Deep in memories shadow.., p.1
Deep in Memories (Shadow Man Book 4), page 1
Deep In Memories
The Shadowman Series
BY: B.P Stevens
Mystery Thriller story
Copyright © [2022] [B.P Stevens] – All rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Description
After Harper makes a startling decision, she finds herself in the home of the man she trusts the least. Desperate for answers, Harper dives headfirst into a world that she knows nothing of. However, she has no idea what she's gotten into, or how much danger she is really in. What will she have to do to get the answers she so desperately craves? And worse.... what will happen to her when she learns about it?
Tables of Content
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Other Books By this Author
About This Author
Review This Book
Chapter One
Harper couldn’t sleep at all.
Not when she was contemplating becoming the one thing that she couldn't stand: the one thing she despised more than all things.
A criminal.
The person she had sworn to stop all her life.
She sighed and rolled over in bed, looking at the ceiling fan spinning in circles. The moonlight fought its way through the blinds, sprawling out on the floor in slices of bright gray light. Her comforter hugged her to the bed, too heavy for her restless body. She sighed and sat up for the fourth time, running her hands down her face.
She got up and shuffled into her tiny kitchen in her pajamas.
She got a cup from the pantry and milk from the fridge, poured it into the cup, and let her mind race. When she was this worked up about things, she would usually talk them over with Jill. However, talking to Jill was out of the question for now. Not only was Jill at work, but Harper also felt that she had already compromised her friend enough. For now, she would have to wait until she had concrete evidence to convict Andrew before she brought it up with Jill again.
And that would of course only happen if Harper became brave enough to face her own fears and tackle the concept of breaking into Andrew's home head-on.
She put her cup of milk in the microwave and tapped her fingers on the counter while it spun around in the heating machine. She made a clicking sound with her tongue, shaking her head.
“Son of a gun,” she whispered. “What have I gotten into now?”
After Pete left and paid for the entire bill himself, which he insisted upon, Harper was left with a lot more questions than answers. What happened that was so bad that Andrew felt the need to change his name? To change his life? To become someone entirely different?
Pete had known Andrew was a weirdo from day one. The way he acted as if the victims of the crimes brought the violence on themselves or something. Of course, Harper knew as well as anyone else on the force that you can't help yourself from blaming the people who are victims of these crimes sometimes. It's just hard not to do so.
Harper remembered one of her earlier cases when she was a rookie on the rise. A mother had her baby stolen from the stroller. She put off admitting to the police that the baby was stolen because she had left her baby on the subway when she went to meet up with a guy.
The baby was never found, and Harper truly couldn’t tell if that was the better option at the end of the day. Maybe that baby was better off without having that woman for a mother. But she couldn’t know that for certain. No one could.
“I’m losing my mind.” She shook her head. “I’m truly losing my mind.”
The microwave beeped and she pulled the milk from it. She stirred it around with a straw and sighed.
“Okay,” she said to herself. “I can think through this.”
Her voice echoed in her empty home. She’d never felt sad that her home was empty, never longed for a family or even a husband. Nothing could take her mind off of her duty to find her best friend. Now, though, that the answers seemed closer than ever, she had no idea how to go about it.
What would Beth want her to do?
“Pete was right about one thing.” Harper wagged her finger in the air as she sipped her milk. “Andrew is a no good son of a devil. He’s up to something. If he isn’t the kidnapper himself, he certainly has to be connected to someone who knows something. I mean,” she paused to take a sip of her milk, “He’s been impeding the entire investigation.”
She let the warm milk settle in her stomach, soothing her throat. She set her milk back down on the counter and sighed again.
“But if I do break into his house, and I do find evidence, how the heck am I supposed to get this admitted in court anyway? I mean, what am I going to say to the court judge or even my boss? Here, I found this evidence at the scene, convicting Andrew! Yes, it was in his house. Super legal!”
She stirred her straw in her milk and thought some more. Even if she did break in and find nothing, there was also the possibility - the fear - of getting caught by Andrew. He could have her arrested, and it could easily be the end of her career as she knew it.
Or it could be her only chance to save her best friend and everything she’d lost as a child.
“Okay, I need to look at this objectively.” She nodded to herself and took another sip of milk.
“I have incriminating photos of Andrew taken by Dan. I know they were somehow related, one way or another. I know Andrew had access to Beth.”
She counted the clues that she had off on her fingers. She was glad to see how much she was able to recall.
She rolled her neck, took another sip of her warm milk, and went to her junk drawer.
