Sky's Shadow

by Ted Galdi

  The SUV nears, just a couple hundred feet away. Glen lifts the bloody scrubs top over his face and jumps out from the bush into the road. He sees nothing but the darkness he created. Braces himself for a potential flattening.

  The screech of tires. Growl of an engine. A clank.

  His heart rate comes down. If the SUV were to hit him, it would’ve done so by now. He yanks down the scrubs top. Gazes at the vehicle, nose down in a ditch. Swerve marks on the pavement.

  “What the hell?” Bo shouts. “Let’s get out of here. Hurry up.”

  Glen ignores him. Paces to the SUV. Looks through the driver’s window. A fortyish man at the wheel, a boy, about twelve, in a Little League uniform next to him. The boy is crying.

  Glen opens the door. The driver turns to him. His head recoils a few inches. Maybe from the blood smeared on Glen’s chest. Maybe from his missing eyebrows. Maybe something else.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the man asks. “Are you drunk?”

  Glen says nothing. Just looks into his eyes. Then the boy’s.

  “You dislocated my son’s shoulder,” the man says.

  “Was he wearing a seatbelt?”

  The father reaches to the backseat. Pulls a baseball bat out of an equipment bag. Steps out of the car. “You almost get us killed, now you’re being a smartass?”

  “Put the bat down, please.”

  The father’s eyes notice Bo across the street, leaning against the Prius with his arms folded. He lowers the bat, says, “Let’s just…I just want to be on my way. I’m going to call a tow truck. We’ll be fine.”

  “Your son doesn’t look fine.”

  “He’ll be okay. I can pop his shoulder back into place.”

  “Maybe I can look at it. I’m a doctor.”

  “It’s…all right. You can be on your way too.” He walks back to his car. Says something to his son. Then turns around, notices Glen standing in the same place. “Go. Really.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I know. This could’ve been worse.”

  Glen steps to him. “Things would be worse if you were me. Do you know who I am?”

  “Sorry…I don’t.”

  “Do you watch the news?”

  “Not very often. No.”

  “I’m on the news today.”

  “That’s…that’s good I guess.”

  “Not for something good. According to the people who run the news at least.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  “The worst part they didn’t talk about on the news. The worst part is that I am a father too. Well, I was. But my little girl is dead.”

  Silence for a bit. “That’s…you know…that’s terrible.”

  “My wife too. Do you have a wife?”

  A bead of sweat trickles down the man’s forehead. “Yes. I have a wife.”

  The boy says, “Dad, it hurts. Can you do that thing you said?”

  The father snaps his shoulder back into the socket. The kid screams. The father pats him on the back. “It’s all over. Good job. I’ll call the tow truck. Let’s go home.” He grabs his phone from the cup holder.

  “Put that down,” Glen says. He removes a gun from the waist of his scrubs pants, points it at him.

  “Let’s…just chill.” He raises his hands. “I don’t want to…press charges or anything. I just want to get out of here with my son.”

  Glen leans forward, peeks into the car at the boy. He shoots him in the face.

  The father’s eyes stay wide and frozen for a few seconds as if in disbelief. Then he glimpses his dead son slumped over in the seat, a caved-in red splotch where his nose used to be. He shakes his shoulders. “Owen? Owen?”

  Bo runs over. Scopes the small corpse. “Jesus Christ.”

  The father turns to them. He opens his mouth as if to say something, then closes it. He pants.

  “We’re the same you and I,” Glen says. “Same type of day.”

  “No. No, no, no.”

  “Or maybe it’s more like your wife’s. Maybe your wife and I had more of a similar day.” Glen shoots the man in the heart. He crumbles to the dirt. Gasps. Glen fires another round into his forehead.

  Bo shoves Glen into the side of the car, says, “You’ve lost your mind.”

  Glen smirks. “What’s a mind?”

  “What?”

  “What is it? Something inside my brain? What’s a brain? Just a clump of cells. No mind inside a clump of cells. Not that I ever saw in any medical-school textbook. I didn’t lose anything. I never had anything to lose.” He looks up at the sky. “I just am. Same as you. Same as them. I just am.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Glen crosses the road to the Prius. “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us.”

  Sixty-One

  Jordana stands in front of four San Diego cops under a tent set up Downtown, a makeshift command center for the FBI-SDPD task force going after Brent and Archer. “The army’s combat training is even more extensive than yours or mine,” she says. “If you happen to find them, do not let your guard down. If you make a wrong move, they’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”

  “Any chatter on the APBs?” a male cop asks.

  “Unfortunately nothing on Brent’s Aston Martin. Or Mercedes. They could be in something else for all we know. If you see something shady with any type of vehicle, look inside, get a visual on a face. Anything else?”

  “We’re good. Thanks.” He leads the other three officers out of the tent.

  Jordana pours a cup of coffee from an urn and sits in front of a monitor showing live feeds of the public streetlight cameras in San Diego. She debates listening to the voicemail Tommy left her. His parting words before boarding his flight to New York. At best, the message is an apology for being a jerk earlier. At worst, an accusation of her being one. Either way, it could tamper with her head. And as case lead, she needs a stable one.

