Her Silent Shadow: A Gripping Psychological Suspense Collection

by Edwin Dasso

  Sighing, Liz pulled herself together as he got off at their exit. She hated him, she loved him, she hated him, she loved him. It wasn’t fair. There had to be something that would help her to define what she felt for John so that she could either fight for him or boot him to the road. That road wound through tall trees, harbingers of death-defying deer. Taking her hands away from her face, Liz screamed again as a large buck with a mature rack of antlers stepped out into the path of their car. The animal was so beautiful; she remembered thinking afterward that if she were an artist, she’d be able to recall every line of muscle. His haunting eyes stared into hers as his front leg and chest made contact with their car. It was enough impact that it knocked him down, but before John could stop, the deer dragged himself into the woods again.

  “John, we have to help him! We have to put him out of his misery,” she screamed.

  “What the hell should I do, Liz? Beat him to death with my backpack?” He’d stopped at the side of the road not because there was anything he could do. He wanted to check the damage to his car, a big Lincoln. The animal would just have to die on its own.

  “Call your brother,” she cried. “Call Nick. He has a gun. Ask him to take care of it.” When John hesitated, she got her phone out of her purse and keyed in Paula’s number. They’d left Greektown shortly after Liz and John and were already home. Paula answered on the second ring, and Liz, hysterical, told Paula, who was also an animal lover, what had happened.

  “Let me ask Nick,” she said. Liz listened while Paula explained to Nick. And so like Nick, he agreed readily to come right over to try to find the deer. Still inconsolable, anger filled Liz’s chest as the seconds ticked by. John was outside in the freezing night air, examining the damage done to the car. Bending over in the light of the headlamp, she watched him mumble something and scratch his head.

  “This is going to cost a fortune to repair,” he said, sliding back into the car. A magnificent animal is suffering in the woods, and all he can think of is the goddamned car.

  “Can you drive it?”

  “I think so,” he said, putting it into gear and moving forward slowly.

  “Just get home, then,” Liz said shortly. Staying calm while sitting next to him took more energy than she feared she had available, wanting to reach out and slap his face. The house, her refuge, came into view, a welcoming light inside visible from the road. Relief flooded through Liz. After John pulled the car into the garage, Liz rushed into the house to change clothes to go with Nick into the woods after the deer. Insanely she believed its suffering was somehow her responsibility in the cosmos; she’d lost control and allowed her thoughts to go haywire, and the result was the injury to the deer.

  Running to her bedroom, she’d forgotten he’d moved his things to another room, and the realization caught her by surprise. “You’ll get used to it,” she said. The hurt John had inflicted got blown out of proportion when the deer ran out into the road. She knew rationally that he didn’t purposely kill the deer and that her response to it was irrational. But I’m not rational. Ripping the buttons to get the pea coat off, she threw it into the trash along with the satin pants. The little black patent leather boots she vainly wore, thinking they exuded youth and fashion, were going, as well. Pulling on jeans and a University of Michigan sweatshirt, she’d make coffee and wait. Nick and Paula were an hour away. Checking her appearance in the mirror of the vanity, she had a soft, dewy-eyed look tonight that belied the hatred growing in her body.

  John was standing in the kitchen, thumbing through a magazine. “You’re not really going out in the woods with my brother, are you?” Wanting to tell him it was none of his business, Liz made it an act of her will to be courteous. It would take effort, but she’d do it for her own sake.

  “Yes, I am,” Liz replied, taking the coffee pot to the sink.

  He watched her filling it with water, going through the motions of an average evening. She started to talk to him, but he’d already left with his magazine, so like John to walk away from strife. After being cornered in a car with her for two hours, any more interaction was unbearable. The coffee made, she took a cup into the little-used living room and, ignoring the unlit Christmas tree, sat at the window, waiting, trying to see beyond her reflection in the glass for headlights in the black void of the woods. She fought visuals of the deer, waves of despair flowing through her. Just before eleven, her phone beeped with a text message: We’re almost there. Do you want to tell us where it happened or come with? She answered that she wanted to come. Taking her cup to the sink, she planned to invite them in, to ask them to stay the night. Having others in the house would act as a buffer.

