SHADOWS OF DEATH: Death Comes with Fury (and Dark Humor) To a Small Town South of Chicago

by Carl S. Plumer

  The small town of Kantaby, population 3,624, was having a kind of an epidemic. Lots of diseases—strange ones, too. Not just colds, the flu, and the usual meningitis breakouts. But the strange ones, the rare ones. Like West Nile disease, Malaria, Tuberculosis, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (commonly known as COPD), rabies, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (a rare neurodegenerative disease that rapidly, progressively, and severely affects the brain and eventually leads to the development of many tiny holes in the brain), and Lupus. And Chagas, a disease caused by a parasite transmitted via the Triatoma bug (also known as the “kissing bug”).

  And no one appeared to be recovering.

  While some of the diseases and conditions were, by definition incurable, doctors were certain they could at least treat the patient and give them a modicum of normality, such as can be done with some HIV/AIDS patients. But nothing worked on the folks in Kantaby, and the problem was spreading. Town after town in the suburb south of Chicago succumbed. Patients were diagnosed with unusual diseases; died from atypical causes.

  Those who managed to escape disease and viral conditions deteriorated in other unusual ways, in increasing numbers. A woman parking her car on a normal day in an ordinary downtown parking garage died when she was crushed to death by an SUV that, through a defect in the cement, fell through from the floor above her. Others accidentally hung, stabbed, or shot themselves to death.

  Yes, these things happen. But not in these numbers. And not with this frequency. And certainly not in adjoining houses in the same neighborhoods.

  “We should get walking, I suppose,” Conner whispered, defeated by all the insane action of the night as well as by the loss of Ricky Martin. “We need a good night’s sleep. And a new plan. I don’t think we can devise a new plan without sleep.”

  “My mom and dad are going to be worried to hell,” Flower said. “Not sure they’re going to even let me sleep.”

  “Yeah, my mom is going to be plain pissed,” Almira added. “She’s already a mess because of everything. Almost no sense in going home, really.”

  For a few minutes, they strolled along in silence.

  Rush hour traffic would start soon; perhaps they might be lucky enough to get a ride home or at least downtown, by some well-meaning persons. But no traffic yet, as the sun had barely popped up.

  They trudged along on the shoulder of the interstate. No cars rolling by. Not even cops to investigate the horrendous wreck of the police cruiser and Ricky’s car. Not even to witness the Shadow Being From Hell, if the thing should ever return.

  Which it did.

  Right then.

  A Greyhound bus, carrying interstate travelers, sped by them, on the opposite side of the highway, going in the opposite direction.

  A shadow swept by, as if a large plane was passing overhead.

  Four of the wheels on the left side of the bus blew out simultaneously with such force that the bus overturned, skidding down the highway at ninety miles per hour, sparks flying where the metal sides of the bus scraped along the asphalt.

  Inside, riders had fallen against the low side of the bus and others had fallen a top them. These passengers were bloody, some unconscious, others screaming, crying. The driver was most likely dead, based on the fact that the stick shift had pierced his chest and was now sticking out of his back, blood spraying like a lawn hose.

  The sparks near the gas tank, which had ruptured during the crash, danced dangerously near the spilling gasoline. The gas soaked the ground as the bus zigzagged on its side down the highway.

  Conner observed, frozen, aghast. Before he could move, do anything, say anything, the bus was in flames. This was followed by a tremendously loud boom. Almira and Flower stood at his side, equally frozen as metal parts flew through the air as if shot from a cannon. Flower, Almira, and Conner all averted their eyes and covered their heads.

  The three ran for cover in the brush along the highway. Once again helpless, defenseless, and back in the bushes.

  “Did you see that?!” Conner hollered.

  “How could I not?” Flower yelled.

  “No, not the crash. I mean the shadow, that shadow that came by. Right before the accident.”

  “I didn’t see anything like that,” Flower said.

  “I did,” said Almira. “I saw the fuckin’ thing.”

  “Like it’s a killing shadow,” Conner said, eyes wide. “A Shadow of Death, right?”

  “I don’t know about that.” Flower pursed her lips. “There’s people hurt over there.” She pointed. “We have to do something . . . ” She mumbled the last part.

  “Not sure what we can do,” Conner said, standing slowly. “Those flames and all that smoke should bring emergency-type people, don’t you think?”

  “Don’t you think we should get over there?” Flower asked, barely audible. “See what we can do. Maybe if we can save just one person . . . ”

  “You’re right, Flower,” Almira said, raising herself up. Then she turned to Conner. “She’s right, baby. Maybe it’s some kind of miracle that we happened to be here at this place right now. Fuck all this death talk. It’s God’s hand at work.”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s go and see what we can do,” Conner said in a kind of a monotone. He wasn’t so sure, however, that what was happening was any kind of a miracle.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We Are Never, Ever, Finished Here

  The incorporated township of Kantaby was located in a shallow valley along the Iroquois River, about fifty miles southwest of Chicago. The sky overhead was, for the most part, blue. The air was crisp—cold but not too cold. Bearable.

