Beyond the Shadows

by LaVerne Clark

  Kelly rubbed at her arms and sighed. No matter how good a fit Scott Williams was to being their killer, the hard evidence they needed to place him at any of the murder scenes remained frustratingly elusive. And none was more frustrated during that time than Nate.

  Kelly would never forget the suppressed rage that was his constant companion. Taciturn at the best of times, Nate was like a volcano poised to erupt. She’d learned the hard way it was easiest to stay out of his way. It didn’t seem she could do anything right. When she’d complained to another colleague about his snappiness and boorish behavior, she learned his sister had been murdered six years before, and the murderer had gotten off due to lack of evidence.

  It was no wonder this particular case got to him. Karma caught up with Thea’s killer, who died in a gang related shooting not long after, giving the family some semblance of peace. But peace seemed as elusive for Nate as the evidence they so desperately needed.

  When they finally discovered the vital piece of evidence at the mortician’s last murder scene, everyone was jubilant. Finally, they had solid proof of Scott Williams’ guilt, and the city let out a collective breath.

  He’d made a pitiful sight in court on the day of sentencing as he’d been led into the dock. As the judge passed sentence, gone was the smug confidence he usually wore. Instead, he looked thunderstruck and loudly protested his innocence. When he didn’t heed the warnings of the judge to quiet down, the bailiffs dragged him out and back to the cells, his voice slowly fading into the distance. A week after being sent to prison, he’d committed suicide.

  A fitting end, she’d thought at the time. Now, she stared blindly at the television and wondered.

  “Bathroom’s free,” Nate called from the doorway and she looked up, startled. His gaze sharpened on her face then lowered to the remote clutched in her hand.

  “Thanks.” She pressed the off button and the remote clattered to the table. She didn’t want to risk his recovery with the news just yet and she needed to get her head around all the ramifications.

  Cocking his head to the side, he glanced at the television and back again. “Something upset you?”

  “Oh! No. It’s silly,” she gave him a wan smile. “I know better than to watch a scary movie just before bed, that’s all.”

  He straightened and narrowed his gaze on her. Then he nodded and gave her a slow wink. “Feel free to crawl into bed with me if you get scared during the night.”

  Kelly groaned and rolled her eyes, “Thanks for the gallant offer, but I think I can manage the night terrors all by myself.”

  “That’s a shame.” He flashed a wicked grin and eased off the support of the doorway. “Night, Kelly, sweet dreams.”

  “Goodnight, Nate.” She watched him disappear down the hallway, his movements stiff and awkward. The stumbling gait was very different from the grace with which he usually moved. “Leave your door ajar so I can hear if you need me,” she called after him. He acknowledged her request with a raised hand and disappeared into his room.

  Kelly sighed and headed to the kitchen. Her mind raced with questions. Through experience, she’d discovered, she’d be better to keep herself occupied and let her subconscious work on the puzzle.

  She rinsed and stacked plates and utensils in the dishwasher, turned it on, and filled the sink to scrub the fry pan. While she worked, her mind drifted over the day’s events. The mundane task soothed her. First thing tomorrow, she’d discuss the news story that had so shaken her with Nate, and together they’d deal with what needed to be done.

  God. What if he really had been innocent? She stopped scrubbing as the thought crept into her mind. He couldn’t be, she assured herself and resumed scrubbing the pan.

  He’d been a sicko. All the evidence screamed that he was the killer. The police investigation had been painstakingly thorough. A witness sent photographic evidence of Williams outside one of his victim’s house within the timeframe of her death. In retrospect, the fact that the photographer wanted to remain anonymous grated on her nerves, but it wasn’t an unusual request. What cinched the case was the cigarette butt with Scott Williams’ DNA she found at the site of the last victim’s murder. DNA didn’t lie.

  But people do. The thought came unbidden from the dark recesses of her mind and once there, she found it hard to shake.