She grabbed an old company pen and the pad for groceries from her fridge, clicking the pen in her hand three times before looking at the lines on the list. She scribbled everything important down that she could remember. She wanted to be prepared.
"So Andrew has ties to Dan." She wrote it down and whispered along as she continued. "And he knew where Beth would be. She would trust him. He would have built a rapport with her – he’d have enough information to get her to listen to him if he told her to come outside.
Suddenly, Harper smacked herself on her forehead. She felt stupid for forgetting one of the most important parts of this case.
Kaison’s testimony.
He remembered hearing keys, which Andrew had plenty of. He always had a lot of keys on him. Some were to his gun case and locker in the precinct, others were keys to places in his home that Harper didn’t know about. He identified Andrew’s voice. He knew it so well that when he appeared in the precinct Kaison bawled his eyes out and screamed bloody murder. The more that Harper thought about it, the more she was surprised that the precinct didn’t do anything about Andrew then. The evidence was pretty obvious, at least when she listed it out this way.
She stirred the straw in her milk and chewed on it. The only reason Andrew didn't look like a suspect was that he had done such a wonderful job of covering everything up. He had made it so easy to blend in calmly into the background at first and then gained everyone's trust over time. He gained a rapport with them so that when the time came, and the inevitability of getting caught came into play, he wouldn't even be considered.
She had to take him down.
She wondered if Andrew knew that Dan was going to come into the picture. She wondered now, with everything piecing together if Andrew wanted Dan to kill her when she chased after him. She'd always been his biggest competitor and she had been onto him since the beginning of the case. What better way to lose her than to simply have her be killed in the line of battle by some freak she chased after with no backup? Andrew could have easily made himself out to be the hero in that tale again as well - maybe he begged her not to go after the man they found that night. Maybe he would have tried to stop her.
But Harper had won.
And she had scared him.
“He knew what I would do to get the truth,” Harper whispered. “He knew what I was capable of so he needed me off the case.”
Obviously, Andrew didn't consider Harper was good at her job. Every single time that Harper won an award, Andrew always scoffed as if there was no reason for Harper to have been the one who earned it. He always acted as if the very concept of Harper doing good wasn't normal. It never seemed sexist on the surface, but now Harper was questioning everything.
She stirred her milk some more. She was almost done drinking it, and she was ready to jump into action. She was tired of sitting around and waiting. She chewed on her bottom lip and tried to dissect the last issue she was currently facing.
He did bring a girl to ‘bring your kids to work’ day once.
He had brought a little girl with curly black hair and dimples. She had rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes that Andrew swore she got from her mother. She loo
Pete had mentioned Andrew could have hired any kid from off the street to be his kid, but she was so good at acting like she was his daughter. If the entire thing was a facade, then how come she was so good at playing the part? Why didn’t she ask for help if he was forcing her to pretend? She was literally in a police station.
Harper pressed her fingers together and forced herself to remember that day as best as she could. It was three years ago, and Harper was just starting to get the attention she deserved as a good cop. She and Jill were talking about Jill's boyfriend at the time, who later turned out to be a cheating piece of crap. They were looking at the door when Leroy and his dog came in - the only kid he had in the house now, he told them. His other babies were away at college, living their lives.
Harper remembered laughing about that with Leroy. He showed her photos and poked fun at Jill, Tyler, and Harper for not having any kids to call their own yet even though they had good jobs. They all poked fun at him too, making jokes about the economy and how it was impossible to have kids in this day and age when Andrew walked in with his little girl.
Harper paused the memory in her brain. She remembered that a car had dropped them off - a gray one. It had been so casual that it was almost impossible to remember, but Harper was certain of one thing: she never saw that car again.
Andrew’s wife never drove a car like that. Harper had seen his wife’s car before when she dropped off some of his lunch or medicine. She had never come inside, which Harper found a little odd but decided that maybe she was shy. They drove a small black car.
Who had driven the gray car then?
Harper sighed and twisted her hair, thinking about it some more.
“Okay, so there’s always the possibility that they simply purchased a new vehicle, right?” Harper shrugged her shoulders.
No one answered her, of course.
She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and thought harder.
If there were connections between Dan and Andrew that she hadn’t seen before, maybe there were connections to other people that Andrew shared but didn’t make obvious. There had to be something going on in the background of this.
“It’s not like that part matters,” Harper scolded herself. “The girl is gone. The car is enough to warrant suspicion.”
