Cast a Pale Shadow (2 page)

"Don't give me that crap. You don't need to do what all the other kids do. Maybe their parents don't give a damn."

"Oh, and you do?" she asked with all the venom in her rebellious teenage heart. The slap that time knocked her off her chair.

It didn't matter. She didn't let it hurt her.

Cole

He had his seasons reversed. Instead of packing and heading south as April turned to May, Cole knew he should be unpacking and studying street maps and deciding on routes so that, by the end of the summer, he would have covered all of Grand Rapids. He should be looking forward to a season of smiling brats and whining mothers and money in his pocket.

Instead he counted his spare change and wondered if he needed to once again hock his camera equipment to get enough money to get out of town. He should never have stayed on so long, but Daisy got sick, and the vet bills kept him insolvent, and Florida seemed too far away to even dream about.

On the first fine days of a false spring in March, Cole curried the recovered Daisy and aired out his costumes and picked a neighborhood at random. How could he know it was populated by the foulest tempered hellions ever born? Or that Daisy would grow so quickly impatient at being kicked in the side and tugged at the mane? He should have been more conscious of the pony's mood. He should have realized she was not back to her docile sweetness after being so sick.

Poor Daisy. He would miss her, but he doubted she would waste a moment missing him. She probably much preferred the green pastures she grazed now to trudging the streets with Cole, posing for his camera with bogus baby Billy the Kids and Calamity Janes on her back.

Daisy probably had not even known she had sealed her fate, and Cole's too, when she bit a chunk out of one little bugger's shin, setting its mother to howling and threatening to sue. It wouldn't have bothered Daisy how Cole had had to nearly give her away to see she was cared for, or how he had given a moment's consideration to inquiring what the dog food factory would have paid for her. He was that irritated with this turn of events.

But it was just as well. Cole had stayed too long in Grand Rapids. The gray of the winter skies had gotten under his skin and set his mood to match. If he sold off his pony trailer, Daisy's saddle and harness, and one trunkful of his costumes, he thought he might get enough money to get away. Maybe he'd wind up in Ocean City or Myrtle Beach in time for the tourists. He'd figure it out on the way. He'd hold on to his cameras until worse came to worse.

Once he got settled again, he could even sell his car. Cole was a vagabond by choice, and he knew his feet and his thumb would serve him as well as four wheels he could not afford to keep in gas and tires. But he was a photographer by blood, and no amount of squaring his fingers and clicking his throat could substitute for his Canon and a roll of film.

There was plenty of trunk space in the wheezing Buick, once blue but now mostly rust. Even packed with all of the belongings Cole could salvage after his scramble for funds, there was room enough to sleep back there, which he might someday soon be forced to do.

Or to transport a rug-wrapped body to a burial with the fishes
. He immediately regretted the thought. The image gave him a prickling chill. He let his imagination get the best of him. He slammed the trunk lid hard three times to get it to latch, then rolled his shirtsleeves down to cover his goose bumps. It was time to go to someplace warm, away from this chronic winter turning him morose and unsettled.

He should call his father first, or rather leave word with his father's custodians where he could be reached. Necessity might push him into a decision on where that might be.

On second thought, he might as well visit. At least it would give him a direction to head when he drove out of town.

Four hours later, Cole turned up the circular drive around the St. Vincent's statue, a pigeon perched on its alabaster head, surrounded by tulips just beginning to nudge their green shoots out of the ground. It was not visiting hours, so parking was plentiful, but just to be perverse Cole pulled into the spot marked "Reserved for Chaplain."

The reception hall had its familiar smell of floor wax, old carnations, and urine. He always marveled at the shine on the black and white tile. Cole smiled at the armed guard at the door who acknowledged him by removing his finger from its search up his nose to stick it under his armpit, never changing the scowl wrinkling his face.

"Cole Brewer. I'm here to see my father, Duncan Brewer," he said in a hushed voice to the receptionist.

Without looking up, she answered in a nasal drone, "Visiting hours are one to three and seven to eight-thirty. Visitors must have a pass from the attending doctor."

"That's just it. I received a call from him and was told to come right away," Cole lied. "He said he'd leave a pass at the desk."

