Trouble in Mind

by Michael Wiley

  As he put his key in the office door, he half expected Doreen Felbanks to be sitting at his desk in her hot-pink jacket and matching shoes. But the client chairs were empty. He slid open the top drawer to see his picture of Sue Ellen. Then he sat and gazed at her. He was still gazing twenty minutes later when his phone rang.

  He had a sense, and, sure enough, Doreen was on the other end. ‘I just came in,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Are you watching me?’

  ‘Always.’

  He felt a pinprick ache deep in his forehead. He said, ‘You’re trying awfully hard to screw with my mind.’

  ‘Maybe you have a little mind and it’s easy to screw with it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’m only doing what I’m told.’

  ‘I’m tired of hearing it. And I’m getting the sense it’s a lie. I know about you. Someone hurt you when you were a kid. Maybe a bunch of people did. So now you’re hurting them back. And maybe you see me as hurting another kid, and so I deserve it too.’

  ‘I think you’re confused. And with Mengele, confusion is dangerous.’

  ‘Who’s Bicho to you? Of all the kids in this city who’ve gotten hurt or died, you picked him. Why are you coming after me?’ He realized he was still sweating from Nuñez’s office.

  ‘You may think you know me, but you don’t,’ she said.

  ‘But I’m closing in on you, right? Instead of me walking into my office and finding you, you walked into the house Raba Lisle shares with her boyfriend and found me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone there. She’s innocent.’

  ‘You put her in the middle when you sent her to pick me out of a lineup.’

  ‘That wasn’t my idea. Leave her alone.’

  ‘Can’t do that.’

  ‘I’m doing this because I have to,’ she said. ‘But you seem to like it.’

  ‘Ha. I hate it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve got a day and a half,’ she said. ‘Less than that. You’re wasting time.’

  ‘Is that why you called?’

  ‘Mengele said you needed a reminder.’

  ‘Maybe I’m coming after you right now,’ he said. ‘Maybe you think you’re watching me, but I’m really watching you.’

  ‘Don’t say stupid things,’ she said. ‘Even if you’re thinking them, don’t say them.’

  ‘I see you riding a bus from Sioux Falls to Chicago. I see you getting as big and bad as the city itself. But I also see a little worm turning inside you – a little idea of yourself from before you slept with Christian, this idea of a kid you once were. We’ve all got those worms. And they hurt, right? They hurt when they turn inside us, and we wish we could pull them out, but we know that they’re life itself and we can’t kill them without killing ourselves.’

  ‘Yeah, you talk stupid,’ she said. ‘Maybe Mengele will speed up the clock. Maybe if you check on Dominick Stevens right now, he’s already dead, and Mengele has set it up so it looks a hundred percent like you did it.’

  ‘Nope. I’m done with that. From now on, I’m coming after you – you and the man you’re with.’

  ‘You’re wasting time, and you’re going to get hurt,’ she said, and she hung up.

  So he talked to the dead line – talked because he couldn’t help talking and because talking seemed to focus his thoughts after his loss of control with Nuñez. ‘What did Dominick Stevens do? Something more than sleeping with Bicho’s girlfriend and getting her pregnant? Is this about more than hurt feelings? Does Mengele even exist? Is he Hugo Nuñez? Can anyone explain what’s going on?’

  Then he dialed Venus Johnson at the Harrison Street Police Station. She answered his question before he could ask it. ‘I didn’t see it. It’s missing.’

  ‘How does a case file go missing?’ he said. ‘Especially for a big-story death like Bicho Rodriguez?’

  ‘It happens. It could be at the courts. Someone could’ve pulled it for the DCFS and never put it back. Maybe there’s a lawsuit.’

  ‘I’m tired of you and Peters treating me like an idiot,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t get weird. You were a cop for long enough to know it’s as sloppy here as anywhere else.’

  ‘Yeah, but the slop keeps landing on me. I asked for a little favor.’

  ‘It isn’t so little – you were a cop long enough to know that too. I could get slapped for just talking about sharing a file with you. If I asked others about it, they would ask about me.’

