Bad Karma

Dave Zeltserman

Chapter 1

Bill Shannon ran hard from his apartment to the juice and coffee shop on the eastern end of Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall where he was going to meet Eli Rosen. He did this partly to keep from being any later than the extra ten minutes Eli had given him, and partly as a challenge to see whether he could run a half mile in under three minutes. When he arrived at Juiced Up he leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees while trying to get his breathing under control. A quick look at his watch showed that he had made it in just over three minutes. His eyes wandered down his wrist to the stubs where his ring and middle fingers used to be. Five and a half years ago they were ripped from his hand. This was the first time since then that he had gone out in public with his damaged right hand exposed. He straightened up and entered the shop.

Eli was waiting at their usual table. He was a large man with gentle eyes and heavy rounded shoulders. Thick light brown hair ran up to his neckline and covered the exposed areas of his arms and legs. Like most mornings, at least during baseball season, he wore sandals, shorts, a Bucky Dent Yankees jersey and a matching Yankees cap. Shannon nodded towards him, and Eli gave him back a deadpan stare in return. He told Shannon he was sweating. Shannon took some napkins and wiped off his forehead and the back of his neck.

Eli kept his deadpan stare intact while glancing at his watch. “It’s been eleven minutes since we talked on the phone,” he said.

“I made the mistake of taking one last look at Susan before leaving the apartment. It cost me a minute. By the way, she says hi.”

“A lovely woman, your ex-wife.”

Shannon nodded towards an empty glass in front of Eli. “How many chais you have already?” he asked.

“Three.”

“Think your bladder can handle another?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Shannon walked over to the counter and bought another chai for Eli and a wheatgrass juice for himself and brought the drinks back to the table. When he handed Eli his chai, he saw his friend’s heavy-lidded eyes open a quarter of an inch wider and knew Eli’s stare was fixed on his damaged hand.

“I knew there was something different about you this morning,” Eli said, a forced casualness in his tone. “I just realized you’re not wearing your trademark glove.”

Shannon didn’t bother to respond. He sat across from Eli and sipped his wheatgrass juice.

“You never told me before what Charlie Winters had done to your hand. The only thing I knew was he had injured you. Jesus, I had no idea.”

“That bad, huh?” Shannon asked.

Eli made a face indicating that it was. “Bill, I never pushed you before, but I need you to tell me what happened. I can’t put things in the proper perspective without knowing.”

Shannon took another couple of sips from his drink. He had never told anyone about what happened that last night with Winters. Not the cops who arrived on the scene, not the therapist he saw after he had moved to Boulder, no one. The only person who knew was Susan, and that was only because she had witnessed it.

Shannon stared stone-faced at Eli for a long moment, but the compassion flooding the other man’s eyes weakened his resolve. He shrugged. “It will sound like something out of a horror movie,” he said.

“Hey, you’re talking to one of Stephen King’s biggest fans.”

Shannon looked away from his friend to a pastel drawing on his right of Chautauqua Park. The lower part of the pastel showed a meadow done in a muted green, the four faces of the Flatirons above it were colored a soft purple.

“That last night, Winters murdered my partner, Joe Digrazia.”

“You had told me that.”

“I didn’t tell you how,” Shannon said. He kept his stare fixed on the pastel. “Winters skinned Joe alive. He made Susan watch.”

“Jesus.”

A hard grimace tightened the muscles along Shannon’s jaw. It was worse than what he had said. Charlie Winters had also made Susan beg him to kill Joe instead of herself, but Shannon couldn’t tell Eli or anyone else that part of it.

“He tied Susan up with wire and had her helpless. If I brought anyone with me, he would’ve killed her and then surrendered to the police. The only chance I had was crashing through a window and getting to him before he knew what was happening. I screwed up, though, and my foot caught on the window sill. Before I could get to my feet he hit me on the back of my head with something hard, I think a lamp. While I was on the floor, he broke my two fingers with a nutcracker. He worked on those broken fingers for almost an hour, trying to force me to cut Susan with a knife. At one point I said something that pissed him off and he twisted a little too hard with that nutcracker.”

“Jesus, Bill…”

Shannon kept his stare locked on the pastel. He waited until Eli’s voice trailed off before continuing. “I might’ve left my body then,” he said. “I don’t know, I could’ve hallucinated the whole thing. It seemed, though, as if I’d been shot up into a corner of the ceiling and then just sort of hovered there, watching everything below me with a kind of weird detachment-like it was nothing but a movie. It was like I was watching as Winters realized he was only holding onto my two torn-off fingers, then my body turning on him and using the knife he tried to make me hurt Susan with to cut off his goddamn ugly malformed head. Next thing it was as if I was sucked out of the air and back into my body.”

Shannon’s gaze shifted from the pastel to Eli. His friend’s face was ashen. “So what do you think,” Shannon asked. “Would King be able to do something with that story?”

“I’d have to think so.” Eli rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Bill, I knew you had killed Charlie Winters in self-defense, but I had no idea how savage the whole thing was. It does explain a lot, though.”

“Such as?”

“For one, why you’ve been having so much trouble inducing an out-of-body experience. The one time you left your body-and Bill, I’m convinced that you did leave your body-it was under extreme duress. It happened solely for self-preservation. To be able to leave your body peacefully, you need to feel safe in the universe. If you believe evil is out there, how can you feel safe?”

A hard smile locked on Shannon’s face. Over the last five years they’d argued about the existence of evil a countless number of times, with it always coming down to Charlie Winters-after all, what was he if not the essence of evil? Eli’s answer was that Winters was something aberrant, a broken soul who had been confused about his role in the universe. That answer always infuriated Shannon. He didn’t want their current talk to slide into that same long-standing argument. Still, he couldn’t help himself as he asked about Winters being able to leave his body. “He seemed to be able to do it at will,” Shannon said. “How do you explain that?”

“For exactly the reason I’ve been saying. He felt safe in the universe. In his confused mind, he was some sort of demigod, put on earth to dole out punishment and pain, not to receive it.” Eli shrugged his large rounded shoulders. “Enough of that. Tell me about the breakthrough you mentioned over the phone.”

“I had a lucid dream about Winters last night. But when he showed up, I felt none of the rage that I’d been feeling in past dreams.”

“And you’re sure it was a lucid dream?”

“Yep. I was aware I was dreaming the whole time. I knew I had complete control over it.”

“That’s good.” Eli put his hand back to his jaw and rubbed it absent-mindedly. “Did Winters attack you the same way as in your other dreams?”

“Exactly the same. He rushed me with a carving knife, but this time I didn’t try to fight him. All I did was step aside and let him tumble past me.”

“What were your emotions during this time?”

“Flat. Complete disengagement.”

“You had no desire for revenge? To do him bodily harm?”

“None.”

“Did he try taunting you as he did in past dreams?”

“He tried, but it had no effect.”

Eli nodded as his eyes focused on some point in the distance. Slowly, his gaze shifted back to meet Shannon’s eyes. “I think you’re right,” he said. “This sounds like the breakthrough you’ve been working towards. What happened next?”

“Winters melted into some sort of liquid mess. What was left of him disappeared into the ground. Right before waking up, I remembered thinking ‘good riddance’. I also had this feeling that I’d never dream about him again.”

Eli held out his hand. “Congratulations, guy, I think you did it.” Shannon took his hand and matched the firmness of his grip before letting go.

“It’s funny,” Shannon said. “An ex-cop fleeing Cambridge, Massachusetts to Boulder to study meditation and do dream work therapy. If you knew me five and a half years ago you’d realize how out of character this would’ve been for me.”

“Something made you realize you had to do this.”

Shannon nodded weakly. “After everything that happened with Winters I knew I had three choices: drown myself in alcohol, swallow a bullet, or do something to get myself whole. One night when I was contemplating the bullet diet, I saw a story about the Boulder Mind amp; Body Center on TV. Something about it clicked and I decided to give it a shot. Susan had already divorced me by then, so the next morning I packed up my car and headed west.”

“My story’s not that much different,” Eli said. He sighed, a soft smile forming over his lips. “You know I was originally from New York -”

“I heard New Jersey.”

“Whatever. I may have been born in Jersey and had a house there, but I worked in Manhattan. I made good money back then as a corporate lawyer, but after eleven years of helping companies figure out how to rid themselves of employees as cheaply as possible, I felt spiritually bankrupt. One day I read a magazine article about the Center and, like you, something clicked. I told my wife I needed to move out here, that I wanted to study meditation and yoga and other new age practices. Nancy’s response was ‘go ahead’, but she’s keeping the house. The only thing I asked for and received in the divorce was my seven year-old Saab and enough money to drive out to Colorado and pay my first three months rent. But Bill, you should’ve seen me back then. Thirty-five going on sixty. Money means absolutely nothing when you’re losing yourself, and I was as lost as you could be. And fourteen years later that Saab still runs like a kitten. Of course, unlike you, my ex-wife never came out to Boulder to move back in with me.”

“You ever hear from her?”

Eli made a face. “Once twelve years ago. She remarried, and from what I could tell, was quite happy living in Holmdel. God love her, somebody has to be. But enough about that. Bill, any doubts that you vanquished your demon?”

“None.” Shannon looked down at the table and showed a sick smile. “For a long time I couldn’t bear to let anyone see what Winters had done to me. The reason for the glove. This morning it didn’t seem to matter.”

“Because you know he’s really gone from your subconscious.”

Shannon nodded.

“Did you tell Susan about your dream?”

“Yep. She was pretty happy about it. The reason I was late this morning.”

“It’s been a long road,” Eli said. “You’ve come a long way the past few years, and I agree with you, this is the breakthrough we’ve been working towards. So any ideas about what next?

Shannon met Eli’s eyes. “I want to continue this,” he said. “I want to see if I can get to the point where I’m having out of body experiences.”

Eli noticed his chai was beginning to cool off. He took a long drink and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m beginning to think that’s possible now,” he said. “With Charlie Winters eradicated from your subconscious, the universe should be a calmer, safer place for you. But you know, you never told me why this is so important to you.”

“Winters was able to have them.”

“So?”

Shannon shrugged. “I have my reasons.”

“It’s not so you can look for Winters?”

“No.” Shannon took in a deep breath, held it, and flashed a thin, embarrassed smile. “I want to visit the people Winters stole from me. I want to find my mom and Joe, tell them how sorry I am about what happened to them.”

Eli nodded, a sadness softening his eyes. “My motivations were similar. I had a younger sister, Wendy, who died at only twenty-three. I wanted more than anything to see her again so I could tell her how much she meant to me. But even though I’m able to leave my body nightly, I seem bounded by our universe. I haven’t been able to figure out yet how to slip between different planes of existence.”

“It can be done,” Shannon said. “Winters was able to invade my dreams. I know he invaded others’ too.”

A kid, maybe twenty, with long blond hair and a scraggly beard interrupted them by stopping to stare at Eli’s Bucky Dent jersey. “Yankees suck,” he said.

“Twenty-six rings, my friend.”

“After 2004 they also got a nice, big, fat choker to go along with them,” the kid offered as he walked past them and out of the shop.

“That’s what I love about you college kids,” Eli yelled out to him. “Such fascinating discourse.” He turned to Shannon. “I’ve been wounded deeply. If you want to talk about aberrations, I don’t think you’d ever find one bigger than last year’s Yankees-Red Sox playoff series. The damn thing turned my whole universe inside out. Made me for a moment question the existence of evil.”

Eli’s rant brought a smile to Shannon’s lips. “I’ve got to ask you about that Bucky Fucking Dent jersey of yours. If you’re wearing it for my sake, you’re wasting your time. In seventy-eight, I was only eleven and living in Sacramento. Back then I was a big California Angels fan.”

“My condolences.”

“Thanks. If you want to rub my nose in it for being a Sox fan, do something a bit more creative like get yourself a tattoo of the ball going through Buckner’s legs.”

“Who showed you a picture of my ass?”

Shannon smiled at that. “So why are you always wearing that jersey?”

“Two reasons my friend. First, to make sure no one confuses me with an expatriated Californian, of which there’s nothing lower here in Colorado, except maybe Texans. Even ex-New Yorkers are higher on the food chain -”

“Yeah, but you’re from Jersey.”

Eli made a face. “Whatever. Reason two, this shirt reminds me of the most joyous day of my life. October 2nd, 1978. A little pop fly that ends up in the screen above the Green Monster, crushing the hopes and dreams of Red Sox fans everywhere. What could be a better day than that?”

“Eli, you’re a cruel man. If you keep wearing that jersey I might have to get a T-shirt made showing A-Rod slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove.”

That brought a chuckle from Eli. “The curse of A-Rod,” he said. “Who would’ve thought it would come to that?” He leaned back, stretching. “Are you planning on catching any games now that the dreaded Red Sox are in town?”

“I’m thinking of it. Any interest in joining me at Coors Field tomorrow?”

Eli made a face. “Interleague play’s a blight on the game. I have no intention of encouraging it with my attendance.”

“A purist, huh?”

“That’s right. If it were up to me, the designated hitter would go the way of the Dodo. But at least the American League mostly plays on grass. Nothing’s worse than seeing the grand old game played on carpet.” Eli leaned further back in his seat. The wooden chair under him creaked a bit, but held. “How about heading over to the Center? We’ll work out some new out-of-body exercises. I’ll make you up a cassette.”

Shannon checked his watch, then looked around the shop before turning his gaze back to Eli. “I can’t this morning. I’m going to be meeting a prospective client soon.” He braced himself for Eli’s standard lecture on how his working as a private detective interfered with his spiritual development. “How can you elevate yourself when you’re constantly mired in the worst that people can do,” was Eli’s usual argument. Maybe it was true but he’d been a cop for ten years-six of them as a detective 1st grade- before losing those two fingers, and he wasn’t willing to give up that part of his life, at least not yet. Even if all he had left of it was doing occasional private detective jobs. If it took a little longer for him to achieve his out-of-body experiences because of it, he was sure his mom and Joe would understand.

Shannon could see Eli’s long-standing argument forming over his friend’s face, but as quickly as a shadow passing, it was gone.

“Call me this afternoon then,” Eli said, sighing.

Shannon nodded. He knew that if he had mentioned who the prospective client was, Eli would’ve argued with him until he was blue in the face.

Chapter 2

Shannon had forty minutes before he was supposed to meet Paul Devens. Eight-fifty in the morning, and the sky was already a rich blue with almost no haze. Shannon stood looking at the sun and felt a dry heat warm his face. They’d been having a hot July so far, and the forecast for that day was to hit a hundred by noon. He started walking towards Devens’ office on Broadway. The part of Pearl Street he was on was mostly for locals, but as he walked west and past the courthouse that started to change. By the time he got to the outdoor mall area, the shops were mostly expensive art boutiques and the restaurants trendier and more tourist-oriented.

Shannon found a bench to sit on. A few bicyclists passed him and some stray pedestrians were strolling around, but since it was Tuesday and only a quarter past nine in the morning, the street was mostly empty. By noon it would be crowded, and by Friday the street would be jumping. As Shannon relaxed on the bench, he spotted a young man in military fatigues and shoulder-length hair walking toward him. The man’s gait seemed off, and it wasn’t until he got closer that Shannon realized he had a prosthetic leg. He joined Shannon on the bench, nodded toward Shannon’s damaged hand and tapped his own prosthetic leg.

“Tikrit,” he said. “How about you?”

Shannon shook his head. “I wasn’t over there.”

“Hey, man, sorry.” He frowned and scratched his head. “I thought you lost your fingers by mortar or something like that.”

“No, not that way. It happened when I was a police officer.” Shannon didn’t bother elaborating. He held out his hand and introduced himself. The other man shook hands, gave his own name as Kyle Jones and told Shannon he used to be a member of the First Marine Division.

“Hey, man, however it happened, we’re all brothers, you know?” Jones’ eyes grew distant as he stared past Shannon in the general direction of the Flatirons. “We all gotta keep moving forward, know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean.” Shannon saw a glint of confusion in Jones’ eyes as the ex-marine’s gaze shifted from the mountains back to him. “Kyle, what do you say I buy you a cup of coffee?”

Kyle considered it, shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m all set for now. Remember brother, just cause you’re missing something don’t mean you’re not whole. Me, don’t matter that I’m missing a leg, I’m hiking a mountain today.” He got off the bench, nodded towards Shannon and headed off in the direction of the Flatirons. From where he was starting, the trail was maybe a mile away. Shannon watched as the ex-marine strode down Pearl Street. When he was out of sight, Shannon left to meet his nine-thirty appointment.

***

Shannon stood admiring the view of the Flatirons from the fourth floor office. Devens told him, “If you think that’s something, you should see it when there’s lightning out there. Absolutely spectacular.”

Paul Devens was in his mid-thirties, maybe a year or two younger than Shannon. Blond and thin with a sunburned face, he looked like he religiously used the racing bicycle that he kept in a corner of his office. Along the walls were several acrylic paintings of animals done in a primitive style, almost like cave paintings, with the acrylic paint layered on in thick swirls. One of them was of a bear, another of a herd of buffalo stampeding towards an orange sun, and a final painting of three horses all on their hind legs. Shannon walked over to a shelf holding clay figurines, each of a Native American woman with children either in her arms, on her lap, resting on her head, or in some cases, a combination of all three. Shannon picked one up and studied it.

“A Navajo storyteller,” Devens said. “I collect them. Would you like some coffee, tea, soda?”

Shannon shook his head, placed the figurine back on the shelf and took a seat across from Devens’ desk. “For an attorney’s office, you’ve got very good energy here,” Shannon said.

Devens walked over to a small kitchen area, poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat down behind his desk to join Shannon. “Nice backhanded compliment.” Devens smiled thinly. “But thanks, I guess.”

“No offense meant. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I would’ve expected enough bad energy to be brought into any law office to keep it from having this type of feel.”

Devens raised an eyebrow. “Now I’ve heard everything, an ex-Boston homicide detective -”

Shannon corrected him. “Retired Cambridge, Massachusetts police detective.”

“Okay, an ex-Cambridge police detective turned private investigator who studies Feng Shui?”

“Maybe not Feng Shui.” Shannon flashed an embarrassed smile. “But I’ve taken my share of new age courses since moving to Boulder. I think your City Council requires it now of all new residents.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if someday they passed a regulation like that.” Devens’ smile faded. He brought a hand up to his face and squeezed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. When he took his hand away, his expression had grown somber. “About your theory concerning good and bad energy in a law office, my practice is mostly real estate issues, occasionally some water law cases. I usually don’t get involved with murders. Actually, Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson’s are a first for me.”

Shannon sympathized. Murder can be a hard thing to connect yourself to regardless of the capacity-whether it’s as a lawyer, reporter, investigator, or whatever. When Devens had first called him, it sounded as if the life drained out of the attorney’s voice when he talked about needing someone to investigate these murders. The age of both victims seemed particularly to get to him. Both were young-Taylor Carver was twenty-three, Linda Gibson only nineteen. Both were students at the University of Colorado, with Taylor working on a Masters in English and Linda enrolled in an undergraduate program in film studies. Three months ago they were beaten to death in the bedroom of an off-campus condo they shared. Early reports had it that the bedroom looked worse than a slaughterhouse. After that, the police stonewalled the media. Stuff still leaked out, mostly stories that the police were bungling the case and had nothing. Early on, the police spokesman at the news briefings had a deer in the headlights look. The last few weeks that Shannon caught him on the news, he seemed more harried and short-tempered than anything else.

“These are a tough couple of murders to be your first,” Shannon said.

“You’re not kidding.” Devens rubbed his eyes again. “I wish the police could’ve solved this, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

“From what I’ve seen so far, I’d have to agree. Any information from them?”

“Nothing.” Devens’ thin smile reappeared. “They won’t say one word to me. But I have a good friend in the DA’s office-we graduated law school together. From what he hears, the police have run out of leads.”

“Any suspects?”

“None as far as he knows.”

“When a case goes cold like this, it gets solved because the perp does something stupid, like getting drunk and bragging about the crime or selling something he stole from the victims. Your client’s probably better off giving the police more time than spending money on me.”

Devens made a face as if he had a bad case of gas. “He doesn’t want to do that,” he said. “I told him about your background, how you solved that serial murder case back in Massachusetts, and he wants you on this.”

“Which family would I be working for?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you acting on behalf of one of the families involved?” Shannon asked.

“Hardly. I told you, I handle real estate issues. My client owns the condo that Carver and Gibson were murdered in.”

Shannon leaned back in his chair. “Why is he involved?”

“He’s being sued. Carver’s mother brought the suit, claiming that my client failed to provide proper security.”

“Did he?”

“A deadbolt on the front door is supposedly rusted and hard to turn. According to my DA friend, the door had only its chain lock on when it was forced open.”

“How much are they suing for?”

“Five million.” Devens rubbed his eyes again, this time squeezing hard enough that the whites of his knuckles showed. When he took his hand away, both eyes were red. “The theory the lawsuit is espousing is that one or more strangers were able to gain access to the condo due to my client’s negligence. My client owns several properties. He’s got money, Carver’s mother doesn’t. A sympathetic jury could wipe him out. Our best bet is to put a name and face to the killer or killers. If it turns out to be strangers, at least the jury will put some of the responsibility on them. And who knows, maybe it will turn out to be someone the victims knew, in which case I’d have a shot of dismissing the lawsuit. Maybe the murders will turn out to be drug-related.”

Shannon stared hard at Devens. “If you’re looking for someone to dig up dirt on the victims, you’ll have to look elsewhere,” he said.

Devens had no trouble meeting Shannon’s stare. “That’s not what I’m looking for. I have to be able to sleep nights. The only thing I want to hire you for is to find out who killed Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson, and why. Nothing else.”

Shannon started laughing but it died quickly in his throat. “This has got to be a first.”

“What?”

“Investigating a double-murder for a lawsuit.”

“Nature of the litigious society we live in. So Bill, are you available?”

Shannon thought about it, nodded. “I guess I am.”

“Good.” Devens held out his right hand and, outside of a slight flinch, gave no indication that the hand he took hold of was missing a couple of fingers. “I already went over your fee with my client and he’s fine with it. Before you leave, I’ll write you a check for a retainer. Just tell me the amount you need.”

“Five thousand will cover the first two weeks.” Shannon paused. “I need your client’s name and phone number.”

Devens frowned. “Why?”

“See if he knows anything. Maybe Carver or Gibson had complained to him about other tenants. Also, I’m going to need access to the condo.”

“My client’s name is Chris Jackson. I’ll get you his phone number before you leave, but he’s not going to be able to tell you anything,” he said. “He has a realtor who acts as a middleman between him and his tenants.” He lowered his hands to his desk and started making slow circling motions as if he were smoothing out wrinkles on the wooden surface. “About getting into the condo, that could be a problem. The police still have it sealed off.”

“After three months?”

“That’s what they’re doing. What I heard is two days after the murder, Taylor Carver’s mother drove a U-Haul up to the condo. I guess she was going to empty the place out, and she wasn’t very gracious when the police stopped her. They decided after that to take their sweet time in releasing the condo.”

“I’ll try talking to the police and see if they let me in, but is there anything you can do in case they’re not cooperative?”

“Okay. I’ll go to court tomorrow and file for a hearing.”

Shannon’s glance wandered towards the clay Navajo storytellers. As he absent-mindedly looked at them, he realized what the figurines symbolized: a mother caring enough about her children to make sure they knew about her people’s history. He turned back to Devens. “What about Carver’s mother-any idea if she’ll be helpful?”

Devens showed his thin smile again as he shook his head. “My impression is she cares more about a five million dollar judgment than anything else right now.”

“I probably should talk to her,” Shannon said.

“Okay. It couldn’t hurt. I’ll get you her address and phone number. She lives out in Loveland with another son. The father’s out of the picture.”

Devens collected several papers for Shannon and wrote him a retainer check. Before leaving, they shook hands again, and at the door Shannon gave the collection of Navajo storytellers a quick nod.

Shannon’s first stop after leaving Devens’ office was the public library where he searched through three months of Denver Examiners for articles on the double murder. Other than that Linda Gibson was from Wichita, Kansas, the only new thing he learned was the name of the lead police investigator. When he was done with the articles he made copies of newspaper photos of Carver and Gibson which showed them when they were alive and able to smile brightly for the camera. He was struck by how attractive both of them were. Taylor Carver reminded him of the actor who played the elf, Legolas, in the Lord of the Rings movies, and Linda Gibson, at least from her high school graduation picture, looked like a young Heather Locklear.

Shannon next visited the University of Colorado’s campus. The first half-dozen students he stopped had no idea which building the English department was in, but he found an older man with a well-groomed white beard and mustache who was able to give him directions. The man seemed to be trying hard to give the impression that he was a professor, both by the way he carried himself and his outfit, which on a summer day topping a hundred degrees, included a sports jacket complete with patches on the elbows.

“You’re not by any chance an English professor?” Shannon asked.

“No, economics.” The man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously behind designer glasses. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m trying to find people who knew either Taylor Carver or Linda Gibson.” As the man’s face remained blank, Shannon handed him copies of the newspaper photos he had made of both victims. “They were the two students murdered here,” Shannon said.

The economics professor’s face aged a dozen years as he looked at the pictures. “Tragic incident.” He handed the copies back to Shannon. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I never met either of them.”

“Any rumors circulating on campus on what might have happened?”

The professor shook his head. He looked past Shannon, as if all he wanted to do was get away from him. “Murders are rare in Boulder,” he said. “In my experience, the few we unfortunately suffer tend to be drug-related. I really must be going.”

Shannon thanked him for his help, and watched as the professor moved quickly down the stone path, almost as if he were in a jog.

The English department office was empty when Shannon got there. After a ten minute wait, a middle-aged woman entered and took a seat at the administrator’s desk. She smiled sadly at Shannon when he asked about Taylor Carver.

“That was just terrible,” she said. “I never had a chance to get to know him, only saw him around the office occasionally, but it is simply terrible when something like that happens.”

“I’m trying to find any faculty or other students who might’ve been more familiar with him.”

“Let me see if I can help.” She went over to a file cabinet, searched through one of the drawers and brought a folder back with her. “His advisor was Professor White.” She smiled apologetically at Shannon. “Unfortunately, Professor White is traveling abroad this summer.”

“Any way to contact him?”

“I don’t believe so, he’s hiking in the Andes. But I can give you his email address. Maybe he’s able to check it. Who knows these days with wireless laptops?”

“I couldn’t answer that. I’ve still got an old clunky desktop system at home. Anyone else who might’ve known Taylor?”

She gave him another pained apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know. The problem with summer session is we have a very limited faculty on hand. But let me give you a list of faculty members who are here this summer.”

She pulled a sheet from a stack of papers on her desk, made a copy, and after writing down Professor White’s email address, handed the paper to Shannon. Before leaving, Shannon tacked one of his photos of Taylor Carver up on the office bulletin board, and wrote a note on it for anyone who knew Taylor to give him a call. The administrator wished him luck, and Shannon thanked her for her help.

He had pretty much the same results at the Film Studies department office. It was a quarter past twelve by the time he finished up. He stood for a moment and tried to collect his thoughts. A nearby maple tree caught his attention and he found a shady spot under it, sat cross-legged with his hands resting lightly on his knees and closed his eyes as he tried to imagine a third eye of pure white light emerging from the middle of his forehead. For a while he was able to maintain his focus, but then noises and other thoughts started to buzz through his head and knocked him out of his meditation. He felt calmer, but no more insightful of how he was going to proceed. He checked his watch, saw it was a few minutes to one and called Susan. They arranged to meet at their favorite Nepalese restaurant.

Chapter 3

Susan’s face was flushed as she told Shannon about her day so far. Back in Massachusetts, she had worked as a secretary in a Boston law firm, a job that was mostly miserable for her. Since moving to Colorado, Susan studied homeopathy for three years and now had a small but growing practice. At five foot two and barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, she was exceptionally beautiful with mesmerizing soft gray eyes and long black hair that flowed past her thin shoulders. Shannon knew she loved working as a homeopath and it brought an ache to his chest to see her face lit up the way it was.

“My nine o’clock was a pure Medhorrinum,” Susan continued between bites of Aloo Mutter, an Indian dish made up mostly of potatoes, peas and spices. “I recognized his remedy type pretty quickly. Medhorrinum fit him so perfectly. It explained his sinus infections and his…” She stopped to give Shannon a cross-eyed look. “What are you grinning at?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Shannon said, grinning widely. “I just love watching you after you meet with clients, that’s all.”

“You think this is all silly, don’t you?”

“You’re asking me that? Someone who’s been studying for five years how to have lucid dreams? Who’s been trying to learn how to leave his body?” Shannon stopped to take a bite of his Vegetable Korma. At one point he had been a steak and potatoes guy, but after all the gore Charlie Winters had visited on him the thought of eating meat repulsed him so much that he became a strict vegetarian. He had read that slaughterhouse workers often become vegetarians for the same reason. Susan also switched to being mostly vegetarian, except for occasionally eating fish.

“I think it’s great that you’re so passionate about what you’re doing,” Shannon added.

She gave him a wary eye. “Why do I think you’re not taking me seriously, and that you’re only sitting there grinning like an idiot because you think I’m cute?”

Shannon’s grin grew wider. “Well, you are damn cute, but of course I take you seriously. Even though I only understand a third of what you’re saying when you talk about homeopathy.”

Susan laughed at that. She broke off a piece of naan and took a healthy bite of it. As she looked at Shannon, her flush deepened to a darker shade of red. “Hon, my eleven o’clock appointment was amazing. I think I could write a paper about him for one of the homeopathic journals. He works as a psychic with police departments around the country. If he’s given an article of clothing from a dead person, he can locate the body. Sometimes he can locate them while they’re still alive. Just last year he saved a girl who had fallen into a hole. The way he described it to me, there are two worlds-the one we’re used to and the other one. He lives in both of them. When that girl started to enter into the other world, he was able to see her. “

“I remember reading about that. Wasn’t that in Oklahoma…?” Shannon broke off his question, perceiving the alarm in Susan’s eyes. She could discuss her cases in detail, but ethically she was not allowed to mention the identities of her patients, and if Shannon was able to guess who this man was, she would’ve betrayed her practitioner-patient confidentiality which was something Shannon knew she took seriously. He casually waved the whole thing away. “I think I’m confusing that with a book I read,” Shannon said. “But that’s quite a gift he has.”

Gratitude shone in Susan’s eyes for Shannon not pushing it and remembering the psychic’s name. “He pays a price for it,” she said, still heated with excitement but choosing her words more carefully. “When I shook hands with him, it was like shaking hands with a corpse. But, Bill, I might’ve saved his life.” She edged closer, her voice dropping to a hushed whisper. “He came to see me because his physician gave him only a few weeks to live. Almost every system in his body is badly diseased. But I am positive his remedy type is Stramonium, and I think there’s a chance I can reverse his diseased systems.”

“I hope it works.”

“I hope so too. I gave him a dose of Stramonium, and he’s going to call me after his next doctor’s appointment.”

There was a hot intensity burning in her eyes and on her skin. She was so jazzed from her work that it brought a lump to Shannon’s throat. He reached across the table with his damaged hand so he could feel the warmth of her cheek against his palm.

“You’re so damn beautiful,” he said, his tone the same hushed whisper that she had used. As she took hold of his hand and felt the stumps where his fingers should’ve been, her smile weakened and became something fragile.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Here I am only talking about me, and I don’t even ask you what’s going on with you.”

“It didn’t sound to me like you were talking about yourself. It sounded more like how you’re helping other people. I’m so damn proud of you, babe.”

She kissed his damaged hand. “Are you doing okay today without your glove?”

“I really am doing okay. I haven’t felt self-conscious, and it hasn’t bothered me when I catch people staring.” He removed his hand from Susan’s so he could rub the joints around his knuckles with his good hand. After five years and a half years, he still occasionally suffered phantom pains from where his missing fingers had been. “It’s funny, I think more people stared when I wore the glove, like I was some sort of Michael Jackson wannabe.”

“Eli thinks you’ve rid yourself of him also?”

“He does.”

A tear started to roll down Susan’s cheek. She dabbed at it quickly with her napkin and looked down at her food. “Both our lunches are getting cold,” she said. “We really should eat.”

In between bites of her Aloo Mutter, she commented on how she didn’t need to ask whether he took on the double-murder investigation. “I caught you a few times with that far-away, introspective look you always have when you take a case,” she said. “Eli’s not going to be happy when he hears about it.”

“No, I don’t suppose he will.” Shannon chewed a mouthful of his Vegetable Korma, and signaled the waiter to refill his mango lassi. “But the Yankees have been teaching their fans the last couple of years how to live with disappointment. I think he’ll be okay”

“How’s the case look?”

“Too early to tell. Okay if I take the car this afternoon? I’ll probably be needing it a lot the next week or so, but I can always rent a car if you’re going to need it.”

“I’m fine without it. It gives me an excuse to ride my bike more.”

“Ah Lord, the chiropractors in Boulder are going to be having a field day treating all these guys getting whiplash trying to catch you riding past in those spandex bicycle shorts of yours!”

Susan laughed heartily at that. They didn’t say much after that-they didn’t have to as they ate the rest of their lunch in comfortable silence.

***

The desk sergeant put his paper down to look at Shannon. “Yeah?” he asked.

“I’d like to see Lieutenant Mark Daniels.”

“What about?”

“The Carver-Gibson murders.”

The desk sergeant’s expression shifted from annoyance to suspicion. “You a reporter?” he asked.

“No. I’m a private investigator. I’ve been hired to look into these murders.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s all we fucking need.” He gave Shannon a long stare before holding out his hand, palm up. “Let me see some identification.”

Shannon took his investigator’s license from his wallet and handed it to him. The desk sergeant shook his head as he looked it over, then handed the license back to Shannon. “Take a seat over there,” he said with his thumb pointed towards a wooden bench on the other side of the room. Shannon smiled pleasantly and asked the desk sergeant if he was from New Jersey.

“So you can tell from my accent I’m from Jersey. Big deal.”

With a dry smile Shannon told him it wasn’t just from his accent. “People around here at least make an effort to be civil,” he added. “Even if they’re thinking ‘fuck you’ behind their smiles.”

Shannon sat on the bench and watched as the desk sergeant got on the phone, all the while maintaining a hard glare in his direction. When he hung up the phone, he kept his glare going for another minute or so before turning back to his paper. A couple of minutes later, a man about fifty wearing khaki-colored cargo shorts, a polo shirt, and loafers with no socks entered from the squad room, walked over to Shannon and introduced himself as Mark Daniels. He was mostly square in shape with a thick neck, hard, flat face and gray hair that was cut close to his scalp. Except for the way he was dressed, he reminded Shannon of his ex-partner, Joe DiGrazia.

“I’d like to see your license.” Daniels’ tone was soft and easy, but his face had the cold, dispassionate look of a slab of granite. Shannon showed him the same investigator’s license he had shown the desk sergeant. Daniels peered at it indifferently, then looked away. “Let’s talk someplace private,” he said. Shannon followed him through the squad room to a small interrogation room. Daniels indicated to Shannon to take a seat while he leaned against the table, arms folded across his chest.

“It’s Bill, right?” Daniels said.

“That’s right.”

“Bill, let me get this straight, you do have a client?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Bill, that could be why you’re here, but the thought did occur to me that you might be freelancing. You know, trying to use these murders to get your name in the papers. It’s not something like that, is it, Bill?”

“I have a client.”

“You do, huh? Well, Bill, maybe you can tell me why someone would hire you-excuse me, Bill, am I saying something amusing?”

“No, not really-just the way you’ve been overusing my first name. It’s a good technique, and if used properly, can really unnerve the hell out of a suspect. When I was on the force I used it frequently during interrogations, except maybe with a little more subtlety.”

“You were on the force?”

“Ten years. The last six as a detective.”

“Where was this?”

“Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

“You handled homicide cases?”

“I worked my share of them.”

Daniels scratched his jaw as he considered this. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m afraid you wasted a trip here,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t discuss this investigation with you or anyone else.” Daniels breathed in deeply as he filled his lungs, then slowly let the air out through his nose. His square face seemed to deflate with his chest. “As you probably know, we’re getting the hell beat out of us by the media. I’ve got to go strictly by the books. I can’t jeopardize this investigation by losing evidence due to any procedural problems.”

Shannon understood the rules of evidence as well as any cop, and the idea of jeopardizing evidence by discussing the case with Shannon sounded close to paranoia. At this point, all forensic evidence must’ve been collected and tagged months ago. Still, Shannon could see the stress built up in Daniels’ face and in the muscles bunched up along his neck. He could appreciate the pressure the man was under. It was also very likely the police were withholding information that could damage their investigation if it got leaked to the public. For one thing, there had been no mention of the murder weapon in the newspaper reports, and Shannon had to think that the police knew what it was. He also strongly suspected they knew whether there was a drug angle involved. But as he looked at the vein beating like a rabbit’s heart on the side of Daniels’ neck, Shannon realized there was no point in asking about any of that.

“My main reason for coming here was I wanted to give you the professional courtesy of letting you know I’ll be privately investigating these murders. Also, I’d like to enter the victims’ condo.”

“I appreciate the professional courtesy. I can’t let you into that condo, though.”

“It’s been three months.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s still the crime scene for an ongoing investigation.” Daniels held both palms up in an apologetic gesture. “It probably looks like I’m stonewalling you simply for the hell of it, but I’ve really got no choice. Put yourself in my shoes. I’m sure at some point you’ve been where I am now.”

Shannon thought briefly about arguing that after three months the case was cold enough that a second pair of eyes looking things over couldn’t hurt, but instead held out his hand to Daniels. “When I was on the job I never had to worry about a private citizen gumming up one of my cases. I can appreciate your concerns.”

Daniels took his hand and gave Shannon a half-hearted smile. “I don’t want to appear like a prick, especially since it probably looks like I’m going out of my way not to help you, but do you mind telling me who your client is?”

“The owner of the condo is being sued by Taylor Carver’s mother. I was hired by his lawyer, Paul Devens.”

That ignited a spark of interest in Daniels’ eyes. “Eunice Carver brought a suit against the landlord, huh? Any idea why she thinks he’s responsible?”

“A deadbolt lock was rusted.”

The spark faded as Daniels shook his head. “That lock might’ve needed a few drops of oil, but it was functional.” He lowered his voice into a conspiratorial tone. “Now don’t get excited, I’m not going to be discussing this case, only giving you my opinion of Eunice Carver. I know I should be more understanding, especially after what she’s been through, but she’s a piece of work. So’s her other son, Randall. You’ll see.” Daniels looked away from Shannon. “Linda’s family’s no bargain either.”

Almost as if he were watching a movie in slow motion, Shannon could see the change in Daniels’ expression as if a thought had just occurred to him. As he turned back to face Shannon, a soft, easy smile showed, but it was edged with violence. “You’re not trying to dig up dirt on these two kids, and make it look like they got what they deserved?”

“No. What I was hired for, and the only thing I’m willing to do, is find out who killed them. Whatever else I might find out along the way is staying with me.”

“How’s that going to help your client?”

“I don’t know if it will. But it might show that a rusted lock had nothing to do with the murders.”

Daniels nodded as he thought it over. “Well,” he said. “I’ve got work to do, as I’m sure you do also. Let me walk you out of here.” Neither of them talked as Daniels led the way through the squad room and to the street. Once outside, Daniels asked Shannon if he had any ideas.

