Listen to the Shadows (17 page)

Where the strawmen had stood unmoving, they now, like grotesque wind up toys, began to move toward her. Stiff-legged they came, zombies whose greedy, dead eyes burned into her, dead eyes that she knew could somehow see. Katie’s flesh crawled, her knees drawing up ever tighter to her body pressed hard against the rough, cold wall, but there was no where to go. No escape. She watched in helpless terror as skeletal hands reached out to her. As the strawmen came closer, their limbs made a dry, raspy sound that, to Katie, was more horrifying than the thunder of boots. Insane with terror, she fought to move, to get away, but it was as if she was bound with invisible ropes. Then she felt a hand on her cheek—light as spider legs—and saw that the straw fingers had become pale bones, and the nails touching her face were long and curled and yellow from an eternity spent in the grave…

She screamed.

And sat bolt upright on the cot, hearing the echo of her scream all around her. Her breathing ragged, her body drenched in perspiration, Katie scanned the room, peering warily into dark corners, not yet certain if she was really awake or still locked into her awful dream. At last she got up and lit the lamp.

Only when the lamplight had chased all the shadows from the corners, did she breathe a sigh of relief. She was safe—at least for the moment. She tried not to hear the whispery sounds of movement that lingered at the edge of her nightmare.

She’d lit the fire and was taking off her coat when the phone rang, jarring every nerve in her body. She snapped it up on the second ring. Drake, she thought, and half-hoped it was. She would be grateful for his company. He’d probably read her note by now. She hoped he would understand and take no for an answer, but she also knew it wasn’t like Drake to give up without a fight. She definitely had no strength for a confrontation. She said hello, her voice sounding small and weak in her ears.

At the sound of breathing, her heart gave a little skip. Not Drake. It was him. “Hello,” she said again foolishly. “Who’s calling, please?”

No answer.

Suddenly more angry than frightened, Katie slammed the receiver down. Before the phone could ring again, she took the receiver off the hook.

For a solid hour she sat staring into the fire. At last she rose and walked to the desk, picking up the manila envelope that had come in the mail along with a postcard from her mother. Ignoring the postcard for the moment, she slid the photograph from the envelope, and moved closer to the lamplight.

As Katie studied the photograph, she gradually began, both consciously and unconsciously, to slip into a different world. A world detached from all the terrible things that were happening.

Hattie Halloway was neither young nor beautiful, not in the traditional sense, yet her face was far from uninteresting. The word aristocratic came to mind. Vaguely reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy. Her eyes were her best feature—deep-set, wide, intelligent, almost black in color. Her mouth bordered on thin. Her dark hair was softly styled in a rather out of date pageboy, framing an oval face accented by high cheekbones. Wonderful bone structure, Katie thought, with a mild stirring of excitement. It was a face that begged to be captured on canvas.

As she gathered her brushes and paints together, arranged the canvas on the easel and uncapped a tube of flesh-tone paint, Katie realized this was exactly the sort of therapy she needed right now. Painting required nothing short of her full concentration.

After donning the yellow, paint-spattered smock that hung on the hall tree, she turned up the wick and placed the lamp just to her left on the table so that its flame spotlighted the canvas. Holding her brush delicately between thumb and forefinger, Katie began the deft, fine strokes that would form her outline.

Deeply immersed in her work, she did not hear the car when, two hours later, it pulled into her drive. She whirled at the pounding of feet up her back stairs, knocking the jar of brushes to the floor.

“Katherine, are you in there? Katherine?”

Letting out a breath of relief at the familiar voice, Katie unlocked and slid open the doors. “Jonathan, I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, more pleased at the sight of him than she wanted to be.

“I know. I’m sorry to barge in on you so late. I tried to call you, but all I could get was a busy signal.”

He looks tired, Katie thought, and realized she was tired herself. Her shoulders ached, and her eyes felt as if someone had rubbed them with sandpaper. Yet, on a deeper level, working had calmed her.

