The Shadow's Edge

by Patrick Dakin

  “Officer Fordham,” he said in a lazy, friendly manner. “What can I do for you?”

  “I reported my wife missing this afternoon to Chief Jessup. I assume you’re aware of that.”

  “Right. Callie Parmenter. The Chief is looking into that matter as we speak.”

  “Has he come up with any explanation for why she would have been out on Thornhill Road, or why she left her vehicle there?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Parmenter, the Chief hasn’t called in yet. I can’t rightly say.”

  “When you hear from him, tell him I’m staying at the hotel. I’ll be waiting to speak with him.”

  “You got it,” Fordham said. As I turned to leave he called out, “You know, before you spoke to the Chief about your wife being missing, I got a call from Mitch Fuller – owns a farm out on Thornhill Road – reporting he heard gun shots. I went out there to have a look around but I didn’t find anything to shed any light on what Mr. Fuller heard.”

  “I know. Jessup mentioned it to me earlier. Did Fuller have anything else to say when you got out there?”

  “I didn’t see him actually. When I stopped in to talk to him he was gone. He lives on his own out there – kids are grown, wife died a few years ago. There was nobody else around to talk to. But now that we’ve got a missing person situation Chief Jessup will undoubtedly be talking to all the folks around there so maybe he’ll catch him at home.”

  “You noticed the blue Ford pickup that my wife was driving, parked past the old Crandall place?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t see anybody around it though. At the time I figured it probably belonged to a hunter and it was his shots that Mr. Fuller had heard.”

  Not an unreasonable assumption at the time, I thought. “Please tell the Chief to call me the moment he gets back.”

  “I will. By the way, Mr. Parmenter, I want you to know not everybody around here blames you for what you did to Reuben Henderson. Me included.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” I said.

  When I got back to my room at the hotel I found Bix curled up in a corner. He followed me with his eyes as I stretched out on the bed. “You need to pee, Bix?”

  He blinked, then continued to stare. I wondered if his apparent sadness had anything to do with the fact that he was Callie’s dog. Maybe her depression had rubbed off on him. Or maybe he just missed her.

  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a scenario concerning Callie’s actions today that made any kind of sense, especially now that it was possible gunfire had entered into the equation. Could it be that she had been lured to that spot under some as yet unknown pretext and then kidnapped?

  But who, I wondered, would be able to get Callie to drive to a remote location without her mentioning it to the two people she trusted most in the world?

  Who indeed?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. I opened it to find Jessup standing in the hall with his Smokey Bear hat tipped back on his head, rubbing his eyes which appeared to have smoke in them from the cigarette he was holding.

  “Chief,” I said, “come in.”

  He entered the room, took a second or two to reflect on Bix’s presence, then sat down in the room’s only chair. He looked tired. “So,” he mumbled, “not a lot to tell you. I had a good look around and I spoke with half a dozen residents of farms in the Thornhill Road area – nobody saw a thing that’s of any help to us. Your wife seems to have disappeared into thin air.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “We both know that’s a crock,” I said. “She went with somebody – either voluntarily or not. And what about the report of gunshots out there today?”

  Jessup sucked his teeth and leaned forward in his chair with his arms on his knees. “It’s not uncommon for eager hunters to try and get a jump on the season. I have no reason to believe your wife’s absence is in any way connected with that report. Personally, I find it extremely interesting that she picked the very day you were likely to show up here to vanish.”

  “You think she ran away with somebody.” I said. Not a question.

  “I think that, or something like it, is a distinct possibility, yeah.”

  “I’ve heard there was another woman who disappeared from here recently. What about there being a connection?”

  Jessup sneered. “That so called disappearance is nothing more than a young women who moved on to a more exciting life. It’s no secret around here that she was unhappy in her marriage - tired of cooking and scrubbing floors, I expect – and simply left.”

  “You ever find any evidence to support that theory?” I asked.

  “Never found anything to disprove it,” he countered.

  It was pretty obvious Jessup attached no importance at all to the fact that Charlene Lamont no longer resided in Colville. I could only hope his attitude might change in Callie’s case.

  “I checked with Miles,” I said. “Callie took nothing with her this morning. No extra clothes, no money. Nothing.”

  Jessup sat back and reached for a cigarette. “Don’t mean a lot,” he said. “She can access her bank accounts from anywhere. As for clothes she can buy them anywhere, too.”

  “Seems like you’ve made up your mind about this already,” I said.

  “If nothing is heard from her in another thirty-six hours we’ll put out a missing person alert on her with the State boys. Not much else I can do until then.” He stood and went to the door.

  “What about the pickup?” I said.

  “If nothing has changed we can go out and get it in the morning.” He raised his eyebrows in an ‘anything else?’ gesture.

  I hung my head in defeat. “Okay.”

  He left without another word.

  I looked at Bix. I hadn’t yet seen him take a whiz. He must have had the biggest bladder in the world. “Come on,” I said.

  He struggled sleepily to his feet and followed me into the hall and out the back door like he was doing me a personal favor. He scouted around in the vacant lot behind the hotel for five minutes before finally deciding to do his business.

