Bad Karma

Chapter 5

When Shannon arrived back at his apartment, Susan tried intercepting him for a kiss, but wrinkled her nose when he got within a few feet of her.

“You don’t smell too good, hon,” she said.

“I know. I visited Carver’s mom and this is what her house smelled like. I’m going straight into the shower, scrub myself raw-and if that doesn’t work, buy some industrial-sized drums of tomato juice. And I’ll probably have to burn my clothing.”

He tried to sidestep her, but Susan moved quickly, got on her toes and kissed him hard on the mouth.

“Must be true love to get anywhere near me smelling the way I do,” Shannon said.

“You do worse for me,” Susan said. “Every morning you kiss me passionately no matter how bad my morning breath is.”

“What are you talking about? Your breath always smells like sweet petunias. Especially in the morning.”

Susan laughed at that. “One of these days I’m going to find out where you got that ‘sweet petunia’ expression from. And besides, I don’t think petunias even have a smell.”

“Of course they do. A wonderful smell. Exactly like your breath.”

Shannon gave her shoulder a little squeeze as he made his way by her and into the bathroom. Once in the shower, he put the water on as hot as he could stand it and scrubbed himself until all traces of the rancid cheese-sweat smell were gone.

When he finished, he dressed quickly, then sent an email to Professor Lester White, introducing himself and asking for information about Taylor Carver. After that he called Chris Jackson. Jackson confirmed what Paul Devens had told him earlier-that he knew nothing about his tenants or any problems they might’ve had, that a management company handled his rental properties for him and that he himself had no involvement with his apartments. He thanked Shannon for his thoroughness in calling him. He also told Shannon that he was counting on him to pull his ass out of the fire with this thing. “I feel awful, of course, with what happened to those two kids, but what could I’ve done? If I knew there was a rusty deadbolt I would’ve gone over there myself and squirted a couple of drops of oil on it. This has just been a hell of a thing to go through.” Shannon couldn’t disagree with him.

Before leaving the apartment, he found Susan in the living room. She had her reading glasses on as she sat cross-legged on a pillow, chewing on the end of a pen while going over pages of handwritten notes. Shannon felt his pulse quicken as he watched her. There were times like this when he was completely stunned at how beautiful she was and, no matter what else had happened in his life, couldn’t believe his good fortune that they were together. She sensed him standing there, looked up and smiled at him. “I’m going over some homeopathy notes for one of my patients,” she said. “So what’s next on your agenda?”

“I called Eli on my way back from Loveland. We’re meeting at the Center at five. After that I’m going to see if I can talk to Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson’s neighbors.” Shannon hesitated, showing a slight smile. “I’m also thinking of heading over to Coors Field later and catching the Sox. It will be my first chance to see them play since I left Massachusetts. Care to join me?”

Susan showed a disappointed look. “I’d like to but these notes are for a client who’s coming over at eight. Maybe Eli will go with you?”

“Nah, he’s afraid he’d have to pay money just to watch the Sox win, especially with how the Rockies are playing now.”

“Well, you should go to the game anyway. And root for Nomar for me!”

“The Sox traded him last year.”

“Nomah’s not on the team?” She exaggerated the Boston accent with Nomah, as Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch used to do on Saturday Night Live. “Jeeze, what’s this world coming to? Then root for Pedro Martinez for me!”

“Pedro’s not on the team anymore either.”

Susan shook her head. “I’m out of names then. But even though they got rid of the only two players I knew, you should go to the game and have fun.”

“Maybe, I haven’t decided yet. But I’ll give you a call before your eight o’clock appointment and let you know what I’m doing.”

Shannon glanced at his watch and saw he only had ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Eli. He reached down, gave her a quick kiss, and realized if he was going to meet his friend on time he’d better leave while he still could.

Shannon found Eli Rosen in his office thumbing through a book on chakra meditation. Raising his heavy eyelids, Eli looked up when Shannon knocked on the open door.

“Fascinating stuff,” Eli said, referring to the book. “This author has documented Tibetan monks who’ve sat naked in minus twenty degree weather and kept themselves warm simply by meditating on their Manipura, or solar plexus, chakra.”

“You might’ve mentioned that to me once or twice before.”

“I still find it fascinating no matter how many times I read about it.” Eli tossed the book on his desk and smiled broadly as he looked at his watch. “Miracle of miracles,” he said. “You’re on time for a change. Let me guess, you didn’t stop off at home or, more likely, Susan was out.”

“Wrong on both counts. I was just able to exercise amazing self-control.”

“You’d have to walk away from that stunningly beautiful ex-wife of yours.” Eli’s smile slowly faded. “Why don’t you tell me about the job you took.”

