The Shadows We Hide

by Allen Eskens

  “Even knocked out on meds, I can’t see Jeannie writing this note. There are no commas in the whole thing. I used to call Jeannie my comma Nazi because it drove her crazy when I’d skip a comma.”

  “And look how she spelled Bapu,” I say.

  Bob reads: “B-A-P-O-O.” He looks up at me, his mouth open, trying to speak words that his mind can’t find.

  “What?” Kimball asks.

  I turn to Kimball. “Jeannie had a nickname for her father. She called him Bapu—B-A-P-U. It’s a term of fatherly endearment in Hindi. She would never misspell that, no matter how many meds she was on.” I pause to let Kimball catch up. Then I say, “Yesterday, my mom showed me a letter that Toke wrote after he was arrested for assaulting her.” I pull Toke’s letter from my back pocket, where it had been since leaving Mom’s house, and hand it to Bob; Sheriff Kimball leans in to read it as well.

  I continue talking as they read. “He made two of those same mistakes. He misspelled both make do and outcome, spelling them the same way they appear in the suicide note.

  “Toke wrote Jeannie’s suicide note,” Bob whispers.

  “What about his alibi?” Kimball says. “None of this matters because he had an alibi.”

  “Follow me,” I say, leading them into the guts of the body shop. Greg Dubinski is waiting for us and shakes hands with Bob and Sheriff Kimball as we walk in. Then I continue laying out the case. “Toke knows that he’s going to be suspected of killing Jeannie: he knows that he’s going to need an alibi.”

  “He was here working on his GTO,” Kimball says. “We have surveillance footage to back that up.”

  “Toke knew about the surveillance cameras,” I say. “He knew they point at the parking lot and at the office. He knew that he’d be seen coming in and leaving. But when he’s working on the car—there’s no camera on that. All he has to do is slip out that window.” I point at a row of windows lining the back wall of the shop. “He slips out, stages Jeannie’s suicide, and slips back in, letting Angel find her mother hanging in the barn.”

  “That’s a nice theory,” Kimball says. “And I’m willing to bet that it’s true, but we need proof.”

  “We’re getting there,” I say. “But there’s another aspect that we need to cover. We now know that Toke wasn’t Angel’s father: Toke knew it too. That fact changes everything.” I can see the wheels turning in Sheriff Kimball’s head, but they’re not spinning fast enough for my taste, so I come at it from another angle. “Start from the end and work backward. The night that Toke died—what if he was planning to kill Angel?”

  Bob looks aghast. “Why would he do that? He already had the inheritance.”

  “But Jeb found Jeannie’s suicide note under Angel’s pillow, alongside a photograph of Jeannie, Angel, and Hix,” I say. “On the back of that picture Jeannie wrote: My Bapu, my baby, and me. Bapu—B-A-P-U. Angel had her mom’s suicide note with Bapu misspelled. That’s the night she texted Moody, saying that she was freaking out. What if she put it together? What if she understood that her father had killed her mother?”

  “Toke must have caught wind that Angel was on to him,” Bob says. “Maybe Angel confronted him, or maybe he found what she had under her pillow.”

  “That still doesn’t get us past the alibi when Jeannie died,” Kimball says. “On the surveillance tape we saw shadows moving around in here,” Kimball says.

  “His brother Charlie?” Bob asks.

  “Believe it or not,” Kimball says. “We looked into that. Charlie had an airtight alibi that night too.”

  “Besides,” I say. “Toke and Charlie hated each other. It doesn’t make sense that Toke would trust Charlie on something this risky. Charlie could blackmail him. No, Toke did this all by himself. Actually, it was pretty simple.”

  I turn to Dub. “Go ahead,” I say.

  Dub clears his throat and says, “Toke has this GTO over here, the one he bought from Harley Redding.” Dub points to a car in the farthest bay, a sleek black muscle car with gray patches of Bondo covering parts of its side. “A little while ago he asked me if he could use that bay to work on the car. He was willing to pay me, now that he had money. Well, one morning, I come in here and…well, come look.”

