The Shadow Man Read online

  And whoever—or whatever—had been in Malcolm's bedroom could have only left via the window—a window, now destroyed, that gaped fifty feet above a very unforgiving jumble of solid rock.

  6

  The police did not leave Malcolm's house until after daybreak. They combed the back yard, went through the house a dozen times, picked through the Kings' garbage (which had some recognizable stuff in it but still seemed to be comprised largely of alien trash artifacts) and even searched the marsh and dock house. But they found no intruders, and nothing seemed to be missing.

  The officer who arrived on the scene first was a serious, soft-spoken young man named Lieutenant Chu. His posture was so erect that it seemed artificial, as though he had been carved from a single block of wood.

  Lieutenant Chu did not smile as he came inside. He showed Malcolm his badge and ID immediately, which made Malcolm recall what Ben had said about his pseudo-cop visitor the previous morning.

  "You were here alone?" Chu said.

  "Yes. Well, me and the dog. Her name's Daisy."

  "You're married? Kids?"

  "Yep. Wife's with her mother in Atlanta. My daughter's spending some time with a friend's family at the beach while my wife is away since I go into work too early to take her to school. She's fifteen—can't drive yet."

  "There was no sign of forced entry into the house. Did you leave it open?" Chu said.

  "I had come outside because I heard a noise. Trashcans were knocked over. I was picking that up when I saw someone in the house walking around."

  "And you had left the door open when you came outside?"

  "Well, yeah. It wasn't open, just unlocked. Didn't want to lock myself out. I had no idea that anyone might try to get in."

  "You have an alarm system. Was it activated last night?"

  Malcolm shook his head.

  "There just aren't many break-ins out here. Most times we forget to turn it on."

  The officer wrote something on his notepad before looking back up. "Tell me about the glass," Chu said.

  "What?"

  "The glass. All this," he said, sweeping his arm across the foyer. "There's glass everywhere. What exactly happened?"

  "It all just sort of exploded. Like a glass bomb went off. Right before everything blew, I heard this high-pitched buzzing noise and then everything went ka-blam!"

  "So you have no idea why this happened?" Chu said.

  "No, sir, I do not. Do you?"

  Chu raised his eyebrows and tapped his pen against the paper. "We don't," he said. "Not yet."

  "So will you have folks out here to help determine that? Like the bomb squad or something?" said Malcolm.

  "Not bomb squad people, but top men. They're on their way."

  "Top men? Like who?"

  Chu sighed. "Top men," he said. "That's all you need to know."

  Malcolm realized that Lieutenant Chu was not a man prone to idle conversation.

  "I think that's all I have for now," Chu said. "Here's my card in case you come across anything else you want to tell us."

  As the police left, Malcolm texted Lynne Abramowitz, the manager of his medical practice: You up?

  His phone rang a minute later.

  "What's going on?" Lynne said.

  "There was a break-in at my house early this morning. Amy's out of town with her mom's surgery, so I had to deal with all of this. I've been up since 4 AM. The police have already left, but I've got to get a glass guy out here, check with the alarm people, stuff like that. Could you cancel my first few elective cases? I think I'm supposed to start at nine. Maybe you could move the inpatients to the early afternoon. I should be ready to go by then."

  "Are you okay?" she said.

  "I'm fine. Just irritated, that's all. As far as I can tell, they didn't even take anything."

  "I'll take care of it. Now, Dr. King, if you need to take the whole day . . ."

  "That's not necessary. I just need a few hours this morning to get things straightened out."

  "I'm glad you're okay. I'll call you if there are any issues."

  "Thanks."

  When Malcolm called Amy, he got a little surprise.

  She was crying when she answered the phone.

  "Hon, what's wrong?" he said.

  "Mom's had a bad night. We had to go back to the hospital. They think she might have had a pulmonary embolus," she said.

  "When did this happen?"

  "Last night, late. She woke up short of breath. It was so bad that I called 9-1-1. I knew something was wrong—she just looked so bad. Ashen, you know? And she was using her accessory respiratory muscles. I've seen it in other patients when I was working, but when it's your mom . . ."

