Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  Christensen felt sick. He remembered filling out a records-release form the day he asked for the file. How much information had he given? How much was too much?

  “You got the files, though, right?”

  “I got what’s there,” she said. “It’s what’s not there that’s got me curious.”

  It took a few seconds, but Christensen caught on. “The photographs.”

  “X-rays, too,” she said. “Nothing.”

  From the forbidding signs that had surfaced, phrases from Bostwick’s disjointed message burst to mind: Life insurance. Always leave yourself an out. Some things you can’t deny. Got what you need.

  “I think I know who might have copies,” Christensen said. “Or at least I know someone who knows something about them. I got a call last night—”

  The faint sound of a woman’s footsteps stopped him. They were close, somewhere around the corner of Harmony’s long main corridor but approaching fast, the distinctive sound of high heels on smooth concrete.

  “Mr. Christensen?”

  “Guy named Bostwick,” he said, keeping his voice low. “The deputy coroner who handled the case three years ago. He was drunk, I think, going on about how he had what we needed, talking about his insurance policy. But it was in the context of this case, because I’d called him about it and asked him some questions. Hold on a sec.”

  The footsteps were just around the corner, still approaching fast. Something in their rhythm suggested purpose, and they stood out among the shuffling struggles and quiet passage of wheelchairs in the research center’s main hallway. Suddenly, Brenna rounded the corner, nearly colliding with him with a startled yelp. What was she doing here? He knew from her eyes, even before she recognized him, that something was wrong. She backed off, regained her composure, then paced back and forth in the corridor. She wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “Stay with me,” he said into the phone. “Hold on, okay?”

  He put his hand over the receiver. “Bren? What is it?”

  She mouthed the words, “Who’s that?”

  “Carrie Haygood.”

  Brenna rolled her eyes.

  “I trust her,” he whispered, his hand still covering the mouthpiece. “She’s getting pressure—”

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Christensen?” Haygood asked.

  He removed his hand. “No, no. Just hold on, please.”

  Brenna waited until he covered the mouthpiece again. “They killed the boy,” she said in an urgent whisper. “Ford told me what happened.”

  Christensen reached for Brenna, impulsively wanting to hold her close, but she backed away. His second impulse was to relay that information to Haygood, but Brenna grabbed his wrist as he uncovered the phone’s mouthpiece.

  “That’s between us,” she said.

  “She needs to know,” he said.

  Brenna shook her head, her glare leaving no room for debate.

  “She says the photos and X-rays of the child aren’t in the coroner’s files,” he whispered. “Bostwick has them, or copies of them. I’m almost sure of it. She’s also getting heavy pressure to stay away from this thing, from people with ties to the family.”

  “Mr. Christensen? Is everything all right?” Haygood’s voice filled Christensen’s head even as the world shrank to himself and Brenna. “Mr. Christensen?”

  “I’m here,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “Anything wrong?”

  Christensen kept his eyes on Brenna, holding her gaze, hoping to hold her trust. He uncovered the telephone’s mouthpiece. “If the possibilities we’ve discussed about this case were true, Carrie,” he began, “how important would those photographs and X-rays be in proving or disproving what actually happened?”

  Brenna was watching him, suspicious, maybe startled that he and Haygood already were talking in such terms. But she didn’t interfere.

  Haygood considered her answer a long time. “Short of an exhumation order, which I don’t think we’d get in this case, they may be the only way to prove it didn’t happen the way they say. If they’re conclusive, they’d suggest very strongly how it did happen. Having said that, let me just add that it would be very unusual for a deputy coroner to have material like that.”

  “Unless he was part of it,” Christensen said. “Say he was bought off. Say he agreed to support the story, or just agreed to look the other way if any evidence conflicted with the horseback-riding story. He’d want some security. Maybe for his own safety. Maybe to blackmail the people who paid him off. Hell, maybe the guy’s just got a conscience—that’d be a nice change of pace. But more than anyone else, he’d know the value of those photos and X-rays, wouldn’t he? And just based on the message he left on my answering machine, I think he’s got copies.”

  In the silence that followed, Brenna’s glare intensified. Christensen felt like a man in a vise. But everything fit. Bostwick was trying to tell him something with that business about insurance policies and getting himself out of hell a bit sooner.

  “Way I see it,” Haygood said, “we’ve got to find out. Word’s already out that we’re looking into this thing. It’s just a matter of time before they shut us down, maybe twenty-four hours. And I can’t jeopardize my work here. There’s too many other cases that need attention, Mr. Christensen. I can’t let them pull the plug on the review team. I just can’t.”

  Christensen weighed her words, trying to understand. He felt more vulnerable than he had in years, utterly exposed in a way he hadn’t been since the Primenyl case. He thought of Maura Pearson, of the Chembergos, of Annie and Taylor and the eggshell that insulated them from this unfolding nightmare. As of now, he was defenseless. They all were.

  Brenna’s eyes had softened into a look of pure anxiety. He covered the mouthpiece. “We should get the kids from school,” he said. “I want them with one of us.”

