Cast Of Shadows

by Kevin Guilfoile

  “Nonsense, Martha. Do you know what your father would say about all this?”

  “He’d say, Nonsense, Martha.”

  “That’s right, nonsense. He doesn’t need to be challenged by the other kids. He needs to have fun. His little brain isn’t ready for all this grown-up thinking. The telescope and the astronomy, that’s all right. But this other stuff.” She shook her head. “You’re going to make him into something. Turn him into something.”

  “Turn him into what, Ma?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Then say it.”

  “The fires, the stealing, the acting out.” Now her mother was whispering. “Those are all early signs, you know. What do they always say about the bad ones? After they’ve been caught by the police? They say, ‘He was smart. He kept to himself.’ ”

  “You’ll fall in love with any cliche, won’t you? You know, they say those things about the CEOs of software companies, too.”

  “Bundy, Gacy, Ng – all intelligent. They all had too many thoughts in their heads.”

  “Charles Ng? Ick. You should never have gotten a satellite dish, Mom,” Martha said. “Justin’s not crazy. He’s smart. Way smart. I’m not going to ignore that. I’m going to encourage it. In an anti-smothering, noncrazy-mom, totally normal way.”

  Her mother shook her head. “Buy him a math book, then. I don’t trust philosophy any more than psychology. Philosophy is ideology, and ideology leads to narrow minds.”

  “That’s Dad talking, all right.”

  “You know what I mean. Ideas come with responsibility, and he’s too young to know the meaning of that. In what cubbyhole of his mind is he supposed to stick a Greek philosopher?”

  “Do you even know what Plato was all about?” Martha asked.

  “No. Do you?”

  “A little. What I remember from college. And from the back of Justin’s book.”

  “You know a little. So he knows more than you now?”

  “About Plato?” She looked into Justin’s intense eyes. He was nearly halfway through the book. “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Here’s a tip,” Mom said. “Never let them know more than you. About anything.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  “Terry’s been gone a year.”

  “Don’t want to talk about it, Mom.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  – 34 -

  From the atmosphere, Rita’s could have been one of two dozen North Side Italian restaurants: thirteen tables, eclectic chairs, young staff, short menu, large portions, three-fork Sun-Times review in a black frame on the wall. When Big Rob and Sally walked in, the place was already nearly filled with lunching employees from neighborhood galleries and design firms.

  “You’re really going to buy me a meal,” Sally said with mock disbelief as he held her chair. “This is a first.” Big Rob didn’t explain, but as he sat down across from her she thought the smile on his face seemed false. He had brought a yellow file folder with him, and he set it down next to his plate.

  Big Rob waited until the server had recited the specials and returned for their order before beginning. He didn’t whisper. Even though the distance between tables was less than ten inches – measured each morning by the owner with a piece of custom-cut crown molding left over from the remodeling of her den – this space somehow felt as private as an office.

  “Phil Canella’s dead,” he told her.

  “What?” Her disbelief was genuine this time.

  “On a job. In Nebraska. Chasing a cheating husband.”

  Sally reached across the table and touched his arm. “Oh, my God, Biggie. I’m sorry. I know the two of you were close. You were on the Chicago PD together, right?” He nodded, and she understood now the formality of the setting was part of his mourning process. By giving her the news this way, in a nice restaurant instead of his hot, cramped office, he was showing respect for his friend. “When did it happen?”

  “He went missing a few weeks ago. Police haven’t found his body, but, you know…” His face went blank as he tried to choke off an unwelcome emotion. “I went down there for a few days to help out if I could. The town where Philly was last seen, Brixton – their force is a little understaffed for this kind of thing.”

  “Was there anything you could do?”

  Biggie shrugged. “He was staying at a Marriott in Lincoln. I went through his things, looking for anything that might tip us in the right direction.” He held up the yellow file folder. “I found these in his room.” He handed it to Sally.

