Shadow Girl

by Gerry Schmitt

  “Mommy,” Poppy said, “you know that red shirt with the black polka dots that you bought me?”

  Afton punched the On button for the dishwasher, turned, and said, “You mean the one we got at the Kids General Store? That one?”

  “Uh-huh. Do you think it makes me look like a ladybug?”

  “Well, uh . . . no. Not really.” Afton knew that if she said yes, Poppy would never wear that particular blouse again.

  “Oh. Good,” Poppy said.

  “Is it okay if I get my paints out?” Tess asked. She’d gotten a starter set of acrylic paints for her birthday and was beginning to experiment.

  “Homework all done?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay, then, sure. We can put down some newspapers and you can paint right here at the table,” Afton said.

  Once Tess was painting—she’d decided to try her hand at portraiture and had gotten Bonaparte to sit still, for now—Afton joined Poppy on the couch, where she was curled up with a book but not really reading it.

  “What’s up?” Afton asked. “Doing a book review? Checking out the competition author-wise?”

  Poppy laid her book flat on her lap. “Should we be worried?” she asked.

  “About what, honey?”

  “Oh . . . things.”

  “Could you be more specific?” Afton asked.

  “Dinosaurs aren’t really real, are they?”

  “No. The ones you see in movies look real but they’re computer generated. You know, like cartoons.”

  “Okay.”

  Afton sensed there was more. “What else are you worried about, Poppy?”

  “The zombie apocalypse?”

  “There’s no such thing.” Afton knew damn well that there were real monsters roving around out there, but she wasn’t about to explain that to her baby girl. No way. Keep her kids safe for as long as it takes. Forever, if it came to that.

  “So the TV ones are cartoons, too?” Poppy asked. “The zombie people?”

  “I think those are mostly actors with lots of goopy makeup on their faces to make them look all green and moldy.” Afton hesitated. “Anything else?”

  “Do you think I could have a Rice Krispies bar?”

  “I think that could be arranged.”

  Tess looked up from her painting. “Just don’t leave it sitting on the table by the TV or Bonaparte will get it.” She shook her head. “You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.”

  • • •

  BY nine o’clock the kids were tucked into bed. At ten o’clock Afton decided she could do with some serious z’s herself. Still, what she’d come to think of as the Leland Odin mess continued to swirl around in her brain. When she was with the girls, it was fairly easy to quiet her mind and set aside the pressure of the workday. But when she was alone, when she wanted to find some inner solace and peace, then the questions and what-ifs reared their ugly heads: What if the killers had already left the country? What if Sunny had contracted for these killers? How was Fan Ling involved? Or was she?

  Afton crawled into bed and punched on the tiny TV set that sat at the foot of her bed. She scanned the news channels but, thankfully, found nothing that was related to her case. Then, out of curiosity, she switched over to the Diamond Shopping Network.

  She watched with a faint degree of curiosity as an enthusiastic on-air host named Jeffrey held up a bright red frying pan and urged viewers to stay tuned for the Confetti Cookware show coming up next hour. Then Jeffrey’s twinkling eyes and dulcet tones reminded her that they were only halfway through their Treasures of Asia show and that there were lots of exciting things just ahead.

  Jeffrey—clearly she was on a first name basis with him now—held up a decorative butterfly pillow and began to extoll its virtues as the perfect accent piece for your bed or sofa. Then he moved on to a blue-and-white Chinese vase, a matched pair of ceramic foo dogs (cute but expensive), a tea set decorated with swirls of pink peonies, and a jade-colored incense burner.

  Afton frowned and sat up a little straighter in bed.

  Incense. That’s what she’d smelled in that fancy suite at the Hotel Itasca. Someone had been burning incense.

  But what did it mean? Maybe nothing.

  Maybe something.

  She snapped off the TV and turned out the light. For some reason she felt like calling Max. But no. It was too late to call. Have to catch him first thing tomorrow morning. Let her brain stew on all this crap while she slept. She yawned deeply. Maybe figure something out. But for now . . . zzzzz.

