Shades of Gray

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “She’s right in here, I think,” Sophie was saying as she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “Well?” Tracy Reed asked eagerly. As usual, Shannon’s partner wore a dark suit, this time navy, and her long blonde hair was iron-straight. She was in her mid-twenties, ten years younger than Shannon, but she had risen fast through the ranks, due more to hard work and eagerness than to the fact that her grandfather, father, and brother had also worked as police detectives.

  “Nothing. Maybe I’ll have better luck in the garage or at his office.”

  Tracy nodded. “I hope so.”

  “Can you show me around the house?” Shannon asked Sophie.

  Tracy didn’t follow them from the room. “That expensive pen you read?” she said to me in a low voice. “Well, you were correct. It did write the threatening letter. We tracked it to the seller, who remembered the purchase, and we were able to trace the payment and get our man.”

  “I’m glad.” Pens often carried good imprints. “What did Shannon say?”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell him where I got the information.” Tracy winked. “Or about the identification you made of the camera owners who witnessed that bank robbery. They did have another memory card, exactly as you saw in the imprint, with all the photographs they’d taken of the area just before the robbery. Got some great accidental photos of our culprits staking out the place. Good thing the perps didn’t guess about the full memory card they’d just replaced, or they might have done more than trash the camera.”

  All that with a few simple imprints. At least I had helped someone.

  I was itching to get out to the garage, but I was also curious about what Shannon might find. Better to chat a bit more with Tracy, who squatted down near the swing to look at Lizbeth. Fortunately, Shannon didn’t spend even as much time as I had in the other rooms.

  “So you didn’t notice if he was preoccupied,” I heard him say from the living room.

  Motioning for Tracy to follow, I moved into the hallway to hear the answer, stepping over Sawyer’s toys on the carpet.

  “No more than normal. He—he got depressed sometimes, you know, and he’d withdraw a bit. Usually when the kids were being more of a handful, or when he had to work a lot of evenings. But this week was good. He wasn’t any different.”

  “Do you know anyone who’d want to hurt your husband?”

  “No.”

  The questions went on, from money issues and any fights they might have had to extended family and past relationships. Some of the questions were too personal, and I was beginning to feel a little defensive on Sophie’s behalf.

  “Leave her alone,” I said finally. “She doesn’t know where he is or why he left. Can’t you track his car? Or what about Tawnia’s drawing? Wasn’t there a building in the background? Couldn’t you identify that and look for the car nearby?”

  Shannon arched a brow. “I’ll get to it.” I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or patronizing.

  “What drawing?” Sophie asked.

  I was saved from answering when Sawyer threw his phone at my leg. I gasped but not from the impact. A scene flashed in my mind, disappearing before I could tell what it was.

  “Sawyer, no!” Sophie said, closing the space between them and bending down to talk to her son. “We don’t throw things. You’re not going to be able to play with your phone today. Daddy’s—” She broke off suddenly and then said in rush, “Daddy will be very sad you used his old phone that way.” Sophie was reaching for it as she spoke.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Her hand froze in midair. No one spoke as I hesitated over the cell phone. It was an old one, large and unwieldy but comfortable to hold to your ear. The perfect toy, I supposed, for a rough little boy, though I wasn’t sure it was safe to have kept the battery in. The imprints on the phone practically sparked toward my fingers.

  I lifted my gaze to see everyone staring at me, Shannon’s beautiful eyes the most intent. He gave me a slight nod, which freed me from my sudden paralysis. My hand tightened over the plastic.

  I saw Dennis’s face, felt Sawyer’s delight as his daddy handed him the phone. “This is yours now, okay? You can stop trying to take mine.” A giggle as Sawyer took the phone and hugged his daddy.

  How easy it was to give a child joy.

  This recent imprint was immediately replaced by something older and much darker, an imprint which sucked me in and held me tight. Dennis’s shock and terror as he/I dialed a number. A man sprawled on blacktop, unnaturally still, a well of crimson covering his chest. Another man standing over the corpse, his features obscured by the darkness, an ominous black shape in his hand. His eyes lifted in Dennis’s/my direction. Chills crawling up my back. Hide. Run! Footsteps following.

  “What happened?” A tinny voice demanded from the phone.

  “I need you to pick me up.”

  “What about Bart?”

  “He killed him. He’s following me!”

  “Who killed who?”

  Running faster. Had to get away or he would shoot me, too. Run. Terror.

  “Autumn?” a voice said from far away. I didn’t know whose.

  “Tell me where you are,” the tinny voice said from the phone.

  Dennis/I rambled off street directions that made no sense. Stumbling. Falling. The sidewalk smacked him/me in the face. Footsteps moving closer. Turning. A man lifting his gun. A face of shadows. Terror filling every part of me. Looking into the face of death. Heart fluttering like a moth pinned to a board.

  I was going to die.

  Chapter 3

  I was falling. Falling. Fear pounded in my ears. I couldn’t breathe. Arms came around me, and I touched something. A watch. I saw it in a man’s hand as he turned it over to view the inscription on the back, To my grandson, Shannon. You have been my greatest joy. The face of an older man as I reached to give him a hug. Love seeping into all the deep cracks the terror from the other imprint had cut into my soul, infusing me with rationality and comfort in exactly the way my parents’ book of poetry or my mother’s picture had soothed other terrifying imprints.

