Shadow of the Past Read online

  Jack wanted to shake his head in furious disagreement, but realized that if he did he’d more likely slice his own throat open.

  “I have so many things to show you,” he continued, the pressure easing slightly on his chest, allowing Jack to take in a giant lungful of air. “Marvels and wonders. A whole new world and the potential for power as great as what I’ve been granted. But I can’t show you them to you if you don’t listen.”

  “I’ll listen. I swear,” Jack squeaked.

  “I hope so,” he said, drawing the blade slowly over Jack’s neck. “Because I’m only going to say this one . . . more . . . time. Leave the boy alone. I need him for what’s ahead. I need him to understand what’s happened and to understand the error of his ways. He can’t very well see what I want to show him if he’s got his brain all scrambled up with a baseball bat, can he?”

  Jack nodded as much as he dared. “I understand. Leave him alone. I will, I swear.”

  “Good, good.” The Shadow Man said, and then with a sudden flick of his hand, the blade snapped back into its sheath. The pressure on Jack’s chest began to ease again, and the Shadow Man rose up, drawing himself up to his full height.

  “Pleasant dreams,” he said, and the blackness swirled around him, blocking out Jack’s vision completely. For a several horrible seconds, he thought he would suffocate from the sudden, oppressive darkness and the almost overwhelming smell of burning flesh, but just as quickly as it passed over him it was gone, and all that was left were the fluttering curtains in the chill autumn breeze.

  He rolled over, but was shocked by sudden moisture on his throat and chest. He wiped at it with one of his blankets, desperate to get it off him. He stared at the new stain, its origins dawning on him. He put his hand back to his throat where the blade had rested, and could feel the sticky remains of the blood that had been on the blade.

  He stared at it on his fingertips, so dark it was almost black. He leaned in close, smelling its metallic odor with a hint of flame. Tentatively, he touched his tongue to it, savoring the texture.

  He pulled his stained blanket up close to his face, and inhaled deeply again, closing his eyes with a smile on his face.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Where is she?” David asked one of the nurses, who pointed him down to the next waiting area. He nodded his thanks and walked down the hallway. Even though things had been quiet for almost a month he’d known that whoever had killed Clara Washington and Carrie Kennedy wasn’t done. Even worse this third killing left no doubt about who the focus of these killings was.

  David paused where the hallway first widened into a waiting area. Christine Baker was sitting in a chair, alone, at the far end of the room. She was staring blankly out of red, puffy, heavy lidded eyes, and while he was sure that she could see him, he didn’t think she realized he was there. It was almost 5am, and from the looks of her she hadn’t gotten any sleep. Mrs. Baker, David had been told, had been sedated and given a room to try to calm down in.

  The first responders had told him that while they were getting the kitchen fire under control, Mrs. Baker had to be forcibly pulled from the house, screaming about finding her daughter. Christine had been nowhere to be found, and they were about to put out an alert for her when she came running up to the house.

  David crossed the room and sat down opposite Christine, waiting to see if there was any reaction. After several moments, she glanced his way, and he smiled weakly at her. “Hi Christine. Do you remember me? I’m Detective Prescott.”

  “I guess so,” she said, looking past him.

  “I need to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”

  She let out a long, ragged sigh, and focused her eyes on him again. “Have they told you if my Dad is going to die?”

  Dave looked down at the little notepad he had fished out of his jacket pocket, consulting his notes. “Well, he’s still in critical condition, but the doctors are pretty optimistic. This is one of the best trauma hospitals in the area.” He left out how they were uncertain as to the extent of the nerve damage to his leg and spine, and what that would mean for his mobility post-recovery.

  “And my brother is really dead? They won’t let me see him.”

  “Yes, he is. I’m sorry they haven’t let you see him, but he’s not ready for that yet. I’m sure we can arrange something for you and your mother sometime soon.”

  “She is such a wreck,” she said, eyes drifting down to the floor. “She gave me Aunt Helen’s number, and she’s flying down from Hartford, but . . . I don’t know when she’s going to get here.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about that if you want to give me whatever info you have on her. First, though, I do need to ask you just a few questions, okay? This is real important.”

  She actually smiled a little at that last part, but did not look back up at him. “I guess this is how he felt.”

  “Who felt?”

  “Mark. He told me I didn’t know what it was like to lose someone, and here I am.”

  “You two are dating, right?”

  He thought it would be a simple question for her to answer, but instead her face seemed to spasm with pain and she let out a choked mix of a sob and laugh.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’re ‘dating.’ I wouldn’t be sitting here right now if we weren’t dating.”

  It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear.

  “What do you mean by that?” he said neutrally, and she just rolled her eyes at him.

  “What do you think I mean? Clara, Ms. Kennedy, and now this!” her voice was getting louder now. “And before you even ask, no, I don’t know why! He said something to me after Clara died, about dreams he was having, but after Ms. Kennedy he said it was nothing, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. I knew he was full of shit, but . . .” the volume dropped off, and her eyes fluttered wildly. One of the nurses poked her head out of one of the rooms down the hall, but he just flashed his badge at her and she retreated.