“I took the phone off the hook,” she said, taking his coat and hanging it on the rack. “I didn’t want to be disturbed. What time is it, anyway? My watch seems to have stopped, and I keep forgetting to wind the clock.”

He held his wrist up to the lamp. “Twenty to ten. I called you this morning, too, but—uh, I guess you went to work.”

She chose the moment to gather her brushes from the floor. Jonathan bent to help her. “I thought I should,” she said. “It seemed important at the time.” It occurred to her that losing her job wasn’t the tragedy she’d expected it to be. In a way, it was even a blessing. She had a month’s pay in her purse, and there would be the money from the portrait, and from the sale of her other paintings. For a little while, at least, she would be free to do her real work. Odd, that something in her life should still matter to her.

“I dropped in to The Coffee Shop,” Jonathan said, handing her the brushes he’d picked up off the floor. “I spoke with Mrs. Cameron.”

“And she told you she fired me.”

“She chose a nicer way of expressing it. I’m really sorry. People can be so…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Katie cut in. “Look, I was just about to have some coffee. Would you like a cup?” She might as well be civilized. He had, after all, been kind to her. She couldn’t very well hate him. There wasn’t enough emotion left in her for that, though it might have been easier. Besides, she could hardly consider herself his victim when she knew full well she’d boldly and willfully thrown herself at him.

He accepted her offer of coffee. “I—uh, need to talk to you, Katherine.” As he ran a hand through his thick, black hair, Katie’s senses recalled the way it had felt to her touch. She remembered its clean, soapy fragrance. The memory shattered when Jonathan added,

“What happened to your lawyer friend? I half-expected to see another car in the drive.”

She briefly considered telling him the truth, that Drake wasn’t coming, but knew he would then feel obligated to stay with her, and further obligating Jonathan Shea was the last thing she wanted to do.

“He was tied up. He’ll be along later.”

That was good, he said, and told her there was a police cruiser in the area, so she could feel relatively safe anyway, which Katie found comforting. She saw him looking at her canvas.

“The commission I told you about,” she said. “A portrait. There’s not much to see yet, but maybe when it’s finished, you’ll give it a review.” She managed a smile at him, then showed him the photograph of Hattie Holloway.

As Jonathan studied the woman in the photo, Katie saw recognition come into his eyes. “I know this lady,” he said. “Or rather, I know her husband, George Holloway. He’s a land developer. They’ve just donated a new wing to the hospital. They’re wealthy people. And good people.”

Katie had figured with what Mrs. Holloway was paying her, they weren’t exactly paupers. “I supposed she must be a patron of the arts,” she said. “Otherwise, she would have chosen a name to do her portrait.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Katherine. I’m no expert, but your work looks damned good to me.”

She warmed at his compliment. “Thanks. Actually, I never imagined it could be anything but a hobby.”

“Well, I won’t press you on that,” he said smiling. “Is this your first portrait?”

“The first one I’ll get paid for. Please, sit down, Jonathan. Make yourself comfortable,” she said, suddenly self-conscious talking about herself. “I’ll get the coffee.”

When she returned he was sitting on the cot, legs angled out in front of him. She handed him his coffee. “You said you wanted to talk. Do the police have any leads?”

“Nothing solid.” He patted the place beside him. Katie tensed for a second, then, not wanting to create an issue, sat down.

“I’ve been at the police station most of the day,” he said, “going through reports, computer files…” He shook his head despairingly. “I thought we might stumble on something helpful if we went back to the beginning. To the night you saw the strawman—assuming that’s what it was—in the back seat of your car.”

“It’s what I saw all right. I’m sure of that now.” Her nightmare came back in a rush. She forced it away. “But I don’t know what I can add that I haven’t already told you.”

