Bad Thoughts

Chapter 7

February 6. Morning.

“Enough! Stop it!”

It was a pointless thing to say to himself. He knew he could yell it until he was blue in the face and it wouldn’t help any, it wouldn’t change that February tenth was only four days away. And as bad as it was now, Shannon knew it was going to get worse. A lot worse. Trying to psych himself out of it was about as useless as anything he’d ever tried in his life.

He’d been lying in bed since nine last night making it over sixteen hours flat on his back. Every time he’d try to move he’d feel his strength drain out of him like blood from an open vein. Susie had left hours ago, her face hard and cold. She was too pissed to say a word to him. Maybe more scared than pissed because she knew what was coming or at least had a good idea of it. She didn’t know why, though. She had given up trying to find out why a long time ago, but as much as he’d promise her otherwise she knew it was going to be like all the other years.

Shannon started to think about February tenth, and as he did a dull ache radiated through his body and inched its way through his legs and to the heels of his feet. He took a deep breath and forced his mind blank. Then he pictured a mountain brook among golden aspen trees. He held that image in his mind. It was a technique his therapist had been urging him to use. He slowed his breathing, concentrating on keeping the scene intact. It was difficult, though, and the picture changed as other images danced in and out, scurrying every which way and perverting the pristine landscape he had built. Then they took over, pushing themselves to the front and playing themselves out in all their glory. There was so much blood in them. Shannon squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head until the images dissolved into a blur of redness. As he lay in bed listening to the uneven rhythm of his heart he realized his breathing had sped up dramatically. Not quite the effect his therapist had promised.

It was funny, but some days he actually thought he could beat it. That this year could be different. Then it would hit him how ridiculous the idea was and the realization of it would sap the strength out of him.

He became aware of the phone ringing. The answering machine clicked on and then his partner, DiGrazia, his voice muffled with frustration, left an address in East Cambridge that Bill had better meet him at. That they had a homicide to investigate.

Shannon thought about it for a long moment as he listened to a soft buzz running through the back of his head and then found the strength to push himself out of bed. He dressed without bothering to shower or shave.

The address DiGrazia left was typical of East Cambridge. A ratty, four-family house crammed between a street full of similarly ratty structures. Each front yard about the size of a large burial plot. Thin layers of sludge and dirty snow covered the ground. Neighbors and other passersby were standing in the street, gawking at the house. A few uniformed officers were keeping them at a distance.

There were a half dozen patrol cars and an ambulance at the scene, all left in the middle of the narrow street, blocking off traffic. Murders were unusual in Cambridge. Shannon dumped his car in line with the others and held the collar of his coat shut as he stepped outside. The wind had picked up, making the cold even more unbearable. Up ahead, Shannon spotted Gary Aukland’s white minivan with the vanity plate, “GUTS.” Aukland was the Boston coroner and was contracted out to Cambridge when needed. For some reason Aukland thought his license plate was funny.

Two ambulance attendants were standing by the doorway of the house enjoying a smoke. Shannon nodded as he walked by them. One of them warned him that it was a grisly one.

The murder had taken place in the second-floor apartment. DiGrazia was standing by its front door talking to one of the patrolmen. He eyed Shannon slowly and shook his head, not bothering to disguise his disgust. “Nice of you to show up,” he said, his tone flat and without any feeling. His small, red eyes continued to stare at his partner, the disgust in his face deepening.

“You look like a goddamn disgrace,” DiGrazia muttered softly, pulling his partner aside. “You couldn’t even shave, huh? Why don’t you at least go into the bathroom and run a comb through your hair?”

“Nice to see you, too.” Shannon forced a smile, glanced at DiGrazia’s thick, ham-hock hands. “And if we want to talk about personal hygiene, those knuckles of yours could use a trimming. Want to go fifty-fifty on a razor?”

“Very funny.” DiGrazia edged closer. “We’ll talk later. Don’t worry about that, buddy boy.” He paused. “Let me show you what we got.”

He led Shannon through the apartment and to a bedroom. Lying on the bed was a woman, fortyish, her eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. She was dressed in jeans and a white turtleneck sweater. There were long, red gashes through the sweater that ran from her chest to her belly. There were other stab wounds along her torso and legs, and a deep one in the middle of her throat. She was long dead, her skin already turning a dull blue.

