Shadow Image (18 page)

She had said nothing, really, but the inference hung between them.

“But a horse's kick would be consistent with that, right?” he said.

“Maybe.” She pushed his file of photocopies back across the desk. It was still open to the last page of Simon Bostwick's autopsy protocol. Her finger lingered on a paragraph beneath the section describing Chip Underhill's head. “Assuming the physical evidence was consistent with the witness accounts.”

Christensen read the paragraph again. No contusions. No fractures. No obvious bleeding except in the boy's brain and retinas. Nothing whatsoever that suggested the impact of a horse's hoof. He looked up. Haygood still hadn't shifted her eyes from his.

“Of course, we'd never proceed on a case without digging out the full file from the morgue,” she said.

“The full file?”

“These files I've got don't include the autopsy photos, X-rays, that sort of thing,” she said.

He nodded. Carrie Haygood sat back, her chair groaning as her weight shifted. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.

“Now,” she said finally, “if you don't have any other questions, Mr. Christensen, I've got a lot of work here that needs my attention.”

He passed the elevator and started down the stairs, reviewing his conversation with Carrie Haygood. She'd told him nothing, and everything. At the very least, she'd implied that there was reason to suspect the official version of the death of Chip Underhill, the only child of the man likely to be the state's next governor. She'd used the word “assault,” if only in general terms. He couldn't imagine a more explosive allegation in the heat of a high-profile political campaign.

Then again, who was Carrie Haygood? Boil it all down, filter out her Ivy League credentials and her projected air of sanctity and mission, and in the end she was just an investigator who worked for J. D. Dagnolo, one of Underhill's most rabid political opponents. She'd already decided something was amiss with the previous investigation. Then she'd sketched a vague theory full of implication to a total stranger who had wandered uninvited to her office just days before the primary-election polls opened. Why?

He needed to talk to Brenna. She knew better than most how to navigate the Machiavellian swamp that was Grant Street. He knew only that he was in over his head, clutching for the hand of someone who understood this world of expedient loyalties and calculated cruelty and the strange science of judiciously leaked information. As he swept past the district attorney's offices on the third floor, Christensen wondered if Haygood was already on the phone to her boss.

A flash of familiar color, a brilliant copper, caught his eye as he passed the large window overlooking the brick courtyard. A second look confirmed his hunch. Two floors below, Brenna was standing at the center of a small knot of men gathered near the blue fountain at the courtyard's center. Two of the men were holding television cameras. Klieg lights blazed.

He hurried down the remaining stairs and looked for a way into the building's central plaza. When he found one, he slowed his pace to a saunter to stay inconspicuous as he approached the group. He edged as close as he could and sat down on a low wall, hoping to snag Brenna as soon as she was done. If she shared any of his nagging doubts about the Underhills, she showed no hint of it as she answered the reporters' questions calmly and patiently.

“—don't know where that information is coming from, Mr. Levin, but we're certainly going to wait until the investigation is complete before responding to anything like that.”

“So, are you saying you were not aware of this supposed eyewitness, or that you're not concerned about his statements about the struggle?”

“Neither, Myron, and I think you're aware of that. I'm saying we know of at least one conflicting account of Mrs. Underhill's fall, and that we hope further investigation will get to the bottom of it. But right now, we don't find that account cause for alarm.”

“No cause for alarm? No cause for
alarm?”
Astonished reactions were a Myron Levin trademark. “You don't find the possibility that the leading gubernatorial candidate's mother might have been shoved off a cliff ten days before the election any cause for alarm?”

Another reporter, a young black woman, interrupted. “Give it a rest, Myron. Brenna, how is Mrs. Underhill
feeling?”

“She's back home and doing fine. Because of her age, it may take her broken bones longer than usual to heal, but her doctors don't anticipate any long-term physical problems. Thank you for asking, Tawny. Is that it, everybody?”

Myron Levin wouldn't be denied. “The investigator's report says the witness was part of the Underhills' household staff, a Hispanic male,” he said. “It says his wife worked for the family, too. True?”

“I've read the same report, Mr. Levin,” Brenna said. “Ask the sheriff or the D.A. if it's true. It's their report. If you'll excuse me, then—”

“Have you spoken to the witness, Ms. Kennedy?”

“I won't comment on that.”

Christensen caught Brenna's eye as she pushed her way out of the tight circle. She started to smile, apparently relieved to see a friendly face and be out of the spotlight, but Levin followed her. He dropped his microphone to his waist as they walked away from the group. “Brenna,” he said in a stage whisper.

