The Shadow Box

by Maxim, John R.

  The woods are thick up around that airport. And there's plenty of noise from planes taking off and landing, noise from cars on the parkways. He, Moon, began digging a grave. They left Rasmussen in the trunk where he could hear the digging and hear them discussing what was deep enough.

  By the time Jake opened the trunk, dragged him out, Rasmussen was a gibbering idiot. He saw the grave and squealed. Jake says, “That's right, pal. You're going to die.” Then Jake reaches into the backseat and pulls out a Louisville Slugger. He says, “But it's not going to be quick.”

  Jake tells him he's going to start at the ankles and work up from there. But not the head because after he gets done busting everything below it, they're going to bury him alive. He's going to be lying down the bottom of that grave, he's going to be conscious, and he's going to watch the dirt come in one scoop at a time.

  Rasmussen had already fouled his pants. He starts whimpering and begging, blurts out that the Valium was none of his doing, says this Brunner did it on his own. Jake had never mentioned the Valium.

  Rasmussen tried offering them money. He started at ten thousand. Jake wasn't offended, exactly, but he spends that much on a single congressman. He stood over Rasmussen and took aim. Now the German screamed that he had over a hundred thousand dollars in his office safe and another hundred at home. Jake said this was more like it.

  Jake had figured on at least two safes because he said there'd be two sets of books. The combinations to those safes were what he really wanted. The German blurted them out. Jake waited ten minutes and asked him again, just to make sure he wasn't making them up. Jake took his keys and told him to go sit in the grave and shut up. Jake would keep him company while he, Moon, drove back to New Jersey.

  “You were never going to kill him?'' asked Johnny G.

  “Only if I never got back.”

  ”I would have. Either way.”

  “No, you wouldn't. Julie maybe, but not you.”

  Johnny G. glared at him. “Let's hear the rest,” he said.

  Megan was at Woods Hole, alone on her boat. Michael was in Edgartown. But she could feel him all the same.

  he felt that now, at this moment, he was whistling. That he was happy. And that he was thinking about her. She did not feel that he was wondering. Only thinking.

  She had made a promise to herself. She would not spend another minute of another day worrying about how long this might last. It will end when it ends.

  The day will come, she realized, when being mysterious starts to get a little old. He'll want to know more about her. Her choice will be to lie or to tell him.

  He would probably believe the lie. She felt sure that she could concoct a plausible past history, and then rehearse it, load it with details such as places and dates. She could even, if she concentrated, make it true in her mind. There's a technique for it. It's sort of like that trick she showed Michael. But she knew that in the end she would blow it because she can't stand herself when she lies. She would tell him the truth. And then he'll be gone.

  Not right away, perhaps, but it will never be the same. He's such a gentle man; he'll tell her that what's past is past, and that it doesn't matter. But it does and it will. Michael will start to back away, he'll stop wanting to stay over quite so much, he'll find that running an inn takes more and more of his time. But she won't let that hurt her. As long as she knows it will happen, as long as she expects it and is ready for it, she should be able to handle it. It shouldn't break her heart.

  With luck, however, they'll have the summer. Three months, maybe four, of being with him and of feeling him up against her. And inside her. She blushed and grinned at the thought. She could scarcely believe how brazen she had become.

  The grin faded when a picture of Bronwyn flitted through her mind. She didn't let it stay. She didn't want to see them together or even think about her anymore because one day she might blurt out to Michael what she felt about her. That Bronwyn had never loved him. Michael won't want to know that. He'll think that it's jealousy talking. He might even be right.

  She had also begun to worry about making love with Michael. It was okay for now. Much more than okay. But she couldn't be sure how she might react to it after the weather turns warmer—in August, for example—and she feels his skin getting sweaty.

  What if it takes her back?

  What if she starts thinking of those men who would come into her room at night. And cover her mouth so she couldn't scream. And hold her down. What if she suddenly panics and starts clawing at Michael? She knew that he wouldn't start beating her. Not Michael. He's not like them at all. But what if it just gets him more excited? She would hate it if he liked it when she gets that way.

  September, in any case, will be time to move on. She thought she would sail down to the Yucatan, stay there for a year or two. The Oceanographic Institute will be doing studies for at least that long of the area where the big comet struck. The one that wiped out all the dinosaurs. The ocean floor there is unlike any in the world. It should be very interesting. It should help her forget.

  Megan blinked her eyes. She brought her fingers to her temples.

  Right now, suddenly, she was seeing graves.

  A lot of them.

  She wondered why she was seeing graves.

  Moon got back, he told Johnny G., almost four hours later.

  Rasmussen, he said, was near out of his mind because every crawly thing in those woods must have stopped to visit that hole and try to lap at the blood where Jake had ripped his eyebrow open.

  Moon had the money. He had one set of books from the office and two more from Rasmussen’s house. He had Rasmussen’s bankbooks, checkbooks, and passport. He also had the personnel file of a man named Reinhardt Brunner. He told Jake that he had set fire to the office after searching it, then waited a few blocks away until he could see flames coming through the roof.