“How do you know I took it?”

“I can see the guilt written all over your face.”

“Damn! I washed before coming here.” Shannon pulled a chair up to the desk, sat down and clasped his hands behind his head as he leaned back and rested his feet on the desk.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Eli said.

“Thanks.”

“So tell me about this job.”

Shannon shrugged. His gaze wandered to a framed photo on the wall to his left that showed a herd of elk in a snowy mountain vista, then to one of Babe Ruth in Yankee pinstripes swinging a bat and looking skyward as if he were following the arc of a homerun ball. Turning back to Eli, he said, “You remember those two students who were killed a few months ago? I’m looking into it.”

Eli sat quietly staring at Shannon. The disappointment filling up his eyes gave him a hangdog look. “Jesus, Bill,” he said, breaking his silence. “One of these days you’re going to have to make a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“About the level of spiritual awareness you wish to achieve. At least during this lifetime.”

“Chrissakes, Eli, all I’m going to be doing is investigating a crime.”

“You’re doing more than that.”

“Like what?”

“Like spending your time mired in the worst that people can do.”

Shannon rubbed a hand across his eye. The same old argument, although Eli’s manner now seemed more personal and less academic than all those earlier times. Now there was nothing but disappointment showing in his friend’s eyes. Of course, this was the first double-murder investigation Shannon had taken on since moving to Boulder. When he was a police detective in Cambridge, he had investigated some horrendous crimes that truly did deal with the worst that people can do-including rape, incest and child abuse, as well as murders. Since moving to Boulder and working part-time as a private investigator, the most serious case he handled involved a real estate scam in which several people, at least temporarily, had lost their life savings. Shannon had been able to recover most of their money for them.

“Look,” he said. “This is the world we live in. What am I supposed to do, keep blinders on and only pay attention to uplifting sights, like elk tramping through the mountains?”

“Bill, you’re right, we live in a world where bad things happen, but we can choose what type of energy we expose ourselves to. If you seek out positive energy, it will have an effect on you, just as dark and negative energy will also have its own special effect. There’s a lightness needed to leave your body peacefully and at your own choosing. Dark energy can be like a black hole, pulling you into its own gravitational field. It can be hard to fly when you’ve tied a cement anchor to your waist.”

“Quite a speech.”

“Thanks, I thought so. But obviously not good enough to change your mind.”

“No, not quite.” Absentmindedly Shannon massaged his damaged hand. He clenched his teeth against phantom pains that had started to radiate from his missing fingers up to his wrists. For a long moment it was as if nails were being driven into his joints. “I’m thirty-seven years old. I need to do something. I can’t spend twenty-four hours a day working on my spiritual development.” He paused to look down at his damaged hand. “Anyway, I’m good at what I do,” he added in a tired voice. “And maybe doing this I can help bring justice to the victims and some relief to the families.”

“You don’t sound very convincing with that last part.”

Shannon shrugged. “I met one of the families. Bringing any relief to them is only wishful thinking on my part.”

“Then why do this, Bill? I know it’s not for the money. You’ve got your disability pension and Susan’s making a good income with her practice. I agree, you should be doing something, but don’t try selling me that you’re doing this so you can help people because there are plenty of other things you could do-like working at a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen or any number of things that could enrich you. So why detective work?”

Shannon removed his feet from the desk and leaned forward so he could pick up an amethyst geode that Eli used as a paperweight. He ran his thumb along the purple and silver diamond-shaped crystals inside it, studying the intricate pattern that they made. “It’s just something I need to do,” he said as he placed the geode back on the desk.

“I think you need to figure out what you really want.” Eli took a cassette tape from the top drawer of his desk and tossed it to Shannon. “For whatever good it will do you, here are some new exercises. Like the old ones, play these a half hour before going to bed.”

Shannon nodded. “Thanks. Are we still meeting tomorrow morning?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“I thought you might be too pissed at me for taking this case.”

“You want to put obstacles up for yourself, that’s your business. I still plan on working with you. And besides, I’m not ending a friendship over something like this.”

“Fair enough. I’ve got a few things to do over the next hour or so, but any interest in catching the Sox game later?”

Eli made a face as if he had swallowed spoiled milk. “I already told you my thoughts on interleague play. Besides, I don’t see any reason to pay money to watch a second-rate team beat a third-rate team.”

“What are you talking about? The World Champion Red Sox a second rate team? Last I checked they’re two and a half games up on your beloved Yankees.”

