Bad Karma

by Dave Zeltserman

  “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.

  Chapter 6

  Shannon woke early so he’d have time for a five mile run down Baseline to Flagstaff Drive. Even though it was only a quarter past six and there was a coolness in the air, he could tell from the cloudless sky and the warmth of the sun against his face that it was going to be another hot day. When he got to the beginning of Flagstaff and started the uphill part of his run, he pushed himself hard, trying to sprint up the Flatirons to his halfway point. By the time he reached a gnarled crabapple tree that he knew marked two and a half miles from his apartment, he was gasping in air, his chest aching as if it were going to explode. He turned and coasted down the mountain, letting gravity do most of the work as he took long, bounding strides and at times almost creating the allusion of flying. He tried to clear his mind and concentrate on his breath, fixing his eyes on the fields above Chautauqua Park. Off in the distance he spotted a hawk circling the plains below and watched as it made a quick dive to the ground. Chipmunks and squirrels rushed in the grass and underbrush nearby. Occasionally he’d spot one of them. By the time he returned to Baseline, he had his breathing back under control. A couple of other runners nodded to him as they passed by. He maintained a moderate pace on the mile and a half back to his apartment, trying to give the layer of sweat coating his body a chance to dry.

  Susan was waiting for him at the small ceramic table they were able to fit in their kitchen. Even though the kitchen was tiny, it had a bright and airy feel to it, no thanks to Shannon. The day after Susan moved in, she painted the walls a bright yellow and added other little touches to give the space a country kitchen feel to it.

  “Have a good run?”

  She was wearing one of his T-shirts as a nightgown and had a bowl of fresh fruit and granola in front of her alongside another bowl she had prepared for Shannon. Sitting there without any makeup and her long black hair mostly a mess from getting out of bed, she still took his breath away. He stood for a long moment before sitting at the table next to her.

  “You’ve got my heart pounding faster now than when I was running up Flagstaff,” he said.

  She laughed at that.

  “You find that funny, huh?” he asked. “We’ll see how funny it is when you try explaining to the paramedics why I collapsed clutching my chest and why the big smile stretched across my face. Although one look at you and I think they’ll understand.”

  She reached out and took hold of his good hand. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

  “It was a good run. I needed it to clear my head.” Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it quickly. “This breakfast looks great, by the way. Thanks for putting it together.” He mixed some honey into the granola and took a spoonful of it, making sure to include some of the raspberries and blueberries she had added. “I’m going to have to get some business cards made up,” he said. “Maybe I’ll call myself the Crunchy-Granola Detective.”

  She laughed again. “Hon, I don’t think it matters how much granola you eat or what type of metaphysical studies or new age classes you take. I don’t think you’d ever fit the definition of crunchy-granola.”

  “You don’t, huh?”

  “No, I don’t think so. If I’d made hardboiled eggs for breakfast instead, that would’ve been a better fit for you.”

  “So I’m just a hardboiled egg?” he asked, a wry grin showing.

  She placed a small hand on his cheek and caressed his skin lightly. “You’re definitely a tough guy,” she said. “You’d have to be to survive what you did. So why the funny mood this morning? What’s going on?”

  “I guess nothing. When I saw Eli at the Center yesterday, he asked me to try to figure out why I’m still doing detective work, and you know, it’s a pretty good question. It just seems to be opposite to what I’m trying to do with my life here in Boulder.”

  “I think you’re overanalyzing this,” she said. “Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. Whether it gives you purpose, a way to help people, or whatever. Personally, I think it’s because you’re driven to put bad guys away. But again, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re getting satisfaction from it.”

  Shannon was going to recite Eli’s long-standing arguments about how it was interfering with the dream work and out-of-body experiences he was trying to induce, but decided against it. Instead, he took her hand from his cheek and gently kissed each small white knuckle before letting go.

  “I forgot to ask you,” Susan said, her eyes sparkling, “how was the game?”

  “It was fun. Sox won it in the ninth. I couldn’t quite get into it, though. I think I was distracted by this case.”

  “I could’ve told you that would happen,” she said. “Whenever you take a case, your mind’s always churning away working on it. And it doesn’t stop until you’ve solved it. There’re times when I’ll look at you and know you’re a million miles away fitting together all of your clues and planning out your next move.”

  “I guess I get preoccupied sometimes–”

  “Sometimes?” A lightness danced in her brown eyes. “Try always, my darling. But that’s something I love about you, the passion you show in everything you undertake.”

  They ate quietly after that. Susan tilted her head to one side as if an earlier thought just came back to her. “Did Eli end up going to the game with you?”

