Warrior in the Shadows

by Marcus Wynne

  It didn't matter anyway; there wasn't a locked door in this neighborhood that could keep Alfie out. He smiled to himself, looked at the growing light in the sky, ran his teeth over his partial plate, and clicked it twice.

  Time to go.

  1.7

  Charley had slept fitfully in Mara's bed, his dreams jagged shards of light and sound, and only once could he remember a piece of his dream, and it was the image of the painting drawn in blood and body fat on the wall of Madison Simmons's entertainment room.

  Mara was still and distant in the morning. The two of them dressed in silence, sat and drank coffee together in silence.

  "I'm going to church," Mara announced.

  "What's with this church thing?" Charley said.

  "Just because you've never seen me go to church doesn't mean I don't go regularly, Charley." She looked out the window as she spoke.

  "Okay, I'll go," Charley said.

  "I'd rather you didn't," Mara said. "It's something special to me and I don't see the point of you going if it means nothing to you. You can stay here or go home."

  "I'd like to go, look we can…"

  "No, Charley. I prefer going alone."

  And with that, she gathered up a coat and left, a hint of jasmine perfume in the air and Charley with the feeling that he'd failed some kind of test.

  "Fuck," Charley said.

  He drained off the last of his coffee and rinsed the cup and put it in the drying rack. He gathered up his camera bag and the crime scene prints, then went out the door and down to his car. When he got to the street he found a parking ticket on the windshield of his Camry.

  "Fuck me," he said.

  He sat in the car, started the engine, turned it off. He wouldn't think of her but he would. He couldn't seem to help himself. The whole thing with the two of them was crazy. She's too young for me, she's convenient, what does she mean she loves me? What the hell is that all about? What's this about church anyway? She'd said she went to the Catholic church in his own neighborhood and he'd never seen her around there and she'd never mentioned anything at all about that before.

  And he hated leaving things like this.

  It wasn't right. He liked resolution, clarity, a clear picture and a clean end to things. So he had to see her.

  He started the car again and pulled out into the flow of traffic, holding up a middle finger for the cars that slammed on their brakes to avoid hitting him.

  * * *

  It surprised him that the church was so full. He didn't know why he should be so surprised, after all lots of people still went to church. He himself hadn't been to church or participated in a mass since he was in the Army, since he'd been kneeling on the airfield at Pope Air Force Base before shipping out for the Gulf. He'd never been big on religion anyway, but the seemingly pat blessing the priest had put on all the little soldiers before they went off to battle put him off even more.

  There were a surprising number of devout Christians in the CIA, even in the Special Operations Division, but they seemed able to compartmentalize that part of their life from the operational demands of special operations, which called for the cunning and deceptiveness of the devil's own.

  Maybe it was those thoughts and memories that contributed to his unease as he stood in the back of the church. The service had already begun and he was unsure about where to sit. There were two empty pews at the very back of the church, so Charley slipped into one with a semblance of genuflection and the hasty sketching of the sign of the cross. He remembered that much, at least.

  The mass was halfway through, because the priest had ended his sermon and was preparing the host for communion. Charley scanned the pews in front of him, looking for Mara, but he couldn't make her out in the crowd. He cursed himself, conscious of his blasphemy, for giving into the random compulsion to come here without a plan and for just sitting here without any idea about what he'd say to her if he did see her.

  Now the ushers went to each pew, starting at the front, and indicated the celebrants should come forward for communion. Charley thought for a moment about if he would take communion, but reminded himself that he hadn't been to confession in at least ten years and to take communion at this point would be a mortal sin since he hadn't cleansed his soul through confession. Cleansed his soul. That was an interesting thought. What would he say to the priest in the confessional? Bless me, Father, for I have sinned in so many, many ways? I have killed, I have spilled blood, I have lied, I have cheated, and worst of all, Father, I have reveled in it all.

  Charley felt a grin grow, just a little.

  What would happen out of that?

  There was a sudden commotion in the two lines leading up the center aisle to the altar. Charley heard someone cry out, and leaned out to see what was happening. An older man, well into his sixties or seventies, heavy and corpulent with the flushed features of a drinker who liked a good meal with his booze, was stopped, grasping at his chest and the arm of the woman in front of him, bringing the line to a halt. He fell, slowly and ponderously, like a great tree. The woman knelt beside him.

  "Jerry! Jerry!" she cried out. "Someone help me!"

  Charley was already moving. He pushed the gawkers out of the way and knelt beside him, one hand loosening the too-tight collar and the neck tie knotted there, one hand slipping to the belt buckle and loosening it, his sure eyes and hands of experience saying myocardial infarction, a heart attack and this old man was in the middle of a massive one. Charley felt for a pulse at the neck, then put his cheek beside the man's mouth, gaped wide like a fish's maw.

  No heartbeat, no breath.

  "Call 911," Charley commanded. "Tell them you have someone in full cardiac arrest."

  "Cardiac?" the woman companion said. "Oh, my God, he's having a heart attack, Oh, Jerry, help him, please."