She knew she was just convincing herself at this point to do what was right even more than she already knew. All the evidence was lining up, and the answers were all pointing to Andrew. She had to know if he was innocent or not. It would eat her up inside if she didn’t find out herself.
Sure, she would be breaking and entering. Sure, she would be turning into one of the criminals she hunted daily, but at the end of the day, she was doing it for the right reasons. She wasn't trying to steal anything - she was searching for the truth.
She checked the time. It was two thirty in the morning. She could call Jill to ask her a question, but maybe Jill was sleeping, and Harper didn’t want to wake her friend. Instead, she opened her workplace app and checked the schedule. She read the names of who was working when, and when they would be off.
She found Andrew’s almost immediately.
She smiled to herself.
He was working the night shift the following day. He would be at the precinct from five o'clock in the afternoon until about two in the morning, where he would be relieved by Leroy. She had a window of time here to break in - an eight-hour-long window.
She didn’t intend to waste it.
Chapter Two
Harper had to take two melatonin pills to put her to sleep that night. She knew that she needed all the rest she could get before she had to turn around and do one of the hardest things of her life. She had a dreamless sleep – which was good – but when she woke up in the morning with three missed calls from Jill, her stomach churned.
“Hey,” she whispered when Jill picked up. “What’s going on?”
“Oh nothing much,” she whispered. “Andrew just found the tape you ‘misplaced’”.
Harper shot up in bed. “The what!?”
"Yeah, exactly. It's concrete evidence that he had it after we left!" She hissed into the receiver. "He played it off as he found it on the floor under some boxes, but he noticed me staring. I had to lie and say that I was just super tired to play off the fact that I couldn't stop staring at him. I just couldn't understand it, Harper." She sighed over the phone. "I didn't want you to be right, but I think you are. I hate it, but I do think you're right."
“So do I,” Harper sighed, running her hands down her face.
Then she remembered the schedule.
“Wait, why is Andrew in this early?” She asked. “I thought he had the night shift.”
Jill paused. “How do you know he has the night shift?”
Harper played off the awkward pause with a casual, breezy laugh. “Because I still work there, silly. I check the schedule every week to see who’s working when.”
Jill sighed again. “Right. Sorry, I’m just so worked up right now.”
“That’s understandable.” Harper nodded. “How much time do I have to clear my name?”
“I didn’t know we were clearing names!” Jill hissed.
Harper chuckled but rephrased her answer nonetheless. "I mean," she offered, "How much more time do I have until the case closes?"
“I don’t know for sure,” Jill admitted. “There’s probably a little bit more time, but not too much. They’re wrapping up loose ends, and Andrew’s doing his best to explain away the things that don’t make sense.”
Harper was pleased to know that Andrew was desperate.
He was clawing for ways to get this case wrapped up soon. Hopefully, for Harper, this could mean even more time to explore his house. Maybe he would stay longer.
“Is he still there?” Harper asked.
“Nah,” Jill offered. “He just left to go rest. He does have the night shift this evening.”
Harper checked her watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning.
She had time to kill, but now she had the urge to do what she was supposed to do. Now, she had no reservations about going after Andrew. He had stolen the tape to incriminate Harper and returned it to cement himself even further as the hero.
“Okay well I gotta let you go,” Jill chimed in. “I have to sort some paperwork. I’ll call you later?”
“Sure!” Harper smiled. “Be safe, Jill.”
“You too.”
Harper hung up the phone and stared at her home screen for a long time. She licked her tongue against her teeth for a moment, thinking. A slow smile spread to her face as she shook her head from side to side, chewing on her nail.
“Oh, you want to play dirty, Andrew?” Harper scoffed.
“I can play dirty.”
She put her phone back on the charger and got up, preparing to make breakfast. She started with the eggs, making sure to keep her protein up. She would need all the strength she could muster for what was coming. She made a good vegetable and fruit smoothie from scratch, using the leftover fruit from her fridge. She smiled to herself and ate her breakfast in peace, staring out the window with a sense of relief and wonder washing over her.
The sky was a beautiful dark gray with cinder clouds overhead, and the birds were singing. The trees were rustling in the wind, and Harper felt inner peace. She wished that all her mornings had been like this, but they weren’t. They were consumed with fear for her best friend, dread of wondering where she was.
Now Harper would know for certain.
Now, the waiting game was over.
She didn't know what to do with the rest of her day now. She spent her time doing remedial tasks around the house, like cleaning, just to keep her mind busy. No matter how many times she checked her watch, it seemed that the clock couldn’t go any faster at all. Time dragged when you had to wait for something you so desperately wanted.
