The Shadow Constant

by AJ Scudiere

  There was no perceptible nod to Reenie’s agreement, only the fact that she took the phone and began punching buttons.

  Kayla broke in. “If you could find any hints to where Ivy is while you’re checking her phone log for criminal activity that would be nice, too.”

  Reenie frowned at her, and Evan spoke softly. “She’s not being sarcastic.” He turned back to Kayla, his large presence making the space seem both smaller and emptier. “How worried about her are you?”

  “Very.”

  “You don’t seem it.” He looked at her closely, as though words or runic clues might appear on her skin.

  “How do I not seem that worried, Evan?” She had studied behavior, tried to imitate it and sometimes did well. She knew that when people were worried their voices rose in pitch and that hers often didn’t. And Evan should know that. As though the room stretched somehow, she suddenly seemed farther away from the other two than she had before. Reenie was frantically punching in things on Ivy’s phone, Evan was staring at her funny and she was wondering if maybe there were things on her face.

  “You haven’t suggested that we call the police or file a missing persons report.” He waited for her answer.

  She stared at him because she was in shock, not because she wanted him to understand just how far off base he was. “Evan, are you on crack? The police may be part of the problem, and we only have a sheriff out here anyway. And you can’t file a missing person report on an adult for forty-eight hours.”

  Reenie looked up from where she was neck deep in Ivy’s phone logs. “Is that right?”

  “Yes.” Kayla eyes dodged back and forth between them. Why did no one think Ivy was missing? “And there’s no obvious sign of a struggle. We aren’t even related. We’d have to get a hold of her mother to file a report.”

  Somehow, she’d managed to remain calm until now. But standing here in the bedroom with everything around her, things became more serious and her heart rate rocketed. The fact that the phone had been on the floor was disconcerting. Ivy was constantly leaving it behind—in the desk drawer, by the bed, even the Overseer’s dining table—but there hadn’t been a single time that Kayla knew about when it hadn’t been somewhere safe.

  “Okay.” Evan had his voice-of-reason tone on. “Why do you think she’s missing?”

  She wanted to be more eloquent, but she didn’t have it in her. Thoughts pinged around in her head, scrambling her thoughts. Screw the machine. The idea of the footprints kept trying to weasel into her brain and pull her off track. It made her wonder what was happening with her machine now and what exactly Evan had meant when he said he “scuttled” it. But instead Kayla nearly wailed. “Because she’s missing! She’s not here. And her things are! Strange people keep coming here and lying to us and stealing our things and now they’ve stolen Ivy!” Tears were forming in her eyes and by the time she finished, several had escaped and were making their way down her face.

  “Okay.” It was as much as Evan would give. It was his answer when she started to lose it. But ‘okay’ meant he would do something. “Reenie, maybe you can save the phone for later.”

  Reenie looked once at Kayla and with an odd look on her face, pocketed the device.

  “Let’s look for Ivy here first.” Holding up a hand, Evan stopped Kayla before she could start. “If she’s here, we’ll find her. If she left of her own accord, maybe we can find out that she did, or how or where or even when she’ll be back. If she didn’t, then maybe we can find something to take to law enforcement.”

  Fighting back the sting in her eyes and failing, Kayla found a way to agree with her brother. He made sense.

  Before either of the women could formulate a response, Evan was issuing orders and making a plan. “We’ll get the walkies from downstairs, then we’ll go over everything. We’ll start by combing the houses. Reenie and Kayla take this house, start at the attic, and work your way down, room by room. I’ll be at the Overseer’s. When anyone finishes, let the others know, and we’ll decide what to search next until we’ve done the whole plantation.”

  He started out of the room, Reenie right behind him and Kayla bringing up the rear. Since she was simply following the person in front of her, her mind wandered. Given the size of the property and depending on how thorough a search they did, they might not get finished before nightfall. She checked her watch. Not even near lunch yet. There was time for a good look, but not the best. She chose speed over thoroughness.

