Sky's Shadow

by Ted Galdi

  On his drive to Newport Beach he composed a speech in his head he plans to give when he sees Cora. He replays it in his mind as he nears the house.

  His feet reach the backyard pavers. He peeks through a window. His eyes cover the dining room. Long table, chandelier, encased china. No Cora. But he hears something. Her father’s voice. Sees him pacing nearby on the phone.

  “It doesn’t end,” Stewart says. “All Goddamn day. Not just the local cops. Feds.”

  He quiets as if listening to the person on the other line.

  Stewart says, “Wives never get fair treatment in situations like this. Rick Jorrell, a former business associate of mine. Was wanted a few years ago by the FBI for tax evasion. Hundred percent he was guilty. The old prick was probably cooking his books since they were actual books, before computers. We all knew it. But the feds didn’t just go after him. Ripped his wife’s life apart too.”

  A few moments.

  He says, “No way she had anything to do with it. The only financial document that airhead knew how to read was a price tag at a department store. Still, they tore through all her emails and text messages. Took her words out of context. Made it seem like she knew what was happening. Charged her as a coconspirator.”

  Silence for about half a minute.

  He says, “What do I look like? Some chump who mans the ladle at a soup kitchen? If my whack-job son-in-law wants to kill more bums, that’s his business. My business is my daughter. And I want to keep her out of prison. I don’t give a shit if she can help the feds.”

  He’s quiet for a bit.

  Then says, “Cost doesn’t matter. Find me the best defense attorney in California. I want to get ahead of this. All right, so long.”

  Stewart hangs up, disappears through a doorway. Tommy advances along the backyard pavers. Looks through a second window at a home crafts studio. Easel, canvases, paint. No Cora.

  He moves to a third window. A living room. Cora isn’t inside. But someone else is. Staring back at him, face no more than an inch from the fogged glass, is a Doberman Pinscher.

  It kicks its head back and lets out a booming bark, its long, sharp teeth on display. The noise gets Stewart’s attention. His meaty frame, about six and a half feet tall, turns a corner. His eyes meet Tommy’s through the window.

  Stewart opens a sliding-glass door, yells, “Rocco, get him.” Tommy only has a moment before the Doberman bolts out of the house. His mind rushes to assess options.

  He could hop the property wall and drive away. But he’d need to make it there first. As fast as he is, the dog is surely faster. And even if it didn’t catch up to him, he’d still fail. He’d be leaving without accomplishing his goal, talking to Cora.

  The Doberman’s dark, muscular body rushes out of the doorway. Tommy decides to go with his second option, seeing this through.

  He jumps onto the patio table. The dog does too. It snaps forward to bite his leg. Just before it does, Tommy jumps up onto the awning. His stomach lands on a beam, knocking the wind out of him. He looks back at the barking dog on the patio table.

  “What’re you doing here?” Stewart shouts. He runs out of the house wielding a baseball bat.

  “I’m here for your daughter,” Tommy says. “I just—”

  “What gives you the right to trespass?”

  Tommy negotiates the beam toward a second-story window. But it doesn’t open. The glass is fixed in place.

  Pain rattles through his left ankle. “Ahh,” he yells, falling off the awning’s beam onto its fabric. Stewart just hit him with the bat. In a moment a similar pain rocks through his hip. “Dammit,” he shouts.

  Tommy pushes himself to his knees and crawls back to the solidity of the beam. He yanks out his axe. Stewart takes another swing at his ankles. Tommy leaps, avoiding it, then lands back on the beam, almost slipping off.

  He bashes the window with the axe, shards flying into the house. He bangs around the rim of the hole, widening it, then dives through. An edge cuts his bicep. His body hits the floor of the upstairs hallway among a splatter of blood.

  Rising to his feet, he screams, “Cora.” No response. He opens the first door he sees, glances inside. Nobody. He opens another door. No. Footsteps echo through the high-ceilinged house from downstairs. Stewart and his baseball bat are on their way up.

  No one in the third room Tommy checks. Or the fourth. But this one stands out. It lacks the formal decor of the others, an adolescent feel to it. A lot of pink, a lot of posters. Seems like a teen girl’s bedroom. That agent on Jordana’s team said Cora had no siblings, so Tommy assumes this is her former room, likely where she stays when she visits.

