Shadow Dancer (The Shadow Series Book 1)

by Kline, Addison

  “Uncle Frank’s truck is gone. I bet you they went to get help,” Liam suggested.

  Jack gave Liam an agitated glare, “Frank would never leave if Tristan is in danger. He is here somewhere. If anyone took the truck, it was Bridgette and the younger boys. We need to look for Frank.”

  DiNolfo waved for Adam and Liam to follow her. She couldn’t just hope they were all safe. She needed to make sure that no one else was hurt. She had to gather as much information as she could about what happened. She had no phone in which to call for back up. No radio either; she had left the cruiser at the station. She would have to make do until help arrived.

  Upon performing a thorough search of the grounds, she found Frank and Bridgette being tended to by Angus as Moira sat by their feet. Bridgette was beginning to come to, but Frank’s condition appeared to be more serious. While the bleeding from the entry wound appeared to be under control, he was still knocked unconscious from his close encounter with Kendricks’ rifle. When he was in the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, he started to come to, shaking off the nasty headache associated with violent blunt force trauma. He looked over at his wife who was sitting by his head and said, “Please tell me she’s alright… Please tell me everyone is alright…”

  Bridgette leaned down and stroked Frank’s bald head. “She will be just fine. Everyone will. It’s over. Jack ended it.”

  Frank’s facial expression went from grim to shocked and amused. “Wait. What?”

  Bridgette smirked at her husband. “I’ll explain it later.”

  Frank breathed a sigh of relief as he closed his eyes and allowed Bridgette’s gentle touch to soothe his weary mind.

  DiNolfo had finally finished searching the grounds, accompanied by Adam and Liam who had assisted her. With a smirk on her face, she turned to them, “You two would have a hell of a future in law enforcement.”

  Looking surprised, Liam replied, “Who? Us? We were just trying to help out.” Adam looked amused at the idea.

  “No. Not just that. You have excellent instincts. You knew to keep an eye on that fishing shack. You knew to stay out of view and monitor the forest at night. You knew that bear trap was there, and saved my leg from being chopped off. Cool under pressure, you two. You should consider taking the test for the academy in Danville. It just so happens that we have a couple of positions that just opened up.” Adam and Liam smirked at each other.

  “We’ll consider it” Adam said, grinning at his younger brother, “It might be fun.”

  DiNolfo laughed. “Oh, you have no idea!”

  * * *

  “Tristan, I know you’re shaken but I need to learn as much as possible about what happened when you were taken so that I can document this case file,” said DiNolfo, a sensitive and understanding tone in her voice.

  Tristan, who was still clasped to her father’s side, nodded her head in agreement.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Please start at the beginning.”

  Tristan let out a sigh as she released herself from her father’s embrace. She sat on the floor, just a few feet from Kendricks’ sheet-covered body. Jack and DiNolfo waited patiently with hushed anticipation, as she prepared to tell them everything they needed to know about her disappearance and the dead man on the floor.

  “The night he took me, it was October the eighth, I believe. I woke up around three A.M. The storm woke me up. That is when I noticed that my bedroom window was open. I got up to close it, and noticed him standing behind me in the reflection. When I didn’t move, he approached me. He looked insane. I will, for as long as I live, never forget that face. I tried screaming, but no sound would come out. He forced me out the window where I fell to the ground two stories below. That’s how I hurt my leg. He followed but landed much softer than me. I tried to run but my leg was causing me too much pain.

  “From there we got into this old gold car. This inside smelled; it was a strange smell, something like gasoline mixed with rotting food combined with the scent of his air freshener. He needed at least fifty of those air fresheners. It reeked of something dead.

  “We didn’t go far. It was dark but I had a good idea of where I was. See, the road never changed from dirt to gravel. Once you get used to the roads up here, you can usually tell what path you’re going with your eyes shut. Dirt, then gravel, then black top means you’re going into town. Plain old dirt with swerves and drops in the road means you’re going deeper into Cavegat. We were in the deep forest, right by Dad’s ice fishing shack. He snapped the door open, shoved me inside, and locked it. During the night, I heard him outside talking to himself. He seemed to be talking about his plan. Honestly, I just thought he was talking to himself. He did a lot of that. I didn’t realize where I was until I started feeling around inside the fishing hut. My leg kept getting caught on something in the floor. Something round. I later figured that that must have been the cut-out where Dad would fish from. I started banging, hard, on the door, yelling as loud as I could hoping that someone, anyone would hear me. It didn’t last long though because he soon pressed his rifle in on my face. He kept me in there for the next day. There was no food, no drink. He sat there, staring at me. He only left me alone for about an hour, when he said he had to take care of something. I later got out of him that he planned to kill everyone so that they could no longer ‘interfere’ with ‘our’ lives. He planned to kill every single one of my family members. It seemed like someone caught him on the property though because he came running back in a hurry. I thought I heard Adam and Liam’s voices. From then on, he kept the door locked from the inside. When the dogs and the voices came near, he forced me to lay on the floor under a blanket. When I tried to kick out of the blanket, he stapled it to the fishing hut floor, so that I couldn’t move.”

