Shadow Suspect

by Patrick Logan

  CHAPTER 71

  Excerpt from Dr. Mark Kruk’s notes, dated March 1st, 2017.

  Kruk: Now, I want you to tell me about your childhood, Marcus. About your parents.

  Marcus: Well, it wasn’t always so good. Daddy was mean a lot. He would get angry all the time—like real angry.

  Kruk: Did he yell at you?

  Marcus: Oh, yes, all the time. And when he got really angry, he would hit me and mommy.

  Kruk: He would physically strike you?

  Marcus: Yes. And sometimes…

  Kruk: You can tell me, Marcus. This is a safe place.

  Marcus: Sometimes he would put cigarettes out on me. On my back, and on my hands.

  Kruk: And what would your mother do when your father put out cigarettes on you?

  Marcus: She would only cry. She would just sit there and cry. This would only make Daddy madder. He would punch her until she stopped.

  Kruk: Did your mother ever call the police or tell anyone about what your father did to you?

  Marcus: I don’t know. I don’t think so.

  Kruk: Did you tell anyone?

  Marcus: No.

  Kruk: And why not? Why didn’t you tell a teacher or a friend at school?

  Marcus: No, I didn’t.

  Kruk: But why not, Marcus? Why didn’t you tell?

  Marcus: The kids… the kids at school made fun of me. Called me names when I came with the bruises.

  Kruk: That’s okay, Marcus. You’re doing a good thing by speaking to me today. Please, take your time and if you need breaks, just let me know.

  Marcus: I’m fine.

  Kruk: Okay, then we’ll continue. When did your father stop hitting you?

  Marcus: One day he went to work, and just never came home.

  Kruk: And then it was just you and your mother?

  Marcus: Yes.

  Kruk: Did things get better after your dad was gone?

  Marcus: No—a little.

  Kruk: Can you explain what you mean?

  Marcus: Mommy never hit me or yelled at me. But she was always crying. Always, always crying. The only time she would stop crying is when she would sleep.

  Kruk: How old are you, Marcus?

  Marcus: Eight—almost nine.

  Kruk: And after your Daddy left, did your mommy make you food? Breakfast? Dinner? Did she help you get ready for school?

  Marcus: No. She only cried. I had to do everything for myself. But I was so, so tired. Only I couldn’t sleep because every time I tried, I could hear her crying. And I was scared.

  Kruk: Why were you scared? Were you scared that your father would come home?

  Marcus: Yes; I was scared that he would come home and get angry because Mommy was crying.

  Kruk: Did the crying ever stop, Marcus?

  Marcus: I don’t want to say.

  Kruk: It’s okay, Marcus, you won’t get in trouble. Remember, this is a safe place, and I’m here to help you.

  Marcus: You promise?

  Kruk: I promise.

  Marcus: Mommy fell asleep in her chair one day after Daddy left, and I was just so tired. Only I knew that as soon as I tried to go to sleep that she would wake up and start crying again. I was so, so tired.

  Kruk: What happened next, Marcus?

  Marcus: I went to the kitchen and opened the drawer with the adult knives. I wasn’t supposed to go in there, but I couldn’t ask her, because all she did was sleep and cry. I had been in there before when I needed to cut open a bag of chips—there wasn’t much food in the house. And then I walked over to Mommy and tried to wake her up, to ask her not to cry anymore.

  Kruk: And then what happened?

  Marcus: She wouldn’t wake up, so I cut her. I cut her arms, her wrists. There was… there was so much blood and I thought that she was going to wake up and get mad at me for getting her dress dirty. It was her favorite dress, she used to say that. It was the one that daddy liked best.

  CHAPTER 72

  The notebook trembled in Drake’s hands and his eyes darted to the photograph of Marcus’s mother dead in her chair.

  Beckett and Dunbar had been wrong.

  Martha Slasinsky didn’t commit suicide, she was murdered.

  She was murdered by her son.