  He notices a desktop computer. And remembers the agent said she didn’t use a password on hers in San Diego. Tommy dashes to this one. It doesn’t require a password either. He opens the browser and checks the history. A few results from today. The most recent titled “Reservation Confirmation.” He clicks on it, arriving at the website of a hotel called the Grand Bay Resort.

  “You a reporter?” Stewart asks.

  Tommy turns to him in the doorway. “No.”

  “An undercover cop?”

  “No. I’m here to help your daughter.”

  “I’ve never seen you before. How do you know her?”

  “I…well—”

  “Liar.” Stewart steps to him.

  “Just hear me out, we—”

  “So you’re what then, a thief? Think you can rob me?” He swings the bat. Tommy ducks. Stewart pulls the end of the bat out of the wall. Tommy’s axe could end this right now. One shot, even to a non-vital section of the body like a knee, would incapacitate Stewart.

  The guy is clearly an asshole. But doesn’t deserve an axe maiming. Tommy considers a non-violent way out of this room. Notices the closet door. It’s ajar, its hinges directing outward. In his firefighter schooling on building evacuation, he learned the importance of clearing obstructions from outward-swinging doors. If heavy enough, they can trap occupants inside during a fire.

  Stewart brings the bat down at him. Tommy rolls to the side, the barrel thwacking the floor. Tommy keeps rolling, all the way into the closet. He moves backward on his hands and feet, leaving enough space for Stewart to enter, then grabs a sweater off a hanger.

  Stewart comes in. And tries to cock the bat back for another swing. But the tight walls constrict him, the barrel striking a shelf. As the long-limbed man struggles to better position himself, Tommy chucks the sweater into his face, over his eyes.

  While Stewart fumbles with this problem, Tommy crawls past his legs out of the closet. He shuts it. Then darts to Cora’s bed, grasps the headboard, and shoves it against the door.

  “Let me out you bastard,” Stewart yells, pounding the door.

  Tommy pushes the dresser behind the bed, wedging a corner against the wall. With a lot of sweat, Stewart should be able to force his way out, but should need at least a minute.

  Tommy runs out of the room. Descends the staircase to leave the house. The Doberman’s bark resounds. Tommy’s feet stop. The dog hurtles into the foyer, turns for the steps. Tommy hurries back up to the second story, then into a bathroom. Closes the door.

  Outside it he hears the Doberman’s legs working their way up the steps, plus the legs of Cora’s bed rumbling as Stewart struggles to free himself.

  Tommy contemplates how to handle this predicament without using the axe on the man or dog. He notices a window in the bathroom facing the back of the house. He opens it. Then grabs the towel by the sink and rubs it all over his arm, bloodying it with his bicep cut. He stuffs the towel into the wastebasket and heaves it out the window.

  It clangs against the backyard pavers. He hears the Doberman bark. Then run down the staircase. Tommy peeks out the window. The dog exits the house, sniffs around the wastebasket.

  Tommy leaves the bathroom, trots to the steps. When he reaches the foyer, he hears a bark. Sees the Doberman peering at him from the backyard. It charges ahead, back into the house
. Tommy has enough of a head start to reach the front door. He twists the deadbolt. Slips outside. Closes the slab, feels the animal jump against the other side.

  Tommy sprints along the Halls’ long driveway toward the property gate. Soon he hears the jangle of the dog’s collar tags behind him. It must’ve raced back outside, then around the house. Tommy grips the gate’s iron bars and climbs. The dog’s teeth clasp his pant leg. He shakes himself loose, his cuff tearing. Then plummets to the street, the Doberman’s snarling snout jutting between two bars.

  Tommy runs to his car. Turns on the engine and drives off the block. Once he makes it to the main road, he pulls over, catches his breath. Then enters “Grand Bay Resort” into his GPS.