“A little like Janice Rowley,” DiGrazia said.

“Except she’s fully dressed. Janice Rowley was naked.”

“Yeah, but look at how she was stabbed.”

Shannon nodded. “She didn’t seem to bleed much,” he noted mechanically as he studied her.

“I wouldn’t quite say that,” Gary Aukland stated. He was sitting at a desk behind them, scribbling notes and sipping some coffee. He twisted his body around to face them. “She bled a lot internally. If we move her the wrong way, it will all come spilling out of her.”

“We better not move her the wrong way then,” DiGrazia said.

“Not unless we really want to piss off the apartment below.”

Shannon’s eyes hardened as he turned back to the dead woman. “Is it as it looks?” he asked.

“For the most part. She actually died of asphyxiation. Her lungs filled up with blood and she drowned. The autopsy will prove it, but you can push down along her sides and feel for yourself.”

Shannon did just that, putting his hands under her sweater and pushing down.

Aukland smiled. “Kind of squishy, huh?”

Shannon nodded. “What else do you got?”

“Believe it or not, everything.”

“Like what?”

“Murder weapon with prints-” Aukland held up an eight-inch knife wrapped in a clear plastic bag. “-hair and skin samples from under her fingernails. We’ve also got a couple of drops of blood next to her pillow that I don’t think are hers.”

“And,” DiGrazia cut in, “we’ve got the murderer in the second bedroom.”

“What’s he doing there? Why haven’t you brought him in?”

“Because he hasn’t shut down yet. I thought you, with that silver tongue of yours, could coax the truth out of him. Save us all some aggravation. I know it’s a lot to ask from you, since all the department is doing is paying your salary, but-”

“Shut up,” Shannon ordered. Normally he could ignore DiGrazia, and more often than not get a good chuckle out of him. Now, though, the fat man was getting to him and he could feel a hotness flushing his cheeks. DiGrazia closed his mouth, a slow, satisfied smirk twisting his lips. Aukland bent over the desk, pretending to be oblivious to their spat.

“Anyway,” DiGrazia said softly enough so Aukland wouldn’t be able to hear, “I thought it would be good to get you out of bed. Susie called me earlier this morning. Later, you’re going to tell me what’s going on with you. No bullshit this time.”

“Fine.” Shannon found himself staring at the woman’s dead eyes. He shifted his gaze to the rest of her face. A heavy weariness seemed to pull at her features. Even in death…

“So who do we have?” Shannon asked, looking away from the corpse.

“This is a real beauty,” DiGrazia said, his eyes sparkling slightly. Aukland, sitting at the desk, shook his head, his lips pressed tight together.

“Her son’s in the other bedroom,” DiGrazia went on. “He did it, buddy boy. He hasn’t talked yet, but there is no doubt about it. It’s a done deal, right up to the fresh scratch marks running up both his arms. And guess what we also found in his room?”

“What?”

“A collection of articles about Janice Rowley.” DiGrazia paused for a moment, and then his voice got lower, edgier. “This freak has probably been dreaming about this for months. If we take him in, Youth Services will shut him down. Let’s crack him now while we got the chance. If we’re lucky we might be able to get something to use to try him as an adult. Let’s have him spend his formative years in Walpole bent over at the waist.”

DiGrazia spat on the floor, his eyes now shining like red hot coals. “I would love to bring the piece of shit in here and do the questioning, but well-” he shrugged, his shoulders slumping helplessly “-I don’t suppose the courts would be too happy about it.”

“How old is the kid?”

“Thirteen.”

Bill Shannon stood, blinking at his partner. He felt cold for a moment, very cold, especially around the forehead. “What do you mean, thirteen?” he heard himself asking.

“Just what I said,” DiGrazia muttered, annoyed.

“A thirteen-year-old kid torturing and murdering his mother?”

“That’s what it looks like,” Aukland agreed.

“We’ve got to nail him, Bill,” DiGrazia said. “It would kill me if he got through this as a juvenile. You agree?”

Bill Shannon found himself nodding. The coldness in his head was disorienting, like ice pressing hard against the inside of his skull. His eyes wandered around the room and focused on the gaping red hole carved out from the dead woman’s throat.