“Not many. I guess first thing I’ll do is look into whether this was drug-related.”

Daniels shielded his eyes against the sun. “If I wasn’t worried about someday having a defense attorney grill me on whether I ever had any inappropriate discussions about this case, I’d probably tell you we’ve found nothing to suggest the victims were involved with drugs.” His gray eyes narrowed as he met Shannon’s stare. “At least I’d probably tell you something like that,” he said.

“If you did, then I’d probably have to thank you and admit I have no good ideas at the moment.”

“Welcome to the club,” Daniels said.

Chapter 4

When Shannon had first moved to Boulder, he drove a few times through Loveland for skiing and would see nothing but open prairie once he got past Longmont’s city limits. That was five years ago. Now it seemed as if Longmont had been stretched out with more and more subdivisions erasing miles of prairie. Once he got onto US 287 there was some open space, but it was peppered with new construction-mostly McMansions, four thousand plus square foot homes loaded with cathedral ceilings and bay windows. This trend continued well into Loveland proper, but eventually Shannon got to a part of town where the houses were older and more modest. Past a trailer park, he found Eunice Carver’s address. The house was barely a shack, probably no more than four rooms. A chain link fence surrounded the property, the yard mostly dirt mixed with a few weeds. Tires, a stove from the fifties, and a worn-out looking sofa were sitting in the front yard. As Shannon made his way up the walk to the door, a yellow and white pit bull mix charged out from under the sofa. When the dog got close to Shannon, it threw itself at him, but a chain around the neck snapped it back. The dog let out a yelp, then was back on its feet, frothing at the mouth and nearly airborne as it tried to get at Shannon’s throat.

Shannon eyed the dog cautiously and edged away from it. The front door opened and a kid, maybe eighteen, wearing a stained sleeveless muscle shirt and shorts that fell past his knees stepped out. He was thin and had a squirrelly look about him, with long greasy blond hair, bad skin and eyes that were too small and set too close together. His sleeveless shirt showed off greenish-colored tattoos on his pale and nearly skeleton-thin arms. Even though he had none of Taylor Carver’s good looks, Shannon could tell that they were brothers.

Randall Carver gave Shannon a quick look, then focused on the dog, yelling at it to shut up. “Buttercup, shut the fuck up!” he warned a second time. To Shannon’s surprise, especially given the frenzy the dog had worked herself into, she listened to him, cocking her head to one side as she paid full attention to the kid. Randall looked back at Shannon. “Who are you?” he asked.

“My name’s Bill Shannon. I’d like to talk to Eunice Carver. Is she home?”

“What do you want to talk to my ma about?”

Shannon walked towards the front door, stopping when he got a few feet from Randall. Up close, the younger Carver smelled like a mix of sweat and bad cheese. The kid’s eyes darted from left to right as if he were trying to make up his mind whether to stand his ground or flee.

“I’m investigating Taylor’s murder,” Shannon said. From behind he could hear Buttercup growl.

“Are you a cop?”

“I’m a private detective. You’re his brother, Randall, aren’t you?” Almost as if his head were attached to some invisible string, the kid nodded. “I’d like to talk to you also,” Shannon said. “Is your mom home?”

“Let me see.” Randall stuck his head into the house and yelled, “Ma, there’s a guy here wants to talk to you!”

A woman’s voice yelled back, “What about?”

“Taylor. He’s some sort of private eye.”

There was a silence within the house. Then, “Tell him I’m busy!”

Randall turned to Shannon and smiled, revealing teeth that were the color of chewing tobacco. “My ma’s too busy to talk with you,” he said. “And so am I.”

“That’s too bad. I would’ve thought the two of you would want to help find the person who murdered your brother. This won’t look good when your lawsuit goes to court.”

“How do you know about ma’s lawsuit?”

“I’d like to tell you, but you’re too busy to talk now.” Shannon turned and started towards his car, making sure to give Buttercup a wide berth. Randall stuck his head back in the door, yelled, “He says you not talking won’t look good with the lawsuit!”

“How does he know about that?”

“He won’t say!”

“Goddamn it!” There was a long silence that was broken only by Buttercup’s growling, then, “Tell him I’ll talk.”

Randall yelled out to Shannon, “Ma says she’ll talk!”

Shannon turned from his car and headed back towards the house. Buttercup stood with her head pushed forward as she watched Shannon, all the while growling disapprovingly. Randall, his face locked in a sullen stare, led Shannon into a small room that served as a combination living room and dining room. The same perspiration and rotten cheese smell that came off of Randall permeated the house. Shannon’s ordeal with Charlie Winters and his horrific stench of decay had left him hypersensitive to certain sickly-sweet odors. Over five years later, odors like the one in this house still physically affected him. This one brought a dull throbbing to the back of his head. Shannon tried breathing in only through his mouth to avoid the smell but it didn’t help much.

As Shannon looked around, he was surprised at what he saw. While the room was dirty, it had newer and more expensive furniture than Shannon would’ve expected, including a large plasma TV set that covered a good part of one wall. Off to the side was a small kitchen where Eunice Carver sat at a three foot square oak table, a cigarette between two fingers and a cup of coffee to her right. As Shannon entered the kitchen, he noticed that a new stove and microwave had been installed.

“Buttercup’s some name for a pit bull,” he said.

“She’s a sweetheart of a dog, and only part pit bull.” Eunice Carver peered up at Shannon with glazed eyes, then looked away. “You wanted to talk?” she said.

Shannon took a chair to her left. Like her son, Randall, she had long stringy hair that needed washing and eyes that were too small and set too close together. Her face was bonier than Randall’s and had a yellowish, unhealthy pall to it giving her the general appearance of someone who was worn out. Shannon couldn’t imagine her being attractive at any age and decided whatever good looks Taylor had, he’d gotten from his father.

“Yes ma’am, I’m investigating your son’s murder, and am hoping that you and Randall can answer a few questions for me.”

She inhaled deeply on her cigarette and let the smoke blow out her nostrils. When she turned to face Shannon, her eyes didn’t seem able to properly focus on him, almost as if she were looking past him to someone behind him. “Why do you care about Taylor?” she asked. “Who hired you?”

“People magazine,” Shannon said straight-faced. He didn’t like the idea of lying to her, but he knew he would’ve wasted the trip if he told her the truth and, as he had learned long ago when he was on the force, if you’re going to lie, lie big. There were times he was able to convince perps he had satellite pictures of them committing their crimes and was able to get full confessions out of them. They always seemed disappointed when they found out later there were no photos coming from Washington.

Shannon’s answer had an effect on both mother and son. An uncertainty clouded Eunice’s face, and Randall, who had been standing off to the side slouching against a wall, straightened up and combed his fingers through his hair.

Eunice noticed that the cigarette had burnt close to her fingers. She stubbed it out on a plate she used as an ashtray, then tapped a fresh cigarette out of the pack and lit it.

“How’d you know about my lawsuit?” she asked

“Court documents are open to the public,” Shannon said.

She nodded to herself as she thought that over, then licking her lips, peered at Shannon with a glint in her eyes. “People magazine willing to pay for my side of the story?”

“What’s your side?”

She sucked on her cigarette and held the smoke in before letting it out the corner of her mouth. “About how hard it is losing your eldest son,” she said, her small dark eyes challenging Shannon to argue with her. She looked away, sniffed, and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. “Especially what was done to my boy. The funeral home couldn’t do anything for Taylor. We had to have a closed casket.”

“I’m sorry,” Shannon said. He reached a hand toward her shoulder and she pulled back as if he were going to strike her, then sat rigid, accepting the gesture. Randall snickered from behind. “Hey Mr. Private Eye,” he said, “you’re missing some fingers. Buttercup do that?” Eunice Carver noticed the missing fingers and smiled. Shannon pulled his hand back showing only a subtle change in his expression.

Eunice, with the smile dropping from her face, asked, “What do you think? Will People magazine pay me for my story?”

“I’ll ask them,” Shannon said. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

She thought about it, shrugged. “Don’t matter to me.”

Shannon took a miniature tape recorder from his pocket, placed it on the table between them and hit record. “July 19th, 2005.” Shannon checked his watch. “Three thirty-five, afternoon. I’m talking to Eunice Carver and her son, Randall.” Then to the mother, “Did Taylor have any problems that you knew about?”

Eunice’s eyes went dull as she stared at the tape recorder. She looked away and blew more cigarette smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Taylor didn’t talk to me about things like that.”

“Things going well at school?”

“He never said otherwise.”

“Any recent disagreements or fights?”

She flicked cigarette ash onto the plate, then looked out a window into the backyard. Her gaze seemed transfixed on an old refrigerator and other junk that had been stacked out there. “If he had any, he didn’t tell me about them,” she said.

Shannon turned to Randall, who simply shrugged.

“How’d you get along with your brother?” Shannon asked.

“We got along good.”

“He talk to you about stuff?”

Randall’s mouth screwed up into a tight circle as he shook his head. “Not too much,” he said.

“Why was that?”

“I dunno, he just didn’t.”

“When did you see him last?”

“At his funeral, but as Ma said it was a closed casket, so I guess I really didn’t see him then.”

“I meant when he was alive.”

Randall’s face went blank as he thought about that. “Maybe last Christmas,” he said.

“How about the last time you talked on the phone?”

“I dunno. We didn’t do that much. Maybe before Christmas.”

“Any idea why your brother was killed?”

“Because his landlord was too cheap to keep that door lock working right,” Eunice volunteered, her face rigid with anger. Randall nodded in agreement, all the while staring down at the floor and kicking at it with his toe.

“Anything more you can tell me that could help?”

Randall shrugged, his expression distant and sullen. “I don’t think so.”

Shannon turned back to the mother. “Do you have any ideas?”

Eunice nodded. “Yeah, I know what happened. Some drugged-out maniac broke into my son’s apartment and beat him to death with a baseball bat. All because that landlord couldn’t be bothered to fix a lock.”

“How do you know a baseball bat was used?”

“Police asked me about it. They wanted to know if Taylor owned one. I told them Taylor was never much into sports.”

“They say anything else about it?”

She shook her head.

Shannon considered her for a long moment, trying to get a feel for whether she carelessly leaked the information about the bat or had some ulterior motive. He knew damned well she would’ve been warned repeatedly by Daniels and any other cop questioning her not to mention that bat to anyone. After a while he decided it was a coin flip either way.

“What can you tell me about Taylor’s dad?”

She took a long puff on her cigarette. “Last I heard he was screwing some whore in Alabama. That was fifteen years ago.”

“He never kept in touch with his sons?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Shannon turned to Randall, who just shook his head. He then looked back at Eunice and asked her what she could tell him about Linda Gibson.

“You mean that whore that was shacking up with my son?”

Shannon was taken aback by that. “I take it you didn’t think too much of her.”

“Her family’s trash.” Eunice’s mouth screwed up as if she were going to spit on the table. “They couldn’t even be bothered to go to Taylor’s funeral. So I didn’t bother going to that whore’s.”

“Why was she a whore?”

Eunice looked dumbfounded as she stared at Shannon. “She was living in sin, wasn’t she? What else do you call someone like that?”

“Outside of her living in sin, what can you tell me about her?”

As she stared at him, her look changed from dumbfounded to incredulous. “Why would you think I’d be able to tell you anything else about her?”

“Didn’t you ever meet or talk with her?”

“Why would I’ve done something like that?”

He sighed, shook his head. He felt a twinge where his missing finger should’ve been and resisted the urge to rub his damaged hand. “Anything else either of you can tell me to help me find out who did this to Taylor?” he asked.

“Not a thing,” Eunice muttered. “Besides, what’s the point?”

“Maybe to bring some closure to you and Randall and anyone else affected by Taylor’s death. And bring your son some justice.”

“It’s too late for that.” She inhaled deeply on her cigarette. Her expression remained phlegmatic as she looked in Shannon’s direction, her eyes still unable to focus on him.

“Why’s it too late?”

“Because Taylor’s beyond justice.” Her cigarette had burnt down to mostly ash. She tossed what was left onto the plate. “Only justice left is making that landlord pay for what happened. When me and Randall collect our five million dollars, that will be justice.”

Shannon felt a dull throbbing in the back of his head, partly from his conversation with Eunice and Randall Carver and partly from the stench filling the house. Even though he was breathing in through his mouth, it seemed as if he could taste the sweetly rancid smell in the back of his throat. More perfunctory than anything else since he would’ve bet his last dollar against ever getting a call from either of them, he left Eunice his business card and asked that she call him if she thought of anything that might help. He turned off the tape recorder and was pushing himself out of his chair when he again noticed the new stove and microwave.

“You’ve made some recent purchases,” he said.

Eunice didn’t bother to respond.

“New stove, microwave.” Shannon waved his damaged hand in the direction of the combination living room/dining room. “Plasma TV, sofa, stereo system,” he continued to list.

“So?”

“Did you come into some money recently?”

“Taylor bought me all that. Before he got killed.”

Shannon’s gaze narrowed as he met Eunice’s small dark eyes. “How’d a college student get the money to buy stuff like that?”

She shrugged. “Wasn’t my place to ask him.”

“Was he working?”

She stared at him blankly before shrugging again.

Shannon looked over at Randall and realized he wasn’t going to get a better answer from him. He simply thanked the two of them for their time and left the room. Neither mother nor son bothered to move as he let himself out of the house. Buttercup was waiting for him, though, head thrust forward, eyes intently following him. When he got into his car, he smelled his shirt, then both his arms. Cigarette smoke and the cheese-perspiration smell had saturated his shirt and skin. After opening both front windows of his late model Chevy Corsica for ventilation, he drove fast to get the hell out of there.

Chapter 5

When Shannon arrived back at his apartment, Susan tried intercepting him for a kiss, but wrinkled her nose when he got within a few feet of her.

“You don’t smell too good, hon,” she said.

“I know. I visited Carver’s mom and this is what her house smelled like. I’m going straight into the shower, scrub myself raw-and if that doesn’t work, buy some industrial-sized drums of tomato juice. And I’ll probably have to burn my clothing.”

He tried to sidestep her, but Susan moved quickly, got on her toes and kissed him hard on the mouth.

“Must be true love to get anywhere near me smelling the way I do,” Shannon said.

“You do worse for me,” Susan said. “Every morning you kiss me passionately no matter how bad my morning breath is.”

“What are you talking about? Your breath always smells like sweet petunias. Especially in the morning.”

Susan laughed at that. “One of these days I’m going to find out where you got that ‘sweet petunia’ expression from. And besides, I don’t think petunias even have a smell.”

“Of course they do. A wonderful smell. Exactly like your breath.”

Shannon gave her shoulder a little squeeze as he made his way by her and into the bathroom. Once in the shower, he put the water on as hot as he could stand it and scrubbed himself until all traces of the rancid cheese-sweat smell were gone.

When he finished, he dressed quickly, then sent an email to Professor Lester White, introducing himself and asking for information about Taylor Carver. After that he called Chris Jackson. Jackson confirmed what Paul Devens had told him earlier-that he knew nothing about his tenants or any problems they might’ve had, that a management company handled his rental properties for him and that he himself had no involvement with his apartments. He thanked Shannon for his thoroughness in calling him. He also told Shannon that he was counting on him to pull his ass out of the fire with this thing. “I feel awful, of course, with what happened to those two kids, but what could I’ve done? If I knew there was a rusty deadbolt I would’ve gone over there myself and squirted a couple of drops of oil on it. This has just been a hell of a thing to go through.” Shannon couldn’t disagree with him.

Before leaving the apartment, he found Susan in the living room. She had her reading glasses on as she sat cross-legged on a pillow, chewing on the end of a pen while going over pages of handwritten notes. Shannon felt his pulse quicken as he watched her. There were times like this when he was completely stunned at how beautiful she was and, no matter what else had happened in his life, couldn’t believe his good fortune that they were together. She sensed him standing there, looked up and smiled at him. “I’m going over some homeopathy notes for one of my patients,” she said. “So what’s next on your agenda?”

“I called Eli on my way back from Loveland. We’re meeting at the Center at five. After that I’m going to see if I can talk to Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson’s neighbors.” Shannon hesitated, showing a slight smile. “I’m also thinking of heading over to Coors Field later and catching the Sox. It will be my first chance to see them play since I left Massachusetts. Care to join me?”

Susan showed a disappointed look. “I’d like to but these notes are for a client who’s coming over at eight. Maybe Eli will go with you?”

“Nah, he’s afraid he’d have to pay money just to watch the Sox win, especially with how the Rockies are playing now.”

“Well, you should go to the game anyway. And root for Nomar for me!”

“The Sox traded him last year.”

“Nomah’s not on the team?” She exaggerated the Boston accent with Nomah, as Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch used to do on Saturday Night Live. “Jeeze, what’s this world coming to? Then root for Pedro Martinez for me!”

“Pedro’s not on the team anymore either.”

Susan shook her head. “I’m out of names then. But even though they got rid of the only two players I knew, you should go to the game and have fun.”

“Maybe, I haven’t decided yet. But I’ll give you a call before your eight o’clock appointment and let you know what I’m doing.”

Shannon glanced at his watch and saw he only had ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Eli. He reached down, gave her a quick kiss, and realized if he was going to meet his friend on time he’d better leave while he still could.

***

Shannon found Eli Rosen in his office thumbing through a book on chakra meditation. Raising his heavy eyelids, Eli looked up when Shannon knocked on the open door.

“Fascinating stuff,” Eli said, referring to the book. “This author has documented Tibetan monks who’ve sat naked in minus twenty degree weather and kept themselves warm simply by meditating on their Manipura, or solar plexus, chakra.”

“You might’ve mentioned that to me once or twice before.”

“I still find it fascinating no matter how many times I read about it.” Eli tossed the book on his desk and smiled broadly as he looked at his watch. “Miracle of miracles,” he said. “You’re on time for a change. Let me guess, you didn’t stop off at home or, more likely, Susan was out.”

“Wrong on both counts. I was just able to exercise amazing self-control.”

“You’d have to walk away from that stunningly beautiful ex-wife of yours.” Eli’s smile slowly faded. “Why don’t you tell me about the job you took.”

“How do you know I took it?”

“I can see the guilt written all over your face.”

“Damn! I washed before coming here.” Shannon pulled a chair up to the desk, sat down and clasped his hands behind his head as he leaned back and rested his feet on the desk.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Eli said.

“Thanks.”

“So tell me about this job.”

Shannon shrugged. His gaze wandered to a framed photo on the wall to his left that showed a herd of elk in a snowy mountain vista, then to one of Babe Ruth in Yankee pinstripes swinging a bat and looking skyward as if he were following the arc of a homerun ball. Turning back to Eli, he said, “You remember those two students who were killed a few months ago? I’m looking into it.”

Eli sat quietly staring at Shannon. The disappointment filling up his eyes gave him a hangdog look. “Jesus, Bill,” he said, breaking his silence. “One of these days you’re going to have to make a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“About the level of spiritual awareness you wish to achieve. At least during this lifetime.”

“Chrissakes, Eli, all I’m going to be doing is investigating a crime.”

“You’re doing more than that.”

“Like what?”

“Like spending your time mired in the worst that people can do.”

Shannon rubbed a hand across his eye. The same old argument, although Eli’s manner now seemed more personal and less academic than all those earlier times. Now there was nothing but disappointment showing in his friend’s eyes. Of course, this was the first double-murder investigation Shannon had taken on since moving to Boulder. When he was a police detective in Cambridge, he had investigated some horrendous crimes that truly did deal with the worst that people can do-including rape, incest and child abuse, as well as murders. Since moving to Boulder and working part-time as a private investigator, the most serious case he handled involved a real estate scam in which several people, at least temporarily, had lost their life savings. Shannon had been able to recover most of their money for them.

“Look,” he said. “This is the world we live in. What am I supposed to do, keep blinders on and only pay attention to uplifting sights, like elk tramping through the mountains?”

“Bill, you’re right, we live in a world where bad things happen, but we can choose what type of energy we expose ourselves to. If you seek out positive energy, it will have an effect on you, just as dark and negative energy will also have its own special effect. There’s a lightness needed to leave your body peacefully and at your own choosing. Dark energy can be like a black hole, pulling you into its own gravitational field. It can be hard to fly when you’ve tied a cement anchor to your waist.”

“Quite a speech.”

“Thanks, I thought so. But obviously not good enough to change your mind.”

“No, not quite.” Absentmindedly Shannon massaged his damaged hand. He clenched his teeth against phantom pains that had started to radiate from his missing fingers up to his wrists. For a long moment it was as if nails were being driven into his joints. “I’m thirty-seven years old. I need to do something. I can’t spend twenty-four hours a day working on my spiritual development.” He paused to look down at his damaged hand. “Anyway, I’m good at what I do,” he added in a tired voice. “And maybe doing this I can help bring justice to the victims and some relief to the families.”

“You don’t sound very convincing with that last part.”

Shannon shrugged. “I met one of the families. Bringing any relief to them is only wishful thinking on my part.”

“Then why do this, Bill? I know it’s not for the money. You’ve got your disability pension and Susan’s making a good income with her practice. I agree, you should be doing something, but don’t try selling me that you’re doing this so you can help people because there are plenty of other things you could do-like working at a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen or any number of things that could enrich you. So why detective work?”

Shannon removed his feet from the desk and leaned forward so he could pick up an amethyst geode that Eli used as a paperweight. He ran his thumb along the purple and silver diamond-shaped crystals inside it, studying the intricate pattern that they made. “It’s just something I need to do,” he said as he placed the geode back on the desk.

“I think you need to figure out what you really want.” Eli took a cassette tape from the top drawer of his desk and tossed it to Shannon. “For whatever good it will do you, here are some new exercises. Like the old ones, play these a half hour before going to bed.”

Shannon nodded. “Thanks. Are we still meeting tomorrow morning?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“I thought you might be too pissed at me for taking this case.”

“You want to put obstacles up for yourself, that’s your business. I still plan on working with you. And besides, I’m not ending a friendship over something like this.”

“Fair enough. I’ve got a few things to do over the next hour or so, but any interest in catching the Sox game later?”

Eli made a face as if he had swallowed spoiled milk. “I already told you my thoughts on interleague play. Besides, I don’t see any reason to pay money to watch a second-rate team beat a third-rate team.”

“What are you talking about? The World Champion Red Sox a second rate team? Last I checked they’re two and a half games up on your beloved Yankees.”

“I was referring to the Rockies as the second-rate team. I’ve also decided that the Red Sox never won the World Series last year. We’re either the victims of a massive media hoax or are suffering from some sort of mass delusion. And about the Yankees being two and a half games out-don’t take too much solace from that. In seventy-eight they were fourteen games out this same time of year, and we all know how that turned out.”

Shannon got to his feet and, at the door, told Eli that he would see him tomorrow.

Eli nodded, his long face reflective. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Think harder about why you’re still doing this detective work.”

“You got it, Chief.” Shannon gave him a quick salute and left.

***

The condo complex where the murdered students had lived was off Arapahoe Avenue and was made up of clusters of newer-looking two-story townhouses, with what looked like four townhouses grouped together into each cluster. Driving through the complex, Shannon guessed that the townhouses had been built within the last five years.

Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson had rented a condo in an end unit townhouse that was in the back of the complex and not visible from the street. Shannon found the door to the building unlocked. Inside was a small vestibule leading to two condos. The door to Carver and Gibson’s unit had red smudges on it and some splintering where it had been kicked open. A police notice on the door warned that it was a crime scene and that the area was sealed off to the public until further notice. The other condo had a small metal sign screwed into its door indicating that it was the residence of Mike and Nancy Maguire. Shannon knocked on the Maguire’s door and waited. After several minutes a man in his early forties came out, his face flushed as he gave Shannon a wary look. “Yeah?” he asked.

Shannon introduced himself. “I was hoping you could tell me about the two students who were murdered next door,” he added.

“How about you show me some identification,” Maguire said, a thin smile showing that he thought Shannon was full of shit. Shannon handed him his PI license. Maguire studied it and then, coordinated with a sudden jerk of his head, snapped his fingers, a wide grin breaking over his face.

“I knew you looked familiar. I used to live in Medfa,” he said, grossly exaggerating his Boston pronunciation of ‘Medford’. “You were in the news for weeks. A police detective, right? What was the name of that serial killer? Carl… Carl Winters, right?”

“Charlie Winters.”

Maguire snapped his fingers again. “That’s right. Charlie Winters. You killed him, didn’t you?”

Shannon nodded.

“Damn,” Maguire said, still grinning widely. His flushed face showed a deep pink along his cheeks, almost as if he had rouge on and almost matching the color of his red hair. He was about Shannon’s height but wider, carrying an extra forty pounds beyond Shannon’s hundred and eighty. “When I heard you outside I thought you were a reporter. The tabloid ones are the worst. Nothing but a bunch of fucking piranhas.”

“No, I’m not a reporter,” Shannon said. “If you’ve got some time, I’d like to talk to both you and your wife. Is your wife home?”

“She’s home.” He hesitated. “She’s not feeling well, though. She’s come down with some sort of bug and would give me holy hell if I brought you or anyone else upstairs. You also caught me as I was about to head out.” Maguire snapped his fingers again, his eyes brightening. “Look, I’ve got two tickets for the Sox game. Since my wife can’t come, and shit, you’re another Boston guy-as long as you’re a Sox fan, you want the ticket?”

Shannon found himself nodding. “I was planning to go to the game,” he admitted.

“Then come on, man, take my extra ticket. Otherwise I’ll just be scalping it, and with my luck, selling it to some undercover cop. This way I’ll know it’s in the hands of a true Sox fan. Wadda ya say?”

Shannon hesitated as he thought it over. Maguire’s grin turned more into a smirk as he shook his head. “Come on,” he said. “What’s there to think about? It will be fun. Us guys from back east, we take baseball seriously, not like these rednecks and cowboys out here. And you can ask me all the questions you want while we’re driving back and forth to the game. But once the game starts, that’s it. No questions. I go into my gonzo fan mode. So last time, wadda ya say?”

“You talked me into it.”

“Great.” Maguire offered his hand and showed only a slight tic in his grin on realizing that Shannon was missing a couple of fingers. “I’ve got a few things I’ve got to do before we head out. I’d invite you up but my wife would kill me.”

“That’s fine.” Shannon nodded towards the staircase behind Maguire. “Your condo’s on the second floor?”

“Yep. We’ve got the upstairs, they’ve got the downstairs.” Maguire waved a thumb at the other condo. “What do you think, one of these days they’ll take that notice down?”

“Three months is already too long.”

“You’d think so, huh? It cheers my wife up everyday to have to walk past that. Also does wonders for my resale value.”

“You’re thinking of selling?”

“Maybe, not right now.” He sniffed a few times, then froze for a moment as if he were about to sneeze. The moment passed. “Look,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of things I really need to do, then you can fire away all the questions you want. I just don’t want to miss batting practice. With the altitude out here, Manny and Ortiz should be launching some moon shots.”

Maguire gave Shannon a short wave, then turned and headed up the stairs, his feet heavy on the hardwood steps. Ten minutes later he came down wearing a 2004 Red Sox World Championship T-shirt, Red Sox cap and official-looking baseball uniform pants. His face was flushed a deeper red than before as he showed Shannon the baseball glove he was carrying. “Kind of a kid’s thing to do, but maybe I’ll get lucky and catch a foul ball.” They started towards the parking lot, and when he caught Shannon reaching for his car keys he put out a hand to stop him. “If you don’t mind, I’ll drive,” he said.

He led Shannon to a dark blue BMW Z3 convertible. “Before you get any ideas I’m loaded, this beauty’s eight years old and has almost two hundred thousand miles on it. I bought it during the boom times of the late nineties. Before nine-eleven changed everything.”

Maguire put the top down. As they drove from Arapahoe Avenue to Twenty-Eighth Street, he explained how he’d been a software engineer in the networking equipment sector during the nineties. “It was a magical time back then,” he said. “For a while it looked like we were all going to make millions. But it was an illusion. There was nothing backing these companies up, no real fundamentals anyway. So when nine-eleven happened, the whole damn bubble burst.”

The pink in his cheeks dropped a shade as he thought about it. “While it looked like everybody in my industry was making millions, the reality was most of us made nothing. Worse than that, a lot of people got wiped out buying worthless stock options and then having to pay taxes on paper gains that never existed. The small startup I was at had an offer for two billion before nine-eleven. The greedy son-of-a-bitch founders and venture capitalists turned it down thinking they could go IPO and make ten billion. Want to guess how much I would’ve made if they took that two billion dollar offer?”

“A million dollars,” Shannon said.

“Try six million. Instead, the company goes belly up. They closed their doors the day before Christmas Eve, 2001. I didn’t even get a severance package out of the deal.”

Maguire became quiet, appearing to lose himself in his thoughts. After taking a deep breath and letting it out in a long exhalation, he went on, “At that time there was nothing in Massachusetts. The job market for guys like me was completely dead. Worse even than in California, which was a nuclear meltdown. It took me nine months to find a job here in Boulder and I considered myself lucky to’ve found it. A year later that company went out of business. But for once my luck didn’t completely stink and six months after that I was able to find another job down the same street from where I was working. At least I didn’t have to pack up and move again. With all the outsourcing going on, it’s looking like my days as a software engineer are winding down.” He showed Shannon a half-hearted smile. “C’est la vie,” he said. “Maybe my next career will be doing PI work like you. I’m always reading PI novels. I can’t get enough of that stuff, and I’d have to think I’d have a blast being a PI.”

“It’s a little different in real life,” Shannon said.

“Maybe.” Maguire pulled onto US 36 heading to Denver, his smile hardening as he stared straight ahead. “But it still has to beat sitting at a desk twelve hours a day working on the most bore-ass software imaginable. After twenty years, it gets old.”

As Shannon waited for Maguire to start up his monologue again, he saw what looked like a group of dogs off in the distance. Even though they were too far away to make out any details, he could tell by the way their backs were hunched and the feral way in which they moved that they were coyotes. He watched them until they faded from the horizon. When it became clear that Maguire had talked himself out, he asked how long he had lived in his condo.

“Time for the questioning, huh? Since we moved here. I guess almost three years.”

“How about Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson?”

“What about them?”

“When did they move into your building?”

He thought about it. “Over a year ago. Probably the beginning of last summer.”

“Did you know them?”

“Not really.” He showed a pained grimace as he thought about it. “They were sort of standoffish,” he said. “Not the friendliest types. Plus they were students while me and my wife are past forty. I tried inviting them over a couple times for barbecue, but they didn’t seem interested. Then school started for them and work got crazy for me, and I just didn’t bother after that. I guess I could’ve put in more of an effort. I feel bad about it after what happened. Terrible thing.”

“Any of your neighbors friends with them?”

“I don’t think so. Most of us living there are working types. These were college kids. They seemed to want to hang out with their own kind.”

“A lot of people going in and out of their apartment?”

“I don’t know if I can answer that. Tonight’s pretty unusual for me. Most days I’m working until ten and that usually includes Saturdays and more and more Sundays now, but yeah, I’d hear people over there while I was home.”

“Were they selling drugs?”

Maguire chewed on his lower lip as he thought it over. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never saw anyone smoking crack outside the building, if that’s what you mean. But could they’ve been selling drugs? I never really thought about it before.”

Shannon gave him a long look. “You never thought they could be drug dealers?”

“Nope.”

“Even after they were beaten to death?”

“What can I say? The thought never occurred to me.”

“You better forget about being a detective then,” Shannon said.

“Hey, I don’t think that’s fair.” A hurt look formed over Maguire’s mouth. “I just never saw anything that made me think they were drug dealers.”

“Why were they killed?”

“What?”

“I’m giving you a chance to play detective. Why do you think they were killed?”

“Jeeze, that’s some question. To be honest, I haven’t given it much thought. The last six months work has been totally nuts. We’re trying to get our next round of funding and the stress has just been unreal. And now when I’m home, I’m having one reporter after the next bugging me.”

“You’ve got some time now. Give it some thought. If you want, you can think of this as a job interview.”

“Hey, I wasn’t entirely kidding before. If my current job washes out, I might just want to do something different like PI work. Why the fuck not do something fun for a change?”

“Then think of this as an interview for an internship. Why were Taylor Carver and Linda Gibson killed?”

As Maguire thought about it, he started drumming on the steering wheel then nodding his head as if it were some kind of bobble head doll. Finally he became still. “How about this,” he said. “We know they were beaten to death and from what I heard it was pretty bad. I guess it could be drugs, but I just never saw any evidence of that. So why couldn’t it have been a crime of passion, someone close to them who just went nuts. I’d have to think it would take some pretty intense emotion to beat two people to death. So maybe it was a family member or a close friend. I think that’s the angle I’d look into. So how’d I do?”

“I’ll grade you later. Any suspicious behavior before the murders? Any strangers hanging around the building? Anything odd, out of place?”

“The police had already asked me about that. There was nothing I could think of.”

“Did you see or hear anything the night they were killed?”

Maguire shook his head. “We had a field trial at work scheduled the next day at a potential customer’s site and I couldn’t leave until I finished one of the features we’d promised. I didn’t get home until three in the morning and when I did everything was quiet and peaceful. They must’ve been killed before then. The next day a police detective banging on my door woke me up. I guess their door had been broken into and there was some blood outside of it, but I was too tired to have noticed it when I got home the night before.”

“How about your wife?”

“She didn’t hear anything.” Maguire’s round face seemed to shrink as he stared straight ahead. “My wife hadn’t been sleeping well for a while and was taking sleeping pills by then. She never got used to moving out here. Misses her family, friends, the ocean, lobster, the weather, foliage, Quincy Market, Newbury Street, the Boston Globe-you name it, she misses it. Anyway, she was sedated and out like a log that night.”

“I’m sorry to hear she’s unhappy here.”

“Thanks.” Maguire gave Shannon a quick glance. “How about you, you get used to it?”

“It’s been a good change for me.”

“Are you married?”

“Divorced. But we’re reconciling, and it’s been a good change for her also.”

“I guess it takes time.” He pulled onto the ramp for I-25 and flashed Shannon a wicked grin. “Only five minutes from the park, then that’s it for your grilling. Your interrogation will have to wait until the ride back.”

“I only have a few more questions. Did they have problems with anyone that you knew of?”

“I don’t think so, but you got to remember these were college kids, and like a lot of college kids, they weren’t the most considerate neighbors in the world. Kind of loud at times. But no, I can’t think of anything specific.”

“But you had a problem with them.”

Maguire made a face. “Because they woke me up a few times? As I said, they were kids, you’d have to expect that. You think because of that I’d break down their door and beat them to death? Jesus!”

“Lesson one in being a detective, consider every possibility.”

“Christ, I’ll remember that. But to answer your question-they could be annoying at times, but no, I had no real problems with them.”

“How about your wife?”

Maguire shook his head. “Not that I know of. Most nights she was doped up with sleeping pills, so when they made noise she slept through it.”

“From the pictures I saw, Linda Gibson was quite a looker.”

“Leave no stone unturned, huh?” Maguire said.

“Lesson two.”

“Alright, I asked for it, I’ll play. I didn’t see her much, maybe a dozen times while they lived there, but she was a good-looking kid. Operative word being ‘kid’. I don’t cheat on my wife, and if I were going to, it wouldn’t be with a kid half my age. Satisfied?”

“Lesson three, you’re never satisfied until the case is closed.”

“Committed to memory,” Maguire said, a grim smile tightening his lips. As he pulled into the Coors Field parking lot, his smile turned more upbeat. “And we’re at the ballpark,” he announced. “PI school is closed until further notice. Only thing I’m talking about from this point on is baseball, beer, and hotdogs.”

As Maguire got out of the car he spotted a couple of guys wearing Red Sox jerseys hanging out by a van as they drank beer. He yelled to them with his fist raised in the air that the Sox would kick the Colorado Rockies into rubble. They yelled back that the Sox rule and the Yankees suck. A couple of Colorado Rockies fans walking by suggested to Maguire that he move back to Boston and quit adding to Denver’s pollution problem.

Maguire gave Shannon a poke with his elbow. “This is going to be fucking great,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to this since February when the schedule came out. I bet you we get more Sox fans here than Rockies fans.”

As they entered the stadium, Shannon had to admit there was a good chance of that. There seemed to be a sea of Red Sox jerseys and pennants, and only a scattering of fans wearing the Yankee pinstripe rip-off Colorado Jerseys. The Red Sox fans were loud and raucous and belligerent. The seemingly outnumbered Rockies fans acted subdued, only making occasional smartass comments about what the Sox fans could do to themselves. Sox fans countered by asking when the Rockies were going to field a major league team.

Maguire poked Shannon again. “Section one forty, third row. Right by third base. You couldn’t get tickets like this in Boston if you donated a kidney for them.”

As they made their way to their seats, Maguire wanted to stop off at the concession stands for some beer and hotdogs. Shannon told him he’d take care of it as payback for the tickets. He started off with two beers and three hotdogs for Maguire and a bottle of water for himself.

“You don’t drink beer or eat hotdogs?” Maguire asked, eyeing Shannon suspiciously.

“I’m not big on alcohol these days. And I’m a vegetarian.”

“Sounds kind of un-American. Oh well, I guess that just means more beer for me,” Maguire said.

They got to their seats about the time batting practice started, and Maguire had been right, there were moon shots being launched-balls that would’ve cleared Lansdowne Street in Boston. Near the end of batting practice, Shannon heard someone from behind yelling his name. He turned and saw a man standing in the aisle above him saluting him with a big shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

“Holy shit,” the guy yelled. “It’s Bill ‘freakin’ Shannon, back from the dead.”

Shannon stared back for a long moment before recognizing the man. Ed Poulet, one of the detectives Shannon had worked with back in Massachusetts. Next to him was Jimmy Mason, also grinning from ear to ear. Shannon never much cared for either of them when he was on the job. Poulet was a wiseass and Mason for the most part his sidekick. Several times over the years he and Poulet had come close to blows.

Poulet was waving a hand at Shannon like a traffic cop directing a car through an intersection. “Come on, for Chrissakes,” Poulet was yelling, “you got a couple of Brothers in Blue waiting up here.”

Shannon left his seat to meet them. When he got closer he could see that Poulet had put on some pounds and his hairline had receded a few more inches, making him look almost like a caricature of his former self. Mason was the same thin, wiry sort he always was. Both of them had a glazed sheen in their eyes indicating a day of heavy drinking. As Shannon got within a few feet, Poulet grabbed his hand and pulled him in for an embrace.

“Damn, it’s good to see you,” he said. Next, Mason pumped Shannon’s hand and at the same time gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Shit Bill, we were walking by when Ed here with his eagle eyes spotted you,” he said. “It’s been over five years, you can’t write or call anyone about how you’re doing?”

“I’ve been good.”

An intensity burned through the alcoholic haze in Poulet’s eyes as he stared at Shannon’s damaged hand. “So that’s what that piece of human garbage did to you,” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ. And what he did to poor Joe. I hope he’s burning in hell for all eternity.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he is.”

“I fucking hope so.” Poulet shook his head. The intensity in his eyes faded and his face seemed to sag. “I heard rumors that you were out west somewhere. Jesus, though, I never expected to run into you here. Jimmy and I booked a two-day package to come out here and tour some of the breweries around Denver and catch a Sox game.” His face sagged a bit more as his gaze shifted away from Shannon. “Bill, I feel lousy that I didn’t see you after what happened. The whole thing was so fucking bizarre, and with what he did to Joe, and Jesus, you leaving town as quick as you did after getting out of the hospital. But I should’ve visited you while you were laid up. It’s something that’s been bothering me.”

