The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Max shook his head. He’d tried that earlier today. She wouldn’t let him in or even take down the door chain. She was nervous and asked him to leave, said she couldn’t have any visitors. Max knew there was another person in the apartment. He’d recognized the Jeep with the Confederate flags in the driveway. Michelle kept looking over her shoulder and gesturing to someone he couldn’t see.

  There wasn’t any way he was getting in there with permission. The Aryans knew Max would come back to ask more questions. They could have just killed her, but that would raise more questions than it would answer. They’d established they were smart enough to half-cover the trail. Max hoped they weren’t smart enough to cover it completely.

  “So you think she’s still got the photos from the file?”

  Max nodded.

  “That doesn’t make any sense…why wouldn’t they burn them?”

  “I’m playing a hunch here.”

  “A hunch?”

  “You’re familiar with the books about men being from Mars, women being from like Saturn or something?”

  “I manage a bookstore, Razor.” He gave him an incredulous look. “Yes, I’m familiar with them. How does that apply to this situation?”

  “Well some of that stuff is true, when men say something it means one thing to them but something different to a woman. And vice versa. I’m playing a hunch on Michelle being a woman.”

  “Wow, some hunch. You’re like Columbo, or Brainy Smurf—”

  “I’m hunching that when Skyler told her to get rid of the photographs from the file, he meant for her to burn them or put them in a shredder.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Right, but I’m guessing Skyler didn’t specify how he wanted her to get rid of the photographs, so she just grabbed them up and put them in her bag. And then she’d be done with that.” Max threw up his hands. “I’m doubting these vampires expected they needed to specifically tell her to burn the pictures.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Because it’s harder to charm someone into doing something they wouldn’t normally do. Michelle is a State Child Protective Services worker. Destroying evidence in a case is not something she’d be comfortable doing. But bringing the photos home…well, she can justify it subconsciously that she’ll put them back eventually.”

  Frank thought about it for a few seconds. “All right, that makes sense. But why wouldn’t the vampires just ask her to hand the photos over to them so they could torch them?”

  “That’s my hunch,” Max explained, looking at Frank. “They assumed when they told her to get rid of the photos, she would burn them. Instead, she stuffed them in her bag and tossed it by the door. She assumed she’d fulfilled the vampire’s wishes, and the vampires assumed she’d done what they wanted.”

  “That’s…that’s circumlocution.” Frank shook his head. “If those pictures are in there, it means your whole case is saved by the unpredictable stupidity of the people you’re investigating. It’s like deus ex machina, except instead of Zeus or Athena, its morons…idiota ex machina.”

  “I think you’re making this far more complicated than it needs to be.”

  “I’m making this more complicated?” Frank laughed. “You’re the one leaping to massive assumptions about the actions and intentions of people you don’t even know.”

  “Well, that’s the best we’ve got. I mean, the worst that can happen is I go in there and the photos are gone, or I can’t find them.”

  “Or the vampire comes home and finds you in his sex toy’s house.”

  “Yeah. That’s a possibility.” Max looked at a reflection in the side mirror. He saw a familiar car parked at the corner. Frank hadn’t noticed it, and Max hadn’t pointed it out. “There’s a plan B…”

  “Plan B? You want to clue me in on plan B?”

  “I don’t think you want to know.”

  “Jesus, Razor…why do I do this for you! I just…I hate you so much!”

  “No you don’t.”

  Frank tapped the wheel then pushed up his glasses. “Hey, when you showed me the file, there were two workers. Where’s the first one?”

  “Janice?” Max shrugged. “I don’t know. Dead, probably.”

  “It doesn’t make sense; why would the vampires kill Janice but not Michelle?”

  “It would if you’d seen Janice and Michelle.” Max leaned back and zipped up his jacket. “Janice is older anyway, probably harder to control and the vamps were dumb enough to figure if she vanished the problem would go away. They didn’t anticipate the case just getting handed off to another worker.”

  “Wouldn’t someone investigate Janice going missing?”

