Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  “One more thing, governor,” she said. “I’d like to go back to something Ford said that first day we talked about what happened to your wife.”

  Brenna tried to gauge Underhill’s reaction by the flutter of his eyelids.

  “Mr. Chembergo described the sound he heard that day as a thumping. Now, if you walk across the floor of that gazebo out back, even in hard-soled shoes, it’s pretty quiet. A few creaks, maybe, but nothing like thumping. But there’s apparently an empty storage room underneath the floor, and if you stomp your feet on the gazebo floor, you get this thumping sound, like a bass drum. The sound really travels.”

  “Where are you going with this, Ms. Kennedy?”

  “If the investigators are as sharp as I think they are, they’re going to see Mr. Chembergo’s statement about the thumping as credible. The sound would be consistent with a scuffle, and it’s not the sort of detail a witness would dream up. He said he was up near the greenhouses when he heard it, right?”

  Underhill shrugged. “I don’t recall.”

  Brenna pressed on. “That’s what he told the investigators, and we have no reason to doubt him. Combined with a broken railing where Mrs. Underhill apparently fell, and what Mr. Chembergo apparently said about seeing somebody leaving the area—”

  “No reason to doubt him?” Underhill said, standing suddenly. His face remained calm. “You don’t find reasonable doubt in the statement of a drunk Mexican who’s a football field away? Who lied about his standing with the INS? Who was in this country illegally?”

  Brenna stood her ground. To back down would seem defensive. “We have nothing to suggest he was drunk.”

  “Mr. Staggers says he caught him drinking down by the stables at least twice in the past few months. Lottie has complained, too. Just say the word. I’ll get you all the statements you want about that.”

  “He was reprimanded?”

  “By Mr. Staggers, yes.”

  “In writing?”

  Underhill smiled, but his gestures were getting sharper. He was tired of being pushed. “We’re talking about a gardener, Ms. Kennedy. How many people do you know who keep personnel records on their gardener?”

  “It’s a question the district attorn—”

  “The district attorney, Ms. Kennedy, can kiss my ass.” Underhill smiled again. He poured himself another brandy, just a splash, and drank it in one swallow. “If he’s got nothing better to do than chase down phantoms who throw old ladies into ravines for no apparent reason, based solely on the word of an unprosecuted felon, then maybe we need a new district attorney. A few well-placed dollars, an effective TV campaign, and practically anyone could crush Dagnolo like a bug in the next election.”

  “That’s two years away,” she said. “If something’s going to happen with this, it’ll happen long before that.”

  Underhill set the bulb of glass back down on the liquor cart and turned his back to her. “Fact is, Ms. Kennedy, they’ve got no witness. Am I correct?”

  “The sheriff has his statement. Myron Levin has God-knows-what on videotape.”

  Underhill turned, unrattled, apparently studying his fingernails. “Myron Levin? How far do you really think we’re going to let that little loose cannon roll, Ms. Kennedy? Do you know how many seats I control on the board of CapCom Broadcasting?”

  The corporate parent of Channel 2. “I admire your confidence,” she said.

  “Confidence has nothing to do with it. So enough. End of story. Let J. D. Dagnolo play his little games. Let him and Myron Levin ask their questions. It’ll all come to nothing, and both you and I know that. They know that. They’re desperate little men playing above their ability in a game they don’t understand.”

  There was no mistaking Underhill’s next gesture. He walked to the study door, his footsteps silent on the thick Persian rug. “I know you’re anxious to get home,” he said. “May I walk you to your car?”

  They crossed the foyer without another word. Brenna was a jumble of emotions. The empathy she had felt for Underhill as he retold the story of his grandson’s death was now tempered by a gut feeling about Underhill’s arrogance. Dagnolo had an obligation to investigate Floss’s fall. Political motives aside, he would have been remiss in not doing so. It wasn’t a game, and Underhill’s tone went way beyond confidence. It was contemptuous.

  Brenna unlocked the Legend’s door and set her briefcase on the front passenger seat. Underhill stood beside the car door, his face showing no sign of tension as he watched her bend over. When she stood up again, the door between them, their faces were less than two feet apart.

  “If you’re not taking this seriously,” she said, “why do you need me?”

  Underhill put his hand on the top of the car door, nearly touching hers. “Because besides being the best criminal-defense attorney in town, Ms. Kennedy, we felt that you could understand and appreciate the added dimension that politics brings to any situation. We’re taking no chances this close to Ford’s election. Once that’s over, we’ll probably never hear another word about it. I promise it’ll come to nothing.” He swept his hand sideways, lightly brushing hers, a horizontal chop that seemed unnecessarily forceful. “Nothing.”

  The front door opened behind them, and they both turned at the same time. Alton Staggers strode purposefully across the flagstone porch, between the potted geraniums and across the carport. With his hands clasped behind his back, his gait took on the loping quality of an uncoordinated scientist preoccupied by a sudden discovery. He stopped maybe ten feet away, looked straight at Underhill, and held out a cordless phone.