  ‘I’ll trade you for the trouble,’ he said. ‘Christian Felbanks’s—’

  ‘I don’t trade. That’s not how it works.’

  Kelson gave her the information anyway. ‘Felbanks’s parents are gone. There’s blood in the sink at his condo.’

  She took a sharp breath. ‘Jesus, you’re like an infected thumb, Kelson. Just talking to you gives me stabbing pains. How do you know they’re gone?’

  ‘A friend of mine went there last night.’

  ‘Last night? And you and your friend didn’t think you should call it in?’

  ‘I figured you’d blame me for it. Every time I call something in, I end up in lockup.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable from my end. The city’s safer that way – and quieter. Do I want to know the name of your friend?’

  ‘Probably not. It’s—’

  ‘Don’t. Not if it makes my life messier. We’ll check the condo, and if we need to talk to your friend, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘I need Bicho’s file,’ he said.

  ‘And I need a job where I don’t have to deal with infected thumbs like you. But you know what? It ain’t happening.’

  When they hung up, he called Greg Toselli. Last time they talked, Toselli was having a bad morning and recommended that Kelson either hurt Stevens or take the redhead out of the game by any means. Now, when Toselli picked up the phone, he seemed to be having a better day, and Kelson told him, ‘I found out the redhead’s name. Doreen Felbanks. She’s the cousin of the first victim.’

  ‘Cool,’ Toselli said. ‘You want me to go with you to talk to her?’

  ‘You mean, take her out of it?’

  ‘I mean, whatever’s necessary.’

  ‘I don’t know how to find her,’ Kelson said. ‘Anyway, I thought you wanted to stay away from this.’

  ‘No, I said I wouldn’t let you drag both of us down. You know I’ll help you off the clock.’

  ‘Yeah, but the clock’s spinning. It’s as messed-up as my head, and I don’t know what’s on the clock or off. This Mengele guy is putting me in bed with these people. Everything’s collapsing on itself. I—’

  Toselli interrupted as if to save Kelson from himself again. ‘So, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Right. I asked Dan Peters’s partner to look at the file, but she says it’s missing. Peters has cuffed me and thrown me in the back of a cruiser every chance he’s gotten, and now his partner’s playing sort of nice but the result is the same.’

  ‘He’s a tight-ass, but he’s clean,’ Toselli said. ‘I hear the same about his partner. They’ve got limits and they stay inside them. That comes from too little time on the street. But sometimes you’ve got to go around the system. You know that and so do I.’

  ‘You still won’t hunt down Bicho’s file?’

  ‘Give me a call when you locate the redhead. Cut it at the root.’

  Kelson promised to call when he had something.

  ‘Cover your ass,’ Toselli told him. ‘You’ve only got one.’

  Even before the sun dropped below the top of the low-rise building across the street, Kelson locked his office door and went out to the parking garage. As he pulled on to the street and again a half mile from his office, he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a blue Buick Regal a couple of car lengths behind him, but the afternoon sun kept him from seeing who was in the car, and when he slowed for a red light, it peeled into an alleyway by a dry cleaner.

  ‘Don’t start,’ he said, and drove back to his ap
artment.

  His head ached, and as Payday and Painter’s Lane rubbed against his ankles, he popped a double dose of Percocet. ‘Time hurts too,’ he told Payday, and scooped her up to his chest, where she purred and kneaded his skin through his shirt. He asked her, ‘What do you say, do I call Nancy?’ If Doreen Felbanks was telling the truth, the man would go after Nancy and Sue Ellen within twenty-four hours – unless he killed Dominick Stevens. Which he wouldn’t do. ‘Tell her what?’ he asked Payday. ‘Take Sue Ellen out of school, pack their bags, and run? She’d never do it, never go. She’d laugh at me, say I was crying wolf. Or say she would kick the man’s ass. Might do it too.’ He scratched Payday’s little skull and said, ‘Infected thumb? More like a toothache. Nancy knows what to do. Yank it. Tough. Never mess with a dentist.’ The double dose of Percocet fishtailed through his arteries, and he felt a pleasant, dizzying warmth. ‘The world is what it is, that’s all,’ he told Payday. He felt like lying down. He went to the kitchen and popped another pill. Then he stretched out on his bed and waited for the room to melt.

