The Shimmer

by Carsten Stroud

  She put these thoughts away. Eventually he would tire and leave and she could come back to shore. She knew what to do once she got back to the shore. She had done it often. So she waited.

  Time passed slowly and still it was just the two of them, the police sergeant standing motionless by the shore, and Selena two hundred feet out, shivering violently in the water, aware that something large and slithery was close by her, only a few yards away, resting on the floor of the swamp, lidless eyes considering her.

  She could feel its reptilian mind working, thinking dim slow thoughts about catching and ripping and swallowing, maybe mixed up with a bit of doubt, getting strange signals off her, its hunger and its fear fighting with each other. There was nothing to be done about that.

  She was very cold and very hungry and starting to be just a little afraid, her skin on fire with bites and wounds and stings.

  Beyond the trees the streetlights came on, and over her head the stars were shining through shreds of cloud. She could hear the cop’s radio crackling with chatter and out on the roadway blue and red and white lights were slicing up the sky and spearing through the treetops.

  And still he stood and still he stared.

  And now he was beginning to worry her.

  She idly wondered if she should slip a hundred feet down the shoreline, try to get behind him and kill him. If he didn’t go soon, she might try it, even though moving—not being still—would be acting like prey instead of predator.

  But a few minutes later he walked away up the slope until he reached the tree line. He stopped there and turned back to the swamp. And called out, a deep rolling voice, a strong Southern accent, Georgia or the Carolinas.

  “Lady, if you’re still out there, I have something to tell you. I know you. I’ve seen your face somewhere. So I’m gonna look everywhere I can until I find you. Every police record. Every newspaper story. Every official site in the US. I’m gonna hunt you. And when I have your file, I will come for you. My name is Sergeant Jack Redding of the Florida Highway Patrol. Enjoy your evening.”

  Then he turned and disappeared into the trees and Selena was alone in the swamp and she had a lot to think about. Redding. She knew that name, but she couldn’t quite remember from where, or why.

  * * *

  She was still thinking about it when she reached the shoreline a while later and moved silently, invisibly, a darker shadow in the night, gliding up the grassy slope and slipping through the trees toward the backs of the houses, where most of the people would be out on their front porches, watching the police cars, talking to their neighbors, having a lovely time savoring all the excitement, enjoying the delicious idea that something dangerous, something fatal, had happened right in front of them.

  But it hadn’t happened to them.

  * * *

  Two Flagler County Deputies, Danika Shugrue and Luke Cotton, knocked on the front door of a trim little white bungalow two hours later. The porch lights were on and old-timey music was coming through the door, what used to be called big band music. While they waited for an answer, Deputy Shugrue checked her clipboard, a list of local residents.

  “We’ve got a Willard Coleman, eighty-seven, a widower. Lives alone. He’s in a wheelchair—”

  “Hence the ramp we’re standing on,” said Cotton.

  “Stop saying hence, will you? Next it’ll be hither and forsooth.”

  Cotton, who was hunting a promotion, was taking a college-level English Lit course online and Shugrue felt it was having a bad effect on him.

  The door opened. A pretty woman was standing in the doorway, in a ratty powder blue terry-cloth bathrobe, obviously naked underneath, since the robe was not quite pulled in tight enough for modesty, her hair wrapped up in a big white towel and her face covered in some kind of lime-green cream. She smiled at them.

  She had a great smile.

  “Evening, miss,” said Deputy Shugrue, the senior deputy in this pair. “Can we talk to Mr. Willard Coleman?”

  The woman made a pursed-lip expression, thinking about it, but then she brightened.

  “Well, I think he’s asleep, but of course, come on in. Is this about the shooting thing earlier?”

  “Yes it is, Miss...?”

  “How terrible. I’ve been watching it on Fox. They have all sorts of video on it, I guess from people and their cell phone cameras and stuff. That poor lady police officer. The whole thing is on film. They’re playing it over and over. Is the lady officer okay?”