  She sniffed.

  Malcolm's chest ached for his wife. He wanted to be there to hold her.

  "Why didn't you call me?" Malcolm said.

  "It happened so fast, and it was so late. I didn't want to bother you. I know you had a lot of work to do, and that you'd be up early this morning, so I figured I'd call you then. You just beat me to it."

  I can't tell her about the house right now, he thought.

  She sniffed again.

  "So how are you doing?" she said.

  "Fine. Just me and Daisy, hanging out."

  "You're sure you're okay?"

  "A hundred percent," he said.

  "I miss you," she said.

  "I miss you, too."

  "Mal, this may last a few days longer than I thought. I'm sorry. I just can't leave her like this," she said.

  "It's okay, Amy. Your mom is blessed to have the best nurse I know as her personal caregiver. You just take all the time you need. And if you need me up there, let me know."

  "I'm okay. Of course, I'd love to have you here, but that's selfish. You need to be there. Daisy needs you, and your patients need you," Amy said.

  "I love you, Amy."

  "I love you, too."

  They hung up without Malcolm mentioning the break-in. It would have been pointless—more stress for Amy and no benefit to either of them.

  Malcolm was sitting at his office browsing the Internet while he waited for the glass people to come by when his cell rang. It was Ben Adams.

  "Hey, man, how are you?" Malcolm said.

  "Are you okay?" Ben said. "They said there was a break-in at your home last night."

  "I'm fine, really. I can't even tell that they took anything. Just made a huge mess."

  "Glad you're okay," Ben said. "Man, what a screwed-up week for you."

  "Tell me about it. And Amy's out of town."

  "Bummer. Hey, listen, I checked on the plates on that van you sent me. You said you know that the plates had been stolen, right?" said Ben.

  "That's what the airport cop said."

  "Okay, well, here's another weird development. When they went to track the guy down who reported the plates stolen, in Miami, they couldn't find him. He'd disappeared—didn't show up for work for several days, no one had heard from him, etc. And then someone reported a weird smell coming from a motel room in this crapola roadside inn in Fort Lauderdale and you know what they found?"

  "The guy was in there dead," said Malcolm.

  "Bingo. But not just dead. He was eviscerated, like your neigh­bor's dog. The room was full of flies, and decay was starting to set in, but whoever did this had cut the vic's head off, sliced open his abdomen and draped entrails all over the picture frames and light fixtures, and had removed the kidneys, spleen, heart and lungs with what my vatos in Florida called 'surgical precision.' It made even the hard-core homicide guys ill. And you know what else?"

  "What?"

  "Whoever did this wanted to make certain that they knew the identity of the victim when they found him. The dude's driver's license was propped up on a Gideon Bible beside the bed—and sure enough, the dental records matched. Same guy."

  Malcolm thought for a minute.

  "Did you say the guy was in Miami?" he asked.

  "I did. I mean, he lived there. They
found the body in Fort Lauderdale."

  "I was just in Miami," said Malcolm. "Got back on Friday. In fact, I was at the airport driving home from my return flight when the guy in the SUV hit me. What the hell's going on here?" said Malcolm.

  "I'm not sure, mi amigo, but it sure ain't good."

  7

  The next day began brilliantly.

  Malcolm slept in the guest bedroom on the river side of the house; the master bedroom was still a minefield of glass fragments. He had toyed with the idea of staying in a hotel but dismissed it after the windows were replaced and the alarm was checked out. Boarding Daisy would have been another problem—she was old and did not adapt well to strange places. Plus, he did not like the idea of leaving the old house alone, defenseless.

  Gotta protect the castle, he thought.

  The alarm guy had come up with all sorts of other things he could have done to upgrade the system. Malcolm agreed to installing a panic button in his bedroom, and he had more motion sensors installed in the downstairs area, but he drew the line at the wireless webcams.

  "How do they work again?" he had asked.

  "They are tiny video cameras that you can use to observe what's going on in the house. You can use a web connection to look at what is going on."

