Chapter 5

【Marcus's POV】

I stood outside the observation room and Tony appeared at my elbow, coffee in hand and that look on his face that meant he had news. "Marcus, meet our new team member."

I turned as a man in his early thirties approached, extending his hand with the practiced confidence of someone used to making first impressions. Clean-cut, professional bearing, expensive suit.

"Detective Reid? I'm Derek Hayes, Special Agent with the FBI. Just transferred from our Portland office to the Seattle field office. I'll be working with your team on this case."

I shook his hand, noting the firm grip and direct eye contact. "Welcome to Silverwood, Agent Hayes. Hope you're ready for some interesting developments."

"So I've heard." Hayes glanced toward the interrogation room where Claire sat waiting. "Rodriguez filled me in on the basics. Twenty-year-old college student claims she dreamed the murder scene in vivid detail. All the specifics check out—missing shoe, earring, strangulation marks, drowning, missing phone."

"That about sums it up," I said, crossing my arms. "What's your take?"

Hayes pulled out a small notepad, flipping through pages of neat handwriting. "There are several psychological explanations we should consider. Sleepwalking syndrome could account for her presence at the scene. Or we might be looking at cryptomnesia—unconscious plagiarism where she encountered the information somewhere and her brain processed it as a dream."

"You think she was there?"

"I think she knows more than she's telling us." Hayes clicked his pen closed. "The question is whether she witnessed the murder or committed it."

Tony shook his head. "Riley Patterson, her roommate, swears Coleman was in the dorm all night. Kid's studying for her LSAT, barely sleeps. Says she would have noticed if Coleman left."

"Alibis can be fabricated," Hayes said. "Especially between friends."

I studied the FBI agent, trying to get a read on him. He had that by-the-book federal attitude that could either be exactly what we needed or a pain in the ass, depending on how he handled the unusual aspects of this case.

"So you don't buy the dream theory?"

Hayes gave me a look that suggested I'd asked if I believed in unicorns. "Detective Reid, in my experience, when someone has detailed knowledge of a crime scene, it's because they were there. Dreams don't provide GPS coordinates."

I nodded slowly. He wasn't wrong to be skeptical—hell, if someone else had brought me this case, I'd probably react the same way. But there was something about Claire that didn't fit the profile of a killer. Something lost and desperate and weirdly honest about the way she'd answered our questions.

"Fair enough," I said. "Why don't you take a crack at her? See what you can shake loose."

"That's exactly what I was hoping you'd say." Hayes straightened his tie. "But I want to go in fresh. What's her background?"

"Coleman family. Big money, political connections. Mother runs some kind of corporate empire downtown. The daughter's got a reputation for partying hard—drunk and disorderly, public intoxication, that sort of thing. But no violence on her record."

"Interesting." Hayes made another note. "Wealth and privilege can create a sense of invincibility. Maybe she thought she could get away with it."

I wanted to argue, but couldn't quite put my finger on why. Instead, I stepped aside and gestured toward the interrogation room. "She's all yours, Agent Hayes. But go easy on her—she's been here for hours, and we don't have anything concrete pointing to her involvement."

"Understood."

I watched Hayes enter the room, his posture confident and commanding. Through the glass, I could see Claire look up as he introduced himself, her expression shifting from tired resignation to something sharper, more wary.

The conversation started professionally enough. Hayes pulled out his notepad, asked basic questions about her relationship with the victim, her whereabouts the previous night. Standard procedure. But I could see tension building in Claire's shoulders with each question.

Then Hayes leaned forward, his voice taking on an edge I could hear through the speakers.

"Ms. Coleman, the details you provided about the crime scene are remarkably accurate. Every single one. Now, you claim you learned these through a dream, but I have to ask—doesn't it seem convenient that your dreams are so perfectly aligned with reality?"

Claire's response was immediate. "Convenient? You think this is convenient for me?"

"I think it's interesting timing."

That's when everything went sideways. Claire's face flushed red, and she leaned back in her chair like Hayes had slapped her.

"Detective—sorry, Special Agent—let me ask you something. If someone tells you a murder happened, and all the details match up exactly, should that person be celebrating? Should I be doing a fucking victory dance because I was right about how Jade died?"

