Bad Thoughts

Chapter 16

February 12. Midday.

The first thing he felt was the throbbing in his fingers; next he felt the cold. Shannon lifted his head and found himself squinting against the sunlight. As his eyes adjusted to the light he realized he was lying in a basement of what was probably an abandoned building. The sunlight he was squinting against was coming through a broken window.

The overall effect was disorienting. After all, one second Shannon had been in the Black Rose working on a bottle of bourbon the slow way, shot by shot, and the next he was lying on a hard, cold floor in some foreign basement.

He knew what had happened. That he had been gone since that second at the Black Rose. He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked over his hands, making sure there were no gashes or cuts. He quickly checked his fingers, feeling for frostbite and then felt over his body probing for any injuries or broken bones. It brought to mind a story he once read about a leper who was constantly checking himself for cuts, always worried about gangrene setting in. That was what it had come to for Shannon also, being unaware of what damage, if any, he had been doing to his body. For all he knew he could’ve been sitting there bleeding to death.

But he wasn’t. His skin felt cold and raw but there were no cuts or broken bones. He ran a hand over his face and felt that his skin was intact; a few day’s growth but no damage. His nose and ears felt numb but they didn’t feel frostbitten.

He pulled himself to his feet. Other than the throbbing in the fingers of his right hand, he didn’t feel that bad. Kind of dry in the mouth and his legs a little wobbly, but other than that, not that bad.

He was still wearing the same clothes as when he was drinking at the Black Rose. They were pretty much a mess. With some relief he found his wallet and badge were still in his pockets. He pulled out his wallet. There was still money in it.

The basement had a dank, musty smell. It was, for the most part, empty; a few broken bottles and some bags of garbage but not much else. He walked over to the broken window. There were pieces of glass lying along the floor underneath it.

Shannon walked up a small flight of stairs and found the door nailed shut. The wood, though, was rotting. He braced himself and then kicked it down. A couple of crack heads were sitting in the hallway smoking some stone. One of them was completely oblivious to him, the other one looked up from his pipe, kind of surprised.

“Hey, man,” he asked, “what were you doing down there?”

“Hell if I know,” Shannon said. He walked over them. The oblivious crack head never looked up. The other crack head started swearing.

“That’s right,” he sputtered out, indignant. “Just walk over us like we’re trash.”

Shannon ignored him. He heard some more crack heads upstairs arguing about who owed who for what they were smoking. The front entranceway had been boarded up but some of the boards had been pulled loose. As Shannon was squeezing through the opening, he heard the indignant crack head yelling at him.

“Just kick down other people’s doors like they’re your own,” he was yelling. “No respect for other people’s property. No goddamn respect.”

It turned out he wasn’t that far from home. The abandoned building was in Roxbury, a section of Boston located only a few miles from Cambridge. He bought a newspaper and was relieved to see that he’d only been gone five days. Five days was better than a week. Still, it was five days that were lost to him. Five days of doing God knows what. A chill ran through him. Like usual, whatever he was doing, he wasn’t eating a hell of a lot. His clothes felt loose on him. At least this time, though, he wasn’t sick. At least he made it past February tenth in one piece. He had to be thankful for little favors. When he tried hailing down a cab, the driver attempted to swerve past him, but Shannon stepped out in front of the cab and held out his police badge. The driver pulled over and Shannon climbed in and gave him his address.

As they approached the triple-decker that his apartment was in, Shannon saw the squad cars lining the street. DiGrazia was standing in front of the house next to his talking with a uniformed cop. Their eyes locked on each other. DiGrazia started moving in a trot towards the cab. He was at the door as Shannon stepped from it.

DiGrazia was breathing hard from his run. “Well, well,” he grinned. “The prodigal son has returned. And looking kind of ripe at that.”

Shannon couldn’t help returning the grin. DiGrazia was looking worse than him. Along with the dark circles under his partner’s eyes, the little hair DiGrazia had left was streaked with dirt and his clothes looked like they had been slept in.

“At least I have an excuse,” Shannon said. “What’s yours?”

“What’s mine?” DiGrazia sputtered. “You sonofabitch. I’ve been out every goddamn night looking for you. I haven’t slept in five days. That’s my goddamn excuse.” DiGrazia hesitated and then lowered his voice. “What have you been up to?”

