Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [87]
“She left me a message.”
Jack did a double take. The story had suddenly taken on an entirely different quality. “What kind of message?”
Mays went to McKenna’s grave and knelt beside it. “Have you ever heard of a memory medallion?”
“No,” said Jack.
“It’s nothing super-high-tech, but it’s about as computer savvy as graves get.” He brushed away a little dust from a metal plate on the stone marker. It was about the size of a quarter.
“It’s an added feature you can order through just about any funeral company,” said Mays. “The marker comes with a weatherproof portal. If you know the password, you can hook up a USB cable and view photographs or read stories that others have left. Or you can leave something for others to see: pictures, poems, stories. Or you can do what Shada did this morning: leave a message for your husband.”
“That makes no sense,” said Jack. “Let’s put aside all the other questions raised by her resurrection from the Everglades. If she wanted to get in touch with you after all this time, why wouldn’t she just call or e-mail you?”
“Calls and e-mails can be traced. This can’t. We’re the only two people on the planet who even knew it existed.”
“She could have just knocked on your door,” said Theo.
“Not if she didn’t intend to stay. Obviously, she didn’t. She ran as soon as we made eye contact.”
A million questions came to mind, but Jack was speechless, not sure what to ask. “Why did she run in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” said Mays.
“Because she thinks she can,” said Vince.
Vince had a troubled expression on his face, and Jack worried that it wasn’t his place to probe. But he needed to understand. “What does that mean, Vince?”
Vince patted his guide dog, and Sam sat up straight, as if his master had something important to say.
“It doesn’t matter where I go, what I do, or who I’m with,” said Vince. “I could change jobs, change my name, change my life—change my gender, if I want to get crazy about it. No matter what, I’m still blind. The man who butchered McKenna left me that way. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve accepted it. Shada—and this is just my take—is another story. She hasn’t accepted anything. She thinks that if she runs far enough and long enough, she can get away from what happened.”
No one spoke, but after a minute or two, Mays was shaking his head. “You’ve known a long time, haven’t you, Vince?”
“Suspected. It was all so amateurish. The sleeping pills in the car. The canoe in the Everglades. Today cinched it for me. You tried to sound surprised, but—”
“I actually was surprised to see her,” said Chuck. “But not because I thought she was dead. I just never thought I’d see her again, after she left.”
“She just left you?” asked Jack.
“It was her idea. But I let her go.”
“What do you mean you let her go?”
“Shada was a mess. She lived in fear of McKenna’s killer coming back for her. She blamed me for leaving the country and not doing something about Jamal before it cost McKenna her life. She wanted out of her life, out of everything she’d ever known. I let her go.”
“Why did she come back? Why now?”
“She didn’t say in her message.”
“Exactly what did she tell you, Chuck?”
“She told me that she was sorry it had to be this way. And she told me not to worry.”
“Worry about what?”
“Being charged with murder.”
“Whose murder?”
“Hers, of course.”
Jack blinked hard, not comprehending. “Why would you be charged with Shada’s murder?”
“As much as Shada tried to make it look like she committed suicide, the investigation was homicide all the way. Like Vince said, it was pretty amateurish. Is anyone here really that surprised that it turned out to be bullshit? Jamal was the chief suspect for almost three years, but now we know he was in Gitmo when Shada disappeared. The cops are back to square one. Any time a wife disappears, square one is the husband.”
“So when Shada told you not to worry, she meant what? She’s officially coming out of hiding?”
“She’s coming out of hiding if—and only if—the same assholes who can’t catch McKenna’s killer try to pin something on me that I didn’t do. Like