Mason was nodding. “I’ve been feeling like shit about it too, Bill.”

“Back then I wasn’t much in the mood to see anyone,” Shannon said. “If you had come to my hospital room, I probably wouldn’t have let you or anyone else in.”

“Yeah, well, still, I feel pretty lousy about it,” Poulet said, but relief showed on his face. “So what the hell are you up to? Just living the good life off your disability pension?”

“Half-retired. I’ve been working part-time doing some private investigations.”

“No shit?” Poulet said, his shit-eating grin back in place. “I should’ve guessed as much. Detective work is in your blood, Bill, one of the reasons you were one of the best cops I ever worked with.”

“Never thought I’d hear those words, Ed.”

“I mean it. That was probably the reason I was always giving you shit, just trying to get under your skin so I could level the playing field.” He turned his smart-alecky grin towards Mason. “Anyway, at least you were a hell of a better cop than this waste of space next to me.”

“Fuck you,” Mason said, punching Poulet harder in the shoulder than he had punched Shannon.

“How are things back in Cambridge?” Shannon asked.

“Quiet,” Poulet said as he rubbed his shoulder and glared at Mason. Then his gaze wandered back to Shannon as he forgot about the punch thanks to an alcohol-shortened attention span. “We haven’t had anything major in years. Just the typical shit. Car thefts, domestic disputes, b and e’s, vandalism, drugs, punks trying to pretend they’re gang members, nothing big. I don’t know if you heard, but our old Captain captain found himself a new job. I guess the aftermath of that Charlie Winters’ business was too much for him.”

“I hadn’t heard. What’s Martin doing?”

“He took the same position with the Lynn police,” Poulet said, his smart-alecky grin stretching wider. Mason started laughing, said, “He stepped in it big-time.”

“I don’t know if it made the news here,” Poulet added, “but a pretty messy bank robbery went down last summer with a couple of their customers killed. They still don’t know exactly what happened, but from what I hear our old captain, Martin Brady, was put through the ringer. Last I heard he’s hanging onto his job by a thread.”

“Tough luck for Martin.”

“Yeah, I almost feel sorry for him.”

An announcement came over the PA system for people to stand during the national anthem. Poulet indicated to Shannon that they were going to go find their seats. “Bill, it was good seeing you. Stay safe, okay? And keep in touch, for Chrissakes!”

“Hey, it was good seeing both of you too. And don’t worry, we’ll keep in touch.”

As Shannon made his way back to his seat, he realized he’d meant what he’d said. It was cathartic in a way seeing the two of them. Putting old ghosts to rest. Although he doubted whether he’d contact either of them again.

“Run into some friends?” Maguire peered at Shannon from above the rim of a cup raised to his mouth. Underneath his seat were two empty cups, and it looked like he’d bought a couple of more beers from a vendor.

Shannon nodded towards the beer Maguire was in the process of finishing off. “You might want to slow down.”

“Hey, I’m here to unwind and have some fun-something I haven’t had in months. You’re not drinking, so what the fuck, you can be the designated driver.”

He handed Shannon the keys to his BMW. “Besides,” he added, “isn’t lesson four that PIs, other than you of course, are supposed to drink like fish? Basically be borderline alcoholics?”

“Nope. Lesson four is don’t believe everything you read in books.”

Maguire gave Shannon a wary eye as he finished his beer, but he slowed down his drinking after that and spent most of the game good-naturedly trading jibes and arguing statistics with Colorado fans sitting nearby. Instead of the game being the homerun derby he’d predicted, it turned out instead to be more of a pitchers duel and defensive showcase, one in which the Red Sox pulled ahead by a run in the top of the ninth thanks to a seeing-eye single, stolen base, bunt and sacrifice fly. Uncharacteristic for them. Normally it would’ve been the type of game Shannon enjoyed but he couldn’t focus on it, his thoughts circling back to what his next steps would be and to Poulet’s remark about detective work being in his blood. Maybe it was that simple for him. As much as he liked to think he was doing the work partly to keep busy and partly for purer, more altruistic reasons, maybe deep down inside he was driven simply because it was in his blood. Or worse, these cases allowed him to get close to the darkness without fully immersing himself in it. Maybe it was yet another way he was attached to Charlie Winters, and at some subconscious level he was trying to understand the evil that drove that psychopath. Because what was the altruism for this case? He could tell himself it was to provide a voice for the victims and to make sure that something as cruel as ending the lives of two young people didn’t go unpunished, but the bottom line was he was working to help a defendant in a civil case keep from having to pay out a large judgment.

Thoughts of one of Susan’s homeopathic patients also kept buzzing in and out of his mind-the psychic who was stuck in two worlds, the dead and the present. In some ways he could argue the same about himself. He had moved to Boulder for a fresh start, to heal himself, to live a different life than the one he had submerged himself in Massachusetts. Yet here he was, back investigating the types of crimes he’d thought he wanted to leave far behind. Like Susan’s patient, he found himself floating between two worlds, unable to fully commit to either one.

Focusing on his next steps, he decided he’d have to visit Linda Gibson’s family, which meant a trip to America’s Heartland. And he’d also have to find out how a college student was able to afford the purchases Taylor Carver had made for his mother. Especially if he wasn’t dealing drugs as Lieutenant Daniels claimed.

The Rockies made the final out by popping up harmlessly to second base and Maguire exchanged high-fives with a couple of other Red Sox fans nearby and traded a few more jibes with the Colorado fans he’d been engaged with.

“Another eighty-six years before they win another one,” one of them told him.

“Ha, want to bet eighty-six years before your team has another whiff of the playoffs again?”

“You’re still a bunch of chokers.”

“Like the last four years, with three Super Bowls and one World Series Championship?”

“And you won them personally, huh, asshole?”

“Hey, they’re the teams I live and die for. How have your teams been doing?”

That elicited a number of “Fuck you’s” and “Move back to Boston if its such a fucking paradise”. As they walked back to the car, Maguire acted animated, buoyant, but when he got into the passenger seat the life seemed to drain out of him, almost as if a switch had been thrown.

“Oh man, I’m wiped,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Sorry, any more questions you’re going to have to wait. I’m fucking exhausted.”

Shannon glanced over and saw Maguire’s chin moving slowly towards his chest, his eyelids mostly closed. “Lesson five, learn how to pace yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Maguire mumbled as if he were talking in his sleep. “I’ll take notes later.”

“I have a few more questions,” Shannon said without much hope of getting anything more out of his companion. “And I still need to talk to your wife.”

“Tomorrow,” Maguire said, his voice slurred as if he were using the last bit of strength he had. “Give me a call tomorrow.”

The traffic leaving the ballpark was bumper-to-bumper and it took a while to navigate to I-25 North, but once Shannon pulled onto US 36 West he seemed to have the highway to himself-as if he and Maguire were the only people from Boulder to attend the game. More likely than not that was true. There wasn’t much interest for professional sports in Boulder, outside of some of the college students and transplants like Shannon and Eli. While you could stop almost anyone on the street and discuss the Tour de France endlessly, it was a tough town to talk baseball or football in.

As Shannon drove, he could hear heavy breathing coming from Maguire along with sporadic choking noises that would last for a few seconds before sputtering out, then Maguire’s heavy breathing again. There were moments where Shannon was afraid the guy was going to suffocate. At one point he glanced over and saw his passenger’s face dead still and lit up by the moonlight like something waxen, not quite alive. Then the heavy breathing and sputtering kicked in.

When he arrived back at Maguire’s townhouse, he shook Maguire until he opened his eyes. At first there was only disorientation and confusion in those eyes, then a heaviness fell over his face as he realized where he was. “Shit,” he moaned. “No way I can climb those stairs tonight. Too fucking tired. I think I’ll sleep here.”

“Your choice,” Shannon said. He folded the car keys into Maguire’s large pudgy hand. “If I left those in the ignition you could get picked up for DUI, even if you’re sitting in the passenger seat.”

“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 friendly 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.”

“That would help.”

“I’ll call you when I find something.” Eli shifted in his chair, rubbed a thick hand across his jaw, said, “If you feel like talking about it, you can tell me about those two students.”

Eli was trying to be as blase as he could about it, but Shannon could see the interest shining in his half-closed eyes. He had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. For all of Eli’s protestations against his taking on investigations, he would still always want to hear all the details, which Shannon was more than happy to share with him. Not only did Eli provide a good sounding board, but at times offered insights and observations that had helped Shannon solve past cases.

“So far I don’t have much,” Shannon said. “I did get a strange email from Taylor Carver’s faculty advisor at the university, saying that his murder didn’t surprise him. At this point I’m waiting to see if he can provide more details.”

Eli raised an eyebrow at that. “It sounds like you need a face-to-face chat with him.”

“Yeah, that would be nice, but the guy’s spending the summer hiking in the Andes.”

Straight-faced, Eli said, “Sounds like an ideal opportunity for you to take your beautiful ex on a well-deserved vacation. I’ve heard that the Andes can be close to a spiritual experience.”

“Yeah, well, I could lead an expedition through South America looking for the guy. Or I could just be satisfied with the mountains we have here in Colorado and in exchanging emails with him.”

“A few weeks backpacking in the Andes might help you get back on track with your out-of-body work,” Eli stated defensively, his expression more serious.

“Lesson six,” Shannon said, “always look for ulterior motives, even in the most innocent sounding suggestions.”

“What’s this nonsense about lesson six?”

“Nothing.” Shannon let the grin he was fighting show through. “I ran into a fellow Red Sox fan yesterday and gave him a few lessons in being a private detective.”

“They win one stinking World Series in eighty-six years and you get deluded fans everywhere popping out of the woodwork. It’s like a bad zombie movie from the fifties. Night of the brain-dead Red Sox fans. The government desperately needs to develop a vaccine before it spreads any further.”

“I thought you didn’t believe they won last year. That it’s all some sort of mass hysteria?”

“All the same, mass hysteria or government hoax, it’s causing this epidemic to flourish.” Still with his deadpan expression intact, Eli added, “After one day on the job that’s all you’ve come up with?”

“No, not all,” Shannon said. “Something’s up with Carver’s family. I met with the mother and kid brother yesterday. Some very weird vibes, along with that they’re more concerned with winning a civil suit against Taylor’s landlord than seeing his murderer get caught. Also there were several new and expensive items in their house that they claimed he bought for them before he was killed. We’re talking thousands of dollars. I’ll have to find out if they had any life insurance on him.”

“Could the police tell you that?”

“They could.” Shannon smiled thinly. “But they’re not being very cooperative. I met the lead investigator. He seemed like a decent enough guy, but he wasn’t going to share any information.”

“Not surprising,” Eli said, nodding grimly. “They seem to have developed a persecution complex, at least that’s how it looks in the papers. But to be fair to them, they’ve been taking quite a beating. So the obvious question begging for an answer is how did a college student come up with the money to make those types of purchases? When I was in school all I could afford every night for dinner was hotdogs and beans or macaroni and cheese. I was lucky if I could scrape together enough money to buy a new pair of sneakers every year. And back then they didn’t cost the same as a stereo system.”

“Yeah, it sure points to drugs, doesn’t it? The one thing the police were willing to share with me was that they’d found nothing to indicate drugs were involved.”

“If not drugs…?” Eli let the question hang, then a spark flashed in his eyes as he looked at Shannon. “Something interesting that you said, and I quote: ‘seeing his murderer get caught’. Do you have any reason to think that only one person committed these murders or was this a subconscious conclusion that you made?”

Shannon thought about it, shook his head. “I have no way of knowing yet how many people were involved.”

“Then something from your subconscious made you say that.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. More likely it was only careless word usage on my part.”

Eli waggled a large sausage-sized finger at Shannon. “Bill, don’t ignore your intuition. And remember, there are no such things as accidents.” Flashing a sheepish grin, he pushed himself out of his chair and moved towards the restroom. “Which reminds me. I’d better return one of these chais before I prove myself wrong about accidents. The problem, my friend, with having a prostate that has swelled to the size of a watermelon. Same time tomorrow?”

“I’ll call you later. I’m thinking I might have to fly to Wichita to meet with the dead girl’s family.”

“Well, let me know.” Before closing the door behind him, Eli gave Shannon a stern look and added, “And keep working on those exercises.”

Shannon gave his friend a quick military-type salute, which was acknowledged by a deadpan stare, followed by a shake of Eli’s head.

***

It was ten past eight when Shannon left Juiced Up and started down Pearl Street. The street was quiet except for a couple of rollerbladers and some kids with backpacks. He thought briefly about going back to the condo complex and trying to talk with more neighbors, but at that time of morning people either would be rushing off to work or already gone. Realistically, he’d have to wait until evening. Out of ideas, he called Mark Daniels’ direct line at the Boulder precinct. Daniels answered after the third ring, his voice friendlier after he realized that Shannon was on the line.

“I’m glad you called,” Daniels said. “I was going to give you a ring, but I don’t know what time you private dicks get up and about. As an ex-cop, I should’ve figured you’d be working by now.” There was a hesitation, then he added, “After you came by yesterday, I spoke with some people in Massachusetts about you and they all told me the same thing. That you were a damn good cop. Also, you were never a glory hound and that you were in this for all the right reasons. I also spoke with our district attorney here, and have a better understanding of what I can talk to you about without jeopardizing a future prosecution. I might’ve been a tad too rigid before.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, just a bit.”

“Then how about letting me into that condo.”

“Ah, shit. I was afraid you’d ask about that. I still can’t. Sorry.”

“Crime scene photos then?”

There was a pause, then, “Let me talk it over with my captain. I’ll get back to you about it.”

“How about a couple of questions?”

“Go ahead, shoot.”

“Did Taylor have any life insurance?”

“None that we could find.”

The fact that Daniels answered him took Shannon by surprise. He thought he was simply getting a more polite runaround. Taking the call more seriously, he asked, “How about his mom? Did Eunice Carver have a life insurance policy on him?”

“No. Why this interest?”

“Her house is loaded with some big ticket items that she claims Taylor bought for her before his death. We’re talking thousands of dollars worth of purchases. Like a new large-screen plasma TV set. I’m trying to figure out where the money came from. Any idea if he had a job?”

“All he had was a small stipend from the university as a teacher’s assistant. Ah shit. I’ll dig deeper and see if I can find any policies.” Daniels voice became muffled as if he were rubbing a hand across his face. “Fuck. Every time we’ve talked to her it’s been at the station. I should’ve had someone check her house. It’s possible he got the money from Linda. Her family’s pretty well off. I’ll try to track that down.”

“Another question. According to the newspapers they were killed between eleven and two. Is that right or were you feeding the papers misinformation?”

“That’s what we got from the coroner.”

“An upstairs neighbor, Mike Maguire, told me he was working until three that morning. Any chance you verified that?”

“Why? Something not sound right about him?”

“No, nothing like that. But he did tell me there were some noise issues with him and the dead students. More than that, though, I just don’t like coincidences.”

“Give me a minute.” When Daniels picked up again there was a hint of vindication in his voice. “We checked out his story. The company Maguire works for has a security system where you have to use an encoded badge at the door to get in and out. The system records the times that the badges are used, and that day Maguire got there at nine eighteen in the morning and left at two fifty-six the next morning. We also talked to his supervisor. They had a big customer deal going on the next day so Maguire leaving that late made sense.”

“Thanks. That crosses him off. Do you know anything about a cult called the True Light?”

“Yeah, a little bit. They have a compound out in East Boulder by Baseline Reservoir. Been there a little over a year. Why? You think they’re involved in this?”

“Sorry, a completely different matter. I got a call from a Pauline Cousins. Her daughter joined True Light six months ago. She’s worried about her. True Light won’t let her see her daughter. She claims the Boulder police won’t help her either.”

Daniels’ sighed heavily, making no attempt to hide his annoyance. He told Shannon that he’d look into the matter and get back to him. Lowering his voice, he asked, “What’s your take on Carver’s family?”

“Very odd. Doesn’t seem like they much care if Taylor’s murderer ever gets caught. But they do seem concerned about making money off of it.”

“My thoughts also.” Daniels hesitated, asked, “Any plans on visiting Linda Gibson’s family?”

“Yeah, probably in the next few days.”

“After you do, lets touch base. I’m curious if you come up with the same gut feeling I did.”

“Want to give me any hints?”

“I’d better not,” Daniels said. “I don’t want to prejudice you. Let’s compare notes after you meet them, okay?”

Shannon told him he would. After slipping the cell phone back into his pocket, he noticed a young girl walking towards him. She was maybe eighteen, a little heavy, with long frizzy blond hair and numerous earrings and piercings. She wore an outfit that could’ve come from a movie made from the sixties complete with a flowered vest and a skirt reaching down past her ankles. While a lot of wealth had moved into Boulder over the past two decades, it was still a Mecca for transients and a right of passage for hippie-wannabes to hitchhike to and bum around.

She had a sly little smile on her face as she asked Shannon for money. “Mister, I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday,” she said with no attempt to hide her smirk.

Shannon told her to follow him.

“I’m not doing anything for the money,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to.”

There was a cafe half a block away that was open for breakfast. When they got to it, Shannon told her to order what she wanted.

“I’d rather have the money.”

“And I’d rather buy you food.”

She opened her mouth as if she were going to argue, shrugged, and instead asked if she could get something for her friends too. Shannon agreed, and she ordered several roast beef and ham and cheese sandwiches to go, along with a couple of large cokes, chips and cookies. When she got her package, she begrudgingly muttered thanks to Shannon before leaving.

The cashier, a nice-looking brunette in her thirties, shook her head as she handed Shannon the change. “She showed a lot of gratitude, huh?” she said.

“I was probably worse at her age.” Nodding to the cashier, he left the cafe and started walking idly down Pearl Street again, slowing down when he came across two men playing chess. One of them was sitting on a bench, the other on a folding chair, with a chess set on a folding table between them. The man on the bench was in his sixties, and looked like Paul Bunyan, except that his red hair had turned mostly gray. Even though it was midsummer, he wore dungarees, work boots and a heavy red flannel shirt. As he studied the game, he pushed an upper plate in and out of his mouth. The other player was young and probably a college kid. Along with needing a shave, his hair resembled the top of a string mop that had been dyed black and, like his clothes, looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. As he sat there, his eyes moved fervently as they scanned the board.

Standing nearby kibitzing on the game was what looked like another college student. A tall blond Germanic-looking kid with red cheeks, a smart-assed smile and a cheap stogie dangling from his lips polluting the air around him. “Idiot,” he exclaimed as the other kid reached for his bishop. “Don’t you see you can win a pawn?”

The younger player turned to him and pointed a finger. “Are you playing this game?” he asked. “No? Then shut the fuck up.” Under his breath, he added, “Moron.”

The color dropped from the tall blond kid’s face. Still smiling his smart-assed smile but with no humor left in his eyes, he tossed his cigar at the player.

“Sonofabitch,” the kid jumped up, knocking the cigar out of his lap. “You’re going to throw a lit cigar at me?” He was a good six inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter than the blond kid.

“You could’ve been more polite about my suggestion…” the blond kid started, but before he could say anything else he was hit hard with an uppercut that sent him on his ass.

“The sonofabitch threw a lit cigar at me,” the other kid repeated, his arms moving in wild gestures as he stormed away. The blond kid looked stunned as he sat on the ground. Then, rubbing his jaw, he flashed an embarrassed grin before getting back to his feet and walking gingerly in the opposite direction.

“I never knew chess was a contact sport,” Shannon said.

The Paul Bunyan look-alike had watched the event with an amused sparkle in his eyes. He slipped his upper plate back in place. “You live in Boulder long enough you’ll see everything.”

“I wonder if your opponent knew you had mate in four no matter what he did?”

The older man leaned back on the bench and appraised Shannon slowly. “Show me,” he said.

Shannon played out the moves, demonstrating how mate in four could be forced.

“You know your chess. The name’s Eddie, by the way. Why don’t you take a seat. Let’s see what you can do.”

Shannon sat down in the folding chair and introduced himself.

“Out to kill a few hours?” Eddie asked.

“More to clear my head.”

Eddie nodded. “You have the look of someone with a purpose. About my last opponent, he didn’t have a clue. I had him hook, line and sinker. Nothing but a fish waiting to be reeled in and gutted. A shame I didn’t get my chance to fillet him.”

The first dozen moves went quickly, then Eddie started taking more time to study the board before making his moves. When it was his turn he’d be locked in deep concentration, his face rigid except for his upper plate sliding in and out of his mouth. When it was Shannon’s turn, Eddie would engage him in conversation.

“How’d you lose those fingers?”

“They were broken off.”

“How was that done?”

“With a nutcracker.”

“That must’ve hurt.”

Shannon looked up, saw no sarcasm in Eddie’s heavily lined face. Other than trying to get an edge by distracting his opponent, he was doing nothing more than talking straightforwardly.

Shannon made his move, then dead silence for several more minutes until Eddie decided on his next course of action. Then:

“You been in Boulder long?”

“About five years.”

“Me, off and on since ’74. I left in ’97 after the student rioting. Ashamed after that to admit I was from Boulder. I only came back a few months ago. And I keep wondering why I did.”

“Students rioted here in ’97?”

“Yep, did their share of damage up on the Hill. And guess what their reason was? To protest racism? Inequality? Poverty? An unjust war? Nope. Nothing more than they wanted underage drinking. When I think back to the sixties and seventies and then what these students did it makes me sick.”

“A different world, different priorities,” Shannon offered philosophically.

“I guess. But ’74, that was when Boulder was Boulder. A different town than it is now. That was before all the Californians and money rolled in. Of course, you’ve always had your share of rich students, but nothing like today.”

“Must’ve been something.”

“It certainly was,” Eddie said, a wistfulness misting his eyes. “As close to heaven on earth as I’ve ever found. Money and urban sprawl changed all that. Maybe thirty thousand people back then in Boulder, outside of the students. If you drove to Denver you’d see nothing but open prairie. Three months ago when I took the bus back here all I could see were new developments. One right after the next. Broke my heart.”

Shannon made his move and sat in silence again while Eddie studied the position. After he made his next move he showed Shannon a toothless grin thanks to his upper plate slipping out of place. Using his thumb he pushed his plate back into position.

“You’d never believe this,” he said. “but Boulder used to be a dry town. That was back in the sixties. What makes that kind of ironic was how this town became a conduit for drugs in the seventies.”

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 few 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.”

Shannon breathed out slowly as he thought about it. “Fucking insidious,” he said.

“It is that. Also a bit ingenious. What better way to find college students who are the most emotionally vulnerable than to set up a business that they’ll seek out. And then you have hours to work on them while they’re putting themselves in your hands. Of course, the so-called yoga classes they’re giving are as fraudulent as a wooden nickel.”

“And how’s that?”

Eli made a face. “The woman I talked with told me what they had her do, and while I don’t know exactly what you’d call it, it’s not yoga. Sounded more like the positions are meant to wear you down more than anything else. So let me guess, after all my attempts over the last five years to convince you of its benefits, you’re finally going to sign up for yoga classes?”

“Well, I guess at least some fraudulent ones.”

***

The Hill section of Boulder was directly across the street from the university and its businesses catered almost exclusively to students. Cheap to moderately priced restaurants, tanning salons, music shops, clothing stores, stuff like that. Vishna Yoga had a basement location in the heart of the Hill-off of Thirteenth Street, sandwiched between a music store and a nightclub. A sushi bar sat directly above it.

The signs in front of the yoga studio were innocuous enough in the way they advertised new approaches to achieving well-being and stress relief. Several blown-up photos showed classes filled with young women, all seemingly in a state of bliss as they stretched in the same manner and direction.

Shannon walked down half a dozen steps, opened the front door and entered a small vestibule where he was assaulted by a pungent overly-sweet odor. The smell seemed like a mix of musk and marijuana. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was more powerful than any incense he had ever encountered and the air was thick with it.

From behind a set of curtains he heard people chanting in a low monotone. Something about Vishna being the one and true source. A woman stepped quickly through the curtains to meet Shannon. She was dark-haired, short, petite, in her early twenties and wearing yellow leotards. Her eyes were wide open and expressionless as she stared at Shannon in the same manner a morgue worker might look over an incoming body that needs to be catalogued. Then, nodding to herself as if she had finished sizing him up, she told him Vishna Yoga would not be for him.

“What?”

“What we do here would not be right for you. I am sorry, but it would be a waste of your money.”

“Why wouldn’t it be right for me?”

“Your energy is all wrong. Please leave.”

“Wait a minute.”

Shannon was taken aback by the woman’s reaction to him. To bide time, he picked up a brochure from the counter and started to thumb through it. Inside was a picture of their founder, Vishna the One True Source. He was a few years older than Shannon, maybe forty, with a shaved head, brownish skin and sharp features that were made even sharper by his piercing black eyes.

Shannon tried to act oblivious to the way the woman was staring at him and read aloud the marketing hype from the brochure. “Stress relief, improving my self-image, better sense of well-being.” Smiling, he added, “This sounds like what I’m looking for.”

“I am telling you this would be a waste of your money. There is nothing we can do for you.”

“It’s my money to waste.”

“No.”

Shannon gave her a hard look. “What if I stay to observe a class,” he said.

“Leave now or I will call the police.”

“I think I can stay for one class.”

“I said leave!”

An Asian woman, also very young, poked her head through the curtains and stared at Shannon with the same empty look in her eyes. With reinforcements now in place, the woman in the yellow leotard bent her knees, tensing, as if she were going to spring at him. A vein had started beating along her neck.

Shannon took a step back. “You know,” he said, “this isn’t doing much to help my stress. Or my well-being, for that matter.”

He got no reaction from either woman. Not even a crack of a smile. Backing up, he left the shop.

He tried the music store first. The kid working the cash register shrugged when Shannon asked him about the yoga studio. “I see some nice looking girls going in and out of there.” He scratched his chin, frowned. “I tried talking to a couple of them. Not the nicest experience.”

“How so?”

“They’re kind of spacey, you know, and not that friendly. One of them wouldn’t even look at me. Made me feel like an idiot. Another, it was like she looked through me instead of at me. I stopped bothering after that. But they are nice to look at.”

Shannon thanked him. As he got to the door the kid mentioned the smell from the yoga studio. “Sometimes it gets in here,” he said. “I think they’re smoking pot down there. Although it don’t smell quite like pot.”

Shannon got less information from the night club. At the sushi bar, the only thing the chef told him was that none of the yoga students ever eat at his restaurant.

“I wanted to put a flyer there offering their students a twenty-five percent discount, but they wouldn’t let me do it,” he complained. “Very unfriendly. Very un-Boulder like. Also smells bad.”

True Light’s compound turned out to be only a twelve minute drive from the yoga studio, but the building seemed as if it were in the middle of nowhere. Located off a new road near the southeastern part of Baseline Reservoir, there was nothing for miles around it. And even though Pauline Cousins had described the compound to him, Shannon still didn’t expect what he saw. The place did remind him of a prison. Not that the building didn’t look expensive, and not that it wasn’t loaded with cathedral ceilings, large bay windows and stone chimneys. Maybe it was the gray stone they used, or that it was so isolated, or the six-foot iron fence surrounding the property-with each iron post topped off with a dagger-like spike. Or maybe it was the way the building seemed to be comprised of several unrelated smaller structures, all jammed together making it less like a house than something industrialized. It made Shannon think of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of a gothic mansion gone horribly wrong.

After pulling up to the main gate, he got out and rang the intercom buzzer. A woman’s voice asked him who he was. Shannon identified himself and told her he was there to speak to one of their members, Melissa Cousins. The intercom went dead. After waiting several minutes, Shannon realized the woman had no intention of responding back. He rang the buzzer again.

Angrier than before, the woman told him that Melissa did not wish to speak to him and he should leave.

“I’d like to hear that from her.”

“Too bad because you won’t.”

Again the intercom went dead. Shannon pushed his thumb against the buzzer and held it there until two men with shaved heads came out of the building, both of them wearing white robes and sandals, their faces twisted into angry scowls.

“Stop ringing that buzzer!” one of the men yelled at Shannon.

He was the larger of the two, but other than that they were almost indistinguishable. Both had square-shaped heads, flat noses and small, almost baby-sized ears. As the larger man unlocked the gate, Shannon took a step back. He watched curiously as the two men stormed through it, scowls on both faces deepening.

“Are those silk robes or polyester?” Shannon asked. “My guess is polyester. Doesn’t seem to have the texture of real silk.”

The two men came towards him, stopping only when they were a foot away. Up close, they looked vaguely familiar but not as much alike as Shannon had first thought-it was more of an optical illusion caused by their shaved heads and identical outfits. Maybe they were enough alike to be brothers, but not identical clones. They were both young, probably in their early twenties. The larger man had beadier eyes, while his partner had a more angular face. Shannon realized why they had seemed familiar; the larger one resembled Curly Howard from the Three Stooges, while the other could’ve been a young Shemp with a shaved head.

He couldn’t help feeling angry as he thought of these two pushing Pauline Cousins to the ground. Swallowing it back, he said as flatly and evenly as he could that he was there only to make sure that Melissa Cousins was okay.

“Why don’t the two of you back away from me,” he added with a tight grin.

Lips separated from the Curly look-alike showing small white teeth about the size of corn kernels. He threw both hands outward trying to push Shannon in the chest. Shannon sidestepped it and grabbed Curly by his elbow as he stumbled forward off balance, then swung him head first into the fence. Curly’s forehead clanged off of it and he shot backwards as if he had come out of a cannon. As he lay unmoving on the ground, a gash showed over his right eye and blood from it trickled down and stained his robe.

“I hope you don’t try something stupid also,” Shannon told the other man. “Cause as you can see I’m not a ninety pound middle-aged woman. I’m a little tougher to push around.”

As the Shemp look-alike stared dumbfounded at Shannon, his face screwed into a look of fury. He screamed like a banshee and charged forward, throwing a wild uppercut. Shannon blocked it and, in almost the same motion, grabbed him above his wrist and swung him backwards. The man kept screaming until he tripped over his partner and hit the back of his head against an iron post, making the same clanging noise that Curly’s head had made. Then, his eyes rolling inward, he slumped forward and lay crisscrossed on top of his partner. Shannon checked to make sure they were both breathing, then walked through the unlocked gate to the front door.

Like the gate, the door had been left unlocked. Shannon opened it and stepped down into a marble foyer that had been set up as an altar. Facing him was a life-sized painting of the cult leader, Vishna. In it he wore a long, flowing golden robe as he sat cross-legged, thumbs and forefingers touching, hands resting on his knees, his black eyes just as piercing as they were in the brochure photograph. On both sides of the painting were ornamental tables where candles and incense burned, the odor similar but not exactly the same as the one in the yoga studio. What looked like small offerings-flowers, jewelry, silk scarves-lay scattered on the floor in front of the painting.

As Shannon took all this in, a woman with long black hair reaching to the middle of her back entered the foyer. She was wearing the same type of white robe as the two men who had attacked him. Like Melissa and the women from the yoga studio, she was young, petite and very pretty. Also like the women from the yoga studio, her eyes had an expressionless, almost glazed look to them. Still, seeing Shannon standing there, her jaw dropped, although no sign of her bewilderment showed in her eyes.

“What-who are you?” she asked, stammering slightly.

Shannon recognized her voice from the intercom. “The two thugs you sent after me are lying outside your gate. They probably need medical attention.”

She walked past Shannon and looked out the front door. When she turned to face him again, her eyes were wider but still had the same expressionless, glazed quality to them.

“They attacked me,” Shannon told her. “I could file assault charges against both of them, and maybe you also as an accessory. But I won’t. Not if you let me see Melissa Cousins.”

“T-That’s not a decision I can make.”

“Then talk to someone who can.”

She stared blankly at Shannon for a good minute before blinking and nodding her head.

“I’ll take you to a waiting area,” she said

She led Shannon down a hallway decorated with paintings of different Hindu deities. Shannon recognized Shiva holding his trident, the four heads of Brahma, and many of the others from a book Eli had given him on Hinduism. At the end of the hallway was a marble sculpture of the cult leader. From somewhere beyond that, Shannon heard what sounded like sitar music and monotonic chanting.

The woman put her hand out to stop him. “Wait here,” she ordered as she opened a door off the hallway. Shannon obliged and, as he walked into the room and the door closed behind him, saw that there was no doorknob on his side of it. The click of a lock being turned came from the other side. Not that it mattered-without a handle he had no way of opening that door whether it was locked or not.

The door was solid oak. No chance of breaking it down with his shoulder. Maybe he could kick it down, but not without at least splintering his shin. He was in what amounted to an eight foot by eight foot cell with no furniture, nothing but a small half-moon shaped window on one wall and it wasn’t nearly large enough for him to crawl through if he had to. He walked over to the window and tapped on it. It made the dull sound of Plexiglas. For the hell of it he smacked the glass hard with the edge of his hand. While it gave a little, it didn’t break.

Shannon sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. Taking out his phone, he prayed that the cult hadn’t thought enough ahead to have the room insulated with copper. A gnawing in his stomach grew until he saw that he had a signal to call out on. Feeling some relief, he tried Eli’s number at the Center and left a message, asking that his friend call him back as soon as he could. After ten minutes of waiting he considered whether or not to call Mark Daniels. A half hour later his internal debate had grown more serious and as he was making up his mind to try Daniels, his phone rang. It was Eunice Carver asking whether they were going to pay her.

“Excuse me?”

“People magazine. Are they going to pay me for my story?”

It took him a few seconds to remember what she was talking about, “I don’t know yet. I have a call in and I’ll get back to you when I hear from them.”

Within seconds of hanging up on her, his phone rang again. This time is was Eli.

“What’s so urgent?”

“Not much,” Shannon said. “Only that I’m sitting in a cell inside of True Light’s compound.”

“What do you mean a cell?”

“Just what I said. I’m alone in a room about the size of a prison cell. Door’s locked on the other side and the window’s too small even for Houdini to crawl out of. But that’s moot since it’s covered by Plexiglas.”

“Jesus, is there any way for you to get out of there?”

“Not that I can see.”

“I’m calling the police!”

“No, not yet. But do me a favor. Call me back in fifteen minutes. If I don’t answer send the police here.”

“Bill, I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I. Next thing I know they’ll be pumping poison gas into this room.”

“Shit, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m a little scared myself. This place is a fucking freak show. You hit it on the head the other day when you talked about cults in Boulder. The guy who runs this one is a pure megalomaniac. You walk into the compound and the first thing you see is an altar to him. Then the hallway leading from the altar is lined with paintings of Hindu gods, and of course, residing alone at the end is a marble sculpture of this megalomaniac. The one god I saw missing from the hallway was Vishnu.”

“Jesus, the reason for that is because he’s replacing himself as the supreme being. Sonofabitch. It’s no accident he named himself Vishna.”

“My thoughts exactly. By the way, I stopped off at their yoga studio before coming here. Not only wouldn’t they let me sign up for classes, but the girl working there-all five foot and one hundred pounds of her-looked like she was going to try to physically throw me out.”

“That is interesting.”

“I guess I didn’t fit the profile of what they’re looking for.”

“Or the girl could’ve had very good radar and picked up that you were a cop, or at least used to be a cop.” Eli hesitated, added, “Bill, you’ve got me worried. Why not call the police now?”

“I could, but I came here to talk to my client’s daughter. I still want to give that a shot.”

“Bill, if your life is in danger-”

“I don’t want to be too melodramatic about this. I don’t think I can make a claim at this point for false imprisonment since I was asked to wait. And to their credit, they did provide me nice plush carpeting to sit on. Let’s just give it another fifteen minutes. See what happens.”

A loud, unhappy sigh came from Eli’s end. “Alright,” he grumbled. “I’ll wait fifteen more minutes, but if you’re still locked in there I’m calling the police no matter what you say.”

“Deal.”

After talking with Eli, Shannon sat quietly and took deep breaths as he tried to calm the tension squeezing his gut. He had two reasons for calling Eli. First, he really was unnerved about being locked away in the room, which he assumed was the point of them doing it, and second, in case the room was bugged and he was being eavesdropped on, he wanted them to know he couldn’t be fucked with. Or at least make them think he couldn’t be fucked with.

Nine minutes after Eli had called back and almost an hour after being locked up, the door opened and two men walked in. These two were a different breed than the robe-wearing stooges he had encountered earlier. One was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, the other had on slacks and a light sports jacket. There was a hardness about both men. The one in the sports jacket was in his forties and looked solid, as if he were a weightlifter, his hair cut close to his scalp and scars running down both cheeks. His nose had been flattened a number of times and was now smeared sideways across his face. He smirked at Shannon, his small gray eyes as dull as sand. When he undid the buttons to his sports jacket, he unveiled both a Tony Bahama Hawaiian shirt underneath it and the handle of an automatic that stuck out from his waistband. From the shape of it, Shannon guessed it was a. 45 caliber.

His companion was younger, maybe early thirties. He was also taller and lankier, and had the wiry look of someone you didn’t want to mess with. He started laughing an ugly laugh as he pointed towards Shannon’s damaged hand.

“He must be nervous,” he said, wheezing from his laughter as he elbowed his associate. “Look, he chewed his fingernails to bone.”

“Is that right,” the other man asked Shannon. “You nervous?”

“Nervous as all hell,” Shannon said.

Both men had Russian accents. The one in the sports jacket seemed to be in charge. His accent was thicker, coarser, and his voice came out as a deep rumble. He continued to smirk at Shannon, his eyes lifeless.

“Maybe you should not come here to stick your nose where it don’t belong,” he said.

“Maybe, but I think my mistake was walking into a room without checking it out first.”

“Pretty stupid,” the man agreed.

The younger Russian laughed his ugly laugh again. It was muted, but still sounded like something you’d hear in an insane asylum.

“Why don’t you stand up,” the older Russian said.

“I like it down here.”

“Stand up anyway.” He took the automatic from his waistband. As Shannon had guessed it was a. 45 caliber Smith amp; Wesson.

“Nice gun,” Shannon remarked.

The Russian waved the automatic casually at Shannon’s head. “I ask you politely stand up.”

“This is nice carpeting,” Shannon said. “Probably expensive. It would be a shame to ruin it.”

“Carpet can be replaced.”

Shannon started to stand up. Before he got to his feet, the older Russian stepped forward and threw a hard jab. Shannon saw the punch coming but wasn’t able to react fast enough to roll with it and it caught him flush in the eye. He felt like he’d been hit with a chunk of concrete and the punch knocked him against the wall.

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” Shannon said, his hand up against his eye.

“We not nice men,” the younger Russian said, smiling broadly and showing off yellowed, crooked teeth.

“My friend is right,” the other one said. “We are not nice men. But neither are you. It was not nice to come here and make trouble. Beating up devout followers of Vishna. These are holy men here.”

Shannon didn’t bother to respond. The area under his eye had already started to swell. He stood in a half crouch as he held a hand over his eye and tried to decide whether he had a chance of wrestling the gun out of the Russian’s hand.

The older Russian held his free hand out and snapped his fingers sharply. “Your wallet,” he ordered.

Shannon shook his head.

He trained his gun on Shannon’s chest and slid the safety off with his thumb. “You do not give me your wallet then this is the way it will happen,” he said, his voice calm, methodical. “You come uninvited here, and when asked to leave you beat up people. Then you charge inside and jump on poor innocent girl.” He turned to his partner. “You know her name?”

