The Shadow Man

Other books by John Lutz

Jericho Man
The Shadow Man

The Alo Nudger Series

Buyer Beware
Nightlines
The Right to Sing the Blues
Ride the Lightning
Dancer’s Debt
Time Exposure
Diamond Eyes
Thicker Than Blood
Death By Jury

SPEAKING VOLUMES, LLC
NAPLES, FLORIDA
2012

The Shadow Man

Copyright © 1981 by John Lutz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

9781612329024

For Steve, Jennifer and Wendy

Senator Jerry Andrews had voted against the water appropriations bill. He supported the concept of the bill, but there were some amendments that the President damn well knew would prove costly to the already impoverished over the next several years. So the much needed bill was stalled, possibly for months. Sometimes politics was pure crap.

After adjournment, Andrews left the Senate Chamber immediately. Now he walked along the well-lighted corridor toward his offices in the Senate Office Building. He was a tall, energetic man suspended between the loose-jointed affability of youth and the graying distinction of middle age. His athletic body seemed tailored for his conservative three-piece suit, rather than the other way around, and his straight brown hair was just beginning to be shot with silver. But he still had a persistent cowlick near the crown of his head, and at times his lanky frame seemed to contain too much youthful vitality for the traditional sedateness of his surroundings. During the past two years he had been involved in several bitterly fought political frays, and the strain had left its imprint on his lean, habitually amiable features—deeper lines from his nose to the corners of his ever more resolute lips, faint crow’s-feet radiating from the corners of his candid gray eyes. Lately those eyes had taken on a somber, level gaze that caught even Andrews by surprise some mornings as he stood shaving before his mirror. He was indeed beginning to look like a United States senator. And in the past few years he finally had come to feel like one.

Several people nodded to him as they passed in the long corridor. Andrews was becoming well known in Washington. He was not yet a national figure, but he now knew that soon he would be. The senior members of the Senate, the news media, were watching him, had tagged him as an increasingly important factor in the equation and were still trying to bracket him for reference. In this city, everything and everyone had to be labeled.

“Senator!” Wayne Hallock of Iowa called, smiling as he approached. “How are you going to explain that water appropriations vote at home?”

Andrews returned the elderly senator’s wily grin. “I don’t think I’ll have to, as long as my wife has enough to wash and cook.”

Hallock snorted and brushed a strand of wispy white hair back from his eyes. “I mean, how are you going to explain it to your constituents? Or haven’t you seen the latest polls from your great state?”

“Explaining is my business,” Andrews said easily. He squeezed Hallock’s bony arm in friendly parting and continued down the corridor, his footsteps echoing rhythmically as he approached his office. He had the feeling that Hallock was still watching him, calculating how to convince him to accept the President’s amendments on the stalled bill. And on the mental balance sheet that every politician kept, Andrews owed Hallock.

As Andrews neared his office door, his appointments secretary, Judy Carnegie, rounded a corner and strode toward him hugging a bulging legal-size portfolio to her breast with both arms, as if she were carrying an infant. Judy always walked with swift deliberation, giving the impression that she was almost but not quite late for an appointment. And her dark eyes always glittered with eagerly mischievous intelligence beneath her bangs, reflecting the pragmatic machinations that regularly went on behind them. Just five years out of Vassar, she had come far. She had aspirations.

“Busy, busy,” she chanted with a grin, somehow balancing her burden and opening the office door for Andrews. “Hey, wait’ll you hear your schedule for the rest of the day. A killer.”

“Beats having lost the election,” Andrews told her, rankling her by stepping aside so she would have to enter first. Men didn’t make even the slightest allowances for femininity in Judy’s yearned-for world.

Andrews’ office was medium-sized, sparsely but expensively furnished, cluttered with the accoutrements of his profession. On one wall were framed various awards that Andrews had received throughout his career. On another hung a large autographed portrait of the President, wearing his firm but friendly expression. The walls were light green and freshly painted.

