Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

For a boy’s room, Justin’s was unusually tidy. He spent a few minutes at the end of every day organizing, arranging his books at alphabetical attention, blowing the dust from his computer keyboard, coordinating his clothes for the following morning. Although he never showed signs of fatigue, she couldn’t imagine how he had time for sleep, between school, his own independent study, his fastidiousness, and the hours he spent playing that blasted computer game. She had read an article about how thousands of kids (and adults, too) spent so much time playing Shadow World they had become indifferent to, if not outright neglectful of, their own, real lives. Extracurricular and athletic team enrollment were both down dramatically in high schools across the country, and many educators claimed, credibly, that Shadow World was to blame. It made sense: just in Northwood, Martha personally knew of three – three! – marriages that had broken up because one spouse had left the other for someone they’d met in Shadow World. At least Terry left Martha for his personal assistant. There was something almost old-fashioned about that.

Not everyone agreed the game was entirely bad for kids, though. Some psychologists claimed teens who experimented with adult scenarios in Shadow World were better prepared for college and the pressures of leaving home. They were said to be confident, less risk averse, and more likely to be content once they entered the working world. Never having played the game herself, Martha was skeptical about such claims, but it was easier to believe them than to try taking the game away from her son (or her son away from the game), so she chose to have faith.

Martha pulled the dirty sheets from the mattress and aired out the clean ones, measuring the sides of the fitted sheet and folding the corners of the top sheet. Then she reassembled blanket and comforter and pillowcases, trying to be as neat about it as her son would be. He never complained but Martha had caught him more than once remaking the bed after she had done it, to his mind, in a substandard way.

She had sorted the laundry and carried her own clothes into the master bedroom (compared to where she slept, Justin spent his nights in a biological clean room). Two weeks’ worth of his shirts, jeans, and underwear, washed and dried in a morning-long marathon, filled three round laundry baskets, and she set about putting them away in their proper places. Blue jeans needed to be folded and stacked on the second shelf from the bottom in his closet. Shirts hung on plastic hangers, never metal. Blue socks had a different drawer than black socks. Underwear should be rolled instead of folded. Again, he never complained to her or threw a tantrum over it, but she knew he’d redo it if she didn’t get it exactly right.

At the bottom of the laundry basket she found three bleached-and-dried one-dollar bills. She must not have checked all the pockets before she threw his pants in the washer. Worried she might have ruined something important – a homework assignment or a pretty girl’s phone number – and not above using that concern as an excuse to snoop, Martha began feeling inside Justin’s pockets. She found two more ones and a five in the first four pairs and set the money on his dresser. In the fifth, her hand felt something curious: paper, wrinkled and warped in the agitated soapy water and spin cycle, the size of a business card. She pulled it out. The name printed on it didn’t even register with her at first without the “M.D.” behind it.

Anger wasn’t the word for what pulsed through her. Outrage was closer. Or just rage. She wondered where Moore had approached him. For how long had they been meeting? What does that sonofabitch want with my son, and why won’t he leave us alone? She wanted to call her lawyer, but knew he’d start the clock at $350 an hour. She wanted to call the police, but knew the first thing they’d ask was whether she had ascertained all the facts. Have you talked to your son, ma’am? It’s not a violation of the restraining order for your son to be carrying around a piece of paper with Davis Moore’s name and number. The truth was she couldn’t ask Justin. She was too scared. He hadn’t said a cross word to her in over four years, but he still frightened her. A mother knows her son, even if he received none of her DNA. A mother knows what her son is capable of. Every time he quietly redid the bedding or refolded his jeans, Martha imagined the pressure building inside his head and inside his heart, pressing against his skull and his ribs, whistling in his ears. Sooner or later it would need to be released.

But as long as she could keep Justin close, as long as her boy studied and played under her roof and under her eyes, as long as she remained interested and up to date with his friends and his hobbies, she could guide and control and protect him.

And hope for the best.

Martha grabbed a piece of paper from Justin’s printer and wrote down Davis Moore’s private phone number and e-mail address, and she returned the card to Justin’s pocket.

In the middle of downtown Northwood was a roundabout where six streets intersected, and in the middle of the roundabout was a small park with a half dozen benches, each perpendicular to one of the streets, and in the middle of the park was a statue of a soldier, erected after World War I but understood to commemorate Northwood veterans from all the military conflicts since, including the most recent mini and proxy wars in Asia and Africa. Parades on Memorial Day and Veterans Day and the Fourth of July always ended here, which made good sense for both symbolism and downtown business.

Big Rob and Davis had made an appointment to meet in the middle of the roundabout, it being a sunny weekday and close to the bank where Davis needed to withdraw the detective’s fee.

Big Rob had spent three weeks tracking down the mysterious Mr. Cash – starting with Chicago and Northwood phone books, then widening his search to online databases he subscribed to for just this purpose. He worked the professional organizations – the bar association, the futures exchange – and found a few Cashes, but none that matched the few facts he had about the man. Big Rob called a friend on the force and got access to recent domestic complaints and sexual assaults, and he checked area luxury-car dealers. If the guy’s name was Cash, the pool of suspects was too small, and if it was just something similar, the pool of suspects might as well be infinite.

The break came when Big Rob wasn’t even looking for it.

“Fum ducking luck,” Big Rob said to himself.

He had collected several months of back issues of Northwood Life, which seemed to exist only to print the names of as many residents as possible in every edition. He was scanning them inattentively on a Friday afternoon (but mostly using them to catch Ho Hos crumbs before they reached the floor) when he found a paragraph announcing that Sam Coyne, a graduate of Northwood East and the son of Northwood residents James and Alicia Coyne, had been named a partner at the downtown law firm of Ginsburg and Addams. The name didn’t trip any neurons in Big Rob’s head, but when he saw the photo of Sam Coyne, he bit his tongue. The picture in the paper was a professional business portrait. Sam was handsome, in his thirties, and blond. His suit fit precisely and he looked healthy underneath it. And the face was nearly the same face Big Rob had taped to the top of his desk twenty days ago. “Cash. Cash. Coyne,” Biggie mumbled to himself. “Christ, it’s gotta be.”

Big Rob stood nervously behind his desk. Sometimes the cases just solve themselves, he thought. But he was also a man who believed in earning his fee.

At five o’clock he was loitering outside the glass doors engraved with the names Ginsburg and Addams and hopped on a descending elevator with a gaggle of G amp;A secretaries. They ranged in age from about twenty to about fifty-five, none of them wore a wedding ring, and they seemed a little happy and loud to be headed for a train home. “I just made fifteen thousand dollars without doing a damn thing,” Biggie announced to the cab as it descended past the twelfth floor. “And I’d like to spend a good chunk of it tonight getting beautiful ladies drunk.” The secretaries whooped and hollered.