  “Jesus,” Drake whispered.

  Who are you, Marcus Slasinsky?

  He shuddered, then started reading again, the air in the office suddenly feeling very, very cold.

  CHAPTER 73

  Excerpt from Dr. Mark Kruk’s notes, dated March 1st, 2017.

  Kruk: What did you do after your mother stopped bleeding?

  Marcus: I tried to wake her up again, but she just kept sleeping.

  Kruk: And then what did you do?

  Marcus: I made dinner and went to sleep. It was… it was the best sleep I ever had. Mommy didn’t wake me up crying at all.

  Kruk: And the next morning?

  Marcus: I made breakfast, kissed mommy on the lips and went to school.

  Kruk: Alright. Now I want you to move ahead a little bit. I want you to tell me about the butterfly.

  Marcus: Okay—it came around the time that the neighbor lady asked me if everything was okay. She said that there was a smell in the hallway, and wanted to know if we had a problem with the toilet. I told her everything was fine and when she asked to talk to Mommy I said she was sleeping. I told the woman that Mommy was very happy now, that she had stopped crying. The lady went away and I opened the window just in case.

  Kruk: And then what happened? Where did the butterfly come from?

  Marcus: Every morning before I went to school, I kissed Mommy on the lips and told her I loved her. Then, one day, when I kissed her I felt her lips move. At first I thought she was waking up, and I was very happy—only she didn’t open her eyes. I watched as her lips moved and I thought she was trying to tell me something. I leaned in close and then the most beautiful thing I have ever seen came out of her mouth.

  Kruk: A Monarch butterfly?

  Marcus: Not just any butterfly—the most beautiful butterfly that ever lived! It had bright orange wings, and black spots on them that looked like tiger eyes. I let it walk onto my finger and when it stretched its wings I kissed it; it was like kissing Mommy, but instead I was giving the butterfly kisses.

  CHAPTER 74

  Drake was aware that he was clenching his jaw and that his stomach muscles were so tight that they were making it difficult to breathe, but there was nothing he could do to make them relax.

  What had happened to the boy was horrible, unimaginable.

  But there was also something very strange about the transcript.

  Dr. Kruk himself didn’t look a day over forty, and yet Martha Slasinsky was murdered something like thirty years ago. He couldn’t possibly be the psychiatrist who had seen the boy back then.

  What about after the coma?

  That didn’t make much sense either; even if he overlooked the fact that in the notes Marcus claimed to be eight, and very much spoke like an eight-year-old might, Dr. Kruk had to be less than twenty at the time of the incident at the Butterfly Gardens.

  And the notes themselves were dated from earlier in the month.

  It doesn’t make sense.

  Drake scanned forward in the notebook. It was filled with pages and pages of the same format: Kruk with the question, Marcus with his answer.

  It went on and on and on, with seemingly no end.

  Frustration began to mount inside him, and his thoughts suddenly flicked to Suzan, and the way that she had screamed at him, told him that he had ruined their lives.

  Drake placed the notebook on the table, and then picked up the butterfly encased in the plastic and stared at it as he turned it slowly in his hand.

  It was bright orange, just like the one that Marcus had described. Even the dark spots on the majestic wings appeared to look like cat’s eyes, vertical slits that ran their length.

  Where are you, Marcus? Where the hell are you now?

  Drake closed his ey
es, and he was instantly bombarded with an image of Clay’s face, blood and spit clinging to his bearded chin. In his mind, Drake leaned in close to his friend’s lips as they parted, half expecting to hear his final words.

  Only they weren’t words. They were the wings of a butterfly as it emerged from his dead mouth.

  Drake shot to his feet.

  “Where are you Marcus!” he yelled and flung the crystal butterfly with all of his might.

  The cube flew across the small office, and struck the end panel of the bookcase.

  Drake expected one of two things to happen: either the cube would shatter, or it would thonk off the wood and leave a dent.