  Underhill looked at Brenna, then at Staggers. “I’ll be a minute,” he said.

  “It’s Bragg,” Staggers said.

  The two men stared at one another, their faces blank. But the name was clearly freighted with importance.

  “I’ve already talked to him,” Staggers said, “but you may want to be in on this.”

  Underhill reached across the top of the car door. Brenna shook his offered hand.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Ms. Kennedy,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll talk soon.” Underhill winked and turned toward the house.

  As she backed the Legend into the center of the carport and shifted out of reverse, Brenna saw Vincent Underhill at the window of his study with a cordless phone to his ear, listening. Behind him, Alton Staggers was pacing like an anxious shadow.

  Chapter 24

  The building Christensen was about to enter looked incredibly out of place. The city had intensively redeveloped Grant Street during the past two decades, starting with the artfully rusted U.S. Steel building at the north end, adding high-gloss modern towers here and there along the way, then, oddly, returning the actual street surface to the same red brick it was at the turn of the century. Opinions varied as to the overall effect. The new Grant Street was either an eclectic masterwork of urban design or a discordant eyesore of graceless development. Smack dab in the middle, the turreted Allegheny County courthouse crouched like a medieval castle.

  Christensen checked Brenna’s scribbled directions. She’d come home late, made a cryptic midnight call from the downstairs office, come to bed brooding, then left again before the kids woke up for school. She hadn’t even asked him why he was coming Downtown as she told him the best place to park and how to navigate the courthouse entrance. Truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure why he was here either, beyond a vague sense that this whole thing was more complicated than he or Brenna had ever imagined. He wanted to talk to Carrie Haygood.

  He pushed through the revolving brass door, expecting to emerge into a grand entry so typical of Pittsburgh’s ancient public buildings. Instead, he stepped into what looked like a catacomb. He’d seen root cellars with more light a
nd less dust. He stepped aside and waited for his eyes to adjust from the morning sun outside. In the darkness, on the leg of an arched pillar, the dim face of a lighted building directory emerged.

  He scanned the listed offices—sheriff, judges, commissioners, clerk of courts. The Child Death Review Team wasn’t listed, but since it was technically part of the district attorney’s office, he started up the marble steps to the third floor, emerging first into a larger and lighter lobby flanked by tile murals titled Industry and Peace, past a large window overlooking the building’s red-brick interior courtyard, then through another arched doorway and up the building’s central stairs. A hand-painted wood shingle—“Office of the District Attorney, J. D. Dagnolo”—hung outside a heavy wooden door. Through the door glass, on the facing wall, hung two black-and-white portraits: John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman. The receptionist to Christensen’s right motioned him in.

  “Carrie Haygood’s office?” he said, pushing halfway through the door.

  “Fifth floor.” She checked a sheet of paper taped to her desk. “514.”

  The corridors outside the third-floor courtrooms were populated with bored and desperate-looking people, silk-suited lawyers, and uniformed bailiffs. Christensen stepped around a man sitting on the floor and took a narrow set of steps two at a time to the fifth floor. Room 514 was near the men’s room, its door closed. Christensen twisted the knob and stepped in, startled to find himself not in a reception area, but in a cramped, overstuffed office. Once inside, he was less than five feet away from a sturdy, unflustered black woman behind the desk who was glaring at him over the rims of her black-framed Ben Franklin glasses.

  “I should have knocked,” he said. “I didn’t realize … Sorry.”

  The woman seemed frozen in place among stacks of boxes and piles of documents, a file folder open in her left hand, an elegant ink pen clamped in her right and suspended above a scribble-filled yellow legal pad. The tailored jacket of her gray suit hung over the back of her chair. Her blouse looked silk, and her elegant strand of pearls seemed especially out of place in this setting. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were closely gathered in a way that would have made her face equally interesting upside down. Her hair was cropped short, making her African-primitive earrings seem too big. She did not smile or blink. This was not someone whose time Christensen wanted to waste.

  “Yes,” she said finally.

  Christensen extended his hand. It seemed too intimate a gesture in a space this small. “My name is Jim Christensen,” he said as the woman set down her pen. Her grip was wary. “You must be Carrie Haygood.”

  She nodded, then checked her leather-bound personal organizer. “Did you have an appointment?” Her diction was precise, its earthy richness tinged with a trace of formidable Ivy League snobbery.

  “Sorry, no,” he said. “I won’t take but just a minute of your time now, or I can come back when it’s more convenient.”

  The woman sighed, folding her arms across her substantial bosom. She nodded to a metal chair to his left. Its seat was stacked with thick manila file folders. “Set those off if you want to sit.”

  Christensen stood for an awkward moment, searching the tiny office for somewhere to move the stack. From the dated labels and bright Post-it notes affixed to some of the boxes, he was sure there was a system at work in the jumble of cartons, cabinets, and loose files, just as he was sure that the woman across the desk was the only person who could possibly understand it.

