Bad Thoughts

by Dave Zeltserman

  But the rest of it. The murders. The articles hidden in his walls . . . Liza Keenan . . .

  He lifted the shot glass to the window and studied it, studied the way the light filtered through its yellow murkiness. As he stared through the liquid a resolve tightened the muscles along his jaw. A coolness cleared his mind. He put the shot glass back on the bar and got up.

  He first called Susan. She confirmed that he had gotten home around eleven-thirty. Her voice sounded brittle, distant. She asked if he had been drinking. When he told her he hadn’t she hung up on him. He had a sickening feeling in his stomach that she had been told about Liza Keenan. For a moment he lost his resolve but then called Elaine Horwitz. She was positive he left her at eleven-ten. That left only twenty minutes for him to have driven to East Boston, pick out Liza Keenan, butcher her, and drive back to Cambridge. It would’ve taken more than twenty minutes to have just driven to East Boston, which meant that he had nothing to do with the murder.

  At first he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Then, just as quickly, a hot flush of anger. When Shannon next called Joe DiGrazia, his hands were shaking.

  * * * * *

  The old man looked first at Liza Keenan’s photograph and then back at Shannon. “Cops were showing me her picture,” he said suspiciously. “And yours, too. Why should I be talking to you?”

  Shannon showed him his police badge.

  “This says you’re a Cambridge cop. This is Boston. I don’t have to talk to you. Not unless I have a reason.”

  He had been pushing a grocery cart filled with cans and newspapers when Shannon had stopped him. He brushed past Shannon and started to push his cart away.

  “Is ten dollars enough of a reason?”

  “Maybe.” He stopped and waited for Shannon to hand him the money. When he had it shoved into his pants pocket he gave Shannon an accusatory scowl. “Why those cops showing your picture around?”

  “I don’t know. Have you ever seen me around here before?”

  “No, I’ve never seen you. That what you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say the truth.”

  “Okay, I’ve never seen you before.”

  “But you were here last night?”

  “Yeah, I was here last night. Where else am I going to be?”

  “You didn’t tell the police that.”

  The old man showed a sly, toothless smile. “They didn’t give me any reason to,” he said.

  “And you saw what happened to that girl.”

  “No, I didn’t!” the old man protested. His face went slack. “At least,” he added, “not until after it had happened.” Then, very quietly, “I saw him when he was leaving.”

  Shannon felt his heart skip a beat. “You saw him?”

  “Not enough to get a good look,” the old man said apologetically. “I was sleeping in that alley behind some crates. I saw him when he walked by. Then I saw what he had done to that girl. And then I found myself another place to sleep.”

  “All right,” Shannon exhaled, “let’s go talk to some people—”

  “No, you don’t! I ain’t going nowhere. They’ll steal my cart if I go. Anyway, I don’t want to go nowhere.” The old man started to push off.

  Shannon dragged his cart away from him. “You’ll lose your cart either way.”

  The old man struggled briefly and then turned, resigned, to face Shannon.

  “It wouldn’t help if I went with you,” he said. “My eyes aren’t that good anymore and it was dark and add to that, I was just waking up. I didn’t get a good enough look at him. At least not so I could describe him.” The old man shuddered involuntarily, his gnarled face relaxing. “I don’t think I wanted to get a good look at him.

  “There was something about him that made me look away,” he continued, smiling sadly. “I guess I’m just too old to want to face death. At least before it’s time.”

  “Is there anything about him you remember?”

  “I’m sorry. There really isn’t. Except he seemed evil. That’s all I can picture in my mind. Just pure evil. It made my skin crawl when he walked by. And then I saw what he did to that poor girl.”

  Shannon tried to question him, but the old man wouldn’t budge. If he had to guess on it, he’d say Liza Keenan’s murderer was big, but he couldn’t say for sure. He couldn’t narrow down the man’s age or what he was wearing. Only that he was white and that he was evil and that he smelled bad. Smelled bad enough that even he could notice.

  Shannon sighed. “I need your name.”

  That got the old man cackling. “What you need my name for?” he asked, showing a wide, toothless grin. “Nobody’s used it for over twenty years.”

  “I still need your name.”

  “Wouldn’t do you or anyone else any good. I don’t leave this block much, if you need to find me. Although, I don’t know what for. Since I already forgot everything I told you.”

  * * * * *

  Shannon met with Joe DiGrazia and filled him in on what he found. DiGrazia looked skeptical.

  “You just left him?” DiGrazia asked.

  “It wouldn’t have done any good bringing him in. He would’ve denied witnessing anything. Besides, he really didn’t. At least not so he could’ve given us a reliable description.”

  “It was still sloppy police work.”

  “Yeah, well, at this moment I’m not really a cop. And if we want to look at sloppy police work, let’s look at me being brought in for Liza Keenan’s murder. A couple of phone calls would’ve cleared me.”

  DiGrazia looked thoughtful. “I’m not convinced you shouldn’t have been brought in,” he said at last. “I believe Susie about when you arrived home. I’m not sure if your therapist is being completely honest. I got a feeling she’s covering for you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Shannon couldn’t tell whether DiGrazia was only trying to get a rise out of him. “There was no evidence I was involved with Keenan’s murder. If I was, from the photos I was shown, there should’ve been some blood evidence. A few minutes of real police work would’ve cleared me.”

