When Shadows Come

by Vincent Zandri

  “Hey, John Wayne was cool, pal.”

  An electric hum fills the connection before Andrew says, “Call me back when you know something.”

  “And when exactly is my assignment due, Professor?”

  He hangs up.

  Setting down the phone, I lie on the couch, my open eyes staring at a ceiling that looks much better when I’m blind.

  “She’s not your wife anymore,” I say. But there’s no one around to hear me.

  Chapter 42

  By three o’clock that afternoon, I have heard neither from Grace, which is expected, nor from the police. What is unexpected is that my eyesight has lasted all day without interruption. The buzzer goes off at exactly two minutes after three. I go to the intercom, depress the Speak button.

  “Yes,” I say into the unit.

  “Good afternoon, Captain. It’s Anna Laiti.”

  Unlocking the front door, I tell her to come up.

  A minute later the journalist is standing inside my studio. She is an attractive thirty-something woman, with short red hair that’s parted over her right eye, smooth pale skin, and deep brown eyes that afford her an air of inquisitiveness and seriousness. She’s dressed in a short black skirt, black tights, and knee-high black leather boots, like lots of women in Italy wear this time of year. For a top, she sports a thin gray sweater under a brown leather jacket.

  She’s carrying her travel bag, which I assume contains her computer. It also tells me she came here straight from the airport. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out a notepad and a pen.

  “You don’t mind if I take a note or two,” she says, more like she’s telling, not asking.

  I nod. Of course she can take notes. “Would you like a coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Happy I have something to occupy myself with while she’s asking me questions, I walk the few steps to the kitchenette and fill the pot with tap water.

  “Now,” she exhales. “I would like you to start from the beginning.”

  “From my time here in Venice?” I ask, spooning espresso-blend coffee into the top chamber of the pot. “Or prior to that? Grace and I have had many beginnings.”

  The studio goes silent while she thinks.

  “Tell me about the war, Captain,” she says. “And how it took away your eyesight.”

  “That beginning,” I say. I set the pot onto the stove, switch on the gas burner, and turn to face her. “There was a village way up north,” I tell her. “I called in the airstrike that destroyed it . . .”

  I speak about my war in Afghanistan. But I do not tell her everything. I tell her about the village filled with Taliban who would raid our encampment night after night, causing multiple casualties. I tell that we were like fish in a barrel. That not even the Hesco defense barriers could stop all the bullets raining down on us some nights. Then I tell her about the airstrike. But I do not tell her about what happened to the little boy. What was strapped to his chest.

  I fill her in on how the blindness began almost immediately after the incident in the village, and how I was medevacked to Kabul, and from there flown to Frankfurt, where the psychologists went to work on me once it was determined from numerous MRIs that nothing was physically wrong with my brain. Then I tell her about how Venice proved an opportunity for me to not only regain my eyesight, but also for Grace and me to get to know one another again.

  By the time I’m done telling the writer my story, we’ve gone through two pots of espresso. Despite the caffeine, my eyes are getting tired and beginning to lose their focus. Maybe it’s exhaustion that triggers the blindness. Maybe it’s memories that trigger it. Memories, that for some reason or another, I’m not meant to recall. Not without doing some kind of damage to myself. Without inflicting some kind of pain in my head.

  Anna stares down at her notes, bites the nonbusiness end of her pen with her teeth. She looks very young when she does this, like a college student trying to come up with the answers for a midterm exam.

  “Please allow me to get my facts straight. The waiter at the caffè . . . this Giovanni . . . he believes you. Yet he did not see Grace being kidnapped.” It’s a question.

  “But he has seen the overcoat man on two or three different occasions. A couple of times outside his caffè, and then yesterday inside the church of San Geremia. That’s why I suspect he might have been following Grace and me not just for a couple of days, but all week.”

  “The police have Grace’s passport.” Another question.

  “Yes. They found it floating in the canal. So they tell me. And I have this.” Reaching into my pocket, slowly I withdraw Grace’s diamond. “Giovanni located it stuck in the cobblestones under the chair she sat in before she was taken.”

