Shadow Dancer (The Shadow Series Book 1) (33 page)

“Its okay, my girl… my brave girl. It’s over. It’s all over now.”

* * *

“Did you hear that?!” Adam yelled at DiNolfo, who was already running down the path towards her car.

“Hurry up and get in!”

She sped up the road hitting sixty miles per hour, the car sounding as if it would break apart from underneath them as gravel flew up and hit the underbelly of the car. DiNolfo didn’t care. She could get a new one. She planned to ask for a raise after this case was over. She had decided days ago that her job in busy Pittsburgh was less stressful than this case had been.

As soon as the house was in sight she ran for the front door which was now wide open. She could see a man standing in the doorway. DiNolfo skidded to a halt as she approached the porch and ran up the steps. She could see the silhouette of a tall man in the entryway. With her gun drawn, she addressed him.

“Elkhart Police! Identify yourself!”

Jack grabbed his crutch and slowly turned himself and Tristan to face DiNolfo. Tristan was still buried deep in Jack’s shoulder, tears flooded down both of their faces. When DiNolfo realized who it was, she couldn’t believe her eyes. That is when she saw the body. Lying on the floor lifeless with a bullet hole in his head, Bernard Kendricks stared lifelessly back at her. Clutching her side, she had to sit down. It was all too much for her.

“Oh, thank God…” she said, catching her breath as she felt a giant weight rise from her chest. “Is anyone hurt?”

“War wounds… we’ll live” said Jack trying to lighten up the grim scene, “Right kid?” he said looking at Tristan. Somberly, she shook her head up and down. Adam and Liam watched from afar, still reeling from the events of the last few days. DiNolfo looked up at Jack with a perplexed look.

“Wait… how did you know?”

“The phone. It had been dead for hours. I tried calling at least a dozen times. I knew then that I had to come.” He looked down at his daughter, who was still gripping his waist tightly as he kissed her on her forehead. “And it’s a good thing that I did.”

Adam, who was looking perplexed, called up to his father on the porch.

“Where the hell is everyone?” he asked with a worried look on his usually pleasant face.

“I have no idea. I just got here,” said Jack wearily. All his attention, all his energy had gone into making sure that Tristan was safe. He had subconsciously always assumed that the boys could defend themselves as long as they stayed
together. He was wrong to assume so.

“Uncle Frank’s truck is gone. I bet you they went to get help,” Liam suggested.

Jack gave Liam an agitated glare, “Frank would never leave if Tristan is in danger. He is here somewhere. If anyone took the truck, it was Bridgette and the younger boys. We need to look for Frank.”

DiNolfo waved for Adam and Liam to follow her. She couldn’t just hope they were all safe. She needed to make sure that no one else was hurt. She had to gather as much information as she could about what happened. She had no phone in which to call for back up. No radio either; she had left the cruiser at the station. She would have to make do until help arrived.

Upon performing a thorough search of the grounds, she found Frank and Bridgette being tended to by Angus as Moira sat by their feet. Bridgette was beginning to come to, but Frank’s condition appeared to be more serious. While the bleeding from the entry wound appeared to be under control, he was still knocked unconscious from his close encounter with Kendricks’ rifle. When he was in the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, he started to come to, shaking off the nasty headache associated with violent blunt force trauma. He looked over at his wife who was sitting by his head and said, “Please tell me she’s alright… Please tell me everyone is alright…”

Bridgette leaned down and stroked Frank’s bald head. “She will be just fine. Everyone will. It’s over. Jack ended it.”

Frank’s facial expression went from grim to shocked and amused. “Wait. What?”

Bridgette smirked at her husband. “I’ll explain it later.”

Frank breathed a sigh of relief as he closed his eyes and allowed Bridgette’s gentle touch to soothe his weary mind.

DiNolfo had finally finished searching the grounds, accompanied by Adam and Liam who had assisted her. With a smirk on her face, she turned to them, “You two would have a hell of a future in law enforcement.”

Looking surprised, Liam replied, “Who? Us? We were just trying to help out.” Adam looked amused at the idea.

“No. Not just that. You have excellent instincts. You knew to keep an eye on that fishing shack. You knew to stay out of view and monitor the forest at night. You knew that bear trap was there, and saved my leg from being chopped off. Cool under pressure, you two. You should consider taking the test for the academy in Danville. It just so happens that we have a couple of positions that
just
opened up.” Adam and Liam smirked at each other.

“We’ll consider it” Adam said, grinning at his younger brother, “It might be fun.”

DiNolfo laughed. “Oh, you have no idea!”

* * *

“Tristan, I know you’re shaken but I need to learn as much as possible about what happened when you were taken so that I can document this case file,” said DiNolfo, a sensitive and understanding tone in her voice.

Tristan, who was still clasped to her father’s side, nodded her head in agreement.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Please start at the beginning.”

Tristan let out a sigh as she released herself from her father’s embrace. She sat on the floor, just a few feet from Kendricks’ sheet-covered body. Jack and DiNolfo waited patiently with hushed anticipation, as she prepared to tell them everything they needed to know about her disappearance and the dead man on the floor.

“The night he took me, it was October the eighth, I believe. I
woke up around three A.M. The storm woke me up. That is when I noticed that my bedroom window was open. I got up to close it, and noticed him standing behind me in the reflection. When I didn’t move, he approached me. He looked insane. I will, for as long as I live, never forget that face. I tried screaming, but no sound would come out. He forced me out the window where I fell to the ground two stories below. That’s how I hurt my leg. He followed but landed much softer than me. I tried to run but my leg was causing me too much pain.

