Falls the Shadow

by William Lashner

  “Iowuherah.”

  “Think of the doctor, his glorious grip on the world loosed in an instant. Think of the driver of the Gremlin, destined to die in jail. And think of the daughter, sitting in the back seat of the car, lap belt tight, watching her father slam on his brakes, curse, charge after the Gremlin. Watching helplessly through the windshield as her father yells, and then backs away, and then clutches his chest and spins around and collapses to the ground. Think of her, the daughter, and the scars she undoubtedly carries from a bullet that cut not her flesh. Think of how that brutal event still curses her life, affects her behavioral patterns in ways she doesn’t even recognize today.”

  “Iaheeah.”

  “Of course you can. What I’m saying here, Victor, is if you can save this young girl, this sister of Daniel, from any such pain, if you can help her minimize the traumas of an already traumatic childhood, then that is a cause worth fighting for.”

  “Ighahee.”

  “Perfect. Let me take off the metal framework so I can send it back to the laboratory to have the porcelain put on. One more visit and we’ll be done, Victor. It will be nice to have that hole finally filled, won’t it?”

  “Ahouhie.”

  “Tilda.”

  Another magically quick appearance. “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Owheooah?” I said.

  “I’m just about finished here,” said Dr. Bob. “Prepare the cement so I can reattach Victor’s temporary crown.”

  “With pleasure, Doctor.”

  “Isn’t it nice to see Tilda so enthusiastic about her work? Somehow your very presence encourages her so. What do you think it is, Victor?”

  “Ehaeal?”

  Dr. Bob laughed.

  I was standing at the reception desk, waiting for Deirdre to return from the back room after maxing out my credit card, while Dr. Bob made his notations on my file. I absently took in the photographs in Dr. Pfeffer’s smile hall of fame on the wall.

  “When this is over,” I said, “are you going to take a picture of my mouth for your wall?”

  He looked up from the file, gave me an appraising stare before turning to face the array of photographs. “No,” he said.

  “What would it require?”

  “Massive reconstruction,” he said, turning his attention back to the file.

  “You know, some of those smiles look awfully familiar.”

  “I would hope so. You’re sleeping with one of them.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’ll call you to set up your next appointment. Sometimes the laboratory takes longer than we expect. Remember that you’ll be having a thorough cleaning, too. I can see you wince. Don’t worry, Victor, the procedure is relatively painless.”

  “Relative to what?”

  “That’s always the question, isn’t it?”

  “What about Tanya?”

  Dr. Bob put down his pen. “What about her?”

  “I need to find her.”

  “I suppose you do.”

  “I could use some help.”

  “Are you asking? Think a moment, Victor. Are you asking? Because a favor like this is not easily repaid.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “One never knows in advance, does one? But I like to be of assistance when I can, and sometime in the future, you might be of assistance to me.”

  “Sort of like paying it forward.”

  “Sort of, but without the swelling music and the tears.”

  I thought for a moment. I felt like I was getting myself into something I didn’t quite understand, but I needed the help. Tanya needed the help. “Okay. Yes. I’ll repay you if I’m able.”

  “All right, then. We have a deal. I’ll see if the Hotel Latimore takes reservations.” He chuckled as he folded the file, slapped it on the desk, and headed back toward the examination rooms.

  I watched him go and then turned again to the wall of smiles. Healthy gums, shiny teeth, a certain arrogant joie de vivre. That one there, I figured, must be Carol Kingsly. Or maybe that one there, because I have to tell you, more than one looked awfully familiar. But it wasn’t only the strangeness of the smiles on the doctor’s wall that was preying on my mind, smiles hung like trophy heads in a hunting lodge. There was something else that puzzled me. I had come to the conclusion that Dr. Bob wasn’t one for idle chatter. All his stories had a purpose. And so what the hell was the purpose, I wondered, of the strange story of the doctor and his daughter and that little orange Gremlin?

  I figured it out eventually, yes I did, even a dumb cluck finds the acorn now and then. And I figured it out, perversely, while staring at photographs of the dead body of Leesa Dubé.

  53

  Dr. Peasley was a tall, lugubrious man with pale skin and a very brown toupee. I sometimes think we develop our personalities by modeling behaviors from the people we come into contact with most often, which goes far, I think, to explain the testimonial style of the coroner. By the time he spelled his name and listed his qualifications, snores were being heard from the back of the courtroom.

  Nothing like a slow monotone, with frequent inexplicable pauses, to keep things humming.

  I had already read the report, I knew how Leesa Dubé had died, and Beth was responsible for objecting when necessary and for the cross-examination, and so as Dr. Peasley droned on and eyelids all over the courtroom started drooping, I let my mind wander. And where it wandered to was Dr. Bob.

  For some reason I felt squirrelly about what the dentist had said while adjusting my new bridge. Why had he emphasized over and again the contingent nature of most murders? Why had he warned me so vociferously never to underestimate the effect of childhood trauma on the adult psyche? And most troubling of all, what the heck had that story of the doctor and the Gremlin and the girl in the back seat been all about?

