In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  She got up on a stool, trying to maintain a look of nonchalance. The bead of sweat that was currently running down the hollow of her spine and the trembling in her hands, however, wasn’t doing much to help maintain her façade. She crossed one leg over the other, the slit in her skirt aligning as it was meant to—enough thigh to make a man sit up and pay attention, but not enough that he thought she was a complete tart. She didn’t want things getting out of hand too quickly. Other than playing it cool and sitting here having a much needed drink, Tomas hadn’t given her much of a script. He seemed rather more certain than she was that the man would find his way to her.

  Tomas had been right, for she hadn’t done more than sip at the vodka tonic she’d ordered when a man heaved himself up on the stool beside her. He smelled strongly of dirty copper, the way people who drank too much often smelled.

  “Hello,” he said, voice overly loud, causing a few heads to turn toward them. She looked at him.

  “Hi,” she said, swallowing nervously. This suddenly seemed a catastrophically bad idea.

  “Not from around here?” he asked, and she thought that chat up lines in bars seemed standard regardless of country.

  They had decided her cover story should be as close to the truth as possible. “I’m American, from New York.” Which she was, just not recently. She sipped a little more of the vodka tonic, so far it wasn’t doing anything to calm her nerves.

  “Here for pleasure or business?” he asked. The edge of his voice was broad and melted, the way it often was in people who were always partially inebriated.

  “A little of both. I’m hoping to see some of the countryside while I’m here too. My family came from Ireland a couple of generations back.”

  “Ah, ye can tell, ye’ve the look of an Irish colleen about ye. What with the lovely skin an’ the eyes.”

  Pamela rather thought most women, regardless of national origin, were possessed of skin and eyes, but forbore to share this observation with the man.

  He ordered her another drink, without asking, though she was not even halfway through her current one. The second would be her limit. Tomas had told her this man had the almost bottomless capacity of the chronic alcoholic. There was no way she could keep up with him, or she would have to be taken out of here on a stretcher. Two drinks was her absolute limit, she had a notoriously low threshold with alcohol.

  “Ye’re very attractive,” he said, and smiled.

  “Thanks,” she said, turning her body ever-so-slightly toward him so that he would think she was receptive. In truth, she felt mildly repulsed, and also sad to see what the drink had done to the man. He bore very little resemblance to the youthful police officer in the pictures Tomas had shown her.

  “What about you, what is it that you do?” she asked.

  “I’m a policeman,” he said, “or I was.”

  “Really, a police officer?” She leaned forward a little more, and put her fingers an inch or two from his arm on the bar. “That must be fascinating work. My father was a policeman back in New York, part of the 94th.”

  “Was he? Then you know how it is—how we’re the bad guys all the time, even when we try to do something right. Dealing with the scum of the earth most days, an’ somehow we’re in the wrong, we’re the persecutors.”

  “Oh, I do know,” she agreed, heightening her accent a smidge so that it was more Long Island than where she had grown up in Manhattan. “My dad had this case that almost destroyed his life. He took early retirement because of it, well that and they pushed him out because he liked his evening tipple. It was that last case that started him drinking though. He’d stop at the bar on the way home at night, to take the edge off.” She hesitated for a moment, because the story was going to have to be just right, neither veering too close to his own, nor too far away. It was a delicate balance she had to achieve.

  “It was one of those messy cases, you know, where it’s just a shambles from the get go?”

  He nodded, bloodshot eyes trained on her face, as if her story might offer him some sort of absolution.

  “So this prostitute gets killed, but she’d been a CI for the police for a long time, because she was connected to some really big players in the drug scene. She’s found dead one morning, face down in the Hudson River, shot in the head. It’s execution style. So it’s sending a message, yeah?”

  He nodded to show he was following her, and she took a few seconds to push from her mind another prostitute, not an imaginary one, who had been found facedown in another river in a different city.

  “They thought it was a hit, or maybe her pimp. He was this real nasty sort, the kind that’s in trouble from the time they’re old enough to make trouble. You know the sort? Little greasy guy, they called him Carlos the Weasel behind his back. Thing is my dad found out it wasn’t him that killed her, but another policeman, someone he’d known and trusted for years. Turned out the guy had been having a fling with her and she was threatening to tell his wife. The pimp gets twenty-five years for the murder, and then he gets killed his first year in prison. He wasn’t a good guy, but he died for something he didn’t do. My dad thought the cop arranged to have this guy killed in prison, to keep him from talking. He went to the top brass, told his story, gave his proof and they shut him down so fast and cold he didn’t know what had hit him. By the time he understood, they’d pensioned him out, blackened his name and ruined his life. That,” she said, allowing a quiver into her voice, “is when he started drinking in earnest.”

  She decided that was enough of her hard luck sell, he would either buy it or he wouldn’t. Too much detail sounded like a lie, not enough would never convince. She hoped that she had hit the right balance.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to yer father?”

  She looked down into her drink, she didn’t have to fake this part because her father was gone and she missed him, especially of late. “He died a couple of years later, cirrhosis of the liver.” She shrugged, “It sounds like one of those sordid stories you expect out of New York. I’m sure you don’t have that kind of corruption here, it’s such a beautiful part of the world.” She switched gears back to slightly naïve American.

