Once Shadows Fall

by Robert Daniels

  “Would you like to grab a bite to eat?” Beth asked. “I owe you.”

  “It’s been a long day,” Jack said. “I need to feed Marta.”

  “Sure. Maybe another time.”

  Jack gave her a tight-lipped smile that seemed rather sad and left the vehicle without another word. She sat there watching him until he disappeared into the house. When the lights came on, she started her car and pulled out of the driveway.

  Maybe my cat’ll be happy to see me.

  *

  The fog surrounding Sandra Goldner slowly lifted as she regained consciousness. Her head was throbbing and her vision was still blurry. She tried moving her arms and found she couldn’t. They were secured above her head by a pair of handcuffs looped over a metal pipe. Before passing out for the third time, she’d yelled for help until her voice was hoarse in the desperate hope someone would come.

  The murky darkness enveloping her was terrifying. There was barely enough light seeping through the opening of a huge iron door to see by. It was nearly twenty feet across and at least that much in height. Behind her was another door identical to the first. The floor she was sitting on was cement and incredibly uncomfortable. She tried shaking the pipe. It was firmly anchored and wouldn’t budge. All she managed to do was rub the skin around her wrists raw.

  Calm, she told herself. Stay calm. Panic is the enemy now. As the assistant general manager of a bank with fifteen employees, Sandra considered herself someone who didn’t panic easily. You had to be.

  Think. There’s a way out of this mess. Use your intelligence. Even the most challenging situation has a solution. But intelligence didn’t cover being kidnapped from a public parking lot. The last thing she remembered was walking to her car before a searing pain hit. Her shoulder still bore the mark where the electrodes had attached themselves. After that—blackness.

  Sandra screamed as a tiny animal skittered across her legs, drawing them back out of reflex. In the deathly silence, her hearing had become acute. Though she could barely see it, the sound of the little rodent’s nails running across the floor were clear enough. At first her mind refused to accept this was happening. Now that she had time to think, she was completely focused on survival. It was the only consideration.

  Six weeks had passed since her divorce from Chad, a womanizing, cheating, low-life drunk. She was just beginning to feel human again. With some trepidation, she accepted Betsy Ann’s invitation to come with her to Atlanta and meet her new boyfriend and his buddy. She’d known Betsy Ann since middle school and her friend assured her the guy was all right, a respectable stock broker.

  On the whole, the evening had been a success, but it was too soon. She needed more time to recover from the breakup of her marriage. Even friendly divorces, and hers would hardly qualify as that, took their toll. It was like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. The only good thing was that eventually you stopped. Jerome’s friend was divorced himself and seemed to sense her discomfort. He told her he hoped they could get together again but didn’t ask for her phone number when they said good night. Hopefully, there’d be a lot of nice guys in her future.

  When this nightmare’s over, she told herself, I’m taking that vacation to Italy I’ve been promising myself.

  She gave the pipe another shake. Nothing.

  Occasionally, there were other noises in the strange room. She considered it further and decided it was really more like a cylindrical space that reminded her of the inside of a grain silo. Creaks and groans came from beyond the back door, as if something was pressing against it. The door was so massive Sandra couldn’t imagine what that could be.

  She gathered herself once more and tried yelling for help. The only response was the echo of her voice bouncing off the walls.

  Does anyone know I’m here? Are they even looking for me? Sooner or later, someone will come and take me away from this terrible place. She clung to that thought like a drowning person clings to a piece of driftwood. Someone had to come.

  Chapter 16

  The following morning found Jack Kale sitting in a comfortable leather club chair in the home office of Dr. Morris Shottner.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Jack said. “Hope I’m not ruining your weekend.”

  “Forty years of practice hasn’t helped my golf game,” Shottner said. “One more day won’t make a difference. I was surprised by your call. It’s been, what, almost a year?” The doctor consulted his notes and corrected himself. “Sixteen months.”

  Shottner was a bearded man of middle height in his early sixties. He was wearing a pair of glasses with silver rims that made his eyes seem larger than they were. His office smelled vaguely of pipe tobacco. Two large jars of the stuff sat on the corner of his desk.

  “When did it happen?” Shottner asked.

  “Around one in the morning,” Jack said.

  “Any different from the others?”

  “About the same. Shortness of breath, pressure in my chest, dry mouth, profuse sweating. I thought I was having a heart attack.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t need to tell you PTSD symptoms can masquerade as heart attacks. Their reappearance is what concerns me.”

  Jack nodded and looked out the window at two squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of an old oak tree on Shottner’s lawn. When they were through, they continued jumping from branch to branch in a constant state of motion. One of them paused and looked in the window at him, tilting its head to one side.

  Perhaps he considers me sluggish, sitting here like this, Jack thought.

  He turned back to the doctor who was waiting for him to continue.

  “The timing concerns me, too,” Jack said. “That’s why I called.”