“I was referring to the Rockies as the second-rate team. I’ve also decided that the Red Sox never won the World Series last year. We’re either the victims of a massive media hoax or are suffering from some sort of mass delusion. And about the Yankees being two and a half games out-don’t take too much solace from that. In seventy-eight they were fourteen games out this same time of year, and we all know how that turned out.”

Shannon got to his feet and, at the door, told Eli that he would see him tomorrow.

Eli nodded, his long face reflective. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Think harder about why you’re still doing this detective work.”

“You got it, Chief.” Shannon gave him a quick salute and left.

The condo complex where the murdered students had lived was off Arapahoe Avenue and was made up of clusters of newer-looking two-story townhouses, with what looked like four townhouses grouped together into each cluster. Driving through the complex, Shannon guessed that the townhouses had been built within the last five years.

Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson had rented a condo in an end unit townhouse that was in the back of the complex and not visible from the street. Shannon found the door to the building unlocked. Inside was a small vestibule leading to two condos. The door to Carver and Gibson’s unit had red smudges on it and some splintering where it had been kicked open. A police notice on the door warned that it was a crime scene and that the area was sealed off to the public until further notice. The other condo had a small metal sign screwed into its door indicating that it was the residence of Mike and Nancy Maguire. Shannon knocked on the Maguire’s door and waited. After several minutes a man in his early forties came out, his face flushed as he gave Shannon a wary look. “Yeah?” he asked.

Shannon introduced himself. “I was hoping you could tell me about the two students who were murdered next door,” he added.

“How about you show me some identification,” Maguire said, a thin smile showing that he thought Shannon was full of shit. Shannon handed him his PI license. Maguire studied it and then, coordinated with a sudden jerk of his head, snapped his fingers, a wide grin breaking over his face.

“I knew you looked familiar. I used to live in Medfa,” he said, grossly exaggerating his Boston pronunciation of ‘Medford’. “You were in the news for weeks. A police detective, right? What was the name of that serial killer? Carl… Carl Winters, right?”

“Charlie Winters.”

Maguire snapped his fingers again. “That’s right. Charlie Winters. You killed him, didn’t you?”

Shannon nodded.

“Damn,” Maguire said, still grinning widely. His flushed face showed a deep pink along his cheeks, almost as if he had rouge on and almost matching the color of his red hair. He was about Shannon’s height but wider, carrying an extra forty pounds beyond Shannon’s hundred and eighty. “When I heard you outside I thought you were a reporter. The tabloid ones are the worst. Nothing but a bunch of fucking piranhas.”

“No, I’m not a reporter,” Shannon said. “If you’ve got some time, I’d like to talk to both you and your wife. Is your wife home?”

“She’s home.” He hesitated. “She’s not feeling well, though. She’s come down with some sort of bug and would give me holy hell if I brought you or anyone else upstairs. You also caught me as I was about to head out.” Maguire snapped his fingers again, his eyes brightening. “Look, I’ve got two tickets for the Sox game. Since my wife can’t come, and shit, you’re another Boston guy-as long as you’re a Sox fan, you want the ticket?”

Shannon found himself nodding. “I was planning to go to the game,” he admitted.

“Then come on, man, take my extra ticket. Otherwise I’ll just be scalping it, and with my luck, selling it to some undercover cop. This way I’ll know it’s in the hands of a true Sox fan. Wadda ya say?”

Shannon hesitated as he thought it over. Maguire’s grin turned more into a smirk as he shook his head. “Come on,” he said. “What’s there to think about? It will be fun. Us guys from back east, we take baseball seriously, not like these rednecks and cowboys out here. And you can ask me all the questions you want while we’re driving back and forth to the game. But once the game starts, that’s it. No questions. I go into my gonzo fan mode. So last time, wadda ya say?”

“You talked me into it.”

“Great.” Maguire offered his hand and showed only a slight tic in his grin on realizing that Shannon was missing a couple of fingers. “I’ve got a few things I’ve got to do before we head out. I’d invite you up but my wife would kill me.”

“That’s fine.” Shannon nodded towards the staircase behind Maguire. “Your condo’s on the second floor?”

“Yep. We’ve got the upstairs, they’ve got the downstairs.” Maguire waved a thumb at the other condo. “What do you think, one of these days they’ll take that notice down?”

“Three months is already too long.”

“You’d think so, huh? It cheers my wife up everyday to have to walk past that. Also does wonders for my resale value.”

“You’re thinking of selling?”

“Maybe, not right now.” He sniffed a few times, then froze for a moment as if he were about to sneeze. The moment passed. “Look,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of things I really need to do, then you can fire away all the questions you want. I just don’t want to miss batting practice. With the altitude out here, Manny and Ortiz should be launching some moon shots.”

