Shadows Among Us

by Ellery A Kane

  “You happy now?” he asks.

  “Happy?” It comes out in a sob. A sob directed at his shadow on the wall, because I can’t turn to look at him. I’m still fifteen, standing before him naked and ashamed.

  “You can fit me in one of your neat little boxes like the rest of ’em. Shoot me up with enough meds to kill a horse, ship me off to the loony bin, and call it a day.”

  “How could I be happy about this?” I flap my hands, desperately. Like the hooked fish I am. “What did you do, Dad? What did you do?”

  The silence is absolute. The crickets go mute. Even the wind holds its breath. I face him, then. Him and his lantern and his trusty rifle. His face, so much like my own. So worn down with shock, incapable of it now. Like a toy that’s been wounded too many times.

  “What did you do?” I clench my teeth to dam the rage. It surges up my throat, unstoppable. “To. My. Daughter.” To me. To Roscoe. But that stays unspoken.

  “She wanted to get to know her grandpa. I met up with her a few times at the library. What’s the harm in that? I knew you’d blow a damn gasket.”

  I see it unfold in a kind of fast slow-motion, spastic as a spliced film reel. Kill, kill, kill. I’ll bash his head in with the flashlight. Hit him till he stops breathing. Kill without mercy! Better yet, the shovel. Then I’ll dig a hole with it and bury him in it. The same way he buried Roscoe. That’s the spirit of the bayonet! No, no. I’ll set a fire and let it devour him. Lick by lick. The same way he—

  I stand so fast my head spins. My blood rushing, an electric current. I’m at the wall in one stride, shovel in my hand in a death grip. I rear back, ready to swing.

  I go cold, when I see it, the freeze coming from deep inside me.

  Strands of hair in the flashlight’s glow cling to a protruding nail just below the shelf. I have to know they’re real. So I reach for them, touch them. They tickle my palm. Real as real could be. I’d know that color anywhere.

  It’s not pink, Mom. It’s rose gold.

  ****

  I am drunk. So drunk I probably won’t be able to stand. Yet, here I am driving. Doing a mighty fine job of keeping it between the lines, if I do say so myself. Atta girl, Mollie. A chip off the old—

  The thought bobs up and down in my head, a persistent little bugger, until I drown it.

  Thank God for all-night truck stops and cheap vodka.

  I make the turn into the drive, a little wide, but that’s alright. I never liked that rose bush anyway.

  “Holy shit.” That’s how it sounds in my head. But it probably comes out different, soaked in vodka. What else should I say when I see two men sitting on my porch? Side by side and not speaking. I wonder how long they’ve been there, stalemated.

  I open the door, and Sawyer moves first. I’m not sure if that makes him the winner or the loser. I was wrong, though. I can stand. Sort of.

  “Sawyer,” I say, collapsing against his chest, my body suddenly sandbag heavy. He touches the swollen spot on my temple, and I wince a little.

  “What happened to your head?”

  That Sawyer. Ever the optimist. As if getting clocked with a bowling ball is the worst of it. I giggle. I can’t help it.

  Over his shoulder, I hear a voice. “For God’s sakes, Mol, you’re plastered.”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” I’m feeling proud of myself for my clever retort. But I push my luck. “Lieutenant Grant Sawyer, meet my sorry excuse for a Cole. I mean, ex-husband meet my Sawyer. Oh, screw it.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Two

  (Saturday, October 6, 2018)

  “Just let her sleep it off.”

  “Seriously? Sleep it off? It’s been twelve fucking hours. I need to know what happened last night. I have a right to know.”

  I close my eyes again, certain I’m dreaming. Because that’s Cole’s voice. Angry and entitled as ever. But Cole is a free fish, happily swimming eight hundred miles and the entire state of Oregon away. He’s certainly not outside my bedroom door arguing with Sawyer.

  Then there’s the matter of my head. Even with them shut, my eyeballs grate in their sockets like stones on an anvil. Behind them, a dull, throbbing ache that won’t let up. I feel as if I’ve been pummeled in the head with a bowling ball.

  Oh. Wait.

