Bad Karma

by Dave Zeltserman

  “I’ll be out of town tomorrow.”

  “Next day then.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Maguire nodded, muttered something about the next day then. When he got to his door, he turned to give Shannon a half wave, then disappeared inside his apartment.

  ***

  Shannon found Susan waiting for him in their hotel room wearing only one of his T-shirts. He cocked an eyebrow at her, told her he thought they’d go out to a jazz club.

  She smiled. A nice smile. Mostly lips, just a flash of teeth showing. “Sorry, Hon,” she said, “but I have a different idea.”

  Shannon swallowed hard as he stared at her bare legs, then reluctantly told her he was feeling too banged up right now.

  She took hold of his hand and led him towards the bed. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll be gentle. Promise.”

  And she was.

  Afterwards he drifted easily into sleep, far easier than he would’ve guessed given all the thoughts that were bombarding him earlier. At first there was nothing but blackness, then, almost as if a switch had been thrown, he was aware of being back in his hotel room with Susan lying on her side next to him. He heard other noises and felt perspiration cover his back as he turned and saw the two Russians standing over him.

  I’m dreaming, he told himself, this is nothing but a dream.

  The younger Russian, Dmitry, was staring intently at Susan. The older Russian had his .45 out and was polishing it with a handkerchief. When he noticed Shannon awake, he put his handkerchief away and showed a crooked smile.

  “You think this is a dream?” he asked, amused.

  “It has to be,” Shannon said. He pushed himself up into a sitting position. The cold sweat from his back had spread to his thighs. “That’s all this is. It’s what’s called a lucid dream.”

  The older Russian smiled broadly. “Hoo boy, are you mistaken. How come we are in it then? And how come it’s so realistic? Lucid dream you control, right, smart guy?”

  Shannon found himself nodding.

  “You controlling this one?”

  Shannon started to shake his head, stopped himself.

  “Then you sure you didn’t wake up?” the Russian asked, laughing. “What if I let my young friend do what he wants to do? Will that prove this is no dream?”

  Dmitry’s face was a hard white as he stared at Susan, his mouth small, his eyes tiny black holes. As he stood there, his breath came out in a harsh, almost obscene rhythm. Shannon shook his head. “This is only a dream,” he repeated. “Look at both your noses. They’re the way they were earlier today before I broke them.”

  The older Russian touched his nose, shrugged, then sat on the edge of the bed next to Shannon. He touched Shannon’s knee in a conspiratorial type fashion. “Maybe this is something else,” he said, his breath stale and smelling a bit like rotting fish. “Maybe this is what you call prophecy, right? A look into your future?”

  Shannon didn’t answer him. Just sat still as his heart pounded within his chest.

  “You take us as idiot mudacks?” the Russian asked, all amusement now gone. “Do you think we can not find you here?”

  “Why should you be able to? I’m registered under Susan’s name.”

  “And nothing in your apartment has her name? You don’t think we will call every hotel looking for her?”

  Shannon looked from Dmitry back to the other Russian. He tried to tell himself this was only a dream. That he had full control over it and could make these two Russians leave anytime he wanted. But he wasn’t sure of that. He also didn’t want them to leave. At least not yet. He wanted to hear more of what this man had to say.

  The Russian sensed what Shannon was thinking. A sly smile showed on his lips. “You know you were lying to her before,” he said. “About us not bothering you again if you keep sticking your nose in our business. You know we will come for you. Her too. And you know we will hurt her. Very much. You don’t even have a gun to protect her, do you?”

  Shannon involuntarily shook his head.

  “What type of detective don’t have gun,” the Russian mused. “Pussy detective, that is what. What’s matter? Too afraid to upset her, that why you don’t have gun?”

  There was some truth to that. Shannon had never gotten a gun permit as a way of showing Susan that he wasn’t going to take any dangerous cases. At least that was the plan. Now it was too late. Even if he applied for a permit tomorrow, it would take six months. How was he going to defend Susan against these Russians if they came after them? With a roll of quarters? A baseball bat? What good would that do against two stone cold killers armed with .45s?

