Delia's Shadow

by Moyer, Jaime Lee

  I wished I could believe that Esther had a guardian to show her the way and wouldn’t be alone. Much as I wanted that to be true, I wasn’t ready to make that leap of faith. There was too much I didn’t understand about ghosts, too much uncertainty about what Shadow wanted from me.

  Even if I felt the need to find an answer to the riddle Shadow represented, I didn’t trust her. I wasn’t sure I ever would.

  CHAPTER 8

  Delia

  I was tempted to wait for Gabe on the front porch. That seemed the only way to avoid Sadie looking on from the sidelines and gauging Gabe’s reaction to her handiwork. She’d dressed me in a deep burgundy summer suit, a hat with a wide cream-silk brim and black silk gathered on the crown. The skirt fell to just above my ankle, wide, boxy pleats making it fuller than I was used to wearing. Jet buttons closed the jacket and the wide lace collar of a cream-colored batiste blouse filled the square neckline.

  The effect wasn’t what I’d call stunning, but I had to admit I looked less like a frumpy girls’ school teacher when she’d finished. Sadie was very pleased with her handiwork, too pleased for my peace of mind. Allowing her to fuss over dressing me once meant I could look forward to more of the same. That was probably the least pressing of my worries, but the safest to think about.

  Fretting about the nightmare, remembering Shadow’s pain and fear, and knowing I had to tell Gabe added to my overall case of nerves. Avoiding tears might be impossible and crying would embarrass me, but I’d lived through embarrassing moments before. What the ghost showed me was important, I knew that, and somehow tied to the case he was trying to solve. Gabe needed to know all the details, no matter how painful I found the telling.

  “You look wonderful, Dee. Tomorrow I’ll take you shopping. That way you won’t have to worry about having something suitable to wear until the rail company brings your trunk. We’ll work on updating your wardrobe and find a special outfit for you to wear when the boys take us to the fair again.” She fussed with my collar and adjusted the hat. “Something in a deep green and a cut to turn heads, I think.”

  “Turning heads is your area of expertise. You love playing the peacock.” As soon as she took her hands away, I laid the collar back the way I’d had it. “I’m more comfortable in plainer plumage.”

  The doorbell chimed. Annie let Gabe in, her warm hello one she reserved for people she liked. Footfalls came toward the sitting room, hollow sounding against the high ceilings. That my heart beat a bit faster was enormously silly and not knowing where to stand even more so. I ended up next to Sadie, stiffly facing the door.

  Confronted with the two of us posed side by side, Gabe looked confused. Sadie greeted him straightaway with a bright smile and a kiss on the cheek. “How are you, Gabe? I hope you and Jack weren’t out too late. Did you sleep well last night?”

  “Well enough, thank you. We weren’t out too late considering. Jack dropped me off just after midnight.” Gabe turned to me and smiled. He appeared genuinely pleased to see me, but still firmly anchored in his shoes. “Are you ready, Delia?”

  “I’m ready.” I gathered my gloves and my handbag. Ignoring Sadie beaming at the two of us like a fond maiden aunt was difficult, but I managed. “Do you think we’ll be back by suppertime? I should let Annie know whether to expect me or not.”

  “I’m hoping we can get to Stanford not long before Colin’s lecture ends at three. When we start back depends on how quickly he finds the information we need.” Gabe glanced at Sadie before clearing his throat. “I know a nice restaurant not far from the campus. It’s not fancy, but the food’s good. We could have supper there after we finish with Colin and then drive back. Does that sound all right? I don’t want to inconvenience Annie more than I have already.”

  I expected Sadie to jump in, but she kept her promise and stayed quiet and blameless. How awkward I felt making social arrangements with Gabe wasn’t his fault or Sadie’s. The foolish mistake I’d made the night before made me uncomfortable and afraid to speak without thinking carefully beforehand. “That does sound like the best solution. Yes, that would be nice. Let me tell Annie and then we’ll go.”

  Sadie spoke up then. “Go ahead and leave, Dee. I’ll tell Annie not to expect you. Jack’s coming over after work to visit Mama. That will give Annie plenty of people to feed and fuss over.”

