A Shadow Fell Read online

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  A SHADOW FELL / Patrick Dakin

  A SHADOW FELL

  A Novel by

  Patrick Dakin

  A shadow rose,

  And then it fell;

  From whence it came,

  No one can tell.

  Part One

  The Threat

  February, 1990....

  Our motor home excursion along the southeastern seaboard had been the best of times. Three weeks of uninterrupted pleasure. Long, lazy days exploring small towns, touring historical sites, walking pristine beaches, and even a day of deep sea fishing. But all things must eventually come to an end. When your daughter is six years old three weeks of separation from her friends is about all it takes to bring on some serious home sickness. We were headed south through Georgia en route to our home in Florida.

  Taking advantage of near perfect weather we had stopped well before our usual pullover time. I was comfortably seated outside, engrossed in a novel while sipping a lite beer, with Winston curled at my feet. Tanya, stretched out on a towel, was occupied with charcoal pencil and sketch book, already showing some talent as a budding artist. Life seemed impossibly full of contentment while we awaited the call to dinner.

  In a heartbeat everything changed. An anguished cry from Callie shattered my Utopian mood.

  I rushed into the RV, my first thoughts being that she had burned herself or deposited a pot-roast on the floor. I found her standing at the kitchen counter, no evidence of disaster apparent. She was staring at the radio which was broadcasting the early news, a haunted look in her eyes. “What is it?” I said.

  She was trembling - I couldn’t tell if it was more out of anger or fear. Either way it was serious; she was not a woman prone to over-reaction. He’s out,” she seethed. “He escaped.”

  It took a few seconds to compute. The one incarcerated person in the world guaranteed to spark such a vehement response was her father. And surely that was impossible. “Not Reuben,” I said. But even as the words left my mouth it was obvious my first intuition was correct.

  “Yes,” she whispered. She brought her hand to her forehead, as if fighting off the onset of a vicious migraine.

  The news was, indeed, disturbing. Few things in the world were likely to spur a more dreaded reaction than the thought of this vile creature on the loose. I put my hand on her shoulder. “When?”

  “Three days ago. Christ, Jack, he could be anywhere by now.”

  “How the hell could this happen?” I muttered.

  “The radio report says he faked a heart attack, got away while the ambulance attendants were transporting him.”

  We both turned to Tanya, standing in the open doorway to the RV. Henderson had made no secret of his craving to punish us for bringing him down and, given his history, there was little doubt in either of our minds about what form his retribution would take if he ever got the opportunity.

  “What’s wrong, Daddy?” Tanya said.

  I picked her up in my arms. “Nothing, honey. Just some bad news about someone we used to know.”

  “Is it someone I know?”

  “No,” I assured her. “Someone from long ago.”

  We were on the road early the next morning, anxious now to be home as quickly as possible. In truth we were probably safer on the road than we would be anywhere else. Henderson would have no way to track us down while we were travelling. Once home we would be much easier to target. But at that moment we just wanted to be back on familiar ground, where we would have access to weapons and police protection if it came to that.

  There would be those in law enforcement who felt we were perfectly safe from reprisals. Many simply regarded Reuben Henderson in his present form as nothing more than a harmless old man; a monster of almost unparalleled evil at one time to be sure, but now made ineffective by the passage of years.

  Callie and I knew better than most how inaccurate this assumption was. Henderson had spent a vast portion of his life, by choice, eking out a primitive existence in a remote cabin in the Virginia mountains. He was capable of surviving anywhere, under the most heinous conditions. Add to that his penchant for ritualistic killing which was - not to overstate the reality - his driving motivation in life and had been since his childhood. The authorities were not even close to knowing how many children he had tortured and murdered during the many years of his brutal savagery; in addition to his own father and his sister, the number, they knew, ran to at least forty. On top of that were the murders of countless innocent dupes whose deaths had been set up to look like suicides to shift attention away from a serial murder spree covering decades. And the fact that he had been as active during the two years just prior to his capture as at any time in his past was clear evidence he was unimpeded by advancing age. What stood out in our memories most vividly, though, was the venom he had spewed at us after his trial. It had chilled us then and still did.

  No, there was not a fragment of uncertainty in our minds that, failing capture, he would come for us.

  The only question was when.

  2

  We lived on a small acreage in Levy County in central Florida. The nearest town was Williston with a population of a couple thousand; Ocala was a forty minute drive southeast. I had bought the place a year or so before Callie and I got together, tiring of the condo life I had endured since retiring to Miami Beach. I’d gotten the property at a reasonable price but the house had been badly neglected and it had taken me most of a year to complete the renovations I felt were necessary. It was now a comfortable, airy structure, set well back from the road, and surrounded by lots of tall, scraggly trees and leafy vegetation common to this part of the world. In most ways it suited us well; the one quality we were not entirely sold on was it’s remoteness. I had gone from one extreme to the other in moving here from Miami Beach and, although I loved the solitude and beauty, I had reservations about how suitable it was for a small child. Callie had overcome this concern to a large degree by ensuring that Tanya was involved in a variety of activities outside the home. It seemed there were enough play groups and sports options available for young children within a fairly short drive to offset the fact that we lived a largely secluded existence.