  The images come in waves, one after another. Each more punishing than the last.

  Sawyer and Cole. Cole and Sawyer. Side by side on my porch.

  Truck-stop vodka. It’s still sloshing in my stomach.

  The sticking door of my father’s hunting shed.

  His footlocker. Getting seasick now.

  A gold button.

  Pink hair.

  The wave crests, knocks me over. The urge to vomit, its sudden brutality, catches me by surprise. I stumble out of bed and trip over Gus’s squeaky chew toy. Now everyone, Gus included, knows I’m awake. And I haul ass to the bathroom, where I hug the toilet like a long-lost friend.

  I’m still sitting there when the first knock hits the bedroom door. “Mol? We need to talk.”

  The second. “I know you’re awake.”

  And the third. “Goddammit, Mollie. Let me in.”

  Cole tries the door, which I must’ve had the good sense to lock. Score one for drunk me.

  “Give her a minute, man. She’s probably sick as a dog. No offense, Gus.”

  So I’m not dreaming then. Sawyer’s here too. Has been since last night. That was twelve hours ago. The realization hits me—another violent wave—and I panic. Sawyer and Cole have been here, alone together, all night. I think of the things Cole knows about me. It’s enough to make me upchuck again.

  “Coming,” I say, into the toilet. My words echo back to me, and my head thrums.

  “It’s about damn time.”

  But when I try to stand, the room spins a little. This might take longer than I thought. “Ten minutes.”

  Behind the door, Cole grunts, and stalks away. I hear his footsteps.

  I brace myself, one hand on the seat, and struggle to the sink. I brush my teeth and wash my face in a meager attempt to restore order. But I don’t look in the mirror. I’m afraid to. Not of the sickly green cast to my skin or my bloodshot eyes or my hair, which I’m sure has gone haywire. But of the parts of myself that belong to my father. I can’t look at me without seeing him. And I can’t look at him. Not ever again.

  I change out of the clothes that smell like his sycamore grove. Toss them in the bathroom wastebasket. Then I beeline for my purse on the dresser and start rummaging. Now that I remember—most of it, anyway—I need to be certain I took it with me. A fifty-fifty proposition at best.

  With all the contents spread before me, my heart sinks.

  It’s not here.

  But then, neither is my cell.

  Or my car key, which must be here somewhere, since I drove home. Regrettably. I scan the room. Night stand, floor, bed. No sign of any of it.

  Was I that wasted?

  I answer my own question, shame rising thick and hot in my throat. There’s nothing left in my stomach, so I wait it out. One dry heave, then another.

  Hand on the knob, I brace myself. Nothing can be worse than last night. Nothing can be worse than what I know.

  I move quietly down the hallway to the stairs. Below me, my two worlds collide. Sawyer sits at the edge of the sofa, elbows on his knees. Head in his hands, his shoulders drooping. Cole paces behind him, a tiger in a cage. I stare in wonder at the strangeness of it. The wrongness. Like the puzzles Dakota loved as a little girl: Which one of these things doesn’t belong?

  Sawyer spots me first. He doesn’t speak, just meets my eyes and returns my sad smile. I clear my throat, then, announcing myself. Not yet trusting my voice. When I swallow, it feels as if I’d chugged a fifth of broken glass instead.

  “I see you�
��ve finally decided to grace us with your presence.” Cole pounces, claws unsheathed. I’m the wounded antelope, lagging behind the pack. All I can do is lie down, expose my own jugular, and hope for a speedy death.

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were coming.”

  “You’re sorry? Now you’re sorry? Do you know how worried I’ve been? First, I find out—on the news, mind you—that my daughter’s killer was here, at this house, leaving some kind of sick clue. You don’t answer any of my calls or texts. Then, you disappear for half a fucking day. And I haven’t even mentioned the drunk driving. The drinking, which you told me you’d stopped. The crazy shit you were saying last night.”

  What was I saying? I think it, but I don’t speak it. Because I’m not sure I’m ready to lay it all out. To admit it to myself sober.

  “Coffee?” Sawyer asks as I descend the stairs on wobbly legs, measuring each step twice.

