The Inner Shadow (A Project Specter Mystery Book 3) Read online

  The Inner Shadow

  A Project Specter Mystery

  Paul Seiple

  Dangerhouse Media

  Contents

  Carl Jung Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  William Shakespeare Quote

  Free Book

  Project Specter Mysteries

  A Note From Paul

  Carl Jung Quote

  “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

  – Carl Jung

  One

  Lou’s Diner, Cleveland Ohio

  Emma Zito ignored the baby until the high-pitched sounds poked at her eardrums. Lou’s Diner was packed with the lunch crowd, but the constant chatter couldn’t drown out the crying coming from the child. Emma covered her ears and questioned why the noise was pricking at her senses in such a malevolent way. Normally, Emma was a level-headed person who understood how stress wreaked havoc on her health. No caffeine after noon or else it affected her sleep, and sleep was a huge part of Emma’s sanity. She never skipped a day of transcendental meditation and went to yoga class three times a week. Things like a crying baby didn’t bother her. But today was different. Maybe it was the marketing strategy presentation due at the end of the week for a new health food start-up? This was Emma’s opportunity to prove she was better than her co-workers Alison and John. Maybe the stress from that was causing her to feel like murdering everyone in the diner? She hoped she wasn’t getting sick. Emma got agitated when she felt a cold coming on. This was not the time to be out of work.

  More crying sent Emma over the edge.

  “Can you please shut that baby up?” Emma asked.

  Her words cut through the chatter and silenced the diner… except for the crying baby.

  “Sorry, he’s teething,” the mother said.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Emma said. “It’s just a bad day.”

  Emma felt all eyes in the diner peer down on her. She lowered her head and spooned at the tomato bisque soup as it turned colder. After about thirty seconds of silence, the chatter returned.

  I do good things, Emma thought. I volunteer at the animal rescue on weekends. I help at the homeless shelter twice a month. I gave Angus my last bit of cash today. Why can’t I get ahead?

  Deep inside, Emma always felt like she was passed over for promotions she deserved. She was better than her co-workers. The negative thoughts multiplied until her mind was full of rage. She knew she missed out on her dream apartment because she didn’t have the look. Emma could afford it, but she didn’t fit in with the upperclass women. Their stares were acts of judgement when the realtor showed her the fifth-floor space. Emma was more of a free spirit. Some would call her a hippy. She knew rage hid inside of her, but Emma kept it under control with self-care and the understanding that everyone had an inner shadow. A part of their being they didn’t want the rest of the world to see. Emma wanted to be a positive person. She fought the negative thoughts. But today, they were powerful, like a caterpillar with violent tendencies damned to break free from its cocoon.

  “Can you believe she screamed at that woman about her baby like that?”

  Emma took her eyes away from the soup. An older woman, probably in her early fifties, was talking to her husband as he read the Wall Street Journal. The woman was cut from the same cloth as those who judged Emma while apartment hunting.

  “They really should ban her from coming here for that,” the woman said.

  A faint heat touched the back of Emma’s neck like the whisper of a worked up lover.

  “She thinks she’s better than you. Show her your true self.”

  Emma whipped her head around to match a person with the voice. No one was there. A slow burn churned in Emma’s gut. She caught fire quick from rage. Emma made eye contact with the woman, who glanced away.

  “You’re worth more than this world gives you,” the voice said.

  Without taking her eyes away from the woman, Emma snatched a butter knife resting on a plate of dinner rolls.

  “That’s it. Make her pay for judging you.”

  Emma stood up, strolled to the woman’s table. Her husband never took his eyes away from the paper. Emma tightened her grip on the knife when the woman’s overpriced perfume assaulted her sense of smell.

  “May I help you?” The woman tried to sound confident, but fear crept through her soft tone.

  Emma didn’t speak. She swung her hand toward the woman’s face, jamming the butter knife into the woman’s left eye. The woman screamed and fell backwards out of the chair. Emma dropped to her knees and raised the knife above her head. A man at the next table leaped forward and grabbed Emma’s wrist before she could push the knife into the woman’s right eye.

  “Drop the knife,” the man said before tackling Emma.

  He wrapped his arms and legs around Emma in an amateurish MMA move.

  “Show the world your true self, Emma Zito,” the voice said.

  Emma laughed. The laughter grew louder and rattled the pictures, hanging on the walls, of famous people who had visited Lou’s over the years.

  “Call the police. She’s crazy,” the woman’s husband said, placing the newspaper on the table.