  The citizens were mostly white, but the population—like a lot of places these days in the United States—was slowly becoming enriched with minorities and folks of different religious beliefs and economic fortune.

  At a modest table in a modest kitchen in a typical home in such a community, a man smoked a cigarette and sat staring out the window. Aaron Gardener hadn’t slept much, and now wondered wearily of the whereabouts of his daughter, Flower, seventeen. As he watched outside, the sun was positioned above the rooftops, beginning its heating of the town. The shadows were short but beginning to spread across the lawn.

  A man wearing a service jacket of some kind—municipal power, perhaps?—stepped aggressively along the sidewalk, as if on a mission. He didn’t go house-to-house, as Mr. Gardener expected him to if the man were reading meters. Rather, he seemed bent on moving toward a particular home, as if he were an arrow and the house—turned out to be the Jameson’s place—were the target.

  When he reached the Jameson’s house, he strode up to the door and rang the bell.

  Mr. Gardener could read the man’s jacket clearly then. Mortician, it said.

  Then Mr. Gardener, as if awakening from a dream, could see that the man had come from down the street. There a van sat parked, KANTABY COUNTY MORTICIAN stenciled on the side. In front of the house—for this was a corner lot and the front of the house faced the other way, the side facing Mr. Gardener’s window—sat two squad cars, lights off. Two police officers leaned on the hood of one of the cars, chatting. Now that he was paying attention, Mr. Gardener could hear the crackling of a police radio. The two officers looked unconcerned and nonplussed by it all.

  After a moment, the mortician reemerged. He waved to the van parked around the corner. The van glided over to the side door where the mortician stood. Another man wearing a similar jacket hopped out. He went around to the back of the van, opened the doors, and next slid out a gurney. The back legs of the mini-bed popped open and hit the ground. The man pulled the device all the way out of the vehicle until both sets of wheels engaged. He rolled the gurney to the side door, where the other mortician helped him get it into the house.

  Mr. Gardener stubbed out his cigarette and rose to get to his car, and on to work.

  He and his wife had called the police the night before and were told that the missing person’s case would be open after a little more time ha
d passed. Officers would be on the lookout, because of Flower’s age, for any sighting, suspicious activity, and the like. But no official investigation would commence until a full forty-eight hours had passed.

  Frustrated and anxious, Mr. Gardener and his wife decided that the best thing for him to do right now would be to go into work. Just another day. Get his mind off his worries a bit. Mrs. Gardener would stay home from work and wait to hear from the police, or anyone at all, with news about their daughter’s whereabouts.

  Mr. Gardener kissed his wife on the cheek and strolled out onto his walkway and toward his car. He stood idly holding the door to his Toyota Camry open as the morticians rolled the gurney to the van. Atop the gurney was a black body bag, zippered tight. Who was in that body bag was anybody’s guess, as far as Mr. Gardener was concerned. He never really knew much about his crossways neighbors as they mostly came and went via their front door on Caramel Street. Mr. Gardener lived on Fudge. Could be that an elderly relative was living with them and simply expired. The lack of any urgency on the part of the cops seemed to confirm that observation.

  What Mr. Gardener didn’t know was that this was the fourth time the van had visited the house this morning. Seems that all four residents of the house had managed to trip and fall down the stairs in four separate incidents, at four different times during the night, all dead of a broken neck. The coroner would later declare that there were no suspicious marks or bruises, nor any unusual substances—such as poisons—in the bodies. The detectives assigned to the case would find no evidence of foul play and would have to agree with the coroner’s findings. Just a bizarre, Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not! style string of surprising, but not criminally suspicious, deaths.

  Not even the fact that their dog, an English Springer Spaniel, had also tripped and fallen down the stairs to its death, changed anyone’s minds or the final conclusions on the case.

  The three teens ran across the south-side highway, then over the divide, and then the north-side highway. Bodies slumped in the smoldering bus, but was anyone alive? Every time they approached the bus, the heat was too intense to continue moving forward.

  They stood and stared for a while, back far enough from the heat and the dying flames. Sirens, at last, came through the early morning air from somewhere in the distance. Within a few minutes, two fire engines, an ambulance, and a number of squad cars screeched to a halt in a haphazard parking pattern.

  While the injured were tended to and chaos reigned, two cops happened to notice Flower, Almira, and Conner a bit further up the highway. They returned to their cruise and rolled up to three teens. The cops jumped out.

  “You all right?”

  “We’re fine,” Conner said. “Thanks.”

  “Were you on the bus?”

  “No.”

  “No? What are you doing here?”

  “We’re, um, we were just walking along—on the other side,” Flower said. She pointed across to the other side of the highway.

  “What were you doing walking along on the other side of the highway?”

  “Nothing!” Almira said, too quickly.

  “Hmmm,” the cop said. He waited a second, adjusted his sunglasses and said, “How’d you get there?”

  “Walking!” Almira’s response was too fast again.

  “From where?”

  “From our car,” Flower said. Ooops.

  “What car?”

  “Nothing. No car.”

  “You said you had a car.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Flower said, forcing a jovial, but nervous, smile on her face. “I meant we were walking far. Not car.”

