Shadow Stalker

by D W Cooperstein

  In time, I was able to leave my apartment. I constantly thought about Caroline and the baby. I walked in the park where we shared our first kiss. I shed many tears there and in the following days at home. I continued drinking to drown my sorrow. Still, through it all, I held on to my undying love for her, despite what my head was telling my heart to do. No, I couldn’t forget her; I still loved her. Her simple answer of revenge for the killings of her parents wasn't enough. As surely as Caroline had broken the sacred bond of trust between us, I felt disappointed and angry with myself that I didn’t see it all sooner. I could certainly sympathize with her understandable rage at the world for the tragic and unexpected deaths of her parents, but I could never forgive her for killing and wounding so many good and innocent people.

  Colonel Richards called again to see how I was doing. I offered my resignation, but he suggested that I take time off. “Jim, take as much time as you need to work this out,” he told me. The Colonel was a friend as well as my boss. He was the only person I had ever confided my love for Caroline to, many years ago.

  As my depression started to lift, I wanted to do more interesting things. Until now I’d been feeling terrible. I started going out in the evenings. In my wanderings around the city, I was careful to avoid the special places that Caroline and I had gone. The fond and glowing memories we once shared were painful, and I didn’t want to revisit any of them. I returned to work. Colonel Richards made sure that my workload wasn’t excessively taxing. Soon I settled back into my old job as a problem solver for the Bureau.

  Dr. Aldridge suggested I socialize more and consider dating. The idea of dating someone other than Caroline didn’t appeal to me, but I thought a low-key approach with no expectations might be okay. My friends tried to match me up with people they knew. I met a few interesting women and continued dating for a while. This helped obviate the need for tranquilizers, given my worsening anxieties concerning Caroline and the unborn baby. I was still in love with Caroline, and I did not meet anyone who rocked my world the way that she did.

  In my next session with Dr. Aldridge, I told her about my intimate feelings for Caroline and all the sex we had on a regular basis. It was fascinating to watch how a therapist could just sit there for almost an hour and listen, while I revealed the most intimate details of my lovemaking, and not so much as flinch or move a muscle. If I were sitting in her chair, I’d be squirming like a worm on the end of a fishing line. The end of that session didn’t come fast enough.

  I wanted to take a few days off and visit the ocean, but I decided to go to Somerset to commune with nature in the beautiful Cathedral of the Pines. I hadn’t been to these serene woods in ages, and it felt good to be back. I remembered walking here as a little boy with my Uncle William. Under the canopy of trees that we called The Cathedral, the whispering pines sounded harmonious and angelic. The mellifluous sound of the wind blowing gently through the treetops caressed my spirit. It was an angel’s harp playing a celestial encore of the most bewitching and delicate music I’d ever heard. In the deep woods, nature revitalized my soul. The smell of the aromatic pines, the gentle tramping of underbrush, and that exquisitely fine carpet of pine needles underfoot felt exhilarating.

  I continued my invigorating walk, then returned to my apartment. Driving home, I thought about the tiny village in Maraba, high in the Himalayan Mountains. I marveled at how living with the people of the village gave me strength, through meditation and solitude, to regain my momentum going forward. It was there in that tiny village that I decided to start over after the breakup with Caroline. I took a good look at myself and didn’t like what I saw, but I was determined to change with help from God. In some ways that experience was similar to now, where I needed to find the strength again to climb out of this deep hole of despair in losing my soulmate.

  In therapy, I started working on the difficult and daunting disconnect within my mind. Dr. Aldridge helped me realize that we were all living with feelings of separation between the head and the heart. I suppose it was just hard-wired into our basic human genetic makeup. The trick, according to Dr. Aldridge, was being able to live with it. Finally, I was learning how to do that.

  Within six weeks I was feeling like my old self again. My stress headaches were completely gone, and I experienced a return of self-confidence. I wanted to get back to work. I continued therapy while slowly rebuilding my life. Each day I felt a little stronger and stopped my drinking binge. Fortunately, my boss didn’t accept the resignation I submitted in writing. I was glad for that. I really loved my job.

  My psychiatrist wanted me to be more involved socially. The few dates I’d been on wasn’t enough. The loneliness and isolation I had been feeling was troublesome. Gradually, I came out of my self-imposed exile. I started to reconnect with close friends. Dr. Aldridge suggested that I talk to Caroline. I told her that would be tricky, since it wasn’t considered appropriate to pay a social call to a murder suspect, especially in such an emotionally charged case. So, realizing that, and the psychological necessity to eventually speak to her, I arranged a secret meeting with Caroline out of the spotlight of the media. The Colonel and my contacts within the police department were instrumental in helping me arrange this important meeting.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After several weeks of intensive therapy, I was ready to see Caroline. I wanted my psychiatrist to come along, to help me in case I felt overwhelmed with sad feelings, but Dr. Aldridge said no.

  “This is something I strongly suggest you do on your own,” she said.

  I looked at her with just a little trepidation. “Please, I don’t know if I can go through with it. I need your help.”

