Deadly Shadow

by Kim Cresswell

  “Her pregnancy is news, Agent McClane.” Melissa pouted and checked her hot pink lipstick in the mirror. “You know how it works.”

  Victory gritted her teeth. Frustration and the lack of sleep kicked in full force. “Listen, you arrogant, ego-tripping little shark.” Her hands balled into fists at her sides and it took every ounce of willpower not to pop the reporter in the mouth. “You don't care who you hurt. Just like when you threw me under the bus last year, blaming my husband's death on me because I had to stop at the bank. Frank Sanders killed Josh. Not me. Get your damn facts straight.”

  Biting back tears, Victory spun around out of Melissa's view. The reporter was not going to see her cry. Not a chance. Victory booted the trash can out of the way. Garbage spewed across the floor. She flung the washroom door open and marched down the hallway.

  “Wait, Agent McClane." Melissa hurried behind her. "I’m just trying to do my job. I have some information about Eddie Bullington’s death. It’s important.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  After leaving the field office, Victory sped down US-50, frustrated she’d allowed Melissa to get to her. Rush-hour headlights and taillights made the wet highway shimmer like ice. Windshield wipers flapped and squeaked, fighting to keep up with the heavy wet snow. She eyed the speedometer and realized she was driving almost twenty miles over the speed limit. A voice inside her told her to slow down, but anger surged through her and made it almost impossible.

  A pickup truck merged into the lane ahead of her.

  Victory pumped the brake just in time before she almost rear-ended the truck. Tears fell, obscuring her vision. She pulled to the side of the road and let it all out.

  Sunshine poked through the early afternoon clouds and glistened against the neighborhood’s snow-covered front lawns. Victory sat in the driver’s seat of the family’s Honda Odyssey outside their red brick bungalow and punched the horn several times, her gaze trained on the front door.

  Jade emerged, carrying a banker’s box. A large stuffed elephant was tucked under her arm.

  She walked past the driver’s window. “God, Mom. You just can't wait to get rid of me again, can you?”

  “You found me out. Now hurry up and get in. Where's your father?”

  Victory hit the horn again.

  “Why on earth do you need to bring Fanny? You haven't even looked at her in years.”

  Victory watched in the rear-view mirror, growing more impatient, as Jade stuffed the animal between some boxes and crawled over the seat to the middle of the second row. “I didn't have to look at her. I always knew she was there for me.”

  “I'm sure your roommate will be impressed, seeing that monstrosity coming down the hall.”

  “Don't call Fanny a monstrosity! What's wrong with you?”

  Victory’s gaze traveled back to the house. “Your dad is what's wrong with me.” She poked her head out the window. “C'mon, Josh!”

  Josh stepped out the door, keys in hand. He balanced a box on his knee as he tried to lock the front door.

  “Look at him.” Victory shook her head. “He won't take the five seconds to set the box down because he doesn't want to waste time, and his juggling act will end up costing him five minutes.”

  Josh locked the door, smiled smugly, and made his way to the passenger seat after putting the box into the back.

  Victory threw the vehicle into reverse and zoomed out of the driveway. “Well, thank you, sir, for gracing us with your eventual presence.”

  Josh smiled and peered over his shoulder at Jade. “Remind me who chose to work on her day off instead of getting you back to college this morning? We still have a four-hour drive ahead of us.”

  “Umm, I think it was...Oh, that was…Mom.”

  “You’re right. It was.” Josh smirked. “Funny, it seems to be the same Mom who's blaming us for being late now.”

  “The very same one,” Jade said.

  “Yeah well, you guys go out and catch bad guys to keep the world safe then.” Victory slapped the steering wheel. “Oh shit.”

  Josh’s eyebrows raised. “Shit, what?”

  “The insurance reimbursement. I forgot to deposit it yesterday.

  “So? Do it tonight, or tomorrow morning.”

  “It needs to be in before the end of the day. Today. The mortgage payment will bounce otherwise.”

