But when I hear Wendall speak those words, my underground is upended. Everything from down below—panic, fear, confusion, rage—winds up written on my face, on my body. But not just written, scrawled in red ink. I know because my neck gets hot, my hands go numb, and my ribs turn into a vise, squeezing the air from my lungs.
“Now, don’t you go faintin’ on me, Doc.”
That’s when I realize I’m standing, shaking. Wendall’s hand is on my shoulder, patting it the same way he’d tapped Gus’s head, his voice nearer than I’d like. I can smell him too, the sickly-sweet odor of tobacco. That muffin may be destined to come up after all.
“I’m okay,” I say, stutter-stepping backwards until I feel my chair behind my thighs. I collapse into it, my legs useless stumps. I search the room for something, anything I can use as a weapon—the lamp maybe—though I’d hardly need it as weak as Wendall is now. “It’s just . . . you . . . you surprised me.”
“It’s my fault. I stuck my foot in my big ole mouth again.” He retreats toward the sofa—still regal in its calm—and I wish I’d been nicer to it, admired its buttery leather like it deserved. Maybe it would swallow him now, suck him down beneath the cushions and spit out his bones.
“Are you sure you’re alright? You look whiter than Clotilda’s bedsheets. And let me tell you, she used to bleach ’em within an inch of their lives.”
I nod at Wendall. It’s all I can do. His face blurs in and out of focus.
“I’m not him, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Lord, no. Killin’ in war is something altogether different than killin’ just ’cause you want to. Cause it feels good. I ain’t that far gone.”
His hat is a black cat curled on the table. His hat is an asp ready to strike. There are words on my tongue, precious words. Words I’ve waited so long to say.
They don’t come out.
“But I am complicit. I thought he’d stopped. I should’ve said somethin’ to somebody. If I had, your pretty little girl would still be alive. I’m sure of it. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I found you.” When I don’t speak, can’t speak still, he shrugs his shoulders, thin as a wire hanger beneath his button-down. “There you go. That’s the heaviest stone I’ve got.”
Now it’s resting on my chest, pinning me to the chair, until a single word escapes in a tearful gasp. “Who?”
“You’re not gonna tell the police, are you? I swear I didn’t know what that loon was capable of.”
“Wendall, who is it?”
He coughs, pounds at his chest, his voice coming out raspy. “That’s just it. I ain’t one hundred percent certain. He goes by a moniker, MQKlinger—like the character in M.A.S.H.—on the World Wide Web and claims to know me. I’m guessing it could be one of my old military buddies.”
“So you’ve chatted with him online?”
“He messaged me about five years back, after I started the Shadow Seekers website. Well, I didn’t build it myself, of course. I ain’t into all the newfangled technology . . . that Book of Faces or the Tweeter. But after Clotilda died, I got bored and turned into an amateur sleuth. A real Sherlock myself, if I dare say so. Like a lot of folks, I went down the Shadow Man rabbit hole. Thought I could catch that rascal.”
My head is spinning, spinning, spinning, the way five-year-old Dakota had spun with Cole, hands clasped together, laughing. Until they’d both fallen into the grass. “What did he tell you?”
“A whole lotta crazy, that’s what. I didn’t take him seriously. Rantin’ about conspiracy theories and spy games. Some real James Bond–type shenanigans. Then he told me he was Shadow Man. And he’d killed those girls ’cause they were secret government agents sent to destroy him.”
The single clawed finger of a memory tries to pry its way out of the lockbox in my brain. I grind my teeth, clamping down the lid even tighter. There. It’s gone. “You think you know this guy? From Vietnam?”
“Just a hunch.” He coughs again, harder this time, his face straining with the effort. “His username and all. Plus, we did a lot of burnin’ over there. Practically burned that whole damn country to the ground. Crispy critters. That’s all we left behind. Reminded me of Shadow Man, ya know?”
Of course, I knew. I’d committed Dakota’s autopsy to memory, even the unbearable parts.
Reconstruction of the remains revealed the deceased was a moderately built young adult female. The jaw was completely burnt with charring of the bone underneath. Gum tissue was partly cooked with a heat hematoma present in the region.
