Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  Carrie Haygood’s voice filled the car. “…case we spoke about this morning. I’ll be at my office until seven p.m. today.”

  He waited through the low white noise until Bostwick’s message began with an indistinguishable rustle and the thrum of passing traffic. A closing car door. Where had he called from? Suddenly, the dead man’s voice filled the car. “This is for Jim Christen … sen.”

  He tried to conjure an image of the man inside the cabin, wishing now he’d looked into his face, wanting to put the voice to something human, something alive. With his eyes closed, though, all Christensen saw was the damp snarl of hair at the base of a skull and the collar of a flannel shirt soaked through with blood.

  “We’re talking about life insur … nance, is what we’re talking about,” the voice slurred. “I got it, yes I do.” An exaggerated laugh. “Got what you need. If they knew—” Another laugh. “—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 gotta leave yourself an out. Always. Always, always, always. ’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.”

  In the background, a sound Christensen had heard again and again just an hour before, the roar of a starting Harley. And then he knew: Bostwick was calling from Cook’s Corner.

  “So don’t call me at my house again. 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 rewound the tape again. What struck him at first was Bostwick’s fatalism. He wanted someone to know before it was too late, someone who could piece together a story perhaps only he and the Underhills fully understood. Thinking of the clue Bostwick left in the written records—the unflinching reference to the subdural hematoma that ultimately killed Chip Underhill—Christensen wondered if the man’s conscience had bedeviled him from the moment he was co-opted. To someone who knew enough and who read the coroner’s file closely, someone like Carrie Haygood, that conclusion would be as obvious as if he’d stamped HOMICIDE across the file folder.

  “If they knew,” the voice said again, “I’m thinking I’d probably look like the one up there in the springhouse. Worse, probably.”

  Stop. Rewind.

  “…knew, I’m thinking I’d probably look like the one up there in the springhouse. Worse, probably.”

  In a message full of vagaries and abstractions, that one specific reference stood out. But Christensen had no idea what it meant. He played it again—“…up there in the springhouse.”

  Did Bostwick own a second home? No, people who bought in these mountains owned summer homes or winter homes or weekend places, not springhouses. So what was a springhouse? He closed his eyes, conjuring what little he knew about Bostwick. It meant something, but what?

  Christensen grabbed Annie’s Big Bird flashlight from the glove compartment, surprised that the batteries were still good, if weak. He opened the Explorer’s door and stepped back out. Pain from his injured ligaments shot up his leg, and he suddenly realized he was still in his stocking feet. He passed the Thunderbird, again giving it space, and approached the cabin.

  The track lights inside were still on, casting a pale glow into the enfolding woods. He stopped to survey the property from about thirty yards short of the maple tree and the motionless dark form at its base. The cabin had been thoroughly searched, which left two possibilities among the structures on Bostwick’s property. The garage to the left was closed and dark. Maybe that’s where the killer was headed when he came out of the house. But if Bostwick kept the films in the garage, wouldn’t he have used that word? Plus, he’d said “up there in the springhouse.” In relation to the cabin, the garage was down.

  He’d barely noticed the other structure, the playhouse-sized outbuilding on the slope behind the cabin, but suddenly it loomed very large. City boy that he was, he still knew that western Pennsylvania’s forests were nourished by countless cold-water springs that bubbled from aquifers to the surface, sometimes in the most inconvenient places. Many became streams. On developed properties, they were corralled into drainage systems and diverted, sometimes using pipes and pumps to manage the flow. A building the size of the one behind Bostwick’s cabin was useless, except maybe for small-equipment storage … or to disguise a system that diverted springwater away from the house.

  Christensen limped past the killer without a word, but he felt the malice in the man’s eyes as he watched him pass. His head was back against the tree, but he tracked Christensen’s passing with a smile that conveyed something between contempt and intense pain. The man was motionless except for his own injured foot, a snarl of damaged nerves that continued to twitch.

  The garage was padlocked, and so probably hadn’t been searched. If need be, he’d get inside somehow and look there. But by the time he passed into the rectangular shadow to the left of the cabin, Christensen was following a strong hunch up the slope toward the smaller structure. As he neared the small outbuilding, his socks suddenly soaked through. That’s when he knew this was the place Bostwick had chosen. The springhouse.

  He found the latch to its tiny door, which was just large enough to allow someone to crawl inside. Small spaces bothered him. Small spaces where rodents or woodland creatures might hide bothered him even more. But he followed the flashlight’s pale beam through the door, relieved to find himself alone amid an inelegant knot of pipes and damp aromas but disappointed that the space contained nothing that looked like a packet of photographs. Now what? He started to back out, but then swept the light once into the structure’s upper corners. Once was enough. There it was, a cellophane-wrapped manila envelope duct-taped to the plank underside of the roof.

