Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  Brenna stared long and hard, but Underhill wouldn’t look at her. They were his father’s words, almost exactly, except his father had used them only to justify an elaborate lie. Somehow that seemed more forgivable than this man using them to justify the “mistake” of his only child’s death. “In my neighborhood, we’d call that a cover-up,” she said. “And everybody who knew about it we’d call an accessory after the fact.”

  Underhill flinched again. She sensed a weakness in him that she had never seen in his father, a misunderstanding of power and how to use it. He nodded his contrition. “That’s fair.”

  “At this point, it’s also history, isn’t it?”

  “Meaning?”

  “He did a very thorough job. No one’s ever questioned the horseback-riding story, have they?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “You’re sure?” Brenna baited, thinking first of Myron Levin, then of Jim, then of Maura Pearson. “Never?”

  “No. Why? And let me just say, I’m not sure I like your tone.”

  Slow down, she thought. She was losing control, letting feelings overpower her professionalism. “Because to have someone questioning the official version of what happened would be very damaging, wouldn’t it?”

  Underhill’s eyes narrowed, like closing windows. In an instant, the contrite, emotional man who had just wrung himself out was staring at her with a look that could melt steel. “I’ll trust that’s not a threat, Ms. Kennedy.” His voice was steady now, but Brenna felt suddenly off balance.

  “No. I just meant … you’re very vulnerable, considering your high profile right now. With all the media attention since you announced for governor…” Her voice trailed off. She wished it hadn’t, knew it would cause problems, but she needed time to collect her thoughts.

  “Meant what?”

  “I need to ask you something,” she said. “And please understand my reasons for asking: How many people know what happened?”

  Underhill studied her. “Three,” he said finally. “My father, my wife, and me. We let Mother believe the story about Gray.”

  “No one else? The investigators? The coroner?”

  Underhill nodded. “You’re wondering if anything contradicts what we told the paramedics and police, correct?”

  “I’m guessing not, or there’d have been problems.”

  “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “The story held. The sort of injury that killed Chip, this shaken-child thing, there’s nothing obvious about it. So life went on. We all went on, doing what we had to do to cope. Me, I went on because my father’s a great believer in destiny. He made a great case, too. There was so much he wanted to do during his time in Harrisburg that didn’t get done. Good things. Things that would have made life better for people in this state. The rural poor. In the inner cities. Schools. Specific plans for things we’re sure can be effective. My job, my destiny, is to finish what he started. Without me where I am now, a lot of good doesn’t get done. Without me, the legacy ends.”

  “So it was best just to let the lie stand?”

  Underhill waved her off. “Spare me the sanctimony. Try to imagine our burden since then, Ms. Kennedy. But is it really any different than if Chip had been a passenger in our car? If we’d made a mistake, run a red light, and he’d died when we were broadsided, would that be any different?”

  Brenna understood the obliviousness of the guilty. She’d heard rapists blame their victims, even the infants. She’d heard guilty men rationalize atrocities as benign overreactions. Rationalization made it possible for them to live with the reality of what they’d done. But none of those moral gymnastics bothered her the way this did. Few of those other men were educated. None of them portrayed themselves as the moral center of public policy. None of them were about to be elected governor.

  “I’m withdrawing as your attorney,” she said.

  Underhill’s face faded for one stunned moment. He had the just-clocked look of a steer at a packinghouse. Then his face flushed bright red. His body shook. The release finally came when he hurled his brandy glass at the fireplace. It shattered with a thin, anticlimactic pop, and he stood there facing the mantel with his back to her. He seemed calmer when he turned around, as if his flash of temper had never happened. The instant mood change was frightening.

  “That would be a mistake, Ms. Kennedy,” Underhill said. “It solves nothing.”

  Brenna stood up. Her choice was clear, and she’d made it on instinct. The longer she stayed, the more complicated it would become. “It solves a personal dilemma. Like you said, life goes on. We each do what we have to do. And this is something I have to do, for myself and for you. You need an attorney who can devote his or her full energy to your defense, should it ever come to that.”

  Underhill crossed the room, closing the distance between them to an intimidating five feet. “I would remind you, Ms. Kennedy, that you represent my family in matters involving the sheriff’s misguided investigation of my mother’s recent fall. That has nothing to do with a tragedy that happened three years ago. What, exactly, is your dilemma?”

  Brenna stood her ground, fighting the urge to back away. “I’ll keep my reasons to myself.”

  “We hired you to represent us,” he said. “That doesn’t give you the right to judge us.”

  Brenna kept her eyes on his. “I can recommend other attorneys, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, can you?” he said with a schoolboy’s sarcasm.

  “If you’d like.”

  It took every ounce of Brenna’s strength to hold her tongue, to keep her revulsion in check, to demonstrate that she would no longer be intimidated, or seduced, by the Underhill power.

