The Shadows We Hide

by Allen Eskens

  “I found all this out when I was dating Joe, but Charlie had a secret, something that his family kept hidden from everyone. Their mother used to babysit for extra cash, kind of an illegal day care, and Joe and Charlie used to help. One day, Joe walked in on Charlie molesting one of the children, a little girl named Poppi Sanchez. She lived on the same street as me growing up. Charlie was a teenager, and Poppi was only six or seven at that time.”

  “Holy crap,” I whispered.

  “Yeah. Joe freaked out and told his mother, but nothing happened. His parents swept the whole thing under the rug. Charlie went on living his charmed life. No consequences. And he never seemed to regret what he did to Poppi.”

  Then Mom took on a questioning expression, leaning in and asking, “Do they think Charlie killed Joe? That wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “They don’t think so; turns out, the people who wanted Joe Talbert dead make up a pretty long list. Everybody thought he was an asshole—their words, not mine.”

  “I suppose he was that, and more.”

  “And yet you named me after him.”

  I could hear the accusation in my voice. Between the two of us, I was the one slipping into old patterns. But Kathy didn’t react the way she would have in the past. She took a slow breath, in and out. Then she did it again and said, “Joe, I have caused a great deal of harm in my life to many people, not the least of which is you and your brother. I have a lot on my plate, and I’m dealing with it as best I can—one day at a time, as we say. Can we have this…discussion later? I just want to enjoy being with you and Jeremy tonight.”

  I felt bad about trying to get that jab in. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “Do you have to go back to Buckley tonight?”

  “Well…”

  “I still have your old bunk bed.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have…”

  I hadn’t thought this through. How did I not see her request coming? I looked around the apartment at the traces of this new life my mother had been forging. Nothing I saw hinted that the old Kathy might be lurking behind the quiet smile of this new woman. But I had been proven wrong before. I wanted to be outside of my mother’s influence as I considered this new wrinkle.

  “I need to run an errand,” I said. That was a lie. “Can you watch Jeremy for a little bit?”

  My mother beamed at that and didn’t have to answer.

  I left Kathy’s apartment and drove through Austin, curling around old and familiar places, drawing from them the memories of why I shouldn’t leave Jeremy with my mother. But the woman in that apartment bore little resemblance to the woman who cursed my birth after the guardianship hearing. My mother had changed. Bremer saw it. Lila saw it. And if I were being honest, I saw it too.

  I had already crossed one line by letting Jeremy see his mother. Would crossing another one be all that bad? And if I could leave Jeremy with Kathy, it would help me in all kinds of ways. Where would Jeremy stay if I decided to meet with Moody Lynch? I couldn’t leave him in the motel again. If she could keep it together for a couple days, I might have things worked out. And if she fell apart—well, I’d just have to cross that bridge if it happened.

  Before going back to Kathy’s, I stopped at a store and bought Jeremy enough clothes to last him a few days—and a green toothbrush. When I got back in my car, I called Lila—my call going straight to voice mail.

  “Hi, Lila. You’re not going to believe this, but I’m in Austin of all places. I wanted to let you know that…you were right about my mother. It’s a long story, but Jeremy and I are spending the night at her apartment. And then I’m going back to Buckley in the morning. It’ll be strange not having him with either one of us for a night. I can’t remember a time when it was you and me without him being there. I’m sorry, I’m rambling. I just wanted to say that you were right to keep the letter, and I’m really sorry that I made such a case of it. I’m sorry about a lot of things. I hope the studying’s going well, and…I really miss you.”

  Chapter 31

  The next morning, I got started for Buckley a little later than I had hoped. Kathy made a breakfast of pancakes and bacon and eggs—actual food. Jeremy and I grew up on a menu of fast and easy—anything microwavable or box ready. Sure, we had the occasional home-cooked meal, but I could only remember a handful, and even then, the quality of the cooking was questionable. I think what surprised me most that morning was the real maple syrup. The rest of the meal could be faked, but to have real maple syrup in the cupboard, ready to go, meant that Kathy probably made pancakes on a regular basis, and not just to impress us.

  In my last text with Moody Lynch, I had agreed to meet him face-to-face, telling myself that I could always back out of it. Now, I had two hours of drive time to decide. I’d been down that path once before—going to meet with someone who might be a murderer—and I just about lost my life over it. My experience and my good sense were both telling me not to go.

  But there was something in his text that tipped the scale in his favor. His last text read in part: If you’re Angel’s brother, then you need to hear what I have to say. Those didn’t seem to be the words of a man setting a trap. Why would he think that I needed to hear what he had to say if he planned on killing me? He had no quarrel with me. It sounded like he genuinely wanted to talk, nothing more. I struggled with my decision as I headed back to Buckley.

  Around midmorning, I stopped in a town half an hour east of Buckley and bought a couple ham sandwiches, one for me and one to give to Moody as a show of goodwill. And just like that, I had made my decision. Because I had promised Jeb that I would call him if Moody contacted me, I dialed his number as soon as I got back on the road.

  “Jeb here.”

  “Hi, Jeb. It’s Joe Talbert.”

  “Hey, Joe.”