  “Agent Quick?” a female voice says behind her.

  Jordana turns to an FBI agent about ten years older than her. “Yeah?”

  “A nine-one-one tip came in about a white box truck.”

  “You sure it wasn’t another prank?”

  “Caller used a business landline, not a cell. Seems legit.”

  Jordana’s posture straightens. “We’ve known about the white box truck for a week. And they know we know. Why drive around in that?”

  “I’m just conveying the information.”

  “Who made the call?”

  “A gas-station attendant. About forty miles east of here.”

  “Saying what exactly?”

  “He was watching the news earlier, following the story. TV mentioned Brent and Archer have driven around in a white box truck. Saw one pull into his gas station to fill up. He stepped out of the mini-mart and headed over to the pumps to get a better look at who was inside. Two men, late forties. They were in hats. Couldn’t see their faces well. He was too scared to stare or get very close. But overheard them talking. They mentioned something about a factory in El Cajon.”

  Jordana’s index finger fidgets with the rim of her coffee cup. “Could still be a false alarm. But it definitely doesn’t sound like a prank. This gas-station attendant saw something. It’s worth checking out.”

  “I agree.”

  “Call the El Cajon Police Department. Have them send a couple cruisers over to whatever factories might be in town. See if they notice anything suspicious.”

  “On it.” She steps to Jordana. “One other thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re doing a great job as lead,” she whispers.

  Jordana smiles.

  The agent walks off. Two others approach Jordana with questions. For the next hour, she fields even more.

  Her phone vibrates, a number not saved in her contacts. “Agent Quick,” she says into it.

  “This is Sergeant Zimmer. With the El Cajon Police Department. You might want to get over here.” Once he explains his reasoning, she go
es in her Blazer, attaches the siren atop, and races up the freeway.

  She drives through El Cajon toward an out-of-business pillow factory. Its parking-lot entrance is blocked off with yellow tape, a cruiser nearby, a patrolman on guard beside it.

  Jordana rolls down her window and presents her FBI badge. The cop moves the tape to the side. She traverses the asphalt, the cracked windows and decrepit facade of the factory towering above the Blazer. In the distance, among huddled police officers, emerges an image that streaks coldness up the skin of her arms.

  The white box truck.

  She parks and steps out. A grizzled man with sergeant insignia on his uniform’s sleeve walks to her. “Agent Quick?”

  “Sergeant Zimmer?”

  “In person you look even younger than I heard you were.”

  “Any sign of them?”

  “Not yet. Just the truck. But it must be theirs. Splotches of blood all over the back.”

  “Fresh blood?”

  “Dry. Probably stains from past victims.”

  “Anything in the vehicle that could suggest why they came here?”

  “Negative.”

  “You search the factory?”

  “Two of my best are inside as we speak. So far…nothing.”

  “So they came here, parked, and decided to what…go out on foot? Is there a homeless encampment nearby?”

  “I sent a car. According to the homeless there, no sighting of anyone with Brent or Archer’s description.”

  “Then why come here?”

  “I don’t know yet. What I do know is that the nine-one-one gas-station call came in about an hour and a half ago from Pine Valley. A half-hour drive from there to here. Meaning Brent and Archer have been in town for no more than an hour. And if they’re on foot, they’re not covering much ground. I’d put them within a three-mile radius of the factory.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “I have a team going door to door at businesses and residences. And we’re firing up the chopper for an overhead look at the streets.” He smirks. “El Cajon will be the last stop on their tour.”

  Sixty-Two

  Tommy sits on a metal chair in an interrogation room in the Newport Beach jail, his head slumped toward his shoulder. The door opens. In walks a wiry man in his late thirties in a tucked-in polo shirt, a badge on his waist, a manila folder in his hand. He sits across from Tommy, no table or other barrier between them. Pulls a recording device from his pocket, flips it on, and sets it on the floor.

  “I’m Detective Stince.”

  “And I’m not your murderer.”

  Stince smirks. “Who was she?”

  “How should I know?”

  “This is how you want to play it?”

  “I have nothing to play.”

  “Her body is with the coroner. He’s taking prints. DNA. We’ll find out who she is soon.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Once we do, if we learn you knew her when she was alive, do you really want to be on record saying you have no idea who she is? You’d establish yourself as a liar. Juries don’t like liars. You want to pretend I just walked in here and we can start over? Try to have a constructive conversation?”

  “The only constructive conversation I can have is one with the FBI. Get me on the phone with Special Agent Jordana Quick.”

  “Ah yes, the FBI. Of course. Officer Huddy filled me in on everything you told him on the way over. You’re working for them as a special consultant. Sounds very top secret. Very…James Bond.”

  “I get one phone call. You get arrested, you get a phone call. Give me mine.”

  “Why bring a lawyer into this if you’re innocent? Why make things so formal? I just want to have a casual conversation. Just want to hear your side of the story.”

  “I don’t want a lawyer. How many times do I have to tell you guys? I want Special Agent Jordana Quick from the FBI’s San Diego field office. Let me talk to her first. Then I’ll talk to you about this bullshit murder.”

  “Bullshit, huh?”

