The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “If she didn’t find a kid, why did she do a follow-up visit a month later?”

  “To prove…there still wasn’t a kid?”

  Max gave him an incredulous look.

  “What? I’m not saying I believe this, I’m just saying it has to start making sense before it makes sense. I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re right.” Max nodded. “We have to prove there was more evidence before we go forward.”

  “How’re you going to do that?”

  “I already have.” He gathered up the photos and pointed at the corners. Frank squinted through his glasses across the table. “These are date-stamped by the camera as August fifteenth. Janice paid for the developing of the photos from the data card with her own money.”

  “Why didn’t she print them at the office?”

  “Because the State is too cheap to buy us a photo printer: we go to Wal-Mart or one of the drug stores and keep the receipt.” Max also had one at home he used sometimes. He didn’t like people seeing the kinds of pictures he had to develop. Max pulled another piece of paper out of his bag. “This is the receipt for the Drug Warehouse on Seventh Street. It has one of those little digital development stations.” He slid the receipt to Frank. “I got that from the expense report records.”

  He made it sound easier than it was. Those records were locked in a filing cabinet in the records room. Anyone could go in the records room, but only the supervisor and the senior office support assistant had the key to the personnel cabinet. Max had a key from when he was supervisor. He’d been given two, but when he got demoted he only returned one. He didn’t need to steal this—if he’d told Brian why he needed it, he’d have gotten it for him. But Max didn’t trust Brian, and Brian had made it clear he only wanted a highly crafted version of the truth. The less he knew about how Max resolved things, the better.

  “This says ten photos were printed and paid for.” Frank read from the photocopy of the receipt. “How many photos do we have?”

  “Seven.”

  “So the remaining three photographs are either of the kid, or provide evidence that a kid exists.”

  “Yeah. But that isn’t going to get us anywhere. It’s still circumstantial…we have to prove this family has a child, then show the child isn’t in the home and establish that they don’t have a reasonable explanation for where the child is.”

  “You know, if they wanted a kid to disappear, they could have just said she was with her grandparents or something.”

  “Not good enough. Whoever is behind this wanted the kid to vanish, like she never existed.”

  “So…what do we do now?”

  Max gathered up the file and shoved it into his bag. “We go meet the parents.”

  “At the Hagshead trailer park? Fun…”

  “You don’t have to come with me if you aren’t comfortable.”

  “And miss the skinhead ho-down? No way.”

  Chapter Six

  Hagshead was everything they could have hoped for in a sleazy trailer park. Why anyone would choose to live in a trailer home in the tornado-plagued northern edges of Joplin was beyond Max. The answer was that most of them didn’t choose to live there; it was all they could afford.

  There were some who subsisted at this level who had no greater ambition than mere survival. Filth and decrepitude were commonplace. Conditions most people would find intolerable were accepted as part of life. Why clean the floor when the roof is falling in?

  Hagshead was comprised of an uneven dirt lot, climbing a hill to Peace Church Road beyond the city limits. Development in this area was in competition with the dense Ozark foliage, and Hagshead was no different. At the base of the hill beyond the last clump of trailers was a large copse of trees. Being November, they were stripped of green, save for the occasional evergreen. Periodic ice storms tore the heavier branches to the ground, so the trees were studded with broken limbs and hundreds of underdeveloped branches.

  Frank winced. “People live here?”

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  “How?” Frank looked out the window of Max’s Prius as they passed a decrepit trailer home. It didn’t appear inhabited, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t. “How could it be worse?”

  “I met a family of six living in a single room third-wheel trailer. They’d run a series of jumper cables up the pole to a power line for electricity. They didn’t have any running water.” He grinned at Frank. “And they were out of diapers for the babies.”

  “Babies? How many?”

  Max held up three fingers.

  “What were they using instead of diapers?”

  “Instead of diapers? There is no ‘instead of diapers,’ there are either diapers or babies shitting on themselves and the floor.”

  “So…”

  “Babies were shitting on themselves and the floor.”

  “Man…” He looked back out the window. “It sucks being poor.”

  “This isn’t poor. This is…this is something else. A lot of people are poor. Poor people still clean their houses and take baths. They make their kids take baths. They send their kids to school because they want something better for them.” Max pointed at a few of the “nicer” trailers as they bumped through the gravel lot. “Some of these people will keep their homes as nice as possible. They’ll try to make it work until they find something better.”

  He gestured to another row of trailers. They were filthy, surrounded by broken appliances, car parts, and tangles of garbage and rusted metal. “The others, this is how they will live for the rest of their lives, and they have no dream of making anything better. They’re too lazy to get up in the morning and get their kids ready for school, and even if the kids did go, they’d get sent home for being filthy.”

  “Yeah….”

  Max sighed. “I don’t give a damn about rules, you know? But there are things people have to do if they’re able. They’re not rules, more like basic requirements for being alive. And you accept that if everyone else has to do them, you have to do them too. Some people don’t care…they don’t care if anyone else does anything and they just drop out. But there are those who expect everyone else to follow the rules, but they don’t have to.”