  Charley covered the old man's mouth with his and breathed two quick breaths, saw the chest rise, then began compressions, counting out loud, "One, two, three, four, five, breathe," then two quick breaths, then again with the compressions. Charley's heart was racing and he felt sweat pouring down his face and an inexplicable anger: why wasn't someone calling the paramedics and why did he have to be the one to help this old bastard and why did he have to have a heart attack on his watch and this wasn't his watch, it was a church and he didn't even know why he was here even while he kept up the compressions and the breathing and nothing was happening and he was furious and reared up and slammed his fist down on the man's chest and shouted, "Christ! Breathe, damn you! By the power of Christ!"

  And suddenly the old man was gagging, choking, struggling to get Charley off him as Charley suddenly sat back on his heels and the ring of onlookers drew back and the priest was standing there, making the sign of the cross and everyone was looking at Charley except for the paramedics who were suddenly there, kneeling beside the man gagging and choking for air on the floor.

  The woman fell to her knees in front of Charley and said, "You saved him, you saved him, oh, thank you, you saved him…"

  Charley stood and quickly walked away, the crowd parting for him, but the priest caught his arm and held him.

  "You saved a life," the priest said. He was in his sixties or seventies, too, with a thin Irish face that might be humorous on another occasion, but drawn now in intensity. "You called on the power of Christ and he moved through you. Do you know what you did just now?"

  "I need air, Father," Charley said. He shrugged off the priest's hand. "Excuse me." He pushed his way through the crowd and out the door into the clean fall air. He stalked down the stairs and began to walk toward his apartment building down the street, abandoning his car in the church parking lot.

  "Charley!" he heard. He stopped and turned and saw Mara coming to him with that curiously awkward half trot she did when she was in a hurry.

  "Charley," she said. "What did you just do?"

  * * *

  Charley dreamed of somewhere outdoors, in the wild, a terrain he'd never seen and yet he was seeing
it now: scrub trees, like manzanita grown larger, knee-high grasses that might slice at his legs, in the distance dark hills, smoothly humped in some places, jagged and sharp in others. It was as though he glided without substance or form through this bush, and there were a series of earthen humps, each as tall as a man, in a clearing where the trees did not go. He went to the humps and there was a stirring, a movement from inside that he could sense but not see, then one of the lumps cracked open and fell apart and inside was the curled skeleton of a man, crawling with termites, giant ones, inches long, the skin drawn like leather parchment tanned almost black, the bark of the trees nearby curling up like pale hands and when he looked closely at the face of the man it was his own…

  … and that image brought him fully awake in his bed, Mara gripping his arm, one hand to her mouth, saying, "Charley? Charley, are you all right?"

  He was momentarily confused as he looked around his apartment and one hand went involuntarily toward the dresser drawer where he kept his .45.

  "Charley!" Mara said, shaking him. "You're having a dream, a dream, look at me!"

  He was in a strange state midway between dream and waking, and when he looked at her it was as if each pore on her face were a tiny whorl of spinning light that came in through the open window and fell across the narrow bed. Daylight? What time was it and where was he and why was he lying in bed?

  "What time is it?" he said.

  "It's almost four o'clock."

  "In the day?"

  "Yes, Charley," Mara said gently. "In the day. You've been napping. You had a dream."

  "Dream, hell," Charley said. He swung his feet out of bed. He was fully clothed except for his shoes. He went to the sink in the kitchenette and drew a glass of water and greedily gulped it down. "That was a full-blown nightmare."

  "What did you dream?"

  Charley drew more water from the tap and drank two glasses in rapid succession.

  "What were you dreaming, Charley?"

  "I must have been tired."

  "Do you remember what you did earlier today?"

  Charley looked at her for the first time since waking. He remembered seeing her after the incident in the church, but he drew a blank after that.

  "I remember that old man."

  "You seemed as though you were a little out of your head after that, Charley. You were confused, and I came here with you. You said you had to lie down and then you fell asleep. A deep sleep. I stayed here with you."

  She gestured at the file folder that held the Simmons crime scene photographs.

  "I looked at the photos. I hope you don't mind."

  "I must have been tired, didn't sleep well last night. Probably the excitement, the stress, something like that… been a long time," Charley mumbled.

  "What was a long time, Charley?"

  "Ah, first aid, that kind of stuff. It was hot in there."

  "You don't want to talk about that, do you?"

  He realized that he didn't want to talk about what happened, not with her, maybe not with anyone. The whole thing smacked of strangeness to him.

  Mara nodded slowly but not unhappily. She changed the subject.

  "Do you still want to meet Kativa?"

  "Kativa?"

  "My friend who can tell you about that image."

  "Let's get coffee. I need coffee."

  They went downstairs. Jill served them coffee without comment, but gave a long curious look at Mara, who'd never joined Charley in the diner before.

  "So, Kativa?" Mara said after Charley drained two cups of coffee.

  Charley poured the remains of his third cup into a foam to-go cup. "Yeah," he said. "Let's meet your friend Kativa."

