Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

Ricky twitched at the first question. He pulled Canella’s wallet out and pried it open with the end of the. 38.

“My name is Phil Canella,” he told them. “I’m a private investigator from Chicago.”

Weiss nodded and showed his driver’s license to Peg, who was at his side now. “Okay. Why did Judge – Doctor, whatever – why did Forak hire you?”

“His name isn’t Forak. His name is Dr. Davis Moore. And he didn’t hire me. His wife did.”

“To do what?”

“To find out if he was having an affair.” Now that Mrs. Weiss was here, Philly was hopeful they could talk their way to a resolution. He wondered if he could ask for a glass of water. His throat was burning.

“An affair?” Peg muttered. “Ricky! Put that gun down!”

He ignored her. “That lady. She wasn’t his wife?”

“No.”

“Put the gun down, Ricky!”

“Who was she?”

“A colleague. Possibly his mistress. I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find out.”

“Do you think she’s in on it?” Ricky asked. “The mistress?”

“Put the gun down, baby!”

“In on what?” Weapon pointed at his face or not, Canella was collecting information on his case.

“He’s a lunatic,” Ricky said. “But you know all about that, I bet.” Psychologists, Philly thought, would accuse a man like Ricky Weiss, waving a gun around on a Thursday afternoon and calling another person a lunatic, of projecting.

“What are you talking about?”

“Jimmy Spears,” Ricky said. “Forak’s going to kill him.”

“What?”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Ricky! Give me the gun!”

“I’m not lying,” Philly said. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your guy. Forak. He wants to kill Jimmy.”

Canella almost laughed. “Kill Jimmy Spears? That’s crazy.”

“He told me himself.” This was a lie, but a lie to which Ricky thought he was entitled, since he was holding the gun.

“Look, I’ve never met Davis Moore, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to kill some second-string football player-”

“Put down the gun, Ricky!”

“ – and I don’t think you mean to hurt anyone, either.”

“You’re a liar,” Ricky said. “He sent you to do me so he could go ahead and kill Jimmy and there wouldn’t be anyone left to know about it and go to the papers or the cops.”

“I’m not lying to you, Ricky.”

“Ricky, get rid of that thing,” Peg said. “Put it down and let’s talk about it.”

“I don’t mean to hurt anyone,” Ricky said. “I don’t.” But he didn’t put down the gun, which was now pointed uncertainly at Philly’s chest.

Canella could feel the desperation and fear emitted in hot waves from the trembling Peg. He sensed the situation had turned unpredictable, and that whatever Ricky Weiss knew about Davis Moore had made him desperate. It was no longer safe to be here. He made a decision.

Run for it.

When Ricky saw Canella turn, his spinning brain increased its workload by many revolutions per minute. His internal tachometer was redlining. He needed to know more. If he escaped and told Moore that Ricky had figured out the doctor’s plan to kill Jimmy Spears, Moore would just send someone else to do the job right. He had to stop Canella, but Peg had stepped away from the door, and once this man was outside, sprinting to his car, what could Ricky do except run him down and tackle him, which wouldn’t be easy? Someone was likely to see them fighting from the road, especially with Peg screaming the whole while. But even if they didn’t see, what would Ricky do then? Drag Canella back to the trailer? Tie him up? He wasn’t a kidnapper. He couldn’t take care of a dog, much less a hostage. But he had to stop him.

His brain, running too fast now, too hot, and – in Ricky’s defense – without his explicit permission, knew of only one way.

Ricky squeezed the handle of the gun without really aiming it. Peg cried out in harmony with the report. Phil Canella’s head jerked back toward him and blood appeared in chunky patterns across the screen door and on the back of his hand, which he had used to push it open. His body contorted in a spasm, his shoulders turned back toward the gun, and then collapsed in an inanimate free fall straight down to his knees and then forward like a tree, his head hitting the aluminum stoop, his feet still inside the trailer, his body propping the door ajar.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Peg sobbed.

Ricky brought the. 38 slowly to his hip and let it fall to the floor, where it made a hollow, impotent sound like a plastic tumbler dropped at a picnic. He was processing everything very quickly. He hadn’t meant to shoot Canella, but he accepted the fact immediately and was already dealing with it. He would need to get rid of the body. He would need to clean up the trailer. He would need to do something about Davis Moore, the only person, as far as he knew, who could link him to this dead man when somebody noticed him missing.

First, he would need to calm Peg down. She would help him clean up the blood, and help wrap the body in cheap guest sheets, which she bought with her Wal-Mart discount, anyway. He would get rid of it alone. The less Peg knew about the details, the better. He wouldn’t ask friends to help. On TV, that’s how people were always getting caught. Somebody asks somebody else to help him and the second guy gets caught and cuts a deal with the cops. He wouldn’t be stupid that way.

He thought he might need a good saw.

“Because it’s ridiculous, that’s why. Weird.”

Instead of watching television, Martha would often watch Justin read. Sitting on the couch, with Justin in the big red chair opposite, his seat and hers angled acutely toward the TV, she would drink coffee or hot chocolate, or tonight, with her mother visiting, a glass of Fume Blanc.

“It’s not weird, Mom,” Martha said, whispering unnecessarily. When Justin was into one of his books, really inside the pages as he was now, the words being silently dictated to his head in a hypnotic patter, his eyes pinched together so tightly that Martha had taken him twice in the last year to see if he needed glasses, she could have fired the antique rifle Terry had left behind when he and his mistress moved to New Mexico, fired it into the ceiling, and not been able to make him flinch.

“He should be reading Harry Potter. Or the Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew, even,” Martha’s mother said. “That psychiatrist is filling his head with ideas. He’s too young for ideas, and he comes up with too many on his own already.”

“You’re being silly.”

“The point is, I don’t think it’s helping. He should be playing sports. Baseball. Football. Hockey. He has problems socializing. Relating to people. Other kids.”

“The other kids don’t challenge him. The other kids bore him. That’s why he acts out.”

“Nonsense, Martha. Do you know what your father would say about all this?”

“He’d say, Nonsense, Martha.”

“That’s right, nonsense. He doesn’t need to be challenged by the other kids. He needs to have fun. His little brain isn’t ready for all this grown-up thinking. The telescope and the astronomy, that’s all right. But this other stuff.” She shook her head. “You’re going to make him into something. Turn him into something.”

“Turn him into what, Ma?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Then say it.”

“The fires, the stealing, the acting out.” Now her mother was whispering. “Those are all early signs, you know. What do they always say about the bad ones? After they’ve been caught by the police? They say, ‘He was smart. He kept to himself.’ ”