  Fifty-Four

  The stolen Prius pulls onto the property of the San Diego VA Hospital. Bo mans the wheel in a low-pulled hat and shades, his head and beard shaven. Glen sits in the passenger seat, his hair transformed blond with hydrogen peroxide and baking soda, his eyebrows waxed off. He wears scrubs and a surgical mask Hawks bought him.

  “Give me another pick-me-up,” Glen says.

  “You’ve already had a decent amount.”

  “Do you realize what I’m about to do?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you know I need all the energy I can get. And clarity. Bust it out.”

  Bo fishes a baggy of cocaine from his pocket, taps some in Glen’s palm. He snorts it all up.

  “Ready?” Bo asks.

  “Death before dishonor.”

  “Preach. I’ll meet you around back.”

  They slap hands. Glen gets out with a camping backpack Hawks purchased for him, and strides through the hospital entrance. He smells the VA’s familiar, Windex-like scent. He’s worked here for so long around so many employees, one may recognize him on body language despite his mask, new hair, and missing eyebrows. So he adjusts the way he walks, giving himself a phony limp.

  He navigates the hallway amid a jumble of patients and personnel. Passes a cracked waiting-room door, overhears TV news commentators speculating on how life could’ve turned an upstanding citizen like Glen Brent into something so vile.

  He takes an elevator up. His heart thrashes from the coke. An image flashes in his mind of two skeletons, Cora’s next to the smaller one of his unborn daughter. A tear flows from his eye. He wipes it away. Then exits the elevator onto the floor where he works.

  His neck muscles tense when he turns a corner and spots faces. Mabel the X-ray technician. Alfonso the physical therapist. Levi the orderly. Glen angles his head downward, accentuates his limp. And clears the three-person gauntlet.

  He reaches the door to a restricted zone where the hospital stores equipment and drugs. And swipes his employee keycard through a magnetic reader, gaining access.

  The room’s long rows of metal shelving glint in the brightness of the fluorescent panel lights. A half-dozen doctors are dispersed throughout with carts, perusing shelves like supermarket shoppers.

  Glen tucks his backpack behind a rack of medical tubing, grabs a cart, and pushes it into an aisle with no one in it. He’s been in here many times, the layout imprinted in his memory, and knows where his needed items are.

  He takes a roundabout path through the aisles to avoid passing other doctors. Into his cart go scissors, scalpels, and forceps. Then sutures.

  No way he’ll be able to snatch an anesthesia machine from the VA, so a spinal injection must numb his final group of patients. This means syringes and lidocaine, which he stocks up on next. Then blood-testing kits. Skin markers. Rubber gloves. Various other items. And last, packets of organ-storage solution.

  He wheels his cart to his backpack, unzips it, and begins stuffing the supplies inside. He glances over his shoulder to assure nobody is watching. His arm speeds up. In about twenty seconds, it’s all packed. He returns to the elevator, descends to level one. He moves through the congested hallway. And soon breaks away from the crowd toward the exit door. The pat of his footsteps is the only sound in his ears.

  Then he hears, “Doctor Brent?”

  A pain in his gut. He knows what this is. Knows who this is. But attempts to play it off, staying in character as a doctor with any other name.

  “Doctor Brent.” It hits him again, like a lance through the back.

  Nurse Peggy Wiggins.

  At least a thousand times he’s shared an operating room with this woman he believes loves him. He was so thrilled to escape the supply room undetected, he forgot to put on his limp, he realizes. Peggy, one of the few people who could identify his natural gait from dozens of feet away, apparently just did.

  He steps outside. The door closes behind him. She’ll second-guess herself, leave this alone. He scans the parking lot, spotting Bo in the Prius.

  “Glen,” she calls. Another lancing. She must’ve sprinted down the hallway after him. He stops moving. He has two ways to handle this and needs to choose fast.

  The first option, he can continue on to the car and just drive off. He’d avoid confronting her and she’d never really know if she saw him. But she would still likely tell someone about the potential sighting. The police would soon find out he’s in the area in a Prius and barricade the on-ramps to any freeways.

  Leaving him with only option two.

  He spins around, making eye contact with her. And nudges his mask down. “Peggy, oh my God, did you see the news on TV?”

