A Shadow Fell Read online

  I didn’t like what I was hearing one bit. None of it had the ring of legitimacy. Confronting him on the matter at this point, however, seemed ill advised in the extreme. “Let’s go,” I said.

  Con had underestimated the distance to the campsite. It only took us about twenty minutes to reach it. As soon as we came upon it I knew everything was wrong. The site was open to the elements; there had been no effort made to conceal anything about the location. A large one-man tent stood a few feet from a rock-enclosed campfire in which a few dying embers still prevailed. Whoever had established this cozy little nest had been here for awhile. And there was no sign of a dirt bike.

  A man with a full grey beard, wearing a peaked hunter’s cap and checkered shirt, lay slouched against a fallen log with two bullet holes in his chest.

  He wasn’t dead but he wasn’t in good shape.

  Neither was he Reuben Henderson.

  36

  All my energy suddenly seemed to vacate my body. I was bone tired. I hadn’t slept much last night of course which accounted for some of it, but mostly it was the sheer sadness of the tragic circumstances I now found myself immersed in. I knelt down beside the poor bastard Con had shot and had a look at his wounds. They looked bad. Blood flowed freely from one hole dead centre in his chest and another a little lower and off to the left. I took a towel from my backpack and pressed it to the wounds, then tied them tightly with a belt. He opened his eyes briefly when I was done and mumbled something I didn’t understand. Even Winston seemed to understand the immensity of the tragedy that was playing out. He crouched beside me and whined softly.

  I looked at Con. “What the fuck were you thinking?” I seethed. “You must know this is not Henderson. This guy is at least twenty years younger for Christ’s sake.”

  Undoubtedly he did know but, for whatever his reasons, chose to act surprised. “You sure?” he asked casually.

  “Jesus,” I moaned. “Did you just walk into his camp and shoot him without even making an effort to confirm who he was?”

  Con shrugged unapologetically. “Looked like he was reaching for a gun ta me. I wasn’t gonna take no chances.”

  “You realize, of course, if he dies you’re going to have to answer to the law for this, right?”

  Con pushed out his chin and stared down his nose at me. “Weren’t my gun that shot him.”

  “What!?”

  “I ain’t going ta prison, amigo. Not for this, I ain’t. I was just trying ta help you, that’s all.”

  “Help me?” I said amazed. “By shooting an innocent camper? That’s how you’re trying to help me?”

  “Look,” Con said, “so I made a mistake. All we gotta do is finish him off and bury him. Ain’t no way anybody’s ever gonna find him way up here.”

  I shook my head in utter astonishment. “That’s your solution? Murder him?”

  “Looks like we’d be doing him a favor,” he said.

  It was all too clear there was no sense arguing with Con’s twisted logic. But it did beg the question of what to do. If Con decided to stick to his version of events it would be his word against mine. And even though he had a dubious past there was no denying my mental state was far from healthy. Given what I had gone through in the past few months it might be argued I was easily capable of making a misjudgment such as this.

  I hadn’t yet had the chance to check the Glock for bullets but I did have two spare magazines in my backpack. I didn’t know for sure whether or not Con was aware of these. I had never mentioned them but it was entirely possible he had gone through my things while I had slept one night. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I didn’t have the spare mags I thought I had. Con was no fool even if he was firing on fewer cylinders than normal. He may well have removed them at the same time he took the Glock. If so I was most likely in real trouble. I still felt there was at least a possibility that Con had his own weapon in his backpack. If that was the case he had used my weapon to kill the camper, intentionally or not, with the objective of pointing the finger at me for it if things went bad.

  In the ruse of going along with Con’s thinking and in order to give myself the opportunity to check my backpack I said, “Before we do anything I need to eat something. My blood sugar is plummeting.” I reached into one of the compartments on my pack, ostensibly searching for a high-energy bar. My heart sank like a rock in a shallow puddle.

  The two spare mags were indeed missing. I didn’t have to check the Glock to know it was empty too.

  37

  I withdrew an energy bar from my pack and kept the knowledge of the missing mags to myself. I had a strong feeling Con was laughing at my pretense of needing food but, if so, he was not obvious about it.

  “So what’s the call, amigo?” he said. His voice had a playful quality to it that was totally out of character to the situation we were in.

  After choking down my energy bar I said, “Let’s find out who this poor son-of-a-bitch is.”

  Con obliged by reaching into the back pocket of the guy’s jeans and pulling out a wallet. He flipped it open and extracted a driver’s license. “He’s from Nebraska. Name’s Eldon Walker. Guess he ain’t much of a walker no more, huh?” He threw the wallet on the ground near me.

  I picked up the wallet and thumbed through the contents. “Do you really find this situation humorous, Con?”

  “What’s done is done,” he responded. “Now, I say we get this fucker in the ground and get on with our search.”

  I stood, feeling much older than my years. “Just so I’ve got this straight,” I said, “you intend to kill this guy, then report it was me if we go to the law, is that right?”

  “Sorry about that, old son,” he answered in a frivolous tone, “but I already got the fuzz buzzing up my ass about my old lady. I don’t need no more shit like that in my life.”