  “What do you mean he dreamt about these things? Did he fantasize about them? Write them down?”

  “No,” she said, losing patience. “He said they were about these things happening, about seeing what happened to Clara. At least, that’s what he told me, but you’ve met Mark, he’s not much of a liar.”

  He just nodded in acknowledgement. “Did he give you any details?”

  “No, I wasn’t too interested in the finer points.”

  “Is there anything else you can remember about what he said about this?”

  “He had a book,” she said. “He’s gotten it from the library, and he was real mad when I picked it up. It was about other crimes in the past, something about Corning or something like that. There was a whole chapter about it he had it open to.”

  “He didn’t tell you why he had it?”

  “No, he lied about it, said it was for school. I just let it go because I thought it made him feel better, like he was actual doing something other than worrying.”

  “Christine, do you think Mark is involved in this? Do you think he knows who’s doing this?”

  She waited, staring off into space for several moments until turning back to him. “I don’t think so.”

  Her eyes drifted away from him again, and this time it looked like they would be away for a while. He waited to see if she was going to refocus on him, but after about a minute he cleared his throat.

  “Christine, I’m going to see if they can spare a bed for you here, okay? You may feel a little better if you got some sleep before the sun comes up. When you wake up, I’ll have an officer take you and your mother back to the house so you can get some things together. Do you have your Aunt’s information? I can try to get in touch with her and help her arrange a hotel for you three.”

  She made a slight head movement that may have been a nod, and then dug into her pants pocket and fished out small sheet of paper which had been torn out of an address book. On it was an address, phone number and cell phone number for a Helen Greene.

>   He went off in search for the nurse from earlier as he dug the cell phone out of his pocket. He’d make some calls to be sure that Christine and her family was taken care of, and then he’d make some that would probably ruin Mark’s life.

  Mark woke up with a throbbing headache, the worst he’d had since the day or two before the accident. He wasn’t sure if it was from the stress of dealing with Steve and his bullshit, worrying about Christine or staying up late failing to make a dent in his homework.

  Keep this up sport and you’ll be able repeat a grade of high school, since you love it so much.

  Joe came in late last night, so it didn’t seem likely that he’d see this side of noon. Mark figured it was best to not to be in the immediate area when that happened. He grabbed some cold leftovers from the fridge and headed out back to the garage to get a look at the damage that had been done to the V.

  Steve had let him use his computer so he could find a manual on the Internet and print it out. Mark had been fascinated by the tiny engine and studied every aspect of it, eager to get his hands on it and see how it worked but terrified of breaking it and having to sink more money into his prized freedom.

  He’d changed the oil regularly, washed it with care, and done everything he could think of to be safe on it. Apparently, he shouldn’t have bothered.

  Joe had rolled it into the garage to let it lean against the wall, but in the week since it had fallen over. From the way it had been laying, it looked like the fall had caused one of the side mirrors to bend, so much so that if Mark tried to bend it back into place he’d probably just snap the thin piece of metal in half.

  “How hard is it to put down the fucking kickstand?” He squatted down to fully assess the damage. He’d hoped what he’d seen of it and what he told Christine had been pessimism brought on by trauma but if anything it looked worse than what he remembered.

  The back end was dented so deeply that the back panel was mashed into the wheel and had dug into the tire so much that it was punctured. The rear taillight was completely wrecked, dangling from the chassis by a set of frayed wires, and the back end of the seat was crushed and wobbled to the touch. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like the wheel frame on the front tire had been bent as well, but there was no way to tell without taking the tire off.

  It may have been fairly used when Mark had found it last year, but now it looked like a giant had tried to kick a field goal with it.

  Joe had bought Mark a set of tools after he’d gotten it, informing Mark that he wouldn’t be responsible for any repairs on it. “If you want to ride something you should be able to fix it if it breaks.” Tucked into the tools was the print out of the manual.

  He sat down, surrounded by tools and little bits of Vespa that had fallen off and tried to find a place to start. His head throbbed and he felt his body sink into the ground at the enormity of the task

  After fifteen minutes, he realized he’d been reading the same page about removing the front wheel and not getting any closer to understanding it. His head was throbbing more and more, and with an irritated snarl he threw the stapled sheets of paper against the garage wall, hoping the whole thing would just burst into flame and he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.

  Flame. It took him a second, but then the memory of it began breaking into his brain. Bits of it at first: Corwin wrapped in shadows, eyes on fire . . . a house, stairs, watching someone get shoved down the stairs, the silver blade being thrown.

  It took a couple of moments but he remembered everything, dropping to the ground and rolling over on his side. Corwin had been looking for her. He’d been there, in her house, and he killed her brother and father when he couldn’t find her. Had she been hiding? Did they run into him before he could get to her? Was she okay?

  It was the last though that propelled him from the garage floor and up across the yard and into the kitchen as fast as he could. His head no longer hurt, unclogged from the psychic log-jam that the vision had caused, and he dialed her number so fast that it took about three tries for him to get it right.