  27

  THE Callahan Casket Company, located a few blocks west of Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis, had shut down some twenty years ago when the funeral industry downshifted into what’s now generally accepted as the cremation industry. Cremation caught on big-time because it proved to be cheaper than traditional burial, was much more environmentally friendly than a leaky tomb, and neatly solved the problem of overcrowded cemeteries. Plus, baby boomers loved it. To them, cremation sounded more like an alternative concept, which meant they could avoid thinking about the harsh realities of dying. At least for a while.

  After the casket factory shuttered its doors, the enormous redbrick monolith of a building stood empty for ten years until a hopeful group of artists, painters, potters, and photographers tried to carve out studio space inside of it. But somehow, the giant hooks in the ceiling, the metal tracks that led out to the loading dock, the catacomblike atmosphere, just hadn’t been all that conducive to creativity. Or to attracting a flurry of wealthy, artsy people who wanted to attend their studio openings.

  Now the artists were scattered all throughout northeast Minneapolis in cheery, sunlit studios while the empty casket factory still hunkered next to a jumble of railroad tracks, looking gloomier and more deserted than ever.

  Except the building wasn’t deserted.

  On this chilly Thursday night, Mom Chao Cherry, Narong, and Hack were gathered in the basement. Narong had built a charcoal-and-wood fire on the stone floor and now that small blaze illuminated their faces as well as the body of the man stretched out on the floor in front of them. Unfortunately, the fire did nothing to penetrate the darkness of that enormous subterranean room.

  • • •

  JAY Barber came awake in several stages. First he realized that he was dreaming and allowed himself to slide back into the gray zone where he’d been hovering for what felt like many, many hours.

  Then he decided it must be very early morning, but he could still sneak in another hour of shut-eye.

  Finally, his thinking became slightly more cogent and he really did begin to wake up. But he was feeling irritated by his wife, Shelly, who kept yapping in his ear.

  “Where is it?” Shelly yapped.

  “Where is what?” Barber mumbled back to her.

  “Where is it?” she asked again.

  “Shut up,” Barber said.

  A man’s voice suddenly sliced through the fabric of Barber’s dream, shocking him and rousing him to almost total consciousness.

  “The blow,” Hack snarled. “Where’d you people stash the blow?”

  What? Barber peeped open a single eyelid, only to discover a man standing over him. He was also shocked and totally discombobulated when he realized he wasn’t in his own bed and that it wasn’t his wife who was screeching at him. It was . . .

  “I know you,” Barber said in a dry, scratchy voice. He tried to swallow, but his stomach clenched in a painful knot and his throat suddenly felt like sandpaper. It was all coming back to him in a blinding flash, like a fast-forwarded horror movie on his DVR. He remembered running along Lake Harriet Boulevard and then . . . the slap of something painful? Tumbling down hard and seeing two men’s faces?

  “That’s good,” Hack said. “You look like you’re finally starting to track. You’ve been out like a light for almost sixteen hours.” He turned to Narong and said, “Gotta get me some of that tranquilizer shit.”

  “Water,” Barber gasped. “I need
water.”

  “No problem,” Hack said. “So long as you cooperate.”

  “What?” Barber asked. He looked confused.

  “Where’s the shit?” Hack asked.

  “Shit?” Barber was even more awake now, a look of panic lighting his face as he realized that his arms and legs were tied down. That he was lying spread-eagled on a cold stone floor in a dank basement somewhere.

  “That’s right,” Hack said amiably. “The white lady. The gutter glitter. You know, the stuff you people stole from this fine lady.” At this casual introduction, Mom Chao Cherry and Narong both stepped forward to stare down at Barber.

  “Stick him now?” Narong asked. He was anxious to get going.

  “Oh shit,” Barber said in an anguished tone. “Oh shit.” Comprehension was dawning at lightning speed. They were looking for the drug shipment that Leland had hijacked. He began to cry, softly at first, then in loud desperate sobs that turned to guttural cries. “Don’t hurt me,” he pleaded. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Sure we do,” Hack said. “In fact, we can do anything we want. Tables are turned, pal. We make the rules.”

  “You have my drugs,” Mom Chao Cherry said with barely an inflection in her voice. She could have been talking coolly about breakfast cereal. Or an expensive new handbag.