  “You sound like a Republican.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I’m not saying all poor people are like this—most aren’t. And there are lots of people who need help. But you get people who are so poor and so destitute they can’t see a way out, so they just give up and accept the state. They pass that attitude on to their kids, or they’re so stupid from mom drinking grain alcohol while pregnant that they just live like this. They live in these places and don’t care.”

  “So why bother?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why bother trying to help them?”

  “I don’t help them, I help their kids. The kids don’t choose to live like this. The adults can live however they want…but when they bring children into the world—”

  “But if they’ve just passed on their bad genes or brain damage from alcohol on to the kids, what difference does it make? Won’t the kids just come back to it?”

  Max shrugged. “Maybe. But I know not everyone is doomed by their environment. There are kids from fine, very well-to-do families who have everything they could ever want and have a golden road in front of them, and they turn into criminals and junkies. And I’ve seen kids from places just like this who want something better, even if they’ve never seen it, or even been told they could have it. They just need someone to give them a little help, because they aren’t going to get it at home. Mom is too busy smoking meth or going back to the guy who hits her. Dad probably isn’t around, and the guy mom is shacking up with is just waiting for them to get old enough to molest.”

  “Jesus, Razor!” Frank laughed. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, places like this are an all-you-can-molest buffet. Child molesters find a single mom with a couple of kids, sometimes more than a couple, and just slide right in. I’ve
got this one case…the family lives in a house about the same standard as most of these trailers. The step-dad is molesting the daughter. She’s fourteen. He’s been molesting her for years--”

  “Why is she still there? Can you not prove it?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “Is it the step-dad’s?”

  “She says it is. She says she’s never been with anyone else. But anyway, she’s not in the home. She’s at the New Leaf Ranch right now. She’s six months pregnant.”

  “I bet mom is furious.”

  “No! Mom believes the step-dad!”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, step dad says he never touched her. But that isn’t all. He says she comes on to him, and mom believes him. She thinks the girl is a whore, so there isn’t any telling who the daddy is. And step-dad swears he never touched her, and that he loves mom….”

  “Did he rape the girl?”

  “Not quite. Yes, but not like you’re thinking. I mean she’s under age so it’s rape no matter what. But he tells the girl he loves her…and he wants to be with her…and her mom is keeping them apart.”

  “Romantic.”

  “Yes indeed. Like something with Meg Ryan in it. She’s at the New Leaf because she used to sneak out of foster care to see him. In fact, she was in foster care when he knocked her up.”

  “How does he get in touch with her?”

  “He finds a way. Of course, he denies it. He says she’s lying, or she came to see him. Whatever…I mean unless this girl is totally lying about everything, and it’s someone else’s baby, and she is just into blaming her step father because of some stupid teenage vendetta.”

  “But you don’t think that’s it, do you?”

  “No.” He pulled next to a yellow trailer-house. “This is D-nineteen.”

  “And there’s the master race,” Frank muttered as they stepped out of the car. Beyond the wire fence, a big fat one sat on a porch. A few feet from him a younger, fitter skinhead leaned against a picnic bench. Both had on hooded sweaters and had close cropped—not quite shaved—heads. They noticed Max and Frank immediately, but didn’t get up. The younger one met eyes with Max as he passed. Max grinned and kept contact until they disappeared around the corner of the Winnans’ trailer.

  “Parasites,” muttered Max.

  “If they’re what we think they are, they can hear you,” Frank whispered.

  “Good.”

  Three short knocks brought Mrs. Winnans to the door. She was young, with pale skin and long hair dyed black. She looked surprised to see them.

  “I’m Max with Children’s Services.” He held his plastic ID badge to the door.

  Mrs. Winnans smiled. “Oh yes, like that girl who was out here last week. Come in.” She had a dishtowel in her hands, and dried her palm with it before shaking hands with Max and Frank.

  “Who did you see last week?” Max knew the answer; he just wanted to see if she remembered.

  “I don’t remember her name,” she replied as Max and Frank entered her home. “She was very pretty though.” She closed the door behind them.

  The trailer looked much as it did in the photos. The carpet was light tan with a few stains—likely left by the previous occupants. The walls were artificial wood paneling. The couch and chair were covered with clean white sheets. Everything smelled clean, though there was a hint of natural gas from the old furnace.

  “Why was she here?”

  Mrs. Winnans paused. “I don’t remember!” She laughed. “It might have been about one of the other kids in the park.”

  “You don’t have children?” asked Frank.

  “No, not yet.” She appeared to notice the suspicious look on Frank’s face. Max thought maybe he shouldn’t have brought him—he wasn’t used to being lied to like Max. If she was lying…

  Max could tell he was about to ask if she was sure. He jumped into the conversation. “Do you have any neighbors with children, Mrs. Winnans?”

  “Please call me Janet, and yes. There are several children in the park.”

  “This doesn’t seem like much of a place to raise a child,” Frank opined, looking around. He seemed to catch how that sounded when his eyes landed on Janet again. “I don’t mean this particular home; I mean the park in general….”

  “I agree,” she said with a nod. “But it’s all some people have.” Janet looked at Max. “What can I help you with today?”

