Bad Karma

by Dave Zeltserman

  Shannon raised an eyebrow at the older man.

  “It’s true,” Eddie went on. “We had a lot of small planes flying to hidden out-of-the-way airfields, supplying drugs for a good part of the West. With the mountains, these planes were hard to track. And because the statute of limitations has long run out, I have no problem now admitting to a police officer that I made a good chunk of my money in those days offloading drugs from these planes and providing a taxi service for them. The route I was usually given was Kansas City. Used to drive there at least once every two months.”

  “What makes you think I’m a cop?”

  Eddie smiled again, this time with his upper plate in place, showing off perfectly-shaped white plastic teeth. “You’re probably not anymore ’cause of those fingers, but you used to be. Written all over you.”

  “Damn, I’ll have to get a squeegee and some soap. But you’ve got good eyes. I did used to be a cop. For ten years.”

  “You’re still involved somehow,” Eddie said, nodding.

  “That’s right, freelancing these days as a private investigator.” Shannon paused for a moment before asking, “What’s your take on those two students who were killed?”

  Eddie shrugged. “I came back a few weeks after it happened but I’ve been reading the newspaper stories about it. Murders are rare in Boulder. Probably more people killed here by mountain lions over the years. When you do have one, especially when it’s as violent as those two, more times than not it’s drugs.”

  “What if it’s not drugs?”

  “Well, that would be a tough one. Those murders didn’t sound much like a personal dispute. From what I read they were pretty ugly. I guess if its not drugs, then it would have to be one of those random crimes you never know what’s the reason behind it.”

  “What if you were to make a guess?”

  “Wouldn’t have one.”

  When Shannon made his next move, Eddie’s eyes darted from the board to Shannon, then back to the board. He restrained himself for a good minute to make sure he hadn’t miscalculated, then he pounced, making a move that would force Shannon to give up a rook for a knight.

  “Fish,” Eddie muttered under his breath.

  Three moves later when Eddie realized he was going to have to give up his queen, he put his king down.

  “You suckered me into that,” he complained.

  “I took advantage of you being a little overeager,” Shannon said.

  Eddie’s lips compressed into a thin line as he shook his head, still not believing the mistake he had made. For a moment his heavily-lined face looked like a wood carving. “Care for another game?” he asked.

  “I’d like to but I should get back to my snooping.”

  “You’re looking into those two students who were killed, aren’t you?”

  “That’s a good guess.”

  “Aside from what you might think from that last game, I’m not a complete dummy.” Eddie absentmindedly bit down on a yellowed thumbnail. He looked at it as if he were wondering how it had gotten into his mouth. Shifting his gaze back to Shannon, he said, “Leave me your phone number. I’ll put my ears to the tracks and if I hear any rumblings I’ll give you a call.”

  Shannon wrote his number on a notepad and ripped the sheet out for the older man. “Know anything about the True Light?” he asked.

  Eddie showed a little smile. “If you asked most people that they’d have no idea what you were talking about. I’ll give them credit, unlike other cults that have come to Boulder, they’ve kept a low profile. But I do know something about them.”

  “Which is?”

  “There’s a price for that information.”

  Shannon rolled his eyes, started to take out his wallet but Eddie stopped him. “The price is giving me a rematch,” he said.

  “Fair enough. Set them up.”

  For the next game, Eddie stayed silent during Shannon’s moves. With his deeper concentration, his face looked older, almost ancient. If it weren’t for his eyes darting over the board and his upper plate sliding in an out, he could’ve been taken for a grotesque example of taxidermy. Even with his more determined effort, the result ended up the same—with Eddie knocking his king over once he realized his position was hopeless.

  “Just be gentle when you take me off your hook,” he said, his face frozen in disgust.