  “Thank you.” I took a breath, nervous again now that we were setting out. “That will save us some time.”

  She patted my shoulder on her way out. “I’ll see you tonight. I expect you to tell me all about your day.”

  Bright sun made me squint as we stepped outside and I tipped the hat brim to shade my eyes. The young officer who’d come to find Gabe the night before, Henderson, held the car door for me. I settled myself while Gabe got in on the other side, searching the backseat for the glimmer that meant Shadow was going to show herself. The back of my neck itched with her nearness, but the telltale shimmer of air that preceded her presence never appeared.

  We were pulling away when I noticed a second patrol car parked in front of the Bourke’s house across the street. One of the officers touched the brim of his hat as we drove off and nodded to Gabe. It was an odd sort of comfort to know someone was watching the house. Disquieting as well, and a reminder that life had grown dangerous.

  The car roof was up and a glass screen separated us from the driver’s seat up front. Henderson wouldn’t be able to overhear what was said and I wouldn’t have to shout over the rush of wind. Both of those things made me feel better. Finding a way to open the conversation and to recount the dream was the problem. The longer silence stretched between us, the more difficult breaking it became.

  Gabe took off his hat and set it on the seat between us. He stared out the window on his side, chewing his lip and appearing deep in thought. I took in the scenery on my side, not ready to disturb him yet. We moved off Russian Hill, down Powell past Chinatown, and into downtown. Horse-drawn buggies, wagons, and cabs vied with motorcars for space once we turned onto Market Street, slowing progress to a crawl.

  Crowds filled the city sidewalks at midday: women lugging home brown-paper parcels from a morning trip to the grocer or butcher, bankers in suits and bow ties, sailors strolling in twos and threes, tourists in town for the fair taking in the sights. Shopkeepers’ wives helped unload goods from wagons in front of their husband’s stores, guarding small mountains of bags and boxes on the sidewalk until the men carried it all inside.

  Ghosts milled in groups on the same walkways and in the street, pointing and staring at unseen spectacles. Other ghosts moved with purpose, going from one remembered place to another. Unless I looked closely or the ghost had faded, picking out the dead from the living was sometimes difficult.

  Gabe studied the crowds intently. Last night’s talk convinced me that he searched an ocean of strangers’ faces for a killer, and perhaps, wondered who among the people we saw might be the next victim.

  I wondered as well. “Gabe…”

  Surprise was followed by the sheepish expression I’d seen before. He’d forgotten I was there. Gabe blushed and put his back to the window. “I get so wrapped up thinking about this case … but that’s no excuse for rudeness. Forgive me, Delia. What did you want to say?”

  “No harm done. Your case or something near is what I need to talk about.” My fingers curled around the edge of the leather seat, holding tight to something solid. “I had another dream. A horrible dream.”

  His relaxed, friendly manner fell away. A policeman’s distance and caution came over Gabe, pulled him up straighter. “A dream about what happened to Shadow?”

  I nodded and he ran a hand through his chestnut hair, leaving it tousled and trying to curl. How much he resembled Jack that way startled me. I hadn’t noticed that they looked enough alike to be brothers until now.

  “Are you able to tell me about the dream?” Gabe asked. “I’ll understand if it’s too soon.”

  “I intend to try. This will be difficult to tell, Gabe,
but I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve if I wait. You need to know what I saw.” I nursed the flicker of courage inside, trying to coax it into a flame. “Shadow didn’t die in that alley. The man in the mask took her somewhere, to a house. She was still alive then. What he did … what I saw was terrible.”

  Gabe’s eyes widened, but he’d risen to the rank of lieutenant for a reason; he was good at his job. His voice remained calm, professional. “Did Shadow know where the house was? The district it might be in?”

  “Let me think.” Shutting my eyes to organize my thoughts was a mistake. I jerked them open again immediately, desperate for sunlight. Shadow’s memories of darkness and numbing cold shut out the warmth and brightness of the day, filled my mouth with the taste of salty dirt and the need to keen with terror. Breathing was difficult. The weight of earth and the house above, and the fear I’d die alone in the dark, left me gasping for air.

