Shadow Puppet

by Jeffrey Round

  “He’s not gone. Not yet. I can find him.”

  “Then bring him back!” Donny’s voice was a near scream. He crumpled into a chair. “Every couple of months, and sometimes more often, I hear about bodies being retrieved from the flowerbeds below my balcony. Why? Because gay men get lonely at night. Because we get tired of the drugs and the discos and the boys and we realize we’ve ended up alone. But I was stupid enough to believe I’d escaped all that.” He sat forward. “So you get out there and bring him back!” He slumped in his chair again, exhausted. His voice was sad and quiet now. “Do that for me and I might forgive you.”

  Dan pulled out his cell and checked the time: 11:32 p.m. It was late, but he called anyway. At this point he needed all the help and reassurance he could get. What was the worst that could happen?

  Adele answered.

  “Hello, Adele. It’s Dan Sharp. I’m sorry for calling so late. It’s important, otherwise I wouldn’t have called. Can I speak to Domingo?”

  “No. You can’t.”

  The answer was abrupt. Dan was about to apologize again for having called when Adele continued.

  “Oh, Dan! She’s not here. She’s in the hospital.”

  “What happened?”

  “She collapsed this afternoon. I don’t know for sure.” Her voice was shaky. “She was having pains in her back. I just got back from the hospital. I haven’t had time to call anyone.” There was a long pause. “I think it might be the cancer come back.”

  “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Not at the moment, but thank you. We just have to wait and see.”

  “Okay. Please let her know I’m thinking of her. Whatever she needs …”

  The call clicked off. He felt a stab of cold white fear — for Domingo and Adele, for Donny and Prabin — for himself. It was a long time since he’d felt like this. Not since he was a young father trying to raise a son largely on his own. His head throbbed.

  It seemed ages since Prabin’s text appeared, but in fact it had been just over two hours. Two hours in which anything might have happened.

  Outside, the snow beat against the window, clinging for a second before melting and running down the glass. Tears for the dead.

  THIRTY

  Tableau

  WHEN HE HADN’T HEARD FROM Prabin by midnight, Dan ground some coffee beans and sat over a steaming espresso. He took out his phone and flipped through his messages to Terence’s text. Sam’s face smiled out at him. A sweet-looking guy whose visa was about to expire. Nabil had known about Hanani Sheikh’s sideline and offered to help. But Hanani claimed he hadn’t given Nabil any papers, despite his urgent request.

  In his calendar Nabil had said Sam liked “to get rough,” describing him as “quite a conceited little ass under the skin,” while Reggie called him a “pretentious little twit.” But Terence had said he was the ideal boyfriend, a simple man of exquisite manners. How could you be all those things to different people? He supposed it was possible. Dan was a father to his son, a friend to his friends, and a lover to his lover when he had one. But he was, for all intents and purposes, still the same man inside, not one thing in the light and another in the dark. Not just a shadow taking on the form of something as different as the dead from the living.

  Donny called frantically every fifteen minutes, interrupting his thinking, till Dan ordered him to sedate himself and go to bed.

  “I’m going out to look for him,” Dan assured him.

  “I want to come with you, wherever you’re going.”

  “No good. I can’t have you tagging along.”

  He closed his computer. Somehow, his gut told him, it all connected with those grinning devil dolls strung up on a wire. Why was he looking in the diary of a dead man when the answer lay in the apartment of another dead man?

  He got back in his car and took the expressway, bypassing the city streets. The lanes were deserted. But in a few hours, he knew, they’d be full again. Hell on wheels. No turning right or left till you exited, cursing and vowing never to take that route again. As if that were possible. What made all those commuters so dedicated to their work? Dan wondered. Ambition? Pride? Child support payments?

  Down again, a couple of turns, then up Church Street to Wellesley. Even in the cold, the hookers and drug peddlers still hawked their wares. Just a block farther to where the Viking waited for him like an old nemesis silently planning its revenge. Darkness shrouded the windows, front and sides.