  “I’ll be as gentle as I can,” Shannon said. “Now for your part of the bargain…”

  “About the True Light, huh?” Eddie made a face as if he’d coughed up something that needed to be spat out. “Up until a few days ago I’d been setting up shop at the student center. A week ago, a girl, maybe eighteen, tried hitting me up for money. She ended up hanging around for a few hours while I taught her the rules for chess. Very skittish girl, maybe worse, I don’t know. Anyway, at one point she told me she’d been a member of the True Light. She didn’t say much else about it, other than whispering to me that their leader was a false prophet.”

  “When you say, ‘very skittish girl, maybe worse’, what do you mean by that?”

  “Maybe she was fearful of something.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  Eddie shook his head.

  “How about describing her?”

  “Small. Maybe five feet, ninety pounds, if soaking wet. Long straight red hair along with the pale skin redheads usually have. Would’ve been attractive if her eyes weren’t jumping around like ping pong balls.”

  Shannon stood up and offered his hand to Eddie, who frowned at it. “Don’t get offended,” he said. “But I don’t shake hands. It’s just something I’ve never done.” He put his own hand up to his grayish red beard and started stroking it. “If you’re willing to give me a rematch sometime soon, I’ll set up shop back at the student center and see if I can find her again.”

  “Deal. How about in a few days?”

  Eddie nodded and turned his concentration back to the chess set, frowning deeply as he studied the position he had ended up in.

  Shannon checked his watch and saw it was a quarter past ten. He tried calling Mike Maguire, who sounded rushed as he told Shannon now was not a good time and to call him later. Almost as soon as the line was disconnected, Pauline Cousins called. Shannon agreed to meet her at noon at the coffee shop inside of the Best Western motel. He then walked back to the courthouse, found a grassy spot on the lawn, and sat cross-legged as he meditated on his heart chakra using a technique Eli had taught him. The technique involved picturing a small blue ball hovering in front of his chest. At first the ball was spinning wildly, darting in and out of his mind’s eye. After a while he was able to slow it down, and for a moment he had it hovering calmly in place.

  His cell phone jolted him out of his meditation. For a long moment he didn’t want to move, hoping to be able to hold onto the peace of mind he had slipped into. Realizing it was lost, he checked the caller ID and saw it was Paul Devens.

  “I have a court date for tomorrow morning,” Devens told him. “I’m going to have to do some fancy tap dancing to get you into that condo while at the same time keeping Carver’s family out. I’m afraid if they got in, the place would be cleaned out in minutes.”

  “After meeting with them yesterday I have to agree with you.”

  “Quite a family,” Devens said.

  “Quite a family,” Shannon agreed. He filled Devens on what he had done so far. “I’m thinking I should visit Linda’s family. How would your client feel about travel expenses to Wichita?”

  “Not an issue. Whaever you need to do. I’ll call you after the hearing and let you know how my tap dance went.”

  After putting the phone away, Shannon thought briefly about trying to get back into the calmness he had slipped into, but decided it was a lost cause. Instead he got to his feet and headed back to his apartment. He didn’t have much time if he was going to make travel arrangements to Wichita before meeting Pauline Cousins.

  ***

  Shannon arrived at the Best Western motel a fe
w minutes before noon. When he walked into the adjoining coffee shop he spotted a woman sitting alone at the counter who kept glancing towards the door. Her eyes had a hollowed out, desperate look as they locked on his. He approached her. She tried smiling, but it didn’t stick.

  “Pauline?” he asked.

  She nodded, biting her lip. “You must be Mr. Shannon?”

  “Bill,” Shannon corrected.

  “Bill,” she said. This time a wisp of a smile stuck for a few seconds before disappearing. “Thank you so much for meeting with me.”

  “Why don’t we take a booth? It will give us more privacy.”

  She moved unsteadily as she slid off the counter stool. Shannon took her hand, then her arm as he directed her to a booth. She was nearly skeleton-thin and walked as if she needed the support Shannon gave her. Looking as worn out and frail as she did, she could have been anywhere from her late forties to early seventies. Once he got her seated, he went back to the counter to fetch her coffee.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you get my name?” Shannon asked as he sat across from her.

