Shadow Man (6 page)

One deep breath and I move through the door.

It’s not a big office. Just the four of us, desks and computer stations, a small acting conference room, phones. Corkboards covered with photos
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of death. It looks no different now than when I was here six months ago. But the way I feel, I might as well be walking on the moon. Then I see them. Callie and Alan, backs to me, talking to each other as they point at one of the corkboards. James is there, focused with his usual cold intensity on a file that lays open on the desk in front of him. It’s Alan who turns and sees me first. He sees me, and his eyes open wide, his mouth drops, and I am bracing myself for a look of revulsion. He laughs out loud.

“Smoky!”

It is a voice filled with joy, and in that moment, I am saved.

6

D
AMN, HONEY-LOVE,
you won’t have to dress up for Halloween anymore.” This is Callie. What she says is shocking, crass, and unfeeling. It fills me with an easy joy. If she’d done anything else, I probably would have burst into tears.

Callie is a tall, skinny, leggy redhead. She looks like a supermodel. She’s one of those beautiful people; staring at her too long is like looking into the sun. She’s in her late thirties, has a master’s in forensics with a minor in criminology, is brilliant, and lacks any social veneer at all. Most people find her intimidating. Many decide, on first blush, that she’s uncaring, maybe even cruel. This couldn’t be further from the truth. She is loyal to an extreme, and her integrity and character couldn’t be tortured out of her. She is blunt, forever truthful, brutal in her observations, and refuses to play games, political, PR, or otherwise. She would also put herself in front of a bullet for anyone she calls a friend.

One of Callie’s most admirable features is the one that’s easiest to miss—her simplicity. The face she shows to the world is the only one she has. She doesn’t believe in self-importance and has no patience with those who do. This is probably the crux of what confuses those who judge her harshly: If you can’t take her poking fun at you, she’s not going to lose any sleep over your discomfort. Lighten up or get left
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behind, because—as she likes to say—“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re of no use to me.”

It was Callie who found me in the aftermath of Joseph Sands. I was naked and bleeding, screaming and covered with vomit. She was dressed to kill, as always, but she didn’t hesitate to gather me in her arms and hold me while she waited for the ambulance. One of the last things I remember before I passed out was the sight of her beautiful tailored suit, ruined by my blood and tears.

“Callie . . .”

This reproval comes from Alan, quiet, serious, to the point. Alan’s way. Alan is a huge, scary-looking African-American. He’s not just big, he is gargantuan. He is a mountain with legs. His scowl has caused more than one suspect in an interrogation room to wet himself. The irony, of course, is that Alan is one of the kindest, gentlest people I have ever known. He has a tremendous patience I have always admired and aspire to, and he brings this to our cases. He never tires of going through the evidence, of examining the smallest thing. Nothing bores him when he is tracking a killer. And his eye for detail has broken more than one case. Alan is the oldest of us, in his mid-forties, and he brought ten years of experience as a Los Angeles homicide detective with him when he joined the FBI.

A new voice. “What are you doing here?” If displeasure was a musical instrument, this would be a symphony.

It’s said without preamble or apology; blunt, like Callie, but without her humor. This comes from James. We call him Damien behind his back, after the character in
The Omen,
the son of Satan. He’s the youngest of us all, only twenty-eight, and he’s one of the most irritating, unlikable people I’ve ever known. He grates on you, sets your teeth on edge, and infuriates. If I ever want to piss someone off, James is the gas to throw on the fire.

James is also brilliant. That off-the-charts, white-hot nova kind of brilliant. He graduated from high school at fifteen, got perfect scores on the SATs, and was wooed by every college worth a damn in the nation. He picked the one with the best criminology curriculum and proceeded to burn his way through to a PhD in four years. Then he joined the FBI, which had been his goal all along.

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When he was twelve, James lost his older sister to a serial killer with a thing for blowtorches and screaming young women. He decided he was going to work in this office the day they buried her. James is a closed and faceless book. He seems to live for just one thing—what we do. He never jokes, never smiles, never does anything unnecessary to the job at hand. He doesn’t share his private life or anything else that would give a clue to his passions, likes, dislikes, or tastes. I don’t know what kind of music he enjoys, what movies he prefers to watch, or even if he does.