  “Did he touch you?” DiNolfo asked, afraid to hear the answer.

  “No,” Tristan assured her, anytime he came near me I was swinging, biting, anything I could do to get him away from me.”

  “What happened next?”

  “He started to get hungry. He thought he had the all-clear, so he unlocked the door and peaked out. That is when I made my move. I charged at him full force despite my hurt foot, knocked him out of the way, and I bolted. I know the back woods like the back of my hands, but in that instance, I was just trying to get away. He was standing closer to the house so I bolted in the opposite direction. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. When I looked behind me, I didn’t see him anymore, so I walked. I walked all night, until these two busybodies on the highway insisted I go to the hospital. I was just trying to get back home.”

  “At the hospital, I was told that he had a disguise. Can you tell me more?”

  “He was acting like he was one of those aides that take patients to different parts of the hospital. What are they called… an orderly? He looked completely different. He had dyed his hair black, used bronzer, but I could tell it was him. He still had the scratch I had given him across his left cheek. After I knew it was him, I tried to get away. I remember you had told me that my Dad was here, so I screamed. Dad must have heard me. When Dad came, he shot Dad and took me again. He was completely insane. Told me that he was going to take me to South Dakota to start a new life. I wasn’t having it. I severed the rope around my wrists and used it against him to stop the car. I guess I pulled too long though because the car veered off the road and we plowed into a ditch. He went unconscious. I unbuckled him and he fell out of the car. I took the car and bolted for Elkhart. Uncle Frank saw me first, on Mountain Road. I knew Kendricks would come back for me, and he did. He came up from the basement. He had me alone in the house, he thought he had me cornered. So did I for a minute. Then Dad came charging in. The weirdest, sickest thing out of all of this… he swore I was my mother. Like he was cut off from reality. It wasn’t just a game to him. I was her in his eyes. And it was weird… when Dad showed up, he expected it to be you.”

  As DiNolfo scribbled furiously into her notepad, Jack all
owed his face to sink into his hand.

  “So there are some things that have fit together since we’ve last spoken,” said DiNolfo, keeping her eyes on her notepad.

  Jack, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, chuckled. “I’ll say.”

  “Brace yourself,” warned DiNolfo, this information isn’t pleasant. Amos ratted out Kendricks. He was trying to take your wife, too. But she fought, ran, and made it very difficult for him. He chased her all the way across the property, through snow and blizzard force winds, all the way to Croft Lake. She fell through the broken ice, and he held her head down, drowning her.”

  Jack didn’t look surprised. He did look a little relieved to finally hear the truth, however. “I’ve known it was him for a long time… I just didn’t know how it happened.”

  “Catherine’s case is going to be closed. It may take a little bit… I’m going to have a ton of paperwork to do…”

  “That is a relief.”

  DiNolfo had a perplexed look on her face. “Jack, let me ask you a question…”

  “Go for it.”

  “If you knew it was him, why did you keep her at the school?”

  “We don’t have many options up here. It’s either Steeplechase where she could get a solid education or PS 132, which is one of the worst schools in the state. Literally, at the beginning of the school year, P.S. 132 installed metal detectors. When I found out that Kendricks was her English teacher this year, I tried to get her transferred out. In order for her to have a different teacher, she would have to be taken out of AP classes. When she heard, she had a fit,” explained Jack, as his daughter gave him a heated glare. “Not blaming you, I’m just explaining why you were left in his class. I figured she had her brothers in there, Shane, their friend Cole. They all keep an eye out for her. I never in a million years thought anything like this would happen.”

  “PS 132 is my alma mater,” explained DiNolfo, feigning embarrassment.

  Jack, looking sheepish tried to cover up his previous statement, “I’m sure it was much nicer when you went there,” he said quickly. DiNolfo shook her head and laughed.

  “There is one more matter of business that I have not revealed to anyone yet. There is a reason why he was expecting me.”

  Jack looking confused but intrigued, perked up. “Why is that?”

  “This is not the first time I have had to deal with Bernard Kendricks’ work.”

  Jack did a double take. “Wait… what are you talking about?”

  “I had a detective in Sunbury run the plates on the car that he took Tristan in. It had Ohio plates, and belonged to an Ernest Finkle. I immediately recognized Finkle’s name from another case. Not from here. In Pittsburgh.”

  “Ernie was Kendricks’ step father. He hated him.”

  “Hated him enough to kill him. Six months ago, we got a call reporting a disturbance at an apartment in Pittsburgh. He found Ernest Finkle, his girlfriend Patrice Daly, and Allison Finkle, Kendricks’ step-sister, all strangled. That case was brutal. It was the reason I left Pittsburgh. We could never pin it on Kendricks, but he was our major suspect. He murdered them all, just two days after his mother’s death. It must have set him off.”

  “Ernie used to beat his mother and him when he was a kid. He hated his guts.”