  She tried smiling again. This time it lasted a few second longer. “A woman at the university recommended you. Lauren Magglia. She told me you helped them find a student who had run off.”

  A year earlier Shannon had been hired by the University of Colorado to find a missing student with a history of depression. Lauren was his contact for the job. It turned out the student had stopped taking his medications, and when Shannon found him he was holed up at a fleabag rooming house off East Colfax Avenue in Denver. A month after being back on his medications, he was no worse for wear. Last May Shannon and Susan took him out to dinner to celebrate finishing his junior year of college.

  “I understand this must be very difficult for you–” Shannon started.

  “This is far worse than difficult.” She put a hand to her cheek and held it there gingerly as if she were suffering from a toothache. “I tried going there this morning. They wouldn’t let me see Melissa. They wouldn’t even let me know if she’s still there. I don’t even know if my daughter’s alive.”

  “The police checked that your daughter’s okay.” Shannon told her about a phone call he had with Daniels on his way over to meet her. “An officer visited the True Light after you first called them. He determined your daughter was there of her own free will.”

  “How could she be there of her own free will? They brainwashed her!”

  “Maybe, but she’s over eighteen. As far as the law’s concerned there’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “You sound like my husband,” Pauline said. “That’s all I heard for six months. She’s an adult now. Keep your nose out of it. She’ll leave when she’s ready, you stick your nose in and she’ll stay there forever.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. I’m sorry I let him browbeat me. I should’ve come here the moment I heard about this. I should’ve done everything I could to drag Melissa out of that cult.”

  “These things are hard,” Shannon said. “I was a police officer for ten years. I’ve seen this before. There was probably nothing you or anyone else could’ve done.”

  “I don’t believe that.” She bit her lip as she fought to keep her composure. Shannon couldn’t help noticing how tight her skin seemed on her face, as if it could rip if she opened her mouth too wide.

  “I need to know that Melissa’s okay,” Pauline continued, a wetness showing around her eyes. “And I need to be able to talk to her, to try to convince her to leave that place. Mr. Shannon, I mean, Bill, please, will you help me?”

  Shannon found himself nodding. “I’ll see what I can do. Why don’t you tell me about your daughter. How she joined this cult.”

  Pauline fumbled with her handbag as she took out a photograph. Shannon hoped the girl in it would have straight red hair, but instead saw the image of a young blonde girl. Even with a slightly upturned nose she was very pretty and, like her mother, very thin.

  “That was taken last summer. Melissa’s a sophomore at the university. The two of us have always been close. I used to talk with her at least once a week.” She bit her lip again and made a weak waving motion with her hand as if she were halfheartedly shooing away a fly. Squeezing her eyes shut to fight back tears, she added, “This was a difficult year for Melissa. Her boyfriend broke up with her right after Thanksgiving and before that she was feeling a lot of pressure at school. She decided to stay on campus during Christmas break instead of coming home. I should’ve come here to be with her, but I didn’t. Fred, my husband, told me I’d be smothering her.”

  “When did you last talk to her?”

  “January 18th. I knew she was unhappy and I was calling her more often, but most days she wouldn’t pick up.”

  “Did she say anything to you about this cult?”

  Pauline showed a sad clown’s smile and wiped a bone-thin hand across her cheek. “She told me she had found a group that made her feel accepted. I had no idea what the True Light was. For some reason I had it in my head that they were a religious group, something dealing with Bible study. I encouraged her to go to their meetings and to try to fit in. I thought it would make her happy. Can you believe that? I encouraged my daughter to join a cult!”

  She closed her mouth as a look of anguish washed over her face. It was quick, only lasting a few seconds, but during that brief moment Shannon was given a glimpse of what Pauline Cousins would look like in thirty years.