  Once again, the scene returned. She saw, the cigarette lying so innocently in the long, dry grass, almost camouflaged among the summer-scorched earth. In her excitement, she bagged it and walked over a couple of paces to share her find with Nate.

  “Did you take a photo first?”

  Her stricken expression must have answered the question because he swore under his breath and closed his eyes as if calling for strength.

  “Oh, shit. What have I done?” Her voice broke as her stomach curled into a painful knot. “If this proves to be William’s, have I just completely screwed up the case by moving it?”

  “No,” he shot back, his scowl fierce. “That is not going to happen. Where exactly did you find it?” He glanced around.

  She twisted her hands together. “I—I’m not sure exactly.” Her gaze darted about as she took a hesitant step back in the general direction of where she’d been.

  His glare softened and he squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Kelly. Things get missed in an investigation from time to time. We all do our best, but we’re not infallible.” His eyes narrowed on the ground in front of them. “That looks a likely spot. See the darkened patch there? It could be from ash. Put the cigarette butt on top and take the photo.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “But, that wouldn’t be right. I need to report to the sergeant my mistake.”

  “You did find it somewhere around here didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” She pointed to a spot. “It could have been here. Or there,” she said pointing to another spot close by.

  “What wouldn’t be right is letting this guy get off on a technicality if it turns out to be his cigarette. That’s exactly what will happen if you don’t.”

  She swallowed heavily then knelt and took a series of photos.

  When she was finished, he crouched down and bagged it again, nodding in approval. “Good work. Don’t worry, Kelly. It will be fine.”

  And he’d been as good as his word. It had been fine, until the news tonight, setting off an alarm in her head.

  Something was off about that scene. Something more than her rookie error and the re-positioning of the evidence. What was it? She rinsed off the plate and stacked it, her mind traveling back in time, viewing the scene of her original discovery as if in a snapshot. With a rush, it came to her and she gasped.

  The summer-scorched earth.

  When she’d picked up the cigarette butt from the long, dry grass, there weren’t any burn marks in the surrounding area. The cigarette couldn’t have been dropped there carelessly without leaving scorch-marks. It had been tinder-dry those past few weeks leading up to the discovery.

  No. It had to have been placed there when it was cold. Nausea clawed her throat, burning a hole in her chest at the realization. Williams’ frantic denials as he was led away from the courtroom replayed in her head. Had he been telling the truth after all?

  But who set him up?

  Suspicion brought Nate’s face to mind before her stomach rebelled at her disloyal thoughts. Wringing the dishcloth dry, she flung it over the faucet and stalked into the living room. She stood before the windows, gazed across at the city lights winking at each other, and tried to calm herself. Her breaths came in rapid succession, and her pulse raced at the implications. Needing air, she unlocked and pushed open the ranch-slider door and then stepped out onto the balcony.

  What the hell should she do now?

  If only she had remembered to take that photo. But could she really rely on her own memory of the condition of the ground surrounding the cigarette? Most of her attention had been taken up by the evidence that miraculously appeared before her eyes. This was exactly the r
eason they went to such painstaking effort cataloguing everything during a crime scene examination. They covered all their bases thoroughly and ensured they made no mistakes.

  The right thing to do would be to go to the sergeant and tell him the truth. Acid burned her stomach as she imagined discussing that with Nate. It wouldn’t go well.

  She leaned forward on the railing and stared blindly out into the night. Nate’s jubilant expression at the discovery haunted her. He’d needed the conviction. Could she really rule out the thought he would stoop so low?

  The devil on her shoulder whispered in her ear. Did she really want to rock the boat? Wasn’t it better to leave well enough alone? In all likelihood, the recent murder was a copycat. So what if Scott Williams hadn’t actually left that piece of evidence himself? Everything else pointed to him. He couldn’t have looked guiltier if he’d tried. What was she saying otherwise—that he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the girl he was spying on was killed? A victim of circumstance? She snorted. As if.

