Shadow Men

by Jonathon King

  An hour later a single crime-scene tech and an assistant medical examiner showed up. The coroner’s body bag boys took the remains and grunted and groaned as they hoisted it over the turnstiles and up the stairs. No one was pleased to be out in the cold at 3:00 A.M. The M.E. was as detached as Edgerton.

  “Same as the other two. Cause of death was the slashed throat. A race between asphyxiation and bleedout, since he got the carotid.

  “Male Caucasian. Probably in his early thirties, though it’s tough to tell with these homeless guys. No I.D. that I could find. Might get some kind of tattoo or distinguishing mark when we cut the clothes off on the table.”

  The guy wasn’t reading from any notes, if he’d bothered to take any.

  “The eyes?” Edgerton said.

  “Same. Removed postmortem with something blunt, like a spoon.”

  “Christ. Three in six weeks,” Edgerton said. “This sick fuck is gonna ruin our clearance rate all by himself.”

  We worked the case for three days before Edgerton got bored and was able to slide off onto the double homicide of a Cherry Hill couple in the parking lot of Bookbinders that was stirring up press. They let me go it alone for five days. I started walking the deep subway corridors from eight to eleven at night, when I had a chance to interview stragglers from work who used the trains late. I went down again from five until sunrise when the tiled corridors were nearly empty except for the echo of the trains and the occasional skitter of rat claws over the concrete. I had used the subway since I was old enough to walk but never knew you could start at City Hall and stay underground all the way to Locust Street. I talked with the rag men, the homeless who sneaked down from the steam grates on the sidewalks when their clothes got too wet and they risked freezing to death. I looked in their eyes and felt their fetid breath and heard little more than psychotic babble.

  A woman struggled with the burden of extra clothing wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. I tried to help her but she snatched the bag away and looked into my face with wet blue eyes and said, “Mercy!”

  Other than her voice, her sex was revealed only by the tiny size of her white boots with the daisy on the strap, and I wondered about that single scrap of female vanity. I left her alone.

  The lieutenant of the unit pulled me after the first week. “Got other cases, Freeman. Priorities, son.” But on the weekend I walked the perimeters of the downtown stations, looking above ground for someone who would go down in the dark to kill human beings and steal their eyes. The second week I walked the corridors on my way to the roundhouse for the beginning of the shift, and again on the way back. I started getting the derisive smirks and “bulldog” jokes from the other detectives. Edgerton pulled me aside and thought he was counseling me when he tried to tell me I wasn’t my father.

  “It doesn’t work that way these days, Max. Obsession ain’t a positive trait in this business,” he said. “Beside, this isn’t a series of innocent kids you’re talking about and…” He stopped himself, leaving out the “Look where it got your old man” that would have finished his opinion. The skepticism continued until the following Friday night.

  It began to sleet at ten, frozen rain that looked like snow in the streetlights but stung when it hit your skin and then turned quickly to water. It drove everyone for cover. The subway cars had been packed during rush hour, but the corridors had cleared out as usual—until the sleet came and the Friday night clubbers and the half-frozen homeless started going underground. By now I knew a few of the regulars and could identify them by their individual stoops and shuffles. I assessed the new ones. Past midnight a tall man in a ragged peacoat slid past me at a concourse near Market Street. His long neck curved down like a garden hose, his shoulders wrapped around his sunken chest like it had been punched by a mighty blow and never recovered. By two o’clock the platforms and corridors were empty; those who were down here had found their hiding spots. I was working my way through a tunnel north of Chestnut when I turned a corner and scared the hell out of a young woman walking south. She was wearing duck shoes and a ski jacket and was carrying a backpack over one shoulder. She gasped when she saw me and I immediately showed her my badge and said, “I’m a cop. It’s OK.” I watched some of the alarm move off her face, and she was about to speak when we both heard an agonizing howl that was instantly cut short.

  The woman’s eyes went huge and she took a step in the direction away from the noise as I took one toward it.

