Shadow Image (32 page)

Brenna focused on her breathing, trying to calm herself, listening to the agitated voices coming from just around the corner of the house. Something snapped, a branch maybe? She tried to remember what was there, knew only that Alton Staggers kept an apartment above the Underhill estate's garage.

Think. Her advantage was surprise, assuming Staggers hadn't been watching her the whole time on the security monitors. Then again, maybe he was out looking for her. When her breathing was steady and the blood roaring in her ears had slowed, she closed her eyes and listened for clues.

“Tommy's a boy.” A familiar voice.

“So.”

“So, I'm Tommy. You have to be the pink ranger.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

Brenna lowered the gun and edged toward the corner of the house, stunned. She leaned forward and peeked just to make sure she was right.

Taylor was maybe forty feet away, snared in a bush just below one of the garage's second-story windows. Even in the dark, even as he thrashed to free himself from the tangled branches, Brenna recognized the hooded white sweatshirt her son had worn to school that morning. Annie was about ten feet above him, inching down a knotted rope of bedclothes, curtains, towels, and blue jeans, hissing: “Could you make any
more
noise?”

Brenna stepped around the corner into plain view. “Guys!” she said.

Annie dropped to the ground and fell backward, but stood immediately in a rough approximation of an
Action Rangers
karate stance, panting and ready for action. She squinted and finally focused on Brenna, who raised a finger to her lips and waved them over, realizing too late the gun was still in her hand. Annie's smile lit up the night as she pulled Taylor from the bush.

Her son ran into her arms, crying, with Annie close behind. Brenna hugged them both against the corner of the house, held them until Annie pulled away.

“Can I hold the gun?” she asked.

Brenna shoved it into her sweatshirt pouch. “You're both okay?” she whispered.

They nodded. “Mr. Robbins said he'd take us home, but he brought us here,” Annie said. “Then he said he'd be right back, but he never came. And he locked us in.”

“So you were up there the whole time?”

“Plus, he wears too much cologne or something. Gag.”

Taylor wiped his eyes. “But he's got really cool stuff in his car. He showed us.”

Brenna looked back at the garage, at the makeshift rope. “That was a really great idea.”

Annie shrugged, rolled her eyes. “Indian Princesses? My fire-safety badge? Like, duh.”

Brenna hugged them again. Then she said, “Let's go.” They moved quietly through the gardens, away from the house and toward the low corner of the walled property where she'd first come in. She looked back just as the pale glow from the rear den disappeared. Somebody inside had turned off the TV.

Through the Explorer's open window, Christensen could smell both. He steered along Fox Chapel Road, straining to hear the dialogue between Annie and Taylor in the backseat, enjoying the tortured logic of their discussion about earthworms. They'd watched a documentary about composting last night, alternately fascinated and horrified, and by this morning had decided there was big money in worm farming. The ecological advantages of composting were lost already. They were far more interested in opening Shadyside's only live-bait shop.

“You're not talking,” Brenna said.

“I'm listening.”

“You're avoiding.”

“Think you could be happy filling bait cups? They'll only be open after school.”

She rolled her eyes and turned away, watching the passing landscape. Developers were turning Fox Chapel's peripheral property into just another bedroom community with a high-status mailing address. The grand estates remained, scattered and isolated, but each construction season brought more backhoes, more foundations, more custom homes. Fake Tudor country manors and suspiciously ancient Tuscan villas were sprouting like mushrooms.

“Good God, look at that one,” he tried. “Are skylights and a basketball court pretty standard in a French Provincial?”

Brenna ignored him. She was right. He wasn't talking to her, at least not about anything important. An old habit, one he was trying to break, but it was too soon, too raw, too scary. Combining their families had been a new beginning for both of them, and neither had taken that step casually. For five years he'd seen her through a lover's eyes, accepting her career and ambition as a strength rather than a weakness. Now, he wasn't sure. The defense attorney plays a critical role in the justice system; he understood and appreciated that. But he understood, too, that defense attorneys can choose who they will and will not defend. As the Underhill nightmare unfolded, Brenna had made selfish choices, choices that might have come at an unthinkable price.

“Bren?”

“Hmm?” Still looking out the window.

“I just need time to sort it out, that's all.”

“I know.”

