The Shadow Man Read Free

could leap up, grasp it and hang supported by its warm strength and solidity.
    “I’m tired, is all,” Karpp mumbled at last.
    “I’ll leave now, then,” Larsen said agreeably, switching off the cassette recorder on the corner of the table. “There’s no big rush about what we have to say to each other.”
    Karpp laughed his low, oddly melodic chuckle. “I have plenty of time, anyway,” he said. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”
    “Not tomorrow,” Larsen said. “I have another appointment. But I’ll be back in a few days.” Larsen glanced at Karpp. The stern-featured man appeared to be in his mid-thirties, though he was now only twenty-seven. Larsen sensed an unspoken regret in Karpp that their usual conversation wouldn’t take place tomorrow. He felt an unprofessional pang of pity for this trapped and unfathomable man. Sad bender of history. “Maybe Wednesday,” Larsen said, packing recorder and papers into his briefcase.
    Smiling at Karpp, Larsen said goodbye and opened the door to step into the guard area.
    “You’re my only visitor, you know,” Karpp said behind him.
    Larsen looked at him and nodded. “I’ll return, Martin.”
    “I’m not so sure.”
    Larsen closed the door and the guard opened the thick outer door for him and stood to one side. The bulge beneath the man’s armpit was noticeable and remotely threatening. Before stepping through to the main corridor, Larsen turned and spoke to the guard.
    “This might sound naïve,” he said, watching the guard’s placid, tanned face, “but is there any way he could get out of here?”
    The face remained expressionless, making the voice all the more incredulous. “You mean out of the asylum?”
    Larsen nodded, shifted his leather briefcase to his left hand.
    “There’s someone watching him every minute of the day,” the guard assured Larsen.
    “And night?”
    “He’s looked in on.” A glimmer of light transfixed the guard’s eyes, as if he’d suddenly spotted something in Larsen that inspired confidence. “If you’re worried about the possibility of escape, forget it. This is maximum security. It might not look it, for the sake of some of the patients and their families, but this place is guarded better than Leavenworth.” He said again slowly, as if in irrefutable finality, “Maximum security.”
    Larsen thanked the guard and glanced through the clear Plexiglas into the interview room. Karpp already had been removed.
    As he drove from the grounds of the secluded asylum, Larsen noted again the unobtrusive but numerous safeguards. The high, wire-meshed, barred windows recessed in ivy-covered brick walls, the many white-coated attendants Larsen knew were armed and well trained, the surrounding high double fences with their guarded gates. And outside the sanitarium were miles of heavily wooded hill country, beautiful country violated only by the two-lane blacktop road snaking to the asylum from the nearest town, Carltonville. Even keeping to the road, it would take someone on foot hours to reach the town, hours during which the escape attempt would be discovered and the area sealed and searched. The logical mind balked at the idea that escape from the Belmont sanitarium was possible. The logical mind.
    The last of the high gates swung open for Larsen, and he pressed his foot down on the accelerator of his rented Chevy, then made a hard left turn onto the blacktop road. The tires squealed in a brief, almost human cry of agony.
     
    In his cabin at the Clover Motel, where he was staying just outside of Carltonville, Larsen listened to the tape of his latest conversation with Karpp. Then he spent some time at the small oak writing desk, organizing his notes.
    At seven o’clock he left his cabin and drove half a mile down the highway to the Chicken Barn, where he usually had dinner. The small family-owned and -operated restaurant served a variety of good food besides their specialty of crispy fried chicken.
    “The veal tonight,” he