Among the Shadows

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  “Looks pretty fuckin’ official now, John,” he said aloud as he scanned the room. Somehow, in the short span of five minutes, his living space had grown even more depressing. All his meager belongings stacked up like they were about to go into storage or off to the Salvation Army. The sum of his life reduced to a dozen or so boxes in a shitty little one-­bedroom-­ efficiency. No longer a temporary home, it was now his future.

  As if on cue, the secondhand air-­conditioner, given to him by Humphrey, began making the horrible squealing noise to which it had lately become prone. The AC wasn’t doing much to cool the tiny living space, but it was better than nothing. Besides, when autumn finally did make an appearance, he would no longer need it. He got up, walked over to the window, and gave a hard rap with his knuckles to the side of the aging appliance. The squealing stopped. He returned to the kitchen, rinsed out a dirty juice glass, and poured himself two fingers of Jameson Irish whiskey. The strong smell of the liquor filled his nostrils and the slow soothing burn caressed his throat. He closed his eyes, savoring the restorative powers of the bottle.

  He gave a start at the unexpected ringing of his cell. “Yeah,” he answered without checking to see who it was.

  “John, it’s Kay.”

  He paused before responding. Unsure of what to say, he said nothing.

  “I know you were served today. I’m sorry about doing it like this.”

  He felt the anger swelling inside. “Not too sorry to file them, though.”

  “I know you’re upset. I guess I probably would be too.”

  “No you don’t know,” he snapped. “You don’t know because you’re not me. We couldn’t even talk about this in person? Really, Kay? Is this how two responsible adults handle things? Through an attorney?”

  “I couldn’t tell you in person. I knew how upset you’d get.”

  “Upset? You’re goddamned right I’m upset! Twenty years of marriage and you couldn’t even tell me to my face. You asked me to give you some space and I did. You said you needed time and I gave it to you. I gave you everything you asked for, and for what? What the fuck did it get me?”

  “John, please—­”

  “I’ll tell you what it got me, nothing. Do you have any idea how goddamned humiliating it is to have some pimply-­faced attorney wannabe serve you with divorce papers, at work? In front of my boss. Really?”

  “John—­”

  “I hope you’re happy.” He hung up and threw his phone across the room, striking the air-­conditioner. “Fuck,” he announced to the empty apartment.

  The squealing began again, in earnest, like fingernails on a chalkboard. He set his glass down, walked slowly but purposefully to the window, and delivered a forceful side kick to the metal casing. The same kick he’d delivered to scores of doors during his early years on the job. There was a loud cracking noise before the AC tumbled out of its frame. The wire pigtail popped from the wall outlet and gave chase. He heard it crash onto the ground below. Only an empty window frame remained. He slammed the window shut and calmly returned to the bottle.

  DIANE STOOD ON the doorstep to Byron’s apartment, waiting. She’d already knocked several times but hadn’t gotten a response. She knew from prior visits that the button to the ancient doorbell was probably still broken, but she pressed it anyway.

  Byron had already departed 109 by the time Shirley Grant told Diane about the divorce papers. He wasn’t answering her calls and she was worried. Worried about what her partner might do to himself. For all his tough talk and posturing, she knew that his crumbling marriage bothered him more than he let on. She wasn’t sure if he still held a place in his heart for Kay or if he just hated to fail at anything.

  She knew Byron well enough to know that he’d want to be alone as he sorted things out, but she also knew how self-­destructive he could be. The alcohol seemed to be getting the better of him. And she knew firsthand what addiction could do to a person, having gone through it with her brother. The truth was she wanted to be with John. In spite of his many faults, he was a good man, with a good heart, and she had feelings for him. But he was an old-­fashioned guy who had, at least until now, still considered himself married. Probably why she hadn’t acted on those feelings.

  “John, you in there?” She turned to the sound of giggling behind her on the sidewalk. Two young girls laughing uncontrollably about something, staggering drunkenly by under the cone of light cast by a streetlamp. Diane waited until they were gone, then knocked again. “John.”

  There was a light on in the front room, the living room. She couldn’t see inside the apartment from the stairs, and the windows were too high to look into from the sidewalk. She hadn’t seen his car parked anywhere nearby, but given the late hour and the lack of on-­street parking, she knew he might have parked blocks away. Diane pounded on the door one last time. She pulled out her cell and sent him a text, then reluctantly returned to her car and drove home.

  IT WAS STILL dark out when Byron awoke. The throbbing pain in his head was only slightly less uncomfortable than the pressure in his bladder. Unsure of his surroundings, he took a moment to gather himself. He was seated in a car, his Taurus, and it was running. He wondered how long he’d been there. Cool air poured from the dashboard vents. An empty bottle lay on the seat next to him. Blacked out. Again. He dragged himself out of the car and staggered to the rear. Leaning against the trunk to steady himself, he urinated on the grass. He was standing near Munjoy Hill’s East End Beach, still attired in the previous day’s clothing. Moonbeams sparkled brilliantly across the surface of Casco Bay. Breaking waves and gulls crying were the only sounds. He struggled to reconstruct the previous hours, as he had countless times before. He remembered Kay’s divorce papers, followed by his impromptu home air-­conditioner repair, after that it became fuzzy. Byron assumed that his visit from Saint Jameson must have come next. He must have opted for the cool car over his sweltering apartment with its broken AC. He returned to the car on unsteady legs and checked his cell. Only three-­thirty. He’d missed three calls and a text message: one call from Kay and two more from Diane. The text was also from Diane. “Heard what happened. U OK? Call me.”