  Barwick opened the folder. She covered her mouth with her right hand. “Oh. Jesus. God. No. God, no. ”

  Inside were many of the photos Sally had taken of Justin Finn over the years. The posed shots she had taken at Martha Finn’s request and sold to Gold Badge Investigators.

  “How? How did he get these?”

  “According to his e-mail he got them from his client, Jacqueline Moore. She lives up in Northwood.”

  Sally continued to leaf through the photos, their familiarity shocking under the circumstances. “I didn’t have any idea who the client was on the photo job. Scott Colleran never told me.”

  “Jackie Moore told Philly she found these on her husband’s computer.”

  “The cheating husband?”

  Big Rob nodded. “His name is Davis Moore. Does that ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “He was the doctor who cloned Justin Finn.”

  Slowly, Sally’s hands abandoned the folder on her lap and began scratching the sides of her face. “Davis Moore hired Gold Badge to acquire photos of his former patient? Doesn’t make any sense. What about Mrs. Moore? Does she know who the kid is?”

  “No. As far as I can tell, she was afraid he was her husband’s kid. By some other woman.”

  “So Moore might not have been cheating after all. Jesus, what a waste. And Philly’s death? I mean disappearance? Related?”

  “I’m going back to Brixton to find out.”

  Sally saw the waitress approaching with two plates of pasta and she discreetly closed the folder. She couldn’t imagine eating right now. Philly was dead. It horrified her to think the photos she took – that she already felt so guilty about – might have had something to do with his murder.

  “When are you going back?”

  “Not for a few days. Philly and I made a deal a long time ago. I’ll go through his cases and settle up with his clients. Take on the ones I’m able. God, I have to call Jackie Moore and tell her Philly was killed while working on her case.”

  “What are you going to tell her about the photos?”

  Big Rob mumbled through a giant forkful of linguine. “I don’t know. What do you think I should tell her?”

  “Well, the truth, of course,” Barwick said. “There’s just no way to know what the truth is.”

  Big Rob put down his fork, which for him was a gesture of seriousness. “There’s something else I wanted to prepare you for, Sals. The cops are gonna want to know what Philly was looking for down there. They’re going to chase every angle. Interview witnesses. These photos” – he nodded at the folder – “are gonna come out.”

  It took a few seconds for the scenario to play out in Sally’s head. “Omigod,” she said. “Martha.”

  Big Rob nodded. “You might want to start thinking about how you’re gonna handle that. I predict you’re going to have one pissed-off mother on your hands.”

  That night, grown-up Justin came again to Sally’s dreams wearing Eric Lundquist’s face. They were sitting on top of a tall building downtown. Not the Hancock or the Sears Tower, but one of the early-twentieth-century skyscrapers, ten or twelve stories up. Taller glass-and-steel buildings formed privacy walls in every direction. Gothic gargoyles – cats and bats and monkeys and dragons – lined the edge of the roof all around them. It was night but the air was
warm and still. They were having a picnic.

  “Have you heard of Plato’s cave?” Justin asked.

  Sally had taken two semesters of philosophy at the University of Illinois, but in the dream she said no.

  Justin opened the picnic basket and transferred the contents – fruit and cheese and bread – to the blanket underneath them. “Plato believed an idea was the ideal state of being,” he said. “When a carpenter conceives of a table in his mind, it is perfect. His conception of the table is the real table. When he actually planes the wood and saws the legs and assembles it, when he crafts it into something we can see and we can touch, the actual table is only a representation of the idea, an imperfect imitation.”

  “And the cave?” Sally asked, opening a thermos and pouring thick, sweet, green liquid into a pair of wine goblets.

  “He said our experience is like that of a man in a cave, watching shadows projected on the wall from an unknown source. The shadows we see are only imperfect representations of the real human beings.”

  “So the real people? If you can’t see them, where are they?” Barwick asked.

  Justin took a goblet from her and leaned forward, their shoulders pressed together, his lips the smallest metric measurement from hers. “Here,” he said. “On this roof. The two of us. At night. In your dreams. This is real.”

