The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “I’m calling the police.” Frank started hitting numbers.

  “Hey!” Ollie shook his hands. “We ain’t doing nothing!”

  “We’re not trying to start a fight,” whined Leroy.

  Frank looked at Max. He nodded for him to stop dialing. Frank nodded back and stopped.

  The leader turned his canine eyes back to Max and pushed up his shades. “We were just walking by and saw your car. Don’t see many of them around here. We were just curious about it, that’s all.”

  “Curious about mileage, and what not?” Max had the gun in his hand. The vampire skinhead’s lip curled a little, showing Max he could smell gunmetal mixing with palm sweat.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Who are you?”

  “I’m Max. Who are you?”

  “Boone.”

  “You mean like…Pat?”

  He grinned. “More like Daniel.”

  “Gotcha.” Max nodded.

  Boone stepped away. He saw Ollie was leaning against the car and slapped him on the shoulder. “Ollie, you fat ass, get off the man’s car.”

  Max and Frank looked at each other and exchanged nervous grins.

  Boone looked back at Max as they walked away. He held up his hands. “Don’t be a stranger. Come on by some time and say hello!”

  “Yeah, sure. Which trailer is yours?” Max looked past the trio at the Confederate flags in the window.

  Boone laughed and turned around. Ollie and Leroy watched as Frank and Max got back in the car. Boone didn’t turn to look at them until he was past the fence. By that point Max already had his car going and was backing out of the driveway.

  “Why’d he think we were cops?” Frank whispered. He knew the vampire might be able to hear them, even being in the car. Max waited until they were outside the park to answer.

  “He smelled my gun.” He panted and let his heart slow. He knew the vamp could hear that too. He’d had to have known they were scared, but their stubborn refusal to show any outward signs of fear had earned some measure of respect.

  “You’ve got a piece?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got the three-eighty in my bag.” Max gestured to the black bag in the back seat.

  “Dammit, Max.”

  “What? You wanted one, too? Remind me next time, I have a forty-five in the trunk—”

  “No, you dick! You know I don’t like it when you carry guns around me.”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  Frank slapped himself on the head. “Max! What would you have done if they’d drawn a knife or a gun? Would you have shot them?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank looked at him for a second before nodding. “All right. I guess I’m okay with that.”

  “Oh, well thank you.” Max laughed. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

  “Are you even allowed to carry a gun?”

  “I have a concealed carry permit—”

  “I mean for your job. Does the State allow social workers to pack heat?”

  Max turned a corner. “In what sense do you mean allow?”

  “Have been given permission to, and will not get in trouble if.”

  “In that sense, no. I’m not—” Max made quote marks with his fingers “—‘allowed to carry a firearm.’ I can always get another job. I can’t get another life.”

  “Would you be able to live with it?” Frank asked at length, “If you had to shoot one of them?”

  “Easily.”

  Chapter Seven

  Frank had enough playing social worker for the day. Max dropped him off at his car at the mall and went inside to see if Sadie was ready for lunch. She was, so they went to the food court.

  “What were you and Frank doing?” she asked as she munched on a gyro.

  “Almost getting our asses kicked by white supremacists.”

  “Very nice. You take your friends to such interesting places.”

  Max shrugged and took a sip of tea. “One of them was a veepee.”

  She stopped munching.

  “What?” He didn’t like the look on her face. “Sadie—”

  “You promised.”

  “Promised what?”

  “Promised you wouldn’t get involved in this stuff anymore!” she said it a little louder than she needed. Noticing people were looking; she leaned forward and continued the conversation in a whisper, “You promised you wouldn’t get tangled up with more of them.”

  “No, no I didn’t—” She tried to interrupt him, but he kept going. “I promised I wouldn’t go looking for trouble. This came to me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “This came to me!”

  They sat in relative silence for a few moments. The mall was very busy for a Monday afternoon. She wasn’t looking at him anymore.

  “It’s about a kid.”

  “It’s always about a kid, Max. You work for Children’s Services. Everything you do is for kids. You can’t use kids as an excuse for getting yourself in these situations where you have to be rescued by dragons.”

  Max grinned. Never before in the history of human languages had that sentence ever been spoken, he thought.

  “Look, honey.” He leaned forward. “I’m not going to be rescuing anyone or getting into any fights. I’m just looking into something. If I don’t do it, they’ll send someone else… someone who can’t handle something like this.”

  “You can’t handle something like this!” She rubbed the side of her head. He stared at her until she looked away. “You don’t have to rescue every kid in the world, Maxwell.”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed. “This isn’t about a kid. This is about her.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s about a kid.”

  “You just use the kids as an excuse. If you didn’t have the kids, you’d find something else.” She ignored Max’s chuckle. “If you worked for Senior Services, you’d find some old person being fed on by a vam…veepee to rescue.”

  “Would you rather I work for Senior Services?” Max’s eyes widened. Wait…that’s it!

  Sadie tilted her head to the side. “What? What’s that look?”