  “Oh, ye’d be wrong thinkin’ that, wrong entirely.”

  “Really?” she said, mixing an equal part of breathiness with a touch of dubiousness. Which was no easy feat while trying to maintain a Long Island accent.

  He got a look on his face, which she recognized. It was of a man who was sure he was about to impress her.

  Please God, she muttered to herself, please God that he might be about to tell her the right story and she wasn’t about to spend an hour listening to a drunken ramble.

  It was a drunken ramble as it turned out, but it was the right drunken ramble. Fortified by another shot of Bushmills with a pint on the side, he began. With his first words she felt a quiver of excitement go through her.

  “There were this case we landed some time back, wee girl gets killed in a cemetery—terrible scene, lots o’ blood, throat’s cut, clothes are in total disarray, in such a way as to know that she’s been raped. Sometimes there’s no suspects, or not even one good one but this case had too many. Four of ’em to be exact. One weren’t guilty of much other than bein’ in the wrong place at the wrong time, an’ havin’ looked at the girl more often than was smart. She’d told people he give her the creeps, an’ so he were an obvious suspect in that light. He weren’t in other ways, though. He were a slow lad, but he didn’t mean much harm, or that’s what I believe, believed it at the time, too. The other three were more interestin’ an’ more likely in my view; she were havin’ an affair with someone’s husband, she’d broken things off with her own fiancé just recent like. An’ there were a strange character, too, hung about the cemetery, showin’ his bits to whatever lady had the misfortune to wander through. All three had motive, means an’ opportunity, an’ admittedly so did the wee slow lad, but I knew he wasn’t guilty, right from the start. Nothin’ fit, ye know, how t
hings are just that way sometimes, like a puzzle where the pieces just won’t click together, but a toddler shoves the pieces into place, breakin’ them in the process to make them fit. That’s how the whole case was, start to finish.”

  She hoped to God that the wire was picking every word up, she could only tilt toward the man so far, without risking him seeing the wire and also making him think she was offering him a night in bed.

  She nodded sympathetically and patted his hand in a manner meant to be both encouraging and comforting. He trapped her hand with his own though, so that hers was palm down flat on the bar. He gave her a look that was a frightening mix of lust and anger.

  “Why are ye listenin’ so close? Most women don’t like stories like this one. Most women want sweet words an’ promises.”

  “I told you, my dad was a cop, I grew up with stories like this one.”

  “Are ye lonely?” he asked, and there was something both cunning and pathetic about the question.

  “Sometimes yes, most of the time actually,” she said, because it was the truth and the truth was always recognizable, even to a drunk, perhaps even more so to a drunk. The tension in his hand eased, and the anger faded from his face.

  “Hard to imagine,” he said, words clear, “how a woman like yerself could be lonely. What are the men thinkin’?”

  “I lost my husband,” she said, “a while ago.”

  He gave her a long look, one eye squinted almost shut, like he was trying to keep her down to one image. Then he nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  The simple human decency of it made her want to tell him to stop talking and not tell her anything more. She suddenly hated the thought that Tomas was hearing all of this. The words started again and she realized it was a confession of sorts, from a man who knew there wasn’t any redemption for what he had done. He was speaking more to himself than to her, she knew, trying to find some wisp of relief, some small handhold by which to pull himself out of this quagmire of guilt that was slowly but surely killing him.

  “It were this man, Mungo Hanna that fitted him up, his partner was killed in a shootout with the boy’s older brother a few years before. He wanted blood vengeance every day after. This was as close as he could get. Think it would have done less damage had he just killed the man.”

  “How long has this boy been in prison for a murder he didn’t commit?” she asked, striving to keep her voice free of judgement, and not betray how much this one question mattered. If she could get him to answer it then she was done here for the night.

  “Four years, poor lad, four years for somethin’ I’m dead certain he couldn’t have done.”

  Sin sin. It was how Casey had always said, “That’s that.”

  The man was still talking, however, and there wasn’t any way to graciously extract herself just yet.

  “Sometimes I think I’m haunted by the ghost of who I could have been. D’ye know what I mean?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Aye,” he nodded, and she could almost hear the contents of his head sloshing about. “I believe ye do. What’s yer ghost, then?”

  “My life with my husband, how it was then, and how it is now,” she replied, softly.

  It was strange how sometimes one had these moments with a total stranger, where one told truths that one didn’t often admit to oneself.

  She understood that it was guilt that had done this to him, more than the alcohol, because he had started drinking to drown the guilt.

  “I knew it weren’t him. I told my bosses, I tried to make it right. There weren’t no proper proof the lad had done anything.”

  She felt a wash of guilt go through her. This man had tried to do the right thing, a little too late, but he had at least tried. And he’d been repaid by the loss of his career, his wife, home and family, all of which had clearly meant a great deal to him. And here she was trying to trick him into telling her all the heartbreaking details so they could be used in court to possibly hurt him further. She reminded herself that an innocent young man was currently in prison for the mistakes and cover-ups this man had assisted in making.

