The Shadow Priest

by D. C. Alexander

  *****

  Around 4 p.m., the breeze at last picked up, and Arkin made the most of it, running before the wind with the main and genoa sails trimmed wing-and-wing. By nightfall, he had rounded Possession Point and sailed into the Port of Everett. It had one of the biggest marinas he had ever seen. He tied up the boat in a vacant slip and hobbled ashore. The train line indeed ran along the waterfront. But the train would have to wait. A few blocks into town, he found a drug store. Strolling its aisles, he collected large bandages, a standard screwdriver, a bag of ten Styrofoam coffee cups, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a cigarette lighter. He stuffed the bandages in his back pocket. Then he set the bag of cups on the ground behind a magazine rack near the pharmacy window, sprinkled alcohol on it, and lit it on fire. By the time he circled around to the other side of the pharmacy area, an impressive column of dense black smoke was rising from his small blaze. The fire alarm went off, sprinklers kicked on, and the two-person staff of the pharmacy evacuated with the rest of the employees and store patrons while Arkin kept out of sight. They had locked the pharmacy door. But Arkin was able to pop the latch with the screwdriver in a few seconds. Inside, he grabbed bottles of Ciprofloxacin and Metronidazole capsules. He found the prescription painkillers too. But they were inside a glass cabinet with a heavy-duty lock. He weighed the risk of attracting attention by breaking the thick glass, then left, grabbing a bottle of ibuprofen, another tube of antibiotic ointment, and a box of candy bars as he did.

  *****

  Arkin rolled south through the night in a freight boxcar, half freezing despite the foul weather jacket he'd taken from the boat, hidden in a cramped hollow atop bags of lawn fertilizer. The powerful chemical stink of the fertilizer put an unpleasant metallic taste in the back of Arkin's mouth as he ate candy bar after candy bar. And the cold, the pain of his wound, and the unrelenting fear of discovery and capture rendered his brief and woefully insufficient periods of sleep unhappily fitful. But for all his exhaustion and misery, he made it to Eugene by the next morning, gingerly stepping off the train as it slowed near the center of town. There, he found an open restroom in a park on the south bank of the Willamette River where he washed his head, face, and hands in a sink in an effort to make himself look less suspiciously filthy and haggard.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Putting on the mask of a careworn law student—a look he knew all too well—Arkin strode into the University of Oregon School of Law library. He sat down at an open computer terminal—one of many in a long bank—and began an internet search for Bluefields Data Dynamics. An examination of State of Oregon business entity records gave Arkin the street address, and revealed the company's owner to be a "Dr. David Tillman," Adjunct Professor, Sociology, University of Oregon. The name struck Arkin as familiar, though he couldn't say why and couldn't find a photo of the man. He racked his memories of the Priest case, but to no avail. A satellite image of the address revealed that it was not in a business park or office building, as one might have expected, but in a residential neighborhood, on a hillside to the southwest of the University of Oregon.

  As he did a handful of follow-up searches to make sure he had as much information on Bluefields and Professor Tillman as was publicly available, a conversation at the far end of the bank of computers yanked Arkin from his trance.

  "No, Jacob. It's effective upon dispatch," a male voice said with the forced pomposity Arkin had come to expect of the deeply insecure.

  "Acceptance is effective upon dispatch?"

  "That's the common law simplification. The Second Restatement says acceptance made in the manner and medium invited by the offer is operative and completes the manifestation of mutual assent as soon as it's out of the offeree's possession."

  "Plimpton said it has to be received by the offeror."

  "No, he said it doesn't have to be received."

  "No, no. Think about it logically. Here's a hypothetical. If the offeree sends the acceptance and a rejection at the same time—"

  On and on they went. Arkin wanted to pull his own hair out. Here he was, a wounded, half-starved fugitive, his far-away wife's health failing as he raced to clear his name, break a multiple murder investigation, and expose an international conspiracy of Hollywood proportions. And he was stuck listening to two posturing first-year law students carry on a trivial argument over the mailbox rule of contract law—something neither of them would probably ever encounter in the real world even if they didn't quit the legal profession, disillusioned and miserable, within five years of graduating. Though he'd fallen for it himself, it never ceased to amaze Arkin that people freely chose to go to law school.