  Emma’s laughter turned into screams. The newspaper caught fire. The sleeve of the husband’s blazer caught fire. Rage ignited Emma. Her eyes felt as if they were boiling in the tears of joy streaming down her cheeks and smearing her makeup.

  The lunch crowd watched in horror as the temperature grew warmer. No one escaped. Lou’s went up in flames. Emma laughed as the rest of the patrons screamed.

  “The inner shadow is the True Self,” the voice said.

  This was better than meditation. More fulfilling than yoga. For the first time in her life, Emma Zito truly felt at peace as the fire burned her flesh.

  Two

  Two Hours Later

  Plumes of smoke funneled through the fall air. Embers smoldered around the rubble of Lou’s Diner. Several firefighters huddled near a truck chugging bottled water and attempting to catch their breath. News crews migrated towards the crime scene tape like moths to flames as they tried to get a quote about the explosion. The firefighters were tight-lipped. The police department ignored the questions. The truth was, there were no answers. Not yet, anyway.

  A tall, thin brunette gave chase to a man scrolling through his phone.

  “Excuse me, I’m Morgan Wiles with Channel 8. What did you
see?” She shoved a microphone underneath the man’s chin.

  “It just went up in flames.” He never took his eyes off the phone.

  “Were you in there?” the reporter asked.

  “Uh…” the man laughed and put the phone in his back pocket. “No. If I was in there, I wouldn’t be out here now.”

  “Did you see anything else?” Morgan asked, but she moved away before the man could answer. “Noah. Detective Noah Wright, can I have a word with you."

  Noah Wright looked much younger than his years. He was somewhat of a local celebrity after bringing a serial rapist to justice a few years earlier. The case landed him on several national crime television shows which got him labeled “The Sexiest Detective in America.” It was something Noah hated almost as much as being told he could be a stand-in for Brad Pitt. He didn’t think Pitt was that great of an actor.

  “Noah?”

  Morgan ran to catch up to him. He stopped to admire her ability to run on cracked asphalt in heels without fear of falling on her face.

  Morgan caught her breath as she slowed down. Noah cut her off before she could ask a question. “I have nothing, Morgan. I just got here.”

  “But you have to know more than these bystanders,” Morgan said.

  Noah smiled. “Be careful in those heels.”

  Morgan spit out a string of questions as Noah walked away.

  A uniformed officer moved in beside Noah. “I can barely make it down the stairs barefoot in the morning. I couldn’t even image trying to walk in those things.”

  “That’s a good thing, Chuck. You don’t have the calves for heels. What do we have here?” Noah asked.

  “Not really sure. Maybe a gas leak? Maybe arson?”

  “Arson? ReallY? In broad daylight?” Noah asked.

  Chuck shrugged his shoulders and pointed to a woman standing next to another officer a block away. “See the blonde talking to Andrews? She said there was an altercation in the diner before it went up in flames.”

  “Well, that makes it more interesting, doesn’t it? What’s the casualty count?” Noah asked.

  “We don’t have a final number. But it doesn’t look like anyone survived the explosion,” Chuck said.

  “And the blonde?” Noah asked.

  “She left seconds before it went up,” Chuck said.

  Noah thanked Chuck for the information and crossed the street to speak with the blonde. The gravity of the situation hadn’t set in yet. That wouldn’t come until the total count of the dead was revealed. Noah had seen more than his fair share of tragedies in his fifteen years as a detective, but it never got easier knowing the people who died started their days without realizing it would be their last.

  “She looked normal, actually she looked like me sitting at the table. And then she just started screaming and stabbed that poor woman,” the blonde said.

  “Excuse me, I’m Detective Noah Wright.”

  The blonde turned away from the officer. “I know who you are. I’ve seen you on television.”

  “Noah, this is Sally Belk. She appears to the be the only reliable witness,” the officer said.

  “And what did you see, Mrs. Belk?” Noah asked.

  “It’s Miss, and you can call me Sally.”

  “OK, what did you see, Sally?”

  “Like I was telling Officer Andrews, there was a woman who looked a lot like me, except she was wearing a pantsuit, maybe a Vera Wang. I’m not sure. Anyway, she started screaming, and then attacked an older woman for no reason,” Sally said.

  “Did she have a weapon?” Noah asked.

  Sally chuckled. "Yeah, a butter knife. I bolted out of there when she stabbed the woman in the eye with it.”

  “Did she have anything flammable?” Noah asked.

  “Sorry, I didn’t stick around to see. I’ve watched enough crime shows to know that when someone gets stabbed with a butter knife in the eye, it’s time to leave,” Sally said.

  Noah looked at Officer Andrews, who shrugged his shoulders and held his hands out, palms up.

