Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  He must have seen her glare.

  “But this is nice. Real nice,” he added. “Not too feminine.”

  His eyes roved over her counters, the bare island, and the unused stove. Lou didn’t think she’d turned it on once since moving in two years ago.

  And if she was honest with herself, she would have been fine with an abandoned warehouse. She’d only gotten this apartment, filled it with home goods and hung art on the walls, so that Lucy would stop begging her to get an address.

  King opened a cabinet and found her six water glasses. Another had her four bowls and four plates. The third, a box of crackers and a bag of ground coffee. The other cabinets were bare.

  “A man could live here.” He pointed at the Picasso. “Men love to have naked boobs on their walls. Even artistic ones.”

  “I don’t want to live with a man.” She shoved the guns, ammo, and glow sticks into a canvas bag.

  King frowned. “I wasn’t suggesting you needed a man. I’m commenting on the gender neutrality of the apartment.”

  “Get in the closet.” Lou tossed him the bag. He doubled over when the sack hit him square in the gut. “We’re leaving.”

  King squeezed himself into the closet and looked ridiculous doing it. His shoulders were hunched up to his ears as she slid in, trying to find a niche for herself. The door wouldn’t close on the first try.

  “Suck in,” she told him.

  He snorted. “I am! It’s the bag.”

  “Suck in harder.”

  “You need a bigger closet.”

  “You need to lose ten pounds.”

  “That’s unfair!” King said, creating another inch or so by angling his body deeper into the corner. “If I said that to you, I’d be an asshole. That’s sexism.”

  Lou managed to get the closet door to click shut and then they were moving, exploding out into the other side.

  “Fuck,” King said, bumping against the inside of the shipping container deep in Siberia. The cold of the container rushed in on them, raising the goosebumps on her arm.

  Lou shoved her hand into the canvas sack, fingers searching until she felt the plastic tubing of one of the glow sticks. She snapped it in half and shook it. Orange light filled the shipping container. She handed the stick to King.

  “What's this for?” King held the light over his head. From that angle, the tangerine glow illuminated the whole container. Chaz Brasso’s dark liquid eyes blinked open in a slow, dazed sort of way.

  She handed King three more glow sticks, keeping one for herself, and gave him the gun from the safe along with a full magazine. “Interrogate him. I’ll be back.”

  “What?” he said, panic rising in his voice. “You can’t leave me here.”

  “Lucy needs me,” she said, closing the canvas sack and slipping her arms through. “Something is wrong.”

  His panic only deepened. “If you don’t come back, I’ll starve in some hole in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

  “A shipping container in Siberia,” she informed him.

  “A shipping container!” he exclaimed. “In fucking Siberia!”

  “I’ll be right back. Hide the stick under your shirt. Wrap your coat around it. Come on. I need a shadow.”

  When he didn’t move, she plucked the transparent tube from his fingers and shoved it into his pocket. Then she was gone.

  31

  Lucy ran the once-white washcloth under her kitchen sink. Red ribbons of Paula’s blood dripped down the back of her hand and into the metallic basin. She watched the blood swirling down the drain with all the intensity of an old crone reading entrails, looking for a way to save her village from an impending drought.

  And she hurt like an old crone. The burning in her chest. The swollen and aching feet.

  The blood made her think of Jack. Blood always made her think of Jack.

  When he was dead, and Louie was missing, she’d gone to the morgue under cover of night. She remembered how cold the place had been as if stepping into a meat locker. Except this time, the carcasses weren’t hanging from the ceiling on hooks, waiting to be hauled down by some butcher in a stained white apron. This time, the flesh was tucked neatly away in drawers, like the kind one might pull open at the bottom of a stainless steel refrigerator to retrieve a soda or a beer.

  Except one of these drawers had held her brother.

  She’d pulled open the drawer and slid him out.

  He was pale and naked on the silver slab. They had not done the autopsy yet, for which she was grateful. But his chest was still a mess. Nine bullets had punctured the flesh, leaving behind nine puckered black holes. Some were misshapen, and Lucy imagined the morgue attendant inserting snipe-nose pliers into these wounds and digging out the bullets for the cops. They’d need them for their investigation, she was sure. If they intended to hunt the killer, that was. She had doubts. The way they smeared his name, his good name, she suspected the cops as much as the disgruntled drug dealers.

  Lucy reached out and touched her brother’s ghostly pale face. Tears spilled across her cheeks as she placed a hand on the unmoving chest. “I’ll look after Louie.” She’d promised him. “I’ll do my damnedest to keep your baby alive.”

  She’d been certain, that night in the morgue, the killers who’d murdered her brother would be back for Lou. Much like the ancient Romans, after running through the soldiers with their swords, they dashed the babies’ skulls against the hearth for good measure.

  “I’ll keep her safe,” she said again.

  I’m sorry, Jack. She thought now at her kitchen sink, watching the years stretch out between now and then. I didn’t do half of what I promised you.

  “Lucy?” Paula said.

  The girl’s voice pulled Lucy from the daydream of her dead brother. She looked down and saw that she’d wrung the washcloth until the water ran clear. Her knuckles were scalded red by the water still running.