  "Why would I need to see what is going on in my own house?" Malcolm asked.

  "Well, some people see a need for that sort of thing. Like with a nannycam."

  "We don't have a nanny. And I don't trust the Internet enough to know that someone else might be looking in on me using my own system. So let's scratch the wireless webcams."

  The alarm guy finished up by lunchtime. Malcolm then went to work, came home, reheated some food for dinner and hit the sack early in a room he'd never slept in.

  So the moment the alarm clock sounded the next morning he was disoriented, bamfoozled. He knew the light was wrong. The bed was on the wrong side of the room and the alarm clock was on the wrong side of the bed. For a brief moment, he thought, Did I get a hotel room after all?

  And then he pulled back the curtains and saw his river.

  The sun had scattered its light across the edge of the horizon. By some strange alchemy there was a mist lurking in the marsh grass, like a congregation of spirits, barely visible among the vast expanse of Spar-tina alterniflora that flanked the river's edge. The mist's tattered edges whis­pered silent prayers, tendrils of fog and nothingness swirling at the gold-tinged margins of the Vernon River and curling over the rude planks of Malcolm's ancient dock.

  It was beautiful.

  Malcolm's breath caught in his mouth and stayed there, daring not to move for fear of spoiling it all.

  After turning off the alarm and feeding the dog, Malcolm flipped through the paper while eating a bowl of cereal filled with blackberries and skim milk. He smiled as he ate the first bite. Mimi would be proud of him.

  I'll call her after school, he thought.

  He was driving in to work when the phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID. It was Ben Adams.

  "Hi, Ben," Malcolm said.

  "You sitting down?" asked Ben.

  "I'm driving. What's going on?"

  "Where were you last night?"

  "Home. With the dog."

  "You didn't go out? No one else saw you?"

  "Amy's still in Atlanta, and Mimi's still at the beach. I saw the alarm guy and the glass people yesterday. They both left around noon. I then went into work, did a few surgeries, answered messages and reviewed labs at the office, and came home."

  "What time did you get home?" said Ben.

  "Oh, 7:30 or so. Why?"

  "You know a guy named Phillip Kretschinger?"

  "Doesn't ring a bell."

  The OR at Memorial Hospital was calling his cell. Malcolm ignored it.

  "Former patient of yours? Sued you a couple of years ago because he said you misdiagnosed his Crohn's disease?"

  The memory hit Malcolm like a brickbat to the skull.

  "Ah, that guy. What ajerk. He actually lives in my subdivision. Has a nasty stutter. He came in with a bowel obstruction one night and asked for me because I had seen him around Rose Dhu. I took him to the OR and fixed the obstruction. He had Crohn's disease. It was unequivocal; the surgical pathology confirmed it. He had an uneventful recovery from his operation. I referred him to a gastroenterologist for his Crohn's, and figured that was that. A couple of years later, he shows up with colon cancer and tries to say that he'd had that all along—that the Crohn's diagnosis we had made was mistaken. Got some 'expert witness,' a hired gun out of North Dakota, to back him up. The case dragged through the courts for three years before it was thrown out. That pissed him off. I think he'd figured he was going to hit the jackpot. After the case, I'd see him walking around, glaring at me. I haven't seen him lately, though. I'd forgotten about him."

  "He still lived in your neighborhood. Had a small stroke a couple of years ago and couldn't get around much."

  "You said lived," Malcolm said.

  "What?"

  "Lived. Past tense, as in 'no longer lives, but lived.' Did he move away or did something else happen?"

  Ben sighed.

  "He's dead, Mal. Eviscerated, like the dog and the guy in Fort Lauderdale. And this time, there was an anatomical diagram left beside the body that fully delineated the incisions that were made, what organs were removed, etc. Our killer knows anatomy, that's for sure."

  Malcolm's hands were shaking. He pulled the BMW to the side of the road. Sunlight dappled the windshield.

  "There's another thing. The killer wrote something on the wall. In blood."

  Malcolm felt his palms begin to sweat.

  "What did it say?" Malcolm asked.