  “You think your trip to Jordan precipitated it?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Possibly,” Shottner said. “How are you doing with the—?”

  “Taking them once in a while.”

  “How do you define once in a while?”

  “More than I should but less than before.”

  “That’s progress,” the doctor said, “as long as you’re not upping the medication on your own again. What are those papers on the seat next to you?”

  “The detective I met sent me a fax with the crime report and findings from the murder scene.”

  “And the photo?”

  “A color image of a plaque they found in the woman’s grave,” Jack said.

  “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “That’s what therapists say to make themselves sound smart. Didn’t they teach you that in graduate school?”

  “I never say ‘Ah,’” Jack said.

  “I rest my case.” Shottner paused to take a polished briarwood pipe with a curved black stem from a rack on his credenza. He filled it with tobacco from one of the jars. When the pipe was full, Shottner used a slender metal tool to tamp the tobacco down but didn’t light it.

  “There were two bodies found in Jordan,” Jack said. “A man and a woman.”

  “Terrible,” Shottner said.

  “And another woman is still missing.”

  “So you went there to help with their investigation. That was kind.”

  “I was basically kidnapped by one of the detectives.”

  “Unusual technique.”

  Jack shrugged. “Unusual woman.”

  “You could have said no.”

  “It was a little difficult. I was already in the car and she was driving.”

  “I’ve never known you to be at a loss for words, Jack.”

  Jack considered this for several seconds, then said, “So you think I wanted to go?”

  “What do you think?” Shottner said.

  “Definitely not.”

  “Okay.”

  “You don’t agree?” Jack said.

  “I neither agree nor disagree. I merely find it interesting after so many years.” Shottner asked, “Did a nightmare follow last night�
��s attack?”

  “Not this time,” Jack said, annoyed at the noncommittal answer. “Maybe that’s progress.”

  “Possibly. What are your feelings?”

  Jack took a weary breath and let it out. “The detective on the case told me psychiatrists always answer questions with questions.”

  “She may have a point,” the doctor said and lit his pipe.

  “You know Morgan’s coming to visit this summer,” Jack said. “I’m really looking forward to seeing her again. Seems she grows six inches each time we’re apart.”

  “I’m told children do that,” Shottner said, blowing a stream of blue smoke into the air. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “What?” Jack said.

  “I asked if the smoke bothers you.”

  “Uh . . . no,” Jack mumbled. He’d been looking at Beth Sturgis’s fax.

  “You feel comfortable with Morgan in the house now?”

  “I can’t keep her away forever,” Jack said. “She insisted. The girl has a mind of her . . .”

  Jack’s voice trailed away as his eye fell on a photocopy of the almanac page they’d recovered from the grave. It made no sense. Yet he knew there had to be a reason for its presence. Page 403 talked about ocean currents and had been torn from the middle of a book.

  “What were you saying?” Shottner asked.

  “Huh? Oh, I said she has a mind of her own—like her mother.”

  “Do you and Katherine still speak?”

  “Generally about Morgan. Katherine’s married now. I’m not part of her life anymore.”

  “Maybe we should explore that,” Shottner suggested.

  “Perhaps another time would be better,” Jack said.

  Page 403.

  “That’s what you say whenever the subject comes up,” Shottner said.

  “Resistance to therapy.” Jack smiled.

  “Possibly.”

  “To what end?”

  “That, my dear professor, is what we’re here to find out.”

  No salinity was noted on the mollusk fragments.

  “The subconscious is extremely logical, Jack. It accepts whatever we put in without judgment.”

  Jack took another breath. “You’d think after eight years we’d be able to figure it out.”

  “Psychotherapy doesn’t operate on a timetable,” Shottner said.

  “I know that. It’s just frustrating.”

  “Do you still feel the same way about hypnosis? That’s still an option, you know.”

  The brass plaque bearing the name “McKeachern, M.” shows signs of oxidation on only one side.

  Jack stood up so abruptly it startled the doctor, causing him to drop the match he was using to relight his pipe. He used his hand to extinguish it against the desktop.

  “I’ve got to go,” Jack said.

  “Obviously,” Shottner said. “I take it something’s occurred to you?”

  “I think I know what he’s doing.”

  “Who?”

  “The UNSUB.”

  “UNSUB?”

  “Unknown subject. It’s police slang.”

  “Well, always glad to help,” Shottner said.

  Jack was already halfway out the door and called over his shoulder, “Thanks, Moe. Sorry to screw up your weekend. I’ll phone later.”

  Chapter 17

  Jack’s cell phone was out by the time he reached his car. He fumbled around in his pockets for a few seconds trying to find Beth Sturgis’s business card and finally dialed her number.

  “Sturgis.”

  “Jack Kale. Where are you?”

  “Uh . . . I’m here at the crime lab. We’ve been trying to pin down some of the particles in that soil sample you found. They look like—”

  “That broken plaque we recovered—do you still have it?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “The composition’s brass, right?”