  “You’d assume so. Who knows where that went? But she was a divorced woman with no children, living alone. She’s only been gone about two weeks so more than likely no one has missed her enough to call the police, depending on whether she has local family or not.”

  “Damn…” Frank shook his head. “Do you think we should tell James?”

  “Tell him what?”

  Frank nodded and let out a short breath. “Yeah, good point.”

  “Anyway, it is possible that the skinheads have her out at their little compound in the woods, and when we finally get probable cause to go in there with the police we’ll find her.”

  “We? You make it sound like you’re going to march in there with the SWAT team.” He laughed.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Max replied as he put on a pair of leather gloves. “Joplin PD doesn’t have a SWAT team.”

  Frank chuckled. “You want me to circle the block?”

  “Just stay put.” Max pulled up his hood. “I’ll come out fast and want to move. I don’t know how long they’re going to be out.”

  “You want me to text you if they get back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if the cops show up?”

  “If the cops show up, leave me,” Max said as he got out of the car. “I’ll deal with it.”

  Before Frank could voice a protest, Max shut the door and trotted off into the cold night.

  Women who lived alone tended to be a bit more paranoid about security than other people—with good cause. Max didn’t expect getting into Michelle’s apartment to be easy. The first thing he tried was the front door on the off chance that she’d just left it unlocked. It was a long shot, and it didn’t pay off. The back door was a sliding screen, also locked with a broomstick in the slide to prevent forced entry. He could have broken it, but that would have been loud.

  Michelle hadn’t picked a terrible part of Joplin in which to live, east of Main, south of 20th, but it wasn’t a particularly well-lit area either. Sadie and her grandmother didn’t live far from here, so he was familiar with the area.

  He got lucky with a bathroom window. The screen was easy enough to remove and the wood framed pane was old and easy to move. Unfortunately, being a bathroom window, it was far off the ground and tiny. He was able to get up to it by standing on the air conditioner box, but getting through was another matter.

  Max was thin, but not thin enough to make this easy. He knocked things over. The window was directly above the toilet, and Michelle had a flimsy, tube-framed toilet stand stacked with towels and little girly shower knick-knacks. Max wound up knocking the whole damn thing over and breaking a couple of candles. He made such a racket that if anyone in the house had been asleep, he’d surely have awoken them.

  After bashing his elbow on the side of the sink and almost breaking his neck on the way to the floor, Max stood up with no amount of grace. He rubbed his elbow and cursed under his breath. Feeling started to return to his forearm as he searched the floor for anything valuable he might have broken. He didn’t want to destroy anything important. He wasn’t trying to punish her. It wasn’t Michelle’s fault she was hooked on meth and vampire sex.

  Satisfied that everything was in order, though he didn’t try to repair the towel rack, Max threw back his hood and walked out of the bathroom. He steadie
d his breathing as he examined the dim apartment, almost tripping over a pile of dirty clothes before finding a light switch. Max felt like a jackass… he hadn’t brought a flashlight. It was probably the most essential burglary tool and he’d left it at home, like a monkey. Hopefully the living-room light being on would attract less attention than a flashlight beam zipping around the house in the dark. That was how Max justified his criminal incompetence anyway.

  The lights revealed a den much the same as it had been the day before, though a few things had been moved. The brown leather bag was missing. That sent a quick jolt through Max’s gut. He scanned the room. He’d expected this to be a quick in and out, since he didn’t know how long Michelle and her Hitler Youth boyfriend were going to be gone.

  Max scrambled around the apartment, tossing dirty clothes and old issues of Cosmo and Vogue around as he searched the floor. Doubt burrowed to the front of his brain. He wasn’t sure what would be worse, not finding the evidence, or having to admit he was wrong about his hunch to Frank.

  He was just about to sort through that dilemma when he caught a glimpse of the bag in the corner of the bedroom. Max was almost past the door when he saw it, and had to step back and take another look to be sure. He was on it in an instant, tearing through the bag like a wild dog.