Judy dropped the heavy portfolio onto a small library table while Andrews stripped off his suit coat and loosened his tie. “What is all that junk?” he asked, pointing to the portfolio.

“The transcripts of every speech Walter Gorham has made since nineteen forty-five,” she said. “And miscellaneous information pertaining to the economy.”

Andrews looked closely at Judy and nodded slowly and admiringly. Walter Gorham was soon to come before the Senate for confirmation as Federal Reserve Board chairman. By that time, Andrews would have studied the information Judy had compiled and know not only how to vote, but how to cope with the potential assets and liabilities that went along with that vote, be it aye or nay.

He sat behind his desk and leaned back in his upholstered swivel chair as Judy opened the large, leather-bound appointment book and studied it. “Lunch at one with Senator Davis,” she said, “then at three you meet with Frank Turner in his office to discuss the campaign fund bill. At four you have an appointment here with a representative of the American Save the Wicker Society—”

“The
what?”
Andrews interrupted.

Judy shrugged. “Four thirty is the long-distance call from Masters in California. Five thirty you meet Governor Vincent for cocktails at Ricardo’s.”

Andrews sighed. The only possible free time in the schedule was after lunch with Davis, but Davis was notorious for his prolonged, alcoholic lunches.

“And your wife phoned and wants to speak with you,” Judy added in an automatically neutral tone.

They both knew that Ellen was Andrews’ principal political liability. But Ellen also realized that and played the game. Or had so far.

Andrews rose from behind his desk and walked into the small washroom to splash cool water on his face and brace himself for the rest of the day. Hadn’t he asked for this in hundreds of campaign speeches?

“Dial Ellen for me,” he instructed Judy, shoving the washroom door closed with his foot.

“One other thing,” Judy called from the office. “Dr. Dana Larsen phoned. He asked to see you as soon as it was convenient.”

“About?”

“Didn’t say.”

Andrews paused, letting his hands remain beneath the stream of cold water. “Did you work him in?”

“For ten tomorrow morning. He’s flying into town on an early flight.”

When Andrews had freshened up for his lunch with Davis and returned to his desk, Judy informed him that Ellen hadn’t answered her phone. Relieved, he told her not to bother calling again.

Then he put down the papers he was to sign and wondered why Dr. Dana Larsen wanted an appointment. Three months ago Andrews had used his influence for Larsen, who was a psychiatrist and an old college friend, to obtain entree to interview convicted political assassin Martin Karpp in a maximum-security asylum for the criminally insane in New York. Larsen was doing research on the phenomenon of multiple personality, and Karpp had come to be regarded as a classic case, a man who possessed six distinctly separate personalities. Other than having read a few popularized histories of such cases, Andrews knew nothing about the subject. The favor was one of the few Larsen had ever asked of Andrews; he considered the series of interviews with Karpp essential to his work.

An instinctive caution alarm was silently signaling in the back of Andrews’ mind. Larsen might possibly stir up some bizarre new angle on the Governor Drake assassination. Though the murder had been carefully investigated and tirelessly discussed, and though there was absolutely no doubt as to Karpp’s guilt, always there were the conspiracy fanatics. Even the John Kennedy assassination, now rightfully the property of history, was still being picked over by those intrepid nonbelievers.

Of course Dana Larsen was one of the most reasonable and professionally responsible men Andrews knew. That was why Andrews had decided to pull strings and get him the interviews with Karpp. But now Andrews found himself questioning that decision. The Drake assassination still was a delicate subject, especially in the South.

One of the lucite buttons on Andrews’ desk phone began to blink, then dimmed as Judy answered at her desk.

“Your wife again, Senator,” she told Andrews.

He drew a deep breath, as if seeking precious oxygen, and lifted the receiver. Maintaining a political career was like juggling vials of nitroglycerin.

