CAME A SHADOW (The Shadow Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  "Well, to hear Miles tell it the parallels between these two cases are almost too much to be coincidental," Jack explained. Much as Miles had done for him, Jack then ran through the list of similarities, comparing one case to the other.

  Bert heard him out, then shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. "Okay, I grant you it's strange but … it's coincidence. What else could it be?"

  Jack acknowledged Bert’s skepticism with a shrug. "Maybe you’re right. I don't know. But you knew pretty much everybody around here in those days and what I'd like is for you to give some hard thought to who is still around that could possibly fit the description of a suspect in these cases. Anybody that you may have harbored misgivings about back then, who is still around now. Miles is doing the same. You never know what might come of it."

  Bert frowned . “Miles has doubts after all these years that he fingered the wrong man for that crime?”

  “Yes, it seems so. And if he’s right, it opens up a whole new spectrum of possibilities.”

  "You're seriously thinking there might be some tie between these cases? That whoever was to blame for whatever happened to Libby is also responsible for Sophie?"

  "I just don't know, Mr. Crandall. But anything's possible."

  "Okay. I'll give it a try. What have we got to lose?"

  "Not a thing," Jack said. "I've been called back to Augusta again but I'll keep in touch with you." He handed Bert a card. "You can reach me anytime through this number."

  Bert walked Jack to the door. "I'm not real optimistic about this," he said, "but I'll do my best."

  Jack responded with a solemn nod. “That’s all I can ask.”

  For the rest of the day Bert was busy with one thing and another and hardly gave any thought at all to what Jack had asked of him. But later, as he prepared for bed, he was struck by a disconcerting memory.

  Most of the long night that followed was spent in somber reflection of the distant past.

  CHAPTER 14

  Back in New York, the rift between Brad and Samantha, already approaching cavernous proportions when they had left Maine, continued to deepen. They slept apart and spoke rarely. What little conversation they did engage in usually ended badly.

  The clothing business that Samantha had worked so hard to establish, that had consumed her for most of the previous three years, now held less interest for her than the nightly hockey scores.

  "If you’re not going back to work, we might as well think about selling the shop," Brad offered one night.

  Samantha didn’t even bother to look up. "Do whatever you want with it," she said.

  “Don’t you care what happens to it? You worked hard to get that business to where it is. You’ve got employees that---”

  “Sell it, give it away. I don’t care.”

  The next day he met with a commercial broker to discuss listing the business. The realtor pointed out that, without Sam in the creative hot seat, there really wasn’t anything to sell. “Liquidate the inventory and sublease the space,” was the best he could offer.

  Brad told Samantha that night what the broker had suggested.

  She acknowledged the news with a whispered, “Whatever,” and never mentioned it again.

  She had given up cooking entirely. Even preparation of the simplest meals seemed beyond her capabilities. Although Brad had never been much in the culinary department, he had little choice but to take on the role of meal preparer. Samantha rarely ate more than one or two bites of the concoctions he produced and her utter lack of concern for her own health was a constant source of distress for him.

  "If you don’t start eating something you’re going to get sick, Sam," he warned. "You're down to skin and bone already. You know, you'd probably feel better if you got out of the house. You need to get some fresh air."

  His lectures rarely elicited a response. He might as well have been addressing a piece of furniture.

  "Please, make an appointment with the doctor,” he implored her. “You've got to get some help."

  ****

  One day turned into the next. Week followed week. Months passed. “She should be getting better by now,“ Brad confided to Carl. “But she isn’t. In fact, nothing has changed with the possible exception that she’s worse than ever.”

  “Can’t you get her to go to a doctor?” Carl wondered.

  “I wish,” Brad said. “She won’t even discuss it.”

  “Don’t give up on her, Brad.”

  Brad was quiet for several moments. “I swore it would never happen,” he said finally, “but my determination to see her through her depression is beginning to wane.”

  “She’ll come around. Just be patient with her.”

  “You don’t know what it’s been like, Carl. We’re like strangers … worse than that actually. She would just ignore a stranger - me she hates the sight of.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s true. She blames me for what happened to Sophie. And I don’t think she’s ever going to find it in her heart to forgive me.”

  “But why would she blame you?”

  Brad sighed with disgust. “What’s the difference? She does, that’s all that matters.”

  “Maybe if I talked to her …”

  “Be my guest. You’ll be wasting your time, but feel free to try.”

  Later that week Carl stopped by the house while Brad was at work. Samantha answered his knock at the door with an expression of outright hostility. “Yes, Carl,” she said. “What is it?”

  Carl was shocked by her appearance. Sunken eyes, hollow cheeks. Stringy, unkempt hair. He’d have walked right by her on the street without recognizing her. “Sam, I was hoping I could have a talk with you.”

  “Believe me,” she said tiredly, “I know what you’ll say and I have no interest in hearing it.”

  “Please, Sam, let’s just--”

  “Goodbye, Carl,” she said, her tone more cruel than he would ever have imagined possible. “Don’t bother coming around again.” She closed the door before he could respond.