  Jake asked, “That took you four hours?”

  “Had some other business. And I burned his house down, too.”

  Jake's eyes went wide. “Tom said he had a wife and kids.”

  ”I looked. No kid ever lived in that house. Only pictures of kids.”

  It turned out later that he'd married some divorced woman just so he could stay in the country. As far as anyone knew, he never saw her again once he got his papers. And it turned out that Brunner had an SS tattoo under his armpit. He'd tried to get it scraped off but they could still make it out.

  “What was that other business?” asked Johnny G.

  ”I left Brunner on Rasmussen's front lawn.”

  “Oh.”

  There wasn't much more to tell. After going through the ledgers, the ones from his house in particular, Jake told Rasmussen that if he wasn't out over the Atlantic by ten the next morning, he wouldn't be leaving at all. Told him Westchester Airport was a good place to start. He could walk there in half an hour. Jake handed him his passport. They left him in the woods.

  Jake got home, waited until nine the next morning, and made a few phone calls. Before noon, the two warehouses had been raided and everything in them seized. The print shop was padlocked and Eagle's bank accounts were frozen. Jake told them it was Tom they had to thank for shutting that whole operation down but, all the same, the deal was he didn't want to see the name Fallon—not any Fallon—in any newspapers, court papers, or even on a thank-you note.

  Jake had waited, as opposed to calling in the middle of the night, because he wanted to give Rasmussen time to get away. Jake didn't want a trial either.

  Those ledgers, come to think on it, are probably still in Jake's basement. He and Doyle spent a few days going over them. He said one of these days he'd get around to burning them. For now, however, he had a brother and a nephew to take care of.

  “Did Rasmussen leave the country?”

  “Guess so.”

  “He went back to Germany. Where you think he worked his way into AdChem?”

  Moon shrugged, then nodded.

  “Does Michael know all this?
”

  “No.”

  “And yet he ends up working for them.”

  “John . . . we've been through this.” His tone carried a warning.

  Johnny G. raised both hands. “Look,” he said quietly. “People do things and they don't know why they do them.”

  He got up from the bench, started pacing. In part to be out of Moon's reach.

  “There was this house I saw once,” said the younger man. “Just a plain everyday house over in Bayside but I couldn't get it out of my mind. This ever happen to you? I kept driving past it. I didn't know why and I still don't.”

  Moon saw where he was headed. Michael might not have known—except for bits and pieces—but maybe he felt. Maybe AdChem pulled at Michael without him ever realizing it. It was possible. But it also didn't matter.

  “Moon . . . why don't you just tell him?”

  Because there's more.

  ”I mean . . . Mike and I used to talk about this. He knew back in high school that his father was no saint.”

  ”I know he did.”

  “You're afraid he'll think less of you and Jake?”

  Moon didn't answer.

  “Or you're scared he'll go looking for Rasmussen.”

  Moon shook his head.

  “What, then?”

  “Scared he'll find him before I do.”

  A grave again. Just one.

  Megan was showering and she saw it in her mind.

  She dismissed it at first because she thought that she knew what it was. It had happened before. She'd had flashbacks to that grave up in Braintree where that man buried two of his victims. She had seen him dig it and she had watched as he filled it. She saw him go back to his car and sit, his shoulders hunched forward, for several minutes before he drove away. She knew that he was masturbating. And there were birds. She kept hearing the sounds of birds.

  She saw him again, or that part of her mind did, when he reached the street where he lived and stopped in the driveway of his house. A woman, a neighbor, had gone out to her mailbox. She greeted the man by name and wished him a happy Thanksgiving. The woman called him Andy. He preferred to be called Andrew. He smiled and waved at the woman. But he called her a cunt in his mind.

  His house was a saltbox, she thought, painted Williamsburg blue with red or maroon shutters. She never quite saw the interior but she knew that he kept it very neat. He lived alone. An older woman had lived there, until not long ago, perhaps his mother. She was dead now, thought Megan, but Megan had no particular sense that this man had harmed her.

  Megan did have one odd notion. She had a sense that this man, this Andrew, became invisible once he stepped through his door. The police asked her what that meant. She had no idea.

  But she saw a little bit more of the neighbor's house, she told them. Perhaps that would help them find this man. The neighbor's mailbox had lavender mums planted at its base. On her door she'd hung a pretty arrangement of autumn leaves and three ears of indian corn. Just inside, on a little table, she kept a silver bowl that still had Halloween candies in it.

  Within hours, the police arrested Andrew Birdsong. They knew him and they didn't. They had questioned him almost a year before this but only as a possible witness to an earlier murder. They'd never had a reason to suspect him.

  There was semen on the front seat of his car. By the end of that day, he confessed to the murders of six women. The murders began after his mother died. Or, as Andrew had put it, after she was taken from him.

  And he had no mirrors in that house. Not one, not even on the bathroom cabinets. That, she supposed, is why he felt invisible.