“I don’t know. I just woke up, so to speak.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t look like your rest did you much good.” He paused, considering Shannon. “At least you’re back in one piece.”

“It looks that way. About spending your nights looking for me, I’d like to thank you.”

“Yeah, sure you would. You really don’t know what you’ve been doing?”

Shannon shook his head. “No idea. About an hour ago I came out of it in a crack house in Roxbury.” He hesitated. “How’s Susie been?”

“She hasn’t left you yet. My ex sure would’ve.” Exhaustion passed over DiGrazia’s thick face, giving his flesh a wasted look. “I’m glad to see you, pal. I’ll tell you, after the last week being run ragged both on the job and looking for you, I’m having a tough time thinking straight. Did you know Rose Hartwell?”

“Ah, shit. What happened to her?”

“You did know her?”

“Yeah, I know her. I know everyone on this street. What happened?”

DiGrazia started to say something and then stopped himself. For whatever reason he got cute. “You better look for yourself.”

“All right. Let me wash up first-”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. You’re fine. Fresh as a goddamn daisy.” DiGrazia had an arm around Shannon’s shoulders and was veering him away from his building towards the triple-decker Rose Hartwell lived in. As they walked, DiGrazia asked whether Shannon knew if the Hartwells were having marital problems.

“Yeah,” Shannon said, “I think things had kind of hit bottom for them.”

“That’s what I’ve been hearing,” DiGrazia said.

There were about a half dozen plainclothes cops milling through Hartwell’s apartment, all grim-faced, all wearing beige or maroon sports jackets. Shannon didn’t recognize any of them. Rose Hartwell was waiting for them in the kitchen. She was lying on a small table, fully clothed, a knife sticking out of her mouth. She was dead. Gary Aukland was standing off to one side while a thin man with a short marine-style haircut examined the body. The man had an unnaturally pale complexion with lips that were way too red. His facial bones seemed to shine through colorless, translucent skin. Shannon didn’t know him, either. DiGrazia murmured in his ear, “FBI.”

There was no shock as Shannon looked at the body. He was surprised how calm he felt. Almost serene. It was as if he’d been expecting this for a long time. Maybe not Rose Hartwell, but someone. He asked the FBI examiner how long the woman had been dead. The man sniffed in the air as if he smelled something and then muttered about them having to wait for a report. Aukland cleared his throat and said it probably happened early in the morning. He moved his head to one side, signaling towards the living room. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go talk.”

They left the kitchen with DiGrazia joining them. Aukland asked if Shannon had been sick. “You look almost as if you’ve been suffering from exposure,” the coroner noted.

“Not that I know of. But then again, what the hell do I know?”

Aukland gave him an odd kind of look and then shook his head. He told him he’d heard Shannon had been put on departmental leave. “Right now I wouldn’t mind volunteering for that,” Aukland added. “They’re really pissing me off in there. You realize how big a favor they’re doing letting us watch? Tight-assed little pricks.”

“Why are they involved?”

“Because they’re experts from their elite Sex Crime unit. And we have a serial killer,” Aukland said with an unhappy smile.

“There was one several days ago in Boston,” DiGrazia said.

“And the Roberson murder,” Aukland added.

Shannon turned to DiGrazia. “I thought you had the kid all wrapped up?”

“I was wrong. He didn’t do it.”

Shannon was going to say something else but he let it drop. DiGrazia’s expression demanded that he let it drop. He asked Aukland what they had on Rose Hartwell’s murder.

“It’s hard to tell standing on the sidelines, but it doesn’t look like there’s any physical evidence. No skin, no blood, no semen. There’s a slight discoloration along the wrists that shows her hands were tied. Probably with some sort of fabric, maybe a towel. Whoever did this has a pretty good knowledge of forensics. How closely did you look at that knife?”

“What do you mean?”

“You probably couldn’t tell from the angle you were standing at. The knife went right through the back of her neck and stuck a half inch into the table. It severed her windpipe. My guess is she died of asphyxiation. And, Bill, it probably wasn’t fast.”

“Any other wounds?”

“No, just the one. It was more than enough, though.”