  “Well, as the last worker to come here probably told you, we received an anonymous report about a child living in the home. Do you have any idea why anyone would think you had a child here?”

  Janet shook her head.

  “Do you babysit for your neighbors, ever?”

  “No, we don’t know them very well.” She glanced at the window. The blinds were down and the curtains were closed.

  “You don’t like it here?”

  Janet let out a little sigh and gave him a world-weary smile.

  Max looked around the room. “I do have to say this is probably the cleanest trailer I’ve seen in this park.”

  “Thank you! I think I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.” She laughed. “Cleaning helps. I’m on disability, but you probably already knew that.”

  “No, I didn’t. Do you mind if I ask why?”

  She rubbed the back of her head. “I have bi-polar disorder.”

  Max wrote that down. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked….”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m not ashamed of it. I tried working, but if I work I can’t afford the medicine…but if I get Medicaid so I can afford the medicine, then I can’t work…it’s like a catch twenty-two.”

  “How do you feel about your neighbors?” Frank asked.

  Subtle…real subtle! Max should have established that only he would get to question people.

  Janet gave a nervous laugh. “Which ones? There are a lot of drugs in this park. We don’t talk to most of our neighbors, except the ones we go to church with. The church owns most of the trailers and the park.”

  “I didn’t know that. Which church?” Max asked.

  “Eternal Life Christian Church. That’s how we got this place. They let us move in without a deposit and they have free daycare.”

  Max looked at Frank as his mouth opened. He was about to ask about the skinheads. Max cut him off before he could start. “We’ve taken up enough of your time, ma’am.”

  Before they left there was a little small talk about the weather, typical southwest Missouri stuff about how it was cold today but would be warm tomorrow—so on and so forth. That led to Max asking where they’d moved from. Janet said Montana. Max wrote that down and steered the conversation to Janet’s husband, Larry. He worked at a pallet factory in Joplin. Max wrote that down, too.

  The small talk turned to the neighbors when they reached the door. Max and Frank stood at the foot of the porch when she gestured across the lot to the trailer in the photograph.

  “That’s Mrs. Soptik. She’s lived in the park for like twenty years or something.”

  Max wrote down the name.

  “Do you ever talk to her?”

  Janet shrugged. “Sometimes. Not very often. I think she has alt-timers.” Max wrote down Alzheimer’s in his note pad. “I know she doesn’t have any kids in the park!” She laughed. Max smiled.

  “Did Janice ever talk to her?”

  “I doubt it. She won’t come to the door unless it’s someone she knows.”

  “Would she answer the door for you?” asked Frank.

  “Maybe.” Janet shrugged.

  Max thanked her and put the notebook in his bag. Janet closed the door and locked it as Max and Frank walked around the trailer to his Prius. The futuristic black car looked out of place. It also had some visitors. Three skinheads, the two they’d seen setting outside, and a third.

  “Is this your faggot-mobile?” asked the fat one.

  “Yes.” Max slid his hand into his bag. “This is my faggot-mobile.”

  “Shit! Ollie,” said o
ther one from before. He clapped his hand onto the fat one’s arm. “Slanty-eyes made this piece o’shit!”

  The fat one slapped away his hand.

  “Don’t be sayin’ my name!” Max would find out later that one’s name was Leroy. Ollie was the biggest of the three, but not the tallest—not the most threatening either. That was reserved for the lanky newcomer.

  “Both of you shut up,” he said to them without looking. Instantly, they both shut up. His voice was like a pestle grinding charcoal, with a thicker southern accent than Max was used to hearing from people around here.

  Ah, the chief! The tall one was the only one not wearing some kind of jacket, just a wife-beater and a pair of jeans held up by red suspenders. A thin layer of bleach-white hair covered the blue veins on his head. He was paler than the other two, and wore a dark pair of sunglasses despite the overcast sky.

  He stepped to Max and lowered his head enough that his shades slid down his nose. He had small, beady eyes, almost pink with little blue dots in the middle. He smiled and showed off two rows of pearly teeth. His nostrils twitched as he sniffed the air.

  “You cops?”

  “Do we look like cops?” Max closed his hand around the grip of the little gun he carried in his bag. “Or, smell like cops?”

  He grinned and pushed up his shades. Every finger on his hands sported a different ring. Max saw skulls, shamrocks, and a couple of iron crosses.

  Frank pulled out his phone. The leader skinhead looked at him. Frank didn’t back away any further.

  Max looked over at Leroy and Ollie.

  “Actually, the Japanese were allied with the Germans in World War Two, so you should appreciate Japanese craftsmanship.” They gave him a confused look. Max wasn’t surprised he’d confused them. He looked back at the leader, now inches from his face. It was colder near him than it should have been. Max knew what that meant….

  “You aren’t selling anything.” He lowered the shades again and fixed Max with his eyes. “What are you doing here?” Max felt a pull in his brain, like he’d been hung upside down. He felt the skinhead’s influence stretch and break, snapping out of his brain like a rubber band. The vampire gave him a surprised look. “Who are you?”