  “I believe that you have the strength to face your fear of the past and move on to the future. A little more faith in yourself is all you need. You can do this,” she said. I knew she was right, but I still felt apprehensive. I didn’t know how I’d react seeing Caroline in jail after all this time. My psychiatrist had confidence in me, and now I started believing in myself as well. It was time to confront my fear and visit with my former soulmate.

  The meeting with Caroline was arranged for early Sunday morning. The details had already been worked out in advance with help from the Captain and the police unit guarding her. I drove to the jail and entered the building from a private entrance in the rear. I walked through a maze of corridors until I came to the room where she was held. There was a security guard standing outside the door.

  “Hello, Mr. Watson,” he said. The heavyset black guard stood six feet four inches tall. His demeanor seemed to suggest a happy and bright disposition. His name was Richard. I took out my ID card and showed it to him. I watched while he checked my identification.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing. It’s just that I recognize you from television. You’re the detective who broke the case. I’m honored to meet you.” It wasn’t my intention to dawdle, but Richard seemed like a smart and pleasant chap, so we chatted. “I can only speak for myself,” he said, “but we’re all proud here at the department that you finally got this crazed lunatic off the street.” I looked at Richard and nodded my head, smiled and took back my ID card.

  As part of my agreement with the police, I’d be alone in the room with Caroline for about fifteen minutes. After securing my clearance, Richard informed me that the prisoner had been taken to another holding area. I said goodbye to Richard, then walked a short distance down the corridor. My footsteps reverberated with tiny echoes along the hard surfaces of the long corridor and walls. What a dull and gloomy place this jail was.

  When I approached the unguarded door to the room where Caroline was waiting, I felt nervous, just like I did many years ago when I entered her apartment on that rainy afternoon. What would I find on the other side of the metal door? Despite feeling anxious and apprehensive, I recalled what Dr. Aldridge had told me, and I felt a little more confident. I knocked on the door and turned the knob. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. T
he door opened and I went inside.

  Caroline was sitting by the window in a hard chair next to a metal table with nothing on it. She was in chains, just staring out the window, lifeless. Looking at her I felt very sad. “Hello, Caroline.”

  At first, she didn’t respond, but then abruptly turned her head and looked at me. She seemed to have aged years. Her lackluster, tired eyes no longer had the sparkle that I was used to seeing, and her grey prison jumpsuit seemed to reflect the sentiment of her personality and the blackness of her mood. “How are you doing?” I finally said.

  She cleared her throat and coughed a little in the cold room. “Why didn’t you come to see me sooner?”

  I pulled over a chair and sat down beside her. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through these past two and a half months?”

  “You bastard!” Caroline shouted. “Jimmy Watson, I’ll tell you what you haven’t been through. You haven’t been living like a caged animal in this fucking jail, alone and frightened, feeling abandoned. You haven’t had to deal with the looks of scorn and hatred coming from everybody you see, every minute of your waking life. And you haven’t had to feel so isolated and cutoff from humanity that after a while you couldn’t even recognize yourself. Finally, you didn’t have to put up with feeling totally rejected by the one person you truly loved. Tell me again just how tough your life has been these past months, so that you couldn’t even bring yourself to give me a call to see how I was doing?”

  As she cried in her chair, I slowly regained my composure. How could I be such a cold, callous and insensitive human being to ignore her at this terrible time in her life? And what about my promise in her apartment to stay by her side no matter what? My answer to all of that was she’d broken the bond of love and trust we shared when she became a serial killer.

  “For me the great love we shared was real. I opened myself up to you completely. I loved you with my whole body, heart and soul. When we reconnected after so many lonely years, I felt certain you were the only woman I could ever love. But goddammit, Caroline, I just couldn’t reconcile the love I felt for you in my heart, truly felt for you, with the fact that you had become a cold-blooded serial killer. I just couldn’t live anymore with that reality, knowing you killed all those innocent people.”

  She looked deeply and lovingly into my teary eyes. She reached out and gently caressed my face. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said in a soothing voice. She paused, then spoke softly in almost a whisper. “But I’m not a killer.”

  “What do you mean you’re not a killer?”

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and face. “It’s just what I said. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  I flinched a bit in my chair. “Are you telling me now that you’re not the Shadow Stalker?”

  “It was all a lie. I made up everything in my apartment,” she finally said.

  As I listened to her speak, I was dumfounded. “Well, I suppose you lied to me about the baby, too.”

  “I didn’t lie about the baby. I am pregnant. I’m carrying your baby inside of me. Jimmy, please forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I really didn’t mean any of it,” she cried.

  I got up from my chair a little dazed at what she had just told me and started pacing around the cold empty room. I was agitated. “What do you mean you’re not the Shadow Stalker? You’re lying to me. You confessed to those killings, remember?”

  “My darling, you must believe me!”

  “No!” I shouted. “I was there. You weren’t faking that emotional anguish. It was real, and I saw it. I was there!”

