Her Silent Shadow: A Gripping Psychological Suspense Collection

by Edwin Dasso

  He was pointing to the game on the table.

  “I used to play with my wife, years ago. I’ve not played of late.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry for your loss, Doctor Adams.”

  “How did you…?”

  “When Erin said you were coming, I looked you up on the computer.”

  There was a pause. Tobias just sat, his finger still pointing at the chess set as though he had forgotten to retrieve it, a smile, friendly, not in the least sinister, in place. Adams used the brief respite to assess the situation. He found himself on the defensive. He was not a proponent of Twin Telepathy; there was no empirical evidence confirming it; just anecdotal incidents used to sell books written by fellow psychiatrists, and others who had no formal training. Yet, he had left Agent Carter less than two hours ago. He had been with her since they met, and as he understood it, Jim Brandt had not mentioned he would be joining the team to her previously. Had she called her brother on the ride back to Sacramento? That was the most rational explanation.

  “So can we play a game, Doctor Adams?”

  “What?”

  “Chess.” He jerked the extended finger toward the board. “Is it allowed in this visit? I wasn’t told the rules. Erin didn’t know.”

  “Yes, why not?”

  A switch had been thrown.

  Tobias exploded into action, causing Adams to push back into his chair. He looked nervously at the police officer on the other side of the glass. He was standing with his back to them. Great! His fingers felt the lanyard.

  Adams took a breath.

  Tobias was quietly sitting in his chair again.

  Between them, the chessboard had been set up with fanatical speed.

  “I’ll let you be white, Doctor Adams. You don’t mind, do you?” He paused, briefly glancing at Adams. “That should make up for not playing for a while. I play every day for hours.”

  21

  Adams reached forward and advanced a pawn.

  “We can talk while we play. Is that alright, Tobias?”

  “Won’t you find that distracting, Doctor Adams?”

  “No, I don’t think so. If the game starts to interfere with my objective in coming here, we’ll have to stop.”

  Tobias, whose eyes had been riveted to the board, sweeping from one side to the other, backwards and forwards in a precise, practiced pattern, looked up.

  “Oh, we can’t do that, Doctor Adams. You’ll have to come back another day to ask me questions. The game is important to me. I play against the computer all day and it’s not the same when you have a real person opposite you. Please, Doctor Adams. Try to do both.” His tone started almost as the admonition of the Madre Superior of the Catholic school Adams attended as a child, and ran through several peaks and valleys, ending with a whispered entreaty that reminded Adams of the Gollum Smeagol of Andy Serkis’ incarnation in the movies.

  Adams involuntarily shuddered, though he tried to hide it. He glanced at Tobias, thinking he caught a sly smile, he blinked, and it was gone. All the man’s concentration was on the game again.

  “You’re a very intelligent person, aren’t you Tobias?”

  “I don’t know.” He moved his bishop. “The doctors do tests here but they never share the results with me. Erin calls me stupid. Says I don’t think things through.”

  “And Toby? What does he say?” Adams moved his queen. The pace of the game was much faster than Adams liked. He felt pressured.

  “Oh, no. Toby never speaks to me. That’s not his role. Only Erin speaks to me.” He moved his king from behind a barricade of pawns though there was no immediate threat to it.

  “So what does Toby do?” Adams advanced his queen again, trying to achieve check, or at the very least, stop the king from escaping the corner of the board.

  “Oh, he’s like, in the old days when you had telephone exchanges with people who plugged in cables to connect those who wanted to talk. He only talks to Erin.” He advanced the king again.

  “I understood all three of you were conjoined.”

  “Yes. I see you have been doing your homework.”

  “Erin told me.”

  “Ah. Then you need to be careful she isn’t manipulating you. She’s good at that. Did she send you here to see me today?”

  Adams moved his only remaining bishop, still trying to trap the black king.

  “No. It was my idea. We were near so I thought I’d try to see you. Although that paper I co-authored a while back is over and done with, your unique situation piqued my curiosity. It’s not that common to find identical twins of different sexes, conjoined, and with a parasite twin…”

  “No, no, Doctor Adams. Don’t make that mistake.” He moved his king forward another square.

  For a moment, Adams was not sure if Tobias was referring to what he had just said or to the move he had made in the chess game… or both.

  “Toby is not a parasite. He was part of me physically, and part of Erin. Now he lives in Erin, but we are all still connected, just not physically.”

  Adams lost his concentration on the game and absently moved a pawn to no effect. He sat back startled again as Tobias entered into one of his hyperactive moments; this time moving the king one more square diagonally.

  “Checkmate, Doctor Adams.” He laughed loudly, then sat back in his own chair as though spent. “That was a good game, Doctor Adams. I enjoyed it. Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve not given you a better game, Tobias…”

  “Oh, no. You did exactly as I hoped. You see, I was very curious about a game I read about on-line. It was Short versus Timman in Tilburg in 1991. Short, playing white, won with a king walk down one side of the board. You don’t see king walks too often at that level and the game stuck in my mind. I played it myself, taking both Timman and Short’s roles, but that is like making a photocopy; any idiot can do it. I wanted to see if it would work against a real person, and to make it more of a challenge, I took the black pieces. No, it was a really fun game, Doctor Adams. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Too many people focus on the end game, the result, of a chess match, but there is beauty to behold in the moves if you allow yourself to see it. There is deceit, distraction, hidden traps, direct attacks that seem to materialize out of nothing. You can tell an amazing amount about a person by playing chess with them. I particularly noticed how distracted you were… and took full advantage of it with my king walk.”

