Shadow Dance

by Susan Andersen

  She picked up the card once again and double-checked the address against the one painted on the glass office door situated near the loading dock. Nothing had changed since she had checked it a moment ago; the two addresses still matched.

  What the hell was going on here? The ambience of this place didn’t exactly jibe with the romance of the flower. She would give Chad exactly five minutes to present himself and explain, and then she was leaving.

  Rhonda rolled up the car window and checked the locks on the doors to be sure they were secure. A girl didn’t grow up navigating the streets of a Chicago housing project without learning a thing or two. She didn’t like the feel of this at all, and her instincts were urging her to get the hell out of there.

  Then he appeared out of nowhere, approaching the car from the passenger side. The first Rhonda saw of him, he was striding up to the car, and from her seated vantage point, all she could see clearly was his torso from mid-chest to thigh, and even that view shrank the closer he got to the car. Relief surged through Rhonda that he was finally here and could explain why he’d picked this bizarre location to meet. His explanation had better be good, too, for this place was giving her the creeps. She leaned across the seat to unlock the passenger door for him, expecting him to squat down and greet her through the window.

  It was his unnatural stillness that caused her to hesitate with her hand on the lock button. She’d been raised in a neighborhood where one learned not to take any situation at face value. Growing up under the auspice of the Housing Authority had taught her an intrinsic wariness, and it was screaming Red Alert now. Why was he just standing there so still and quiet, instead of leaning down to say hello, which would be the natural thing to do and which would have given her a look at his face?

  Unless he didn’t want her to see his face. Rhonda went cold all over. Slowly, she straightened back into the driver’s seat and reached for the ignition key.

  “Come on, Rhonda,” he said, and his voice was indistinct and muffled through the glass of the window. “Open the door.” He reached out and rattled the handle.

  And she saw that he was wearing surgical gloves.

  “OhJesusohshitohGod…” The car started with a roar, and putting it in reverse, she removed the safety brake and hit the gas. The man’s gloved hands slid along the front fender as she roared backward. She traveled in reverse about fifteen feet before hitting the brakes, and the sudden stop bounced her forward against the steering wheel and then snapped her back against the seat. For an instant she just sat there gripping the wheel, and stared at him in the headlights’ glare.

  Who the hell was that guy? He looked vaguely familiar, but the way he kept smiling was far from natural. It was, in fact, downright eerie.

  He took a step toward the car, and Rhonda, gripping the wheel in sweaty hands, interpreted a world of menace from his body language. Then her survival instincts snapped into place. Putting the car in drive, she floored it—straight at him.

  The man whirled aside with amazing agility and ran swiftly at an oblique angle to the car. He leaped into the air, soaring the remaining feet to the short set of steps that led up to the office entrance and loading platform. Grasping the tubular metal handrail, he vaulted over it with athletic dexterity. He raced up the stairs and was up and over the warehouse roof in seconds flat. Close behind, Rhonda nearly crashed the car into the solid stairs. She fought the wheel, wrenching it hard to the right, and stood on the brakes, shaking as the car screeched sideways and rocked to a standstill inches from the concrete stairwell. It took her about one instant to gather her wits.

  Then she turned the car around and drove out of there as if the demons of hell were nipping at her heels.

  Amanda was in bed but still wide awake after her confrontation with MacLaughlin when the pounding on her front door commenced. For crying out loud, what now? She threw back the covers and grabbed her robe. This had been the craziest damn night.

  She hesitated at the door and drew a deep breath. “Who is it?”

  “Amanda, please, let me in,” Rhonda’s voice pleaded through the door.

  “Rhonda?” Amanda fumbled with the chain and dead bolts and threw the door open. Rhonda immediately stumbled in, slamming the door behind her. She slumped against the now-closed portal, chest heaving, and stared wild-eyed at Amanda.

  “What is it—what’s going on?” The look on her friend’s face made Amanda’s heart pound, and she reached out to touch Rhonda’s arm. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Give me a minute.” Rhonda took several deep breaths, holding them for as long as she was able before exhaling gustily. “It was a mask,” she finally said.

