Murdered Sleep — Thomas D. Davis

Dave Strickland had gone up to Monterey to give a report to a client, and because it was a nice day he decided to stick around for a while. So he drove out on the peninsula and saw something that bothered him. When he followed up on it, he wound up in the hospital, a small piece of his skull shattered and crushed. Now the police want to know what it was he saw and Strickland wants to do nothing more than forget. But he can't. Twelve-year-old Becky is an orphan, living with her aunt, Janet Kendall. The girl is troubled and, given her past, that doesn't come as a surprise. The surprise is that someone would want to kill her. That's what Strickland had interrupted, that's why he is in a hospital bed, afraid of dying and even more afraid of sleeping. Sullen and quiet, there is something else about Becky that makes Strickland care, and there is something about him that makes it important that he try to find the man who has been hurting the child, something that comes back in dream after dream, something he has to discover or the frightened child won't be the only one in danger. And he knows that she still is in danger, that the murder he prevented is not the end of the matter. It never is... and the echoing voice crying sleep no more is growing louder.