  “Nah, he couldn’t stomach the idea of paying money to watch the Sox beat up on a last place team. It’s too bad. It turned out to be a pretty good game. I ended up going with one of the victims’ neighbors.”

  “Really?” Susan asked, her face scrunching up into a puzzled look. “That sounds kind of odd.”

  Shannon smiled. “Not really. It turns out he’s from Boston and had an extra ticket for the game. He knew I was from Boston also so he invited me. And in this crunchy-granola town, how likely is it you’re going to find someone willing to take an extra ticket for a ballgame?”

  “Sounds like a fri
endly guy.”

  “Yeah, he is.” He winked at her. “You’d like him too. Passionate about his baseball. I just hope he didn’t kill his neighbors.”

  Susan’s eyes widened. “You don’t think that’s possible?”

  “I don’t think it’s very likely, but he did tell me there were some noise problems with them. Anyway, I should be able to cross him off quickly. I’m going to need to talk to more of the neighbors and see if any of them had problems also. But, as I told him last night, lesson two, leave no stone unturned.”

  With a thin smile, she asked, “What’s that about no stones?”

  “I’m schooling him in the art of being a detective. That was just one of the many pearls of wisdom I shared with him. By the way, I ran into Ed Poulet and Jimmy Mason at the game.”

  “You’re joking?”

  “Nope.”

  “Of all the people from back home for you to run into,” Susan said, wrinkling her nose.

  “It wasn’t bad. They acted as if we were long-lost pals.”

  “I just bet they did!”

  “They did. Believe it or not it was kind of nice seeing them, and in a way, it gave me some closure. Of course, I don’t think I’d want to make a habit out of it.”

  “I hope not,” Susan said, laughing. “So what are your plans?”

  “First, I want to cross my new baseball buddy off the list. Then talk to more people and see where it leads. Also, I’m thinking I’m going to have to take a trip to Kansas and visit the dead girl’s family.”

  “If you have to go…”

  “I’ll try to make it a one day trip. Maybe see if I can schedule it for tomorrow. With some luck I can fly out there and be back in time to take you out for a nice dinner.”

  “Well, I guess as long as it’s a nice dinner,” she said, exaggerating her pout.

  Shannon checked the clock on the wall and saw he still had twenty minutes before he was to meet Eli. The clock was one of the nice touches Susan had added—made from a ceramic plate that had been painted with a barnyard rooster on it. He gathered up the dishes and, after putting the tea kettle on for Susan, washed them and laid them out to dry. After the water boiled, he packed a tea ball with the Darjeeling brand that Susan liked and started steeping it in a cup of hot water.

  He caught a glimpse of Susan watching him, her eyes half-closed, a warm and contented look relaxing her face.

  “You meeting Eli this morning?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I have to leave in a few minutes. Although seeing you like this, I’m thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be late again. And this time more than twenty minutes late.”

  She laughed, showing the delicate soft curvature of her throat. “If only,” she said. “I have work I need to do, and my homeopathy group is coming over at eleven so I’ll be busy through lunch. But let’s plan a nice dinner together.”

  Shannon nodded. He felt a dryness in his mouth as he watched the playful half-smile forming over her lips. “I don’t want to interfere with your work,” he said. “But would you mind asking one of your patients if I could meet with him? The one who acts as a psychic for the police, helping them find dead bodies?”

  Susan thought about it, nodded. “I’ll ask him. But he never mentioned anything about being able to communicate with the dead, only about being able to see people as they’re close to death or have just died.”

  “It’s all part of my ‘leave no stone unturned’ motto, and besides, these days being the crunchy-granola detective, I’m up for anything. I figure it can’t hurt.”

  “Okay, Crunchy, I’ll call him today.”

  “That’s Mr. Granola to you!”

  That elicited a small wisp of a smile from his ex-wife.

  Shannon brought Susan her tea, then reached down and gave her a long kiss, the palm of his damaged hand lightly tracing the outline of her jaw. On his way out, he checked his email and found a cryptic message from Professor Lester White that simply stated that Taylor Carver was of a cynical nature and his death did not come as much of a surprise. Shannon felt a pounding in his head as he stared at the message. He replied back, asking the Professor to please provide him with more details and for a list of other people for Shannon to talk to, especially those who shared the Professor’s view.

  ***

  Eli made no attempt to hide his disappointment and it showed clearly on his long face. “I told you this type of work would affect your progress,” he complained, his New Jersey accent coming out in a loud nasal whine. “Not only couldn’t you make any progress with your out-of-body work, but you regressed with your lucid dreaming.”

  They had a table by the front window, with Eli finishing off a lemon scone while working on his second chai, and Shannon still sipping his first Grasshopper—a combination of wheatgrass, pineapple juice and mint.

