Shadow Man

by Alan Drew

  At noon a woman opened the sliding glass door to the kitchen and brought them glasses of ice water and orange slices. He smiled at her and they talked. Yes, they wanted the pool dug before her husband was back from New York. Yes, thank you for working so hard. Later, he stood at the sliding glass door and waited as she rose from the couch, setting aside a magazine. She unhooked the lock on the door—a little click like a small bone breaking. Yes, she said, of course, and he walked down her cool hallway to find the bathroom with the white towels and the seashells in a glass bowl. He kept his eyes on the sink, watched the water swirl into the drain; still he caught glances of himself in the mirror—his dark hair slicked with sweat, his thin jaw, his foreshortened nose, his straight mouth like a slit across his face, his soft teeth the color of butter. If he looked up, he’d see his eleven-year-old self, the one he saw for the first time at the doctor’s office, the boy self with saucer eyes and sores on his face. He hated his eleven-year-old self, the way it sat like a bird with a hood over its head, the way its heart exploded like grenades and burst flashes in its brain. But it followed him everywhere—he couldn’t get rid of it.

  When he was finished, he asked for another glass of water and he stood in the doorway of her kitchen, complimenting her house, thanking her for the work; her little fingers drummed on the countertop, nervous to get him back outside. He liked her for that—it turned her beautiful, her body rigid in her own kitchen, the forced smile an unlocked door to her fear. He drank the glass to the bottom and thanked her again, and when he stepped outside he heard the latch click again in the sliding glass door. The wind blew palm fronds and electricity raised the hair on his neck and the buzz in his fingertips electrified the shovel and he dug and dug, deeper into the earth.

  Now he was driving past the airport, the planes descending to the tarmac like giant insects. He took the Magnolia off-ramp, swinging around the cement berm, and merged into the stream of suburban traffic. At a stoplight, he turned to look at a man in his idling car, the dashboard light greening his face. He stared at the man until the man felt him and glanced across the lane, and when he met the man’s eyes he kept staring until the stoplight turned green, and then the man was gone. But his eyes went with the man, crouched in the backseat of his car, riding with the man down the boulevard, staying with him until he was deadbolted inside his house.

  He turned the car in to the driveway and idled at the gate. He punched in the five numbers on the silver box—he had watched the rich man earlier today, memorized the 6, 6, 9, 3, 6—and the gate that made them feel safe rattled open and he drove inside.

  5

  THE DECEASED WOMAN, EMILY, HAD no family. No children, a dead mother and father buried together in Forest Hills, a divorced husband living in Phoenix. The husband hadn’t seen her in four years, he said when Natasha called him, but he was driving out to collect her body, to bury her in the empty plot to the right of her mother.

  Mendenhall was done for the day, off to dinner and a movie with his wife at South Coast Plaza, and Natasha was left to prep Emily’s body before the ex-husband’s arrival. She had already incinerated the organs. Mendenhall avoided the incinerator, too. Maybe he didn’t like the smell; maybe there was something too final about the architecture of the body being reduced to ash that he couldn’t stomach before sitting down to steak and red wine. Maybe he just didn’t care. Emily had had a heavy heart; her liver, too—a drinker.

  After the incinerator, she sewed up Emily’s body, trying to line up the imperfections of skin, reanimating a hollowed shell. When she was finished, she cleaned up and filled out paperwork until the husband arrived. Emily hadn’t been sexually assaulted. Definitely not the serial’s MO. She had a small tumor in her left lung, which would have become a problem soon. Otherwise, she had been mostly healthy.

  The ex seemed like a nice man, tired from the drive, genuinely upset about his duty.

  “She was strangled?” he said, his voice weak.

  “Yes,” she said gently.

  She had pulled the sheet back for him to see Emily’s pale face. She made sure to stop at the neck, made sure not to show him the baseball stitch running down the length of her torso.

  “I feel guilty,” he said. “Maybe if I hadn’t left her.”

  She replaced the sheet.

  “Death makes everyone feel guilty,” she said, touching his elbow to guide him toward the papers he’d have to sign.