  Jade let out a long sigh. “Great planning, Mom. Now I'm going to be late for the biggest campus party of the season.”

  “Be quiet, you. The ATM at First National is the closest. It won't take long.” Victory flicked on the turning signal and turned left.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Fifteen minutes later, Victory steered into the busy parking lot of the First National bank and put the vehicle in park. She dug through her purse and held up the check. “I’ll just be a second. Back in two shakes of a lamb's tail.” She smiled and placed her hand on the door's release ready to get out.

  “What does that even mean, Mom?”

  “It means I'll be quick.”

  “I know, but I—oh shit.”

  Victory turned and looked at her daughter. “Shit, what?”

  “Contact lens cleaner.”

  “What about it?”

  “I'm all out. Gotta get some. Like, now.”

  Victory glanced at her husband and sighed.

  Josh pointed across and up the busy street, then snatched the check from Victory’s hand. “There's a Walgreen’s up the block. Run her over, and I'll toss this in the account.” He opened the door and hopped out.

  Victory nodded, then sped out of the lot, toward the drug store.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  While she waited for Jade to make her purchase, which seemed to be taking forever, Victory turned up the volume on the radio. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and half-hummed, half-sang along with Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop”. When the song was done, she shut off the radio and opened the window a few inches. Freezing air seeped inside.

  In the distance, sirens howled. Her eyes shifted to the side mirror. A stream of police vehicles, lights flashing, sirens shrieking, sped toward the bank. Her heart stopped. Josh!

  Victory flung the door open and jumped out. Her boots pounded the street as she darted through traffic, almost getting hit by vehicles more than once. Tires squealed, horns blasted.

  She sprinted around the corner, her chest heaving. Officers had cordoned off the area with police tape. Her heart pounded. Dozens of police vehicles, ambulances, and a SWAT van blocked the sidewalk in front of a crowd of onlookers gathered at the bank.

  Victory elbowed through the jostling mob and ducked under the police tape. She spotted FBI SWAT Commander Matt Harris. She raced to him. “Matt! Where's Josh? Where is he, Matt? What's going on?”

  His eyes drifted to the bank. His expression turned grim. “Victory, the shooter's down but...it's not good.”

  She sidestepped him.

  Matt grabbed her arm to try to stop her. “Wait, Victory.”

  She shook free and ran.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Victory stopped dead inside the bank’s double doors, her legs frozen. Holiday music churned a jolly tune from the bank’s speakers. A police officer walked past her carrying a crying little girl. Her pink winter coat was spattered and stained with dark red blood. Two SWAT members were busy ushering a group of horrified customers and employees past her and out of the bank.

  Victory scanned each face. Josh wasn’t with them. Panic set in. She looked away and took a few shaky steps.

  In front of her, a body. His face was covered with a black ski mask. A few feet away, a woman with brown hair was flat on her back, arms sprawled out at her sides with a gaping bullet wound at the top of her head. To the right of the woman, a young man, a bank employee, his plastic ID still pinned to his striped shirt. His lifeless body was propped up against the bottom of the bank counter. Dead blue eyes stared back, wide.

  Victory’s eyes darted to a Christmas tree in the corner. Then she
spotted him. His boots...his shirt. So much blood.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her legs buckled, and the world slipped away. Victory dropped to her knees and wailed.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  At six-fifteen, Victory arrived home, exhausted and emotionally drained. After a brief conversation in the elevator with Suzanne, a lawyer who lived below her, Victory unlocked her apartment door on the twenty-ninth floor. She turned the light on and dead-bolted the door behind her. She hated coming home. Hated the silence.

  The Radcliffe Towers offered lots of perks including a twenty-four-hour fitness center, pool, spa, and a rooftop deck. The building was convenient, only a twenty-five-minute drive to the field office. Many summer evenings she had sat on the deck enjoying a beer, taking in the spectacular city skyline. But it wasn't home. Victory glanced at the cream-colored leather sofa and chair, coffee tables with shiny metal legs and the rich cherry-colored bamboo floors. No matter how much time or money she spent on decorating, the apartment never felt like home.