  Content that his search had been thorough enough, he took the stairs to an upper floor where he found exactly what he was looking for—private study rooms with locking doors. Inside one of the small, windowless rooms, he locked the door, turned out the lights, and lay down on the floor under the desk to catch a brief rest before nightfall.

  *****

  Arkin sat in darkness, observing, from ten or fifteen yards inside a dense stand of trees and bushes off the end of the backyard, the residence that served, at least on paper, as the headquarters of Bluefields Data Dynamics. The night air carried a penetrating, chilling dampness, and smelled of evergreens and ferns. From somewhere down in the south Eugene neighborhood in the valley behind and below him, a large-sounding dog was barking. Otherwise, aside from the soft white noise of the city, all was quiet.

  He was lying as flat as he could, propped up on elbows to watch the large, 1920s-era Arts and Crafts style house through a small set of shoplifted binoculars. He was looking at the back of the house. The lights were on inside. There was a large glassed-in sunroom that the resident seemed to be using as a den or reading room. In it, a tall bookshelf filled with elegant hard covers, a large wingback chair of dark brown leather, and a jade green reading lamp. It was a warm and inviting room. A great place to curl up and read a book. There was a black-and-white photo of a mountainside waterfall framed at one end of the wall, an oil painting of an old sailing ship at the other. Being a sailor, and interested in all things maritime, Arkin lingered on the painting. It was a man-o-war. A three-masted heavy frigate, circa late 1700s, clearly of American design.

  No.

  As the wires connected, channeling old memory into his conscious mind, Arkin's body went rigid. He was back in Nag's Head, North Carolina. He was in the den, having been dispatched to retrieve cigars from a small bookshelf humidor while Hannah and the others lingered over dessert. He hadn't been snooping. The passport had simply fallen out of a false panel in the lid of the humidor. Dr. David Tillman, born in Livingston, Montana, 28 August 1951. Arkin assumed it was just another work identity. There was nothing odd about that. He himself had three active identities at the time, complete with drivers licenses, credit cards, and so forth, to be used, as needed, for undercover or covert work. The only odd thing was that it wasn't being kept in a safe at headquarters as required by DCI standard operating procedures. Arkin could still smell the cedar of the humidor, the roasted garlic aroma of the dinner they'd just finished. Could still picture the exact position of the same wingback chair and the grand, old hardwood desk that stood under the same painting of the heavy frigate U.S.S. Constitution in the study of Roland Sheffield's North Carolina beach house.

  The first drops of a chilling Oregon rain brought him back to the present. "Roland?" he whispered. As he grappled with the implications, realizing, for the first time, that Sheffield might actually have orchestrated Arkin's disgrace and banishment to keep him from making further progress in the Priest case, a dark sadness took hold of him. Made his arms and legs go weak. He blinked, and blinked again, still half believing, half hoping it was an illusion, but knowing that it wasn't.

  He rose to his feet with utter disregard for concealment. Part of him yearned to run to the house, kick the door in and embrace his old mentor, ask him what happened, demand an explanation. Doubt held him back. Doubt, a trace of reason, and a sud
denly overwhelming fatigue that had come with the discovery that, instead of being his dear friend, instead of being a genuine source of long-yearned-for and treasured affection, Sheffield was, perhaps, his enemy. But Sheffield couldn't be with the group. There was just no way. Arkin knew him better than he'd ever known his own father. There had to be more to the story. There had to be some explanation.