“Neither do I. But humor me for the moment. Unfortunately, we don’t know anything about that particular one,” Jonathan went on, talking more to himself than to her, his forehead creased in concentration. “But we do know about the effigy of Todd. We have the physical evidence of that one. Of course, they could have been one and the same. I had hoped it was just some sick Halloween prank, but too much has happened for that to stand up.”

Meaning Jason was dead and that Jonathan believed, as she did, that he’d been cold-bloodedly murdered.

How terrified her friend must have been seeing that monster truck bearing down on him, the cruel deliberateness of the madman behind the wheel. She could almost feel his panic when at last he went into the lake, as the icy water closed over him, blocking out the sun and sky. She could feel his desperate struggle for air as the lake roared its deadly message inside his head, as it sucked him down, down, pounding it triumphantly through his very bone marrow.

What must it feel like to know you are dying? How long? How long did it take to drown? When had he lost consciousness? Two minutes…three…four…Katie gasped in air as though her own lungs were about to burst. She closed her eyes against the bombardment of images and sensations. Somehow, I’m responsible for Jason’s death, she admitted to herself for the first time. Knowing it was true, she could only stare at her hands.

“Are you all right?” Jonathan asked beside her.

She opened her eyes and looked at him, almost surprised to see him sitting there. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“I know this is difficult, but we really do have to talk about it.”

“I know. I’m just not sure what it is you want me to say.” Recalling Sergeant Miller’s suggestion, she said, “I guess you’re trying to help me remember something of significance, huh?” Might as well get on with it, she thought. Maybe she would remember something that would help. Why not? It worked all the time in the movies.

“If there is anything,” he said hesitantly. “Anything at all. Katherine, I was wondering—do you have any suspicions, yourself?”

“No, not really.” No one and everyone, she thought. Allen Parker not excluded. But she did not want him drawn back into her life, not unless it was absolutely necessary. Allen was certainly capable of slapping a woman around and of harassment. She could attest to that. But murder? It didn’t seem likely. Still, she couldn’t be sure. Whether or not he was still in Belleville was something she planned to check out herself.

“There has to be some connecting link,” Jonathan was saying.

“Some pattern. It’s all so damned bizarre. Oh, I guess I should tell you, the police are interviewing everyone you worked with, the people in your art class…”

“That should make me popular,” Katie quipped. Her gaze dropped to a burn spot, shaped like a teardrop, on the floor near the fireplace. But maybe they would uncover some important clue. “I suppose it’s not entirely true that I have no suspicions,” she said slowly, her eyes shifting from the floor to Jonathan. He was studying her intently.

“Lately, it seems I’ve come to suspect just about everyone I come into contact with. So I really don’t know how much stock you could put…”

“Katherine, what is it? What happened?”

“Well, there was an incident with Frank today, but it probably didn’t mean…”

“Frank Cramer? The cook at The Coffee Shop?”

“Yes,” she replied, knowing how Frank would have bristled at the term “cook”. He was a chef, dammit, he would bellow when any unwitting soul made the mistake. An artist!

Katie related briefly the incident to Jonathan who listened without interruption. “… and when he shouted that he’d show me, that he’d show everyone—I guess I couldn’t help wondering if his words implied some sort of threat.”

Frank? she mused. Not the most stable individual she knew—but a murderer?

“Right you should wonder. Anything else?” She thought a moment, remembered her encounter with Raymond Losier at City Hall, then dismissed it as too ludicrous to have any importance.

All the while, Jonathan was intently scribbling in a notebook. When he stopped writing, she said, “There is something. Last night when I was walking home from the bus stop, I heard something in the woods, just off the road. It seemed to be—keeping pace with me. I didn’t see what it was.” Jonathan frowned. “An animal?”

“It’s what I thought at first. And what I tried to convince myself of when I got home. But I sensed a person. I wasn’t about to hang around to find out.” She saw herself running, recalled the blind terror that had pushed her on. “Anyway, we can’t keep blaming everything that happens on animals, can we? That’s just about as bizarre as anything else we can think of.”