  “God, I’m a mess,” she said. “If you can believe it, I used to be a strong person. Six months ago I was running 10K races. Since finding out about Melissa, I’ve lost over twenty pounds. But none of that matters as long as I get my daughter out of that cult and safe.”

  “How did you find out she joined them?”

  “After a week of Melissa not returning my calls, I contacted the university and found out that she had stopped going to class and that nobody in her dorm had seen her for days. I called the police and told them about the True Light. They called me back later and told me they found Melissa there… that she didn’t want to talk to me … that she didn’t want anything to do with…”

  Her mouth closed as she fought to keep from sobbing. She almost won, but a few tears broke loose and ran down her face.

  “Are you okay with me asking you a few more questions?”

  “I’m so sorry.” She waved briefly again at some imaginary fly. “Yes, of course. I’m being ridiculous.”

  “No, you’re not. Under the circumstances you’re holding up damn well. Can you tell me what happened when you visited the True Light this morning?”

  “They have an iron fence surrounding their property.” She looked away from Shannon, her face wax-like as she stared out the coffee shop’s front window. “It’s like a prison,” she continued. “I buzzed at the front gate and the girl answering wouldn’t tell me anything about Melissa. I told her I wouldn’t leave until I spoke with my daughter. I kept buzzing until two men came out. They were dressed in silk robes, their heads shaved. They looked so angry. One of them pushed me to the ground, and they threatened to do worse to me if I didn’t leave.”

  “Do you want to go to the police?” Shannon asked. “You could file charges against them.”

  She shook her head. “I just want to get Melissa out of there. I don’t want to do anything that could complicate that. So Bill, will you try to see my daughter?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  She started to fumble with her handbag. “How much should I pay you?”

  “Nothing right now,” Shannon said. “I’ll see if I can convince them to be reasonable. If I can, there’s no charge. I’ll just be happy to have helped. If I can’t convince them, then we’ll talk again and work something out.”

  “No, really, let me pay you –”

  Shannon put a hand out, stopping her. “Please, this is something I’d like to do,” he said.

  Looking into his eyes, she nodded and put her bag down.

>   After getting her cell phone number and the True Light’s address, he told her he’d call after visiting them. “How long do you plan on staying in Boulder?” he asked.

  For a long moment she stared at Shannon as if she didn’t comprehend his question. Then a grim determination hardened the muscles along her mouth.

  “Until Melissa is safe,” she said.

  Chapter 7

  Eli held a cheeseburger in his right hand and a napkin balled up in his left which he used to wipe the grease off his chin. His eyes sparkled as he smiled thinly at Shannon.

  “I had less than an hour between my two meditation classes to uncover what I did,” he said. “If you worked half as fast you’d have the murders of those two students solved by now.”

  “Or if I was half as lucky as you,” Shannon said.

  “Luck? As my grandma used to say, Feh! There is no such thing as luck, my boy. What you think of as luck is simply the tapping into of your psychic vision.”

  “So if I find a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk, I somehow created my luck? That I psychically knew where that ten dollars was going to be?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Sounds a bit farfetched to me, but fine, enough lectures for now on metaphysics. Are you going to tell me what you found?”

  “Such impatience. First let me enjoy the fruits of my labor.”

  Eli started to take a bite of the burger but his eyes glanced towards Shannon and he shook his head, sighed and dropped the burger back onto his plate. “How can I enjoy my food when you’re staring at me with those big, sad puppy dog eyes?”

  “I’ll close my eyes. How’s that?”

  “Won’t help any.” Eli sighed heavily. He pushed his plate a few inches away. “So you want me to tell you how this fercockta cult recruits their members?”

  “That’s why I’m buying you lunch.”

  “A bargain. Trust me. They do it by running a small yoga studio up on the Hill.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I kid you not. The place is called Vishna Yoga. Notice how close that is to Vishnu, the bastards! Trying to catch the unaware off guard. They have a small storefront on Thirteenth Street.”