  DiGrazia shrugged. “It was still worth bringing you in. Something funny is going on with you. You might not have had anything to do with last night’s murder, but it still doesn’t clear you of the other two. Or explain why you had those articles of your mother’s murder hidden in your apartment. The ones you claimed you didn’t know you had. And it doesn’t explain what you were doing when you blacked out.”

  Shannon shrugged. “Let’s look at what happened. There’ve been four murders, all presumed to have been committed by the same individual. I’ve already been cleared of two of the murders, but you and the FBI still keep trying to get me for the other two.”

  “And we shouldn’t be?”

  “No.” Shannon shook his head. “I think you need to go back to your original theory. That they all were committed by one person. If you do, and you accept the evidence that clears me of Roberson’s and Keenan’s murders, then you have to ask yourself why it seems like I’m being implicated.”

  DiGrazia narrowed his eyes, lines along his jaw muscles hardening. “Yeah, why is that?”

  “Because,” and Shannon couldn’t keep from showing a sick smile, “someone out there is trying like hell to implicate me.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “I don’t know. But he knows what happened to my mother. He planted those articles in my apartment. He had to have, ’cause I never saw them before.”

  “You’re trying to tell me he broke into your apartment—”

  “That’s right. And he’s committing these murders. Joe, he’s trying to frame me. I think what he really wants is to convince me I’m doing them.”

  DiGrazia was drumming his fingers against the table. Frowning, he reached into his coat pocket and fumbled for a cigarette. “If that’s true, he has to know about your blackouts,” he said after he lit it up.

  Shannon nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. He must’ve been wat
ching me, waiting for when I’d black out this year. Which means he’s been keeping tabs on me over the years.”

  DiGrazia stared long and hard at Shannon. “Dammit,” he swore. He flicked his cigarette on the floor and crushed it out with his heel. “Give me a description of your witness. I’m going to bring the sonofabitch in like you should’ve.”

  * * * * *

  At four in the afternoon Shannon received a call from DiGrazia.

  “You sick bastard.” DiGrazia’s voice was strained to the point where Shannon wasn’t sure what was said. At least at first.

  “What was that?”

  “You heard me.” Then, his voice choking, “I found your witness. Goddamn it, I almost believed that crap you fed me. I actually almost believed it.”

  “What are you so excited about? I told you he wouldn’t cooperate—”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that. At least, not after the way you left him in that alley.”

  “Joe, talk English to me—”

  “Shut up. I don’t want you trying to talk to me again. We’ll talk later, but not now. Not until we got you dead to rights. Oh, Bill, one more thing, I wouldn’t wait up for Susie if I were you. We had a nice long chat before I called you. In English.”

  Chapter 29

  It had been raining sheets of water all night. Three in the morning Pig Dornich received the call. A couple of uniforms found the abandoned station wagon in an alleyway in Dorchester. The car was stolen. She was in the trunk. Four of her front teeth had been pulled out of her mouth. Her tongue looked a half foot longer than it should’ve been, as if someone had pulled on it. As if someone had tried to yank it out of her . . .

  * * * * *

  That was twenty-one years ago. They never got anywhere with the murder. The victim was a prostitute and those types of deaths happen. Maybe not as brutal and vicious as this one, but they do happen. Dornich really hadn’t thought about it in years. At least, not consciously. But once he remembered it . . . what was done to her tongue . . .

  But that was all twenty-one years ago.

  His office desk was now covered with a collection of faxes, newspaper clippings, and old police reports. They traced a trail of unsolved murders leading from Boston, down the Eastern seaboard, snaking through Florida and Alabama, into Texas, and Arizona. The murders appeared random. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to any of them. Nothing outwardly that could link them together, yet they were all eerily similar. Almost as if the nature of their randomness was forced. As if they were purposely made to look unconnected.

  Dornich felt a dryness in his mouth as he scanned the reports. In front of him were forty-three unsolved murders. He knew by the time he brought the trail to Sacramento there would be at least a half dozen more. Forty-three unsolved murders . . .

  By eight o’clock he was finished. Fourteen more murders had been added to the list—the last one occurring in Los Angeles, four days before Shannon’s mother had been butchered. The total count had reached fifty-eight unsolved murders. Dornich had no doubt about who committed them. He couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed as he looked the list over. There were so many names on it.

  He felt exhausted, but also somewhat exhilarated. Not bad police work for a pig. Not fucking bad at all. Before calling it a night he made a couple of more phone calls; first to North Carolina, then to book a morning flight to Raleigh.

  Chapter 30

  Susie never arrived home, not even to pack her bags. After watching the six o’clock news, Shannon understood why. He could pretty much guess what DiGrazia told her. He could pretty much understand why she’d believe him.

  The lead story was about the murder. The old man’s body was found in the same East Boston alleyway that Shannon had stopped him in. It had been a brutal murder, in some ways even more so than any of the women’s, and it had been leaked to the media that it was done by the same killer. That tie-in made it a big story. Shannon learned from the news the old man’s name was Walter Hough. It didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

  No one contacted Shannon. Not Agent Swallow, or anyone from the East Boston precinct or any of the cops he knew in Cambridge. He figured this time they were waiting until they had enough evidence to make it stick.