Maguire gave Shannon a short wave, then turned and headed up the stairs, his feet heavy on the hardwood steps. Ten minutes later he came down wearing a 2004 Red Sox World Championship T-shirt, Red Sox cap and official-looking baseball uniform pants. His face was flushed a deeper red than before as he showed Shannon the baseball glove he was carrying. “Kind of a kid’s thing to do, but maybe I’ll get lucky and catch a foul ball.” They started towards the parking lot, and when he caught Shannon reaching for his car keys he put out a hand to stop him. “If you don’t mind, I’ll drive,” he said.

He led Shannon to a dark blue BMW Z3 convertible. “Before you get any ideas I’m loaded, this beauty’s eight years old and has almost two hundred thousand miles on it. I bought it during the boom times of the late nineties. Before nine-eleven changed everything.”

Maguire put the top down. As they drove from Arapahoe Avenue to Twenty-Eighth Street, he explained how he’d been a software engineer in the networking equipment sector during the nineties. “It was a magical time back then,” he said. “For a while it looked like we were all going to make millions. But it was an illusion. There was nothing backing these companies up, no real fundamentals anyway. So when nine-eleven happened, the whole damn bubble burst.”

The pink in his cheeks dropped a shade as he thought about it. “While it looked like everybody in my industry was making millions, the reality was most of us made nothing. Worse than that, a lot of people got wiped out buying worthless stock options and then having to pay taxes on paper gains that never existed. The small startup I was at had an offer for two billion before nine-eleven. The greedy son-of-a-bitch founders and venture capitalists turned it down thinking they could go IPO and make ten billion. Want to guess how much I would’ve made if they took that two billion dollar offer?”

“A million dollars,” Shannon said.

“Try six million. Instead, the company goes belly up. They closed their doors the day before Christmas Eve, 2001. I didn’t even get a severance package out of the deal.”

Maguire became quiet, appearing to lose himself in his thoughts. After taking a deep breath and letting it out in a long exhalation, he went on, “At that time there was nothing in Massachusetts. The job market for guys like me was completely dead. Worse even than in California, which was a nuclear meltdown. It took me nine months to find a job here in Boulder and I considered myself lucky to’ve found it. A year later that company went out of business. But for once my luck didn’t completely stink and six months after that I was able to find another job down the same street from where I was working. At least I didn’t have to pack up and move again. With all the outsourcing going on, it’s looking like my days as a software engineer are winding down.” He showed Shannon a half-hearted smile. “C’est la vie,” he said. “Maybe my next career will be doing PI work like you. I’m always reading PI novels. I can’t get enough of that stuff, and I’d have to think I’d have a blast being a PI.”

“It’s a little different in real life,” Shannon said.

“Maybe.” Maguire pulled onto US 36 heading to Denver, his smile hardening as he stared straight ahead. “But it still has to beat sitting at a desk twelve hours a day working on the most bore-ass software imaginable. After twenty years, it gets old.”

As Shannon waited for Maguire to start up his monologue again, he saw what looked like a group of dogs off in the distance. Even though they were too far away to make out any details, he could tell by the way their backs were hunched and the feral way in which they moved that they were coyotes. He watched them until they faded from the horizon. When it became clear that Maguire had talked himself out, he asked how long he had lived in his condo.

“Time for the questioning, huh? Since we moved here. I guess almost three years.”

“How about Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson?”

“What about them?”

“When did they move into your building?”

He thought about it. “Over a year ago. Probably the beginning of last summer.”

“Did you know them?”

“Not really.” He showed a pained grimace as he thought about it. “They were sort of standoffish,” he said. “Not the friendliest types. Plus they were students while me and my wife are past forty. I tried inviting them over a couple times for barbecue, but they didn’t seem interested. Then school started for them and work got crazy for me, and I just didn’t bother after that. I guess I could’ve put in more of an effort. I feel bad about it after what happened. Terrible thing.”

“Any of your neighbors friends with them?”

“I don’t think so. Most of us living there are working types. These were college kids. They seemed to want to hang out with their own kind.”

“A lot of people going in and out of their apartment?”

“I don’t know if I can answer that. Tonight’s pretty unusual for me. Most days I’m working until ten and that usually includes Saturdays and more and more Sundays now, but yeah, I’d hear people over there while I was home.”

“Were they selling drugs?”

Maguire chewed on his lower lip as he thought it over. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never saw anyone smoking crack outside the building, if that’s what you mean. But could they’ve been selling drugs? I never really thought about it before.”

Shannon gave him a long look. “You never thought they could be drug dealers?”