  Max’s cell phone went off. It played the opening chords to Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt. It was Laura, a cottage supervisor from the New Leaf Ranch. One of the girls he was working a hotline on was there, and she was the reason for Laura’s call. Max needed to go see her.

  Max jumped up from the chair and kissed her cheek. “I have to go.” She crooked her eyebrow and looked up at him. He put his hand on the back of her neck. “Sadie, I’m going to be fine. Just…I have to go.” He kissed her again and left.

  “I love you, too.” he heard her mutter when she must have thought he couldn’t hear.

  Going to the Ranch put the rest of his plans on hold. Driving across town to the Hagshead trailer park and interviewing Janet Winnans took most of the morning. It was just after one now, and if he wanted to squeeze all of this in before four thirty, he’d have to hurry. He decided to put his plan to talk with Mrs. Soptik off until tomorrow.

  “I’m sorry to bug you with this.” Laura met him at the cottage door. She was a short woman with light brown hair. Her husband was one of the local police officers, though Max had never met him. “She just flipped out when they told her she couldn’t see him.”

  Max groaned and walked past Laura. She shut the outside door behind him and activated the magnetic lock by flipping a switch in the office as they passed. Another worker was in there, a tall man with short dark hair and the red uniform polo. Laura stopped past the office and backed up.

  “What are you doing, Mitch?” she asked. Max stopped ahead of her and listened. Before the employee could answer, Laura asked, “Who’s watching the other two kids?”

  “I thought you were.”

  She turned her head to Max and closed her eyes. Max grinned when she shook her head.

  “You want me to?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.” She gave him an overenthusiastic nod, tossing short brown c
urls around her face as she did. Max heard the chair creak, and a pair of feet hit the floor in the office. She ushered him forth.

  “Still only hiring the best and the brightest, I see.”

  Laura rolled her eyes. “I laugh to keep from crying. It’s really only funny if you’re not me.” She sighed as Max chuckled. “I think they just hire anyone who applies as long as they aren’t a sex offender.”

  “Well, at least they check for that.”

  The cool-off room was at the end of the hall. Above the door ran a stairway with brown-carpeted steps. The upper floor of the cottage was where the girls slept. The boys had rooms downstairs. This was known as the transition cottage. The kids here went to the Joplin public school, and had more privileges than children at the other cottages. This was usually their last stop before going home or getting aged-out of the system. Max couldn’t do much of anything for them after that. He couldn’t really do much for them, period.

  “Why isn’t she in school?”

  “She got suspended Friday for sneaking out. We called your office, but-”

  “Yeah, I’ve been out. The other two?”

  “One is suspended, the other sick.” She yawned out the last part of that sentence.

  “Still on overnights?”

  “It’s the hardest shift to fill.”

  “I remember.”

  Outside the cool-off room stood a big guy with no hair. He reminded Max unpleasantly of the skinheads he’d faced earlier. This guy didn’t look to be an Aryan though, just a guy with no hair. He stepped away from the door as Laura and Max approached. Max glanced at the tag hanging from the New Leaf Ranch lanyard around his neck, Glenn. His polo shirt was wrinkled; standing close, Max smelled perspiration.

  Eileen huddled in the corner when Max found her. The cool-off room had padded walls but a regular floor with shallow brown carpet. Eileen’s heels were red and a little bloody, and her face was flush with tears. When she saw Max, she closed her eyes and squeezed her chest.

  “What do you want?”

  “What are you doing in here?” Max had left his briefcase in the car. All he had with him was his cell phone, which he slipped into his pocket before entering the room.

  “Just sitting.”

  Max looked over at Laura. She nodded and left, taking Glenn and closing the padded door behind her. It stifled the sounds from the rest of the house. Only the occasional thump or laugh pierced the room. After a few seconds of pensive silence from Eileen, he heard Laura’s voice loudly commanding a cease to the ruckus. The children obeyed.

  Max leaned against the wall. “You know why you can’t see him, right?”

  “I know why you don’t want me to see him.”

  “Eileen?”

  She gasped and dropped her arms to her side. She had on a loose fitting shirt, so he couldn’t tell if she was starting to show, probably too early. “I know you don’t want to be living here when your baby comes.”

  “That’s months away.” She looked down. Long strands of dyed black hair obscured her face. She sniffled a bit and adjusted against the wall. “You’re just gonna take her anyway.”

  Eileen had decided she was having a girl. They actually didn’t know yet. The ultrasound was next week.

  “I never said that.”

  “You know you will.”

  “What’s this ‘you’ shit?” Max slid down the wall and sat next to her. “It’s the judge who takes babies away, not me.”

  “Yeah, but you tell them to.”

  “Pfft! Judges don’t listen to me! They’re lawyers…lawyers think they know everything. Judges even more so.” Max saw a little grin under a curtain of hair.

  “My judge was an asshole.”

  “Judge Shelby? He’s not an asshole. He’s just tough. You know he yelled at me once? Right there in open court… just flew off the handle and started chewing me out. I almost cried.”

  “No you didn’t!” She giggled.

  Max smiled. “No, I didn’t. But I did seriously ponder a career change.”

  “What else would you do?”