  “Just fucking dandy,” he said.

  He put the car in gear and drove slowly to his apartment.

  DAWN CAME FAR too soon. The intoxicating effects of the whiskey had mostly departed, but there was still a price to be paid. Shedding his clothes, Byron stepped into the shower. He spent the next twenty minutes trying to wash all of it away, the self-­pity, failed marriage, stalled murder investigation, his shitty little apartment, all of it.

  After showering he shaved, dressed in clean but wrinkled clothes and a tie, made coffee, and washed down three Tylenol, then swallowed one more for good measure. Pausing in front of the mirror, he studied the dark recesses of his eyes. The purplish black circles told the story of a man haunted by self-­destructive habits. A man determined to walk a different path than his father. A man failing.

  Get it together, John, the voice inside his head told him. He was surprised by how much it sounded like something Diane might have said.

  “Enough with the mothering, already,” he said aloud. “I’m handling it. Like always.”

  Are you? The voice asked. Are you handling it? The same way you handled Kay’s call last night?

  He looked at the divorce documents lying on the counter. Sooner or later he’d have to deal with this. In spite of how she’d blindsided him, he did owe Kay an apology for being such an asshole. If he was being honest with himself, he owed her many apologies for the countless times he’d been an asshole. A drunken asshole. He opened the cupboard where his booze was hidden, a habit left over from his married days. Four unopened bottles of whiskey sat on the shelf behind the boxes of mac-­and-­cheese. One by one he removed them from the cupboard, uncapped them, and poured them down the sink. His career in the bureau was in jeopardy. Hell, his caree
r in general was in jeopardy. His drinking wasn’t the best kept secret, and he knew both Stanton and Cross would like nothing more than to replace him. If not for LeRoyer running interference, they likely would have already. Probably with some rumpswab like Crosby, who would do anything they asked, like some damned puppet. With Kay gone, only two things made his life worth living: the job and the bottle. And the first was being fucked hard by the second. He unsealed the last bottle and emptied it out.

  He knew this simple act was largely symbolic. But he also knew that getting his shit together began by taking a first step. Cleaning out the reserves was his first step.

  The voice was unrelenting. How is this going to help? You’ll only buy more, like always.

  He snapped a lid on his travel mug and walked out the door, ignoring the voice.

  “WOW, YOU LOOK like shit,” Diane said as she entered Byron’s office and plopped down in the chair across from him.

  He squinted his eyes at her. “Gee, thanks.”

  “I heard about your visit from Kay’s lawyer yesterday. I’m sorry, John.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Didn’t you get my text?”

  “I was busy.”

  “I stopped by your apartment on my way home.”

  “I was out.”

  “Self-­medicating?”

  He stopped reading a case supplement and looked up at her. Aware that the voice from earlier had taken on a physical form. “You’re not really gonna sit there and lecture me, are you?”

  “Would you listen if I did?”

  “No. Did you come in here to bust my balls or do you have something for me?”

  “Both,” she said with a sly smirk. “We might’ve actually gotten something useful from the canvass.”

  “Wouldn’t that be novel? What?”

  “Alice Keagan. I just got off the phone with her. She’s an elderly neighbor of Riordan’s. Sounds like she’s the neighborhood busybody. Told me she suffers from insomnia, stays up most nights sitting by the window so she can see what’s happening. Said she remembers seeing two ­people get out of Riordan’s car after it pulled into his driveway Sunday night.”

  “She get a look at who?” he asked, now fully attentive.

  “Told me it was too dark to make out any detail, but she’s confident it was Riordan, and another man.”

  “She remember what time it was?”

  “Around midnight.”

  “How about hearing a gunshot?”

  Diane shook her head. “Said she didn’t hear anything, but she’s hard of hearing.”

  “Did she see anything else?”

  “Yeah. She saw Riordan’s car being driven away a little before two.”

  Chapter Twelve

  BYRON DROVE OUT Washington Avenue, past the old J. J. Nissen bread factory toward Tukey’s Bridge, looking for something he should have checked before. He’d erroneously assumed Riordan had either been given a ride home or taken a cab. The possibility that the killer might have driven Riordan’s car never even occurred to him. It didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t the killer have driven his own car? He pulled into the lot across from the AMVETS, parking where he had the previous afternoon. Riordan’s Buick was still parked in the same spot. He contacted dispatch and requested the beat officer to his location.

  He stepped out of his car and scanned the lot until he spotted it. A security camera mounted atop one of the nearby light poles. The parking lot appeared to belong to the adjoining industrial-­style gray-­steel building. The only business currently occupying the large building was Bay City Florist.

