Her Silent Shadow: A Gripping Psychological Suspense Collection

by Edwin Dasso

  One day I looked up from my drawing board, and she was getting coffee from the pot in the art department. There’s a coffee pot in the break room, too, but it’s usually empty. Sometimes employees from other departments raid our coffee rather than make a fresh pot. Violet saw me looking at her and, realizing she’d been caught, raised a finger to her lips saying, “Shh. Don’t tell on me.” Then she smiled and tiptoed out of the room. After that, I’d go out of my way to pass by the sales office or time my afternoon trips to the break room to coincide with hers.

  I don’t know if I would have behaved that way if Dana and I weren’t such a mess. It’s been months since we’ve had sex. I understand why, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It also doesn’t help that Dana has shut me out emotionally, as well. Her two dominant emotions are anger and frustration. Even if she isn’t directly angry with me, I’m always in the blast zone. No matter how understanding I try to be, no matter how helpful— Well, I’m feeling very fucking unappreciated at home. A little attention at work couldn’t hurt. After all, it’s just lunch.

  3

  Hades

  The Jaguar's battery died a while ago, but I’m still sitting here, lost in reverie. There’s a patch of sweat at the base of my spine. I'm not a fan of leather seats. Jax bangs on the roof of the car, startling me.

  "What the hell, man?"

  "Wake up. I've got an idea."

  "About getting out of here?" I open the car door and turn to face him. My head's still throbbing.

  "No. We should start honking the horns again, though. Maybe set off some car alarms, too. Make a bunch of noise. This is something different. When you and your wife get divorced, who gets the house?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "When you get divorced. You'll probably want to sell the house and split the profit, right? You'll need someone to sell it for you." He spreads his arms wide and smiles. "You'll need a realtor."

  "There isn't any house. We rent a place in Hollywood. We're on a waiting list to rent in Santa Monica."

  His smile disappears. "Fuck Santa Monica and their fucking rent control. I own an apartment building in Santa Monica. The income just barely covers the mortgage."

  "Well, that's the only way we could afford to live there."

  "Then go live in the valley with all the other lowlifes."

  He stalks off into the dark. I take my tire iron and head out into the gloom to forage. I move carefully, feeling my way from car to car. At each one I break out a window, turn on an interior light, and look under the seats, the glove compartment, the trunk. In one car I find a bundle of newspapers. They’ll be a good source of reading material, kindling, and toilet paper. When I look back the way I’ve come I see that I’ve left the interior lights on in all the cars I ransacked. They glow in the dark like Christmas lights in the neighborhood where I grew up. I don’t want to run down all my available batteries, so I go back and shut most of them off, but I can’t help leaving a few lit. The glow is comforting.

  I find bottled water and snack bars in a couple of cars, and in one car, a big cardboard box filled with dozens of individual serving pudding cups. Collecting supplies gives me the feeling of doing something. Preparing for a long siege. Having some say in my fate. I know it's an illusion, but it's comforting. I put a few items in my pockets, a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a cigarette lighter. The rest I stash in the front seat of an electric blue, mid-60s Mustang. Of all the cars I'm able to see, over half are vintage or expensive cars. The Trachis Tower is a classy place. The Mustang is beautiful, so I use a piece of stiff wire to open the door lock. It would be a shame to break a window. There's a collection of classic rock CDs in the glove box: Beatles, Hendrix, Joplin. It's parked next to a pickup truck I can crawl under in case there's another shockwave, and it's far enough away from the Hummer that I can avoid Jax and his shitty attitude.

  There was a fifth of cranberry vodka under the driver's seat of a BMW convertible, which doesn't surprise me since I think BMW drivers are pretty much a menace. I take the vodka and go looking for Jax to mellow him out. We need to start the SOS campaign again. He's sitting on the hood of a silver Mercedes with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  "Look at this," he says. "Same model and color as mine, and not a scratch on it. I like my upholstery better, though. This one's got cloth seats."

  I sit on the hood next to him and point at the cigarette. "You smoke?"