  I nod, grateful.

  “Did either of you see my cell phone or my car key?”

  “That’s what you’re worried about?” Cole asks, shaking his head. As if I’m the most disgusting mutation he’s ever encountered. Worse than acute lymphocytic leukemia. Worse than astrocystomas and gangioglimas and all the other tongue-twisting killers. He used to make that same face after work when he’d lost a patient. It’s his I-fucking-hate-cancer look. And right now, I’m the cancer.

  “You were pretty out of it,” Sawyer says. The smell of coffee starts to work its magic, sweeping the cobwebs from my head as he pours. “Cole thought it would be best if . . .”

  “One-Armed Jack here is putting it mildly. You were a raving lunatic. I didn’t want you doing something stupid.”

  “Like making a phone call?” It surprises me how easily we slip back to it. This contemptuous dance. “And don’t call him that.”

  Sawyer appears unbothered. He passes me a steaming mug and watches us warily.

  “Like getting back behind the wheel and killing someone. Jeez. Do you ever think about anybody but yourself?”

  I take a sip too fast and let it burn my tongue. Better than saying what I really think. “Fine. Fair enough. But I had something else in my purse. Something important.”

  Cole rolls his eyes at me. “Not that again.”

  So I had told them.

  “What did I say, exactly?” No use avoiding the question now. But I set my eyes on Sawyer. Whatever it is, I’d rather hear it from him. “I don’t remember telling you.”

  Sawyer looks to Cole, and that hurts. Like they’re doing their best to co-parent me, the problem child. Thankfully, he speaks first. Or maybe—I’m horrified to think it—they’d planned it that way.

  “You said that your dad is Shadow Man. That he killed Dakota.”

  Leave it to the military man to get right to the point.

  I release a long breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “Yes. He is. And he did.”

  Cole sneers, the way only he can. “Your dad is Shadow Man? So he planted Gus’s collar for you to find?”

  “Look, I can’t explain all of it. But, Dakota’s hair—her pink hair—was in his shed. And I found these military documents. He did really bad things over there. Horrifying things.”

  I want to cry, to convince them, but now, of all times, I’ve no tears left. Luckily, I have something else.

  “You don’t have to believe me. I got his DNA.”

  Cole stalks over to the coffee table and reaches beneath it, holding up a familiar paper bag. The kind you might get if you bought a bottle of Absolut in the middle of the night at a truck stop. He sticks his hand inside and produces my cell phone, my car key, and an empty beer can, half-crushed in the center. The kind you might take from your father’s junkyard if you needed his saliva.

  “This is your DNA sample? A can of Olde English in a paper bag stuffed in your purse? I’m sure the FBI will be really impressed with your immaculate collection methods.”

  Cole places the items—bag, cell, key—one by one onto the table. But not the can. He tosses it onto the floor, and I steady myself against the countertop, waiting for the rest of his soliloquy. He walks toward me as he talks, pointing his finger like a weapon. “You’ve lost your goddamned mind. This is what you’ve been doing? How you’ve been solving our daughter’s murder? What you’ve been rubbing in my face?”

  “Hey, man,” Sawyer says, stepping between us. “You’re not helping.”

  I step around Sawyer and brush past Cole, daring him to stop me. “I’m calling Detective Sharpe. Let him decide if he wants to test the can.”

  “Mollie,” Sawyer calls after me, following me into the living room, Cole at his heels.

  “Go ahead. Tell her, Grant. She stopped listening to me years ago. Right around the time she screwed her boss. But hey, we all deal with grief differently. Don’t we, Mol?”

  I snatch the phone from the table like a lifeline and hold it in a death grip, deciding whether to dial it or hurl it at Cole’s face.

  Sawyer touches my arm, his eyes tender. My hands unclench. “You already called Detective Sharpe last night. Several times. You left messages.”

  I stand there and let it sink in. All of it. Cole’s smug look. The beer can, its cheap shade of gold. And my outgoing calls. Four of them to Detective Sharpe’s cell number. Sawyer is my only saving grace.