  “I don’t think your recommendation would be of any interest whatsoever,” Underhill said.

  Brenna picked up her briefcase and turned toward the study door. “I know my way out,” she said over her shoulder, then turned back to face Ford Underhill from a more comfortable distance. “My office will be in touch to settle the account.”

  “I’m sure it will,” he said.

  She was nearly out the door when Underhill called her name. When she turned around, he was standing right there, even closer than before. The features of his face were hard, a look calculated, she was sure, to scare her. It worked.

  “I would only remind you again of the sanctity of attorney-client privilege,” he said.

  “No reminder needed.”

  Brenna was several miles away, out of Fox Chapel’s hollows and hills, before she pulled the Legend into the gravel parking lot and dialed the Harmony Center from her cell phone. She glanced in her rearview mirror, half expecting to see one of Underhill’s black Suburbans, but she was alone.

  Busy. The handset shook in her hand as she pressed the redial button again and again.

  Chapter 32

  “Carrie Haygood, please.” Christensen drummed his fingers on the fake walnut desktop in his sparse Harmony Center office as the county operator searched her directory.

  “What department does she work in?”

  He was getting the definite impression that Haygood’s sense of holy mission with the Child Death Review Team wasn’t shared by many others in county government. Hardly anyone even knew she worked there, which suggested two possibilities: Either District Attorney Dagnolo was keeping her work very low-key, or the whole lofty notion of a special child-death investigator was nothing more than a feel-good political gesture intended to show that He Cares.

  “The district attorney’s office,” he said. “Fifth floor. Five-fourteen, I think. Look, if—”

  “Found it. Please hold.”

  Haygood answered on the first ring in a voice Christensen found reassuring, though he didn’t know why.

&nb
sp; “Hi, it’s Jim Christensen returning your call. I’m sorry it took me—”

  “Where are you calling from Mr. Christensen?”

  “The Harmony Center, out near Fox Chapel,” he said.

  “Pay phone?”

  “No. I’ve been using an office here during my research. Why?” He heard shuffling papers.

  “I’m going to give you another telephone number,” Haygood said, dictating a Downtown exchange. He scribbled the number on the back of a patient-evaluation form. “Please find a pay phone and call me back on that number. Give me about two minutes. If you have a cellular phone, please don’t use that.”

  “I’m—”

  “Please. Thank you.”

  He waited until he heard the dial tone, uncertain whether the click he’d heard was the sound of her hanging up. Then he walked down Harmony’s bright main corridor to a bank of pay phones, dialed the number Haygood had given him and started to punch in his credit-card number. He stopped halfway through as Haygood’s odd request suddenly made sense. She was worried about the security of her own office phone, maybe even Maura’s office phone at Harmony. He replaced the handset and fished into his pocket for change. Paranoid or not, cash offered an anonymity that a credit card couldn’t.

  Haygood answered on the first ring again. He heard an echo in her voice, which was keyed lower than before. Wherever she was, Carrie Haygood was trying hard not to be overheard.

  “I’m very sorry about the inconvenience, Mr. Christensen,” she said calmly, as slow and smooth as a cello. “Thank you for calling back.”

  He waited for an explanation. Haygood offered none. “You called me,” he prompted.

  “Yes. About the case we discussed. I wanted to follow up on some of the—” She cleared her throat. “—questions that arose regarding the investigation’s integrity.”

  He wasn’t being paranoid. The woman was being careful, cagey. He listened hard for the telltale signs of fear in her voice, but was reassured by its confidence. “Your concerns about the cause of death?” he said. “You’ve developed more information?”

  “No, but my attempts to do so were met with unusual resistance. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Christensen felt like a Cold War spy. He turned around, wondering who might be watching. Except for a single rehab patient wheeling himself slowly toward the cafeteria, he was alone in the corridor. “Is there some reason we’re speaking in code?” he said.

  “Yes,” Haygood said, “but I’ll try to be as clear as I can.”

  Christensen tasted fear at the back of his throat. He looked around again.

  “First, sir, do you have any additional information at this time you feel is relevant regarding the incident itself? Or any information about attempts which may have been made to obscure the actual cause of death?”

  Haygood’s question, so loaded with implication, struck with unexpected force. Christensen felt his legs go weak. “Yes,” he said.

  “Can you explain in general terms what that information might be?”

  Was it information, really? A vague conversation with Floss Underhill that seemed to confirm the link between Chip Underhill’s death, the disappearance of the gray horse, and Warren Doti? His unfocused suspicion that the deputy coroner who investigated the child’s death knew more than he was saying? A theory about an impossibly coldhearted effort to stop damaging memories from leaking from Floss Underhill’s brain? Maura Pearson’s unexplained death?

  “I believe—” he began. “Several things have happened that make me think there’s an ongoing effort to obscure the cause of death in this case. A very determined effort.”

  He let his words hang. Haygood listened without responding.

