The Dream

Chapter 16

"Sarah is dead! And it's all your fault!! How could you do this man? "
"Don't blame me for her death, Richie. I hid a very small bit of information which you wouldn't have known anyway."
"Small bit!!! Small bit you say!! How could you hide the fact, that Steve Spindler whom you were chasing used a similar method to kill someone and a person is already in prison because of him?
How could you hide that the convict in your previous case had dreams and he ended up killing someone unknowingly?
How could you hide it from me that it took a long chase for you to find out that Steve might have been the actual person behind those mysterious events?
How could you hide this from me, when it was the same thing that happened to me? After all the information I gave you, after I confessed, how could you do this!!"

I was furious. He hid all this important information from me. Had he told me this yesterday, I could have been more cautious. Sarah might have been saved if I had an idea of this. I wanted to know why that bastard did this.

"Listen Richie, you are not in prison right now because I know what has happened to you and I had witnessed this before. But there's a reason I didn't tell you this. I suspected foul play behind the murder of Steve Spindler.
I doubted that Steve was murdered by an old ally of his. If it was so, I didn't want to mess up the chance of finding a new lead by giving you a heads up. I wanted you to be as natural as you can be and I trusted you that you would catch the culprit. We could gain much more insight that way.
I didn't expect it would turn out like this. Either way now it's clear that you can't trust anyone"
"What about you then? Can I trust you Robert? How do I know that you aren't the actual culprit?" I asked him raising an eyebrow. I was really pissed.
"Oh you don't. But still, I am willing to take the chance. Are you?"

I don't know why, but Robert started making sense to me. May be it was necessary to hide this fact from me. I might have been too cautious and I may have messed up. But still, it somehow didn't feel right.
"Anyway, since this is directly linked to your previous case, I want all the information you have. I want to get to the root of the matter. Not just for me, but also for the person who is convicted in the New York murder and is in prison even as we speak, waiting for someone to save him from his misery.

Don't you dare hide anything from me now. Give me all the leads you have got!"

I started going through the case report again, to see if I missed any other details but that was all. There were no further links to this case. But I wanted to check something. Such a pattern of murder is quite unimaginable. There is no way anyone could suspect you. I wanted to check if this type of murder has been reported elsewhere, because if there was any report then it might be some serious danger.

I checked on different media houses to see if any other such cases had been published in the news over the years and I was right.

I had my connections in some of the departments and managed to pull the records.
I was baffled by the number of cases. There were a lot of such incidences and they were all done in the same pattern. All the convicts were in prison, serving time for a murder they weren't even aware of committing. Only I was spared from prison-time at least for now, because Robert knew my position. Now the only way to save myself, and all those people who are wrongly convicted is to grab the real culprit and get his confession and then use that to unravel all these murder mysteries.

I started digging a little deeper into all the cases, to see if I could get some names. Someone I could follow; like Robert followed Steve Spindler. I found just one such name. The suspect had escaped to New York and they weren't able to track him later. The name I saw completely startled me. The name, was Mark Jacobs. The last name, was the same as Sarah Jacobs!!

As they did not have any sketches attached, I tried to find the description by the officer in charge to try and find that person. But as I was reading the description each word startled me!
What I had found, completely blew my mind. The description perfectly fitted that of Steve Spindler!! What was going on here?
So does this mean Steve Spindler was just an alias? Was Mr. X actually Sarah's brother all this time? Does this mean it is Sarah's brother who is dead?
But she said she did it for her brother; and she would do anything to live with him. If that was the case why did she get him killed? I couldn't take it anymore!

What the heck was going on here!!!!