Sky's Shadow

by Ted Galdi

  He watches the red shine of the taillights. The car turns onto the service road. Soon it disappears from sight.

  “What’d he run over?” Jordana asks. She hobbles toward him on her twisted ankle.

  “That lowlife piece of—”

  “Your leg?”

  “I don’t care about my leg. He took off.”

  “We’re alive. We—”

  “He’s getting away.”

  “We got Archer. And we saved the farmworkers.”

  Tommy stands. Pain spikes through him. “We can’t let him leave the country. There could be more.”

  “He’s in a car without tires. No way he’s going to pull anything off tonight.”

  “Not tonight. The future. It’s only a matter of time before he tries something again. Either overseas, or back here after getting plastic surgery and a new identity. I have to stop him.”

  “You have to go to the hospital.”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re losing too much blood. If you don’t get medical attention ASAP, you will die. I’m calling an ambulance.” She reaches for her phone.

  “This isn’t over.”

  “He’s gone, Tommy.”

  “Maybe the keys are in the Prius. Only two of its tires are shot. We can go after him in that. Catch up to him.”

  “We have no idea what direction he’ll turn when he gets off the farm. And his keys are probably on him.”

  “Or Archer.”

  “I think I remember Brent get out from the driver’s side after they pulled up.”

  Tommy takes an excruciating step. “It’s worth checking the car, Archer’s pockets.”

  Seventy-One

  Glen listens to the Blazer’s hubcaps grind against pavement. He rolls along a quiet rural road about a mile from the farm. He tears off his mask, plucks from his hip a walkie-talkie paired with one on Bo. Says into it, “I’m sorry Bo. I didn’t…you stopped moving and I thought you were gone. If you’re still alive and you can hear this…Goddammit, please know I’m sorry. Respond. Tell me. I’ll…do something. I had a chance to get out and took it. If I had a sign you were alive, I would’ve stayed. You know that. I just…I’m sorry.”

  He wipes a tear from his eye. Then calls Hawks. No answer. He tries Cora. No answer. He dials the number of his mother. The line is disconnected. He forgot for a moment she’s been dead seven years.

  The Mexican border is about twenty miles away. These deflated tires likely won’t make it that far. He’ll drive south until they give, abandon the car, and hike into Mexico through a wilderness pass. Under the thick treetops of this region, he’ll have a legitimate shot to cross out of the US without a chopper spotting him.

  He turns on the car radio. Blondie’s “Dreaming” plays from the speakers. He sings along, “You asked me what’s my pleasure. A movie or a measure? I’ll have a cup of tea and tell you of my…dreaming. Dreaming is free. Dreaming—”

  A bullet rips through the windshield, striking the passenger’s headrest. He stomps the brake. Ducks. A red light spins against the night. A cop car.

  “Come out with your hands in the air,” a male voice says from a megaphone.

  Glen glances out the windshield. A cruiser blocks the road, two policemen leaning over the hood aiming guns at him.

  He assesses his options, the Blondie song still playing. He could flip the car around, try to lose them on the road. No. His torn tires. They’d catch up to him. A more direct approach is necessary.

  He reaches to his ankle, unclips the holster holding a pistol he brought in case of an emergency. He could crawl out of the car, take cover behind it, and blast at the cops. But quite a bit of back-and-forth fire may be needed to take out both of them. By that time, another couple cruisers are sure to show up.

  Staying low, his eyes just above the dashboard, he steps on the gas. And rockets toward the cop car, challenging the two policemen to a game of chicken.

  The officers fire. The Blazer’s windshield shatters. Glass hits Glen’s face. But their bullets miss. His foot remains on the gas. The cops dive out of the way, one rolling toward the front of the squad car, the other the rear.

  Glen twists the wheel to the right and pounds the brake, the hubcaps screeching. He points his pistol out the window, shoots one cop in the forehead.

  On his knees, the other officer unloads on Glen. He ducks. Then fires a close-range round at the officer’s mouth. The bullet explodes out the back of his neck.