  Christensen squeezed himself inside, hooked an arm around one of the cold plastic pipes, and peeled the envelope from the planks. There, using Big Bird’s golden beam in the cramped privacy of Simon Bostwick’s springhouse, he inspected the contents—two contact sheets of autopsy photographs, one strip of 35-mm negatives in a plastic sleeve, and four X-rays of a child’s skull.

  His hands were trembling as he slid the films inside, then backed out the tiny door. By the time he waved the envelope at the helpless killer and retrieved his shoes from near the maple tree, Christensen was crying.

  Chapter 40

  The Explorer fishtailed onto blacktop, its headlights sweeping the tunnel of trees that bordered the road. Even in the dark, Christensen felt as if he were driving in plain view of the Underhills. How big was their network of spies? He thought of the electronic surveillance hive inside the killer’s Thunderbird and wondered if they somehow already knew what had happened, if they might even be watching him now. He leaned down and tucked the manila envelope deeper beneath his seat. The carpool from hell had a new passenger: paranoia.

  He tensed with each car that passed. Even in the dark stretches where there was no traffic, he imagined them watching from some omniscient aerial view, as a spider might watch a fly’s futile attempt at escape. Right now, he felt as alone and vulnerable as ever, desperate to find someone he could trust with what he knew, with what he could now prove. But a question perched on his shoulder like a nagging crow: Who?

  Brenna would know. He picked up the car phone, but stopped, wishing he’d paid more attention to the alarmists who warned about cellular’s lack of security. Could someone monitoring the signal triangulate his exact location, or Brenna’s? He imagined the call registering on a computer somewhere in the Underhills’ web, sounding like a sona
r signal echoing off a lost submarine. He replaced the handset in its holder.

  On the near horizon, he recognized the glow of an isolated Arco gas station. As he slowed, he checked the bay for cars and the convenience mart for customers. The only vehicle outside was a ridiculously large motor home, its owner draining the pump into its gas tank. Besides the clerk, the only people inside were two teenagers. Christensen parked next to the pay phone, locking the door as he stepped out because … just because.

  Brenna’s voice filled his head, their home answering machine. “Bren, pick up,” he said at the beep. “It’s me, Bren. Please?”

  She was supposed to be waiting for the kidnapper’s call. Where could she be?

  “I’m—” How much should he say? “I’m okay. But I need to talk to you. Don’t try to call me on the car phone. I’ll call back.” Before he hung up: “I love you.”

  In the open, beneath the station’s buzzing fluorescence, Christensen felt exposed, like a deer washed in onrushing headlights. He could stand dumbstruck on the center line, or he could move. Every instinct told him to move, but he resisted.

  Who could he turn to now?

  A logical name came to mind, a name weighted with bad memories. The irony struck him immediately, that in this most desperate hour he’d turn to someone who’d once tried to destroy him, who’d tried to twist the simple act of mercy he’d shown toward the woman he loved into something criminal, who would have sent him to jail for ending what remained of Molly’s life.

  The directory-assistance operator asked what city.

  “Pittsburgh. The Allegheny County District Attorney’s office.”

  He closed his eyes, memorizing the number. It was nearly 8:30 p.m. What were the chances he’d still be in?

  “J. D. Dagnolo, please,” Christensen said.

  The voice was tired, male, clearly not a regular receptionist. “It’s election night. The office is closed.”

  “Please, wait. If he’s in, I need to talk to him. I have information—”

  “Who’s calling?”

  He hesitated. What twisted god of fate could have brought him to this point? “My name is Jim Christensen,” he said. “I’m sure he remembers me.”

  “What’s the information?”

  Christensen held his breath. The risk was calculated. Dagnolo was scum, but Brenna said he wasn’t intimidated by the Underhill family, either. “Tell him … just tell him it involves the Underhills.”

  The teenagers, two girls, stepped out of the convenience mart with Snapples and microwaved burritos and swept past him in a cloud of lemon perfume and synthetic chili, headed for a battered Honda Civic parked at the side of the station. Christensen curled around the phone, avoiding their eyes. After they’d passed, he scanned the rest of the service bay to make sure no one was watching. The motor-home owner was still pumping. Christensen realized after several minutes that the hold music was an instrumental version of “My Favorite Things.”

  “Mr. Christensen, this is J. D. Dagnolo.”

  The voice made him jump, like screeching brakes. “Thank you for taking the call,” he sputtered. “Look, I don’t know if you remember me. We never actually met, but my wife, Molly—”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “She was in an accident a few years ago. You—”

  “Mr. Christensen, I’m due at a function. What can I help you with this evening?”

  “Okay.” Where to start? “It’s a long story.”

  “Involving anyone in particular?” Dagnolo baited.

  That’s why he’d taken the call. To a Democratic political maverick like Dagnolo, Christensen had said the magic word.

  “The Underhills.” He waited through a long silence.

  “You’re not being very specific, Mr. Christensen, and I’m afraid I’m due—”

  “Chip Underhill.”

