Cast a Pale Shadow

chapter Fourteen

Dawn found Nicholas and Trissa tucked safely in their own bed. Her warm, well-loved body lay snuggled along the length of his with her head and one hand resting protectively on his chest. His chin touched the top of her head and his arms encircled her. Their legs were a tangle of his and hers, his and hers. Nicholas was awake, savoring the soft puffs of air that rippled across his chest as she breathed in and out against him. He would not be able to extricate himself without waking her, and he was not sure whether he regretted his entrapment or not.

Eventually, he would have to get up. He would have to search for her battered, little suitcase and copy her old telephone number from the dangling identification tag. He would have to phone her father from the shop and arrange their confrontation.

Nicholas would keep the appointment Trissa had confessed her father had coerced her into making with his threats. The sooner he pushed himself to perform these tasks, the sooner he could make this pleasant illusion of safety a reality. He knew this. He had been willing himself to leave her side for the past half hour, but he had not summoned the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to relinquish the warmth of this dream for the uncertainty of fate.

Trissa stirred slightly and murmured, "Good morning, husband." She raised her face for a kiss, not stolen as on other mornings when they slept on separate layers of their bed clothes, protected by barriers of flannel, terry cloth, and wool, but offered and taken with no walls standing, no shields remaining, no rules unbroken. She was, indeed, the master now.

"Good morning, wife. How do you feel?"

"Cherished," she said.

"That you are," he stroked her back and she hummed like a contented kitten. "But otherwise? No aches or soreness?"

"No. Ummm, well... my feet," she admitted hesitantly.

"Your feet?"

"It gives me cramps. In my arches."

"It does?" he chuckled. He dove under the blanket and stoically resisted all the temptation between to kiss the arches of her feet and the tips of her toes. "Better?"

She giggled and lifted the blankets to peek down at him. "Come out of there!"

"I'll try. But it's very dark and I'll have to feel my way."

"Stop!" she said as he began his journey.

"Really?"

"No," she sighed.

Following a circuitous path with many pleasant detours, his lips found their way back to hers, and he sought his true home inside her again. With a gentle, stroking caress from her knees to her toes, he guided her legs to wrap around his hips.

"Tell me when it happens. We may be able to find a remedy to this foot cramping problem." His eyes shone with secret power as he began to take them both slowly toward that moment. She hooked her arm around his neck and pulled herself up to place her palm on the center of his chest to feel the strong hammer of his heart as he drove harder, forcing her to whimper with delight at each thrust. Then for a while they teetered, suspended, like a tossed coin wavering on its edge.

"Now, Nicholas, now!" she cried, but he did not need to be told.

"Ballet lessons," he said later as she cuddled against him.

"What?"

"We should get you ballet lessons. To limber up those arches. That will cure it."

She made a soft, round fist and jabbed him playfully in the stomach.

He let her drift to sleep again, neither had had much chance for it overnight. He touched his fingertip to her opposite cheek and she turned toward it, curling into the tight, little ball that was her usual sleeping position. He crept from the bed, pulling the blankets up to her ears. She was still sleeping when he finished dressing. He knelt beside the bed and leaned in to kiss her brow.

"Trissa? I have to leave for work now," he whispered. "I may be a little late. Don't worry about me."

"Hmmmmm?"

"You're to stay home and help Augusta."

"I know," she said, not really waking.

"I love you, Trissa."

"I love you, Nicholas," she murmured and smiled in her sleep.



*****



Nicholas did not identify himself to the artificially cordial Edie Kirk when she answered the phone. He asked to speak to her husband.

"He's not in," she said, her voice going instantly cold. "I suggest you try his work."

"Do you have that number?"

"It's in the book. Cromwell Manufacturing."

"Thank you."

When he did not reach Bob Kirk at work either, and they had no idea when or if he would be in, he called Edie back and left the same message he had with his secretary. "Tell Mr. Kirk that the appointment he made for this afternoon will be kept. There is no need to pursue the matter any further."

She tried to protest that she was not likely to see him.

"Well, if you do, give him the message."

"Who did you say this was?"

"I didn't. It's not important. Goodbye."

An hour later he checked both places to see if the message was delivered. The secretary gave a curt no. Edie Kirk did not answer the phone. He decided it was for the best. Perhaps the element of surprise would go in his favor. Instead of his daughter to intimidate with his threats, Bob Kirk would have to face a man who was not afraid to fight back.

Or, at least, that's what Nicholas told himself. He took the creased and faded photograph of father and daughter at the beach from his pocket and tried to judge the size of the man. He was relatively sure he was not the hulk Bryant Edmonds was, and Nicholas had the advantage of youth. But, other than that, he had no idea how things would turn out if matters came to blows.