In a small hexagonal gray room at the Belmont Institution for the Criminally Insane, Dr. Dana Larsen sat facing Martin Karpp. Between them was a narrow oak table covered with nicks and time-darkened scars, almost luminous with a patina created by years of the perspiration and despair of intent conversation.

Over the black frames of his glasses, Larsen calmly observed Karpp. The political assassin seemed composed, his square-shouldered, stocky frame relaxed as he drummed idly, yet with a curious sort of detached concentration, on the table with sturdy, blunt fingers.

The man fascinated Larsen, as did the general subject of multiple personality. So little was known about the affliction, and so much might be garnered from more understanding of its genesis. And Martin Karpp embodied a rare opportunity for serious study.

“Tell me more about Jay Jefferson,” Dr. Larsen suggested.

Karpp’s black eyebrows rose as he considered this request. His face was heavy-featured but symmetrical, not unhandsome in a thick, brooding fashion. He seemed to enjoy discussing his various personalities, talking about them as if they were acquaintances, sometimes old friends. And always he referred to them in the third person. Larsen had never spoken to Martin Karpp when Karpp was anyone but his genuine identity. But it was “Jay Jefferson” who four years ago had shot presidential candidate Governor Hugh Drake, and who inadvertently had been betrayed at the trial by Martin Karpp. That Karpp and Jay Jefferson occupied the same body, along with four other identities, had resulted in an insanity decree and Karpp’s confinement for life here at Belmont.

“Jay had to shoot the governor,” Karpp said, after slow consideration. “He’s sorry he had to kill. But he’s also sorry that people don’t understand he did it for his country, for the way of life that everyone but a few people like Jay, with the guts to see things as they really are, takes for granted.”

“But what gave him the idea of assassinating the governor?” Larsen asked, leaning forward with unfeigned interest.

Karpp’s dark eyes slid off to the side as he smiled. “Are you trying to get me to say something incriminating, Doctor? Underestimating me?”

“You must understand that isn’t so,” Larsen said. He knew that Karpp had an IQ well above the median. “You’re here for the rest of your life anyway. What difference does it make what you say?”

Karpp continued to smile but didn’t speak.

Beyond him, on the other side of a clear Plexiglas partition, stood a guard in civilian clothing. The guard was well out of earshot. Karpp knew that. He’d insisted upon it when laying down the conditions for the sessions with Larsen. It had interested Larsen, the way Karpp was able to use what little bargaining position he had and imposed his will.

“He dresses like you,” Karpp said, motioning with his head toward the stoic figure of the guard, “but he carries a gun beneath his suit coat.”

Larsen nodded. “This is a maximum-security institution. You’re considered a dangerous man.”

“Not me. Jay.”

“How do you feel about that?” Larsen asked. “About Jay shooting Governor Drake and you being confined for the crime.”

Karpp’s blocky shoulders moved slightly in a resigned shrug. “I understand how it is.”

“You mean about occupying the same body?”

Karpp nodded.

“You’ve understood since you were eighteen, haven’t you?” Larsen said, referring to the findings of the battery of government psychiatrists who had examined Karpp four years ago. They had put him through every test conceivable to substantiate his psychosis. And there was no doubt as to the validity of his fragmented psyche. By the date of the trial’s suspension, each of Karpp’s five other personalities had even been identified by name.

“I was about eighteen when sometimes I became Alan Hobson,” Karpp said. “Alan liked to steal. I was strictly against it, you understand, and tried to talk him out of it. But he said he wanted things—no, he
needed
things. Since he felt so strongly about it, and saw other people stealing in so many ways, he decided it was all right to go ahead. I always pretended he’d bought things when he brought them home and I’d find them in the morning.”

“So you don’t approve of stealing.”

“Of course not.”

“How can you approve of murder?”

“I thought I explained about Jay. What if somebody had killed Hitler before he gained power? What about that?”

“How do you feel about Willy Bennet?” Larsen asked, ignoring Karpp’s question.