  When we arrived home from our trip I phoned Tom Kilborn, the Special Agent in Charge of the F.B.I.’s Tampa field office. Although it would be overstating the truth to say we were close friends we had worked together several times over the years before his promotion and had always gotten along well.

  “Hello, Tom,” I said when I was put through to him after identifying myself to his assistant.

  “Jack, how are you?”

  “Okay I suppose. You?”

  “You know me, Jack. The search is still on for younger women and older whiskey.”

  “Same old Tommy the Killer, huh?”

  “Well, maybe not quite the same. We’re all getting older, am I right?”

  “No argument from me there. I imagine you know what I’m calling about.”

  “I do. I wish I had some good news for you, Jack. There’s been no trace of him yet, but we’ve got a full bore search underway. We’ll get him.”

  “How the hell could this have happened, Tom?”

  “I don’t know. Makes you wonder. Henderson was being held in the Greensville Correction Centre near Jarratt. You probably remember it was originally a maximum security facility but it was reclassified to medium security recently when two new state prisons were opened. Henderson was slated for a move but, because of his age, they didn’t put a high priority on him and hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “Do you have any more details on how he pulled off the escape? The news reports were pretty sketchy.”

  “Not a lot really. As you’ve heard, Henderson used some ki
nd of drug on himself to temporarily mimic the effect of a severe heart attack. How he was able to get a hold of this particular drug we don’t know. But it’s no secret, of course, that availability of narcotics in the prison system is hardly unusual. In any event, prison officials figured he was pretty much done; he was transported to the nearest medical center in the middle of the night and a guard was posted at the emergency room exit. Henderson was hooked up to an IV and a specialist was on his way in to see what could be done for him when it was discovered he was missing. Looks like he waited for the right opportunity, threw on some doctor’s scrubs, and simply walked out of the place.”

  I shook my head in wonder. “Jesus. That easy.”

  “Sad I know,” Kilborn said, “but it looks that way.” He made no effort to disguise the disgust in his voice.

  “Callie’s pretty nervous. She’s convinced he’s going to try to get to us. He never made a secret of what his intentions would be if he ever got the chance. The thing is, Tom, we have a six-year-old daughter now. We adopted two years ago. I don’t have to tell you what this maniac would do if he was ever able to get his hands on her.”

  “You can tell Callie to rest easy. We’ll have you guys covered. He’s not going to get near you.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but you know damn well you can’t guarantee that.”

  I heard him sigh. “Look, what can I say?”

  “Get me back in. Temporary assignment, no pay, no status. Just let me be part of the unit.”

  “Jack, if my math is correct you’re now at mandatory retirement age. I couldn’t get you back in even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Look, you’ve still got your standard issue Glock I assume.”

  “Of course.”

  “Start carrying it if you’re not already. Keep your eyes open and let us do our jobs. Besides, the best thing you can do for your family is to stay close to them.”

  I couldn’t argue with the truthfulness of that. “Will you keep me posted?”

  “You can count on it,” he assured me. “Anything I learn, you’ll know as soon as it’s humanly possible.”

  I wasn’t exactly pleased with the outcome of the discussion with my old associate but I knew it was unlikely I was going to get anything more from him. “I guess I’m going to have to be content with that then. Get this guy fast, Tom, before he has a chance to harm another child.”

  “We will. Now go take care of your family.”

  I hung up feeling like a very old warhorse who’d been put out to pasture. It wasn’t a feeling I relished.

  The newspaper and television people called all day wanting to interview us for our reactions to Henderson’s daring escape. I had learned during my career with the Bureau that the best way to treat the media when you don’t want to be bothered by them is to totally ignore them. Don’t beg them to leave you alone, don’t express anger that they’re bothering you. Make absolutely no comment about anything. Simply ignore them. Eventually they get the idea and leave you alone.

  3

  Three weeks went by and the FBI’s daily updates on the news made it very clear they were doing a lot of wheel spinning and going nowhere. Henderson’s whereabouts remained a mystery. The lack of progress in the case resulted in a large and expected public outcry. Footage of outraged mothers, angry fathers, and concerned politicians consistently crowded the airwaves. On its own, though, this wore thin quickly as a news item. Soon panels of so-called experts were being engaged by the big networks to come up with answers of their own. Some of the theories offered by these groups bordered on outright lunacy but one I found credible was that Henderson had a secret nest somewhere, created years before his arrest, where he could hole up indefinitely if he was ever on the run. Though he had never gotten the opportunity to use it before he was detained, it would be his destination now that he had escaped. If it was true he could have it stocked with everything he might need for months. The Bureau wasn’t speculating about the likelihood of this but they weren’t denying the possibility either. With the resources they were putting into the hunt for him it seemed inconceivable that he was able to avoid detection for so long unless this, or something close to it, was the case.

