“It’s all up to you, Bill. You can make it hard for everyone, especially yourself, or you can make it easy. Which way is it going to be?”
Shannon felt a hotness flushing his face. He looked at both men; Brady with his soft acquiescent smile and Swallow with his dour hostility. Fine way to treat a fellow police officer, he thought bitterly.
“Fine,” he said. “If Special Agent Swallow wants my blood, he can have it.”
“I’m glad you’re being reasonable,” Brady said. “Hopefully, we’ll get this cleared up today. Doug, if you don’t mind I’d like to talk to Bill privately for a minute.”
“I’ll be right outside,” Swallow said. He moved quickly as he left the office.
Brady shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he considered Shannon. “This business about blacking out…”
“I’ve been sick-”
“Yes, I’ve heard that before. You already told me you were drinking heavily. Are drugs involved?”
“No.”
“Just alcohol then?”
“I’m not an alcoholic.” Shannon hesitated. “This problem I have, it’s some sort of illness. I’ve been seeing a therapist about it.”
“This has happened before?”
Shannon nodded.
“And DiGrazia knows about it, doesn’t he?” Brady asked angrily. “Goddammit! And all these years Joe’s been lying to me about it.”
“I’m trying to work this out-”
“So when you have these blackouts you don’t know what you do, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Martin,” Shannon started helplessly, “I’m trying to get help with this.”
“For all you know you could be killing these women.”
“No. Not a chance. I wasn’t gone when Roberson was murdered.”
“What do you mean you weren’t gone?”
“I hadn’t blacked out yet.”
“When do you have these blackouts?”
“After I’ve been sick-”
“Always the same time every year, is that it?” As Brady looked at Shannon his face softened. “What’s behind them, Bill?”
Shannon turned away. “I really don’t know. That’s what I’ve been seeing a therapist to find out.”
Brady started to say something and then closed his mouth. He sat back in his chair, his eyes glassy, his lips pressed tightly together. It became very quiet in the office. A painfully uncomfortable quiet. Finally, Brady told Shannon how much he didn’t like the situation.
“It’s something I can manage-” Shannon started.
“Obviously, it’s not. Not when you can’t function for weeks at a time.”
“It’s over, Martin. At least for this year.”
“Uh-uh.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m putting you in for a psychiatric evaluation. Pending the results, you’ll be assigned desk duty. You want to file a union protest?”
Shannon stared straight at Brady. His hands were shaking. He told the captain that he didn’t want to file a union protest.
“You sure? We can call your union rep right now.”
“I’m sure.”
“ ’Cause I don’t want to impinge on your rights-”
“I said I’m sure.”
“Okay, I need your service revolver.”
Shannon removed it from his shoulder holster and handed it to him.
“You have any others at home?”
“Me? With any unlicensed weapons? You should know I wouldn’t break any departmental regulations.”
Shannon turned to leave but Brady stopped him.
“Bill, remember, if I wanted you off the force you’d be off the force right now.”
“Is that all?”
“One more thing.” Brady paused for a moment. “This has been bothering me for several months. How did you know where to find Janice Rowley?”
“I really don’t know. I just woke up knowing I had to get in my car and start driving. I didn’t know I was going to find her until I did. Why, are you going to blame her death on me, also?”
Brady ignored the question. “Cooperate with Swallow. Let’s get this cleared up and over with.”
*****
Shannon sat in a small windowless room, waiting for his test results. The room was no larger than a prison cell, about six feet by nine feet. The door was closed. Shannon had heard Agent Swallow lock it from the outside. Aside from the chair he was sitting on, there was no other furniture in it.
An hour passed before the door opened and Agent Swallow gestured for him to get up. He looked more constipated than anything else. He waited until Shannon had joined him in the hall before telling him the test results were negative.
“Tough luck, huh?” Shannon remarked as he turned to leave. He was halfway down the hallway before he heard Swallow barking at his back.
“I don’t want you anywhere near this investigation,” Swallow yelled, his voice straining to a croak. “You understand me?”
Shannon kept walking. There wasn’t much else he could do.
Chapter 18
That night Shannon dreamt about Herbert Winters again. Like before, Shannon was pulled from a mindless, blissful drifting to have Winters hovering over him, grinning like there was no tomorrow. And like before, Winters seemed like a caricature of the man who had tortured him twenty years earlier; now balding, fortyish, his features bloated, his body looking as if a few extra layers of stucco had been slapped on.
But he still had that malformed chin. He still had those pale, rattlesnake eyes…
For a long while Herbert Winters seemed content just to grin at Shannon, his eyes dead within his fleshy face. There was an odor that came off him. A sour rancidness. It assaulted Shannon’s senses. Winters noticed the effect and grinned even wider.
“The smell of death,” he said with a sly wink.
Shannon tried to pretend he wasn’t there. Tried to keep from breathing in that smell. It was like garbage and rotting flesh and sickness all mixed together. It hung in the air and made his skin feel dirty.
“You know all about that smell, don’t you?” Winters asked. “You inhaled a big whiff of it from your mom that day. And an even bigger whiff of it from me, didn’t you, boy?”