  Shannon shrugged. “What got my mind racing was that little homework assignment you gave me to try to figure out why I’m still doing this detective work.”

  A thin smile curved up the corners of Eli’s mouth. “Self-reflection’s always good,” he said. “Any conclusions?”

  “Yesterday I had someone tell me detective work is in my blood. I think that’s part of it. I think also it’s partly because of Charlie Winters. In some ways I’m still searching to understand that twisted psyche of his better, and maybe this is helping to give me that insight. And I think part of it is to help people avoid being victimized by the Charlie Winters’ of the world. And there are other reasons—a lot of them, actually. All I know is for now I need to keep doing this work.”

  “About detective work being in your blood, Bill, we all make our own destinies. It’s only in your blood if you want it to be. And about protecting the world against other Charlie Winters, he was an aberrant case–”

  “I never told you this about Winters,” Shannon said, his eyes turning to stone as he interrupted his friend. “One of his last victims was a private investigator named Phil Dornich. Susan had hired him after my last blackout and disappearance to find me. He was a smart guy, at one point he was head of detectives for the Boston Police. Somehow he got a whiff of what Charlie Winters was doing. By himself, he built a case linking Winters to over seventy unsolved murders. Afterwards, the FBI took Dornich’s evidence and was able to expand it, linking that psycho to over three hundred killings over a ten-year period.”

  “Jesus, I had no idea.”

  “The FBI was able to keep it out of the HBO series.”

  “I didn’t watch that,” Eli said. “These days the only thing I watch on TV is baseball.”

  “Well, you didn’t miss much. I refused to give them permission to use my name, and they ended up making my character in the series a composite of several of the other cops involved. But the point of this is all you need is one Charlie Winters to create a world of suffering.”

  Eli sighed. “This is damaging your progress, Bill.”

  “I guess I’ll have to work harder to make sure that doesn’t happen. And I hope you’re still willing to work with me.”

  Eli made a face. “What else am I going to do? Drop you? Just keep doing the exercises I gave you last night. Maybe something will sink in.”

  Shannon nodded. He felt a jolt from his cell phone that had been put on vibrate, took it from his pocket and frowned as he read the caller identification information. “Mrs. Pauline Cousins, Portland, Oregon. I don’t know her.”

  Eli shifted his chair so he was looking out the front window. Exaggerating an insulted look and letting a coolness chill his voice, he said, “Go ahead and answer it. I’ll just sit back, drink my chai and enjoy the many pleasant sights of Boulder. At least those that care to walk past me.”

  Shannon answered the call. At first there was nothing. “Bill Shannon speaking,” he tried again.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” a woman’s voice said. It had a high pitched, nails-on-chalkboard quality to it. “This is Pauline Cousins. I would like to talk to you about hiring you.” She cleared her throat and added, �
��Would you have any time to meet with me this afternoon?”

  “I think so. Do you mind telling me what this is about?”

  There was a long pause. For a moment Shannon thought he had lost the connection. Then in a shaky voice, she said, “My daughter. Melissa. She joined a cult, something called the True Light. It’s been six months since I’ve heard from her. The police can’t help me. I need to know that she’s okay and that nothing has happened to her.”

  “Pauline, are you in Boulder now?”

  “I flew in last night.” There was another long pause before she continued, her voice now halting and breaking up between words as if they had a bad connection, which Shannon knew they didn’t. “I-I’m there now—at their complex, but they won’t let me see her. Th-They won’t even let me know if she’s alive.”

  “Pauline, are you staying in Boulder?”

  “At the Best Western.”

  “Go back to your room and call me when you get there.”

  There was the sound of her sniffling, then, “I will. Thank you.”

  Shannon was still frowning as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. He caught Eli peering at him, his heavy eyelids half-closed, belying the curiosity that shone on his long face. “Taking yet another case?” he said.

  “Maybe. The woman who called wants me to check that her daughter’s okay.”

  “She’s missing?”

  “Probably not. It sounds like she joined a cult. Something called the True Light. Did you know Boulder has cults?”

  “Do dogs have fleas?” Eli straightened himself in his chair as his eyes narrowed and a seriousness hardened the muscles along his jaw. “For whatever reason Boulder has over the years attracted its share of megalomaniacs. They’re able to set up shop here and convince disenchanted college students and similarly disenfranchised transients and locals that they’re the voice of God. From what I’ve heard, there were some real doozies that operated in the seventies and early eighties, where the leaders would use their disciples, how should I say this delicately, to get their rocks off. I haven’t heard about the True Light yet.” He paused, thought about it, then added, “If you want, I’ll see what I can find out about them.”