The younger Russian made a show of thinking about this while he tapped his skull. “Blonde girl, right? Meliza Coozan, I think.”

“That’s right.” The older Russian clapped his partner on the back. Smiling grimly at Shannon, he said, “Meliza Coozan. Unfortunately you beat poor girl to death. I shoot you, but too late.”

“That’s insane,” Shannon said. “No one would believe that.”

“Why not? Thirty witnesses, more even, will claim that is what happened.”

Something flickered in the Russian’s eyes. While Shannon wasn’t sure whether he would shoot him, he had no doubt that this man was a stone-cold killer. He handed him his wallet.

“William Shannon,” the man read slowly from his license. “It is nice to know where you live, William Shannon.”

“If you ever come anywhere near my home -”

“What?” He laughed as his partner grinned wickedly. He slipped Shannon’s wallet into his pocket. “What would you do?”

Shannon’s cell phone rang. “This is a friend of mine,” he said, holding up the phone. “He knows I’m here, and if I don’t answer he’ll be calling the police.”

The grin disappeared from the Russian’s face. He trained his gun again on Shannon. “Answer it. And don’t be stupid.”

Shannon told Eli to call him back in five minutes and hung up before his friend could ask any questions.

The Russian waved his gun at Shannon. “Get moving,” he ordered.

The two men escorted Shannon out of the room and back into the hallway lined with Hindu gods. The place was quiet-no sitar music or chanting coming from within the compound. As they walked to the marble foyer, there were no signs of any of the cult members. From behind, the Russian poked Shannon in the back a couple of times with his gun, his associate chuckling softly with each poke.

“See what happens when you stick your nose into other people’s business,” he said. “No good comes of it. Vishna is a great, great man. People here because they want to be here. So why you have to come and bother them?”

“Not a bad question,” Shannon said. “A better question is why are a couple of Russian mobsters involved with some half-assed cult?”

The gun was poked hard into the base of his spine, making him stumble.

“That is not smart thing to ask,” the older Russian said. His associate laughed his soft wheezing ugly laugh.

When they got to the foyer, the Russians followed Shannon outside. The older one slipped his gun back into his waistband and buttoned up his sports jacket. The younger Russian unlocked the gate and turned to Shannon with his hand held out.

“No hard feelings,” he said, a big smart-alecky grin etched on his face. Shannon could see in his eyes what he was intending. He took the hand that was being offered, and when the Russian jerked him forward and sent his knee heading towards Shannon’s groin, he stepped aside and swung his right leg around and behind the Russian, sweeping his one supporting leg out from under him and sending him hard on his tailbone. The Russian let out a loud “oomph” as he hit the pavement. Shannon, still locked in a handshake, was dragged down with him, landing with his knee on the man’s chest. Any sign of the Russian’s smart-alecky grin was gone. Using his free hand, Shannon threw quick rabbit punches to the Russian’s nose until the man let go of the handshake.

Shannon heard scuttling noises from behind and was halfway to his feet when he took a hard shot to the side of his face. The punch knocked him to the pavement, and he took skin off his damaged hand using it to break his fall. He scrambled backwards, turned and saw the Russian approaching, his shoulders squared away and fists and feet positioned in a manner that showed he had boxed at a professional level. He shuffled forward quickly, throwing a combination, the first punch exploding as it hit Shannon in the chest, the second glancing off his skull.

Shannon was knocked to his knees. The Russian stepped forward again, a thin smile playing on his lips, his eyes completely dead. He threw a straight right hand at Shannon’s jaw, but this time Shannon blocked it with his left and at the same instance drove his right fist into the man’s groin. He could hear the explosion of breath coming out of the Russian as he doubled over in pain. Without giving him a chance to recover, Shannon grabbed him by his ears and slammed his face into the pavement. As the man lay still on the ground, he retrieved his wallet, then kept searching until he found the Russian’s. The driver’s license identified the man as Dan Smith and listed a Los Angeles address. Shannon handled the license by its edges and tossed the wallet on the ground. He stood up slowly, his body stiff, his head and chest aching. He felt like he’d been worked over with a baseball bat.

He turned towards the gate, a sharp pain sucking his breath away. The younger Russian had pushed himself up into a sitting position. Blood streamed from his nose and, like his associate, it was now pushed more to one side. He looked woozy but as he stared at Shannon, his eyes shrunk to small black dots. Slipping a switchblade from his pocket, he opened it and started to get to his feet, swaying as if he were on a ship in bad weather.

A string of Russian words were barked out from behind. Shannon turned. The other Russian had gotten onto his elbow while still clutching his groin. His face was a bloody mess, his nose looking like hamburger meat. With his voice breaking into a hoarse whisper, he barked out more commands to the younger Russian, who Shannon guessed was named Dimi since that word was used more than any other and with urgency. The younger man stared sullenly into space as he closed his switchblade with his thumb and slipped the knife back into his pocket.

“You were lucky today,” the older Russian yelled at Shannon in the same hoarse whisper. “You come here again, you won’t be so lucky. Trust me. Maybe you lose more fingers. Maybe you lose more than that.”

Shannon ignored him and continued through the gate to his car. When he got there, he went through his trunk and found a plastic bag to put the license in, then got himself seated behind the wheel. He watched while the younger Russian helped his partner to his feet and the two men hobbled back into the compound.

His phone rang. It was Eli asking what the hell was going on.

“All over now but the crying.” Shannon winced as he touched his eye and as his fingers traveled down to the area above his jaw where he’d been hit. He resisted the temptation to look at himself in the rearview mirror. “I’m in my car now. And mostly in one piece.”

“What do you mean mostly in one piece?”

“They sent a couple of goons to put the fear of God in me.” Shannon opened his mouth wide and moved his jaw from side to side, making sure it was still hinged properly and nothing broken. “As we were saying our goodbyes, they tried giving me a beating as a warning. It didn’t quite work as they’d planned.”

“Jesus, Bill, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Mostly. A little bruised and banged up, maybe some cracked ribs but nothing broken that I know of. Are you at the Center?”

“Damn it, Bill-”

“Sorry, Eli, but I’m rushed for time right now. I’ll tell you more about what happened when I see you. No more than an hour.”

After hanging up, Shannon called the Boulderado Hotel. There was a cancellation and the reservation clerk could let him have one of their suites until next Thursday, but that was all she had. When she told Shannon the price, he winced a bit harder than when he’d touched his bruised eye and jaw, but told her he’d take it. Then he put the car in drive and headed back towards downtown Boulder. On the way he called Susan.

“What’s wrong, Hon?” she asked, her voice uneasy, sensing something was not quite right with him.

“Probably nothing,” he said. “I booked us a suite at the Boulderado for a few days. I’ll explain more when I see you, but for now pack what you need and go to Emily’s. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes and tell you more then.”

“Hon, you have to tell me what’s going on.”

“I will when I see you.”

“I’ll wait here for you,” she said, an iciness edging into her voice. “We’ll discuss then whether we’re going anywhere.”

“Susie, you have to pack and leave now. Please, do as I say and let me explain when I pick you up.”

“You’re making me nervous,” she said.

“There’s no reason for you to be nervous. Everything will be fine, but we need to leave the apartment for a few days. Trust me on this, please, Darling?”

There was a long silence where Shannon imagined Susan holding her breath, her face white with worry, her brow one big wrinkle, her beautiful brown eyes welling up with tears. He felt lower than he had felt in years, hating himself for exposing her to more danger, something he swore he would never do after they’d survived Charlie Winters. He wanted to drive back to that cult and find a way to put the fear of God in those two Russians, make sure they knew what would happen if they ever came to his apartment and bothered Susan or him. But those two were beyond fear. They’d just take it as a challenge, if they weren’t already planning on it.

Finally Susan told him she would wait for him at Emily’s. Her voice sounded so fragile it brought a lump to his throat. For the next few minutes he drove with his lips pressed hard enough together to make his jaw ache even more than it should given the punch he had taken. When he trusted himself to talk in a calm and rational tone, he called Daniels and asked if he could check on Melissa Cousins at the True Light compound.

“Now why would I want to do that?” Daniels asked somewhat drily.

“The place is bad news.”

“Nothing I can do about that.”

“Maybe not, but I have a gut feeling something happened to her. That that’s why I’m getting so much resistance.”

“You’re getting resistance, huh?”

Shannon hesitated and Daniels let out a loud, annoyed sigh. “Can you give me anything concrete?” he asked. “I need some reason for showing up there.”

Shannon told him how he had gotten locked up inside True Light’s compound when he tried to see her. “Some professional muscle came an hour later and threatened to kill Melissa and frame me for her murder if I didn’t leave,” he added.

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope.”

“How about coming in and giving a statement?”

“Wouldn’t do any good. They’ll manufacture dozens of witnesses with an alternative story.”

“Which would be?”

After clearing his throat, Shannon said, “That I assaulted a couple of them.”

“Any truth to that?”

“Anything I did was in self-defense.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

Shannon told him about the two robed stooges.

“Fuck. So you went there and beat up two of their members. Goddamit, Shannon, you were supposed to be a smart guy.”

“They swung at me first. I just reacted.”

“By bouncing their heads off an iron gate?” Daniels asked, exasperated. “I’ll check things out alright. See if I need to bring you in on assault and battery charges.”

Shannon ignored the latter part of his statement. “Just check that she’s okay. I’ve got a picture of Melissa I can give you if you need one,” he said.

“Don’t need it, her mother faxed one over months ago and it’s still in her file.”

“Can you call me after you check on her?”

“You bet I’ll call you,” Daniels said somewhat disgustedly. “Especially since I’ll be bringing you in in handcuffs afterwards if they file charges against you.”

“I’ll give you odds they don’t.”

Daniels only grunted and hung up without giving any indication whether he cared to take that bet.

When Shannon arrived at his apartment, he found that Susan had already left for Emily’s which he was grateful for-especially after he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror. The area under his eye was puffed out and already a dark bluish-purple, and his cheek and upper jaw were badly swollen and discolored. He looked almost like he was wearing a mask on half his face. The older Russian must’ve wore a ring because he had left him cut up pretty good where he’d been hit. There were other cuts along his face which he couldn’t account for. He cleaned up as well as he could, gritting his teeth when he applied antiseptic, and using bandages where he could. Still, it didn’t help much. He looked even worse than he felt, and he felt like crap.

After finishing with his face he worked on his hand, cleaning out the long stretch of raw flesh where his skin had been scraped off, then wrapping a bandage around it. He noted with grim humor how the bandage obscured the fact that he was missing two fingers. When he was done, he slowly removed his shirt, which was torn and had been left with an interesting pattern of blood splattered across it-something that would’ve made many a modern artist proud. Squinting, he could make out a grinning demonic face in the pattern, complete with two reddish streaks that served as horns. Most of the blood had come from the younger Russian, but he was sure some of it was his own. A bruise the size of a large grapefruit showed on his chest. He methodically tested the area, pushing his fingers against each rib. It was painful, but not enough to make him think any of them were cracked or broken. Most likely just bruised. After slowly chewing several aspirin, he held onto the rest of the bottle.

When he was done he put on a clean shirt; also changed his pants which had gotten a fair amount of blood smeared on them. Then, taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the butterflies fluttering around his stomach, he set off down the hallway to Emily Janney’s apartment, Susan’s best friend in Boulder. When Susan saw him and her face started to crumble, Shannon felt his heart turn to sludge.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he told her, his voice sounding to him as if it were echoing from within a chamber. “I’m really okay.”

She shook her head hastily, fighting to hold back the tears. “I thought when we left Massachusetts we were all done with this. I didn’t think I’d ever have to see you like this again.”

Off in the background Emily scowled angrily at him. He turned his focus back to Susan.

“Darling, I promise you this is nothing. In a few days it will all be forgotten.”

“I don’t think I’ll be forgetting you looking like this anytime soon,” she said. “And we have to leave our apartment!”

“Just for a few days.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Later, when we get in the car.”

“No. You tell me here and now!”

One look at her and he knew there was no sense arguing. Emily stood behind her with her square jaw jutted out as she shot daggers his way. As much as Shannon loved Susan, he knew Emily was a close second. Fiercely protective, he had no doubt she’d throw her body into a line of bullets to protect Susan, and he knew right now she wanted to kick his butt for upsetting his ex-wife.

He told them everything: about Pauline Cousins, her daughter, the Vishna Yoga Studio, the True Light cult, the Russians.

“Oh my God,” Susan said, her eyes beseeching Shannon’s. “They know where we live? How could you do this to us?”

“They probably don’t even remember the address,” Shannon mumbled, barely able to meet her eyes. “Anyway, this will all blow over in a few days.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“It will. Please, Darling, trust me. All they wanted to do was scare the hell out of me. Make me decide it isn’t worth my time looking for Melissa.”

“But you’re not going to stop.”

Shannon swallowed, shook his head. “How can I?” he asked, lowering his gaze. Then looking up until his eyes met hers, he asked, “You wouldn’t want me to stop, would you?”

She stood motionless for a long moment before shaking her head. Then she bit her lip as she gave him a brave smile. “We’ll have fun spending a few nights at the Boulderado,” she said. “And if we have to, we’ll find a new apartment. Or leave Boulder.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he insisted with as much bravado as he could muster. But the thought was still out there-if these Russians were willing to beat him up as a first warning, what would they be willing to do for a second? Susan turned to Emily and the two women hugged, with Emily briskly rubbing Susan’s back. “You take care of my girl,” she warned Shannon. He nodded that he would, then got Susan’s bags, and brought them down to his car. When he went back for her bike, Emily sidled up next to him.

“You know who you look like now?” she asked. “Mickey Rourke from ‘Sin City’.”

“Thanks.”

She walked behind him, adding, “Don’t worry about nothing. I’ll keep an eye on your place.”

“If you hear anything, call the police. Call me also. But don’t get involved.”

“Maybe, or maybe I’ll go in and knock some sense into them myself.”

He stopped and gave her a hard look until she agreed to simply call him and the police. She was a character, from Oklahoma originally, and as tough as she talked, all five foot six and a hundred and thirty-five pounds of her, Shannon would probably choose taking on one of the Russians again than a fired up Emily. He lifted the bike to his shoulder and started down the steps. Emily followed, telling him how she passed by the Vishna Yoga Studio every day when she went to work and had at one time thought of signing up for classes. The last part came out more as a question. He turned to her, gave her a wary eye. “Don’t,” he said.

When he joined Susan in the car, she gave him a pensive smile. “You think something happened to that girl?”

He nodded. “I think so. Otherwise they would’ve let me talk to her instead of going through all the trouble they did.”

They drove in silence after that. When they got to the Boulderado Hotel’s parking lot, Susan took hold of his bandaged hand and brought it to her lips. He looked over, felt a hollowness deep inside as he caught her somewhere between smiling and sobbing. Tears started to run down both her cheeks and he wiped them away with his thumb.

“Look at us,” she said, sniffing, trying to hold back more tears. “We’re both a couple of messes. Do you think they’ll let us check in?”

“Darling, the way you look right now there’s not a person alive who could turn you down for anything.”

She put both hands behind his head and brought him to her, kissing him hard. When he winced, she pulled back, alarm in her eyes. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said. “I hurt you!”

“I’m just a little banged up, that’s all.” He took hold of her chin with his thumb and forefinger and kissed her gently, tasting the saltiness of the tears that had made their way to her lips. The last thing he wanted to do was pull away, but after a minute or so he forced himself to. “I guess we should check in,” he said.

“I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time earlier,” she said.

“What? You had every right-”

She put a finger against his lips, cutting him off. “No I didn’t,” she said. “I blamed you for this. Which is crazy because if you were the type of person who’d be willing to abandon that poor woman and her daughter, I probably wouldn’t love you as deeply as I do. I guess after what happened with Charlie Winters, and our time here in Boulder being as peaceful as it’s been, this hit me pretty hard.” She paused, her voice softer as she added, “Memories from that day started flooding back.”

Shannon removed her finger from his lips and kissed her long and hard, ignoring the throbbing that radiated from his jaw and cheek. “Darling, we’ll get back to what we had, and I swear I’m not letting any of this stuff get close to you.”

“I know you won’t. I also know if you could handle Winters, these Russians will be a piece of cake.”

Shannon nodded, but in his gut he knew she was wrong. Winters had been insane, a murderous madman, but these two Russians were detached cold-blooded killers. Shannon knew that the moment he saw them. As cunning as Winters was, he was driven by bloodlust and made mistakes because of it. These two Russians were no less ruthless but were driven solely by expediency and need, which made them far more dangerous.

Forcing a laugh, he mentioned how pissed off Emily had looked. “For a minute I thought she was going to mop the floor with me,” he added.

Susan joined in with a sad laugh. “For a minute, I thought so too,” she said.

When they checked in, the desk clerk appeared flustered as he glanced uneasily at Shannon, but in the end took his credit card and gave them the keys for their suite. After their divorce Susan had gone back to using her maiden name, Kerry, and they used that when registering in case anyone tried calling hotels looking for Shannon. The clerk took Susan’s bike and stored it in a back room for her.

The Boulderado, a Victorian-style turn-of-the-century hotel that in the eighties had been restored to its full grandeur, anchored the downtown mall area. They’d eaten at the hotel’s restaurant a few times on special occasions and Susan would always comment then about how fun it would be to stay there for a night or two. As she stood in the lobby taking in the spectacular stained glass ceiling and the Victorian-style furnishings, her mood brightened. By the time they got to their suite, she was almost her old self again, lively, excited, like a kid in a candy store as she took inventory of the antique cast iron bed, the Victorian furniture, the white lace bedspread and the old Western-style paintings of open prairies. She stopped briefly to run her fingers along the surface of an antique walnut table that had an inlaid chess board carved into it. As Shannon watched her he breathed easier, grateful for her change of mood.

She ended up by the window where she stared out at a view of the Flatirons which was even more spectacular than the one Paul Devens had from his office. “This is going to be nice,” she remarked. Shannon joined her, putting an arm lightly around her back. She leaned closer to him and rested her head against his shoulder. They stood still like that for several minutes, doing nothing more than feeling the contact of each other’s bodies while soaking in the mountain view. Sighing, Susan broke the spell, asking Shannon what his plans were.

“I promised Eli I’d stop off at the Center and prove to him I’m still alive and in one piece. I’ve got a few other loose ends I need to tie up, but I should be back in an hour. How about going out for a nice dinner then?”

Susan nodded, showed Shannon a guilty smile. “I’m meeting a patient at eight. I told her she could come to the hotel. I hope that’s okay? We should be finished by ten.”

Shannon waved it away. “Of course. Anyway, I should go back to that condo complex and talk to more of the neighbors. We’ll have dinner, go our separate ways for a few hours, then meet back here at ten.” He hesitated, then added, “I had plans to fly out to Wichita tomorrow, but I can reschedule that for another day if you want.”

“Aren’t people expecting you?”

“They don’t even know I’m coming. Ah, if I were still giving my lessons in being a private eye I believe this would be number seven: don’t give suspects a chance to coordinate their answers.”

“They’re suspects?”

Shannon arched an eyebrow as he looked at her. “Everyone’s a suspect, my dear.”

“Well, what if they’re not home tomorrow!”

“Then it will be an uneventful trip. But I’ll get a chance to see downtown Wichita.”

Susan frowned at that. “Private eye lessons or not, I think its foolish flying there without calling that family first. Don’t cancel your flight for me, though. I have appointments scattered throughout the day. In between I’ll do some shopping and spend enough of our money to make you think twice about tangling with Russian mobsters in the future. Just try to be back by tomorrow night?”

“I’ll make sure of it. Tomorrow evening we’ll be watching the sunset together from this window. And I’ve got news for you, I think I’ve had my fill of Russian mobsters.”

They kissed, her hands wrapped lightly around his neck, his lingering on her small hips. On his way out, a collection of what looked like first edition Zane Grey westerns caught his eye. He opened one of them, told Susan that it had been published in 1908. “They must’ve bought all these new when they came out. Damn.” He opened more books and saw publishing dates of 1910, 1914, 1915. “Before we check out, I’m spending a whole day in this room,” he told Susan. “And I’m spending part of it reading these books!”

She laughed, told him he had a date.

***

He called Pauline Cousins from his car and told her that the cult had refused to let him talk to her daughter but that the Boulder Police were going to check on her and make sure she was okay.

“I’ll call you after I hear from them,” he said. “And I want you to know I’m not giving up on this.”

“Should we meet? I’d like to pay you a retainer.”

“That’s not necessary, but I’ll talk to you soon.”

At the Boulder Mind Body Center, some of the people he passed in the hallway stopped to ask whether he’d been in an accident, others averted his eye. When Eli saw him, he stared deadpan for a long ten-count, then shook his head sadly.

“I sweated off ten pounds while you were locked in that compound,” he complained.

“You’ve been telling me for months how you need to drop some weight. Just thought I’d help out.” Shannon lowered himself into a chair and swung his feet onto Eli’s desk. He froze for a moment, feeling as if someone had gripped his lungs and squeezed the air out of them. When he could breathe again, he took the bottle of aspirin from his pocket and popped several tablets into his mouth.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just some muscles tightening up. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Yeah, well, I am.”

Eli gave him a cautious look, then asked if Shannon was going to tell him what happened, a mix of worry and impatience edging into his voice. Shannon leaned back in his chair and told him all of it. As Eli listened his long face grew somber.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Shannon asked. “Dimi, is that a Russian name?”

Eli nodded briefly. “Short for Dmitry.” He nodded again, this time slower and to himself. “You’ve had a lot of violence in your life,” he said after a while.

“I guess you could say that, but I couldn’t help what happened all those years ago with Winters.”

“No, you couldn’t. But you knew when you rang that buzzer what was going to happen. You knew those two cult members were going to come out and try to push you around. Do you think at some level your motivation was to pay them back for what they did to your client?”

“I don’t think so. You’re right, I did know what was going to happen, but I was thinking more that I’d be able to use it as leverage to see Melissa. After all, they did assault me first.”

“Very Machiavellian of you.” Eli smiled thinly. “And when you let yourself get locked into that room…”

“I didn’t let myself get locked into any room-”

Shannon’s cell phone rang, interrupting him. According to the Caller ID it was Mark Daniels. Eli’s smile turned peevish, but he indicated he wouldn’t be overly offended if Shannon took the call. He then picked up a book and peered at it with heavy eyelids.

When Shannon answered the phone, Daniels broke in, stating in a defensive tone that he had talked to Melissa Cousins over an intercom. “She claims she’s there because she wants to be. She also wants you and her mother to leave her alone,” he added brusquely.

“You didn’t see her?”

“They preferred that I didn’t enter their premises.”

“They could’ve had any woman there pretend to be Melissa. Or even some high-pitched guy.”

“Look, I had no legitimate cause to enter their compound, and after the way you botched things up I couldn’t get a warrant now to save my life.”

Shannon didn’t believe that was true. When he was on the force, he would’ve had more than enough to get a warrant. He decided not to push it and instead asked if they wanted to file charges against him.

“No. They didn’t mention you. I also checked the local hospitals. No head injuries or concussion cases brought in today. They’re trying hard to keep a low profile.”

“So that’s it.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Daniels sounded exasperated. “I feel the same as you. Something about that place stinks, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Except keep my eyes open.”

“There is something else you could do. True Light operates Vishna Yoga Studio up on the Hill, directly on Thirteenth Street. They use it for recruiting new members. The place smells like they’re smoking pot in there.”

“If they’re distributing it…” He let the sentence die, then grumbled that he’d check into it. “That would be enough to get a warrant,” he admitted.

Shannon showed a grim look as he hung up the phone. Eli tossed his book back on the desk and commented how it sounded as if the police didn’t have any better luck.

“No, they didn’t.”

“It doesn’t sound good.”

“It doesn’t,” Shannon agreed.

“You think something happened to this girl?”

“I think so.”

“But she could be fine,” Eli said. “It could just be the cult leader’s megalomania shining through. Refusing to let anyone enter his sacred ground or talk to one of the flock. Playing God and all that.”

“Anything’s possible.”

Eli gave Shannon a long, pained look. “Jesus, talking to you now is worse than pulling teeth,” he said. “Still, I’d like to ask you to think about why you let yourself get locked in that room.”

“It’s just something that happened.”

“Nothing just happens. As what has long become a mantra of mine, at least when arguing with you, there’s no such thing as an accident.”

Shannon shrugged. “Maybe I thought they might lock me in, but the worst I was expecting was for them to call the police which would’ve given me a chance to get things hashed out with Melissa. I don’t believe at any level, subconscious or otherwise, that I expected muscle to be brought in.”

“But you knew the place wasn’t kosher.”

Shannon nodded weakly. “That’s a long stretch from expecting a couple of Russian mobsters to walk into that room.”

Eli shrugged and admitted that was true. “Still, it raises an interesting question. Why are a couple of Russian gunsels involved with a cult?”

“Gunsels,” Shannon said, repeating the word slowly. “That’s an interesting word choice for you.”

“Hey, I read the classics. Hammett, Spillane, Chandler. So how about it-why are a couple of gunsels hooked up with a cult?”

Shannon shook his head, frowning. “That’s what I have to find out.”

After leaving the Center, Shannon went back to his apartment where he tried without any luck to get fingerprints from the Russian’s driver’s license, then checked his email and found another note from Professor White. This time White tried to clarify his previous email, stating that he at no time suspected Taylor Carver was in imminent danger or at any risk of being harmed, simply that he thought his ex-student was an extraordinarily callous individual who, borrowing from the Dylan song All Along the Watchtower, acted as if life were but a joke. He apologized for not being able to give Shannon names of other students to talk to, but as far as he could tell Carver was a loner who didn’t socialize with fellow students. He ended the email by adding that Shannon’s initial correspondence had gotten him thinking about Carver’s Masters thesis and if Shannon sent him his home address, he’d have his office make him a copy.

Shannon emailed his address, thanked him for his help and asked if he could provide examples of Carver’s callous behavior. After that he sent Kathleen Tirroza an email telling her that he was finally calling in the favor she owed him. Kathleen worked as a forensic investigator for the FBI and had spent hundreds of hours with Shannon in the aftermath of Charlie Winters. Their work ended up tying Winters to over a hundred other killings. In his email, Shannon told her he needed information about a cult leader operating in Boulder and also a Russian mobster who had tried with only partial success to rearrange his face. He told her his guess about the Russian having boxed professionally, and also described his associate who he was fairly certain was named Dmitry. He faxed her the Russian’s drivers license and Vishna’s photograph from the yoga studio’s brochure.

He was in the bedroom packing up a few items Susan had overlooked when he heard the front door open. For a moment there was dead quiet, then the creaking of someone moving across the hardwood floor of his living room. He moved silently to the dresser, took a roll of quarters from his sock drawer and made a tight fist around it. Then opening the bedroom door, he saw Emily standing in the middle of the living room as she gripped a Louisville Slugger, her knuckles almost as white as her face.

Shannon stepped into the room and asked her what the hell she was doing. The bat clattered out of her hand as she took a step back and clutched her chest.

“Goddamn it, Bill, you damn near gave me a heart attack!”

“I’ll ask you again. What the hell are you doing?”

“I was walking by and heard noises. What do you think I was doing?”

“I thought we had an agreement. That if you heard anything you’d call me and the police?”

“Well, if I had done that you probably would’ve gotten yourself shot up when the police came,” she argued, her jaw pushed out as she challenged him to say otherwise.

“Do we have an agreement or not?”

She looked away, kicked at her bat.

“Emily, these are dangerous people. I don’t want you getting involved.”

She met his eyes and smiled defiantly, “How am I supposed to know it’s you coming back here and not one of those others if I don’t look inside?”

He had to admit she had a point. “Next time I come back here I’ll knock on your door first,” he said. “In the meantime, give me your key.”

“Damn it, Bill-”

“I mean it, Emily.”

Shannon stood patiently and waited while Emily handed over the spare key to his apartment. After he slipped it into his pocket, he asked her what she was doing with a Louisville Slugger. She grumbled that her pop had given it to her for protection when she left home.

“Not the best thing for that,” Shannon noted. “You hit someone with the wrong part of the bat and that handle will snap, leaving you holding splinters. If you want a bat for protection, you’re better off with something aluminum.”

“Can’t get myself to buy an aluminum one,” she said with a half-smile. “I’m too much of a traditionalist.”

Shannon got a laugh out of that, then turned serious as he warned her again about not getting involved. “These are people who’d just as soon cut your throat as look at you,” he said. “I’m not exaggerating. If they come here, keep away from them. Okay?”

“Damn it, Bill, you’re a pain in the ass.”

“Just tell me you’re not going to do anything stupid like this again.”

“Alright, already, you don’t have to bite my head off.” She manufactured an injured look, added, “If you’d asked, you and Susie could’ve stayed at my place.”

“Susie and I both know that, and I’m sure she appreciates it as much as I do.” He hesitated, added, “It’s better that the two of us get away from here in case they end up watching the building.”

“I figured it was something like that,” Emily said, nodding. She gathered up her bat and grudgingly promised Shannon she’d behave herself. After she left, he finished packing then took out a couple of toys he had bought for his business-motion activated spy cameras. He set one up in the living room, the other in the bedroom. Satisfied that they were hidden well enough, he grabbed his suitcase and headed back to the hotel.

Chapter 8

They ate dinner at an Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel, Susan having the pan fried trout in garlic, butter and lemon sauce, Shannon the Linguini a la Puttanesca. It was a nice dinner, and for an hour or so Shannon was able to relax. Susan looked especially stunning. For long stretches he’d find himself lost in her large beautiful brown eyes, at times almost forgetting the day he’d had. There were even moments when she’d flash her dazzling smile and he’d forget how banged up he was feeling. Now that he was back at the dead students’ condo complex knocking on doors, he found himself again wondering why he was doing this investigation work, especially given the psychic cost and that he could’ve been spending the evening watching the Red Sox or simply meditating peacefully. His eye, jaw and cheek ached on his right side, and his lower back had started to go into spasms. He wasn’t sure what was causing his back pain-either the jabbing he took from the gun barrel, or maybe the muscles that had tightened along his chest were affecting the ones in his back. All he knew was that when the spasms came, they would suck the breath right out of him. Aspirin only helped a little and he’d already chewed on a dozen or so tablets. It didn’t help matters when he called Pauline Cousins and told her what Daniels had told him. She had the same thought he did about the cult putting someone up to masquerade as Melissa and became close to hysterical when she insisted on seeing him. He couldn’t afford to do that-one look at him with all his bruises and cuts would’ve pushed her over whatever edge she was clinging onto. After twenty minutes on the phone, he calmed her down and convinced her that he wasn’t going to give up on them. That somehow he’d get to Melissa.

Another back spasm stopped him in his tracks. When it passed and he could breathe again, he took the bottle of aspirin out, stared at it disgustedly, and popped a couple of tablets into his mouth.

He’d already been at the condo complex a half hour and had talked to the people in the townhouse next to the murdered students. The setup was the same, one unit had the first floor, the other the second. The couple in the second floor unit had little to offer. They never had much to do with Carver or Gibson, never saw anything to make them think they’d dealt drugs, and neither of them saw or heard anything the night they were killed. The husband, a professor in civil engineering at the university, told Shannon that the firewall between the two townhouses was well constructed and had a fair amount of soundproofing material packed around it. He didn’t think he would’ve been able to hear anything from that unit unless windows were open in both his apartment and the students’. The investment banker who owned the lower level unit seemed more interested in finding out about the fight Shannon had been in than talking about the students. He made it a point to mention that he had a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and throughout gave Shannon a tough guy look as if he were going to challenge him to go a few rounds. Just about the only thing Shannon was able to get out of him was that he never saw anything that made him think the two students were involved with drugs.

Shannon waited until his back spasm eased before trying the next townhouse over. No one answered the door for the upstairs unit. He stood outside it for a while listening, but it didn’t sound like anyone was home. Noise from a TV came from the first floor apartment. He knocked, then after waiting a minute, knocked again. He had a sense that someone was looking at him through the peephole. When he knocked a third time, a woman shouted through the door for him to leave or she’d call the police.

“Ma’am,” Shannon told her, “I’m an investigator. I’d just like to ask you questions about the two students who were killed.”

“I don’t care who you say you are, I’m calling the police!”

“I can give you my cell phone number if you’d like and we could talk over the phone.”

“You think I’m going to fall for that?”

“No, ma’am-”

“I’m warning you, I’m calling the police! Right now!”

He heard the beeping sound of a phone being dialed. He apologized for disturbing her and left, moving like an arthritic old man from all of his stiffness. He had tried Maguire’s unit when he first arrived at the complex but got no answer and couldn’t find Maguire’s BMW out front. He went back to their townhouse and saw there was still no sign of the car. He knocked on the door and listened long enough to decide that no one was home, then tried Maguire’s cell phone. After the fifth ring Maguire answered, asking who the fuck was there.

“Bill Shannon. We were supposed to talk more tonight.”

There was a long pause, then, “Bill, my buddy from Boston. I’m sorry, Cambridge. How’ya doin’?” Maguire stopped talking as the sound of people cheering and feet stamping roared in the background. After the noise died down, he came back on. “Fuck,” he groaned. “Sox just hit into a double-play. They’re actually losing to this shitty Rockies team.” A couple of people yelled at him to go fuck himself, another asked why if his team was so fucking great they’re getting their asses whipped. Someone else commented that the Rockies were opening up a nice fresh can of whoop-ass on Boston. Maguire yelled back for them to have patience, that a baseball game’s nine innings not six. That elicited a few more jeers.

“Are you at the game?” Shannon asked.

“What? Fuck no. I’m watching it at a sports bar, one next to the Harvest House. Why don’cha come over and watch it with me? I can tell you about the amazingly shitty day I’ve had. And you can ask me anything you goddamn want to.”

“I was hoping to talk to your wife also.”

“Ha! Wait ’til I tell you all about that. Pretty fucking funny joke if you ask me. So what do you say? Keep me company and show these punk Rockies fans what true baseball fans are like?”

“How much have you been drinking?”

“Not enough, brother, not nearly enough.”

Shannon told him he’d meet him. The sports bar was a five minute drive from the condo complex, and when he got there he spotted Maguire sitting alone at a table looking morose as the other patrons were up on their feet cheering. A glance at the screen showed a Colorado player in the middle of a homerun trot. A big guy with a large ruddy face and stringy black hair that fell down to his shoulders got in Maguire’s face and yelled, “Thirteen to one, asshole, thirteen to one!” Maguire had the same pasty, surly look that Shannon had seen on dozens of drunks over the years right before they’d throw their first punch.

The Colorado fan showed a big grin as he sat back down. He looked over his shoulder to leer at Maguire, then turned back to the game. Maguire started to push himself up, spotted Shannon and wavered as he lost his train of thought. As he squinted in Shannon’s direction, the belligerence in his round, red face faded to confusion. Then a light seemed to go on in his eyes.

“Fuck, I’m glad to see you,” he yelled as he waved Shannon over to his table. “I need some help explaining to these hicks that one game doesn’t mean shit.”

“That so? Then why were you shooting your mouth off before?” a bald guy with glazed eyes and a thick mustache asked. Outside of Maguire, there were maybe twenty other bar patrons watching the game, most of them men in their twenties and thirties, a few women in the mix. A number of the patrons gave Shannon a hard eye as he joined Maguire, but turned away when they noticed his bruises and bandaged hand. One of them started laughing and mumbled something under his breath how it looked like another guy from Boston had gotten his ass whooped.

As Shannon’s condition registered on Maguire, he showed a wide, toothy smile. “Fuck,” he said. “You might even’ve had a worse day than me.” He picked up his glass, drained it, and signaled the barmaid for another draft.

“Wa’cha drinking?” He slapped his forehead. “Doh! That’s right, you don’t drink booze. So wa’cha want, water, ice tea?” He broke out laughing over some private joke.

“How many drinks have you had?”

Maguire wiped a few tears away from his eyes, his stomach still convulsing with laugher. “Don’t know,” he said. “Nine, ten. Lost count. All I know is I’m not even halfway done.”

“About talking to your wife…?”

Maguire’s laugh died in his throat. He sat motionless, then gave Shannon the type of dull-eyed stare that only drunks can muster. Smiling savagely, he told Shannon good luck with that.

“Why’s that?”

“Nancy left me today.” The pink faded from his cheeks. He stared down at his hands as he batted his empty beer glass between them. “What a fucking miserable day. Lost my wife, my job, and now the Sox are getting blown out by a team that shouldn’t even be allowed in Single A.” Raising his voice, he added, “And I got to listen to shit from a bunch of ignorant rednecks, none of which could probably even tell me what the infield fly rule is.”

That caused a few of the other patrons to turn his way, but other than some mumbling and one guy calling him pathetic, no one bothered to say anything.

“I’m sorry to hear about your wife and job,” Shannon said.

Maguire kept batting the empty glass between his hands, and as he did, he seemed to sober up. “I should’ve seen both coming. Eh, shit, probably did, just didn’t want to admit it.”

The big guy who had gotten in Maguire’s face earlier, leaned towards him and smiled sympathetically. “Hey man, lost your wife and job same day? That’s cold, man. I’m sorry about before, but you were just acting too obnoxious. But, shit, I don’t know what I’d do if I had your type of day. No hard feelings, okay?”

He held out his hand. Maguire stared at it coldly before taking it. “Your Rockies team still sucks,” he said.

The big guy pulled his hand away. “Fuck you. They’re still beating the shit out of your Red Sox.” His face turned even redder as he looked away from Maguire and stared back at the screen.

Shannon asked Maguire why he was looking so hard for a fight.

“You know what?” Maguire said, a thin smile showing. “That’s a good question ’cause I’d get my ass kicked if I got in one. I haven’t been in a fist fight since 5th grade.”

The waitress brought over another draft beer and took Shannon’s order for a club soda. Maguire lifted his pint glass to the light, studied it for a moment before drinking down half of it, then wiped his hand across his mouth.

“What happened today?” Shannon asked.

“Not much. Just your typical rotten, miserable day. I showed up at work this morning and found out I’d been downsized.” He shrugged, made a face. “The VCs forced my company to cut twenty percent of the payroll-if they didn’t they’d have their funding pulled. I think I was included ‘cause I didn’t show the proper dedication by taking last night off.”

Maguire lifted his glass, drank down the rest of the pint. He caught the waitresses’ eye to signal for another. Turning back to Shannon, he smiled wistfully.

“I should marry that girl,” he said. “No fuss, no arguments, no games, all she does is bring me beers when I ask for them. My wife, on the other hand, Jesus Christ. The last few days I really thought she was sick. It turned out to be nothing but an act while she planned her great escape. Before that, for a whole goddamn year, she does nothing but mope around and complain about how much she hates it here, how much she misses it back home and all the rest of that crap. As if there were anything I could’ve done about it. When I got home today after being laid off I found her note waiting there for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, not your fault.” He put a hand up to his eyes and rubbed them, then stared bleary-eyed at Shannon. “Not my fault either,” he said with a hard smile. “If I could’ve sold my condo a year ago I would’ve. But I bought at the top of the market, and condo prices dropped twenty-five percent since then. I would’ve had to bring eighty grand to the closing, money I didn’t have. Nancy knew that. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

He shook his head, a lost look in his eyes. The waitress brought over another beer and a club soda. Maguire slipped ten bucks on her tray to cover the two drinks and a tip. As she placed the beer in front of him, he leaned in close and told her they should get married. She gave him a diplomatic smile, suggested they wait until his divorce finalized.