“And there was one like this last week in Boston?”

“A carbon copy. And you have Phyllis Roberson. For the most part the profiles match.”

Shannon looked out the window, squinting. “How’d you find out it wasn’t Roberson’s kid?”

Aukland shrugged. “The blood we found on the pillow didn’t match either Roberson or her son. Also the timing didn’t fit. With the amount of time it took her to bleed to death, the son couldn’t have done it. He was in school at the time the internal bleeding had started.”

DiGrazia’s thick ears had turned bright pink. “With what we had at the scene anyone would’ve picked that kid,” he said.

Shannon asked, “What about the scratch marks on his arms?”

“It probably happened the way he said it did,” Aukland said. “Her internal bleeding was slow so it took a while for her lungs to fill up. In the meantime, her son came home, found her like that, tried to pull the knife out of her throat, and well, you know what happened next.” Aukland showed some yellowed teeth as he smiled. “I almost think our killer planned it that way; leaving her dying with that knife bobbing out of her throat so her son would do what he did. The blood, though, doesn’t make any sense. He was so careful not to leave any other physical evidence. Do you know how difficult it is to kill someone like that without leaving any physical evidence? You think he would’ve realized he left a few drops of blood.”

“I guess he got careless.”

“The sonofabitch plants newspaper stories about Janice Rowley’s murder in the kid’s room to frame him, is so damn meticulous with the murder, and he leaves blood behind in plain sight?” DiGrazia asked.

“He probably got so excited with the murder he didn’t realize it.”

Aukland thought about it and shrugged. “Maybe,” he conceded. “I’m going back in there and keep my eye on things.”

DiGrazia grabbed Shannon by the arm. He told Aukland they’d join him later. Then to Shannon, “Let’s go to your place.”

Once inside his apartment Shannon tried to call his wife at work. DiGrazia cracked his knuckles impatiently as Shannon left a voice mail message.

“What do you think, we got a serial killer?” he asked as soon as the phone was put down.

“You don’t think so?”

“That’s right. I don’t.”

“A copycat murder?”

“Nope,” DiGrazia said, shaking his head. “No details were released on any of the murders.” He took a cigarette out, slipped it into his mouth, and then raised an eyebrow at Shannon and offered him one. Shannon declined.

DiGrazia lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply and then stood and watched as the smoke curled around him. “I think we got someone who wants it to look like a serial killer,” he said, the smoke drifting past him, his face all of a sudden anxious, his eyes like hard red marbles. He sat down on the sofa and leaned forward, licking his lips.

“Phyllis Roberson was having problems with her ex,” DiGrazia explained. “She was suing him for back child support. A lot of money, Bill. And her ex didn’t want to pay. You know, spite. Real bad blood between the two of them.”

“Roberson’s ex and Brad Hartwell got together and planned this?”

“No, but they’re both criminal lawyers. They both work in the same courts.”

“So?”

“So maybe they know the same people.” DiGrazia took another drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it out, all the while his eyes focused on Shannon’s. “Maybe by pure luck they hired the same guy. And maybe this genius had the idea to make it look like a serial killer to cover up the motive. Maybe he got the idea reading about the details of Janice Rowley’s murder. Shit, Bill, we have two women with marital problems murdered. You know the statistics as well as I do. Seventy-five percent of the time it’s the husband.”

“What about the other woman-the one killed last week?”

DiGrazia shrugged. “I think she was thrown in to confuse the issue. I’ll show you her file when you come down to the station.”

“Were any of them forced entry?”

“No, they were all let in. So what’s your gut feeling, a serial killer or something else?”

“My gut feeling is you’re suffering from sleep deprivation.”

“Come on-”

“It’s too complicated for a hit man. And I can’t see a hit man throwing in a third body just to be cute.”

“You’re not using your imagination, pal. Try thinking outside the box a little.”

“Okay, how about this-whoever’s doing this is enjoying it. It’s taking a long time for these women to bleed out.”

“Shit, Bill, that’s just a smoke screen. There’s been nothing sexual with any of these victims. And you got strong financial motives for both Roberson and Hartwell to be killed. I’m telling you, this serial killer business is just to throw us off the trail.”

“What does the FBI think?”