“Nope.”

“Even after they were beaten to death?”

“What can I say? The thought never occurred to me.”

“You better forget about being a detective then,” Shannon said.

“Hey, I don’t think that’s fair.” A hurt look formed over Maguire’s mouth. “I just never saw anything that made me think they were drug dealers.”

“Why were they killed?”

“What?”

“I’m giving you a chance to play detective. Why do you think they were killed?”

“Jeeze, that’s some question. To be honest, I haven’t given it much thought. The last six months work has been totally nuts. We’re trying to get our next round of funding and the stress has just been unreal. And now when I’m home, I’m having one reporter after the next bugging me.”

“You’ve got some time now. Give it some thought. If you want, you can think of this as a job interview.”

“Hey, I wasn’t entirely kidding before. If my current job washes out, I might just want to do something different like PI work. Why the fuck not do something fun for a change?”

“Then think of this as an interview for an internship. Why were Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson killed?”

As Maguire thought about it, he started drumming on the steering wheel then nodding his head as if it were some kind of bobble head doll. Finally he became still. “How about this,” he said. “We know they were beaten to death and from what I heard it was pretty bad. I guess it could be drugs, but I just never saw any evidence of that. So why couldn’t it have been a crime of passion, someone close to them who just went nuts. I’d have to think it would take some pretty intense emotion to beat two people to death. So maybe it was a family member or a close friend. I think that’s the angle I’d look into. So how’d I do?”

“I’ll grade you later. Any suspicious behavior before the murders? Any strangers hanging around the building? Anything odd, out of place?”

“The police had already asked me about that. There was nothing I could think of.”

“Did you see or hear anything the night they were killed?”

Maguire shook his head. “We had a field trial at work scheduled the next day at a potential customer’s site and I couldn’t leave until I finished one of the features we’d promised. I didn’t get home until three in the morning and when I did everything was quiet and peaceful. They must’ve been killed before then. The next day a police detective banging on my door woke me up. I guess their door had been broken into and there was some blood outside of it, but I was too tired to have noticed it when I got home the night before.”

“How about your wife?”

“She didn’t hear anything.” Maguire’s round face seemed to shrink as he stared straight ahead. “My wife hadn’t been sleeping well for a while and was taking sleeping pills by then. She never got used to moving out here. Misses her family, friends, the ocean, lobster, the weather, foliage, Quincy Market, Newbury Street, the Boston Globe-you name it, she misses it. Anyway, she was sedated and out like a log that night.”

“I’m sorry to hear she’s unhappy here.”

“Thanks.” Maguire gave Shannon a quick glance. “How about you, you get used to it?”

“It’s been a good change for me.”

“Are you married?”

“Divorced. But we’re reconciling, and it’s been a good change for her also.”

“I guess it takes time.” He pulled onto the ramp for I-25 and flashed Shannon a wicked grin. “Only five minutes from the park, then that’s it for your grilling. Your interrogation will have to wait until the ride back.”

“I only have a few more questions. Did they have problems with anyone that you knew of?”

“I don’t think so, but you got to remember these were college kids, and like a lot of college kids, they weren’t the most considerate neighbors in the world. Kind of loud at times. But no, I can’t think of anything specific.”

“But you had a problem with them.”

Maguire made a face. “Because they woke me up a few times? As I said, they were kids, you’d have to expect that. You think because of that I’d break down their door and beat them to death? Jesus!”

“Lesson one in being a detective, consider every possibility.”

“Christ, I’ll remember that. But to answer your question-they could be annoying at times, but no, I had no real problems with them.”

“How about your wife?”

Maguire shook his head. “Not that I know of. Most nights she was doped up with sleeping pills, so when they made noise she slept through it.”

“From the pictures I saw, Linda Gibson was quite a looker.”

“Leave no stone unturned, huh?” Maguire said.

“Lesson two.”

“Alright, I asked for it, I’ll play. I didn’t see her much, maybe a dozen times while they lived there, but she was a good-looking kid. Operative word being ‘kid’. I don’t cheat on my wife, and if I were going to, it wouldn’t be with a kid half my age. Satisfied?”

“Lesson three, you’re never satisfied until the case is closed.”

“Committed to memory,” Maguire said, a grim smile tightening his lips. As he pulled into the Coors Field parking lot, his smile turned more upbeat. “And we’re at the ballpark,” he announced. “PI school is closed until further notice. Only thing I’m talking about from this point on is baseball, beer, and hotdogs.”