Brenna turned around, clearly annoyed. They were off-camera now, and Brenna had had enough. Christensen was glad he wasn't Myron Levin at that moment.

“You may want to touch base with Dr. Walsh's office,” Levin said. “Something's come up, if you know what I mean.”

Brenna froze, her shoulders going slack. Levin stood with his microphone dangling at his side, looking very much like a slugger who'd just connected. Brenna wheeled and walked back toward him. “Cut the bullshit, Myron. What's that mean—something's come up?”

Levin just smiled. “Just a hunch. Call.”

Brenna shifted her briefcase from one hand to the other, never taking her eyes off the TV reporter's. Then, without another word, she turned and walked away. She was coming straight toward him now, but from her stride Christensen could tell she had no intention of stopping. In her wake, the faintest trace of Eternity.

“Whoa, what's with her?” Liisa cocked her head toward Brenna's closed office door. “She didn't even pick up her messages.”

“I'll take them in to her,” Christensen said.

The secretary shook her head, handing him a stack of pink message slips. “Enter at your own risk.”

He knocked lightly and pushed through the door. Brenna was at her desk, the telephone already to her ear, dramatically framed in an angled bank of wide windows. Every time he came to her office, Christensen was impressed by its stunning panorama view that swept from the South Side past PPG's crystal tower, Point State Park, and across to Three Rivers Stadium. She motioned him in, saying “Tommy Hasch, please” into the phone.

“Problems?” he said.

Brenna covered the phone's mouthpiece. “Not sure. Myron's still up to something. I just need to get ahead of the curve.” Christensen started to respond, but she held up her free hand. “I'll hold. Thanks.”

He was a pretty good judge of her moods, but this one was confounding—not exactly worried, but uneasy. Brenna was the consummate Grant Street insider, and the thought that Myron Levin or any news reporter knew something she didn't probably bugged her more than she'd ever admit.

“Who's Tommy Hasch?” he asked.

“Deputy coroner.” She winked. “My mole over there. Find what you needed at the courthouse this morning?”

He thought of Carrie Haygood. “We need to talk about that. Bren, I think we're both behind the curve on this thing—”

“We need to talk about something else, too,” she interrupted. “How do you feel about Harrisburg?”

“Nothing a neutron bomb wouldn't fix.”

Brenna flinched. Her eyes narrowed. She was pissed, and he didn't care. Right now, it was a welcome distraction.

“Never mind,” she said.

“Bren, this woman on the Child Death Review Team—”

“Tommy?” She motioned for silence. “Since when are you actually in the office?”

Her voice was suddenly playful, almost sultry, a carnal whisper in the ear of any man who ever imagined himself with her. He'd heard her use it on cops and prosecutors with devastating effect, and just as effectively in bed. Christensen knew she was just wheedling for information, knew why, but he felt himself suddenly jealous of a deputy coroner named Tommy Hasch.

“Walsh can't replace everybody,” she said. “Clerical I can see, but not you guys. Preech hired good people, pros, when he was in office. Walsh wouldn't play patronage with professional staff. He needs you guys to make him look good.”

Brenna listened patiently as the deputy coroner apparently continued his litany of ongoing staff changes at the morgue under new coroner Cyrus Walsh. Finally: “If there's anything I can do, write a letter or anything for you, let me know. Not that it would do any good. Walsh seems to have his own agenda, and I don't know him nearly as well as I knew Preech. But you let me know if there's anything—”

She listened again as Tommy Hasch continued, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling in mock exasperation. “Well, he's—” she tried. Then, oozing sympathy, “I know. So you let me know if there's anything I can do. You've done me a ton of favors over the years. Me? Nothing much. A little birdie just told me to call. What's new?”

Christensen walked over
to the bank of windows, to the side facing the Monongahela River. He pressed his face against the glass, trying to see the morgue in the dark canyon between the courthouse and the Grant Building, but it was lost somewhere in the shadows.

“I read about that, up in the Hill. You handled that one?” Brenna shook her head. “Oh, yuck. Where do kids get guns that big?” She shifted in her seat, getting down to business. “Anything come up on any of my cases?”

Christensen tried to read her eyes. They were focused now on a blank legal pad on her desk. She plucked the pen from its holder, ready to take notes.