He nodded with a silly smile stuck on his face, waited until she left, then told Shannon that he had left a message with Nancy’s parents. “When I find out where she is I’ll give you her number and you can ask her whatever you want,” he said. “But I don’t think she’s gonna help you. She spent the last year too depressed and drugged up on sleeping pills to notice much of anything going on around her except how much she thought her life sucked.”

He lifted his glass and drained it about a third of the way down, then lowered it back to the table, pushed it away. “That’s it. I’m done for the night,” he told Shannon, his large round face shiny with perspiration.

Some hoots rang out from the crowd as the game ended. While several of the patrons glanced over at Maguire, none of them bothered to rub the Red Sox loss in his face.

“What a perfect ending to this day,” Maguire said, laughing sourly as he waved a hand towards the TV screen for emphasis. “How about you? You look like you were hit by a Mack truck.”

“Something like that,”

“Something like that? I bare my soul and that’s all I get in return?”

“I was in a fight with a couple of thugs.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“This over those murdered students?”

Shannon shook his head. “Different matter. What do you say I drive you home?”

“Hey, buddy, not necessary. I’m only a couple of miles away-”

“I think it would be better if I drove you.”

Maguire was about to argue the matter but shrugged instead. When he got to his feet and started towards the door, he moved with the slow measured pace of someone who was drunk but trying hard to look sober. After they got in his BMW, he told Shannon he wasn’t kidding the other night about doing PI work.

“I’m so fucking fed up with software development,” he said. “I’m not doing it anymore. No fucking way-not even if I could get another job. Shit, I think I’d rather get beat up by a couple of thugs than spend twelve hours a day beating my head in writing software. And for what? To get laid off when the company runs out of money. I’m sick of it. I’ve been sick of it for a long time.” He sniffed, rubbed a hand across his nose. “So what do you say,” he went on, his face pale in the moonlight. “You want an intern? You don’t have to pay me a dime. I’ll help out any way you want, and in exchange you teach me the ropes.”

Shannon laughed. “You’ll sober up. By tomorrow you’ll be looking for another high paying job.”

“I don’t think so.” Maguire slumped in his seat. “No, I don’t think there’s much chance of that. Fuck, I feel wiped. This whole rotten day must’ve just caught up with me.” Mumbling in a soft monotone, he added. “But I’m serious about the PI work. Sleep on it, okay?”

By the time Shannon got Maguire back to his condo, his eyes had closed and his chin had dropped to his chest. Shannon shook him until he opened an eye.

“Thanks, buddy,” Maguire muttered as he stumbled out of the car.

Shannon checked his watch, saw it was a quarter to ten. “If you want I’ll look things over in your apartment,” he said. “See if I can get an idea where your wife went. You can think of it as your first lesson in being a private eye.”

“Oh, man, I’d like to,” Maguire said, his shoulders stooped, his voice coming out as a low tired whisper. “Too fucking zonked. All I can think of right now is getting upstairs and lying down. How about you come by tomorrow and we do it then? I won’t touch a thing, promise.”

“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.”

Shannon shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.”

“First off, I’d say the Gibsons are more well-off than wealthy,” Wilson said. “And no, not all wealthy parents send their children to prep schools. Believe it or not, we have excellent public schools in Wichita-better than many of the private schools you can find on either coast.” With a slight smile, he asked, “What makes you think I’m not from a wealthy family?”

“Are you?”

“My dad’s a heart surgeon. He probably does as well as Mr. Gibson.”

“And you ended up a cop. I guess it shows how fucked up rich kids can get when you let them mix with lower middle class runts like me.”

Wilson laughed at that. “Yes sir. I turned out to be a bitter disappointment to Dad. But in a way it’s your fault. I didn’t decide to be a police officer until I found out about Charlie and Herbert Winters, about them being responsible for murdering my aunt.”

A silver Jaguar convertible had pulled into the cul-de-sac and slowed down to a crawl and as it approached the police cruiser. The driver was a blond woman in her late forties with too much makeup and skin that looked like it was wrapped too tight against her skull. Wilson hopped out of Shannon’s car and waved to her. Shannon got out also.

“Hello, Mrs. Gibson,” Wilson yelled to her.

The convertible came to a stop and the driver, with a sour look on her face, peered at Wilson. Slowly recognition hit her and she showed a crack of a smile.

“Is that you, Eric?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“My, my. Eric Wilson. Look at you, a police officer now. I had no idea.” She gave Shannon a quick glance. “Eric, is there any trouble here?”

“No ma’am. This man is a private investigator from Colorado. He’s looking into Linda’s murder.”

“Is that so?” She looked back at Shannon and gave him a halfhearted smile. The way the sunlight hit her, Shannon felt almost as if he was wearing x-ray glasses and could see the skull beneath her flesh. As it was, he had no trouble making out the patchwork of thin blue veins which crisscrossed her temples. He nodded to her. “I’ve been hired to find the persons responsible for your daughter’s death. I’m hoping you can give me ten minutes of your time. If you’d feel more comfortable, I’m sure Officer Wilson would be willing to sit in with us.”

Wilson seemed surprised at being included, but said that would be fine with him.

Mrs. Gibson gave Wilson a patronizing smile and told him that wouldn’t be necessary. Turning back to Shannon, she agreed to give him ten minutes. “Although I’m not sure what good it would do,” she said. “I don’t know what I could possibly tell you that I didn’t already tell the Boulder police. But if you require ten minutes from me, fine. Meet me at the front door.”

Before pulling away, she smiled at Eric and told him to stop over at the house some afternoon, that she’d like to catch up with him. “I’m surprised you didn’t come to the funeral,” she said, her smile cracking a bit. Wilson mumbled an apology about that, saying he had to work that day. “That’s okay, dear,” Mrs. Gibson said. “I do remember receiving your flowers and note. They were very sweet. Please do stop by sometime.”

Wilson nodded. He watched stone-faced as Mrs. Gibson drove into her driveway and parked in the rightmost garage space. After the garage door closed behind her, Wilson extended his hand to Shannon.

“I need to thank you for what you did to both of those Winters cousins,” he said. “I can only hope they’re rotting in hell.”

Shannon nodded, taking his hand.

Wilson looked down at the ground a bit sheepishly, added, “Before you leave Wichita, could I maybe buy you a cup of coffee and pie somewhere? I’d like to ask you a few questions about them.”

“I’ll answer any questions I can, but I’d rather give you my cell phone number and have you think about it for a few days.” Shannon sighed, started to rub the joints around his missing fingers, caught himself and stuck his hands in his pockets. “There’re things about them you’re probably better off not knowing. My advice, try to remember that your aunt’s in peace now and there’s nothing Charlie or Herbert Winters can do anymore to change that.”

He ripped a sheet from his notepad, scribbled his cell phone number on it and handed it to Wilson, who took the paper and put a finger to his eye as if he were rubbing dirt from it.

“What time’s your flight back to Colorado?” Wilson asked.

“Five-o-eight.”

“I’ll think about what you said.” He turned his gaze away from Shannon. “I still might call you this afternoon.”

Wilson rubbed the back of his hands across his eyes, nodded in Shannon’s direction and slowly walked back to his cruiser. He honked twice at Shannon as he drove off.

Mrs. Gibson was waiting for Shannon at the front door. He had to squint hard to see a trace of her daughter in her. She was probably the same height and weight as Linda had been, but she was more bony than thin. She had on low-rise designer jeans and a tight blouse exposing her belly button. From a distance, she might’ve been able to pass for her twenties but up close she looked every bit her age. With all her facelifts, Botox and collagen injections, she hadn’t succeeded in shaving much, if anything, from her age.

“Who hired you to do this?” she demanded.

“Taylor Carver’s mother-”

“I don’t believe that woman would spend a dime hiring you!”

“I don’t believe so either. But she’s suing the owner of the condo that your daughter and Carver rented.” Shannon explained the whole story to her.

“Simply unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head. “I swear that woman must be pure white trash. And that’s the family Linda had to get involved with. Par for the course with her.” She stepped aside, letting Shannon enter past her. “I promised you ten minutes and I’ll give you exactly that.”

She led Shannon from a marble foyer into a room that could’ve been a small modern art museum. The room was large and the ceiling high enough to hold a basketball court. The walls were covered with modern abstract paintings. Shannon spotted Picasso’s signature on a watercolor of naked women done in blue and orange, but the painting that stopped him was one of a temple resting on a foundation of prayer books and pages that had been torn from them.

“My husband collects those,” Mrs. Gibson said to Shannon as she sidled up next to him. “I couldn’t tell you a thing about any of them. Follow me and we’ll talk in the kitchen. You have eight and a half minutes left of the ten I promised you.”

She led him through a living room, then into a kitchen larger than Shannon’s apartment back in Boulder. The living room walls displayed more artwork and family photographs were scattered about on tables and built-in shelves. Most of the photos were either of Mrs. Gibson alone or with her husband. A few had a teenage girl that he didn’t recognize. She was blond like Linda, but had a squarer face that was shaped more like her mother’s.

The kitchen he’d been taken to was all glass and stainless steel. Mrs. Gibson directed Shannon to sit at an oval-shaped glass table and asked if he’d like anything to drink. He told her water would be fine.

“Mineral or flat?” she asked.

“Whatever comes out of the tap.”

She smiled at that, took a bottle of San Pellegrino water from the refrigerator and handed it to Shannon. “I think you’ll enjoy this a tad more,” she said as she took a chair diagonally across from his.

Shannon took out his miniature tape recorder and asked whether she’d mind if he recorded their conversation. She told him she’d prefer he didn’t. He hesitated, but turned the recorder off and put it away.

“Those ten minutes were asked for figuratively,” Shannon said. He tried smiling at her but a dull ache from his jaw ruined it. “I’d hope you’d be willing to spend more time if it meant finding the persons responsible for your daughter’s death.”

“You hoped wrong, Mr. Shannon. As far as I’m concerned, Linda’s responsible for the choices she made and any consequences that followed. I’m through beating myself up over them.” She gave Shannon a thin, condescending smile. “Oh, I can see from your expression that you’re judging me as an awful mother. That’s your choice, but I’d suggest you have a daughter like Linda and then judge me. Besides, how do I know you’re any good as a detective and that my talking to you isn’t a complete waste of my time?”

“You don’t. I can tell you I solved a fair amount of cases when I was a police detective for six years. And unfortunately, more than my share of murders.”

“You were a police officer for six years?”

“Ten. Six as detective.”

“Where was this?”

“Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

That seemed to catch her attention. “I take it then you’re a better detective than you are a fighter,” she said half under her breath.

“You should see what the other two guys look like,” Shannon said, this time keeping his smile intact. “Could you tell me about your daughter?”

“Tell you about Linda?” She gave Shannon a sad, thoughtful smile. “Where to begin. When she was young she was a sweet girl, always trying so hard to please.” Her mouth began to crumble but she caught it. After the moment passed, she added, “Things changed around puberty. The last ten years it’s been nothing but a battle with her.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Everything was my fault.” She sniffed a couple of times but her eyes remained clear. “All her mistakes, all her bad judgment, all her problems were my fault. According to her I was responsible for everything that went wrong in her life.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Thanksgiving. She brought her boyfriend with her.”

“Taylor Carver?”

“Yes. What a horrible young man. Impolite, snide, with this ‘holier than thou’ attitude. I could’ve just scratched his eyes out. And of course Linda was in rare form.” She sniffed some more. This time a little wetness showed around her eyes. “I washed my hands of my daughter after that. The things she dared say to me!”

“Which were?”

She shook her head. “I’m not dignifying her comments by repeating them.”

“Anything that might explain what happened to her?”

“No.”

Shannon sighed. “I wish you’d tell me. There might be something in them that could help.”

“There isn’t.” She checked her watch and smiled thinly at Shannon. “You have three minutes left.”

“Was your daughter doing drugs?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me with the way she acted. But not that I know of.”

“Anything at all you can think of to explain what happened?”

“Nothing whatsoever.”

“I didn’t see any pictures of Linda in your living room.”

“You are a good detective, aren’t you? I told you, I washed my hands of her.”

“Who’s the other girl?”

“My daughter, Gloria.” Mrs. Gibson smiled bitterly. “She’s enrolled in private school in France. A twelve month program. This one, I’m not giving any excuses to blame me.”

“Could you give me her phone number-”

“No. I’m sorry. Mr. Shannon, but you’re not contacting her. She’s only sixteen.”

“Her sister was murdered.”

“And she has therapists to talk to. She doesn’t need a private eye. Sorry.” A buzzer went off on her watch, and she again showed Shannon her condescending smile. “And I am sorry, but your ten minutes are up.”

Shannon could tell there was no point in asking for more time. Nor did he think he’d get anywhere even if she gave it. He pushed himself out of his chair and ignored the throbbing in his jaw as he smiled at her. “I’d like to thank you for your ten minutes,” he told her. “I’d also like to talk to your husband. Do you have a phone number where I can reach him?”

She seemed surprised, maybe even disappointed that Shannon didn’t put up a fight for more time. “I’ll give it to you on the way out.” Walking with him, she slid her arm under his. “You probably think I’m an awful person for writing my daughter off like I did, but I’m not! As far as I’m concerned I lost her years ago. Thanksgiving was only the final straw. Mr. Shannon, believe it or not, I’ve been grieving for my daughter for a long time now. I’m so worn out from it, though.”

She stopped in the living room to find one of her husband’s business cards. According to the card, Fred Gibson ran a commodity trading firm in the heart of downtown Wichita. At the door, Shannon asked whether they had any other children.

“Trying to sneak in another question, Mr. Shannon? But no, only the two, thank God.”

“Well, thanks again for taking the time to see me.”

“For whatever good it did you. Have a safe trip back to Colorado, Mr. Shannon.”

Once back in the car, he thought about calling the husband but knew that the wife would beat him to the punch. Instead he navigated to downtown Wichita where he hit more traffic than he would’ve expected, and after a few missed turns, found Gibson’s office address.

The office was on the sixth floor and was filled with dark wood and expensive leather furnishings. The receptionist’s eyes opened with alarm as Shannon approached her and they stayed large as she shifted her view from his bruises to his bandaged hand. Shannon gave the receptionist his name and told her that Mr. Gibson was expecting him. Her expression was a mix of wariness and extreme skepticism, but it changed quickly after she got on the phone and consulted with Gibson. With a warm smile she told him that Mr. Gibson’s office was the first door on the right.

“You don’t by any chance box?” she asked Shannon.

“Excuse me?”

“So many of our clients are into extreme sports,” she said. “Rock climbing, hang gliding, skyboarding. I think people who are into that type of adrenaline rush really get off on commodity trading.” She lightly tapped a finger to her lips as her smile grew larger. “You look to me like you could be an amateur boxer.”

Shannon shook his head. “Strictly street fighting. But only if I’m ganged up on,” he said, winking at her.

Fred Gibson was waiting at the door when Shannon entered. He pumped Shannon’s hand, all the while a confused and harried look on his face. He was a big man with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. With his deep tan, solid jaw and sculpted nose, he would’ve been good looking if it weren’t for large and slightly bulging round eyes that gave the impression that he was missing his eyelids.

“Betty gave me your name as, um, Bill Shannon,” he said, his large round eyes trying hard to squint. “Is that right? I can’t recall us agreeing to meet.”

“I’m investigating your daughter’s death. Your wife told me she’d call you and let you know I was on my way over.”

Gibson slapped his forehead in an overly exaggerated manner. “That’s right. Mindy did call. I’m sorry, I don’t know where my head’s at today.” He ushered Shannon to a chair, then sat behind his desk. Like his home, an expensive collection of abstract paintings were displayed on the walls, mostly what looked like sunsets with different shades of yellows, oranges and blues. Shannon picked up a framed picture from his desk of two girls holding hands, both blond and wearing party dresses, one several years older than the other. The older one was Linda, maybe at age thirteen. She was smiling in the picture but a solemn look in her eyes seemed to contradict it.

“Those are my two girls,” Gibson said. He pushed a hand through his hair, all the while maintaining a friendly smile. “I understand you came here from Colorado. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how we can possibly help you.”

“I’m hoping you can give me some insight into Linda.”

He tried squinting again, this time appearing more genuinely confused. “Why would that do any good? From what I understand this was a random act. That a psychopath broke into their apartment.”

“Who told you that?”

“Jim Munson. He’s a police detective here in Wichita who’s been contacting the Boulder police for me.”

“The Boulder police haven’t made a determination yet as to what happened. Do you mind if I tape record our conversation?”

Gibson had fallen into a funk, his eyes dazed as he stared at one of his sunset paintings. Shannon had to ask twice about recording their conversation before Gibson snapped out of it. He gave Shannon’s recorder a confused look before nodding and telling Shannon to do what he needed to.

Shannon placed the recorder on the desk between the two of them, turned it on and asked Gibson about Linda.

“What’s there for me to say? She was my little girl. I loved her with all my heart.”

“From the pictures I saw of her she was very attractive.”

He nodded, his solid jaw pushed out slightly. “Yes, she was.”

“Can you think of anyone here who might’ve been obsessed with her? Someone who might’ve followed her to Colorado?”

He shook his head.

“Never any problems with stalkers?”

“No.”

“Anyone you didn’t know show up at the funeral?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I was in no state of mind to notice something like that.”

“Anything odd occur at the funeral?”

Gibson shook his head.

“Any strange phone calls? Anything odd happen afterwards?”

Again, he shook his head. “Why are you asking this?”

“If it was a serial killer, he might have made an appearance at the funeral or afterwards. Sometimes that’s how they get their kicks. How did Linda get along with her sister?”

“She was four years older than Gloria, but they got along fine.”

“I’d like to talk with Gloria. Maybe Linda told her something she didn’t tell you or your wife.”

Gibson gave him a tired smile. “This has been very hard on Gloria as you could well expect, and my wife and I don’t want to upset her any further. I’ll talk to her. If she has any information, I’ll get back to you.”

Shannon nodded, took out a notepad and made a show of consulting it. “I understand Linda and your wife didn’t get along very well.”

“No, that’s not true.” He hesitated, put a hand up to his eyes and squeezed them with his thumb and ring finger. “Mr. Shannon, have you ever lost a child due to violence? You have no idea how difficult it is to cope with something like that.”

“I haven’t lost a child, but I have lost people close to me. I have some idea what you’re going through. Your wife, though, she made it pretty clear that she had no relationship with your daughter at the time of her death.”

“That’s Mindy’s way of dealing with it. Blowing up past fights and arguments as a way to emotionally protect herself. But trust me, my wife, in her own way, is in as much pain as I am over this.”

“She told me about Thanksgiving.”

Gibson’s head moved to the side as if he’d been slapped. “What did she say?” he asked, his voice pinched, not quite right.

“That your daughter made accusations against you and your wife. That things got ugly.”

“There were no accusations made,” he said slowly in the same pinched voice. “Linda was very good at pushing buttons, and that’s all that happened. When she wanted to she could have a cruel sense of humor.”

“Can I ask you what was said?”

He shook his head, his jaw pushed further out. “It’s not worth repeating.”

“How about telling me about Taylor Carver?”

“I didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“Among other things, he was an opportunist.” Gibson checked a clock on his desk and told Shannon he had to get back to work. “I’m afraid this couldn’t have been very productive for either of us.”

“No, it’s been helpful.” Shannon reached for his tape recorder, but stopped himself, and made a further show of studying his notepad. After flipping through several pages, he asked, “Did you know a Candace Murphy?”

Gibson said he didn’t, which made sense since Shannon had made up the name.

“She was a friend of Linda’s. According to Candace, Linda was going to confront you and your wife over Thanksgiving about sexual abuse issues.”

Something flickered in Gibson’s eyes. Then he noticed the tape recorder and in a shaky voice told Shannon that he was lying.

“I’m not lying. If you need me to, I’ll get an affidavit from her, but I’m hoping-”

“You are lying,” he said, his voice more confident. He stood up, muscles bunching along his shoulders. “Get out of here now or I’ll throw you out.”

Shannon hesitated, hoping that Gibson would try something like that. He had had that hunch ever since he talked with Gibson’s wife, but when he saw that momentary flicker in Gibson’s eyes and heard the shakiness in his voice, he knew his hunch was on target. As he collected his tape recorder, Gibson warned him that he would sue Shannon for every cent he had if he ever repeated any of his scurrilous garbage. Shannon shrugged, told him he had a few thousand in the bank, and for Gibson to go for it. Fred Gibson stood rubbing his knuckles, but didn’t move as Shannon left his office.

Shannon stopped at the receptionist on his way out and asked if she knew of a good place nearby to get a piece of pie. She gave him an odd look, and he repeated himself. “I haven’t eaten anything all day and I’m in the mood for a good piece of apple pie,” he told her. She gave him the name of a diner a few blocks away, then checking her watch, asked if he’d like some company. “I haven’t gone on my lunch break yet,” she said.

“I’ll have to ask for a rain check. I plan to be meeting a few people.”

***

Detective Don Chase reached across the table and stopped the tape Shannon was playing for him and Wilson. “This is nuts,” he said, his face reddening with exasperation. “I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here.”

Chase had one of those fireplug bodies; barely a neck, barrel-chested, and a thick trunk. Along with that he had a wide face that seemed stuck in a half scowl, half grin. He also had the same military-style buzz cut that Wilson had, which made Shannon wonder if the hair cuts were a departmental directive. There was something familiar about the guy that Shannon couldn’t quite put his finger on. Chase and Eric Wilson sat on one side of the booth while Shannon sat across from them. He held up a finger for Chase to wait while he chewed a bite of apple pie and vanilla ice cream, then said, “He sexually abused his daughter. I think that’s a good reason for your being here.”

“He sexually abused his daughter, huh? Where’s the evidence?”

“The mother sending the other daughter off to France. The way she acted, how she tries so damn hard to look like a teenager. The change in Fred Gibson’s voice when I asked him about Thanksgiving. How he nearly swallowed his tongue when I brought up sexual abuse.”

“You got to be shitting me.” Chase glanced over his shoulder, saw an elderly woman glowering at him. He lowered his voice. “You have Wilson drag me down here because of some circumstantial bullshit and a so-called change in inflection?”

Shannon couldn’t keep from smiling as it finally hit him why Chase seemed so familiar. He could’ve been Ed Poulet’s younger brother. Looked and acted like him. The one big difference was that Shannon instinctively liked this guy more than he ever liked Poulet. Chase asked him what the fuck he was grinning about.

“Nothing. You remind me of a guy I used to work with, that’s all.” Then more seriously, Shannon said, “He abused his daughter, probably both of them. That was what their Thanksgiving blowup was about. That’s why Linda brought Taylor Carver with her; so she’d have a witness to it.”

“And you know this how?”

“From my ten years as a police officer. I was always good at reading people, and there’s no doubt in my mind about any of this. Linda confronted her parents last Thanksgiving about the abuse.”

“Yeah, well, I know about your history as a police detective. That’s why you’ve got some credibility with me, and that’s why I’m here now. But shit, you’ve given me nothing.” He stopped himself in mid-scowl, looked away. “And if what you’re saying’s true, then what? They bump off their own daughter to keep her from making more accusations? This is fucking insane.”

“Chase, where are you from originally? You don’t have a New York or Philly accent, but you sure the fuck don’t talk like a Midwesterner.”

He grinned at that. “As much a Midwesterner as this clown,” he said, pointing a thumb at Wilson. “Born and raised in St. Louis. Getting back to my question you so adroitly sidestepped, are you trying to say they killed their own daughter?”

“I couldn’t tell you. At least not without knowing their whereabouts the time of the murder or if any unusual money transfers had been made. I’d also like to know what the phone records looked like between Linda and her parents. Maybe before her murder she had threatened to go public with the abuse. If they did kill their daughter, I wouldn’t know without further police investigation. But I’ll tell you, I’ve seen stranger things over the years, and just as sickening.”

“Yeah, well, this still sounds pretty farfetched to me.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But even if they had nothing to do with Linda’s murder you still have a child who was sexually abused by her father, and that demands an investigation.”

Chase gave Shannon a hard look and shook his head. “The only real witness to it is dead and buried,” he said. “Even if you’re right, there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it. Not without something concrete.”

“You could talk to the other daughter.”

“How would I do that? She’s locked away somewhere in France, and from the sound of it, she’s going to be staying there until she’s of age.”

“You could have the authorities there talk to her.”

“Oh, yeah, that would go over swimmingly. I can just imagine what the Cap would say if I asked him to do that with what you’ve given me. He’d laugh me off the force.”

“What do you think, Eric?” Shannon asked.

Wilson had been sitting quietly. He looked up at Shannon, his face a hard white. “I agree with Detective Chase. You’ve shown nothing to merit an investigation.”

“How about answering whether Linda was abused by her dad.”

“How the fuck would he know?” Chase demanded.

“He dated her in high school.”

Chase’s face turned redder as he stared open mouthed at Wilson. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, incredulous. “When the fuck were you going to say something about that?”

“Calm down,” Wilson told him. “I have no evidence of Mr. Gibson abusing Linda.”

“But you suspect it,” Shannon said.

“I never said anything to you about that.”

“No, you didn’t. But I told you, I’m good at reading people. And you had it written all over you in large print.”

“Damn it, Wilson,” Chase prodded. “Did Gibson abuse his daughter or not?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you suspected that he did,” Shannon said.

Wilson gave a slow and reluctant nod. “I don’t know if I suspected that exactly,” he said. “But I guess I knew something was wrong. Not that Linda ever talked to me about it. More by the way she acted around them, especially with Mr. Gibson. She’d get so quiet and withdrawn when she’d see him. With her mom, I remember times she’d fly off the handle over little things. Sometimes nothing at all. I guess there were other signals, but I was just too dense a kid to pick up on them. Maybe I never really wanted to admit it to myself that any of that happened. Listening to you and thinking back how Linda used to act, it makes sense.”

“Officer Wilson, you didn’t answer my earlier question,” Chase said, his tone completely business. “A simple yes or no. As someone who was intimately involved with the deceased, Linda Gibson, do you now suspect her of being the victim of sexual abuse by her father?”

Wilson gave a weak nod, said, “Yes.”

“Okay, then,” Chase said. “At least I can now consider going to the Cap about an investigation.” He leaned further back in his seat, his wide face looking a bit washed out. Eyeing Shannon’s pie, he asked if it was any good.

“Damn good pie,” Shannon said. “Almost worth a trip to Wichita for.”

Chase nodded grimly and waved the waitress over. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said to the sixtyish grandmotherly woman standing with pad and pen. “How about a piece of that apple pie? Make it big, something that will hold me to late ’cause I’ll be working ’til midnight now thanks to these two clowns. And hide a few scoops of ice cream on it, okay darling?”

Later, the waitress brought over what looked like half a pie with a pint of vanilla ice cream on top of it. Chase ate it quickly, barely coming up for air as he joylessly shoveled it into his mouth. When he was done, he nodded at Shannon and Wilson, and suggested that it would help if they all met with the Cap.

Shannon glanced at Wilson, who appeared deep in his own thoughts. “Eric and I have another matter to talk about,” he said. “How about we meet you at the station?”

Chase scowled suspiciously at both of them, but squeezed himself out of the booth and told them not to take too long. “Cap likes to take off early on Thursdays for Walleye fishing.” After he ambled out of the diner, Shannon asked Wilson if he still wanted to know more about the Winters cousins.

“At this point, I’m not sure what I want to know. I can’t believe I was in such denial about Linda and her parents all these years. Makes me wonder how I could be a police officer if I couldn’t see what was right in front of my face.”

“Sometimes you’re too close to a situation, that’s all. But your instincts were right. At a gut level you knew what was going on. Over time, you’ll learn to listen to your gut more.”

“I hope so. But I’m going to take your advice and think about how much more I want to know about Winters. I might still call you in a few days.”

“Anytime you want, although I hope you don’t-at least not about that.” Shannon paused, scratched the side of his jaw that wasn’t swollen. “I apologize if I dragged you into something you didn’t want to be a part of.”

“No need to apologize,” Wilson said, his eyes as hard as stone. “This needs to be investigated. You really think they could’ve killed Linda?”

“I don’t know. Let’s see where this leads. If they didn’t, but it still comes out that Gibson abused either of his daughters, at least that will be something. At least in some way justice will be served for them.”

Wilson nodded, got to his feet and headed towards the exit. Shannon covered the bill and followed him out the door.

Chapter 10

The sun had already set by the time Shannon made his way through Denver International Airport. When he called Susan from his car to apologize for missing their date to watch the sunset, he caught her in the middle of a session with a client. She just seemed relieved that he’d be back in Boulder that night; she also didn’t think she’d be done until ten. They arranged to meet at the hotel at that time so they could go out for a late dinner.

He was able to reach Eli at the Boulder Mind Body Center and they set up to meet a half hour earlier the next morning at their usual spot. Next, he checked his cell phone for messages and saw there were twelve of them. The first two were from Eunice Carver asking about People magazine. She got testier in her second message, demanding to know whether or not they wanted her story; that if they didn’t, she would sell it elsewhere. The next message was from Paul Devens. He thought Shannon would like to know that his tap dance routine had gone over brilliantly. In other words, Shannon could now access the condo while Carver’s family was still barred. According to Devens, his performance would’ve brought a tear to Fred Astaire’s eye. After Devens’ message there was one from Mark Daniels who sounded depressed as he congratulated Shannon on his lawyer’s victory in court and asked if Shannon could let him know when he was planning to search the apartment so he could be present. The rest of them were from Pauline Cousins, all scattered throughout the afternoon. She didn’t say much, only that she needed to talk to him.

Shannon tried calling her motel room but she didn’t pick up. He then reached Devens on his cell phone.

“How was Wichita?” Devens asked.

“Interesting. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it. Ah, you should’ve seen me today. I had them absolutely dazzled with my footwork,” Devens told him, sounding a little drunk.

“Yeah, I heard. Celebrating?”

“A bottle of champagne, my detective friend. This is a big deal for a lawyer like me who never goes to court except to pay off speeding tickets. Come by the office tomorrow morning after eight. You can fill me in about Wichita, and I’ll give you keys to the condo and the police padlock.”

Shannon told him he’d see him then. He next tried Mark Daniels’ cell phone and left a message that he was planning to look through the apartment in the morning, that if Daniels gave him a call back they could arrange when to meet. After that he put the Red Sox-Rockies game on his car radio, and by the time he arrived at his apartment building, the Sox were up four runs in the sixth inning thanks to two David Ortiz homeruns. He couldn’t help smiling thinking how Maguire at that very moment was somewhere giving Rockies’ fans a hard time.

Shannon knocked on Emily’s door, waited until she opened it a crack and told her he was stopping off at his apartment for a little while. He frowned as he looked past her. “Is that a frying pan you’re holding behind your back?”

“So what if it is?” she demanded, her chin stuck out slightly. “You told me my Louisville Slugger’s no good. Anyway, how’d you know?”

“I could see it in your hallway mirror. Try to relax, okay? Odds are no Russian thugs are going to be coming here.”

“They better not, ’cause I’m ready if they do.”

Shannon was going to say something, but decided it would be a waste of breath. He gave Emily a short salute and headed back to his apartment. When he got inside, he found that his spy cameras hadn’t been activated, and felt more relieved than he would’ve guessed knowing that the two Russians hadn’t bothered breaking into his apartment. He then checked his email and saw a reply from Kathleen Tirroza. She was glad to hear he hadn’t fallen off the face of the planet like she had feared, and would get back to him when she had something about either the cult leader or the Russian. At the bottom of the email she included a photo of herself standing next to a good-looking guy about ten years older than her, an engagement ring prominently displayed on her finger as she smiled her typical cat-ate-the-canary smile. The guy next to her had a hardness about his face, and Shannon knew instinctively he was a cop. The tagline added to the bottom of the photo was: Got tired of waiting for you, Shannon!

He knew she was joking about the tagline. They had developed a closeness during the four months they’d worked together, but it was strictly a big brother-little sister type relationship. Tirroza was stunningly beautiful, but this followed the aftermath of Charlie Winters. He’d just been released from the hospital, and Susan had already filed for divorce and had moved to God knows where. He was too messed up emotionally to get involved with anyone. He also still had too many unresolved feelings about Susan. In the emotional state he was in, the only thing he wanted to do was stay busy and work twenty-four hours a day if possible, and many times he and Tirroza did just that. When they were done, he had helped her tie Winters and his cousin, Herbert, to over a hundred other murders across the country. After that, he officially went on disability and moved out to Boulder. He spent the next eight months trying to work out his feelings about Susan, and ended up realizing that even with the hell Winters had put them through he still loved her as much as he ever did. Fortunately she must’ve come to the same conclusion about him because around that time she visited him in Boulder and never left.

Shannon sent Tirroza a reply that it would take something momentous like her getting married for him to take a trip back to Boston, and that he expected the invitation was already in the mail. After that he reset the spy cameras and left.

As he drove back to the Boulderado he kept thinking of the messages Pauline Cousins had left him. There was something about the tone of her voice that bothered him, especially her last message. Calm, but resigned. It reminded him of a jumper he’d once tried to talk down while he was on the force. He pulled over to the side of the road and tried Pauline Cousins again at her motel. When he still got no answer, he got back on the road, swung a left at the next light and drove towards Baseline Reservoir. The moon was in a waxing crescent, and with the area mostly undeveloped with no streetlights, he almost missed the Chevy Impala parked a few hundred yards from True Light’s compound. He pulled over, took a slim jim from his trunk and made his way quickly back to the Chevy. Seconds later he had the door unlocked and was checking the glove compartment. He found paperwork there showing that Pauline Cousins had rented the car. Dropping the slim jim back in his trunk, he got a flashlight, and started towards True Light’s compound in as fast a run as his bruised ribs allowed.

The flashlight caught her face about twenty feet from True Light’s main gate. She stared wide-eyed at Shannon, the muscles tight along her mouth and jaw. Shannon lowered the flashlight and saw the knuckles on her hand bone white as she gripped a handgun. From the size and shape of it, he guessed it was a. 38 caliber snub nose; more than powerful enough to knock her over if she tried firing it.

As calmly as he could, he asked her to give him the gun, and held his hand out to her, palm up. Indecision froze her, then she took a step away. “I’m getting Melissa out of there,” she said, her voice cracking, barely above a whisper.

Shannon looked from her to the main gate. He knew what she was trying to work up the courage for: buzz the main gate until someone came out and then use the gun to force her way in. “You need to give me more time to do things my way,” he said.

She didn’t bother to respond-just stared straight at him, her lips pressed hard enough together to make them as bloodless as her knuckles.

“It won’t work. You’re only going to get yourself killed, maybe a couple of other people along the way.”

“It will work,” she said. “It has to.” In the glow of his flashlight he saw her swallow hard, saw the tenseness in her face and shoulders. Her gun arm jerked in kind of a nervous twitch and the thought flashed through his mind of her accidentally pulling the trigger and blowing off one of her toes, maybe even one of his. His own voice tightened as he told her again to hand him the gun, that he would get to Melissa without having to do it this way.

“How?” she asked. “They won’t even let the police see her. And look at you. They did that to you yesterday, didn’t they?”

“They did,” he admitted. “You know as well as I do there’s something very wrong about this place. But I’m going to find a crack into it, and I’m going to speak to Melissa. I promise you that.”

“How can you possibly promise me something like that? I tried calling you today and couldn’t even get a hold of you.”

“I’m sorry about that, but I was out of state today working on another case.” He smiled good-naturedly at her. “I do have good instincts sometimes. I knew you were here, didn’t I?”

The resolve bled out of her as she thought about that. Shannon saw the change in her eyes, stepped forward, and gently took the gun from her hand. He was right; it was a. 38 snub nose. He cracked open the cylinder and dropped the bullets into his hand.

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“I asked around and found a pawnshop in Denver that was willing to sell it to me.”

He grimly studied one of the bullets. It was a hollow point. She would’ve done a lot of damage if she had gotten in there. He dropped the bullets into his pants pocket.

“Let’s get back to your car,” Shannon said as he lightly held onto her arm, both supporting and guiding her.

“They could be doing anything to Melissa in there,” she said, half under her breath. “I can’t feel a connection to her anymore. I have no idea if she’s even still alive.”

Something furry and thin, maybe a foot and a half long, darted past their feet. Shannon flashed his light on it as it scuttled away into some underbrush, and saw from its tail and the shape of its head that it was a weasel.

“Let’s keep the faith that she’s okay,” he said to her. “And I have someone in the FBI helping me with this. We’re going to get to Melissa. Until then, maybe you should go back to Portland and be with your husband.”

“If I went back home now I’d kill him. I can’t believe I let him bully me for six months not to do anything. No, I’m staying in Boulder until I see Melissa.”

They arrived back to her car. Shannon watched as she got into the driver’s seat. “You going to be okay driving back?” he asked. She nodded, her face bloodless and frail. “I’ll hold onto the gun for now,” Shannon told her.

He went back to his car, reloaded the. 38 and hid it under his spare tire, then followed Pauline Cousins down Baseline until she turned onto 28th Street. Satisfied that she’d make it to her motel in one piece, he headed back to the Boulderado Hotel. He checked the dashboard clock, and saw that somehow he was going to be on time.

Susan was waiting for him in their room. The tee shirt and cutoff jeans she wore accentuated all the wonderful curves of her small, slender body. She flashed him a dazzling smile as she gave him a hard embrace and even harder kiss. Stepping back, she placed her palms lightly on his face and studied him. “Your swelling’s gone down,” she said, her smile more of a playful kind. “You almost look presentable. Have an eventful day?”

“Thanks, and yeah, I did,” he said laughing. “Damn, it’s good to see you.” He picked her up, spun her around in the air several times, kissing her again on the mouth, then on the neck and earlobe. Dropping her to the floor, he leaned back in and sniffed her hair.

“You haven’t been smoking pot, have you?” he asked.

Her smile changed from playful to something wry. “Of course not, my darling. Since when in all the years you’ve known me have I ever smoked pot?”

He made a hmmm noise, his brow furrowed deeply. “I was thinking we could eat at the hotel tonight,” he muttered, still distracted by Susan’s thin Cheshire-cat grin and the odor he picked up from her hair.

“We could do that. I was kind of in the mood for pizza, though.”

“Pizza it is, then,” Shannon said.

They were out of the room and walking down the hallway when it hit him what that odor was. Their eyes met as he turned to her, Susan still grinning her Cheshire-cat grin.

“You went to the Vishna yoga studio,” he said.

“That’s right, hon. I was going to surprise you about it later-”

“Damn it, Susan, what the hell were you thinking?” He stopped himself and swallowed back the rest of what he wanted to say. “What’s done is done, but you’re not going back there,” he said in a more controlled voice.

Susan stared at him with what could’ve been mistaken for amusement if he overlooked the intensity burning in her dark brown eyes. “Hon,” she asked, “how long have we known each other?”

“A long time,” he admitted.

“Since I was eighteen. Over sixteen years.”

He nodded.

“Do you think now’s the time to start ordering me around?”

“Sue, these people are dangerous. This is not something you should be fooling around with.”

“Hon, I think I can make my own decisions. Besides, all I’m doing is going to a yoga studio on the Hill. If by doing that I can help you, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Sue, please-”

She took hold of his hand, gave it a squeeze. “Darling,” she said, “I can take care of myself. You should know that by now.”