  “What was? What on earth is going on, Rhonda?”

  “A mask,” Rhonda repeated in wonder. “One of those rubber, whole-head ones, with hair and everything.” She shook her head slowly, as if bemused. “Of course. I couldn’t figure out what was different about him. His head was a little bigger than normal. And that smile. But it was a goddamn mask.”

  Then she told Amanda everything.

  Amanda stared at her in horror, momentarily robbed of speech. “Are you crazy?” she finally demanded in a fierce whisper. “You went to meet a man in a deserted industrial park at three o’clock in the morning when there’s a killer on the loose? You’ve done some asinine things in your life, Rhonda Smith, but of all the feeble-brained…”

  “Mandy, please,” Rhonda said wearily. “Don’t, for God’s sake, lecture me. I have just been scared out of my few remaining wits, and I’m not exactly thrilled by my own stupidity. The last thing I need is a lec…a lect…” She couldn’t finish her sentence as reaction set in with a vengeance and she began to shake.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Rhonda. I’m sorry.” Amanda lurched forward to wrap her arms around her friend, holding her in a grip that drove the blood from her own fingertips. “It’s just that you’re my best friend in the whole world, and I couldn’t bear to lose you, too, and…” She pulled back far enough to look into Rhonda’s face as a thought struck her. “Oh, jeez, we’ve got to call MacLaughlin right away.”

  “He’s not home. I tried there first.”

  It was childish and mean-spirited, Amanda knew, to be hurt that Rhonda had turned to him first, but somehow—

  No. Lifting her chin, she refused to entertain any such thought. Of course Rhonda was going to contact a policeman before she came to her friend. “He had a woman at his apartment earlier,” she informed her. “Maybe he’s just not answering the door.”

  “I pounded long and hard, kiddo,” Rhonda informed her wryly and gently disentangled herself from Amanda’s hug. She led them both into the kitchen. “He couldn’t have failed to hear me, and you know MacLaughlin—he’s the responsible type. Believe me, with all the racket I made, not even the greatest orgasm of his life would have prevented him from coming to investigate. You can pretty much take that to the bank. He’s not home.”

  Amanda really wished Rhonda hadn’t raised the specter of Lieutenant MacLaughlin’s sex life. Had the Bunny woman, with her soft and feminine voice and her hello-sailor dress, given him the greatest orgas—

  She cleared her throat. “Well, then, Detective Cash. We’ll call Detective Cash.”

  “Good idea. But Mandy, do you think you could make me some coffee first? God, I’m so cold, and my hands keep shaking.”

  “Oh, sweetie. Yes, of course.” Amanda turned on the burner under the tea kettle and went to place her call to Joe Cash. Back in the kitchen, she ground some coffee beans and poured them into the drip basket. “I cranked the heat up,” she told Rhonda, picking up the kettle and pouring steaming water over the grounds. “Between that and this, you should warm up pretty soon.” She poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her friend.

  “Thanks, kiddo.” As Rhonda sipped cautiously at the steaming brew, the significance of Amanda’s earlier words suddenly sank in with delayed meaning. So, MacLaughlin’d had another woman in his apartment tonight, had he? Somehow, that surpris
ed Rhonda. As much as she would love to know how Mandy felt about it, she knew better than to ask. All her friend would say was that MacLaughlin’s life was his own, and what he did with it was his business, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with her. Or some equally polite drivel.

  Lord, Rhonda wished he had been home! But failing that, she sure hoped Detective Cash got here soon. She’d been taking care of herself for what seemed like her entire life, but she didn’t feel safe tonight. She’d lost confidence in her ability to see to her own protection for what was left of the night, and the sudden uncertainty left her trembling all over. She was angry and hurt and so scared she hardly knew what to do. What really hit her the hardest, though, was knowing that this deranged person had managed to expose something deeply buried and painfully vulnerable when he had used a lousy flower to get to her.