  “You guys screwed up. Got the wrong person. This will go away once you recognize whatever mistake you made. I’m not worried. What I am worried about is the massacre that’ll happen tonight if you don’t listen to me.”

  Stince opens the manila folder, takes out a photo of a red-haired woman in medical scrubs lying along a trail in the woods. “What does this look like?”

  “A dead person.”

  “Very good.”

  “Do you want a lot more dead people tonight?”

  Stince removes a second photo from the folder. “And what does this look like?”

  Tommy’s throat tightens. A close-up of his New York driver’s license on the dirt beside the dead lady.

  “Those dress pants are pretty slick,” Stince says. “Looks like your ID slid right out of your pocket when you were strangling her.”

  Brent. He had Tommy’s driver’s license on him after taking it at the warehouse.

  “This is a setup,” Tommy screams.

  “Haven’t heard that one before.”

  “It’s all part of the same—”

  “What really happened? I’m assuming you were banging her. Let me guess, you two had been fighting. She worked at a hospital or some dentist’s office or something like that. To apologize to her, you surprised her at work at the end of her shift, told her you wanted to do something spontaneous. So you took her out camping to the park. Had something nice in mind. Figured the time alone out in nature would be good for your struggling relationship. But you were wrong. It wasn’t long till she made a comment you didn’t like. Next—”

  “I’ve never seen her before in my life. I—”

  “Next thing you know you’ve got your hands around her throat. You’re just squeezing to shut her up, not trying to kill her. But she got you really pissed this time. After all, you brought her out there as a nice gesture. And you squeezed a little too hard. For a little too long. She scratched at you, got your arm pretty good. But not good enough to stop it. You probably blacked out. Don’t even remember most of it. And when you snapped back, she wasn’t breathing.”

  “None of that happened. It’s…made-up. Where’s the proof?”

  “What’s already been proven is your attempted robbery in Queens. I know all about that. And the two years you just did in Attica. That must’ve hardened you up a bit, huh? Hear it’s vicious over there. I can imagine the things you saw. How you had to live. Turned you aggressive, didn’t it?”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  “Oh. There’s a little taste of it right there. Can’t help yourself when you get that feeling, right? That burning feeling in the chest. Attica may have made you hot-tempered, Dapino. But I don’t think it turned you into a cold-blooded murderer. So you got scared when the girl died. And—”

  “No girl died.”

  “You looked at her photo, said it yourself. Dead.”

  “No girl died because of me.”

  “This one did. Then you hit the road and just drove for a while. Figured the cops might be after you. And decided you needed to find a different car. When you passed by the fire trucks at the hotel, you thought it’d be a good opportunity. Thought you could steal a car in the parking lot with all the confusion going on. Maybe pretend you worked there, in charge of clearing out a path for the trucks, and ask some gullible guest to hand you his keys. Am I close?”

  “No.”

  “Look, things like this happen. When they do, it feels a lot better to cleanse the conscience. I don’t think you’re a bad person. Because of that, you’ll have a long way to go to heal. Why postpone the start? Why not just tell me what happened now and we can get past tonight and on to making you whole again?”

  “Does that sappy crap actually get people to confess to murder?”

  Stince leans back in his chair. “I’m trying to help you here, Dapino.”

  “And I’m trying to help you catch the real killer. The same person trying to frame me.”


  “And whom might that be?”

  “Glen Brent.”

  Stince chuckles. Then erupts into a belly laugh. “Oh, that’s good. While Glen Brent is worrying about evading a statewide manhunt, he decides to take time out of his schedule to frame some guy from Queens for a murder in the middle of the woods. That’s your story?”

  “Yes. Now can I get my call?”

  “It’s my job to document your side of the story. And if you’re going to tell me something ludicrous like Glen Brent framed you, that’s your right, but I need to make sure I capture all the details. You give them to me, without jerking me around, and I’ll give you your phone call.”

  “It’s not yours to give. I get one by law.”

  “And I get to pick when. You keep playing games with me, I’ll put you back in your cell. If you’re really working with the FBI on some time-sensitive matter, do you want to waste the whole night there or do you want to talk to this Agent Fast?”

  “Quick. Agent Quick.”

  “Sure. That one.”

  A pause. “What do you want to know?”

  “For starters, why were you in the parking lot of a hotel you’re not staying at, in the middle of a fire?”

  Tommy could try to lie his way around the question. But Stince would call the hotel to discredit any fabrication. That preppy blond clerk would be happy to assist. As retribution, Stince would delay his conversation with Jordana. Tommy imagines the dozen farmworkers set to die tonight if he doesn’t get on the phone with her soon. Then says, “There was no fire.”

  “Huh. You have my attention.”

  He tells Stince the truth about his visit to the hotel, including how and why he faked the fire.

  “You realize pulling that alarm was against the law?” Stince asks. “A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in county jail, not to mention a steep fine.”

  “I know.”

  “Whether or not the rest of your story is true, I’m definitely charging you with falsely pulling the alarm. Got your confession on tape.”

  “Great. And the sound of me head-butting you is also going to be on tape if you don’t give me my phone call right now.”

  Sixty-Three