  For the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening we spent the hours wandering around town. I picked up a bag of dog chow and some junk food and we ate a solemn meal together in our room.

  I was up at six, in the habit of rising at that time every morning while in prison. They got you up early so they could put you down early. It was a habit I was probably going to have some trouble breaking. I slipped into my jeans and padded down the hall to the bathroom. It was shared by the five other rooms on the same floor. I didn’t know how many of the other rooms were occupied but getting up when I did pretty much assured I’d have the bathroom to myself for awhile. But I didn’t need it for long, anyway, because my shaving gear and toothbrush had been left at the Wilson place.

  When I got back to the room I took Bix out the rear door of the hotel and around the side to the main street, then headed in the direction of the diner. Once there I left Bix in his usual spot and took a seat once again at the counter. Kat served me a couple of poached eggs on toast with my coffee. I figured they’d be about the safest thing on the menu.

  “Anything further on Callie?” she asked.

  “No. I’m going over to see Jessup when I finish up here. I talked with him yesterday afternoon but he hadn’t come up with much then.”

  “Do you need to borrow my car?”

  “Maybe later, thanks. I’ll let you know.”

  She nodded sympathetically and moved on to serve other customers. When I was done I left some bills under my coffee cup and slipped out. Bix came slowly to his feet when he saw me and stood patiently waiting for me to untether him. He was such a well behaved animal it’s unlikely I even needed to bother with a leash for him but he didn’t seem to mind.

  I called Miles from the public phone to check in.

  “No word from her yet,” he reported. There was a heavy measure of sadness and worry in those few words. Miles had spent most of his life as an officer of the law, too
– a good part of it right here in Colville – and I’m sure his mind was calculating all the unpleasant explanations there might be for Callie’s absence.

  I didn’t want to worry him any more than necessary but I felt I had to tell him about the gunshots.

  “Oh, Lord,” he moaned.

  “Jessup and I will go out and get the pickup.”

  “Ya don’t have to bring it back yet. Use it as long as ya want,” he said. “I’ll let ya know if we need it for anythin’.”

  “Okay. Keep the faith, Miles.”

  “You, too, Jack.”

  Bix and I crossed the street and made our way to Jessup’s office. Bix sat outside the door while I went in. A middle-aged woman with vivid red hair and freckles sat at the reception desk. She wore a nametag pinned to her blouse that identified her as ‘Madge’. “Help you, sir?” she said.

  “Chief Jessup in?”

  “Sorry, he just phoned to say he’d be late getting to the office this morning. Probably be in around eleven.”

  Not what I wanted to hear.

  “Can Officer Fordham help?” she asked. “ He stepped out a moment ago but he should be right back.”

  I thought about it but decided it’d be better that I deal with Jessup. “No, I’ll stop back around eleven. If you wouldn’t mind telling him to expect me?”

  “Sure thing,” Madge said.

  I took a walk with Bix to stretch my legs and burn off some nervous energy and managed to kill an hour and a half. When I arrived back at the cop-shop I pointed at Jessup before letting Madge say anything, and walked to his office door. He was drinking coffee from a heavily stained mug and dragging deeply on a cigarette. He glanced up from some papers spread out before him and gave me a bored, barely concealed, look of contempt.

  “I spoke with Miles earlier,” I said. “There’s been no word from Callie. Can we drive out and get his pickup?”

  He took a deep breath to demonstrate his vast patience, stood slowly, and grabbed his hat from a coat rack behind his desk. “An hour, Madge,” he said as we headed out. At the door, Jessup stopped and turned back to her. “You heard anything from John yet?”

  “Not a word, Chief. And RJ says John wasn’t there yesterday when he went over to check on him.”

  Jessup looked mystified. “Give him another call,” he ordered.

  “Will do.”

  When we were outside and Jessup saw me unhooking Bix he looked over at me. “Why don’t you leave him here?”

  “I’d rather bring him along if you don’t mind,” I said.

  Jessup gave me an impatient look. “Suit yourself.”

  I opened the rear door for Bix and then climbed in the front passenger seat. Jessup fired up the Crown Vic and motored unhurriedly out of town.

  He was quiet during the ride out to Thornhill Road. When we arrived at our destination he said, “I had a good look around here yesterday. There was no sign of a struggle having taken place. Your wife will most likely turn up in a day or two with a nice simple explanation for why she took off.”

  I tried not to let my contempt for him show too much when I faced him. “Pretty much the same thing you figured about Charlene Lamont, I imagine, huh?”

  He ignored the question. And my disdain.

  I got out, freed Bix, and stood watching as Jessup sprayed gravel pulling away. A few yards up the road he cranked a u-turn and drove by me with a bored look on his face.

  “Shit-heel,” I mumbled.

  Bix stared after Jessup’s fading presence and barked once, then looked at me and dropped his head nervously as if to apologize for speaking out of turn. It was the first sound I had heard him make.

  Before getting into the pickup Bix got side-tracked, sniffing something that intrigued him but I couldn’t see anything that looked out of the ordinary with the exception of the small quantity of roadside dirt on the pavement.

  We drove back to town.