  Isadora’s admonishment not to let Shadow inside so easily, to keep myself separate and in control, came back to me. I needed to anchor myself or I’d be lost in the ghost’s life and not be able to speak at all. That I couldn’t see her didn’t seem to matter.

  This was Shadow’s panic I drowned in, not mine. I fought to remember light and that the horrors crowding my head all happened long ago. “The stranger wore gloves and … he kept hitting her until she stopped moving or making noise. She was unconscious and covered by a tarpaulin in the back of a wagon. Shadow didn’t come around until they reached the house.”

  Gabe let me stumble through describing all I remembered: the smell of the wagon and the stranger’s coat, what Shadow saw of the house and the pictures on the wall, the trapdoor in the bedroom floor. Telling him about the room under the house, how the stranger watched Shadow from the door and left her in the dark was hardest.

  My voice quavered relating Shadow’s plea to go home to her baby, but I won the struggle not to cry. Gabe took my hand when I’d finished, both a kind gesture and a reminder that I wasn’t the one shut underground.

  We sat quietly for a time and I watched out the window, fighting for composure. Once Henderson negotiated the narrow streets of downtown, leaving the city proper didn’t take long. A wide, two-lane road went south from San Francisco, winding down the peninsula past fields green with newly sprouted lettuce, corn nearly knee-high, and pumpkin vines beginning to sprawl across earth dark with moisture. Farmhouses and barns sat in the center of a patchwork of soil and growing plants, rising dust marking where farmhands worked. Lean-tos at the side of the road sported hand-painted signs, each promising fresh produce for sale later in the season.

  Sunshine, warm air, and new growth made Shadow’s memories of darkness and cold bleak in a new way. I mourned her, grieved that she’d never seen her child grow and that he’d never known his mother. Parents and children lost each other, I knew that firsthand, but this was an especially cruel way.

  “Remembering that took courage. Thank you.” Gabe squeezed my fingers and released my hand. “I’m fairly certain that I know when Shadow died. My father was a homicide detective, too. Almost thirty years ago he worked on a series of murders almost identical to the ones Jack and I are investigating. The killings stopped as suddenly as they started. Based on what you just told me, I’m almost convinced the same man has started killing again.”

  “After thirty years?” I stared, grappling with the idea. Giving Gabe information was part of what Shadow wanted from me, I was certain of that. Why was becoming clearer. “Where has he been? For that matter if it is the same man, why did he stop killing when your father was hunting for him?”

  “I can’t answer either of those questions yet. I’ll be honest. The idea of the same murderer coming back gives me a serious case of the shakes. And believing the ghost of one of his victims is giving me clues makes me fear for my sanity. I really do believe and that makes it worse.” Gabe sighed, sounding tired and a bit defeated. He pulled a packet of light blue envelopes out of his inside pocket. “I brought these to show Colin. Dad has letters in his files just like them. I’d be a fool to ignore the similarities between my father’s cases and what’s going on now. I’m not willing to risk Sadie’s safety or yours by refusing to see what’s right in front of me.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Lieutenant Ryan, I’ve been questioning my sanity for years. You grow accustomed to it.” I slumped back in the seat, forgetting good posture and all the deportment lessons my mother worked so hard to teach me. “As long as we’re sharing delusions, perhaps you can tell me more about the letters your father received. What makes you think all the letters come from the same person?”

  He started to say no, I saw it in his eyes. Sharing evidence and confidential information with me was against the rules, and the little I knew of Gabe Ryan pointed toward him always playing by the rules. Something changed his mind. Perhaps Sadie’s charm was rubbing off on me.

  Gabe tucked the letters back into his pocket. “I’m trusting you with this, Delia. You can’t tell anyone, not even Sadie.”

  “No one would believe me. I have a problem with insanity.” The twinkle in his eye suggested he didn’t take everything as seriously as Sadie thought, but I gave a serious answer in any case. “I won’t tell, not Annie, and especially not Sadie. You’ve my word on that.”

