Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  The steps were slick with dew. She moved slowly, keeping close to the rough wall, rising into the covered patio area where she’d first met with the Underhills. Through the French doors, downstairs lights defined the empty rooms—the foyer with its hammered-iron chandelier, the massive kitchen with its targeted track lights, a rear living room with its rustic antique lamps. All subtle, but bright enough to expose her if she was careless, because someone was definitely inside. From the scratchy electronic voices and wavering light from a window at the far end of the house, she knew a television was on. And music? She strained to hear. “Happy days are here again…”

  Brenna moved along the back wall, her right hand on the gun, ducking below other windows as she went and wondering just how this might play in court if something went wrong: The Underhills’ former defense attorney caught stalking the family estate with a gun on the night Ford Underhill rose to political prominence. Pittsburgh’s own Squeaky Fromme.

  The television volume was loud enough that she could hear it through the leaded-glass window that overlooked a less formal living room than the one she just passed. It was more of a den with a casual Western theme, mission furniture and Navajo blankets. Peeking over the window’s bottom ledge, through the wavering glass panes, she saw two people with their backs to her. They seemed riveted by the televised election coverage: Floss Underhill, her tiny fist clutching the stem of an empty champagne glass resting on her wheelchair’s arm; to her right, a younger woman leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, watching the anointing of Ford Underhill as the Democratic candidate for governor. From time to time, the younger woman rolled a champagne bottle in a silver ice bucket, rubbing its neck between her palms to keep it chilled. Floss said something as she gestured toward the TV, and both she and the other woman laughed out loud.

  Nothing about the quiet celebration suggested the perverse scenario she’d seen unfold in the past ten days. It was disorienting because it seemed so normal. She’d come filled with righteous rage, expecting a blackhearted cabal of killers. Or kidnappers. What she’d found was a scene of gentle celebration and camaraderie between an old woman and, apparently, her home-care nurse.

  Brenna forced herself away from the window, wondering if there was any way Jim could be wrong. She retraced her path across the back of the house, then retreated down the stone stairs to the garden. Her hands shook, her legs felt weak. She took a deep breath, realized she was crying. Suddenly, the puzzle that had fit together so neatly when she arrived had an extra piece. Where did this scene belong in the picture of corruption, intimidation, and murder that had seemed so plausible just an hour ago? Or was her mind playing tricks, letting that inconsequential snapshot of calm overshadow the truth Jim had fought so hard to uncover? How could something so simple throw her so completely off stride?

  Moonlight bathed the garden path to the gazebo, the path she’d walked that day with Alton Staggers to see where Floss tumbled into the ravine. The man’s damp face floated into her mind. He’d been here every time she came, hovering around the family like a territorial bird. She knew he monitored the security cameras, but from where? Where was he now? She’d seen him come out the side door of the estate’s immense garage once, reading a computer printout as he walked. Maybe the security operation was there.

  Brenna moved, pulled toward the garage by the resolve that had brought her. If Taylor and Annie weren’t here, she at least wanted to leave knowing she’d looked in all the logical places.

  A rustle of shrubbery stopped her as she neared the corner of the house. And voices, indistinct but harried, coming from around the corner, near the garage she still couldn’t see. Pressing herself against the back wall of the house, Brenna felt for the gun’s grip and hoped whoever it was couldn’t hear her ragged breathing.

  Chapter 44

  The elevator door opened almost without a sound into the dim service corridor. It seemed strangely quiet compared to the noise in the hotel lobby, though Christensen heard voices and the crackle of a walkie-talkie somewhere down the hall.

  “Go right,” Haygood whispered. “Now.”

  The penthouse door was twenty feet away, open at the end of the floor’s main hallway, as Haygood had predicted. The walkie-talkie crackled again at the opposite end, probably near the main elevators. Christensen was running on pure adrenaline now, filled with purpose and anger and a coppery fear he could taste at the back of his throat. Suddenly, they were in, that easy, exposed like startled cockroaches in front of a half-dozen strangers, including the new Democratic nominee for governor. Ford Underhill looked up, unmistakable in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, as did his father and another man in a dark suit seated with him around an elegant glass conference table littered with three-by-five note cards. Beyond them, scenes of the growing mayhem downstairs filled the screen of a large television. Beyond that, a wall of sliding glass opened onto a roof deck facing the Oliver Building across Underhill Square, seventeen floors below.

  A clinking glass to his left diverted Christensen’s attention to a perfectly coifed woman he recognized from campaign commercials as the candidate’s wife. Leigh Underhill was frozen in midpour at the suite’s bar, her mouth open, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot suspended above an empty champagne glass. Beside her stood a beefy, well-dressed man.

  Christensen looked back at the conference table, and in that moment, though he didn’t see how, the man from the bar covered half the distance to the doorway where he and Haygood stood. The man, dark, a Pacific Islander maybe, had drawn a gun and held it discreetly at his side. He’d use it without a second thought, Christensen was sure, ready to protect his man from what must have seemed like two disheveled and possibly deranged intruders. Christensen stepped in front of Haygood, ready for whatever happened.

  “Wait.” A familiar voice.