  1.8

  Lieutenant Simon Oberstar was a big florid Norwegian who supervised the Special Investigations Unit. He'd been Bobby Lee's rabbi throughout his career, hovering over him all the way from patrolman to detective sergeant. Obi's wife had died from cancer five years ago, leaving Oberstar with two teenagers a year apart in private schools. They were both in college now, and the tuition was stretching Oberstar to the brink, Bobby Lee knew. They were smart kids, but lots of smart kids went to St. Olaf's in Northfield and there weren't enough scholarships to go around. Two mortgages and living as frugally as a lonely widower could was how Oberstar made it work. Maxine loved the old man who'd been a fixture in their life from day one with the PD, and she fixed him the Norwegian treats he loved and she loathed, just to see him happy when he came over, which was often.

  "What you got on this Simmons thing?" Oberstar said. "What's your case file looking like? Is it thick with all kinds of leads you've run down, or skinny with all kinds of nothing?"

  "I just got the autopsy back, Obi-Wan," Bobby Lee said. "The doer knew what he was doing… and we got a good make on the knife if we find it."

  "How's that?"

  "Knife was serrated halfway down, sharp as hell. Looks like this," Bobby Lee said. He reached into his front pocket and pulled out the knife Charley had given him for his birthday. He flicked it open one-handed and handed it to Oberstar.

  "See?" he said.

  "Jesus, Joseph, and Mary," Oberstar said. He weighed the knife in his hand, took a swipe at the air. "This is legal?"

  "Oh, yeah," Bobby Lee said. He took the knife back and studied it. The chisel-pointed blade folded into a titanium handle, an elegantly designed fighting knife built for one purpose only and that was cutting up humans in a fight. He'd met the maker, Ernest Emerson, at a knife-fighting seminar sponsored by Charley's friend Rick Faye, who taught martial arts in town and was an adviser to both the FBI SWAT team and the Minneapolis Emergency Response Unit. Both Emerson and Faye were nice guys, easygoing and laid-back till you saw them in action with a knife, stick, or their bare hands. It made Bobby Lee glad they were on the side of the good guys, and taught him a whole new respect for knives. He thumbed the blade shut and slid it back into his pocket.

  "Probably a blade just like that. Somebody who knew how to use it, too. We're looking into it."

  "What about motive? Who benefits?" Oberstar said in his favorite pedantic voice. He scratched his nose and studied his fingernail as though looking for skin scrapings.

  "Hauser and Thomas are over at his office, interviewing coworkers and we got a warrant for his office files. The bank is pretty cooperative, but they're hinky about his files. He was their lead officer on a whole slew of international loans and venture capital deals… lots of stuff in Asia, Australia, South America."

  "Was he working on any big deals?"

  "Nothing out of the ordinary, according to Hauser's first pass. But we're looking into it."

  "Fucking First Bank. Those sons of bitches got me by the balls with their mortgage."

  "Me too," Bobby Lee said.

  "Old Rollie Wheeler, used to be a mortgage officer there… used to be a cop, got shot back in the seventies in that big shootout down in Bloomington with the narcos. Said he'd had enough and got out. Took one in the lung and rode that disability all the way through school and then to First Bank. When Angie was still alive, old Rollie, he took care of us. He's gone now, these fuckers no w…"

  "Yeah, I know," Bobby Lee said, cutting into the tirade. "Screw them all if they can't take a joke. We'll send the Cannibal Killer after them."

  "Let me know what happens, Bobby," Oberstar said. "I'll keep the assholes off your back. But make something happen soon, huh?"

  "Thanks, padre. Go take a break. I got the ball."

  "Dig for this boy, Bobby. Whatever you need."

  "I got it. I'll let you know how it develops."

  Bobby Lee watched Oberstar lumber away, hitching his baggy suit pants as though he were still wearing a patrol uniform and equipment belt. Then he turned back to his desk and flipped through the case file again, turning over the photographs as though he might now be able to see through the scramble of blood and innards strewn across his desk to the face that had to be behind it, and through that face to get some insight into the mind there.


  He'd never worked a case like this before. He'd filled out the detailed questionnaire the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit sent to local law enforcement agencies requesting help for profiling serial offenders, but he knew what kind of backlog those harried and overworked agents had to deal with. He didn't have a serial killer yet.

  Yet.

  Bobby Lee's street smarts had stood him in good stead during his years on patrol, and working homicide hadn't taken the edge off that at all. He stayed tuned up and kept his senses sharp. He had a feeling about this guy, and he'd learned to trust his feelings. He was going to see this guy's work again.

  But there was something about the choice of the victim. Madison Simmons wasn't right. The banker wouldn't be the usual prey of a serial offender; this smacked of a hit, someone with a grudge, business or personal. This kind of anger you sometimes saw in sex-related crimes. Gay? A hooker? Something there? There wasn't the element of disorganization you saw in a rage-induced murder, though. Simmons had been butchered, but not in a frenzy. It had been systematic and efficient, not hate-filled hacking. Madison Simmons had been taken apart the way a good hunter took apart a deer in the field, even down to preparing the kidney fat for a snack.

  "That's some silly sick shit for sure," Bobby Lee said.

  "You ain't kidding," said one of the uniform officers passing his desk.

  "Caught me talking to myself," Bobby Lee said.