Shadows Among Us

by Ellery A Kane

  After my unfortunate run-in with the NVMX reporter had been broadcast on every news station from here to China, Detective Sharpe had shown up in my driveway, threatening to arrest any remaining members of the media for harassment. Have some respect. The woman’s been through hell. She’s hanging by a thread. His words exactly. I’d heard him through the door, replayed them a hundred times. Deemed them absolutely true.

  “No problem. I’ve got no patience for the way they feast on pain. It’s inhuman.”

  I see myself, a cadaver, bisected and splayed down the middle. If they opened me up, I’d be hollow as a husk. All the good parts sucked away.

  Detective Sharpe opens one of the nondescript doors lining the hallway and ushers me into a sparse interview room. One table. Two plastic chairs. It reminds me of Napa State. Even my office had been bare. Because furniture can be a deadly weapon.

  I wait for him to speak. This is how my patients felt. Sized up by someone who holds all the cards.

  “Have you heard from your father?”

  “No. We’re not exactly on speaking terms. I don’t think he has my number. And he certainly doesn’t own a cell phone.”

  “He said as much when we asked him.” See what I mean. Holds all the cards. “He had a lot to say about you, though.”

  I’m not sure how to take that, so I don’t. I just let it sit there between us.

  “He feels bad about the way you grew up. The things you had to deal with.”

  My throat feels tight, but I shrug at him like it doesn’t matter.

  “It sounds like he had a pretty rough go of it himself.”

  “Is there a question here?” I hate the way my voice croaks.

  “Wendall Grady.” I’m certain I flinch. “Ever heard of him?”

  “Not until last week when I read my father’s sworn testimony before the Army C.I.D.” The Wendall I know—lanky legs spread wide on my scornful sofa, black hat perched on his knee—is my secret to keep. Our sessions are confidential unless and until I decide otherwise. And right now, it feels like an ace in the hole I need to hold on to.

  “So your father never mentioned him? You never met the guy?”

  “I can’t say for certain. There’s a fair bit of my childhood I don’t remember all that well.” Except for the things I do. Those are more than enough.

  Detective Sharpe makes a few scribbles in his notepad. If it’s anything like the one I’d used, he’s jotting words like certifiable and kooky and unhinged.

  “What if I told you he worked at Napa State for a while as an orderly?”

  I shrug off the fiery sting, the electrical prod to my heart. It goes with the territory of being caught in a lie to a detective. “There were a lot of orderlies, psych techs, nurses. It’s possible.”

  “Those dogs you told me about, the ones you said matched up to Shadow Man’s victims, where did your dad get those from?”

  “I told you. He found them. Or that’s what he said. Did he admit that at least?”

  “He admitted you had those dogs. Confirmed your story exactly. Except . . .” Detective Sharpe leans forward, and so do I. “He said those dogs came from his old war buddy, Wendall Grady. That the guy volunteered at a shelter and smuggled out some of the dogs they were about to put down. Your dad didn’t want to get Wendall in trouble, so he lied about where they came from. And he admitted to touching that collar, the one that belonged to Blondie. He said Wendall showed up with the dog outside of Mol’s, and he refused to take her. Had a heck of a time getting her back in Wendall’s car, though. He claims he never saw the dog again.”

  My thoughts pinball from Wendall to Dad to Wendall and back again. Sweat dampens my armpits, and suddenly the room that had been meat-locker cold is as stuffy and airless as a coffin. “If he’s such good buddies with Wendall, why did he testify against him?”

  Detective Sharpe nods sagely. As if all those cards he’s holding reveal to him the secrets of the universe. “You tell me. You’re the shrink.”

  I put my head in my hands, trying to fit pieces of a mixed-up puzzle. “Can you tell me what he said about Dakota?”

  “Just that he cared for her. She visited him a few times, and they went out to the shed together once. The lab confirmed her prints were in the shed, and it was her hair you found. Of course, your father denies hurting her.”

  Hurting her. I repeat those words in my mind. Nice of Detective Sharpe to sugarcoat it.