  “You told me your wife was coming back home and you’d be able to put that problem to rest. So I’m guessing that was bullshit, huh?”

  He smiled at that. If it’s possible for a smile to be evil, then his was. “Yeah, well.”

  “So maybe it’s time you told me exactly what this whole charade of yours is about.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. What charade?”

  “First up, what’s with taking my gun and---”

  “I gave you your gun back, amigo.”

  “After you shot an innocent man with it. And then kept the ammo.”

  “What the fuck you want from me anyway?”

  “Give me back the bullets, Con.”

  “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I don’t think I can trust you now, man.”

  “You can’t trust me? That’s rich coming from you.”

  I had forced him into a corner and now I was about to find out just what I was dealing with. He reached into his pocket. I was hoping against hope that his hand would come out full of bullets. But that isn’t what happened. Instead he produced a Colt .45 and aimed it at my chest. “I guess this jig’s about up,” he said.

  “Con, what are you doing?”

  “This ain’t exactly the way I wanted this to go down,” he said. “But I guess I’m just gonna have ta improvise.” He pulled back the hammer on the Colt.

  “At least tell me why for Christ’s sake, Con. What the hell did I do to deserve this? I thought we were friends.”

  “Friends? No, man, we ain’t friends. The only thing I ever wanted from you is your wife. She don’t love you. Don’t you see that? I can give her what she needs. With you gone her and me can have a life together.”

  “You are totally fucking insane. What ever gave you the idea my wife would have anything to do with you?”

  “Don’t you remember how she took my hand when she first came out a that coma? It was me she reached out to, not you.”

  “So you think my wife is in love with you and you brought me up here to kill me?”

  “Not like this.
This wasn’t my plan. I wanted to find Henderson. Then I’d kill him and you both. Make it look like you guys fought it out and you both died.”

  “So how are you going to explain what happens here then?”

  “What’s to explain? I just dig a big hole and bury you both. I wasn’t here. You never came back from your search for the guy who killed your daughter. Let the cops think whatever they want. Whether they ever find Henderson or not they’ll figure he killed ya.”

  “Not much of a plan, Con. Seeing as the FBI knows I came up here with you.”

  That evil smile was back. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Nobody has seen us together. There’s nothing ta tie me ta this place.” He took aim.

  The sound of the gunshot surprised me. I had no idea I would live to hear the explosion that killed me. Or that I would feel no pain in the instant before I was sent into oblivion.

  I waited for my body to fall helplessly to the ground, for my world to turn to permanent darkness.

  And then I realized I hadn’t been shot at all.

  38

  The shot that was fired sent a bullet through the right side of Con’s head, exploding out the left side and leaving little that was recognizable as a face. It took a moment or so for my brain to process what had happened. When it did I moved to get my hands on Con’s weapon. I didn’t know who my savior was but I knew I’d feel a lot better if I had some form of self-defense at my disposal. As soon as I moved, however, an ominous voice called out from the woods nearby in a childish lullaby. “Uh uh uhuhhh.”

  I froze. There was no question to whom that voice belonged.

  I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t relieved to know I was still breathing, having survived the looming prospect of certain death that Con had presented, but there was not a soul on earth I felt less beholden to than the source of that voice. As I scanned the trees a form slowly began to materialize.

  Reuben Henderson sighted down the barrel of a bolt-action hunting rifle with a large scope attached to it. “Move slowly toward me,” he ordered. When I didn’t move he added in a soft and reasonable tone, “That wasn’t a request, Jack.”

  I had taken a half dozen steps when he called out again. “Stop. Now get down on your stomach, hands stretched out in front of you. Stay very still. If I see so much as a twitch I’ll…. Well, you know perfectly well what I’ll do, don’t you?”

  Logic dictated that my only hope of staying alive was to do exactly as I was being told. But there suddenly raged within me the irrational need – an almost overwhelming craving - to charge at my adversary without regard to the consequences. My earlier resolve to let the law handle Henderson dissolved like a puff of smoke in a high wind. I wanted vengeance - more than I thought it was possible to want anything.

  It was very clear in my mind that one of two things was surely about to happen. I would either somehow miraculously find a way to turn the tide of events in my favor and kill Henderson … or I would die in the process of trying.

  Once before I had been in the gun sights of this maniac. Then, I had been saved by the timely arrival of Callie. If she had not shown up when she had I most surely would have died within moments. I had been extraordinarily fortunate.

  But it was all too clear there would be no one arriving to save me now.

  Part Five

  Vengeance Denied

  39

  Callie woke up one morning thinking of a time Jack and she had sat on the verandah of their home. It was late afternoon and they were drinking coffees while doing a crossword puzzle together. Not a memory of any great significance until, in one powerful instant, she realized the event she was thinking of had occurred pre-coma. Post-coma being, until now, the sum total of her memory experience.

  From that point on the memories gathered speed at an incredible rate as she allowed her mind to flood with all that had been lost over the last few months.