  “You Goddamn bastards,” Glen shouts at the corpses. Then laughs at the sky. He drives around the police car, continues along the road.

  A crackle from his walkie-talkie. Bo’s voice, it says, “I passed out for a minute there, but I’m alive. Come back and get me.”

  “Bo. My God. Yes, yes, of course. Yes.” He spins the wheel into a U-turn and drives the way he came. “I just ran into a couple cops. Any there yet?”

  “Not yet. But they will be soon. So hurry up.”

  “I am. What about Dapino and the FBI girl? They still there?”

  “They searched my pockets. I think they were looking to take off in our car. I played dead, then grabbed my rifle. Killed them both.”

  “Perfect. Be right there.”

  Soon Glen turns back onto Darrington Farm. He rides the service road as fast as the wheels allow. The barrack comes into view behind trees. He cuts through them. Stops near the building, says into the walkie-talkie, “I’m here. You hiding inside?”

  “Yeah. Still a little weak in the legs from the bullet. You mind giving me a hand walking to the car?”

  “No problem. One sec.” Glen puts the Blazer in park, steps out, and approaches the barrack’s dark doorway. A fist hurtles through the shadows and drills him in the face. He crashes onto his back.

  Standing above him is Dapino.

  “Don’t move,” the FBI girl says, stepping out behind him.

  Glen gapes up at this surreal sight for a moment, then tries to stand. But he’s stopped, the FBI girl whacking him in the forehead with the butt of Bo’s rifle. His surroundings oscillate. She flips him over, secures his hands behind his back with a zip-tie.

  Dapino kneels in front of him, blood dripping from his torso. Glen looks into his fading eyes, says, “What is this? Where’s Bo? What’s happening?”

  “You were right about him,” Dapino says. The sound of police sirens in the distance. “He is dead. We heard your voice coming from his hip. Dragged him inside. And I took this.” He reveals a walkie-talkie in his hand, puts on a voice identical to Bo’s, and says, “Bet you didn’t think it’d end like this, brother.”

  Dapino’s eyes lose their last flicker of energy. Then close. He crumbles onto his back next to Glen.

  “Tommy,” the FBI girl says. She shakes him. He doesn’t wake up.

  Seventy-Two

  Tommy lies unconscious on a stretcher in an ambulance. Jordana kneels at his side, holding his hand. A paramedic adjusts the breathing apparatus over his face, then says to her, “Please give us some space ma’am.”

  Jordana lets go of Tommy’s hand and sits on a seat against the ambulance wall. She stares at his eyes, hoping they open. They don’t.

  The ambulance drives through the farm town for about twenty minutes. Then heads into a small city, passes the closed downtown storefronts, and arrives at a hospital. The EMTs pull Tommy’s gurney outside, wheel it through the ER’s double doors, and turn it out of sight.

  Jordana steps out of the ambulance, limps on her twisted ankle through the hospital’s main entrance, and approaches the front desk. The receptionist, a sixtyish lady with a hair bun, peeks at her “FBI” bulletproof vest with an uneasy expression, then says, “Hello there. Is everything…all right?”

  Jordana explains she’s not here for law-enforcement reasons, but visiting a patient named Dapino. The receptionist directs her to a waiting room. Jordana soon comes up on a cluster of chairs that looks familiar to the one in Mira Mesa where she heard the news of Clyde’s death.


  Taking a deep breath, she sinks into a seat. Past four AM, the hospital is quiet other than the sporadic beep of unseen medical machinery down the corridor. She folds her arms, drops her head back, and waits.

  “Are you a superhero?” a youthful voice asks.

  Jordana looks toward a little girl, about six. She didn’t even notice anyone else in here. “I’m a…regular person. Why?”

  “My daddy says your shirt can stop bullets.”

  Jordana glances at the room’s corner. A mid-thirties man smiles. “She’s a curious kid. Sorry.”

  “No,” Jordana says. “It’s all right.” She turns to the girl. “My shirt can stop bullets. So maybe it’s a little magic. But I’m not.”

  “Why do you wear a shirt like that?”

  “So I don’t get hurt.”