  “May I?” She holds out her hand.

  “Please.”

  She takes hold of the ring, examines it. I can almost hear the gears spinning in her brain.

  “Captain, do you trust me?” she poses.

  Her question takes me by surprise. Why shouldn’t I trust her? She came here of her own accord directly from Paris. I can only assume she is interested in more than just filling in the missing pieces of yesterday’s article. She sees something else going on with Grace’s disappearance. Something larger. Deeper. Or perhaps this is just what I want to believe. A man who is desperate for help. Any kind of help.

  “Sure,” I say. “I suppose I can trust you. Why do you ask?”

  She stands, returns her notebook to her bag.

  “Because I’d like to take the ring with me and have it tested for prints.”

  My tired eyes go wide. “You mean at the police station? If they know I have the ring, it might make me look—”

  She shakes her head. “I have friends on the inside, as they say, who can test the ring for prints tonight when things are not so busy. I can have it back to you in the morning with my findings.”

  “Seems to me you’re not going to get a hell of a lot from a ring.”

  She holds up her hand. “You would not believe what crime labs can pick up nowadays with digital holography and new imaging workstation advances. Traces of prints on the tiniest of spaces. I wrote a series of articles on the subject not too long ago. Perhaps there are more prints on the band than yours and Grace’s. Perhaps there is a set of prints matching those of a man who wears a brown overcoat.”

  “But Giovanni and I have handled the ring since. It’s likely worn off any prints that the overcoat man could have left, if he touched it in the first place.”

  She tilts her head in acknowledgment. “It’s a long shot, because the ring surface is small. But trust me, not that small. If it does turn out it’s possible to uncover the print of a third party and then cross-reference it on the Interpol database, you might have a solid ID on the man who stole Grace. The investigation would be over before it begins and you would no longer be a suspect in the eyes of the police. You might even be able to locate Grace before any further harm comes to her.” Another backhanded wave. “In any case, looking into the prints won’t do any harm.”

  She’s got one hell of a point.

  “I will take good care of it, Captain,” she assures me, storing the ring in a pocket on her jacket. She walks to the door. “I promise you, come morning, I will have some answers for you. One way or another.”

  “Thank you,” I say, looking into her eyes.

  “I understand your frustration over the Italian police,” she offers. “How do I begin to fathom your fear?”

  “You don’t,” I say, opening the door for her. “You just don’t go there.”

  Chapter 43

  The journalist isn’t gone for more than thirty minutes when my blindness returns. I’m convinced if I can force myself to sleep, rather than wait for sleep to overtake me spontaneously, I will regain my eyesight far quicker than if I stay awake.

  Inside my Dopp kit in the bathroom, I find the bottle of sleeping pills I use on long-haul transatlantic flights to knock myself out. I take a pill with a shot of
whiskey. Then I shuffle the twelve steps across the studio floor to the bed and lie down on it. In no time at all, sleep takes over.

  My eyes open. I can see. Focus on the ceiling above me.

  I can see but I cannot move.

  It’s as if I am glued to the mattress, my limbs, head, and torso impossibly paralyzed. I can breathe, swallow, and I can feel my heart drumming against my ribs. But I can’t lift a finger any more than I can speak or shout. My voice, my ability to make any kind of sound whatsoever, has vanished.

  I’m not alone.

  There’s someone else in the room. I can’t see, touch, or speak to him. I want to shout out. But I can’t. Still, I know he’s there, the same way a bird will sense the onset of an earthquake minutes before the ground opens up.

  But wait, I’ve got this sight thing all wrong. It dawns on me that I’m not staring at the plaster ceiling. I’m staring at the inside of my eyelids.

  The sound of breathing.

  Then come the words “I see.” He pronounces the word “see” like “seeeezzz.”