As Maguire got out of the car he spotted a couple of guys wearing Red Sox jerseys hanging out by a van as they drank beer. He yelled to them with his fist raised in the air that the Sox would kick the Colorado Rockies into rubble. They yelled back that the Sox rule and the Yankees suck. A couple of Colorado Rockies fans walking by suggested to Maguire that he move back to Boston and quit adding to Denver’s pollution problem.

Maguire gave Shannon a poke with his elbow. “This is going to be fucking great,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to this since February when the schedule came out. I bet you we get more Sox fans here than Rockies fans.”

As they entered the stadium, Shannon had to admit there was a good chance of that. There seemed to be a sea of Red Sox jerseys and pennants, and only a scattering of fans wearing the Yankee pinstripe rip-off Colorado Jerseys. The Red Sox fans were loud and raucous and belligerent. The seemingly outnumbered Rockies fans acted subdued, only making occasional smartass comments about what the Sox fans could do to themselves. Sox fans countered by asking when the Rockies were going to field a major league team.

Maguire poked Shannon again. “Section one forty, third row. Right by third base. You couldn’t get tickets like this in Boston if you donated a kidney for them.”

As they made their way to their seats, Maguire wanted to stop off at the concession stands for some beer and hotdogs. Shannon told him he’d take care of it as payback for the tickets. He started off with two beers and three hotdogs for Maguire and a bottle of water for himself.

“You don’t drink beer or eat hotdogs?” Maguire asked, eyeing Shannon suspiciously.

“I’m not big on alcohol these days. And I’m a vegetarian.”

“Sounds kind of un-American. Oh well, I guess that just means more beer for me,” Maguire said.

They got to their seats about the time batting practice started, and Maguire had been right, there were moon shots being launched-balls that would’ve cleared Lansdowne Street in Boston. Near the end of batting practice, Shannon heard someone from behind yelling his name. He turned and saw a man standing in the aisle above him saluting him with a big shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

“Holy shit,” the guy yelled. “It’s Bill ‘freakin’ Shannon, back from the dead.”

Shannon stared back for a long moment before recognizing the man. Ed Poulet, one of the detectives Shannon had worked with back in Massachusetts. Next to him was Jimmy Mason, also grinning from ear to ear. Shannon never much cared for either of them when he was on the job. Poulet was a wiseass and Mason for the most part his sidekick. Several times over the years he and Poulet had come close to blows.

Poulet was waving a hand at Shannon like a traffic cop directing a car through an intersection. “Come on, for Chrissakes,” Poulet was yelling, “you got a couple of Brothers in Blue waiting up here.”

Shannon left his seat to meet them. When he got closer he could see that Poulet had put on some pounds and his hairline had receded a few more inches, making him look almost like a caricature of his former self. Mason was the same thin, wiry sort he always was. Both of them had a glazed sheen in their eyes indicating a day of heavy drinking. As Shannon got within a few feet, Poulet grabbed his hand and pulled him in for an embrace.

“Damn, it’s good to see you,” he said. Next, Mason pumped Shannon’s hand and at the same time gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Shit Bill, we were walking by when Ed here with his eagle eyes spotted you,” he said. “It’s been over five years, you can’t write or call anyone about how you’re doing?”

“I’ve been good.”

An intensity burned through the alcoholic haze in Poulet’s eyes as he stared at Shannon’s damaged hand. “So that’s what that piece of human garbage did to you,” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ. And what he did to poor Joe. I hope he’s burning in hell for all eternity.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he is.”

“I fucking hope so.” Poulet shook his head. The intensity in his eyes faded and his face seemed to sag. “I heard rumors that you were out west somewhere. Jesus, though, I never expected to run into you here. Jimmy and I booked a two-day package to come out here and tour some of the breweries around Denver and catch a Sox game.” His face sagged a bit more as his gaze shifted away from Shannon. “Bill, I feel lousy that I didn’t see you after what happened. The whole thing was so fucking bizarre, and with what he did to Joe, and Jesus, you leaving town as quick as you did after getting out of the hospital. But I should’ve visited you while you were laid up. It’s something that’s been bothering me.”

Mason was nodding. “I’ve been feeling like shit about it too, Bill.”

“Back then I wasn’t much in the mood to see anyone,” Shannon said. “If you had come to my hospital room, I probably wouldn’t have let you or anyone else in.”

“Yeah, well, still, I feel pretty lousy about it,” Poulet said, but relief showed on his face. “So what the hell are you up to? Just living the good life off your disability pension?”

“Half-retired. I’ve been working part-time doing some private investigations.”

“No shit?” Poulet said, his shit-eating grin back in place. “I should’ve guessed as much. Detective work is in your blood, Bill, one of the reasons you were one of the best cops I ever worked with.”

