Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

“There,” Justin said. “I can see me in there now. That’s Cash.”

Davis took the paper and angled it away from him into light refracted through the windshield. He had spent untold hours with this face, but was only now seeing it as an actual person as opposed to an abstract idea – a person to be found, to be confronted, to be feared. It gave him a chill and he wondered what it would be like to be this close to the real thing.

“So how do we find him?” Justin said.

“There’s no chance you could get any more info out of your mom?”

Justin made a noise with his lips like air leaking from a basketball. “No way. She’s never mentioned it since that night. I think she’s hoping I repressed it or something. If I bring it up now she’ll get my shrink involved, and her shrink, too. She’ll freak.”

“No good,” Davis agreed. “We can’t let her suspect.”

“Yeah. She finds out about this she’ll have my butt grounded and your butt thrown in jail.”

“Probably. I’m going to work on this a little. I used a detective agency a few years ago…” He stopped.

Justin giggled. “Gold Badge? The one that hired Sally Barwick to take the pictures of me? My mom’s got a restraining order against them, too.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a notebook. He paged through it, looking for something among the class notes and elaborate ink doodles. “This is the guy Sally used to work for. His office is downtown. Mr. Cash lived in the city, remember?” He wrote something and tore off a page corner.

Davis stuffed the paper in his pocket. “You still talk to Sally Barwick? What is she doing these days?”

Justin shrugged. “Dunno.”

Davis didn’t press him on it. He really didn’t care. “Do you ride your bike to school every day?”

“Until it gets too cold.”

“When I find something out, I’ll put a white piece of paper in an upstairs window of my house. The one on the far right as you’re looking at it. Ride by in the morning from now on and if you see it, call me on my cell. And don’t use your own phone. If your mother sees my number on your bill it’s all over.”

“Right,” Justin said. He checked his bag to make sure it was zipped tight and opened the passenger door.

“Justin,” Davis said. The boy stuck both feet on the ground where the pavement surrendered to the wild grass and leaned back into the cab. “That stuff you said, about the self, about the thinker separate from his thoughts. One self occupying two bodies…”

The boy blushed. “That’s just stuff I kick around. I’m embarrassed to talk about it with people I know, so when I get a few minutes with a stranger…”

“Well, you’re a smart young man,” Davis said. For some reason the words had a difficult time coming out of his mouth. His eyes rinsed themselves and his nose went numb. He started to say he was proud of him but realized how stupid and wrong that would sound.

Justin shrugged and squinted in a manner that fell just short of being modest. “Yeah, smart,” he said. “That’s gonna make me a real bastard to catch.”

Big Rob’s tiny Ogden Avenue office hadn’t been altered in even small ways since he quit the force and started taking on clients. The walls had the same rose tint. The furniture, two decades out of date when he opened up shop, was now approaching the forty-year mark and was nearly but not quite retro chic. The carpet was industrial-grade, the kind they used in department stores, and along well-traveled routes he had treated the periodic coffee stains with dish soap and a damp cloth. Surrounded by dust, an old CPD bowling trophy stood on a filing cabinet like a statue anchored in concrete.

“Dr. Moore,” Big Rob said. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Really?”

Biggie nodded. “I hardly know you and yet I feel like we’ve been through some traumatic events together.”

“Phil Canella was your friend, I understand,” Davis Moore said.

“He was. And I’m very sorry about your late wife.”

Davis nodded, thankful that such business could be dispensed of quickly. “I’m looking for a man. I don’t know much about him. But I need you to get me his name and to tell me where he lives.”

Biggie held up a hand and stood from behind his desk. Although there wasn’t room for a man his size to walk freely in this office, when he was with a client he liked to be on his feet. It felt like exercise. “Who are we looking for?”

Davis took a small notebook from his pocket. He had written down pages of thoughts and notions since meeting Justin in the forest preserve three days ago, and he had done his best to filter the speculation from the facts. “His last name could be Cash, or something similar. He grew up around Northwood – was probably living there eighteen years ago, and one or both of his parents might still live on the North Shore. He likely has some history of violence against women, although I can’t say if he has a record or not. He has money – he’s possibly a doctor or a lawyer or a banker or an entrepreneur – and he probably drives an expensive European car. As of six years ago, he was living in the city of Chicago.” He paused while he decided if the next piece of information would be helpful. “Around the same time, he went on a single date with Martha Finn.”

Biggie groaned and pointed at Davis. “Gold Badge hired my assistant, on your behalf, to take pictures of her son. Mrs. Finn has a restraining order against Sally now. She has a restraining order against you, too. I read that in the paper.”

“That’s fine. I don’t want anyone to bother her.”

Big Rob looked out the window, deciding how he was going to live with the regrets that were already taking shape in his head. Christ. “What else do you know?”

Davis turned to a pair of notes he’d made after contemplating the things Justin said in the car. “As a child he might have been fascinated with fire, or connected to the disappearance of animals or pets. He’ll be extremely intelligent. Probably much smarter than you or me.”

“Great,” Biggie said. “A psycho, in other words. And a genius. What is he, like a mad scientist or something?” He chuckled.

Davis opened his briefcase and pulled out the sketch. “Finally, he looks like this. Or he did until recently.”

Big Rob pulled the paper across his desk, touching it only at the edges. “I know this picture. Philly had it when he died.” He looked into Davis Moore’s eyes for signs of truthfulness.

“My wife found it on my computer and sent it to him, thinking it might be related to” – he wasn’t sure how to put this – “her case. It’s been refined a little since then.”

Big Rob held it up in front of his face, blocking the sight line to his client. “Philly died over this face.” He forced an impassive expression onto his eyes and lips and set the sketch down, fixing his gaze again on Davis.

Biggie told Davis his fee. “And you’ll pay my expenses in the meantime?”

“I will.” Davis unfolded cash from his pocket. Biggie sighed and accepted the money without counting it.

The sheets on Justin’s bed hadn’t been changed in a week and a half, and Martha felt terrible about that. She had been showing four houses a day, many of them for the same client, a young woman (just married to an older doctor) who had convinced her husband they needed a suburban house with a yard and a playroom and a big kitchen more than they needed a downtown apartment with a view of the lake. “If he thinks I’m going to raise kids in the city just so he can be close to his Gold Coast mistresses, he’s nuts,” she told Martha. The woman confessed she knew about her husband’s Gold Coast mistresses because until recently she had been one of them.