James Swain - Shadow People

First things first, Peter thought. “The creepy guy behind me on line is a killer.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I read his mind. He shot a guy in Hell’s Kitchen Friday night. His victim was left lying in an alley. If you don’t grab him now, he’s going to escape.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Positive. I saw the whole thing clearly.”

“How do I prove this?”

“He stole his victim’s wallet. He’s still carrying it.”

“Wait here. I’m going to go arrest the son of a bitch.”

Most criminals were stupid. The man in line was no exception. His victim’s ID was still in his wallet when Schoch arrested him.

Schoch was beaming as they sat in her tiny cubicle in Homicide. Her desk was as neat as a pin, which could not be said of the desks around her. She offered him a soft drink.

“No, thanks. Let me tell you why I’m here,” Peter said. “I’ve been having some problems lately, and I think they stem from the night my parents were murdered. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind. It will help me sort things out.”

Schoch leaned back in her chair. “What kind of problems?”

“Anger issues.”

“That’s not uncommon for victims of violent crimes.”

“These are extreme.”

“You’re becoming violent?”

“Close enough. Will you help me? Please?”

Her face softened, if just a little bit. “All right, fire away. What do you want to know?”

“Did I become violent the night my parents died?”

“No. You cried a lot at the station house, but that was it.”

He thought back to what he knew about his demon. It came out right at the moment he became angry, like a spark turning to a flame. “I mean at the scene of the crime. Did I do anything out of the ordinary?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Schoch replied.

“But you were the first responder. You would have seen how I was acting. Try to remember. It’s very important to me.”

“I don’t know if I ever told you this, but when I first got to the scene, you weren’t there,” Schoch said. “I was a foot cop working Times Square with my partner. A call came in that a man and his wife had been abducted in an alley beside the Shubert Theatre. We got to the scene as fast as we could, and discovered there were plenty of eyewitnesses. We took their statements, and every single one of them said there had been a little boy. Well, there was no little boy.”

“I wasn’t there?”

“No, and we looked high and low for you. You vanished.”

“Then how did I show up at the station house?”

“A man brought you. I remember him quite clearly. He had snow-white hair and was theatrical looking. I pegged him for an actor. He said he’d found you wandering the streets.”

“Did you get his name?”

“No. It was weird. He came into the lobby and handed you off to me. You were in a state of shock and not communicating. While I was watching you, he disappeared.”

He disappeared? Peter felt the invisible stab to his heart. The physical description matched that of Max, his teacher. He took a deep breath before continuing. “How long I was gone?”

Schoch had to think. “The call came in at ten o’clock at night, and you showed up at the station house at around three A.M.”

Five whole hours. That was a long time. Yet it made sense, the pieces of the puzzle falling together, the empty holes filling in. Right as his parents were abducted, he’d looked into his mother’s eyes, and had known that he was never going to see her or his beloved father again. He’d known his parents were about to die, just as they’d known. A shared truth had never been more painful. And with that terrible knowledge had come an anger so great that the little boy in pajamas who’d maimed a burglar had gone on a rampage that had lasted into the small hours of the night. Once the rampage was over, he’d somehow ended up with Max, his parents’ dearest friend.

There was no doubt in his mind this is what had happened that awful night. The only question was, how much damage had he caused?

Peter sat on the edge of the detective’s desk and tried to act calm, even though his heart was racing out of control. “I have another question. I know this is going to sound strange.”

“I’m sure it isn’t anything I haven’t heard before,” Schoch replied.

“The night my parents died, were there other deaths in the city that you didn’t solve?”

“Deaths? Do you mean murders?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded.

“That’s a strange question,” she conceded. “Why do you want to know that?”

The detective wouldn’t have believed him if he’d told her, so he said instead, “I’ve been having some weird dreams lately that concern that night. I’ve been wondering if the things I’m seeing in my dreams might have actually happened.”

“Fair enough. Let’s ask Dag. He’ll know.”

Schoch told Peter that her toothpick-chewing partner, Dag, had recently been assigned to work on a slew of cold cases from that year, and he’d be the person to ask. She called Dag on her intercom. “You busy? I need a favor.”

“What’s going on,” Dag replied over the squawk box.

“Peter Warlock is here. He needs our help.”

Moments later, Detective Sal Dagastino, known as Dag to his friends, entered the cubicle and pumped Peter’s hand. “How’s life in the fast lane?” he asked.

“Traveling at the speed of sound,” Peter replied.

“I need to score four tickets for Saturday night’s show,” Dag said without missing a beat. “My in-laws are coming to town, and I want to show them a good time.”

“Consider it done. You can pick them up at Will Call. Will third row center do the trick?”

“Perfect. Now it’s my turn. What do you need?”

“I was wondering if there were any unsolved murders or violent crimes which took place the night my parents died. Detective Schoch said you’ve been working cold cases lately.”

“Peter was roaming the city that night and might have seen something,” Schoch explained.

As a rule, cops did not share information about open investigations. But Peter had helped Dag and Schoch solve a difficult murder case not long ago, and gained their trust. The toothpick twirled between Dag’s teeth as he considered their visitor’s request.

“There were several violent killings in the city that night that were never solved,” Dag said. “We recently reopened them because of a new DNA test called ‘scraping.’ Scraping lets us test for DNA in places we weren’t able to test before.”

Peter swallowed hard. Several violent killings. Were they his doing?

“Were the cases linked?” he asked.

“They sure were. All our victims had skin underneath their fingernails which wasn’t theirs,” Dag said. “With scraping, we were able to find DNA, and compare it. The same assailant was responsible, and might be a serial killer. Kind of scary to think this person has been roaming around the city for the past eighteen years and we didn’t know it.”

Pools of black opened up before Peter’s eyes, and he would have liked nothing better than to jump through one of them, and disappear. He felt the weight of Dag’s stare, and realized the detective was waiting for a response. If the police shared information with you, they expected you to give something in return, and he said, “The memories from that night have recently been coming back to me. Maybe while I was roaming the city I came across your killer.”

“Would you remember him?”

“I might.”

“How about his victims? Would you remember them?”