In Shadows

by Chandler McGrew

  He leaned closer to the open window, and anyone who passed across the backyard would have been certain he was staring up at the mountains. His nostrils flared with each soft inhalation. The sense that something was broken in the valley came over him again, and he knew that whatever it was it was getting worse. And even without eyes or ears, Pierce knew better than anyone that a real storm was blowing in high overhead.

  But other than the constant dripping on his hands, the day below was still as death.

  ULES WATCHED THE OLD WOMAN as she waddled around the apartment, tossing some kind of clear liquid here, pouring shots of rum into tiny porcelain bowls in front of strange conglomerations of glass and grass and feathers and beads and God knew what all else. He’d heard of places like this, but he’d never expected to be living in one. Unlike Paco, Jules didn’t have a superstitious bone in his massive body. But he had to admit that the crazy old bitch made him nervous.

  He’d developed the knack of sleeping with one eye open during his days in the pen, and last night he’d gotten up several times, but she was always right where he’d left her, sitting against a thick pile of pillows in her bed. Not once—although he crept to the door silent as any mouse—had she been asleep. She was always wide-eyed, staring at him blankly like a corpse. The first time he’d seen her like that he thought maybe she was a corpse. But when he waved a hand in front of her face she blinked at him with those same dead eyes, and ice had slid down his spine.

  He watched her now like a rabbit observing a circling hawk. When the phone rang he jerked, knocking over the cold coffee on the counter beside him. Memere stared at him innocently, then glanced at the phone.

  “Answer it,” he said. “But make it good. Unless you want more of what you got from Jimmy.”

  Memere placed the receiver on her shoulder. “Oui?” she said.

  She frowned, holding the phone at arm’s length, as though it had a bad odor. “It’s for you,” she said.

  “Yeah?” said Jules, cradling the phone against his neck but not taking his eyes off of Memere. “Oh, boss! Yeah, no problem. She’s not going anywhere. You and Paco find the bastards?”

  He saw the old woman’s ears prick up, but he didn’t give a shit. Let her listen. Time for her to get a little nervous.

  “You mean you didn’t take off till this morning?”

  The voice in his ear grew strident.

  “How long are you gonna be stuck in D.C.?”

  He nodded as the voice on the other end became downright threatening. When Jimmy was irritated it was best to just try to carry on a normal conversation with him as though he weren’t calling you a stupid sack of shit.

  “I’ll take care of it, boss. You don’t have to worry. But the old bitch is a little weird. Yeah. Paco was right about that.” He listened and laughed. But after he stared at Memere for a moment his voice became more somber. “I don’t know if she’s putting a spell on me or not . . . No. I was just kidding. I’m okay. I can handle her.”

  He nodded again and hung up the phone.

  “Spells!” cackled Memere. She took a tiny sip from the bottle of rum, then poured some into a cup and disappeared into the altar room again.

  Jules followed.

  She’d cleaned up all the glass, but one of the dolls had a shattered face, and its base had been crudely pasted back together with clear silicone. The cups Paco had broken had all been replaced, and if any of the feather and cloth contraptions had been wrecked Jules didn’t think he’d have been able to tell. The whole fucking assortment was just too over the top for him to figure out.

  The old bitch leaned over one of the little altars, lighting a candle and pouring more of the rum. The spirits seemed to be a bunch of drunks. She muttered to herself and peeked over her shoulder at Jules, and her dark eyes and toothy grin sent his creep factor up a couple of notches each time she did. He shook his shoulders and cursed under his breath. No way the old slut was getting to him with a bunch of hoodoo.

  “You boss having trouble now, hey?” she said.

  Jules shook his head, startled. “No trouble.”

  “No? Why for he in D.C. and not up to Maine by now?”

  “The plane had a problem. They had to divert.”

  She smiled knowingly. “He gwine have a lot more trouble than you t’ink.”

  “Bullshit,” said Jules. “You telling me you caused the plane to break down?”