“I’m sorry, Doc. I dropped a regular ole A-bomb on you, didn’t I?”
Other bones also showed evidence of charring, which likely occurred after death. Dakota’s backpack had been there too. What was left of it.
I swallow, forcing the lump in my throat back down. “What do you expect me to do now? Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
Another vicious cough and Wendall doubles over, sputtering. “That one hurt like hell.”
Still hacking, he reaches for a tissue, wiping a smear of scarlet across his lips. At the center of his palm, a spot of blood so shocking and bright, I can’t look away. The last time I’d seen blood like that, it marked the back of my own hand. That blood had belonged to Dakota.
****
Wendall was right. A-bomb on target, delivered right to the center of my universe. As he drives away—he’d stubbornly refused an ambulance—I take inventory. My internal landscape a pile of rubble. In the middle of it all, the twisted wreckage of my devastated heart. But my brain remains somehow unscathed, a still-ticking clock in Hiroshima the day after. With every tick I think of MQKlinger and the website. It makes perfect sense. Shadow Man was a Shadow Snoop. Same as Dakota, Boyd, and apparently, Wendall, king of all the Snoops.
With Wendall’s treatment folder in my hand, I lock the office and sprint back to the house, faster than I’ve run in years. Even faster than the Dr. Roark of olden days, racing on a road to nowhere, hoofing it on the best treadmill money could buy till I’d burned the requisite five hundred calories per day.
I fling open the door and head straight for the sofa, where Gus has been keeping my seat warm. He eyes me guiltily and slinks from the center cushion, leaving a set of dirty pawprints behind. I don’t have time to care. I fire up Dakota’s computer, logging into Shadow Snoops as One-Armed Jack, the user ID Sawyer had created. As I scroll through the comments, I send a text to One-Armed Jack himself.
Can you pick a lock?
His reply comes seconds later, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. Because old habits die hard. Even though I already know Sawyer is nothing like Cole, leaving my just checking in, love you texts unanswered for an entire hospital shift. Sawyer is dependable. And after Hurricane Cole, dependable is sexy. Dependable is downright irresistible.
Good morning to you too. And it depends who’s asking.
Impossible as a daisy sprouting on this radioactive morning, I feel the corners of my mouth turn up into a smile.
I’ll take that as a yes. Pick me up in twenty minutes?
The phone stays quiet. Glaring at it doesn’t seem to help, so I distract myself with an Easter egg hunt, my eagle-eyed search amid the Shadow Snoops for MQKlinger.
Did you ever watch the show? Wendall had asked. I always felt bad for ole Klinger. Pulling all those crazy stunts to earn himself a Section 8. Can’t say I blame him. By the end of Nam, we’d all earned one. He’d leaned out the window of the Cadillac and grinned. I probably had grimaced back, seeing his top row of teeth still coated by a thin sheen of blood.
Promise me you’ll go straight to the hospital. And he’d promised. Which is why I need Sawyer to hurry.
I text him again, a string of question marks. Nothing. I call him, and it goes straight to voicemail. C’mon, Mr. Dependable. Don’t let me down now.
I open the folder I’d carted back from the office and fi
nd the home address Wendall had penned on the top portion of Dr. Mollie Roark’s fancy-schmancy treatment agreement. 1910 Meadowlark Way. I carefully type it into my phone’s maps app for later. Wendall lives in Alta Heights, one of the older, quieter neighborhoods in town, near Napa State Hospital. I zoom in on the quaint ranch-style one story with its two-car garage and redbrick face. Hardly the house of a man who can’t be trusted. But like faces, houses lie too.
I close the app and return to my mindless scrolling. Since we’d opened the account on Tuesday, I’d already poured over most of Dakota’s public comments, the majority of them between her and Chewie. With Jojo666 providing comic relief and DocSherlock lurking in the background, piping up to defend her when Chewie got overzealous. Not that she’d needed it. This was my girl. Smart and spunky and funny too. The girl I remembered. Before everything went to hell. I read through them again, but there’s no sign of MQKlinger in Summer 2016, so I keep moving down, down, down the screen until the beep of my phone interrupts.
At ease, soldier. I had to check my lock-picking schedule. Some of us common folk do work, ya know.
