Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  “I started looking into her family the way you wanted,” Julio said. He placed his thumb in his mouth and began to chew it. “It was Angelo’s kill, like you said. But I’m hearing other shit too, man.”

  Konstantine leaned forward, unable to hide his interest. “Tell me.”

  11

  At five past eleven, Lou stepped into her apartment. She’d only come back for a wardrobe change. She removed the machete from her back and switched to thin, efficient blades, easily concealed in her inner arms and boots. Their handles were sleek metal meant to keep the weight of the blade even if she needed to throw it rather than plunge it into her target’s neck. Black metal would neither reflect the light nor draw attention to itself.

  Killing, not intimidation, was the order of the evening.

  She pulled four S&W blades from their hook on the wall and slipped them into place. Then she loaded six clips. Six was a tad much for a simple stakeout, but she’d only been expecting to meet her aunt’s friend for coffee, and look how that turned out.

  Someone was watching her. Tracking her.

  It was a new sensation and unpleasant.

  The part she loved most about her ability was the way she moved through the world. Like a ghost.

  She blended into a setting, observed, took what she wanted, and was never seen again. And the men she seized, they never lived to tell the tale. Her anonymity was her greatest power, and she fully understood this. Even if she hadn’t been raised in an age where starlets were displayed on magazine covers, and their sex tapes rampantly devoured, she would have understood this. His face and name had gotten her father killed after all. Even before the internet, five minutes on the television was all the Martinellis had needed to track him down.

  Castle was the first man Lou’d let go since she killed Gus Johnson at the tender age of seventeen.

  And the fact that this new Martinelli, Konstantine, had photos of her, shopping her face around, meant the number of men who could recognize her on sight was rising. And what the hell was his game anyway? He must want revenge for his murdered family. That was the only connection between them. And yet, she was certain she’d been careful. Left no witnesses. Konstantine shouldn’t even have the smallest idea of who the hell he wanted revenge from. So where had she fucked up?

  Fuckups happened, but they had to be cleaned up. The only problem was, Lou was in a boat on the open sea. It was filling up with water, and she had no idea where the leak was.

  That simply will not do, as Aunt Lucy liked to say in a fake and poorly rendered British accent, and probably misquoted from some old movie launched before Lou’s time.

  The moment Lou realized the not-detective King was Aunt Lucy’s ex, she wasn’t surprised. Aunt Lucy was too romantic. Of course, she would run to her ex, some man she probably still coddled a burning love for, and ask him to swoop in and save her wayward niece from self-destruction. The idea that a woman needed a man to help her do anything was ridiculous and five minutes with King was enough to tell her he was no saint on a white horse. His apartment reeked of marijuana. He had no food in the fridge. He was at least forty pounds overweight, and yet he’d gobbled those beignets like he hadn’t eaten in three days, sucking the powdered sugar off his fingers with relish.

  She loaded a magazine and then inserted it into the butt of her gun. She chambered a round. She didn’t need some bored ex-cop to give her direction. She’d call her own shots, thank you very much.

  She slipped the extra magazines into the pockets of her cargo pants and the inside pockets of her vest. Again, it was a lot of ammo for stalking. But Lou felt the heat of the situation rising, and she’d rather be ridiculously over-prepared than ridiculously stupid. Besides, this was one of her father’s vests. She ran a hand down the front of her chest over the Kevlar, and the muscles in her body went soft.

  She’d had to sneak into their home to get it.

  After her parents were killed, Lou returned to her house. Lucy had forbidden it, but Aunt Lucy couldn’t watch her 24/7. The moment her aunt’s snores turned soft and steady in the next room, Lou had slipped through and found herself in her house. Her old house.

  The grief had welled fresh then, as her mind tried to sort through its options for reclassification: my old house, my childhood home, my parents’ house, where I used to live—

  She’d appeared in her room. The twin bed was there, and her covers rumpled. Most of her stuff was still there since they’d forbidden her from taking anything away from The Crime Scene. That’s how they said it, as if in all caps, THE CRIME SCENE.