  “I didn’t take your drugs,” Barber moaned. “That was my . . .”

  “We understand,” Mom Chao Cherry said. She waved a hand as if she were waving a scepter. “That is old business. We already dealt with your partner, Mr. Odin. Now we do business with you.” She took a step back and nodded to Narong.

  Narong moved forward, knife blade extended.

  Barber saw the flash of the knife and screamed loudly before the point even touched the center of his chest. But when Narong did slice him from sternum to belly button, his eyes popped, his nostrils flared, and he howled like a crazed animal caught in a trap.

  From out of the darkness came Mom Chao Cherry’s voice: “You will tell us everything there is to know about my hijacked shipment. You will tell us exactly where it is.”

  “Pleeeeeease.” Barber’s scream echoed off the brick walls. “We can make a deal!”

  Mom Chao Cherry sighed. She was immune to Barber’s screams and pleadings. She’d overseen plenty of interrogations much like this one. Some of the men had been innocent, some not. But this man, this partner of Leland Odin, was clearly guilty. He was an accomplice. “Again,” she said to Narong.

  Narong probed with his knife and, right on cue, Barber screamed.

  “Untie me and I’ll tell you where the drugs are,” Barber moaned. “Wait, I’ll show you. I’ll take you there.”

  “Maybe deeper?” Mom Chao Cherry suggested helpfully. She wished she’d brought along one of her native venomous brown spiders. Once, in a long-ago brothel where she’d been forced to work, a man had abused her horribly. Then, two weeks later, he’d come scrabbling back, grinning sheepishly and offering her a bag of candy, acting as if nothing had happened. She’d bowed deeply like the madam had taught her and led the customer upstairs. After they’d had sex on her sad, flat pallet of a bed, the man had fallen asleep. She’d crept down into the basement, caught a fat brown spider in a jar, and carried it back to her room. When death came for the snoring man, it was very painful.

  • • •

  I’VE got an idea,” Hack said to Narong. “Why don’t you try . . .” He turned and ambled back a few steps, dug through his duffel bag. “Here,” he said. “Maybe this will give our boy some incentive.” He handed Narong a long, wicked-looking knife, basically a Bowie knife, with a curved fifteen-inch sawtooth steel blade and rubber handle.

  Narong accepted the knife with pleasure. “What is this?”

  “Call it a pig sticker,” Hack said.

  “Very nice.”

  Hack flicked a wrist. “Give ’er a shot.”

  Narong went to work on Jay Barber’s left thumb, which produced another sequence of high-pitched screams.

  “Good,” Mom Chao Cherry said. “Now we must . . .”

  “Hold everything,” Hack said. He glanced at his watch. “I gotta meet a guy upstairs.”

  “Here? Now?” Mom Chao Cherry asked.

  “Just takin’ care of business,” Hack said. “You know, that asshole from the university.”

  Mom Chao Cherry pulled her mouth into a tight smile. “Yes. Of course. The greedy one.”

  • • •

  OUT on the front steps, pounding on a front door that was covered with decade-old graffiti, Gary Toft figured he must certainly be in the wrong place. It was the exact address that he’d been given, all right, but this five-story brick building—really more like the shell of an old factory—looked utterly deserted.

  “This sucks,” Toft muttered. He was a hospital orderly, Hack’s lookout, for lack of a better description, who’d been bounced out of nursing school for cheating on a test. And right now he was pretty sure he was being jacked around, that Hack was trying to screw him royally on the twenty grand. But just as he turned to leave, the front door snicked open and a smiling Hack said, “Hey there, Toft.”

  Toft turned around. “I’m here for my money.” Now that Hack was standing right in front of him, Toft didn’t feel quite so confident in shaking him down.

  “Sure thing,” Hack said. “Come on in and I’ll grab it for you.”

  Toft hesitated. Something felt fishy. “What is this place?” he asked. “You live here?”

  “I own it,” Hack said with some pride in his voice. “Got a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to turn this place into artists’ lofts.”

  Toft nodded. He’d read about this kind of thing in a local arts magazine. Shit-hole buildings being rehabbed for use as artists’ studios and even small repertory theatres. “Cool.”

