Shadows Among Us

by Ellery A Kane

  “The ink will fade in about two weeks. But until then, you’ve got a tat, girl.”

  Grandpa Krandel cleared his throat and flexed his bicep in the floor length mirror.

  “Yeah, yeah. You too, old man.”

  Her grandfather handed Bull a wad of cash and shook his hand. “Thanks, soldier. I’ll see ya at Tuesday’s group. And hey, if anybody calls here askin’ questions, you didn’t see me. You didn’t hear me. You don’t know me.”

  “Roger that,” Bull said, giving him a stiff military salute. “I love a good covert op.”

  As they left the shop, Dakota snapped a picture of herself in front of the store’s logo—a heavily tattooed bull with a studded ring in its nose. She grinned as she posted the photo online. It felt like a giant FU to the universe.

  Beneath it, she typed: Some birds aren’t meant to be caged.

  AFTER

  Chapter

  Twenty-Nine

  (Tuesday, October 9, 2018)

  A lick from Gus’s tongue is more effective than any alarm clock. I wipe my face and sit bolt-upright on the sofa, eyes wide. My fists clenched at my sides. My stomach knotted. As if I’m ready for a fight. Funny, I don’t remember falling asleep, only the murmur of an infomercial, a mustached man in a silly chef’s hat urging me to buy a set of knives that could halve a watermelon in midair.

  Now, it’s my father’s face filling the screen. Not the father I know, though, the old scraggly man who eats wieners from a can. They’ve chosen a photograph from his Vietnam days. I’m not even sure it’s him. But the caption beneath it assures me this strapping young fellow is Victor Krandel, person of interest in the murder of his granddaughter and possible suspect in the serial killings of sixteen other young women in Napa and Solano counties. He’s wearing a war helmet and smiling like he’s having a good time raping and pillaging a world away and a lifetime ago.

  I find the remote on the floor, halfway hidden under the coffee table, and turn up the volume. Even though I’d rather listen to the screech of an acutely psychotic patient the moment before he gets an emergency Haldol injection.

  Yesterday evening, Mr. Krandel was transported to the Napa County Jail, following questioning by the recently formed Shadow Man Task Force. He has been placed under arrest for several counts of criminal possession of a booby trap, after SWAT officers were called to disarm several traps, which impeded safe entry into his compound. According to the Napa County Sheriff’s Department, Krandel is a person of interest in the murder of his granddaughter, Dakota Roark. Speaking off the record, staff from the Napa Valley Veteran’s Administration confirmed Krandel has received treatment for severe mental illness, stemming from war trauma.

  I cringe when the camera pans the campus of Napa State and takes us inside to an office I recognize. It belongs to Dr. Jackass. He’s seated smugly in a chair where I’d once straddled him.

  Doctor Peter Jacoby, Chief Psychologist at Napa State Hospital and expert in serial murder, has been following the Shadow Man case closely over the course of the last twenty years.

  I laugh out loud when I spot the ink stain on the pocket of his shirt. I only wish it had been worse. Spinach in his teeth. Lipstick on his collar.

  Mr. Krandel certainly possesses some characteristics similar to other serial killers. His history of military experience, for example. A background in law enforcement or the military may lend an advantage in gaining the compliance of a victim, and psychologically speaking, these men generally have a need to control others while simultaneously lacking an ability to control themselves. Mr. Krandel has been described by others as a loner who is fascinated by weapons and violent toward animals. These are signs of a seriously troubled person.

  He frowns deeply—the way I’d done as Mollie of old, post-Botox to the forehead, admiring the way my skin had snapped back without a wrinkle in sight. He’s trying to convince the audience of his own depth. Which is more kiddie pool than ocean.

  Though it is not unheard of for serial killers to harm members of their family—for example, Edmund Kemper, the coed killer, murdered his mother and his paternal grandparents—it is much more common for them to maintain a façade of normalcy with those closest to them, such that their family and friends do not suspect the wolf in sheep’s clothing. If—and I want to emphasize Mr. Krandel has not yet been charged of a crime—he did murder his granddaughter, this killing was likely more personal for him. Perhaps she had found him out and threatened to expose him.

