Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  “You both sound mad,” Annie said.

  He turned to Brenna and offered an awkward hug. It was like trying to embrace a mannequin. “Truce?” he whispered, pretending to kiss her ear.

  She patted his shoulder and leaned around him. “Everything’s fine, guys. Just let us work this out, okay?”

  “Use your words,” Annie said.

  Christensen felt Brenna relax a little. “Deal,” she said.

  The kids shuffled back to the breakfast table. They were shoveling cereal into their mouths before Brenna spoke again. “So what are your plans?”

  “Harmony.” Christensen thought of Maura, his sadness suddenly profound and overwhelming. “Oh Jesus,” he said, stifling a sob.

  Brenna looked over his shoulder—at their kids, the stairs, the jumble of furniture and moving cartons they hadn’t had time to arrange and unpack. Christensen wiped his eyes, fighting for composure. “We’ve been doing evaluations of everyone in the class,” he said.

  “If you see Floss, are you going to talk to her?”

  “I don’t know. They pulled her from the class, so I don’t know if she’ll be around. But I have to go in. Maura’s students know me a lot better than the administrators, so I should probably help break the news. That way I can reschedule the evaluations and all that. Bren, call it paranoia if you want, but I’ve got to get some answers. I’m going to talk to Carrie Haygood this morning and Bostwick this afternoon. Maybe Floss, too.”

  “You do what you’ve got to do. Just don’t try to run my life while you’re doing it.”

  He nodded, his eyes never leaving Brenna’s. She looked around him again. “Bye, guys,” she said. “Love you.”

  The kids were watching them again. Brenna offered him a stiff embrace, all for show. As she pulled away and stepped through the front door, Christensen felt the disorienting sensation of movement, as if they all were being pulled toward some dark center, spinning faster and faster as they approached the whirlpool’s unforgiving funnel.

  Chapter 30

  Christensen had hurried Annie and Taylor through the breakfast, tooth-brushing, and shoe-tying routine, then herded them into the Explorer. Hiding his apprehension as best he could, he’d dropped them at the Winchester-Stanton School with a promise to return as soon as he could after classes ended, wishing he had a better option.

  Now, as he moved along the Harmony corridors at 8:30 a.m., Christensen felt the pall that hung over the aggressively cheery ground floor. He noticed it first in the parking lot, where someone had left a large arrangement of roses in Maura Pearson’s empty parking space. Inside, the receptionist was crying. Staff members and patients sat quietly together in the central lounge, many of them crying as well. The rehabilitation garden, one of the center’s most popular areas with its planter boxes and wheelchair-height potting tables, was empty. On one of the outdoor patios, where patients new to wheelchairs practiced getting into and out of the modified passenger compartment of an ancient Lincoln Continental, two patients from the spinal cord unit argued about exhaust systems.

  A hand-lettered sign on the door to Maura’s art therapy room announced the cancellation of classes, but without explanation. To one side of the door, Pearson’s most challenging student sat perfectly upright in her wheelchair, one manicured hand resting in the lap of her familiar pink Chanel suit, the other fingering her single strand of pearls as if they were rosary beads.

  “There won’t be any class this morning, Emma,” Christensen said.

  “Service at this club used to be so good,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happened.”

  He knelt on the corridor’s linoleum floor, bracing himself on the arm of her chair. “You’re at the Harmony Center, Emma, and I’m Jim Christensen. I’ve been with you many times in Maura Pearson’s art classes. But there’s been an accident, and Maura can’t be with us today. Is there somewhere else you’d like to go this morning?”

  The woman’s fingers raced even faster from pearl to pearl, their speed a perfect measure of her agitation level.

  “We made reservations a week ago, and I’ve still been waiting an hour for a table,” she said. “This is unacceptable, and believe you me, my husband will hear about it.”

  Christensen patted her hand. Her husband was at least ten years dead.

  “I’m going to escort you to the dayroom, Emma. I saw some of the other members of the morning class there with Allison.”

  Emma stared.

  “Allison is one of the art therapists who helps Maura in class,” he continued. “She’ll know what the schedule is for the morning now that classes are canceled. I don’t think we’ll be doing evaluations today as we’d planned.”

  Christensen tested the art therapy room door. It was unlocked. “Why don’t you come into the art room with me for a few minutes first? I want to use the phone in Maura’s office for just a minute.”

  He turned her chair around and backed through the door, wheeling her to the spot at the worktable where he knew she felt most comfortable. They both looked around. Even with the riot of color and ongoing projects, the room seemed empty and lifeless without Pearson’s dominating presence. “Emma, is there something you’d like to work on for a few minutes while I make a call?”

  The woman looked around. “These tables aren’t even set,” she said. “I want to speak to the manager.”

  Christensen set a sketch pad and a box of colored markers on the worktable, within her reach but not so close that they might upset her. “In case you feel like drawing,” he said. “I’ll be in Maura’s office, just for a few minutes.”

  He found Pearson’s phone under a large bag of cedar chips, which were bound, he assumed, for the gerbil habitat atop the bookshelf. The squeaking of the exercise wheel was the only sound in the dim space, and it underscored the sad fact that Pearson was gone. Against all odds, Christensen found himself concerned about the welfare of the tiny rodent. Who would trim its teeth now?