  Noah reached into the inside pocket of his denim jacket for a business card. He handed it to Sally and told her not to hesitate to call him if she thought of anything else that could be useful to the case. She smiled. He turned away and started back toward what was left of the diner.

  “What’cha think?” Officer Andrews asked, walking beside Noah.

  “Too early to tell. I’d bet against it being a gas leak though. I assume if the restaurant had surveillance, it’s been destroyed,” Noah said.

  “Yeah, there’s nothing salvageable,” Officer Andrews said. “We’re getting the City to pull video from those.” He pointed to cameras affixed to light posts.

  Noah eyed the cameras for a moment. “It’s definitely an Orwellian world.”

  “Huh?” Officer Andrews asked.

  “Nothing. When can we view the feeds?” Noah.

  “I mean, if you’ve got a minute, you can do it now.”

  Noah smiled at hearing the woman’s voice. He turned to see a tall, almost six-foot brunette with her hair pulled into a bun. She waved an iPad at Noah.

  “I thought you left Cleveland for the life of a housewife,” Noah said.

  “The city has a way of bringing you back in. So, are we going to watch this or what?”

  Jaime Wynn was Noah’s high school sweetheart. They dated for a few years before calling it quits when Noah left for Stanford after high school. Jaime stayed in Cleveland, got a degree in biology before moving east to study forensic pathology. After becoming a pathologist, she moved to California. Jaime was on her second husband and swore this time it would work. But being back in Cleveland alone told a different story. Jaime still had a soft spot for Noah, and judging by the smile on his face, the feeling was mutual.

  “When did you move back?” Noah asked.

  Jaime hesitated. Noah recognized the stall tactic. He had seen it more times than he could count when the guilty tried to plan an innocence that never existed.

  “We can catch up later. Buy me a coffee?” Jaime asked.

  Noah had learned the only way to get to the truth was through patience. He forced another smile and followed it up with, “Sure.”

  Jaime watched the diner explode for the second time as she waited for Noah to return with coffee. The horror of those few seconds played out in her mind well after she paused the video. So many people died, she thought, as Jaime tried to shake the image from her mind.

  “We only drank Boones Farm in high school. So, I wasn’t sure how you take your coffee these days. I got a lot of cream and sugar,” Noah said.

  Jaime laughed at the pyramid of cream and sugar on the tray. “Two’s a plenty,” she said. “This is bad, Noah. Lou’s is packed at lunchtime. No one could have survived that.”

  “I’m afraid no one did,” Noah said. “Did you watch it?”

  “Just the explosion,” Jaime said.

  “How far back does the video go?” Noah asked.

  Jaime swiped her index finger across the screen to open a folder that housed a list of sub-folders labeled with timestamps. “The camera records in thirty-minute increments and then archives the recordings on a cloud server. I can go back as far as you need me too.”

  “Let’s start at about forty-five minutes before the explosion. Maybe around 11:45,” Noah said.

  Jaime found the recording and inched closer to Noah. Her shoulder touched his forearm, creating a moment of awkward silence before the video began. They watched for a few minutes before someone caught Noah’s attention.

  “Pause it,” he said.

  “You see something?” Jaime asked.

  “Can you zoom in on the blonde?” Noah asked, as he touched the screen.

  “Sure,” Jaime said.

  “Sally said the woman who started the fight looked like her,” Noah said, barely above a whisper.

  “What?” Jaime asked.

  Noah didn’t answer her right away. The blonde on the video stopped to talk to
a tall man wearing a black hoodie underneath a torn trench coat. He stepped away from a shopping cart loaded with his belongings to speak to the woman.

  “This blonde. Sally said the person who created an altercation in the diner looked like her. This woman looks like Sally,” Noah said.

  The blonde reached into her purse and handed the tall man some cash. He cradled her hand between his palms and bowed his head.

  “She doesn’t seem like someone who would start a fight,” Jaime said.

  “No. She doesn’t seem like someone who would stab another person in the eye with a butter knife, either,” Noah said.

  “A butter knife? That’s a different level of hate,” Jaime said.

  The blonde waved to the man as he moved back to his shopping cart. She disappeared into the diner. The man pushed his cart out of the camera’s eye.

  “It makes little sense,” Noah said. “Sally said the woman started screaming before attacking another woman. That doesn’t fit the character of someone who would help a homeless man.”

  “Maybe it’s not her. There are a lot of blondes in the world, and I hate to say it, but some of them look alike,” Jaime said.

  “Maybe.”

  Noah watched the video for anyone resembling Sally to enter the diner. There was no one else who reminded him of her.