  Lucy had slipped her back in of course, after a few hours, but only to get clothes. Nothing they’ll notice, she’d said. But it wasn’t enough. Lou knew the cops didn’t give two shits about her books, clothes, or music. Her rollerblades with the one cracked wheel or the drawings she’d done herself and stuck to the wall with Scotch tape. She could’ve stuffed all her things into her camo backpack or her Hello Kitty suitcase, and they’d never question where the shit went. But she’d wait until Saturday for those, the day she was allowed to take what little was left of her former life.

  Aunt Lucy was left with the task of going through her parents’ stuff and determining what should be sold and what should be boxed up for Lou.

  Sell it all, Lou had told her.

  Because it wasn’t all her mother’s worthless shit that she’d wanted. All the throw pillows and doilies and ceramic vases and china figurines.

  She’d wanted her father’s things.

  And she knew that’s what the cops wanted too, so she had to be first. She went into her parents’ bedroom and froze. Blood stained the mattress, one side of the sheets had been stripped back to reveal the mattress and the stain spread in an oval on her mother’s side of the bed. The cordless phone was still on the floor where her mother had dropped it. And a glass of wine, with a thin layer of dried wine coating the rim, lay on the carpet beside the phone. Her mind kept trying to put the two together, the overturned wine glass and the blackish stain on the mattress. She spilled her wine, her mind said. A lot of wine.

  She’d torn her eyes away from it and went into her father’s closet. Not her mother’s, which had been the walk-in on the left, but the one on the right. She pulled the brushed aluminum handle, and the door came open with a pop, the frame sticking in the heat of summer.

  She stepped inside and closed the door. The world wavered, threatening to pitch her through, but she turned on the light, and it became steady again. Her father’s dress shirts were organized by color, Courtney’s doing. At first, Lou could only run her fingers along the sleeves and feel the different fabrics. Mostly cotton. Some of them the flannel he loved.

  She reached her arms out and squeezed the shirts into a giant ball and cried. They smelled like him and her mother’s detergent, and she would never smell it again.

  She had no idea how long she stood in the closet, sobbing into her father’s shirts. But she took the flannel, still had it, though it fell to her thigh when she wore it. And she had to roll the sleeves up above the elbow. In addition to the shirts, she took two other things. Cut-resistant Kevlar sleeves which had to be resized later, but she’d found someone to do it. And his adjustable vest. Her father had worn it at the biggest size, the straps stretched fully extended. She wore hers at the smallest, with the Velcro overlapping. Before she grew up and found a use for her father’s vest, she would wear it on the nights she couldn’t sleep. She’d put it on, tighten the straps, and crush it against her. It didn’t fit, but it was something of his. A poor substitute for his arms around her.

  Lou blinked back tears and the St. Louis skyline came into focus, locking on the searchlight from Busch Stadium. A distant roar of loudspeakers and cheers swelled. There was a game tonight. Some man in a red and white uniform was dreaming he’d hit it out of the park.

  Lou stepped into the closet hoping for the same.

  When she stepped out of the closet, she was on a rooftop in Austin. She crouched in the shadow
of a bigger building, standing tall beside the one she squatted on. The buildings were right against one another. She leaned one arm against the sun-warmed brick and watched the downtown strip below. From here she could see the evening in full swing. Women in fish scale or leopard print skirts prowled the four-lane boulevard. Men in jeans or leather stalking them or possessively holding onto their hips in a display of dominance. Cigarette cherries burned in the darkness beneath the pulsing lights, and music blared through bar doors, mingling with the sound of honking horns and squealing brakes on the street.

  She could see everything from up here. And she could thank King for the idea. When he asked her for a better view of their stalkers, she knew what he meant immediately. She preferred to slip laterally. She could put real distance between herself and her attackers. It was easier to track from underneath, following the sounds of footfall through floorboards overhead. She had gone high for a vantage point, an idea she credited to King.