  Think of her, the daughter, and the scars she undoubtedly carries from a bullet that cut not her flesh, had said Dr. Bob. Think of how that brutal event still curses her life, affects her behavioral patterns in ways she doesn’t even recognize today.

  How would the curse play out? I wondered. As Dalton passed to the jury certain photos from the autopsy and Dr. Peasley, in his slow, deep voice, explained how a gunshot at close range had torn apart Leesa Dubé’s neck and caused her to bleed to death, I considered the possibilities. Had she become a violent psychopath, the girl in the back seat of the Pontiac? Had she become a manic-depressive? A gun enthusiast? A peacenik? A taxi driver? What?

  And why would the dentist be telling me the story if there wasn’t something I could do to help relieve her pain? Who could she be? I wondered. Was it Carol Kingsly, with whom he had set me up? Was it Julia Rose, the mother of both his patient Daniel and the girl of whose perilous fate I had just informed him? Or was it Dr. Bob himself, Dr. Bob before the sex change? That one I liked, that one I thought about for a while, let the possibilities simmer in my mind.

  And then it came to me in a shiver. It came to me with the force of undiscovered truth, as if I had been born with the knowledge, as Plato believed, and was just waiting for Dr. Bob to act as my Socrates and pull the blindfold from my eyes. It came to me as Dalton reached the climax of her examination of Dr. Peasley.

  “Now, Dr. Peasley, you put the time of death at approximately midnight, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Peasley, in his slow, deep voice. “That is right.”

  “And you saw her how much later?”

  “She was brought to me at approximately noon the next day. So it was approximately twelve hours later.”

  “And what condition was the body in then?”

  “When a person dies,” said Peasley slowly, slowly, “the body goes through a number of specific stages of deterioration. At the very moment of death, the heart stops, the muscles relax, the bladder and bowels release. Depending on the environment, the body will begin to lose approximately one and a half degrees Fahrenheit each hour. This loss of temperature is referred to as algor mortis
.”

  “What happens after thirty minutes?”

  “Under normal conditions, after thirty minutes blood begins to pool in the lower portions of the body, which is referred to as livor mortis. The skin turns purple and waxy. The hands and feet turn blue. The eyes begin to sink into the skull.”

  “And after four hours?”

  “At four hours, the pooling of the blood and the purpling of the skin continue. And rigor mortis begins to set in.”

  “What exactly is rigor mortis, Doctor?”

  “Rigor mortis is a rigidity of the body that occurs after death. It is effected by chemical changes in the muscle tissue and causes the joints to become so stiff it is almost impossible to move them without breaking the bone. This starts after about four hours, becomes full at twelve hours. After that, the body gradually returns to a limp state.”

  François was listening to this testimony with a sense of bland detachment on his face, which didn’t surprise me. Testimony on the texture of dead muscle was no mystery to a four-star chef whose signature dish involved a rack of ribs, I figured, even if the dead muscle being testified to was that of his wife. But Beth’s emotionless reaction, as she sat between François and me at the defense table, was somewhat puzzling. She had a yellow legal pad before her, a line drawn down the middle of the page, and she bit her lip with concentration as she listened to the doleful responses of Dr. Peasley and took notes on the testimony in preparation for her cross. From her expression, the witness could have been talking about real estate valuations or a stock deal that went south, not describing the condition of a murder victim laid on his autopsy table or the stages of deterioration of the human body after death.

  “Now, when you examined the body at the morgue,” said Mia Dalton to the coroner, “you determined that she had been dead for about twelve hours.”

  “That’s right. I determined the time of death first by analyzing the algor mortis. I did this by taking the temperature of the liver, which was just over eighty degrees, and doing the calculation. I also examined the extent of livor mortis, or the pooling of the blood, which was extensive, and determining the state of rigor mortis, which at the time was full.”

  “Which meant what, Dr. Peasley?”

  “All her muscles and joints were completely stiff.”

  “At that time did you try to move any of her joints?”

  “Yes, I did. Her right arm was bent beneath her, as you can tell in the photographs from the crime scene. In order to examine her hand, I had to move the arm. It was quite difficult.”

  I leaned over and looked at Beth’s notes. Algor mortis—80 degrees. Livor mortis, pooling of the blood. Rigor mortis, completely stiff. “How about mortis and pestle?” I said softly.

  “What?” she whispered back.

  “If you’re going to include all the mortises in your notes, you shouldn’t forget the good old mortis and pestle.”

  “That’s mortar and pestle,” she said without looking away from the witness.

  “Or my grade-school friend Freddie Mortis.”

  “Happy boy?”

  “No, actually, a bit depressed. Obsessed with death, for some reason. I suppose we know why this Dr. Peasley went to med school.”

  “Be quiet.”

  “To fight the scourge of insomnia.”

  “Shhhh. I need to get ready for my cross.”

  “What are you going to ask him?”

  “If he’ll share his Valium with me,” said Beth.

  “Were you able to see the deceased’s hand?” said Dalton after glancing our way with irritation. I smiled back.

  “Eventually, yes,” said Dr. Peasley.

  “What state was it in?”

  “It was blue and clenched.”

  “Did you have cause to open her hand?”