  “And you believe him? What if he runs?”

  “We have to follow the evidence, Mollie. Belief is the least of it. I know it’s hard, but I need you to steer clear of your dad for a while. Let us finish our investigation. We’ve got patrol watching Mol’s round the clock.”

  “How can I just do nothing?” I have the urge to scream, to howl. To take my plastic chair and hurl it at someone. Anyone.

  He looks at me and his eyes soften.

  “There’s something else I think you should know,” he says, before leading me back to the world that I once believed I could control. The world I claimed to understand. The world that spit in my face and stole my daughter. “Your father begged us to keep him here. He’s scared to death of Wendall Grady.”

  ****

  I call Cole on the drive back home to fill him in. Only because Sawyer tells me to. I have to summon the energy to explain it all.

  “Where is this Wendall guy?” He sounds like he’s gritting his teeth. “I’d like to pay him a visit.”

  “Detective Sharpe says he’s pretty sick. Apparently, not well enough to leave his house anymore. He has a nurse.”

  “Well, have they talked to him? Jesus, Mollie. What if he dies?”

  He’s thinking what I’m thinking. We may never know. We’d turn into one of those families. Suspended in time. Our lives forever orbiting around the unknown.

  Sawyer nudges me with his elbow. “You should tell him about the therapy,” he loud-whispers.

  “What therapy?”

  I answer Cole with a groan. “Just come over to the house. I’ll explain everything.”

  Sawyer parks in the driveway, and we sit on the steps, waiting for Cole. He puts his good arm around my shoulders, and I let myself lean in to him.

  “I don’t understand,” I say, thinking of my father.

  “Which part?”

  “All of it. The harm he’s done. He murdered that girl in Vietnam. Of all the things I’d heard about at Napa State—shootings, stabbings, rapes—I’d never heard anything like that.”

  “We don’t know what happened over there. The fog of war is real shit. Especially in Vietnam. Hell, I’d go back to Afghanistan in a heartbeat before I’d want to be in those jungles. The first thing you learn in basic training is to follow orders. Obedience to something bigger than yourself. And to somebody with more bars and stripes on his uniform. For your dad, that was Wendall. For better or for a lot fucking worse.”

  ****

  The three of us are in my real office, examining the suspect wall.

  Cole had gone straight for his picture, ripping it down without a word. He’d balled it in his hand and tossed it across the room into the corner. Where it still sat.

  I’d taken Tyler’s off too. Even though Luciana had sent me a link to an interview he’d done with some trash tabloid yesterday, telling them he’d met Dakota’s grandfather. The guy had killer eyes. And that he’d never get over losing her, the love of his life. Like, so far.

  That left Boyd and Victor and the Post-it where I’d scrawled Wendall Grady/DocSherlock.

  Cole chews on the end of a pen. “So you’re saying this guy, Wendall, worked at Napa State as an orderly for a while. He knew your dad. He started a goddamned Shadow Man website. And he just happens to show up to unburden himself in therapy and implicates Victor. I think we’ve got our man.”

  “What about the DNA?” I ask. “An
d the hair. You wouldn’t dare argue with that. It’s science.”

  Sawyer’s eyes ping-pong between the two of us. “Do you believe your father is capable of killing Dakota?”

  “He’s right, Mol. Your dad’s a nut, but c’mon.”

  “Really, Cole? On Monday, you were ready to execute him yourself. Now you’re defending him?”

  “That was before I knew about Wendall.”

  “Which I suppose is my fault too?”

  “Well, yeah. Actually, it is.”

  Sawyer clears his throat. “I’ve got an idea. How ’bout we call a momentary truce and go pay Wendall another home visit?”

  I’m already halfway out the door when I hear Cole.

  “Another?”

  ****

  Cole heads up the sidewalk toward Wendall’s house; Sawyer and I watch from the Jeep.

  Cole is playing catch-up. Trying to make up for abandoning me here with my billboard and my suspect wall. My guilt too, and the unhealthy need to drown it in vodka.

  Still, I want to be the one standing there, knocking. The one pushing my way past the stocky gray-haired woman who’s appeared at the door.