  “Well, I’m happy you enjoyed the game, Tobias. I feel humbled by your skill. You could be playing at national championship level at least, if you weren’t here, that is.”

  “Yes, I know. Can we play another game? Is there time?”

  “Not today, Tobias. Maybe some other day. I do need some answers to my questions though. After all, it was my objective in coming to see you. The game was just incidental…”

  “No, Doctor Adams. The game is never incidental. It’s the vehicle of life and death.”

  “What? I don’t understand. Can you explain what you mean by that?”

  “‘Maybe some other day’, to quote someone I met in person today,” whispered Tobias. It was the last phrase he spoke. From that moment onward, he slumped in the wingback chair, his emaciated form seeming to fold in on itself; his eyes, deep within the shadows, unfocused; his head slightly tilted to one side as though hearing music too subtle for Adams’ hearing.

  Noah waited a full three minutes, occasionally calling Tobias’ name, but to no avail. Finally, he rose, walked to the windowpane and tapped to draw the attention of the police officer. The latter entered, took hold of Tobias’ elbow and guided him out. Tobias shuffled alongside the guard, just as he had entered.

  Adams sat back down in the wingback he had occupied with the resident’s file in his hands, unopened. His mind was numb. He had the distinct feeling he had just been played. Tobias was a master gamer, and not just at chess.

  The psychiatrist shook his head, trying to clear the fog. He needed to leave the hospital as soon as he could. Find
somewhere quiet to be alone to think. But there was one more task that needed to be done beforehand.

  He dropped the file on top of the chess game, scattering the pieces, folded his arms across his chest and waited. Ten minutes passed before Gus reappeared. As he entered, Adams stood.

  “I am assuming there are hidden cameras in here. I want a copy of the meeting with Tobias now, Gus. It’s pertinent to the case I’m working on. Do I need to get a warrant?”

  22

  Less than a couple of kilometers from where Noah Adams stood, an accident was about to happen. Not just a simple accident with practically no consequences, but something that would have major repercussions.

  The room was below ground level, something common for rooms of this nature. Like its counterparts, it was tiled, off-white ceramic, in this instance, that ran to above head height on all of the walls. The floor, however, was concrete. It had been tiled until a storage room below had evidenced an expansive, unpleasant stain spreading across its ceiling. Given the nature of the business conducted in the room above, immediate action was taken in the interest of public safety.

  Over a long holiday weekend, specialist contractors had come in. First, they carefully dismantled the furnishings in the room, removing the bolts that held them to the floor, then carried them through the opening where the large double doors, now lifted off their hinges, had been and stored them temporarily underneath heavy plastic sheeting in the wide hallway outside. Then they had gone over every square centimeter of the tiled floor with BlueStar Forensic Magnum spray, creating a pattern of photographs that reflected the luminescent stains that showed around the many drainage grids and in multiple other locations. The tiling had then been ripped up. The drains and the baskets within were removed and discarded. New plumbing and drain filters were installed, then after checking the structural integrity of the floor, quick drying concrete had been applied. After the requisite twenty-four hours, the concrete was dry. It was subjected to a process that ensured it was perfectly level. Then a special epoxy solution was used to coat the new floor. It was tough, non-slip, and had antifungal and antibacterial properties. The epoxy solution was extended to knee height on all the walls too. Finally, once this had also dried, the BlueStar had been applied again with far more satisfactory results. The furnishings were reinstalled and the autopsy room at the Napa Deputy Coroner’ Office was back in business.

  The two victims from the CBI’s serial killer lay a couple of meters apart on two metal tables. Both were still in the body bags in which they had been found. In turn, the Deputy Coroner had bagged them again, once he had been told the original bags were evidence too. The forensic pathologist and her assistant carefully removed the first bag on the smaller of the two victims, the hospital nurse that the Deputy Coroner had chanced to find. To be absolutely certain they had not left any forensic traces in their body bag from the other, the assistant picked up the BlueStar spray left by the contractors and applied it to the inside of their bag. No fluorescence was visible. Without being told to do so, the assistant, always eager to gain points in the eyes of the pathologist, proceeded to spray the outside of the still-closed inner bag. Again, and surprisingly, it came back clean.

  Together they cut the bag horizontally, carefully placing it on a sterilized gurney they had prepared. Without thinking, the assistant picked up the spray and passed it over the interior of what had been the top half of the killer’s body bag. His mouth dropped open, in part, as he realized he could have destroyed evidence by not making a visual inspection beforehand, and in part because of the luminance that briefly became visible.

  He called to the pathologist who had been examining the corpse. She walked over and he pointed to the area in question. A swift stream from the spray and they both watched as the number ‘7’ magically fluoresced blue. The pathologist grabbed their camera and indicated to her assistant he should repeat his actions. This time the elusive number was documented digitally.