  “My mommy got hurt tonight. She went to the bathroom in the dark and fell and broke her leg. My daddy took me here with him because I’m not allowed to be at the house by myself.”

  “I hope your mommy is going to be all right.”

  “If I wear a shirt like yours, do you think I could stay home by myself?”

  “Why…why do you think that?”

  “Then nobody can hurt me.”

  “No. You don’t want to be alone. It’s not fun to be alone.”

  “Why do people try to shoot bullets at you?”

  “They don’t very often.”

  “Why do they sometimes?”

  “It’s part of my job.”

  “My mommy has a job. She makes commercials on TV. And my daddy draws pictures they turn into engines for cars.”

  “Wow. Cool.”

  “Why do people shoot you for your job?”

  “I…not everyone is as nice as you. Some people just aren’t very nice.”

  “Why not?”

  “I…don’t really know.”

  “I think I know.”

  Jordana chuckles. “Yeah? Why?”

  “They’re mad because they think God made them a bad way.”

  A nurse enters. Tells the man he can see his wife. The little girl waves at Jordana. She waves back. Her father and her disappear through a doorway.

  A couple hours pass, during which the black of night out the overhead atrium glass lightens with streaks of a new day.

  “Hello,” a different nurse says.

  Jordana, her heart speeding, glances at her. “Yes?”

  “Reception mentioned you’re here for Mister Dapino.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you his spouse?”

  “No.”

  “Other type of relative?”

  “No.”

  “Technically I’m not supposed to let you into the recovery room.” A pause. “But I guess I can make an exception for a few minutes.”

  Jordana stands. “Appreciate it.”

  “His shin was severely broken. His collarbone too. We put his leg in a cast, gave him a splint for his shoulder. The bullet tore up muscle in his abdomen. But didn’t hit anything vital. He did lose a significant amount of blood. A little bit more and it could’ve been…too much. But we controlled it. And put him on an IV of fluids. He’s finally responsive.”

  “So…he’ll be…all right?”

  “It’ll take him a few weeks to heal. But yeah, he’ll be all right.” She leads Jordana along a hallway, turns a corner, and points at a cracked door. “He’s in there.” With a smile, the nurse leaves.

  Jordana steps inside. Tommy, in a hospital gown, stands on a crutch with his back to her, an IV dispenser beside him, a window in front of him. She walks to his side. His eyes acknowledge her, then turn back to the window.

  He gazes up at the sky, filled with the reds and purples and oranges of the morning. She recalls a comment he made on her balcony yesterday, about the image of the black smoke he’d see if he looked at the sky. His eyes don’t flinch. She supposes he doesn’t see the smoke anymore.

  His head turns to her. He kisses her.

  Seventy-Three

  A man in a hairnet plops a wad of gooey wheat onto Glen’s tray in the mess hall of a county jail. Glen approaches the rows of stainless-steel tables, at them packs of loud inmates in the same jack-o’-lantern-colored uniform as him.

  He sits on a bench by himself. And has a sip of milk, its scent in his nose not putrid but unpleasant, as if past expiration a day or so. Another inmate sits next to him, on the inside of his light-brown arm a tattoo of a clown face, a common emblem of Mexican gangs. Glen wonders if Los Hombres del Vacio put out a hit for him in here.

  “Doctor Brent,” a voice says.

  Glen looks across the table at a thirtyish man. White, shaved head, veins running down his arms the circumference of pens.

  “You’re Glen Brent, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Fancy doctor. You probably never been in the clink before this, huh?”

  “Excuse me, but have we met? Do I…know you?”

  “You know me, yeah. Know all about me. My past, what happened to me, what didn’t, all the good, all the bad. And you can judge it. All of it. Right Doctor Brent?”

  “I’m sorry. I just…I’m not sure what you’re asking me.”

  “You really don’t recognize me? Look at me. Look at me.”

  Glen offers him a once-over. “I apologize.”

  “Let me help you, doc.” He straightens his arm, nods down at the juncture between his forearm and bicep. “That’s all you need to see. The windows into my soul.”