  The night faded by as he half paid attention to the TV. At some point static replaced the talking heads. When he finally closed his eyes, he drifted off quickly. He knew Herbert Winters would be waiting for him. Strangely, he didn’t mind. In a way he was looking forward to it.

  The smell was there immediately. Then he saw Winters, his face whiter and fleshier than before. Whiter and rounder than a harvest moon. A nasty grin, made even nastier by the lack of a real chin, was streaked across it.

  “You shouldn’t have killed that old man,” Winters admonished lightly.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Of course you did.” Winters paused to stroke what should’ve been a chin, his grin shrinking to something more smug. “You let me take over. Don’t you remember what happened next? I coaxed him back into the alley. And I didn’t let his collection of bottles go to waste. You remember what we did with them? You remember how much fun we had with those bottles, Billy Boy?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie to you with us being one and the same?”

  “You’re not part of me. You’ve never been part of me. I know that.”

  “You do, huh?”

  “I do. You blew it with that girl.”

  Winters let loose with a low hiss of a laugh. The sound of air escaping from a punctured tire. “I wouldn’t believe what that old man told you, boy. He wasn’t going to tell you the truth. He was scared to death of you. ’Cause he recognized you from the other night. So he fed you whatever bullshit he thought he had to—”

  “He was telling me the truth. You blew with it with that girl. I know where I was when you murdered her. I’ve got two people who know where I was.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Two people know where I was.”

  “They’re mistaken, boy, because you were there. Goddamn it, you little piece of . . .” Winters’s voice trailed off. His mouth closed as he considered what Shannon told him.

  “What happened?” Shannon asked. “You couldn’t help yourself, was that it? The urge to kill a little too strong?”

  Winters didn’t say anything.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “That’s the real point,” Winters remarked slowly as life filtered back into his dead rattlesnake eyes. “It doesn’t matter anymore what you think. As long as the police believe you’re doing these killings, that’s all that matters.”

  “Who are you!”

  “You don’t have any idea, do you? Except that I’m not Herbie, because we both know he’s long dead. Just like your mommy, right, Billy Boy?”

  A white, blinding rage surged through Shannon. He felt himself taking off with it, his hands groping for Winters’s throat, wrapping themselves around it, squeezing it. At first there was nothing but shock and surprise in the dead man’s pale eyes, and then unbridled fury. As Shannon squeezed harder against his throat, Winters fought back, pushing himself closer to Shannon, his foul rankness assaulting Shannon, weakening him.

  “You’re the one they’ll be coming after,” Winters whispered as he clawed at Shannon, his breath hot against his face. His head seemed amorphous as it ebbed in and out. “Especially after tonight.”

  In the same motion Winters jerked free of Shannon’s grip and grabbed Shannon’s two fingers, the ones that had been broken as a thirteen-year-old. “You were right about that girl,” Winters said with a sly wink. “I just couldn’t help myself. But I sure did have fun. And guess who I’m with right now ? Even as we speak.” He started to bend back Shannon’s fingers. “I’m going to make mincemeat out of her,” he breathed into Shannon’s ear. Then with a hard push he shoved Shannon’s fingers back until they touched his wrist. And Shannon screamed.

  * * *
* *

  Shannon woke up screaming. He doubled over in pain and grabbed his two fingers. He rocked back and forth in bed massaging his fingers, trying to quiet the pain that was radiating from them. After a few minutes it became bearable.

  His fingers had turned a dark purple. They had swollen to over twice their normal size. Shannon walked to the kitchen and wrapped ice in a paper towel and squeezed hard on it, trying to numb out the pain. As he stood in the kitchen, he smelled it. It came from his hair and it brought a rush of vileness up from his stomach. He fell to the floor, vomiting. It lasted a long time, long after there was anything left inside. When he could stop, he went to the bathroom and stuck his head under the shower and scrubbed his scalp until he was sure he had gotten rid of any trace of that smell.

  When he was done he dried off and made his way back to the kitchen. He slowly, meticulously cleaned the floor and then put some water on for coffee. His fingers hurt like hell. He must’ve slept on them funny, somehow spraining them, maybe even breaking them. Probably why he had that dream . . . but that smell—somehow he imagined it—because how could it have gotten in his hair? Unless . . .

  Unless, and the thought sickened Shannon, unless it was more than a dream. And what did Winters tell him—that he was with her?

  With brilliant clarity Shannon realized it was true. Winters was with her.

  He called DiGrazia. The answering machine clicked on. Shannon hung up and tried again. DiGrazia answered after the third ring.

  “Where is Susie staying—”

  “You son of a bitch,” DiGrazia groaned. “It’s three in the morning.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Goodnight, buddy boy.”

  “Joe, listen to me—”

  “I told you before I didn’t want you calling me again—”

  “He’s with her right now. The murderer.”

  At first there was only static. Then DiGrazia asked how Shannon knew that.

  “He told me.”