“I feel that what he does is his business. Willy can’t help it he’s a queer.”

“But you don’t approve.”

“Of homosexuality? I don’t know. Like I said, it doesn’t concern me. It’s Willy’s business.”

“Does Jay Jefferson approve of Willy’s sexual preference?”

Karpp knitted his dark eyebrows. “I don’t know. What does it matter?”

Again Larsen ignored Karpp’s question. It would be easy to fall into the role of subject rather than interviewer. He wondered if the tragic man across the table was consciously trying to wrest control of the interview from him. Larsen carefully broached the matter he’d been trying to bring into focus for almost a week.

“What about Paul Liggett’s note?”

Karpp seemed almost to smile. Paul Liggett was another of his personalities. And a week ago someone had left a note at the desk of Larsen’s motel, suggesting rather ominously that he leave the area. The note had been signed Paul Liggett.

“So Paul left you a message,” Karpp said matter-of-factly. “So what? Why do we keep getting back to that?”

“If Jay Jefferson can’t leave the asylum, how can Paul Liggett?”

Now Karpp did smile, but very faintly. “Maybe Jay can leave. You’re the one who said he couldn’t. Maybe it isn’t right that he’s here for what he did, and he
can
leave. Maybe Paul can leave too. Maybe he does. I don’t always remember what everyone does; most of the time I don’t. Paul shouldn’t be here to begin with. Don’t you agree?”

“Who did Jay Jefferson know in New York?” Larsen asked.

“The people the FBI found out about. Some I know from what Jay told me in notes. Political people. He’d naturally have friends like that. What else would you expect?”

Karpp had raised his voice slightly in exasperation. Behind him, the plainclothes guard stirred and stood away from the anteroom’s tiled wall.

“Why should the question upset you, Martin?” Larsen asked Karpp. “I only want to know so I can talk with these people, find out some things for my research. I told you that, and you agreed to help. I’ve been honest with you.” Larsen emphasized the word honest.

Karpp clamped his lips together and held his large head in his hands as if it were dangerously fragile. He sat that way for a long time. From outside came the faint sound of jays chattering on the grounds. Sunlight, packed with a swirling riot of dust, silently lanced through a narrow, high window and spotlighted the top of the wall to Karpp’s left. So intense was the ray of sun that it seemed a man could leap up, grasp it and hang supported by its warm strength and solidity.

“I’m tired, is all,” Karpp mumbled at last.

“I’ll leave now, then,” Larsen said agreeably, switching off the cassette recorder on the corner of the table. “There’s no big rush about what we have to say to each other.”

Karpp laughed his low, oddly melodic chuckle.
“I
have plenty of time, anyway,” he said. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow,” Larsen said. “I have another appointment. But I’ll be back in a few days.” Larsen glanced at Karpp. The stern-featured man appeared to be in his mid-thirties, though he was now only twenty-seven. Larsen sensed an unspoken regret in Karpp that their usual conversation wouldn’t take place tomorrow. He felt an unprofessional pang of pity for this trapped and unfathomable man. Sad bender of history. “Maybe Wednesday,” Larsen said, packing recorder and papers into his briefcase.

Smiling at Karpp, Larsen said goodbye and opened the door to step into the guard area.

“You’re my only visitor, you know,” Karpp said behind him.

Larsen looked at him and nodded. “I’ll return, Martin.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Larsen closed the door and the guard opened the thick outer door for him and stood to one side. The bulge beneath the man’s armpit was noticeable and remotely threatening. Before stepping through to the main corridor, Larsen turned and spoke to the guard.

“This might sound naïve,” he said, watching the guard’s placid, tanned face, “but is there any way he could get out of here?”

The face remained expressionless, making the voice all the more incredulous. “You mean out of the asylum?”

Larsen nodded, shifted his leather briefcase to his left hand.

“There’s someone watching him every minute of the day,” the guard assured Larsen.

“And night?”