“Never thought I’d hear those words, Ed.”

“I mean it. That was probably the reason I was always giving you shit, just trying to get under your skin so I could level the playing field.” He turned his smart-alecky grin towards Mason. “Anyway, at least you were a hell of a better cop than this waste of space next to me.”

“Fuck you,” Mason said, punching Poulet harder in the shoulder than he had punched Shannon.

“How are things back in Cambridge?” Shannon asked.

“Quiet,” Poulet said as he rubbed his shoulder and glared at Mason. Then his gaze wandered back to Shannon as he forgot about the punch thanks to an alcohol-shortened attention span. “We haven’t had anything major in years. Just the typical shit. Car thefts, domestic disputes, b and e’s, vandalism, drugs, punks trying to pretend they’re gang members, nothing big. I don’t know if you heard, but our old Captain captain found himself a new job. I guess the aftermath of that Charlie Winters’ business was too much for him.”

“I hadn’t heard. What’s Martin doing?”

“He took the same position with the Lynn police,” Poulet said, his smart-alecky grin stretching wider. Mason started laughing, said, “He stepped in it big-time.”

“I don’t know if it made the news here,” Poulet added, “but a pretty messy bank robbery went down last summer with a couple of their customers killed. They still don’t know exactly what happened, but from what I hear our old captain, Martin Brady, was put through the ringer. Last I heard he’s hanging onto his job by a thread.”

“Tough luck for Martin.”

“Yeah, I almost feel sorry for him.”

An announcement came over the PA system for people to stand during the national anthem. Poulet indicated to Shannon that they were going to go find their seats. “Bill, it was good seeing you. Stay safe, okay? And keep in touch, for Chrissakes!”

“Hey, it was good seeing both of you too. And don’t worry, we’ll keep in touch.”

As Shannon made his way back to his seat, he realized he’d meant what he’d said. It was cathartic in a way seeing the two of them. Putting old ghosts to rest. Although he doubted whether he’d contact either of them again.

“Run into some friends?” Maguire peered at Shannon from above the rim of a cup raised to his mouth. Underneath his seat were two empty cups, and it looked like he’d bought a couple of more beers from a vendor.

Shannon nodded towards the beer Maguire was in the process of finishing off. “You might want to slow down.”

“Hey, I’m here to unwind and have some fun-something I haven’t had in months. You’re not drinking, so what the fuck, you can be the designated driver.”

He handed Shannon the keys to his BMW. “Besides,” he added, “isn’t lesson four that PIs, other than you of course, are supposed to drink like fish? Basically be borderline alcoholics?”

“Nope. Lesson four is don’t believe everything you read in books.”

Maguire gave Shannon a wary eye as he finished his beer, but he slowed down his drinking after that and spent most of the game good-naturedly trading jibes and arguing statistics with Colorado fans sitting nearby. Instead of the game being the homerun derby he’d predicted, it turned out instead to be more of a pitchers duel and defensive showcase, one in which the Red Sox pulled ahead by a run in the top of the ninth thanks to a seeing-eye single, stolen base, bunt and sacrifice fly. Uncharacteristic for them. Normally it would’ve been the type of game Shannon enjoyed but he couldn’t focus on it, his thoughts circling back to what his next steps would be and to Poulet’s remark about detective work being in his blood. Maybe it was that simple for him. As much as he liked to think he was doing the work partly to keep busy and partly for purer, more altruistic reasons, maybe deep down inside he was driven simply because it was in his blood. Or worse, these cases allowed him to get close to the darkness without fully immersing himself in it. Maybe it was yet another way he was attached to Charlie Winters, and at some subconscious level he was trying to understand the evil that drove that psychopath. Because what was the altruism for this case? He could tell himself it was to provide a voice for the victims and to make sure that something as cruel as ending the lives of two young people didn’t go unpunished, but the bottom line was he was working to help a defendant in a civil case keep from having to pay out a large judgment.

Thoughts of one of Susan’s homeopathic patients also kept buzzing in and out of his mind-the psychic who was stuck in two worlds, the dead and the present. In some ways he could argue the same about himself. He had moved to Boulder for a fresh start, to heal himself, to live a different life than the one he had submerged himself in Massachusetts. Yet here he was, back investigating the types of crimes he’d thought he wanted to leave far behind. Like Susan’s patient, he found himself floating between two worlds, unable to fully commit to either one.

Focusing on his next steps, he decided he’d have to visit Linda Gibson’s family, which meant a trip to America’s Heartland. And he’d also have to find out how a college student was able to afford the purchases Taylor Carver had made for his mother. Especially if he wasn’t dealing drugs as Lieutenant Daniels claimed.