  The man with the gun stopped. Ford Underhill stood up, his handsome, oversized head already made up and ready for prime time. A telegenic red tie was knotted just so against his brilliant white shirt, and he wore a relaxed, unflustered smile. “I wouldn’t want our guests to get the wrong idea,” he said. “Mr. Samala, please.”

  The man retreated, laid the gun down on the bar without hesitation, and stepped away, obediently clasping his hands behind his broad back, his eyes scanning Christensen’s body for signs of a weapon. Underhill stepped into the center of the room.

  “What can we do for you, Mr.—” A shrug.

  “Christensen. We’ve never met, but I’m guessing you’ve met my daughter and Brenna’s son.”

  Brenna’s name seemed to connect. Christensen imagined Underhill rewinding his private conversation with Brenna, wondering if his attorney had betrayed him. His smile suddenly was less practiced than forced, the look of a man calculating his next move. Ford turned back toward the table. Vincent Underhill was standing now, anxious, his eyes shifting back and forth between his son and his daughter-in-law.

  “Gentlemen, this is actually less unexpected than it might seem,” Ford said. He glanced at his wristwatch and turned to the conference table, to the damp older man seated across from his father. The man casually spit an ice cube back into his half-full highball glass. “We’re pretty much wrapped up here, Phil. If you’ll all excuse us, we’d like a moment alone with these folks. We still have a few minutes before we’re scheduled to go downstairs for the speech.”

  No one moved.

  “Really,” Underhill said. “It’s fine. Mr. Samala, you, too.”

  The man at the table stood up, his glass still in hand. “You know what you’re doing, right, Ford?”

  “Phil, please.”

  The security man moved toward the door, leading an apparently reluctant Phil around Christensen and Haygood. “We’ll be right outside, of course,” Phil said as they moved through the door.

  “Of course. A few minutes is all.”

 
When the door closed, Underhill smiled as if greeting old friends. “I’m sure you understand the security concerns of a campaign like this. Now what can we do for you, Mr. Christensen?”

  “Talk. Answer some questions. We’ve been doing some investigating, and we know what’s been going on.”

  Underhill dropped the pretense and twisted his face into mock surprise. “Now which are you? Frank or Joe Hardy?” He nodded at Haygood. “Nancy Drew?”

  Christensen bit his lower lip. He’d never seen raw power on this scale, but he now understood not to underestimate the Underhill family’s willingness to use it. “This is Carrie Haygood,” he said, “with the county’s Child Death Review Team.”

  Something changed in Ford Underhill’s eyes. They narrowed, shifted once to his wife across the room, then back again to Christensen. For the first time Christensen could recall from the dozens of television interviews and speeches where he’d seen Underhill perform, that giant face registered a genuine emotion. If he had to guess, it was a mix of shock and confusion.

  “Now I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” Underhill said. “This is about Chip?”

  The reaction seemed real, not contrived. Christensen lost himself for a moment, sensing a father’s pain despite the circumstances.

  “You lost a son, Mr. Underhill, every parent’s nightmare. Never mind what happened, I’m sure you felt that loss as deeply as anyone else.” The moment had arrived, the confrontation he’d imagined since the truth became clear. “But—” Why was he having so much trouble taking the next step? “We know it wasn’t a horseback-riding accident.”

  Haygood stepped forward and held up the manila envelope. “Autopsy X-rays and photographs,” she said. “There are things we know, and things we don’t know, sir. What we know now is that somebody shook this child. That’s how he died.”

  “So you were there? When it happened, I mean?”

  Haygood patted the envelope. “Didn’t have to be, now that we’ve found these.”

  Underhill shook his head as he rolled the cuff of one white sleeve down and buttoned it. “I’m afraid the coroner’s office disagrees with you on that.”

  “Simon Bostwick gave them to us,” Christensen said. “Right before he died.”

  Underhill didn’t pause as he rolled the other sleeve down, but behind him, Vincent Underhill blanched. “Who?” Ford said.

  “Spare us the bullshit,” Christensen said.

  That got him. Ford Underhill stared him down. “What I’m wondering at this point, Mr. Christensen, is if the bar association might be interested to know about Ms. Kennedy’s casual approach to attorney-client privilege.”

  “You ass.”

  Underhill squared his shoulders. “Excuse me?”

  “Hide behind that if you want,” Christensen said. “What about everything else, though? Your son’s not the only victim here. Bostwick’s dead. The Chembergos are dead. Maura Pearson’s dead. Warren Doti’s dead. Now you’ve got our kids. Where does it stop?”

  Underhill glared, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then something registered on his face, a look of revelation tempered by suspicion. Slowly, he turned toward the suite’s bar, to the woman who now stood with the gun trained on Christensen and Haygood.

  “Leigh?”

  Ford Underhill turned back to his famous father, who quietly buried his face in his hands.

  “Dad?”

  Leigh Underhill moved across the room, the gun held straight out in the two-handed grip of someone who’d had pistol training. Christensen tried to absorb the scene, to shape it into coherent narrative. Suddenly, the truth exploded like a buried mine: It was her.

  “I’ll take those,” she said, pointing the gun at the envelope in Haygood’s hands. “Slide them across the floor.”