  “That must be Wendall’s nurse,” Sawyer says.

  After a brief conversation, Cole turns around and shrugs. Like he’s giving up.

  Without a word, I bolt from the car and jog across the street before Sawyer can stop me. He calls after me, but I don’t slow down. If anything, I run faster.

  The nurse widens her eyes at me as I approach, huffing. I imagine I look scary, desperate. But I’m used to it now. Sorry, Betty. A clip-on name tag tells me to whom I should direct my silent apology. And my audible demands. “We really need to talk to Wendall, Betty.”

  “I’m sorry, but as I explained to your . . .”

  Cole and I disagree, out loud, over each other. The story of our marriage.

  “Ex-husband.”

  “Friend.”

  Nurse Betty presses her lips together in a thin pink line of defense against her judgments. But they find their way out regardless in the raise of her eyebrows. “As I said to this gentleman, Mr. Grady left about thirty minutes ago for a drive. I was about to head out myself. Grab some dinner. Lucky you caught me.”

  “A drive? I thought he was too sick to leave the house.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t ask any questions. He’s not the easiest fella to get along with, but the agency pays triple, and I fit the criteria, so I deal with it.”

  “Triple, huh?” Cole asks, incredulous. Meanwhile, I’m wondering if I should rethink a career as a home health nurse. “I imagine it’s your extensive experience they value. Your bedside manner.”

  Betty’s cheeks flush, and she makes a show of looking for an imaginary spy listening in on our conversation. The orange tabby cat is the only soul in sight, pressing his luck by tracking a grasshopper under Wendall’s manicured bushes.

  “Now don’t go sharing this around, but Mr. Grady has had a few complaints against him in the past. He can be a tad demanding. There’s not many of us left willing to deal with his shenanigans.”

  She winks at Cole. He’s not half bad at this.

  “So are you folks with the army too?”

  Cole stammers—apparently his lying skills took a nosedive since we’d split—as Sawyer steps from behind me and shakes Betty’s stubby hand. She teeters on the edge of swooning.

  “Lieutenant Grant Sawyer, Army Rangers. You said my colleagues already stopped by?”

  “I don’t believe they were with the Rangers. But they left a business card. Come on in, and I’ll find it for you.” She motions us inside and disappears down the hallway, her cheery voice carrying. “. . . said they need to speak with Wendall urgently. I can’t imagine why you’re all still so interested in him. What with his dishonorable discharge a couple years back. His rank-stripping. That really set him off, the poor guy. It’s none of my business, but what does it matter anyway what happened over there? It’s all water under the bridge now.”

  I’m glad she can’t see my face. The shock there. The outrage. The overwhelming desire to smack her skull against the wall. Because it would blow our thin story to smithereens.

  By the time Betty returns to the living room, I pull it together enough to stand upright with my mouth closed like a good army flunky.

  “Found it,” she says, aiming her smile at Sawyer. “United States Army Criminal Investigation Command, Special Agent Bo Watley. An unpleasant fella. Real pushy. Cold as ice. You know the type.”

  “I do indeed.” Sawyer examines the card with a faint smirk. “Unfortunately, sociopaths do make better soldiers.”

  “What happened to your arm?” Betty asks, extending a tentative hand toward Sawyer’s prosthetic. Behind her, Cole circles Wendall’s bag of medicines on the table, positioning himself for a better view. I spot his walker folded in the corner.

  “Somebody whacked it off.” Sawyer makes the sound of a blade slicing the air.

  “Oh, my goodness. Were you held captive over there? A POW? Afghanistan? Iraq?”

  “Vegas,” he deadpans. “I lost a bet.”

  Betty’s eyes widen, threatening to pop, until Sawyer laughs. “I’m just kidding. IED explosion, ma’am. Nothing glamorous. We appreciate your time today. I’ll let Agent Watley know we stopped by.”

  Sawyer and Cole are already halfway back to the Jeep, but I linger at the door, unable to let go. “You said Mr. Grady went for a drive. Do you know where he went?”

