Beyond A Shadow of Doubt

Part 2 -Shade Sense

A week in clean sheets and a warm bed was exactly what the doctor ordered.  Jake had passed out that first night; simply crashing from the adrenaline and exhaustion.  However it had been a few days now and at night, he kept seeing Craig's face.   He had simply defended himself. Hadn't he?  

If he was being honest with himself, it was more than that.  Craig did attack him first, but he didn't need to take it as far as he did.  But he'd seen friends kill each other over shoes in these streets.  It was hard to tell, sometimes.  Mikey, for example, was the kind of guy who would show up on the corner with one of those paper carrying trays with coffees for all the guys when he scored some cash.  That's just who he was.  He never got just for himself.  Whereas, Stanley, once hid two whole pizzas from him a homeless teenager.  

'Shows what I really thought of Craig, I guess' he thought to himself.  Craig was an OK guy, but when it came to a large sum of cash, Jake just felt like it was Craig or him.  Still, he took a life and he'd have to live with that.  

He used the money Kase paid him to get some clothes from the thrift shop, but he knew it wouldn't last.  And you couldn't get a job without an address so, when Thursday rolled around, he used the burner phone to call Kase again.

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Early Friday morning was the checkout for the motel, but the manager told him he had until 10 pm to pay for an extension by way of "Mr. Kase", the man said.  'Mr.  Now that's funny', he thought to himself when he was told the good news.  

It always seemed to him that the title of 'Mister' implied respect and legitimacy.  He knew it didn't, but felt it should.  Kase could be said to have respect in the way that all street criminals have respect - through fear, but he was far from legitimate.  Still, for better or worse, this was his benefactor by his own choosing.  

The new 'job' Kase had for him was to knock a guy out.  Supposedly, he had a meeting later tonight in the back room of a closed restaurant.  He told Jake that one of his own was coming with them, but that they would be patted down by a guy when they went in.  He wanted to slip into this meeting with his friend, with their weapons.  So, he offered Jake $500 and another week at the District, to knock this guy out (or whatever he had to do) before they got there at 8:15pm.  It was 6 o'clock and Jake decided to simply walk around for awhile.  He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't needed to keep track of which soup kitchen or food pantry was offering dinner on which days.  It was nice.  

As he passed by LaFayette Park, he saw a young woman riding her bike along the path.  For a moment, he imagined that he saw an animal and that she fell.  He looked again and saw the woman peddling as before, so walked by without much thought.  A moment later he heard barking and a crash.  When he looked back, several people were surrounding the woman who had crashed her bike somehow.  There was a strange feeling of DejaVu, but Jake shook it off. Less than an hour later, it happened again.

He stopped along his route to light a cigarette and saw a mother and her young son walking hand in hand.  Aside from the mother being a rather pretty woman, he couldn't say why he noticed the two of them.  Not at first.  But after a moment, he realized it was because the boy's shadow was behaving differently than the boy,himself.  Jake rubbed his left eye, and then his right.  As they stood waiting for the walk signal of the traffic light, the shadow of the boy was chasing after something and running out into the street, where the shadow of a car smashed into it.  Jake shook his head, convinced he was having some sort of break-down over killing Craig....that is, until he saw the small, rubber ball the boy was holding drop from his hand and bounce out into the street.  Then everything seemed to slow down considerably.  

Jake watched as the boy pulled his hand away from his mother and began to chase the ball.  He saw the mother reach out after the boy and he felt himself start to run towards them, dropping his cigarette and lighter.  He yelled out, "Wait!" as loud as he could, which caused others up ahead to look.  Some looked at him, some looked around to find the source.  Fortunately, a man who was closer to the boy, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back, just as a red, Chevy Impala blew through the place where the boy's shadow had stood.

The mother was hugging the boy tightly, while screaming at him about running off like that.  The man was apologizing for scaring the boy, who had started crying when the stranger tugged him back to the curb.  Jake sat down on a bus stop bench, trying to understand what the hell had just happened.  It didn't make any sense.  'Did I imagine it?', he wondered.  Then he looked back and the relieved mother and distraught toddler, and knew he had not.  He had a sudden need to be elsewhere, so he began walking again.

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The restaurant was just up ahead.  Jake has spent the last hour in a bar a block and half away, nursing a Scotch & soda, after a straight shot.  No matter how many times he went over it in his head, he couldn't figure out what had happened back there with that kid.  What he did know was that he needed to focus on this job, tonight.  Kase wasn't the type to overlook mistakes.  Especially mistakes caused by bouts of crazy.  And Jake knew if he ever tried to explain, crazy is exactly what it would sound like.  He physically shook his head to break up his thoughts before looking into the place.  Sure enough, there was one guy in a bad suit.  Jake walked in.

The 'suit' approached him immediately, his hand extended as if he was trying to stop traffic. "Sorry pal, we're closed", he said.

"Door was open, so I thought"....Jake kept walking towards him so that he could close the gap between them.  He knew it would have to be the element of surprise, or this could become another Craig situation.  

"I don't give a shit, what you thought, asshole.  You can't be here", the suit was saying just as Jake punched his windpipe.  The next hit was a solid elbow to the jaw, sending the man's head twisting hard to the right.

  What most people don't realize about knocking someone out is, it's not about hitting the person especially hard.  It's about hitting them in the right place, and hitting them quickly.  The head spins sharply causing the brain to hit the skull and for the nervous system to misfire, temporarily.  And the suit, crumpled to the floor.   As if on cue, Kase and his friend came walking in.  

Jake nodded and Kase smiled, slipping Jake his money as they walked by him.  Quietly, he headed for the front door while the other two men walked towards the back room.  There was a light coming from the kitchen area that illuminated the two men and some of the tables, nearby. In a brief glance back, Jake saw the shadow of Kase's man pull out a gun from behind him and shoot Kase in the head.  Without hesitation, he reached for one of the chairs nearby.  As he saw the man actually reach into his jacket, he gripped the chair and brought it up over his head, stepping towards Kase.  He brought the chair down hard on his head, sending him crashing to the floor.  

Kase spun around with a gun of his own, ready to shoot Jake until he saw the drawn gun on his own man.  The commotion of the attack drew attention and the men Kase had come to meet began coming from the back room, with guns of their own.  Jake ran out of the restaurant as he heard the first shots and the shattering of glass from the storefront.  Kase was running too, but not in the same direction.  Jake ran for blocks, never slowing down.  He wasn't sure what he was more afraid of - the guns, the criminals, or the shadows he kept seeing.  

Regardless of the cause, Jake didn't stop running until he saw the Metro Center.

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