  I remembered that I was Autumn Rain and I was safe in Sophie’s house, not lying in a street somewhere facing a killer. In fact, I was encircled by Shannon’s arms, my back against his chest as he crouched on the carpet. I clung to his wrist with a strength that surprised me, my fingers greedily soaking up the imprints associated with the watch his grandfather had given him.

  “Are you okay?” Shannon asked after too many minutes had passed and it had begun to be awkward, his holding me while I clung to his arm. He bent his head around to look at my face, and the concern in his eyes was apparent, the way he held me tender, his attraction leaking through the mistrust. Usually, I felt the slightest bit of pure human satisfaction that Shannon liked me, however hard he battled against it, but I was so shaken by the imprint that I didn’t feel a hint of gloating.

  “Give me your watch,” I managed, my tongue feeling thick and gummy.

  He blinked once but unfastened it. I didn’t lose contact with the metal as he did this but curled my fingers around it possessively, probably gouging his skin with my fingernails as I kept hold.

  Once the watch was in my hand, I curled forward, away from Shannon’s chest. He let me go. I breathed in steadily, shutting my eyes. Shannon had loved his grandfather so much, but there was a sadness in the imprints too, because one of them took place at the old man’s funeral. Even that had a sort of beauty about it, a comforting inevitability, of belief in an afterlife.

  Better than Dennis and the gun.

  I had to tell them. They were still waiting, all of them sitting or kneeling on the carpet where the hallway intersected the living room and the kitchen, wanting to ask questions but giving me time. Even Sawyer waited, his eyes going between me and the phone on the carpet.r />
  “Sawyer, take your toys and go up to your room.” Underneath the calmness of Sophie’s voice, I heard her fear. When the boy seemed ready to protest, she added, “If you’re good, I’ll take you to the park later and buy you an ice cream.”

  “With chocolate on the outside?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Sawyer picked up his toy box and gave his phone one last longing look before tromping upstairs to his room.

  I took another steadying breath. “Dennis saw a man murdered, a man named Bart. He was calling someone, but the murderer came after him. He was going to kill Dennis, too, but that’s where the imprint ended. I don’t know what else happened. It was . . . disturbing.”

  Sophie gasped. “Do you think the man is after Dennis?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t see how. The imprint is very vivid, but it happened over five years ago. Around April or May, I believe, though I can’t be sure.” I didn’t see dates when I read imprints but rather imagined a calendar in my mind with a highlighted area around the event. Unless the imprint was less than a few months old, it was hard to pin it to an exact date.

  “Well, the one thing we do know is that Dennis didn’t die five years ago.” Shannon moved away from me so gradually that at first it was hard to tell he was moving at all. He picked up the phone and stared at it thoughtfully. His voice didn’t hold as much disbelief as it normally did by this point, but that was probably because I’d been right often enough before.

  I wondered if I could remember the address Dennis had given without touching the phone again. I really, really, really didn’t want to do that.

  “I need paper,” I said.

  Tracy produced a pad and pen from somewhere, and I jotted down what I could remember of the address. “I think this is what Dennis told whoever he called. Maybe you can find out if something happened there. I have no idea what state or even what country it was in.”

  Shannon took the paper and rose to his feet. Everyone else did the same, even me, though my legs were shaky. “They were speaking English?” he asked.

  Oh, right. “Yes. Definitely American.”

  “Has Dennis always lived in Oregon?” Tracy asked Sophie.

  “No. He’s from Kansas. We met when he moved here.” Sophie paused, her brow furrowing. “That was five years ago. We got married in three months. It just seemed right, you know?”

  Tracy and I nodded agreement while Shannon asked, “Have you ever met his family?”

  “An aunt once, a couple years ago. His mom and dad were older when they had him. They died before we met.”

  “He have any siblings?”

  Sophie shook her head. “Look, if Dennis did see someone killed, then do you think it might have something to do with why he’s missing now? What if that guy has been searching for him all this time and finally found him?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Shannon said. “Or it might be unrelated. Have you contacted his work?”

  “They called me. Apparently, Dennis was supposed to do some computer systems update on Wednesday night and he never did it. I told them he hadn’t come home, either.” Sophie glanced at me. “I learned later he did come home while I was out and packed a few things. I told his boss that I’d called the police.”

  “I think I’ll pay them a visit,” Shannon said.

  “Maybe they did it!” The words burst from Sophie as if they’d been held in a long time. “I get a bad feeling about them sometimes, you know?”

  Shannon’s eyes narrowed. “What about Dennis? Did he ever say anything negative about his work?”

  “No.” Sophie’s voice was soft. “I mean, he didn’t always get along perfectly with everyone, but he loves that job.” She put her hands to her cheeks and began to sob. “I’m so scared!”

  Shannon put a hand on her shoulder, a comforting hand. I’d seen him to do the same thing to a woman at the commune after her husband had been shot and killed while trying to protect her. It gave me the same unsettled feeling now as it had then, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said. “I promise.”