Though I’m alone, my face gets hot. I’d forgotten the day, forgotten Sawyer works. Forgotten all of it but myself. What I need. That says a lot about me. What level of crazy I’ve reached. Forget MQKlinger. I need a Section 8 myself.
Sorry. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.
Yeah, lock-picking usually is. Took an early lunch. I’ll be outside in five.
I close the laptop and tuck it under my arm. It’s coming with me. As I hurry past Gus, asleep on his bed in the foyer, he lifts his head to consider me.
“Stay off the sofa,” I tell him. “And keep an eye out.” But he’s already got both of them shut again, dead to the world.
****
Sawyer’s truck smells like the freshly cut grass that’s stuck to his work boots and stained the legs of his jeans. It takes me back to Mol’s. Not to the junkyard itself, but to the nearby county road all grown up with weeds almost as tall as me. A few times every summer the farmers would come through with their tractors, mowing it down and baling it into hay. In the evenings, after the dust had settled, Dad would send me into the ditches to look for treasure visible in the choppy leftovers. Tires, tools, and fast-food bags, poking up from the hacked-off grass that reminded me of a bad haircut. But the smell, that made it all worth it. Too bad Cole had ruined it for me years ago, when he’d told me that fresh-cut scent was the grass’s response to trauma. It’s fighting for its life, he’d said.
“So just to recap . . .” Sawyer takes his eyes from the road to give me a sideways glance. “We’re breaking into the home of a dying old man—your patient, by the way—for no particular reason other than your therapist’s intuition.” He says that last bit with the kind of skepticism I reserve for Luciana’s fortune-telling. “The same intuition that had you chasing poor Boyd out of the parking lot on Monday.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds bad.” I gesture up ahead to the street sign on the corner. “This one. Take a left.”
“You’re totally right. My fault. I was a disaster at P.R. Probably why they kept passing me over for that promotion to Captain.”
I shake my head at him, laughing. Already I feel better, lighter. A little less radioactive. “There’s just something creepy about the guy. He shows up at my house, uninvited. Basically confesses to murder. And then takes it all back. Says it was a big misunderstanding. That he was so obsessed with a serial killer, he paid somebody to make a website, and then lo and behold, Shadow Man confesses to him. Doesn’t that seem odd?”
Half-grinning, Sawyer shrugs, and I steel myself for a barrage of sarcasm. “About as odd as a person signing up to work with murderers. Oh wait. I mean, psychotic murderers. Are you even supposed to be telling me all this? Don’t they have rules for that?”
He guides the truck to the curb as I give his shoulder a firm shove. Even though he’s technically right. “They might’ve passed you over because you’re too much of a smartass.” My voice softens when he looks at me, brown eyes dancing. “But seriously, thank you. For doing this.”
“Don’t thank me yet. The last time I picked a lock I still had two hands.”
****
You can learn a lot in five minutes. Five minutes with Cole at Bistro Jeanty, and I’d decided he was way too good for me and, therefore, had to win him over to prove to myself I could. I never met a game I didn’t play to win. Five minutes at Napa State and I’d been in over my head. But it felt familiar too. The kind of overwhelming chaos I’d grown used to at Mol’s. Five minutes with Sawyer, my first Grieving Parents group, felt like more than five minutes. Like I’d known him my whole life. And five minutes with Dakota, sweet little face swaddled in a pink hospital blanket, her tiny fingers wrapped around one of mine, and I’d realized I could be a mother after all. That I wanted to. No matter what I’d grown up with. Or without.
But five minutes can also tell you nothing at all. The house across the street is holding its cards close to the vest. There are no signs of life, except for the well-manicured lawn, the neatly trimmed bushes. Windows curtained, doors shut. Driveway empty. The whole street is Ray Bradburyesque, and I half-expect the mangy dog from the story to come round the corner and collapse in the street. Just a bag of bones waiting to be carted off by mechanical mice and deposited in the incinerator.
“Let’s go,” Sawyer says. “If you still want to.”
Despite my shaky breath, I nod. “I just need to see inside.” As if a house is a mind is a heart is a soul. Not just a lifeless container filled with things.
