The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

by Carol O'Connell

  “Tell me about the film.”

  “After I tell you, you will wish I hadn’t. I guarantee that. Shall I go on?”

  This was his last chance to be an honest man, the man Edward Slope thought he was dealing with.

  “Yes, go on.”

  “Do you know what a snuff film is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a film of the torture and murder of a human being. A little something for the ultimate film buff—the freak. Most of the victims are children. Any child you see on the streets of New York can be turned into some kind of currency.”

  Slope waved down a passing waiter to order a double scotch. He turned back to Charles. “I can’t do this sober. Are you sure you want to hear all the details?”

  “Quite sure.”

  Not at all sure. I have nightmares enough. No. Go on. I deserve this.

  “When the film opened, the children, a boy and a girl, were asleep on the floor of a cage. It wasn’t a fancy production. It was shot in a warehouse with only one set. I believe the children were drugged. The little boy was just coming out of it. Maybe that’s why they took him first. The little girl wasn’t moving at all. It was Kathy, of course. You knew that.”

  Charles nodded.

  Another lie, and another bad dream due for penance.

  “She could only have been eight years old when the film was made. She’d apparently been on the street for a while by then. She was wearing a grimy T-shirt and jeans that were miles too big for her. I remember her telling me once that she’d always stolen the jeans closest to the door of the shop, so she didn’t always get a great fit.”

  A waiter hovered over the table to deposit a glass, which Edward grabbed up at once. He drank quickly.

  “She was only wearing one shoe, and one foot was bare. Well, they took the boy out of the cage and started to work on him. I made Markowitz turn off the volume, but I can still hear the child screaming. You don’t need to know what they did. But he lived quite a while before they were finished with him. And all the while, the cage was in view to one side of the screen. Kathy never moved, never opened her eyes. I watched her the whole time they were torturing the little boy.”

  Oh, God. No, wait. I’m a visitor in Mallory’s church tonight, and God is not here.

  “Then it was Kathy’s turn.”

  I don’t want to hear any more of this.

  “One of the men opened the door of the cage and lifted her out. She was dead weight in his arms.” Edward ran one hand through his hair, and then drank from the glass as though with a terrible thirst.

  “You know what I remember most vividly? The one small shoe and the little bare foot. Isn’t that absurd? Kathy slept on as he laid her down on the mattress that was bloodied from the body of the little boy. They had just rolled him off to one side. So much blood.”

  Charles watched the rapid movement of Edward’s eyes and realized that the man was watching the film all over again. Edward’s hands covered his face for a moment, and his next words were muffled.

  “Oh Christ! Isn’t it just a wonderful world for children, Charles?”

  Charles began to rise from his chair, leaning toward his dinner companion. Edward put up one hand.

  “No, I’m all right. Sit down, Charles. I’m sorry.”

  And after another moment, the reel in the doctor’s eyes rolled on again.

  “And then the man bent over her. Suddenly, Kathy was awake. Not just coming around from the drug, but wide awake. She’d been shamming sleep—that was obvious—waiting out the murder, picking her moment. And then she was all over the man and all teeth and snarls like an animal. Her little thumbs stabbed at his eyes. That one veered off with both hands to his face. Blood was streaming out between his fingers. You can guess at the damage she did there. And then the cameraman was on her. She closed her mouth on his bare arm and bit off a chunk of the flesh. A chunk of flesh, Charles. And she spat it out on the floor.”

  Charles looked into the shattered lenses of Edward’s eyes. The doctor was in the moment. It was happening all over again.

  “And now the men are screaming, lights are being overturned, the camera is lying on the floor. The closing shot is Kathy hightailing it down a dark hall and away from the light, running like the devil, with one shoe off and one shoe on.”

  He had liked that stupid look of surprise in the moment she realized she would die. Best of all, he liked the look of her when she was dead, all lines of hostility smoothed out. The only good bitch was a dead bitch. Mallory would be no different.

  The two grapes were squashed beneath his thumbs, but slowly, in the delicious destruction of the orbs, the breaking of the skin, flattening of membranous flesh therein, the feel of the cold destroyed tissue. Each was a green eye to him. And now he drew his thumbs back from the cutting board. Staring at them, mashed, split, she was blind to him.

  “She wouldn’t press charges,” said Betty Hyde, setting her coffee mug on the countertop in the Rosens’ kitchen. “I don’t suppose you have any more proof on the beating of his mother? I’ve got a very vague column for the morning edition. My editor won’t let me use any names till we exhume the body—and that’s in the works. I also have a young reporter waiting to ambush the judge outside the building tomorrow. You know the sort of thing . . . ‘Is there any truth to the rumor that you beat your elderly mother to death?’ ”

  “Did Pansy give you anything?”

  “No. Poor Pansy. I’ve never seen that kind of pain up close. She’s gone back to him.”

  “She’s up there now? She’s crazy.”

  “She says he’s always very contrite after he beats her. She’s not afraid of him right now. She thinks she can work this out.”

  “You know he’s going to kill her the next time.”

  “Does she have to file the complaint? Couldn’t you do it? In addition to the humane aspects, I’m thinking of libel laws. An editor won’t touch it without a police report, and there isn’t one.”