  The words come from the end of the bed. The smell coming from that direction is wormy and moldy, mixed with a hint of burning incense. His presence is overwhelming. Like meeting my maker. Or in this case, my destroyer. My and Grace’s destroyer. I want to jump up, grab him, throw him down onto the floor. I want to slam his head on the floorboards until he gives up Grace’s location. Then I want to choke him with a full forearm hold until his heart and lungs stop.

  I want to neutralize him.

  But soon I feel myself drifting.

  Falling and drifting.

  Until I am once more unconscious.

  Chapter 44

  When I open my eyes again, my eyesight has returned. Daylight is pouring in through the French doors. I slide out of bed, look for any signs of an intruder. There are none. And something else. Judging by the position of the furniture, I didn’t sleepwalk last night. At least, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that I did. I woke up in my own bed. Mine and Grace’s. Everything seems to be in its proper place.

  I check the door.

  It’s locked, the bolt engaged. I check the French doors. They too are closed and locked, just as I left them last night. Standing by the couch, I recall the presence of a man standing at my bed in the middle of the night. I recall the smell of a strange mix of sweat and incense. I recall the words he spoke. “I see.”

  I recall not being able to move a muscle. Not being able to utter a sound. I recall being entirely paralyzed, as if I’d been injected with a drug that rendered me immobile, but allowed my senses to thrive.

  But then, why does the sensation of being paralyzed suddenly take on a greater significance? Have I been paralyzed before? Drugged? Made to endure something unspeakable?

  The world is off-kilter, unbalanced. The pain shoots into my head. I feel sick. Running into the bathroom, I lean over the toilet, release a mixture of clear bile and stomach acid that burns the back of my throat, sends me into a fit of coughing.

  When I’ve calmed down enough to straighten back up, I wipe the sweat from my brow, the snot from my nose, and the spittle from my lips. Turning, I catch my image in the mirror. The concave cheeks covered in stubble. The bloodshot eyes, the pale complexion. Who the hell is this man?

  Then, in the mirror, a shadow. A shadow that appears and disappears as quickly as it registers. Ice water replaces the blood in my spine and I react to the threat, throw a swift punch at the mirror. The crack of fist against glass means I’ve hit my target.

  Alert to a second attack, I turn on the balls of my feet, peer into the studio. “Who’s there? Who the fuck is there!”

  But the apartment is silent.

  Turning back to the sink, I avoid my face like it belongs to the devil. I don’t want to look into the cracked glass. But something makes me look. The fury boiling up from deep inside me. From a source that isn’t entirely my own. As if it’s a small separate part in my system. It’s not something I can easily resist, but it’s something I have done my damnedest to keep from Grace. In war, the fury keeps me alive. In peacetime, the fury makes me a dangerous man.

  My head spins, and something snaps in the gray matter.

  . . . I see not one, but dozens of mirrored reflections in the jagged, triangular slices of cracked glass. I don’t see myself standing before the sink in the bathroom. I’m lying down in a brightly lit room. A man enters. A big, bulky African American. But I can’t move. Can’t talk, can’t open my eyes . . . When the man returns, I hear him set down two objects. One of them sounds like a metal bucket sloshing with water. The other, a wood board . . . “Refreshments are served, Captain,” he says, in a happy voice. “Hope you’re thirsty . . .”

  “Stop!” I scream, pulling myself away from the mirror, sitting down on the toilet lid.

  Breathing in and out.

  My fingers are cut. Bleeding. I pull the towel from the rack, apply pressure. The cuts are not deep, but the pain in my head goes endlessly deep. Maybe this whole thing is an elaborate dream. A lucid nightmare. I’ve never been waterboarded, so why does my mind insist on recalling something so false?

  I’m no stranger to vivid dreams. Soldiers who spend enough time in the field will eventually experience one or two of them. Dreams in which the line between reality and the subconscious becomes confused and undefined. Exhaustion and stress will do that to a man. You find yourself standing guard in the middle of the night, then suddenly you see eyes looking back at you in the darkness and the flash of a shadow or the movement of a figure. Maybe several figures. The figure is carrying a weapon and he’s about to ambush you.