  The cop took off his sunglasses and looked each of the teens in the eyes. “Stop bullshitting me or I’ll drag all three of you to the station. Which I’m considering doing anyway.”

  “Okay, okay,” Conner said. “We had a car . . . but it’s gone now.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It, uh, got destroyed.”

  “You had an accident?”

  “Not exactly.”

  The cop sighed and returned his sunglasses to his face. “Then, what?”

  “Well, it was involved in some kind of accident, a collision. But we weren’t in the car at the time.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In the woods, you know, along the side of the highway.”

  “What were you doing in there? Smoking pot? Having sexual intercourse with a minor?” The cop took out his summons pad and clicked his pen.

  “What? Hey now, nothing like that!” Conner took a step back and raised his hands up defensively. “Do we need a lawyer? Are we under arrest?”

  “Maybe,” the cop grumbled. “You’re not doing yourselves any favors.” He put the pad back in his hip pocket along with the pen, re-clicked. “Show me where your car is.” The man took a step closer to Conner as if scrutinizing the air between them for lies.

  “Uh, well, okay,” Conner said, taking a deep breath. “It’s about a half a mile, maybe less, down the highway—that way.” He pointed.

  “Okay, hop in the car.” He turned to his partner. “Townes, I’m taking these witnesses down the road a bit.”

  They piled into the squad car and drove down the highway for less than five minutes when the accident scene came into view. The officer pulled over and slammed the car in park. He activated his microphone. “This is car 21. Officers down. Suspects apprehended. Requesting additional units.”

  He turned back to the three. “You’ll need a lawyer. You are now under arrest.”

  When they all arrived at the downtown police station for questioning, Almira, Flower, and Conner were separated from each other. This was the only way to be sure their stories could be validated. In addition, of course, it would allow each teenager’s words to be used against the other.

  Conner was put in interrogation room A, Almira in B, and Flower in C. Detective Gloria Meehan of the Homicide department entered interrogation room A. Meehan had only recently been promoted to detective, the first black female homicide detective in the history of Kantaby. She was now part of this investigation because of the suspicious circumstances of both the squad car collision and the bus overturning. The deaths in question were now being considered as murders until more information could be discovered.

  Detective Meehan smiled, closed the door, and turned back to Conner, who sat at a wooden table facing her.

  “How are you Mr. Croyant? Doing all right? Can I get you anything? A soda?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I guess, anyway. Considering . . . ”

  Meehan shut down her smile like slamming a window. “Yes, considering wherever you and your two girlfriends happened to be tonight. Where there were multiple ’accidental’ deaths.”

  Conner said nothing. The enormity of his situation just now beginning to sink in.

  “Well, yeah, you think about that,” Meehan said. “Now, let’s start with the basic facts. What were you three doing on the side of the highway at 4:50 in the morning to begin with?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “Right.”

  “You were just driving along, looking for a highway to cruise. Then, you found one. Cool. Understandable. Next, you were just cruising along said highway and thought, ’Hey, look over there. That’s a swell place to have a nice midnight picnic.’ Do I have that about right?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Mr. Croyant, and I’ll treat you with the same courtesy. You were there, at that particular spot along that specific stretch of highway for a reason: deadly mischief.”

  “No, really,” Conner said, barely choking out the words, although he was desperate to sound confident. “We were just out for a drive before dawn. That’s all.”

  A knock at the door and it swung open. Another detective came over and whispered something in Meehan’s ear and then walked out.

  “Seems your folks are here. They’
re gonna be pissed. But, before they grab you by the ear and drag you home—and lawyer you up, if they’re at all smart—I just have one last question for you.”

  Conner gazed at the dirty linoleum floor.

  “You said to the patrol officer that brought you in that the car, or what little is left of it, belonged to a—lemme check my notes—a Mr. Richard Martin, III. Is this correct?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t need to know. You can just sit there and lie. We already recovered the engine ID tag. We’ve made the connection. The automobile, a blue 1995 Camaro belonged to one Richard “Ricky” Martin, aged seventeen, of Kantaby, Illinois.”

  For a long minute, Meehan glared at Conner.

  “Where is Mr. Martin? What have you done with him? Where have you hid the body?”

  Conner said nothing, but felt his knees start to tremble. He pushed his feet hard against the floor, trying to get his legs to be still.

  “Because his parents are here, too, Mr. Croyant. And they say they haven’t seen their son in almost twenty-four hours. So did you only steal his car? Or did you murder him first? For kicks, of course. That’s understandable.”

  “Jesus! It’s not that way at all. You’ve got it all wrong.” Sweat appeared on Conner’s forehead.

  “Then tell me, young man. Where’s Mr. Martin? Or at least give me a hint where we might find the poor boy’s body.”

  At that point, Mr. and Mrs. Croyant entered the interrogation room, preceded by the criminal lawyer they hired, a friend of a friend of an attorney friend of theirs.

  “We’re finished here,” the lawyer said, slamming down his briefcase.

  “Why do you guys always say that?” Meehan said, marching past the trio without making eye contact or changing the expression on her face. “Because we are never, ever, finished here.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  What Are You Doing Here?