“He’s looked in on.” A glimmer of light transfixed the guard’s eyes, as if he’d suddenly spotted something in Larsen that inspired confidence. “If you’re worried about the possibility of escape, forget it. This is maximum security. It might not look it, for the sake of some of the patients and their families, but this place is guarded better than Leavenworth.” He said again slowly, as if in irrefutable finality, “Maximum security.”

Larsen thanked the guard and glanced through the clear Plexiglas into the interview room. Karpp already had been removed.

As he drove from the grounds of the secluded asylum, Larsen noted again the unobtrusive but numerous safeguards. The high, wire-meshed, barred windows recessed in ivy-covered brick walls, the many white-coated attendants Larsen knew were armed and well trained, the surrounding high double fences with their guarded gates. And outside the sanitarium were miles of heavily wooded hill country, beautiful country violated only by the two-lane blacktop road snaking to the asylum from the nearest town, Carltonville. Even keeping to the road, it would take someone on foot hours to reach the town, hours during which the escape attempt would be discovered and the area sealed and searched. The logical mind balked at the idea that escape from the Belmont sanitarium was possible. The logical mind.

The last of the high gates swung open for Larsen, and he pressed his foot down on the accelerator of his rented Chevy, then made a hard left turn onto the blacktop road. The tires squealed in a brief, almost human cry of agony.

In his cabin at the Clover Motel, where he was staying just outside of Carltonville, Larsen listened to the tape of his latest conversation with Karpp. Then he spent some time at the small oak writing desk, organizing his notes.

At seven o’clock he left his cabin and drove half a mile down the highway to the Chicken Barn, where he usually had dinner. The small family-owned and -operated restaurant served a variety of good food besides their specialty of crispy fried chicken.

“The veal tonight,” he told Carla, the waitress, when she approached his table near the window. “And iced tea.”

“Hot as the Lord makes ’em out there today,” Carla said, commenting as she invariably did on the weather. The temperature outside was still in the eighties, and Larsen wondered if Carla would have remarked on a cold snap if he’d ordered coffee.

She tucked pad and pencil into the oversized front pocket of her frilly yellow apron, and her long face broke into its horsey yet strangely attractive smile. Her lank, shoulder-length hair added to the impression of total elongation. As she started to leave to deliver the order to the kitchen, she turned.

Now, Larsen was sure, she would ask whether he wanted baked potato or fries.

“Fella was in here earlier lookin’ for you,” she said, surprising him.

Larsen’s hand left the sugar dispenser he’d been toying with. “What fellow?”

“Didn’t leave a name. But he knew your name.”

“What did he say?”

“Just wanted to know if you came in here. I told him you did now an’ then.” She frowned and gazed down her long nose at Larsen. “That’s okay, ain’t it?”

“... Sure. Is that all he said?”

“Said he and you would get together, then he left the place.”

“What did he look like?”

“Average height, I guess. Husky, with big shoulders. Not exactly fat, though.”

“What color hair?”

“Dark. Black, I think. Tell you the truth, I didn’t pay much attention. We was awful busy at the time.” With her loping gait, she walked quickly behind the counter and returned with an overflowing glass of water. Then she hurried away to get Larsen’s order.

After dinner Larsen had two cups of coffee and read about weddings and funerals in the local paper. Then he returned directly to the Clover Motel, locked his cabin door, and began packing for his morning flight to Washington.

Larsen left the motel at 3 A.M. He had to turn in the car at Kennedy and board his plane by seven. He tossed suitcase and vinyl garment bag into the trunk of the rented Chevy, then walked to open the door on the driver’s side. Gravel crunching beneath the soles of his shoes sounded amazingly loud in the dark, quiet morning. In the moonlight he saw that the cream-colored car was coated glass and all with a faint film of moisture, like fine white dust that had settled over a period of years, of interest to archaeologists. It seemed impossible that the car would actually start, roll over the brittle gravel and take him away from here.