  The Russian smiled thinly. “So that is the answer,” he said. “You never got gun to prove your love. How romantic. But leaves you now, how you say, up shits creek. If you have any brains you keep nose out of our business!”

  “How is that cult your business?”

  “Not smart question to ask.” The Russian looked over at his partner and smiled sadly. “Never see my friend before want a woman as bad as yours. Look at him, he barely knows where he is now. I let him do what he wants, it will not be pretty sight.”

  “Fuck you. How is that cult your business?”

  “Then I answer this way,” the Russian said with a tired shrug. “A secret.”

  “Who the fuck are the two of you? Ex-KGB?”

  “Anything possible,” the Russian said, again shrugging.

  Dmitry’s breathing had become more ragged as he stared at Susan. The older Russian glanced at him and told Shannon how it could be interesting anyway to let his friend do as he wants. “We can see how well you control your dreams,” he said, his laugh ugly and coarse.

  Enough! Shannon shouted to himself. Leave! Both of you!

  “Okay, okay,” the Russian said. “Don’t get your panties in uproar. You want us leave, we leave. Just ask yourself if you want us back for real.” He turned to his friend and pulled him by the arm. “Next time, Dimi,” he promised him. “We see her again and I will let you do what you want.” Dmitry reluctantly let himself be dragged to the door, all the while staring with a hot white intensity in Susan’s direction. Then, without the door opening, the two were gone. As if they’d faded into the air.

  In the split second between semi-consciousness and waking, Shannon felt as if he were in freefall. Then he swung up in bed, his heart racing a mile a minute, his body damp with sweat. In a near panic he reached out and felt Susan next to him. The sheet had slipped off her and his hand touched her bare thigh. She was sound asleep. He let his hand linger there for a long moment as he tried to slow down his breathing.

  The room was dark, shadowy. In his dream the room had been as bright as daylight. Slowly he regained his orientation. He squinted at the alarm clock and saw it was three-twenty-four in the morning.

  He sat motionless for several minutes as he tried to make sense of his dream. It had seemed ultra realistic with none of the sloughing through molasses feel or lack of control that a normal dream has. But he never felt as if he had complete control over it, and at times, wasn’t even sure he was dreaming. This was something other than the lucid dreams he’d been experimenting with.

  He left the bed and walked to the bathroom sink. There, he splashed cold water over his face, then risked a look at himself in the mirror. He shuddered involuntarily at what he saw. His face looked drawn, his eye and jaw still swollen badly, his skin the same whitish-gray color he’d seen on dozens of drug addicts he’d encountered over the years. Lowering his head he splashed more cold water over his face, this time avoiding any glance of himself in the mirror.

  As he thought more about his dream, he wished he had a chance to discuss it with Eli. He knew that it was partly his subconscious warning him about things he’d overlooked, such as the Russians being able to locate him through Susan’s name. In the morning he’ll have the front desk change their registration to an alias. He also knew he had only been fooling himself before. If he kept digging into that cult,
those two Russians would come after him again. There was no chance that they wouldn’t. Maybe his dream was simply a warning to him to drop the case. As he thought about it, he felt unsettled. He knew he couldn’t drop it. He couldn’t just leave Pauline Cousins and her daughter to fend for themselves. He was going to do what he had to and worry about the Russians later.

  When he got back in bed, Susan turned over so that the side of her face pressed against his chest and her legs lay over his. Shannon put his arm around her thin shoulder. He lay like that for a long time just feeling the shallow, rhythmic rising and falling of her breathing. Eventually, he closed his eyes but didn’t sleep again that night.

  Chapter 9

  Had the Gibson family home been in Aspen it would’ve made a nice ski lodge. As it was, sitting on a cul-de-sac with a lake view, it was impressive. A big stone Tudor styled to look as if it had been built in Europe during the nineteenth century. An attached four car garage did little to alter the illusion.