  After the men from the funeral home wheeled the body out to the hearse, Natasha made copies of the two reports—one on Emily and one for the unidentified Mexican boy. She filed the originals away, placed the copies in two separate folders, one marked Detective Rafferty (Mission Viejo) and the other Detective Wade (Santa Elena), and left to meet her friend Allison for a drink.

  When Natasha got to Las Brisas, Allison was already into her second margarita. She was at the patio bar, sitting poised at a tall table overlooking the cliffs and the surf below, a forty-something man in khaki pants and a guayabera leaning into her, shadowing her from the late-evening sun.

  “Tash!” Allison said when she saw her. “Ronald, this is my friend Natasha.”

  They shook hands, but the hawklike smile on his face collapsed into the frustrated squint of a man who’s just had his plans ruined.

  “We’re going to have a private drink, Ronald,” Allison said, touching the man’s tanned forearm. “Tash and I need to catch up.”

  “No problemo, cariño,” Ronald said, glancing a rebuke at Natasha. “Let me know if you need another one of those.”

  “Cariño?” Natasha said when he was gone.

  “He’s cute,” she said.

  “He’s trying to get laid.”

  “Of course he is,” she said. “He’s lonely. Everyone here is lonely.”

  “The kids with David?”

  Allison pouted for a moment and took a sip of her margarita.

  “With my mom,” she said. “David’s in New York. Again.”

  Natasha had known Allison since they were seven. They had been the only two kids on a cul-de-sac of brand-new homes in the second housing development in Santa Elena. Most of the houses hadn’t been purchased yet and sat empty. It was like living in a ghost town that first year, but they had each other. If they’d met today, though, Natasha doubted they’d make much of an impression on each other. Their lives were too different—Allison the bored (ignored, she would say) housewife to a traveling exec named David. She ferried her kids from soccer game to dance recital to karate training. Natasha was the career woman who worked 24/7, a decision Allison could never wrap her mind around. “It just seems so empty,” Allison had said to her one night when too much alcohol dulled her sense of social etiquette. “I can’t imagine life without kids.” Yet here Allison was, poured into a dress the crimson of a ripened strawberry, accepting drinks from a half-drunk man hoping to get her in bed tonight.

  Natasha ordered a whiskey and they talked for a while—the kids and their grades, little Donnie and his anger problems, the work on the kitchen that had been delayed because the Mexican tile they wanted was out of stock, David and his job, David and his bonus, David and his endless travels, David and…

  Natasha lit a cigarette and found herself tuning out, nodding when appropriate. She wanted to say, Hey, you know someone was murdered last night? Shut up and enjoy the big house and the big car and the spoiled kids and the absent husband. It’s what you wanted. She wanted to say this, but she knew it would sound like jealousy to her friend’s ears. That was the nature of privilege, to assume any argument against it was jealousy. Natasha wasn’t jealous. She couldn’t live Allison’s life, couldn’t lock herself up in a faux Mediterranean house in the hills and drive a minivan back and forth to Lucky’s. Natasha needed to define herself by something other than the man who took care of her and the children she took care of. Natasha’s mother had been a housewife, a smart woman who wandered around that brand-new home like a ghost, disinfecting this and washing that, her brain atrophying. When Natash
a discovered evidence that blew a case wide open, nailed some perp to the wall, the satisfaction was like a drug. And, Lord, she wouldn’t know what to do with a man like David—he drank white wine, liked smoked Gouda, and dry-cleaned his jeans. Jesus, pressed creases in his Levi’s denim! He talked down to Allison, too, as if she were some teenage girl in threat of getting out of line. Maybe she was being too hard on her friend. Maybe Allison was like Natasha’s mother—bored out of her mind. Maybe that’s why she was here, getting free drinks from middle-aged men who dressed like they thought Jimmy Buffett was high art.

  “But enough about me,” Allison finally said. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been busy at work,” Natasha said.

  A waiter swooped in and set down two sweating margaritas in front of them.

  “Compliments of the dudes over there,” the kid said.