Shannon didn’t answer. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep from smelling that smell. Breathing in through his mouth didn’t help any.
“You just can’t get enough of it, can you, Billy Boy?” Winters asked, laughing lightly, the fat on his body rolling gently. “Is that why you like working homicide so much? To be around that smell?”
Shannon didn’t want to answer him but he couldn’t help himself. He heard his voice telling Winters it was so he could put shit like him away.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Winters said after thinking about it. He shook his head, his lips forming a small pout. “No, I just don’t think so. I think you need that smell. But by the time you get to the body it’s faded. It’s all but gone. And the little that lingers is no longer enough for you, is it?”
Shannon clamped down hard on his teeth. He tried like hell not to breathe.
“That’s why you had to kill those women. So you could get that smell fresh. So you could inhale it deeply into your lungs. So you could let death fill you up.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Keep telling yourself that, boy.” Winters started making a laughing noise deep in his sinuses. “You forget I’m part of you. I know what you’ve been up to, Billy Boy.
“And don’t take too much comfort in those test results!” Winters snapped at once, his dead-fish skin beginning to redden. “All those test results showed was that you didn’t kill Roberson. It proved nothing about those other two women.”
“Roberson and those other two were-”
“Were what?” Winters rudely interrupted. “Killed by the same person?” He burst into laughter, his thick body now convulsing wildly. It sounded like he was choking on food. “Says who?” he
sputtered out when he could, his eyes now alive, now glistening with amusement.
“They weren’t killed by the same person,” he explained after a while. “Remember one thing, Billy Boy. You and me are part of the same ball of wax. When you went bye-bye last week, you let me out of the bottle. And, Billy, you may not remember all the gory details, but I do. I have to tell you we had a hell of a time-”
The smell had become unbearable. It had become like a thick, oozing liquid. Shannon had an image of it filling up his lungs. He felt like he was drowning in it, and like a drowning man he started to panic. In a mad rush he felt himself moving away from the smell… Winters’s image dimmed. His voice started to fade… The smell.. .
*****
Shannon woke up. His heart pounding, his skin clammy wet, the sheets around him damp. For a brief moment he thought he detected that smell. He jerked himself upright, inhaling deeply as he concentrated. He forced a stillness within him as he desperately tried to find if that smell was anywhere around. But it was as elusive as his peace of mind, and similarly, just as distant.
Shannon exhaled and looked over at Susie. He touched her gently along the cheek to make sure she was still alive and then let his fingers gingerly trace the outline of her small body. She murmured softly in her sleep.
The last thing he wanted to do was wake her. If she found out about his dream she’d leave him for good. He had no doubt about that. Because he wasn’t supposed to have another breakdown, at least not ’til next year.
*****
Lying among dirty sheets ten miles away in an eight-dollar-a-day rooming house was the flesh and blood embodiment of Shannon’s nightmare. On cue, his eyes opened and his lips formed into a crooked smile, framing an almost nonexistent malformed chin.
He was pleased with how things turned out. More than pleased, really. He had guessed right about the blackouts, and more importantly, how that little piece of shit didn’t have a clue what he did during them. It was the reason why he could never visit the little pissant during those times. You can’t visit someone who’s not there.
He started laughing. A thin, wheezing sound. It oozed out of him like a noxious gas filling the room. “Just wait, Billy Boy,” he breathed softly in a wispy, singsong voice, “you might think your nightmare just ended but it hasn’t even begun. And when it happens it’s going to be a real eye-popper. You can bet on it.”
It took a long while before he stopped laughing. Before he closed his eyes again.
Of course, the man wasn’t Herbert Winters. Winters was long dead, his corpse cremated twenty years earlier. But while the man may not have been Herbert Winters, he knew what had happened in that house that day. He knew because Herbert Winters wasn’t alone.
Chapter 19
Charlie Winters knew early on he had a special bond with his cousin, Herbert. They were born within a month of each other and physically they looked more like brothers than cousins; both around the same size and skin coloring, both damned with the same pale, almost albino eyes, both inheriting the same deformed chin from their fathers. Charlie knew they had far more than their physical similarities in common. Even as young as age six, Charlie knew they shared a uniquely perverse outlook on life. At that age it wouldn’t have been something he’d have been able to put in words, but it was still something he knew. That deep in the core of their hearts they were the same.
Over the years they became inseparable as they fleshed out the basic truths that were driving them. Of course, their lessons were learned in secret, first with small animals and then later progressing to neighborhood dogs and cats. They were quiet about it and careful, and it wasn’t until the Chilton girl disappeared that they found out they hadn’t been nearly quiet and careful enough. It was then that they realized there had been a growing groundswell of suspicion towards them and the Chilton girl brought it all out into the open-the dirty, hateful glances, the inquiries, and outright accusations. They were all baseless, of course. There wasn’t a shred of evidence linking them to the girl’s disappearance or her mutilated body when it was finally discovered, so they feigned innocence and the townsfolk ended up having to accept it; even the County Sheriff who would’ve beaten the truth out of them if their parents hadn’t been able to afford the best lawyers in North Carolina.
