A man in a dark suit ran forward, took off his shoes, and trotted toward my niche. Before he had come close enough to the light to expose his face, the bully-boy lumbered around the corner of an intersecting lane. The bully-boy raised his bat and attacked. I crept out to put an end to the lout. Then, bafflingly, a second form, in every way similar to the first, sprinted down the lane. One of them was my son, but which?
I drew back. A promissory music filled my ears.
The new arrival pushed the tourist aside and leaped upon the roughneck. Surely, this was my son. In seconds, he had claimed the baseball bat and was bringing it down on the roughneck's skull.
Taking in the careless beauty of his features, the darkness of his lustrous eyes, the abrupt angle of his cheekbones, I watched my scion saunter toward the lamplight. The commission of a violent homicide had ruffled him no more than it would his old man. The Adversary's radiant monstrosity utterly belied the terror, the quailing dismay of his shadow-appearances. I supposed that the little shit had grown into this self-assurance around the time I erased from the earth, as Commanded, the last of the Dunstans no longer resident in Edgerton, those barrel scrapings through whom I had moved like a plague.
But what in the world was he up to, and who or what was the replica whose life he had saved? I hugged the wall and watched the blood-soaked center of the stage.
My foe strolled glittering into the spotlight. With the self-awareness of deliberate art, he appeared to hesitate. That devil knew exactly what he was doing. He wasposing. Slowly, negligently, he turned his back to me and faced the man in first row center. After a beautifully timed delay, he spoke.
Unfortunately, he uttered only an anticlimactic sentence concerning the hypothetical male obligation to honor the sexual overtures of females. Evidently he had bedded someone the other fellow had rejected. My inner receptors continued to hum in expectation of more essential info. My formidable son and adversary vanished down the intersecting lane. As if linked by an elastic band, the other stumbled into the circumference of the lamplight.
The recognition of how close to understanding I had come while failing completely nearly made me burst into laughter. I was looking at the same face, more or less, considerably more than less. They were brothers.
Star had given birth to two boys, and while I had vainly sought the first, it was the second son, apparently named Ned, whose shadow-self had floated behind me on their mutual birthday. Star's death had summoned them both to Edgerton, and until a moment before, the dope now hovering at the edge of the light had been as clueless about his brother's existence as I. Starhad not wanted him to know. Star had protected him. Stunned, the lad moved forward to pursue his brother, shuddered back, and skedaddled.
I have been given what I needed all along.
4
HOW I FOUND MY SHADOW AT LAST, AND WHAT IT DID
• 41
• "Under the bed is not a new concept," said Lieutenant Rowley. "But you pushed that sucker wayback there. Were you afraid someone would steal your winnings?"
Lieutenant Rowley raised his rust-colored eyebrows toward his crinkly, rust-colored hair. The wrinkles in his forehead deepened, and his mouth stretched into a narrow line. Creases like hatchet marks appeared on his leathery cheeks. He was smiling. It was 4:56a.m., and Rowley had been having a wonderful time since 3:30, when he and Officer Treuhaft, a human totem pole swathed in blue, had awakened Nettie and Clark, charged into my room, read my Miranda rights, and arrested me for the murder of a man named Minor Keyes. Rowley was just getting into his stride.
“I didn't win that money. I brought it with me fromNew York."
"Do you always take along five or six hundred dollars when you go out of town?"
For the fourth or fifth time, I said, “I didn't know if my ATM card would work here. I didn't withdraw it all at once, it accumulated over the past week or so."
"Funny how it matches what Staggers and the others say you took off them. Even worse, they identified you." Some of the savagery left his face. “It's tough, Ned, but it isn't as bad as you think."
A young policeman cracked open the door, came up to Rowley, and whispered in his ear. Rowley planted a finger on his shoulder and pushed him back. "Blanks? No ridges? Will you please get the hell out of here?"
Rowley was about forty-five, roughly the same age as Stewart Hatch, but his skin looked borrowed from someone a decade older and recently deceased. “I mean that." He willed some life into his face. "Know what? Right now, I'm the best friend you have."
He hitched his chair closer to the table. "Forget the money. JoeStaggers and his friendsknow you took money off them at theSpeedway, and theyknow you were in Hatchtown tonight. Keep saying you weren't involved, you're looking at life in prison."
“I wasn't in town on the night of the card game," I said.
Rowley fixed my eyes with his. “I'm on your side, Ned. I know how it went." He thumped his hand on the table. "All ofa sudden, a guy was coming at you with a baseball bat. The whole thing went down in a couple of seconds. To me, you were a Marine in there. Probably you didn't even know he was dead, am I right?"
Rowley spread his arms. “In the twenty-two years I been on this force, I never heard a better defense. Come in telling the truth, chances are you walk out free and clear. Why don't we take your statement and put you on your way back home?"
“I didn't win any money in a card game at theSpeedway," I said. "On Wednesday night, a truck driver for Nationwide Paper named Bob Mims picked me up in Ohio and dropped me off at the Motel Comfort. In the bar, I met an assistant D.A. from Louisville who told me she could give me a ride here the next day. Her name is Ashleigh Ashton, and she's staying at Merchants Hotel. Thursday morning, she dropped me off at St. Ann's Hospital. Last night, I ran into Mrs. Ashton and Mrs. Hatch at Le Madrigal, and they invited me to their table for dinner. After that, I went to see Toby Kraft. I drank too much. On the way home, I got as far asMerchantsParkand passed out on a bench. I got back to my aunt's house around twelve-fifteen, twelve-thirty."
"Maybe twenty minutes later? A witness puts the time attwelve twenty-six."
"Why don't you call Mrs. Ashton and ask her where I was on Wednesday night?"
"We will," Rowley said. "We'll talk to Mrs. Ashton, and we'll hear what she has to say about Wednesday. It won't have any bearing on what happened attwelve twenty-six last night, but we'll check it anyhow. In the meantime, I want you to think about what I said."
“I can't confess to a murder I didn't commit," I said.
Rowley took me downstairs to a cell. I stretched out on the cot and surprised myself by going to sleep.
The clanging of the door woke me up. A gray-haired man with a pink, weary face that had a lot of miles on it walked into the cell. His belly pushed out the front of his white shirt, his sleeves were rolled up, and his tie was yanked down over his open collar. Behind him, Rowley loomed like a ferocious statue. "On your feet, Mr. Dunstan," said the gray-haired man. "We're releasing you."