She was angry at herself; she'd said as much. For letting flattery blind her. For overlooking the Underhills' calculation in hiring a well-known caregiver advocate as their defense attorney. For not anticipating that they might use her own child at the end.

“Staggers is talking,” she said suddenly. “Or so I've heard.”

“About?”

“Leigh Underhill, mostly. He's copped to the cover-up killings—Maura, Bostwick, and the Chembergos—and to shoving Floss over the rail. Not much else he could do once the cops found his skin under her fingernails and that scratch on his forearm. But he's saying Leigh pulled all the strings.”

“Convenient.”

“Not unusual, though. Whenever these guys talk, surprise! The mastermind is usually a corpse.”

Christensen flashed on a scene, looking down from seventeen stories up onto the patterned concrete walkways and spotlit fountains of Underhill Square. Leigh Underhill had landed on the overhanging roof of the hotel's rear entrance. The helicopter's beam had tracked her all the way down.
Real TV
was having a field day with it.

“And Vincent?” he said.

“Good old Staggers.” Brenna shook her head. “Loyal to the end. Vincent didn't know a thing.”

“Think he'll get away with that?”

She shrugged, still not looking at him. “Maybe. It's the O. J. problem: How could someone so famous and likable do such a thing? Not sure jurors would ever buy the former governor consenting to a hit on his wife.”

“They'd need to understand Alzheimer's,” he said, “how little of a person it can leave behind.”

He eased the Explorer onto Silver Spur Road, crossing an old stone bridge, looking for an address.

“What about Raskin?”

“No idea. They're working it to see how much he knew. I'm guessing a lot. He and Leigh are charter members of the Machiavelli Fan Club.” She waved him on. “About a half-mile, straight. When you see the stone pillars and a gate on the right, pull in. Know what else Staggers is saying?” She turned and cocked her head toward the backseat, where the debate had moved on to the miracles of an earthworm's digestive tract. “Taking them was totally his idea.”

“Staggers?”

“Strange guy.”

“You get that with psychopaths.”

“I mean, he told the cops this long story about this seminar he's been taking. Effective Decision-Making, or something. To help develop leadership skills. He had this assignment: Identify a problem, find a solution, and take the initiative.”

Christensen took his foot off the gas, wincing at the twinge in his damaged ligaments. The car slowed. This was bizarre. “So taking the kids—”

She nodded. “Just a guy trying to show a little initiative at work. Cops don't think he had time to even tell anybody. Just dropped them out here and headed off to find Bostwick in the mountains.”

Christensen rewound the scene in the penthouse, recalling the blank looks he got from the Underhills each time he asked about the kids. “I think I believe him,” he said.

“Here.” Brenna pointed to a short drive leading to an enormous iron gate. Beyond it, a driveway curved up and into a property that seemed obsessively private. “Roll down your window and wait.”

“How will they know we're here?”

“They'll know.” Brenna pointed out the cameras on top of the pillars, in the trees.

They waited. Thirty seconds. A minute.

“When Mr. Robbins brought us here the gate just opened,” Annie said.

“He let me push the button,” Taylor said.

“No.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“There's a call button over there on that pillar,” Christensen said. “I don't think anybody's watching.” He stepped out, crossed in front of the Explorer and pressed the glowing red button. An amplified voice burst through the speaker.

“Who's calling?” A woman. One of Floss's aides, he guessed.

“Is this Paige?”

“Hi. Who's this?”

“Jim Christensen. We brought something for Mrs. Underhill.”

Long silence. What were the chances she remembered meeting him at Harmony, or his name? Or would she recognize his name from Myron Levin's overwrought, overhyped Channel 2 news exclusives of the past three days?

“I suppose we could leave it at the gate, if you'd prefer. But I was hoping—”

Without a sound, the gate began to move. He climbed back into the driver's seat as it yawned open. “Not sure what this means,” he said, “but here we go.”

He felt as if he were moving into the pages of a shelter magazine. The driveway wound through a copse of trees, over a wooden bridge, through an expanse of carefully cultivated meadow. Just past that, at the edge of a commanding view of forever, the house. He parked in the empty spot near the garage. His was the only car in sight.

“You guys climbed out of there?” he said, pointing to one of the garage's second-story windows.

“Easy,” Annie said.

“My idea,” Taylor said.