“When I was a kid I used to spend my afternoons playing hockey. I guess times have changed, huh?” DiGrazia asked.

Shannon nodded again and let his partner lead him to a much smaller bedroom, maybe a third the size of the dead woman’s. It was crammed solid with uniformed cops. A few nodded silently to him, their faces pinched, hostile.

“Someone open a doughnut shop in here?” Shannon asked.

“We’re keeping the boy company,” one of the uniformed cops grumbled.

DiGrazia winked, smiling broadly and showing off some denture work. “Okay,” he announced. “Slumber party’s over. Clear out.”

As the cops squeezed past Shannon, one of them muttered he’d give a month’s overtime to spend five minutes alone with the kid.

“There wouldn’t be enough left of that shit to put in a paper bag,” he promised with deep conviction into Shannon’s ear.

With the room emptied out, Shannon got a good look at Jamie Roberson, the dead woman’s son. The kid was sitting on his bed, his head hung loosely as he stared at the floor. There was a puffy redness about his eyes, the rest of his face a sickly white. He had on the typical urban teenage uniform; army boots, a Beavis and Butthead tee shirt, and a pair of torn jeans. Long, red scratch marks could be made out plainly along his thin arms. The kid seemed so young, his face small, freckled, his eyes glazed and dull. As Shannon looked at him, he felt the coldness within himself intensifying, the ice pressing harder against his skull. For a split second he lost his balance and had to clutch on to an oak bureau next to him for support. He shifted his gaze past the boy to a South Park poster on the wall.

DiGrazia gave his partner a dig with his elbow, and then walked over to the boy, his face forcing a somber look.

DiGrazia to the boy: “Jamie, we appreciate your bravery in this. I guarantee you we want to catch the sicko who did this as bad as you do.”

DiGrazia then turned to Shannon, his expression darkening to show his malice. “What Jamie tells us is when he arrived home his mom was already cut up, with the knife sticking out of her throat. When he tried to pull the knife out, like any good son would-now get this-his mom turns out to still be alive and starts scratching him like all hell, not recognizing her own son. Isn’t that right, Jamie?”

The boy nodded, a tiny sob breaking out of him. As Shannon shifted his gaze downwards, he met the boy’s eyes. The same dumb sort of look a deer gives when it turns towards oncoming headlights. It hit Shannon hard, harder than if he’d been cold-cocked. The room started reeling. A thick shadow fell over his eyes, thick enough that he could taste it in his throat. Then it darkened and his legs gave out from underneath him.

The world disappeared as he was swallowed up in an icy swirl of blackness. He could hear DiGrazia swearing and then the boy crying hysterically. Then the noise faded to nothing. There was a sense of movement. Shannon tried to step forward. He felt his body jerk spastically as if he had no control over it.

The sense of movement stopped. After a while the black faded into gray, and then into a mix of shadows. Finally shapes formed. Shannon realized he was sitting on something. Through the haze he could make out DiGrazia. His hand shook as he lifted it to his forehead. Touching his skin was like touching a wet corpse.

“What the hell was that?” DiGrazia demanded, his teeth clenched tight enough to crack them apart.

“I guess I fainted,” Shannon said, laughing softly. He saw that he was in a bathroom propped up on a toilet. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror attached to the back of the door and laughed pitifully at what he saw. His eyes had a hollowed out look, his face flushed and shiny wet with perspiration. He leaned forward and dropped his head between his knees, rocking his body back and forth.

“That little puke’s hysterical now,” DiGrazia forced out.

“That boy was in shock. You had no right trying to question him.”

“Is that so? The poor kid, all shook up because he butchered his mom like a piece of meat. Maybe pushing that knife into her throat afterwards traumatized the young lad. Excuse me for not showing enough sensitivity to the matter.” DiGrazia’s face quickly went from red to white. “Fuck you.”

“You should’ve brought him to the station.”

“Fuck you!”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m not in the mood. I’m sick.”

Even with the buzzing in his ears, Shannon could hear the harsh rasping sounds of his partner’s breathing. He could hear it speeding up, like a crazed bull blinded by blood and rage. Then with a dizzying whirl he was pulled from the toilet and slammed hard into the wall. DiGrazia’s face was inches from his, his breath sour in Shannon’s face.