  Glen notices three light-pink scars. Which look like track marks from heroin needles.

  “I struggled with that shit since I was fourteen,” the inmate says. “Screwed up my life, put me in here. I’m clean now. But other people never got that chance. Ill people living on the streets who needed medical help.” A pause. “The doctor saw them, all right.” He spits in Glen’s tray. “Enjoy your breakfast.” And joins his friends at another table. They laugh.

  After breakfast, Glen wanders out of the mess hall with an empty stomach. In the procession of inmates ahead of him, a large percentage appear Latino, and another large percentage have the young-but-weathered look of drug addicts. A shanking threat from both groups will lurk around everyday corners for the rest of his life. Every meal. Every shower. Every trip to the prison gym.

  He returns to his cell, sits on his uncomfortable mattress. At the foot is a paperback copy of the eighth installment of the Prince Troy fantasy series he got from the jailhouse library. He gazes at two photos he taped on the wall, the first of him and Cora on their honeymoon in Hawaii, the second a sonogram of Jade.

  His cellmate, a brawny biker, climbs off the top bunk and pisses in the toilet. He glimpses the Hawaii photo. “Great tits.”

  “That’s my wife.”

  “Word of prison advice, don’t hang up a picture of a hot piece of ass if you don’t want guys looking at it. Plus, she ain’t your wife anymore.”

  “Is too.”

  The biker laughs. “Until your lawyer hands you the divorce papers. Any day now. I’ve seen it happen to a million guys.”

  “She loves me.”

  “Maybe she used to. Not anymore. Good luck ever seeing that kid after she pops it out. She’ll probably make up some story about who the real father is. Some sea explorer who died trying to rescue dolphins in the ocean or some shit.”

  “Cora won’t do that. She has to bring her in to visit. At least…holidays, maybe my birthday.”

  “No she don’t. Why would she want to bring her little girl around you? You’re insane.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Hell are you talking about? If I were you I’d embrace that. An insanity plea is the only thing that’ll keep you from getting the needle for federal charges.”

  “My lawyer said the same thing. But I told him no. Because I’m not crazy.”

  “According to the media, you’re responsible for over twenty bodies.”

  “In hindsight I should’ve…went about things a different way. The head of
my hospital had political connections. If I asked him to get me a meeting with a senator, he would’ve done it. We could’ve worked together to come up with a bill to help soldiers who needed transplants. I would’ve made a good spokesperson. Could’ve gone around the country drumming up support for it. Speeches, appearances, online campaigns. But I was just too…fed up to do it that way. That makes me rash. Fine. Not crazy.”

  “You killed a twelve-year-old kid. For no reason.”

  “Oh. That. Yes…yes I did do that.”

  “Sane people don’t pull that crap.”

  “Define sane.”

  “I’m an eighth-grade dropout, man. I don’t want to get into some battle of words with a guy like you. You’re nuts. The whole country knows it. I’m trying to give you a tip, not make you feel like shit about yourself. Have your lawyer run with the insanity thing.”

  “I asked him the same question. Asked him to define sane. You know what he said a sane person is?”

  “What?”

  “Someone who has empathy.”

  “What’s that mean again?”

  “It means you can identify with other people. Understand if they’re in pain.”

  “Makes sense I guess.”

  “So I told him I’m the sanest person in the world then. Because I killed the twelve-year-old boy for that very reason.”

  “What?”

  “That day I thought I lost my wife and daughter. It hurt so much that…I just wanted someone else to feel what I felt. Every part of my body was vibrating with this compulsion. To not be…alone in that state. The boy’s mother. I took her husband and son from her. I knew how it’d make her feel. Exactly how it’d make her feel. I was acting out of empathy. Pure empathy. Nothing but it.”

  “That shit sounds pretty insane to me.”

  “That’s a contradiction.”

  “Whatever. I already told you I don’t want to get into a big thing over it.”

  “This is my life we’re talking about. It’s a big thing to me. You’re telling me to declare myself insane. I’m not insane.”

  “You tell me then. If you’re not crazy, who is? If it’s not that empathy shit that does it, what does?”