  He's ditched his coat and tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal massive forearms. He taps his shirt pocket. "I found a pack in a VW. No lighter, though."

  I pull out my new lighter, light his cigarette, and hold up the vodka. "I found us a little libation. Cranberry vodka. Good for the kidneys, eh?" I take a swig. It’s way too tart. Normally, I’d spit it out, but what the hell. I hand him the bottle. "Maybe we should start honking again."

  "Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, let's make a little more headway on this bottle, first."

  We sit and drink in silence for a while. He doesn't offer me a cigarette, which pisses me off. I quit smoking a while back, but still— We polish off a little more than half the bottle, then Jax claps his big hands together.

  "I got two kids," he says.

  "Yeah?"

  He fishes his phone out of a pants pocket, taps the screen a few times, and shows me a photo of a couple of teenagers. The boy wears a blue blazer with some kind of crest on the pocket. The girl has on a white dress. Both kids have Jax's dark hair and chunky features. The boy sports a unibrow. The girl, however, is quite attractive, but she has a patch over one eye. I look at Jax and point to my eye. "What happened?"

  "She had astigmatism back then. Had to wear a patch for a couple of months to strengthen the weak eye. She's fine now, but she was a mess while she had to wear it. Cried every day. Didn't want to go to school. They live with my second wife up in Santa Barbara. Smart kids. Private schools all the way. The boy plays football."

  "That's great. How often do you get to see them?"

  "Not often enough. They're busy with school and friends, and their mother and I don't get along."

  "That's a shame. I bet you miss them."

  Jax's affection for his kids makes me reassess my opinion of him. Maybe he isn't such a bad guy after all. Suddenly, everything seems complicated. I'm not tracking well. I hope it's the cranberry vodka and not a concussion. I slide down off the hood.

  "Let's start honking, man. You wanna stay with the Mercedes? I'll go down by the far pillar and find a car with a nice loud horn." I point with the bottle.

  He waves me away. "Do your thing, King Toot. I'll climb into the Mercedes and honk. Hey. Maybe if I put my license plates on this car I can drive it out when we get rescued."

  "VIN number," I say.

  "Shit. That’s right. Fucking VIN number."

  I walk back toward the Mustang, but I slide into the driver's seat of the BMW. I don't want to wear down the Mustang's battery. I'm looking forward to listening to some CDs. Jax has already started honking, and when I join in it makes quite a racket. Our SOSs aren't timed well. They overlap. I don't think they sound like car alarms, but they sure don't sound like Morse code. I honk for several hours, but then the BMW's horn starts to lose volume, and finally, the battery dies. When I stop honking I realize I don't hear Jax's horn. My head still aches, but not as much, and my thinking is a little clearer. The vodka’s wearing off.

  I go back to the Mustang, toss the newspapers into the back seat, climb in, and use the screwdriver to strip the steering column. I experiment with the exposed ignition wires, connecting and disconnecting them until a dashboard light comes on. The Woodstock soundtrack CD starts playing Country Joe's "Fixin' To Die Rag.” My head feels better, but my stomach is making unpleasant noises. Finally, I pull out one of the newspapers to use as toilet paper, a Wall Street Journal, which somehow seems appropriate, and make my way through the gloom to a little alcove behind some pillars. It's dark, so I survey the area with the light from my cell phone. It's empty. As good
a place for a toilet as any. I take my pants and underwear off for freedom of movement and squat down to poop.

  4

  Violet

  Violet and I ate at our regular spot again, a Thai restaurant just far enough away from the office that the chance of running into one of our coworkers was pretty slim. They serve a delicious soup made with coconut milk, tofu, and cilantro. Violet always makes a face when I order it. She hates cilantro. Says it tastes like soap. She sticks with the ginger chicken. I think I keep ordering the soup because I know Violet will make her disapproving face. I guess I’m purposely trying to irritate her. Abdicate the responsibility of ending our little office romance, such as it is. We haven’t had sex, but we have been going to lunch together for a while, and there’s a sexual tension between us. Our conversations are laced with innuendo. I don’t know if I want it to happen or not. I don’t want to cheat on Dana. I just want the expectation of sex. The idea that there’s the possibility of sex in my future.