  ****

  Before the nightmare of Sophie’s disappearance Brad had never been interested in joining the office crowd for drinks after work. Getting home to his family had always seemed infinitely preferable to hanging out in smoky bars, making small talk with boozy acquaintances with whom he had little in common. But home held no appeal for him now. Evenings out became the norm, bar hopping a way of life. Anything was better than facing Samantha’s stony silences and sullen indifference to his presence.

  The fact that she was totally apathetic about his absences or his obvious inebriation when she observed it only made him drink that much more. After all, he had a double loss to compensate for. Samantha, on the other hand, may have lost her daughter but the loss of her husband was evidently of no consequence to her at all.

  It didn’t take long before his deteriorating personal life became apparent to everyone who knew him. His friends, always sympathetic and supportive as long as he was muddling through with some degree of equanimity, were now, one after another, taking pains to distance themselves from him. No one wanted to stay too close to a man heading for ruin.

  Inevitably, word spread among his financial circle. Clients began avoiding him; a few pulled their accounts from the firm.

  A confrontation with Carl - run ragged in a perpetual effort to keep the firm afloat - was inevitable. On an afternoon in late spring, he tapped on Brad’s office door. "We need to talk,” he said.

  Brad had been out of the office for most of the afternoon, ostensibly occupied with a business luncheon. In reality it had been little more than an excuse to booze away three hours with one of their less judgmental clients. He sat at his desk, barely able to stay awake. "Kinda busy right now,” he mumbled.

  Carl took in the bleary eyes, tousled hair, and crooked tie. He could smell the liquor from fifteen feet away. He entered Brad’s office, closed the door behind him, and leaned against it.

  “You realize, of
course, your drinking has gotten out of hand, Brad."

  “Tha’s ridiculous.”

  “Look at yourself for God’s sake.”

  "My drinking is none of your business, Carl." The raised voice and slurred words only serving to confirm what he was attempting to deny. Even he recognized the menacing tone in his voice as completely alien to the man he used to be.

  "None of my business?” Carl said. “I beg to differ. When you show up late in the morning with an obvious hangover and then chew out secretaries who are busting their asses to cover your mistakes, when you walk into a business meeting smelling like a brewery, it becomes my business. You’re costing us clients. If you don’t do something about the drinking you’ll bring this firm down. In case you've forgotten, we've worked bloody hard to get where we are and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand idly by and watch you ruin us."

  "You finished?"

  "No, I’m not," Carl snapped. He walked to the window, struggling to get his anger under control. When he spoke again his voice was calm, judicious. He addressed Brad’s reflection in the window. "We've been friends a long time. I’ve always valued our friendship as much as anything in the world. And, believe me, I know how tough the past few months have been on you. I’m not trying to make light of that. But surely you can see that if you continue on the way you're going it will lead to disaster. Are you willing to just give up on everything, to sacrifice what we've worked so hard for all these years? Are you willing to take me and everyone else here down with you?"

  A strained silence followed. Even the hum of office activity outside Brad’s office door seemed to abate. Part of him wanted to say, I don't give a damn. Just leave me alone. I've got nothing left to live for so why should I care what happens to anyone else. He nearly said it. The words were right there, ready to spill out of him. Somehow, he managed to hold on to some small semblance of sanity. "I'm sorry, Carl,” he choked out. “You're right, of course. I'll… you’re right, you’re right."

  Carl turned and looked directly into his friend’s eyes. What he saw left him far from convinced the matter had been resolved but, for the moment, he felt he had done all he could. "I'm here for you, Brad. You know that, right?"

  "I know," Brad whispered. "I'll be fine."

  After the talk with Carl it was clear that he couldn’t continue on the way he had been. But the drinking had a hold on him now and stopping was not an option he cared to consider. He was not unmindful of the fact that alcoholism ran rampant through his mother’s side of the family. Her father and two of her brothers had struggled with the disease all their lives, in one case tragically. On some level he acknowledged this truth but on another was convinced that, in his case, the problem was a temporary one he could manage with some creative thinking.

  The solution was simple enough. He would simply not drink during working hours. And if the urge to drink became impossible to ignore, he would leave the office for the day. Predictably, as time went on, he was spending more and more time away from the office.

  He was routinely drinking until late into the night. Sleep, in the conventional sense, was almost impossible, leaving him in a constant state of exhaustion. He talked his doctor into prescribing a strong sleeping medication. Then, so he could function at work, he took stimulants which counteracted the sleeping pills. Soon he was doubling up on the sleeping pills to offset the effect of the stimulants.

  He was eating poorly and losing weight. By mid-summer he had dropped twenty-five pounds and looked near death.

  ****

  The Chivas on the rocks was his third since arriving home from the office. "Anything new, Dad?" he said into the phone.

  "Not really." Bert said. "After Parmenter was called back to Augusta Callie just gave up, I think."

  "Yeah …"

  Bert regretted his words the moment they were out of his mouth. The last thing in the world he wanted was to add to his son's dismay. "But I'm working on something myself that might lead somewhere,” he added in a hopeful tone. “I'll tell you about it when I see you."