  “Come on, let me show you around.”

  “Okay,” Toft said. And with that he stepped inside and sealed his fate.

  • • •

  DOWN here,” Hack said as they descended a long flight of narrow steps. The beam of his flashlight bounced along, probing the way.

  “Down here?” Toft said. This did seem awfully strange. “You got an office down here?”

  “Something like that.” Hack waited until they were all the way downstairs. Use the gun or the snare? he wondered. The gun. Easier and more industrial.

  He turned to Toft and said, casually, “We got our own little torture chamber set up down here.”

  “What? What?” Toft’s face drained white and he made a motion to turn and run, but was stopped abruptly in his tracks. Hack had just stuck a snub-nosed revolver one inch from his nose.

  “Get over there and shut up,” Hack said, giving Toft a push. There was no sense in fooling around or keeping up any sort of pretense.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Toft said when he saw Jay Barber spread-eagled on the floor, sobbing and leaking blood. “What did you people do to that guy? Who is he?”

  “Aw, we were just having a friendly bull session,” Hack said. He pushed Toft closer into the circle. “Come on, meet the gang you signed on to help. Don’t be shy.”

  Toft turned a wild-eyed gaze on Mom Chao Cherry and Hack. “You people are crazy. This right here is torture!”

  “Torture, yes,” Narong said. He seemed to be enjoying himself for the first time in several days.

  Hack gave Toft a rough shove that forced him down into a sitting position. “Shut up and watch. You might get a kick out of this.” He gestured at Narong. “Go ahead, Narong. Get to work.”

  Barber squealed continually as Narong worked on him, first with his knives and then with a small blowtorch. It was the kind a five-star chef might use to glaze the top of a meringue.

  “Now he is fearful,” Mom Chao Cherry said. “Now he’ll tell us what we want to know.”

  Hack nodded. “Dude knows you’re serious. Make him sing like Pavarotti on a warm day.”

  Toft was weeping and moaning, rocking back and forth as if
he couldn’t stand the pain himself. A sour smell was coming off him. “This is so wrong!” he roared. “Somebody’s got to come and stop this. Somebody’s got to hear this.”

  “Shut up,” Hack said. He lifted his arm, aimed the gun at Toft, and shot him square in the forehead. Toft looked momentarily surprised. His mouth formed a perfect O as his scream died on his lips. Then he rocked backward for a final time. When his head hit the stone floor, it sounded like the splat of a watermelon being dropped.

  “He was starting to get on my nerves,” Hack said.

  “Can anyone hear us?” Mom Chao Cherry asked. It was the first time she sounded nervous.

  “No,” Hack said. “Walls are too thick. If you heard anything at all, you’d just think it was a trick of the wind.” He took a step forward and looked down at Barber. “You gonna tell us where to find the drugs?”

  “You’re never going to let me go,” Barber moaned. He’d tried to deal and they’d scorned him. Now he was running his chances through his mind and the endgame didn’t look good.

  “Stick him again,” Hack said.

  Two minutes later, Barber was barely able to grunt, let alone form actual words.

  “Shit, I think something tore inside his throat,” Hack said. “He’s just making grunts and groans.”

  “Untie him and give him a pen and paper,” Mom Chao Cherry said. “He will tell us.”

  Narong untied Barber and sat him up, which was no easy feat. Barber flopped and sagged so much, it seemed as if his spine was broken. Then, finally, when Barber was staring at them, dark-eyed and numb with pain, Hack put a pen in the man’s good hand and placed a sheet of paper on the floor.

  “Go ahead,” Hack said. “Write it down. Tell us where the drugs are.”

  Barber’s head lolled on his shoulders and some white froth dribbled out one corner of his mouth. The pen dropped out of his hand.

  “Uh-oh,” Hack said. “He might have some brain issues.”

  “Stick him again?” Narong asked.

  “No, no, he’s gonna be able to pull it together,” Hack said. He leaned down and put the pen back in Barber’s hand. “Aren’t you, buddy?” He clapped Barber on the shoulder. “Go ahead, you can do it.”