  And what about Nate? Even though she’d been the one who messed up, he’d been her supervising officer and was ultimately responsible. He should have logged her mistake, not ignored it. Worse still. He’d repositioned it. He would have been severely reprimanded and likely stepped down for a time if anyone discovered he’d covered for her. But how could she live with herself if she did nothing? Whatever she decided, she had to show him the news footage and voice her suspicions. With their enforced proximity to each other, he’d read something troubled her sooner rather than later.

  Kelly rested her elbows on the railing and covered her face with her hands. The cooling breeze lifted her hair with ghostly fingers. With a sharp pang, she remembered the feeling of Nate’s fingers as they released her hair from the ponytail. She bit down on her knuckles to stop the sob threatening to escape. From tomorrow, there would be no more banter between them. She felt as if someone had died and then realized a small part of her actually had.

  ****

  The man turned off the television with a smirk. Having his work displayed on prime-time news segments never failed to thrill him. For a while there, he’d felt the heat of their breath as they’d gotten closer to him. Then, Praise God, there’d been that funeral director to divert their attention. He closed his eyes and basked in the knowledge that he was one of God’s chosen. God had guided him towards Scott Williams, had approved of his method to take the heat off so he could continue his work. He smiled and sent up a silent prayer of thanks. It was God’s will that he wasn’t found out. He had too much to do yet.

  And God had shown him his next assignment.

  As the reporter fronted the camera, the small gold cross around her neck glinted. His lip curled. Why wear such a symbol if you weren’t going to live what it signified? He bet her actions didn’t correlate with the good words of the Bible, just as his mother’s hadn’t. Well, he’d shown her the error of her ways. He almost regretted she wasn’t around to marvel at what her son had become. Almost.

  She’d phoned him that last day pleading for money again.

  “Maybe you should quit pissing it all down the toilet and go and get a job.”

  He didn’t know who was more shocked by his outburst. There was silence on the other end of the line before the hissing and spitting started.

  “How dare you talk to me like that, you ungrateful little bastard!”

  After she’d hung up on him, guilt took over. When he phoned her back, an engaged signal greeted him. What if she’d done something desperate? Without further thought, he’d jumped into his car and raced over to her dive of a flat. But when he got there, he discovered she’d made other arrangements to earn the money she needed.

  The sight of the dirty man slamming out of her front door and zipping up his jeans disgusted him. And the smell—the smell as he entered the building enraged him. Illicit sex and stale sweat filled his nostrils. He followed the source to her bedroom where she sat up, a soiled bed-sheet clutched to her naked, bony chest.

  His eyes lit on the pile of money sitting on the side-table then dropped to the cross she still wore around her neck and white-hot rage exploded out of him. “You’re prostituting yourself?” He leapt at her, his hands around her throat.

  He hadn’t meant to kill her.

  As her life ebbed away, a powerful feeling washed over him. Pure joy filled his soul as if God spoke directly to him, whispering his approval in his ear. He glanced at the portrait of the Virgin and her blessed son beside the bed, the same one he had on his own wall, and tears blinded him. They were smiling.

  This was what he’d been put on this earth for. In this moment in time, in this squalid flat, God had chosen him to be His instrument, His wielder of power. Peace entered his soul at the realization and he looked down at his mother with a benevolent smile.

  He lowered his head towards her ear. “You feel that, whore? The Lord is coming for you. Repent. Give yourself over to Him and you shall know His mercy.”

  But she’s not the only sinner, a voice whispered in his head.

  As his eyes narrowed on the reporter gazing so solemnly out from the television screen, he knew he’d found yet another.

  He turned away from the TV, wandered through to his office, and sat down before his computer. Typing in the reporter’s name that had flashed under her image, he proceeded to find out everything he could about her. Once he’d logged onto Facebook, he found her page in a matter of seconds. His lip curled as he perused the many photos she’d posted of herself. She looked to be a bit of a good-time girl. In one image, the gold cross dangled between large breasts almost fully exposed as she leaned towards the camera. Clearly intoxicated men draped themselves over her, their hands everywhere while she laughed, encouraging their antics.

