Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  She finally looked at him. “I’m not worried. I’m curious.”

  “I’m worried,” he said. “I need to finish the story I started to tell you.”

  In her office that morning, he’d wanted to tell her about Chip Underhill and Carrie Haygood and the possible causes of subdural hematoma. He had so much else he wanted to tell, about the Gray horse and Floss Underhill’s strange paintings and Warren Doti and Simon Bostwick and the theory that was percolating up through that murky collection of facts. But Liisa had said someone was waiting and they’d agreed on Fiorello’s as he left, leaving him to struggle with the burden for the rest of the day.

  He leaned forward, trying to keep his voice low. “Bren, this whole thing got weird today. I think we’re into something a lot deeper than we thought.”

  “Your meeting with Haygood?”

  He nodded. “That’s why I was so curious about her allegiances and Dagnolo and all that. But I didn’t get a chance to tell you what we talked about, or about some of the other stuff that’s come up about Floss.”

  “Like I said, Haygood’s a cipher to me.” Brenna set her wineglass back on the table. “That review team is so new, and it operates outside the normal channels. There’s no buzz about it, or her. At all.”

  Christensen leaned even closer. “I showed her the morgue paperwork on Chip Underhill. She’s already looking into it.”

  Brenna smiled. “That’s her job.”

  “No, Bren, no. The Underhills’ story about the horse didn’t wash. She all but said that’s not how the kid died.”

  Brenna stared until a passing waiter was out of earshot. “How, then?”

  “The $64,000 question. But there’s apparently nothing in the coroner’s report that supports the story about him getting kicked by a horse. Remember what your pal Levin said about the ‘little skeleton’ in the Underhill family closet? I’d bet Haygood leaked something to him. And I’m wondering if what he said about Floss might be right, the thing about somebody trying to keep her quiet.”

  Brenna gave him an exasperated look. “Aren’t you the conspiracy theorist? Well, how about this one: Maybe Haygood’s doing all this because she works for Dagnolo.”

  Christensen stared. Her dismissal was defensive, not just indifferent. “There’s a lot more I haven’t told you about, Bren, but it’s all starting to make a strange sort of sense. I don’t think it’s that simple; it’s not just politics.”

  “Jim, Dagnolo’s watching Ford Underhill waltz into the job he wanted, the one the state Democratic committee told him was his until Underhill decided to run. He’s pissed off.”

  “I don’t—”

  “So I’m not surprised he’d sic Haygood—”

  “Bren, would you listen to me?” At adjoining tables, heads turned. Brenna froze, her wineglass suspended halfway between the table and her lips.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Maybe the world does work the way you think it does, maybe it’s a big power game where everybody’s just trying to get an edge. I hope it is.” Why was he so angry? He ratcheted his voice down to a stage whisper. “But I don’t think we can ignore what’s happening here. I don’t think we can overlook our questions about the Underhills anymore. It’s getting too—” He searched for the right word. “—plausible. When I put all the pieces together, I wonder if maybe what happened to this kid is at the heart of it.”

  “Of what?” she said.

  “Of everything.”

  A waiter arrived to take their order, standing impassively while they stared across the table at one another. Brenna handed him her menu. “You know what I want, Antonio.” Christensen ordered his favorite pasta.

  “You’re not making sense,” Brenna said after they were alone again.

  He took a deep, calming breath, then a sip of Chianti. “Just hear me out.”

  Brenna listened. She sat back while he described the events of the past few days, events that were the building blocks of a disturbing possibility. Now that he said it aloud, the whole thing sounded nearly as paranoid as it did plausible. When he was done, she waited through the waiter’s elaborate Caesar salad preparations before reacting.

  “All right,” she said, refilling her wineglass. “If some specific memories are leaking from Floss’s brain, as you say, how can you be sure they’re accurate?”

  “I can’t, Bren. The thing about Alzheimer’s is it doesn’t usually distort memories so much as it leaves them without context. That’s why the images in her paintings are so, so—”

  “Bizarre.”

  “But they’re not, really. They seem disjointed, I know, but the common thread is the time frame. The horse, Gray, is the key. He was involved in the boy’s death, then he was shipped off to this private ranch out in Westmoreland County about the same time as Warren Doti. She loses a grandson, a favorite horse, and a man I think was her lover all at the same time. When you understand how all that unfolded, her fixation on those images makes perfect sense.”

  “It does?”

  “Because she may remember it all. It just doesn’t make sense to her. Maybe because of her disease. Maybe because she was told a version of events that doesn’t add up for some reason. Who knows? But think about it, Bren. What if Floss knew how that child really died and kept it quiet to protect somebody. Hell, say she did it or helped cover it up. If the family all of a sudden couldn’t control her anymore, don’t you think that would make her a fairly dangerous person to have around?”