  When the food came she said, “You must really like that soup.”

  I smiled. “I guess it’s an acquired taste. How’s yours?”

  “Yummy.”

  Violet complains about her husband all the time. I’ve mentioned that Dana and I haven’t had sex in months and that she refuses to tell me why. Dana’s always depressed, but she refuses to talk about it. I’ve tried to get her to see someone. She won’t do that either.

  I think telling Violet about Dana’s emotional problems would be a betrayal, as if these little lunch dates aren’t. Dana’s always on my mind, though. A presence, hovering just over my shoulder. Some days she’s heartbroken, and some days she’s mad as hell.

  We finished lunch. I looked at my watch and signaled the waitress for the check while we sipped our Thai iced coffees. Violet pulled an envelope from her purse and slid it across the table.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Something I wrote. For you.”

  “Should I read it now?”

  “I’d be too embarrassed. Take it with you and read it later. Please.”

  I slipped the envelope into my pocket.

  5

  Hades

  The garage is eerily quiet. The only noise is the echoed shuffling of my footsteps as I make my way back to the Mustang from my bathroom corner. I stop to listen, and the silence has a quality to it like a large empty auditorium. If someone dropped a pin on the other side of the garage the sound would reverberate through the space. I can only describe it as acoustic potential, like something is about to happen. Then I hear something out in the dark, a quiet sound, soft, like crying and fairly close. I say, "Jax?" No answer. I take out my phone and turn on the screen for light, but it fades right away. The battery is drained, and I’ve left the flashlight in the car. There’s some light from the overhead fluorescents, but I go back to the car for the flashlight anyway, tossing my leftover newspapers into the trunk along with all the drinks and snacks I’ve salvaged.

  The noise is weak but consistent. I look in the windows of a few cars. There’s a woman in the back seat of a Prius. She has short, dark hair and is wearing a white blouse and a grey skirt. The skirt is hiked up over her thighs, and she's holding her left leg above the knee. There are streaks of blood on her blouse and a bloodstain on the seat. She's trying to staunch the flow of blood from a gash on the inside of her leg. Her eyes are closed, but when I tap on the window they pop wide open. I can see the white part of her eyes all the way around the brown irises. Her makeup is smeared. She’s been crying. I open the car door and lean in to get a better look at the cut. It’s not gushing, but it’s oozing steadily.

  "We need to get a tourniquet on that,” I say.

  I set the flashlight on the floor next to the back seat and stand to unbuckle my belt and slide it out of the loops. I lean into the car again, kneel on the seat, and start to slip the belt around her leg. She makes a panicky noise and picks up the flashlight from the floor.

  I say, "Don't worry," and she hits me with the flashlight, right on the lump on my head. Startled, I slip off the seat onto the floor, my legs hanging out of the open door. She hits me again. And again. And—

  The rough texture of the carpet is digging into my cheek, and it smells awful. It’s not wet, but it stinks. I push myself up from the floor and get the spins. The woman isn’t in the car. I put one arm on the seat for leverage to pull myself up, and my hand comes down on the flashlight. I push the switch, and it lights up the inside of the car. The front seat’s been pushed forward, so there’s room for me to sit on the back seat and hang my head between my knees until the nausea passes. My head is messed up. Future archaeologists digging at this site will think I was entombed like an Egyptian pharaoh, only instead of donkeys and dancing girls I was buried with a bunch of cars and a giant realtor.

  After a few minutes I climb out of the car and stand up, consciously standing straight to keep from falling over. The ground looks very far away. What I want to do is go back to the Mustang and lie down. Instead, I click on the flashlight and go looking for the woman. My belt is missing, so hopefully she’s using it to control the bleeding. I don’t see a trail of blood droplets, but the floor of the parking garage is covered with concrete dust, and there are some footprints near the car. Big footprints.