  She missed her house in Cleveland, a cozy four-bedroom brick bungalow that she and Josh had bought right after she'd graduated from the Academy. Her stomach clenched. It wasn't the actual structure Victory missed. It was what the home had meant to her, Josh, and Jade. Love. Safety. Happiness. The way Victory thought the rest of her life would be. Victory wriggled out of her coat and let it drop onto the arm of the couch. As she took off her boots, the apartment intercom buzzed, forcing her melancholy mood on hold. She checked the viewer screen to see Agent Tom Mendez, a tall, and attractive Latino with boyish good looks. He had a white file folder in his hand.

  “C’mon up, Tom.” Victory hit the button to let him in.

  She turned and stared at the mess on the coffee table, then quickly gathered the newspapers, books, file folders, and stacked them in a neater pile on the table.

  Minutes later she opened the door. “Hey, thanks for stopping by. It's been a crazy day, really long one. I was hoping to meet with you at the office but obviously, that didn't pan out.”

  He shot her a smile. “Hey, no worries.”

  “Want a beer or something?”

  He shook his head. “No, thanks. Can't stay long, but here's the file on Bullington’s hate crime investigation. Can't say I'm surprised he's dead.” He handed her the folder.

  It was sad no one seemed shocked by the radio host's death. Not the FBI. Not even the victim's sister.

  “What's the status of your investigation?”

  “It went south a while ago. I had forwarded everything to the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. Not enough evidence. The file was closed about a month ago.”

  “Was Bullington notified?”

  “Yup. Spoke with him in person. The guy was scared to death. So much so, that the radio station had forked out a large amount of dough to hire a bodyguard through a private security firm,” Tom said.

  “What was his name?”

  “The bodyguard? Wilson. Tyler Wilson. There’s half a page on him in there. If one thing’s clear, it's that the station didn't want anything to happen to their money-maker. Bullington had also mentioned they were installing the best home security system money could buy.”

  “Well, he definitely did that. Not that it helped.” This was the first Victory had heard about a bodyguard. She made a mental note to check into the guy. “Exactly how was Bullington threatened?”

  He leaned against the wall. “Someone left a blood-splattered letter tacked to his front door, along with a cloth armband. Official NSM garb. White with red circles and a black swastika. The note went into graphic detail about chopping him up into little pieces if he ever did another negative radio show about them or neo-Nazi groups in general.”

  Victory leafed through the contents of the folder. “But the guy wasn't cut up. He took a bullet in the head. A homicide with a half-assed attempt to make it look like a suicide, it seems.”

  “Yeah, that's interesting. Maybe they offed him to take the heat off the group after the letter incident.”

  Victory doubted the racist group had anything to do with the radio host's death. A coincidental threat and nothing more, but, like every other seemingly-unrelated bit of information, it would need to be checked out. “Any suspects at the time?”

  “No one specific. But one name kept popping up. Michael Vertus, a white supremacist, and troublemaker from way back. Two years ago, he was a lieutenant with the Ohio chapter. Now he runs a rogue online group called Whites Rise-Up dot com, a typical neo-Nazi propaganda site. With these guys, hatred and intimidation are the name of the game. I heard he was hanging low in Cleveland, with his sister on the family farm.”

  Victory’s breath came fast and uneven. Cleveland. The last place she wanted to go. Her gaze traveled to the mantel to the wedding photograph of her and Josh.

  “Any thoughts on that one yet?” Tom asked.

  “Crime scene kind of points to The Shadow. But we’ll be checking out Vertus regardless.”

  “The Shadow? I’ve overheard some solemn whispers about that one over the years. A story that mommy and daddy FBI agents use to scare their kids. Totally unexplainable stuff. You think there might be something there?”

  “Just a hunch. But if it is him, a radio personality is a slightly different target for him. That deviation that could help nail him.”

  “If you try to nail him, he'd probably just evaporate or something.”

  Victory laughed. “You might not be too far off on that.”