“Nothing?” Brenna set the pen down. Her shoulders relaxed. “You're sure?” The soft leather of her executive chair exhaled, as did Brenna, as she leaned back and ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe I need a new little birdie.”

When she leaned forward again, though, she picked up her pen and jotted some notes. “That was yesterday morning? I didn't hear anything about it.”

Christensen crossed back to the chair in front of her desk and sat down, glancing at his watch. Almost lunchtime, but he wasn't hungry. When he looked up, he was startled by the change in Brenna's expression.

“No IDs, though? Any idea how soon you'll have them?” She was scribbling furiously now. “Where'd they come up?”

Christensen leaned forward, trying to read her handwriting upside down. McKees Rocks. Neville Island. Other phrases leapt off the page: Hispanic male. Hispanic female. Execution-style. Powder burns. Wadding in tissue. Bruised wrists. His mind raced to a horrifying conclusion.

Brenna noticed him eavesdropping, waved him off, and pulled the pad away.

“You know those currents around the Point, Tommy. Even if they were dumped together, even weighted, they wouldn't stay down long. Any idea where they went in?” Brenna turned her chair to her left, focusing briefly on the brown sliver of Allegheny River that divided Downtown from the North Side. “You can tell all that from the sediment in his pockets?”

Brenna set the pen down and turned the pad over on her desk. “Nothing, probably. I don't know,” she said. Her voice shifted again, back to the carnal whisper. “Would you be a sweetheart, though, and let me know when you've got IDs. I won't know if it means anything or not until you've got those.”

She reached forward, her finger poised above the phone's disconnect button. “Tommy? It's probably nothing, like I said, but this stays between us, right? Thanks.”

Brenna mustered a provocative good-bye and brought her finger down, then looked across the desk. He waited, breathless. The intercom beeped immediately, and Liisa announced a visitor. Brenna studied him a long time, then stood up. “It's probably nothing,” she repeated, “but maybe we should talk later.”

The two children glared at one another.

“Look, it's all just macaroni and cheese,” he said. “They're both orange. Orange food is good for your eyes or something, isn't it?”

Annie stood with her legs planted slightly apart, arms folded across her chest. “Flintstones taste better.”

“Bugs,” Taylor countered.

“Flintstones.”

Christensen opened the pantry, put both boxes back on the shelf and closed the cupboard door with more force than was necessary. “We'll have something else then,” he said, his tone calculated to leave no room for discussion. “Go wash your hands. I'll call you when it's ready.”

Annie could barely contain her rage. She took a step toward the younger and smaller boy, clenching and unclenching her tiny fists. Taylor seemed to shrink as she approached. “You're dead,” Annie said.

Taylor took one step backward. “You're—” He looked to Christensen, as if for help. “You're mean.”

“Work it out, you two. Use your words.”

Fog rolled out of the freezer as Christensen opened the door. He waited for it to clear, then dug for a package of frozen hot dogs. He put the icy block of Hebrew Nationals on the counter, then wedged a knife point into one of the pink crevasses, separating two hot dogs from the rest. He recognized Taylor's whimper behind him as he put the greasy packet back in the freezer. When he turned, the boy was clutching his stomach, mouth open in pain and outrage, a strangled cry stuck somewhere just south of his tongue. Annie was five feet away.

“Annie? What happened?”

“Nothing.” She held both palms toward the ceiling, exasperated by the need to explain.

Christensen put his arm around Taylor, who was struggling to stifle his cry, and confronted his daughter. “Hands are for helping, Annie, not for hurting.”

“I
was
helping.”

“Really?”

“He just doesn't understand that Flintstones macaroni is better. I was helping him.”

Christensen pointed to the stairs. “In your room. You know better than that.”

She sauntered off to do her penance. Christensen stooped to Taylor's level. “You okay?”

Taylor sniffed and nodded, his clutching hands marking the spot of some unspoken offense to his belly. “You didn't hit back,” Christensen said. “I'm proud of you.”

The boy straightened.

“If Annie or anybody tries to hurt you like that, you just walk away and tell me or your mom or your teachers. Okay?”

Taylor nodded again. “Where is my mom?”

“I'm meeting her at a restaurant for dinner,” he said. “We just needed a little time to talk.”

Boy, did they. For the parents of young kids, the greatest stressor is not the day-to-day worry of a child falling sick, or even the hectic dinner-bath-homework-bed routine of school nights. It's the inability to complete a task, thought, or conversation without interruption. Since his conversation with Haygood, Christensen had felt as if they were caught in the powerful undertow of a force he didn't understand, a force he worried could drag them both under. Things were happening too fast, and they needed to catch a breath. “Wash your hands now,” Christensen said. “Dinner'll be five minutes.”