  She started chattering and couldn’t seem to stop. Even after Joe Cash finally arrived and she thought she would begin to unwind, her conversation retained its tendency to wander off on tangents. He kept trying gently to guide her back on track, but her concentration would waver with a word or a stray thought or a look, and she would find herself taking a whole new conversational tack. Part of her wanted to curl around herself and be very quiet. But her body hummed with nerves, and it was all she could do to remain in her seat as she talked on and on.

  “Receiving that flower was kinda like getting an invitation to the senior prom,” she said at one point. “Did you go to your senior prom, Mandy?”

  “No. It was right after Teddy died.”

  “Me either. Not many girls from my old neighborhood were invited to a senior prom. We were mostly invited to share the backseat of some guy’s car—an invitation, as you know, that I regularly accepted. But getting that flower was almost like being invited to the prom by the captain of the football team and getting to wear organdy and a wrist corsage and have your mom say, ‘Be in by midnight.’ For like twenty minutes, it made me feel all innocent and young, in a way I most likely never even was. It made me feel special. And I could kill him for ruining that for me.”

  Noticing Joe watch her speculatively, she experienced a rare moment of embarrassment. God, he must think she was a first-class idiot, whining about a stupid flower when she could have been killed tonight. There was simply no way to explain why the spoiled symbolism of a single flower hurt far worse than anything else that had gone on this night, or practically in her entire life. She couldn’t expect people who hadn’t grown up in an area where poverty was rife, where welfare was a perpetual way of life, to understand.

  And yet Amanda, who had grown up in a neighborhood that was about ten worlds removed from the one that had nurtured Rhonda, seemed to possess an instinctive affinity for what Rhonda was feeling. She sat down next to her on the couch and put her arm around her. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” she murmured. “What that bastard did to you with that flower is kind of like what my parents did to Teddy when they told her about her boyfriend. I’m truly sorry, Rhonda. You don’t deserve any of this.”

  Rhonda very nearly cried then, something she hadn’t done in…she couldn’t remember how long. But she blinked rapidly and squeezed Amanda tightly in return, then straightened away from her. Amanda’s empathy helped ground her. It made her feel a little less disconnected, and she faced Joe Cash squarely, her face composed. “I’m ready to answer your questions now,” she informed him with what she sincerely hoped was a little more dignity than she’d demonstrated so far.

  Joe reached for his notebook, but there was a knock at the door before he could begin his inquisition. “That’s probably the lieutenant,” he informed the women gently after watching both of them start nervously at the sound. He got up to answer it.

  Tristan burst through the door the instant Joe opened it. “Amanda?” he demanded in a low voice.

  “Rhonda,” Joe replied.

  “Jesus,” Tristan breathed and ran a hand through his thick, short hair. “I knew something was up when I saw your car on the street and all the lights on in here, and I thought…” His voice trailed away and he snatched his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Reseating them, he asked, “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah. Come on in. She was just about to give me the details.” Quickly, he filled Tristan in on the bare bones of Rhonda’s story.

  Upon entering the living room, Tristan crossed straight over to Rhonda. “Are you all right, lass?” he asked her gently.

  “Yes. I’m a little shook, but all right.”

  “Good. Can you tell me what happened?” Tristan spared a quick glance for Amanda, who was seated beside her friend. She was wearing a warm navy-blue robe that was belted firmly over a puritanical white cotton nightgown, and it was hard to look at her without remembering the feelings she’d evoked earlier this evening, or this morning, or whenever the hell it had been. And that he must not do. He couldn’t afford to think of anything but the investigation. He pulled his gaze away and listened to Rhonda repeat her story.

  “You say he was wearing a mask?”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize it until I got here. I told you I saw him in the headlights. And he looked familiar…but odd. His head was kinda big, for one thing. He had big white teeth and a cheesy grin, and his hair was dark, and he had a long needle nose. And…” She swallowed hard. “I thought, who is that guy? Why does he look like someone I’ve seen before? But it wasn’t until I got here that I realized it was one of those rubber masks you pull over your entire head, and the one he wore was of someone famous. Maybe a president, but my mind has turned into one big blank, so I can’t tell you which one.” Then she shrugged. “Not that knowing would do you much good, anyway. He was still masked, and he wore surgical gloves on his hands, so there won’t even be any prints on my car.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Tristan said and smiled at her. “What about his hands? Can you remember anything about them? Were his fingers long, short? Thin, stubby?”

