Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “I told you we wouldn’t go anyplace fancy. We thought you’d feel right at home here,” Paul told her, and she did— until the bill came. She couldn’t believe how expensive it was. Still, she’d said she was treating and she did. She even left a fifteen percent tip for the waiter, who had a beautiful voice and was friendly, too.

  Really, the only unpleasant person she met throughout her stay in New York had been that woman on the plane home, the one who wouldn’t trade seats. It was people like her who gave New York City a bad name.

  Oh well. At least one thing is certain: Imogene will never have to cross paths with her again.

  Settled into her chair, she picks up the remote control and begins to channel surf, still thinking about New York City.

  She’s glad Paul is happy there. Really, she is. It’s just lonely here without him, and Ned.

  Maybe she really should get a dog, as Paul suggested. Or a cat. Cats are quieter. The neighbors who live on the first floor of this duplex have a terrier that’s always barking at something. In fact, Imogene can hear it yapping its head off right now.

  She knows better than to bother going downstairs to complain. The first floor was dark when she got home from the airport. The neighbors always go out on Saturday nights, and they don’t come home until late.

  Aggravated by the racket, Imogene shouts, “Shut up, you stupid mutt!”

  The dog goes right on barking, and she raises the volume on the television, trying to lose herself in a Golden Girls rerun.

  After a minute or so, the canine frenzy downstairs is curtailed so abruptly that Imogene wonders if the owners suddenly showed up and muzzled the dog. She picks up the remote and mutes the television, listening for footsteps below, but hears nothing.

  Noticing that Betty White has come back onscreen, she raises the volume, puts the remote aside again, and turns her attention back to the television.

  Too bad they don’t make funny sitcoms like this anymore. Imagine if they did, and if Paul could get himself a starring role on one! She would be so—

  Amid the laughter coming from the television, a new sound reaches Imogene’s ears.

  Footsteps . . . but they’re not coming from downstairs. A sudden chill seems to permeate the overheated apartment as she realizes it sounded like it came from the next room.

  As she turns to reach for the remote, she catches sight of a figure standing in her bedroom doorway.

  A scream lodges in her throat.

  She makes a futile attempt to rise and flee, but she’s far too stiff and slow. The intruder is upon her before she can even lift her aching hips from the chair, and she collapses back into it when she sees the knife.

  Fixated on the blade held steady in a black-gloved hand, she tries to swallow, her mouth flooded with the sour taste of fear.

  Bad things can happen anywhere, Mother. Even Mankato . . .

  “No,” Imogene whispers, as the knife slashes toward her.

  Oh, Paul. You were so right . . .

  And I was so wrong, she realizes, catching sight of her attacker’s face in the split second before her throat is sliced wide open.

  She’d been so certain she’d never cross paths again with the woman from the plane . . .

  But those icy blue eyes are the last thing Imogene sees on this earth.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Monday, July 2

  The MacKennas spent the entire weekend driving west, following what is essentially a horizontal line Hudson traced across her own map of the United States.

  New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana . . .

  Now it’s Monday morning, and Allison and Mack are squeezed into a tiny hotel bathroom just outside Gary; Mack standing over her shaving as she brushes her teeth.

  They were hoping to make it all the way into Illinois last night, but massive thunderstorms slowed them down.

  All afternoon, as they drove into and out of violent weather, Allison instinctively kept an eye on the sky for funnel clouds and listened for warning sirens, something she would never think to do back home. But she was back in tornado country now, and this, she remembered, was the height of the season.

  Once again crossing those wide expanses of farmland beneath blue-black skies, she could almost taste the trepidation she used to feel on summer afternoons when storms rolled in from the west.

  Her father had taught her how to tell, even before the sirens went off, if atmospheric conditions were ripe for twisters. It wasn’t just a matter of high winds, rain, and hail, he told her. Tornadoes often weren’t prefaced by precipitation, and they didn’t always strike in the afternoon or early evening.

  “You have to look out there for dark, heavy, low-hanging clouds, Allie,” he said, pointing to the western horizon, “when the air is warm and humid and still.”

  She nodded and pretended to be as fascinated as he was, just as she always did when he got into one of his long, involved explanations involving scientific facts—or historical or mathematical or political or literary facts, as the case might be.

  She tried to pay attention even to the boring parts because her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Barnes, once said it was good to know a little bit about everything.

  “It’s better to know everything about everything,” her father said with a hint of disdain when she told him that. He added that he’d always wanted to be a teacher, but his parents couldn’t afford to send him to college.

  “At least I get to teach my kids about how the world works,” he said. “You’re going to be a smart girl when you grow up, Allie, if you just listen to me and remember everything I tell you.”

  For a long time, she earnestly tried to do just that.

  After he left, she switched gears, doing her best to erase every memory of him, good, bad—all of them.

  But yesterday, gazing out the windshield at the layered storm clouds hanging low where the grassland met the murky sky, she could hear her father’s voice so clearly that it was as if he were right there beside her again.