DiGrazia made a face like he had swallowed sour milk. “Fuck ’em,” he said, scowling. “I haven’t mentioned squat to them. They can keep searching for their serial killer for all I care. You want to come down to the station later today? I’ll bring in both hubbies for interrogation.”

“We better make it tomorrow. I need to clean myself up and take care of things with Susie.”

DiGrazia’s face fell slack, not bothering to hide his disappointment. “Okay, we’ll do it tomorrow,” he said. “I should go home and get some sleep anyway.” He leaned back against the sofa. “It’s good to have you back, Bill.”

“Thanks.”

“You really don’t know where you were?”

“Other than where I woke up, no idea.”

DiGrazia leaned further back into the sofa, his eyes narrowing as he appraised his partner. “I could look into it,” he said. “But a crack house in Roxbury doesn’t sound good. It’d probably be better if I didn’t.”

“Probably,” Shannon agreed.

Susie called later. Shannon told her he wasn’t sure if she’d be there this time.

“I wasn’t,” she corrected him. “I’ve been at work.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” There was a hesitation where Shannon could only hear a soft hum over the line. Then Susie asked if it was over.

“Our marriage?”

“No. Not our marriage. Your-the sickness.”

“I certainly hope so.” He started to laugh. “At least for this year.”

“At least for this year,” she agreed, and then she started to cry. When she was able to, she told him she’d be home as soon as she could.

Susan Shannon reached Pig Dornich at his office. “My husband just came home,” she told him.

“No kidding.” He sounded disappointed, almost hurt. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Do you know where he’s been?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Would you mind if I speak to him?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

He hesitated. “About that other matter-” he started.

“I don’t want you speaking to him. I don’t want him knowing I hired you. And about that other matter, maybe we better-”

“I’ll tell you what,” Dornich interrupted, cutting her off before she could finish firing him. “I feel bad about not finding him. Pretty lousy, actually. Let me spend a few days, free of charge, looking into things. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“I can’t afford-”

“Free of charge,” Dornich repeated himself. “One thing,” he asked, “do you know if your husband’s been in the area?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I don’t want you talking to him.”

Dornich started to promise he wouldn’t but the line went dead on him before he could finish. All in all he really did feel lousy. He had been knocking himself out looking for Shannon; the last three days he’d been at it almost nonstop while charging his client for only a small fraction of his time. The case had become a sore spot for him and it had been picked at enough to leave it bleeding and festering. He knew it was a race, that his man was going to be coming home any moment, and he wanted to find him while he was still out there. He wanted to know what the sonofabitch had been up to.

After his talk with Joe DiGrazia, he hit the mean streets around Boston, showing Shannon’s picture, trying to find out if his man had a weak spot for hookers. None of the girls knew the guy. Dornich spent a few more fruitless hours driving around the strip clubs neighboring the city. Again no luck. Later that night he joined Joe DiGrazia as they barhopped ’til closing time, showing Shannon’s picture around. After last call they spent the rest of the night cruising alleys and side streets. They came across a few minor crimes; drug deals, prostitution, and the like, but nothing else. No Shannon. Not even as much as a clue.

The next day was purely routine; checking out Logan airport and the bus terminals. After that he drove down to Providence and then back up to Nashua. The problem was, if Shannon had left the city he could’ve done it any number of ways; hitchhiking, stealing a car, even with a bicycle. So Shannon could’ve been anywhere.

By the end of the week Dornich was spending half his time driving around the Boston area and the other half checking the wire services and contacting out of state law enforcement offices. At no time did he even get a whiff of Shannon. It hadn’t been a complete waste of time, though. He found out his client had been wrong about Shannon’s parents. The mother was dead, but the father wasn’t. He had an address and a phone number. The older Shannon was living in Mountain View, California. He wouldn’t talk much over the phone, just that he hadn’t seen his son in over fifteen years and he’d just as soon go another fifteen.

Pig Dornich picked up the photostatic copies that the Sacramento Journal had sent him from their archives. He read the articles slowly, carefully, letting his eyes linger on each paragraph. When he was done he read them again. Then he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes and wondered what went on in that house between a thirteen-year-old Bill Shannon and Herbert Winters.