Heaving a huge sigh, the broomstick of a woman eyed him over her glasses. "What's his name?"

"Duncan Brewer."

"The doctor's name," she whined.

"Oh, sorry," Cole flashed her one of his usually irresistible smiles to no effect. "Doctor Lorenzo Fitapaldi."

"I shoulda guessed." With a show of elaborate irritation, she checked a file folder then pulled a pad from under her blotter. "I'm writing you a temporary pass. It is good for today only. You are to turn it in to me when you leave. But first Doctor Fitapaldi has left a standing order you should see him before visiting your father."

"Thank you. But I have very little time."

Her pen stopped scratching and she cocked an eyebrow up at him. "Well, then, there will be no pass.

Cole looked down at the floor and saw streaks of grime trapped in the thick wax. "I'll see him."

Five minutes later, he sat across from Fitapaldi, screening out most of the doctor's words with daydreams of the Carolina shore.

"Naturally, we do not need your consent, but I feel you should be informed. This new drug is experimental and the treatment plan will be carefully monitored. Your father's participation could lead to a way to return patients to functional life."

"Return?" The word brought Cole to attention and he felt all the blood drain from his face.

"Oh, not your father's return, of course. The terms of his conviction preclude that. But we have hopes the use of this drug in early stages could prevent--"

"Yes, well--" Cole rose abruptly from his chair. It was not good to remain seated too long in a psychiatrist's office, whether on a couch or a straight-backed wooden chair. It made Cole feel like a germ on a slide. "I'm sure, if he were aware, my father would welcome this chance to repay a part of his debt to society." Cole crossed to the window and frowned down on the terraced lawn below him, his hands clenched behind him to keep them from shaking.

"Exactly so. Mr. Brewer, I note from the charts that you have curtailed your visitation considerably in the past year."

He glanced at the dark, balding Fitapaldi whose eyebrows would soon boast more hairs than his head. "I've been away. Is there a problem with that? I believe I've kept the hospital aware of my whereabouts." As much as Cole, himself, was aware of them, in any case.

The psychiatrist leaned forward on his desk with his elbows and scrutinized him through a triangle made of his fingers. "No," Fitapaldi answered eventually, without much conviction. "Your visits have no long range effect on your father."

"The result is not mutual, I assure you."

"Then why come at all?"

"It is not always a conscious decision," Cole said, with more honesty than he had intended.

"I see. Have you sought counseling or treatment of any kind in recent years, Mr. Brewer?"

"Do I need to remind you, Doctor, that I was the victim here... one of the victims, not the patient? I doubt that any of the victims of Duncan Brewer have sought treatment of any kind in recent years."

"Yes, but the others are--"

"The lucky ones." Cole reached into his pocket and withdrew a scrap of paper. "I'm moving. You can note my new address on your chart. Thank you for informing me of the experimental treatment. I hope that you find some benefit to it. Good day, Doctor Fitapaldi." Cole tried to slip out from under the microscope, but Fitapaldi followed him to the door.

"I can give you some names. You should consider counseling. Or perhaps a surgical exam. The plate is still--"

Unable to stop himself, Cole lifted his palm to cover the right side of his skull where his hair grew in swirls and contrary patches. "Yes, the plate is still there. The payment for my debt is still being extracted."

"They were trying to help."

"So they said."

"It can be removed, you know. The procedure has improved in recent years. The survival rate is--"

"Forget it. I hardly notice it anymore. Except when it picks up transmissions from CIA wire taps." He laughed when Fitapaldi's dumbfounded stare showed he thought Cole was serious. "I have to see my father now."

"But you will call me?"

"Don't wait up." Cole mumbled his goodbye and strode from the office, knowing a periodic hour or two in his father's room was the only treatment he would ever seek. It was shock therapy for him, jolting him out of his haze of memory for a while. If the side effects were harrowing, the returned nightmares terrifying, at least they were familiar and clearly out of the past, preferable to no memory at all, or the strange snaps and flashes that sometimes attacked him and did not seem like memory at all. Nightmares were symptoms of sanity. Everyone had them occasionally.