  Memere shrugged. “I don’t cause nuttin’. Iwas be causin’ whatever they likin’.”

  “What the fuck are Iwas?”

  “Spirits!” said Memere, swirling her hands around in the air as though catching some of the invisible deities with her nimble fingers.

  Jules sighed loudly. “You’re just a crazy old bitch. Nobody can fuck with a jumbo jet, and your mumbo jumbo sure as hell can’t do it.”

  “You don’ believe?”

  “Do I sound like I believe?”

  Memere cocked her head and studied him. “You sure look like you believe.”

  In exasperation he ripped one of the ugly fucking pictures off the wall, ready to hurl it to the floor. Memere stood calmly, waiting. When she shook her head he tensed, wanting to hear the glass shatter, to see the cheap wood frame crumble, to enjoy the fear on her face. But he knew she’d look just as she did now. Like a crazy old woman.

  “You didn’t do anything!” he said, tossing the picture onto the carpet but not hard enough to break the glass.

  “I tole you dat,” she said, smirking.

  AKE SAT ON PAM’S FRONT PORCH sipping coffee and staring out into the gray half-light. The drizzle draping the valley all night had turned to a steady rain. Tree limbs sagged and dripped, and the incessant, low-level thrumming was as irritating as a fingernail tapping at the back of his neck. He could feel the bloodred stone he’d ripped from José Torrio’s throat nestled in his pants pocket. He knew the bauble should have been turned in as evidence. But as far as he was concerned the Torrio situation had gotten personal when José tried to kill him, and for some reason the stone was more than a reminder of the deadly night on the bay. Whenever he touched it he felt a strange tingling along his skin, as though the jewel were electrified. And he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that he’d had the same feeling before.

  He hadn’t slept at all. At first he kept reliving the kid’s death. He went over and over the car chase, trying to find some way he could have saved the boy. Then images of Albert’s mangled corpse began to plague him. By dawn he had begun envisioning the old man sitting up on the autopsy table, the Y incision gaping, his face reproachful.

  But for what? What was he supposed to do?

  Something. Anything.

  The shoe print was more confusing than enlightening because it pointed to a reasonable explanation for Albert’s death. But a nasty little voice kept telling him that all the violence that had happened was related. That the craziness on the beach was old demons coming back to haunt him, no matter how he tried to deny it. But even if there was a connection between Albert’s death and the men on the beach, between his mother’s murder over twenty years before and the hitchhiker’s death, between all of that and a kid who stole a car, what was he supposed to do about it? A feeling of dread cloaked him the way the rain cloaked the valley.

  The screen door slammed, and Pam dropped into the chair beside him. When her arm slipped through his he turned toward her, and she smiled. Her touch brought back good memories, ones he wanted to hold on to. He wished that they could be the only memories.

  “It’s good to have you back,” she said.

  “It’s good to be back.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Good and bad. It’s kind of hard to explain everything I’m feeling. How was Albert the last few years?”

  “He always defended your leaving,” she said, scrunching her face. “He said you did what you had to do.”

  The ache in Jake’s heart sank a little deeper.

  “Jake, your mother’s death was years ag
o. You were barely ten, and what you saw . . . what you experienced . . . is it any wonder your memories would be all screwed up? You’re a cop. You must know what can happen to a kid’s mind in a situation like that. You don’t believe that whoever left that shoe print also murdered your mother two decades ago, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jake, shaking his head. “Cramer told you what happened on the beach in Galveston?”

  She nodded. “Surely you don’t think that had anything to do with your family. There must be a reasonable explanation.”

  “I keep searching for one.”

  They sat in silence for a long time, before Pam spoke again.

  “Virgil called. The kid in the car . . . It was Dary Murphy.”

  “Not Karen and Bert—”

  She nodded. “Their son.”

  Karen and Bert Murphy lived just up the road. Jake had graduated with Bert. Played football and baseball with him.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  She squeezed him tighter. “Virgil said they both took it hard. He ran into Ernie and Ernie went to see them. I’m going to call around and let everyone know so they can help out.”

