Jonathon King - Shadow Men

The guy wasn't reading from any notes, if he'd bothered to take any.

"The eyes?" Edgerton said.

"Same. Removed postmortem with something blunt, like a spoon."

"Christ. Three in six weeks," Edgerton said. "This sick fuck is gonna ruin our clearance rate all by himself."

We worked the case for three days before Edgerton got bored and was able to slide off onto the double homicide of a Cherry Hill couple in the parking lot of Bookbinders that was stirring up press. They let me go it alone for five days. I started walking the deep subway corridors from eight to eleven at night, when I had a chance to interview stragglers from work who used the trains late. I went down again from five until sunrise when the tiled corridors were nearly empty except for the echo of the trains and the occasional skitter of rat claws over the concrete. I had used the subway since I was old enough to walk but never knew you could start at City Hall and stay underground all the way to Locust Street. I talked with the rag men, the homeless who sneaked down from the steam grates on the sidewalks when their clothes got too wet and they risked freezing to death. I looked in their eyes and felt their fetid breath and heard little more than psychotic babble.

A woman struggled with the burden of extra clothing wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. I tried to help her but she snatched the bag away and looked into my face with wet blue eyes and said, "Mercy!"

Other than her voice, her sex was revealed only by the tiny size of her white boots with the daisy on the strap, and I wondered about that single scrap of female vanity. I left her alone.

The lieutenant of the unit pulled me after the first week. "Got other cases, Freeman. Priorities, son." But on the weekend I walked the perimeters of the downtown stations, looking above ground for someone who would go down in the dark to kill human beings and steal their eyes. The second week I walked the corridors on my way to the roundhouse for the beginning of the shift, and again on the way back. I started getting the derisive smirks and "bulldog" jokes from the other detectives. Edgerton pulled me aside and thought he was counseling me when he tried to tell me I wasn't my father.

"It doesn't work that way these days, Max. Obsession ain't a positive trait in this business," he said. "Beside, this isn't a series of innocent kids you're talking about and…" He stopped himself, leaving out the "Look where it got your old man" that would have finished his opinion. The skepticism continued until the following Friday night.

It began to sleet at ten, frozen rain that looked like snow in the streetlights but stung when it hit your skin and then turned quickly to water. It drove everyone for cover. The subway cars had been packed during rush hour, but the corridors had cleared out as usual-until the sleet came and the Friday night clubbers and the half-frozen homeless started going underground. By now I knew a few of the regulars and could identify them by their individual stoops and shuffles. I assessed the new ones. Past midnight a tall man in a ragged peacoat slid past me at a concourse near Market Street. His long neck curved down like a garden hose, his shoulders wrapped around his sunken chest like it had been punched by a mighty blow and never recovered. By two o'clock the platforms and corridors were empty; those who were down here had found their hiding spots. I was working my way through a tunnel north of Chestnut when I turned a corner and scared the hell out of a young woman walking south. She was wearing duck shoes and a ski jacket and was carrying a backpack over one shoulder. She gasped when she saw me and I immediately showed her my badge and said, "I'm a cop. It's OK." I watched some of the alarm move off her face, and she was about to speak when we both heard an agonizing howl that was instantly cut short.

The woman's eyes went huge and she took a step in the direction away from the noise as I took one toward it.

"I'm Detective Freeman," I said. "Go up top."

She looked the other way and seemed to hesitate with panic, so I yelled, "Go up top! Just go." The echo of her running footfalls followed her and I went the other way. Before the next blind turn I had my radio and my 9 mm Glock in my hands. I turned the radio volume low and reported to dispatch my location and a possible subway assault. Then I clicked off the set. Fifty more feet and I heard a deep-throated groan that vibrated and carried off the graffiti-covered tiles. I knew there was an alcove up ahead that was sealed by a chain-link gate that had long been breached at one corner with a pair of wire cutters. I replaced the radio with my flashlight and moved on.

At the gate I stopped and listened. The growing roar of a train arriving at the City Hall station momentarily blocked out any other sound. I waited, and as the cars pulled out I used the noise to move through the bent corner of the gate. There was a stack of stored barricades against one dark wall and racks of metal scaffolding leaning against the other. A passageway between them was just wide enough for a man to get through. Farther in, the weak light from the corridor was lost and the shadows were black. I crouched to avoid being backlit and again tried to listen. After a few minutes of silence, I heard movement. The scrape of boot leather on concrete. A shifting of something heavy and soft. Then a noise, like the tearing of wet cardboard and the distinct sound of a watery suction. The sight of the empty eye sockets flashed in my head. I slapped the flashlight next to the barrel of my 9 mm, snapped on the beam and rushed forward.

"Police!" I yelled, jerking the light from shadow to shadow.

"Police!" I kept barking and then the beam caught movement and my fingers tightened on the Glock. I steadied the beam on his head as he rose, the white skin of his face illuminated in the light. I focused on his eyes and they did not seem to flinch in the brightness, and like a bad photograph I saw them glow red and fearless.

"Hands up and away from your body!" I yelled again, forcing my attention away from his eyes to the movement of his arms. He was tall and dressed in dark material, and he shuffled one step forward.

"Fucking freeze!" I yelled again, the adrenaline taking my voice.

He was ten feet away and I shifted the light and saw a flash of blade in his left hand and the dull metal of a spoon in his right. When I moved the beam back to the knife the light picked up the form of a body behind him. It lay still and I could see a patch of pale skin and then the light found a rubber daisy dangling on a small, white boot.

The man took one more step and I refocused on his eyes and shot him. I aimed low into his hip and did not care whether the round drifted in or not. He went down with a yelp of pain and I closed the distance between us before he hit one knee. I half skipped my last step and then swung my right leg and drop-kicked him in the chest with the toe of my polished combat boot. He was on his back, staring up into the flashlight beam, and the animal look of his red eyes had not changed. I stepped hard on the wrist of his left arm and watched the fingers uncurl from the handle of a six-inch butterfly blade.

"The suspect was armed and in fear of my life this officer determined that the use of force was required to subdue said suspect," I whispered aloud as I felt the ligaments in the man's arm pop under my shifting weight.

I reached down and swatted the knife out of his reach and then pointed the barrel of the Glock into his left eye.

"Roll over and put your hands behind your back."

I cuffed him and then moved my light to the woman. She was dead, and the sharp acid smell of fresh blood rose off her like heat. I rolled her and she stared up at me. One eye still glistened with a curved wound to one side. Her throat had already been cut. I got on the radio and was told a squad car was already up at the subway entrance. The man on the floor was crying now from the pain of the bullet wound but I turned away and let the rumble of the arriving train drown out the sound of his keening.