  She turned off the faucet. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Can I have another Coke? I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m so thirsty.”

  “Sure. Bottom drawer.” Lucy nodded at the fridge to her right.

  Paula flashed a weak smile, either because her mood had not improved despite the passing danger, or because her swollen and purpling face didn’t allow her to smile.

  The stainless-steel drawer slid out, and a gust of chilled fog escaped into the kitchen. Instead of a drawer full of soda cans, Lucy saw Jack, chest full of black bullet holes.

  She threw the rag in the sink. “Why don’t you take some Tylenol with that?” she said. “Your face must hurt like hell.”

  Paula gave another weak smile as she popped the cap on the soda can. “I’d love some Tylenol. I’d even take something harder if you got it.”

  The girl’s eyes slid to the line of orange prescription bottles lined up on Lucy’s table.

  “You wouldn’t want those,” Lucy said and flashed an embarrassed smile. “They’re not for pain.”

  Lucy never made it to the bathroom.

  When she stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, three men stood in her living room. Behind them, her apartment door stood open, revealing the dim hallway with a flickering bulb that the manager had promised to change no less than a hundred times and yet never found a chance to do it between fighting with his wife and NASCAR races on television.

  All thoughts about Tylenol for the girl left her.

  Lucy took in the three men standing there. How had they found her? How had they reached her so quickly? Lou had mentioned San Diego and a vegan drive-thru. But San Diego was a million miles away, and the men here couldn’t possibly be the same ones trying to kill the girl.

  “Lucy Thorne.” The first man said, and he raised the pistol an inch in a sort of shrug. It wasn’t a question.

  So, she didn’t answer.

  “You wanna take a ride with us?”

  “No,” she said. It was a stupid thing to say, but it had come out of her mouth before she’d th
ought it through.

  “Excuse me?” the first one said. His brow furrowed.

  “No,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “I don’t want to take a ride with you.”

  The two men behind him laughed. It wasn’t friendly rolling laughter. It was a short, harsh bark like a crocodile snapping at bait dangling two feet above muddy marsh waters.

  “Even better,” the one in front said and sucked at his teeth. Lucy’s skin crawled at the sound. “I like it when they say no.”

  Would you like to take a ride with us? Only you. No mention of Paula. If they didn’t even know about Paula in the kitchen, then this was something else.

  Only they hadn’t seemed that surprised to her.

  A drawer opened and closed in the kitchen and at the same time three guns raised.

  Lucy took a step back, her hand going to the hollow of her throat. Her mouth had opened in a dramatic O, but no sound was coming out. Instead, all the air was going in a great panicked gasp.

  “Is somebody here with you?” the man in front asked. His furrowed brow had worsened, his lips practically snarling.

  She was going to say no, but Paula Venetti stepped out of the kitchen then and bumped into her back. When the girl saw the men with the guns, she shrieked, and she didn’t stop shrieking.

  “Shut the fuck up!” The first one said, but Paula didn’t seem capable of shutting up. Lucy had to turn and clasp a hand over the girl’s mouth. Paula trembled in her arms.

  They were visibly confused. Each man’s brow furrowed. The one in front shuffled his feet. His gun dipped.

  But it was the one in the back, the smallest of the men, who spoke. “What is she doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” the front man admitted. “But we’ll take her too.”

  “But Chaz just wanted the one.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re taking them both.”

  Go go go, Lucy thought, her mind kick-starting. Her initial shock and panic and the erroneous connection between Paula and these men cleared away. She wanted to protect Paula, and she wanted to warn Lou, tell her not to come back to her place because someone was hunting them. Someone knew about her Oak Park home, and she should stay far away.

  And Chaz... that name rang a faint bell.

  But there were only three ways out of this apartment. One was the front door, now guarded by three men with guns. The second was a two-story drop to the street below, by either jumping off her balcony or tumbling out of a window. Either would surely end in a great deal of physical damage. The men would find it easy to haul away her busted body. After all, how could she protect herself if she had broken legs or half her brains spilled across the pavement?

  The third exit was the closet.

  She was already counting out the steps in her head, eight, maybe less if she took long loping strides.

  She could yank Paula back into the kitchen, but it wasn’t dark enough in there. Unlike Lou, who could slip in the barest of shadows, Lucy required full darkness. Dark so black she could hold up her own hand and not see it.

  She wasn’t sure she could reach the closet before she got a bullet in the head. She couldn’t get Paula in the closet with her. The girl would collapse on her shaking legs after the first step.

  “What you looking at?” the man asked. His eyes went to the closet. “You got somebody else in there too?”

  “No,” Lucy said reflexively. She regretted the words the instant they left her lips.

  The man’s brow deepened. “Donnie, look in that closet.”

  Donnie sported a cleft lip. He looked at the leader for a minute as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard him. When he gave him an angry look, he crossed the room toward the closet as if it were the fire exit in a burning building. Lucy became aware of a sharp pain and looked down to see four red fingernails biting into her arm.

  She pried Paula’s fingers off her flesh and held her hand. The four crescent-shaped impressions ached and burned, but this did not compare to the discomfort of her hammering heart, which had even surpassed her general unease.

