The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “So you had Tanner watching us. But who was watching Tanner?”

  “I was. At least, I thought I was. Obviously, not close enough.”

  Lockman looked past Creed to Jessie on the swing. She held her lemonade in her lap, pushing at the porch with her feet to keep the swing going. She stared off as if not even aware there was anyone else on the porch with her. But Lockman had a feeling she was taking in every word.

  He pulled his attention back to Creed. “His sister’s suicide doesn’t make Tanner a traitor.”

  “Do you remember Dolan’s mission, Craig?”

  “The use of supernatural elements to terrorize Americans.”

  “But why? Every terrorist group has an ideology. What was Dolan’s?”

  “He wanted to expose the world to the supernatural. It was like a mission of truth for him.”

  “There was another angle. He saw himself as a savior. This country has fallen on hard times lately. I think Dolan has had something in the works for a while, something that we managed to disrupt while we were operational.” Creed made a fist and rubbed his knuckles. “I haven’t heard the name Otto Dolan since we saved you from him that night. Not until you showed up here.”

  “What does any of that have to do with Tanner?”

  “Tanner lost his best friend. Then he lost his sister. Then he lost the job he had dedicated his life to. What else does an operative who specialized in the supernatural do but go freelance and work with others that deal with the supernatural?”

  “That’s a pretty huge speculation.”

  “I know it is. But when you add that he is the only other person besides me that knew about Jessie and that she led Dolan to you…” He held up his hands.

  Lockman tried to shake off Creed’s reasoning, but it stuck like a splinter. He kept trying to imagine a man he had trusted with his life helping the likes of Dolan. He couldn’t. Just couldn’t.

  “I guess there’s only one way to know for sure.” Lockman set down his own glass. “I have to go ask him. And you have to help me find him.”

  “And breach security protocol?”

  “What’s one more time? Besides, if I can’t get an answer from Tanner, that leaves me with you. And someone is going to pay for putting my daughter in danger.”

  “Relax, Craig. I have every intention of helping you. Let me print out his file.” He stood and winced, favoring his left leg. “Damn age.”

  “You have files on the team?”

  “They’re not all up to date, but I made sure to keep some mementoes before they axed our division, just in case.”

  “Just in case, huh?”

  “I’m not a fool. I knew something like this would happen eventually.”

  “Marty said the same thing.”

  “Pretty smart…for an ogre.”

  “There’s still something I don’t get.” Jessie planted her feet on the porch and stopped the swing.

  Lockman had gone back to staring at the horizon, trying to enjoy the peaceful lull he knew couldn’t last while Creed got Tanner’s file. He blinked and looked at her. “What?”

  “This Dolan guy is going through a lot of trouble to get you. Not just kill you. But get you alive.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t wonder why?”

  “I already told you, I pissed him off.”

  “It must have been pretty serious. But even if this is all about revenge…” She shook her head. “No. It’s too convoluted. He wants you for something else.”

  “And like I said, I know a lot of national security secrets. He probably thinks he can pump me for info before he tortures me to death.”

  She pursed her lips, seemed to think about that. “Seems more specific than that.”

  “What does? Did you talk to him or something?”

  “Vampires in LA. A shape shifter in Vegas. A ghost here. Any one of those things could have killed you if they didn’t have to take you alive. You would think he would have given up by now.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It might make it easier to figure out how to stop him if you know what he wants.”

  He appreciated her input, but she was looking for logic behind a madman’s actions. And not just any madman, but one with access to a lot of supernatural muscle. He leaned back in the wicker chair. “No. He’s doing this because of what I did to him.”

  “Fine. What did you do?”

  “Nothing I’m proud of.”

  “Seriously. He’s a terrorist. What could you have done to him that would make you feel guilty?”

  “I never said I felt guilty.”

  “Whatever. Same diff.”

  “Please stop trying to psychoanalyze me.”

  “Oh, trust me. I won’t even go there. You obviously have serious daddy issues. No thanks.”

  “Daddy issues?”

  “Yeah. Like your relationship with your father must have sucked. Kind of like mine.”

  “Your father didn’t even know you existed until less than two days ago.”

  “Tell it to the judge.”

  Lockman rubbed his temples. “I don’t remember my father.”

  Her brow creased. The sarcastic edge to her voice dulled. “Did he leave when you were young?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember my mother either. I don’t remember much of anything about my childhood.”

  “That’s weird.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it. My earliest clear memory was joining the marines when I turned eighteen. I remember feeling like I was running away from something. I don’t remember what.”

  “God, I remember when I learned to tie my shoes.”

  “That’s because it wasn’t that long ago.”

  “Thanks. Jerk.”

  Lockman smiled. “I figure there’s a good reason I can’t remember. I’m probably better off.”

  “That’s a big part of your life to lose.”

  “I can’t complain if I don’t know what it is I lost.”

  Jessie looked down at her glass of lemonade, still as full as when Creed poured it for her. “You think this Tanner person will know where Mom is?”