  Her freckled face is silent for a couple seconds, as if she needs a moment to absorb it’s really him. Then says, “Of course.” And jogs to him. “Who hasn’t? I can’t believe—”

  “It’s a huge misunderstanding. I didn’t do it.” He lifts the mask back up. “I came here to get some papers out of my office. Now I’m heading out of town until this blows over. I’m sure you’re curious. I’ll tell you what happened. Come on.” He points at the Prius. “In here. I don’t want someone to see me out in the lot.”

  Peggy’s gaze has a trace of skepticism in it. Yet she still follows him. He opens the passenger door, nods at Bo as if to say, I’ve got this, then gets inside, sets the backpack on his lap, and slides over to make room for her. He extends his hand to help her in, then moves it across her body and closes the door.

  “I knew you were innocent,” she says. “I just knew it. Ughh.”

  “I was framed.”

  “How? By who?”

  He nods at the backpack. “The evidence to exonerate me is in here. That’s why I risked coming back. Once you see it, you’ll understand.” He places his hand on her thigh. “I always felt so close to you. Will you help me get through this? Will you take what I’m about to show you to the press?”

  “Yes.”

  He begins opening the backpack. She watches. He clamps his hands around her throat. “Shh,” he says. “Shh.”

  She gags. He forces her down into the space in front of the passenger seat. Her eyes seem to ask him, Why?

  He grasps tighter. His nails cut into her flesh, her blood ringing his right pinkie. “Soldiers are dying in there,” he whispers. “You see them too. Only I can help them. I’m so sorry, Peggy. But I need to help them.”

  Soon her squirming slows. He chokes for a while longer. Her eyeballs still, as if stopping to process information. He squeezes for another minute or so, then places his hand over her heart. Dead.

  He sits up in the seat and gazes at his eyebrow-less face in the rearview mirror, covered in sweat. Then turns to Bo, says, “Go.”

  Fifty-Five

  Tommy pulls his Chevy Cruze into the lot of the Grand Bay Resort. Parks it between a Bentley and Maserati and walks through the hotel entryway to the scent of flowers in the lobby. At the counter, a blond-male attendant in a red bowtie looks him up and down, says, “You’re in the wrong place.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Restaurant staff should come in through the service entrance around back. Did you not have your consultation with Dmitri yet?”

  Tommy considers his outfit, black shoes, black slacks, blac
k tee shirt. He looks like a busboy. “I’m not working here.”

  “Ah. So you’re staying here?”

  “No. Not that either.”

  The attendant eyeballs the cut on Tommy’s bicep. “Then…why are you here?”

  “My friend. She’s staying here. And left a few of her things back at her house. I owed her a favor. She asked me to bring them. Here I am.”

  “Yes, there you are.”

  “Cora Brent is her name.”

  “Terrific.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So can you tell me what room she’s in so I can bring up her stuff?”

  “I don’t know of a guest with that name. And even if I did, I’m not at liberty to give out information of that nature. If you’re so close to this…Cora Brent…that she invited you up to her hotel room, I’m sure you have her phone number. Give her a call and ask.”

  “That’s the problem. One of the things she forgot was her cell. Called me from her room phone. When I tried it back, the number didn’t go to her, sent me to some automated greeting. Guessing I need an extension. Do you have that at least?”

  “I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do, sir. Have a good day.” Glancing past Tommy, the attendant flashes a smile and raises a hand.

  A woman with a Louis Vuitton bag steps to the counter. Tommy says to her, “Ma’am, I apologize for interrupting you like this, but I need to speak to this gentleman for just a little longer.”

  “I am so sorry Mrs. Franklin,” the attendant says. Then scowls at Tommy.

  “Fine, I lied before,” Tommy says. “I don’t know Cora Brent personally. Her husband is the man all over the news. The surgeon who killed all those people in San Diego last—”

  “Oh dear,” the woman says, hand over her heart. “I heard about that. He’s here, in the hotel?”

  “No,” Tommy says. “You’re safe here ma’am.” He gazes at the attendant. “But Cora might not be. I need to speak to her. For her own protection. Just give me a phone extension. That’s it. I don’t even need to go near her. I just want to talk. You can listen to the whole conversation over my shoulder.”