He nodded. What he knew was that there was no point trying to talk her out of it. He couldn’t help feeling a sick twisting in his stomach at the idea of her going there. “Just promise me going to that yoga studio is all you’ll do,” he said. “If they invite you to True Light’s compound-”

She got up on her toes and kissed him lightly on his nose, stopping him. “I promise you, hon, that’s all. Nothing else. So stop worrying, okay?” She shook her head, laughing. “I can’t believe that smell’s still in my hair. When I got back today I washed my hair for twenty minutes trying to get it out.”

“What is that smell? Are they smoking pot down there?”

She opened her eyes wide in mock surprise. “Oh, now you want my information?”

“Susie, my darling, quit being coy. You already put me through the wringer, remember?”

“I did, didn’t I? I’m sorry about that. I know you’re just worried, and maybe a bit overprotective. Which is sweet. To answer your question, they’re burning incense.”

“That’s all it is?”

“That’s all, but boy is it powerful. They have it burning all over the room fogging it up. The stuff gave me a headache the whole time I was there. Why don’t we wait ’til dinner and I’ll tell you more about it.”

They decided to go to a pizza place on Pearl Street. The night air had gotten cooler and Susan hung close to Shannon, keeping an arm around his waist. As they walked, her hip brushed against his with almost every step. Shannon expected to see more people on the outdoor mall for a Thursday night, but at that hour it was quiet, mostly just college kids gathered around and a few transients bumming for money. When they were half a block from the restaurant, he spotted Eddie sitting alone under a streetlamp studying a chess position. Given his rapt attention to the chess board and the way the lamp illuminated his heavily-lined face, he could’ve been mistaken for an antique wooden carving that had been dressed up in jeans, work boots and an army jacket. Shannon pointed him out to Susan and told her that he knew the guy and needed to talk to him, but that it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. Susan was fine with it, and joined Shannon as he walked over to Eddie.

Shannon stood quietly for a minute or two studying the position, then told Eddie that white could force a bishop advantage in five moves. The older man looked up, a bit startled, then chuckled softly as he recognized Shannon.

“Caught me by surprise,” he said. “I guess in your line of work you get good at sneaking up on folk.” He noticed Susan, quickly tested his upper plate with his thumb to make sure it was in place, then nodded solemnly as if he were tipping a hat. “Ma’am,” he said.

Susan laughed good-naturedly. “Ma’am?” she said. “I guess there’s a first time for everything. Just call me Susan.”

“My ex-wife,” Shannon explained with a wink. “Eddie, I thought you were taking up shop at the student center?”

“I have. Completely dead there tonight so I thought I’d catch some of this cool night air. Mostly dead here also. Reeled in a couple of guppies earlier, neither of which were worth the bother of filleting.” He breathed in noisily through his nose. “I love the smell of this mountain air. One of the reasons I moved back to Boulder.” He gave Shannon a quick one-eyed look. “If this lovely woman’s your ex-wife, then I gave you far too much credit for being bright last time we met.”

“We’re in the process of reconciling,” Shannon explained. “Any luck finding that girl?”

“Don’t you think I would’ve called you if I had?” he said, his tone turning cantankerous.

“I guess that was a stupid question.”

“Won’t argue with you there.”

“Then let me quit while I’m ahead. How about I stop by the student center Saturday for the rematch I promised. Think you’ll be there in the afternoon?”

Eddie said that he would, then grudgingly asked Shannon to show him the sequence of moves forcing a bishop advantage. Shannon played them out quickly.

“Why in the world am I bothering with a rematch?” Eddie groaned as he rolled his eyes upward. “I should just put a sign on my back and ask people to kick me.” He continued to stare skyward, as if searching for divine intervention, then mumbled something to himself about being the world’s dumbest mud-sucking bottom-dwelling fish. He remembered Susan standing there, apologized for his salty language and nodded again towards her, once more giving the impression of tipping an imaginary hat. “Pleasure meeting you, ma’am,” he said. With that he locked his stare back onto his chessboard as if that was all that existed in the universe.

As they walked away, Shannon explained that Eddie was one of his many minions doing his dirty work. “He’s looking for an ex-member of True Light that he ran across a week ago. I’m paying his fee in chess games -”

Susan interrupted him by slapping him in the stomach. “Ex-wife?” she exclaimed.

“Factually correct.”

“You could’ve introduced me as your friend! And what’s with this reconciling business? We’ve been back together almost four years!”

“I’m not introducing you as my friend,” he said. “That would be a joke with what you mean to me.” He paused, then added. “And you know that anytime you want to get the ex removed from my introductions, I’m more than happy to accommodate you.”

“I know that.” Susan touched his arm. “But it would just be a piece of paper, hon. It wouldn’t change that you already have my heart and soul, and that nothing’s keeping me from spending the rest of my life with you.”

Shannon nodded and squeezed her hand resting on his arm. Up until then he had resisted mentioning the idea of them getting remarried, sensing Susan’s reluctance to upset what they had. He understood her reason: that they were happier now than they’d ever been during their ten year marriage, but a big part of it was that they no longer had the specter of Charlie Winters hanging over them. As he looked at her, he also saw the thought flicker across her eyes-that if they were married again, it might bring back memories of Winters that she’d so far been able to block out.

He reached down and kissed the tip of her nose. “Maybe I’ll just start introducing you as my better half.”

“Are you okay with that?” she asked, her eyes searching deep into his. He nodded. She returned the kiss, catching him hard on the mouth. “Let’s get some pizza then. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

After they got seated at the restaurant, they ordered a deep dish pie, half broccoli for Susan, half garlic and olive for Shannon. When he ordered his half, she raised an eyebrow and commented on how he better be damn good in bed if he expected to get lucky that night.

“I’m planning on my irresistible animal magnetism to do the trick,” he said. She got a laugh out of that. As they waited for their pizza, he told her about Linda Gibson. “That poor girl,” she said when he had finished. The empathy in her eyes brought a lump to his throat. At that moment, she was probably never more beautiful. “You don’t think her parents could be responsible for her death?”

“I’m sure in some way they’re responsible,” Shannon said. “Maybe not in actually killing her, but in screwing her up enough for her to end up with a guy like Taylor Carver. Maybe I’m prejudging him, but from what I’ve heard so far he was a piece of work.”

“But do you think they could’ve actually killed her themselves? Or hired someone?”

“I don’t know. It would take someone pretty monstrous to do that, but then again it would take someone pretty monstrous to abuse their own daughter, and probably no less monstrous to turn a blind eye to it for years and let it happen. It’s possible they’re directly responsible. I’m sure they were worried about Linda telling more people about what they did to her. Anyway, if the police dig deeper, they’ll know one way or another if they’re involved.”

“And if Gibson abused his other daughter?”

“Then at least they’ll be able to prosecute him. Unfortunately, the mother will get off scot-free in any case.”

The waitress brought over their pizza. Shannon was starting his first slice when he caught Susan eyeing his half of the pizza. Somewhat sheepishly she asked about trading slices. “Only because I don’t want you feeling self-conscious later about your garlic breath,” she explained with a straight face. Shannon sighed, took one of her slices in exchange even though he hated broccoli.

“You were going to tell me about that yoga studio?”

She finished a bite of the garlic and olive pizza, wiped tomato sauce from the side of her mouth with her finger and licked it. Shannon loved watching her eat. There was so much enjoyment there. It also amazed him how someone as small and slender as Susan could pack away so much.

“Emily and I were talking this morning and we both thought it would be a good idea,” she said.

“It figures.”

“Now don’t start up! You want to hear what I have to say or don’t you?”

Shannon sighed, nodding.

“Okay, then.” She stopped to take another bite of her slice. After she chewed it and brushed some crumbs from her mouth, she went on, “Emily tried joining first, but they wouldn’t let her. I figured that was because she came across as her normal, self-confident, blustery self. They told her that they couldn’t help her and insisted that she leave. When I tried joining, I made myself into a victim. I have no one, my life is falling apart, I don’t know what else to try, oh poor me. I even cried a few crocodile tears. You would’ve fallen over in your seat if you could’ve seen my performance.”

“How about another performance later tonight? Cheerleader and the tough guy detective? I’ll see if I can score you some pom-poms.”

“Dream on, hon. Anyway, for seventy-nine dollars a month they welcomed me into the fold. What a bargain, huh?”

“Hmmm,” Shannon said.

“That’s the second time tonight you’ve done that! What’s this hmmm about?”

“I’m not so sure that it was strictly your act that got you accepted and Emily the heave ho.”

“Heave ho, huh?” Susan remarked, smiling. “I think you’ve been watching too many Three Stooges shorts, buster!”

“Alright. Rejected, bounced, booted out the door, sayonara sister. I think you got in and Emily didn’t because you physically fit the mold of what they’re looking for, Emily doesn’t.”

“And what mold is that?”

“Petite and very attractive.”

“Emily’s attractive. And she’s younger than I am!”

Shannon didn’t argue the point-he knew the trouble he’d get into if he tried. Susan took another bite of her pizza, her eyes somewhat distant as she chewed. “There were only women there,” she said. “I didn’t think that was unusual for a yoga class. But now that you mention it they were all my size… and I guess all of them would be considered attractive.”

“That’s what I saw when I went there, and later when I went to True Light’s compound.”

“Why do you think that is?” she asked, but it was strictly rhetorical. He could tell by her tone and expression that she knew why. Shannon answered anyway. “Vishna’s taste in women for the harem he’s building.”

Susan sat there stewing, a darkness clouding her face. “What a despicable place,” she said.

“I agree. That’s why I don’t want you going back there. If for no other reason than it’s not good to be around that type of negative energy.”

“Oh, but I am going back there, my darling. Anything I can do to help you nail that place, I’m going to. Also, the great all-powerful Vishna is supposed to make a visit in the next couple of days. I’m dying to see the look on his face when I tell him off!”

Her eyes smoldered with anger, and while the passion made her more beautiful it also made her eat faster and with less awareness of what she was doing. Shannon watched helplessly as she tossed her remaining pizza crust on her plate and took the third and final slice of garlic and olive, too caught up in her emotions to realize what she was doing. He stared glumly at the two slices of broccoli pizza that were left for him before looking back at her.

“The place is freakish over there, hon,” she said, the words tumbling out of her. “The instructor, a girl named Luanne, had this glazed, zombie look in her eyes. So did her assistant, Debbi with an i, and the rest of the girls there weren’t much better. And the positions they put us through were not yoga. I think they were designed more to cramp and stress the muscle than to stretch it. Anyway, it was tiring, and while we were in those positions Luanne and Debbi with an i would walk around the room and put their hands on our backs and whisper stuff to us about how our chakras were all wrong, and how we had all this hidden sickness that needed healing, but that Vishna could bring us to peace and health. At least that’s what they were doing when they weren’t having us chant.”

“I heard some of that chanting when I was there. Something like: ‘Vishna the one true source’.”

“That was one of them,” she said, nodding. “Also, ‘Vishna will lead us all to peace and serenity’. And my favorite: ‘open your hearts and minds to the touch of Vishna’.”

“People there were buying it?”

“They seemed to be. I’m so furious a place like that exists. Those poor girls who go there have no clue what they’re being sucked into. And they’re so young! Other than me, I don’t think there was anyone there older than twenty.”

“Probably helped that you don’t look much older than that yourself, otherwise I don’t think they would’ve let you join the flock.”

“I had that thought also, so I lied on my application and put down that I was twenty-five. I figured if they were as out of it as they looked I could pull it off.”

“Even if they were bright-eyed and bushytailed you could pull off twenty-five.”

“Right.” Susan rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I’m sure the bad lighting there, along with the incense-induced fog, didn’t hurt. As bizarre as the experience was, it was kind of fun trying to figure out what homeopathic remedy types all those people were.”

“Did you figure any of them out?”

“Still working on it.” As she took another bite of her garlic and olive pizza slice, she stared down at it, puzzled-her outrage toward Vishna Yoga having calmed to the point where she could taste what she was eating-then gave an equally puzzled look at the rest of the pie. “Oh, hon,” she said apologetically. “I’ve been stealing your half of the pizza!”

“I didn’t even notice,” Shannon said as he avoided the chunk of broccoli on his slice.

“Sure you didn’t. I’ll make up for it later, maybe see if I can buy some secondhand pom-poms after all.” Her face brightened. “Oh, I haven’t told you some terrific news I got! I talked with my Stramonium patient-the one who works as a psychic for police departments-and he’s had a remarkable turnaround. His checkup today showed that all of his systems have improved greatly. His heart, kidneys and liver were all failing before. Now none of them are. His doctor’s completely baffled as to what’s happened, and had to admit to him that it’s looking like he’s going to fully recover!”

“That is terrific news,” Shannon said. “You gave him the remedy only a couple of days ago. Can it work that fast and dramatically?”

“It definitely can, hon, as he’s proving. I talked to him about you also and he’s willing to meet with you. He has no idea if he’ll be able to contact those deceased students-he’s never done that before, but he’ll give it a try if you’d like. He’ll need articles of clothing from them. That’s what he uses when he connects to the dead and near-dead children that he finds. His name’s Les Hasherford. It’s probably too late for you to call now, but I’ll give you his number when we get back to the hotel and you can try him tomorrow.”

“Les Hasherford,” Shannon repeated. “His name’s familiar.” He hesitated, his eyes squinting as he concentrated. “I think he consulted on a case in Watertown when I was on the force. If I remember right he helped find a little girl who had been buried in some perv’s basement. He saved her life.”

Susan nodded, her eyes misting. “He told me about that when he found out I was from Cambridge. You don’t know what it means to me to be able to have this type of impact on his life.”

“I’m proud of you, darling,” Shannon said.

“I know.” Her eyes turned liquid as she closed them part way and flashed a smile that made him weak in his knees. “Right now I wish we had ordered room service,” she said, her voice a soft throaty whisper.

Shannon nodded silently. He dropped twenty dollars on the table to cover the bill, then walked Susan out of the restaurant. Eddie had packed up and left his spot under the streetlamp and the rest of Pearl Street seemed desolate; the few college kids and transients they had passed earlier having already called it a night. Susan held him close as they walked, her thin arm wrapped tightly around his waist. In the cool night air he could feel her body shiver. It was so quiet and still out, as if they had all of downtown Boulder to themselves. When they got back to their room, Susan took hold of his hand and led him to the bed. He watched as she undressed and then he joined her. There was so much emotion in her, so much passion as her body buckled wildly under his, her breath hot against his face. It was a long time before they were done.

Afterwards, Susan fell asleep quickly, her head nestled against his shoulder, her legs lying over his, one of her arms stretched across his chest. There was a contentment in her as she slept. Shannon had an arm around her side and could feel the rising and falling of her ribs as she breathed. He let his hand drop so that his fingertips touched her small hip and felt the coolness of her skin. He felt relaxed as he lay there, as if he could drift off easily. He almost did several times, but he tried to stay awake and concentrate on one of the lucid dream exercises Eli had given him. It was hard, though, his thoughts drifting away while his own breathing grew more shallow.

Then he was simply drifting along, his body bobbing up and down as if he were riding waves at the beach. After a while he saw her in the distance. A shawl draped over her shoulders covered her as she sat with her knees bent to her chest and her hands clasped together around her legs. She looked so small and frail sitting alone, almost like a porcelain figurine. Long blond hair fell past her shoulders and ran halfway down her back. She turned to face him and he recognized her. Reluctantly, he accepted that he would have to talk to her. The next thing he knew he was no longer floating peacefully in the current he’d been caught up in, but now had his feet rooted firmly on the ground as he stood next to her. He saw the headstone by her elbow, then all the others. As he read the words carved on the polished black granite stone next to her, he realized she was sitting by her own grave.

“Linda Gibson?” he asked her.

She nodded, her eyes glassy as she looked up at him. Her face was as expressionless as a doll’s. She pulled the shawl tighter around her.

“The police are investigating your father now.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“Did he kill you?”

She shrugged weakly. “What do you think?”

Shannon found himself shaking his head. “Your mother?”

“No.”

“But your father-he did abuse you?”

“Yes, he did. Since I was twelve. He didn’t stop until I was fifteen. When I went to college he started on Gloria. There was no one to protect her after I left.”

“Is that why your mother sent her off to France?”

“No. Mom did that after I confronted her and Dad over Thanksgiving. Before that I don’t think it much mattered to her.”

“Your mother knew what he did to you?”

“She knew. I told her dozens of times, but she always acted as if I were making it up. She knew, though. It’s why she wouldn’t let me see a gynecologist until he stopped. She didn’t want anyone seeing the bruising and swelling that he caused.”

“I’m so sorry, Linda.”

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for.”

“I’m still sorry that had to happen to you.”

She nodded, her expression still little more than what could’ve been painted on a doll’s face.

“Linda, who killed you?” he asked.

She stared blankly at him, didn’t answer.

“Can you at least give me a clue?”

Her lips twisted into a slight smile. “Mit vergnugen,” she told him.

He woke up then. For a minute or so, he tried to hold onto the peacefulness he’d felt when he’d been floating in his dream. It was gone, though, no remnants of it remained for him to grasp onto. Grudgingly he gave it up, and instead thought about the conversation his dream-self had with Linda Gibson. He decided that she was nothing more than the manifestation of his subconscious, brought up so he could work out his thoughts about her and the events of the past day. He got up, scribbled down some notes, then went back to bed. After a long time he drifted into something close to sleep.

Chapter 11

Shannon was up before the alarm clock rang the next morning. While he’d slept restlessly most of the night, he felt physically better than he had the last couple of days-less stiff and almost no pain cutting through his ribs when he sucked in air. Still, he couldn’t shake an overall feeling of uneasiness. Before leaving, he kissed Susan on the cheek and whispered to her that he was meeting Eli. She stirred, half awake, moving so she could brush her lips against his.

“Busy day?” she said softly, her eyes barely open as she looked at him.

“I think so. How about you?”

“Mostly free. One appointment this afternoon.” She stretched her slender body in a way that reminded him of a cat. “It will give me time to shop for a pair of pom-poms. We’ll meet back here for dinner?”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“Me too,” she said, her voice drowsy and tailing off into a low murmur. She rolled onto her side, her eyes closed as she seemed to drift back to sleep. Shannon reached over and kissed her forehead, then left the room.

When he got to Juiced Up, he found Eli standing in front of their usual morning haunt, his arms crossed and his eyes drooping half-closed as if he were falling asleep. He gave Shannon his typical deadpan stare and told him that the store was late opening up, then rapped a heavy set of knuckles against the glass door. A college-aged girl inside with red frizzy hair held up a finger to indicate one more minute.

“Intolerable,” Eli muttered, grimacing to show his perceived injury. “They’re supposed to open at six thirty. It’s almost seven.”

Shannon laughed. “Maybe if you weren’t decked out like a gang member she would’ve opened up already.”

He gave Shannon a quick sideways glance and flared a nostril to show that a response would be beneath him. He then asked brusquely how Wichita was.

“Flat.”

“I would expect so,” Eli said, a bare trace of a smile ruining his deadpan expression. “You know full well I was asking whether it was eventful.”

“In that case, I’d say so. Best apple pie I’ve had in years.”

Eli turned and stared at him as if he were an idiot-or worse, that Shannon was once again trying to argue that the ’04 Red Sox were a better baseball team than the ’98 Yankees. The redhead working in the store interrupted them by unlocking the door and letting them in. Shannon stopped to tell her his theory on why she left Eli standing out on the doorstep. “But once I came along, one look at my mug and you knew it was safe,” he added. She laughed at that. “That’s right. His NY Yankees jersey and baseball cap screamed gangbanger-even though I’ve been seeing the two of you here almost everyday since I took the job.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I didn’t see you around yesterday.”

“I was out of town. Spent the day in Wichita.”

“How was it?”

“Flat.”

That caused her to both smile and roll her eyes. “What can I get you two?” she asked. Shannon pointed a thumb at Eli who had taken a table by the window and was sitting with his arms crossed while he sulked. “Bucky Dent over there would like a large chai -”

“And a chocolate chip scone,” Eli interjected, his voice dripping with petulance.

“- and a chocolate chip scone,” Shannon repeated. “I’ll take a black coffee as high octane as you can make it.”

Shannon waited at the counter while she got the order together, then paid for it and brought it back to their table. Eli raised an eyebrow when he saw the coffee. “We’ve been meeting here almost three years,” he said. “This might be the first time I’ve seen you with a cup of joe.”

“Could be,” Shannon said. “I’ve been avoiding it. Supposedly it antidotes homeopathic remedies, and I’ve been letting Susan use me as a guinea pig.”

“What for?”

Shannon made a face. “Rage issues I had dealing with Winters. I think it helped, the meditation maybe more. But this morning I need a cup. Badly. And if there were a pack of cigarettes on the table, I’d be smoking them also now.” He lowered his eyes to his coffee. “I used to be a two pack-a-day man. Quit cold turkey five years ago when I was in the hospital.”

“Bill, I’ve got to tell you, you were in rare form this morning. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m feeling a little antsy.” Shannon raised his stare and met Eli’s eyes. He was smiling, but it was a hard smile. “This whole cult business is bugging the hell out of me.”

“You could drop the case.”

“Not really, at least not if I ever want to look at myself in the mirror again. If I don’t help my client, nobody’s going to. Which would mean her daughter’s as good as lost.” Shannon stared out the window and watched as two squirrels darted across the cobblestone street and chased each other up a maple tree. When they were out of sight, he looked back at his friend. “Even without all that I couldn’t drop this-not without having to worry about those two Russians showing up at my apartment. One way or another I have to see this through,” he said.

“Any idea how?”

“A few, and they all center around finding out why a couple of Russian gangsters are acting as muscle for a cult.” He had other thoughts on the matter that he didn’t bother sharing with Eli. Once those Russians crossed the line and made it clear they’d come after him at his home, as far as he was concerned all bets were off. If he ended up having to flush them out and set them up for a long prison sentence, he’d do that. If he had to do worse, he’d do that also. He looked away and took a long drink of his coffee.

“If there’s anything I can do to help…”

“I know.”

“So are you going to tell me about Wichita?”

Shannon rubbed his jaw and could feel that the swelling was mostly gone from where he’d been hit. “I found circumstantial evidence that Linda Gibson had been sexually abused by her father. The Wichita police are looking into it now.”

“You’re kidding? Jesus, Bill, you were there only one day!”

“That’s all it takes sometimes when you’re good,” Shannon said with a tight grin.

“And of course, modest.”

“Of course.” Shannon’s grin turned into something more weary. “I picked up enough signals talking to Linda’s parents to make me suspicious about the abuse, but I also got lucky. Or as you like to say, maybe I created my own luck.”

“And how did you accomplish that?”

“When I arrived in Wichita I stopped off at their main police station to let them know why I was in town, and a local cop searched me out. He dated Linda back in high school and wanted to make sure I wasn’t there to dig up dirt on her. As it turned out, he also had his own suspicions. We were able to convince his captain to investigate the sexual abuse. It wasn’t easy. The guy looked absolutely crestfallen when he realized he had no choice but to take it on or risk the political fallout if it came out in the press. And I made sure that he knew it would come out in the press.”

“How in the world can the police investigate the abuse now with the girl dead?”

“They probably won’t be able to with Linda. But there’s another daughter who was shipped off to a boarding school in France.”

“And you think he abused her too?”

“It’s a good bet. If he did, he’s going to prison.” Shannon looked out the window, watching as a couple of kids in long baggy jeans walked by, one wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt, the other a Def Leopard one. He turned back to Eli. “Want to hear a coincidence? The cop who dated Linda also had an aunt murdered by Winters and his cousin.”

“There are no coincidences.”

“You’re going to try to tell me there’s a divine plan that had me meeting that cop?”

“No.” Eli took a bite of his scone and chewed it slowly. After brushing some crumbs from his chin he continued. “Nothing like that. But picture an energy current that swirls about and picks you and other people up with it. That’s why sometimes we keep running into the same people throughout our lifetimes-we’re riding the same energy jet stream. So whatever energy wrought Winters and all of his destruction, also caught the two of you up in its wake. There is no doubt a connection between you and that officer. And whatever it is, it brought the two of you to the same point in Wichita yesterday.”

“All too metaphysical for me.” Shannon started to rub the joints above his two missing fingers, caught himself. “He seemed like a good kid, though, and I guess we are connected in a way. Because of Winters and his cousin we both became cops. And there are the more obvious ways too.”

The two men grew silent then. Shannon’s face darkened as he sunk deep into his own thoughts. Eli had a similarly distant look as he ate his scone and drank his chai. A glimmer showed in his eyes. He brushed more crumbs from his chin, then asked “You don’t think Gibson could be responsible for his daughter’s death? That maybe she threatened to expose him?”

Shannon looked up at him as if he were coming out of a trance. A few seconds passed before the question registered, then he shook his head. “The Wichita police are looking into it. It’s a possibility, but I don’t think that’s what happened.” He caught himself again as he started to massage the area around his missing fingers. “I had a lucid dream last night.” He lowered his voice and edged his chair closer to the table. “It was all very vivid. In the dream I found Linda Gibson sitting by her grave wearing what looked like a burial shawl. I asked her about the abuse; also whether her father was involved with her death. She confirmed the abuse, but denied that he had anything to do with her murder. When I asked who killed her all she did was mutter some gibberish.”

“How do you interpret this?”

Shannon shrugged. “Her muttering gibberish? No idea. The rest of it was probably my subconscious clarifying my thoughts.”

“Or maybe pointing out your gut instincts.”

“Maybe.” He took another long drink of his coffee, finishing it. “There was something very odd about that dream. Before I found Linda, I was floating as if my body were weightless. I felt so light, so much at peace, and all I wanted to do was hold onto that feeling. When I saw Linda by her grave, I knew I’d lose that sense of peace if I went over and talked to her. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and it took every ounce of strength I had to make myself go over to her.”

“Why did you?”

“I knew I was supposed to.”

Eli tapped his forefinger slowly against his upper lip. “I’m wondering,” he muttered.

Shannon waited while he watched Eli methodically tap his lip. Then somewhat impatiently he asked him what he was wondering.

“How vivid was this dream when you woke up?”

“Very.”

“How about now?”

“Still very vivid.”

“Then what I’m wondering is whether you had a lucid dream or instead had left your body.”

“I didn’t leave my body,” Shannon said. “I didn’t feel any of the twisting and ripping sensation that I felt that time with Winters.”

“It’s not always like that. You could’ve transitioned gently from the dream plane to another plane of existence.”

“That’s not the case. Linda didn’t seem real to me. Her skin had this unnatural sheen to it. Almost like she were a ceramic doll.”

“Like she was something very fragile?”

“Yeah.”

“That fits. She was projected as the image you needed to see her as. I’m telling you, Bill, I think you had an out-of-body experience.”

“What I’m thinking is something got slipped into your chai,” Shannon said. He found himself drumming his fingers hard along the table surface. The same antsy feeling he had earlier was back again worming its way into his gut.

“Jesus, Bill, why are you so upset about this? This is what you’ve been working towards.”

“I’m not upset, it wasn’t an out-of-body experience, okay?” Shannon checked his watch and pushed himself out of his chair. “I’ve got to get going. I’m meeting someone at eight. Usual time tomorrow morning?”

Eli nodded slowly, his lips pursed as he studied Shannon. “Normal time tomorrow’s fine.” Then showing a thin smile, added, “I still don’t understand this reaction from you. It’s not as if I rubbed your nose in the fact that your beloved Red Sox lost to the lowly Colorado Rockies two nights ago.”

“They took two out of three, which is better than your Yankees have been doing with Tampa Bay.”

Eli crossed his thick arms, his deadpan expression back in place. “A low blow,” he said. “Try to tell me tomorrow why the idea of that being an out-of-body experience upset you as much as it did.”

“Christ, Eli, I’m telling you I’m not upset. Besides, that’s not what it was. See you tomorrow, okay?”

Shannon nodded to his friend as he moved quickly out of the shop. He had a half hour before he was going to stop by Devens office, but the uneasiness that had worked its way into his gut made it hard for him to sit still. He walked fast down Pearl Street, taking deep breaths as he moved. Two blocks from Juiced Up he spotted the girl from the other day-the one in the flowered vest and long “hippie” skirt who had hit him up for breakfast. She noticed him too and showed a smirk as she made a beeline towards him. When she got within twenty feet, her smirk disappeared and she looked away from him, the color of her face blanching a pale white. Shannon walked past her. He was a block away when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a storefront window. The look on his face stopped him.

He took several deep breaths and tried to empty his mind as he stared at the Flatirons off in the horizon. He knew part of the reason for his uneasiness was worrying about those Russians, knowing that he and Susan couldn’t move back to their apartment until they were taken care of. And while he knew Susan could more than adequately take care of herself, he still couldn’t help worrying about her going back to that yoga studio. The thought of his dream being an out-of-body experience bothered him too, maybe more than the rest of it.

He had the thought about that dream being something more real when he first woke up from it. The idea of it had nagged at him all morning. Before meeting with Eli, he tried convincing himself it was only a lucid dream, maybe an extraordinarily vivid one, but still just a dream. He knew why the idea of it being more than that bothered him so much. For five years he’d been trying to learn how to leave his body so he could find his mom and his old partner, Joe DiGrazia. More than anything he wanted to tell them both how sorry he was about what Charlie Winters had done to them. And now that he finally had a chance to do that, he was so wrapped up in a case that he blew it. The opportunity he’d been wanting for so long was gone.

He started laughing as he thought about how much this bothered him. Goddamit, he told himself, you used to be a cop. What the hell’s happened to you? Believing in this bullshit?

The thing was he knew it wasn’t bullshit. How could it be with all those years Charlie Winters had invaded his dreams? Even if he could come up with an explanation for that, how could he ignore the time he shot out of his body and floated above it, watching as Winters tortured him by his broken fingers, twisting harder with that nutcracker until those fingers ripped off, then his body, now free, turning on Winters with that knife…

Shannon stood silently for several minutes. Slowly the muscles along his jaw relaxed. He closed his eyes and repeated silently to himself for several minutes that if he could leave his body once he’d be able to leave it again, and that he wouldn’t allow any harm to come to Susan or himself.

His cell phone rang, interrupting him. He felt calmer though, his affirmations working better than cigarettes or shots of Black Bush ever did. He answered the phone and it was Mark Daniels letting him know he had gotten his message the other night. “I owe you one for letting me be there when you go through that condo,” Daniels said, his voice cheery. “What time do you want to do it?”

“How’s nine this morning?”

“Works for me.”

“I’ll pick you up at the station at eight-thirty, we’ll go over the crime scene photos, then -”

“Wait a minute! What’s this shit about crime scene photos?”

“You were going to check that for me, right?”

“Yeah, well, I’m still waiting on word from my captain.”

“You should probably get his word soon,” Shannon said. “At least if you want to be there when I go through that condo.”

“What the fuck you pulling on me?”

“Nothing, except I expect this to be more of a two-way street with us. It’s not going to be just me doing you favors.”

“You just doing me favors?” Daniels sputtered out, nearly choking on his words. “How about me checking on that girl at the True Light cult for you?”

“You did talk to a girl there,” Shannon said. “If you’d actually seen her instead of only talking over an intercom we’d know whether that girl was Melissa Cousins. As it is, neither of us has a clue who you talked to.” There was dead silence on the other end, then Shannon heard some ragged breathing as if Daniels were trying hard to compose himself. Shannon asked, “Do you want me to stop by at eight-thirty or not?”

“Yes, stop by,” Daniels said before hanging up.

Shannon checked his watch. He still had fifteen minutes before he needed to stop by Devens’ office. He found a bench facing the Flatirons, sat down and tried to sort out his thoughts. The downtown mall was beginning to show more life as tourists and locals geared up for the weekend. More rollerbladers decked out in spandex skated by, as did more bicyclists, and more couples whose rubbernecking clearly marked them as being from out of town. A guy wearing a suit and tie and a rubber Dick Cheney mask strolled by with a Capuchin monkey on his shoulder. The monkey was also dressed up in a little suit and tie. Shannon guessed that the monkey was supposed to be George W. Bush. He had to admit it was clever, but not too smart. Even at that hour he could tell it was going to be another hot day. It wasn’t going to be too comfortable for either of them dressed up like that. He felt sorry for the monkey.

***

Devens peered curiously at Shannon. “What happened to you?” he asked.

“An accident.”

“An accident? Not due to our investigation?”

“No, a different matter.” Shannon paused while he rubbed his jaw and looked over at one of the Navajo storytellers in Devens’ collection. He had a weird impression that the mother and three children in the clay piece of pottery were also giving him their rapt attention. “Maybe you can help me out with something? I’d like to find whatever I can about a property here in Boulder. I’m pretty sure it was purchased within the last two years.”

“I think I can do that for you.”

Shannon gave him True Light’s address, and Devens screwed up his face as if he were trying to remember something about it. “That’s by Baseline Reservoir, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Devens nodded. “I remember it. Some religious group built a kind of fortress out there, right? I’ll check the records and let you know what I find.” He went back to his desk, got out a set of keys and tossed them to Shannon. “I danced my ass off in court to get you access to that condo,” Devens said. “Did a few Gene Kelly moves, absolutely dazzled them with my soft shoe. My basic argument being that my client-through you as a proxy-has the basic right to access his property in order to defend it. The DA tried to argue that his rights were superseded by the police’s need to be able to conduct a thorough investigation. Fortunately I had found an appellate court decision from 1986 which supported my argument. You should’ve seen the look on the DA and the police representative’s face when the judge announced his decision.” He leaned against his desk and cracked his neck using both hands in a chiropractic-type adjustment. “You were going to tell me about Wichita,” he said.

“There’s a remote chance that Linda Gibson’s parents are involved with the murders,” Shannon said. “The Wichita police are investigating it.”

Devens raised his brows at Shannon. “No way you leave it at that. I want details, my friend.”

“Sorry,” Shannon said. “This falls under what we talked about before about me not providing any dirt on the two victims. If the Gibsons were involved, we’ll know soon.”

Devens looked like he wanted to argue, but he resisted and instead told Shannon that he could respect that. He offered his hand, met the firmness of Shannon’s own grip. “Keep me informed,” Devens said somewhat curtly. “If you hit any more roadblocks that I can help with, let me know.”

Shannon nodded and told him he would. When he got back onto Pearl Street, he took out Les Hasherford’s phone number and tried to decide whether it was too early to call him. Finally, he decided somewhat glibly that if Hasherford were truly a psychic then he’d be expecting the call. He dialed the number. After eight rings Hasherford picked up. The psychic’s breathing was labored and he spoke in a soft, almost melodic voice that at times sounded more like he was humming than talking. He agreed to meet at one and gave Shannon his address in Nederland, a small mountain town about fifteen miles west of Boulder. Before hanging up, Hasherford warned Shannon that he had never tried anything like this before, but that Shannon should bring articles of clothing from both of the deceased and he would see what he could do.

Shannon checked the time, saw he was going to be late meeting Daniels, and headed back to the Boulderado Hotel to pick up his car.

Chapter 12

Shannon was five minutes late arriving at the Boulder Police Station and Daniels kept him waiting another twenty. When Daniels did appear, he carried a thick folder under his arm. His face remained expressionless and his manner frigid as he gave Shannon a dead-eyed stare.

“Anything else you care to extort from me?” he asked. Shannon ignored him and instead told him that Gibson was being investigated by the Wichita police for sexually abusing his daughters. That warmed Daniels up a bit. At least it chipped away some of the frost.

“I had those same vibes when I met them,” he said. “Both of them smelled wrong. Especially the mother. I was wondering if you’d pick up on that also. How’d you convince the Wichita police to take this on?”

“I got lucky,” Shannon said, then he gave Daniels a full rundown of his trip to Wichita, including the conversations he had with Eric Wilson and Detective Don Chase, and the later one he had with their chief.

“So they’re also looking into Gibson being involved with the murders,” Daniels said, his voice barely guttural.

“Not just him. The mother also.”

“I’ll call their captain later and put more pressure on him, make sure he doesn’t let this slide. I’ll have the DA call also.” He looked hesitantly at Shannon. “What do you think? Could they’ve done that to their daughter themselves, or paid someone to?”

“They had to’ve been worried about the sexual abuse being exposed,” Shannon said. “And the mother’s not playing with a full deck.”

“Yeah, but to kill their own daughter?”

“It’s possible. I’ve seen worse.”

“Yeah, I know, but still… what’s your gut saying?”

Shannon shook his head. “I don’t think they had anything to do with the murders. But at least if the police dig hard enough they’ll find something to send Gibson away for sexually abusing his daughters. It’s not enough, but it’s something.”

“Yeah, I agree about it not being enough,” Daniels said. “When I think about what that girl went through it makes me sick. Raped by her dad for years, then when she finally has a chance to make a life for herself, she’s butchered like a side of beef.” He sighed heavily, pushed a hand through his hair. “Alright, let me show you the crime scene photos. I just hope this doesn’t fuck up the case.”

Shannon knew there was no chance of that. As a licensed private investigator he could be shown all of their confidential police reports involving the murders without it effecting a future trial. But he also knew the reason for Daniels’ reluctance. The beating the Boulder police had been taking in public opinion was brutal and he knew the last thing they wanted was for it to be reported that they enlisted the aid of a private investigator to bail them out. As he followed Daniels through the station, the police lieutenant walked stiffly, making sure Shannon could tell how much of an imposition this was for him.

“I’m not looking to get my name in the papers,” Shannon told him.

Daniels turned back and raised an eyebrow at him.

“If I find out who’s responsible for these murders I’m deferring to you and the Boulder Police Department. I don’t care about getting my name out there, and I don’t want the publicity.”

“That’s up to you,” Daniels said gruffly, but a weight seemed to roll off his shoulders. He showed a bemused smile as he asked why Shannon didn’t want the free advertising the publicity would bring.

“I’m thinking this might be the last investigation I take on,” Shannon said.

That caught Daniels by surprise. “Because of the beating you took? It doesn’t look too bad right now.”

“Yeah, it could’ve been worse. No teeth knocked out or broken bones at least. But I have my better half to think about. Five years ago the two of us went through a lot back in Boston, and I don’t want to put her through anything more.”

Daniels considered Shannon through narrow red-rimmed eyes. After a while he shook his head. “You ain’t quitting,” he said. “This work’s in your blood.”

Shannon laughed at that. “You’re the second cop the past week who’s told me that. Fuck, I’ll get a transfusion if I have to.”

“Yeah, I doubt that would do any good.” Daniels opened the door to an interrogation room and waited for Shannon to lead the way in. After Shannon took a seat at the table, Daniels removed a stack of photos from the folder he was carrying and tossed them onto the table.

The photos showed the full savagery of the murders. Several taken from different angles showed Linda Gibson lying naked face down in the living room with the back of her head bashed in and red dots of blood spotting her body like freckles. A trail of blood smudges could be seen leading from her body to the bedroom. From the frontal pictures taken at the morgue, the left side of her face had been caved in and her eye knocked out of its socket. The photos of Taylor Carver were worse, his head nothing more than a bloody pulp. His body lay in a fetal position inside the bedroom about five feet from the door. He was also naked, his skin a pale bluish white in contrast to the red blood streaks across his body. Splatters of blood speckled the bedroom walls and small bone fragments littered the floor. A sheet lay crumpled on the floor next to Carver’s body. It looked as if it had been dipped in red paint.