  And before she knew it, Ronald was back, leaning into Allison’s ear. His friend, Aiden, was sitting cross-legged in the seat next to her as if he owned the table.

  “So what’s your line of work?” Aiden asked. He was in his mid to late forties. His face was sunburned, his eyes watery and bloodshot, his sunglasses perched on the top of his head.

  “She’s a doctor,” Allison chimed in.

  “A doct—”

  “A medical examiner,” Natasha said.

  Allison shot Natasha an annoyed glance. Don’t do it, she was saying. Don’t bring it up.

  “Like a coroner?” Aiden said.

  “Something like that.” She called the waiter over and ordered a Dewar’s. “I’m not crazy about drinks that need shade from umbrellas.”

  “So what’s a beautiful girl like you doing in that line of work?” Aiden’s voice wheezed a little, as though he were having trouble breathing.

  “I like to know what killed people,” she said. “For instance, say you died suddenly, just dropped dead in the shower, went to bed and never woke up, whatever the case. If I cut into you, I’m pretty sure I’d find a liver in the early stages of cirrhosis.”

  “She’s joking,” Allison said. “She likes to play this little game.”

  Natasha lit another cigarette.

  “Cardiomyopathy,” she said. “You know what that is?”

  “No,” Aiden said. He was leaning back in his seat now.

  “A weakened heart,” she said. “Alcohol enlarges the muscle, thins the walls so the heart can’t pump blood efficiently. That’s why you’re having a hard time breathing. It causes other problems, too. Blood can’t get to the extremities, if you know what I mean.”

  “Excuse us,” Allison said, grabbing Natasha’s arm and pulling her away from the table.

  “Why do you do that?” she said when they were in the foyer of the restaurant.

  “I’m not in the mood for the dating game,” Natasha said.

  “You’re never in the mood.”

  “You know,” she said, “Ronald thinks you’re going to give him something tonight. He doesn’t know you’re just using him to feel important for a few hours.”

  “So what?” she said. “He’s using me, too.”

  Natasha let out a deep breath. “I’m going,” she said. “I’m too tired for this.”

  She sped home in her 280Z; she liked a sports car, liked the feel of the road. At her apartment, she showered and almost called Tony. Something about Las Brisas, being together with all those lonely people throwing sexual Hail Marys, made her feel lonelier.

  Tony was an adjunct communications professor at Long Beach State who had written a couple of screenplays, one of them optioned-but-never-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. She’d met Tony at a Memorial Day barbecue thrown by Mendenhall and his wife, June. It was a narcissistic evening, she could see that now—the writer fascinated with the medical minutiae of the medical examiner. (He’d probably already written her—or a medical examiner like her—into another failed screenplay.) But she brought him home that night and he jokingly kissed each part of her body, asking her to whisper the medical terms: “orbital,” “external auditory meatus,” “labium superioris.” And then her shirt was on the floor—“manubrial notch,” “costa,” “areola,” “umbilicus.” Not to mention the metacarpals, the malleoli, the pelvis, and the others for which words became unnecessary. It was fun, still was, when her body felt the need and he was available and willing.

  But she grabbed the phone and dialed Ben’s number instead.

  Tony was twenty-seven, almost a decade her junior, about as deep as the Santa Ana River in summer, and for all the places he touched—admittedly with an admirable flair—he was unable to reach her (she smiled to herself) “myocardium.” A shame, really. He was easy, uncomplicated, but that was another kind of loneliness—the body satisfied but the heart left hungry.

  She got Ben’s voicemail. “I’m buying if you’re thirsty,” she said. “Call me.”

  There was some leftover Chinese in the refrigerator and two Coors. She popped a can, warmed up the moo shu, and turned on the television. The news, an Angels game, a sitcom about some perfect family and their perfect problems. She flipped the channels again and found a Disney movie, Snow White. She had seen the movie as a kid, her father driving her and her mother up to Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood to sit in one of the balconies and gape at the huge screen. She turned down the lights now in her one-bedroom apartment and watched Snow White asleep in her glass coffin, her face like cold milk, beautiful in her false death. The dwarves keeping vigil, the birds perched heavily on bare branches. Snow White in her glass coffin, kissed and rising from the dead.