  She nodded.

  To Haygood again, he offered the only help he could: “I’ll try to find Bostwick.”

  Chapter 33

  Christensen bounced the Explorer over a curb, nearly sideswiping a white van full of special-needs students that was blocking the Westminster-Stanton School’s parking-lot entrance. The shortcut didn’t help. The lot was jammed with cars and buses, some of them garishly decorated in streamers and poster paint celebrating the girls’ soccer team. A steady stream of parents and students were moving toward the school’s small stadium, where he could see a game already underway.

  He cut off a minivan, triggering a harsh hand gesture from an otherwise pleasant-looking mom, and bounced over another curb, onto the street. A block away, he found a too-small spot in front of a fire hydrant and wedged in. He’d pay a ticket, if it came to that, but right now he wanted, needed, to find Annie and Taylor.

  Kids’ Korner was the name given to two modular buildings set at a back corner of the school property. Far from the perfect after-school program, it was where the young children of the school’s working parents could report between the end of classes at 3 p.m. and the arrival of parents by six. Christensen already was looking for an alternative. The staff was too young, kids themselves, really, probably earning minimum wage to make sure nobody got hurt or misbehaved. But that was about as constructive as the program got. After less than a week, he’d decided the facilities were inadequate, the staff was disorganized and apathetic, the kids bored. Annie was calling it “Kids’ Cage” after just two days, but Christensen hadn’t yet had time to find something better. He fought his way across campus, suddenly aware of how accessible the modular buildings were to the wide-open playground and public streets that ran along the school’s unlocked back fence.

  He opened the Kids’ Korner door and stepped from bright sunshine into a dim room full of cross-legged pre-adolescent zombies, their eyes
fixed on a glowing television screen to his right. Why weren’t they playing outside? The group guffawed at a butt joke that Christensen recognized from Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, a movie he’d forbidden Annie and Taylor to watch at home. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he vowed to place the kids in another program within a week.

  Faces emerged, upturned and lit blue by the television’s glow. He recognized some among the thirty or so in the slack-jawed crowd, but didn’t see Annie or Taylor. He scanned the group again, just to be sure. Christensen stepped lightly through the crowd of kids toward one of the program’s afternoon supervisors at the back of the room. The woman, maybe nineteen and morbidly overweight, was flipping absently through an IKEA catalog and didn’t look up.

  “I’m looking for Annie Christensen and Taylor Kennedy,” he said finally. “Do you know where they are?”

  His intrusion only seemed to intensify her concentration as she studied a page of $25 floor lamps.

  “Excuse me?” he said, louder.

  She scanned the group in front of the TV, then offered a noncommittal shrug. “Checked the other building?”

  Christensen squinted as he stepped back outside and made his way down the ramp to the adjacent building. He opened its door into a riot of fluorescent light, the smell of school glue, and a flash of pride that Annie and Taylor apparently would rather work on art projects than watch mindless videos. But his stomach knotted as he scanned the two dozen faces there. Where were they?

  Another fat supervisor was applying a Band-Aid to the forehead of a teary boy whose torn jeans and crumpled shirt suggested he’d recently lost a fight. “Have you seen Annie Christensen or Taylor Kennedy? They’re not in either building.”

  The woman looked up. She was older, maybe twenty-five, but with a world-weary look that made her seem ten years older. “Who?” she said.

  Christensen tried, for a moment, to keep his anger in check. He failed. “I wonder if there might be someone here who gives a shit?”

  The injured boy’s head shot up. The woman glared. She handed the kid an ice pack and stood, snapping off her latex gloves and dropping them into a nearby wastebasket.

  “No need to get hostile, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for my kids. They’re not in either building.”

  “You checked the playground?”

  “No.”

  “The handball courts?”

  Christensen shook his head.

  “If they’re here, that’s where they’d be. What were their names again?”

  Like it mattered, Christensen thought. He turned and stalked out, headed for the nearly empty playground. A group of maybe ten kids were scrimmaging with a football. Annie might be among them, Christensen thought, but not Taylor. But he didn’t recognize either of them among the players as he drew closer. Three other kids, all boys, all unfamiliar, were taking turns tossing a playground ball toward a netless basketball hoop, playing Pig. The handball courts were empty.

  With a flash of daylight, he burst into the dim room where Ace Ventura was playing, the door propelled by his angry shove and righteous indignation. Still, most of the kids’ eyes never left the screen. The supervisor waddled across the room and met him halfway.

  “I’m having a little trouble finding my kids here,” he said, struggling for control, “and I’m not getting a hell of a lot of help from your staff.”

  “You checked the crafts room?”

  “And the playground.”

  Something in the woman’s eyes told Christensen everything he needed to know: She had no idea where Annie and Taylor were.

  “Let’s check the sign-out sheet,” she said.

