Delia's Shadow

by Moyer, Jaime Lee

  The answer was immediate. “No, Shadow couldn’t see his face. The mask fit over his head like a … a flour sack. Small slits over his eyes let him see out, but she couldn’t see past the openings. A design painted on the front was all she really saw. That stood out even in the dark.”

  His mouth went dry. “A design?”

  “Yes.” Delia drew the design in air with a finger. “A circle divided into quarters, drawn on white canvas with black paint. There was something else, too. The paint was smudged and she couldn’t make it all out, but small pictures were drawn at the bottom of the circle.”

  Gabe patted his pockets down, silently swearing at himself for not being as meticulous as his partner about carrying a notebook. He finally came up with a pencil and a flyer for a local grocer, Mrs. Allen’s shopping list of the previous day scribbled in a corner. “Can you draw what Shadow saw? It doesn’t have to be perfect, but even a rough sketch will help me understand.”

  Delia quirked an eyebrow over the grocery list, but turned the flyer face down on the side table and sketched on the back. She paused, added a few more lines, and held the flyer out. “I drew all the time while at school, but I’m badly out of practice. That’s near as I can come to what I remember. I hope it’s clear enough.”

  “It’s perfect.” The killer’s calling card stared up at him from the creased paper. Two small figures, enough like the signature used by the murderer to twist his stomach, sat at the bottom. Gabe pointed at the largest one. “Do you know what that is?”

  She shook her head. “Not for sure. I went to an exhibit at the Natural History Museum in New York last year. This reminds me of the Egyptian picture writing I saw. Hieroglyphics, I think they’re called.”

  His coffee cup rattled on its saucer, sloshing lukewarm coffee across the tabletop and bouncing his spoon onto the floor. For an instant, the word earthquake was on his lips, but the pictures on the wall remained still and the two small chandeliers on either end of the sitting room didn’t sway. If not for the flash of fear in Delia’s eyes and the puddle of coffee he hastily mopped with his napkin, Gabe might have thought the incident was all in his head.

  The doorbell at the front of the house chimed as he dealt with the spill. Annie answered before he had time to worry or wonder. Gabe couldn’t make out all the words, but her clipped tone made it clear what she thought of late callers. He heard a man’s voice ask for him and the door closed again.

  Gabe was on his feet, the flyer and pencil tucked into an inside pocket, and buttoning his coat as Annie led Marshall Henderson into the sitting room.

  Henderson’s hat was clutched in one hand, long fingers curled tight around the rounded brim. The young rookie nodded to Delia. “I’m sorry to disturb you and your family so late, Miss. The desk sergeant told me that Lieutenant Ryan and Sergeant Fitzgerald might still be here.”

  “I think we can forgive you, officer.” Delia exchanged looks with Gabe before turning back to Henderson with a smile. “I’m sure this is important or you wouldn’t interrupt their evening off.”

  Marshall blushed, obviously flustered by her attention even if he had spoken first. “I’m just following the lieutenant’s orders, Miss.”

  Another murder. He’d left instructions that he was to be notified, day or night, and that was the only reason Henderson would hunt them down this late. A bitter taste rose in the back of his throat and his heart began to race. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since they found the last victims.

  “Annie, can I impose upon you to tell Jack we have to leave?” Gabe asked. “I’ll come by and get the cookie recipe for my landlady tomorrow if that won’t be a problem.”

  “You come calling anytime you like, Gabriel.” She eyed Henderson standing awkwardly to one side, pale and sweating in his blue wool coat. “Wrap up the rest of the cookies on that plate in a napkin and take them with you. Jack didn’t get his share. This young man would probably like a few, too.”

  Gabe scooped the cookies into a white linen napkin and handed them to Henderson. “Put these in your coat pocket for now and be sure to share with Sergeant Fitzgerald. Now tell me where we’re going.” The young rookie glanced at Delia and hesitated. Gabe nodded, signaling his approval. “Go ahead, Marshall. You can speak in front of Miss Martin, but stick to generalities. Specifics can wait.”