  “Just a moment,” Beth said, putting him on speaker.

  A muffled conversation took place in the background with a male voice. A moment later, Ben Furman came on the line.

  “Hey, Jack,” the tech said. “Yeah, it’s definitely brass. There were no prints—”

  “You won’t find any,” Jack said. “The killer’s too smart for that, or thinks he is. Only one side was oxidized, correct?”

  “Yep.”

  “Which means the other side was protected from the elements.”

  “Makes sense,” Furman said.

  “Have you traced the name yet?”

  “I’m working on that now,” Beth said. “The problem is there are fifty McKeacherns in the book. It’s gonna take some time.”

  “We don’t have any time,” Jack said.

  “Why?”

  “The other woman. He’s got her and he’s going to kill her. That’s what the page in the almanac means. It has nothing to do with ocean currents. Four-oh-three is a date—April third. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  “That’s today,” Beth said.

  “We may already be too late.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  Jack started his engine and backed out of the driveway.

  “There’s a common thread running through what we found,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Where do you find sand and shell?” he snapped.

  “The ocean,” Beth and Furman both said at the same time.

  “Or river beds, if the conditions are right,” Jack said. “I’m about thirty minutes from you. Keep working on McKeachern. Narrow it down to anything having to do with the water. If we find who or what they are, I have a feeling it’ll tie the other pieces together.”

  Chapter 18

  Jack came through the crime lab door and spotted Dan Pappas and two other men standing off to one side.

  “Thought you were temporary help,” he said.

  “Thought you were, too,” Pappas replied.

  Beth was seated across the room speaking to someone on the phone, while Ben Furman was hunched over a microscope peering through the lens at something. Neither looked up. Before Jack could say anything further, the two men with Pappas approached him.

  “Professor Kale, I’m Burt Wiggins. I work with Deputy Chief Ritson. This is Captain Kostner, who heads our Robbery-Homicide Division. I believe you know each other.”

  “We do,” Jack said, shaking hands with both men in turn. “Good to see you again, Art.”

  “You, too, Jack,” Kostner said.

  Wiggins continued, “I understand you’ve been assisting Detectives Pappas and Sturgis with their investigation.”

  “Not really. I—”

  “We’ve been following the developments and wanted to say thanks for your contributions.”

  “Glad to help,” Jack said.

  “Detective Sturgis has been quite complimentary,” Wiggins added.

  Jack glanced at Beth, who was still involved in her conversation and scribbling notes furiously. He didn’t think Wiggins and Kostner had just dropped by but decided to see where the conversation was going.

  “My pleasure,” he said noncommittally.

  “We’d like you to continue with us,” Wiggins informed him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We’re saying we need your help, Jack,” Kostner said. “There’s a madman running around killing people.”

  “I know that, but I’m not in a position to get involved with anything at the moment. Actually, I’m in the middle of an important academic research project right now.”

  “Professor,” Wiggins said, “a woman’s life may be hanging in the balance.”

  “I’m sorry. I really can’t—”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Wiggins asked.

  Jack was in the middle of formulating an answer when his eyes drifted to a poster on the wall with the Atlanta Police Department’s symbol—a badge bearing the words “Protect and Serve” at the bottom. Allowing himself to be pulled into this investigation had been a mistake. I
f he left now, he could say everything he wanted in an e-mail and the cops could take it from there.

  “I’m not sure I can answer that,” Jack said. “I suppose I thought I could be of some help.”

  “Got ’em,” Beth called out from across the room. “McKeachern Manufacturing out of Cleveland, Ohio. They make water pumps and hydraulic control systems.”

  Everyone turned back to Jack at the same time, expecting an answer to leap from his lips. He was still drawing a blank. Shells, sand, water. Somehow it was all connected.

  “Beth,” he said. “Get on the phone and see if they can give you a list of their customers in the state of Georgia.”

  “It’s Saturday, Jack. They’re probably closed.”

  “How bout I call the Cleveland Police?” Pappas suggested. “They probably have an emergency contact number. If they don’t, their Fire and Rescue will.”

  “Go,” Jack said, walking to where Furman was sitting. “Have you identified what type of sand we recovered?”

  “Type?”

  “Sand has all kinds of different consistencies and can vary widely from place to place. In Hawaii, where they’ve had volcanic activity, it’s black on some beaches. In Destin, Florida, it’s lighter in color and more powdery.”

  “These grains look pretty coarse to me, Jack. We need a geologist,” Furman said.

  “Then let’s find one quick. Call Georgia State University and see if they have someone there who can help.”

  “Hopefully that woman’s still alive,” Pappas said.

  Jack’s mouth tightened at the comment. Against his own instincts, he was getting deeper and deeper into something that he should be backing away from, but he didn’t know how to get out. It felt like the investigation’s vortex was sucking him along. Wiggins and Kostner both stepped back to allow him space. Quite suddenly, the atmosphere in the lab had intensified into a measured sort of frenzy.