  He pauses, lowering his voice an octave.

  In a way—the irony—perhaps she has.

  I groan, silencing Dr. Jackass with a click of the remote. “What a prick.”

  Gus looks over his shoulder at me, wagging his tail. As if to voice his wholehearted agreement.

  But Dr. Jackass’s words stick, replaying in my head as I down a scalding cup of coffee way too fast, searing my throat.

  More personal for him.

  As I force myself to eat a piece of bread, a spoonful of peanut butter.

  Perhaps she had found him out.

  As I stand in the shower, dead-faced and unmoving, like a statue in the rain.

  Threatened to expose him.

  It comes to me suddenly. A conversation we’d had, Dakota and me. She’d asked about Roscoe and what had happened to him. Stupid me, I’d told her everything. Well, not everything, but enough.

  Moving with purpose now, I toss on yesterday’s clothes, still discarded on the bathroom floor, and squeeze the water from my hair. Good enough. Because I can’t wait any longer to get the answers I need. From someone. Anyone. And I know where to start.

  ****

  Martha Blackburn answers on the first knock. As if she’s been expecting me. I’d given her fair warning, blasting Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” from my parking spot behind Boyd’s VW, halfway up her drive. When Ozzy sings about bodies burning and the day of judgment, I see Dakota’s green eyes.

  Martha cracks the door, glowering.

  “You lied to me,” she says. Behind her, looming large on the television, Dr. Jackass. He’s sitting next to a local news anchor, probably fielding questions he isn’t qualified to answer. At least he’s been muted. “You’re that girl’s mother. Number seventeen.”

  “Dakota.” It still hurts to say her name. But I can’t imagine not saying it. That someday years will pass without it crossing my lips. “Did Boyd tell you he knew her?”

  The familiar shadow of grief darkens her face. “This morning when the news broke. He told me about that website, Shadow Seekers. That he and Dakota had been trying to nail this bastard. For me. Me and Miriam.”

  “I didn’t know either. Not until a couple of weeks ago when Boyd found me and told me what they’d been up to.”

  Martha finally acquiesces, moving her walker aside to let me in. But I feel her eyes boring into me. I imagine she must be looking for a sign. The mark of the devil. To confirm I’m Satan’s spawn. “So that man on the news, Victor Krandel . . . he’s your father?”

  “He is.” I think of all the things I could add. We’re estranged; I don’t really know him; I wish he wasn’t.

  But her gaze flits to the television, distracted, and mine follows. Five rows of photographs—smiles and bright eyes, ponytails and freckles—fill the screen. The seventeen victims. “Do you think he—?”

  “Doctor Roark?” Boyd emerges from the basement. But it may as well be a grave. His skin is pale, his eyes murky pools of brown. He lingers near the sofa, running a hand along its plastic cover. “I—I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about . . .” He waves toward the television, the photographs. “. . . your dad getting arrested.”

  “Can we talk?” I ask him, peering into the space over Martha’s shoulder. “In private.”

  He nods, and I trail him to the Overbridge. My clipped, determined walk following close behind those shuffling slippers.r />
  Just before I descend the stairs, I glance back at Martha. Her face is a magic mirror. It shows me the past. Who I used to be. Because only a mother with someone to lose can look that worried.

  ****

  Boyd paces in front of his whiteboard, the movie posters unfastened and dangling toward the floor. He’d put a large red X through all his suspects. At the bottom, in that same angry-red marker, he’d written: Victor Krandel. So he’s sure then.

  “You really think he did it?” I ask. The shock of it still raw as a cold-clock to the face. “He killed Dakota? And Miriam? And the others?”

  “Well, the timeline matches up. He lives near the southeastern edge of the lake. He knew the area. He was in the military. The stuff they’re saying about him . . . Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I say. You knew him best.”