  You don’t think twice.

  You empty an entire clip into the darkness. When the morning comes, you realize the eyes you swear you saw in the dark were nothing more than the white flowers on a bush reflecting the moonlight. The movement was the wind on the willows. The bittersweet smell of fear was entirely your own.

  Or maybe you’re behind enemy lines, crawling uphill on your stomach toward an enemy encampment. The fear is concentrated entirely in your heart, because it pounds like a bass drum in your head. But still you keep on moving until you come to the edge of the encampment where you spring yourself on an armed bandit, and slice his neck without the slightest hesitation or emotion, other than fear.

  Fear cripples, but only if you allow it to.

  Loneliness kills, but only if you let it take hold of heart and soul.

  Sanity is fleeting when you’ve experienced enough battlefields. But then, I experienced more than just battlefields.

  Dreams . . .

  Dreams are the strange bedfellows I fear the most. Dreams you don’t control so easy.

  Dreams will tear you apart . . .

  . . . even when you try to kill them.

  After I clean the blood from my hand, the cuts require three Band-Aids. Thank God a good soldier is always prepared with a travel-sized first aid kit.

  As usual, I check my cell phone.

  Nothing.

  I call Grace’s number.

  Now I don’t even get a computer voice telling me her mailbox is full. I hear only a prerecorded announcement telling me the number I’ve reached is out of service or temporarily disconnected. So please check the number and try calling again, or check with an operator for assistance.

  Screw you and the digital line you rode in on.

  I decide to calm down, before I become so frustrated and pissed off I do something FUBAR, like toss my cell phone through the French doors and into the canal below. I wash my face, brush my teeth, make coffee. While the espresso is cooking on the stove, my eye catches my laptop. I go to it and refresh the page. It’s still open to CNN and the short sidebar article about Grace’s disappearance. I peer down at it, not sure what to expect. The article is still the same article. But something is different. I see my comment, and I see the comment that Anna Laiti made in response to it. But now there’s a third comment also.

  It says, “I was th
ere at the caffè. I saw what happened.”

  It’s signed simply “Geoff.” And following that, his e-mail address.

  My pulse picks up. I open my e-mail and write:

  Dear Geoff,

  I am Grace’s fiancé. What did you see?

  Please write or call or both. Please!

  Nick Angel

  I add my phone number, then click “Send” and wait. Realizing that an immediate answer is highly improbable, I drink my coffee and try to stay loose. But it’s no use. I think about what day it is. It’s Wednesday. I recall when I was a kid in grade school, how I would come home off the school bus and watch ancient reruns of The Mickey Mouse Club. Wednesday was “Anything Can Happen Day.”

  Soon, Anna will be here with the results of the print tests on Grace’s diamond. That is, if the reporter is true to her word. Perhaps at the same time, I will hear from the man who saw Grace being taken away. Maybe I’ll also hear the progress of the police investigation. My God, maybe it’s possible I’ll also hear from Grace.

  Wednesday.

  Today, anything can happen. Today my life will never be the same. But maybe, if I’m lucky, just a part of what I have lost will be returned to me.

  Chapter 45

  I’m not halfway finished with my coffee when my cell phone rings.

  “Captain Angel?”

  “Yes, it’s me. You saw what happened?”

  “I did. But I’m not comfortable talking about it over the phone.”

  “Why? What difference does it make? What . . . difference?”

  “They’re listening.”

  “Who? Who’s listening?”

  “Meet me at the Ponte di Rialto. Fifteen minutes. I can’t stay long. The missus and I are leaving on the noon train. She won’t know I’m meeting you.”

  “How will I know you?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll know you.”

  He hangs up.

  Chapter 46

  As always when I step out into the daylight of Venice alone, I never know when my blindness is going to return. But I’m taking no chances. I call Giovanni, ask him if he has some time to accompany me this morning to the Rialto. Ten minutes later he meets me outside the door of the bookshop, a smile beaming in his round face. I sense that this is an adventure for him.