  He got his best night’s sleep since Doreen sent him to Christian Felbanks’s condo. Eleven hours straight. He would’ve gotten even more except for the kittens’ mewling. That and the knock on the door.

  FORTY-TWO

  Kelson rolled out of bed and stumbled to the door.

  Peters, his face distorted by the peephole lens, stood in the hallway.

  Kelson opened the door and put his hands in the air. ‘This routine is getting old,’ he said.

  Peters said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Drag me downtown. I’ll call my lawyer and get out in an hour unless you lined this one up better.’

  ‘Nah, I need your help.’ Peters looked and sounded exhausted.

  ‘You’re screwing with me, right?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Is this a trick?’

  Peters walked past him into the apartment but stopped when the kittens pranced toward him across the carpet. ‘We’ve got a situation I want you to look at.’

  Kelson felt a sudden fear. ‘Are Nancy and Sue Ellen all right?’

  ‘Sure – as far as I know. This isn’t about them.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘That’s the thing – we don’t know what to make of it. It’s the kind of situation that’s better to see.’

  ‘Sounds like you want to take me somewhere I don’t want to go.’

  ‘I’ve been there all night. I don’t want to go back either. But it’s my job, and you’re in the middle even if you don’t want to be.’

  ‘What if I say no?’

  ‘Not much I can do. I suppose I could find a reason to throw you in jail again, but I won’t waste your time or mine. I’m asking for your thoughts.’

  ‘Two days ago, you were sick of me. You wouldn’t listen to anything I said. What changed?’

  ‘Come see.’

  ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘I’m not telling you to. I guess if I was you, I wouldn’t. Take your own car. Turn around if you want to.’

  Kelson said, ‘I need to shower and eat.’

  ‘Do it fast.’

  Five minutes later, Kelson came out of the bathroom, ate a bowl of Cheerios, and rode the elevator down with the detective.

  Outside, the sky was clear, though a cold wet wind blew across the damp ground. Kelson followed Peters south in his Challenger. He got a bad feeling when Peters cut on to Halsted. When the detective turned toward North Burling, where Dominick Stevens lived, Kelson said, ‘Ah, shit.’

  A single police cruiser was parked at the curb two doors down from Stevens’s house, and Peters pulled up behind it and Kelson behind him. When they got out, Peters said, ‘We’re keeping this quiet right now. Mayor’s request. But it’s a ticking bomb. One of the neighbors will look out the window and do something to tip off the news.’

  Kelson’s dread felt like a stone in his gut. ‘Dead?’

  ‘Take a look.’

  Inside the front door, cops had laid plastic sheeting on the floor. One in a uniform talked with another in a lab coat by the stairway. More plastic went up the stairs like a runner. Three cops worked at the top of the stairs.

  Peters led Kelson up past them and into Dominick Stevens’s bedroom.

  Kelson had seen plenty when he worked on the narcotics squad. He’d seen bruised children in vermin-infested houses. He’d seen teenaged girls and boys whose bodies looked chewed up by machines after all the needles they’d stuck in them. What he saw in Stevens’s bed was no worse. Christian Felbanks’s mom and dad were lying with their eyes closed, a cotton blanket pulled to their chins. They looked almost content, except Christian’s mom had no hair – that and they both had neat little bullet holes in their foreheads.

  The sight poked at him.

  A needle seemed to lodge in the bone above his left eye.

  He made a low humming sound in his throat as his words from his last telephone conversation with Toselli came back. Mengele’s putting me in bed with these people. Everything’s collapsing …

  As if he was scripting his own life.

  Peters watched him. ‘What?’

  ‘Toselli,’ Kelson said.

  Peters gave him a look. ‘Huh?’

  Kelson shook it off. ‘Where’s the hair?’

  ‘I hoped maybe you could tell me,’ Peters said. ‘Forensics went over the place and couldn’t find a strand.’

  Kelson asked, ‘Did you pull back the blanket?’

  ‘She’s shaved from top to toe. Clean as a baby.’

  ‘And him?’

  ‘Just the hole in his head.’