He washed and sliced raw carrots and apples, arranging them on the kids' plates as the microwave defrosted the hot dogs. When it beeped, he punctured the rubbery skins with a fork and put them back in to cook on high for two minutes. He poured two glasses of milk, then hurried to answer the doorbell.

Jenny was the only sitter they knew who was willing to drive to their new neighborhood. The first time they'd used her, Annie talked about little else for days. Tonight, Jenny wore an electric-pink bikini top and old jeans hacked off just below her crotch. Christensen focused on her forehead as he greeted her, close enough to her eyes but safely away from the perfect expanse of sixteen-year-old flesh. “I know, I know,” she said. “Bath at eight, bed at nine. What time will you be home?”

He breathed easier as she passed, noticing as she removed her backpack the tiny butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder. He reacted without thinking. “A tattoo?”

The girl turned suddenly and winked. “One of them.”

Christensen looked at his watch. He was supposed to meet Brenna at Fiorello's in forty-five minutes. No time to make other arrangements.

“Jen!”

Annie stampeded down the stairs, preceded by her excited greeting. She practically leaped into the arms of the Manson girl she now worshipped.

“Annie! Brought you that CD!”

Taylor hurried from the kitchen and took Jenny by the hand, Annie apparently forgiven. The threesome disappeared into the living room, headed for the stereo, as the microwave announced that dinner was ready.

“Did you eat, Jenny?” Christensen called.

“I'm fine, thanks.”

He put ketchup on the table and broke the safety seal on a new squeeze bottle of mustard. After twisting off the nozzle cap, he sniffed the contents—an old habit. A few baby dills to create the illusion of a green vegetable, and there, another meal done. Tomorrow, he vowed, a real dinner.

“Food's on the table,” he shouted, interrupting the frenzied dance party that had erupted in the living room. The woman's voice coming from the stereo speakers was angry and passionate and pitched somewhere between a trumpeting elephant and a chain saw, and she did not much like men, or so the lyrics suggested. Annie held up one hand, her thumb and index finger forming an O, then kept dancing.

Upstairs, Christensen faced his closet. Most of his clothes were finally out of boxes and moving cartons, but most still bore the inevitable wrinkles and dirt smudges of moving. Fiorello's was New York dressy, not at all his kind of place, but a place he knew Brenna worshipped for the dark anchovies in its Caesar salads and calamari she had already requested as a last meal before execution, should it ever come to that. He pulled out a black-and-white herringbone sports jacket and white shirt, some classic black pants, and what he called his lawyer loafers, their leather buffed and black. He pawed through his slim collection of ties for the one the guy at the store said went well with the rest of it.

He was knotting his tie in the dresser mirror when he noticed his notepad in the center of their bed, a bright yellow Post-it note stuck to the top page—Simon Bostwick's phone number. Any other day, the call would have been a priority. Today, it had completely slipped his mind. He checked his watch. Brenna wouldn't be there for another forty minutes, and Fiorello's, on top of Mount Washington, was maybe thirty minutes away. He closed the bedroom door to block out the music downstairs and picked up the portable phone.

The area code was the same as for all of western Pennsylvania, but the exchange was unfamiliar. When the number rang, it sounded distant and rural. The voice that answered sounded gruff and sleepy.

“Sorry to bother you,” Christensen said. “I'm looking for a Simon Bostwick.” He waited through a long pause.

“Who is?”

“I'm Jim Christensen with the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Bostwick. I'm doing some research on a case involving an accidental death, and I ran across your name in some morgue records. I hope you don't mind me calling, and I won't take much of your time now. I was just hoping we could schedule a few minutes in the next day or so to talk. I had some questions about—”

“You said Christensen?”

“Right. Jim—”

“I know who you are.”

Disoriented, Christensen ran through every conceivable way this total stranger might know him. He came up blank. “Really?” was all he could manage.

“I knew Grady Downing,” Bostwick said. “Primenyl.”

Of course. Christensen's most recent brush with fame had been three years earlier when Downing, a homicide detective, had suckered him into working on the decade-old Primenyl product-tampering case. He'd worked with the killer's son, plumbing the young man's mind for memories of the killings that Downing was sure the boy had repressed. Downing was right, more or less, and the killer made Downing pay the ultimate price for his intuition. When it was over, when Christensen had helped end the city's ten-year-old nightmare in a horrific and haunting flash of violence, the newspapers went looking for a hero. He was the only one left standing.