  The reel in my head unwinds, and I see my father telling ghost stories in the light of a Badlands campfire. Hunched over a rust bucket, wrench in hand. Aiming the barrel of his rifle. Drowning his sorrows in a can of Olde English. Cursing Charlie. Screaming bloody murder at me.

  And rumbling up to the junkyard in his pickup with Roscoe, Waggles, Rex, riding shotgun.

  Found another pup, Mol, he’d always say. What are ya gonna call ’em?

  “Yeah. I guess I did.”

  I walk to Yoda’s enclosure. She lies there, lethargic, a lump in the center of her belly. Where I’m certain some small rodent has met its end.

  “Has Yoda ever escaped?” I ask.

  “That’s what you want to talk about?”

  “Well, has she?”

  “I figured you’d find out,” he says. For a moment, I gape at him, confused. “About Yoda escaping. The cops picking me up. Yeah, it happened. I was still working full time at the reptile store back then. They called me to cover a shift, and I forgot to lock her enclosure. When I came home that night, she’d disappeared. Just like the real Yoda in Return of the Jedi.”

  “And you coincidentally went looking for her in the bushes beneath a girl’s window? In a neighborhood with a Peeping Tom? Sounds pretty unfortunate.”

  “I never said I was the luckiest guy on the planet.” Boyd holds out his disfigured arm, half of his mouth lifting in an ironic smile. “Obviously.”

  I don’t feel sorry for him. Because I know all about being unlucky. After the cops had linked Dakota’s murder to the Shadow Man, I’d dragged myself out of bed in the middle of another sleepless night and typed a question into my computer’s search bar, waiting wide-eyed for it to tell me exactly how unlucky I’d been. A silly pop psych article had provided the data, and I’d counted the zeroes. Three of them. As in, my daughter had a .00039% chance of being the victim of a serial killer. So yeah, unlucky.

  “How did Yoda get out of the basement? To a house three blocks away?”

  “I’m no expert, but I would surmise she slithered.”

  Yoda lifts her head, tasting the air with her forked tongue. If only I could speak snake, I’d ask her what happened. The same way I’d ask Gus to tell me about the day Dakota ran away. The day I’d driven her away with my lunacy, just like my father had done to me. Not that it matters. None of it matters now. The futility of it all is like gasoline to my lit match. The one that’s always slow-burning at the heart of me.

  “Cut the sarcasm, Boyd. I don’t buy it.”

  “This isn’t about Yoda. So why don’t you go ahead and ask me what you really want to?” But his face tells another story. That my asking him the real questions is scary as hell.

  “Did you hurt Dakota?”

  “No.”

  “Were you attracted to her?”

  He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple moving beneath his neck like the prey in Yoda’s stomach. “She was a pretty girl.”

  With a growl Gus would be proud of, I start toward him.

  “Fine. Yes. I was. But I never touched her. Not like what you’re thinking.”

  “You flirted with her though. I read your posts on the main page.”

  “She flirted back. It was harmless. I’m not like that. I promise. I’m just . . .” He spreads his long arms as wide as he can manage, nothing but a sad basement between them. “Lonely.”

  I glare at him, wishing I’d brought the bayonet.

  “I want to see your messages. The ones she sent you.”

  Another strenuous swallow, but he shuffles to his computer anyway. He navigates the Shadow Seekers main page and logs in to Shadow Snoops, his hands shaking. Twice, he enters the wrong password.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I’m nervous.”

  “You should be.”

  Welcome, Chewie.

  Your last login was October 8, 2018 11:35 p.m.

  He opens his inbox and takes an audible breath. So do I. Because there’s a folder called DAKOTA and a string of twenty or thirty messages inside.

  “Give me a minute,” I say, motioning him out of the seat. “But don’t go far.”

  I move methodically through the bulk of them, reading and emailing each one to myself. The last outgoing messages, three of them, are timestamped at 6:30 p.m. August 16.

  “What were you apologizing about?” I ask him.

  “We had an argument about what to do next. After we’d found the dog license info.”

