Shadow Man (18 page)

I live with all of this knowledge. This understanding. It is an unwanted companion that never leaves my side. The monsters become my shadow, and sometimes I feel like I can hear them chuckling behind me.

“How does that affect you, long term?” Dr. Hillstead had asked me.

“Is there any constant emotional consequence?”

“Well—sure. Of course.” I had struggled to find the words. “It’s not depression, or cynicism. It’s not that you can’t be happy. It’s . . .” I’d snapped my fingers, looking at him. “It’s a change in the climate of the soul.” I’d grimaced as soon as the words left my mouth. “That’s some silly poetic bullshit.”

“Stop that,” he’d admonished me. “There’s nothing silly about finding the right words for something. It’s called clarity. Finish the thought.”

“Well . . . you know how land masses that are near the ocean have their climates determined by it? By that proximity? There may be some freak twists in the weather, but pretty much it’s a constant, because the ocean is so big and it doesn’t really change.” I’d looked at him; he’d nodded. “It’s like that. You have this constant proximity to something huge and dark and awful. It never leaves, it’s always there. Every minute of every day.” I shrugged. “The climate of your soul is affected by it. Forever.”

His eyes had been sad. “What is that climate like?”

“Someplace where there’s a lot of rain. It can still be beautiful—you do have your sunny days—but it’s dominated by grays and clouds. And it’s always ready to rain. That proximity is always there.”

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I look around Annie’s bedroom, hear her screams in my head. It’s raining right now, I think. Annie was the sun, and he is the clouds. So what does that make me? More poetic bullshit. “The moon,” I whisper to myself. Light against the black.

“Hi.”

James’s voice startles me out of my reverie. He’s standing at the door, looking in. I see his eyes roaming over the room, taking in the bloodstains, the bed, the overturned night table. His nostrils flare.

“What is that?” he murmurs.

“Perfume. He coated a towel with perfume and stuffed it under the door so the smell of Annie’s body wouldn’t get out right away.”

“He was buying himself time.”

“Yeah.”

He holds up a file folder. “I got this from Alan. Crime-scene reports and photos.”

“Good. You need to see the video.”

When it starts, this is how it goes. We talk in short bursts, automatic gunfire. We become relay racers, passing the baton back and forth, back and forth.

“Show me.”

So we sit down, and I watch it again. Watch as Jack Jr. capers around, watch as Annie screams and dies a slow death. I don’t feel it this time. I’m untouched—almost. I’m detached and distant, examining the train with narrowed eyes. I get an image in my head of Annie, lying dead in a grassy field, while rain fills her open mouth and dribbles down her dead gray cheeks.

James is quiet. “Why did he leave this for us?”

I shrug. “I’m not there yet. Let’s take it from the beginning.”

He flips open the file folder. “They discovered the body at approximately seven P.M. last night. Time of death is rough, but based on the decomposition, ambient temperatures, et cetera, the ME estimates she died three days before, at around nine or ten P.M.”

I think it through. “Figure he took a few hours raping and torturing her. That means he’d have gotten here at around seven o’clock. So he doesn’t come in while they’re asleep. How does he get inside?”

James consults the file. “No sign of forced entry. Either she let him
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in, or he let himself in.” He frowns. “He’s a cocky fucker. Doing it early evening, when everyone is still up and about. Confident.”

“But how does he get in?” We look at each other, wondering.
Rain, rain, go away . . .

“Let’s start in the living room,” James says.

Automatic gunfire,
bang-a-bang-a-bang.

We walk out of the bedroom and down the hall until we’re standing in the entryway. James looks around. I see his eyes stop roaming and freeze. “Hang on.” He goes to Annie’s bedroom and comes back holding the file. He hands me a photo.

“That’s how.”

It’s a shot of the entryway, just inside the door. I see what he wants me to see: three envelopes lying on the carpet. I nod. “He kept it simple—he just knocked. She opens the door, he slams through it, she drops the mail she’s holding. It was sudden. Fast.”