  “Before a tornado, the air becomes electrically charged, so if you walk outside and your hair gets all staticky and starts standing up on your arms—look out! Get into the storm cellar as fast as you can, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “I want you to be real careful and look for those signs whenever you’re home alone and the weather starts to turn, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  She might have long since tried to block out his voice and his face, but the advice stayed with her, especially in later years, when she was so frequently home alone—or might as well have been.

  Technically—legally—her young life was in her mother’s hands, but most of the time, the harsh reality was just the opposite. Brenda was often passed out cold by afternoon, or too high to take heed of even the wailing sirens. Allison can remember literally dragging her unconscious mother down to the storm cellar, then weeping softly as she waited for the storm to pass.

  But that was after her mother developed her full-blown drug habit; after her father left. Things were different in the old days. Back when he was home, Allison was never particularly anxious about impending bad weather.

  “Come on, Allie,” his voice echoed back over the years, “help me gather up flashlights and candles and make sure the crank radio is wound and ready.”

  How she loved to crank that radio; loved the game her father made of guessing how high they’d be able to count between thunder booms and lightning bolts.

  If the power went out—which it often did—they made shadow puppets on the walls in the flashlight’s beam, and her father dished up gigantic bowls of ice cream, telling her they had to eat it all before it made a melted mess.

  Funny—Allison had anticipated that as she made her way back to Nebraska, memories might come at her fast and furious, as harshly unwelcome as April sleet.

  But that hasn’t been the case so far. The memories have been coming, yes—triggered by everything from license plates on passing
cars to the smell of summer rain mingling with warm asphalt and wildflowers.

  But they haven’t all been bad, not by any means.

  A roadside Dairy Queen reminded Allison of how her mother once took her out for a hot fudge sundae on the last day of school to celebrate her good report card.

  “You only got a good report card one time, Mommy?” Madison asked when she shared the memory with the girls.

  “I always got a good report card. But my mom took me out for a sundae one time to celebrate.”

  “Just once?”

  “Just once.”

  “Maybe you forgot the other times,” Hudson said.

  “Maybe I did,” Allison agreed, though she knew it wasn’t true. Once, her mother was so proud of her that she took her out to Dairy Queen. Once, in her whole childhood.

  Memories . . .

  At a rest stop, two little girls skipping rope reminded Allison not just of her own daughters but of her old friend Tammy Connolly, who taught her to jump to the rhyme about Lizzie Borden taking an axe and giving her mother forty whacks.

  “Why did she do that? Why did she kill her parents?” Allison interrupted her counting to ask breathlessly as they jumped.

  “I don’t know. Because they were mean to her, I guess.”

  “So she killed them?”

  “You’re making me lose count, Allison! Start over! One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  Memories . . .

  A sign advertising Runza sandwiches—pockets of dough filled with seasoned meat, a Nebraska specialty that now seems to have spread east beyond the state line—reminded her of her father. On the rare occasions they went out to dinner, he always ordered a Runza if it was on the menu.

  “Here, try it, Allison. It’s really good.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t like it.”

  “How do you know that if you don’t try it?”

  “I just know.”

  “That’s a stupid thing for a smart girl to say. You should try it.”

  “Maybe I will—someday.”

  She never did. But maybe she still will someday.

  Maybe even tomorrow.

  Memories . . .

  A child’s bike attached to the back of a camper reminded her of when Brett taught her how to ride a two-wheeler, running alongside her, promising he wouldn’t let go of the sissy bar on the back of her banana seat. She glanced over her shoulder to see him far behind her and instantaneously went from infuriated to exhilarated as she realized that while he’d broken his promise, she hadn’t fallen down.

  “I’m doing it, Brett! I’m doing it all by myself!”

  “Good job, Allison, but don’t look back. Just keep looking forward!”

  Yet all day yesterday, as she gazed through the windshield at the road ahead, she kept looking back—though not, for a change, with regret. She remembered the good times, even when the thunderstorms came rolling in.

  After a few hours mostly spent crawling along in blinding rain, clinging to the taillights of the car in front of them, they were forced to call it a night, still a hundred miles short of their destination. That will make for a longer day today, driving all the way across both Illinois and Iowa and into Nebraska at last.

  Last night, they ate again at Cracker Barrel—the girls’ new “most favoritest restaurant in the whole wide world!” thanks to the old-fashioned store in the front. The candy counter is just as Allison remembered it, stocked with retro treats—caramel bull’s-eyes, horehound drops, Necco Wafers, Clove gum . . .

  She bought candy buttons for her daughters and told them how she and her friend Tammy used to tear them into strips and trade with each other.

  “What was your favorite color, Mommy?”

  “Blue,” she told Madison. “Tammy always said to me, ‘You just like blue because your eyes are blue,’ and I’d tell her that she should like green, in that case.”

  “Blue’s my favorite, too, Mommy. What was Tammy’s favorite color?”

  “Pink,” she answered readily, surprised that she remembered.

  “I like yellow best, because it’s the happiest color,” Hudson decided. “Are you going to see Tammy when we get to Nebraska?”