  Intellectually, Liz knew that she was transferring heartache over the final abandonment of her husband to concern for the deer.

  6

  Even though a restraining order was in place, Mark would spend Sunday night watching over Jill. At three in the morning, he noticed the lights on in her apartment and called her cell phone.

  “Everything okay up there?”

  “I’ve got to go in,” she said. “A body was discovered on Belle Isle.” Belle Isle, a city park in the Detroit River, was taken over by the State of Michigan when Detroit could no longer support it.

  “Why’d they call Detroit? I thought the state was patrolling it.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, yawning. “What are you going to do?”

  “Follow you in and then head home for a few hours.”

  She was ready in minutes, and he watched her go to her car. When they arrived at the precinct, she waved goodbye to Mark, and he drove off, Albert pulling up shortly after.

  “Why’d they call us?” Albert asked, covering his mouth as he yawned. It was going to be a long week.

  “I don’t know yet,” she repeated, getting into his car. Too tired to inquire about the weekend, they were silent as their brain activity increased, adrenalin pumping into their blood stream. The dispatcher simply said there was a body. Albert pulled onto the McArthur Bridge, the connecting bridge from the city to the island. Driving around the perimeter of the dark island, they came to a remote place where Riverside and The Strand met, a short roadway leading to the power plant. They spotted a state police cruiser with its lights on. It would be the place where the body lay, waiting for discovery. The medical examiner’s van wasn’t there yet, nor the crime scene investigator’s massive truck. Albert yawned again. It was going to be a long night, too. He parked the car away from the scene. They got out, and Albert started walking toward the officer, but Jill stayed back. She never approached the scene without taking in the surroundings first, looking for anything unusual. It was early Monday morning, freezing cold temperatures with a crescent moon high above. The lights of the city twinkled in the distance, competing with the sparkling stars overhead. Over her shoulder, she saw the grand scale of the Renaissance Center, its towers dominating the skyline. But in front of her stood the Marble Lighthouse, the path to it from The Strand a gravel thread that hikers traveled during the day, but only the brave would attempt at night. Looking up, Jill saw the lights from the Marina District; boats would be in dry dock now, but during the season, boaters would find this to be a wonderful area to set anchor away from the bustle of the city. This drop would be recent, not a decomposed body left from the summer when the island was overrun with hikers.

  “Jill,” Albert called. She looked up as lights went on; the crime scene people had arrived and were putting floodlights around the decedent. Careful where she walked, Jill imagined the victim running through the thick grasses matted down with snow, or the murderer carrying a body, and she didn’t want to disturb footprints.

  “Be careful where you walk,” Maxine Delacorda called out. Her team was photographing and videotaping a series of footprints visible in the old snow around the body: obvious high heels alongside huge sneakers, side by side for fifty feet, and then the heels in front of the sneakers, debunking Jill’s theory.

  “You can almost see what
happened here. Do you got that, Zannos? Someone with big feet dragged this poor creature out to the middle of the bog, put a gun up to her chest and shot a bullet through her, like she was a piece of meat. He let her stand a bit, too, and that’s why there’s a big pool of blood-soaked snow around her feet. I bet the ground under her is soaked, too.”

  Jill noted everything Maxine said. It was the first evidence for the case.

  “Okay, got it,” Jill said, shivering. “Do you ever get a day off?” Maxine was present at almost every investigation Jill participated in.

  “Do you?” Maxine asked, cross. “Yet another suburbanite gettin’ hers in the city.” This was the third white suburban woman found dead in the city in the past year.

  “How do you know where she’s from?” Jill asked.

  “There’s a car behind the putting green shack, registered to Cynthia Caldwell of Hudsonville.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Southwest of Grand Rapids. Here’s Sam,” she said, looking up. Sam Wasserman, the medical examiner had arrived. They’d soon find out if this was, in fact, Cynthia Caldwell. He pulled the van behind the police cruiser and stepped out in flannel pajama pants and a down-filled coat, walking toward Jill.