  This time, the silence was different. Less expectant than genuinely startled. “Not Ford?”

  “Are you familiar with the case?”

  “Ford’s son,” Dagnolo said. “The riding accident.”

  “Three years ago, out on the family’s Fox Chapel estate.”

  “He was riding with Ford, though, if I recall.”

  “Yes,” Christensen said. “No! That’s what they said, but I’m pretty sure his head injuries weren’t caused the way they said. I think someone shook him, an adult, someone in the house that day, and when he died they covered it with the horseback-riding story.”

  Dagnolo said nothing.

  “And the cover-up, it’s still going on. I’m sure of it. I’ve worked with Floss Underhill, out at the Harmony Center. When she fell ten days ago, I think that was part of it, too. And some other stuff, deaths, disappearances, may be part of a pattern.”

  He’d probably said just enough to qualify as a fringe conspiracy theorist. Dagnolo’s office probably got dozens of calls like that every day.

  “It’s primary election night, Mr. Christensen,” Dagnolo sighed. “Three blocks from here, at the Grant Hotel, there’s a goddamned coronation going on. Come next fall, Ford Underhill will be the next governor of Pennsylvania, and you’re stepping forward now, of all times, saying he’s part of a conspiracy to protect his own son’s killer?”

  Christensen wanted to say what he knew, that Ford Underhill had already undercut the official explanation of the boy’s death, that what he’d said might even be a confession, but he couldn’t betray Brenna’s confidence. Instead, he just said, “Yes.”

  Dagnolo laughed.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t believe your timing.”

  “I have evidence,” Christensen said.

  “A signed confession, I hope. Anything less—”

  “The name Simon Bostwick mean anything to you?”

  Dagnolo wasn’t laughing anymore. “Former deputy coroner,” he said.

  “He did the autopsy on Chip Underhill three years ago,” Christensen said. “Left the coroner’s office not long after.”

  “What about him?”

  Christensen took a deep breath, an image of crumpled and bloody flannel swimming into his mind. “He’s dead. Shot in the head about an hour ago by someone I’m sure works for the Underhills. I saw it happen.”

  Dagnolo waited. Finally: “Where are you calling from, Mr. Christensen?”

  Christensen felt a change in tone, felt himself suddenly in the spotlight. “I’d rather not say.”

  “Interesting,” Dagnolo said. “You’ve just witnessed a murder, and you’d rather not say where it happened?”

  “That’s not what you asked. It happened at Bostwick’s house.”

  “Easy enough for the Westmoreland County sheriff to check. Answer me this, though, Mr. Christensen: How come so many people wind up dead when you’re around?”

  “Like I said, long story.”

  “How many people know it?”

  Two, he thought, Brenna and Carrie Haygood. “A few.”

  “I’d love to hear it,” Dagnolo said. “And this evidence you’re talking about? Can you give me even a little hint?”

  The conversation arrived, finally, at the issue of trust. The man he’d loathed for five years, the man who’d wanted to send him to prison for ending Molly’s life, who might even suspect him in Simon Bostwick’s death, was asking for the trump card in a deadly high-stakes game. Christensen wasn’t about to turn it over, at least not without a witness.

  “I’d like to meet with you in ninety minutes, at your office,” he said. “And I want Carrie Haygood there as well.”

  “Carrie Haygood?”

  “I want your word on it.”

  He im
agined Dagnolo calculating: If he’d just witnessed Bostwick’s murder and was still ninety minutes away, surely the D.A. had figured out he was calling from somewhere in the Laurel Highlands. If Dagnolo ran his license plates, how long would it be before some Westmoreland County sheriff or state trooper pulled him over during the drive back into the city? Then what?

  “One other thing,” he said. “Anybody tries to interfere with me before I get there, I take what I know to someone else, maybe state or federal. Is that clear?”

  “Very clear.”

  “Say it.”

  He waited while Dagnolo chose his words. “We’ll meet here in ninety minutes. I’ll arrange for Ms. Haygood to be here as well. At that point you’ll tell me everything you know about this situation—and I mean everything, Mr. Christensen—and deliver whatever evidence you have that supports it.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll wait an hour and a half before, ah, before notifying anyone.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Christensen said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Mr. Christensen, if what you say is true, you’ve just left a crime scene.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, sir, that for the moment you’re a suspect in the murder of Simon Bostwick. That’s information the Westmoreland County sheriff needs to know. And based on our conversation just now, there might even be sufficient cause to issue a warrant.”

  Christensen felt suddenly dizzy. Dagnolo had just played a trump card of his own.

  “Do we understand each other?” the D.A. said.

  Christensen was alone now. The teenagers were gone. The motor home’s taillights were shrinking to a red pinpoint down the road. Inside the convenience store, the clerk was watching a small black-and-white television. In that moment, Christensen stepped into the void and felt the first empty rush of a long, long fall.