His true intention was to reason with the man, to lay out the ruination he would face if his propensities came out in the open. Kirk would have nothing to gain by forcing his daughter back home. He should mitigate his past mistreatment of her by leaving her alone, letting her be happy at last. Surely, the man would have enough residual fatherly regard for her to accept that bargain. And if he didn't...

Nicholas recalled the humiliation of his aborted scuffle with Edmonds and knew that the threat of physical violence should not be his next recourse. He had only the bluff of his threat to expose him -- and bluff it was, for he would never endanger Trissa's fragile self-esteem with such a public disclosure. The whole gamble turned on his only trump.

Unless he took a weapon. But what? He could not imagine himself brandishing a firearm, and he'd get more laughs than respect with his rusty, broken pocketknife. The murder victim died as the result of multiple pricks and lockjaw, they'd say at his trial. There was the ever-reliable blunt instrument, he supposed. But that always seemed accessible at the murder scene, grabbed in the fury of the moment. One didn't go around carrying a concealed blunt instrument.

A shudder raced over him as he recalled a young boy cowering from a blunt instrument, a baseball bat, wielded by another father at another time. Nicholas remembered that he himself had brought that weapon to that scene intending to stop his father from abusing his sister. Arming himself was no solution. He might very well end up being accomplice to his own murder. All this thought of violence was eroding his confidence. For once, he wished he had not so alienated Bryant Edmonds. He'd make a handy sidekick.

Trissa called at noon to say that Augusta was keeping her busy, but that she missed him already. "Will you be very late?"

"I hope not. I have an errand to run. Ben let me go early last night." He let the unrelated sentences serve as excuse and explanation. Neither of them were lies.

Later, when he remembered the soft music of her voice when she said, "Goodbye. I love you. Hurry home," he knew everything would be all right. The foe would be vanquished and with Nicholas' own best weapon, his tongue. He had to do it for her.

At the appointed hour, he waited in the alley, a circle of cigarette butts forming at his feet. The sun went down; the alley grew dark. It was long after five. Up and down the alley, kitchen lights and cooking odors and dogs barking marked the passing time. Kirk wasn't coming. Or, contrary to his plans, he waited for Trissa in the house. Nicholas caught movement at a pulled shade in an upstairs window of Kirk's house and decided that was the case. Throwing down his cigarette, he started up the walk.

"I've been watching you. What do you want?" came a low, gruff voice from the shadow of the garage.

Nicholas halted and turned toward the voice. He had noticed no one there before. But hunched on a wrought iron bench was a man, his legs stretched out before him, holding a metal flask in one limp-wristed hand.

"Mr. Kirk?"

"Maybe. Who wants to know?"

"I have come on your daughter's behalf."

"The hell you have. Where is she?"

"In protective custody."

He was suddenly alert. "Custody? Whose custody?"

Nicholas had thought of this tactic on the way over, stealing the idea from Jack Sanders little tax default schemes. He would threaten him with the law and then, when he squirmed, offer him the convenient out. It would work. It always did for Jack. "Charges are being prepared against you and a warrant--"

"Charges?" he roared and lurched to his feet. "Why, you little shit heel, you're him, aren't you? You're the pervert she's been shacked up with all this time."

Nicholas squared his shoulders and stood his ground. "I am an investigator from the Division of Family and Children's Services. My name is George Pulasky." It was the first name that sprang to mind. Georgia Pulasky wouldn't mind his stealing it for such a worthy cause. "Serious allegations of child abuse have been filed--"

Kirk spit on the ground and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Let me see some identification."

Nicholas fumbled in his jacket pocket, patting for his wallet, delaying the finding of it until he thought of something else. "As an officer of the court, I am authorized--"

Whether Kirk thought he was reaching for a weapon or he had simply grown impatient with his game, Trissa's father gave him no time to finish. The flask swung up and smashed Nicholas across the temple. He staggered sideways with the blow. His wallet flew from his fingers and into the grass.

"Where is she, prick? Tell me, or I'll kick you bloody. You won't be sticking it to someone else's daughter again when I'm done with you."

"Look at me before you make your threats, Kirk," Nicholas said, fists clenched and ready to strike, his ear still ringing. "I'm not some little girl you can knock around and intimidate. When the police arrive--"

"When the police arrive, my ass. You've been sniffing around my back alley for two hours like some cur looking for a bitch in heat. Don't tell me you been waiting for the police to arrive. When the police arrive, Mr. Officer of the Court, they'll see I've dealt with a prowler trespassing on my property."