  He kissed Sally – an endless, heart-skipping, unforgettable first kiss that was still thick on her lips in the morning. It felt real. God, it felt so real.

  – 35 -

  Jackie hung up the phone with the private detective – Robert something-or-other, he’d said – and walked into the bathroom and shut the door. Tears fell from her cheeks into the bowl of the sink. Her hands trembled. Her eyes were pink with the bad news.

  She had sent a man to his death.

  Detective Robert had assured her there was no evidence linking Phil Canella’s disappearance to her case, but he never would have been in Nebraska if she hadn’t asked him to go back. Her lungs filled with asthmatic guilt. Exhaling became impossible.

  He told her they didn’t have any more information about her case. She told him that was all right, she was so sorry. He didn’t mention the sketch of the man or the photographs of the mysterious child or whether he knew if the boy was her husband’s son. She didn’t ask.

  Whenever Jackie took an assessment of herself, she pictured the three Jackies: past, present, and future. Past Jackie, full of energy and potential; present Jackie, always in transition; and future Jackie, contented, relaxed, happy at last. In the mirror tonight, she could see only the first two Jackies. She couldn’t even imagine herself without a husband, without a daughter, without this house. And now this shame on top of it.

  Her husband was leaving her. A man was dead.

  She could never know how much of it was her fault.

  – 36 -

  Big Rob checked in to the Brixton Budget Inn around 6 p.m., and after showering off the road grime with hard water and a tiny biscuit of motel soap, he got in his car and drove to Millie’s Tap Room, which was not the only bar in Brixton but the only one in which Big Rob, after three visits to the village, could order a hamburger without trepidation. He made the first two trips in the weeks after Philly disappeared. The local police – a chief and four cops – seemed perturbed by his questions, but eventually they understood the pain and guilt Big Rob carried within his giant frame and began to value the unofficial input of a former Chicago cop to a staff that rarely handled missing persons and had never coped with a murder investigation, if that’s what this turned out to be.

  On his first trip he flew a low-fare carrier to Lincoln, with his girth expanding uncomfortably across two expensive seats. This time he drove, piling highway miles on his old Chevy van. “The Stakeout and Make-Out Mobile” he called it, to the appreciative snickers of his new friends on the Brixton PD.

  Officer Crippen already had a table saved when Big Rob walked into Millie’s. “Crowded tonight,” Crippen said. “I had to fend off a few unrulies to save your seat.”

  “How unruly do they get around here?” Big Rob asked.

  “That’s what we all aim to find out, I guess.” Crippen took a long pull on a bottled Genuine Draft.

  Big Rob sat down with an expulsion of air and stress so loud and wheezy it seemed to Crippen less like a sigh and more like a breach of the ex-cop’s hull. “So, what do you know?” he asked.

  “What do we know?” Crippen shrugged. “Not much since the last time you were here. But there has been one development in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We found Philly’s car.”

  “Really? Where?” Superstitious, Big Rob knew better than to release the hope locked within him that his friend might still be alive.

  “Lawrence, Kansas. A student at KU was keeping it on campus. Got into a little fender bender. No insurance. The other guy’s insurance investigator started poking around, saw the VIN plate had been replaced, found the serial number on the engine block. He’s the one who eventually traced it back to Canella’s rental company.”

  “Where did the student buy it?”

  “A used-car lot in Topeka. The papers were pretty badly forged, but he says he bought it at auction, and the dealer he bought it from says he got it in a trade-in. That owner said he answered an ad and paid cash for it to a guy in North Platte. A fellow named Herman Tweedy. We haven’t talked to him yet.”

  “Promising?”

  “I’d say so. Herman Tweedy went to high school here in Brixton.”

  “You’re kidding! Friend of Ricky’s?”