  Only neither happened. Instead, the butterfly made a scraping sound and embedded itself in the wood.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  “Is everything okay in there, Detective?”

  Drake ignored the secretary on the other side of the door and quickly made his way over to the bookcase. The entire structure looked to be made of solid wood, except for the section at the very end where the cube had struck, and was now embedded in. This section appeared to be made of veneer. Drake grabbed the cube and pulled it free and his suspicions were confirmed.

  Without thinking, he put his hand in the hole and pulled. The veneer, which he realized ran floor to ceiling, bowed outward, but didn’t come free.

  Drake pulled again, and although this time he heard splintering wood, it still held fast.

  “Detective!” the woman shouted, her voice shrill now. “Detective!”

  Drake forced the first two fingers of both hands in the hole now.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up,” he muttered and then yanked with all his might.

  The veneer came free in one long sheet, and Drake stumbled backward. He tripped on his heels and went down, pulling the veneer on top of himself.

  He swore and thrust it aside before turning his attention back to the bookcase.

  Despite all the air being sucked out of him, he was still somehow able to utter three words.

  “Oh my god,” he whispered as suddenly everything became clear.

  CHAPTER 75

  “NYPD! I’m inside your home, Tim!” Chase shouted. “I’m inside!”

  There was still no answer, and Chase felt adrenaline flood her system. She quickly scanned the rooms near the entrance, then made her way upstairs.

  Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest when she made it to the top landing. She gave a cursory glance around, but went straight for the bedroom that she had found Tim in when he had tried to escape out the window.

  The window was still open, which she found odd, but she was grateful for the moonlight that flooded in.

  Chase found Tim lying on his stomach in his bed, the covers pulled up to the back of his neck.

  “Tim?” she whispered. Chase stared closely at his still frame for a few seconds, a feeling of dread starting to wash over her.

  He wasn’t breathing.

  “Tim!” she said more loudly this time. Gun still at the ready in case this was some sort of ploy, she reached down and grabbed the bed sheet.

  Chase took a deep breath and then yanked it down.

  “No,” she moaned as the moonlight reflected off the bloody butterfly drawn on Tim Jenkins’s back, giving it a strange blueish hue.

  How is this possible?

  The sound of a car backfiring drifted up to her from the open window and she rushed over to it. Leading with the gun, she scanned the street, wondering how she had let this happen.

  How any of this had happened.

  CHAPTER 76

  The scars on Dr. Kruk’s hand that he had seen when they had first met, the reason why Marcus was only eight in a journal dated less than a month ago, and his cryptic comments—People only see what they want to see. Our minds are wired in this way—an imago. This picture? It’s much like everything else in the image we portray to others: just an empty shell—it all added up to one thing: Dr. Mark Kruk was Marcus Slasinsky.

  He swallowed hard and stared up at the glass aquariums with a mixture of awe and horror. Drake counted seven of them in total, each roughly a foot and a half tall, and if he were to assume that they were the same width as the bookcase, about foot wide.

  The bottom three were filled with dirt, upon which lay scattered leaves. There were dozens of caterpillars milling about the soil, either eating or resting atop the leaves. The sight made his stomach lurch.

  The other aquariums were filled with the most beautiful array of butterflies he had ever seen. Most were monarchs, their orange and yellow wings making a fiery rainbow as they fluttered. But there were others, too, other types of butterflies with names that Drake didn’t know, including bright blue ones, green ones, ones with shimmering wings like miniature peacock feathers.

  It was only then that Drake was aware of the meaty smell of old earth filling his nostrils. And it was this smell that snapped him from the mixture of horror and beauty of what he saw.

  Drake scrambled to his feet and reached for his phone. It snagged in his pocket, and for the first time in his life he wished that it wasn’t a thick brick but something slim and sleek like Chase’s.

  Chase!

  The name ripped through his brain like a skewer through an overripe avocado.

  “Detective!” the woman veritably screamed. “I called the police!”

  Drake finally got his phone free.

