Once Shadows Fall

by Robert Daniels

  Everyone stood and headed for the door.

  In the hallway, Pappas said, “I have a question about the nurse. Tell me his name again.”

  “Ron Curry,” Gillam said.

  “You said he’s at Ellenwood. Why’d he leave?”

  “Ron was a contract employee. He’s with some company that has a deal with the state. Bill Tomlinson replaced him.”

  Pappas said, “I don’t recall seeing Curry’s name on the employee list.”

  “Probably an oversight. He was already gone when Ms. Sturgis made her request. Their employer sends us the fingerprint and DNA cards. I turn them over to Danita. She forwards them to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. If there was a match, I guess they’d have told you, right?”

  “Right,” Pappas said. “Just curious.”

  Chapter 69

  When they were in the car, Pappas commented, “Those tapes weren’t worth much.”

  “DVDs,” Jack said.

  “Whatever.”

  Jack was silent for a moment, then said, “I want to know more about Ron Curry. Everyone here provided DNA samples, right?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “And everything came back negative.”

  “True.”

  “I buy Gillam’s explanation that Curry was already gone when Beth asked for the employee list again. But it can’t hurt to be sure.”

  “I’ll call the hospital in Savannah and get his records,” Pappas said.

  *

  The world gradually came into focus. Beth’s eyes fluttered as she emerged from the haze of drugs clouding her mind. She was lying on a cot in a room with bare brick walls and a cell door. The memory of a crowbar coming down on her collarbone returned. Tentatively, she explored it with her fingers and winced. Probably broken. The skin around the bruise was a mixture of black and yellow. Her arm also had a sizable mark just below the shoulder. Even the slightest movement sent waves of pain shooting through her body.

  How long have I been here?

  She had no sense of time, but from the discoloration of her skin at the bruise, she guessed several days had passed since her abduction.

  The Soul Eater’s attack came back to her in a series of vignettes. Peekachu lying dead in the middle of the room. Cold gray eyes behind a ski mask. The bar coming down. A jolt of electricity passing through her body.

  Beth sat upright, placed her feet on the floor, and stood. She had to wait for the room to stop spinning. When she felt sufficiently stable, she made her way to the door. It was locked. No surprise there. The bars weren’t of a type you’d expect to find in a jail, but were sufficient for their purpose. She turned and took stock of the room she was in. Apart from the cot, the only furniture was a series of wooden shelves that lined one wall. They were divided diagonally. Most were empty except for a few bottles of wine. Next to the cot was a bucket and a bottle of water.

  The room contained no windows, and the only way out appeared to be through the door. With nothing left to learn, she turned her attention to the rooms beyond the cell door. Her eyes settled on a large table. To the right of the table was a staircase with dusty steps. Beth returned to the table again. Her first thought was that it was an operating table, but the drain down the center made no sense. Underneath it was a square bucket.

  It finally dawned on her what she was looking at. This was no operating table but rather a mortician’s table, similar to the one the medical examiner used when cutting a subject open. Oddly, the instruments lining the table’s edge were not the gleaming modern type. They were ancient. The chest and jars sitting along the facing wall confirmed her worst fears, though not as badly as the contents of the adjoining room to the left. Several bodies wrapped in linen cloth from head to foot lay side by side in wooden coffins. Standing upright in the corner was an empty sarcophagus.

  “Houston, we have a problem,” Beth whispered.

  *

  The following morning, they returned to Mayfield. Tony Gillam had set up one monitor to play the original disc and one to run the copy he’d made. Jack and Pappas began the process again. The discs appeared to be identical right down to the time clock ticking off seconds at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Gillam hung in with them, answering questions when one came up.

  When they reached the section where Curry arrived with Pell’s medication, Jack asked him to rerun it. He and Pappas looked from screen to screen. They saw nothing unusual. Despite Gillam’s initial enthusiasm, even he was getting bored. He left the room and returned with three cans of Coke. They continued to watch. The disc was now starting the month of April.

  The second week was equally tedious with one exception. On the morning of the fourth day, Dr. Charles Raymond walked off the elevator at the end of the hall accompanied by Beth and Pappas. They went to Pell’s cell and looked in it for approximately two minutes.

  “Forgot we’d be on camera,” Pappas said.

  Jack merely nodded. Seeing Beth jarred him.

  “You okay?” Pappas asked.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. He pressed the play button again and continued studying the disc.

  Dr. Cairo showed up later in the week for another therapy session. Food trays went. Nurses brought medicine.

  “Always thought working in Homicide would be exciting,” Gillam said, stifling a yawn.

  “More perspiration than inspiration,” Pappas told him.

  Jack had no comment. He stuck his legs out, folded his arms across his chest, and leaned back in the chair. His neck was stiff, and he was sore from sitting so long. Something was bothering him. Something he had seen. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. Gillam was in the process of telling his wife that he’d be home on time when his hand slipped. He dropped his phone. The noise caused everyone to jump.

  “Shit,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Jack said. “Did you ever find out if Dr. Cairo would be in today?” he asked.

  “Oh, right,” Gillam said. “The doc’s probably seeing patients now. You want me to page him?”