  ‘I guess that’s enough. Where’s Stevens?’

  ‘He came in last night and found Goldilocks and her husband in his bed. He’s put himself up at the Omni.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell me about this?’

  ‘I wanted to see your reaction.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘You said, “Toselli.”’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘My question.’

  ‘His name was in my mouth. Greg and I talked yesterday. Good man. Principled.’

  Peters gave him that look again. ‘I’ve got a question. You’re into hair, aren’t you? I mean, you talk about this redhead.’

  ‘Doreen.’

  ‘Sure. And there’s Raima Minhas’s braid. And Christian Felbanks’s decision to go skinhead.’

  Kelson said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  Peters smiled as if they were getting somewhere. ‘When Raima’s dad and cousin ID’d her body, they said she was growing a braid. She was supposed to cut it off when she got married. It’s a Hindu thing. Did you maybe take it?’

  Kelson’s mind swam.

  Peters said, ‘Christian Felbanks liked his hair, the little he had of it. Maybe you have it too?’

  Kelson gestured at the couple in Stevens’s bed. ‘You think I did this?’

  ‘Here’s the thing. My partner says you tipped her off to the Felbankses’ disappearance yesterday. I don’t know why you’d give her that if you did this. But if not you, I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘I can tell you what,’ Kelson said, and he told him Raba Lisle’s story about Doreen Felbanks – her teenage relationship with Christian, the boys who pursued and abused her afterward, cutting off her hair, the father who kicked her out, the man who, she said, controlled her now. And on and on, until Peters silenced him.

  ‘OK,’ Peters said, resigned. ‘OK.’

  Kelson felt a sudden lightness. ‘Do you believe me? About Doreen Felbanks and—’

  Peters shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ His face was sour.

  Kelson said, ‘This all goes back to Bicho. If you don’t look—’

  Peters cut him off. ‘Just leave him out of it, all right? Let’s deal with one fucked-up story at a time. Let’s see who this Doreen Felbanks is.’

  ‘Bicho and Doreen Felbanks are one story,�
� Kelson said.

  ‘Just leave it,’ Peters said. ‘You already gave me enough.’

  ‘Seems like more than you can handle.’

  Peters gave him an uncertain look, and then, to end the conversation, ‘I hope they didn’t tear up your apartment too bad.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Peters shook his head again. ‘Do you really think I just wanted to see your reaction to this? I needed you out so we could look for the hair.’ Then he offered to shake Kelson’s hand. ‘If they’d found anything, they would’ve let me know by now.’

  FORTY-THREE

  At Kelson’s apartment, the search team had come and gone, getting through the door without breaking the frame, even locking it behind them when they left. They’d closed the kittens in the bathroom, rifled through the clothes in the closet, pulled back the bed covers, and rattled the kitchen drawers. ‘Enough to give me an aneurysm,’ Kelson said as he gazed at the mess.

  The kittens kept away from him, as if they could sense it. ‘You guys want a Percocet?’ he asked because he badly wanted one himself and wasn’t going to take it. ‘Too much to do,’ he said. ‘Too little time. Too many, too few.’ He glared at Painter’s Lane, who mewled at him. ‘I’m babbling like a bald baby.’ Painter’s Lane moved tentatively toward him. He picked up the kitten, petted her, and set her back on the rug, afraid of what he might do, the razor’s edge of a headache seeming to divide his skull bone. ‘Poor Mrs Felbanks,’ he said.

  He went into the bathroom, stared at the vial of Percocet in the medicine cabinet, and told it, ‘I’m not your bitch.’ He closed the cabinet and laughed at the man in the mirror. ‘Ha,’ he told him. ‘I’m everyone’s bitch. And so are you.’

  But he managed to get out of the bathroom without sucking the pills from the vial. ‘Get on with it,’ he said to Payday, and he pulled out his phone and started to dial Toselli’s number. Then stopped. He stared at the phone as if it was an oracle. He ended the call. ‘Some things, once you say them, you can’t unsay,’ he told phone. ‘Not that that’s stopped me before. Maybe nothing I ever said was something to say.’ He stared at the phone. It said nothing. So he dialed Rodman instead.