  Doctor Salouf had not spoken directly of the events that had caused her loss of memory, instead skirting the issue with such generalizations as ‘your memory loss occurred as a result of an assault.’ Now, with everything suddenly coming back to her with astonishing speed and clarity, she still could not remember the events leading up to the assault of which he had spoken. But she did remember Tanya. And when she did she knew instinctively that something was terribly wrong. Why hadn’t Tanya come to see her in the hospital? Where was she? The logical conclusion was that she had been with Callie when the assault had occurred.

  Her therapy had progressed to the degree that she was nearly ready to be released from the hospital. If her husband had gotten back from whatever business it was that had taken him out of town she would have been preparing for her departure at this moment.

  A nurse entered her room. “Glenda,” she said, “my memory is returning to me. I know I have a daughter. Tanya. But I can’t remember if …” And then, suddenly, an image of a gas station. Helping Tanya wash up. Opening a restroom door. Then nothing but a strong sense of anxiety. Is this where the assault occurred? And what of Tanya?

  “Okay, Callie,” nurse Glenda said soothingly, “just take it easy. I’m going to get Doctor Salouf. He’ll help you.”

  She rushed out and within a minute or so Doctor Salouf came quickly into her room. “Well, well,” he said, beaming widely. “How wonderful to see that you ---”

  “Doctor,” she interrupted, “tell me where my daughter is. Please. Is she okay?”

  He looked saddened. It was not difficult to see that the news he was about to impart would be bad. He took Callie’s hand in his. “Let’s sit down,” he said. “We have much to talk about.”

  * * *

  Doctor Salouf was honest and direct in explaining the circumstances under which Callie had ended up in a coma and her ill-fated daughter had been killed at the hands of Reuben Henderson. Callie was spared the details of Tanya’s death and didn’t press beyond wanting to know if she had died quickly. Doctor Salouf assured her, quite untruthfully in point of fact, that she had almost certainly done so.

  Following her talk with Doctor Salouf Callie fell into a deep and profound despair. She was alone. Her daughter murdered and her husband missing. How could she possibly expect to cope now in a world as foreign and hostile as this? On top of everything else, her father, the fiend responsible for the tragic state of her existence, remained at large.

  When efforts to reach Jack met with no success hospital officials contacted Miles and Betty Wilson, listed as the closest thing Callie had to family, to advise them of her imminent release. When Miles and Betty arrived to pick up Callie the meeting was a poignant one. A sudden deluge of new memories, most of which were good, but many that were not, surfaced. Not the least, of course, being those associated with the capture of an infamous child killer to whom it was her appalling misfortune to be related. The same vile creature that had been allowed to escape from custody and murder her child and whom her husband was very likely in pursuit of at that moment. That was, of course, assuming he was still alive.

  Given everything Callie had so recently come to know, Miles and Betty insisted that Callie accompany them to Colville and stay until Jack’s circumstances were determined. Callie did not put up even the slightest opposition to this arrangement. Although she had regained her ability to remember most of what had occurred in her past she was often frustrated by her inability to deal with matters requiring any degree of complex reasoning. Doctor Salouf had warned her about this and had explained that this condition may or may not improve with time. She knew that she spoke in a slower, more controlled manner than she had before and that, in doing so, she was made to appear feeble and unintelligent. But she found it was crucial to think things through before speaking her thoughts aloud, however slow-witted it made her sound.

  In the circumstances she was quite content to let gentle and compassionate friends care for her.

  40

  When almost a month went by and nothing was heard from Jack, the FBI finally got serious about trying to find
him. Two agents came to Colville to interview Callie. Harvey Blackmore and Vincent Colletti were career agents with over twenty years experience each. Both were in their fifties, balding and going to fat. Neither of them knew Jack personally although Blackmore had met him briefly a dozen years earlier during a major drug operation that had involved agents from a number of field offices.

  “Mrs. Parmenter,” Blackmore said, “is there anything you can think of that might help us locate Jack?”

  “I’m sure you’re aware of my condition up until a couple of weeks ago,” Callie answered slowly. “I have absolutely no idea what Jack might be up to.”

  “Were you acquainted with your neighbor, a Mr. Conrad Edgerton?” Colletti asked.

  “I’ve met him,” Callie responded. “Very briefly. Why do you ask?”

  “We’ve learned that Mr. Edgerton is also missing. As far as we’ve been able to determine, Edgerton and Jack disappeared at approximately the same time.”

  “That’s very strange,” Callie said. “Jack didn’t know him at all as far as I recall.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly the case,” Blackmore said. “We do know that Jack and Edgerton were keeping company. It’s entirely possible they left home together for places unknown in search of your father.”

  “I’m totally surprised at this,” Callie said.

  “We’re a little concerned,” Blackmore continued, “ in that Edgerton is a suspect in the disappearance and possible murder of his wife. This is not a guy Jack would have been in the habit of befriending.”

  “But Jack didn’t know anything about this,” Callie said.

  “Actually,” Colletti said, “he did. Our agents met with Jack and advised him of our suspicions about Edgerton several weeks before he disappeared.”

  “What we suspect,” Colletti continued, “is that Edgerton convinced Jack he might be able to find your fa---”