  The phone rang. It wasn’t Ben.

  —

  BEN WAS TOSSING in bed at 1:03 A.M. He never slept well when he was on a case, and the winds made it impossible—the freight-train roar outside the window, the electricity tingeing the air, the way the rushing air put your whole body on edge.

  After he paid a visit to Emma’s boyfriend earlier, he drove across the city line into Tustin and ordered take-out tacos—lengua, al pastor, carnitas—from Taqueria Sanchez. He had been eating them alone in the barn, drawing penciled lines between crime scenes, checking mileage between them, when the phone rang.

  It was Daniela Marsh, from the Rancho Santa Elena World News, a newspaper that didn’t cover world news and rarely ventured beyond Conquistador Road. He had gone to school with Dani. Even at sixteen, she was in everyone’s business, spreading any shred of gossip she could unearth. She had caused more than a few breakups then and alerted the principal to the part-time night janitor who was banging a JV cheerleader in the riding-lawnmower shed behind the practice fields. She’d written a couple of articles about Ben, too, in the high school paper, back when he was the star swimmer. She had called Ben three times earlier in the day at the station for comment about the boy in the field. He would only confirm or deny her questions. Yes, it’s a dead body. Yes, the body was shot. No, there’s nothing, yet, to suggest that it was murder.

  “I’m at deadline for the morning paper,” she said. “Anything from the autopsy? Murder? Suicide?”

  “How’d you get my number? It’s unlisted.”

  “I’m a reporter, Detective,” she said. “Come on, Ben, we went to school together.”

  “You wanna talk?” he said. “You call me at the station.”

  He slammed the phone down and it immediately rang again and he let it go. She’d keep hunting around, he knew, until she got something to print, but he wasn’t going to give her anything; she’d have to work for it.

  Now he couldn’t stop his mind from running—an endless loop of evidence and crime shots. He got out of bed at 1:06 and slogged through the windy darkness back to the barn. He left the lights off, only flipping on the scanner and the desk lamp. He pulled the Mexican kid’s file from the desk drawer, found the slip of paper he’d taken off the body, and read it. Q: How would she feel if she knew? it read, in an elegant cursive. A: You know exactly how s— The paper hastily ripped.

  The scanner squawked: 926. Tow truck needed. />
  Ben had learned over time that the best investigators were not the savant kids straight out of university armed with criminal-justice degrees and math theorems to connect the dots. They weren’t the tough-guy cops with marksmanship skills and judo training. They weren’t the forensics geeks, either, with all their scientific magic tricks. The best investigators knew that most things were simple, that usually there were straight lines to connect suspects to crimes. If a young woman was killed in an apartment, it was a boyfriend or an estranged lover. If a teenager got shot in the street, it was the rival gang. If a man was popped in a car, in a house in the hills, at some dramatic deserted location, it was probably drugs. If a convenience store was robbed, the perp lived around the corner.

  If a mysterious note was found on a dead body, it probably led to the killer—or at least someone responsible for the death.

  459-A: bank alarm, Security Pacific, Barranca.

  But figuring out who did what to whom was the easy stuff. What was a bitch to sort out was why. And what was a bitch and a half was proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.

  The rafters shuddered, and next door Annie Oakley huffed air through her snout.

  “It’s all right, girl,” he said. “It’s just the wind.”

  He fanned through the pictures of the boy, his glazed eyes staring at the cloudless Southern California sky, his left index finger still hooked in the .45. Ben looked at the slip of paper again.

  Who is “she”? he wrote on his legal pad. Girlfriend? Mother? He ran his fingers over the letters, imagining he could feel the scar of the ink against the paper.

  He underlined girlfriend, but then he heard Hernandez’s voice in his head. You’ve got nothing, Detective. She could be the Virgin Mary for all you know. He erased the line and tossed the pencil on the desk.

  “187,” an out-of-breath voice scratched from the scanner. The cop’s voice was tight, pumped with adrenaline. “19745 Buttonwood Street.”