  He glanced at Henderson and back to me. “There are obvious things that started me thinking about this. Both sets of letters are written on the same blue stationery. I haven’t compared side by side, but the handwriting is exactly the same as I remember. So are the symbols he uses instead of a signature. But the pattern is what really started to convince me.”

  Listening to Gabe explain helped push back Shadow’s memories and fear. More than that, I got a glimpse of how his mind worked when presented with a puzzle, and likely, how he did his job without going mad. “What kind of pattern?”

  “Both for my father’s cases and mine, the first few letters were sent to the newspaper. The killer claimed a string of victims the police never found and demanded front-page coverage. Dad believed him and so did I, but we never made the letters public.” Gabe frowned and raked fingers through his hair again, waking more curls. “Then a new set of letters arrived, addressed to my father instead of the papers. The last letter my squad found was addressed to me personally. In Dad’s case, the murderer went one step further. He began sending proof to my father that he was telling the truth.”

  Shadow appeared, faint and ragged, almost not there. Neat plaits were undone, uneven chunks of hair hanging in her face and hiding some of the bruises. She cradled her broken hand to her chest and sorrowful green eyes stared into mine, making sure I’d seen. The ghost vanished.

  I choked back the burning in my throat and the desire to be sick. “Dear God in heaven. What kind of proof?”

  “Locks of hair, buttons, a wedding band, and a gold cross. Trophies he took from his last victim. I thought that cross was still in the files my father has at his farm. Seeing it on the floor of Dora’s tent was a shock.”

  Gabe ran a finger along the crease in the crown of his hat, studying the old fedora as if he’d never seen it before. I thought he’d finished, but he cleared his throat and started again. “It got worse. The last letter, the one with the cross, was slipped under the front door of our house and threatened my mother. Dad and his partner took turns sitting up all night in our front room for three days. As soon as Dad could make arrangements, he sent my mother and me away. The killings stopped, but Dad didn’t bring us home for six months.”

  “That’s why you ordered protection for Sadie.” He nodded, still seeming to pay more attention to the hat than me. I wasn’t fooled. “And for Dora.”

  “I have men watching over my landlady, too. I’d station a man in every doorway of the city if I thought that would slow this killer down.” Gabe stopped his nervous fiddling and smiled, wry and without a trace of humor. “Keeping this man from repeating the rest of the pattern might be impossible, but I’m going to try. He’s won e
very move so far. That can’t last. Every killer makes a mistake sooner or later.”

  I was fascinated and terrified simultaneously. He was resigned to contesting with fate, even if he was likely to lose. The handkerchief twisted tight around my fingers, digging grooves in my skin. “You make tracking a murderer sound like a chess game.”

  The university was just ahead, green lawns and gravel pathways glinting in the sun. Gabe slicked his hair back and stuck the fedora down tight. “Playing chess is easier, Delia. With chess I can see the board.”

  * * *

  Gabe directed Henderson along a series of side lanes to the eastern portion of the campus. The roads were narrow, more pathways designed for bicycles or small carts than automobiles. Students stepped off the crushed gravel path into the grass to stare as the patrol car rolled past. A visit from the police couldn’t be a common sight on the quiet campus and I didn’t blame them for being curious.

  Not many of the students were women, but those I saw were bolder than I’d been at that age. Young women pointed at Henderson and held hurried, giggling conversations behind upraised hands. Some of them must have spoken loud enough so that he heard or shouted things after the car passed. He looked straight ahead, but blushed furiously.

  The antiquities building sat alone at the end of a long tree-lined lane. A half-circle drive in front, paved with white flagstones and edged with marigolds, let Henderson park near the base of the marble front steps. The building appeared newly built since the quake, three stories tall and faced with redbrick. Arched windows on the front of the building and brass handles on the double doors reflected sunlight into my eyes. A constant stream of students left the building and rushed off across the lawns, their classes ended for the day.

  Gabe opened my door and offered his hand. “Colin’s office is on the second floor. We’ll give the crowd a few moments to make their escape and then we’ll go up.”