  Lockman wanted to say “no way,” but he knew she had been listening to her and Creed hash it out. “I can’t be certain about anything anymore.”

  “At least you were certain about some things. I don’t even know what that’s like.”

  “Yes you do.”

  She flashed him that lip-curled look of total skepticism. Lockman didn’t mind. He had missed her attitude. He didn’t like the somber, disconnected Jessie, even if he did have to take a few jabs.

  “What about Ryan?” he asked.

  She winced.

  Lockman cringed inside. He shouldn’t have brought the kid up.

  Jessie recovered, nodded. “You’re right. I loved him. I know I did.”

  “And he loved you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that’s better than most people have.”

  “Do you still love Mom?”

  The question took Lockman off guard. While he fumbled for an answer, he hemmed and hawed like an amnesiac who had been asked his name.

  Jessie laughed. “That’s a yes.”

  “I don’t even know her anymore.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You aren’t over her. You still pine.”

  “Pine?”

  “Like only a true lover could.”

  Lockman rolled his eyes. “You’re full of it.”

  Jessie stood and walked over to sit in the wicker chair Creed had left. She set aside her glass and leaned her elbows on her knees like a conspirator laying out a plan.

  “Why won’t you tell me what you did to make Dolan hate you so much?”

  “I thought you wanted to make movies when you grew up, not be a shrink.”

  “I already make movies. I don’t have to wait until I ‘grow up.’”

  “Fine. Stick to what you know then and leave my personal life out of it.”

 
“You’re my dad. I want to know you.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Yes I do.”

  Did he want her to know him, though? Hadn’t he made the decision to stay emotionally detached? But at every turn he had let his emotions undermine the larger danger. Whatever Dolan wanted, it couldn’t be good. If Jessie was right, and there was some specific piece of intel he wanted, it could only mean terrible things for the nation’s security. Which made it all the more important he keep out of Dolan’s clutches. Which also meant he should consider walking away. Disappear again, this time on his own, so no one could trace him.

  “I get it,” he said. “But you’re making a mistake. Getting to know me isn’t going to fix you.”

  “Okay, that’s lame. I don’t need fixing.”

  “Why come all that way, Jess? Why go through all the trouble to find me?”

  “I was just curious.”

  “You’re unhappy with your mom and your stepdad. So you thought finding your biological father would change something. But it won’t.”

  “That’s a shitload of assuming you’re doing there.”

  “Forget it. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She pushed out of her chair and stalked down the porch steps.

  “Where are you going?”

  “For a walk.”

  Lockman stood. He should let her go. She would cool off, come back. If he’d hurt her feelings, it was for the best. Neither of them could get emotionally attached.

  “Jessie, wait.”

  She rounded the porch and started toward the front of the house.

  Lockman went to the railing. “I killed his brother.”

  She stopped. “What?”

  “Dolan was using his brother’s basement as a weapons cache. We found out and hit the house. His brother was home and in the heat of the moment I shot him.”

  Jessie looked up at him on the porch, mouth open and silent.

  “We don’t know how involved he was in Dolan’s operation. Maybe complicit just by allowing him to store weapons in his home. But still…”

  “Sounds like an accident.”

  “Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “No. Guess it wouldn’t.”

  He leaned on the porch railing. “Forgive me?”

  “I shouldn’t have been so nosy.”

  “Water under the bridge.”

  The screen door knocked against the jamb behind Lockman. He turned.

  Creed held a sheaf of papers in one hand and a pen in the other. He took in the scene of Lockman on the porch and Jessie around the side. “Everything all right?”

  “It’s cool,” Jessie said. “I was going to check out that turkey while you guys talk strategy.”

  Lockman could tell Creed wasn’t fooled, but the old man played along. “Don’t go feeding him anything. He’s spoiled enough as it is.”

  Jessie waved and strolled off toward the barn. Lockman watched her until she disappeared around a corner of the outbuilding.

  “Thirteen and tough as Kevlar,” Creed said. “Reminds me of you.”

  “Funny,” Lockman said. “She reminds me of Kate.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The young man tasked with killing the ghost’s wife went by the moniker Chaz while among his fellow soldiers in the Movement. His real name, Charles Eaton, he kept to himself. But alone with the woman in the cement-floored room with the cinderblock walls, he didn’t feel like Chaz at all.

  Make it nasty, Mr. Dolan had said. He had even offered the services of their resident priest. Truth was, Charles didn’t believe much in God. He believed in vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. But he had seen those things with his own eyes. He had never seen any evidence of God.

  Right now he wished he had.

  The woman’s blouse had soaked up so much of her sweat, it barely provided much cover. She was an older lady, in her mid fifties, a little younger than his own mother, crying, and handcuffed to an exposed pipe.

  She gazed at Charles with wet eyes and a tortured face. “Please. Don’t hurt me.”