  “Yes. As part of the autopsy, it was important to examine her hands and fingers for any possible wounds, also to determine if there was any tissue matter under the nails, which we could analyze. Unfortunately, there was not.”

  “Can you describe opening the hand?”

  “It was difficult. It was clenched tight.”

  “Could that have been the result of rigor mortis?”

  “No. A hand won’t clench as a result of rigor mortis, it will just stiffen. Her hand was already clenched when rigor mortis began to set in.”

  Beth jotted down this little nugget on her notepad. I stared at her profile for a moment, sturdy and sincere, her forehead attractively creased in concentration. It was the familiar profile of my best friend, yet somehow different than I had ever seen it before. And then François leaned forward, so that in my viewpoint his handsome features were now side by side with Beth’s. The girl in the back seat of the Pontiac would have seen her father ripped from her youth in the most violent way. For the rest of her life, she’d be pining for him. And perhaps looking for a substitute. An older man, maybe. Or a doctor. Or a man with a streak of anger in him. Or maybe a man similarly separated from his child, his daughter. Maybe a man who looked to that girl in the back seat, now grown, as his only hope for salvation.

  “And what did you find when you tried to open her hand?” said Dalton to the witness.

  “As slowly as I could, I pried open her fingers. I was working carefully so as not to break any bones. And that is when I saw it.”

  “Saw what?”

  “The thing that she had been clenching.”

  “Did you recover it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What state was it in?”

  “It was creased, there was some blood, but it was still recognizable.”

  “I want to show you what is marked as People’s Exhibit Twenty-one. Do you recognize that exhibit?”

  “Yes. It is the object I found in the deceased’s hand. It has my initials on the back.”

  “And what is it, exactly?”

  “It is a photograph,” he said, and then he pointed his long, bony finger at François. “Of him. What I found clenched in the murder victim’s hand was a photograph of the defendant, François Dubé.”

  There were gasps in the courtroom. Dalton had cleverly not mentioned the photograph in her opening and it was a surprise to the jury and some of the spectators, and so there were gasps. And at that very moment, along with the jury, I gasped, too.

  But not at the photograph.

  And that was not the last of the surprises for me at that trial. Let me tell you, the hits just kept on coming.

  54

  Mia Dalton stood at the lectern and gave me a sly smile. It wasn’t overt, and because the prosecution always sits closest to the jury box, and because she was turned from the jurors when she gave it, it wasn’t discernible by the twelve and two alternates who really mattered, but there it was, clear as the sun on a clear, sunny day.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Please state your name for the record,” she said to the witness.

  “Geoffrey Sunshine,” said Geoffrey Sunshine, who proceeded to spell his name as if we all were second-graders who needed the help.

  “Is that your real name?”

  “That’s my business name. My real name is Gerald Sonenshein. But it doesn’t have quite the same sparkle.”

  Little Jerry Sonenshein, being called as a prosecution witness. This was bad, very, very bad. I had of course objected. “He is nowhere on the prosecution’s witness list,” I had loudly proclaimed, with a tone of righteous indignation. But when Dalton pointed out that Sonenshein was on my witness list, along with a few dozen other names put on there just to confuse the apparently unconfused Dalton, the judge simply shook his head and denied my objection. For some reason Dalton thought Sonenshein was a witness who could help her case, which was problematic for me, since I had thought this witness was the very heart of my defense.

  One of us was wrong.

  “And your job, Mr. Sonenshein?” said Mia Dalton.

  “I own a supper club,” he said. “Marrakech. It’s pretty well known in the city.”

&nbs
p; “Did Leesa Dubé ever go to your restaurant?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Before her marriage, I’m talking about now. She was a regular. The downstairs is the restaurant proper. Upstairs we have a club. She wasn’t much of an eater, but she was upstairs at the club all the time before she married him.” He pointed at François. “She would go there with her friend, Velma Wykowski.”

  “And how do you know she was a customer?”

  “Hey, two girls that pretty and that easy who hang out at your club, you get to know them fairly well.”

  And then, in response to Dalton’s careful and measured questions, little Jerry Sonenshein detailed the exploits of the famous Wykowski sisters. It was everything he had told us in that first meeting in the smoking room at his upstairs club. I would have objected, would have stood up and pounded the table and raised every ground I could have manufactured to keep it out, and my objections would have been upheld, too, except it was the very testimony I had intended to elicit when I called him to the stand. So I looked at François, who seemed strangely worried, and at Beth, who shrugged with puzzlement, and let it go on, and so it did. The whole before-marriage scene, the famous Wykowski sisters, the coming of François into their lives.

  “And you were aware, Mr. Sonenshein, when Leesa Dubé married the defendant.”

  “Of course.”

  “Did she ever come to your club after the marriage?”

  “Once or twice with François.”

  “Ever alone or with friends?”

  “No.”

  “Were you aware when they were separated?”

  “François had his own restaurant then. In this business we all gossip about one another, so yes, I heard.”

  “Did Leesa ever come into your club after the separation?”

  “No.”

  Like a slap.

  “Never met any man at your club after the separation?”

  “Not that I ever knew of, no.”