  Shannon tried the front door, found no one home, then went back to his car to camp out. At a quarter past eleven it was hotter than it had been in Boulder all summer. He had parked in the shade and had the driver and passenger windows rolled down, but even so felt like he was baking in an oven. He was trying to get comfortable in his seat when a police cruiser pulled up behind him.

  The cop took his time making his way from his cruiser to Shannon’s door. When he got there, he leaned into the open window and asked if Shannon wouldn’t mind telling him what he was doing there.

  “I checked in with the desk sergeant at your North Main Street station when I arrived in Wichita,” Shannon said. “I told him my reason for coming here.”

  “Sir, would you mind telling me.”

  “Not at all. My name’s Bill Shannon. I’m a private investigator from Boulder, Colorado. I’m looking into Linda Gibson’s murder and am hoping to be able to talk to her parents. If you’d like I could show you my PI license.”

  “Yes sir, I think that would be a fine idea.”

  Shannon handed him his license. The cop couldn’t have been much older than his early twenties. Medium build with a military-style buzz cut and mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes. He took his time studying the license before handing it back to Shannon.

  “Sir, I’d like to ask you how you got those cuts and bruises on your face.”

  As polite a manner in which his questions were asked, the cop’s hand still moved an inch or so towards the butt end of his nightstick. “A couple of Russian mobsters tried to persuade me to drop another investigation I’m working on,” Shannon said.

  The cop stood motionless for a minute as he leaned into the open window, all the while smiling pleasantly. Then he told Shannon to stay where he was while he checked his story. Taking his time, he sauntered back to his cruiser and spent a while on his radio before coming back to Shannon’s car.

  “Sir, you did report in at the North Main Street station as you said,” he told Shannon. “I’d like to ask whether Mr. or Mrs. Gibson expect you here.”

  “They’d have no reason to.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been common courtesy?”

  “I thought it would be better this way.”

  The cop kept smiling his pleasant smile. “Now why would that be?”

  Completely straight-faced, Shannon looked into the cop’s mirrored glasses and told him that he didn’t call ahead of time so the Gibsons wouldn’t worry unnecessarily. “I don’t think it would be much fun to have to wait several days to be asked questions about your daughter who’s been murdered,” he added.

  “Now, that’s good you’re keeping their welfare in mind,” the cop said drily. “And you’re right, they don’t need people coming around here bothering them. I’ll hang around and make sure when the Gibsons do arrive that they’d like to speak with you.”

  “I’m impressed,” Shannon said. “Residents here seem to be getting top notch service from their police force.”

  The cop ignored him and started towards his cruiser. When Shannon invited him to wait in his car instead, the cop smiled over his shoulder and told him he’d rather not.

  “I’ll burn some gas and put the AC on,” Shannon offered. “You can wait in comfort and maybe fill me in a little on this family. And you’ll be helping out a former brother in blue. I was on the force ten years in Massachusetts.”

  That slowed him down. Still smiling his pleasant smile he walked back to Shannon’s car.

  “You’re not lying now about being a former police officer?”

  “What do you think?”

  He gave Shannon a hard look, then strolled to the other side and got into the passenger seat. “You said something about turning on the AC,” he said.

  Shannon started the ignition, closed both windows and turned the AC on full.

  “Again, Bill Shannon,” Shannon said as he offered his damaged hand.

  “Eric Wilson,” the cop said as he shook hands. He nodded towards Shannon’s missing fingers, asked if that was why he’d left the force. Shannon told him it was.

  “Happen in the line of duty?”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Wilson said with the utmost sincerity. “Always sorry to hear of an officer going down. Now, what you told me before about Russian mobsters, you were feeding me a line, weren’t you?”

  “I wish I were. How about my turn to ask a question?”