  Callie had become increasingly anxious as the days wore on. She jumped alarmingly at the least innocuous noise and hadn’t slept decently since all this had started. Throughout the night she would wander the house, rechecking door and window locks, listening for telltale sounds of an intruder.

  And I was not much better. I had taken to wearing my shirt untucked to conceal my service weapon, a Glock .40 caliber handgun I wore in a holster at my back. At night it was never out of reach. In other circumstances I would have felt adequately prepared for whatever might be coming. But others had been guilty of underestimating Henderson’s capacity for cunning in the past. I was not going to make that mistake.

  Callie, always concerned about loaded guns in the house where Tanya might come across them, kept a Smith and Wesson .44 caliber Magnum in a locked box which was stored on an upper shelf in our bedroom closet. She carried the only key to the box with her at all times. She liked the Smith for it’s stopping power. If you hit an assailant anywhere with that thing it was going to do enough damage to seriously slow down an attack. And the truth was, despite her many years of experience as a police officer, my darling wife was not the most talented shooter in the world. If her aim had been a little better three and a half years earlier, in fact, everything we were now going through could have been avoided.

  Things went along pretty much unchanged for another month.

  Then, at two a.m. one muggy night as we both tossed and turned, struggling to find sleep, the phone rang. One ring, that was all. I picked up the bedside receiver but when I brought it to my ear there was nothing but the sound of static.

  Callie reached out in the dark and touched my arm. “It’s him,” she said, “I know it.”

  There was no mistaking to whom she was referring. “Come on, honey,” I said. “Just a misdial. Happens all the time.”

  “Not at two o’clock in the morning it doesn’t.”

  I had to admit, it wasn’t a common occurrence. Still, I chose not to get too wound up over a single incident of such unsubstantiated importance.

  But the next night, at exactly the same time, the phone rang again. One ring. And again I was greeted by static.

  When it happened on the third night in a row Callie professed absolute certainty it was her father. By then I was beginning to think she might be right.

  I phoned Tom Kilborn first thing in the morning and told him what had been occurring. “We’ll run a trace and let you know what it shows,” he promised.

  Within a few hours Kilborn reported back. “It’s damned suspicious, Jack, I have to say.”

  “I’m not surprised. What turned up?”

  “The three calls were all made from public telephone booths. The good news is that none of them are located anywhere near you. Whitetop, Virginia, where the last call was made, is at least six hundred miles from your place.”

  I knew damn well where Whitetop was and I could tell from his voice there was a ‘but’ coming. “And the bad news?”

  “All the calls were made from towns where Henderson has a history. The first came from Colville, Maine, the second from Richmond, Virginia, and the third from Whitetop.”

  “Each call a little closer to us,” I noted. “He’s letting us know it’s him and that he’s coming.”

  “It’s possible it’s just some whacko who knows the story and is getting his kicks by trying to rattle you guys,” Kilborn pointed out.

  “Yeah, it’s possible.” My tone let it be known I didn’t put much stock in that possibility.

  “We’ll have a tap installed on your phone so we can get quicker results. You never know, maybe we’ll be right on top of him if he’s stupid enough to phone again.”

  Henderson was a lot of things, I thought to myself. He was cunning, evil beyond imagining, and inhumanly sadistic. Argu
ably insane. How could anyone commit the atrocities he had been credited with if not insane? But he was not stupid. Never that.

  “I assume the cabin was checked out,” I said, referring to the cabin Henderson had been raised in and then used as his killing ground for dozens of torture/murders.

  “The cabin doesn’t even exist anymore,” Kilborn told me. “It was destroyed after Henderson went to prison. We didn’t want a bunch of drunk souvenir hunters crawling all over the place up there.”

  “Now that you mention it, I remember.”

  There was a pause before Kilborn spoke again. “Listen, Jack, the AD is on the line for me. I’ve gotta run.”

  Associate Directors, of course, demanded priority above all else. “Sure, Tom. Please keep in touch.”

  When I told Callie what Kilborn had reported the color drained from her face. I had never seen fear like that in her before.

  Without a word she went immediately to our bedroom and brought the gun box from the closet, placing it on an upper shelf in the kitchen.

  That night we laid awake waiting for, and fully expecting, another call. When 2 a.m. arrived we were holding our breaths but Henderson, once again, proved unpredictable. The phone remained mute.

  He had achieved his goal. We knew it was him, and we knew he was coming. We spent the rest of the night thinking about where he would be the next time we heard from him.

  4

  Everything we did now carried an undercurrent of powerful uneasiness. Every bush hid a potential killer. Every footstep we heard behind us while shopping was cause for trepidation. When and where would Henderson show up? The only thing we could count on was that it would be when and where we least expected him.