  A bell chimed as he opened the glass door to the business and stepped inside. A young blond girl wearing a nose stud stood behind the counter. She was chomping on gum and texting. He waited for her to finish, noticing her purple lipstick and matching eye shadow.

  “Good morning,” she said, finally lowering the phone.

  “Morning.”

  Like an automaton, she delivered the company’s catch phrase, “If you’re looking for flowers for a special someone, you’ve come to the right place.”

  It was all he could do not to laugh in her face as he thought of how his special someone had just gifted him with a divorce. He wondered if they sold an arrangement for that. He held out his credentials. “Actually, I’m trying to find out who owns the pole camera outside.”

  She furrowed her brow as she checked his ID. “That would be us. This is my uncle’s business. I’m Dorothy Webber. Guess you’d call me the manager.”

  “Detective Sergeant John Byron,” he said, extending his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” she said with a firm but quick shake of her hand. Following the customary greeting, Webber resumed her previous activity.

  Byron, noting that her nails were also purple, wondered if a purchase might help her to focus. “Does the security camera work or is it only for show?”

  “It works,” she said without looking up. “We put it in the last time we had a break-­in. Dropped our insurance rates, a little.”

  “Any chance you’ve still got the footage from Sunday night into Monday morning?”

  “We did, but I already gave the video to one of your detectives yesterday.”

  Byron stared at her as if she were joking. “One of my detectives? I didn’t send anyone over here.”

  “Well, he showed me a badge and said he worked for the police department.”

  “The Portland Police Department?”

  She shrugged. “I guess.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around ten-­thirty, I’d say. Late morning anyway.”

  Observing her phone hypnosis, with some amazement he realized exactly how ludicrous his next question would likely seem. “Can you remember what he looked like or what he drove?”

  “I didn’t see what he was driving, ’cause I was working on a big order, but he was a little shorter than you and maybe a bit older.”

  “How old would you guess?”

  “Fifties maybe. I’m not real good with ­people’s ages.”

  Too bad the mystery man hadn’t texted her his picture. “Anything else you can remember about the way he looked: hair, eyes, anything?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.” Ms. iPhone looked up momentarily, giving Byron the once over. “He was wearing a suit, like you.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope. I don’t pay very close attention, sorry.” Back to the phone.

  Byron was working hard to maintain his composure and thanking God he didn’t have to deal with a teenager of his own. “Did anyone else see him? Maybe your uncle?”

  “I was here by myself when he came in.”

  “Think you might recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “Maybe,” she said, snapping her gum.

  Byron wrote down her information and handed her a card after jotting the number of his cell on the back. He returned to the parking lot as the beat officer was pulling in.

  “Hey, Sarge,” the officer said. “Fancy seeing you again.”

  O’Donnell. The same officer who’d kept the crime log at O’Halloran’s. “Morning, O’Donnell. See the Buick parked over there?”

  The officer nodded.

  “I want you to tow it to the basement of 109 for processing.”

  “Happy to help.”

  “Make sure it’s secured in the cage.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Byron pulled out his cell and called Diane.

  “Joyner,” she answered.

  “Diane, it’s Byron.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I need you to drive out to Bay City Florist on Washington Avenue and take a statement from the florist shop manager, Dorothy Webber.”

  “Sure thing. What do you want in her statement?�
�

  “A guy went in there yesterday morning, identified himself as a detective, and made off with their security video.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not in a kidding mood.”

  “On my way.”

  “One more thing. Bring Dustin with you and see if there’s anything he can do to recover whatever was on their surveillance system.”

  “I’ll take care of it.

  Byron’s next call was to Sergeant Peterson, the property crimes supervisor.

  “George. You didn’t happen to send any of your ­people over to the AMVETS yesterday, did you? The one on Washington Avenue?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “Or maybe Bay City Florist?”

  “No. Neither one of those businesses are even on the current case board. Why?”

  “Someone playing detective just made off with my surveillance video from the florist shop.”

  BYRON RETURNED TO 109 to meet up with Pelligrosso and Stevens.

  “Sarge,” Stevens greeted as he entered the lab. “Good timing. We were about to call you. Think we’ve got something you’ll wanna see.”

  “I’ve got something for you too. Riordan’s car is being towed down to our basement. I need it processed.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Pelligrosso said. “What are you searching for?”

  “It’s possible our victim’s mystery guest may have driven Riordan’s car back to the AMVETS after the suicide.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Stevens said.

  “What did you find?” Byron asked.

  “Riordan’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

  Pelligrosso placed two old police department photos of Riordan on the table. “These.”

  Byron looked at them. “What am I supposed to see?”

  “Riordan was a southpaw, Sarge. Problem is he was shot in the right temple.”

  Byron looked from one picture to the other. Riordan’s holster was on his left hip in both. “Shit.”

  DUSTIN TRAN WAS the answer guy. When it came to gathering background information quickly, there was no one better. Byron knew they needed as much information as possible in order to find whatever else linked O’Halloran and Riordan. Interviewing the officers who were being targeted would be key to establishing the killer’s motive but pointless if they didn’t know which ones were targets or what questions to ask. With the lives of former cops at stake, they couldn’t afford to guess.