  “The floor’s fine,” she offered.

  He moved the folders and took the chair. “Looks like you’ve taken on a huge job here.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Christensen?”

  So much for chitchat. “I need some forensic advice, and someone at the morgue suggested I talk to you,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true.

  Her smile was patient, but purposeful. “The morgue couldn’t offer forensic advice?”

  “It’s about a child’s death, part of some research I’m doing.”

  She looked suspicious.

  “I’m a psychologist. I study memory,” he said, realizing as he spoke that it explained nothing. “It’s a long story. I won’t bore you with it. If I could just get you to help me interpret a death certificate, I’ll be out of your way. But I would beg your discretion on this, as far as my interest, I mean.”

  “Recent case?” she said.

  “Three years old.”

  “Do you have the file with you?”

  “Copies.” Christensen pulled his notebook from his briefcase. Tucked between the pages were the photocopied documents given him by the morgue clerk the day before. He gestured around the room. “You’ve apparently got a copy here as well, they said.”

  “Name?”

  “Chip Underhill. It’s Vincent the third on the records.”

  She took the documents he handed across the desk, poker-faced, saying nothing. “It’s entirely possible we requested it, but that doesn’t mean anything. We’re just working our way forward.”

  “From ten years ago, right?”

  She nodded, adjusting her glasses to the end of her nose. The woman radiated a strength Christensen couldn’t quite define, the look of someone on a mission. She was also absorbing everything he said, but giving nothing in return.

  “This conversation will stay between us?” he said.

  “These are public documents,” she said without looking up.

  “But as far as me bringing them to your attention—”

  Carrie Haygood offered a slight smile, which could have been more reassuring. “I’ll let you know if you say something important.”

  The death certificate was on top. Her smile evaporated, either from focusing her attention on the task, or in response to something she’d read. He wished he could be sure. She flipped quickly through the next document, the toxicology report, and scanned what he assumed was the coroner’s investigative report. Her face betrayed nothing but intensity as she studied the information before her.

  She laid the manila folder down on her desk on top of the file she had been reading when he’d barged in, folded back the cover page of the final document, the autopsy protocol, and started reading at the beginning. When she finished, she closed the folder, stood up, and walked her fingers along a row of hanging folders sitting sideways on the opposite side of her desk. Even from his angle, Christensen could read the file tabs. They were arranged by year, going back ten years. Her fingers stopped at the one she wanted—the one labeled with the year of Chip Underhill’s death written on the tab in black Magic Marker. She pulled a thin manila folder from inside. It was labeled “UNDERHILL, Vincent III.”

  Christensen searched her inscrutable face for clues, finding no information about what had just happened. He looked at the file. Despite the apparent chaos of her organizational system, there was no mistaking its prominent spot on her desk. But why?

  “So?” he said.

  She studied him. “What’s your interest in this case, Mr.—”

  “Christensen.”

  The woman was like a sponge, sopping up his every gesture, expression, and proffered piece of information without a leak. Give a little to get a little, he thought.

  “I’m researching the function of memory in Alzheimer’s patients, out at the Harmony Brain Research Center. One of the study subjects is this boy’s grandmother, and I’m just trying to construct a reliable account of certain events in her past, particularly events that may have been traumatic for her, so I can see how her mind interprets those memories.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” he said.

  Haygood knitted her fingers together and set her hands on her desk. “Why this woman in particular?”

  “I’m followi
ng an art therapy group that she’s in,” he said, resisting the urge to explain more. He’d said all he was going to say unless Haygood gave a little, too.

  Haygood waited. He waited. Haygood blinked first. “So she remembers something about how this child died, and you’re just trying to corroborate it?”

  “Is this an interrogation?” Christensen hoped his smile would temper his agitation.

  “Just curious. Your work sounds interesting.”

  “Thank you.”

  Haygood unraveled her fingers and reached across her desk. She slid the hanging file rack around until its front face was angled toward him, then waited as he read the front label. “Team Review,” it said. The gesture seemed purposeful, but Christensen wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “Your team is already looking at this boy’s file?” he said finally.

  “Mr. Christensen, I’m not at liberty to discuss any particular case, especially one that’s officially under review.” Her tone had shifted, suggesting something not apparent in her words. “But I can answer any general questions you may have about what we do here.”

  He tried again. “What does it mean if you refer a case for team review?”

  She winked. The gesture was as unexpected and welcome as a first kiss.

  “The team has fifteen members,” she said. “Experts from various fields—a detective, a prosecutor, two sheriff’s deputies, a psychiatrist, a social worker, a pediatrician, a violence-prevention expert, and seven others from various agencies.”

  “And you,” he said.

  “And me. It’s my job right now to do preliminary screening. At least initially, I’m reviewing details of all the child deaths in Allegheny County for the past ten years. In cases where questions arise, I recommend a full team review.”

  “In cases where questions arise,” he repeated.

  “That’s correct.”

  They both looked at the hanging files.