“You must have worked with Grady on some of his cases, I guess,” he said.

Bostwick cleared his throat. “More than I care to count. What can I do you for?”

Something in the voice bothered Christensen, something thick and deliberate and affected. He thought of his father, how his voice thickened once the first few drinks of the evening kicked in. But he was glad he and Bostwick had found common ground in Downing. It was the first time he'd found a practical use for the unwanted minor celebrity that followed his role in Primenyl.

“This was a case you handled about three years ago, when you were doing coroner's investigations.”

“I'm out of that now,” Bostwick said.

“I know. But your name was on the investigation report on a case I'm interested in. You handled the autopsy.”

“What kind of research? You're a memory expert or something, if memory serves.”

This seemed to crack Bostwick up. Christensen laughed along until Bostwick regrouped. “I suppose,” he said finally. “It's like saying an astronomer is an expert on extraterrestrial life. ‘Expert' sounds so all-knowing, but there's more we don't know than we do know. Right now I'm trying to find out more about how Alzheimer's affects memory.”

After a long pause, Bostwick said, “I'm not following you here. Alzheimer's isn't the sort of thing I could have looked for when I opened somebody up.”

“No, no. You're right. This is a case where I'm trying to reconcile someone's memory of an accident with what actually happened, to see how traumatic memories like that evolve over time. And I had a couple of questions about it that I couldn't answer from the paperwork. You were the only person who could answer—”

“The coroner's people are giving out my number?” Bostwick's voice suddenly had a hostile edge Christensen hadn't noticed before, an unpredictable shift of mood, a drinker's conceit.

“They told me you were living in the mountains. I just called information.”

“When I left that place, I was done with it. I don't even come back to testify unless I'm subpoenaed. I just don't like the idea of them passing out my number.”

Christensen checked his watch again. They were clearly on difficult terrain, and he didn't have time to get bogged down in some old grudge between Bostwick and his former employer. He knew how a drinker's anger can gain unmanageable momentum.

“Like I said, the morgue didn't give me your number. I tracked it down on my own, because I have these questions that I don't think anybody can answer but someone who was—”

“What was the case?” Bostwick said.

“The name was Vincent Underhill the third. Happened in—”

“Doesn't ring a bell,” Bostwick said.

Christensen waited. “You don't seem to want to help me here,” he said finally.

“I'm perfectly happy to help you,” Bostwick said, stretching the R sound like a piece of taffy. “Grady said you were a helluva guy, a standup guy. Let me tell you something: I trusted Grady Downing like nobody else in this world, sir. And you can take that as gospel.”

“It didn't sound like you even thought about the name. It's a case I think you might rem—”

“Let me tell you something else,” Bostwick said. “Eleven years I spent with the coroner's office. Anybody there'll tell you I was one of the best. Handled a helluva lot of cases in those eleven years, a lot of them kids like that—way too many kids for anybody's taste, let me tell you. But names? Nuh-uh. That's just another line on the form. We didn't deal much in names, except for the paperwork, if you see what I'm saying.”

“But this name —

“So you see what I'm saying here? Chances of me remembering a name, it's just a crapshoot. That one doesn't ring a bell, though. Vincent?”

“Vincent Underhill the third. They called him Chip.”

“Nope. Real sorry.”

Christensen wasn't giving up, but this was going nowhere fast. “Would it help if I faxed you the report you wrote? Maybe that would jog your memory.”

“You're welcome to do that, and I'll be happy to look it over. Anything for an old friend of Grady's. But like I said, there were a lot of cases, and I'm out of it nearly three years now.”

Christensen took down Bostwick's fax number and promised to send the autopsy report the following morning. “I'll check back with you in the afternoon,” he said, ending the conversation.

The portable phone disconnected with an electronic beep. The music was off downstairs, replaced by the sound of Annie and Taylor arguing over who would squeeze the ketchup onto their plates. The digital alarm clock read 6:27. He had to get going if he was going to make Fiorello's by seven, but he sat motionless on the edge of their bed, trying to figure out what so bothered him about the conversation. Finally, without too much effort, he narrowed it down to a nagging question: If Bostwick didn't remember the case, why had he assumed Chip Underhill was a child?