Hayes held up a hand. "Ms. Coleman, I'm not suggesting—"

"No, you are suggesting exactly that." Claire's voice was getting louder now, cutting through the sterile air of the interrogation room. "You're asking me why I look upset instead of relieved. A girl I lived with for two years is dead, Agent Hayes. Someone strangled her and left her face-down in Mirror Lake like she was garbage. So you tell me—am I supposed to be happy that my dreams were accurate, or are you just lacking in basic human empathy?"

The room went dead silent. Hayes looked like he'd been hit by a truck.

"I... I apologize, Ms. Coleman. That wasn't my intention."

"I don't care what your intention was." Claire crossed her arms, her whole body language shutting down. "I want to talk to the detective who was here before. The one who treated me like a human being instead of a suspect in some procedural manual. Anyone else, and I'm done talking."

Hayes glanced toward the one-way mirror, clearly recognizing that he'd blown it. After a moment, he stood up and left the room, his professional composure intact but his confidence clearly shaken.

"Well," Tony said as Hayes rejoined us in the observation room. "That went well."

"She's defensive," Hayes said, but I could hear the uncertainty in his voice. "Defensive people usually have something to hide."

"Or," I said, picking up a bottle of water and an energy bar from the break room supplies, "they're exhausted college kids who've been sitting in a police station for hours after finding out their roommate was murdered."

I headed for the interrogation room, leaving Hayes to process that. Claire looked up when I entered, her eyes red-rimmed but alert.

"Detective Reid. Thank God."

"Sorry about that," I said, setting the water and energy bar on the table. "Agent Hayes is new to the team. Sometimes federal agents forget that people aren't case files."

Claire opened the water bottle and took a long drink. "Is he going to be working this case?"

"He's part of the team now, yeah. But I'm still lead detective." I sat down across from her, keeping my posture relaxed and open. "Ready to continue?"

"I've been ready for hours." She unwrapped the energy bar but didn't eat it, just held it like a lifeline. "I keep telling you all the same thing, and no one seems to want to believe it. I dreamed it. All of it. I don't know why, I don't know how, but that's what happened."

"Okay." I pulled out my notepad. "Let's say I believe you. Help me understand how this works. When did you have the dream?"

"Last nights ago. I woke up around three AM, soaking wet with sweat, heart pounding like I'd been running." Claire's voice was steadier now, like she was relieved to be talking to someone who wasn't treating her like a criminal. "It felt more real than anything I've experienced in years."

"More real than what?"

She gave me a look that was part sad, part defiant. "More real than my actual life, Detective. I spend most of my time drunk or high or both. I haven't felt genuinely present for anything in months. But this dream..." She shook her head. "It was like being slapped awake."

I wrote that down, noting the honesty in her admission. "What else can you tell me about Jade's death? Anything you didn't mention before?"

Claire was quiet for a long moment, staring at the energy bar in her hands. Then she looked up at me with an expression that was almost mischievous.

"If I told you I knew where Jade's phone was, would you assume I was going to say it fell in Mirror Lake?"

"That would be the logical assumption."

"Well, it didn't." Claire leaned forward, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. "It's not in the lake. It's in the bushes by the shoreline. Hidden in the middle of that cluster of wild shrubs, about twenty feet south of where you found her glasses."

I felt that familiar tingle of a case breaking open. "You're certain about this?"

"As certain as I was about everything else." Claire glanced toward the one-way mirror. "And Detective? There's something else. About the killer."

I waited, pen poised over my notepad.

Instead of speaking, Claire held out her hand. "Can I have a piece of paper? And maybe borrow your pen?"

I tore a sheet from my notepad and handed it over along with my pen. Claire wrote quickly, folding the paper in half when she was done.

"What the killer was wearing," she said, sliding the folded paper across the table. "But I want you to promise me something."

"What's that?"

"Don't open this until you have solid evidence. Until you've identified the suspect through proper police work." Claire's eyes were steady on mine. "I don't want my dreams to be the reason someone gets arrested. I want them to be confirmation of what you already know."

I picked up the folded paper, feeling its weight like it was made of lead instead of notebook paper. In twelve years of police work, I'd never had a witness hand me evidence with conditions attached.

"Ms. Coleman," I said carefully, "if you have information about a crime—"

"I have information from a dream, Detective Reid. And until you can prove that dreams are admissible in court, I think my way is safer for everyone involved."