’s jurisdictional concerns out of the way. I think you’ll be happy to hear, Lieutenant, that the Assistant Chief is going to run interference for us with Neal Alcott.”
    “Who?” I asked.
    “FBI.” Biegler’s tone was flat. “Bank jobs are federal crimes. Though usually they leave us alone, unless we ask for assistance.”
    “But not this time,” Sinclair said. “Not with a hostage situation that led to multiple casualties. Luckily, Alcott’s a desk jockey who’d rather brown-nose his way to a promotion than get his fingernails dirty. As long as we keep him in the loop, we’ll probably get to run this investigation ourselves.”
    “Until the manhunt goes nationwide,” Polk pointed out. “Then it’s the Bureau’s ballgame.”
    “All the more reason to get on top of this fast.” Sinclair turned to Biegler. “So, Lieutenant, what the hell happened out there today? What do we know?”
    “Not much, at this early stage.” Biegler consulted some files he’d opened on his lap.
    “Here’re the broad strokes: according to the statement given to Detective Lowrey and Dr. Rinaldi by Treva Williams, two masked men entered the First Allegheny Bank at approximately noon. To be more precise, one masked man entered and immediately shot out the video cameras. Then his partner came in.”
    He spoke to Polk without looking up from his files.
    “Sergeant? Any word from the lab on the video?”
    Polk stirred. “I just talked to them. They’ve looked at the tape, and it bears out the Williams girl’s story. I haven’t seen it myself yet, but it apparently shows the first guy entering the bank, taking out a big gun—we figure it’s the .357 Magnum we recovered from the scene—and shooting the surveillance cameras, one at a time. That’s all we have that’s usable on the tape. After that point…well…nothin’. Obviously.”
    “Obviously,” Sinclair repeated. Then he turned to me. “Which is why you’re here, Dan.”
    “I was wondering about that myself.”
    “According to Detective Lowrey, it was you who managed to get Treva Williams to talk about what happened. From what I understand, she was in quite a state.”
    “Suffering from shock, yes. But without knowing anything about her personal history, or previous experiences of trauma, I can’t say for sure how deeply all this has impacted her. I can say she was barely keeping it together. Sometimes lucid, but more often dissociative. I’ll need to do a complete eval. Including mental status exam. Perhaps some projective tests.”
    Sinclair’s voice was clipped. “All very interesting. The point is, can we trust her story? Her account of what happened?”
    “Hard to say. I think so.”
    “Even though she said she dreamed it all?” He made no effort to hide his skepticism.
    “Believing it had just been a bad dream enabled her to describe it. Gave her the illusion of distance. Protected her.”
    “And you went along with it?”
    “Seemed like the right call at the time.”
    I could tell Sinclair enjoyed looking unconvinced. He glanced meaningfully at Fletcher, and then Biegler.
    “I was there , sir,” Lowrey spoke up suddenly. “I think she was telling the truth. And