The Shadow Man Read online

  The Shadow Man

  Mark Murphy

  Copyright © 2012 by Mark Murphy

  Langdon Street Press

  212 3rd Ave North, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401

  612.455.2293

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-938296-05-5

  I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Daphne and my mother Peggy, the two most important women in my life, who both believed in me unconditionally.

  Prologue

  The darkness was everywhere.

  Q felt it pressing in on him like the poisoned atmosphere of some alien planet. It pulsated in his arteries, ink-black and foul, filtering into his brain and filling his eyes to the point that they hurt.

  He wondered if anyone else could see the darkness in his eyes.

  He remembered the night when the ice storm roared across Ann Arbor, during his surgical residency. The cold permeated his bones and congealed his marrow, anesthetizing his fingers and toes like Novocain. He had hated the frigid thickness of it, the way it made him feel clumsy and powerless.

  The ice storm was what had driven him to move to Florida. By God, it never got that cold here.

  But now the dark filled the swamp so completely that he could hardly breathe.

  He piloted the skiff through the tannin-stained water as a few stars began to wink overhead, mocking him with their pinpoints of cold light.

  There was a stand of cypress up ahead. He could not see it, yet, but he knew it was there, looming ahead like some moss-draped wooden cathedral, roots twisting clutching fingers into the earth.

  The Chief had only gone to Hollywood for a single day. That had not given Q much time, but it had been enough. When the Chief returned, his world would be different in ways that he could not even begin to imagine now.

  Q took some small pleasure in that.

  He passed the cypress stand, feeling the shadowy bulk of the trees pass to his right. He knew the creatures were watching him, eyes glittering like jewels, creatures with scales and claws and teeth, animals with a raw hunger that he could only begin to guess at.

  But he could guess at it, all right.

  He flicked his cigarette over the side of the boat and chuckled to himself.

  The vegetation had thinned out and Q could see the sky. It unfolded before him, horizons broadening, giving him space. The dark clouds had drifted away. Stars spilled across the velvet darkness, glittering diamonds outlining the Milky Way, Orion's Belt, and the Seven Sisters. In stark negative relief, he could also see the crowded brace of trees that formed the edges of the Hole.

  He was here.

  Q killed the engine and tossed the anchor over the side. The splash startled something in the Hole, a massive bulk that spilled into the water like a steamer trunk.

  Waves slapped against the side of his skiff.

  Q turned on his headlamp, which cast its narrow beam across the Hole to the dense tree line at its edge. Twenty or more pairs of unblinking ruby eyes stared back at him.

  Waiting.

  Q pulled on a pair of elbow-length nitrile gloves and opened the suitcase. The garbage bag inside it glowed ghost-white.

  The first thing he pulled out of the garbage bag was the woman's head. Her hair made for a convenient handle.

  He dangled her in the headlamp's silver beam. She looked like Medusa, mouth agape in dull surprise, eyes half-closed. A few splatters of blood dripped onto the deck of the boat as the head twisted slightly left.

  He had kept her driver's license and a lock of her hair, as he always did, but he would have liked to have saved more of her. Perhaps a few teeth, or one of those pretty eyeballs pickled in formalin. But there had simply been no time. This one was too close to home. He could not afford to leave any evidence behind. The gators would have to have every last bit of her. Habeas corpus, isn't that what the lawyers said—something about having the body? Except no one would habeas this corpus except the reptiles of the Everglades.

  She had been a worthy opponent. The woman had put up a good fight. As a reward, he had severed her carotids cleanly, without hesitation. Blood had spurted up to the ceiling until her heart emptied out.

  He would need to disinfect the jagged scratches she had left on his arms when he got home.

  He tossed her head into the swamp. It bobbed for a moment, turning over as her hair splayed out, then disappeared in a boil of scales and teeth.

  The arms and calves were easy; he grabbed the hands and feet and tossed them in like cordwood. The burning pairs of eyes crowded in tighter. Hisses and grunts filled the air as the reptiles fed on what was left of her, and on each other.