  “I have a few more if you don’t mind. Who hired you?”

  “An interested third party.”

  “And who would that be?”

  Shannon sighed. “It doesn’t matter. They have a legitimate reason for being interested, and the only thing I was hired to do was find the person or persons who murdered Linda Gibson and Taylor Carver. That’s all I’m doing.”

  “This interested third party isn’t a book publisher or movie producer? Or one of the tabloids?”

  “Nope. There’s no chance I’d take a case like that.” Shannon showed his damaged hand. “I could get as many book and movie deals as I want from my own story. Ever hear of Charlie Winters?” He waited until Wilson nodded slowly, then went on. “My guess was that you had since Wichita was one of his killing grounds. If I remember right, he and his cousin butchered six people here close to thirty years ago. Charlie Winters is how I lost those fingers. I’m also the guy who killed him. And his cousin, Herbert, twenty years before that.”

  Wilson’s smile faded. “Wow.” He took his sunglasses off, stared at Shannon with wide blue eyes. “I knew your name sounded familiar. And I do know about the Winters cousins. Everything that’s been written about them, actually, including all the FBI and police reports I could get my hands on.” Lowering his voice, he added, “One of the people they killed was my aunt.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wasn’t born yet when it happened. I never got a chance to know her.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  He nodded solemnly. “If you don’t mind my asking, how old were you when you killed Herbert Winters?”

  “Thirteen,” Shannon said, his voice sounding tight, unnatural. He cleared his throat and repeated himself.

  Wilson rubbed his jaw. “The police report I read kept your name out, probably due to you being a minor at the time. But this explains why the other cousin, Charlie, went after you later.” Thin lines showed on his forehead as he tried to recall more of that report. “The two of them murdered your mother,” he said softly, more as a statement than a question. Shannon didn’t bother answering him.

  “Oh my Jesus,” he muttered to himself. Then to Shannon, “Sir, I don’t know what to say about all this except that I’d truly like to apologize for giving you the hard cop routine earlier. I only wanted to make sure you didn’t come here to dig up dirt on Linda. She doesn’t deserve that.”

  “There’s no need to apologize, and no need for sirs, either. It’s Bill, okay? And about your concern—that’s not going to happen. Not even a chance of it. You knew
her pretty well?”

  “Must be obvious from the way I’m acting.”

  “That and it wasn’t an accident you showing up here ten minutes after I did. Someone at your station house filled you in about me.”

  Wilson broke into a more genuine smile than the artificial pleasant one he had worn earlier. “Don’t be so sure. You’re right, of course, but I could’ve come just as easily as a result of a call from a concerned neighbor. At least if Sergeant Jameson weren’t screening them. A Dodge Neon sticks out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood, and people do pay attention here. More than likely, there’ve been a number of calls already made to the station about you.”

  “I’ll remember next time to rent a Mercedes. Why don’t you tell me about Linda.”

  Wilson breathed in a lungful of air, let it out in a loud burst. “She was a beautiful girl,” he said. “Maybe the most beautiful I’d ever known. There was something special about her.” He hesitated, added, “And sad too.”

  “What do you mean sad?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it, as if he were stuck. Like he was trying to remember someone’s name but couldn’t quite get it. “Not sad in that she’d mope around,” he finally said. “Just sometimes you’d catch a certain look in her eyes, especially when she didn’t think you were watching.”

  Wilson got very quiet. After a while Shannon asked whether he had dated her.

  “Back in high school. She was a freshman then, I was a junior.”

  “You two keep in touch?”

  “No. We stopped after she went off to college.”

  “How about her family life?”

  He hesitated. Then with his jaw set, he said, “It was good. Solid. Parents first rate.”

  “You two went to a public high school?”

  “Yes, we did,” he said, showing a quizzical smile.

  Shannon waved a hand towards the stone Tudor in front of them. “These people are wealthy. Why didn’t they send their daughter to a private school?”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”