  “I’m Detective Freeman,” I said. “Go up top.”

  She looked the other way and seemed to hesitate with panic, so I yelled, “Go up top! Just go.” The echo of her running footfalls followed her and I went the other way. Before the next blind turn I had my radio and my 9 mm Glock in my hands. I turned the radio volume low and reported to dispatch my location and a possible subway assault. Then I clicked off the set. Fifty more feet and I heard a deep-throated groan that vibrated and carried off the graffiti-covered tiles. I knew there was an alcove up ahead that was sealed by a chain-link gate that had long been breached at one corner with a pair of wire cutters. I replaced the radio with my flashlight and moved on.

  At the gate I stopped and listened. The growing roar of a train arriving at the City Hall station momentarily blocked out any other sound. I waited, and as the cars pulled out I used the noise to move through the bent corner of the gate. There was a stack of stored barricades against one dark wall and racks of metal scaffolding leaning against the other. A passageway between them was just wide enough for a man to get through. Farther in, the weak light from the corridor was lost and the shadows were black. I crouched to avoid being backlit and again tried to listen. After a few minutes of silence, I heard movement. The scrape of boot leather on concrete. A shifting of something heavy and soft. Then a noise, like the tearing of wet cardboard and the distinct sound of a watery suction. The sight of the empty eye sockets flashed in my head. I slapped the flashlight next to the barrel of my 9 mm, snapped on the beam and rushed forward.

  “Police!” I yelled, jerking the light from shadow to shadow.

  “Police!” I kept barking and then the beam caught movement and my fingers tightened on the Glock. I steadied the beam on his head as he rose, the white skin of his face illuminated in the light. I focused on his eyes and they did not seem to flinch in the brightness, and like a bad photograph I saw them glow red and fearless.

  “Hands up and away from your body!” I yelled again, forcing my attention away from his eyes to the movement of his arms. He was tall and dressed in dark material, and he shuffled one step forward.

  “Fucking freeze!” I yelled again, the adrenaline taking my voice.

  He was ten feet away and I shifted the light and saw a flash of blade in his left hand and the dull metal of a spoon in his right. When I moved the beam back to the knife the light picked up the form of a body behind him. It lay still and I could see a patch of pale skin and then the light found a rubber daisy dangling on a small, white boot.

  The man took one more step and I refocused on his eyes and shot him. I aimed low into his hip and did not care whether the round drifted in or not. He went down with a yelp of pain and I closed the distance between us before he hit one knee. I half skipped my last step and then swung my right leg and drop-kicked him in the chest with the toe of my polished combat boot. He was on his back, staring up into the flashlight beam, and the animal look of his red eyes had not changed. I stepped hard on the wrist of his left arm and watched the fingers uncurl from the handle of a six-inch butterfly blade.

  “The suspect was armed and in fear of my life this officer determined that the use of force was required to subdue said suspect,” I whispered aloud as I felt the ligaments in the man’s arm pop under my shifting weight.

  I reached down and swatted the knife out of his reach and then pointed the barrel of the Glock into his left eye.

  “Roll over and put your hands behind your back.”

  I cuffed him and then moved my light to the woman. She was d
ead, and the sharp acid smell of fresh blood rose off her like heat. I rolled her and she stared up at me. One eye still glistened with a curved wound to one side. Her throat had already been cut. I got on the radio and was told a squad car was already up at the subway entrance. The man on the floor was crying now from the pain of the bullet wound but I turned away and let the rumble of the arriving train drown out the sound of his keening.

  I woke with the sound of screeching metal train brakes in my ears and came up shivering in my bunk. The shack was still dark, and I swung my heels to the wooden floor and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and half expected to see my breath steaming in the air.

  I got up and this time tossed some kindling into the wood- burning stove and started it. I watched the flames dance and build and then set my coffeepot over an open port on top. I stepped outside while the water heated and drew in the night air to wash the remembered smell of subway rot from my nose. For several days after the slasher’s arrest the other detectives gave me the razz.