  He hadn’t bothered with his ski mask, as her ID-ing him wouldn’t be an issue after she was dead. He wanted it, though. He didn’t like the idea that his face would be the last she ever saw. Especially knowing that sometimes the dead came back and Mr. Dolan himself planned on raising a whole lot of dead right here in Detroit if all went according to plan. Her ghost could be one of them. She might want to come after Charles for a little postmortem vengeance.

  Didn’t matter. He had a job to do.

  He set the metal toolbox he’d brought with him on the floor by his feet. Flipped it open. Not a usual assortment of tools, though some would look at home in any suburban garage or shed. Hammer. Pliers. Duct tape. Power drill. After that, though, not so much the average tool selection—syringe and pack of needles, rubber tube, brass knuckles, some contraption consisting of a leather strap pierced with evenly spaced nails and a set of stripped wires wrapped between them. That might also explain the car battery that sat beside the toolbox when he had retrieved it.

  These were Mr. Dolan’s tools, and either he had let them get rusty or he never bothered to wash the blood off from previous victims.

  Charles reminded himself that whoever had received the brunt of these tools had deserved it. They had stood in the way of world enlightenment.

  His stomach twitched like a big nervous slug.

  “What are you going to do?” the woman asked.

  “It will be easier if you don’t talk.” Easier for him, anyway.

  “Who are you people? Why are you doing this?”

  She had no idea why she was here. Charles wondered why Mr. Dolan hadn’t shared with her the glory of enlightenment. Wouldn’t she want to know that her husband’s spirit had been brought back? Knowing that, wouldn’t she want to join them?

  But it sounded like she was the only way to destroy the ghost on the loose. She had to be sacrificed, just as many others were sacrificed to harness the great powers.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  Charles hovered his hand over the selection in the toolbox, uncertain which would provide the necessary energy to banish the ghost. He understood the rudimentary physics behind the supernatural. Much of the work behind splitting the barrier between here and another reality involved high levels of emotional distress. Somehow that distress generated the power necessary to create a rift. Not all rifts—very few, in fact—manifested as an actual tear, though. It wasn’t like walking through a door, it was more like pulling—or throwing—something through the surface of a pool.

  In this case, Mr. Dolan must have figured the emotional connection between the husband’s ghost and his living wife would provide the necessary means to send him back where he came from. Charles was curious how the ghost had been summoned in the first place. As far as he knew, mortal spirits didn’t respond well to living mortal command. Raising one ghost was hard enough. And yet, Mr. Dolan planned on raising an army of them. Charles’s rank in the Movement did not qualify him to know the method behind such a feat.

  “You’re hesitating.”

  Charles looked up from the toolbox at the woman. The agony in her expression had softened some. The effect only reinforced her motherly appearance.

  “I’m just trying to work some things out.”

  “How old are you?”

  The hammer. It would work to start. He pulled it out of the box and tested its weight in his hand.

  “You can’t be much older than twenty.”

  He needed to work her up before death. He would have to start small. He could hammer at her knee caps.

  “I have a son not much older than you.”

  “You need to shut up now.”

  “I don’t need to do anything. If you’re going to kill me, I have nothing to lose.”

  He took a step toward her. She sat with her legs tucked under her, her body twisted to the side to accommodate the way her hands were cuffed to the pipe. “Stick your legs out
straight.”

  “I’m sorry honey, but I’m not going to do that.”

  He feinted with the hammer. “Do it.”

  She tucked her chin against her chest and scrunched up her face, anticipating the strike. When it didn’t come, she looked up at him, eyes watery, quivering lips. She did not move her legs for him.

  “Are you nuts, lady?”

  “Do you really expect me to make it easy for you to torture me? You want me to move my legs, move them your damn self.”

  A shrill hysteria wrapped her words like barbed wire, but he still couldn’t believe the way she was talking to him

  “You don’t want to do this,” she said. “Otherwise you would have already started.”

  “Lady, what I want doesn’t make a bit of difference.”

  “God gave everyone free will.”

  Charles lifted the hammer over his shoulder. “The man I work for doesn’t give a damn about God. I’m sorry.”

  He swung the hammer.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Turned out the address Creed had on file for Benjamin Tanner was no longer valid. But the location of his sister’s funeral plot sat within Detroit’s city limits. Lockman and Creed both figured, based on Tanner’s psychological profile, that he wouldn’t move far from where his sister was buried. So Lockman prepped himself for a long surveillance.

  “Can you watch her for me?”

  “You trust me enough?”

  Lockman and Creed stood by the kitchen table, Tanner’s file spread across the surface—photos, maps, and pages of data that included a full psychological profile as well as a family tree and medical records dating back to early childhood.

  Lockman looked over all the papers. “You have a file like this on me.” Not a question, but a way to deflect the conversation Creed seemed to want to have that Lockman did not. Talking about trust did nothing more than rub the shine off of any trust already there.

  “It’s not as extensive. Tanner was one of my first men. And since he did a lot of internal affairs work for me, I had to know more about him than most.”

  “You have my records from when I was a kid?”