Shannon looked away from the photos, asked, “Was only Carver’s blood found in the bedroom?”

“Nope. We found both of theirs on the walls and carpet. Mostly only her blood in the hallway and living room, but we did find some drops of his.”

“Any blood from a third party?”

Daniels shook his head.

“What about her eye?”

“What about it?”

Holding his annoyance in check, he asked whether it had been found.

Daniels showed a grim smile. “The perps didn’t take it as a trophy, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was found under the bed.”

Shannon looked again at the photos taken from inside the bedroom. Other than Carver’s dead body and the gore splattered across the carpeting and walls, the room looked untouched. A large flat panel TV could be seen hanging opposite the bed, along with what looked like expensive stereo equipment next to it. “Anything stolen from the apartment?” he asked.

“Not that we can tell.”

“Do you mind showing me the medical examiner’s report?”

Daniels hesitated for a moment, but fished the report out of the folder and handed it to Shannon. He read through it quickly. Carver had been struck over thirty times with a blunt instrument, at least ten times in the head, the rest along his torso. Linda was hit once on the left side of her face with enough force to kill her, and four times on the back of her skull.

“So what’s your theory?” Daniels asked, his face once again a hard granite mask.

“A baseball bat was used?”

Reluctantly, Daniels nodded.

“Did you find it?”

“Nope. Probably in a landfill somewhere. Assuming only one bat was used.”

Shannon’s expression was impassive as he again studied the photos of Taylor Carver lying in a fetal position and Linda Gibson face down with her arms stretched out by her side.

“One person did this,” he said. “The killer attacked Carver first. Linda probably tried to stop him and he struck her near fatally on the side of the face. Must’ve thought he either knocked her out or killed her and went back to beating Carver. At some point she crawled away, and when he realized she was missing he found her halfway across the living room floor and finished her off with those four blows to the back of her head. He then went back to the bedroom and used the sheet to wipe the blood off his bat.”

“It could’ve been that way,” Daniels admitted. “Also could’ve been more than one killer.”

“Any indication that Linda was sexually assaulted? Or Carver, for that matter?”

Daniels made a face. “No indication with Carver. That’s a hard question to answer about Gibson. It appears they were interrupted in the middle of intercourse. There was a lot of bruising around her vaginal area, but it could’ve been caused by Carver. The only semen found on her came from him. There were no bruises on her wrists or ankles to suggest she was forcefully restrained.”

“While it’s possible more than one person was involved, I’d bet money against it. This looks like pure blind rage. Someone broke in there to get Carver, and Linda had the bad luck of being there with him. If there were two or more people involved, whoever followed Linda when she crawled out of the bedroom would have to be one sadistic cold-hearted sonofabitch to let her go on as long as she did, and I don’t see any evidence that there was an intention to torture either of them. This was brutal, but it was more to kill than to inflict pain.”

Daniels stifled a yawn, shook his head. “Yeah, well, I’m not convinced of that either,” he said. “It could’ve been as you said. It could’ve also been a couple of pervs trying to make it look like something it wasn’t. And who the fuck knows, this could still turn out to be nothing more than a thrill kill. Or maybe someone sending a message. As far as I’m concerned, until I get more information anything’s possible.”

“About someone sending a message, if you found a drug connection then I’d believe it, but without it, what’s the message?”

Daniels stared blankly at Shannon, then muttered under his breath asking how the fuck would he know. He abruptly collected the photos and shoved them back in his folder. He didn’t seem in any mood to talk as they made their way out of the interrogation room and through the station, and Shannon was too deep in his own thoughts to bother trying. They ended up driving separately to the dead students’ condo, Shannon in his late model Chevy Corsica, Daniels in his city issued Buick Century. Different scenarios buzzed through Shannon’s mind as he drove, and while he couldn’t disagree with Daniels’ assertion that it could’ve been some other way than what Shannon had described, none of the other scenarios made sense to him. His gut kept telling him that the murders were committed by a single person. That the person had a vendetta against Carver, and Gibson was killed only because she had been caught in the crossfire. He thought about Eli’s observation from a few days ago that at some level he knew the murders were committed by a single person. He would have to try to figure out what his subconscious had picked up on.

Daniels still wasn’t speaking as they parked and made their way to the condo. He stood grinding his teeth, watching while Shannon unlocked the deadbolt and removed the padlock from the door. Stepping inside, Shannon saw that the trail of the red smudges along the living room carpet were in fact handprints. From the blood splattering, he guessed that the killer had stood to the side of Linda Gibson when he smashed her skull in. He looked away from the blood-stained carpeting and surveyed the rest of the room. There was a matching cream colored leather sofa and loveseat not too far away from where Linda had been killed, both showing a spray of red dots. The book case, end tables and dining room table in the room were all walnut and expensive looking.

“Higher end furniture than I’d expect from college students,” Shannon said.

“Yeah, nicer stuff than I have in my own home,” Daniels agreed. “I checked the money transfers and deposits that were made to Linda’s bank account. Nothing unusual, at least nothing to explain this.” He paused, rubbing a thick hand across his jaw. “Maybe her parents were paying her cash under the table to keep quiet about the sexual abuse,” he offered without much conviction.

Shannon scanned the book case. It was filled with volumes by Kafka, Shaw, Nietzche, Camus and Sartre. He picked up a copy of Being and Nothingness by Sartre and flipped through it and found Carver’s name scribbled on an inside page before putting it back on the shelf.

“Anything show up when you looked at Carver’s bank account?”

“Nothing. None of this stuff was bought with credit cards, at least not with any cards they had on them.”

“Linda use one of her parents’ cards?”

“She didn’t have any in her pocketbook.” He scowled as he glared at the blood stains on the carpet. “I’ll put a call in and try to find out. I might have to subpoena their credit card records.”

Shannon shrugged his shoulders. “If they did pay cash for all this stuff and for what was in Carver’s mom’s home…”

“Yeah, I know,” Daniels said. “Points to drugs. I’m telling you, we found nothing tying them to drug activity.”

“Then how’d they get all this money? Either of them have a job outside of Carver’s teacher’s assistants position?”

“Not that we’ve been able to find.” He half-laughed, half-scowled. “Maybe they robbed a bank or something.”

Daniels looked like he wanted to punch someone. Not necessarily Shannon, but someone. At that moment he could’ve easily been mistaken for his old partner, Joe DiGrazia. The thought of that brought a slight smile to Shannon.

“What the fuck’s so funny?” Daniels demanded.

“Nothing. I’m going to check the rest of the apartment.”

Shannon followed the blood trail to the bedroom with Daniels close at his heel. As with the living room, the gore had been cleaned up, but the blood stains on the carpeting, along with the splattering on the walls and furniture, were left alone. Carver must’ve bled out most of what he had in him. The stain where his body had been found ran almost four feet, and had saturated the carpet to the point where after three months it still gave the impression that it would feel damp to the touch. Shannon scanned the blood patterns on the walls and furniture and tried to visualize where Carver and the killer were standing when the attack happened. There was a light spray of blood halfway up the wall to his left, the rest closer to the baseboards and the bottom sections of the furniture. The first blow must’ve sent Carver to the ground.

He moved away from the blood stain. Opposite the bed was the flat panel TV he had seen in the crime scene photos. It looked expensive, as did the stereo components underneath it. Speakers were mounted close to the ceiling in each corner of the room and two additional ones on opposite sides of the TV set. The brand name was something German that he had never heard of. Like everything else in the room they looked expensive, and he would’ve given odds that they were worth more than his car. The CD collection was mostly heavy metal and grunge rock. He opened the CD player and saw that the last thing they were listening to was Nirvana.

Other than dried drops of blood, the walls were bare. There were no photos or artwork anywhere inside the apartment. There were also no textbooks or personal effects in sight.

“The room looks pretty uncluttered for a couple of college students,” Shannon said.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Daniels said matter-of-factly. “What can I tell you, all their papers and such have been taken to the station.” He paused to squeeze his eyes with his thumb and forefinger before looking back at Shannon. “We’ve gone through it all. There’s nothing there that’s going to help. And nothing that showed where they got their money.”

“You didn’t find any cash stashed here?”

Daniels stared at Shannon, his hard granite mask back in place. After a long ten-count he shook his head.

“This doesn’t add up,” Shannon said. “They should have money stashed here somewhere. Everything so far points to it.” He took in a lungful of air and blew it out slowly. “Fuck, maybe their murders were to cover up a robbery after all. I’m going to make a quick pass and see if I can find anything.”

Daniels stood impassively and watched as Shannon checked the dresser drawers for fake bottoms. In one of the night table drawers he found Linda’s jewelry: several gold necklaces, earrings, a high school ring. He’d have to think if the motive for the killings had been a standard robbery gone bad, the necklaces would’ve been taken. After he finished with the drawers, he knocked on walls and gave the closet a quick search. When he was done Daniels asked if he was satisfied.

“How about helping me flip this mattress?”

The two of them turned the mattress over and found the bottom side undisturbed.

“You done yet?” Daniels asked.

“Almost. Let me give the kitchen and living room a quick search.”

Shannon was more thorough in the kitchen, testing each cabinet for hidden compartments and checking if any of the canned goods and boxes were being used to store money. He left to go back to his car for a screwdriver, then pulled the refrigerator and stove away from the wall and took their back panels off. After that he checked the light fixtures and electrical outlet boxes, then walked around the living room testing the walls for any hollow spaces. Daniels helped him turn the sofa and loveseat on their sides, but the bottoms of both were intact.

Shannon peered around the room looking for other places money could be hidden, then gave Daniels a halfhearted shrug. “I guess I’m done,” he said.

Their moods were both subdued leaving the apartment. Shannon put the padlock back in place while Daniels stood still, almost like a marble statue, as he peered off into the distance. “That was a good call looking for a stash of money,” he admitted. “Too bad it didn’t pan out.” He paused as his hard granite exterior softened for a moment, then said. “This damn thing is going to send me to an early grave. Any idea what you’re going to try next?”

Shannon smiled sardonically. “I’m seeing a psychic.”

Daniels laughed at that. “Yeah, why not? That makes as much sense as anything else with this case. Seriously, you have any other ideas?”

“I’m being completely serious.”

Daniels gave Shannon an odd look as he considered him. “Yeah, sure you are…” He let the sentence hang, stopping when the door to the neighboring condo opened. Maguire, looking half-asleep, stuck his head out. His skin color had a dead-fish quality to it, his reddish hair matted and pulled in different directions-almost like a clown’s wig. He blinked several times while his eyes focused on Shannon. “Bill, my good buddy from Cambridge. I thought I heard you out here-”. He noticed Daniels then and smiled apologetically. “Ah, jeeze, sorry if I interrupted anything.”

“No problem,” Daniels muttered. “I was just leaving.” He nodded curtly to Shannon, told him to call him if he found anything, and left through the vestibule door.

Maguire waited until Daniels was out of sight before apologizing again for interrupting them. “That guy’s a cop, right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“He looked familiar. I think he was one of the cops who came around asking me and my wife questions after the murders.” Curiosity shined in his bloodshot eyes as he nodded towards the other apartment. “You two were in there, weren’t you? Come on, what was it like in there?” he asked.

“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” Shannon said. Maguire stood barefooted in his condo entranceway wearing a stained tee shirt and a baggy pair of basketball shorts that went down past his knees. From three feet away he smelled like an open keg of beer. “You doing okay?” Shannon asked.

“Yeah, I’m doing just peachy. Lost my job, wife’s gone, and I’m stuck in this godforsaken town with a condo I can’t sell.” He forced a weak smile. “But on a positive note, I don’t have to go to a shitty job anymore that was sucking the life-force out of me, my wife’s gone, and the Sox won yesterday.”

“Your wife being gone’s a positive?”

“In her case…” He let the sentence die. “I was hoping to catch you today. I found a phone number for my wife if you still want to talk to her. Also I’ve been thinking more about doing PI work. I’m serious about it and am hoping you give me a shot. Why don’t we go upstairs and I’ll make some coffee and we can talk about it. And I’ll give you Nancy’s phone number.”

Shannon gave Maguire a hard look before nodding. As they walked up the staircase to his living room, Maguire mentioned how he had gotten blitzed during the Sox game the other night. “I’m sure I look worse than I feel,” he added. His apartment had the stale, unhealthy smell of a sick room. The blinds were shut, but even so there was enough light filtering through to show the newspapers, beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn across the living room carpet. Maguire kicked them aside as he made his way to the kitchen.

Dirty dishes and food containers covered the kitchen countertop and filled the sink. More empty pizza boxes were stacked up on the floor. From the corner of his eye Shannon thought he saw a mouse scurry behind the stove. Maguire seemed oblivious to it as he moved some of the clutter aside to make room for a coffeemaker.

“Your wife left only a couple of days ago?” Shannon asked.

Maguire’s lips compressed as he stared at the mess in the kitchen. “Hard to believe, huh?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“What can I tell you? Nancy was never the most conscientious housekeeper. Last couple of months she stopped caring altogether. With the hours I was putting in at work, I didn’t have the energy to pick up the slack. I guess now that I’ve got the time I should clean up this mess.”

“I think I saw a mouse run behind your stove.”

“Nah, I’m sure you imagined it.” Maguire squinted hard as he measured the water for the coffeemaker. Shannon opened a milk container that was on the countertop, sniffed it and poured the contents down the sink.

“I guess you’ll be drinking your coffee black then,” Maguire said.

“I think I’ll skip it.”

“This is good stuff.” He held up a bag of coffee that he had taken from the refrigerator. “Sumatra. And I’ve got a package of cups somewhere so I don’t have to clean anything from the sink if that’s what you’re afraid of. Damn, though, I didn’t think you PIs were so picky.”

Maguire started brewing the coffee. “Let me get Nancy’s number for you.” He started rummaging through a stack of papers. It took him a while before he pulled one out, then after squinting hard at it, he handed the paper to Shannon. “She’s staying with one of her friends back home in Medford,” he said. Shannon programmed the number into his cell phone and handed him back the paper.

The coffee finished brewing. Maguire opened a couple of cabinets before finding a package of cardboard cups, then poured coffee for the two of them. He let out a sigh as he drank his. “Man, I need this badly,” he said, a little color coming back to his face. “So what about it? You’re going to let me do some free PI work for you?”

“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.”

“I’m sober if that’s what you’re wondering. A couple of cups of this stuff and I’ll be as good as new.”

Shannon thought about it and shook his head.

“Come on,” Maguire pleaded. “I’ll go nuts if I don’t get out of here and do something. Shit, there’s got to be some errand I can help you with. Just give me a chance, okay? If I do a good job, then give me something else. Come on, man, what do you have to lose?”

“I’m not sure I’m taking any cases after this one,” Shannon said.

“Really?” Maguire said. Then smiling broadly, he added, “At least this would be a start. And with you out of the business I’ll have less competition.”

Shannon relented. “Do you have a camera?”

“Sure do, boss. Top of the line digital.”

“Okay. Good. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

Shannon left the condo, went back to his car, found the Vishna Yoga brochure and brought it back to Maguire. “They have a class today from one-thirty to three,” Shannon said, reading the schedule on the back of the brochure. “What I’d like you to do is to get there twenty minutes before, find an inconspicuous spot and take pictures of everyone going into the yoga studio. When the class is over, take pictures of everyone leaving. Give it at least thirty minutes for the class to clear out.”

“Sure, I can do that.” More color had come back to Maguire’s face. “But what’s the point of taking pictures of them coming and going?”

“In case you miss someone the first time around.” Shannon felt a sharp twinge where his missing fingers should’ve been. He reached down towards the pain, stopped himself. His reason for wanting Maguire there was to make sure that if Susan went back to the yoga studio someone would be keeping an eye out. He went on, “It will also let me know whether everyone who goes in there leaves, at least by the front door. This is serious business. If you see anything suspicious call me and the police. If anyone approaches you, go into the nearest store, call the police and wait until they show up.” He described the two Russians to Maguire. “If you see anyone resembling those two call me immediately.”

“Will do. What’s the connection with this yoga studio and my, uh, neighbors?”

“None. This is a different matter.”

Maguire’s round face deflated like a flat tire as he absorbed the news. “Ah, jeeze,” he moaned. “I was kind of hoping to work on the murder case.” He showed a guilty smile. “It would look good on my resume if I do become a PI. Also, they were my neighbors. I feel like I should be doing something for them, you know?”

“Why don’t you do this first, and we’ll talk about more assignments later, okay?”

Maguire nodded, accepting his disappointment in stride. “No problem. And rest assured, I’ll have all the pictures printed out and ready for you later today.” He drained his coffee, then poured himself another cup. He was smiling, but still looked a bit deflated. “How’s the murder case looking?”

“At the moment, bleak.”

“Well, maybe when you get me working on it things will turn around,” he offered cheerfully.

“Maybe.” Shannon poured the rest of his coffee down the sink, and clapped Maguire on the shoulder on his way past him. “I’ll give you a call later this afternoon, but let’s plan on meeting back here at four.”

After making sure Maguire had both his cell phone number and the police’s added to his speed dial, Shannon went back to the adjoining condo, unlocked the padlock and entered the dead students’ bedroom. There he found a baseball cap that he remembered Taylor Carver wearing in one of the newspaper photos. He also pocketed Linda Gibson’s high school ring.

Chapter 13

Les Hasherford was a tall, thin man with a sallow complexion and eyes that bugged out slightly. He could’ve been in his early forties, but could also just as easily have been twenty years older than that. It was hard to tell given his ash gray hair that fit his skull like a helmet, and his smooth, hairless face that seemed more wax than flesh. When he offered his hand, it was cold and damp and gave Shannon the impression that he was shaking hands with a corpse. Hasherford turned and moved slowly, leading the way into his cottage-style house. The interior was probably no bigger than Shannon’s apartment, but it was clean and orderly and had a nice feel to it with its antique pine floor boards and wood beam ceiling. The room Hasherford took him to had a fireplace with a hand-cut flagstone mantel and several paintings of lush green English gardens mounted on the walls. Hasherford lowered himself into a red leather recliner. Shannon took a rocking chair beside him.

Hasherford sat for a moment catching his breath. In a soft halting voice he told Shannon that Susan was a wonderful woman. “Three days ago I was having to use an oxygen tank and a walker. Really, quite a miracle what she has done for me.” Then, smiling more to himself than at Shannon, he added, “Taken from one foot in the grave so to speak.”

“Susan told me how you can feel as if you’re in two worlds at the same time.”

“Quite true.” He nodded solemnly. “It’s as if sometimes I’m in a fog where the worlds for the living and dead intertwine.” He stopped to catch his breath again, went on, “But I’ve been feeling less like that since Susan gave me my remedy. Do you have those articles of clothing?”

Shannon handed him the baseball cap and class ring he had taken from the dead students’ condo. Hasherford rested the ring on the arm of his chair, then closed his eyes and held the baseball cap to his chest. After a while he gave up. “I’m not getting anything with this,” he said. He went through he same routine with the ring before opening his eyes and shaking his head. “Nothing at all.”

“Yeah, well, I knew this was a long shot, but thanks for giving it a try.”

Hasherford nodded. “I’ve never tried anything like this before,” he said, his breath sounding more asthmatic than it had earlier. “To be honest, I never wanted to know whether I could do this. It takes so much out of me locating the children that I do that I never wanted to add this additional burden. But this is discomforting. Until I took the remedy, when I would close my eyes I would usually drift towards the other world. That hasn’t been happening as much. Something has changed.”

“Maybe you might find it happening later. Can I leave the baseball cap and ring with you? If you find yourself drifting towards that other world again, could you give it another try?”

“Yes, certainly. If I succeed in locating either of them, what would you like me to ask?”

“The name of the person or persons who murdered them.”

His lips parted into a smile revealing grayish colored teeth. “But of course.”

The phone rang. His smile faded quickly as he picked it up. He sat still, listening, and before hanging up told the other party that he would be there as quickly as he could.

“I must leave,” he told Shannon. With what appeared to be a great deal of effort he pushed himself out of the recliner and grimaced as he straightened his back. “A six-year old boy is missing in Colorado Springs. I need to get there as quickly as I can.”

Shannon hesitated for a moment thinking about what he still needed to do that day, then felt ashamed and asked whether Hasherford needed help getting to the Springs.

“Once I get to my car I’ll be fine,” he said. “But maybe you could give me a hand to there?”

Shannon took hold of Hasherford’s left elbow and provided support as they made their way out of the house. “I hope I can still help that boy and his parents,” Hasherford said in a breathless whisper that was meant more for himself than for Shannon. “I just don’t know anymore.”

Once he got seated behind the wheel of a badly dented pickup truck, he nodded to Shannon and drove off. Shannon waited until the truck was out of sight before moving. From where he was standing he had a full view of Golden Gate Canyon, and stood silently looking out at the aspens lining its mountain ranges. Even though it was only the last week of July, the trees had already started to turn gold. After several minutes of meditating on that sight, the noises buzzing through his mind had quieted. He got into his car and headed back to Boulder.

***

Maguire called to tell him that he took pictures of fourteen different people entering Vishna Yoga.

“All women,” he said. “All very nice looking too. I actually know one of them if you can believe it. I don’t think she saw me, though.” He laughed nervously. “Christ, you would’ve been impressed with how I handled this. What I did was find a spot diagonally across the street and sat down with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. While reading the paper, I kept one eye on the entrance and took profile shots of them as they went down the steps. So far no one’s noticed a thing. No Russians with busted noses or anyone else coming after me.”

“Mike, nice job.”

“Thanks. I’m telling you, Bill, I was born to do this type of work. Fuck, this has been an absolute blast so far. No way I can go back to writing software after you’ve given me this taste.” He went silent for a moment, then came back on the line. “I thought I saw someone heading down there. False alarm. I’m going to go get a burger or something until a quarter to three so I don’t look too conspicuous sitting here. I’ll call you after the next round of pictures.”

Shannon felt a little guilty after he got off the phone. He couldn’t imagine how those pictures could be of any use unless by some miracle Melissa Cousins was being taken to the yoga studio. But it seemed like a harmless enough activity to give Maguire. At least as long as nobody noticed him. And he felt better knowing that someone was keeping an eye on the place in case Susan went back there. He decided that he would give Maguire a real assignment later, maybe let him tag along if he needed to stakeout a location.

When he got back to his apartment building, he knocked on Emily’s door and got no answer, which was what he expected knowing that she usually worked until two-thirty. After that he entered his apartment. A quick check of his spy cameras showed that they hadn’t been activated. The Russians were keeping away. He knew that would change once True Light realized he wasn’t giving up, but at least up to this point they were staying away from his home.

He had two emails waiting for him: one from Professor White, the other from Kathleen Tirroza. White, in his email, explained that he couldn’t recall any specific incidents demonstrating Carver’s callous behavior, but that it seemed evident in the cavalier manner in which Carver treated both him and other students, and in how he would dismiss others’ works and ideas. He had directed his office to send Shannon a copy of Carver’s Master’s thesis and hoped that that would give Shannon a better idea of what he was talking about.

Kathleen Tirroza’s email was of more interest. She’d been able to track down information about Vishna’s background, finding that his name was Anil Paveeth, and that he had come to the United States on a student visa in 1992 from New Delhi to enter a master’s program in chemical engineering at the University of Texas. He finished his degree in 1994, got a green card, and worked for Dow Chemical until 2000 when he was laid off. After that he was off the radar. Given his recent activities, she had already suggested to her bosses that they start a more extensive file on him. She still hadn’t identified the Russian, but was going to keep trying-and wished Shannon luck in keeping his face intact until she did, reminding him that she wanted him looking good for her wedding pictures. Shannon reread her email several times before turning off his computer and leaving the apartment.

The fourteen minute drive to True Light’s compound went by in the blink of an eye. Shannon was barely aware of the road, of the other drivers, of the bicyclists he passed. When he arrived at the compound, he held his thumb down on the intercom’s buzzer until the same woman from the other day answered. She recognized his voice and told him to go away or she would call the police.

“I don’t think so,” Shannon told her. “Why don’t you tell Anil that I want to speak to him.”

“Who?”

“Anil Paveeth. Your guru’s name before he started calling himself Vishna.”

“You’re mistaken -”

“No, sister, I’m not. I suggest you find the great almighty true source and let him know there’s someone here who wants to talk to Anil Paveeth.”

There was a long silence on the other end, then she told him to wait. Ten minutes later someone claiming to be Vishna spoke over the intercom. His voice had a lyrical sing-song quality similar to Charlie Winters’, and it sent a chill down Shannon’s spine. “You’ve been asking to speak to me?” Paveeth said. “Well, speak.”

“Not over the intercom,” Shannon said.

Paveeth chuckled softly on his end, the noise sounding like something that might come out of a small animal. “And how do I know it would be safe to talk to you any other way?”

“If what you’re wondering is whether you need to wait until your Russian muscle arrives, the answer is no. All I want to do is talk. It’s either going to be with you or with reporters at the Denver Examiner. They might find it as interesting as I do that a chemical engineer is now running a cult in a remote area of Boulder.”

“This is not a cult,” he stated angrily, then cut himself off and, with his lyrical sing-song voice back in place, said, “Mr. William Shannon, correct? What I operate here is a devout religious temple, I assure you. But I will grant you an interview. However, and believe me when I tell you if there is any further violence on your part, we will prosecute. I hope that is understood.”

Before Shannon could respond the intercom went dead. He stood waiting another fifteen minutes, then the two stooge cult members he had dealt with two days earlier came out of the house. They were both wearing the same style white robes and sandals as before. The one resembling Curly had his head bandaged, the smaller angrier-looking one showed dark purple bruises on the side of his head. They marched silently towards him and unlocked the gate. Neither of them spoke a word, instead stood glaring at him in unison. Shannon realized they intended to trail him through the compound, and while he didn’t like the idea of that he didn’t see what choice he had in the matter. He walked through the open gate and headed towards the front entrance with the two cult members falling in close behind him.

“By the way, I loved you in ‘Three Little Pigskins’,” Shannon said over his shoulder to the bigger one. “But then again, I’m a huge Stooges fan.”

The Curly look-alike didn’t respond. A glance over his shoulder saw that the man’s face had darkened, his eyes small and piggish, his mouth having contracted into a small angry oval. Shannon stepped through the front door and into the marble foyer. The two cult members walked close behind him. He could smell the sourness from one of their breaths.

“How about you two giving me some space?” Shannon asked politely.

Neither of them responded, but they both backed up enough so that he could no longer smell their breath or feel it on the back of his neck. He made his way down the hallway of Hindu gods and when he got to the marble sculpture of Vishna, the Curly look-alike barked at him to take a left. At the end of this new hallway was a door that looked like it had been embossed in gold leaf.

“In there!” Curly demanded.

Shannon raised a skeptical eyebrow at him, but braced himself in case the door handle was missing on the other side, then opened the door wide enough to look in. Inside, Anil Paveeth sat cross-legged on a gold satin pillow, his eyes closed, his thumbs and forefingers touching as his hands rested lightly on his knees. Paveeth, as in his picture, wore a long flowing golden robe and had his head shaved. The room was large, with what looked like twenty-four foot high ceilings, and was filled with flowers and caged parrots. Floor to ceiling paintings of Paveeth were mounted on each wall. Shannon counted eight parrots, each in separate cages. None of them made a peep as he walked into the room, but they all looked at him curiously.

Paveeth opened his eyes and stared at Shannon. The man was as lean as a knife blade and had the same dark penetrating eyes that he did in his pictures. Shannon had to give the guy credit; he projected a good stage presence and could pull off looking far more imposing than he had any right to.

“Sit down next to me and speak,” Paveeth commanded.

“The one true source,” Shannon said. “You don’t know how many false and semi-true sources I’ve stumbled upon before finding you.”

Paveeth’s dark eyes flashed. “Did you come here to mock me or to speak with me? And if you wish to speak with me then be seated! I will not talk to you standing the way you are!”

Shannon took one of the white satin pillows lying on the floor and sat on it cross-legged. Paveeth smiled as he watched him. “Your posture is quite good,” he said. “A private detective who does yoga?”

“And a chemical engineer who becomes God. It takes all kinds, huh?”

“I never proclaimed to be a god, but the gods have breathed on me, giving me a special light to lead my followers with. That much is true. As far as my past, that is immaterial. There are many paths to righteousness.”

“Yeah, sure. Look, you have a Melissa Cousins here. Her mother is worried about her and wants to talk to her.”

“That is up to Kamal. My followers are free to make their own choices and do as they please. If Kamal wishes to talk with this woman then she will do so.”

“Kamal is Melissa Cousins?”

“That is the name she has adopted. Yes.” Paveeth breathed in deeply through his nose, a look of serenity forming over his razor-sharp features as he let it out. “It is the word in my native language for lotus flower. Like all of my followers there is much beauty and delicacy in her.”

Shannon swallowed back what he wanted to say, instead asked, “If I bring her mother here will you let her talk to Kamal?”

“That is totally up to her.”

Shannon gave him a hard look. Paveeth smiled pleasantly back at him. “Before I leave here I want to talk to her,” Shannon said.

“That would satisfy you?”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“If that is what is needed.” He sighed as he smiled sadly at Shannon. “Let me see if I can persuade her.”

Paveeth uncrossed his legs and rose effortlessly to his feet. It was almost as if an invisible rope had pulled him up. He stopped to feed a piece of apple to a white cockatoo adorned with yellow head feathers, then picked up a phone sitting on a small decorative table near the cage and asked that Kamal be brought to him. He went back to the cockatoo and took it out of its cage. The bird perched submissively on his arm while he stroked its head feathers. Kissing the bird lightly on its beak, he put it back into the cage.

There was a knock on the door. It opened and Melissa Cousins walked in. She was barefoot, dressed in a white robe and was even thinner in person than she was in her photo. She was so slight in presence, but still stunningly beautiful with large green eyes and long blond hair that fell halfway down her back. When she first walked into the room and her eyes settled on Shannon, a look of apprehension tugged on her features but as she spotted Paveeth she relaxed into a contented smile. She moved quickly to him, nestling her head against his shoulder. In return he stroked her blond hair in the same manner in which he had stroked the parrot’s head feathers. Turning her to face him, he kissed her forehead.

“Kamal, my flower, this man does not believe you are here under your own desires. Please enlighten him,” he said.

She nodded and reluctantly left his side.

Paveeth waved a hand at Shannon, his fingers long and manicured. “You may talk to her privately, since trust does not seem to be one of your virtues.”

The door opened and the two stooges from before entered. They both nodded reverentially towards Paveeth, then stood like stone statues until Melissa walked past them, waiting until Shannon followed her out of the room before falling in lockstep behind him. Melissa led them further down the hallway, through a large solarium where thirty or so young and very attractive women in white robes sat and meditated. None of them bothered to look at Shannon as he walked past them. The same incense from the yoga studio burned around them creating a dense fog of smoke which stung Shannon’s eyes. He almost missed Melissa entering a room off to the side. The two stooges accompanying him stared daggers at him until he joined her.

Melissa sat down on the floor in a lotus position, just as Paveeth had earlier. Apprehension again tugged at her mouth as she stared at Shannon, her large green eyes jumping with fear as they followed him. Shannon took one of the pillows and joined her sitting on the floor.

“Melissa-”

“That is not my name,” she interrupted, her voice weak and barely above a whisper.

“I’m sorry, Kamal. My name is Bill Shannon. Your mother has asked me to help you. She’s here now in Boulder and wants to know that you’re okay. If I bring her here will you see her?”

“No.”

“Just for five minutes? It will be right here at True Light. You won’t have to leave-”

“I said no!”

“Is there a reason why you won’t see her?”

“Because I won’t. She is nothing to me anymore. My reason for being now is Vishna. My only purpose is Vishna. Not her!”

“Kamal, she cares about you deeply…” Shannon stopped himself in mid-sentence. The fight or flight look that had formed over her features stopped him. Muscles along her jaw and mouth had become rigid, and her eyes changed into something that made Shannon think of a feral animal. He considered her for a long moment before taking a deep breath and trying again.

“Kamal, please,” he said, his tone as soft and nonthreatening as he could manage, “your mother does love you and only wants to know that you are safe and happy. If you’d like I could call her now.”

Her face became deathly white, her eyes wide as she stared at him. He moved slowly to get his cell phone, and when he had it out of his pocket something in her snapped.

“No! No! I will not leave Vishna!” she burst out, veins streaking her neck like thin cords of rope. “Nothing will make me leave Vishna!” Then she started screaming ‘No!’ over and over again, her voice rising to a hysterical pitch.

Curly opened the door to peer in. Melissa, at that moment, scrambled to her feet and ran from the room. He watched her leave, then turned to smirk at Shannon. “Vishna wants to speak to you,” he said, a gleeful maliciousness shining in his eyes.

Shannon knew it had been hopeless with Melissa the moment he saw how she reacted with Paveeth. Unless he had thrown her over his shoulder and made a run for it, he would’ve had no chance of getting her to see her mother. Still, he couldn’t help feeling lousy about how things turned out. When he was brought back to Paveeth’s sanctuary and saw the smug smile on the cult leader’s face, it took every bit of restraint he had to keep his hands at his side.

“Are you satisfied now, Mr. Shannon?” Paveeth asked.

“One girl,” Shannon said. “You can’t let one girl go.”

“That is not my choice to make. As you have witnessed, Kamal is here of her own free desire.” He paused as he fingered his chin. “I see that you are smiling. Did something I say amuse you?”

“Not really. I was only wondering why you couldn’t have let me see her the other day.”

“And why must I bow to the whims of a bully?” Paveeth asked, his dark eyes staring intently at Shannon. His voice had shifted to the same lyrical sing-song he had used over the intercom. “When you came here you were told that Kamal had no desire to speak to you, but you persisted in forcing your way in. And yes, Mr. Shannon, you are a bully. Spiritually, you are a deeply broken individual. One of the many gifts the gods have breathed into me is the ability to see into a person’s soul. What I see in yours is ugliness.” He paused for a moment to smile patronizingly. “I can also see that it is not entirely your fault. It is clear that much violence has been brought early into your life and it has left you spiritually crippled. You can not help what you have become, but if you were willing to put yourself in my hands I could bring you into the lightness that you seek.”

Shannon applauded. “Not a bad performance. I particularly liked the pitch of your voice. Very hypnotic. Almost put me into a trance. And bravo on using the Internet and doing a background check on me. I guess that’s the least I should expect given your background as a chemical engineer. I’ve got a question for you. Where’d you get the money to pay for all this? I know parrots don’t come cheap, and this is quite a temple of narcissism you’ve built for yourself.”

A film fell over Paveeth’s eyes. He looked Shannon up and down slowly, then shook his head. “I see that I’m wasting my time with you,” he said, his tone flat, dismissive.

Shannon applauded some more. “You could look into my soul and see that, huh? Yet another of the gifts the gods have bestowed upon you. Another question. What’s a vessel of the gods doing employing Russian thugs?”

Paveeth looked away then and clapped his hands sharply. The door flung open and both of his cult-member stooges stormed in, violence flushing their faces as they scanned the room for trouble.

“He is leaving now,” Paveeth told them. His two followers stepped forward. “Do you want us to throw him out?” the smaller, angrier-looking one asked, his voice a high-pitched squeal.

Shannon couldn’t help smiling a hard smile. He gestured towards this stooge who looked a bit like a bald Shemp. “A regular ray of sunshine, huh?” Paveeth ignored him and told his two followers, “That is up to him.”

Shannon’s hard smile turned harder. “Don’t worry, boys. I’m leaving on my own. No reason to get your heads banged up again. Just make sure you keep your paws off me, okay?”

He walked past them and out of the room. He didn’t bother turning around-he could hear their breathing behind him as they kept pace. “Quite an arrangement you have here,” Shannon said. “Just the two of you, plus the great all-powerful Vishna, and all these nice-looking girls. Is that how he pays you? He lets you spend quality time with them?”

“Shut up!” the Curly look-alike barked.

Shannon passed Paveeth’s marble statue, gave it a short salute, and turned down the hallway of Hindu gods. “Not that I could blame the two of you,” he said. “In the real world neither of you would have a shot with girls like these. But I guess having them brainwashed levels the odds, huh?”

“I said shut up!”

“Hey, come on, don’t be so touchy. I’m only trying to figure this out. Of course, it’s not just you two and the almighty Oz. Those Russians who were here the other day, they’re allowed to sample the goods also, right? Let me guess, sometimes they bring friends along?”

Shannon had walked through the marble foyer and stood waiting for Shemp to unlock the door. Neither cult member bothered to answer him. After he stepped outside, both of them pushed past him in a rush to the gate. Curly’s face was a mask of fury as he unlocked it and swung it open. Shannon was barely past the gate when Curly slammed it shut.

Shannon turned to face him through the metal posts. “Whatever’s going on in there will come out, and when it does, the situation is going to be flipped around. The boys in prison are going to have the same sort of fun with both of you that you’re having with these girls. Call it karma.”

The smaller one was nearly epileptic. His hands and face shook visibly and it looked as if it took every ounce of willpower he had to keep from swallowing his tongue. A dark storm brooded over Curly’s round angry face. “We will live our lives in bliss,” he spat out. “Bliss! Under the warm guiding light of the one true source. You, though, will suffer in blind ignorance forever!”

With that, the two of them hurried back to the house and disappeared within it.

Shannon stood quietly as he considered Anil Paveeth and the True Light cult. The place was worse than wrong. There was no doubt in his mind that Paveeth was nothing but a narcissistic fraud, and Shannon was convinced that he was using the girls there for something more than just his personal harem. He wondered whether the place could be operating as some sort of exclusive whorehouse. These girls would be different than the typical prostitute, blindly following whatever orders Paveeth gave them. There would be a clientele for that type of slave-like subservience, and maybe that clientele would be well-heeled enough to pay for Paveeth’s temple and all of his excesses. Shannon decided he’d have to watch the place, see who came and went. As remote as the compound was, he’d have to camp out in the open. Paveeth would most likely end up sending his Russian thugs after him to dissuade him. Shannon smiled thinly as he thought about that, the muscles tightening along his jaw. Maybe that would give him a chance to kill two birds with one stone.

Jesus, he wanted a cigarette badly right then. A tremor shook his hands as he thought about it. He got in his car and sat immobilized. For several minutes all he could think about was lighting up a cigarette and breathing the smoke into his lungs. Deep down in his throat he could almost taste it.

Then he started laughing bitterly, disgusted with himself.

It must’ve been the incense. The smell of it must’ve triggered something in him.

He stared straight ahead and tried to clear the impulse to smoke from his mind. After a minute or so of deep breathing, he felt calmer, the impulse gone.

He had turned off his cell phone earlier when he entered the True Light compound. He turned it back on and saw he had a message from Maguire wanting to let him know that the second round of photos came off without incident. He got in his car and headed towards downtown. On the way, he called Maguire back.

“I’m at my condo,” Maguire told him. “Right now I’m printing out the photos. Same number of women left the place as went in. I hung around until three thirty when a black Mercedes 500 SEL pulled up in front and picked up three of the girls from inside. The car windows were too dark for me to get a good picture, but I think the driver was one of the Russians you warned me about.”

“Any chance you took a picture of the license plate?”

“Let me check.” The phone on Maguire’s end was put down. A minute later he came back on, his voice more downbeat. “I didn’t get the license. Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll be waiting.”