  Ricky Weiss had been the Brixton PD’s only suspect from the day Big Rob had first called to report Philly missing. Interrogated half a dozen times by Crippen, once with Big Rob listening in, Weiss first denied knowing the man, then admitted Canella had come to see him, but claimed he left after asking a few questions. Without a body, there was nothing more they could do except put Weiss under very sporadic surveillance. Brixton cops had few resources they could devote to a case with no body and no motive.

  In his days on the job, Big Rob had been conditioned not to care about motive. Human beings did horrible things for no discernible reason at all. Motives might matter to the D.A. and they might matter to juries, but good police – even ex-police – don’t expect solutions to come in such square packages.

  “The connection to Ricky’s a little tenuous, but we can make it,” Crippen said. “Tweedy’s five years older. He has a short rap sheet. Stupid stuff – pot, vandalism, bush-league grifts – and a reputation a little like Ricky’s. A wannabe hustler, but too lazy to make a living at it. We’re checking the phone records. Asking around.”

  “Anything I can do?” Big Rob asked.

  “Might be. I hear Ricky’s going fishing in South Dakota tomorrow. Four days in the woods. Lots of beer. No telephone. Crapper on the outside. Maybe this is a good time to approach Peg.”

  “The wife?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what she knows, if anything, but Rick keeps her on a tight leash. This might be the best shot we get at her. Has she seen you before?”

  Big Rob shook his head. “Any suggestions?”

  “She’s a drinker. If I were doing an unofficial interrogation, I might do it at night. With Ricky out of town, she’s sure to hit the bars.”

  “I’ll follow her,” Biggie said.

  “There you go,” said Crippen. “Buy her a few drinks. Turn on the charm. See what spills out.”

  Big Rob snorted and shook his head. “You’re a smart cop, Crip.” The officer blushed. The waitress came and took their orders to the kitchen. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are you, twenty-five? Twenty-six? You want to be chief someday?”

  Crippen hitched his shoulders indifferently. “Not especially.”

  “What happens if you catch Philly’s killer?” Biggie asked. “You’ll be certified murder police, then. You still go
nna be happy when they send you back out to put chalk marks on tires up and down Main Street?”

  Crippen peeled a beer label, wet with condensation, away from his bottle. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m telling you, you won’t be. You catch a killer, it changes you. Makes you antsy. Makes you wanna catch ’em all.” Big Rob unwrapped the paper napkin from his silverware and clutched the dull knife in a whitened grip. “Thing is, you can’t catch ’em all,” he said. “And the ones you do, you never catch them in time.”

  – 37 -

  Ricky loaded the back of his truck with poles and nets and beer and secured everything with rope and canvas straps. He had three tackle boxes, with the spoons and minnows and flies segregated according to time of day and type of fish. He even had a spear, which he always brought but never used. The idea of spearing a fish thrilled him, but fishing the regular way could be frustrating enough. He imagined himself knee-deep in a stream, poking fruitlessly at the water as trout and salmon detoured around him. It made him angry just thinking about it.

  Peg was in a good mood. Three days – almost four – with Ricky out of the house would give her some much-needed time away from his chattering, his dreaming, his needling, his pressuring. Since the day that private detective showed up at their trailer and Ricky did, well, did what he had to do to protect their future, he had hardly let her out of his sight. It was a trying time for their marriage, and Peg asked him many times if he trusted her. Ricky always said that he did, but he kept close to the house and needed to know every detail of her schedule and called the store where Peg worked every evening at 5:05 to make sure she’d left for home. Lately he’d relaxed some, but this trip would be as much a vacation for Peg as it would be for Ricky. She’d already made plans with the girls for Friday night, with drinks and then maybe a trip to the place off the highway where they bring in the male strippers twice a month.

  For the first time in almost a year, Peg felt like everything was going to be okay.

  The “thing with the guy” (that was what they called it on the rare occasions when it had to be referred to out loud) had upped the stakes on their latest scheme. Someone was dead (accidentally, of course), and if they didn’t see some results from the Jimmy Spears plan, their killing him, all the risks they’d taken, would have been in vain.