  “Yo, you Freemans ought to start a Mounties’ division. ‘We always get our man,’ eh, Max?”

  “Chip off the old block, eh?”

  “Or off the old bottle,” one stage-whispered.

  By then my father was existing on the good ol’ boy network. His alcoholism was being covered by friends in the department. His abusiveness was kept in the family. His reputation was now the fodder of jokes, but never to his face. I heard the rattle of the coffeepot and went back inside.

  By nine I was at Billy’s, sitting in his immaculate study, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling book cases filled with law volumes, history and nonfiction collections as diverse at the owner. I was facing two computer screens and was using Billy’s hookup to the Internet and LexisNexis to run through religious listings and church locations throughout South Florida. We were banking on Nate Brown’s recollection that Jefferson’s grandson had become a minister and hoping that he’d stayed in his home state. I was also hoping that his isolated, rural upbringing would have kept him from taking a position in a big city like Tampa or Orlando. By e-mail, Billy was coordinating with me from his office and guiding me to Web sites while he worked his own independent sources.

  At noon I took a break from the air-conditioning and stood out on the patio. Out on the ocean I watched a sailboat at the horizon as it moved south, heeled over on a windward tack, its genoa sail pulled tight and its rails dipping into blue water. Before I loaded my canoe at sunrise I’d sat at my table in the weak light and cleaned my 9 mm. The gun had been wrapped carefully in oilcloth and stashed in the false bottom of one of the armoires. There were spots of brownish rust showing along the barrel and the trigger guard where the humid river air had gotten through. I found my cleaning kit and broke the weapon down on the table and meticulously rubbed and oiled each piece. I did not search for a motivation for what I was doing. The fire, the tracking devices, the helicopter, the blown-out windshield or even the psychotic eyes of the subway killer. There was something moving in my veins when I slid the parts back together, snapped the fifteen-round clip into place and dry-fired the piece one time before stowing it in my bag to bring with me. I’d left the bag locked in my truck when I came up, knowing that Billy would detest its presence in his home, but the thought of it somehow gave me comfort. I left the patio, poured another cup, and returned to my work.

  By the end of the day we’d come up with eleven possibilities. Billy had found clergymen with the last name of Jefferson in six towns around Lake Okeechobee and in the south central part of the state. I’d found two each in Miami and Tampa and another in Placid City. We had eliminated several others by running their names through Billy’s link with the Florida Department of Transportations driver’s license database. Using their dates of birth, we kept only those between the ages of forty and sixty, giving ourselves some guessing room. Without access to the software that would have displayed photo I.D.s, we couldn’t winnow the list by race. Instead, we split the list and started making phone calls.

  “Yes, this is Reverend Jefferson, what can I do to help you?”

  “Thanks for your time, Reverend. My name is Max Freeman and I’m working with the law office of Billy Manchester in West Palm Beach on an inheritance matter. I was hoping, sir, that you might be the man we are searching for.”

  A slightly skeptical silence followed.

  “Yes, Mr. Freeman. If this isn’t a sales call, please, go on.”

  “Well, sir, our only information is that our Mr. Jefferson may be a member of the clergy in Florida and grew up with a family in the southwestern part of the state.”

  A slight chuckle sounded from the deep baritone on the other end of the line.

  “Well, Mr. Freeman, you have eliminated me, sir. I am a native New Yorker, and my extended family is deeply ensconced in the Fishkill area. I only took on this congregation five years ago, quite frankly in an effort to leave the winters behind.”

  “Then I’ve taken your time unduly, Reverend. Forgive me. But can I ask if you might have come across another clergyman who shares your last name, sir?”

  So the conversations went. We had no luck with our leads in the cities, which did not surprise me. When I was able to speak directly to the pastors, the lack of accent alone was a giveaway. You did not grow up as a native in the deep corner of southwest Florida in the forties and fifties without forever holding that slow, Southern speech. My sense of the man we were looking for was someone in a small, rural setting. An escape from the isolated world of the Everglades, if that’s what it was, wouldn’t have taken him into a place of high-rises and concrete.