  After the fourth ring, Carrie Haygood’s office phone clicked into voice mail. He hadn’t counted on this, assuming she’d be in after 6:30 as her message had said she would be. “Jim Christensen returning your call at 8:45 Tuesday morning,” he said. “I’d like to talk as soon as possible, but I’m moving around. I’ll call back in thirty minutes or so.”

  Christensen looked at the crumpled phone-bill envelope. The number Simon Bostwick had left on his answering machine the night before was scribbled just below Haygood’s office number. The deputy coroner had said to call him there at two, but Christensen couldn’t resist. Even if Bostwick wasn’t there, maybe he could find out where he had called from. On the first ring, a woman’s voice answered, “Cook’s Corner.”

  Startled, Christensen said, “Simon Bostwick, please.”

  “We’re closed till eleven,” she said, and hung up.

  Christensen plucked a colored pencil from the quiver of pens and pencils on Maura’s desk and wrote “Cook’s Corner” beside the number Bostwick had left. He drew a box around the name and number, then put the pencil back in the cup where he’d found it. The squeaking of the gerbil’s wheel drew Christensen closer to the aquarium than he ever had been. Through the glass, he watched the tiny brown form running its endless circuit, wondering what would become of it now that its keeper was dead. The cage was clean, the wood chips apparently changed the day before. Without thinking, he checked the water bottle and the pellet feeder. Satisfied that both were nearly full, he picked his way among the boxes of art supplies and half-finished projects and stepped back into the workroom, where Emma was sitting just as he’d left her. She was still mauling her pearls; the sketch pad and markers were untouched.

  “Are you the manager?” she asked.

  “No, Emma, I’m Jim Christensen and we’re at the Harmony Center,” he sai
d, trying again to orient her. “The morning art class has been canceled, so I’m going to take you down to the dayroom. Does that sound okay to you?”

  “Fine,” she said. “This whole dinner has been just appalling.”

  The dayroom was at the far end of Harmony’s central hallway, probably a quarter-mile from the Alzheimer’s unit and Maura’s art therapy room. Christensen pushed the woman’s chair out the door, past a red-eyed, waist-high sensor and onto the ribbon of silky concrete designed for frictionless wheelchair passage. The electronic bracelets on Emma’s left ankle and left wrist warned the aide at the monitoring station that someone had wandered outside of the unit, but Christensen waved her off when she looked up.

  They rolled in silence past the stroke unit, the head trauma unit, and the spinal cord unit, and everyone they passed along the way—staff, patients, even visitors—seemed to avoid their gaze. He watched their distorted reflections cross the mirrored half-globe mounted to the ceiling at each intersection, but there was no cross traffic. Harmony was as quiet as he’d ever seen it.

  What caught his eye first as they passed the cafeteria was the odd sensation that the eating area was suddenly twice as big as before. It was mostly empty, and the longer he looked through the window, the more he realized it was an illusion. The space seemed huge because only a few of the tables had chairs; so many of Harmony’s residents and day visitors used wheelchairs and didn’t need them. With no one in the cafeteria, it looked cavernous. What caught his eye next made the hair on his arms stand on end.

  Floss Underhill was parked against the far wall, head bowed, her broken arm resting on one of her wheelchair’s arms. She gripped the chair’s other arm with her good hand as if she was afraid of falling, but the rest of her body was relaxed, apparently asleep. Several feet away, seated in the lotus position on top of a table and reading from a paperback, was the same home-care nurse Christensen had met a few days earlier on the center’s dining deck. No one else was seated within thirty feet.

  On the way to the center that morning, he’d worried about forcing Floss Underhill to directly confront the traumas in her past. Simply asking her what happened that day three years ago when her grandson died, or on the gazebo deck ten days earlier, could nudge her into psychosis. What if those painful memories weren’t simply lost in her crossed neurowiring, but repressed? How would she react to something she was unable to consciously confront? Under normal circumstances, he would lead her to the very edge of the pool, but he would never push her in. These weren’t normal circumstances.

  Christensen moved on, past the chapel, past the occupational therapy rooms, into the crowded dayroom where he spotted Maura’s assistant, Allison, sitting quietly with three other students from Pearson’s class. Allison offered a weak smile.

  “So Emma, you decided to join us?” she said. The old woman continued to work her pearls. Allison looked at Christensen. “Can you believe this?”

  He shook his head. “No one called me, so I just know what was in the paper.”

  Allison reached into the front pocket of her paint-stained smock and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to him. “We got this notice from administration at shift change this morning,” she said. “Nobody seems to know much more.”

  “Who’s telling the students?”

  “We’re talking to them individually,” she said. “In some cases, we’re letting family members tell them. Whatever seems most appropriate.”

  Christensen unfolded the paper. The notice lauded Pearson’s contributions to Harmony and Pittsburgh’s Alzheimer’s community, but contained even less information about how she died than the newspaper account. It did note that Maura’s regular classes would resume the following day.

  “You’re taking over the classes?” Christensen asked.