  He parked and waited. Icicles clung to the eaves, deadly cleavers waiting to fall on the unsuspecting. The front porch light was still out. It was one of the first things he’d noticed about the place. Maybe the tenants preferred it that way to conceal their nefarious comings and goings.

  If he rang Reggie’s buzzer, Dan knew, the super would join him. But he didn’t want help. He just wanted to be sure he didn’t rouse him and get tackled again. Then again, all reports indicated that potheads slept more soundly than the rest of the world.

  A scrofulous-looking bunch headed his way, weaving and wandering along the sidewalk. Drunken partyers, long-past-midnight revellers making their way through the snow and cold. One of them stopped to light a cigarette, fumbled with the flame, struck flint again and again. He spotted Dan sitting behind the wheel, grinned and waved like they were old friends before getting back to the task of striking up. It made Dan so tense he wanted to go over and take it from him, light his cigarette and tell this drunken asshole to get the fuck out of there and join AA.

  Finally, when he was sure no one was watching, he pocketed his flashlight and crept along the side of the building. The moonlight shone in Sam’s window. There was nothing happening inside the apartment, but that didn’t mean …

  Then it struck him — the curtains were fully open.

  He gripped the ledge, but his fingers slipped on the icy sill. He looked around and found a loose brick, chipping at the ice and brushing it away. He tried again. This time his grip was better, but the ledge was still too high up to see inside properly.

  He found a stump by the garage and set it up directly beneath the window. His breath came out in white flags as a terrifying drum beat pounded in the back of his head: Hurry, hurry, hurry!

  The lock was secure. The only way in was to break the window. But that would bring the police, who would keep him tied up for hours as he tried to explain that he needed to find his friend before it was too late and he, too, ended up in the harbour.

  Dan retraced his tracks to the front of the building. For once, he was thankful for the burned-out bulb, even though there was no one around. The lock resisted, stiff with cold and creaking in protest, before suddenly giving way.

  The wind blew the door shut behind him. He stood there, feeling naked in the hall light. The lobby’s hush told him he was the only living thing moving about at that hour. The exit sign cast an eerie red glow as he crossed to the apartment on the left.

  Sam’s lock was not so easy to pick. The old-fashioned skeleton key had hinted at a vulnerability that wasn’t the case. What with pornographers, drug dealers, and mysterious puppeteers on the premises, security was probably far more of a concern than it appeared on the surface.

  Finally, just as he was about to give up and call Reggie, he heard the pins click and give way. He slipped inside the apartment, shutting the door and waiting as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. The moon emitted a faint glow through the windows. A radiator let out a sigh, the last gasp of the dying. He took a step. The floorboard screamed like a banshee in the tomb-like silence.

  He stopped and listened, but nothing changed. He was alone in an empty apartment with no sound but the wind and the occasional slushing of a car making its way past in the darkened street.

  He switched on his Maglite and palmed the lens. His hand glowed red, a demon buried inside his skin as he moved about the room, following the glow emitted through his flesh.

  Dan stopped dead. Something had been placed on the tabletop. It seemed out
of place in his memory. Throwing caution aside, he pointed the beam at it, causing an explosion of yellow in the darkness. A bouquet of fresh chrysanthemums. He calculated back: it was two weeks since his first visit. Cut flowers didn’t last that long, so make it more recent than that. He picked up the card. Hearts and flowers, with a script in a flowing hand: To Sam, my puppet master — Nabil.

  How …?

  Dan turned and looked at the dumb-show of faces, those miniature envoys of evil. They seemed to dance in the air, each one dressed with precision and expert attention to detail. Some grinned, while others were mawkish, still others sad. All eyes were on him, as though they knew something. A secret, a sad truth.

  He reached out and plucked one off its hook, shining his flashlight on it as though he were interrogating it. “What do you know?” he asked. The puppet grinned back.

  Dan hung it back on its wire, shining his light on the others. A lady in a blue velvet robe wore a death mask, lifting her skirts in oblivious abandon to life’s sad waltz, time’s purposeful march to the edge. Next to her, a tuxedoed gentleman grinned his grim approval.