  The metallic scent of blood hung thick in the air. It mixed with the choking rotten-egg swamp odors, the sick-sweet scents of decay: hydrogen disulfide, methane, squalenes. He knew each and every one of them.

  Her thighs were slippery with blood and rounded, like Christmas hams; there was nothing to grab on to. The first one slipped from his grasp and toppled into the boat with a thud!, a hollow sound which was quickly answered by the tail-slap of an overenthusiastic gator striking the aluminum hull.

  "Hey, watch out!" Q said. "I'm feedin' you guys!"

  He picked the thigh up and cradled it in both arms before heaving it clumsily into the dark water. He was more careful with the second thigh, and there were no incidents.

  Her torso was another matter entirely. She was not a large woman—Q estimated that she had weighed perhaps 120 pounds—but her armless, legless, headless torso seemed like it weighed that much by itself. He tried to pick it up, but it threw him off-balance, nearly pitching him overboard.

  "That would not have been good," he said out loud.

  The alligators were becoming more aggressive. One charged the skiff, its toothsome head breaching the freeboard as a scaly forelimb clawed its way over the edge of the boat. The skiff see-sawed back and forth, water splashing into it like oil, before Q grabbed an oar and whacked the hissing creature squarely on the snout.

  "Get back, dammit!" he shouted as the gator disappeared back into the water.

  In the distance, he heard the deep-throated bellow of a large bull gator.

  He knew he had to hurry. That call would bring others. Hundreds, perhaps.

  He rolled her torso against the hull with both arms and pushed it up over the edge. The torso tumbled into the water with a splash. He then tossed the garbage bags and the gloves overboard, pulled up the anchor, and cranked the engine, just as the bull gator roared again. Closer, this time.

  He could hear the feeding reptiles grunting and splashing in the water around him as he left the Hole. His pulse slowed as he chugged past the cypress island. The poisonous atmosphere dried up and dissipated. His breath came easier.

  After he reached the shore, Q tied the boat to a tree stump and reflected upon the evening's events. He supposed he should be feeling some­thing. Elation, perhaps, or relief. But there was nothing. He felt nothing at all. The burnt-out cinder of his heart was as cold and as dead as Pluto. He had won again; the girl was dead, her body swallowed whole by the swamp. But the only things he felt were fatigue and hunger.

  His stomach rumbled. He thought of pancakes and coffee and bacon.

  Q glanced at his watch as he scuffed across the gravel to the Jeep and unhooked the boat hitch. He'd pick up the boat later. 3:17 AM.

  Jesus, he thought. The only thing open at this hour was the Waffle House.

  That would have to do.

  There was a rustle in the trees overhead. It startled him. Somethin
g was moving among the branches—an amorphous darkness, a shuffling presence. Q could feel himself being watched. "Who's there?" he said out loud. The darkness said nothing.

  A breeze shook the branches and the darkness moved, eyes glit­tering, claws clicking against branch and root. There was a rush of wings and feathers.

  Q chuckled.

  "Right," he said.

  For he could now see them.

  The birds were staring at him, thousands of them, a flock as black as the night itself. They were quiet at first. Watching, beaks agape, eyes unblinking.

  "Shoo!" he said. But the ravens stayed.

  Their presence unnerved him.

  The damned Seminoles believed in all of that mystical bullshit. Spirit guides and communion with nature, being one with Mother Earth, all of that garbage. He got tired of hearing about it.

  Q's belief system was easy. Q believed in Q, and nothing else. No God, no devil, no afterlife, no spirit world. What was that phrase? "WYSIWYG"? "What you see is what you get"?

  That was what Q believed in.

  He turned his back on the ravens and opened the door of the Jeep, pulling a few wet wipes from a container in the floorboard. A few birds squawked. Q ignored them.

  Q cleaned the blood from his arms and face. He stared at himself in the rear view mirror and saw nothing amiss. He looked like he'd just been out fishing on an early fall morning.

  Which, in some sense, he had.