  He sets his prosthetic hand on Cole’s shoulder. He probably can’t bear to touch him with the real thing. “Wasn’t that also around the time you almost got canned for sexual harassment?”

  ****

  “Do you agree with him?” I ask Sawyer, nodding toward the front door. The same one Cole just slammed behind him. Gus sits on his haunches, disappointed. It’s well past his time for a walk. “It’s okay if you do.”

  I walk to the door and open it, watching as Gus rushes past. Sawyer joins me at the threshold, but I keep my eyes on Gus.

  “Well, that depends. Agree about what exactly?”

  “That I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Well, you were absolutely wrong to drive in that condition. That was reckless. And irresponsible. And—” I sigh, and he stops short. “You’re not crazy. If you say your dad is Shadow Man, I believe you’ve got good reason to think so.”

  Gus laps the yard and joins Cole at the far side of it. I squint into the sun, head pounding, and watch them. It’s like a window to another life. “Is there a but coming?”

  “Not a but, per se. More of an and. As in Boyd and Wendall. And the other names on your wall. You suspected them too, remember?”

  “I know. And I still do, in a way. But I saw her hair, Sawyer. How did it get there?” The thought of it, the images it conjures—Dakota’s precious head knocked back against the wall from a fierce blow; her hair coiled around the nail, ripped from her head—is enough to bowl me over. To break me. I fall against Sawyer’s chest and let him hold me together.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he whispers. “It’ll be okay.” But he must know it won’t be. Not really. Still, his words are a salve, and I pretend for a while.

  “I never told you about Cole,” I say, finally, pulling away to look at him. “How did you know about the sexual harassment thing?”

  Sawyer’s eyes wander to the yard where Cole leans against Gus’s favorite oak, and then back to me. He grins. “You’re not the only one who can use Google, Detective Roark.”

  “But you never mentioned it.”

  “I knew you’d tell me in your own time. I figured there had to be a reason you kept refusing my dinner offers.”

  I smile back. Because he still likes me. For now. “Maybe you’re not as charming as you think.”

  “Hmm . . .” He taps his chin, rubs his day-old stubble. “My brothers in arms would probably agree with you on that one. Although they did call me Galant Grant for a while in bootcamp, after I lugged my battle buddy’s pack when he got si
ck during PT.”

  “Such a gentleman. How did I ever resist?”

  “Hooah.”

  I start to laugh, but it doesn’t last long. At the tree, Cole removes something from his pants pocket, smacks it against his hand. My mouth hangs open as he lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. Cole, renowned oncologist, who’d once referred to smokers as walking carcinogens, is sucking on a cancer stick.

  Sawyer follows my gaze. “Didn’t know he smoked, huh?”

  I shake my head. “I’d call it a surprising new development.”

  “He told me he picked up the habit a few months before Dakota died. A stress reliever. But he kept it a secret. He thought you’d be disappointed in him.”

  I try to picture that conversation. Cole baring his soul. It gets under my skin. Makes me nervous. And most of all, angry. Because he didn’t say the other thing. The essential thing. That Joanna Montgomery smoked too.

  “Jeez. What else did he tell you?”

  Sawyer shrugs. “It was a long night.”

  The smoke plumes around Cole’s mouth until the breeze picks up and blows it away. Disappears it. Like it never existed at all. Cole tosses the cigarette to the ground and stamps it out with the toe of his sneaker. “That stuff he said about me and my boss . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain,” Sawyer says. “I get it. There are two sides to every marriage. And then there’s the truth.”

  “I know I don’t have to, but I want to.” Even so, the words dematerialize. Gone just like that cigarette smoke. How to explain I was drowning. That I’d clung to Dr. Jackass like the last lifeboat. Like a piece of debris in a swollen river. That he could’ve been anyone. “It was a really hard time.”

  Gus hops up the steps, flashes his canine smile, and pauses to lick Sawyer’s hand. I steal a glance at Cole. Not because I can’t believe he’s smoking. Or that he lied to me. Or even that he confided in Sawyer. No, what’s impossible to fathom is meticulous Cole leaving his crushed cigarette to sully the lawn.