  He dutifully signed the clipboard every morning and evening, logging the times he dropped off and picked up the kids each day. Other than occasional reminders to parents that a full signature was required by state law, he had no idea what practical use the Kids’ Korner staff found for the logs. No one seemed to notice or care who came and went, but he followed the bovine woman across the room anyway and watched her scan the rows of names and signatures.

  “What were their names again?”

  “Christensen and Kennedy,” he said. “Annie and Taylor.”

  The woman pointed to a spot in the middle of the top page. “Here’s the problem, then. Your wife or somebody else picked them up half an hour ago.” She handed him the clipboard with a smug smile.

  Christensen snatched it from her hands, looking for familiar handwriting among the blur of scribbles across the page. The names of enrollees were printed in alphabetical order along the left edge of the chart, last names first. He’d signed both of them in that morning at 7:36. His scrawled signature was beside each name, but there also was a signature in the space to sign the kids out. He looked closer, trying to decipher handwriting that definitely wasn’t his or Brenna’s.

  He thrust the clipboard back at the supervisor. “Can you read this name?”

  She scissored open two slats of a closed miniblind and squinted into the wedge of daylight. “Somebody named Robbins. Tony, maybe? Tony Robbins?”

  Christensen swallowed hard, tried not to think the worst as he grabbed the clipboard back. “Could that be another parent? Maybe they signed on our lines by mistake.”

  “I don’t recognize the name, but we have over fifty kids here,” she said.

  Christensen didn’t find a single Robbins on the list. “Did you see who signed them out?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Did you even check to see if this person was authorized to sign them out?”

  She looked as if she might cry.

  Christensen pushed past her and jabbed the power button on the television. The room went dark, so he reached between the set and the window and yanked the cord of the nearest miniblind. The Ace Ventura fans protested as one, shielding their eyes like cave dwellers prodded into daylight.

  “Does anybody here know Annie Christensen or Taylor Kennedy?” he demanded.

  One boy stood up. “ ‘Do not go in there,’ ” he said, waving away an imaginary odor, pantomiming one of the movie’s sillier bathroom jokes. Peals of laughter.

  “I need some help here before I turn it back on,” Christensen said. “How about it? Anybody?”

  A tiny blond girl with pink-framed eyeglasses raised her hand. “I know Taylor,” she said.

  Christensen bore in with an intensity that seemed to frighten the girl. He tried without success to keep his voice even. “He left a little while ago. Did you see who he left with?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “It’s okay, thank you,” he said, eyeballing the supervisor. “It’s not your job, sweetheart. Anybody else?”

  “Annie has red hair, right?” asked the boy who stood up earlier.

  Christensen shook his head. “Sort of blondish brown.”

  The kid shrugged. “Never mind.”

  Christensen couldn’t waste any more time. He shoved the door open and ran out onto the playground, toward the pile of kids on the football field. “I’m looking for Annie Christensen or Taylor Kennedy. Do any of you guys know either one of them?”

  The players, all boys, untangled themselves and stood up, a riot of denim and grass stains. “Annie was here a while ago,” said one freckled ruffian. Christensen recognized him from Howe Street, but didn’t know his name. “She left.”

  “Where’d she go?” he said.

  The boy pointed to a gate along the school’s back fence. “Over there.”

  “Do you know why?”

  The kid shrugged. “That other kid was talking to some guy through the fence.”

  “Taylor?”

  “I don’t know his name.
Is it her brother?”

  “Are they in trouble?” another kid said.

  Christensen ignored the questions, focusing on the kid from their neighborhood. “How long ago?”

  “A half-hour, maybe.”

  “What did the guy look like?”

  “Just some guy. Why?”

  “How was he dressed? Did he have a car?”

  Christensen’s tone was sobering up the freckled kid, fast. “A suit, like dark blue or black. White shirt, I think. Black car. He was pretty far away.”

  “Did it seem like Annie and Taylor knew him?”

  “Dunno.”

  “How long did they talk?”

  “A while. We were playing Steelers.”

  “Did he come onto the playground?”

  The boy shuffled his feet. “I think so, but I don’t know.”

  Christensen hesitated before asking the next question, as if speaking the words might make it true. “Did they leave with him?”

  The kid looked around, suddenly aware that all eyes were on him. “We were playing Steelers,” he said.

  “So you didn’t see?”

  A black-haired boy stepped around his teammate. He wore his untucked shirt like a badge of honor. “I was over playing basketball. They had their packs and lunchboxes and stuff, headed that way.” He pointed to the gate again.

  Christensen felt sick. Annie and Taylor knew better than to leave with a stranger. But what if the stranger knew their names? Or knew enough about Brenna or him to make a convincing case? He couldn’t outrun the possibilities as he sprinted across campus toward his car.

  Chapter 34

  Christensen snatched the fluttering parking ticket from under the Explorer’s windshield wiper, opened the door, and tossed it across to the passenger’s side. He juggled the car phone and the stick shift in his right hand as he bullied his way out of the tight parking spot, nudging the cars in front and behind, trying to decide whether to call 911 or home.