“Get your hands off me,” Shannon demanded weakly.

DiGrazia didn’t say a word. He had his hands wrapped around Shannon’s collar. He tightened his grip.

“I’ll tell you what, you let go of me and I’ll find some Girl Scouts for you to rough up. Or maybe some invalids. How’s that sound?”

DiGrazia blinked twice, the rage passing slowly from his eyes. “What the hell’s going on with you?”

“I got sick, that’s all. I think it’s some sort of virus. Get your hands off me.”

DiGrazia let go and Shannon slid down the wall, ending with his knees tucked close to his chin.

DiGrazia turned towards the door and then spun around, staring down at his partner. His eyes closed to thin slits. He demanded that Shannon tell him what was going on.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Uh uh. Don’t give me that crap. Every year around this time it’s the same thing. You start coming in late or missing work altogether. You become unreliable. I can’t count on you for a damn thing. Then… Are you hitting the booze already? Susie told me you hadn’t started yet, but I’m not so sure. You kind of look it, pal. And it would sure explain why you collapsed in there.”

“Come on. You know better than that.”

“I do?”

“I’m not drunk. Okay? I haven’t touched any alcohol since-”

“Since last year this time, is that it? So what the hell is it then?”

“Nothing.” Shannon shook his head. “At least nothing I can’t handle. I just need a little space right now.”

“Bullshit. You’ve been telling me that for five years and it’s always the same thing. I always end up getting fucked, just like today. You realize that?”

“That’s not really true. You had no right questioning that kid without Youth Services present. You know that as well as I do.”

DiGrazia regarded his partner slowly, dispassionately. His face relaxed. “Why don’t you take a departmental leave until you’re back to normal?”

“I can’t do that. I’ve got to beat this thing now or I-I’ll-” The thought died in his throat.

“Beat what?”

“Nothing.” Shannon shook his head, cradling it in both hands. “You’ve got a suspect out there to interrogate, okay?”

DiGrazia turned so he wasn’t facing Shannon. “I need a partner I can trust,” he said. “Not one who goes wacko a couple weeks every year. You take a leave now and return when you’re normal or I’ll ask Brady for a switch. I don’t have any other choice.”

With that, DiGrazia left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Shannon leaned his head back and banged it against the tile wall. The spinning had stopped and the coldness in his head had cleared somewhat. He wondered briefly why he had the reaction he did with that thirteen-year-old kid. He had seen far worse during his eight years on the force. Like the young mother who’d become paranoid schizophrenic and believed a devil cult was after her ten-month-old baby. To protect her child from being taken by the devil she split the kid open like a ripe watermelon. That one even had DiGrazia woozy, but not him, not with his stainless steel gut. So why would a stabbing-yeah, it was a gruesome multiple stabbing, but still only a stabbing-have this kind of effect on him? Causing him to pass out at the sight of a thirteen-year-old suspect? Of course, he knew he was only kidding himself. Deep inside he knew the reason for it. Whether he’d admit it to himself was another question.

Like clockwork, things were progressing as usual. First the nightmares, followed by bouts of listlessness, depression, and then simply the struggle to get his ass out of bed. He hadn’t realized he had reached the next level until DiGrazia had pointed it out; that he had stopped taking care of himself.

But there was still a chance he could beat it-if he could keep away from the booze. Except February tenth was a long four days away. As it was, he felt now like he was barely holding on by his fingertips and whatever he was holding on to was slippery as all hell.

Bill Shannon sat for a long while. Sat until the whispers had quieted in his mind. Then he stood up slowly and studied himself in the mirror. His skin had a pasty sheen to it, his eyes a wild combination of yellow and red. If he didn’t know better himself, he’d say he’d been tying one on-and a hell of a one at that. What was the point of staying sober if he was going to look like a stinking drunk? He blotted the thought out of his head. He knew better than that.

He turned the faucet on and ran his comb under it and slicked his hair back. It helped a little.

The corpse had been removed, and DiGrazia, Jamie Roberson, and most of the crew were already gone. As Shannon left the apartment he nodded to a couple of members of the forensic team that were tidying up loose ends. They both only gave him a blank stare in return.