  The chorus rose then, an unearthly din of caws and screes. The ravens were moving, their wings beating against the night air. They blotted out the stars in the sky.

  "Shut up!" Q said.

  He cranked the Jeep's balky engine. It stuttered, coughed, and roared to life. John Fogarty was screeching "Run Through the Jungle" on AM 1400.

  "CCR! All right!" he said, slapping the steering wheel with a calloused palm.

  He turned the wheel sharply left so that the tires scrunched on the gravel parking lot. The Jeep jounced on the edge of the road. The night was still pitch dark, and that was good. The swamp was chock full of secrets, and secrets loved the darkness.

  That was one thing Q knew.

  He could hear the cacophony of the ravens now, their cries simul­taneously hollow and oppressive. It was as though he could see them staring down at him. He rolled up the Jeep's window to shut them out.

  Just as the window was closing, Q thought he heard something else: a distant howling, echoing through the vastness of the wetlands. It died out among the draped shrouds of Spanish moss, the snakelike tendrils of vines, and the sword-like stands of palmetto fronds.

  A soul has moved on, the Seminoles always said when a dog howled like that.

  "Bullshit," Q said.

  He turned up the radio and headed out onto the highway.

  He was eating a pile of waffles and bacon when the sun came up.

  "What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams."

  — Pedro Calderon de la Barca, 1635

  1

  He almost got away with it.

  Malcolm King had picked his bag from the baggage carousel at the Savannah airport and was moving rapidly toward the exit when the tiny blue-haired woman saw him.

  "Dr. King? Dr. King? Is that you?" she asked.

  Malcolm sighed and stopped walking. He dropped his bags and shook her bony hand.

  "Hello, Mrs. Carithers," he said, smiling. "How's your incision healing?"

  "It's just fine, thank you. You almost can't see it—just a thin red line now. And there's no pain, none at all. It's like I never even needed that old gallbladder. Do you want to see the scar?"

  Malcolm had a brief Lyndon Johnson flashback.

  "Why don't we wait and look at it in the office? For privacy."

  Mrs. Carithers blushed.

  "That's fine," she said. "I do have one question, though, if you don't mind."

  "I don't mind at all."

  "Well, my friend Eunice said that sometimes after surgery like this one can get an imbalance with yeast. She's trying to get me to eat yogurt. I don't like yogurt, but I'll eat it if I am supposed to. Is it possible that I have a yeast deficiency? Or perhaps I have too much yeast. What do you think?"

  "Are you feeling ill?" Malcolm asked.

  The woman blinked. Malcolm noted that her eyes matched her hair.

  "No," she said. "I feel fine."

  "Then you are fine."

  "Should I eat the yogurt?"

  "Only if you want to," Malcolm said, picking up his bags. "Take care, Mrs. Carithers. And God bless," he called over his shoulder as he walked out into the night.

  Malcolm thought he remembered that he had left the BMW on Level Two, in the back, but he had been in Miami a full week, since last Friday. He could be wrong.

  Stepping off the elevator, he clicked on his unlock button. He heard the car chirp.

  "Thank God for these things," he mumbled to himself.

  Malcolm popped the trunk and tossed his bags inside, slamming it shut. He locked the door, fastened his seat belt, and looked behind him.

  He had just started to back out when something slammed into the back of his car, jarring him.

  "What the hell . . .?"

  Malcolm turned around just in time to see a black Chevy SUV with Florida plates speeding away through the parking deck. Its windows were tinted, like smoky quartz.

  "Hey!" Malcolm yelled, getting out of the BMW to inspect the damage. "You hit me!"

  The SUV's window rolled down and the driver's hand appeared, middle finger extended.

  "You son of a bitch!" Malcolm said. He jumped back behind the wheel of his car and backed out. The wheels screeched as the BMW lurched into first gear.

  The SUV was nearing the exit gate. Malcolm could see its tail-lights flashing red.

  Malcolm punched the accelerator. He was doing nearly 60 as he neared the gate. He rolled down his window so that he could be heard.