  Michelle was still taking college classes in pursuit of a MSW. At least, she had been doing that before she discovered vampire cock and crystal meth. Max shuffled around the notebooks and pencils, and even found a little can of pepper spray. Too bad she didn’t have it with her now. He finally got fed up with digging and just dumped everything on the floor.

  His heart almost leapt from his chest when he saw a little yellow and white envelope of photos. Max snatched it up and flipped through the pictures. The first was a picture of a little blonde-haired girl standing in front of the Winnans’ trailer. Max couldn’t make out the details of her face because her head was turned, but the next photo showed the girl close up, with the same hair and little yellow and white dress. The way her eyes met the camera hit Max like a bucket of ice water.

  Something inside him creaked like an old door. Max slammed it shut and moved to the next photo. It was of the child’s bedroom, which Max guessed adjoined the den of the humble trailer home at the end of the hallway, just after the front door. Max remembered the expense report sheet indicating ten photos, and he was in possession of only seven. Now he had them all. This was exactly what he wanted, and he was going to text Frank and tell him he could suck it…

  His phone wasn’t in his pocket. It must have fallen out. If he’d dropped it while searching the dirty living room floor, he’d never find it and would be totally fucked… though he could concoct some crazy story about leaving it there on his first visit. Michelle was so doped up she might just buy it. The bathroom wasn’t too much of a mess, so if he’d dropped it upon entry to the apartment, a far more likely scenario, he’d probably find it right away.

  And he did. It was right next to the toilet. Max snatched it up and turned to leave the room, but glanced at the screen. It was bright with a little envelope showing he had a text. He must not have heard it when it came in because, being a burglar tonight, he had it set to vibrate only. He hit the button to read the message just as he passed the bedroom door.

  It was from Frank: THEY’RE BACK!

  Only an English major would have made sure to text in the apostrophe even—or especially—when his best friend was in mortal danger.

  He’d laugh about that later. The text was fifteen seconds old. A jolt up his spine made him shiver at the clatter of keys at the front door. Max dove into the bedroom just as the door opened, stuffing his phone and the photographs into his jacket.

  This was stupid, stupid, stupid…why was he hiding? The minute the vampire sniffed the apartment, he’d know someone was there. He was going to get found, so jumping into the closet was just delaying the inevitable. It still felt like the right thing to do.

  Skyler and Michelle were loud, with most of the noise coming from Michelle. She chattered on about people giving her dirty looks at the store, and made the point that it was people just being obnoxious. It was apparently lost on her that she looked a mess, and that her boyfriend was a tattooed race-hating machine with a shaved head.

  He didn’t remember her being this dumb.

  For his part, the vampire laughed and made a couple of comments about it under his breath. Max couldn’t quite make them out until he got closer to the bedroom door. When Skyler stopped talking, Max felt ice run through his veins.

  “What is it?”

  Skyler hushed her. Max placed them right at the bedroom door, and could almost feel Skyler’s eyes burning a hole through the bi-folding closet door.

  The vampire would have gotten right up to the door without Max knowing about it, if it hadn’t been for Michelle walking right behind him. Vampires move very quietly by instinct. Meth addicts, on the other hand…don’t.

  “What are you doing? What are you looking at?”

  “Woman, shut yer mouth!”

  Skyler opened the door, and got a face full of pepper spray. Vampires had acute senses, so the pepper spray messed with Skyler a lot. His wails were outmatched only by his girl toy, who started screaming her head off as soon as Max blasted her boyfriend. Skyler grabbed his face and twisted away, but managed to shout a command to his thrall.

  “Get him!”

  Michelle threw her little body into Max and knocked him off balance. He tripped and twisted into a wall, almost head-planting right through it before catching himself. He managed to get a look at Skyler for a second. The oddly dark complexioned skinhead’s eyes were like balls of fire and his nose was bleeding. His lips parted and long, sharp fangs dropped from his gums like ice picks. Yes, the pepper spray hurt, but vampires heal fast, too.