“Was not.”

“Was too.”

“Guys,” Christensen said, turning around, “that was very brave. You used your imaginations. Very cool.”

“We're really proud of you,” Brenna added.

Both kids beamed. “My idea,” Taylor said.

“My knots.”

“I helped.”

Christensen cut off the debate with a wave of his hand. “Wait here.”

He stepped out and opened the Explorer's rear gate. From inside, he grabbed the handle of the aluminum case they'd bought that morning and pulled it out. Brenna joined him, and the house's front door opened just as they closed the tailgate. Twenty yards away, Paige wheeled Floss's chair onto the stone landing. In the old woman's good arm, a cigar the size of a baby's arm.

“Thanks for letting us come up,” Christensen said.

Paige shrugged. “It's just us now, except for the lawyers and the relief nurse who does nights. Don't tell anybody I let you in, okay?”

“Why did you?” Christensen asked.

The nurse nodded toward Floss.

“You're the man from Harmony,” the old woman said suddenly, tapping an inch of ash from the tip of her stogie. It fell onto the flagstones. “I remember you.”

The nicotine was working its strange magic on Floss Underhill's faulty synapses, but he knew it was temporary. Hope, even false hope, wasn't a luxury that Alzheimer's allowed for long. He bent down so they were face-to-face. “Hell of a cigar you've got there, Mrs. Underhill.”

“Havana,” she said, and took a long puff. The three of them watched her savor it until the silence grew awkward.

“We brought you this,” Christensen said, setting the case in her lap. Floss stared at it, at the heavy buckles that kept it shut. She'd need both hands to open it, and neither one was available. “May I?” he asked.

She nodded.

The buckles snapped open, but he left the top closed, stepped back and took Brenna's hand. She squeezed. After a confused glance, Floss stuck the cigar between her teeth and lifted the case's top with her uninjured hand. Tubes of watercolor paint lay in neat rows, arranged by color in shades stretching from one end of the spectrum to the other. In the front compartment, a dozen new brushes of varying lengths and widths lay crosshatched and ready. A sketch pad fit neatly into the underside of the lid.

Floss scanned it all, her eyes growing wide, then scanned the watercolor set again. Suddenly that face, normally so unreadable, transformed. The old woman snatched the Cuban from her mouth and flat-out grinned.

Tricia Winklosky of the John Douglas French Center for Alzheimer's Disease in Los Alamitos, California, was kind enough to let me impose on her art class and patiently answered all my questions. Other staff members at the French Center provided me with useful background on the nature of the disease and its predictable stages.

Pamela L. Hess, a clinical evaluator at the Harmarville Rehabilitation Center near Pittsburgh, shared her time and expertise about that wonderful facility. Her assistance was critical in helping me imagine the fictional Harmony Brain Research Center.

Many other people helped in less specific but critically important ways.

Susan Ginsburg of Writers House is more than just my agent; she is my mentor. The value of her contributions to this book, and to my education in general, is immeasurable.

I'll forever be grateful to Berkley Senior Editor Hillary Cige for her early faith in my stories and her insights into their execution, as well as to the many enthusiastic booksellers who have put my work into the hands of readers. Copyeditor Amy J. Schneider was remarkably thorough, and her work is much appreciated.

The members of my monthly writing groups have been typically generous with their time, support, and advice.

Sherley Uhl taught me much about western Pennsylvania politics during my years as a reporter there, and he did it with unparalleled style. Patrick J. Kiger, another original, first showed me how much fun it can be to break the rules imposed by journalism professors and newspaper editors. I salute them both.

Publisher Ruth Ko and the staff of
Orange
Coast
magazine tolerated my constant fatigue as I wrote this book and its predecessor, and I suspect that, at times, my dual careers may have increased their burden. If that's the case, they have my sincere apologies. And if the climactic scenes of this book succeed, they do so thanks to the early suggestions of former
Orange
Coast
managing editor Allison Joyce.

As grateful as I am to those people, none of them bore the additional burden of hearing my alarm clock go off each day at 4
A.M.
or, two hours later, finding me dazed at the computer in my smelly blue bathrobe. That grim duty fell to my beloved wife, Judy, to whom I dedicate this book, and to our children, Lanie and Parker. They are my strength.

M. J. S.