  He continued down the line. The third puppet in wore a ta’wiz. A crescent moon with five stars inscribed inside its arms.

  He held the light closer to be sure, but there was no doubt. It was Nabil’s. The one Dan had given Prabin to catch a killer. There were other makeshift souvenirs: rings, a necklace, a tooth on a thin chain. Then a small, white bone. From a finger.

  Sam was not as far off as he appeared. What had Reggie said? In the city you can just disappear. In fact, Sam had been here all the time, coming and going invisibly. A grim killer reaping his trophies. All along, the puppets had been mocking him, offering their clues like trinkets in a box of deadly secrets.

  Dan stepped back. Something crunched beneath his foot. A tiny, puppet-sized arm. He shone his light over the floor. Pieces of puppet bodies lay strewn across the wood. As though God had run amok in his own kingdom.

  On an antique tabletop a marionette theatre had been smashed to pieces, but there was no time to think what it meant. Footsteps announced themselves in the hallway. Dan switched off his light and held his breath as a hand turned the handle, first one way then the other.

  He cast around for a weapon. His eyes turned to the fireplace: a poker. Not a bad choice, he thought, but again the floorboards betrayed him, screaming out his presence. He hefted the iron, imagining the sound it would make on a skull. He might have a split second to decide whether to hit with intent to wound or to kill and leave no second chances. Neither choice appealed to him.

  He pulled his cell from his pocket and pressed 911, ready to hit SEND the moment anything happened.

  Seconds passed. The footsteps turned and moved off.

  Dan waited, but they didn’t return. A late-night booty call? A misdirected fellow tenant stumbling home drunk and showing up at the wrong door?

  Maybe, but not likely.

  He looked at his phone’s glowing screen, thankful he hadn’t dialed after all. What would he have told the dispatcher? I broke into an apartment and the owner came back unexpectedly. I need help.

  He listened for sounds from the hallway; all he heard was the soft chugging of the monster furnace turning on in the basement.

  Still clutching the poker, he crept over and pressed his ear to the door. Silence. He got down on his knees. Light seeped through, but the gap was too narrow to see if anyone stood just on the other side.

  Time slipped past. He could stay there all night or he could chance getting out to continue his search for Prabin. Tick-tick-tick. Maybe he should rouse Reggie and ask him to help, taking him on as the sleuth he longed to be.

  He turned the lock and opened the door. The hallway was deserted. The exit sign glowed red, like a demon eye. He should just make his getaway.

  He stepped out. Nothing happened. By all rights, it wasn’t supposed to be this easy. The killer would be waiting just outside the front door with an ironic smile, gun barrel raised to catch him in his sights. A single bullet would take him out. He’d be found rigid in the snow by an early-morning passerby. His son would wonder where his father was when he got up, but he wouldn’t think it unusual. Ked would head off to class, then, later that afternoon, Kendra would notify the school and he’d be called to the principal’s office. Or, worse, he might not find out until after he got home, cooked himself a meal, and settled on the couch to watch the evening news.

  Dan closed the apartment door behind him, using his shirttail to wipe the knob free of prints.

  Then he turned and saw the basement door ajar.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Out from the Shadows

  DAN TENSED AS HE REACHED for the railing. Silence met his ears, but what else would there be at — he glanced at his watch

  — 3:28 in the morning? He put his foot on the top stair and started down, one step at a time. Like the road to sobriety. Not quite where he was going, but it was still reassuring.

  Something glistened on a step partway down. A dark patch, small but shiny enough to reflect the faint light behind him. He bent and touched it, bringing his finger to his face. It looked black, but thinned to red when he rubbed it with his thumb. Someone had passed this way, bleeding as they went. The blood skipped a couple of steps before continuing at the bottom, a curious trail leading him to who knew where. Wasn’t it a trail of breadcrumbs that got Hansel and Gretel in all that trouble?