  When I get to the Hummer, Jax is sitting in the front seat, and the woman is reclining in the back. She has my belt wrapped around her thigh, the strap pressed tight into her flesh. My pants feel loose without it, and I hitch them up. Jax waves me over and smiles. This is a different Jax from the one I saw last night. He turns to the woman.

  “Sandy, this is some guy. Guy, meet Sandy.”

  The woman glares at Jax. “The name is Sandra. I hate the name ‘Sandy’ as you well know.”

  I touch the lump on my forehead. “My name’s Hercule. What the fuck did you hit me for? I was trying to help you.”

  “I was frightened. I’m sorry.”

  Given our situation, I can’t really blame her.

  “Sandra here works in the Trachis Tower, too,” Jax says. “She's the exec assist for the guy who owns our firm. I asked her out once. She turned me down.” He turns his head to look at the woman. “But, that’s all water under the bridge, right Sandy? It’s a good thing I heard you two tussling. You might have bled to death.”

  I point to the belt. “How long has the tourniquet been on your leg?”

  Jax answers for her. “About twenty minutes. Maybe a half hour.”

  “We’ll have to loosen it for a while so blood can flow to the lower leg. We don’t want you to get gangrene.”

  “Won’t it just start bleeding again?” she asks.

  “Probably. We can put direct pressure on the wound. Hopefully whatever clot has formed will hold. Have you got any clean cloth in your car? Some laundry or dry cleaning?"

  She relaxes a little and says, "I've got a gym bag with a towel in it. Why?"

  "I want to keep your cut as clean as possible when we put pressure on it."

  I go back to her car for the gym bag and take a minute to get some water from the Mustang. When I get back Jax is hovering over her again.

  "Can I take a look at your leg?" I ask her.

  She stares at me for a moment, then slowly takes her hands away from her leg and moves her skirt above the wound. I take the towel from her gym bag.

  "I'm going to put pressure on the wound and unbuckle the belt." I try to sound as matter-of-fact as possible. "I'll keep the pressure on for ten or fifteen minutes. Then we'll tighten the belt again. Okay?"

  She nods, and I place the towel over the wound, clamp down with one hand, and loosen the belt. The towel gets damp, but the flow of blood is slow. I don't feel it pumping under my hand. I try to keep my eyes on the wound area, but her legs are shapely, and I let my gaze move up her thigh to the edge of her skirt. There's a small tattoo on the inside of her leg, a tiny stylized eye.

  After a couple of minutes I ask, "Why were you hiding in your car? You must have heard u
s moving around. You could have called to us."

  She doesn't answer, but she looks up at Jax. He smiles at her, shakes his head, and lumbers off. I can hear him moving around the twilit garage, occasionally thumping his big fist on a car hood. Neither of us speaks for a while. Then I say, "I'm going to tighten the belt again. Then I'll lift the towel, and we'll see if you're forming a clot."

  I tighten the belt and she winces. "It's going to fall asleep again, isn't it? It really hurt before."

  "Probably.”

  "It just tingled for a while, like when you sit with one leg folded under you. Then it moved up from my foot, and the whole leg felt like it was on fire."

  "It'll probably start hurting again. We won't leave the belt on as long this time. You seemed to handle the pain pretty well, though." I lift the towel and bend down to look at the wound. "I can't tell if you're clotting yet, but the edges of the wound are clean. It's not a jagged tear. That's a good thing."

  I smile, but she doesn't respond. She closes her eyes and leans back on the seat, finished talking. I decide to sit with her until Jax gets back. She seems frightened. I'm sure she's figured out that we're trapped down here.

  It doesn't take long for her to fall asleep. She snores. Maybe she'll sleep through the discomfort when her leg starts to hurt. My head still hurts, and I think to catch a little nap myself, but just as I close my eyes I hear Jax coming back. He's grinning, and when he sees me he holds up a screwdriver.

  "Check this out," he says. "I switched license plates."