  “She’s in the hospital,” said Shugrue, stepping inside and scuffing her boots on the doormat to clean off the mud. “But we think she’s going to be okay. Thank you for asking.”

  “And the little girl who was shot? They’re not saying whether she was okay too?”

  Shugrue exchanged a look with Cotton.

  “She, ah, she died, I’m afraid, Miss...?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m Catherine Marcus. Call me Cathy. I’m with Helping Hands? We’re the assisted-living people?”

  Marcus backed away from the door, inviting them into a neat little front room with a green leather sofa and two chairs, antique lamps, a fireplace with family pictures, a flat-screen TV with the sound off—Fox News—an oxygen tank in one corner.

  “I’m the resident nurse for the night,” she was explaining. “Will... Mister Coleman...has some mobility issues, and he suffers from sleep apnea. So we try to have someone here through the night.”

  “Can we talk to Mister Coleman?”

  Marcus seemed worried, distracted, as she wiped some of the night cream off her face.

  “He’s finally gotten to sleep... He has a terrible time...insomnia. But, of course, you need to check on him... Let me take you to him. His room is just down the hall here.”

  She led the deputies down a narrow wooden-floored hall past a bright galley kitchen, dishes piled neatly in a rack, the counter gleaming in the glow of halogen downlights.

  She reached a door, half-closed, tapped gently on it. “Will...are you awake?” she asked in a whisper. No answer, but the sound of some sort of breathing machine came from the darkened interior.

  “Like I said, Will has sleep apnea,” Marcus explained. “That’s where your breathing just sort of stops, while you’re sleeping. It can be fatal. He has to wear a mask at night, to keep him breathing. Poor dear, he hates it. Says it’s too hot. But he needs it.”

  “Can we just look in?” asked Cotton.

  “Of course,” said Marcus, in a whisper.

  Shugrue pushed the door open softly. The room had been stripped down to the basics, a dresser, a small flat-screen TV on top of it. Wooden floors. It was spare and neat. There was a single bed in the center of the room. In the dim light from a night table lamp they could see an elderly man lying on his back in the bed, covered by a fluffy pale blue comforter.

  His eyes were closed and sunken but his bony chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm. A rubber mask with a flexible tube attached to it covered his nose and mouth. The hose ran down to a machine that was puffing and venting in the same rhythm. The room smelled vaguely of antiseptic and some kind of lemon-scented air freshener, and under that just a teeny tiny hint of old-guy pee.

  The cops stood in the doorway for a while, listening to Willard Coleman breathe. Then they backed out quietly.

  “Okay with you if we do a walkabout?” asked Deputy Shugrue. “Make sure there’s nobody in the house who shouldn’t be here?”

  Marcus gave her a broad smile.

  “You go right ahead. It’s a pretty small house, just one floor. There’s no basement because of the water table around here being so high.”

  Shugrue and Cotton went off down the hall, poked around in the bathroom, a tiny second bedroom, stepped out into the lanai-covered backyard, looked at the locks, flicked on the backyard lights for a moment and then they came back down the hall,
where Marcus had stayed to wait for them.

  “Everything looks good,” said Shugrue, and they all headed back down the hall, two large deputies carrying heavy gear, looming over a curvy barefoot woman in an increasingly scandalous bathrobe—in all the distraction, Marcus seemed to be unaware that her robe was not quite doing all it could to keep her decent.

  They went out into the living room and across to the front door, where Shugrue stopped, as if she had just remembered it, and asked Catherine Marcus if she had some ID.

  “Of course,” Marcus said. “Hold on, I think I left it in the kitchen.”

  She fluttered off, leaving a soapy scent in the air, came back in a moment with a laminated ID card, the Helping Hands logo, and a photo with a security hologram over it and the name printed under the photo, which read Catherine Marcus, RN.

  Shugrue studied the ID, made a note on her clipboard, tipped her Stetson to the nurse.

  “Thank you, Miss Marcus. We’d like to advise you to keep everything locked up tight tonight. We’ve got a dangerous fugitive in the area, so don’t be answering any knocks on the door, okay?”