  Rather than continuing with her autopsy, the pathologist walked to the other examination table, changed gloves to avoid cross-contamination, and unzipped their body bag. She spread the bag and took a scalpel to the interior fabric, running it horizontally to separate the top from the rest of the killer’s package. The assistant had collected another gurney and had placed it next to the table as soon as he had realized what the pathologist was doing. She deposited the material on the gurney with the inside facing upward, checked for any traces adhered to the inner surface of the bag, and then precisely sprayed the same spot where the other numeral had appeared.

  The assistant was ready with the camera and, as the number appeared, clicked the shutter.

  23

  Brandt held the phone to his ear even though the call had finished. His eyes were fixed on the notes he had just jotted on the yellow legal pad on the desk. Simultaneously, he lowered the phone and raised his eyes to the whiteboards.

  His attention quickly reverted to the phone again as his slim fingers flicked down the touchscreen search for a number, one which had suddenly become the center of his universe. He saw the contact details fly by, stopped the scroll with a jab of a fingertip, and pulled the list downward until the name he sought snuck onto the top of the screen. Another tap and the phone was back against his ear. It rang, and rang. He glanced at his wristwatch. Surely there must still be someone there at this hour. Finally, the ringing stopped and a breathless male voice gasped the call destination. Words tripped over themselves as Brandt sought to explain what he wanted the person on the other end of the call to do. Initially, there were protests; it was late, he was on his own, he was not sure he could comply with Brandt’s demands without the forensic pathologists’ prior permission and the man had already left for the day. Brandt threatened to drive over and do it himself, pathologist or no. The assistant acquiesced. He said he would call back within the hour.

  Brandt collapsed back in his chair. He smiled to himself. There was no way he would have driven to the morgue and taken on the search himself. That would be breaking the chain of evidence, a sure way to destroy any hope of a case being brought against the killer if they finally identified him.

  He stood, strode to the whiteboards, snatched a marker and wrote the numbers one to ten in a clear space. Alongside seven and eight, he wrote Imola and Napa, followed by the names of the victims. Flicking the marker onto the desk, he stepped backward to his chair, his eyes never leaving the whiteboard. His mind raced, already playing with combinations.

  The hour went quickly. Then ten more minutes before the phone rang. Brandt already had it in his hand, the legal pad ready, a pen clasped in his fingers. He identified himself then listened, the pen moving swiftly across the paper. He said thanks, placed the phone on the desk, and picked up the yellow pad. Two long strides and he was back at the whiteboard again. He spun around, searching for the marker, then transferred the information he had received to their corresponding place in the numeric list he had created.

  A couple of minutes later, he stood back from the whiteboard, his eyes traversing the new annotations, his head shaking slowly. Sure, they were missing data still, but the message was all too clear.

  Brandt wiped away the sweat sprouting on his brow, grabbed his phone and dialed a number he knew by heart. No answer. The phone was switched off. He glanced at his watch again. Yes, a reasonable action given the hour. However, it could mean something else. It could mean he was already too late.

  His hand fell to his waist, resting on the butt of his holstered gun as he ran from the room.

  24

  Carter lived on Madrone Avenue, West Sacramento, in a two-story block of apartments. It was normally a ten to fifteen minute drive from the Bureau. He did it in six minutes, using the lights all the way, until he neared her home. There he slowed and parked at the corner of the street. He glanced up at the top floor, second from the left. A dull bluish light, perhaps a nightlight, perhaps the television. Outside the apartment block there was space for car parking. Each apartme
nt had one space assigned, so Carter’s vehicle would always be in the same place. He knew her car, a white Chevy Malibu 2014 model, and could see it in its spot. He left the Bureau’s SUV and approached; his hand again on the butt of his weapon.

  Some time ago, she had given him a copy of the key to her place, in case something happened on the job, perhaps a long stakeout or maybe taking a bullet, which necessitated collecting fresh clothes or whatever from the apartment. He did not know of any of her friends; had never heard her talk about them in the time they worked together. He just added the key to his own key fob and forgot about it, until tonight. Now, he pressed all the lower floor buzzers on the panel alongside the glass doored main entrance. Someone buzzed him in and he ran to the stairs, taking them three at a time, his gun now drawn, but held alongside his leg.

  Brandt reached the door to Carter’s apartment without meeting anyone in the hallway. He listened. No noise from inside. Now he had to be careful. If he was right, she might be in serious trouble. If not, she might shoot him before realizing who it was.

  He inserted the key slowly, as quietly as he could. Once he felt it reach home, he twisted it and slammed his weight against the door. Any security chain would not have resisted the onslaught, though hers was hanging limply from the doorframe. The muzzle of his pistol traversed the room beyond. Lounge on his left, kitchen at the back. Both empty. No sign of a struggle. No smell of weapon discharge, just a cloying staleness as though the place had not been ventilated in a while. No lingering odor of food either.

  He crossed to the two doors on the right. The first, the bathroom. Empty. That left the bedroom. He stood to one side of the door. If she was in there, with the noise his entry had made, she was now pointing her gun at the door ready to let off a couple of shots at whoever entered.