  “Well, gotta go and get my youngest from karate class. Best of luck with both cases, Victory.” He glanced at the folder then back to her. “Let me know if you need anything else on Bullington.”

  “I will. And thanks again, Tom.”

  After he left, Victory locked the door and headed into the kitchen. She grabbed a bottle of beer and a plate of two-day-old pasta from the fridge, then sat at the kitchen table and picked at the food. Her thoughts danced from one possibility to another. Was Michael Vertus, The Shadow? What about the bodyguard? Was he involved? Too many questions and not enough answers. She decided to give Ryan a quick call to let him know what she’d learned.

  “Hey, Vic. What’s up?”

  She heard Angie's bubbly voice muffled in the background. Victory didn’t care if the two were seeing each other as long as their relationship didn’t affect their work. Their boss, on the other, wouldn’t be happy. He had an old-school FBI attitude. Agents were men of action, poster boys for J. Edgar Hoover’s G-Men and didn’t need a woman distracting them from catching the bad guys, despite Hoover’s own private penchant for wearing pretty dresses. As much as Victory hated to admit it, at times, it was still very much a man’s world.

  “Got a possible lead in the Bullington case we need to look into.” Victory told Ryan about Michael Vertus and the bodyguard.

  “It’s worth checking out.”

  “Pick me up in the morning. I want to get an early start. And grab me an extra-large coffee. I’m going to need it.” Victory heard Angie’s voice again. It sounded as if the two were having fun and it made her miss her husband even more.

  “Okay, see you in the morning.”

  She placed the phone down and glanced around the empty kitchen, her gloomy mood resurfacing.

  She had met Josh, a forensic dentist, while he was working with the medical examiner’s office in Cleveland after what was suspected of being The Shadow’s first kill. Ryan had introduced them, and it was love at first sight. Six months later they were married. Victory twisted her white gold wedding band and her heart squeezed at the lifetime of memories of their lives together she had locked away, terrified they would one day disappear. She took another drink of her beer and glanced at the accordion file folder at the end of the table.

  Some cases never left her. The Shadow case was one of them. She and Ryan had spent thousands of hours working the case. Decades later, they were still no closer to coming up with a single suspect.

  Victory didn’t want to contact
Melissa Mann, but after learning more about Eddie Bullington, she wanted to know what information the reporter was sitting on. Her stomach churned. She picked up the phone and called the reporter. After seven rings, the call went to voicemail.

  “This is Melissa Mann. Got something for me? Leave it here and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  A long beep. Silence.

  Victory hesitated for a moment. “It’s Victory McClane. Let’s talk tomorrow afternoon.” She disconnected, hoping she wasn’t going to regret contacting the woman.

  A sudden knock at the door startled her.

  Victory got up and went and answered the door. It was John, the building’s doorman, clutching a large cranberry red vase, containing at least three dozen long-stemmed white Peruvian lilies. She stared at the flowers, baffled as to who could have sent them.

  “They sure are mighty pretty. It looks like you made a lasting impression on someone, Mrs. McClane.”

  “I—guess so.” She fought to keep the mention of Mrs from sending her reeling back into the past.

  He passed her the bouquet and grinned. “Have a good night, Ma’am.”

  Victory gave him a small smile. “Thanks. You too, John.” She shoved the door closed with her foot and used the palm of her free hand to secure the lock. After placing the vase on the kitchen table, she found a small white envelope hidden within the stems. She opened it and read the card:

  Have dinner with me

  Derrick

  513-421-5698

  Her pulse sped up. How did he know lilies were her favorite, a detail only Josh and Jade were aware of? How did he know where she lived? It wasn’t as if her address was listed anywhere, and there was no way anyone at the Bureau would have given out her personal information. The more she thought about it, the more suspicious she became. Had he followed her home? He definitely had her attention. She stared at the flowers. If Derrick Lynn wanted to play, Victory was up to the challenge. It was as if he was trying too hard and she knew from years of experience that fact alone was a huge red flag.