  “I didn’t witness the beating. If she says she fell down, the law agrees with her.”

  Mallory’s face was devoid of all expression as she folded her arms and looked down at Betty Hyde. Hyde fought off the startling illusion that Mallory had grown taller in the passage of seconds. Now Mallory leaned down, and Hyde stepped back until she was pressed against the kitchen counter.

  “You’re holding out on me. What have you got on Eric Franz?”

  It was late to be calling on the neighbors. But then, she had taken Eric in on the night Annie died. It was late then, too. Tit for tat, my dear.

  When Eric answered the door, he was pulling his robe closed about his waist, and staring into the air over her left shoulder.

  “Eric, it’s Betty. Can we talk?”

  He stepped back from the door and waved her into the room. It was black until he said, “Oh, sorry,” and pressed the light switch. She shouldn’t have been surprised to see the room unchanged. It had been little over a month since Annie died. Although gone was the bad joke of their framed wedding portrait with crayon cuckold’s horns drawn on the head of his likeness.

  They were hours and bottles into the wine rack when Eric lost control.

  “Are you crazy? Annie would never have stayed with me those last three years if not for the blindness. No, actually it was the insurance money that changed her mind about divorcing me. And then I had the success of the books and the prizes. But if I had been sighted, she would have left me in a minute and taken a large settlement. But she couldn’t leave a blind man, could she, not a socialite like Annie. What would the neighbors think?”

  The latch lowered, and the door opened with a gentle push. He prowled through the dark rooms until he found her. Her long slender body was stretched out on the bed. Her hair had a glow to it, as though she had found a way to trap sunlight, to bring it indoors with her and keep it alive in the night.

  He lay down beside her with animal stealth and rolled onto his back and into sleep, four feet paddling the air, ch
asing mice across his dreams.

  It was the cold metal of the gun against his nose that woke him to the bright light of a lamp. He looked at the tip of the gun, and it was necessary to cross his eyes to do this. Weary and unsteady on the bedding, he rose to his hind legs and began the dance. But she was already gone, having slipped from the bed and into the dark of the next room, preceded by the gun in her hand.

  He thudded down to the floor and padded after her as she searched behind each door. She stopped awhile by the bathroom door. He rubbed his head against one of her bare feet, which did not love him back but pushed him away. Her hand depressed the latch on the door. She pressed on it again and again.

  She looked down at him and whispered, “Are you that smart?” which he, more or less, correctly interpreted as “Good boy,” and he began to purr.

  Now he was being picked up in her arms, luxuriating in the warmth of her skin. And then, he was falling toward the tiles of the bathroom floor. The light went out, the door slammed, and he sat alone in the dark, wondering what he had done wrong this time.

  Mallory, the consummate liar, had barred herself from the poker game for the damage of a lie. How perverse and convoluted was her code of what passed for honor.

  Charles had learned to lie and betray in one night. Oh, wouldn’t Mallory be proud of how far he’d come, how low he’d sunk.

  No, no she wouldn’t. One did not do such damage to people in Mallory’s orbit. But she would never know what he had done. Even if he was in the confession mode, he was bound by Slope to keep silent. A lie of omission.

  As Riker had once explained to him, her history belonged to her alone. She would hate this intrusion, this conspiracy of knowledge. Slope would never discuss this evening with Riker. The lies and betrayal would go unnoticed. And so there were more lies by omission.

  He didn’t have the luxury of barring himself from the poker game. Questions would be asked, she would ferret out the answers, more damage would be done. Once a week, he would be reminded of his crimes, sitting across a card table from Edward Slope.

  And he could not confess to Riker, either, not without the web spreading. He only wished he were a practicing Catholic so he could confess to someone.

  The pattern of his web had become too intricate. Sleep was lost in the tangle of the weave. But finally, sleep did come for him, all in visions of a little girl running in the dark, pursued by things which were darker still and might be spiders. And when she slipped in the blood of his dreams, he snapped awake.

  His mind flooded with music to kill the images and thoughts created by a night of lies, and now his penance was in the room with him. He shut his eyes and tried to end the music. But he could hear the light steps of Amanda’s feet all around his bed.

  “Interesting, isn’t it,” said Amanda. “She was able to pretend sleep while another child was being murdered.”

  No, please. I don’t want to think about that.

  “Oh, Charles, you’ll never stop thinking about that. It wasn’t the reaction you’d expect from a small child, was it?”

  Since when was Mallory predictable?

  He kept his eyes closed, in hopes of minimizing the damage to his mind. He didn’t know how to send her away. Perhaps the delusion would pale without the reinforcement of sight.

  But no. She continued to pace, footsteps growing heavier, waiting on her answer as a solid woman would do.

  Addressing his words to the ceiling, he said, “It wasn’t Mallory’s mother who was killed in the film. You were wrong about that angle.”

  “Was I?” Amanda’s pacing stopped for a moment. “She never moved the entire time a child was being tortured. She played dead.”