  "Stop that guy! He hit my car!"

  The SUV passed through the gate.

  Malcolm watched as the armature fell. He knew he wouldn't make it, but he fired the BMW through the gate anyway, shattering the back-and-white striped barrier like a twig. The armature flipped over the top of his car and clattered to the ground.

  He saw flashing blue lights in his rear view mirror almost immedi­ately. A second police car came out of nowhere and pulled up in front of him, blocking his exit.

  Malcolm, sighing, hit the brakes and put his car in park. He watched the black SUV pull away into the night.

  He could hear the cop walking toward him, but Malcolm looked straight ahead, hands on the steering wheel.

  "Get out of the car, sir," the policeman said. "And I'll need your license and registration."

  Malcolm took out his documents, opened the car door, and got out.

  The cop was a portly fellow who reeked of Old Spice. He had a crew cut and a receding hairline, his teeth were a jumbled mess, and his eyeballs were unusually prominent. Bulging, even. Regular goldfish eyes.

  "Just what do you think you were doin'?" the cop asked. He spoke as though he had marbles in his mouth.

  "Officer . . ."

  "O'Rourke."

  The policeman tapped his nametag. Malcolm nodded.

  "Officer O'Rourke, that guy hit my car in the parking lot and took off. I was just trying to stop him before he got away."

  The cop was staring at Malcolm. He blinked his goldfish eyes twice, then looked again at Malcolm's driver's license.

  "Dr. King?"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "You operated on my mama. Colon cancer. You saved her life. I sure was surprised to see you get out of that car," the cop said. "If you don't mind my askin', why would a guy as smart as you do something as stupid as the thing you just did?"

  "I . . . I really don't have an explanation for it. He hit my car and flipped me off. I was angry."

  "But, Doc—crashin' t
hrough the gate? Was that really necessary?" O'Rourke said.

  "No, sir," Malcolm said. "No, it wasn't."

  "Let me ask you somethin'—what would you've done if you had caught him and he'd pulled out a gun and shot your ass? That could've happened, too, y'know. I've seen it."

  The cop ripped a ticket off of the pad he was carrying.

  "Doc, this is just a warning. In the future, if someone needs to be caught, let us do it. Just because you were mad doesn't justify doing some­thing foolish. We'll get your boy on the airport security cam, y'know. We'll catch 'im. And if you'll pay for the repairs to the security gate we'll call it even," the cop said, handing Malcolm the ticket.

  "Thanks, officer," Malcolm said.

  "Don't mention it. I'm just tryin' to keep you from losin' your cool and doing somethin' that you'd regret later. We need folks like you, you know. I know my mama sure is glad you're around," O'Rourke said. He flashed a grin. "Y'know, if you want me too, I can give you a call with an update on what the security cam shows. Would you like that?"

  "I would greatly appreciate it," Malcolm said. "Here are my numbers."

  Malcolm scribbled on one of his business cards and handed it to the officer.

  The officer put the card in his breast pocket. "Thanks," Malcolm said.

  "Be safe," O'Rourke said, slapping his palm on the side of the car.

  O'Rourke turned his flashers off and backed his vehicle away.

  Malcolm glanced at his BMW. The car was a mess—one headlight out, right rear quarter panel caved in, right taillight shattered. But the car was drivable, and Malcolm was not hurt, and that was something.

  He got back inside, fastened his seat belt, and put the car in drive.

  "Can't wait to get home," he mumbled.

  He called Amy and let her know what had happened, and that he was on his way to the house.

  "Thank God you're all right," she said. "I'll be up when you get here."

  "I love you," Malcolm said.

  The night flashed by as Malcolm drove down I-95. There was a crack in the windshield that cold air whistled through, a crack he had not seen a moment before. Light glimmered through it intermittently, like a prism, as the headlights passed by one by one. Malcolm thought of how fine the line is between perception and reality, how it drifted and weaved, like smoke. Like a crack in the windshield.