  Allison nodded, then stood up. She motioned him to step away, out of the group’s hearing range. “One thing Maura taught me: You have to make sure they have a way to express whatever emotions they’re feeling. This would be the worst possible time to take the art away from them. So we’ll carry on as best we can.”

  Her lip trembled, and Christensen put a hand on her shoulder. No words came.

  “What about you?” she said, regaining her composure. “What does this do to your research?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll carry on, too. I’d hate to walk away from something so promising. If you’ll still put up with me hanging around, I’d like to continue.”

  “You’re as much a part of the class as they are,” Allison said, cocking her head toward the group. “We couldn’t handle you leaving, too.”

  “Well, then,” he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “There’s someone I need to talk to down in the cafeteria,” he said. He nodded toward the group. “They need you to be strong, but it’s okay to talk about it with them. Preferable, really. They need to grieve, too.”

  Allison bit her lip, then nodded. “Tomorrow morning, then.”

  The cafeteria was even less crowded than before. Now Floss and her aide were the only people on their side of the room. The old woman’s head remained bowed, her chin on her chest, as Christensen crossed the room. A flicker of recognition lit up the aide’s face when she looked up from her book.

  “Hey,” she said. “I remember you.”

  “Jim Christensen,” he said, extending his right hand, fishing for her name.

  “Paige Sullivan. Bummer about Maura, huh?”

  Floss lifted her head and opened her eyes. She studied them with the stupefied gaze of someone fresh from sleep.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Underhill,” he said. “I’m Jim Christensen, and we’re at the Harmony Center. How are you today?”

  “Hungry,” she said.

  Paige rolled her eyes and patted the old woman’s arm. “You’ve eaten twice already,” she said, turning to Christensen as if in appeal. “She just forgot. She’s eaten twice already.”

  “How about a cup of tea, Mrs. Underhill?” he said. “Can I get you some tea? Or coffee?”

  She waved him off with her good arm. “How about a Cohiba?”

  He laughed. “You can’t smoke in here. Sorry.”

  “Tea, then,” she said.

  He turned to Paige, then gestured toward the food line. “Would you mind? I was hoping Mrs. Underhill and I might have a few minutes alone to talk, what with everything that’s happened today.”

  Paige nodded. “She really liked Maura, I think.”

  “Just a few minutes,” he said.

  When Paige was gone, Christensen slid one of the cafeteria’s few freestanding chairs in front of Floss and straddled it backward. He didn’t have time for chitchat. He needed to plug the old woman as directly as he dared into that traumatic time three years earlier that suddenly seemed so crucial.

  “What happened to Gray, Mrs. Underhill?” he said.

  The name seemed to jolt her like an electric shock. “Gray,” she repeated.

  “Your horse,” he prodded.

  Floss closed her eyes, the barest hint of a smile playing across her lips. “That horse could fly,” she said.

  “Yes he could.” Christensen took a chance. “Like he had wings.”

  In his triangulation, her memories of the horse might link directly to Warren Doti, its trainer, possibly her lover. He was encouraged when her smile eased into something thinner, tighter, nearly a leer.

  She nodded, her eyes still closed. “He was special.”

  “But what happened to him?”

  “Gone. All gone.”

  “Did Gray run away? What?”

  She shook her head, gripping the arm of her wheelchair with her good hand. No one else was in lin
e, but Paige, bless her, was flirting with the cafeteria cashier.

  “They took him,” Floss said.

  “Who, Mrs. Underhill? Who took Gray?”

  “In the dark, like a bunch of sneak thieves. Day before the funeral, with everybody so upset already.” Her eyes shot open and she looked directly at him. “Can you imagine?”

  Every answer raised more questions. “Someone took Gray at night? Your grandson’s funeral?”

  “I watched them. Just walked him right into that trailer and drove off, like they were taking him to show. But not like that. Took all his tack, too. Cleared out his stall, everything in his equipment locker. Took him off in that Muddyross trailer and never brought him back.”

  An image flashed through Christensen’s mind: The horse trailers he’d seen at the ranch that day, each one with the distinctive MR brand painted dead-center on the side. “Because he’d hurt your grandson, Mrs. Underhill? Is that why they sent Gray away?”

  “Happened so fast. I went down to the stables to find Warren, to find out what was happening. Me in the dark, in my nightclothes, everybody asleep, but the trailer was gone before I got there. Like sneak thieves.”

  “Warren managed your stables and trained Gray, didn’t he? He’d have known what was happening, wouldn’t he?”

  Floss shut her eyes tight, squeezing a tear from one. It rolled into a crease of her sun-weathered skin and followed the connecting lines until it reached her jaw. The tear traced her jawline to her chin and hung there like one of Christensen’s unanswered questions. “He was gone, too. And all his things.”

  “Warren?”

  Paige was back. She set a mug of hot water on the table beside Floss, ripped open a packet of orange pekoe and dropped the tea bag into the mug. “They’re out of English breakfast,” she said. “Hope this is okay.”

  Christensen waited, hoping a tense silence would shoo the aide away. To be more assertive might make her suspicious, but every interruption, any diversion at all, could make Floss lose the delicate thread of coherent memories she was following. Paige looked from Floss to Christensen and back again.