  “Umph.” The noise came simultaneously from both Reenie and Kayla as Kayla plowed into the other woman’s back. They were standing in front of the storage door, Evan looking at them weird even as he checked the walkies.

  “Sorry.” she muttered, then she snapped straight. “Okay, I saw Ivy at five fifty-seven this morning. That’s when I left the room. I snuck out, she was sleeping.” They had to put together what they each knew, so they could make sense of what they found, or didn’t. “I went to the barn to work on the machine. When I came back at nine forty-two she wasn’t here. By the time I realized she was gone it was fourteen minutes later and that man was knocking at the door. He was driving a small car, and I didn’t see anyone else in it. If Ivy was taken in that car then Collins would have needed a second person and then hidden both of them below the window line in that tiny space. So we can pretty safely say it didn’t happen that way. Maybe someone drove up?”

  She’d been speaking at a rather high speed and so Kayla paused, holding the walkie talkie Evan had pressed into her hand and waiting for the other two to catch up. When they did, Reenie spoke first.

  “Do you think Collins was a distraction so someone could take her?”

  “No.” Kayla shook her head nearly violently. “I knew Ivy was gone before he knocked. So that wasn’t it. It had to be before he knocked.”

  “Could he have taken her then come back and knocked on the door?” Reenie’s thoughts were clearly jumbled and Kayla’s panic fought for control.

  “NO!” The words shot out of her mouth with the intent to destroy everything in front of her. The uncertainty was fear and the fear was a physical pain that she could feel in her chest and taste in the back of her mouth. It made her skin feel too tight and made her long to kiss Ivy again. The longing only twisted her tighter. “I already told you. There was no place to keep her in that car! It wasn’t him! It was someone else!”

  Her fingers contracted and the walkie slid from her grip. A fraction of a second later it smacked the floor at her feet. In her brain she saw it camera lens like, the corner hitting the oak flooring at just the right angle, cracking into three main pieces that each went a different direction. The beauty of the mist-like shards spraying out from the impact told her it would never go back together even with duct tape. And duct tape could fix just about anything. Except this. And Ivy.

  Tears pushed at the backs of her eyes and the hand that touched her arm was flung off with a violent shrug. In her brain, she heard the equivalent of a public service announcement, “This Aspy has gone 392 days without incident.” Over a year. Shot. And she hadn’t even gotten a coin to mark the occasion.

  She wasn’t an alcoholic; she hadn’t done this to herself. She deserved to let go, deserved the shaking and the sound like a roaring alarm in her head. In spite of wanting to claw her way out of herself, there was something familiar in the feeling. She knew this place. She’d spent time here. And it was better than thinking Ivy was gone.

  Evan’s voice droned on the other side of the buzz. He was speaking to Reenie; he had to be warning her not to touch Kayla. That if she put her hand out again, she might not get it back. Ivy’s name came through the thundering noise. The pounding in her skull pushed out the letters in Morse code. Short-short-short-short-short-long . . .

  “K-a-y-l-a-a-a.”

  Her muscles tightened and her ears physically hurt as the consonants of her brother’s voice dragged. She turned to the sound, her eyes finally pulling an image out of the noisy blur before her, her lungs cracking a
nd suddenly, painfully expanding at the sound of his voice. She could see his face, hear him, smell him. And this, too, was familiar. Comfortable. An anchor in the storm that was in her and of her.

  Using all the skills she had learned over the years, Kayla did something she had not been able to do even ten years ago. She pooled her thoughts and pushed her focus toward her brother. She concentrated hard on his voice. Even in the storm the irony was not lost on her that she was having to fight so hard for the focus that was usually legendary in her.

  Evan kept speaking, his words coming in warped and breaking up. She didn’t understand what he was saying, but was grateful that he knew to keep saying it. He spoke with a steady cadence, not breaking rhythm as he worked from one sentence to another, one thought to the next. And finally, after swimming through depths and following the sound, she was able to grasp some of the words.