It took a moment for Nicholas to realize that it was not he who swayed from the after effects of the hit, but Kirk. But when Kirk lunged drunkenly forward trying to land a rabbit punch, Nicholas was able to step aside, and Kirk landed on his face in the dirt with a force that knocked the wind out of him. Nicholas laughed at his easy triumph, snatched the flask from the ground where it had dropped and emptied it inches from Kirk's nose, making gin-mud that spattered his face.

"As I was about to say, you have your choice of two alternatives. One, you can wait until the police arrive and I will have assault added to the charges already appearing on the warrant, the details of which I hesitate to mention in earshot of all your neighbors." Nicholas, feeling far too cocky for someone who had never won a fight in his life, was shouting loud enough that neighbors on the next block could hear. He had his foot planted squarely and firmly into the small of Kirk's back. "Or you can submit to a court order that prohibits all contact with your daughter for an unspecified, but, I assure you, prolonged period."

"God damn it, let me up."

"Choose, Kirk." Nicholas increased the pressure on his back, grinding his heel into his kidney.

"Ow, shit! All right, God damn it. I'll leave her alone. She always was more trouble than she was worth." With Nicholas' slight easing of tension, Kirk seized the opportunity to thrust his flank upward, knocking Nicholas off balance. It was a simple matter then to grab the other ankle and pull him off his feet.

Kirk was on him in an instant with skill most likely honed in barroom brawls and wife-beating, he pummeled him with blow after blow in the gut, followed by a few well-placed kicks until Nicholas heaved himself over and tried to crawl away, digging his nails in the gin-soaked mud, unable to pull himself to his feet or even his knees.

"You sure as hell fight like a little girl."

Through smoky pain, he heard Kirk taunt him. A clot of something sour and salty rose to his throat and he retched into the dirt. The pain radiated from his groin to his chest, and rings of darkness encroached on his vision like the closing of the aperture on a camera lens from f/4 to f/8 to f/16.

He brought Trissa's face to mind and held it there, a charm against the blackness. The next kick was to his left ear, and he saw and heard nothing else.



*****



Trissa's worry mounted steadily since dinner when Nicholas didn't show and he hadn't called. Augusta had reminded her several times that he had said he might be late. She had tried to keep her busy making bows and ribbon streamers to festoon the music room. But when seven o'clock had come and gone, no amount of brightly colored bunting could have kept up her spirits.

When the phone rang, they all froze, it seemed everyone expected the worst, and no one wanted to be to be the one to hear it. Roger rose to answer it at last.

"Blackburn residence." There was a pause, then he smiled and nodded. "Just a moment." He pointed at Trissa and mouthed, "I think it's him."

"Hello? Nicholas?" Her voice was tight with anxiety and a bit breathless.

"No, Bryant Edmonds. Hello, Trissa."

"Oh, it's you. I can't speak now. I'm expecting a call."

"I think this may be it."

"Don't flatter yourself," she said flatly.

"Wait, you misunderstand. I have some bad news. Do you have someone with you?"

"Yes," her voice rose on the word. "Yes, Augusta's here. What is it? Tell me."

"Have her bring you down to the hospital right away. It's Brewer. The police just brought him in."

"No. What happened?"

"He's pretty badly beaten up. I'm sorry, but you'd better hurry. They may have to take him into surgery."

Trissa felt the blood drain from her head and she crumpled like a rag doll. Roger, who hovered nearby, caught her just before she hit the floor.

They revived her with a sniff of ammonia and a cold glass of water, and it was as if the ice in the glass had put ice in her veins. Suddenly all business, she fetched her purse and coat, left instructions for Beverly for clothes to pack and bring Nicholas at the hospital.

She was still giving directions when Augusta bundled her out the back door to the car that Jack had warmed up and ready. On the way to the hospital, she chattered on about Nicholas and his talent and how she wanted him to send his photos in somewhere and try to sell them, but he kept saying they weren't good enough. She thought she might surprise him and send some in any way. She'd go to the library and look up how to do it.

"Do you think he'd be upset if I did that, Augusta?"

"I don't know, honey, maybe it would be wise to wait."

"Wait? Wait for what?"

Augusta patted her knee, and Trissa clutched at her hand and read the answer in her eyes. "Oh, Augusta, what if he's killed -- My father warned me he would -- Oh, God, he warned me." She let the tears come then and Augusta comforted her and told her it was good to cry. It would make her stronger when she had to be, when Nicholas needed her smiles to make him get better.