  “Look,” he said finally, “I think we need to be clear. We may be in a very dangerous situation, and at this point confusion or ambiguity could make things worse. I’d like to speak more freely.”

  Haygood was silent so long that Christensen wondered if she’d hung up. “Hello?” he said.

  “Go ahead then,” she said finally, “but no names.”

  Christensen looked around one more time to make sure he was alone. “I’m pretty sure the family is involved in trying to cover up the circumstances of the child’s death, for reasons that should be obvious today, of all days,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Election day.”

  “Go on.”

  Christensen nodded to a passing occupational therapist and waited until she’d passed out of earshot. “You’d know better than I do what actually may have happened to the boy, but you can imagine how damaging the story might be if it ever got out.”

  “Please wait.” Through the phone, Christensen heard the clip-clop of footsteps along what must have been the courthouse corridor. Haygood waited until they receded before saying, “Go on.”

  “I think the deputy coroner who handled this case knows more than he’s saying, may even have been a part of covering it up. But I also think he’s not entirely comfortable with his role. I think one family member may know what happened, or at least suspects something, and may be trying to communicate that to me and to others. That’s gotten her family very concerned in the past few weeks. There may have been an effort to keep her quiet, and—” He checked the Harmony hallways again, just to be sure.

  “Mr. Christensen?”

  “I’m here. It’s just, this is going to sound pretty farfetched, because I have no proof whatsoever. But two people who I think knew about the attempt to keep the family member quiet have disappeared, may even be dead. And there’s another person, a woman I work with … I think word must have gotten back to the family that she was looking into the whole mess, and now she’s dead, too. And I’m looking at all these things, all these isolated events, and the only way it all fits together is if you begin with the scenario you suggested when we first met, that the child’s death couldn’t have happened the way they said. Does any of that make sense to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what you’ve found on your end?”

  Haygood paused, then seemed to laugh. The reaction caught Christensen off guard.

  “You don’t buy it?” he said.

  “I deal in theories, Mr. Christensen. Because of the nature of what I do, they are my reality. No one ever tells me what really happened. I’m left to sift the details, then reconstruct a story from that which is indisputable. Sometimes what I build looks like a house of cards, but sometimes, sometimes, it’s solid enough to hold up.”

  She stopped. He needed more. “Right now, I need you to be clear,” he said. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I’m in the same position as you on this. Do I have anything solid? No, I do not. But even if we don’t know exactly what happened here, I’m getting some interesting official reactions to my questions about this case. Similar stimulus, unusual response. Going from our premise, your theory makes sense.”

  Christensen thought of Brenna, of how vulnerable she suddenly seemed standing at the center of this quagmire. That she’d stepped into it willingly and ignored his earlier warnings was understandable, if not forgivable. “Please be specific,” he said. “Other people might be in danger.”

  Haygood waited. She was so guarded when they first met, and pushing her made him realize how far she’d already come. Something, maybe his naïveté that first day they met, had earned her trust. He felt a partnership with her, like the unshakable bond between soldiers under fire.

  “I’ve been warned away from pursuing this case any further,” she said.

  “Warned away? By?”

  “It’s a complicated situation, political. Word got out that I’d focused on this case, and the response was im
mediate.”

  “Dagnolo?”

  A long pause. “My boss is a political man, Mr. Christensen, but in this case I believe the pressure is coming from somewhere else. Political pressure from someone who numbers the family in question among his most generous supporters.”

  “One of the county supervisors?”

  “Yes.”

  It could have been any one of them, Christensen thought. The Underhills were generous donors to anyone who might someday be useful. But it didn’t really matter. “What sort of pressure?”

  “Let’s just say that the issue of funding came up in a conversation with my boss, who passed it along to me.”

  “Funding for the Child Death Review Team? Someone threatened to pull the plug on it?”

  “Precisely. To use their phrase, ‘We don’t want any witch hunts.’ ”

  Christensen steadied himself against the wall, leaning his full weight against the pay-phone carrel.

  “But, how did anyone know? Forgive me for saying so, but you strike me as pretty cagey, not someone who goes around telling people, even your boss, what you’re up to.”

  Another pause. “After we spoke, I made a records request at the morgue. The file I had was incomplete, and I wanted more information. Specifically, I wanted the autopsy photographs and X-rays that should have been in there. They’d tell me right quick what we’re looking at, whether what the deputy coroner decided about the cause of death was justified. The compression marks we talked about. Cranial damage. I’m guessing here, but at that point only one person besides you was aware of my interest in this case. He works at the coroner’s office.”

  Christensen flashed on the face of a black man. Its features were indistinct except for the thick horn-rimmed Malcolm X glasses. “The records clerk,” he said.

  “Has to be,” Haygood said. “He’s the choke point. I think he’s keeping an eye on those files, letting somebody know if anyone comes looking.”