  Keeping the poker raised, he inched his way into the room where the tentacles of the giant furnace reached up through the ceiling. The grate was open, an orange glow throwing shadows on the walls. A small shovel sat upright against the furnace’s bulk, as though to feed it when it got hungry.

  From some long-ago literature course, he remembered Dante’s vision of hell. It was highly ordered, every sin having its allotted space within nine concentric circles at the centre of the earth. The version of hell Dan found himself facing wasn’t orderly, just dusty and dirty. Boxes had been piled up with their forgotten contents. Off in a corner, a broken lamp stood like a forsaken scarecrow.

  There was another glimmer on the floor ahead. Whoever was bleeding had come this way. And would no doubt have to come back out again. From far off came the sound of a truck passing in the street.

  Still keeping the poker raised, he made his way into the next room. He barely heard the shadowy figure approaching him from behind.

  His first thought was that he was paralyzed. Nothing moved, nothing worked. Something warm oozed down the back of his neck where he felt a stabbing pain. It was a ten out of ten he would say, if anyone asked.

  He raised his head and tried to focus. Little halos surrounded everything: the pipes in the ceiling, the boxes piled against the wall. He was back in the other room. Someone had … he couldn’t remember. His thoughts splintered.

  He tried to move. His feet were free but his arms were pinned behind him. He heard the furnace right behind him. Its heat warmed his fingers.

  He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again the figure standing over him seemed to be an angel. An angel of darkness come to inquire about his troubles. The look on the angel’s face said it felt his pain and understood his sorrows, both spoken and unspoken, for now and for all time to come.

  “Brother,” it said. “Are you ready for paradise?”

  The angel leaned down. A half-familiar face, like something from a dream. Boyish. Half child and half adult. Forgiving and gentle.

  The face changed. It was suddenly judgemental, wrathful. The angel pointed a retributive finger at him.

  “All I wanted was one date.”

  Dan blinked. “Help me,” he croaked out.

  The angel looked pityingly at the ropes binding Dan to the chair. “Now you want my help.”

  Dan strained briefly against his restraints, but there was no give.

  “Don’t struggle. It’s not manly.”

  Reggie stepped into the light. His shirttail was out and his forehead shone
with sweat. There was a deep scratch on his jaw. He looked as though he’d been in a fight.

  “What have you done with Prabin?”

  “You mean Jameel? The one in the video? I recognized him in the bar tonight. I asked him if he wanted to meet Sam. Of course he came with me. They’re all so stupid, aren’t they? Every one of them.” He smirked. “Just like you.”

  “You better not have hurt him,” Dan said.

  “He fought me. He was stronger than I expected. Ironic, isn’t it? You tried to use him as bait to catch me. Then I used him as bait to catch you.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t the first time I met him. I danced with him at Zipperz. You were there. Only you didn’t recognize me. Nobody ever does.”

  Dan wanted to kick himself. He’d been so worried Xavier was after Prabin that he barely noticed the boy he’d been dancing with.

  “Where is Sam?”

  “With the others.” Reggie shook his head, as though saddened by a child slow at learning his lessons. “Were you hoping for a date with Sam? Is that why you broke into his apartment?” He paused. “Everyone wants to sleep with Sam. No one wants Reggie. He’s just the superintendent of a small apartment building. A loser, in other words.” He cocked his head. “I think Nabil liked me for me.”

  Dan saw it now. “He sent you flowers.”

  “Well, yes, but not those flowers. You know that.” He shrugged. “Did you like the card? I thought that was a nice touch. You probably think it’s pathetic that I kept it.” He sneered. “I warned him. The Quran’s teachings are clear. We must keep clean — both physically and spiritually.”

  “Is that why you killed those men? Because they were unclean?”

  “I was helping them. I made them confess before sending them to paradise. Even the police were stupid. They stood right here asking me questions and didn’t once look in the right direction.” He glanced over at the furnace, its orange glow lighting up the grate. “It takes a long time to get rid of a body. You have no idea how hard it is.”