The Mountain's Shadow Read online

  Terrence Junior set a mug of coffee by the sheriff and one for me. I gave him my breakfast order—a biscuit with jam—and fixed my coffee. When I looked up, my gaze met the sheriff’s, who still studied me with suspicious creases under his eyes.

  “Hear you have a butler now.”

  I decided to treat this as I had my dissertation defense—only answer the question, and don’t volunteer anything that might get you in trouble. “Yep.”

  “Did you hire him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “My grandfather.”

  Breakfast appeared, which allowed me to chew as I pondered how to answer the sheriff’s forthcoming questions.

  “Where’s he from?”

  “England.” Okay, Scotland, but it’s not like the sheriff would know the difference.

  “Is he permanent?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  Sheriff Knowles appeared to become impatient with my lack of elaboration. “Got to find these things out, you know,” he said, switching to a friendly, persuasive tone. “With all that’s been going on around here, we can’t be too careful.”

  “I agree. What do you think happened to Louise?”

  The level of background noise plummeted as people paused to hear the sheriff’s answer. I realized no one asked him questions—they just answered his and tried to get out of his way.

  “Under investigation, young lady.” He put his coffee cup down a little too firmly, and I winced as it almost broke. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Have a good day, Sheriff. Oh, and thanks for buying my breakfast,” I said as I slid the fiver he put down on the counter over to Terrence Junior. With a wink, I got up and stalked outside, my heart pounding. I felt an odd mix of elation and terror, like the kid who had just gotten away with putting a whoopee cushion on the teacher’s chair.

  “Doctor Fisher?” The deep voice made my heart skip a beat and I felt the rush of adrenaline that precedes panic. I turned slowly to see Leonard Bowman.

  “Mr. Bowman?”

  “Doctor as well, actually.”

  “Oh?”

  Dark circles ringed his eyes, and his hair hung in waves, still damp from his morning shower.

  “Sleep in this morning?”

  He blinked as though he didn’t understand the question. He had nothing of the angry attitude from the night before or two days previously, and now—in the full sunlight—our encounter began to feel more like a dream. Except for my wrist, which throbbed after I had thoughtlessly used that hand to open the diner door.

  “Look, do you have something to say to me? Because, quite frankly, I have things to do, and I still need one good hand.”

  Instead of becoming angry, he raised his right hand to his face, placed his thumb and forefinger on his temples and massaged them. “Would you believe I don’t remember much of our encounter last night?”

  “What? Were you drunk? Drunk and trespassing? Or were you high?”

  He put his hand down and looked around. “I have a lot I need to explain to you. Can we go somewhere?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can I buy you lunch?”

  “Can you buy me lunch?” I knew it was stupid, repeating what he said, but this was a different Leonard Bowman than either the cocky young man or the rage-filled one I’d seen early that morning, and I wasn’t sure what to expect from him.

  “Please?” he begged. “I just put together who you are and what you do for a living. I’ll take a look at your wrist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He held out his hand, and I slowly put mine in his. Like Gabriel, Leo’s fingers were cool, but roughened like he had worked hard with them. But when he turned my hand over, it was with the fingers of an expert.

  “I was doing my residency in orthopedics,” he explained, “when I got CLS.”

  My heart skipped a beat. All my better instincts told me to say no, but I couldn’t resist. Plus, that biscuit hadn’t been enough to satisfy my appetite.

  “How about Tabitha’s?”

  The world wasn’t ready for the new breed of genetic disorders. Normally Nature seeks to advance the development of organisms. But Nature is a true lady and can admit her mistakes, one of which is that too much intelligence, opposable thumbs, and a self-centered outlook is a dangerous combination. Where Leonard Bowman fit into all this, I had no idea. But by accepting his lunch invitation, I stepped right back into that world of questions.

  The walk from the town square to the restaurant gave me time to think about the first time I’d heard of CLS. And when I first met Robert. It seemed his memory would haunt me as much as my former life as a researcher. I had been twenty-seven, just out of graduate school, and was looking forward to starting my first real job. Robert, the first man I’d seen at Cabal, had been similar to Leo with dark hair, but old enough for his wry sense of humor to trace lines at the corners of his eyes.

  “You the new intern?” He’d come up behind me and startled me so I almost dropped the box of books I carried. He took the load from me without asking, and all I could do was follow, openmouthed, as he led the way.

  “Ah, no, it looks like you’re the new epidemiologist.” The lines crinkled, and I caught my breath at his smile.

  “And you are…”

  “I’m Robert Cannon, a geneticist, and your boss. I’d shake your hand, but I’m carrying this ridiculously heavy load of books.”

  “Right. I’m Joanna.”

  “Fisher, as I recall. Chuck Landover’s granddaughter.”

  “Yes.” The mention of my grandfather had startled me at the time, but I forgot about it with the rush of information I’d gotten from Robert.

  “So here’s the deal, Fisher,” he said and indicated I was to precede him into a laboratory with computers on one side and a host of genetics equipment—most of which I couldn’t identify yet—on the other. I held the door open and he set my box down on the table next to a computer.

  “Is this my desk?”