  Allison’s smile faded. “No. We don’t have time.”

  “We can make time,” Mack said, “if you really want to.”

  “I don’t really want to.”

  Back at the hotel after dinner last night, even Mack fell right to sleep when they collapsed into bed, but not for long. It turned out to be another rough night with J.J. Having once again dozed away the day in the car, he wanted to play all night.

  Allison and Mack took turns holding him, trying to shush him so that the girls could sleep. Finally, their son drifted off about an hour and a half before their six-thirty A.M. wakeup call came.

  “We can always stop sooner tonight.” Mack’s razor scrapes a path through foamy white shaving cream on his cheek.

  “I told Brett we’d be getting there by tomorrow at around noon,” Allison says around her toothbrush.

  “It’s not like we have to punch a clock, though.”

  “No . . . but I’ve always wanted to stay at the Cornhusker. And I booked a suite when I made the reservation, remember? I figured we might need an extra-good night’s sleep before we start the last leg of the trip.”

  “You figured right. Okay, so we’ll go to Lincoln.”

  “Okay.” Allison spits into the sink, then steps back so that Mack can rinse his face.

  “I’ll go get the kids up and moving while you take a shower,” he tells her. “We should get on the road within the next twenty minutes or so if we’re going to go all the way to Lincoln. Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “Positive.”

  When she was growing up, the Cornhusker was the fanciest hotel in Nebraska—still is, as far as she knows. Some of the girls she knew from school once spent a long weekend there with their mothers, but of course Allison wasn’t invited.

  She and Tammy spent that weekend listening to the latest New Kids on the Block album, indulging their mutual infatuation with the band members: Allison was going to marry Donnie and Tammy was going to marry Jordan. They’d be musicians’ wives together, they said, traveling around the country on the tour bus. For her birthday that year, Tammy even made her a framed collage of New Kids photos torn from her precious fan magazine collection.

  The collage hung on her wall long after her New Kids obsession faded; long after Tammy left town. But Allison herself tossed it into the Dumpster when she and Brett cleaned out everything after their mother died.

  At the time, feeling utterly alone in the world—and resenting it—she never imagined that she’d ever want to see Tammy again, even if she knew where she was.

  Now, she knows . . . and now, she’s not so sure.

  As she gets into the shower, she thinks about Tammy yet again, wondering whether Tamara Connolly Pratt is indeed the Tammy in question.

  There’s only one way to find out.

  When she sat holding J.J. on her lap in the middle of the night, remembering all the good times that had come back to her over the weekend, she imagined a happy reunion like the ones Randi had with her high school friends.

  You never know, Allison. It might be a healing experience.

  Maybe Randi was right after all. Maybe it would be a healing experience to reconnect. Not with all the mean girls from her hometown, but with Tammy.

  She’s afraid to mention it again to Mack, though, until she makes up her mind.

  She lathers her hair with cheap hotel shampoo, going through various scenarios.

  What if Mack tries to talk her into it?

  Or out of it?

  He’s as anxious as the kids are to reach their final destination, if only to get out of the car at last. But the closer Allison gets to seeing her brother again, the more inclined she feels to stall.

  What if that particular reunion isn’t healing? For all these years, she could at least hang on to the remote po
ssibility that she might one day have a relationship with the one person in this world who shares her blood—besides her father, anyway.

  There’s no way she’d even bother to plug his fake name into a search engine again.

  No, there’s just her brother. And until she comes face-to-face with Brett, she can still cling to that shred of hope. Once she crosses the threshold into his house, that precious hope will either wither and die, or bloom into a happy ending, at last, to her family’s tragic story.

  She’s had plenty of time to prepare for this—more than half a lifetime, really—yet she’s still feeling too vulnerable to deal with it just yet.

  I need a little more time.

  Time to steel her bruised heart for yet another loss in this final chapter, or open it to letting someone new breach the walls and enter her fiercely guarded private world.

  Either way, she’ll have to tap into a well of strength she’s no longer sure she possesses, regardless of what Dr. Rogel told her that day in his office.

  She wonders what he would say about her impulse to get in touch with Tammy.

  That she might just be delaying one possibly unhappy ending only to replace it with another?

  She shakes her head as she towels off and throws on the clothes she took off last night and hung on the hook on the back of the bathroom door. Might as well be rumpled for one more long day in the car.

  “Okay—who’s ready to hit the road?” she asks, coming out of the bathroom to find the girls jumping from one bed to the other as J.J. crawls around on the floor between them. Mack is sitting in the room’s lone chair, tapping away on his BlackBerry keyboard.

  “Mack! What are you doing?” Allison snatches J.J. off the carpet, not the cleanest in the world. It reeks of cigarettes, despite the “No Smoking” sign on the door.

  “Everyone smokes around here,” Hudson observed just last night, in the restaurant parking lot. “Even kids. Someone should tell them it’s bad for them.”

  “That someone shouldn’t be you,” Allison said quickly, seeing her daughter take a step in the direction of a group of skateboard-toting teenage boys puffing away.