  Dub leads the three of us to the GTO. Behind the rear bumper lay a hand lamp and an oscillating fan with a balloon attached to it by a piece of thread. “This ain’t the same balloon I found here the morning after Toke got killed, but Joe here asked me to set it up the way I found it, so…there it is.”

  I turn on the fan, and it begins to move back and forth, stirring the balloon, making it dance in front of the light in a random pattern. We all look at the wall by the office door to see the shadow of the balloon on the wall, simulating a man passing in and out of the light.

  “Is that what the surveillance cameras picked up on the night of Jeannie’s death?” I ask.

  “That dog,” Kimball whispers. “Did Toke say he was coming in to work on his car the night he died?”

  “He didn’t have to,” Dub says. “He had a key, and I was up in Glencoe that night for my mom’s birthday. I found the balloon and the fan and stuff that next morning. I kicked it to the side and didn’t think much about it other than it was kind of weird to have the balloon here. But Toke could be a weird guy sometimes.”

  I say, “I had Dub pull the surveillance footage from the night that Toke died.”

  “I got it all cued up,” Dub says. “In case you want to see it, but yeah, Toke came in here that night.”

  “Does the footage show him leaving?” Kimball asks.

  “No. It shows him coming in, and then there were those shadows on the wall like we just done. I never saw him leave.”

  Kimball rubs the scruff on his chin. “Well, I’ll be damned. He tried to set up the same alibi.”

  “That’s why he started beating Moody with a coil of rope,” I say. “He was going to use the rope to make Angel’s death look like a copycat suicide. Moody interrupted Toke’s plan. Then Vicky finished him off. He never made it back here to clean up the balloon or walk out on camera.”

  Bob says, “Angel’s overdose wasn’t an overdose at all. Toke drugged her to get her out to the barn. He was going to hang her the same way he did Jeannie.”

  “Moody saved her life,” Kimball says in a quiet voice.

  “What about Vicky?” I ask. “Will this affect her case?”

  Bob says, “Unfortunately, what Vicky did is still murder. True, the man she killed was a monster, but under the law, that doesn’t matter.”

  “That may be so,” Kimball says, “but I doubt the folks in this county will have much of a stomach for punishing her once they hear about this. Hell, they’ll probably want to give her a medal.”

  Mullen nods his agreement. “I’m sure there’ll be a damned good plea offer made. The county attorney’s up for election next year―I doubt he’ll be out for blood on this one.”

  Then Bob turns to me and, with a serious look on his face, says, “Joe…you understand what this means for you…don’t you?”

  I nod. “The slayer statute,” I say.

  “The slayer statute?” Kimball asks.

  Bob says, “A man can’t benefit from killing someone. He can’t inherit if he murders the person he’s inheriting from. It’s called the slayer statute. When Hix died, the farm passed to Jeannie. When Jeannie died, the whole estate went to Toke. After yesterday, and the revelation that Angel isn’t Toke’s daughter, Joe here is the sole heir to the Hix estate.”

  “Okay,” Kimball says. “I’m with you so far.”

  Bob continues, “But Toke can’t inherit the estate from Jeannie if he killed Jeannie. That transfer will become null and void because of what Joe just uncovered here.”

  Kimball gives me a puzzled look and then a sad smile. “So, by figuring all this out, Joe just cut himself off from inheriting the Hix estate.”

  “Exactly,” Bob says.

  “And you knew this when you called us down here?” Kimbal
l asks.

  “I knew it,” I say. “But it’s not my money. I don’t want it. I’ve made it this far without Toke Talbert giving me a goddamned thing. I don’t see a need to change that now.”

  “Well, that’s not entirely true,” Bob says.

  I’m confused, and I’m sure my face shows it. I had worked through the falling dominos at least a dozen times, and every time, the last domino to fall was my inheritance. “What am I missing?” I say.

  “Toke Talbert did have one possession that doesn’t belong to the Hix estate—one piece of property that’s in his name and his name only.”

  I shake my head, still lost.

