William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

I eyed the huge woman standing the doorway and my nerves crashed in on themselves. “Let’s say we skip the fluoride,” I said in a girlish squeal.

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Bob. “Piña colada, why don’t we say? That would go so well with those Sea Breezes you favor. Take over for me, Tilda, won’t you? I’ll be back in a flash.”

He disappeared, leaving me at the mercy of his hygienist. I looked up at the fearsome, swollen face. “Open wide, ja ,” she said as she reached for my mouth. “And no crying this time, bucko.”

I was still shaking from the ordeal of the fluoride when Dr. Bob stepped back into the room. His mask was on, his little blue cap, his hands were held out from his body like a surgeon, fingers up, palms toward his chest, rubber gloves already in place.

“I think that’s it, Victor,” he said. “We’re done here. I have another patient waiting, so I can’t dally and chat.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Deirdre will let you know when the new bridge comes in so we can snap it on. That won’t take but a moment. Then you and I, we’ll be finished. I now have to request that you take back your silly subpoena. It is difficult for me to ask this of you, believe me, but I have no choice. And we did have a deal.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No,” he said with a flat sincerity. “She was a patient, just like you. I only wanted to help her.”

“Either way, you need to testify.”

“So you won’t withdraw the subpoena?”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but it is as I supposed.”

“You said there was a flaw in me. What did you mean?”

“We’re seeing it play out right now, aren’t we? A certain stubborn belief in the status quo and the rote laws of men. A certain feigned helplessness in the face of a mutable world. You say there is nothing you can do? I say there is nothing you can’t achieve, as long as you are willing to pay the price. I suppose I’ll see you at least once more to install the bridge, and we’ll talk all about it then.”

As he turned to leave, I said, “What about the address?”

“Check your shirt pocket.”

I did, and there it was, written neatly on a small scrap of paper.

“Why do you do that?” I said.

“Some tricks never grow old,” he said before he disappeared, and maybe he was right.

I didn’t stop at the office, I didn’t stop at Tommy’s High Ball to pick up Horace, I didn’t stop at Social Services to get ahold of Isabel, I didn’t stop anywhere. I left Dr. Bob’s office and jumped in my car, checked the map, and then drove straight west, out to the address Dr. Bob had left in my shirt pocket.

And I drove fast.

I had no real idea of what I’d find when I got there, other than a girl who had been deserted by her mother and failed by everyone she had ever come in contact with, but I expected the worst. Philadelphia might be the City of Brotherly Love, but it’s also the city of Erica Pratt, who was brutally kidnapped and who escaped her captors by chewing through the duct tape binding her body, the city of Gary Heidnik, who kept a torture and sex-slave chamber in the basement of his Philly home and who fed his victims the flesh of those he had murdered.

Was my imagination running amok? You bet, and when it came to a child within the ambit of my responsibility, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The street turned out to be just a stone’s throw from Cobbs Creek, Philadelphia’s best municipal golf course, in a section of the city called Overbrook Hills. I drove past a WATCH CHILDREN sign, turned right, passed by the address and spied nothing unusual. I drove through the alley behind the house, past the front again, and then parked halfway down the block and across the street so I could keep my eye on the front door.

Once again I was surveilling. You’d think I would have learned.

It was a neighborhood of row houses, great lengths of identical brick homes lining either side of streets laid out in a rectangular grid. These houses were newer and smaller than the usual Philly row house, without the grand architectural details or great stone porches found in the older sections of West and North Philadelphia, just flat brick fronts, with the occasional pediment above aluminum screen doors. The lawns were narrow and scruffy, about half were fenced in.

As I stared at the house, I tried to conjure again the horrors of possibility, but it was harder now that I saw the street. There were children’s toys all over the place, plastic cars, large plastic play sets, a blow-up pool within the confines of a fence. And people were out and about, youngsters moving together in groups, teenagers, kids zipping by on their bicycles. An old man sat out on a lawn chair, sucking on a cigar in the shade of a green plastic awning. A woman was sweeping.

I sat back, scrunched down in my seat, and waited.

I wanted to see someone go in or out of the house; I wanted to get a sense of what I was dealing with. I had my cell phone, and if anything scared me enough I was ready to dial 911 and call out the SWAT team, but I thought I’d better get a grip on things before I did.

The door remained closed, the windows were dark, nothing was happening.

You stare at something long enough, your mind slips into a meditative fog, which is what must have happened, because I didn’t notice until too late the car that slowly slid beside me.

“Is there a problem?”

I startled at the sound, turned to see a cop car blocking my exit, the uniformed driver looking me up and down, wondering, I was sure, what a stranger in an old car and a cheap suit with a bandage on his face was doing in this neighborhood.

“I’m fine, Officer, thank you,” I said.

“Anything I can help you with?”

“Nothing right now, thank you.”

“Can I ask you what you’re doing here?”

“You can ask, sure,” I said.

We stared at each other for a moment, and then a moment longer, before he figured out the gag.

“Step out of the vehicle, please,” he said.

I guess he wasn’t amused.

The name on his shirt was Washington, and he told me that his dispatcher had received a number of calls about the presence of a strange car on the street. After checking my license and registration, and wincing at the Bar Association card I keep in my wallet, he listened patiently as I explained what I was doing there. I showed him the notice of appointment from the judge, I gestured toward the quiet house on the quiet street that matched the address I had been given.

“Why don’t we just go up and ask them?” he said.

I started to say something about Erica Pratt or Gary Heidnick, but within the aura of Officer Washington’s calm, I realized I was being an idiot.

“Sure,” I said, and we did.

The woman who answered the door was plump and pretty. She rubbed her hands nervously together when she saw the uniformed cop and the guy next to the cop in a suit.

“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Good day, ma’am,” said Officer Washington. “This man’s name is Victor Carl.” The woman reacted to the name as if it was Beelzebub. “He has a court order that appoints him the lawyer for a girl named Tanya Rose. He’s trying to locate her and believes she could be here. Do you have any idea where this Tanya Rose might be?”

“How did you get this address?” said the woman.

“I just want to find her,” I said, trying to flash a comforting smile and, based on her reaction, failing miserably. “I just want to make sure she’s all right.”

“I need to make a call,” said the woman.

“Is she here?” I said.

“I need to make a call before I let you do anything. I have rights. You just can’t come barging in.”