  “Sure,” Caroline interjected with a sudden burst of passion in her trembling voice. “I was grieving on the bed in anguish, but not as a remorseful killer of innocent people. No, but rather as a desperate, hurt and grieving daughter, distraught over the deaths of her parents. I loved my parents more than you’ll ever know. I was grieving for them,” she cried. “Now, please believe what I tell you!”

  “I don’t believe you. I saw you holding that detonator by the door and threatening to blow us both up. You’re lying to me. I can’t trust what you say anymore. You are the Shadow Stalker! Why are you doing this to me? Why are you hurting me like this? Is it to punish me?”

  “Yes!” she screamed. “I lied to you in my apartment about everything. I made it all up to get back at you for hurting me again, when the pain of our recent breakup and the deaths of my parents all came rushing back to torment me in anguish. I wanted to make you suffer, like you hurt me in rejecting my love. That’s why I lied. It was all just a murderous fantasy I was living. Can’t you see that?”

  I stared at her in silence.

  “Sure, Jimmy, I was following the Shadow Stalker subway bombings in the news like everyone else living in the city. After all, I had to commute to work by subway like thousands of other people trapped in that nightmare. When the first subway bombings occurred three years ago, I was in shock. People in the city were frightened, and I was no different. With the death of my parents still fresh in my mind, I felt a murderous rage and identified with the subway bomber. I wanted to kill people in the rail stations like my parents had been murdered.”

  As I listened, I shook my head in disbelief.

  “In my fantasy of being Shadow Stalker, I created several wired flower bombs. These devices had detonators and timers, but I never attached explosives to any of them, except for the several sticks of dynamite I recently wired to my flower display table when I thought I was losing you. I just couldn’t live without you.”

  “You’re lying to me. You are this terrorist and just trying to save your own skin!” I shouted.

  “Please believe me!” she begged. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “No!” I yelled. “You are this killer, and you may be insane as well.”

  She looked at me with the saddest expression I’d ever seen. A cloudburst of tears rolled down her face. “I hate you!” she said in a strained and hoarse voice. I looked at her in silence and disgust, then turned away. “You bastard, I didn’t kill anyone. Please, why won’t you believe me?” Caroline sobbed uncontrollably in her metal chair. I looked at her with hatred and left the room and ran down the long corridor and out of the jail. I got into my car, driving away on the nearly empty road until the anger within my body subsided. I never wanted to see her again.

  I drove myself to the ocean, flooded with tears of emotion. I kept thinking about what Caroline had said. Additional waves of anger swept over me. I parked my car by the side of the road and climbed down the steep hill to the water’s rocky shore. I yelled to the sky and screamed to the heavens. “Please, Lord, tell me what’s real. What can I believe?” I fell on the sand, exhausted in anguish. Why would she lie to me like that?

  Cold waves of water gently rolled onshore as I cried out my beleaguered soul. I felt miserable. I kept thinking about what Caroline had told me in the jail. I refused to believe it. How could I believe anything that this woman told me now?

  After a while I picked myself up and climbed the steep hill. I was wet and covered in sand. The pain of what I was feeling wracked my trembling cold body. Fortunately, I had some blankets in the trunk of my car. I got them out and laid them across the driver’s seat and drove myself home. When I finally arrived at Highgate, I made myself some hot tea. I stayed in my apartment for days, refusing to see anyone. My boss and Dr. Aldridge had called several times, but I wouldn’t speak to them. I couldn’t sleep, so I took some leftover tranquilizers to help me relax.

  After several days of seclusion, I felt less troubled. It was only now that I really started to think about what Caroline had told me. Her words kept me up at night, thinking and wondering. The next day I contacted Colonel Richards and asked if I could meet with him in an hour. He happened to have some free time available and agreed to my request.

  I walked into the Colonel’s private office at headquarters. “Good morning, sir, how are you doing today?”

  “I’m fine,” he replied. My boss was sitting
in his comfortable black leather chair. He looked at me wearing his usual grim countenance. “Now, you had something important that you wanted to discuss with me? Go ahead and speak your mind.”

  “Colonel, some new information has come to my attention concerning details of the Shadow Stalker killings.”

  “Indeed,” my boss replied. Colonel Richards was polishing his favorite shiny hand gun. He loved that gun. It was a present given to him many years ago by a close and dear friend. “Tell me how I can help you today.”

  “I need to know the results of the lab report concerning the investigation of the contents of Miss Prichard’s apartment on the night she was brought in.” With eager anticipation, I looked at the relaxed Colonel. He put his gun away and lit his favorite Havana cigar. He took a few puffs and kept staring at me.

  My boss reached over to his cluttered desk and shuffled through some piles of paperwork. “Uh, let me see. Oh, yes, I have the results of the lab report right in front of me. Is there anything in particular that you wanted to know?”

  “I want to know if the investigation found any wired flower bombs or active detonators in the prisoner’s apartment.”

  My boss kept shuffling through some papers on his messy desk. “Uh, nothing here,” he said.

  “Did you say that the lab found no wired flower bombs in Miss Prichard’s apartment?”

  “The lab report clearly states that no flower bombs or any other explosive devices were found in the prisoner’s apartment.”