Jonathon King - Shadow Men

Forgive me my darling if I sound suspicious and maudlin. Your son Robert, your dreamer, has found the beauty in our midst. We gain strength from his fascination with the flocks of white birds that move above us at times like huge snow white clouds. His discovery of a vast army of colorful snails on the sawgrass kept him in awe for days. On a day last week when the dredge had been silenced by repair, he was the first to call all our attention to a feeding flock of birds of which none of us had ever seen. These creatures glowed with a pink color that was a fascination to the eye with the incredible contrast of the unbroken acres of brown and green grasses around them. Even the hard-driving foremen could not keep their eyes from the sight. Robert seemed mesmerized watching the flock feeding in an open pool of water, looking from a distance like a soft pile of pink cotton.

He is, as you would imagine, the one whose eyes seem to cloud over in the glory of God's creation at sunset when the hues of purple, red and orange spread above the horizon. In only three weeks we will be finished with our tour of labor and we shall gather our pay and make our way back to you. Love from your family men, Cyrus I folded the letter and sat in silence. I sipped at the coffee and watched the low flame of the lamp play with the wall shadow. Outside it was dead still until I heard the distinct, guttural "kwock" of a night heron. I thought back to the first time I'd seen one feeding along the river. It was stubbornly territorial but let me paddle within fifteen feet. He then turned his white crown away to show his marked cheek and fix me with one intense, deep-red eye.

I turned down the lamp wick to snuff the flame, and by memory moved through the lightless room. I set my empty cup on the drain board and checked the small propane stove valve to be sure it was off. Then I stripped to my shorts and lay in the bunk with only a sheet pulled over me. Sometime in my sleep, the eye of my heron turned into the eye of Arthur Johnson, whom I had not dreamed of in years, but whose look had been the closest to pure evil I ever wanted to see.

I was still with the Center City Detective Squad, not yet officially assigned and traveling on thin ice after strongly disagreeing with the arrest of a feeble-minded city maintenance worker for a woman jogger's murder along Boathouse Row. I was still just a probationer and the lesson that case clearance was placed above all else was still a concept that tasted like ash in my mouth. But my family history kept me on the administrations track and my own ability to take a figurative or literal shot in the mouth and not have it bother me much kept me from really giving a damn. I was working a late shift when we caught a DOA in the subway between the Speedline stop and City Hall. It was one of the cold months, January or February. But down below the streets on the subway platform at Locust Street, you couldn't see the steam of your breath like you could on the sidewalk. I was teamed with a veteran named Edgerton, and he bent over the dropoff to the tracks and looked up the tunnel leading north.

"How far?" he asked the transit cop who had called it in.

"Fifty, sixty yards. Up in a maintenance alcove," he said, shaking his head and bunching his shoulders as though the thought of it made him colder. "Nasty."

Edgerton looked down at his loafers.

"Shit," he said, and the expletive led to me.

"Go on down there and take a look, Freeman. I'll get the particulars from the sergeant here and the PATCO types. My guess is it ain't gonna be much different than the others."

I borrowed a flashlight from the transit sergeant and climbed down to the tracks on a ladder at the end of the platform. Cold grease and black dirt coated every surface. At least I was smart enough to still be wearing the same polished combat boots I'd been known for on the street patrol. I'd purposely bought my pleated Dockers an inch too long and with the cuffs settled down on the glossed leather of the boots, the brass never noticed. I waved the flashlight beam down the tunnel and a smaller version waved back at me.

Fifty yards into the darkness a transit worker bundled in a winter jacket kept his hands in his pockets. "Yo. How you doin'?" he asked, like he didn't know my answer.

"Cold," I said.

The guy pulled out one hand and trained his beam on a recessed rectangle in the wall and the three metal rungs that led up to it. I pulled on a standard-issue pair of surgical gloves and started climbing. When my head cleared the floor of the platform, the stench hit me and I turned to inhale better air before going on. I flipped on my flashlight. The odor of garbage, urine and death was packed into a four-foot-by-four-foot space that was barely more than six feet tall, and when I stood I had to keep my head bent. A locked metal door took up the rear wall. Bunched on the floor was a pile of dark rags and musty wool that had no doubt covered a body. I squatted down and directed the beam onto one end and peeled back a coat flap. The light fell on a mat of dull, brittle hair, and I had to reach in and find a jawbone to grip before I could turn the head and confirm what Edgerton had already guessed. Two blackened holes looked up at me, the blood around them and the torn gristle deep in the sockets as dark as the skin of bruised plum. I felt the bile rise in my throat but dropped my circle of light quickly to the victims chin. I pulled the rigor-rusted jaw up enough to expose the crescent-shaped gash across the throat. As if the missing eyes weren't confirmation enough.

I was doing a cursory check for any identification, when the transit worker said, "Jesus Christ." The guy was still on the tracks, staring pointedly down the tunnel. "Those assholes," he said, and started waving his flashlight beam to the north. Then I could hear it, the rumble of heavy metal on metal, and it was growing. I leaned out and could see the shine of light against a curved wall down the track, and then picked up a familiar clacking sound. The transit guy was still waving, but he had already taken two long steps toward the ladder.

"They was supposed to shut down traffic while we was down here," he said, fumbling for his radio under the back of his jacket. The clacking rhythm continued to grow.

"Fourteen to control. Fourteen to control," he barked into the mouthpiece. Now he had a hand on one rung, his eyes catching the trains brightening light.

"Asleep at the fuckin' wheel," he said, stepping up as the roar built exponentially.

I reached out and got a fistful of his jacket sleeve and yanked him up and in. We backed to the door and stood shoulder to shoulder and foot to corpse. I could feel the pressure in my ears change as the train pushed the air in front of it. I had to close my eyes as the litter and dust swirled into the cubicle, and I did not open them to watch the blur of train windows and the skin of the cars flash by. In several seconds the roar passed. The final car rushed by and the vacuum following it sucked the air and stench of death out of the recess, leaving a dull silence. The flashlight beams were already bouncing toward us when we climbed down. The sergeant was well ahead of Edgerton, and I thought of my partner's loafers.

An hour later a single crime-scene tech and an assistant medical examiner showed up. The coroner's body bag boys took the remains and grunted and groaned as they hoisted it over the turnstiles and up the stairs. No one was pleased to be out in the cold at 3:00 A.M. The M.E. was as detached as Edgerton.

"Same as the other two. Cause of death was the slashed throat. A race between asphyxiation and bleedout, since he got the carotid.

"Male Caucasian. Probably in his early thirties, though it's tough to tell with these homeless guys. No I.D. that I could find. Might get some kind of tattoo or distinguishing mark when we cut the clothes off on the table."