  “Golden Gate Park, just off 36th Avenue. Baxter’s out front with a car.” Sweat glistened on the patrolman’s face, rolled down his neck and into his collar. “Ruby Diamond was working the corner of 36th and Fulton. She took a customer into the park to conduct business. They didn’t go even a hundred yards from the street, but she picked that clump of trees because they’d be out of sight. The gentleman with Miss Ruby walked into a body in the dark. She says he ran off screaming. He wasn’t anywhere to be found by the time we arrived.”

  Ruby Diamond was well known to all the beat cops and patrolmen who spent any time at all on the waterfront. Normally Ruby worked closer to the docks, but the fair was luring everyone from their usual haunts with the promise of easy money. “Is Ruby all right?”

  “She’s shaken up, but won’t go home.” Henderson pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his face. “Miss Ruby insists on speaking to you first. Maxwell is looking after her and keeping her out of the way.”

  Jack and Sadie came into the sitting room, hand in hand, Annie right behind them with coats draped over an arm and holding Gabe’s hat.

  “Thank you, Annie.” Gabe slipped on his overcoat before retrieving his hat from Annie. “I’m really sorry the evening didn’t work out the way you’d planned, Sadie. If you and Delia are game, we can try seeing a bit more of the fair one day soon.”

  The smile that spread across Sadie’s face almost chased the worry of Jack’s being called away from her eyes. “No one’s to blame for what happened this evening, but I’ll hold you to that offer. You and Jack work out the details. An excursion with a little less drama would be nice.”

  Gabe caught his partner’s eyes. “Go on out to the car with Henderson and he can get started on filling you in. I need to have a word with Delia.”

  “Don’t take too long.” Jack buttoned his coat and forced his cap over his wild mop of red hair. “I won’t be held responsible if I’m forced to listen to Baxter’s theories for long. We’ll see ourselves out, Annie.”

  Jack kissed Sadie good-bye and followed Henderson to the door. Gabe hung back, waiting to speak to Delia and make arrangements to finish what they’d started, hopefully without an audience. Sadie eyed him for a moment, openly curious, but Annie intervened, filling Sadie’s hands with dirty plates and shooing her toward the kitchen. Delia stood, a hand resting on the high, curved back of a chair and her expression equally as curious as Sadie’s.

  He fiddled with the brim of his battered fedora, reaching for professionalism again. “The drawing you made is a great help. I have a friend, Colin Adams, who is a professor of antiquities at Stanford. He might be able to tell us if the drawing on the mask really is a hieroglyphic and what it means. I plan to go see him tomorrow afternoon. If you’re not busy, I’d like you to come along. There are some letters with similar drawings I’d like both of you to see.”

  “Letters?” Understanding shone in Delia’s eyes. “You mean letters from the murderer.”

  Gabe nodded. “We haven’t released that information to the press yet. You don’t have to make the trip tomorrow, but I thought you might find what Colin has to say interesting. I’m hoping he can give us both some answers.”

  “I’ll come. It does sound interesting and I’d like to see this through.” Delia sank into a chair again, tired smudges under her eyes. She peered up at him, face perfectly serious and solemn. “Tell me what time you’ll call round and I’ll be ready. And is this a strictly professional request for my company? I’d like to know how to dress.”

  Gabe didn’t know what to say. He hunted for a hint in the way she watched him that she was teasing. Some dimly remembered and rusty soc
ial skill took over, and he answered without thinking. “The request for your assistance is professional, but wanting to spend time in the company of a new friend is wholly selfish on my part. Is twelve-thirty too early?”

  “Twelve-thirty is fine. I’ll see you then.” She stared at a spot behind him for an instant before giving him a shaky smile, throwing him more off balance. “Be careful tonight.”

  “I will. Good night.”

  Gabe hurried across the empty entry hall, footsteps a muffled echo against the high ceiling. He shut the front door softly and paused on the step to flip up his collar. Fog-laden air hung in a damp veil between him and the car at the curb, dark shapes forming and vanishing again in the constantly moving mist. Faces peered at him, hauntingly familiar, and melted back into the swirling wall.