  Bob nods at the GTO. “I understand you might be in need of a car?”

  Chapter 51

  The next morning, I wake up on the top bunk of a bed that had been Jeremy’s and mine since before I had a memory, the same bed I had lain in when I swore that I would never lift a finger to find my father. I could hear Mom already moving around the kitchen. Apparently, without alcohol, drugs, and depression to sedate her, she’s a morning person. I find her at the table reading a book. She’s a reader now as well. She offers to make me something to eat, but I beg off.

  “Cup of coffee at least?”

  “Sure,” I say, and sit at the table while she pours water into her coffeemaker.

  “Are you going back to Buckley?”

  “No, I have to go to St. Paul. Lila will be finishing up with the bar exam this afternoon.”

  “You should buy her some flowers or something.”

  “Yeah, I probably should.”

  “You know, Joe, you’re lucky to have someone in your life like that. Never take that for granted.”

  “Actually…” I scratch at a tiny stain on the table; I can’t make eye contact or I won’t be able to finish my sentence. “Lila and I are…I’m not really sure where things stand with us.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Joe.”

  “My fault, not hers. I messed it up.”

  Mom nods as if she understands, even though I don’t go into the details. Then she says, “Joe, I know a thing or two about messing stuff up. What you see here…” She gives a short twirl of her finger to indicate the apartment around us. “This is me at my best. I get up every day and pray that I don’t mess it up again.”

  Her hands fidget as she speaks, one hand rubbing the other as if trying to warm the stiffness from her joints. “Do you remember that picture that used to hang over there?” She points to a blank wall in the living room. “The one where you’re holding Jeremy, when he was a baby?”

  At the guardianship hearing, she accused me of smashing it over Jeremy’s head. I don’t say that, of course.

  “I have it in my room now. I see it every morning when I wake up. I put it there to remind me of what I lost when I became an addict. Whenever I feel like I can’t do it anymore, I look at that picture and remember what I did to you and your brother. I used to pray that one day I’d have you both back; I knew that it would only happen if I stayed in recovery.”

  “I’m proud of you,” I say. “More than you can imagine.”

  She smiles at that. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that.” Her eyes start to glisten. She reaches out her hand and puts it on my wrist. “And to have Jeremy here, asleep in his bed, I’m about as happy as a mother could be.”

  “Speaking of Jeremy,” I say. “Do you think you could keep him for another day or so?”

  “Nothing would make me happier.”

  “I’m not sure how things are going to go with Lila.”

  “If you love Lila, don’t give up. Forgiveness isn’t easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight. I mean, look at me. It’s taken me thirty years and a lot of therapy to forgive myself for what happened to my mother. And there’s a lot I’m still working on. It takes time—sometimes maybe even years—but don’t give up.”

  I take a moment to admire my mother, something that I had never done before. She seems so calm in her new skin; it’s easy to forget about the havoc that used to inhabit that body. What she says gives me solace, and I’m ashamed that it surprises me to find wisdom laced in her words. I tuck her sentiment away in a place that has been empty for a long time.

  Mom gets up to pour my coffee, and my phone buzzes in my pocket. For a second, I think that it might be Lila, but then I remember that she should be sitting for the second day of the bar exam, and they don’t allow phones in the room.

  I pull my phone out and look. It’s from Allison at the AP office:

  Any chance you could stop by today?

  I am reminded that today is the day that the follow-up article on Senator Dobbins is going to post—the day that I’m quitting my job. I suppose there’s a procedure we have to go through. She probably wants me to get my stuff out of there before they change the pass code on the door. I type back:

  I’ll stop by this afternoon.

  Then I go to the website to read the article, but they haven’t posted it yet. I think about Penny, my source, and her fear that she might lose her family over this, the desperation in her voice as she made me promise to keep her secret. I failed her too.