  In a daze, he turned away from the house, half stumbled out of the woods, and made his way back down the hill to a small city park. He sat down at a picnic table in the dark and lay his head down on his arms. A cold breeze began working its way under his clothes, but he couldn't have cared less. He didn't know where to go. He was too tired, too confused to think. His mind turned to Hannah. Hannah, surely watched by people hoping to catch him. Hannah, going downhill fast. He began once more to despair that Hannah would die long before he would ever be able to get back to her. That there was no hope for ever seeing her again. He had no desire to stand back up. He closed his weary eyes.

  *****

  When he next opened them, he found that he was walking on a broad, dry, colorless mudflat. A stiff wind was blowing across the hard ground, and dust in the air obscured everything more than a hundred or so yards away. Yet while he'd never been there before and could hardly see, he knew exactly where he was: the parched alkaline delta where the Colorado River once flowed into the sea.

  The wind howled as it tore along the godforsaken earth, whipping his face with sand, stinging his eyes and forcing him to squint. He was turning his back to it when something yellow caught his eye. It was lying in a small depression, like a dried mud puddle, a good 50 yards away. He walked toward it, the color growing more vivid as he approached. It was a cluster of bright yellow aspen leaves, just like the one he'd seen floating down the Animas River so many weeks earlier. But what were they doing there? How did they get there? Before he could reach them the wind shifted, scattering and blowing them away. In moments, they'd vanished without a trace, and Arkin again found himself surrounded by a colorless, lifeless wasteland.

  Then something else caught his eye, startling him. A figure. A person standing at the very edge of his field of view. "Hey!" Arkin shouted. "Hey! Over here!" he called. But the figure, its back to Arkin, didn't move. Didn't respond. Arkin began running toward it. The figure was robed and enormously tall. When Arkin had covered half the distance, he looked up to see the figure moving away from him. Its motion was odd, as if it were sliding away instead of walking on legs.

  "Bryant!" Arkin shouted into the roaring wind. "Father Bryant!"

  At this, the figure paused and turned its head around to look at Arkin. It was then that Arkin once again saw the mask of the Anasazi priest from the pictograph, his face dark, his eyes glowing red, pairs of spokes protruding from either side of the crown of his head.

  "Wait!"

  But the figure didn't wait. It turned and resumed its course, pulling farther and farther away from its pursuer. Soon Arkin was out of breath. His stamina gone. "Wait," he said sadly, at a breathless, barely conversational volume. "Please."

  He dropped to his knees and watched as the figure moved beyond sight, disappearing into the haze of dust. Exhausted, Arkin dropped onto his side on the hard, dry earth and fell asleep.

  *****

  Later, there were voices in the dark. Gentle voices. The gentle touch of someone's hand on his back.

  "Come on, brother. Put an arm over my shoulder and I'll lift you. Freeze alert's on."

  TWENTY-NINE

  Abruptly conscious of the fact that he was in bed, lying on his side, Arkin heard a pair of hushed voices mumbling something about extra blankets. The air smelled of acrid body odor, dried urine, and, to Arkin's perplexity, simmering vegetable soup of the bland and briny sort that came out of a can. He opened one eye, then another, only to find, across a three-foot gap between their parallel cots, a filthy man with a long and scraggly beard and unkempt hair staring at him. He could have been Arkin's age. But it was hard to tell through all the hair and beard and filth. He lay on top of his bedding and wore fingerless brown gloves, brown corduroy pants, an insulated polyester vest, and, of all things, a thoroughly worn out, full-length cashmere Brooks Brothers overcoat with belt loops but no belt. Arkin figured it would have been at least $2,000 when new.

  The man's expression was placid and resigned. Tired. But his pale blue eyes bore a penetrating intensity. After taking a quick glance around the room—which appeared to be a temporary homeless shelter set up in the linoleum-floored coffee room of an old church or community center of some sort—Arkin stared back at the man, lacking the energy or will to speak, let alone move.

  "Why bother, right?" the man muttered at last. "What's the point? The darkness is coming for all of us," he said as he rolled onto his back to stare at the cold, underpowered, humming fluorescent lights overhead.