  Ghosts of a different sort, made from fallen clouds and memory. He’d face them later.

  CHAPTER 7

  Gabe

  Gabe rubbed his hands together briskly to get some of the blood moving and regretted leaving his gloves at home. Damp and cold penetrated his overcoat, soaked through his suit jacket, and seeped through skin to the bone. The calendar might say June, but summer fog carried winter in its heart. He’d worked many a December night and not been near as miserable.

  He’d handpicked his squad, looking for men who followed orders but thought for themselves as well. That always paid off in ways both big and small, and tonight was no exception. He and Jack arrived to find the murder scene closed off and the investigation well underway. That gave Gabe hope he might get to bed before dawn.

  One of the men had driven two patrol cars over the grass to the edge of the grove and trained the headlights on the body and the surrounding area. It was probably still too dark for Baker’s pictures to expose properly, but Baker snapped away with his Kodak and Officer Turner set off the magnesium powder in the flash pan when given the word. The two men were a good team. If anyone could get photographs of the murder scene on a foggy night, they could.

  Gabe’s stomach flipped. What he saw in the shifting fog and uncertain illumination of headlights was bad, worse than he’d ever seen. At least one of the men had been sick. Dirt and old leaves scuffed over the splash of vomit didn’t hide the sour smell. It blended with the scent of blood and piss into an unnaturally foul odor, held close by the fog and not allowed to dissipate.

  Cops who survived long term on murder squads found a way to shut out the gore and the smells, and turn off their human side that recoiled and wanted to run. Gabe had learned to become an observer, distancing himself to note facts, patterns, and record details. Observing let him do his job and if he dealt with nightmares later, that was on his own time.

  He’d have nightmares about this victim.

  A sturdy, middle-aged man hung upside down from the tallest tree in the small grove. His shoes were gone, his white shirt and trousers cut up and tattered, but the victim still wore his wool coat. The bottom of the coat brushed the ground behind the man’s head, a dark drapery that hid his pale face from anyone approaching from the street. A hat rested against the tree trunk, trampled on until its shape was unrecognizable.

  The rope knotted tight round the man’s ankles had been tossed over a sturdy branch to haul him up, looped three times to keep the victim from slipping to the ground and tied off around the trunk. His arms were unbound and dangled next to his head, congealed blood sticky on the backs of his hands and hanging in long strings from the end of his fingers. Dark urine stains soaked the front of his trousers and open eyes stared, the knowledge he was going to die frozen on the murdered man’s face.

  He’d been strung up, gutted, and field dressed as if the grove were a forest and the victim a hunter’s prize kill. His entrails lay on the ground, tossed aside in a slimy coil. The killer hadn’t bothered with a gag this time. Cutting out the man’s tongue worked just as well.

  The magnesium flash stripped away the shadows, each burst of white light burning a new image on the back of Gabe’s eyes. Unlike the other victims, a quartered circle had been carved on the man’s chest, not his forehead.

  Jack busily took notes and drew small sketches in his Moleskine, documenting what he could in case Baker’s nighttime photographic efforts failed. Taking notes and asking questions was the way his partner survived and kept his sanity.

  Gabe gestured toward the tattered remains of the victim’s white shirt. “That shirt is soaked in blood. He was alive when the killer carved that symbol.”

  “I think the poor bastard was alive for most of it.” Jack cleared his throat and took a step back. “What I want to know is how our boy managed to overpower a man that big and string him up like that. Makes me wonder if he had a partner.”

  “Don’t buy trouble.” Gabe worked his way around the tree, dodging his men and working toward the edge of the light thrown by the headlights. His eyes scanned the ground, looking for footprints or anything the squad might have missed. “I want day shift out here at first light. The man who moved those cars into place did the right thing, some light is better than none at all. But it’s still almost impossible to see out here.”

  “What time do you want me at your boarding house with a car?” Jack bent to pick something up, but tossed it away. “An acorn. Probably not important.”

  “You get to handle this one on your own. I need to pay Colin a visit to chase down a piece of evidence. I’m taking Delia with me.” Gabe stopped where the light began to fail and turned back to watch his men working. Pausing also gave Jack time to think about Delia going along. He never doubted that his friend and partner would have a comment to make. “I’ll sleep better knowing you’ll be here to supervise in the morning.”