  It never ceased to amaze him how relaxed people were with their personal security. It was an open world now. Information was given out so readily to anyone who cared to find it. Within a few minutes and with little effort, he found her address from a reply she’d made to a friend about her housewarming, and he made his plans. Jiggling the skeleton keys in his pocket, he grinned, thinking of the time he’d be spending with her the next day.

  The familiar buzz of excitement started to fizz through his veins.

  Plans made, he closed down his computer and prepared for bed. Before climbing in, he took his rosary off the hook above and fingered the beads. He sank to his knees, bowed his head, and fervently offered up a prayer for each station of the cross. Once the hundred repetitions were completed, he offered up one more, asking for God’s blessing and strength for the morning ahead. Then he lay down and slept like a baby.

  Chapter Six

  Nate twisted and turned between the sheets, unable to surface from the half-world of dreams. Shadows danced all around him in a dark void, wordless, but insistent. Every time he tried to wake up, they danced closer. He swatted at them, his hand going through the formless mists and they flitted away, their laughter mocking him.

  What do you want?

  They didn’t answer but came closer, the brief glimpse of faces hauntingly familiar. Beyond them, a dark shadow lingered, watching. Dread churned and his body broke out in a cold sweat. The twisted sheets tightened around him. It drifted closer and the spirits parted as if in deference. But the shadow didn’t stop short like the others. It kept coming until it lay right on top of him, smothering him in darkness, suffocating him, invading his pores.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Right before he started to panic, his lungs filled with oxygen and he sucked in a deep breath, but the shadow lay within him, weighting him down with its dark insidious presence. He tried to force his eyes to open, to break free of the shackles holding him in place, but he was powerless. Suddenly, he could see then realized in the next breath, it wasn’t through his own eyes.

  What the hell is going on?

  The body he inhabited stood as if in hiding. From his vantage point, he could clearly make out a man in a
front garden, his face tilted up to a window in the house. A familiar woman stood there, undressing. A woman he recognized from the photos the anonymous neighbor had taken, incriminating Williams of her murder.

  His host’s hand lifted a mobile phone and photographed the scene, making Nate shiver. Déjà vue. He steeled himself, expecting to watch Williams enter the property, but instead, the man untied his dog from the fence where it had been tethered, threw the cigarette he’d been smoking on the ground, stubbed the end out with the toe of his shoe, and walked away.

  He wanted to keep watching him, but found the eyes he looked through fix back on the house and narrow. They were moving. Knees cracked as the unknown man knelt, reached out with a gloved hand, and picked up the discarded cigarette butt. And then, they were moving again. Horrified, he realized they approached the front door, and his host’s fingers shifted through a set of keys just before his world went black.

  Nate woke with a gasp to find the sun shining through a crack in the blinds. He sat up and ran a shaking hand down his face, his body protesting the effort. His eyes darted around the room, but he found nothing out of the ordinary. Clothes still lay over the back of the chair beside the bed where he’d shucked them off the night before. Streams of sunlight gleamed off the body of the acoustic guitar that had sat untouched in the corner of his room for longer than he cared to admit, and his wardrobe door stood open its customary crack because of the mess at the bottom preventing it from closing.

  Everything was normal. He put a fist to his racing heart and concentrated on forcing it back into its steady rhythm. Deep draughts of air in through the nose and out through his mouth soon had the desired effect. He caught the smell of breakfast cooking and his stomach growled, shaking off the last remnants of the dream.

  He placed his feet on the ground and gingerly pushed himself upright, retrieving his clothes from the back of the chair. He eased them on, gritting his teeth at the pull on tender skin as he moved. Bone-deep aches caused him to groan and his muscles locked in protest. Like an old man, he shuffled into the kitchen and greeted Kelly with a grunt.