  Max was quiet. He didn’t know if there was anything else he could do if he wasn’t doing this. He looked over at Eileen and patted her knee. She was wearing shorts, odd for the weather, but she might have stayed inside all day. Her knee was scratched up from the carpet, though not as badly as her heels. With her head down, Max could see the back of her shirt was wrinkled and the elastic collar was stretched. Max felt heat well in his chest.

  “So why do you like him?” That brought him back to her.

  “Because I’m such an arrogant bastard that anyone who can make me question my self-worth immediately earns my respect.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know.” He rested his arms on his knees and leaned his head against the wall. “I’m not going to take your baby, Eileen.”

  She was quiet for a while.

  “Have you been getting enough sleep?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t sleep good.”

  Max nodded. “Me neither. You have bad dreams?”

  She shook her head. “No. Just got used to being a light sleeper.”

  That made sense. She was quiet for a little while. Outside he heard talking. Max couldn’t make out the words, but he could tell it was Laura upbraiding her subordinates.

  She broke the silence, “What if I don’t want her?”

  “You want to give her up for adoption?”

  “No.” She lifted her head. Max saw a red line over her throat. The heat lifted in his chest again. She appeared to notice and pulled up the collar of her shirt.

  Max forced a smile. “You don’t want to have her?” She looked down. “Well, that’s an option too…if it’s what you want.”

  She shrugged.

  “Have you talked this over with your mother?”

  “She won’t talk to me.”

  “She still mad at you?”

  “I told her I was lying.” She shrugged.

  “You weren’t lying.” He tilted his head towards her and looked her in the eye. She didn’t tolerate that for long.

  “So?” Her cheeks turned red.

  Max exhaled through pursed lips, almost whistling. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

  “You’re the only one who doesn’t.”

  “What are other people telling you to do?” Max lowered his eyes. “What is he telling you to do?” She didn’t answer. “The abortion is his idea?” Again no answer, except this time she looked away. Max tapped his teeth together and took a breath. “If you choose to do that, it has to be because it’s what you want. You have to make decisions based on what is best for you.”

  “I know,” her voice was small and quiet. She rubbed her heels and hissed. The numbing adrenalin from her rage was ebbing. Those burns were starting to hurt. When she rubbed her throat, Max felt like slamming the back of his head into the wall.

  “Will you promise not to freak out again?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to lie to you.”

  Max laughed. She smiled and laughed with him.

  Laura and the two juvenile workers were gathered in the den. The other two kids were in their rooms. Mitch sat on one of the couches. Laura leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. Glenn stood a few feet from a table with his hands in his pockets, rocking gently. He’d smoothed out his shirt a little.

  Max met eyes with Glenn first. He didn’t look away. Max kept his eyes on him but turned his face to Laura. “She got suspended for leaving school?”

  “Yes. To see him.”

  He turned his eyes from Glenn to her. “You know that’s where she went?”

  “One of the teachers said her clothes smelled like tar.”

  Max looked down. Eileen’s stepfather worked at a local roofing tile factory. If he left work to meet her for a quick romp in the park, he’d have gotten
the smell of roofing tar all over her. It was so unbelievably obvious. Max puffed up his cheeks and exhaled.

  Mitch spoke up, “I picked her up from school. The principal called, and I got her in my car.”

  “Did you fill out the incident report?” asked Max.

  “Uh…” He cast a nervous glance towards Laura. “I filled out a mileage report….”

  “I don’t give a damn about that.”

  “I filed the report when he got back,” said Glenn.

  “I faxed it all to your office before I called you,” added Laura.

  “Thank you.” Max crossed his arms and took a moment before moving on to the next bit of business. “Who dragged her across the floor?” Laura raised her hand. When Max looked her way, she turned her finger to Glenn.

  Glenn crossed his arms over his chest and stuck out his chin.

  “I didn’t drag her—”

  “Dude, I saw you drag her,” said Mitch. Glenn shot him an angry look. He shook his head. “The other two kids saw you drag her! They know.”

  Max stepped closer to Glenn, turning, he put his hands on his hips. “All right, I didn’t mean to, but it was the only way to get her into the cool-off room.” He gestured with his hand a little closer to Max’s face than he would have liked, but Max didn’t flinch. “As soon as I got her arm she flopped to the ground.”

  “Why didn’t you leave her there?” Max snorted and got closer to him. He wasn’t as big as Glenn, but he was taller. Glenn had to lift his head a bit to look Max in the face.

  “Cause’ I told her to go to the cool-off room.”

  “Why?”

  “She was having a fit, dude. As soon as she got to the cottage she was all….” He waved his hands around his head. “I told her if she didn’t chill out, I was gonna put her in the cool-off room.”

  “And she didn’t chill out, I guess?”

  “No, she just started screaming. So I told her to go—”

  “You told her to go—”

  “And she stomped her feet….” He demonstrated by stomping his feet in slow motion…as though Max needed a visual aid. “And said ‘f-you, fat mother f-er! I’m not going anywhere!’”

  “And then you—”

  “She started yelling about how I was fat and stupid and retarded, and—”