  It went right to voicemail, and before he blurted out every detail of what he’d seen, he stopped and tried to compose himself. No matter what he had seen, there was no way he could explain it without sounding like a homicidal maniac.

  “Hey you, it’s Mark and I just . . . I just wanted to see what you were up to and how you’re doing. Call me as soon as you get this, so we can . . . I dunno, do something today. I miss you. Call me.”

  He hung up the phone and stared at it. That was way smooth. Really. I think your voice only moved through a dozen or so octaves during that little performance. There’s no way that she’ll know that you know something is up.

  The police showed up about four hours and three phone calls to Christine later. Joe was up by then, and when Detective Prescott, another detective and a pair of uniformed officers showed up on their doorstep with a search warrant, Mark could see Joe’s head almost cave in under the weight of not being able to strangle Mark right then and there.

  While Mark and Joe waited in the kitchen, David explained to them what had happened at Christine’s house, and how she was fine, although exhausted and probably sleeping in a hotel room somewhere.

  It wasn’t lost on Mark that he didn’t tell him where she was staying. Mark didn’t ask.

  They brought down the “Bizarre Crimes of Northern New Jersey,” and the other Detective pulled David into the living room. Mark watched the two argue quietly as he avoided Joe’s glare from across the table.

  After a few minutes, he and David come back into the kitchen. David hung back in the archway while the other Detective took a seat across from him.

  “Mark, I’m Detective Sergeant Lobrazzo. I think we should talk about some stuff down at the station, don’t you?”

  “If we have to.”

  “Yeah, I kind of think we do.”

  “Um, okay. Do I need a lawyer?”

  “I don’t know,” Lobrazzo said, shrugging. “Do you think you need a lawyer?” Over Lobrazzo’s shoulder, Mark saw David nod his head.

  “Yeah, I kind of think so.”

  David liked Ron Lobrazzo. He had to remind himself of this as Ron chewed into Mark in the interview room, leaving David stewing in the corner.

  David had been given a fair amount of leeway with the investigation, which was easy given that most of the evidence they had did make any sense and the rest just pointed to a teenager with no motive and little opportunity.

  But when the Baker’s house was attacked and the shitstorm up at the top worked its way down and got Ron, the senior Detective in the Investigation Unit. When he read David’s report of Christine’s interview, the first thing he wanted to do was bring Mark in and grill him until he broke.

  David couldn’t bring himself to admit to him that he thought Mark was hiding something, but Ron knew enough to read between the lines.

  “Three murders, all only linked by him, and you’re acting like it’s a coincidence. Why the hell are you protecting him?” He’d asked him in the car on the way from the judge’s house with the signed warrant the Chief had insisted they get and serve immediately.

  “Probably because I think he needs protecting.”

  “Cute. I felt that way about that girl back at the hospital.”

  They hadn’t said much after they argued at Mark’s, David telling him that going at the kid hard was going to be pointless, and Ron insisting that the problem was that the kid wasn’t taking this seriously. “For all we know he’s one of those crazy Columbine kids. I’m telling you we’re going to find a gun, or plans for a bomb, or something like that and you’re going to see this kid for the unstable, desensitized monster he probably is. Hell, he could have some accomplice bumping these people off, and you’re letting him off the hook because he was what, asleep? Wake up, Dave. I expect better.”

  So he sat there, keeping watch over Mark as they waited for his lawyer to show up. Joe parked himself in the lobby stone-faced and silen
t, and when Mark’s lawyer showed up David was relieved that the kid’s Uncle had actually spent some money and gotten a real lawyer and not the glorified accountant he’d brought last time.

  “I just don’t understand this. You get run off the road and beaten, but you have no idea who did it or even what they looked like. Plus, you have no idea why anyone would want to kill people close to you. Do you have any ideas? Anything at all that maybe will keep other people getting killed, or are you not worried about that?”

  Mark did what he’d done for most of the interview: stare at the table and shake his head. “No, I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “Really? Maybe you should tell that to Christine and her family. They’d be thrilled to hear that.”

  Mark’s hands clenched, but he didn’t look up.

  “Mark, I just don’t understand how you have no idea about what’s going on, especially since you were hiding a book about murders that took place in this town up in your room.”

  “There’s nothing illegal about taking a book out of the library, Sergeant,” Mark’s lawyer said.

  “Yeah, that’s true, but I have yet to hear why he did it in the first place.”

  “I was scared.” Mark said. He stared at Ron with more intensity than he thought the terrified kid would be able to muster. “It was stupid, but I thought there might be something in the book that would help me understand what was going on. Maybe even tell me why this was happening to the people I care about but it turned out it’s just a stupid book that didn't tell me anything. I didn’t say why I took it out before because I was embarrassed. Is that a good enough reason?” Tears had begun to slide down the kid’s face.

  The lawyer lifted his palms to the sky. “Well, Sergeant? Is it?”

  Ron wiped his mouth and chin, looking past Mark and at David, who just shrugged his shoulders. Ron tilted his head towards the door and David followed him out.