  “I got a text from Moody Lynch yesterday. He wants to meet.”

  “Meet? As in face-to-face?”

  “Yes.”

  Pause—“I don’t think that’s wise.”

  “I know, but I’ve given it some thought, and I’m going to meet with him. I’m only calling you because I told you I would.”

  “Where are you meeting?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Joe, tell me where you’re meeting, and I’ll bring him in peacefully. He won’t be hurt, I promise.”

  “If he sees a cop, he’ll be gone, you know that. Besides, I don’t know where we’re meeting. All I know is that the meeting will be at one o’clock today. I just wanted you to know that in case…”

  “In case anything goes wrong?”

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

  “If you believed that, you wouldn’t be calling.”

  “I’m calling because I told you I’d call. Besides, I wanted to see if I can offer Moody anything to bring him in. I suppose immunity is out of the question?”

  “Completely.”

  “He doesn’t trust you locals. If I could get him to agree, could he turn himself in to, maybe, the state patrol?”

  “Joe, he could do that now if he wanted to. Tell him that we only want to talk.”

  “You won’t arrest him?”

  “You know I can’t promise that.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll just have to hear him out and let you know what he says.”

  “We can rig you up with a wire so you could—”

  “I’m not going to wear a wire. I’m not working for you.”

  There was a pause on the other end as Jeb, I assume, tried to come up with some way to insert himself in my plan. He must have come up empty because he said, “I can’t condone what you’re doing.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “Would you at least check in here as soon as you’re done? I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Sure, Jeb.”

  My phone beeped in my ear, and I looked and saw that there was a text message waiting. “I got to go,” I said, and kille
d my call to Jeb.

  I pulled onto a field approach to read the text: two strings of numbers and nothing more. The text came from Moody, but it made no sense. Then it hit me. They were GPS coordinates. I had never tried it before, but I typed the GPS coordinates into the navigation app on my phone, and to my surprise it gave me directions to a spot about twenty miles north of Buckley.

  The drive took me around the outskirts of town, which was good, because I didn’t want Jeb or Nathan spotting me and tailing me. As I neared the dot on the map, fields gave way to patches of woods, so I knew that I was close to the river again.

  I drove down a mildly sloping gravel road and could see the river ahead of me, the road turning to run parallel to the bank. After about two hundred yards, my navigation system announced that I had arrived at my destination. I stopped the car and got out. The only structure in sight was a barn about a hundred yards down the road, half hidden in a patch of overgrown scrub. He could be in the barn, or he could be hiding in the trees down closer to the river. If it were me, I’d be in the barn with the woods behind me in case I had to make a quick exit.

  I was about to get back into my car when my phone rang. In the sun, I couldn’t see the number, so I answered. “Hello?”

  Nothing. Not even breathing.

  “Hello?” I said again.

  I thought maybe the connection had died on me. I killed the call. I waited for a minute in case they called back, but my phone remained silent. I looked around again, this time listening as hard as I could, straining to hear the sound of someone who might be crawling through the cornfield or the rustling leaves in the woods, but I heard nothing. I grabbed the sandwiches out of the car and started walking to the barn.

  I hate old barns. The Minnesota countryside is littered with them, and each one could send a jolt of panic through me stronger than anything a scary movie could do. I had nearly died outside of an old barn once. I had nearly lost Lila there. Now I stood at the entrance of yet another one, a bag of sandwiches in my hand and my heart pumping harder than it should have been. It’s strange how the structure itself could instill more fear in me than the possibility of meeting a murderer inside. I summoned my resolve, took a deep breath, and walked in.

  Sunlight cut through the gaps in the boards, painting stripes on the ground in front of me. Dust clung to the walls and floated through the air, twinkling in the thin rays of light. If old had a smell, that barn had captured it. Nothing hung on the walls, although I could see wooden pegs and tenpenny nails sticking out where stuff used to hang. At the other end of the barn, a ladder climbed up through an opening leading to the hayloft.

  “Moody?” I called out.

  No answer.

  “Moody?” I said again, listening for any sound and hearing nothing. Maybe he was down by the river.

  I turned to leave and heard, “Stay put.” The low, slow delivery stopped me in my tracks. “Did you come alone?”

  His call came from up in the hayloft. I turned around and saw no one. “I came alone. Are you Moody Lynch?”

  Boards creaked somewhere in the back of the loft, and a tall, thin figure rose to his feet. He stood in the shadows for a second, then stepped forward to where a pillar of light fell through a hole in the roof. His right arm hung heavy at his side, and as he walked to the edge of the hayloft, I could see the gun.

  “Oh, hell no,” I said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Doesn’t work what way?”

  “No guns. I didn’t bring one. I came here in good faith. You put that thing down or I’m out of here.” In my head I was calculating my retreat. Five, maybe six paces to the door at a dead run. Could he hit me in that time? He’d have a pretty good chance. As long as it took more than one bullet to stop me, I’d make it out. Keep running. Get to the car. Get to the highway.

  “You don’t make the rules here,” he said.

  “You want to get your story out? Then you put that gun down. Otherwise, I’m leaving.” I took a step back to see if he would raise the gun. He didn’t. I took another step.