  “Why were you called?” he asked the group, frowning. It would be an omen; hopefully the media wouldn’t notice why Detroit investigators were called to a murder in what was now a state-run park, possibly fueling more negative press for Detroit.

  “I just do as I’m told,” Albert replied. Sam looked around the scene, bending down closer to the body. It was only then that Jill looked, too. The victim was young, not yet thirty, and well taken care of but not beautiful. An angularity of her face was decidedly unattractive, and Jill felt guilty thinking something so trite. Bleached hair, false eyelashes and a knee-length knit dress covering her slender form was visible under her coat. Her shoes were cheap but stylish ultra-high heels covered in blood, with a circle of blood around her feet. She wasn’t posed, but looked liked she’d been laid back in the old snow, her limbs straight, her hair tucked under her.

  “What events are in town today?” Sam asked. Jill looked up at Albert. He frequented the nightlife and might know of something that a hermit like Jill would never know about.

  “There is a Christmas party for one of the big charities at the casino,” Albert replied.

  Sam nodded and resumed his cursory examination. There was a blackened hole on the fabric of the heavy wool coat about mid chest.

  “Help me move her,” Sam said. His assistant knelt down beside the body and rolled her to the side so Sam could see her back. A larger hole, with tattered fabric remnants, was the exit. The snow beneath her was blood soaked, and blood was down the back of her legs. He searched her pockets. “No ID. Any purse or wallet around?”

  “Maxine’s searching her car,” Albert said.

  “Preliminary findings: gunshot wound to the upper mid chest leading to lethal blood loss; homicide.” He nodded to Albert and Jill. They were now in an active murder investigation. “I’ll do the post this afternoon. If she’s identified before then, please let me know.” They’d call in the family to see her body before the autopsy as soon as identification was made. Sam and his assistant loaded the body into the van and left before Maxine returned from the car.

  “We’ll take the car back to the garage,” she said. “Her purse was in there with a photo ID that looks like her. I’m going to call it; it’s her car.”

  Albert was pacing, waiting for a signal from Jill that she was ready to leave. It was only just past five; he could go home and shower. She knew he was patiently waiting for her to stop daydreaming and get with it, so she decided to come back to the scene alone.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said. They got into his cruiser and headed back to the precinct, where he dropped her off at her car.

  “I’m going back,” she said, getting out of the car. “I’m telling you only so someone knows where I’m at in case CSI is gone.”

  “Okay, but be careful,” Albert warned.

  Jill was an adult woman who never needed coddling, but as long as Jacob Parker was out there, she needed to be sharp. Retracing her steps, she drove back to Belle Isle, going over the bridge and following the road past Scott Fountain and around the point to Lake Tacoma. It was the darkest hour of the night, before sunrise when the sun peaked up over Windsor. Continuing on The Strand, along Blue Heron Lagoon, Jill wondered what would bring a young girl from Grand Rapids to Detroit on a Sunday night. Was she part of the party entourage Albert spoke of? Or was it an accident; she found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why was her car behind the caddy shack? So much of the case mimicked Gretchen Parker, a young woman found with a bullet wound through her heart. Unorganized questions filtered through her mind when unexpectedly, she thought of Fred. Fred and his slow-talking, small-town ways and lanky good looks. They had nothing in common but a brief physical attraction that couldn’t sustain a relationship for longer than a few short weeks. Regrets for having rushed into bed with him pierced her mind again, and she shook them away. There was nothing she could do about it except to never make the mistake again.

  The Marble Lighthouse was up ahead. Parking safely away from the scene, she got out of the car again and looked around the area. Flicking on her flashlight, she swept the ground with the white beam of light back and forth, looking for anything CSI might have missed. The size of the blood area shocked her; as Maxine had said, the victim must have been held upright for a period to allow all that blood to drain out of her. The footprints indicated two people walked side by side, and then one turned to face the other, right in front of the body. Did a person who wore sized thirteen sneakers drag the petite, heel-clad woman to the spot, swing her around, embrace her, shoot her, and then after allowing her to stand for seconds with blood draining from her body, lay her down gently in the snow?