  “Need . . . . get . . . Ivy . . . sooner . . . if . . . will . . . can get . . . fix it . . . we can find . . . will come home . . . okay. It will be okay. . . find Ivy, but we need you with us Kayla.”

  The last sound came on a sigh and Kayla blinked as he hugged her. She stood very still, breathing steadily, wondering as she always did why he hugged her so tightly after bringing her out when a hug could send her right back in. But he’d told her once that he couldn’t not do it. That it was payment for bringing her back because when she went it always scared the crap out of him. Well, news flash, it scared her too.

  She pressed her lips together and took three small breaths, feeling the last tight squeeze of the hug. When she blinked and opened her eyes she could see both Evan and Reenie looking at her, Evan with satisfaction. Reenie with open curiosity and concern.

  “That was pretty short, Kay.” Evan reached to pick up the broken walkie.

  “Not even duct tape, Ev.”

  He seemed to know what she was saying, but he probably didn’t know that she would be able to replay that film of the walkie breaking—the battery door hitting and shattering—in her mind whenever she thought of it. Even Evan didn’t know that every time she walked in here she would unerringly see the tiny nick in the flooring that was exactly the shape the plastic corner had been with an added trail from the largest shard as it flew off towards the desk.

  “I’ll grab you the other one.” And he turned back to the closet while Reenie apparently decided to be useful and pick up pieces.

  Deciding to be helpful, too, and knowing that Reenie would never find it on her own, Kayla walked to the far side of the room and picked up the largest piece. “Here.”

  Somehow the other woman took it from her without allowing their fingers to even so much as brush. “Thank you.” But the words sounded stilted. Kayla catalogued the sound though she couldn’t imagine when she would ever need that tone.

  “Okay.” Evan held out the fourth walkie to her. “Are you ready to start?”

  Kayla nodded while Reenie tried to shoot Evan subtle “are you mad?” looks. Even Kayla could interpret that one. “I’m fine now, Reenie. I am. I need to go look for Ivy. I’m starting in our room.”

  And she turned, walkie on and crackling, and took off up the stairs.

      

  Evan was exhausted. They had searched the house top to bottom. Apparently poorly, because they found no evidence that Ivy had left the property willingly. Nor had they found anything suggesting she had left unwillingly.

  Her purse was missing, but her car was in the carriage house. Her phone was here, her clothing here, all of her other things were here. But what wasn’t here was anything suggesting where she had gone or when she expected to return. No paper, sticky note, or text message. Hell, at this point he would have gladly taken a hieroglyph. Anything to make things easier for Kayla.

  When he realized his teeth were clenched, he tried to loosen them. Success came not through his own efforts, but as Reenie curled into him, quietly watching the news on the small TV at the far end of the bed. The room felt crowded, the walls closer than anyone with money would have built them today. It was a room made for a generation when any man of six feet was absurdly tall. And it left Evan feeling absurd in the room. He felt useless to his sister and he knew that he had hijacked Reenie’s day.

  In the curve of his arm, she took a deep breath while the news reporter tried to convince them that their refrigerator was trying to kill them. Sensationalistic crap was what it was. He didn’t know why Reenie watched it, so her voice was a welcome interruption.

  “I wish I could have apologized to Kayla before she went to sleep.”

  He shrugged, only after he did it realizing it had moved her “pillow.” “I wish she would have slept here. I’d be willing to go over to the big house and sleep on the floor, but I’m afraid she’d shoot us if we tried to creep over there now.”

  “I feel like shit.”

  He felt a wet spot forming on his chest where silent tears had leaked from Reenie’s eyes. He had no clue what to do with them, but consoled himself that if he could learn what to do when Kayla freaked out then he could surely learn something for Reenie’s tears, too. “You’ll apologize to her tomorrow, tell her what you found. Kayla’s a very loyal and forgiving person.”