Cole took the stairs to his father's floor instead of the elevator which he remembered reminded him of a padded cell and moaned with distress each time it hoisted itself to the next level. A bell and a light announced his arrival as he opened the stairway door to the fifth floor. No one paid any attention. He had to tap on the counter and clear his throat twice before the ward clerk glanced over her shoulder at him, then ignored him.

"Excuse me. I'm Cole..."

"The nurse will be with you in a moment."

"Fine." Noticing the balls of yarn and five-inch length of crocheting on the desk across from her, Cole shrugged off a bit of his tension. Yarn meant it would probably be Mrs. Hayes. He could handle her. She never looked at him as if he were the spawn of the devil.

"Mr. Brewer. A surprise visit? It won't be much of a one, I'm afraid. We haven't had a lot out of him in the last week." Mrs. Hayes had a voice of grandmotherly kindness. It always seemed too soft to Cole for the job she had chosen. But he supposed there was enough screaming done around here to make the soft voice be the one that got noticed.

"Sometimes it's easier that way," Cole admitted. "Say, I see you're finally starting that afghan you promised me."

"Go on with you. You never told me your colors." Mrs. Hayes held her hand over the keys at her waist to quiet their jingling as she led him down the hall.

"Brown to match my eyes, don't you think?"

"Hmmm, maybe a shade to the chocolate side, I believe." Peeking into the barred grid of the door, she said as sweetly as a maid announcing teatime visitors, "Mr. Brewer, your son is here." There was no response. "The guard is on his coffee break. I'll stay within earshot until he returns. Call if you need us." She patted Cole on the arm before locking him in the cell with his father.

Two chairs, a bed, and a gray metal wardrobe were the only furnishings in the room. Duncan sat with his chair facing the window, except when seated, he was too low to see anything but the sky through the bars and glass. He made no move to acknowledge his son, and Cole had learned over the years it was best not to touch him. He moved the other chair a few feet closer to the adjacent wall and sat watching his father.

"Pop, it's Cole. I came to tell you I'm moving." Cole always paused as if expecting a reply, though, of course, he didn't. But he found it easier to run these conversations as if they were two-sided, framing Duncan's probable responses in his mind and continuing as if he'd actually said them. It made no difference if his father had not said a civil word to him in fourteen years. Cole knew well enough what he would say.

"Yeah, again. Grand Rapids didn't work out for me." Anyone listening might assume they were hearing one end of a telephone call.

"I'll be headed for Myrtle Beach next. Probably too far away for me to visit much." He searched his father's face for any faint trace of regret but found only his implacable, placid stare, a look Cole always interpreted as disapproval.

"I know it would be better if I got a steady job, but I can't seem to work that out for myself.

"If your only surviving son is a bum, I'm sorry. I may be responsible for the bum in me, but it was you who managed the only surviving part.

"Forgive me, I didn't come here to throw that in your face. I only came to say goodbye." Cole allowed himself to be deceived by a light from the window or a drift of air from the radiator that caused Duncan's eyelid to flutter. He wanted to think it was voluntary. He stood and reached a hand to his father's shoulder.

With lightening speed and vice grip strength, Duncan clamped his wrist and squeezed until Cole felt the tendons crunching. Drawing him down to eye level, Duncan growled, "Why ain't you dead, boy?"

It was Cole's turn not to answer. He merely concentrated on not flinching or pulling away and met Duncan's hateful glare until he released him. When he finally did and returned to his impassive state, Cole moved away from him and called for the guard.

As he stood at the door waiting for him, he asked in a voice bereft of all emotion, "Why am I alive, Pop?"

Chapter One

Three years later

Nicholas

A thin streak of brown charring snaked across the paper, and Nicholas could no longer make out the signature or the hugs-and-kisses X's and O's Beth had scrawled across the bottom edge. It didn't matter. He knew the whole letter by heart now. A tongue of flame licked at his finger, but he held the rose-scattered stationary for a moment longer until the corner floated away in cinders. Dropping it, he watched it drift toward the fire, then vanish to ashes. Like Beth. She was too hot for him to handle. And she had known it as well as he had.