  But it seemed perfect for her current predicament.

  If Konstantine was looking for her and Castle was alive and spouting tales of his escape, he would put men on the ground. She had no idea if Castle had had time to talk yet. He could be dead for all she knew.

  But he wasn’t.

  She pulled the scope from the front pocket of her vest—her father’s vest—and lifted it to her right eye.

  The boulevard was blown up to movie screen proportions.

  It took her a moment of sweeping the walkway to find Castle. He still wore the tall white hat with feathers, making him an easier target. Tonight he wore jeans, black cowboy boots with steel toe tips and a black vest. A leather choker with a large turquoise medallion lay against his throat and bobbed up and down as he laughed.

  He stood on the corner outside a bar smoking a joint and chatting with three men and two women. He showed them something in his hand, weaving some long, bullshit tale about his exploits no doubt. Some female conquest or a close battle won. She’d shadowed enough bars to know how men spoke when they were together in large, hungry groups.

  Castle’s audience bent down to look at something close, and then suddenly, they jumped back. One of the women shrieked. Her friend beside her clutched her arm, laughing, but the laugh was hollow. Pure fear.

  When one of the men looked aside, creating a gap in the circle, Lou saw his hands.

  They were empty. It wasn’t what he held that was the spectacle. It was the hand itself. Two fingers had been severed from Castle’s left hand.

  She adjusted the scope.

  Thick black stitches knotted the skin together. The flesh was torn, puckering between the black twine. A home job. And the fingers hadn’t been severed cleanly with a knife.

  Had Konstantine ordered they be torn off? Brutal.

  But the wound was fresh, no doubt, as Castle had had all ten fingers when she dumped him on the avenue the previous night.

  So Konstantine moved fast.

  She lowered the scope and tried to think. Why would they sever the fingers? To send a message? Because he was angry? Because he hadn’t captured her himself?

  Perhaps.

  Yet if he’d wanted his dealers to capture her, he would kill Castle and send a stronger message. Give them a strong motivation to come out of this alive, should one of them find themselves at the wrong end of her gun.

  No, he must’ve wanted something else.

  Lou lifted the scope again and started searching the walk for tails.

  It was hard to tell who might be following Castle as he stood on the sidewalk showing his war wounds to his friends. The tails would only move when he moved. And if they were following him to find her, she had to be careful of her own movements.

  If she moved when Castle moved, it would draw attention. Like prehistoric reptilian beasts, her movements would attract their eyes and bring her into sharp focus.

  She would have to confine her actions to slips, sticking close to the shadows.

  Castle’s phone rang, and he fished it out of his back pocket with his good hand. He used his thumb to mash the button to take the call. After receiving some instruction, he returned his phone back to his pocket and nodded down the street. Castle wrapped the pinkish white gauze over his hand as he walked. He moved in her direction, his face hidden behind the large brim of his hat as he focused on his hand. His group kept him encircled in a cozy knot as they walked.

  In the scope, she could see the blood splattered across the brim of his hat. A grim reminder a lot could happen in twenty-four hours. Castle had lost two fingers. A shiver ran up her spine. What would happen to her by the time the sun rose on the next day?

  She kept her arm pressed to the side of the warm brick building. Unmoving, only her eyes tracked Castle down the sidewalk.

  A group of drunks bumped into Castle’s front line and another man shoved them off. The belligerent drunk’s eyes going wide when a knife was pulled and pressed to his throat. The victim looked like a bleating goat from where Lou stood. His eyes wide and lips blubbering. But the man with the knife let him go, laughing.

  Lou wanted to put her knife to his throat and see how he liked it. In her mind, she moved this mule to the top of her list beneath Castle. She killed Martinelli mules in order of importance. Who moved the most dope? Yank the biggest fish out of the sea, and the ecosystem collapses. She had to keep these objectives in mind. What would she do when Konstantine was dead? The listlessness would not overtake her a second time. And King’s pathetic interest in witnesses would never be enough to stimulate her or put her skills to good use. No. Rank the mules. And perhaps she would have something worth doing once this was all over.