  “This is our lab. I’ll show you the office later, but I thought you might like to keep your books at hand, not that you’ll need them much.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re dealing with something new here. It’s something we need your help tracing in the population so we can localize the genetic mutation.”

  “What does it do?” I tried to keep my excitement in check. This was just what I’d hoped for—to be on the leading edge of researching new disorders.

  He leaned back and crossed his arms. “Lots of fun stuff. It causes a host of behaviors like fierce loyalty to friends, inability to understand or buy into the culture’s materialistic messages, for starters.”

  “And physically?”

  “Early appearance of secondary sex characteristics, particularly body hair on the males. But it’s the psych stuff that’s the most fascinating. Basic drives such as hunger, lust and sleep are assessed as extraordinarily high. Somehow these adolescents find each other, bond, and disappear for days at a time, particularly around the full moon.”

  “Around the what? Now I know you’re kidding me.”

  “Ever hear of lycanthropy?”

  I had, but it had been a long time ago and in a different context. “You mean, like in werewolves? Are you serious?”

  “It’s a true disorder. I’ll have to introduce you to Iain McPherson in Scotland; he’s made it his life’s work. But yes, by adulthood, most of the afflicted isolate themselves from their families and all but disappear. Those who stay in society are described as wild loners.”

  “But isn’t that rare?”

  “It was. Until a few years ago.”

  He’d gone on to explain this lycanthropic disorder was relatively rare until the very end of the twentieth century. Previously, one case might occur in a generation and spawn a local legend of werewolves. However, we lived in the era of impulsivity, and disorders such as ADHD skyrocketed.

  CLS, or Chro
nic Lycanthropy Syndrome, seemed to be the latest step in the evolution of impulsivity disorders, and it soon became the new diagnostic darling of the pediatrician and child psychiatrists’ offices. Children displayed the full range of symptoms by early adolescence, and often those that couldn’t be cured or drugged into submission would just disappear or end up in the correctional system.

  My research centered on finding a common thread. I’d investigated familial patterns, but I felt like there was something missing. Something was making these rare genes express, but why now? Was it some environmental toxin? A virus? Just before the lab had burned, I had acquired boxes of these children’s medical records, particularly from western Tennessee and the Ozark region of Arkansas, where families of Germanic and Scandinavian descent abounded. The Scandinavian culture had the most sophisticated spiritual explanation for werewolves…and the highest incidence of CLS.

  And now, here in the Ozarks, I was face-to-face with an adult CLS sufferer. I sat across from him in the booth pretending to study my menu and bit my lip to keep the questions from flooding off my tongue. How long have you had it? When were you diagnosed? Were you a hyper kid? What illnesses did you have? Do you know anyone else with CLS?

  Instead he asked me, “What are you having for lunch?”

  Luckily the biscuit had been digested quickly. “I think I’m going to have the Turkey Cobb salad.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “What?”

  “Why can’t you women ever eat?”

  I looked up from my menu. “’Scuse me?”

  “Just a salad?”

  “Well, what are you going to have?”

  “The steak you had for dinner last night looks good. Someone like you needs to eat to keep up her strength.”

  My cheeks warmed again. “How do you know what I had for dinner?”

  “I was here, remember?”

  I returned my eyes to my menu. How could I forget? He and that witch, Kyra. Unbidden, the image came into my head of him tucking a stray curl behind her ear. And then of him grabbing my wrist with those fingers. I took a deep breath to loosen the tightness in my chest.

  “Did you want to talk to me about something, or did you just trick me into coming here to mock me?”

  He sighed and rubbed his temples again, but the gesture didn’t inspire the sympathy I thought he was going for. Instead, I felt frustration curl beneath my sternum and reach into my throat. This man could have murdered me the night before. Could have but didn’t. I took another deep breath and blew out slowly to calm myself.

  “Look, if this isn’t a good time, I can catch you later.” His expression reminded me of a begging puppy.

  “No, no, I’m fine. What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “You’re Doctor Joanna Fisher?”

  “Yes. I thought we’d already established that.”

  “Of Cabal Laboratories?”

  “Formerly of Cabal Laboratories.”

  “What happened?”

  “A fire. An affair. All my data was burned, and so was I.”

  “I read your work on cultural patterns and CLS when I was in medical school. At that point, it was all theory, not something I planned on dealing with.”

  The waiter arrived. Ted, Manager, was nowhere in sight. “Are you ready, Doctor Bowman, Doctor Fisher?”

  Leonard raised his eyebrow. “Word gets around.”

  “Apparently.”

  We ordered, and after the waiter brought our drinks—sweet tea for me—I asked, “Wait a second, so you didn’t have CLS from childhood?”

  “No. I would be much better able to control it, I think.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “The second year of residency at UAMS.”

  The door opened, and a shadow flickered over Leonard’s face. I turned to face the door, but at first I couldn’t make out the features of the couple who had just entered. The host greeted them, and once the door closed against the bright light of outside, I saw Lonna and Peter Bowman. He had his hand on her elbow. Leonard sank down in his seat.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m supposed to be at home watching Peter’s wife. He thinks she’s having an affair.”

  “Looks like projection to me.” Already there was too much eye contact, too many casual touches.