The Rockies made the final out by popping up harmlessly to second base and Maguire exchanged high-fives with a couple of other Red Sox fans nearby and traded a few more jibes with the Colorado fans he’d been engaged with.

“Another eighty-six years before they win another one,” one of them told him.

“Ha, want to bet eighty-six years before your team has another whiff of the playoffs again?”

“You’re still a bunch of chokers.”

“Like the last four years, with three Super Bowls and one World Series Championship?”

“And you won them personally, huh, asshole?”

“Hey, they’re the teams I live and die for. How have your teams been doing?”

That elicited a number of “Fuck you’s” and “Move back to Boston if its such a fucking paradise”. As they walked back to the car, Maguire acted animated, buoyant, but when he got into the passenger seat the life seemed to drain out of him, almost as if a switch had been thrown.

“Oh man, I’m wiped,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Sorry, any more questions you’re going to have to wait. I’m fucking exhausted.”

Shannon glanced over and saw Maguire’s chin moving slowly towards his chest, his eyelids mostly closed. “Lesson five, learn how to pace yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Maguire mumbled as if he were talking in his sleep. “I’ll take notes later.”

“I have a few more questions,” Shannon said without much hope of getting anything more out of his companion. “And I still need to talk to your wife.”

“Tomorrow,” Maguire said, his voice slurred as if he were using the last bit of strength he had. “Give me a call tomorrow.”

The traffic leaving the ballpark was bumper-to-bumper and it took a while to navigate to I-25 North, but once Shannon pulled onto US 36 West he seemed to have the highway to himself-as if he and Maguire were the only people from Boulder to attend the game. More likely than not that was true. There wasn’t much interest for professional sports in Boulder, outside of some of the college students and transplants like Shannon and Eli. While you could stop almost anyone on the street and discuss the Tour de France endlessly, it was a tough town to talk baseball or football in.

As Shannon drove, he could hear heavy breathing coming from Maguire along with sporadic choking noises that would last for a few seconds before sputtering out, then Maguire’s heavy breathing again. There were moments where Shannon was afraid the guy was going to suffocate. At one point he glanced over and saw his passenger’s face dead still and lit up by the moonlight like something waxen, not quite alive. Then the heavy breathing and sputtering kicked in.

When he arrived back at Maguire’s townhouse, he shook Maguire until he opened his eyes. At first there was only disorientation and confusion in those eyes, then a heaviness fell over his face as he realized where he was. “Shit,” he moaned. “No way I can climb those stairs tonight. Too fucking tired. I think I’ll sleep here.”

“Your choice,” Shannon said. He folded the car keys into Maguire’s large pudgy hand. “If I left those in the ignition you could get picked up for DUI, even if you’re sitting in the passenger seat.”

“Much obliged.”

Shannon gave him a hard look. “If you want I can help you up the stairs,” he said.

“Oh man, like to take you up on it, but too tired for that. I’ll just put the seat down.”

He lowered his seat until he was mostly horizontal, then wet his lips as he started to doze off again.

“You were going to give me your cell phone number,” Shannon said.

“Yeah I was,” Maguire said, waking. He recited his cell number slowly, his breath heavy. Then, with his voice trailing off, said, “Tomorrow, call me tomorrow.”

Shannon opened both windows a few inches so there’d be fresh air coming in, then turned off the headlights and made sure the car doors were locked before he left.

When he got home, he found Susan curled up in bed. She stirred when she heard him, twisting her body so she could look back at him, and told him in a drowsy voice that she’d felt tired and had gone to bed early. “You’ll join me soon?” she asked, her beautiful brown eyes half closed as she smiled at Shannon.

He told her he would, then reached over so he could taste her soft lips and feel the moistness of them. Before leaving the bedroom, he checked his email and saw he had no messages. He moved to the living room where he sat cross-legged on a rug, slipped on headphones and played the cassette Eli had made for him. He had a hard time concentrating on it, his mind wandering over the same thoughts as before as he tried to figure out why he was taking this double-murder case. About the time he gave up on the cassette, he decided that it wasn’t a simple question. He had a host of conflicting reasons driving him, altruistic and not-so-altruistic ones, and seemingly every shade in between. When he got into bed, he continued to have difficultly focusing on both Eli’s exercises and his dream work, eventually falling into a fitful sleep where his mind raced down paths that he’d just as soon stay away from. He didn’t find any peace until he turned on his side and, in his sleep, drew Susan’s small body into his, her backside pushed hard into his stomach, his left arm draped around her middle.