  "About the case, you mean?"

  "Let's leave it at that for now."

  "If you're on to something---"

  "It may be nothing, son. I don't want to say anything more until I know I'm heading somewhere meaningful."

  "Okay, but … what about Callie? Have you spoken with her?"

  "I see her now and then."

  "What does she think about your ideas?"

  "I haven't mentioned anything to her. Not yet."

  His father wasn’t the kind of man to be pushed. Brad sensed there was little to be gained by questioning him further.

  ****

  Serious bouts of depression plagued him as the year wore on. In lucid moments he would swear off the booze and drugs, only to descend into morbid self-pity when he caved in to the urges that tore at him continually.

  The people he had always counted on for support in the past were like strangers to him now. Samantha lived in a world of her own. Even Carl, who tried so hard to be loyal and sympathetic, was incapable of understanding the depths of his despair. There was still his father, of course, but the old man had been through enough in the past two years - losing his wife and his only granddaughter. What he didn’t need was the added burden of a son going to pieces on him.

  ****

  On the anniversary of Sophie's disappearance Brad arrived home from work earlier than usual, expecting the worst. He pulled into the driveway just as Samantha was backing her car out. He lowered his window. "Where are you going, Sam?"

  Refusing to meet his eyes she mumbled something unintelligible and drove off.

  There was a letter waiting for him on the dining room table. He knew, before reading it, that Sam would not be coming back. It said simply:

  It's over between us - we’ve both known it for a long time. Maybe, apart, we can begin to heal. I beg you not to try to contact me or to fight me on this.

  S.

  A week later a special delivery letter arrived at his office. Divorce proceedings were being initiated, citing irreconcilable differences.

  He waited until the new year to phone his lawyer, a long-time friend named Terry Levinson, directing him to prepare the necessary papers turning over all jointly-owned assets to Samantha.

  Levinson was outraged. "Jesus, Brad, I know you still have feelings for the woman but you're handing everything you have in the world over to her."

  "It’s the way I want it, Terry."

  Levinson was a small, prematurely balding man with a disarming smile. Despite his unimposing appearance he had a well-deserved reputation as a tenacious combatant in the courtroom. "I don't feel right about this, pal. I'm paid to protect my clients interests, not to---"

  "I don’t want an argument about this, ” Brad said, “Just do it." He hung up before Levinson could respond.

  CHAPTER 15

  With the financial arrangements for Samantha taken care of, Brad leased a one-bedroom apartment in an older three-story building not far from his office. The place was too small to accommodate much of his old furniture so he had ordered replacement pieces from a catalog. When the truckload of new furnishings arrived he had the deliverymen place them in the middle of the living room with the intention of deciding for himself where everything should go. After they left he sat down amid the disarray, suddenly aware of how little experience he had with common, household tasks like decorating and arranging furniture. A dark cloud of depression began to descend on him. He could see himself now as one of those pathetic bachelors he used to have such pity for.

  He needed a drink. He went to the little kitchen and unearthed a bottle of scotch. He poured a stiff drink and threw it back. Then two more. It occurred to him that if he could just talk to Samantha he could convince her that there was no need to go through with the divorce. They loved each other. He would learn to be more patient with her. They would work it out. If only he knew where to contact her. Before he knew it he was on the phone asking to speak with Fi
ona Dennison, Samantha’s lawyer. After identifying himself to Ms. Dennison’s secretary he was put on hold for five minutes. When she finally came on the line there was no hint of affability, despite the fact that he had met every one of Samantha‘s demands without a whisper of complaint. “Yes, Mr. Crandall,” she said, managing to sound thoroughly unhappy at the interruption to her day. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was hoping I might be able to get a number where I could reach Samantha,” he said. “There are some things I wanted to go over with her … about the divorce settlement.”

  “That’s why she has me for a lawyer, Mr. Crandall. What is it you’d like to discuss?”

  “It’s, uh, personal. If you could just give me her number.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  “It’s hardly impossible, Ms. Dennison. Why don’t you--”

  “Look, Mr. Crandall, let’s cut to the chase, shall we? I have absolutely no intention of putting you in touch with your wife. If she wanted to communicate with you she would do so. But it is abundantly clear to me, if not to you, that she has no such desire. Now, if there’s nothing further I’ll bid you a good day.”

  “I don’t think it’s asking too mu--”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Crandall.” The line went dead.

  He placed the phone on the receiver gently and sat down among his boxes and crates glassy-eyed, staring into space. His thoughts ran the gamut from sorrow to anger, coming to rest some hours later at somber acceptance of his circumstances.

  To his mild surprise and immense relief he awoke one morning to the realization that the ache occupying such a prominent place in his heart for so long was beginning to ease. He saw that, despite his earlier convictions to the contrary, life would in fact go on with or without Samantha. And if he was honest with himself he’d have to admit that she hadn’t been a part of his life in any real sense for over a year already.