  He nodded.

  “Cramer seems like a real nice guy,” she said, after a moment.

  “The best.”

  “You never had a lot of friends. Even when you were little you were pretty self-contained. But the people who loved you knew you were worth loving.”

  That pushed the ache to its limits. Jake closed his eyes, fighting back tears, but one slipped down his cheek anyway.

  “It’s gonna be all right, Jake Crowley,” promised Pam, hugging him. “You’re home now. And it’s gonna be all right.”

  He wanted to believe that. With all his heart he wanted to believe it. But in the back of his head he heard his mother.

  Run away, Jake. Run away.

  When the screen door creaked again Jake opened his eyes. Cramer waited until Pam disappeared inside before dropping into the empty chair.

  “Nice rainy morning,” said Cramer, staring pensively into his cup, stirring the hot brew with his finger.

  Jake smiled. “No chicory, right?”

  Cramer shrugged. “Wouldn’t expect Yankees to understand anything about coffee. You know, I’m still trying to reason a few things out.”

  Jake nodded, waiting.

  “You didn’t leave a good-looking woman like Mandi because of a killing that happened when you were a kid. And it wasn’t another woman. So it had to be something bad, real bad.”

  “We Crowleys are cursed,” said Jake, grimacing. “Sooner or later someone will tell you all about it.”

  “Why not you?”

  Jake stared into the rain, the old ache suddenly crashing down on him full force. “I loved Mandi,” he blurted, shaking his head. “I loved her so much.”

  “You still do,” said Cramer quietly.

  “Yeah,” he admitted, at last.

  “So, if you’re not here to rekindle that old flame, and your buddy Virgil is on the case and such a great cop, then why are we here? You’ve paid your respects.”

  “I guess I came back to see if there really could be any link between my mother’s death and Albert’s murder. Are you satisfied?”

  Cramer shrugged. “Not until you tell me how the hell there could be.”

  Jake sighed. “Because the style of the killings were so much alike.”

  “Twenty-some-odd years ago a woman gets beaten to death here, and you think that ties them together? You’re a better cop than that. Don’t bullshit your partner. What is it you’re afraid of? What is this Crowley curse?”

  “I’ve been told all my life that it’s a myth,” said Jake, shaking his head. “I tried to tell myself that. Whether it is or not, I thought that I’d finally escaped it.”

  “Okay, then, we’ll treat it as a myth for now. In that case there’s a real, live killer around here. You ready to go back to work?”

  “Virgil told us not to.”

  “And you think I listen to county sheriffs? Didn’t seem to bother you at Albert’s.”

  Jake shrugged. “If the chief finds out we’re butting into someone else’s case up here it’ll be our asses.”

  Cramer stared around at the dull green foliage surrounding the house. “The chief don’t scare me.”

  Jake smirked. “What exactly does scare you?”

  “Baggage,” said Cramer, standing and striding out into the rain.

  IERCE PLACED THE CLOTHES HE’D CHOSEN for the day onhis dresser and turned to take his mother’s hand when she tapped him on the shoulder.

  What do you want for breakfast? Mandi signed into his palm.

  You home?

  Saturday!

  Pierce smiled and asked for pancakes.

  By the time the first batch of silver dollars were stacked on a platter, Pierce was sitting at the table. Mandi placed a glass of milk near his hand, waited until he found it, and filled his plate with pancakes. He dug in heartily, barely catching the syrup off his chin with a napkin.

  “You’ve got an appetite this morning,” she said, smiling.

  Even with the defects nature and man had given him, even though he remained small for his thirteen years, he was still perfect in her eyes. But she wondered for the millionth time if there wasn’t more she could do for him. Maybe she had been wrong to shelter him so closely. He had no friends his own age. He had been forced to grow up in the company of adults. But he never seemed to mind.