  Lifting the yellow tape, she ducked under. This would remain a crime scene for a while to come. Workers acknowledged her with a nod. It was up to the technicians to do the fine work of sifting through details. Jill approached Don Short, a homicide team member.

  “What’d you think?” she asked softly.

  “They came, they murdered, they left. Nothing fancy. You know how usually a tidbit is left behind—a piece of paper or a hair, once a guy left his sock. Not that this one was a pro necessarily, but someone who was ultra neat. Someone who knew the victim.”

  “Why do you say she knew her killer?”

  “There’s no sign of a struggle. The snow tells the story.”

  Jill thanked him and stood looking north and west, across the river to the marina district. Why choose the lighthouse to kill someone? There were more remote places on the island. She was anxious to find out time of death and who she was. Her eyes hurt from the glare of the floodlights.

  “We’re about ready to leave,” Don said. “We’ll come back in daylight. You gonna be okay out here alone?” Evidently, news of Jacob Parker stalking her traveled fast.

  “I won’t stay long,” she answered. She wanted to watch the sun come up, and it was just about time, the thin line of light visible at the horizon under the inky black, stars no longer visible to the east, but to the west, brilliant. The earth in all of its glory. She closed her eyes and felt the peace of one who knows that she’s doing what she was born to do. Gratitude filled her heart. All she had to do was follow the lead of…what? Events? Her intuition?

  As the CSI van pulled away, Jill walked toward a row of benches facing the water. The further she got from the scene, she saw more footprints: a line of big prints in the snow on the side of the road. She followed the prints to see if she could discover their origin. She was going to call CSI back, but before she could get her phone out of her pocket, she was punched from behind with such force that she flew forward, hitting her chin on packed snow, cutting her lip on her teeth. Unaware that she was stunned, it seemed like only seconds passed. Scrambling for her gun, she flipped over on her
back and aimed at…nothing. There was no one behind her. Heart pounding, she quickly got up, aware of an intense pain in her back and the coppery taste of a blood-filled mouth. She spit blood onto the snow, but it kept coming. Oh hell, I’ll probably need a stitch, she thought. She reached around to her back in case what she felt had been a bullet, but her coat was dry except for a dusting of snow. Gathering her strength, she quickly walked back to the car, trying to take note of her surroundings. With a pounding heart, she got in and locked the doors. Still mildly confused, she never thought to call for help. The hospital was only a few blocks from the precinct; she’d find someone she knew to stitch up her lip to avoid admission. Carefully pulling away from the curb, she’d forgotten about the footprints in the snow along the road.

  Driving along Lakeside before it turned into Riverside Drive, she was worried more about getting blood on her Kevlar than she was thinking of the importance of the incident. What hit her? She thought it was a rock or a log, some projectile that had been thrown from a distance. Holding a tissue to her mouth, trying to stem the bleeding, she decided she’d have her lip taken care of and then come back. She was just happy it happened away from the crime scene, imagining her blood mingling with the victim’s. As she turned onto the bridge, common sense caught up with her, and she dialed dispatch, missing the Cadillac parked behind the harbor master’s house.

  7

  With Paula sitting next to him like a real wife would, Nick pulled the truck out of John and Liz’s driveway and returned to the wooded area where Liz saw the deer disappear. “Stop here!” Liz called from the backseat. “I’m sure this is where it happened.” Equipped with flashlights, they searched the edge of the road until pieces of the headlamp glass came into view.

  “That’s our headlight,” Liz said. Turning to the dense woods, she pointed to a spot where the branches had separated. “He went in there. Look! You can see the blood on the ground where he dragged his body.” Bursting into tears again, she felt so badly for the deer. Nick took the lead, and the women followed him up the embankment into the woods.