  “Well, I had to answer yours, didn’t I?” she said, with a bright smile and a touch of tease.

  “Yes, you did,” said Shugrue. “But no one else. Okay? Be careful. Have a good night.”

  “You too, Officers,” said Marcus, holding the door open as they left. “And you both be sure to get home safe tonight, okay?”

  “Thanks, miss,” said Shugrue, and they walked back down the wheelchair ramp and out to the street.

  “Pretty lady,” said Cotton, who had enjoyed the half-open bathrobe more than was quite right for a happily married guy with two kids.

  “Yeah she was,” said Shugrue, writing something on her clipboard. “Except for the acne. Her cheeks looked like she’d been bitten to death by ducks.”

  “Didn’t notice her cheeks,” said Cotton.

  “Yeah,” said Shugrue. “Because her cheeks were all up here and her boobs were all down there. I thought you were gonna trip over your tongue.”

  “More likely my dick,” said Cotton.

  “You wish,” said Shugrue.

  * * *

  Back in the bungalow Selena watched through the blinds as the two deputies walked away into the darkness between two streetlights. Then she slipped back down the hall and into the bedroom where Willard Coleman lay on his back in the hospital bed. She pulled off the sleep apnea mask and contemplated the old man for a while.

  The mask was still breathing in and out for him, but Willard Coleman had drawn his last voluntary breath an hour and fifty minutes ago, when Selena had pinched his mouth and nostrils shut and then held them that way for six and a half minutes, because there was no point in doing something if you didn’t do it right, and it had been her experience that six and a half minutes did the trick for pretty much everyone.

  She’d watched his eyes as he fought for life, his bony fingers scrabbling at her wrists. She had hoped for the Shimmer, but it didn’t come, which happened most of the time, the Shimmer being as elusive as St. Elmo’s fire. She had rarely seen the Shimmer come when old people died. Maybe their life forces were already at a low ebb.

  She had better luck with younger subjects, but so far only a few of them had been able to bring the Shimmer in a way she could use.

  * * *

  Once she was sure the old man was dead, she had found an old bathrobe in the bedroom closet, gone down the hall and taken a long hot shower, which she really needed.

  While she was showering she thought about the cops who would be around soon, making sure all the residents were safe and not taken hostage by that horrible evil fugitive person. She had a plan for that. She always carried a variety of IDs and credit cards and cash in a waterproof belt.

  So she was safe for now, once the cops had come and gone, and afterward there was work to do—yes, a lot of work. The old man had a big iMac computer in the second bedroom. She would need that.

  Redding. Jack Redding. Sergeant Jack Redding.

  She was going to have to think about him, because he showed every sign of turning into a big problem. But that was for the morning.

  * * *

  After her shower she had watched the cell phone video on all the news reports, showing the police shooting out on the street. That female cop had shot Rebecca dead, but Karen was still alive.

  She had already planned for that. There was a better than even chance that it would take care of itself, possibly sooner rather than later. Not a certainty, but in this life, what was? All you could do was your level best.

  Planning. Foresight. Take pride in your work. Selena was meticulous. That was her gift.

  And then the cops arrived, much later than she thought, but she was ready for them, and it had gone just the way she expected, as things usually did if you planned ahead. So what she wanted right now was a bottle of cold white wine and something hot and spicy to eat. The old man’s fridge was full of food. He even had a wine closet.

  And Selena had never been hungrier.

  karen walker reaches a vital conclusion

  Redding drove to Immaculate Heart Hospital with his mind mainly on the woman in the marsh. He was almost certain that she was still there, but the flatboats had been all over it, and he couldn’t just wait her out. He had to see Julie, and then make sure that Mace Dixon hadn’t done something radical to get Karen Walker’s full attention. Such as throwing her off the roof of the hospital.

  The ER entrance at Immaculate Heart was cluttered with ambulances and police vehicles, County and State—another busy evening in Paradise—Redding found a space next to LQ Marsh’s cruiser and shut the car down, feeling a wave of exhaustion settle over him.