  Brenna nibbled at a forkful of chilled romaine, then put it down unfinished. “That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”

  He shook his head, leaning closer, speaking again in a whisper. “Until you think about the stakes, Bren. We’re not just talking about a statewide election here. We’re talking about a political and social legacy that goes back four generations. We’re talking about national aspirations. We’re talking about a family with everything, but its whole reputation is based on its image as a positive force in this community. If there is a dirty little family secret, something as unforgivable as I think it is, something everybody thought was dead and buried, can’t you see how the need to control that secret suddenly could be the most important thing in the world?”

  Brenna watched Christensen pick a meaty black anchovy out of his salad, then speared it with her fork. “But kill her? I just don’t buy it.”

  “Even with so much at stake?”

  “It’s too cold-blooded, Jim. They could have shut her off, kept her from contact with the outside world. She could have lived twenty more years in that Fox Chapel house and nobody would have ever known if she was alive or dead. Look at Ronald Reagan. The guy just vanished the day he was diagnosed.”

  “Which is pretty much the way it was with Floss until last week,” he said. “But remember when all this started?”

  Brenna counted back on her fingers. “What day did she fall? Last Saturday?”

  “No, the context. Remember what happened just before she got hurt?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maura’s art show. One of her horse paintings was going to be in the show, out there for everyone to see.”

  Brenna shoved her half-eaten salad away. “Those images wouldn’t mean anything to anybody.”

  “Except the people who knew what they meant, or who knew she was struggling to make sense of something. I mean, the Press critic singled out her painting and wrote about it in the paper, for God’s sake. A couple days later, Floss Underhill is at the bottom of a ravine and the cops are looking for the person who this gardener says may have pushed her. And now the gardener and his wife are gone.”

  Christensen could see he’d connected. Brenna didn’t object when a waiter took her plate of unfinished salad.


  “Or worse,” he added.

  They fell into an uneasy silence, their eyes drifting to the windows, to the city below. It was getting dark now, and Pittsburgh’s skyline was emerging in silhouette against the hills of the North Side. Christensen felt suddenly alone, suddenly afraid. When he turned his attention back to Brenna, a plate of linguini al pomodoro fresco was in front of him and a heaping plate of calamari in front of her. When had it arrived?

  “Bren?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What if I’m right?”

  She slipped a tine of her fork through a rubbery loop of squid and lifted it to her lips. She chewed it thoughtfully, but without much enthusiasm. “These are my clients. I’m obligated to defend them.”

  “No matter what?”

  Brenna stopped chewing. “Time for my Socratic questions,” she said. “Let’s assume someone in that family is guilty of whatever you suspect. Do you think they should have a trial before we execute them?”

  “Of course.”

  “Should the trial be fair?”

  He nodded.

  “Should the accused have an attorney?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should the attorney be competent?”

  “Yes.”

  “And honorable?”

  Christensen felt her logic tightening like a noose. “Yes.”

  “Even if someone in the family is guilty, shouldn’t I, as their attorney, make the investigators and prosecutors prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt?”

  He nodded again, unable to argue a single point.

  Brenna set her fork down and leaned back in her chair. “Let me do my job then.”

  “But Bren, what if?”

  He waited. Something had changed her. Private practice? Political ambition? He remembered the idealism that had kept her in the public defender’s office so much longer than her contemporaries, remembered her longtime commitment to defending the rights of those who couldn’t defend themselves. How different she seemed now. The worst-case scenario was chilling: a little boy dead, a cover-up that led to the attempted murder of his grandmother, a cover-up of that attempted murder that may have led to other murders, depending on identification of the two bodies at the morgue. Christensen knew Brenna was calculating the possibilities, too, as she rearranged the food on her plate.

  “If you’re one hundred percent right—and you’re not—I would withdraw from the case,” she said.

  “You’d withdraw?” he tested. “That’s it?”

  “This is bullshit.”

  “But if it’s true—”

  “It’s not.”

  “You’re too sure.”

  “I think the Underhills deserve a competent defense.”

  “And I think—” Christensen weighed his words carefully. “Bren, are you telling me everything? You started to say something today about Harrisburg—”

  Brenna pushed the full plate of calamari away and stood up. Even in the dim light, he could tell she was pale. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. “I’ll meet you at home,” she said, and then she was gone.

  Chapter 28

  Christensen had to wait for the valet to bring his car, so Brenna got home fifteen minutes before he did. When he finally walked in, she seemed lost in thought as she rinsed hot-dog grease from the kids’ dinner dishes. Christensen picked up the compact discs scattered across the living-room floor. The kids adored Jenny. Christensen was less enthusiastic. Both times she’d babysat, she left the house looking like the aftermath of a Kansas twister. Christensen flipped on the front light and checked the porch, dead-bolted the front and back doors, then trudged upstairs to join Brenna.

  Even before he turned on their bedroom light, he saw a flashing pinpoint of red light on the reading table beside the bed. He walked to the answering machine and poked the Play button. “You have three new messages,” it announced.

  “Jenny doesn’t answer the phone?” he said.

  Brenna shrugged. She was working open the buttons of her blouse and didn’t look up.

  “Hey, Dad. Hey, Bren.” Melissa’s voice suddenly filled the room. “Greetings from Grenoble.”

