Equal Access (30 page)

Shad almost clipped the rear bumper of the
car as Wally dove inside and Shad leaped toward him. The interior
side of the door struck Shad’s hip as Wally tried to slam it
shut.

Shad grabbed the front of Wally’s shirt with
both hands. With his rage in full force he wrestled Wally out of
the sedan in a matter of seconds and shoved him against the rear
door of the car.

“Dulsie could have died because of you!” Shad
snarled as he hammered Wally repeatedly against the window. “What
lies are you gonna tell me now? That it was Dulsie’s own fault?
That trying to have me killed is completely normal? That society is
too uptight about murder?”

Wally sputtered and tried to grasp at Shad’s
wrists.

Shad growled, “You black hearted, dickless
coward, you’d better pray for the police to get here before –”

He was ready to try to ram Wally right
through the window. Wally looked up as he finally clasped Shad’s
wrists. Immediately his mouth twisted into a distorted gape and an
odd, strangled moan escaped. His eyes were wide, and Shad realized
without a doubt they shone with abject terror.

For a split second his demon rejoiced and
poised for satisfaction.

Shad froze as he realized Wally was looking
at that demon. Its face had broken through Shad’s own visage, and
its darkness was so complete it threatened to smother any flicker
of light.

“
The
only
thing
that
gave
you
away
was
your
eyes
.
I
swear
they
got
darker
.”

Dulsie’s voice emerged from a memory that
seemed to come from a lifetime ago. His rage surged again. This
cretin deserved to be pounded to a bloody pulp for what he did to
Dulsie.

But Dulsie wouldn’t want
this
. She
believed that the man she’d married had a fire in his belly but the
fortitude to keep his cool. Shad had already thrown her a curve
ball with his affliction and now he was about to make himself even
more of a stranger to her. Dulsie couldn’t be won back by a
stranger.

This
isn’t
me
.

With considerable effort to push back down
the raging demon, Shad drew a deep breath as he slowly straightened
but kept a tight grip on Wally’s shirt. His focus began to spread
again, and Shad became aware that a small crowd of people from the
hotel were gathered around the taxi. With another deep breath Shad
tried to both steady his hands, which had begun to shake, and
remove the hoarseness from his voice.

He looked at the crowd and shouted, “Call the
police!”

Shad fully expected to be detained by the
police until he was “extradited” back to Osage County. By the time
a squad car arrived he was back in complete self-control and calmly
and rationally told the officer everything about his run-in with
Wally. Shad then practically volunteered to go to the police
station where the pertinent paperwork was filed. To his surprise
they basically wound up releasing him on recognizance. Apparently
the St. Louis police had a chat with the Osage County sheriff, who
in turn had probably chatted with Shad’s parents.

That left him with about three hours until
time to catch the afternoon train back to Jeff City.

The cab dropped him off at the train station
and Shad found a nearby bench to sit at with his satchel and laptop
case. His stomach was sore but Shad also realized he was getting
hungry. There were plenty of shops in this neighborhood for him to
get something to eat, but now that he had some privacy Shad wanted
to get back to his call to Eliot. True to his usual luck he got
Eliot’s voice mail again, so Shad decided to try calling Monica’s
phone.

His luck remained consistent. Shad heard four
rings and then the messaging service picked up. So he decided to
try Eliot’s home phone.

Shad got the same response.

This was starting to buffalo him. Shad stared
at his cell phone for a while, and then decided somebody would
surely try to call him back while he was on the phone with anybody
else. The people he most wanted to talk with, besides Dulsie, were
Mam and Pap.

Incredible. Nobody answered at home,
either.

Shad glanced around at the other patrons
milling around the stores that lined the streets and half wondered
if he’d missed out on the rapture. All right, he decided to try
Karl’s cell phone.

Shad finally got a break. Karl answered the
phone and immediately sounded quite cheerful.

“We got to bring Dulsie home today.”