“It was early evening, though. How did he keep her from screaming and alerting the neighbors?”

I grab the folder from him and scan through photos. I point to one of the dining table. “Here.” It shows an opened grade-school math book. We glance over at the table. “It’s less than ten feet away. Bonnie was right here when Annie answered the door.”

He nods in understanding. “He controlled the kid, so he controlled the mother.” He whistles. “Wow. That means he came right in. No hesitation.”

“It was a blitz. He didn’t give her any time at all. Pushed his way in, slammed the door, moved right to Bonnie, probably put a weapon to her throat—”

“—and told the mother if she screamed, the kid would die.”

“Yeah.”

“Very decisive.”

Rain, rain, go away . . .

James purses his lips, thoughtful.

“So the next question is: How soon before he got down to business?”

Here is where it really begins, I think. Where we don’t just consider the dark train, we climb aboard. “It’s a series of questions.” I count them off on my fingers. “How soon before he started on her? Did he tell
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her what he was going to do? And what did he do with Bonnie in the meantime? Did he tie her up or make her watch?”

We both look at the front door, considering. I can see it in my head. I can feel him. I know James is doing the same.

It’s quiet in the hallway, and he’s excited. His heart is pounding in his chest as
he waits for Annie to open the door. One hand is poised to knock again, the other
holds . . . what? A knife?

Yeah.

He has a story to give her, and he’s rehearsed it many times. Something simple,
like . . . he’s a neighbor from the floor below with a question. Something that feels
like it belongs.

She opens the door, and not just a crack. It’s early evening; the city is awake.
Annie is at home, inside a security-gated apartment building. All of her lights are
on. She has no reason to be afraid.

He comes through the door before she can react, an unstoppable force. He
pushes inside, knocking Annie down, closing the door behind him. He rushes to
Bonnie. He pulls her close and puts the knife to her throat.

“Make a sound and your daughter dies.”

Annie forces back the instinctive scream that had been building in her throat.
Her shock is total. Everything has happened too fast for her to process. She’s still
looking for some kind of rational explanation. Maybe she’s on a hidden-camera
show, maybe a friend is pulling a prank on her, maybe . . . crazy ideas, but crazy
would be better than the truth.

Bonnie is gazing up at her, eyes full of fear.
Annie would have accepted then that this was no prank. A stranger had a knife to her daughter’s throat. This was REAL.

“What do you want?” was her first question. She was hoping that she could
bargain with this stranger. That he wanted something less than murder. Perhaps
he was a burglar, or a rapist. Please, oh please, she’s thinking, don’t let him be a
pedophile.

I remember something. “She had a small cut on her throat,” I say.

“What?”

“Bonnie. She had a small cut in the hollow of her throat.” I touch my own. “Here. I noticed it at the hospital.”

I see James think about this. His face goes grim. “He made it with the knife.”

We can’t be sure, of course. But it feels right.

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The stranger takes the point of his knife and pricks the hollow of Bonnie’s
throat. Nothing major, just enough to draw a single bead of blood, a single gasp.
Enough to show that he means business, to make Annie’s heart jump and thud
and quiver.

“Do what I say,” he says, “or your daughter dies slow.”
And right then, it was over. Bonnie was his leverage, and Annie belonged
to him.

“I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt her.”
He smells Annie’s fear, and it excites him. An erection stirs in his trousers.

“I think Bonnie was there while he raped and tortured Annie. I think he made her watch it all,” I say.

James cocks his head. “Why?”

“A few reasons. The main one is that he kept Bonnie alive. Why? It gave him an extra person he had to control. It would have been easier if he’d just killed her. But Annie was the prey. He’s into torture, he likes fear. Anguish. Having Bonnie there, having Annie know she was there and seeing what was happening . . . it would have driven her insane. He would have liked that.”

James mulls this over. “I agree. For another reason too.”

“What?”

He looks me in the eye. “You. He’s hunting you too, Smoky. And hurting Bonnie makes the cut that much deeper.”

I stare at him in surprise.