  Arkin took another glance around. His cot stood in a corner alongside a bank of windows, outside of which a cold Pacific rainstorm raged in a gloomy, gray morning, gusts of wind whipping the panes with heavy drops. There were maybe a dozen cots in the room, a third of them occupied by sleeping men. Double doors opened out to a wide hallway that surely led to wherever they were heating the soup. Arkin's eyes returned to his neighbor. At the foot of his cot sat a soiled, threadbare assault pack component of a Marine Corp ILBE backpack system with desert variant MARPAT camouflage. A large tear in it had been sown shut with what looked like green dental floss. He wondered whether the mysterious hairy man had stolen it.

  Next to his pillow, a bottle of water and a bowl of what looked like quick oatmeal sat on a small PVC table. He considered eating or drinking. But his appetite left him the moment he pictured Hannah as he'd last seen her, lying helpless in her hospital bed. He moaned for a moment, then fell asleep again.

  *****

  Again he came to in the bed. It was night. His blanket had been changed. The oatmeal was gone, replaced by chocolate chip cookies. Again he stared at the food without the least temptation to eat, wondering how long he'd been there.

  *****

  Sometime the same night, he was pulled from the darkness by the sound of a woman's voice asking if he could hear her. Was he dreaming?

  She asked again, "Can you hear me?"

  He willed his crusty, tacky lips apart. "Yes," he whispered

  "Will you drink some water?"

  He didn't answer, but complied with her efforts to sit him up as she stuffed another pillow behind his head. She held a plastic cup near his lips. The smell made him realize how thirsty he was. He could imagine nothing better than a large glass of cool, fresh water. He ached with desire for it. But he didn't drink.

  "What's the matter? Do you feel ill?"

  He shook his head, a vision of Hannah anchored in his mind's eye.

  "You need to drink. You haven't had food or water since you arrived."

  He closed his eyes and shook his head again.

  "If you can't drink, I'm going to call an ambulance."

  Ambulance? He opened his eyes. No. "Wait."

  She held his head as he sipped, paused as he nearly choked, then drank the whole cup down. It felt like it was pouring out a hole in the bottom of his empty stomach. All at once he felt a stabbing hunger. But it wasn't enough to overcome his greater wish to escape the pain altogether.

  *****

  The next morning, he woke to the spectacle of a beautiful cream yellow butterfly sitting motionless just outside his window. It was a sight to behold, its spectacular wings seeming, almost, to radiate their own light. But as his eyes cleared, he realized the butterfly was caught on the edge of a spider's web, and that the wretched brown-black arachnid was closing in for the kill.

  An unwelcome vision of Pratt's terrified and blood-speckled wife and children flashed through his mind. Then came a vision of the group's probable next target, Ted Wright, the Canadian First Nations radical, walking hand-in-hand with his little daughter as the two of them licked ice cream cones. Finally, there was H
annah, helpless, frightened, and alone.

  His eyes refocused, and he saw that the spider had already bound the butterfly in silk and delivered its venomous, fatal bite. It was too late to save it. All the same, from deep within, Arkin felt the urge to rise. To rise up and crush the spider with his fist.

  Someone jostled Arkin's cot. "It's time for you to wake up, friend," he heard a voice say. He turned around to see his hairy neighbor standing over him, holding two paper plates.

  "Wake up," the man repeated, setting the plate on the floor under Arkin's nose. It held a large baked potato, piled with sour cream and shredded yellow cheese. The aroma brought Arkin back to life. "You gotta eat something and get your shit together. The weather warmed back up. They're going to close the temporary shelter and flush us out of here pretty soon."

  "Where is here?"

  "South Hills Christian Academy. One of the volunteers must have found you and brought you in when they issued the freeze alert."

  "I fell asleep in a park."

  "There you go."

  Arkin sat up and dug in with a fork. He looked down at the man's ILBE assault pack. "Where do you get a pack like that?"