Shad’s stomach fluttered, which also reminded
him of its other issues. “That’s great. She’s doing fine,
then?”

It turned out Mam and Pap were at the
Wekenheiser home as well, so Karl loaned his phone to Pap. Shad was
brief about his escapade to St. Louis and confirmed he’d be home
that evening. But the matter with Charissa nagged at him, so Shad
cut the conversation shorter than he preferred.

Well, that trick didn’t work. Nobody tried to
interrupt his dialogue with the family. Shad decided to try
Monica’s phone number again.

Answering service. Shad stared at the phone
for a minute, and then on impulse decided to try her a third
time.

After the third ring, just as he was certain
of getting the answering service again, Shad heard the line pick up
and Monica’s voice seemed a bit groggy.

“Hello?”

“Monica? It’s Shad Delaney.”

“Oh, yes. What did you need?” Monica still
sounded only vaguely coherent.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting so long, but I
need to talk to you about Vic. We won’t go into it over the phone,
but are you going to be free this evening?”

“Vic?” Monica was apparently still trying to
process only the first half of what Shad had said. “He should be
around here somewhere.”

A chill flashed through Shad that actually
competed with the humid summer air. “Say that again?”

“Vic should be here. I’m surprised he didn’t
answer the phone.”

“Monica....” Shad’s heart began to hammer.
“Vic wasn’t supposed to be there today. Didn’t Tess call you?”

“Oh yeah, that. Vic came later, said there’d
been a change in plans. He would still watch Charissa until after
I’d slept.”

The tone in Shad’s voice dropped. “Where’s
Charissa?”

“She should be around here, too.” Shad heard
the soft crackling of the receiver being muffled while Monica
called, “Charissa?” Then her voice became sharp and clear again,
and Monica seemed a little more alert. “Just a minute.”

Shad heard the
thump
of the receiver
set down. For what seemed an eternity he listened to silence. A
couple of times Shad thought he could hear a voice in the distance.
It seemed like a lifetime passed before Monica returned to the
phone.

“I can’t find him.” There was tenseness in
her voice. “And I can’t find Charissa either.”

There is mother’s heart in the heart of God.

-- Hebridean proverb

If Shad were a swearing man he could have
made the nearby pedestrians scatter with their hands over their
ears. He told Monica to call the sheriff and that he would do the
same. Shad knew he had the information the enforcement agency would
need, and the rather long conversation he had with a deputy
involved Shad doing a lot of explaining.

The battery of his phone quite low after all
that use, Shad dropped it into his pocket and had that sensation
again of needing to crawl out of his own skin. He sat on the bench
for a few minutes with his arms propped on his knees and head held
in his hands.

Why was this happening? How was this
happening? Apparently Tess did call Vic, but the man decided to
show up at Monica’s anyway and hang around until Monica needed to
lie down and take a nap. So why would he, today of all days, decide
to take off with Charissa? Why wouldn’t Vic have tried harder to
cover his tracks?

Perhaps Shad should start with what he did
know. Vic was the one who got the recommendation about Shad as an
attorney for Monica. As part of the family and with his medical
training and work hours, Vic was selected to help out with Monica
and Charissa. Vic was familiar with the activist website. Vic was
the go-between for Wally and the hired gunman.

Vic was already an accessory to attempted
murder. Why add kidnapping to his rap sheet?

Kidnapping ... children abducted by relatives
were at high risk for both abuse and murder.

Shad had to get to his feet upon that
thought. He snatched up his satchel and laptop, and simply started
walking because he felt compelled to move.

If Vic was associated with somebody who was
willing to kill for hire, Vic was also very dangerous – birds of a
feather. But if he was a situational offender who had been
violating oblivious patients or anybody who couldn’t report his
activities, why kidnap Charissa when everybody would know it was
him?

Did Vic know the jig was up? When Tess called
him this morning, what did she say that might have tipped him off?
Shad had told Tess so little. Unless.... Shad hesitated and stared
down the street.