  Christensen sat down on the edge of the bed to slip off his shoes. He’d grown close to his older daughter in the past three years, and hearing her voice from so far away triggered a sudden and overwhelming sense of loss. He missed her, his sadness underscored by the background commotion of her French host family and the knowledge that she’d grown up and away.

  “Just thought I’d check in before I throw myself off the clock tower in town.”

  The hair on Christensen’s arms stood up. He froze.

  “Kidding, Dad. Lighten up. I haven’t talked to you in a couple weeks, that’s all. Thanks for the check. Thought you might be working at home today. How’s the new house? Can’t wait to see it this summer. I’ve got an eight o’clock French Lit. exam tomorrow, so don’t call back. I’ll check in this weekend. Give Annie and Taylor a hug, okay? Bye.”

  The machine’s electronic voice announced 3:53 p.m. as the time of the call. Between feeding the kids and his troubling phone call to Simon Bostwick, he must have forgotten to check the machine.

  “She sounds fine,” Christensen said.

  Brenna slid out of her skirt. “That was uncalled-for back there.”

  “Maybe. It’s, I don’t know … clients or not, I just think we need to know what we’re dealing with, Bren.”

  “And you’re jumping to some pretty outrageous conclusions.”

  He stood up and unbuckled his belt, letting his pants drop to the floor while he waited for the second message.

  “Mr. Christensen, this is Carrie Haygood with the district attorney’s office.” He reached without thinking for the volume control, turned it up high. “We spoke earlier today.”

  Brenna was suddenly beside him, staring at the machine as if it had begun a conversation and she was expected to answer.

  “I’d like to meet privately to further discuss the case we spoke about this morning. I’ll be at my office until seven p.m. today.”

  Christensen lunged for a pen as Haygood recited her office telephone number, then scribbled the number on the back of a phone-bill envelope sitting on his dresser. Haygood had called at 5:37. The alarm clock read 9:24. Why hadn’t he checked the damned machine?

  Brenna crossed the room again. She stopped by the bedroom window and twirled the miniblind control rod, closing the thin louvers, then slipped out of her blouse. “You gave her our home number?” she asked.

  Christensen shook his head. He put the envelope down when he realized his hand was trembling. “I should try her tonight, before the weekend, just in case she’s still there.”

  The third message began with an indistinguishable rustle and the sound of passing traffic. Christensen waited for a voice, and waited. From the corner of his eye, he saw Brenna’s movements slow and then stop. She was waiting, too.

  Finally, above the sound of a closing car door: “This is for Jim Christen…” A pause. “…sen.”

  Simon Bostwick delivered his words with a thick tongue, deliberate but impaired, different but somehow still the voice of Christensen’s father.

  “We’re talking about life insur … nance, is what we’re talking about,” he slurred. “I got it, yes I do.” An exaggerated laugh. “Got what you need.”

  “Your deputy coroner?” Brenna asked.

  “Shhh.”

  “If they knew—” Another laugh, this one with an edge. “—I’m thinking I’d probably look like the one up there in the springhouse. Worse, probably. But I got it covered. Something I learned a long time ago, something your friend Grady Downing taught me: You go
tta leave yourself an out. Always. Always, always, always.”

  “Sounds perfectly credible to me,” Brenna said.

  Christensen put a finger to his lips.

  “ ’Cause that’s the thing. Once you’re in bed with these people, they know how to make sure you stay there. They know the pressure points. But I could hurt them, too, hurt them like they never been hurt before. Some things you just can’t deny.”

  They were motionless now, both staring at the answering machine, waiting through a long pause. He knew from the burp and roar of a starting motorcycle that Bostwick was still on the line.

  “So don’t call me at my house again,” Bostwick said finally. “And I can’t call you from there. We need to talk, though. Insurance policy’s no good if there’s nobody to file the claim. Something happens, you know, to me, I’d like to make it right. Might get me out of hell a little sooner. Wait a sec. Here’s a number.”

  Christensen wrote the number on the back of the phone bill, just below Carrie Haygood’s.

  “Area code’s the same as mine,” Bostwick said. “Two o’clock tomorrow. I don’t hear from you then, then two the next day. Grady trusted you, I know that much. So I’ll take a chance.”

  Neither of them moved until the machine announced the time of the call: 5:49. Fifteen minutes before he and the kids got home.

  “Drunks make lousy witnesses,” Brenna said.

  “Come on, Bren. The guy’s got no ax to grind, and it sounds like he knows something.”

  She looked exasperated. “Or he’s trying to blackmail the Underhills. The coroner’s office is political, too, you know. They swap favors with Dagnolo all the time.”

  Christensen picked up the cordless phone and turned it on. “Something was wrong when we first talked, though. I called him cold, you know, but his answers were just too sure. He said he didn’t remember the case, but he slipped when he said he handled a lot of cases involving kids. Why would he say that if he didn’t know who Chip Underhill was? He was trying to tell me something even then.”