  It was noon so I stopped into the diner. The lunch crowd was on hand but, as soon as she saw me, Kat came over to serve me at my spot at the counter. “You’re getting to be a real regular,” she said as she poured me a coffee.

  “I figure if I eat here often enough I’ll find something edible.”

  She shook her head sadly. “Good luck with that,” she said. “Anything further on Callie?”

  “Not yet.”

  Her face reflected real uneasiness at my response. I wondered, not for the first time, if maybe she knew more about what was going on than she was willing to admit.

  Miles and Betty were sitting on the porch with coffees in hand as Bix and I pulled up to the house. Betty immediately rose from her chair and disappeared inside, still unable to work up the will to speak to me.

  “Sorry about Betty,” Miles muttered as I joined him. “She’ll come around eventually.”

  “I don’t blame her for the way she feels, Miles.”

  “For what it’s worth,” he said, “me and a lot of other folks around here feel Henderson got pretty much exactly what he deserved.”

  It closely mirrored what Fordham had said but it was also true that a good many other people felt differently. For the rest of my life I would have to accept that there were those who regarded my actions as every bit as immoral and unforgiveable as those of Henderson himself. I couldn’t in all sincerity say that I disagreed with them.

  “What else can you tell me about this Charlene Lamont?” I asked.

  Miles ruminated for a moment or two. “Not much, ta be frank. Very pretty young gal, married but maybe not too happily. There was speculation that a bad marriage was the reason fer the hasty departure.”

  “And why is it that you think there may be something more to it than that?”

  “The fact is, Jack, I don’t really have any strong feelings one way or the other. I know Billy Lamont ain’t the easiest fella in the world ta live with and Charlene and him had their ups and downs. But he did report her missin’ and it just seems ta me there shoulda been more of an effort put inta locatin’ ‘er.”

  “Have the state cops investigated?” I wondered.

  “Unless Jessup makes it clear he believes a crime has been committed they’re not gonna get involved. And he’s been makin’ out like---”

  “She’s a runaway, a bored housewife,” I interjected.

  “That’s about it,” Miles confirmed.

  “Isn’t it possible he’s right?”

  “Sure, I suppose it is. Who knows.”

  “Failing a kidnapping scenario or something like that, what do you think might be Callie’s motivation to disappear?”

  Miles’ facial expression indicated a reluctance to say whatever it was that was on his mind. “She’s a much different woman from the one you married, Jack,” he said. “Her mind don’t work the way it used to. It’s possible … just possible, mind ya, that she ran because she couldn’t face up ta seein’ ya again.”

  “Has she talked about me much over the years?”

  “Not a lot, no. She never seemed ta want ta talk about you or Tanya. Just too painful for her. But the thing that worried us the most was this edge she has now that was never there before the poison that put her in that coma.”

  “The doctors warned me when she came out of it that her mental functioning would be impaired to some degree,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s obvious enough at times. She often gets frustrated when she’s faced with situations that require her ta make immediate choices, that kind a thing. She don’t deal well with stress.”

  “Still, disappearing like this doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “I agree. Leavin’ the truck out there, that don’t make no sense at all. She had ta have left with somebody. But who, and why from there?”

  “You can’t think of anything she said in the days leading up to this that might shed some light on her actions?”

  He went into a thoughtful mode, staring off at nothing. “Now that I think about it,” he said after some time, “she was gettin’ more phone ca
lls than usual for the past couple weeks or so. She never said who it was or what the calls were about. Seemed ta upset her, though. Lookin’ back now I wish I had a been a little more inquisitive.”

  I wished the same thing.

  Just then we heard the phone ring in the house. A few seconds later Betty came hurrying down the hall and out to the porch. Her breathing was labored, like she couldn’t quite get enough air into her lungs. Miles and I both stood, not sure what her problem might be. My first thought was that she might be having a heart attack – she was, after all, nearly as overweight as Miles.

  Miles took her arm and steered her to a chair. “What is it, darlin’?”

  “Chief Jessup,” she said in a choking whisper, looking at me. “He says you’re to come to his office right away. He’s got news about Callie.”

  5

  One day earlier …

  Callie woke with the conviction that today she would deal, once and for all, with John Croop. She had known from the very first moment of their brief affair - could she really call it that? – what a terrible mistake it had been. How she could have let things get so out of hand was beyond her. She only wished she could go back in time - relive her initial encounter with the man who, at first, had seemed so considerate and thoughtful.

  What she had mistaken for compassion, however, soon enough revealed itself for what it really was – a man willing to take advantage of a woman not entirely capable of making wise judgments at all times. Strange, she thought, how clear it seems to me now. Why not then, when it mattered most?

  Other things had become clear to her lately, too – most notably her feelings for Jack. It had taken a long time to forgive him for abandoning her, for not trusting her enough to speak of the terrible madness that had overtaken him seven years earlier. But lately she had begun to see that the measures people sometimes take in an effort to protect those they love are not necessarily easily understood. Jack’s actions, viewed in hindsight, made more sense to her now than ever before. Looking at circumstances from his perspective she was able to see that he had only wanted to spare her the pain he knew would be brought on by coming forward.