Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

Justin blinked a few times and touched her on the arm with a grown-up’s confidence. “The Wicker Man,” he said. “I want to keep us safe from the Wicker Man.”

Of course, Martha thought, expelling a relieved laugh. She leaned forward and hugged him. The Wicker Man was all over the news, and much of downtown was living in fear of him – dating in groups, loading up on pepper spray, even staying home at night. He had killed six people so far in the Wicker Park neighborhood on Chicago’s Near West Side, five women and one man. The police assumed there were more victims as well, better hidden, perhaps elsewhere in the city. The women had been sexually assaulted and stabbed. The man’s throat had been cut. They found fiber evidence, bloody shoeprints, but they had no good witnesses, no DNA, no links between victims, no evidence that could lead to a suspect. It horrified Martha to think her son had been getting such gory details from the news, but it was almost unavoidable. If the Wicker Man was the biggest local news story of the fall, then the second-biggest story was the degree to which talk of the Wicker Man had saturated the Chicago media.

“Justin, sweetie, the Wicker Man isn’t going to hurt us. He lives far away from here.”

Justin didn’t speak but implied with a disappointed expression, a flat smile, and puffy eyes that he didn’t believe her. That broke Martha’s heart.

“Can I go up to my room and play Shadow World?” Justin asked. Shadow World was a computer game her sister had bought Justin for Christmas. It was generally thought to be for grown-ups, but lots of kids played it too, and Martha had activated all of the strict parental controls.

“Sure, honey,” she said. As he padded toward the stairs, she tried to read his state of mind. The worst thing about Justin was that he soaked everything in, but the best thing about him was the way he bounced back. It wasn’t that Justin couldn’t handle the truth as much as that Martha couldn’t handle him knowing. She would talk with him about the Wicker Man, or Ted Bundy, or even goddamn Charles Ng, but she knew she would never be able to talk with Justin about what happened that night between her and Sam Coyne.

There are thousands of views of Lake Michigan from the city, but none quite like that from Abbott’s, the pricey glass-enclosed two-story restaurant a hundred yards out on Navy Pier. From the right table at Abbott’s you felt surrounded by water, protected by it. Davis had hoped for, asked for, and received such a table, and was so comforted by the environs he had to be cajoled by the waiter into finally opening his menu.

The dress Joan wore was black – her little black one, he presumed – and she was as stunning in it as it was stunning on her. It was difficult to tell, in fact, whether she or the dress benefited more from the pairing. Davis had seen her in dresses before, at holiday parties and professional functions, and once by coincidence at the symphony, a night Jackie had been unnecessarily rude to Joan and her date, leaving Davis alone with them at intermission, stammering to cover his jealousy and embarrassment. For all he knew this might have been the same dress she wore that evening, but tonight she wore it specifically for him, specifically to please him, and he was suddenly ashamed of his brown suit, not because it wasn’t flattering, but because he had given so little thought to putting it on.

“Frankly, I’m surprised you wanted to be with me tonight,” she said after the waiter had refilled their glasses with pricey sparkling water and then drifted out of earshot.

“Who else?” he asked, almost suavely.

“On the night before your sentencing? I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just surprised.” Her smile was self-conscious.

“I don’t have many friends anymore, to be honest.” Davis realized almost immediately how unseductive that sounded, and also how true it was. “I’ve seen enough of Graham the last few months. My next-closest friend is Walter Hirschberg, I suppose, and I’m not sure this would be the most comfortable evening to spend with an ethicist.”

“Well, even if I was at the top of a short list, thank you.”

“Not at all.”

“And not just for dinner.”

Davis was foolishly optimistic about her intentions.

“Thank you for keeping me out of it,” she said, reaching over and brushing his hand. “They might have been easier on you if you offered them something. Given me up. Many people would have, to save themselves.”

“I’m hardly worth saving,” Davis said. “Besides, you had nothing to do with it. If anything, I used you. They should tack time onto my sentence for that, not shave it off.”

Joan retracted her hand and placed it over the pearls at her neck. “I thought you said you wouldn’t have to go to prison.”

“Graham doesn’t think so, but there’s always a chance. It’s actually mandatory in the guidelines, but he thinks they’ll suspend it.”

“And then?”

He let a sip of Shiraz trickle down the back of his throat. “Put it behind me.”

“Really?” she asked. “Put it all behind you?” She had her hair up for the night, but it refused to be contained. Long, wavy tendrils hung down past the corners of her brown eyes to her cheeks.

“It’s been ten years since I did it. A fifth of my life. The worst fifth of my life. I made a lot of other people miserable or worse. Including you. For all I know, the guy who killed Anna Kat is dead or rotting in jail by now, anyway. Odds are, he is. It’s time for me to stop caring and see that the next fifth of my life is better. I don’t have many fifths left.”

“Don’t be ashamed of what you tried to do,” Joan said. “It was stupid.” She looked at him honestly. “But you did what you did because you loved Anna Kat. And what happened to Jackie wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes. It was.”

“No. God, Davis. I don’t want to speak ill of her, but she was deeply troubled.” A pair of waiters arrived with their plates and Davis and Joan gazed at each other in silence until they were alone again and she was able to finish the thought. “Did you know Jackie slashed the tires on my car?”

“No! When?”

“Maybe four months before she passed away. It was parked in the driveway of my condo. On a Tuesday night. I found it the next morning.”

“How do you know it was her?”

“She didn’t try to hide it. She came to my house the next day and warned me to stay away from you. I told her there was nothing going on, which was a lie, I guess, but nothing sexual was going on.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Oh, really, Davis. Call the cops on your wife?”

“You should have told me…”

She puffed her lips. “That would have been worse.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Joan allowed herself a breather for a few bites of pumpkin ravioli. “So, was there something going on?”

Davis squinted. “What? With you and me?”

“With you and anyone. I mean, the woman was suspicious about something. She might have been unbalanced, but I don’t think it came from nowhere.”

The restaurant was full now, and the late setting sun reflected against the glass of downtown in an orange glow. “Yeah, well, nowhere was kind of a theme with Jackie.”

Joan whispered, “Even I wondered about you once. That day at the Finns’ house.” She took a sip of Chardonnay and said, almost inaudibly, “Maybe I was just jealous, too.”

“I remember,” Davis said. “But no. I never cheated on Jackie.”

“See? You always had that perspective. Take care of the people closest to you. At all costs.”

“I wanted to once,” he told her.

“Cheat? Really?” she said, mouth full, somehow unsuspecting. “When?”