“From there we got into this old gold car. This inside smelled; it was a strange smell, something like gasoline mixed with rotting food combined with the scent of his air freshener. He needed at least fifty of those air fresheners. It reeked of something dead.

“We didn’t go far. It was dark but I had a good idea of where I was. See, the road never changed from dirt to gravel. Once you get used to the roads up here, you can usually tell what path you’re going with your eyes shut. Dirt, then gravel, then black top means you’re going into town. Plain old dirt with swerves and drops in the road means you’re going deeper into Cavegat. We were in the deep forest, right by Dad’s ice fishing shack. He snapped the door open, shoved me inside, and locked it. During the night, I heard him outside talking to himself. He seemed to be talking about his plan. Honestly, I just thought he was talking to himself. He did a lot of that. I didn’t realize where I was until I started feeling around inside the fishing hut. My leg kept getting caught on something in the floor. Something round. I later figured that that must have been the cut-out where Dad would fish from. I started banging, hard, on the door, yelling as loud as I could hoping that someone, anyone would hear me. It didn’t last long though because he soon pressed his rifle in on my face. He kept me in there for the next day. There was no food, no drink. He sat there, staring at me. He only left me alone for about an hour, when he said he had to take care of something. I later got out of him that he planned to kill everyone so that they could no longer ‘interfere’ with ‘our’ lives. He planned to kill every single one of my family members. It seemed like someone caught him on the property though because he came running back in a hurry. I thought I heard Adam and Liam’s voices. From then on, he kept the door locked from the inside. When the dogs and the voices came near, he forced me to lay on the floor under a blanket. When I tried to kick out of the blanket, he stapled it to the fishing hut floor, so that I couldn’t move.”

“Did he touch you?” DiNolfo asked, afraid to hear the answer.

“No,” Tristan assured her, anytime he came near me I was swinging, biting, anything I could do to get him away from me.”

“What happened next?”

“He started to get hungry. He thought he had the all-clear, so he unlocked the door and peaked out. That is when I made my move. I charged at him full force despite my hurt foot, knocked him out of the way, and I bolted. I know the back woods like the back of my hands, but in that instance, I was just trying to get away. He was standing closer to the house so I bolted in the opposite direction. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. When I looked behind me, I didn’t see him anymore, so I walked. I walked all night, until these two busybodies on the highway insisted I go to the hospital. I was just trying to get back home.”

“At the hospital, I was told that he had a disguise. Can you tell me more?”

“He was acting like he was one of those aides that take patients to different parts of the hospital. What are they called… an orderly? He looked completely different. He had dyed his hair black, used bronzer, but I could tell it was him. He still had the scratch I had given him across his left cheek. After I knew it was him, I tried to get away. I remember you had told me that my Dad was here, so I screamed. Dad must have heard me. When Dad came, he shot Dad and took me again. He was completely insane. Told me that he was going to take me to South Dakota to start a new life. I wasn’t having it. I severed the rope around my wrists and used it against him to stop the car. I guess I pulled too long though because the car veered off the road and we plowed into a ditch. He went unconscious. I unbuckled him and he fell out of the car. I took the car and bolted for Elkhart. Uncle Frank saw me first, on Mountain Road. I knew Kendricks would come back for me, and he did. He came up from the basement. He had me alone in the house, he thought he had me cornered. So did I for a minute. Then Dad came charging in. The weirdest, sickest thing out of all of this… he swore I was my mother. Like he was cut off from reality. It wasn’t just a game to him. I was her in his eyes. And it was weird… when Dad showed up, he expected it to be you.”

As DiNolfo scribbled furiously into her notepad, Jack allowed his face to sink into his hand.

“So there are some things that have fit together since we’ve last spoken,” said DiNolfo, keeping her eyes on her notepad.

Jack, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, chuckled. “I’ll say.”

“Brace yourself,” warned DiNolfo, this information isn’t pleasant. Amos ratted out Kendricks. He was trying to take your wife, too. But she fought, ran, and made it very difficult for him. He chased her all the way across the property, through snow and blizzard force winds, all the way to Croft Lake. She fell through the broken ice, and he held her head down, drowning her.”

Jack didn’t look surprised. He did look a little relieved to finally hear the truth, however. “I’ve known it was him for a long time… I just didn’t know how it happened.”

“Catherine’s case is going to be closed. It may take a little bit… I’m going to have a ton of paperwork to do…”

“That is a relief.”

DiNolfo had a perplexed look on her face. “Jack, let me ask you a question…”

“Go for it.”

“If you knew it was him, why did you keep her at the school?”

“We don’t have many options up here. It’s either Steeplechase where she could get a solid education or PS 132, which is one of the worst schools in the state. Literally, at the beginning of the school year, P.S. 132 installed metal detectors. When I found out that Kendricks was her English teacher this year, I tried to get her transferred out. In order for her to have a different teacher, she would have to be taken out of AP classes. When she heard, she had a fit,” explained Jack, as his daughter gave him a heated glare. “Not blaming you, I’m just explaining why you were left in his class. I figured she had her brothers in there, Shane, their friend Cole. They all keep an eye out for her. I never in a million years thought anything like this would happen.”