  The strange thing was that he needn't have confessed. Her visions were useless as evidence. Nothing tied him to the gravesite except a few fibers and the mud on his shoes. He didn't bat an eye when the police said they had a witness who had seen him digging that grave. He only began to fidget when they said that the witness was a woman. The woman, they lied, had been walking her dog in those woods. She had seen everything he did that day. What made Andrew Birdsong fall apart, what humiliated him, was learning that a woman, a hated woman, had caught him jacking off.

  Megan felt a sudden chill.

  This grave, she realized, was different. She had thought they were the same because both were in a forest but the trees around this one still had leaves. This could not be Thanksgiving. This was spring or summer. The chill swept over her. The warmth of the shower could not defeat it.

  Chapter 33

  The snooper, Aaronson, was dead.

  Parker had stood over Yahya, making him try everything he could, made him do mouth to mouth and pump all kinds of crap into Aaronson’s veins. Yahya said it won't help and it didn't. But he'd learned one thing . . . maybe ... so it wasn't a total loss. And Aaronson could still be useful.

  The best way to do this, Parker decided, might be through Doyle's wife. What's her name? Sheila.

  He placed the call from a pay phone at the Vanderbilt entrance to Grand Central. He had to go over to that side of town anyway. There was a bookstore just down the ramp and he needed to do some research.

  “Here's a message for your husband,” he said when she answered. “We have his friend, Arnold. Fuck with us and he's dead. You got that? If he goes near a courthouse, his friend is dead.”

  He thought that she'd gasp and hang up. She just gasped. What the hell, he decided. Might as well use the whole quarter.

  “And Sheila? You're going to be next. We know everything you do, every place you go. Look out your window, Sheila. There's a blue car with a man in it. You know what he likes to do to women? First he fucks them in the—”

  This time she used bad words. She slammed the phone down in his ear.

  Right now, he felt sure, she'll be peeking through the drapes. There's no blue car, no man, but her imagination will supply one. Ten seconds of that and she'll be dialing her husband. The first message was the main thing. Get Doyle to sit on that lawsuit at least until after the weekend. That might be all the time he needs.

  The second message should get Doyle tear-assing back to Brooklyn Heights. He wouldn't bring Hobbs. He'd tell Hobbs to sit tight. It's expecting a lot to think that Haroun might recognize this as an opportunity but we can always hope.

  Parker walked down to the Arcade Book Store, which, he seemed to recall, had a fairly good-sized section on travel. It did. It had nothing on Martha's Vineyard alone but it had six different guides to Cape Cod, all of which talked about the Vineyard and Nantucket. Parker bought two of them plus a Fodor's Guide to Massachusetts. And he bought a good map. The map even said when the ferries ran.

  Back at his office, he started with the town of Vineyard Haven. Aaronson had said it was “some dumb-ass hotel” and almost every listing seemed to fit that description. Names like the Captain Dexter Inn, the Ocean Side Inn, the Lothrop Merry House. No big chains. No Hiltons or Hyatts. Not even a Howard Johnson's.

  He called each one and asked for Michael Fallon. They had no such guest. He might be using a different name so Parker described him, mentioning that his right arm would have been in a cast up until March or April. They had no one who looked like him either.

  Parker kept dialing. With the map in front of him he worked his way around the island counter-clockwise because the towns in that direction seemed more remote. It's why, according to one book, most of the island's celebrities have bought houses down that way.

  Tisbury, West Tisbury, Chilmark, Gay Head. Same result. No Michael Fallon. Parker was getting discouraged. On an island this size, you'd think everyone knows everyone else's business. If he's there, remember, it was winter when he got there. The island's basically shut down when a stranger shows up, arm in a cast, driving a Mercedes with New York plates, possibly traveling with an older black male. How could no one have noticed him?

  About all that was left was Edgartown and it didn't seem promising. Edgartown was apparently the tourist capitol of the island. It seemed to Parker that if you're going to lie low, you lie low.
But he started calling. If he came up empty, he'd go back to square one and start calling bartenders.

  But bingo!!

  Lady at the Harborview said, “Michael? Oh, he's not here. He bought the Taylor House.”

  Bought?

  Parker checked one of his books. There it was. North Water Street. Sea captain's house, antique furnishings, charming legend of laughing children, listed in Haunted Houses of New England.

  He buys a haunted house? What the hell is this? He's looking to commune with Big Jake Fallon?

  Parker called, just to make sure, and sure enough Michael Fallon answered. There was no mistaking the voice. He'd heard it on tape often enough. Parker almost broke the connection but he doubted that Michael would know his voice. He'd know the face, had seen him around Lehman-Stone and at Bronwyn's service. But he wouldn't know the voice.

  “Realize it's a long shot,” said Parker with a twang, “but might you have a vacancy this weekend?” He said he and the wife are from Chicago, wife just loves haunted houses, have been on the road two weeks now touring them all up and down the New England coast. Calling from New Bedford at the moment.