  She sipped her coffee, glancing out the window into the woods. What depressing weather. If the steady rain kept up, the grass would be over their heads before she could mow it again. She needed something to keep her busy. When she and Pierce had finished their breakfast she tapped his hand, and he offered her his palm again.

  Your plans? she signed.

  Tinkering. What’s up?

  I’m going to clean house. Then later I thought we’d drive to Arcos for ice cream.

  Pierce smiled and nodded vigorously.

  All right, signed Mandi. Keep yourself occupied for a while.

  Pierce deposited his plate and glass in the sink and turned on the water, but Mandi signed to him.

  It’s all right. I’ll do them.

  As he pattered away down the hall she washed the dishes in silence. It was always silent in the house.

  She shook her head and laughed at herself. It wasn’t any quieter now than it had ever been. If Rich was here right now he’d be cleaning one of his guns or passed out drunk. Rich had never been a husband. He’d been a boarder with a hard-on. What in the world had she been thinking?

  She’d been thinking that her son needed a father, and she’d panicked. That was what. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. At least she’d gotten rid of Rich. But she should have gotten the restraining order before Pierce got hurt.

  Not that it would have helped.

  She dried the dishes, put them away, and wiped the table and stove clean. Then she slipped into Pierce’s room and stripped his bed while he sat at his work table, his fingers tickling a small circuit board. She straightened his braille magazines, dusted his dresser, and then brought the vacuum from the hall closet. When she turned on the machine Pierce sensed the vibration and turned for just a moment, then went back to work.

  She vacuumed the bedroom, then the kitchen, the living room, and the downstairs bath. Then she dragged the heavy canister up into her sleeping loft. Resting the machine against the wall, she turned and looked down the stairs at the wide gray spot on the tired old beige carpet, just as she had a million times in the past, and just as she had each time, she felt the heat surging in her chest.

  Ernie had repaired the broken spindle on the rail. Now she had to count them in order to remember which one had dislocated Pierce’s shoulder. But the bloodstain was still there at the foot of the stairs. She had knelt for hours, scrubbing until her fingers were raw and tears soaked the carpet along with the soapy water. She’d refused to replace the rug—knowing Pierce couldn
’t see it—as a reminder to herself that she was her son’s only protection. Sometimes she wished that Rich would come back one last time, that she could somehow induce him to stand on the landing, right where she was standing, so she could slip up behind him and give him a good push. Pierce seemed able to forgive, or at least forget.

  She never could.

  She plugged in the vacuum and went at the floor hard, banging the powerhead against the wall and the old iron bedstead. Finally, when the heat in her breast became unbearable, when she pictured herself standing over Rich’s broken corpse, she dropped to her knees beside the bed and flipped off the vacuum. Steepling her fingers, she bowed her head and prayed.

  “Dear God, dear sweet Jesus. Please forgive me . . .”

  ARBARA STEARN—that was her stage name, her real name was Ethel Mundy, and practically everyone in Crowley knew it—checked her coif in the full-length mirror beside her bed one last time and adjusted her silk blouse. The single strand of pearls she wore this morning was real, but the diamond brooch was as false as her teeth. Her corgi, Oswald, lay like another fat throw pillow on the bed.

  “Mama will be back soon, dear,” she said, stroking the dog’s head before kissing its wet snout. “I have to run some errands. You’ll be good, won’t you, Sweetums?”

  The dog gave her a bored look, and she kissed him again. When she glanced out across her side porch where the lawn sloped down to the creek, thick rain blanketed the air and rivulets of water streamed through the grass, disappearing into the trees. Nasty weather. Not like Hollywood.

  The thought of California still saddened her. Her career had been real enough, regardless of what the local hicks wanted to believe. She’d been a star. Well, not a big star, but she was in the movies right enough. And she’d married a producer. She only wished that Stephan had been a little more successful and not so attracted to Las Vegas showgirls and the stock market. When he suffered his fatal heart attack he’d left her barely enough money to fix up her mother’s old house and pay the bills. At least she’d never had to work nine to five like the hoi polloi.