  “We’ll stop by his office on the way out,” Jack said.

  They said good-bye to Gillam. He called ahead to one of his coworkers and had the elevator waiting for them. As soon as they got off, Pappas checked his phone and listened to a voice mail message from Nolvia Borjas asking him to call the office.

  The secretary answered and informed him, “A fax came in for you from Ellenwood Regional’s personnel department. They don’t have anyone named Ron Curry employed there.”

  Chapter 70

  Instead of going to Alton Cairo’s office, they detoured to Mayfield’s personnel supervisor and met Danita Ritchey, a diminutive woman in her late sixties with curly gray hair. Dressed conservatively in a beige business suit, she had an intelligent face and bright-blue eyes and wore glasses that dangled from a chain around her neck. She reminded Jack of his fifth-grade teacher.

  Pappas asked her, “Were you familiar with a contract nurse who worked here a couple of weeks ago named Ron Curry?”

  “I didn’t know him personally,” Danita Ritchey said. “But I ran into him a few times in the cafeteria and such.”

  “Gillam told us he was transferred.”

  “That’s right. I believe he’s in Savannah now.”

  “That was two days after the first body was found,” Pappas informed Jack.

  “Would you have any contact information on him?” Jack asked.

  “He worked for Southern States Medical. Their business card is in my desk. Would you like it?”

  “Please,” Jack said.

  Pappas used his cell phone to call and reached Southern States’ office manager.

  “This is Detective Pappas with the Atlanta Police. Do you have a Ronald Curry working there?”

  “We did,” the manager said.

  “He quit?”

  “Leave of absence,” the manager said. “Some family problems came up about a week ago. Ron had to take a little time off to deal with them. Is someth
ing wrong?”

  “Not at all,” Pappas said. “We’re doing a routine investigation involving all employees who worked at Mayfield. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I understand. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “If you have a file on Mr. Curry and perhaps a photo, could you fax them to me? I’m at Mayfield right now.”

  “No problem. It won’t take a minute.”

  Danita Ritchey wrote her e-mail address down on a piece of paper and handed it to him. Pappas winked at her and read it off to the manager. In under a minute, a chime sounded on her computer. She opened the e-mail program and stared at the screen, her mouth slightly open.

  “What’s wrong?” Pappas asked.

  “There must be some mistake,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  Without answering, Danita Ritchey pushed back from her desk, walked across the room to a file cabinet, opened it, and removed a green folder. She turned it around so Pappas and Jack could see. The photo in the file looked nothing like the one on her screen.

  *

  Pappas was on the phone with Jordan’s sheriff.

  “I’m tellin’ you, Blaylock, it ain’t the same guy. Not even close. I need you to get out to his house and, whoever this man is, pick him up for questioning.”

  “You’re saying this man switched identities with the real Curry?”

  “I don’t know what he did. But something ain’t kosher. Before we go off the deep end, let’s see what he has to say. Maybe the photos got mixed up somehow. According to his employer, Ronald Curry lives at 471 Cochran Street.”

  “I’ll have Avilles swing by and pick him up.”

  “You tell that kid to be careful. If he’s the one we’re looking for, you need to handle him like a viper.”

  There was a pause. Max Blaylock said, “Maybe I’d better go myself.”

  Pappas and Jack fidgeted for twenty frustrating minutes until the sheriff called back.

  “I’m out at the house. You need to get out here. This is bad.”

  “Talk to me,” Pappas said.

  “There’s a woman and a teenage girl lying dead in their bedrooms with their throats cut. Both of them have fingers missing. I suspect the real Curry’s lying in the garage with a pick axe in his head.”

  “Shit.”

  “I called the medical examiner. The place is a fuckin’ blood bath.”

  Blaylock’s voice sounded shaky.

  “What about the imposter?”

  “No sign of him,” the sheriff said.

  Chapter 71

  In the master bedroom of a house on Cochran Street, three men stood looking at the form of a forty-year-old woman in a green housedress. The smell of death from her decomposing body was nearly overpowering. Her daughter lay dead in the next room. The woman’s throat had been cut from ear to ear, severing her carotid artery. Same with the daughter. Jack noted the wounds were precise and appeared to be the work of a scalpel or a very sharp knife.

  In looking at the mother’s body and her position in the hallway, it was obvious she hadn’t gone easily. All the furniture had been knocked over. He knew for a certainty she died trying to protect her daughter. Sensing the desperation she must have felt, his own throat began to constrict. In addition to the slash across her throat, there were a number of stab wounds to her chest. In the garage, the scene was equally as gruesome. The axe that killed the real Ron Curry was still embedded in his head. He died on the spot, struck from behind.

  “Mother of God,” Pappas said under his breath.

  They returned to the house where Jack dropped down to one knee and studied Loreen Curry’s hands. They had shrunken in as the blood drained and rigor mortis took hold. Even after rigor let go, they were still retracted into claws. Horrible.

  “What are you looking for?” Max Blaylock asked.

  “Do you have a pen knife, Sheriff?”

  Blaylock produced one and handed it to Jack.

  “Thank you. Would you check in the kitchen and see if you can find a small plastic bag? And maybe some tape—masking tape, if possible.”