  This might have worked if he’d sprayed Michelle as well. Too late now, he’d dropped the can when she tripped him. Max didn’t have time to find another weapon before Skyler was on him.

  The vampire’s knuckles were like getting hit in the face with a bat. It didn’t hurt, yet, but it did knock him to the floor fast. The impact of his chest on the hardwood took all the air out of his lungs. Max groaned and felt blood filling his mouth from a split lip. Skyler lifted Max by the back of his neck and threw him into a wall.

  He didn’t know how, but he managed to get to his feet after smashing a hole in the cheap drywall. Michelle continued to scream until Skyler told her to shut up. Actually, he said something like, “Shut your mouth, bitch!” Max thought that was entirely unnecessary. Were he capable of speech, he might have chastised him.

  “Max?” Michelle said his name in opposition to her master’s will.

  “This is Max?” Skyler took a break from beating on him to confer. “What’s he doing in your closet?”

  “We didn’t want you to find out this way,” Max said with a weak voice. Skyler’s red eyes widened. “Michelle and I… well, we never meant for this to happen, but the heart wants what the heart wants…”

  Skyler was just dumb or jealous enough to take the bait. Max pulled a folding knife out of his pocket while Skyler was distracted. When the skinhead charged, Max jammed the blade into his gut. It barely slowed him. He backhanded Max across the temple. In a flash of light and pain, he flopped to the ground.

  Skyler roared when he looked at the big red knife wound on his belly.

  Max was paralyzed. Maybe he was dead? No, he’d been dead before. It didn’t feel anything like this. Being dead didn’t hurt. This hurt a lot. His knife was inches away, taunting him to reach out and take it, like it knew he couldn’t move. When he managed to lift his head, the room spun like he was drunk.

  Skyler kicked him in the side, causing Max to slide into the couch. Max wondered how he’d gotten into the living room. He looked up at the wall and saw the crack he’d left, a big Max-shaped indention in the drywall between two studs. Skyler had thrown him completely out of the bedroom into the living room wall. It h
adn’t felt like it was that far, but Max was sure he’d feel it later. He wondered if he might have some broken ribs.

  The front door burst open and two men ran in. Max recognized them as Kearny and Tritter. The former charged across the room but was graceful enough to avoid tripping on any of Michelle’s mess. Skyler took in the new arrivals with a loud “What now?” before meeting Kearny in the middle of the room in glorious melee.

  Tritter ran to Max and helped him up. It almost made him feel bad for shooting him in the head earlier.

  “Son of a bitch,” Max muttered as Tritter half carried him to a stool. Right behind him was Frank with a tire iron. The sight of him got Max grinning, which apparently looked awful because Frank winced. Max felt a warm, wet trickle on his chin. Looking down at his shirt, he saw it was blood from his mouth.

  After Tritter had Max on the stool, he ran in to help his friend. Kearny didn’t need any help. He was soundly beating the shit out of Skyler all on his own. Max wished the room would stop spinning enough for him to watch. All he saw was a big bald blur getting smacked around by a bigger brown blur. When Tritter got involved, that made three blurs.

  And then there was the screaming. Kearny turned from beating Skyler’s bloody face and took mental control of her with a single word,

  “Stop!”

  It was like he’d yanked her plug from a socket.

  Vampire pugilism tends to last longer than necessary, since the vamps healed so fast. Kearny was vastly stronger than Skyler, but not strong enough to finish him off with his bare hands. That didn’t stop him from trying. He held the Aryan vamp by his collar and pummeled his face into raw meat with one blow after another. Tritter just got out of the way until Kearny finally dropped the bloodied, trembling body to the floor.

  Max almost fell from the stool, but Frank caught him.

  “Sadie’s going to kill you.”

  “If she gets a chance,” Max moaned through bloodied lips.

  Kearny and Tritter debated what to do next. Apparently they’d only been ordered to keep Max alive, so they were unclear on whether that required killing his attacker.