It would be too simple and neat to think of him as just efficient and logic-driven. No, there is a hostility to James that comes out in sharp bursts. His disapproval can be acrid, and his thoughtlessness is legendary. I can’t say that he takes joy in the discomfort of others; I would say instead that he just doesn’t care about it one way or the other. I think James is forever angry at a world where individuals like the one who killed his sister can exist. Even so, I long ago stopped forgiving him for himself. He’s too much of an ass.

But he is brilliant, a brilliance forever blinding those around him, like a permanent camera flash. And he shares an ability with me that ties us together, a gift that creates an umbilicus between us, that gives me an evil twin. He can get inside the mind of a killer. He can slide into the nooks and dark places, consider the shadows, understand the evil. I can do it too. It’s not uncommon for us to end up working together on certain parts of a case, in a very intimate sense. During those times, we get along like oil and ball bearings, smooth, flowing, unstoppable. All the rest of the time, being around him is about as pleasant as someone sanding me like a two-by-four.

“Nice to see you too,” I reply.

“Hey, asshole,” Alan purrs, a low chord of menace. James folds his hands in front of him and gives Alan a cold, direct look. It’s a trait James has that I have to admire: Even though he’s only five foot seven and maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, he’s almost impossible to intimidate. Nothing seems to scare him. “It was just a question,” he replies.

“Well, how about you drink a nice big cup of shut the fuck up?”

I place a hand on Alan’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

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They glare at each other for a moment longer. It’s Alan who breaks away with a sigh. James gives me one long, appraising look, then turns back to the file he was reading.

Alan shakes his head at me. “Sorry.”

I smile. How can I explain to him that even this, those Damien ways, is somehow a
right
thing right now? It is something that is still “the way things used to be.” James still pisses me off, and this is a comfort. I decide to change the subject. “So what’s new around here?”

I walk all the way into the office, scanning the desks and the corkboards. Callie has been running things while I’ve been gone, and she takes the lead in responding.

“It’s been quiet for us, honey-love.” Callie calls everyone honey-love. As legend goes, she has an actual written reprimand on file for calling the Director honey-love. It’s a complete affectation, taken on to amuse herself. Callie isn’t Southern in the slightest. It annoys some people to no end; to me it’s just Callie. “Nothing serial, two abductions. We’ve been working on some of the older, colder cases.” She smiles. “Guess all the bad guys went on vacation with you.”

“How did the abductions turn out?” Child kidnappings are part of the butter on our bread, and are something dreaded by all decent men and women in law enforcement. They are rarely about money. They are about sex and pain and death.

“One recovered alive, one recovered dead.”

I stare at the corkboards, not really seeing them. “At least both were recovered,” I murmur. Far too often, this is not the case. Anyone who thinks no news is good news has never been the parent of a kidnapped child. In this case, no news is a cancer that does not kill but instead hollows out the soul. I have had parents coming to see me over the years, hopeful for news of their child, news I didn’t have. I have watched them get thinner, more bitter. Seen hope die in their eyes, and gray hairs cover their heads. In those cases, finding the body of their child would be a blessing. It would at least let them grieve with certainty. I turn to Callie. “So how do you like being the boss?”

She gives me a patented, pretend-haughty Callie smile. “You know me, honey-love. I was born to be royalty, and now I have the crown.”

Alan snorts at this, followed by an actual guffaw.

“Don’t listen to this peasant, dear,” Callie says with disdain.
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I laugh, and it’s a good laugh. A real one that catches you by surprise the way a laugh ought to. But then it continues a little longer than it should, and I’m horrified to feel tears welling up in my eyes.

“Oh, shit,” I mumble, wiping my face. “Sorry about that.” I look up at them and give them both a weak smile. “It’s just really good to see you guys. More than you know.”

Alan, the man-mountain, moves to me, and without warning, wraps me in those tree-trunk arms. I resist for only a moment before hugging him back, my head against his chest.

“Oh, we know, Smoky,” he says. “We know.”

He lets me go, and Callie steps forward, pushing him aside.

“Enough touchy-feely,” she snaps. She turns her head to me. “Let me take you to lunch. And don’t bother trying to say no.”

I feel tears coming again, and all I can manage is a nod. Callie grabs her purse, then grabs my arm, and hustles me toward the door. “Be back in an hour,” she calls over her shoulder. She shoves me out the door, and once it closes, the tears begin to flow freely. Callie gives me a little sideways hug.

“Knew you wouldn’t want to start bawling in front of Damien, honey-love.”

I laugh through my tears and just nod, taking the tissue she gives me, and letting her strength lead me in my moment of weakness.