  She touched his forearm, giving it a small squeeze so that he might know she saw a human being in him, and not the monster he felt himself to be.

  “Sometimes I feel like the drink is me cheatin’ on the guilt an’ the loneliness. It’s an easy way out, an’ I deserve to feel the pain, but then I can’t manage the pain without wanting to blow my own head off.”

  “Maybe you need to tell someone. Maybe that would help alleviate the guilt a little.”

  “I just told you, didn’t I? Not sure how much better I feel. Only forgetting can do that for me an’ I can only think of one way to forget.” He put his hand on her thigh, the disturbing mix of anger, fear and lust there in his face again.

  In truth it wasn’t lust for the body, but lust for oblivion. It did not matter how desirable he found her, if he indeed did, she could not give him that. And that lust for oblivion had one cause, fear that you would never stop feeling this way, not even for a second for the rest of your life. Temporary oblivion was the best that one could hope for. It was past time for her to leave because things were getting to a place where she could no longer easily handle them. She gently removed his hand.

  “I need to powder my nose,” she said and slipped off the stool. “I’ll be right back.”

  She walked away, aware of his bleary regard following her, a niggling guilt in her chest for lying to the man. At the same time she was relieved to be leaving the building having accomplished what she had set out to achieve, and all without any real trouble. She felt a tiny bit smug as she stepped out the back door into the dark parking lot. This feeling was abruptly squelched when she realized Tomas’s car was gone.

  She panicked and sped up to a half run, her heels hampering her from moving any faster. She couldn’t imagine the man would leave her alone unless something bad had happened, like he’d been spotted and pulled in by the police. And then she saw exactly why he had left, for Jamie was standing in the lot, leaning up against his car, arms folded across his chest, an exceptionally unpleasant look on his face.

  She swallowed a very big desire to bolt, and slowed her run to a steady walk, or as steady as she could manage. James Kirkpatrick angry was not a thing she enjoyed in any way, shape or form. How on earth the man had known where she was tonight she couldn’t imagine, then again it was Jamie, she might be more surprised if he didn’t know what she was up to.

  “Good evening, Pamela,” he said, and there was no mistaking the even tone for anything other than disapproving anger.

  “Where is my truck?” she asked, looking around in bewilderment.

  “I had Vanya drive it up to my house. I’m going to drive you there because I’d like a few words with you in private.”

  She swallowed, her nerves back in full force. “I am not a child, Jamie,” she said, aware that she sounded defensive.

  “I know you’re not, but you’re acting a little like one. Get in the car please, I’d rather not have this conversation out here.”

  She got in the car, because she had no other alternative. If she had a decent pair of shoes she would bloody walk home, even if it took until the dawn. She noted that the receiving end of the wire was in Jamie’s car now, and she felt a little queasy knowing he had heard everything that had passed between her and the man.

  The car was cold, in marked contrast to the man in the driver’s seat, who looked like he could easily produce steam out of his ears right now. He didn’t speak, merely pulled the car out into the street and began the journey toward his house. He was driving fast, which wasn’t uncommon for him, though she noted how tightly his hands were wrapped around the steering wheel. She clasped her own hands in her lap, feeling ridiculously like a penitent school girl, a Catholic one, caught out with her skirt rolled up and cigarettes in her pocket. Though to be certain, James Kirkpatrick, angry or not, was no one’s idea of a dour-faced priest.

  The silence b
ecame increasingly fraught as they left the lights behind and drove up the mountainside to his property. They were about halfway to the house, when he pulled over in a break between two large oaks, and turned off the car. The silence felt oppressive. She was about to blurt out an apology just to break the tension, when he turned to her.

  “Have you lost your mind entirely, Pamela?” The words were said calmly enough; the look on his face was anything but. Even in the dark of the car she could feel his anger, and something more, a strange pulse to the air that she didn’t quite understand.

  “N…no,” she said. Jamie mad was one thing, Jamie furious in a confined space was another thing all together.

  She realized the slit in her skirt was on the same side as Jamie and had ridden rather high up her thigh. The leg seemed to be glowing with a phosphorescent light. Jamie noticed her glance and raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Did it work?” he asked, and the sarcasm was gone from his voice. Instead there was a peculiar tension there, the strange pulse that she had sensed before.

  “In a way. I left him there to his drink; I never had any intention of letting it go further than a harmless flirtation.” She sounded defensive she knew, which was not the tactic to take with Jamie.

  “There’s nothing harmless about it, anything might have happened to you, Pamela. You know that.”

  She did know it. It struck her how her actions of not just tonight, but these last several months must appear to him. She reached over and took his hand. He was shaking, whether with fury or upset she wasn’t certain, she felt incredibly ashamed, regardless of the cause.

  “Pamela, I got a phone call tonight from a contact inside the police force. My contact said there’s been talk in certain circles. Your name has come up, and not amongst good men. When I found out what you were up to tonight, I could have cheerfully murdered you myself. You can’t take chances like this anymore.”