  He checked his watch. It was going on midnight and he had a feeling it was going to be a while before he got back to his seaside bungalow on Crescent Beach.

  Not that going back there was anything he looked forward to, but it was where he had lived for many years with Barbara and Katy and he wasn’t ready to pack up all their things. Yet.

  He leaned forward until his head was resting on the steering wheel, closed his eyes and let the same old feeling pull him down. He had gotten over the central illusion about grieving, which was that grieving was something you got over.

  How he felt now was just the new normal, the way it is for a vet who comes back from the wars with nothing below his knees but stainless-steel sticks. Life was that before, and now life was this.

  * * *

  Anson Freitag.

  An eighty-three-year-old retired surgeon with cataracts and a pacemaker. Loved by all, so all the papers said. A pillar of the community, so all the cable news folks said.

  A celebrated cardiovascular surgeon credited with saving literally thousands of lives over his decades-long career, most of it spent right here at Immaculate Heart Hospital in downtown Jacksonville.

  Anson Freitag, northbound on A1A last Christmas Eve, around 9:30. Driving a tank-sized navy-blue Mercedes-Benz 600. At 80 miles per hour. In a fog bank. Coming up on the Matanzas Inlet Bridge at the north end of Rattlesnake Island.

  And southbound on A1A, at the same time, in their black Jeep, Redding’s wife, Barbara, at the wheel and Katy in her safety seat in the back, strapped in tight, playing with her iPad Mini. Coming up on the Matanzas Inlet Bridge at the north end of Rattlesnake Island.

  Barbara was on the hands-free phone, talking to Redding. Redding was on duty that Christmas Eve, the price for getting Christmas Day off. Otherwise he would have been at the wheel, which might have meant Barbara and Katy would still be alive. Or Redding could have managed to die with them, which would have been better than what actually did happen.

  Barbara’s voice.

  Talking to him about Christmas Dinner.

  Through the cell phone he could hear music in the background. �
��I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by Bing Crosby. Barbara was a sucker for all those old Christmas songs. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland. And the classic films. Miracle on 34th Street, Going My Way, Holiday Inn, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, the one with Alastair Sim.

  Then suddenly Barbara’s voice changed into a horrified yelp—she said, Jack there’s someone in the middle of the road—

  At precisely the same time, Anson Freitag’s Benz 600 swerved violently to the left and crossed the median at the dead center of the Matanzas Bridge. The Benz struck the Jeep on the driver’s-side front wing at 80 miles an hour, which created, for both drivers, the same effect as driving into a concrete wall at one hundred and thirty miles an hour. The heavier Benz took both vehicles through the guardrail and fifty feet down into the bay.

  Redding heard it all over the Jeep’s hands-free phone. The grinding clash of steel on steel. Shattering glass. Barbara’s scream of pain and terror as the SUV burst through the rail and tumbled down into Matanzas Inlet. The much higher pitch of Katy’s frantic shriek. The huge thumping splash as the Jeep hit the water. The secondary splash farther off, Freitag’s Benz smashing into the waves a few yards away. Barbara’s gasping struggle for air as the water poured in through the broken windshield. She was trying to keep her head above water. He could hear her doing it. He always would.

  Then Redding heard her crying out, Katy, Katy, are you, and then her voice was abruptly choked off. The sound of her drowning, which seemed to go on forever, or at least until the car’s electrics shorted out. Redding heard it all. He was going to hear it all for the rest of his life. The audio memory went round and round in a loop in his head whenever he was alone in the beach house. At least, when he hadn’t whacked himself into a near-fatal coma with Chianti and Ativan.

  So, no, going back to the beach house right now wasn’t real attractive. He had the newspaper clipping in his wallet, but he didn’t have to take it out. He knew it by heart:

  ANSON FREITAG, 83.

  Highly Respected Retired Chief of Surgery at Immaculate Heart Hospital Killed on Christmas Eve.