It was an eye-opening experience for them, though, and the lesson they learned from it was invaluable. No matter how careful they thought they were, it wasn’t careful enough. And just as important, they’d better not stay in any one spot for too long. After all, a skunk can only hide its stripe for so long. Eventually, you end up smelling it out.
In any case, a drifter from Texas murdered a young girl outside of Durham six months later and over time it became accepted that this same drifter must’ve also done in poor Marjorie Chilton. Not right away, because it’s hard to dispute the obvious, especially when it’s staring you straight in the face everyday with pale albino eyes, but over time. Eventually, their own parents stopped giving them those funny looks when their backs were sort of turned. Eventually.
So Charlie and Herbert bided their time. It killed them inside, but they knew they had no choice. That as much as they had thought otherwise, they had fooled no one. So they waited and made plans and studied, all the while fighting against the desires that were burning fervently within them.
When they were eighteen they left Mornsville together. They bought a Chevy Nova (they learned their lesson about being careful, and just as important, being inconspicuous). And they went off into the world to fulfill their dreams and aspirations.
They stuck mostly to large cities where people of their kind could blend in without being noticed. Herbert had a knack for finding elderly shut-ins or recluses where they could steal license plates without it being noticed. Whenever they traveled to a new area, that would be the first thing they’d do.
They were on the road for two years crisscrossing the country before they ended up in Sacramento. It was in a local supermarket that Herbert caught a glimpse of Mrs. Shannon. That was all that was needed. Just a glimpse of her. Just something as random as that. They followed her back to her house and gained entrance as she struggled with her groceries and the door, and then kept her alive for an hour as they did things to her.
Near the end Charlie went upstairs and took a nap. They had spent most of the night driving from Los Angeles and he was tired and wasn’t much into it. This one was basically Herbert’s. As he napped, he heard the woman’s muffled screams and a peaceful contentment warmed him over.
When he woke he was surprised to see that over three hours had passed. Herbie should’ve been finished long before then. He should’ve woken him and they should’ve been traveling fast out of Sacramento. Annoyed, he crept downstairs to the kitchen and found Herbie sitting down, the side of his face swollen and smeared with blood, his shirt collar soaked in it. There was a body in a crumpled heap on the floor next to him. The woman was in the same spot as when Charlie had left earlier, lying flat on her back on the kitchen table. Now, though, she was staring blankly up at the ceiling with an eight-inch carving knife sticking out of her open mouth. The padded handcuffs they had used on her had been taken off and were on the floor. As Charlie moved closer he noticed the body on the floor was that of a small teenage boy.
Herbie gave his cousin a hard smirk. “Like my handiwork?” he asked. “I thought I’d give her something nice and hard and long to suck on.”
“What happened to you?”
Herbie ran a hand across his cheek and stared enigmatically at his bloodied hand. “This little piece of shit snuck up on me.” He pushed the boy’s body with his boot and then paused and offered his cousin a crooked smile. “Even gods bleed, Cuz. Believe it or not.” He turned his gaze from his hand back to the body on the floor and gave the kid a kick in the ribs. The boy moaned with the blow.
“He’s still alive?” Charlie asked incredulously.
“Yeah, he’s going to be alive a bit longer.” Herbie gave the boy another kick
in the ribs and the boy let out another unconscious moan. “As soon as he wakes up from his nap we’re going to spend some more quality time together. I’m not anywhere close to being done with him.”
Long shadows were forming across the dead woman’s torso. Charlie glanced anxiously at a clock on the wall and saw it was four o’clock. “Look, Cuz,” he said, “it’s getting late. We have to get out of here.”
Herbie was shaking his head adamantly, his eyes hardening into sharp, pale crystals. “Sorry, this little piece of shit is going to get to know hell real well before I send him to it.”
“Cuz, this is stupid. We’re putting ourselves at risk-”
“You want to leave now; okay, fine, let’s take him with us.”
All Charlie could do was stare at his cousin with his mouth hung loosely open. “Take him with us?” he sputtered when he was able to. “That’s brilliant, Cuz. Let’s invite a national manhunt to come looking for us. Man, let’s just get rid of him and get the hell out of here.”
“I need more time. Another hour.”
Charlie licked his lips. His mouth felt bone dry. This was crazy. Among other things, their car was parked three blocks away in a supermarket lot. It had borrowed plates and the longer it stayed there the better the chance it would draw suspicion to them. He tried to talk some sense into his cousin.
“We could make this look like some sort of satanic deal,” he said, talking in a quick, panicky rush. “We could cut their hearts out and write some shit on the wall. Cuz, we got to get moving.”
“I need another hour.”
“But-”
“Stop it, Cuz,” Herbie ordered softly.
The way he said it stopped Charlie cold. He knew the look on his cousin’s face and he knew what would happen next if he didn’t stop it.
Herbie rubbed a thumb across the gash on his cheek and grimaced. “You can stay and join me if you want,” he offered, “but not if you’re going to keep acting like this. I don’t need you making me nervous.”
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