  Christensen felt sick. He thought of Simon Bostwick, of what he’d sacrificed for those films. He tried to imagine this whole circumstantial house of cards standing without them, and couldn’t. They’d gambled against the most powerful family in the state. As Haygood tossed the envelope onto the carpet toward Leigh Underhill, he knew they’d lost.

  “Somebody mind telling me what the hell is going on?” Ford demanded. He started toward his wife, stopping short when she pointed the gun at him.

  “Just shut up,” she said, backing toward the bar again. “Let me think.”

  Vincent Underhill stood up suddenly, his handsome face still pale. He stepped around the conference table and moved into the space between his son and his daughter-in-law. “Leigh—” he began.

  “Shut up. Both of you.”

  Vincent Underhill held out his hand, asking silently for the gun. “It’s over,” he said.

  “I just need time.”

  “It’s gone too far, Leigh.”

  “Shut up!” she screamed.

  No one moved. Ford Underhill was a picture of dumbstruck impotence. He looked like a man who’d just been hit in the forehead by a two-by-four, standing with his mouth open and his brow furrowed. His father, his hand still extended, looked flash-frozen. The only sign of life was the agitated movement of Leigh Underhill’s gun hand as it twitched between her husband, her father-in-law, and the intruders.

  Finally, the woman nodded toward the penthouse door. “Lock that,” she said to Haygood.

  The deadbolt’s click was followed by a desperate knock. “Vincent?”

  “It’s okay, Phil,” the former governor said, raising his voice. “A few more minutes, please.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ford said suddenly. He moved toward the conference table, reaching for the handset of the hotel phone. “I’m not about to go down there until I get some answers.” He started to dial, nodding toward the continuing celebration playing quietly on the penthouse television. “This can wait.”

  “Get a goddamned clue, Ford,” his wife said. “You just keep smiling and go downstairs and do your thing. We’ll deal with it, just like always.”

  Ford hung up the phone, suddenly less cowed than confident. “How the hell have you been dealing with it?”

  “Listen to you,” she said. “Like you could have handled this? Like you could have managed something this complicated? I’m the one who took a fourth-generation heir without an ounce of ambition and pushed you this far, molded you like your father wanted. And now that it’s happening, now that we’re on our way, you suddenly want to know details?”

  Ford Underhill flushed again. He pointed at the TV. “So this is all about you?”

  “It’s about destiny.” She glanced at Vincent Underhill, defiant, then back at her husband. “You’ve never understood that, Ford. We did. We knew you couldn’t handle the pressure.”

  The moment Vincent Underhill turned away from his son’s accusing gaze, Christensen understood. The full story unfolded in body language and gestures that couldn’t be faked: Ford Underhill knew nothing of the cover-up, blissfully ignorant of the ruin carried out on his behalf. He was trembling now, facing down the truth of his betrayal.

  “Pressure?” Ford said. “After what happened, you’re telling me I’m the one who can’t handle pressure?”

  Leigh Underhill’s mouth twisted into a pained smile. “Don’t ruin it, Ford.”

  “You’re the one who shook him like a rag doll that day.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Shook him until he convulsed, then shook him some more. Then waited so long before telling anybody it was too late.”

  “Shut up! I couldn’t undo what was done,” she screamed. “I couldn’t bring him back. But the lie, Ford, the horse story kept the dream alive, spun the whole thing into something forgivable. Tragedy forges character, right? Says so in your campaign brochures. For you, Ford. All for you.” She nodded toward the tele
vision. “Don’t you see? The dream’s still alive.”

  Ford looked again toward his father. “But whose dream?”

  Vincent Underhill cleared his throat. “I—” He swept a trembling hand across his mouth and tried again. “Ford, your mother—”

  “The weakest link,” Leigh Underhill interrupted. “The paintings. They were in the paper, for God’s sake.”

  “She knew the horse wasn’t out that day,” Christensen said. “So did Warren Doti.”

  Leigh Underhill glared at him, then shook her head. “She only knew what didn’t happen—just enough to blow it. We had to do something.” She turned back toward her husband. “It would have been fine except for goddamned Enrique.”

  If Ford Underhill had any illusions left, he framed them all in a single question. He directed it to his father. “You did this?”

  Vincent Underhill opened his mouth, but said nothing. His face crumpled and he sobbed, still unable to look his son in the eye. “No,” he said. “But I went along. There was just, oh Jesus, so damned little of her left, so much at stake. I—”

  Ford cut him off, his face a mask of horror and disbelief. “Mother?”

  “Others, too,” Christensen said, bolder now, sensing an ally. “Ask them about the ones who weren’t so lucky, Mr. Underhill. People died, people who knew just enough to make them dangerous to this dream they were pushing.”

  “That’s enough,” Leigh Underhill said.

  “A damned fine art therapist at Harmony, someone your mother loved. The Chembergos, who just wanted to help. They bought the deputy coroner’s silence, even had someone purge stories about it from the Press’s electronic library, the ones that would have listed details about the actual cause of your son’s death. They weren’t about to let someone who knew it was all a lie go on living. Then Warren Doti figured it out. Now he’s dead.”

  “Enough!”Leigh Underhill screamed.