  The pressure in the room changed. Her ears popped. The man opened the door and peered into the closet.

  “Where’s the light switch?” he asked, uninterested in going deeper without light. “It’s as black as an asshole in here.”

  Lucy didn’t answer him. There was nothing to say. There was no switch. It was a linen closet that had had the shelves removed. She was sure if Donnie had reached up and touched the wall, all he would feel would be the even studs running horizontally, on which the shelves used to balance.

  The thick outline of Donnie’s body completely disappeared as he reached the back of the closet with his hand outstretched.

  Lucy’s ears popped again, and she thought she heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “Donnie,” the leader said.

  Donnie didn’t answer.

  “Donnie!” he snapped. “Dude, what the fuck?”

  But still, there was no answer.

  The leader raised his gun. “What the fuck?” He punctuated each word with a jab of his gun, and Paula screamed in Lucy’s ear, making her head split into two throbbing parts.

  “I don’t know,” Lucy assured them, though she most certainly did, and the realization made her heart pound and ache with more panic. Stay away, she begged the inside of the dark closet. Please god, Lou, stay away.

  Lucy held her hands up in front of her in the universal signal of surrender. She hoped that she would not get shot. Though if she was dead, perhaps that would be preferable than dealing with the difficult road ahead. A long and exhausting illness that was sure to strip her down piece by piece.

  The leader considered the closet. His brows pinched together as if he was working on a challenge he had not encountered before. He was doing the math in his head, Lucy suspected. If he sent the other man into the closet, then it might be one against two, and while he had a gun, the odds were against him.

  They need us alive, Lucy realized. Alive for some godawful reason. Torture. Or ransom. What did this Chaz want with them?

  Chaz...Chaz... her mind searched for recognition but only conjured a body bag and the sight of flashing blue lights against a dark house.

  “What’s going on with the fucking closet?” he yelled. Confusion made him belligerent, as with most people.

  Lucy raised her hands higher, she lowered her voice hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. “How the hell should I know? It’s a closet.”

  “You’ve got somebody in there! Donnie!”

  Donnie still didn’t answer.

  “Whoever the fuck is in there. If you don’t fucking answer or send Donnie out, I’m going to put a bullet in these bitches’ heads!” He pointed the gun at Paula who shrieked like someone had stuck her bare hand into a boiling pot.

  I can’t let them see you. I can’t let them have you, Lucy thought, and even as her protective instincts rose, so did the obvious ridiculousness of her statement. They have no idea what they are dealing with, a darker voice said. She looked into the open closet, into the pitch black. She couldn’t see Lou, but she could feel her there, on the other side of night.

  She was one with the dark. More of a primordial force than a girl now, shrouded in a substance that they had mistakenly believed to be the absence of light.

  But Lucy had always suspected that wasn’t true. Naïve. Darkness was not the absence of light. It was its own substance. An organism that came in and occupied space like any other nocturnal creature in this world.

  The gang leader had had enough of the game. He stormed across the room, gun raised, and shoved the barrel against Lucy’s forehead.

  That was his mistake.

  The open closet door had been shielding him. Now his profile was in plain view.

  He seemed to realize this a heartbeat after Lucy did. His eyes widened, and he whirled, gun raised.

  Then his face disintegrated.

  One minute, Lucy was struggling to keep herself between the gun
and Paula. The next, half of his skull cap had been blown off. The ripe smell of meat, blood, and piss flooded her apartment.

  She stared into glassy brown eyes with bloodshot threads running through the egg white orbs. She noted the acidic smell of his breath. Tobacco. The scar along one side of his jaw that came toward his mouth and pulled at the corner like a fish hook.

  Then it was all meat and the white gleam of bone.

  The other man who’d waited patiently in the doorway, as if his purpose was to block the only perceived exit from the apartment, jumped back. His mouth popped open in surprise.

  Lou stepped out of the closet then, coming around the door with her gun up. The fat man with the oversized T-shirt turned toward her slowly.

  He didn’t get his gun up in time. Lou put two bullets in him. One in his throat and the other in his upper chest. His strong hand with its short fat fingers went up to his throat and clutched the wound. Blood spewed from between his fingers down over his hairy knuckles.

  He started to raise his gun, but she shot him in the hand, and his mouth dropped open in a wordless cry. Only blood gurgled up.

  Lucy had an overwhelming desire to cry then. Not because she’d witnessed three lives lost, but because of the absolute calm in Lou’s face as she executed the task. She could have been turning on a television or checking her email. Or—god help her—doing something she truly enjoyed. Lucy was horrified to realize she’d seen this very expression on her own face when coming out of a deep and satisfying meditation.

  Relief, she realized. When Lou killed, it gave her peace.

  Lucy’s heart was being crushed in her chest. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak.

  Louie met her aunt’s eyes. Her cheeks flushed red. “I’m sorry you had to see that. Had to see me—”

  Lucy grabbed her and hugged her so hard, Lou groaned.

  “Go somewhere safe,” Lou wrapped her arms around the smaller woman. “Keep moving until this blows over.”

  Lucy hugged her harder.

  “I’ll clean this up.” Lou’s voice was low and steady.