  Movement caught her eye.

  The moment Castle and his group walked beneath an awning, a shadow emerged from the alley one block up. She marched up the street in platform heels the color of bubblegum and a black skirt barely covering her ass. Her breasts were falling out of the front of her denim shirt, which looked like an ordinary garment, though molested. The sleeves had been rolled up above the elbows. The bottom had been knotted above the navel rather than buttoned correctly.

  She wobbled down the street on thin legs, a cigarette burning between her fingers.

  When Castle stopped to smash out the butt of his cigarette, she stopped. She shot a look across the street and met eyes with a man leaning against a light post, pretending to look at his phone. His face was aglow in the light of the screen. He made a nod toward Castle, and the girl started teetering after them again.

  At least two tails then. But Lou figured where there were two tails, there were more. A horrible thought bloomed in the back of her mind. She tore her eyes from the ground and looked up. She searched the windows and balconies of the buildings for eyes.

  Her heart sped up as she counted. Two. Three. Five. Seven pair.

  Two men sat on a balcony with beers balanced on their legs, the picture of casualness if not for the perfect synchronicity of their heads turning toward Castle. Three were watching from the windows of two different buildings as he passed. One leaned down and spoke into a phone.

  Her heart pounded in her ears.

  She’d walked right into a shark den and hadn’t even realized it.

  There were too many men on Castle. She’d greatly underestimated Konstantine’s interest in her. She needed to get the fuck out of here.

  She looked into the window directly across from hers at the man speaking into his phone. The room behind him was dark and his face as translucent as a ghost, reflecting the light from the boulevard below. He scanned the rooftops. His eyes two buildings to her left and moving in her direction, his head did a slow, dramatic turn that made her heart hammer even faster.

  She shrank against the building and slipped through this side of darkness.

  The world solidified again with her in her closet, heart pounding. She sucked in deep breaths and tried to steady herself. Had the scout seen her? Had someone else watched her while she was all doe-eyed over Castle?

  “Fuckin
g stupid!” she punched the inside of the closet. Anger rose inside her.

  The fear never lasted in her experience. This old familiar hate would always draw itself up, its head opening like a cobra hood, flaring to life around her. Hate she understood.

  Konstantine thought he was smarter than she was? Thought he could overwhelm her with his muscle and use her own tricks against her? Because Castle had been her trick. She’d cut the rat loose and sent him running, hoping it would lead her back to the den.

  Instead, the wolves came out, looking for her.

  If he dared to use her trick against her, she would repay him in kind. She could slip to him right now if she wanted. Fall right through the closet and pop up wherever the bastard was hiding and cut his fucking head off. Hunt this! she’d say as his slit throat gurgled blood all over her hands and forearms. Here I am, you fucking cunt.

  Easy girl, her better judgment began. The leash on her anger tightened. Her father’s voice echoed through her mind. Stay with me, Lou-blue.

  The anger broke on the shore like a wave. Each wave that followed less angry than the one before. She saw his beautiful face. Felt his scruffy beard under her small hands, remembered the way it would tickle her nose when he kissed her. How he would lift her whole body off the ground when he hugged her.

  She hadn’t had one of those great encompassing hugs in sixteen years.

  Stay with me.

  “I can’t,” she whispered in her dark closet. Her chest ached. “They sent you somewhere I can’t go.”

  12

  Are you sure this is the right finger bone?” King asked. He looked at the disconnected phalanges in his cupped palms and frowned. The plastic rolled in his palm as incomprehensible as the entrails of some gutted animal. “They aren’t matching up.”

  Mel placed one hand on her hip and glared at him. Her voice rose. She’d reached the limit of her patience and no more questions were to be asked. “You have these bones in your own fingers, don’t you? Can’t you figure it out?”