  “Oh, God, I’m not sure. You know what flashed through my mind when I saw he was wearing surgical gloves? The Hook. Remember him? We used to scare ourselves silly with stories of the Hook when we were kids.”

  Tristan was perplexed. “Who’s the Hook?”

  “Are you kidding me? You’ve never heard of him?” Rhonda turned to Joe. “Tell him, Detective.”

  “The Hook is a favorite modern-day urban legend, Lieutenant,” Joe said. “It’s about this couple out necking in their car in a remote, deserted area, who hear a news flash on the radio about an escaped killer from a nearby insane asylum. The killer can be identified by a metal hook on his right hand. Well, they get a little nervous and decide maybe they had better go on home, so the guy starts up the car and they roar on out of there. Then, when they get home, he gets out of the car and comes around to help his girlfriend out. And there, dangling from her door handle, is…”

  “The Hook!” Rhonda and Amanda chimed in with the end of Joe’s tale, and Rhonda rubbed her arms.

  “It still gives me goose pimples,” she said, and then grew grave as she turned to Tristan, who obviously didn’t see how three supposedly mature adults could get sidetracked from the seriousness of her situation by a corny old-time story. “Anyhow, the point is, Lieutenant, when I saw those gloves on his hands, that’s what flashed into my mind. I mean, there can only be one reason for a man to wear surgical gloves in a deserted parking lot at three o’clock in the morning, right? He clearly wasn’t there to do brain surgery, and I got the same all-over chill that the story of the Hook always gives me. And, I truly am sorry, MacLaughlin, but I didn’t notice anything about their shape or size or anything else.”

  “Can you tell us anything about his height? His build?”

  “He was average height—maybe five-ten or -eleven. And he was athletic, but in a real lean way, you know? Not big and muscular like you; more like a dancer. In fact…” Her voice trailed away. “No, it can’t be.”

  “What?” Three voices demanded.

  Rhonda’s eyes were
closed, as if reliving something in her mind. “My God. He did.” She opened them again and stared at them all blankly. She looked stunned.

  “What, Miss Smith?”

  “He jetéd.”

  “What?!” Amanda jerked upright.

  “When I tried to run him down with my car, he jetéd.”

  “What the bloody hell is a jet-tay?” Tristan demanded, and at the same time, Rhonda said to Amanda, “He’s gotta be a dancer.”

  There was an instant of dead silence. Then Tristan asked again, “What is a jet-tay, Miss Smith?”

  “Show him, Amanda.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Amanda looked at her friend as if she had lost her mind.

  “Amanda has one of the longest jetés in the nonballet world,” Rhonda said. She turned to Amanda. “Show him.”

  “I can’t jeté in my nightie.”

  “Then go put on your damn leotard. It’ll be quicker than trying to explain.”

  “Oh, for…” Amanda got up and stomped to her room.

  Tristan thought he heard her mumble something about this being ridiculous, but he couldn’t be sure. More quickly than he would have thought possible, she was back, her long legs bare, wearing only an old threadbare leotard, a pair of socks that sagged around her ankles, and a pair of scuffed black kid ballet slippers.

  “Ready?” she asked. When the men nodded, she indicated the path that Rhonda had hastily cleared up the middle of the room and said coolly, “Would you mind sitting down? I’ll need the room.”

  They sat.

  Amanda ran lightly for several steps and then launched herself into the air. She soared effortlessly, right leg extended in front of her, left leg extended behind her, like an elevated split, both legs in a perfect horizontal line three feet above the floor. She landed lightly on the ball of her forward foot nearly eight feet from where she had leapt into the air.

  “You see?” Rhonda asked, but Tristan had a difficult time seeing anything but the long, bare expanse of Amanda’s legs as she walked out of the room without a backward glance. He had to force his eyes away. Bloody hell. It was this very thing he needed to guard against—these lapses of professionalism. Grimly, he turned to Rhonda.