  “Wait,” he said. “Fine. No guns.” He leaned over and dropped the weapon to the deck of the hayloft with a thud. “Just wait there. I’ll be right down.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  Chapter 32

  Moody Lynch was a string bean of a kid, a good six inches taller than me, but he couldn’t have weighed more than a buck sixty. He wore a patch of bruises along the left side of his face and a thin scab on his bottom lip. The bruising and his hard eyes gave him age, but his thin beard, a sprinkling of whiskers that poked out, scruffy like the hair on a pig’s back, worked against that age. Behind the wear-and-tear of it, he had a kind face, although it might have looked a little bit kinder had he bothered to close his slack jaw.

  “Sandwich?” I said, tossing him the bag.

  “Thanks. You’re Joe, right?”

  “Joe Talbert…Junior, technically.”

  He opened the bag and pulled a sandwich out. “Are you wired, Joe?”

  “I’m not working for the cops,” I said. “I came here on my own.”

  “You mind opening your shirt and showing me?”

  He took a huge bite out of his sandwich, and I thought him oddly casual, eating my food while he had me strip to prove I wasn’t wired. I opened my shirt and turned in a circle to prove my sincerity. “But this conversation is on the record, Moody. You understand that, don’t you? Anything you say is fair game for me to report.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Are you really Angel’s brother?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said, buttoning my shirt back up. “I’m leaning toward yes. Were you out at Toke’s place that night?”

  “Toke’s place. It’s hard to think of it as Toke’s place. That no-good bastard didn’t deserve it.”

  “But you were there. You sent a text to Angel saying you were meeting her.”

  He looked confused for a second, and then said, “Aw hell! I forgot about that.”

  “Why did you go to the farm?”

  “Angel needed me.”

  “But Toke threatened to kill you if he ever found you out there.”

  “You ever been in love, Joe?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then you know that some things are worth the risk. They are worth anything. That’s how I feel about Angel. I met her when I was in town one day getting some parts from Dub’s. She was there bringing something to Toke, or getting something from him, I don’t remember. When I saw her I couldn’t help what I felt. You ever met Angel?”

  “I went to the hospital to visit her a couple days ago.”

  “How is she?” Moody’s eyes lit up. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “They don’t know. She’s in a coma.”

  “My mom heard that, but we didn’t know for sure.”

  “Do you know what happened to her that night?”

  “No. I mean, I know something happened, but I’m not sure what.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’d been acting really strange those last couple days. It was like she had a secret that she couldn’t tell me. I asked her about it. I said, ‘What’s gotten into you lately?’ All she would say was she couldn’t talk about it. Not yet at least. I think that’s why she wanted me to come over that night.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No. But I talked to her earlier, and she was really nervous. She said she was on her way to the Sheriff’s Office to talk to Jeb Lewis about something, that she would call me later.”

  “Did she call you?”

  “That’s when I got the text. Said she was freaking out and she needed me to come over. We were going to meet in the horse barn. That’s where we always met. She would sneak out after Toke fell asleep.”

  “What time did you go over there?”

  “Just ahead of midnight. I parked my truck at the boat launch a mile away and took the path up through the woods.”

  “The boat launch under the bridg
e?”

  “Yup. There’s an old horse trail that follows the edge of the field and brings you up behind the barn. I normally sneak in through the back door, but the light was on. The light’s never on in that barn. I thought Toke might have left it on by accident, so I waited outside for a while—”

  Moody stopped talking and straightened up, like a deer hearing the break of a twig. We both stood perfectly still, listening to the nothingness around us. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “The highway has a long, straight section a few miles back. If anyone was within five miles of me, I would have seen them.”

  “I was watching the sky as you pulled up. There weren’t any airplanes either.”

  It never dawned on me to look up at the sky. I probably wouldn’t make it as a fugitive.

  “Anyway, I opened the barn door real slow like and peeked in. I saw something on the ground near the front door. I didn’t know what it was, so I eased in and closed the door. I was listening to hear if Toke was around, and that’s when I heard her moan.”

  “Heard who moan?”

  “Angel.”

  “Angel?”

  “Yeah. She was the thing I saw on the ground. I mean, I didn’t know that at first. I just heard the moan.”

  “How was she—describe her to me.”

  “She was wearing her normal clothes and everything, but she was just lying there moaning. I thought maybe she fell or something. I bent down to look at her, you know, see if she hit her head, but I didn’t see any marks. I tried to wake her. I had her in my arms, and I was shaking her, and she wouldn’t wake up. That’s when I heard Toke. I don’t know where he came from. I turned around and—”

  Moody jerked his head up again. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “No, I didn’t hear anything.” Again we stood in silence. The midday sun beat down on the roof and wall of the barn, heating the air inside, turning it thick and stagnant around us. Sweat trickled in thin rivulets down my face. I strained to listen but heard nothing. “What happened when Toke saw you?”

  “I told him something’s wrong with Angel. And instead of doing anything about it he took to hitting me. He was pissed and screaming. He had a coil of rope and was hitting me in the face with it. He was yelling that he was going to kill me. He was saying that he told me to never set foot on his property, and he was going to beat me to death.”