Did Vic know that Shad had been Wally’s
target? But that didn’t make sense. Why kill off the lawyer that
was practically providing new victims for him? Shad felt a little
sick to his stomach and knew it had nothing to do with injury or
hunger. Then again, Vic might not have known the identity of the
hit until ... until Dulsie’s attacker showed up with a gunshot
wound he needed medical attention for.

The thought spurred Shad back into striding
down the sidewalk.

Even if that were the case, why wouldn’t Vic
just make a run for it and try to start a new life elsewhere? Then
again, why should Shad assume that anybody who hung out with
killers and could easily be a killer himself would think like a
person who valued life? There were too many unknowns for Shad to
get a solid grip on Vic’s motivation.

And about motivation ... Shad noticed that he
didn’t know or care where he was going, but he was making good
time. Shad was also headed away from the train station, but that
didn’t matter much because it was well over two hours before the
train would arrive. Here he was, stuck in St. Louis, trying to
puzzle out why Vic would snatch Charissa and where he would take
her.

Where? If Shad could only answer
that
question, he could send the authorities swooping down upon Vic and
they would whisk Charissa to safety. But Vic could be anywhere.
Shad didn’t know enough to even begin guessing where Vic would hide
out. And Vic probably had at least a good thirty-minute head start
before Shad roused Monica from sleep.

Shad proceeded to mentally thrash himself for
not doing things differently this morning. If only he could have
talked to Eliot or Monica, Shad might have been able to keep
Charissa out of danger. After a few minutes of this Shad realized
it wasn’t getting him anywhere. But what could he possibly come up
with here in St. Louis that would be of any help to Charissa?

Shad hesitated, drew a deep breath to try to
reorganize his thoughts, and then noticed he had stopped in front
of a car rental agency.

He could rent a car and leave St. Louis now
instead of later.

Now why on earth would Shad want to do that?
Not only was he practically phobic of St. Louis traffic, getting
back to the Jeff City area wasn’t going to help Charissa. If he did
come up with any brilliant ideas a phone call was much faster than
a road trip.

But he really wanted to leave St. Louis.
Now.

This didn’t make sense. Shad wasn’t going to
discover anything about Charissa’s abduction by heading home any
sooner. Was he?

Shad stared at the rental company and felt an
odd sensation that his need to keep moving hadn’t been random. Of
all the directions he could have headed, Shad had managed to wind
up
here
.

But that was ridiculous. He was uncomfortable
in crowds and mortified of vehicular congestion. Under those
circumstances it was even crazier of him to consider driving.

But if there was any chance at all Charissa
might be saved if he headed toward home now, Shad should do it.
This was insane. He couldn’t do it.

In the depths of his memory Shad heard
Charissa’s trembling voice. “And if I don’t make you stop the
divorce, something bad will happen to me, too.”

This had to be the right action to take
precisely because it was so hard to do. Hoping against hope that
the variety of madness Shad was experiencing was truly divine, he
drew another deep breath to steady his nerves.

Don’t
be
a
coward
Shad told himself, and he walked into the establishment.

I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law
is no law at all.”

-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Luckily the interstate access was only a few
blocks from the rental agency, but it was many miles later when
Shad was able to exit onto a two-lane highway that led to Jeff
City. Only then was he able to go off high alert and begin to
ponder again about matters other than traffic.

Shad’s first thought was that Dulsie was
going to tan his hide in the literal sense and sell it to the
highest bidder in order to recoup from his recent spending spree.
The medical bills they would be facing soon wouldn’t help, but at
least they had good insurance so they shouldn’t wind up in the same
straights Mam and Pap did when Pap had the tumor.

Pap’s tumor. That one event changed the
course of Shad’s career. No, it wasn’t just the tumor. If anything,
the final blow for Shad’s intentions of going into computer science
was Jill’s revelation of what his parents had sacrificed for him.
Opinionated, outspoken, wonderful Jill. There were several ways
Dulsie was like her.