  The sheriff did as asked and returned with everything. Jack placed the paper under the woman’s hand and very carefully unpryed two of her fingers and began to scrape under her nails. When he was through, he sealed the evidence in the bag, labeled it, and signed his name.

  Hopefully, death had come quickly. Max Blaylock’s face had lost much of its color.

  “I’ve been sheriff here for fourteen years. In all that time, we had one murder. Now we have five in the space of a few weeks. This is something out of a bad dream.”

  Pappas nodded slowly. Jack remained absorbed in the scene, studying the details. There wasn’t much either could say.

  Blaylock continued, “I put a BOLO out on the imposter.”

  Jack nodded absently and asked the sheriff if one of his deputies could run the bag into Atlanta and ask Ben Furman to do a DNA test against the skin they’d found under Donna Camp’s nails.

  “Not a problem,” Blaylock said.

  “What a goddamn cluster fuck,” Pappas said. He turned to Jack and asked, “See anything else?”

  Jack shook his head slowly, then said, “I want to go back to Mayfield and look at those discs again.”

  “We just spent two freakin’ days looking at them,” Pappas said. “What’s up?”

  “How did Tony Gillam strike you?”

  The detective was clearly surprised by the question and Jack’s change of direction. “Gillam? Nice guy. Helpful.”

  “Very,” Jack said.

  “Kid seemed like a straight shooter to me. What are you gettin’ at?”

  “He stayed with us the entire time we were there.”

  “So?”

  “You remember him asking if he could get us coffee?”

  “Sure. He did that a couple of times. He also brought us Cokes. I thought it was a nice gesture. What’s wrong with that?”

  “By itself, nothing,” Jack said. “If I recall, the only time he got up was to get the soft drinks or when we all broke to eat.”

  “And that’s a problem?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. Gillam seemed nervous to me. You recall him dropping his phone?”

  Pappas took a deep breath. “Anyone can drop a phone, Jack. Why are you making such a big deal about him?”

  “Tell me what else you noticed,” Jack said.

  Pappas glanced at Max Blaylock, who shrugged, and then said, “He had a habit of rubbing his leg. People do that. My kid does that. You figure that makes him nervous?”

  “I do.”

  “About what? Something on the discs?”

  “That’s my guess,” Jack said.

  “None of it involved him,” Pappas said.

  “It didn’t hit me until a moment ago,” Jack said. “Gillam was trying to distract us.”

  “You want to tell me why or should I just guess?” Pappas said.

  Jack took his notebook out and consulted it. “Each time Alton Cairo showed up, our phony Nurse Curry was with him, or he got there first to bring Pell’s medication.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And each time they did, Gillam chose that moment to ask us a question, tell us he was going for the drinks, or dropped his phone.”

  Pappas considered that for a moment, then said, “You think he was trying to cover something the imposter was doing?”

  “It’s possible. That’s why I want to see the discs again,” Jack said. “There’s something there we missed.”

  “Beth thought the killer and Pell were working together. Maybe that’s how he was passing his messages.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. Pappas raised his.

  Max Blaylock informed them, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  Chapter 72

  When they returned to Mayfield, they were told by Danita Ritchey that Tony Gillam had left for the day. While they were talking, Childers and Spruell arrived. If the detectives were surprised to see them,
neither said anything. Spruell, however, was annoyed and made no attempt to hide it.

  “I understood you were off the case,” Childers said.

  “My last day,” Jack said.

  Childers seemed satisfied with the answer. He said, “Jimmy and I thought we’d follow up on why Sturgis was out here. The LT told us you asked about her trips.”

  When neither man responded, Spruell turned to Dan Pappas and said, “You want to tell us what you’re doing back here?”

  “I got issues,” Pappas said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Issues. There’s all kinds of psychiatrists running around this place. Thought I’d speak to one.”

  “Don’t crack wise with me, Pappas. Sturgis was your partner, which means you’re off the case, too. You know that. It’s policy, man. I want your notes and anything else you and Kale have gathered.”

  “We’ll get to that, Jimmy,” Childers said. “Obviously, we didn’t expect to run into to you guys. Something going on we should know about?”

  Pappas told him what they had seen at the real Ron Curry’s house and the scrapings Jack took but didn’t mention the security videos. When he was through, Childers turned to Danita Ritchey and said, “Ma’am, would you provide us with your file on Mr. Curry, please? It may take us a while to separate fact from fiction, but whatever you’ve got in there could be helpful.”

  The supervisor looked at Dan Pappas. He nodded. She stood but apparently wasn’t moving fast enough to suit James Spruell.

  “While we’re young, okay, lady?” Spruell said.

  Ms. Ritchey stopped, faced him, and clasped her hands in front of her.

  “A little courtesy would be appreciated, young man.”

  Spruell rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath. Then louder, “Fine. I’m asking you nicely. Would you please get the friggin’ file? We’re dealing with multiple murders and have a lot of ground to cover.”

  One eyebrow on Danita Ritchey’s face arched. She stayed where she was.

  Spruell finally had enough. “Lady, do you understand why I’m here?”

  “Years of inbreeding, I suspect,” Danita Ritchey said.