“You wait here and be my lookout. I’ll ring the bell first. If nobody answers, then I’ll go around back. If I get in, I’ll come to the front door. Keep your head on a swivel and call me if you see anybody headed my way.”
I agree. What else can I do? The only real breaking-and-entering experience I can claim comes from my former patients. And let’s face it, they were lousy criminals who’d been caught for much worse.
Sawyer cuts the engine and opens his door, but I grab him by the arm, pulling him back. “Wait. Do you have everything you need?”
“Two paper clips, credit card, and a tension wrench.” He tosses me the truck keys and hops down into the street. “Oh yeah, and this stupid need to impress you. Yep, got it all.”
I watch Sawyer trek across the street and up the drive to ring the bell. When no one answers, he waits and rings it again. Satisfied, he walks around the side of the house to the wooden fence and reaches over, probably unlatching the gate. Then he casually disappears behind it without so much as a nervous glance. I guess that’s what three tours of duty will do to a man.
Meanwhile, my heart is a ricocheting pinball, and I haven’t even set foot outside the truck. A lone car rolls past, and I duck down like I’m dodging sniper fire. A bicyclist whizzes down the sidewalk, and I clutch my chest like I’m cage-diving with sharks. By the time Sawyer cracks the front door, I’m exhausted and wired at the same time.
My tingling legs want to sprint—jog at the very least—but I force myself to walk across the street as if I belong here. I slip inside the door and press my back to the wall, just breathing. Hard.
“You work fast,” I say, finally.
“Sliding glass door. Easiest lock I ever picked. The only lock, if we’re being honest.”
“I thought you said—”
“I was a Ranger, Mollie. Not a spy.” He shrugs, sheepish. “But we’re in regardless. So . . .”
“Right. What now?” A laugh bubbles over, nothing but nerves fizzing like a shook-up soda. But it’s a release too. When I stop, I scan the living room, focused. From the Philips television set with the built-in VCR to the lace doilies on the coffee table, it’s been left in time. The décor, circa 1994. Circa Clotilda, I’m guessing. There’s an odor—faintly chemical but not unpleasant. “You take the b
edrooms. I’ll look around out here.”
Sawyer takes a step toward the dark hallway that leads past the kitchen and into the bowels of the house. “It would help if I knew what I was looking for.”
“I’m not sure,” I say, rifling through the drawer of the entry way table. Nothing to see here but keys and a flashlight. “But I’ll know it when I see it. Anything creepy or suspicious.”
“Got it. Bodies, weapons, souvenirs. Your standard serial-killer starter kit.”
With Sawyer rummaging in the next room, I tackle the bookcase next. Apparently, Wendall reads. A lot. Practical Homicide Investigation, The Big Book of Serial Killers, and a whole alphabetized section devoted to Vietnam. I can’t help but think of Dakota. Like eyes, books are the windows to the soul. And Wendall’s soul is not so different than mine or my daughter’s, intrigued by the dark.
The bottom shelf interests me most. Two large boxes squat atop it, busting at the seams. The cardboard pliable, softened with age. I slide one of the boxes out and open it. It’s the least organized of anything in this room, just haphazard stacks of magazines. Life, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic. I sift through them until I reach the bottom.
A single copy of Dime Store Detective, dated September 1979. On the cover, a young, scantily clad woman gagged and bound at the wrists and ankles. I mouth the titillating headline to myself—The Blonde Who Caught a Ride to Rape and Murder—and toss it back in the box before the image gets stuck in my head.
That definitely qualifies as creepy. But it’s no smoking gun. My father had read the same sort of magazines. Before they’d split, I’d overheard him and my mother arguing about it. Later that night, I’d snuck out of my room and dug the magazine from the trash where Mom had tossed it with an authoritative slam of the garbage-can lid. The picture on the front—a woman in a silky black dress with the blade of a knife at her throat, her mouth open in a silent scream—had scared me so badly, I’d thrown it right back. At Mol’s, he hadn’t bothered hiding them. There’d been a small stack of Dime Store Detective in the bathroom under my issues of Teen Beat. No wonder I turned out the way I did, helper of sick men.
Shadows Among Us Page 17
