Free Once Shadows Fall by Robert Daniels Page B

comfortable leather club chair in the home office of Dr. Morris Shottner.
    “Thanks for seeing me,” Jack said. “Hope I’m not ruining your weekend.”
    “Forty years of practice hasn’t helped my golf game,” Shottner said. “One more day won’t make a difference. I was surprised by your call. It’s been, what, almost a year?” The doctor consulted his notes and corrected himself. “Sixteen months.”
    Shottner was a bearded man of middle height in his early sixties. He was wearing a pair of glasses with silver rims that made his eyes seem larger than they were. His office smelled vaguely of pipe tobacco. Two large jars of the stuff sat on the corner of his desk.
    “When did it happen?” Shottner asked.
    “Around one in the morning,” Jack said.
    “Any different from the others?”
    “About the same. Shortness of breath, pressure in my chest, dry mouth, profuse sweating. I thought I was having a heart attack.”
    “But you weren’t.”
    “No.”
    “I don’t need to tell you PTSD symptoms can masquerade as heart attacks. Their reappearance is what concerns me.”
    Jack nodded and looked out the window at two squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of an old oak tree on Shottner’s lawn. When they were through, they continued jumping from branch to branch in a constant state of motion. One of them paused and looked in the window at him, tilting its head to one side.
    Perhaps he considers me sluggish, sitting here like this , Jack thought.
    He turned back to the doctor who was waiting for him to continue.
    “The timing concerns me, too,” Jack said. “That’s why I called.”
    “You think your trip to Jordan precipitated it?”
    “Don’t you?”
    “Possibly,” Shottner said. “How are you doing with the—?”
    “Taking them once in a while.”
    “How do you define once in a while?”
    “More than I should but less than before.”
    “That’s progress,” the doctor said, “as long as you’re not upping the medication on your own again. What are those papers on the seat next to you?”
    “The detective I met sent me a fax with the crime report and findings from the murder scene.”
    “And the photo?”
    “A color image of a plaque they found in the woman’s grave,” Jack said.
    “Ah.”
    “Ah?”
    “That’s what therapists say to make themselves sound smart. Didn’t they teach you that in graduate school?”
    “I never say ‘Ah,’” Jack said.
    “I rest my case.” Shottner paused to take a polished briarwood pipe with a curved black stem from a rack on his credenza. He filled it with tobacco from one of the jars. When the pipe was full, Shottner used a slender metal tool to tamp the tobacco down but didn’t light it.
    “There were two bodies found in Jordan,” Jack said. “A man and a woman.”
    “Terrible,” Shottner said.
    “And another woman is still missing.”
    “So you went there to help with their investigation. That was kind.”
    “I was basically kidnapped by one of the detectives.”
    “Unusual technique.”
    Jack shrugged. “Unusual woman.”
    “You could have said no.”
    “It was a little difficult. I was already in the car and she was driving.”
    “I’ve never known you to be at a loss for words, Jack.”
    Jack considered this for several seconds, then said, “So you think I wanted to go?”
    “What do you think?” Shottner said.
    “Definitely not.”
    “Okay.”
    “You don’t agree?” Jack said.
    “I neither agree nor disagree. I merely find it interesting after so many years.” Shottner asked, “Did a nightmare follow last night’s attack?”
    “Not this time,” Jack said, annoyed at the noncommittal answer. “Maybe that’s progress.”
    “Possibly. What are your feelings?”
    Jack took a weary breath and let it out. “The detective on the case told me psychiatrists always answer questions with questions.”
    “She may have a point,” the doctor said and lit his pipe.
    “You know Morgan’s coming to visit this