  I felt a short-lived surge of triumph. Shannon was convinced something was wrong with Dennis’s disappearance and that meant he would give the case his full attention. He might be an irritating cynic most of the time, but he was also a dedicated cop who didn’t give up easily once he’d grabbed onto something.

  Meeting Tracy’s gaze, Shannon glanced quickly toward Sophie.

  “If I could just ask you a few more questions,” Tracy said, retrieving her notebook from Shannon.

  “Okay, but I need to check on my baby.” Sophie rubbed her hands over her face several times, wiping the tears. The two disappeared into the kitchen, and I could hear them talking, Tracy’s voice slow, deliberate, matter-of-fact, Sophie’s high-pitched and anxious.

  “Are you planning to rub the metal right off?” Shannon asked with an amused smile.

  I looked down at the watch still in my hands, my thumbs working over the metal on the back as if I were trying to mold it into something else. “Oh, yeah. Thanks.” I extended the watch, and he took it from me. I could feel the roughness on the tips of his fingers that told me he didn’t sit at a desk all day. I wondered if he’d been working on his acre. I’d never seen his place before, and some part of me really wanted to.

  “My grandfather gave me this watch,” he said as he fastened it on his wrist.

  “I’m sorry about his passing. You were named for a man who saved his life, weren’t you?”

  He gave me a measured stare. “How did you know?”

  I’d known for months, since almost the beginning of our acquaintance, but now for the life of me I didn’t remember how I knew. “Didn’t you tell me?”

  “No.”

  That meant I’d probably picked it up from an imprint on something at the precinct when we’d worked together on that first case with the missing child. “Oh, well. It’s a sissy name, you know.”

  “So you’ve told me. You and just about every cop I know.”

  I smiled. “Well, I’m going to take a peek in the garage and then get out of here. I need to go meet Jake.” Because underneath all the excitement, I hadn’t forgotten his visitor. A need to see Jake was building inside me, the primordial urge to stake my claim.

  “You sure you’re okay to drive?”

  There, his concern was peeking out again. “Don’t tell me you’re finally starting to believe.” I’d seen all degrees of belief and skepticism, but I’d thought no one could use my information without at least some kernel of belief, as Shannon seemed to.

  “Oh, I believe you,” he said. “Tracy hasn’t suddenly become the most intuitive detective on the force on her own. Don’t think I didn’t notice the evidence in our cases disappearing from time to time.”

  Okay, so he believed—and now had actually admitted it to me. Not that his believing would make a difference in how he felt about me and my ability. I was weird, odd, unusual, strange. Something to be examined and used at arm’s length. No matter what his inner emotions urged, he wouldn’t allow himself to feel anything more. I felt no regret at that, as I had when we’d first met. Such a waste, I’d thought then, to share an attraction with someone who would never let you close enough to really know him.

  Now I had Jake, and Jake loved me for everything that I was—and wasn’t.

  “You know where to find me if you need me.” I forced a smile.

  Shannon watched me go. “Autumn.”

  I stopped. “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  Why did everyone think I needed that warning? Almost as though I had the words Looking for Danger stamped on my forehead. “With what?”

  “Leave this investigation to me.”

  I shrugged. “Without me, this inves
tigation wouldn’t even be an investigation. If Sophie needs my help again, I will help her.” Giving him a smile full of confidence I was far from feeling, I turned and left. I didn’t look back.

  • • •

  Jake’s grandmother lived in an older section of town, but though the buildings were old, they weren’t neglected. Most of the neighbors had lived there a long time and knew each other by name and helped out when needed. I loved being there. The people had started to recognize me, in part because of the publicity surrounding Winter’s death in the bridge bombing and in part because Jake and I were friends. Their smiles in my direction were genuine.

  The place felt a lot like the area where my apartment was, though I lived closer to the Hawthorne District. I had thought there was a large concentration of African-Americans living there, but Jake told me that was purely in my imagination. According to him, his people were still in the minority by far. His people. That separation was silly. Jake’s father, though he’d never known him, had been white, which meant Jake was as much white as he was black. Not like his younger sister, Randa, who’d come from his mother’s second marriage.

  I’d called Randa at the Herb Shoppe to make sure she and Thera didn’t need help. My store was usually as dead as an ancient tomb on Fridays, and I often took the opportunity to visit yard and estate sales or second-hand stores to search for antiques to add to my inventory. Friday, however, was one of Jake’s busy days, and it surprised me that he had stayed away so long. That he had was probably why I decided to make this little visit. His visitor must be someone special—or big trouble.

  I took the elevator to the third floor, where Jake’s grandmother opened the door. She was slender and strong and stately like a black walnut tree, her shoulders only slightly beginning to hunch with age. Thick lines of gray ran through her dark hair, which was combed and wrapped into her customary knot at the base of her head. She had raised six children and a dozen or more of her grandchildren after their parents’ deaths or when their trials in life left them incapable. Stalwart and opinionated, she’d been the heart and soul of the family. Since the only family I’d known growing up consisted of Winter and Summer, the adoptive parents I’d always addressed by their first names, I practically worshiped this woman and the many ties she’d created.