  Chapter 52

  I arrive in the Twin Cities still wearing the clothing I wore when I escaped the motel fire—and Jeb’s shirt. I think about going to the apartment to get some new clothes, but I would be disrespecting Lila’s wishes. Instead I spend part of my morning shopping at a thrift store for something to wear that doesn’t smell like smoke. I spend another few hours sitting in the grass at Minnehaha Falls, under an ever-graying sky, pondering where to start my search for a new job. I eat my lunch, a convenience-store granola bar and banana, in my car—my GTO. After stalling for as long as I can, I drive downtown to meet with Allison.

  The other reporters in the room look up as I pass by on my way to Allison’s office; Gus is the only one to smile. Allison’s door is open, but I knock anyway.

  When she sees me, she says, “You look like hell.”

  I’m bent over slightly because of my bruised rib, and I have a few cuts on my face and neck from crawling through that mirror. “I feel like hell,” I say. She motions for me to take a seat, and I do.

  “You haven’t posted the story yet,” I say.

  “The story’s not going out.” Allison smiles as she gives me this good news. “Senator Dobbins dropped his lawsuit.”

  Of all the directions that our conversation might turn, I didn’t expect that one. “Why?”

  “It took some talking, but I managed to convince the folks in Legal that your story was true. If that was the case, then the lawsuit they brought hinged on the senator’s confidence that we would rather retract the story than name the source. We called his bluff.”

  “So the follow-up story—?”

  “I wrote it yesterday,” Allison says, serious now. “We really were planning on publishing it today, but we wanted to give the senator and his wife an opportunity for comment. We sent them the story, telling them that we were forced to do the follow-up because of the lawsuit. We gave them a day to respond, promising to include any comment they wanted us to include. I suspect that his wife was the one who pulled the plug. Regardless, they dropped their suit this morning.”

  “What about Penny?” I ask. “Did you show her the article?”

  “No,” Allison says, lowering her voice a little. “I was supposed to, but I didn’t. I kept imagining that poor woman confessing the affair to her husband to get ahead of the article. I didn’t want that to happen unless I was one hundred percent sure that the story would post—and I was never one hundred percent sure of that.”

  “You bluffed the senator?” I say.

  She smiles again. “I guess I did.”

  I glance through the glass wall that separates Allison’s office from the worker bees and see my empty workstation.

  “I’m sorry I put you in that bind,” I say.

  “You were doing your job, Joe. I approved the story because it was important. We
had a state senator beating his wife to the point of unconsciousness—and he was going to get away with it. I’m really proud that you were willing to lay it on the line to get that story out. You did the right thing, Joe. No matter how it might have turned out, you should never regret that.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “It leaves us where we were before all this crap happened. You said you would quit if I published the story. I didn’t publish it—so the way I see it, you have a job whenever you’re ready to come back.”

  A sense of relief washes over me. I have a job again—or still. I thank Allison repeatedly and tell her that I’ll start back to work in the morning. She really is a good boss.

  My rendezvous with Lila is fast approaching, and I’m nervous as hell. She’s in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, sitting at a table at the Earle Brown Heritage Center, filling in little ovals with her number-two pencil. Eight hours of multiple-choice questions. I know that the afternoon session ends at four thirty, but I want to be there early. I want her to see me as she walks out. I’ll know by looking in her eyes whether my sin is forgivable.

  The parking lot is full, but I find a space in the farthest back row. The sky has grown appropriately gloomy, with a ceiling of gray clouds gathering above me to bear witness to my fate. A few raindrops tap my head and shoulders as I stand outside the entrance, holding a black-eyed Susan I stole from Minnehaha Park. It’s a little after four, and the first bleary-eyed lawyer wannabes are beginning to wander out. That trickle grows until they are coming out two abreast. At four thirty, the test is called, and the bodies pour out in a flood. Near the end of the surge I see Lila, and my breath catches in my chest. It’s like I’m seeing her for the first time, the dust of my own complacency now wiped clean.

  She doesn’t see me at first. She’s talking to some guy walking beside her. He’s tall and handsome, and she’s smiling up at him, the way she used to smile at me. I know it’s only my imagination, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less. She sees me, and her smile falls away. The guy looks confused for a second before he too sees me. Then he says something to Lila and walks away.