  Leonard smiled his half smile again. “She’s too busy with their kid to think about an affair. He’s two.”

  “And a terror from what I hear.”

  “He’s not that bad, just a lot of energy.”

  “Not that you’re biased.”

  Leonard’s face lit with a true smile. “When I come home in the evening, he’ll run full tilt down the hall and jump into my arms.” He frowned and lowered his voice. “He doesn’t care about what happens after he goes to bed.”

  “What does happen?” I leaned forward on my arms.

  “You should know.” Leonard’s black eyes met mine. “But then again, you can’t. I don’t even know if I do.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a different state of mind. And what happens feels like dreams.” A line appeared between his eyebrows as he frowned. “I try to remember them in the morning.”

  “But you can’t.” I let my breath out slowly. I had read interviews of CLS kids who had originally been diagnosed with sleepwalking, but their EEG tracings had indicated a state closer to Rapid Eye Movement sleep than to the Stage 3 sleep associated with sleepwalking. When questioned the next morning, they claimed to have no idea how they got where they did or why. It was a different state of mind.

  So those creatures I had seen on the lawn last night had been CLS sufferers hunting—true werewolves. Gabriel had hinted, but now it made sense.

  Our food came, and I continued to glance over Leonard’s shoulder at the table where Peter sat with Lonna. They had their drinks, and it seemed as though Peter liked a civilized cocktail at lunch. There was also one in front of Lonna, which surprised me because she never mixed business and alcohol. Apparently this was a little something more than business.

  “What are they doing?” Leonard still slouched in the booth so as to be out of sight.

  “Talking. Drinking. Why?”

  “I can’t leave until they do. He might see me.”

  I tried not to smile at the irony of the situation. “What are you so worried about? What will he do to you if you’re not there?”

  “Peter is mercurial. I think that’s the right word. He likes to hold our dependence on him, especially our financial dependence, over our heads.”

  “Wait a second, ‘our’?”

  “My cousin Ron also has CLS and lives with Peter.”

  “Both of you?”

  “And we both got it last winter while we were in residency at UAMS.”

  “Before that, nothing?”

  “Nothing. We were both always incredibly healthy.”

  Incredibly healthy… My stomach gave a lurch and I put down my fork. Joanna, I don’t know why you always get sick, and your brother doesn’t, my mother would say. Andrew is the most incredibly healthy boy.

  That’s because he’s a tough kid, my father would add, pride in his voice. That conversation had occurred when I was six. Three years later, my “incredibly healthy” twin brother had died.

  “Doctor Fisher? Joanie?”

  My name snapped me back to the present. I shook my head to clear the fog of old grief. “Sorry, memories.” It disturbed me that they had snuck up on me. Since the fire, only recent unhappy memories intruded on my days. Was I to be tortured by the old ones now, too?

  “Did you know someone with this?” Leonard frowned.

  “Beyond my research subjects? I…I don’t know.”

  Have you ever heard of the Landover curse? Now it was Galbraith’s voice in my head. It supposedly skips a generation. If it popped up, you’d know.

  Or would I? An incredibly healthy child who had died mysteriously of complications after an elective tonsillectomy, Andrew had alw
ays had too much energy for his own good. He wasn’t dissimilar to the CLS victims I’d studied. I filed that away in the back of my head to look into later.

  “Dessert, Doctors?” the waiter asked. It was a different one with blond hair, blue eyes the color of the ocean on a clear day, and a smile that invited a response. He winked at us, his pad poised. His nametag said, “Ronald”.

  “Sure, Doctor.” Leonard smiled. “I think that would be an excellent idea.”

  “Avoiding big brother, are we, Leo?”

  “Always.”

  “No worries. I can get you out the back if needed. Who’s the babe?”

  Leonard looked at me. “Do you know who she is?”

  “Yeah, she’s a social worker from Little Rock.”

  “No, doofus.” Ron tapped Leo on the top of his head with the pencil. “The one who’s sitting with you.”

  Again, heat spread across my face and chest. I must be glowing.

  “Ron, this is Doctor Joanna Fisher, formerly of Cabal Laboratories and one of the world’s leading researchers of CLS.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I held out my hand and Ron shook it. His hand was warm, but also rough.

  “Ah, that’s who I was hoping you’d be. I’ve read your work and told Leo he needed to try to meet you. I’m Doctor Ronald Bowman, formerly a surgical resident at UAMS.”

  “And now waiting tables?” I asked, then bit my tongue. “Sorry, that was rude.”

  Ron’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “That’s all right. The CLS was interfering. Wouldn’t do to lose it in the operating room.”

  I put my fork down. “Why don’t you both come up to my place? I have a lot more to ask you.”

  Ron smiled. “Sure, when?”

  “When do you get off work?”

  “I’ve just been cut, so half an hour. Just enough time to fetch you some dessert and coffee. What would you like?”

  “Chocolate. But I had that dessert last night.”

  “The chef does an awesome chocolate cream pie the regulars know to ask for. It’s not on the menu.”

  “That sounds perfect. And a latté, please.”

  “Leo?”

  “Apple pie. Plain coffee.”