  “This just goes to show how dangerous he truly was.”

  “So he wasn’t bluffing when he said he’d kill everyone?” asked Tristan, a grave look on her tired face. DiNolfo, looking sadly into the girl’s face, shook her head no.

  * * *

  Joe Piedmonte brought a tray of food to table two, where his son Cole and his friends Tommy, Blake and Shane were gathered in hushed conversation, nervous looks present on their faces. For the first time since his wife had passed away, Joe Piedmonte closed the doors to Monte’s early. He sat there with the boys, making sure they were okay, while he kept the doors locked and the shades drawn.

  “Try to relax boys. Everything is going to fine.”

  He tried to console them, but it did him no good. “We should have never left them,” Cole said.

  “We didn’t know that she was in there alone,” said Tommy.

  “We should have checked,” insisted Blake.

  Joe shook his head. “No, you boys did exactly what you were supposed to. You came here to safety. We called the authorities. Let them handle it.”

  “When can we go back?”

  “I think it is best if you stay at my house tonight, then when Jack and Tristan and everyone are back from the hospital, I will take you home,” Joe suggested reasonably.

  * * *

  “I don’t need to go back to the hospital!” Jack protested as the paramedics checked out his leg and helped him onto a gurney.

  “We understand why you left the hospital, but now we have to take you back to check on that leg, and check on those stitches,” said one of the medics.

  “I feel fine. Please, I’m begging you. Do not take me back to St. Benedict’s!”

  “We’re going to Grier Mountain. It’s just precautionary to make sure you didn’t aggravate your injuries.”

  Jack rolled his eyes as they loaded him and Tristan into the ambulance, both of them thoroughly annoyed but decidedly okay.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Return to Steeplechase

  Elkhart, PA

  October 23, 1997

  As Tristan stepped out of her brother's sedan, she felt as if she were walking into a dream. Walking back onto the campus of Steeplechase, and through its halls, she felt as if the past three weeks were nothing more than a passing nightmare. Everything seemed so normal. The level of activity reached a fever pitch as students discussed their winter formal event and their upcoming Halloween plans. Mrs. Collins, the school nurse, was in the school yard handing out permission slips to students for the flu shot. Mr. Davies, the head of the Student Affairs Council of Steeplechase was still hell-bent on chasing the groups of smokers away from the ancient elm tree on the far side of the parking lot. Although Tristan's world had temporarily fallen to pieces, the rest of the world had not. There were, however, a few noticeable differences. The parking space where Bernard Kendricks used to park his polished sports car was now empty, with his name removed with the broad white swipe of a paint brush. In neat black letters, the word vacant now stood where his name used to be.

  Ready to get back to her life, Tristan was eager to get back into the classroom. She heard that the substitute English teacher was a very nice lady named Mrs. Mitchell, and that she was a welcome escape from the high standards of Mr. Kendricks. Tristan couldn't help but wonder about the project she failed to hand in. Tommy and Blake reminded her on more than one occasion that she was missing, and she couldn't be failed for not completing assignments during that time. Still, she worried that her grade point average would be wrecked somehow, as a triumphant farewell gift from Kendricks. Tristan wondered if the entire school knew the reason behind Kendricks’ departure, or the story of what happened at her family’s land in the past few weeks. While she wanted her mother's name to be cleared up, she didn't exactly want people knowing all of her family's business. She had earned her right to privacy. Breaking free of her inner dialogue, she noticed that Cole was looking at her quite intently.

  As she looked up at him, a smile grew on his face "Are you okay?"

  "It just feels weird to be back."

  "I bet. Listen, you don't have to feel weird... we have your back." This provoked a smile and a small chuckle from Tristan. "I just want to get back to normal."

  Cole took her hand as they walked towards the school together, "It doesn't get much more normal than this."

  Liam called to Tristan from the driver side of his sedan. She turned to face him.

  "Call me if you need anything, I'll come and get you," Liam said with a worried look on his face. Tristan smiled at him, it was never like him to worry. He was the most laid-back of all the brothers, but after the circumstances of the past three weeks, she could definitely un
derstand why he would be more on edge lately. "Thanks Lee, I'm okay. Well… I'll be okay. See you at 3:00." Liam, taking the hint, waved at his sister before driving off.

  Moving through the halls of Steeplechase, Tristan felt her heart begin to race as they approached room 219. Cole glided through the entrance, but Tristan halted, stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at the door frame, damaged from when Jack had kicked it down. Plywood was now secured to the door where the window had once been. She shuddered just looking at it, as the memories flooded her mind. Prior to coming to school that day she kept telling herself that there was no way classes would be held in the same room; alas, she was wrong. The investigation was over, and classes had resumed. Adam and Liam would be coming up this weekend to fix the door for their father.

  Running up the hallway, Tommy and Blake were late for class, as usual. Shane, trailing close behind, had white powder from his donut on his lips as he ran to keep up with his cousins. Blake noticed Tristan first. He put his hand on her shoulder causing her to jump, shocked out of her momentary mental prison.