  There was a nod against his arm as she turned back to watching the show and his thoughts, once again untethered, wandered. Reenie had played with Ivy’s phone off and on during the day. She’d sat in the barn going through all the numbers and texts. She’d used her own phone to connect to the Internet and look things up while he showed Kayla what he’d done to her machine, where he had buried or hidden some of the pieces. It had been nearly dark by the time they made it there and they spent some of the time blinking in the waning light.

  Kayla had packed up a few of the remaining parts. She said she could tell that someone had touched them, and it clearly gave her the willies to be touching them, too. But she put all she could carry in her backpack and hiked them up the hill in the deepening night. Reenie had trailed one step behind them, her attention on her phones, Evan’s attention on the shadows gathering around them.

  They hadn’t made it to the slave houses. The crumbling row of huts wouldn’t have been a good place to keep a hostage or to hide out. Many of the walls were missing or had gaps wide enough to see a white tank top or brightly colored bra through. But they would go at first light and look for evidence anyway. Kayla had set her alarm, but he knew she would wake on her own within the five minutes before it went off.

  She’d gone reluctantly on her own to the big house after leaving her pack with Evan and Reenie. They’d all eaten just a little, Evan in his office, Kayla standing at the counter nearly falling asleep in her soup. When Reenie might have eaten something, he didn’t even know. And sometime later, Reenie had come into his office, holding out Ivy’s phone and saying, “I fucked up.”

  Not used to hearing the f-word from Reenie, Evan was shocked. “What?”

  “Ivy wasn’t selling things online. She was protecting us.”

  He’d set down his pen, admitting that doing the books wasn’t soothing. He’d been just filling time, trying to do something positive today, and he’d failed at this, too. “What did you find?”

  She showed him a text in a string about the sugar chest, then she told him, “That sugar chest? Ivy told me to put it away. Not put it on display, not to even tell anyone we had it.” She was looking at the phone and scrolling through messages again. “She told this guy to delete the pictures. She was trying to keep us from putting out things we didn’t have the means to protect. She told me there were things here that were too valuable to display.” Reenie shook her head. “She wasn’t trying to fence anything. The things she said to me fit perfectly with this other text string. I guess she decided not to work with the guy I found. She never contacted him but once again after he sent her a text pushing her to sell some pieces. She went to this other guy.”

  And now Reenie would have a hard time sleeping because she felt guilty. So he wasn’t surprised that Reenie
was restless, or that she rolled away and threw back the covers declaring she needed to eat.

  Eyes glazed and unable to sleep, he stared thoughtlessly at the TV. When Reenie reentered the room, he blinked to focus and saw that she was holding something. The odd tone in her voice went perfectly with the strange stance. “There was a small plate and a cup in the sink all day. I thought it was yours. But I just saw lipstick on the edge of the glass and it isn’t mine. So it has to be Ivy’s. She ate breakfast in the kitchen here.”

  “So?” They all ate here. It was the only stocked kitchen on the plantation. There was nothing off in finding evidence that Ivy had eaten breakfast.

  Holding up the object in her hand, Reenie showed him a wallet. “It’s Ivy’s. I checked the ID in it just to be sure.”

  Too quickly for any grace, he sat bolt upright, reaching out for the piece even though she was at the other end of the bed. As though if he felt it with his own hands that would make her words more true.

  “Where did you find it?” He spoke the words as the leather slid into his extended palm.

  “It was on the seat of a chair. Pushed under the table as though someone had set it there and then hid it.”

  “Holy shit.” Ivy really had been taken.

  Immediately, his thoughts shot to Kayla. She’d been right, again. She’d known. And he had to admit Ivy wasn’t going to come in and say she’d gone to Alabama to visit her aunt or something. She’d taken her purse and car keys but not her car and she’d been gone all day with no money or ID.

  Just then the TV snagged his thoughts, the name “Collins” sinking in like a baited hook.

  Both their heads turned to the small screen and watched horrified as the picture flashed.

  “Georgia Power employee Tom Collins was found this evening outside the Springfield area. He had been beaten then shot point blank and left within ten feet of the company car he was driving today. He was declared dead at the scene.