  “And she never responded?”

  He shakes his head.

  “What’s this one?”

  My heart scampers into the tall grass, shivering there as I click on the final message in the folder, addressed to DocSherlock.

  Hi Doc,

  I need your advice. I think I messed up with Birdie. And just when we were on to something big. What should I do?

  Chewie

  DocSherlock had responded a few minutes later.

  An apology is a good place to start. But from one Shadow Snoop to another . . . any hints?

  Boyd had written just one word in reply.

  Dogs.

  “That’s all of them,” he says. “I never heard from Dakota again.”

  I pretend to study the screen, trying to still myself. To think. “What about DocSherlock? Did you tell him anything else about what you and Dakota were on to?”

  “No. I swear. I told you that I dropped off the site completely. I didn’t want to be part of it anymore.”

  “When?”

  “A little while after I went to Whitetails and Whoppers. I canvassed all of Allendale.”

  Boyd’s wearing the carpet down to nothing. He’s easier to read than any patient I’ve ever had.

  “You just gave up. After all that. Why?”

  He shrugs, his shoulders trembling.

  “I got a message.”

  “On the site?”

  “Yeah. A threatening one. It showed up in my inbox, along with a picture of my mom on the sofa. Whoever sent it had taken the photo through the window. And knew stuff about me . . . how old I was. Dakota’s age too.”

  “What did the message say?”

  “Let Dakota go. Or else. That was the gist of it. That and get off the site and don’t go to the cops. I deleted it and tried to move on. For a while, I thought it might be from you. But the name didn’t make sense. Now, it sorta does.”

  “The name?”

  Boyd stops in front of the whiteboard and points to my father’s name.

  “MQKlinger.”

  ****

  Boyd didn’t flinch when I’d told him I still had the bayonet. “I know where to find you,” I’d hissed. Like a bad actor playing a Mafia hitman.

  He’d only shrugged, resigned. “I hope you get the answers you need. I want them too.”

  I crank up the radio and lose myself in the shred of the electric guitar until I take the turn for home. I should’ve known. My fifteen minutes of infamy starts now.

  The media vans are stacked two-dee
p on Ridgecrest, and if it wasn’t for Gus, I’d drive right by and keep going. Pretend to be someone else.

  Shielding my face with one hand, I continue past the turn for home, past the hoard of cameras watching me with their giant eyes, until I reach the sign for Roark Psychology Services. I figure now is as good a time as any to make my first pilgrimage across that fancy quarry stone.

  I take the turn and hit the gas, nearly sideswiping a reporter with a NVMX station microphone. He stumbles back to the ditch and yells at me as the gravel makes a satisfying crunch beneath my tires.

  “Doctor Roark, is your dad Shadow Man? How do you feel about the cops cutting him loose?”

  It figures he’s out. Cole told me they might not have enough to charge him.

  “Were you in on it?”

  My heart lurches when I slam on the brakes and jerk the gear into reverse.

  They want a show? I’ll give them a show.

  “Hey!” I call out, waiting for the man to circle back with his microphone. A NVMX camera man swoops in after him. The two of them come at me like vultures on roadkill. Which is why it gives me the utmost satisfaction to raise my middle finger to the camera and tell them exactly where to shove their van, their microphone, their camera, and especially their goddamn moronic questions.

  BEFORE

  Chapter

  Thirty

  (Monday, August 15, 2016)

  Dakota had a mission. In her mind, she’d named it O.P.B. Operation Poke the Bear. The bear in question, her mother. The poke, the temporary tattoo on her shoulder. Though she knew when her mother spotted it, as real as it looked, it would feel more like a steel-toed boot to the gut. But her mother deserved it. Because she had taken off work to accompany her dad to D-day, the board meeting at Seattle Children’s to decide his fate. She actually had the nerve to ask Dakota to come along.

  “You can wait outside the boardroom, honey,” her mom had told her yesterday afternoon, after Dakota had bicycled back from the spot where Grandpa Krandel had dropped her off.