An Evil Shadow by A. J. Davidson Page A

pushed her towards the door.
    She tried to shake his hand off. “I’m telling you the
truth. How else could I known what he looked like?”
    “Jackson’s photograph was splashed all over the
newspapers and television news for the best part of a week. You drew your
sketch from that.”
    He slammed the door hard after her.

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    CHAPTER FIVE

 
 
    Arena Victory’s corporate headquarters were on Loyola,
across from city hall, a few blocks from the Superdome. The building, a squat
cylinder of green marble and reflective glass, had been purpose-built by the
company as a testament to its phenomenal growth in the early nineties. Their
core business was the manufacture of sport footwear. Astute marketing and the
blank-check recruitment of top sport stars to endorse its products had
transformed the company from a small-time Louisiana slipper manufacturer into a
multinational success. Two teenagers out of every three would trade their souls
to be the first kid on the block with a pair of the latest AVs. Image is
everything with American youth, and Arena Victory had it in spades.
    That’s why it was the talk of the police department
when Donny Jackson walked into a highly paid corporate-security job with AV
exactly two months after being canned from the force.
    Jackson and his radio-car partner, Bill Trochan, had
been convicted of helping themselves to a murdered woman’s jewelry. They had
been dispatched to answer a 911 call in the Garden District and found the
victim lying prone on her bed, her eyes staring emptily, one hand clutching the
phone. She had been strangled with a computer electrical cable. They checked
for signs of life and, finding none, made a radio call to the homicide
detectives and the medical examiner. With time on their hands, and only a
corpse for company, the two uniforms spent the next twenty minutes rifling
through the bedroom drawers and closets. They found three hundred dollars in
cash and a gold Rolex. Jackson kept the cash, Trochan the watch.
    No one was more surprised than them when the medical
examiner arrived and, having performed a circumspect search for vital signs,
discovered that the victim was still very much alive. The removal of the
computer cable and the administration of CPR and an oxygen mask led swiftly to
the low-point in the lives of the two police officers. Before she would allow
paramedics to load her onto the ambulances gurney, she insisted, in a barely
audible croak, that the uniformed officers be made empty their pockets in front
of the homicide detectives, one of whom was Detective Lieutenant Val Bosanquet.
The press scavengers enjoyed a feeding frenzy when the news broke.
    Val left his car in a quiet, brick-paved alley and
walked half a block to AV’s front entrance. He explained to the girl behind the
reception desk that he wanted to speak to Donny Jackson. She asked for his
name, then pecked at a few keys on her computer and told him to take a seat.
Someone would be along in a moment or two.
    The moment or two developed into a quarter of an hour.
Val spent the first five minutes watching the young corporate Turks entering
and leaving the building. It seemed that no one over the age of twenty-five
worked for AV. Feeling his age, he picked up a glossy prospectus for AV’s
upcoming stock market flotation and flicked through it. Inside the front cover
was a map showing AV’s principal manufacturing plants across the globe: one in
New Delhi, one in Caracas, another in Port-au-Prince, one under construction in
Hanoi. He wondered if any of the institutions that were falling over themselves
to invest, appreciated the irony that few of AV’s manufacturing employees could
ever hope to purchase the product they had made.
    “Jarvis Kraftson,” boomed the voice of a slick
thirty-something as he crossed the foyer towards Val. “Vice-president of Human
Resources.”
    “Val Bosanquet.” They shook hands.
    Kraftson’s palm was soft and felt