  “Good!” he yelled back. “Tell them to hurry!”

  Then with a final, shuddering breath, Drake dialed Chase’s number, hoping that he reached her in time.

  CHAPTER 77

  The man in black watched as the detective with the dark hair came into the room, waving her gun about like a road flare. He watched as she slowly crept toward the body in the bed, her steps slowing as she neared Tim Jenkins.

  His lips parted in a grin when she pulled the sheet back and gasped when his artwork was revealed.

  A car backfired, and the detective bolted to the window. As she did, the man slipped his gloved fingers through the crack between the closet door and the frame and slowly eased it open. Sliding silently into the room, he froze when a phone started ringing. She almost turned then, and he knew he had to act quickly. When the detective lowered her gun to pull a cell phone from her pocket, he moved even closer.

  “Yeah?” she said breathlessly, her brow furrowing. “What, slow down! I… what? It’s who? Drake, what are you saying?”

  The man was close enough now that he could smell her perfume, a gentle vanilla aroma, mixed with her sweet, adrenaline laden sweat.

  “Tim’s dead,” she whispered. “I—”

  He snaked an arm over her mouth, while slapping her gun from her hand with his other.

  She screamed and dropped the phone, but he slid the syringe into her neck before she could squirm away from him.

  As her body started to go limp, shouting from the phone on the floor drifted up to him.

  “Chase! Chase, are you alright? What’s happening! Answer me—”

  The man drove his heel onto the phone, cracking the screen. He continued to grind his boot into it until it eventually went silent.

  CHAPTER 78

  “—Chase! Stay away from—”

  But the line suddenly sounded stifled, and Drake pulled the phone away from his face.

  “Chase? You still there?”

  There was only dead air.

  He turned his head to the sky and shouted. Then he hung up and dialed Chase’s number again.

  It went immediately to voicemail.

  Drake swore, dialed again, then swore again.

  The woman on the other side of the door was screaming at him now, hollering that the cops were on the way, but Drake ignored her.

  His mind flicked to the empty folder he had found on the desk.

  The one with Tim Jenkins’s name on it.

  If she was out at Jenkins’s place…

  They were supposed to go there together, to relieve Detective Yas
iv around ten. Could it be ten already? He glanced at his wrist, but he had forgotten to put his watch on last night or this morning or whenever the last time was that he had gotten changed.

  He supposed it could be. There were no windows in the office, but it had been getting late when he had arrived, and there was no telling how much time he had wasted reading the damn notebook.

  I have to get to her. I have to save her.

  Even though every fiber of his being was telling him to run, to get in his car and drive across the city to Tim Jenkins’s house, he didn’t.

  At least not right away.

  Instead, he glanced over at the butterflies. The cases weren’t all the same size, he realized. The one on top, the one just at arm’s reach was smaller, and appeared to be a handle on top.

  It was portable.

  Drake ran over to the bookcase, and then stood on his tiptoes, trying to block out the smell as he reached up. His fingertips grazed the bottom of the portable aquarium and teased it out. With a grunt, he lifted it and it fell off the shelf and into his waiting arms.

  And then he tucked it beneath his right arm and bolted toward the door, unlocking it and throwing it wide.

  Dr. Kruk’s secretary backed away as he leaped through the opening, her face going slack.

  “Wh—what is that?” she gasped, pointing at the case under his arm filled with a cornucopia of butterflies.

  “When the police come, tell them to head to Tim Jenkins’s house. Do you have that—”

  The woman gaped, but that wasn’t why Drake paused. He paused because what he was saying didn’t make sense. If Dr. Kruk—if Marcus Slasinsky—was at Tim’s house, then he either already had Chase or she had him in custody. Either way, it would do him no good to go there.

  And if they weren’t there, then they would be somewhere else. He thought back to when he had been sitting in the car with Chase, before they had brought Tim in the first time.

  He had been reading the report that Detective Yasiv had put together, the line about—

  And then it clicked.