  Jack didn’t say anything at first, but his pencil beat a staccato rhythm on the edge of his notebook. “I can run the investigation in the morning, that isn’t a problem. But is taking Delia to see Colin wise, Gabe? I’m not sure involving her in this case is good for either one of you.”

  “Let me show you something. Then you can decide if involving Delia is wise or not.” Gabe dug in his pockets and found the grocer’s flyer with Delia’s sketch on the back. He moved closer to the light and angled the paper so that the headlights shone full on her drawing. “She drew this from memory tonight while you were with Sadie. It was part of a nightmare she had about Shadow.”

  By the time Gabe finished telling Jack about Delia’s nightmare, the mask, and her guess about hieroglyphics, his partner was shaking his head.

  “Forget I said anything. You’d think I’d know better by now than to second-guess you.” Jack pushed his cap back with the end of his pencil. “The coroner’s wagon is here. Let’s go talk to Ruby and distract her while they cut the body down.”

  Gabe found Henderson and asked where Maxwell was looking after Ruby. Marshall pointed them toward a bench on the farside of the grove.

  They found Maxwell and Ruby only a few yards from the sidewalk and inside the dim circle of light cast by a streetlight. The young officer watched the street and the darkened park warily, obviously aware of being visible while not being able to see anyone approach. Gabe gave Maxwell credit for letting Ruby have the comfort of the streetlamp and not making her wait in the dark.

  Ruby sat with her legs crossed, skirts hiked up almost to her knees, and one foot jiggling rapidly, as if keeping time to music. Smoke from her cigarette curled up to join with the fog. A pile of snuffed out and discarded cigarette butts littered the ground at her feet, none smoked more than halfway down.

  “Lieutenant Ryan.” Maxwell’s relief was obvious. “I’ve offered to see her home several times, but Miss Diamond insisted on waiting to speak to you.”

  No one called Ruby Miss Diamond, not even Ruby, but pointing that out would only hurt Maxwell’s feelings. “You did just fine, Maxwell. Report to Officer Henderson and have him find something for you to do. Sergeant Fitzgerald and I will make sure Ruby gets home.”

  Gabe traded looks with Jack. His partner sat next to Ruby, arm draped ca
sually along the back of the bench. Gabe stood in front of her, feet planted far apart and hands stuck deep in his overcoat pockets. Ruby glanced up at him, a quick, guilty look, and went back to concentrating on her cigarette. He’d let her finish this one before expecting her to speak; he had patience enough for one.

  Jack put his hand over hers when Ruby tossed the cigarette away to stop her from lighting another. “You told Officer Henderson you wanted to talk, Ruby. If you’ve changed your mind, just say so. No harm in that, we won’t be angry. I’ll have one of the boys see you home and the lieutenant and I can get back to business.”

  Ruby pulled in on herself, suddenly looking older and scared. “You’ve got nice boys working for you, Gabe. They took good care of me.”

  “That’s their job, Ruby. I’m still glad to know.” Gabe crouched down, putting his eyes level with hers. She was crying and trying to hide it. “You can tell me anything you know. Jack, too. I promise that whatever you say stays right here with the three of us. But we can’t help you unless you tell us what you’re scared of. Tell us what happened.”

  Ruby took a deep, shuddering breath and brushed at her eyes. “The man hanging from the tree, I know him from back when I first started working the streets. His name’s Terrance Owens, married with a couple of nice kids and another on the way. Terry used to run a few girls out of a rooming house near the docks, but he got away from that life years ago. Saved his money until he had enough to do something better.”

  Gabe thought he understood now why she insisted on talking to him. Ruby wouldn’t want any of the young officers to see her crying. He took her hand. “I’m sorry you saw any of this. And I’m especially sorry your friend died.”

  Sympathy made her cry harder. Jack pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket for Ruby. He let her dab at her eyes for a few seconds before asking the next question. “What did Terrance do for a living?”