He’s right.

Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a,
the dark train is picking up speed . . .

“Do what I tell you, or I’ll hurt your mommy,” he says to Bonnie. He uses
their love of each other like a cattle prod, driving them toward the bedroom.

“He moves them into the bedroom.” I walk down the hall. James follows. We step inside. “He closes it.” I reach over and shut the door. I imagine Annie, watching it close and not realizing that she would never see it open again.

James stares at the bed, thinking. Envisioning. “He still has two of them to control,” he says. “He wouldn’t have been afraid of Bonnie, but he can’t relax yet, not until Annie’s secured.”

“Annie was handcuffed in the video.”

“Right. So he made her handcuff herself. Just one wrist is all he’d need.”

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“Take these,” he’d said to Annie, removing a pair of handcuffs from a bag,
tossing them at her—

No, that wasn’t right. Rewind.

He has the knife to Bonnie’s throat. He looks at Annie. Looks her up and
down, owning her with his eyes. Making sure she understands this.

“Strip,” he says. “Strip for me.”

She hesitates, and he wiggles the blade against Bonnie’s throat. “Strip.”
Annie does, weeping, as Bonnie watches. She leaves her bra and panties on,
one last resistance.

“All of it!” he growls at her. Wiggles the knife.
Annie complies, weeping harder now—

No. Rewind.

Annie complies and forces herself not to weep. To be strong for her daughter.
She removes her bra and panties and holds Bonnie’s eyes with her own. Look at
my face, she’s thinking, willing. Look at my face. Not this. Not him.
Now he removes the handcuffs from the bag he’d brought in.

“Handcuff your wrist to the bed,” he tells Annie. “Do it now.”
She does. Once he hears the click of the ratchet, he reaches into the bag and
pulls out two other pairs of handcuffs. These go around Bonnie’s tiny wrists and
ankles. She is trembling. He ignores her sobs as he gags her. Bonnie looks at her
mother, a pleading look. A look that says: “Make it stop!” This makes Annie cry
harder.

He’s still cautious, careful. He’s not letting himself relax yet. He moves over to
Annie and handcuffs her other wrist to the bed. Followed by her ankles. Then he
gags her.

Now. Now he can relax. His prey is secure. She can’t escape, won’t escape.
Didn’t escape, I think.

Now he can savor the moment.

He takes his time setting up the room. Positioning the bed, getting the video
camera just right. There is a way that things are done, a symmetry that is impor-
tant, vital. You don’t rush this. To miss a step is to take away from the beauty of
the act, and the act is everything. It’s his air and his water.

“The bed,” James says.

“What?” I look at it, puzzled.

He stands up and walks over to the baseboard. Annie’s bed is queen-size, formed of smooth, rounded wooden pieces. Sturdy.

“How did he move it?” He walks to the headboard and looks down at
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the carpet. “Drag marks. So he pulled it toward him.” He moves back to the base of the bed. “He would have gripped it somewhere here and pulled it by walking backward. He’d need leverage . . .” James kneels down. “He’d have grabbed it at the bottom and lifted it.” He stands up, walks to the side of the bed, drops onto his back, and squirms under the bed up to his shoulders. I see the light of his flashlight go on, then back off. When he comes back out, he is smiling. “No print powder there.”

We look at each other. I can almost feel each of us crossing our fingers. People make the mistake of thinking that latex gloves prevent the transfer of fingerprints. In most cases, this is true. But not always. These types of gloves were originally developed for surgeons so they could maintain a sterile buffer during operations. The flip side of this is that the gloves have to fit like a second skin for the surgeons to use their instruments with no loss of precision or sensitivity. This tightness and thinness can cause the gloves to form-fit into the ridges and bifurcations of the prints on the hand and fingertips. If—and this is a big if, but still possible—someone wearing the gloves then touches a surface that can take an impression, they can leave a usable print. Annie’s bed is made of wood. It’s possible that cleaning solutions used on it could have left a residue that would retain a fingerprint impression, even through the killer’s gloves.