  Betty waves off the question before wielding her own axe. Half my heart lobbed off in two robust chops.

  “Oh, some place up in Allendale, I believe. He’s got a war buddy living there.”

  ****

  The only heavy metal on this drive is my lead foot on the accelerator. I don’t let up until we’re on the freeway and halfway to Mol’s. Even then, it’s just until the car in front of us mercifully glides into the right lane, the Jeep breathing down its bumper like a rabid wolf.

  I’d said only what I needed to. Where we were going and why.

  To my surprise, no one had argued. Meaning Cole, of course. In fact, he’d agreed my father might be in trouble. Because none of Wendall’s medications suggested lung cancer. Organizing pneumonia, COPD, and vertigo seemed the worst of it.

  And when Sawyer called CID, as we lashed down the highway fast as a whip, they’d said Wendall had been court-martialed and charged with two counts of murder related to war crimes in Vietnam.

  I didn’t tell them what Betty had said about Wendall’s war buddy. How I felt this close to the answers I’d been chasing since the day Dakota stormed up the stairs, bleeding, and vanished from my life forever.

  They wouldn’t be able to see it. They wouldn’t understand. In my lap, I held an empty box wrapped in shiny paper. A gift from the devil himself.

  I’d started to hope.

  BEFORE

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  (Wednesday, August 17, 2016)

  Dakota lay in bed—she’d been awake and dressed for hours now—fingering the soapstone four-leaf clover her grandfather had given her for her birthday. After they’d left Bull’s Body Art, he’d tucked it in her hand, along with a scrap of paper and his phone number, and closed her fingers around it with an affectionate pat.

  “Seems like you need it more than me right now.” He’d been right. Because when she’d finally made it home late yesterday afternoon, her mom had said nothing. Which could only mean one of two things: she’d been too hungover to care, or she’d been plotting Dakota’s demise. The most horrible, truly awful, unfair punishment that her psychologist brain could conjure.

  The knock on her door, measured but firm, turned Dakota’s stomach. She tucked her grandfather’s lucky charm into her pocket.

  “Are you awake?” her father asked, without o
pening it. He was only being nice, softening the blows to come. It was nearly ten, and he wasn’t at work yet.

  “Yes.”

  “Come downstairs, please.”

  “Alright.” Dread deepened her voice, weighed her down. So that every step felt like an effort.

  Even Gus seemed subdued as he followed her into the lion’s den, his tail dragging.

  Her parents sat opposite each other, the coffee table between them. On it, smack-dab in the center, the worst thing she could have imagined. Her cell phone. Powered on and unlocked.

  “Sit,” her father directed.

  Dakota could tell they had a plan. They never made plans anymore. Not like this. One where they’d teamed up against her. She couldn’t decide whether to be furious or grateful.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” he began.

  “I do.” Her mom stood up, tapped a few keys on Dakota’s phone and held it out to her. “Explain this.”

  “It’s not me. I mean, it’s partly me. My face and all. But it’s photoshopped.”

  “And this one?”

  “I sent it to Tyler when we were dating. I begged him to delete it. I thought he had.”

  “So you’re sending half-naked pictures to boys now? That’s what you’re doing? Did you have sex with him too?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t—we don’t—trust you anymore.” Her mom took another step toward her, looming over her now. So close, Dakota smelled the alcohol on her breath. Over her shoulder, Dakota searched out her father. But he seemed transfixed. Her mother’s anger could do that. “That’s not even the worst of it. Ha! I can’t believe I’m saying that. That this is what it’s come to.”

  Her mother fiddled with the phone again, cursing under her breath. She slammed it against the coffee table. Dakota winced when she saw the cracked screen.

  “Mollie, calm down.”

  She spun around like she’d been lashed with a whip. “You don’t get to tell me that, Cole. You haven’t been here. Why do you think she’s like this? Sneaking out, lying. Making me miss work. Letting me think she got a real tattoo. Embarrassing me on the phone with some guy named Bull. Bull. As if that’s a reasonable name. He probably knows more about my own daughter than I do.”