  "Only one thing: 'From hell.' That's it."

  "Jack the Ripper," Malcolm murmured. "Damn."

  "What's that?"

  "Remember my Master's thesis?"

  "Why would I remember your Master's thesis?"

  "It was a psychoanalysis of Jack the Ripper. You were fascinated with it. You told me that it was one of the reasons you decided to go become a cop."

  "God, the Jack the Ripper paper. I'd forgotten about that. When was that?"

  "Twenty years ago."

  "Jeez," said Ben. "We're getting old."

  "So in the Ripper murders, a guy who claimed to be Jack the Ripper wrote 'From Hell' as his return address on a letter he sent to Scot­land Yard," said Mal.

  There was silence for a moment.

  "Mal, I need a favor. I need to have you come in to answer some questions," Ben said.

  "What?" asked Malcolm.

  "It's not me. It's the captain."

  "I don't understand."

  "They found one of your business cards in Kretschinger's house, right near the body. When we checked the courthouse records and found you'd had some problems with him, the cap wanted you brought in. We could do it discreetly. I'll pick you up myself if you like."

  "Just because a dead guy who used to be a patient of mine had one of my business cards in his house, I'm a suspect now?"

  "No! We just wanted to find out about what went on between you and the victim. And maybe establish your whereabouts last night, or the night before. The coroner's still trying to determine the time of death."

  "Ben. This is crap. You know that."

  A truck rumbled past Malcolm's car, belching diesel fumes.

  "Mal, listen. The cap wanted to send a squad car after you, but I said no, that I've known you since second grade and I'd get you to come in. I mean, look at it from our perspective. You call a guy about his dog makin' a racket and the dog ends up dead. You get involved in an accident and the car that hit you has plates belonging to a murder victim with a similar M.O. And then a former patient—a patient who sued you, by the way—gets cut up and they find your card at the scene within five feet of the body. All of them are mutilated with surgical precision—and you're a surgeon. Now, you may not be doing anything—and I don't think you are—but you're sure as he
ll a common thread. We have to bring you in. We'd be fools not to. Capische?"

  Malcolm's head was swimmy, eyes watering. He could feel a little tickle in his throat, like a cough that wanted to come out and couldn't.

  There's no way out of this, Malcolm thought. I'll have to go in.

  "Yeah, okay," Malcolm said. "If you'll pick me up, I'll come in and talk to you guys. Can we do it after work? I'd hate to cancel patients another day."

  "Will do. What time?"

  "Let's shoot for 6 PM," Malcolm said. "I'll call you as we get closer to let you know if I'm going to make it."

  "Fair enough. Talk to you then."

  After Ben hung up, Malcolm sat quietly on the side of the road.

  He took a sip of coffee. It was hot, bitter, and vaguely chemical—a dark potion concocted by some bat-faced witch from a fairy tale. He popped open the car door, spat it out, and poured the rest of the steaming cupful onto the ground.

  The sun had fizzled out; the sky was a thick sheet of lead. A cold wind whipped up dead leaves on the side of the road. They swirled a bit and then lay still.

  "Dammit," he said quietly.

  8

  The detective kept his hat on at first.

  It was a black felt fedora, the kind that can be crushed and retain its shape, and he had it pulled low on his forehead so that Malcolm could not see his eyes.

  That's weird, Malcolm thought.

  "Sam Baker," the detective said, extending his hand. "I'm one of the officers assigned to this case. Thanks for coming in."

  Malcolm shook his hand. Baker's grip was weak, his palms moist. The limp handshake surprised Malcolm so much that he looked at the man's hand as he shook it.

  I already don't like him, Malcolm thought.

  "Coffee?" Baker said.

  Malcolm shook his head.

  "You smoke? I can get you some if you like."

  "No, thanks. I'm not a smoker."

  The room was spare, almost empty. A plain wooden table, solidly built, with a couple of hard-backed stained pine chairs and a digital clock on the wall; that was it. The furniture looked like it had been picked up at a scratch and dent sale. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered constantly. It was like having an eye twitch.