  “She might only have been paralyzed with fear. There are not facts to support—”

  “Logic and facts have failed you, Charles. You had a qualified medical examiner as a witness to the film. She was playing dead. Where did she learn that? Maybe she’d had some practice witnessing another bloody murder. Maybe that’s what happened to her mother, and to Justin’s mother.”

  He rolled over to face her, this woman who was not there, yet he kept his eyes closed. “Amanda, this is ludicrous. Justin’s mother died of a heart attack. That’s a fact. Now the aspect of child abuse makes more sense. That’s what Mallory would see in the boy. She would recognize the signs of an abused child. Even Mallory could not divine a murder through the boy’s eyes.”

  Strains of the concerto meandered through his brain. He recited the Greek alphabet in a whisper. The music fled; Amanda remained to pace the floor around his bed. Her footsteps were heavier now. He opened his eyes to faint moonlight and the stronger light of streetlamps pouring through his bedroom window. He turned his face to the opposite wall, where his ultimate nightmare was moving across the wallpaper.

  Amanda had learned to cast a shadow.

  7

  DECEMBER 26

  She had been unsuccessful in her efforts to bully the maid. Perhaps it was true that Betty Hyde was not at home this morning. And neither was Eric Franz answering his telephone. But the judge was in, and so was Harry Kipling.

  She picked up the plastic evidence bag and held it up to the camera to visually record the chain of evidence written on the seal, and then the breaking of the seal. She pulled out the cap gun and set it down on the table in the front room.

  Back in the den, she ran a test of the camera equipment which had just made her visual record of the evidence. On her way to the front door, four gilded wall mirrors caught the swift passing reflection of her T-shirt, shoulder holster and jeans. She was pulling on the new brown cashmere blazer, a twin to the garment Amanda Bosch had been wearing when she died. The tailor had reproduced it exactly. Not that most people would appreciate the detailing.

  She had been tempted to re-create the cigarette burn on the sleeve, but the ghost of Helen Markowitz wouldn’t let her do it. And Helen would have been the first to comment on the bulge the gun made in the line of the blazer. Mallory stopped at the mirror in the foyer, checking the giveaway bulk with a critical eye.

  She called the cat to her, and it came. She snapped her fingers, and the cat made a leap into her arms and nuzzled her neck. She looked back to the mirror. No, it wouldn’t do. The squirming cat wouldn’t hide the bulge of the gun unless she killed it first and pinned it on like a furry corsage.

  She dropped the animal on the floor at her feet, shrugged off her blazer and removed the shoulder holster. She slid the gun into the drawer of the small table beneath the mirror. Putting the coat on again, she snapped her fingers for the cat.

  With no self-respect, no pride, Nose jumped back into her arms.

  She made her way down the hall wondering that doors didn’t open to inquire about the racket of purring. She stopped at the door to Judge Heart’s apartment, and knocked. It was a repeat of last night; the chain had apparently been replaced. The door only opened a crack. The judge was staring at her.

  “I want to see your wife,” said Mallory.

  “Go away.”

  “I could be discreet or not. Up to you. I want to see that she’s all right. I want to see her now!”

  The door closed to the sound of the newly installed chain slipping off the latch. Now the door was opening, and the judge was calling out, “Pansy! Pansy!”

  Pansy Heart entered the room. Her face showed only the damage of the previous night and no fresh marks.

  “Just checking,” Mallory said, turning to go. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at the judge. “I know what you did, and I’m going to get you for it.”

  Judge Heart’s face was in rage-shades of red as the door slammed.

  When she knocked on the next door, one flight up, the Kipling boy opened it. There was no leer on the boy’s face this time. He stepped back to make room for Mallory, and she walked in. Harry Kipling was seated at the table. He looked at the cat and rose quickly to his feet, but not quick enough.

  A springer spaniel was bounding across the carpet and hea
ding for the cat, jaws wide and joy in his eyes.

  The apartment was still, with no current of air or sound to indicate an animate being, not even a cat. Then the quiet of no-one-home was broken by a pair of feet crossing the foyer and dragging a shadow along by the heels.

  The intrusion was short-lived, for the revolver lay in the first drawer opened. The gun metal gleamed for the moments between the drawer and the dark of a bag. Stepping softly, the thief quit the apartment.

  When Mallory slammed the door behind her, the Kipling boy was yelling, “Look what she did to my dog!”

  Mallory returned by way of the stairway. The door to the Rosens’ apartment was open. Could she have been that stupid?

  This time, the cat didn’t cry when she dropped him. He was even prepared for the fall. Nose had grown accustomed to this game of holding and dropping. He padded away, yawning.

  She opened the drawer of the table by the door.

  The drawer was empty; her Smith & Wesson revolver was gone.

  Nothing else had been disturbed. The cap gun lay on the table where she had placed it.

  What now? She couldn’t call in for backup and admit she’d lost the gun. Neither Coffey nor Riker would let her live that one down. A rookie would not have lost her gun.

  A crash came from the direction of the bedroom.

  She passed through the kitchen and slipped a wine bottle into her hand. Now she entered the bedroom. The cat was standing over the remains of a broken lamp. There was no mystery to the breakage. A fringe of the lampshade was tangled in the cat’s paw.