  I got a map of Florida up on one of the computer screens and looked it over, the remaining list of Jeffersons in my head. Plant City was just outside of Tampa on the I-4 corridor to Orlando. The interstate had become so commercial and crowded that it almost rivaled the I-95 strip to Miami. Harlem was a small agricultural town along the southern edge of the lake. It was a possibility, but when I made the call to Pastor Jefferson at the Harlem Baptist Church, he too fell off the list.

  “I am truly sorry, Mr. Freeman, but my family, we’ve been here and here alone for most of the last one hundred years. My own father led this church before he moved on to join the Lord and his father before him.

  “But y’all might call up to Placid City. There is a minister name of Jefferson up that way. A fine man, though I can’t say I know too much about where his people are from.”

  Placid City was represented by a small black dot on the map. It was just off U.S. 27 northeast of the big lake and south of Sebring. There were splotches of blue around it, representing small, landlocked lakes. But most of the area around it on the screen was stark, empty white. I circled the number of Rev. William Jefferson of the First Church of God on North Sylvan Street and dialed it.

  “Yes, this is Pastor Jefferson’s number, but he’s not in right now. Can I take a message for him, please?”

  The woman’s voice was warm and personable, certainly not that of a secretary.

  “When might you expect him back?” I said.

  “Well, sir, he is out visiting with Ms. Thompson out to Lorida. She’s gone sick and I do expect he will be late,” she said. “This is his wife, Margery. Can I help you?”

  I went into my spiel and she listened without interruption.

  “You say this is an inheritance matter, Mr. Freeman? I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Having to do with family that the Mr. Jefferson we are looking for would have had in the Everglades City area, ma’am. Can you tell me, ma’am, if your husband is from that part of the state?”

  Again there was silence.

  “That was a very long time ago, Mr. Freeman, and I can’t imagine that my husband would have any kind of inheritance matters, as you call them, from that time. That part of the family has long since been passed on.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I understand. We may very well have the wrong person, but may I call again, Mrs. Jefferson, when your husband is
available?”

  “Certainly. Please give me your number, Mr. Freeman, and I will make sure he gets the message.”

  After I hung up I leaned back in Billy’s chair and looked again at the small black dot of Placid City. It was the most solid lead yet, and the quiet, not wholly forthcoming quality of Mrs. Jefferson’s voice slipped under my skin. “That part of the family has been passed on.” It was not the usual use of the phrase, and the wording formed a small jagged rock in my head that I began to grind.

  CHAPTER

  14

  I spent the next day on the beach with Richards. It was her day off and she’d called me with a request to do absolutely nothing, and I could think of no better venue. Billy’s own Jefferson search had gained little except a couple of flat-out eliminations and the promise of some callbacks. We agreed that Placid City was the best bet so far, and I ditched my paranoia over the possible intercepts of my cell phone and brought it with me in case the Reverend William should call. I picked Sherry up at ten, and we cruised up A1A to the north end of Lauderdale’s open beach and struck our umbrella into a plot of sand like Oklahoma land-rush settlers claiming our forty acres. We unfolded a couple of low chairs, made sure the cooler I’d packed was guarded by the umbrella’s shade, and then sat. I heard a sigh of pleasure come from Richards as she stretched out her long legs and crossed her ankles in the warm sand.

  “No cases. No cop talk. No dissection of investigations, Freeman,” she said, her eyes hidden by her dark-tinted sunglasses. “Gonna be like normal folk, kicking back without a worry in the world.”

  “Since when have there been normal folk without a worry in the world?” I said, matching her stretched-out pose. The sky was clear and the water blue green. A flock of some dozen white-bellied sanderlings was scattered at the tide mark, pecking at the backwash. When the next wave arrived, their black legs skittered like an old silent film at ridiculously high speed to keep ahead of it.