Shannon did a U-turn and headed back to True Light’s compound. He pulled up in front looking for a black Mercedes, but the driveway wrapped around the building. Most likely there was a carport behind the compound, and if there was a Mercedes parked there he’d have no way of knowing it. For all he knew there could’ve been a helicopter pad back there.

On his way to Maguire’s condo, he called Pauline Cousins at the Best Western and told her that he had talked with Melissa.

“My daughter is alive then,” she said, her voice faltering and sounding as if she were on the verge of tears.

“She is and she appears healthy.” Shannon hesitated. “She refuses to see you, though, which is what we should’ve expected. Pauline, I’ve dealt with cults before and this is common.”

“But she does seem healthy?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God for that,” she said. “What next? How do I get Melissa out of there?”

“I have an idea of something to try, but you’re going to have to be patient.”

“What could you possibly try?”

“It’s probably better if I don’t tell you about it. Please, trust me about this.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?” she asked. Panic had crept into her voice. “What do I do after that? Do I need to hire someone to kidnap and deprogram her? I’ve found ads for people who do that. Oh God, is that what I need to do?”

“Right now you need to take a deep breath, try to relax and give me time to see if what I have in mind works.”

Pauline started sobbing then. Listening to her breaking down brought a knot to his stomach. He didn’t want to tell her that kidnapping Melissa wasn’t even an option-that that only worked when cult members were brought into the public, usually to panhandle for money or recruit new members. With Melissa locked away inside True Light, there would be no way to get to her.

“At least we know Melissa is alive and healthy,” Pauline conceded when she could, still sniffling heavily, her breathing ragged as she tried to hold back more tears. “At least that’s something.”

“It is,” Shannon said. “It’s more than we knew yesterday. And keep the faith. I’m not abandoning her. I’m not abandoning you.”

She told him she would try to, and thanked him for everything he was doing for her and Melissa. “We still haven’t talked about your fee. I’d like to pay you for what you’ve already done.”

“We can talk about all that later,” Shannon said. “After Melissa is out of there and safe with you.”

***

Maguire was grinning from ear to ear when he greeted Shannon at his door. Perspiration showed on his forehead and neck, his shirt looking soaked around the collar and underarms. “I’ve got some pictures for you,” he said with a wink.

Bob Segar’s ‘Her Strut’ played in the background. When they got to the living room, Shannon saw that the room had been cleaned up. It still needed work, but the litter had been picked off the floor and trash bags were stacked in a corner. Windows had also been opened to air the place out.

“You’ve been busy,” Shannon said.

Maguire’s grin turned self-conscious. “Yeah, well, I decided to turn over a new leaf. And you were right. When I was cleaning up in the kitchen I saw some mouse droppings. I’ll buy traps later.”

He stopped suddenly, his head cocked to one side as he listened to Segar belt out how they love to watch her strut. Then at once he started playing air guitar, his face straining and contorting with the music. He finished his rift with several exaggerated strumming motions and pumped his fist in the air.

“I love that song,” he said. “Against the Wind might just be the best album of the last twenty-five years.”

“You’re one of those guys, huh?”

Maguire gave Shannon a questioning look.

“Air guitar player,” Shannon explained.

Maguire laughed at that. “Yep, I’m one of them. Ultimate Frisbee, hackey sack, air guitar, all that stuff. At least I used to be before I started having my life sucked out of me writing code fourteen plus hours a day. But that assignment you gave me today jazzed me right up. To quote a former Patriots head coach, it left me ‘pumped and jacked’.”

He moved into the kitchen where he opened the refrigerator, took out a beer and held it against his neck to cool himself off. He looked over at Shannon, started to ask if he wanted one, then slapped his forehead. “Doh! Sorry man, forgot. You don’t drink.”

“Not usually, but I’ll take one.”

“You sure? I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not an alcoholic. I can handle a beer. Just not the one you’re sweating over.”

Maguire eyed him suspiciously, but tossed him a can of Guinness. Shannon’s hands shook slightly as he opened it. It had been five years since he’d had a beer, and he found himself wanting it now more than he would’ve guessed. He took several gulps of it, then wiped the foam from his lips with the back of his hand. He craved a cigarette badly. For several seconds he stood paralyzed by the thought of it. He fought back the urge to ask Maguire if he had any, and instead joined him at the kitchen table, leaning to look over the photos.

“You still haven’t told me what’s so important about a yoga studio,” Maguire said.

“This one’s run by a cult,” Shannon said. His voice cracked. His mouth had gotten so damn dry. He took a long drink of beer, then pushed the empty can away from him. “They use it to recruit new members.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I were.”

“Shit. You’re serious?”

“Yep.”

Maguire’s cheeks flushed red with excitement. “Holy fucking shit,” he muttered as he searched through the stack of photos in front of him. He found the one he was looking for and handed it to Shannon. “I know her. Damn, I can’t believe she’s into a cult. She seems so normal, so together.”

The photo Maguire had handed him was of Susan. “You know this woman?” Shannon asked.

“Yeah. I’ve been seeing her for this sinus infection and nasal drip I’ve been having. She does something called homeopathy. It’s kind of an alternative approach to medicine. A little out there if you ask me, but the damn thing seems to work. At least I think it cured me.”

Shannon laughed. “Let me guess. Your remedy type is Medhorrinum.”

Maguire reacted as if he’d been sucker punched. He stared blinking at Shannon. “Goddamn, you’re good,” he said. “How’d you know that?”

“Susan’s my ex-wife. Well, more than that, we’ve been reconciling for a while now. She’s going to that yoga studio undercover. Her idea, not mine.”

“You and Susan live together?”

“Yep.”

“I’ve been to your apartment, man. Just this past Tuesday, in fact. Same day we went to the Sox game. Damn. Talk about your coincidences.”

“No such thing as a coincidence. At least according to a friend of mine.”

“Bullshit. This is a fucking huge one. Unless the stars aligned so we’d meet and become partners in a new thriving detective agency. Shannon and Maguire Investigations. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Yeah, I know. One step at a time. And I know, you might be retiring from this business.” He paused for a moment to rub his hand across his cheek and jaw, leaving a reddish mark behind. “You seemed pretty down before about those two students next door who were murdered.”

“A moment of self doubt. It’s already passed.”

“So you think you’re going to solve it?”

“Yeah, if I keep tracking down leads I’ll solve it. Only a matter of time.”

“That’s the spirit.” Maguire nodded solemnly. “I hope you give me a chance to help you with it. Anyway, let me show you the photos. These are the ones of them entering.”

The first photo showed a van driving off. “It let the same three women off that the Mercedes picked up later. I didn’t realize what was going on until the van drove away, otherwise I would’ve taken a picture of the driver. He was young, though, maybe early twenties, bald, with a bandage wrapped around his skull.”

“I know who the guy is.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Anyway, these are the three women he let out.” He pointed out the next three photos in the pile. Each photo showed a woman heading down the steps to the yoga studio. Two of these women were the ones who had confronted him at the studio, the third woman was young and petite with straight red hair.

Shannon flipped through the rest of the photos. With the exception of Susan, all the women were in their late teens or early twenties, and they were all very attractive. Maguire pointed a finger at the picture Shannon was looking at. “This has been bugging the hell out of me. I could’ve sworn I’ve seen her before and it just hit me where. She used to hang out at my neighbors’ condo.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Pretty sure. Yeah.” Maguire nodded, a sheen of excitement in his eyes. “And not just her. A couple of the others too.”

He took the photos from Shannon and studied them, taking out two of the photos. One was the dark-haired girl who had first confronted Shannon at the yoga studio, the other was a blond girl who looked enough like Melissa to be her sister.

“I’m pretty sure I saw those two also,” Maguire said. He absentmindedly rubbed his cheek harder than before, almost as if he had a toothache and was trying to massage the pain away. When he took his hand from his face his skin was mottled a reddish-white. “Shit, I knew they looked familiar.”

“You remember when you saw them?”

Maguire thought about it, shook his head. “No, after a while everything becomes kind of a blur. These days it’s hard to remember whether something happened six months ago or six years ago, you know what I mean? I just have this impression of coming home late from work a few times and seeing them talking outside the building with my neighbors.”

“All three of them talking with Carver and Gibson at the same time?”

“I don’t think so. Different ones at different times. But again, this is just an impression. I couldn’t swear to any of this on a Bible.”

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Shannon’s heart beat a mile a minute as he jogged to his car, got the Vishna Yoga brochure and brought it back to Maguire. Trying to keep the excitement out of his voice, he asked whether Maguire ever saw Vishna hanging around with Carver and Gibson. Maguire studied the picture and shook his head. “I never saw this guy before.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. If I saw this dude, I’d remember.”

“Yeah, well, I guess it would’ve made things too easy if you did.” Shannon took back the brochure and asked Maguire whether he could make copies of the photos of the women he had seen with his neighbors.

“Absolutely. Computer’s in the second bedroom.”

Shannon followed him to a small room that had been set up as an office. Several bookcases were stuffed with a mix of technical books and hardboiled PI novels. While Maguire made the copies, Shannon picked up a dog-eared copy of Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett and flipped through it.

“One of the best,” Maguire told him. “If you want to borrow it feel free.”

“Maybe another time. Right now I’ve got a collection of Zane Grey’s waiting for me.”

“Those are westerns, right?”

“Yep.”

“I’ve read a few recently by Cormac McCarthy. Terrific stuff. Has the same cynicism and bleak landscapes that you get in the best hardboiled books. By the way, all those computer books are getting tossed. In the next few weeks they’ll be replaced with investigation manuals.”

Maguire snapped his fingers suddenly and turned back to the computer. “A moment of inspiration hit me,” he explained to Shannon. “I wonder what would happen if I did an Internet search for Vishna Yoga?”

He brought up a search engine and tried it. “They’re opening up more studios,” he muttered softly as he looked over the results.

Shannon’s heart dropped as he looked at the list of upcoming locations. Fort Collins. Colorado Springs. Austin, Texas. Norman, Oklahoma. Boise, Idaho. Paveeth had far more ambitious plans than Shannon had given him credit for. He was going to mine those college towns for more women who fit his emotional and physical criteria. Shannon knew more expansions would come in the future. That this was just the beginning.

“What do you think?” Maguire asked, a twinkle showing in his eyes. “Should I buy some stock in his operations? Looks like a potential boom.”

“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” Shannon said. “Look, I’ve got to head out. I’ll give you a call soon.”

“Sure. Let me walk you to your car.”

“There’s no need. I’ll find my way out.”

“Yeah, okay, um, you are going to give me another assignment, right?”

Shannon nodded, grabbed the photos. “Yeah, I will. You did a good job today.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that, and say hi to Susan for me.”

Shannon told him he would. Maguire walked with him out of the second bedroom and through the living room. Shannon was halfway down the steps when Maguire asked him if he had called Nancy yet. Shannon turned and gave him a puzzled look.

“My wife,” Maguire explained. “I was just wondering if you’ve talked to her.”

“No, not yet. I’ll give her a call tonight.”

“Let me know how things go.” He paused, showing a halfhearted smile. “Tell her I miss her, okay?”

Shannon told him he would. He felt lightheaded walking down the steps, realizing what he had stumbled into. True Light wasn’t just a local Boulder concern. Anil Paveeth had ambitions to go national. Maybe he had misread Paveeth’s purpose for these young women. Maybe what he was using them for was to train an army of ‘Vishna’ yoga instructors. And maybe the Russians’ role was to bankroll the expansion, and they leaned on him the other day to protect their investment. An image of Vishna Yoga studios in malls and shopping centers across the country struck him. If the sonofabitch was successful he’d be able to buy himself a boatful of parrots.

When he stepped outside he called Daniels and told him he’d stop by the station, that he had something for him. On the way over, he stopped at a convenience store and bought a large black coffee and a pack of Camel Filter Hardpacks.

***

Daniels looked bored as he glanced at the photos Shannon had handed him. He put them down and shrugged. “So?”

“I thought you’d be interested,” Shannon said. “Three members of True Light’s cult spending time at Carver and Gibson’s apartment.”

“First off, you don’t know that they’re members of that cult. All you know is they take yoga classes. Second, you don’t even know for a fact they ever spent time with Carver and Gibson, all you have is an impression from a neighbor that they did. And your buddy, Maguire, he doesn’t know when that was. Third, let’s say Carver and Gibson knew these girls, how the fuck does that tie that cult to their murders? You were a cop once. If someone came to you with this, what would you do?”

“I’d find these three girls and talk to them. Anil Paveeth also.”

“Who?”

“The great almighty Vishna. His real name is Anil Paveeth. This joker used to be a chemical engineer before becoming a god and starting True Light.”

“How’d you find this out?”

“A friend at the FBI.”

“So he used to be a chemical engineer. Big deal. I went to college for journalism and look at me now.”

“I still think it’s worth talking to them.”

“Let’s say I track down these girls. You know what I’ll get from them? Nothing. And I’ll get less from your pal, Paveeth. What you’re asking me to do is waste hours of my time, especially since there’s nothing connecting them to the murders. Now if you told me they were there the night Carver and Gibson were killed, or they had some altercation with them, then that would be different. Or if you told me your FBI friend has something concrete connecting that cult to those dead students. Are you able to tell me something like that?”

Shannon didn’t bother answering him.

“What I’m beginning to think is you’ve got a vendetta against that cult, that you didn’t like that a couple of their boys bruised you up the other day, and you’re looking for an excuse to send me down there to harass them.”

Shannon nodded towards the pictures he had given Daniels. “You need those?”

“Nah, why don’t you take them with you on your way out.”

Shannon did what the lieutenant suggested and took several steps towards the door when Daniels begrudgingly asked him what his theory was. “How were Carver and Gibson connected to that cult?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they did some early recruiting for Paveeth before he opened his yoga studio.”

“Or maybe there’s no connection. Maybe those girls became so distraught over their friends’ deaths that they ended up getting sucked into the same cult together.” Daniels shook his head, his chest deflating as he sighed. “You find a real connection between Paveeth and those dead students and I’ll look into it. But not until then. I already had a new asshole chewed out for me yesterday for not showing enough sensitivity to ‘our minority’ faiths here in Boulder.”

Shannon left. It was already past five. He thought about heading back to the Boulderado to see Susan, but instead made a detour to the university. He found Eddie at the fountain area outside the student center playing a kid in speed chess. Eddie had a rook and three pawn advantage but never had a chance to use it because the kid’s flag fell while he pondered his position. The kid got up and let Shannon take his place.

Eddie opened his eyes wide as he considered Shannon. “An unexpected surprise. I thought our match was tomorrow?”

“It is. I wanted to ask if this is the girl you had talked to before.”

Shannon handed him the picture of the girl with straight red hair, one of the three to have been let out of the van. Eddie studied it intently, pushing his upper plate out as he did.

“Nope,” he said, “that’s not her. The one I talked to looked like a young redheaded version of Meg Ryan with freckles, at least when her eyes weren’t jumping around on me. How about it? You up to a game of speed chess?”

“Sure, I’ve got five minutes to spare.”

“You any good at it?”

“We’ll find out.”

They set up the board with Shannon taking white and each side putting five minutes on their side of the chess clock. Twelve moves into the game Eddie muttered “fish” under his breath. Twenty moves later Eddie had his head in his hands as he stared hopelessly at the board. He stayed in that position until his flag fell.

“Why me, lord, why me?” he beseeched the sky, then turned livid as he faced Shannon. “I played the Steinitz variation of the Caro-Kann perfectly. I spent three day studying all its variations. You screwed up on your twelfth move. It should’ve been a won game for me.”

“I kind of liked my twelfth move,” Shannon said.

“That move should’ve opened you up to a queenside attack…” Eddie cut himself off. “Another game?”

Shannon looked at the kid who’d been observing their game and waiting his turn. “Okay with you?” The kid shrugged, said it was more than cool with him. That he enjoyed watching someone humble Eddie for a change.

Eddie, setting up the board, asked, “You making any headway with your investigation?”

“If you call wandering aimlessly without a clue headway, then yeah.” Shannon took his pack of Camels out, opened it, and tapped lose a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Alright with me. Rest of Boulder might form a lynching party, but don’t hold back on my account.”

Shannon’s hands shook as he struck a match and held it to the cigarette. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the smoke and tasting the sweetness of it. He felt lightheaded and disgusted with himself, but also immediately calmer, less jittery-as if a valve had been opened and the pressure inside released.

“I quit five years ago,” he explained. “The last couple of days the thought of lighting up has been bugging me.”

“Falling back into your old ways.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you were a cop you probably smoked. Now that you’re doing cops’ work again, you’re falling back into your old ways.”

Shannon didn’t believe that was the reason for it, but he shrugged and acknowledged that it was possible. Eddie had taken white for the next game. He made his move and hit the clock. Shannon followed suit, letting no more than a tick run off his clock. Most of the game was played evenly with neither side obtaining a clear advantage. With a minute left on both clocks, both players made their moves fast and furiously. By the end Eddie had a slight advantage, but his flag fell. Only a few ticks showed on Shannon’s clock.

Eddie stared incredulously at his fallen flag, then at the board. “I had you,” he said.

“Perhaps.”

“No question about it. I had you.” He rolled his eyes upward before facing Shannon. “At least this gives me hope for tomorrow. One more?”

Shannon checked his watch, saw it was a quarter to six. “Sorry, I need to get going.”

“I hope these games helped you.”

“What do you mean?”

Eddie shrugged. “If I had to guess, you came here more to clear your head than to ask me about that picture or to play chess. Any ideas come to you?”

“Still hopelessly in the dark.”

Shannon nodded to Eddie, stubbed out his cigarette and walked off. A thought buried in his subconscious had been nagging at him, and while he played the second game he realized what it was: why the hell were those Russians acting as a taxi service and picking up those girls at the yoga studio? His gut told him the Russians were from Denver. If they lived in Boulder they’d stick out like sore thumbs. So why’d they drive all the way out here just to pick up those girls? The answer hit him about the time he was finishing the last game. They were already in Boulder for another reason so it was no big deal for them, and he had an idea what that other reason might be.

He called Susan on her cell phone.

“Hi hon,” she said, “I’ve been missing you. I’m back at the hotel room now practicing with a couple of pom-poms and getting ready for later. Think you’ll be back soon?”

“Hey, babe, I’ve been missing you too. I’m going to stop by the apartment to check email and I’ll head over to the hotel after that. Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure, why do you ask?”

“You sound like something’s wrong. Are you sure everything’s okay?”

“It’s just been a long day and my throat’s a little dry, that’s all. Keep practicing with those pom-poms, okay?”

Susan told him she’d use the extra time to work on some advanced moves, and that she was looking forward to seeing him. There was a hesitancy in her voice. Before hanging up she asked him not to be too long. Shannon knew she could sense something was wrong, but she didn’t push it. He drove to his apartment building. It seemed quiet from the outside, nothing appearing out of place. A wave of relief washed over him when he saw that his front door was in one piece. He had convinced himself that Paveeth had used the opportunity of his visiting True Light to send the Russians to his apartment, and had an image stuck in his mind of them busting their way in. He checked the locks and saw that they hadn’t been tampered with. When he opened the door, his eyes went directly to a gaping hole in the wall that had been carved out next to the hallway closet. The hole revealed two video recorders his spy cameras were connected to. When he checked them he saw that the tapes had been removed. He looked around the living room. Books had been thrown onto the floor, but nothing else looked out of place.

He moved next to the kitchen. All of the drawers had been thrown open and papers tossed to the floor. Shannon felt a coolness driving into his skull as he walked to the bedroom. As he expected, his computer was gone. Then he saw Emily. She was lying on her side next to the bed, her frying pan laying a few feet away from her. The coolness was now more like ice cubes being pushed into his eye sockets. He got on one knee and felt her pulse. She was still alive. Blood had congealed on the back of her skull above her ear. A stain the shape of a large melon had leaked out onto the carpet from her wound. Shannon’s vision blurred as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. He told them to send an ambulance, that he had a head trauma victim needing emergency care. He then called Daniels, gave him a quick rundown of what happened, and asked if he could meet him at his apartment. He struggled over whether to call Susan. He didn’t want her hearing about Emily over the phone, but he remembered her talking about homeopathy being used to help accident victims. He called her, his voice sounding distant and tinny to himself as he told her about Emily.

She asked whether Emily was making any noises.

“No, nothing.”

“How is she breathing?”

“Very shallow. Barely at all.”

“Any movement?”

“None.”

“Bill, this is very important. Go to the cabinet in the kitchen where I keep my remedies. Find one labeled ‘1M Opium’. Shake out six pellets and place them in her mouth.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Try and do it as quickly as you can. Call me back when you know what hospital they’re taking her to.”

“When I find out, I’ll pick you up and we’ll drive over together. I’m so sorry about this, Susie.”

“It’s not your fault, love, but please, get her the remedy now.”

Susan hung up at her end. Shannon went to the kitchen. Her remedies had been tossed onto the floor with the papers. He searched through them until he found a package labeled ‘1M Opium’, then went back to Emily. He stood frozen as he looked at her. This went against all his years of training as a police officer. Over and over it’s drummed into you not to touch an unconscious body unless CPR is needed. As a cop you’re supposed to wait for the EMT workers. The last thing you’re supposed to do is put what amounts to snake oil into someone’s mouth.

The sound of a distant ambulance knocked him out of his trance. Although what Susan did remained as much a mystery to him as voodoo, he had seen small miracles come out of her work. Les Hasherford was just one example. He tapped six pellets into his palm, each one the size of a pinhead. Kneeling by Emily, he gently opened her mouth and placed the pellets in it. He said a silent prayer over her body, then got to his feet.

He walked outside to wait for the ambulance. The noise of a siren was getting louder. He lit a cigarette and tried to pull some comfort from it.

Chapter 14

When the ambulance arrived, the EMT workers moved swiftly and within minutes had Emily on an IV and were monitoring her vital signs.

“How’s she looking?” Shannon asked one of them.

The EMT worker didn’t bother to look up. “Blood pressure’s low. She has a fractured skull and probably swelling around the brain. We’ve got to get her to the ICU right away.”

They stabilized her head, then one of the EMT workers lifted her up enough so the other could slide a stretcher under her. Shannon asked which hospital they were taking her to and he was told Memorial.

They were loading Emily into the back of the ambulance when a police cruiser arrived. Two uniformed patrolmen got out, talked briefly with the EMTs, then approached Shannon with their poker faces firmly intact. One of them introduced himself as Officer Robideau, the other-the larger of the two-didn’t bother giving his name, but Robideau referred to him as Jenks. Shannon explained what happened and his relationship with the victim. Both officers were young, maybe late twenties. Both had short buzz cuts and sunburned faces. Neither of them looked like they believed him. Jenks peered at Shannon with a distant look in his eyes, almost as if he were waiting for an excuse to be able to unload on him with his nightstick. He asked Shannon to show them where the attack happened.

Shannon led the way to his apartment. When the officers saw that his front door was unmarked, Robideau asked whether the attackers had a key to the apartment.

“I hope not,” Shannon said. “My guess is they’re good with locks. These were pros.”

When he opened the door and the two officers saw the gaping hole in the wall, their skepticism faded. Robideau let out a low whistle. “It looks like they had a crowbar with them.”

“What are those recorders hooked up to?” Jenks asked.

“Surveillance cameras.”

“Tapes missing?”

“Yep.”

He gave Shannon a look indicating that he was just itching to smack him with his nightstick. “How do you suppose they knew you had video surveillance?”

“Don’t know. They probably found one of the cameras, then looked for the recorders. As I said before, these guys are probably pros.”

Jenks had small, almost baby-like ears, and as he stared at Shannon the tips of them turned a bright fire-engine red. “Do you mind telling me why you have this system?” he asked.

“I was on the job for ten years.” Shannon held up his right hand showing his missing two fingers. “I was a Detective First Grade when I lost these and had to go on disability. Now I’m a licensed private investigator, and have a surveillance system for my safety, okay?”

“There’s no need to take that tone,” Jenks said, his manner more subdued. “Under the circumstances that was a more than reasonable question.”

“Agreed. Let me show you where I found Emily.”

Shannon led the two cops to his bedroom. While they were staring at the blood stain on the carpet, a hard knock came from the front door followed by Daniels yelling through it to announce himself. Robideau joined Shannon, and when Daniels was let in and he saw the patrolman, he nodded brusquely to him and asked who he was partnering with. Robideau told him Chris Jenks.

“What hospital they take the victim to?”

“Memorial.”

“Why don’t you head over there and take a statement in case the victim regains consciousness. Jenks can stick with me for the time being.”

Robideau nodded and was out the door when Daniels asked him how the victim was doing. “EMTs didn’t think it looked good,” Robideau said.

Daniels stepped into the apartment, nodded at Shannon, then sniffed a couple of times. He made a face. “You been smoking?”

“A couple of cigarettes. Filthy habit,” Shannon said.

“Yeah it is. I didn’t know you were a smoker.”

“Up until today I haven’t been. At least not during the last five years.”

“I sympathize,” Daniels said. “This Carver-Gibson business can take its toll. These last few months I’ve been pouring an extra couple of shots of Maker’s Mark each night. And now just what we need. Another homicide.”

“It’s not a homicide yet,” Shannon said.

“No, not yet. I guess we can hope for the best. How well did you know the victim?”

“Pretty well. Emily lives two doors down. She’s probably Susan’s best friend here in Boulder.”

“Susan…?”

“My ex-wife, well sort of my ex-wife. We got back together four years ago, just never bothered remarrying.”

“How well did you get along with this Emily…?”

“Emily Janney. I like her. She’s a good kid.”

“You two ever involved?”

“No.”

Daniels took several steps into the room and looked around. “I had to pull in a few favors to get this case assigned to me,” he said. “My boss didn’t want me touching anything else until the Carver-Gibson murders are closed. My own personal circle in hell: to work that case for all eternity.” His eyes settled on the hole in the wall. “You had access to the equipment from the closet?”

“Yeah. I had built in a side panel that could be slid out. Too bad they didn’t use it instead of carving up the wall.”

“They probably found the video recorders with a stud detector-type device for electronics.” Daniels’ barrel chest expanded as he took a long deep breath. He let it out slowly through his nose. “This is going to be another fucking long day. Just what I was hoping for on a Friday night. What was your neighbor doing here?”

“She was keeping an eye on the place. She was supposed to call the police if she saw or heard anything.”

“You were expecting someone to break in?”

“I thought there was a chance the muscle I ran into at True Light would try it. A couple of Russian thugs.”

“Yeah? What made you think so?”

Shannon scratched his neck, looked away. “They threatened to come here if I kept bothering the True Light. It was an indirect threat. Nothing I could sign out a complaint on.”

“Ah fuck, this is just what I need. Now I’ve got to chase after a couple of phantom Russian thugs.” He lowered his head into his right hand and squeezed his eyes. When he looked back at Shannon they were as bloodshot as any bassett hounds’. “I’m going to need you to go to the precinct and look through mug shots. I’ll give our sketch artist a call and see if I can get him down there tonight.”

“Maybe I can do better than that.” Shannon took out his wallet, found the Russian’s driver’s license and handed it to Daniels.

“How’d you get this?”

“During our scuffle the other day. I doubt you’re going to find much on him. I’d already faxed his picture to my friend at the FBI and so far she’s found nothing.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“Already checked. License had been wiped clean.”

Daniels held the license closer and squinted as he read the name and address. “Dan Smith from Los Angeles. What do you suppose the chances are that that name and address are genuine?”

“Unless he legally changed his name, zero. Both of these guys had thick Russian accents. If I had to bet money on it, I’d say this one was ex-KGB. Also, at one point he boxed professionally-at least in Russia.”

“Give me a timeline.”

“I stopped off here at ten to two to check emails, stayed no more than fifteen minutes. I came back around six and found Emily. I think the window’s smaller. One of the Russians picked up a few of True Light’s members at Vishna Yoga around three-thirty. He was driving a black Mercedes 500 SEL. I didn’t get a license plate. They were probably here somewhere between two thirty and a quarter past three.”

Daniels nodded slowly as he considered that, then yelled out for Jenks. The patrolman came out of the bedroom and told Daniels he was maintaining the crime scene. Daniels waved him over. “Show this license to every tenant in this building and find out if anyone saw him here this afternoon. Also whether anyone saw a black Mercedes sedan. I want every tenant asked. I also want the neighborhood canvassed.”

“His nose is probably bandaged up,” Shannon offered. Daniels eyes narrowed as he gave him a sideways glance. “I broke it pretty good the other day,” Shannon explained.

“You heard what he said,” Daniels said to Jenks. “Mention the bandages.” Jenks acknowledged Daniels with a curt “yes sir”, then left the apartment.

Daniels asked Shannon, “Outside the videotapes, anything taken?”

“My computer. Nothing else that’s obvious. I’ll go through the apartment more thoroughly later. Are you going to talk to True Light?”

“Yeah, I’ll get their side of it. I want you heading over to the precinct and looking at mug shots for that other Russian.”

“Later. Mug shots are a long shot at best. Right now I’m going to pick up Susan and take her to Boulder Memorial. When the sketch artist is available give me a call on my cell phone and I’ll take care of that and the mug shots at the same time.”

Daniels made a face but didn’t argue. Instead, he mentioned in an offhand manner that maybe they’d get lucky. That Emily would regain consciousness and be able to tell them what happened.

“If she does recover she’s not going to be able to tell us anything. If she could, those Russians wouldn’t have left her alive.”

Daniels shrugged weakly, indicating he pretty much agreed with that. “I’ll get forensics here, see if we can lift any prints or fibers,” he said without any enthusiasm. Shannon left without bothering to mention how useless that activity would be.

The Boulderado Hotel was less than a five-minute drive from his apartment. On his way to pick up Susan, he found that he had shaken loose a cigarette and was lighting it before he realized what he was doing. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror-the cigarette dangling from his lips, the hardness about his face, an emptiness in his eyes. He took the cigarette out and crumpled it. After parking at the hotel, he tossed the cigarette and the rest of the pack in the trash, then found Susan waiting for him in the hotel lobby.

She walked to him quickly and took hold of his hand, then asked whether there was any news on Emily. He told her that he didn’t know of any yet. “But you gave her the Opium 1M?” He nodded and told her he did.

As they walked to their car, Shannon saw that dark clouds had rolled over the Flatirons. With the approaching storm the temperature had dropped almost twenty degrees in the last hour. He felt Susan shiver next to him. She squeezed his hand harder, but didn’t say a word.

While they drove to Boulder Memorial, he told her his theory about Paveeth sending the Russians to their apartment while he was busy at True Light. She sat quietly, listening, her face tense and pale in the evening dusk.

“I am so angry about this,” she said at last.

“Susie, I am so sorry about what happened.”

“There is nothing for you to feel sorry about, hon. You did nothing wrong. The person I am furious with is this Anil Paveeth. For him to think he can victimize people the way he does.”

Shannon hesitated, said, “Susie, I really don’t want you going back to that yoga studio. I don’t think it’s safe. I also think the incense they use has been doctored. Maybe Paveeth’s added THC to it, maybe other ingredients. Anyway I think he’s using it to weaken people’s resolve, along with the other standard brainwashing techniques they’re employing. This guy’s a chemical engineer. He’d know how to do something like that.”

She didn’t respond. Shannon glanced over and saw her brow furrowed as she sat lost in her own thoughts.

When they arrived at the hospital, they went to the ICU waiting area and checked in at the desk. The nurse brought up Emily’s record on her computer and told them that she was in surgery now but her doctor would come out later and talk to them.

They took seats and waited. Shannon could see the worry tugging at Susan’s features and spoiling her mouth. Under the fluorescent light of the waiting room, her skin looked almost paper-thin. More to get her mind onto something else, Shannon asked her what the characteristics were of a Medhorrinum remedy-type.

Numbly, she rattled off, “Intense energy, passion, outgoing, zest for life, all of which leads to them burning themselves out. Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious since I’ve been hanging out with one of your Medhorrinum patients. Hell, we might even go into business together.”

That knocked her out of her brooding and brought a bare trace of a smile to her lips. “Hon, fifty bucks you’re bluffing.”

“Mike Maguire. He’s the Boston guy I went to the ballgame with the other night. You can pay me later in services. We’ll work out an arrangement.”

“Oh no you don’t! You’re not leaving it like that. How’d you find out he’s my patient?”

Shannon couldn’t keep from smiling. “Mike’s doing a few odd jobs for me. I had him outside Vishna Yoga today taking pictures of everyone going in and out of the place. He was a bit shocked to see his trusted homeopath consorting with a known cult.”

“I bet he was!” Her bare trace of a smile stretched a fraction of an inch. “He’s a nice man. I like him.”

“Yeah, he kind of grows on you.”

Susan laughed at that. It was a sad laugh, but at least it was a laugh. “Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“For trying to get my mind off Emily.”

“She’s going to be okay,” Shannon said. “I have a gut feeling that she’ll be okay.”

She nodded but didn’t seem too confident about Shannon’s gut. He looked helplessly at her, wishing there was something he could do. He knew this was hard for her. It was hard for him. After Charlie Winters, they’d both reached their thresholds as far as being able to lose people close to them because of violence. He started wondering how Emily had gotten into their apartment. If those two Russian thugs had broken in as he’d guessed, they would’ve locked the door after them. So how did she get into their bedroom?

He remembered then that he still had to call Maguire’s wife in Massachusetts. It was already seven-thirty. With the two hour time difference he had to call her soon if he was going to do it that night. He told Susan he’d be back in a few minutes, then walked out into the hallway and found a quiet spot near one of the emergency exit doors with better cell phone reception.

A woman answered on the other end with a flat “yeah?”

Shannon introduced himself and told her he’d like to talk to Nancy Maguire.

There was a long pause, then the woman in the same flat voice told him that she was Nancy. “Mike told me you’d be calling,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re bothering. There’s nothing I can tell you.”

“I was hoping you might have seen or heard something the night your neighbors were murdered.”

“No. Nothing. Mike told you I was taking sleeping pills, right?”

“Yeah, he did, but if you could try to-”

“Look, you know about my pills. That’s my answer.”

Shannon stared out the glass door. Flashes of lightning showed in the distance. He listened for the rumble of accompanying thunder, but the lightning was too far off.

“I have a few other questions,” he said, his own voice flattening out to match Nancy Maguire’s. “Do you remember seeing anyone with either of the victims?”

“I told you, I was out that night.”

“Not just that night. Any night.”

There was another long pause. Then, “No, I can’t think of anyone.”

“If I were to fax you some photos, could you take a look at them and tell me if any of the people look familiar?”

“I told you, I don’t remember seeing anyone with them. Look, it’s late here, I got to get going.”

“Before you go, Mike wanted me to tell you he misses you.”

“Yeah, that’s nice.” Then she hung up. Shannon found himself shaking his head and staring at his cell phone. He put his phone away and went back to the waiting area to join Susan. Robideau was now standing next to her talking to her. Shannon joined his ex-wife. Robideau seemed surprised to see Shannon, but gave him a short nod before turning back to Susan.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he told her.

She bit her lip, nodded. Shannon knew she was on the verge of tears. He took hold of her hand and squeezed it. Robideau noticed the gesture, excused himself and took a seat on the other side of the room.

Time dragged until a doctor came into the waiting area. He talked first with Robideau, then came over to Shannon and Susan. He introduced himself as Emily’s surgeon. “I have positive news,” he told them. “Emily’s still unconscious, and by no means out of the woods, but she’s doing much better. Her vitals have stabilized, her breathing is better and, while she has a fractured skull, the CAT scan shows no significant damage and far less swelling around her brain than we could’ve expected given the blow she received. Things are looking hopeful.”

A few tears broke loose from Susan. She wiped them off quickly. “When will you know that Emily’s out of the woods?”

“Regaining consciousness will be a big step. There’s no telling when that’s going to happen. It could be in a day, it could be longer. You just never know. The officer over there has left me his number to call when Emily’s status changes. If you’d like you could leave me your number also.”

Susan shook her head. “I’ll wait here for her.”

“That’s your choice. If you change your mind, feel free to leave your number with the nurse on duty.”

He left the waiting area, his gait showing that he’d had a long day also. A few minutes later Shannon received a call from Daniels telling him the sketch artist was waiting for him. After he got off the phone, he told Susan he had to go to the Boulder Police Station but that he’d be back as soon as he could. She nodded, signaled with her index finger for him to move closer, then kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Try not to smoke any more cigarettes,” she said.

When Shannon stepped outside, he took hold of his shirt collar and tightened it around his neck. It had gotten even colder than before. Earlier in the day the temperature had hit the mid eighties, now it was closer to fifty. Still no rain, but jagged flashes lit up the sky. He could now hear the thunder off in the distance.

At the station house, he went through several books of mug shots without any luck finding the younger Russian, Dmitry. He then worked with the sketch artist, who came up with a pretty good likeness. Shannon told him there was a good chance this one had a broken nose also. The sketch artist came up with a second drawing with the nose bandaged up and the eyes blackened.

As he was getting up to leave, Daniels wandered over and told him he’d like to talk to him for a few minutes.

“Go ahead.”

“It would be better if we talk privately.”

“I’d really like to get back to Susan.”

“This will only take a couple of minutes. Come on, follow me.”

Shannon shrugged, saw he had no choice in the matter and followed Daniels into one of the interrogation rooms. He took a seat while Daniels leaned against the table with his arms folded across his chest.

“None of your neighbors saw anything,” Daniels said. “Canvas came up empty.”

“A good thing then I was able to give you that Russian’s license and a description of his partner.”

Daniels scratched behind his ear. “About that. According to Paveeth, you weren’t allowed entrance into True Light today. He insists that you arrived there around two o’clock today, and were told to leave when you rang the buzzer. One of his members claims she saw you wait by the gate for fifteen minutes and then drive off.”

“The two of them said that, huh?”

“Yeah, they did.”

“I can describe Paveeth’s sanctuary in detail. If you need me to do that -”

“That wouldn’t prove anything. He claims when you busted in a couple of days ago you forced your way into his sanctuary. He also denies knowing anything about any Russians.”

“Then who gave me my black eye and swollen jaw?”

Daniels flipped through his notepad until he found the page he was looking for. “Duane Sweenski and Alvin Guthrop.”

“Who the fuck are they?”

“The Mutt and Jeff team you tangled with over there.”

Shannon gave him a blank stare.

“The guys whose heads you busted up,” Daniels explained.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I talked with Paveeth, I talked with them. They all gave me the same story.”

“I’m sure they did. And you bought it?”

“Before I answer that, let me tell you about a call I just finished with. It was to your old boss.”

“Martin Brady?”

“Yep.”

“How’s Martin doing?”

“He wasn’t too happy I woke him, but he talked with me. He told me you were the best detective he’s had. Smart, resourceful, tenacious as hell once you took a case. He also told me the full extent of your history with Charlie Winters. It was a lot more than a single incident where you lost a couple of fingers in the line of duty.”

“Yeah, quite a bit more than that,” Shannon agreed.

“I had no idea about everything you went through.” Daniels uncrossed his arms and rubbed a hand across his jaw. He tried to look Shannon in the eyes, but veered off and stared into an empty corner of the room. “He told me it wasn’t just your losing your two fingers that put you on disability.”

“That’s mostly true. I could’ve gone on disability with what had happened to my hand, but along with being maimed I did have rage issues dealing with Winters.”

“I’d have to think anyone would under similar circumstances. Question is, how are you doing with these rage issues now?”

“I think I’m doing pretty good.”

“Were you doing pretty good when you attacked Sweenski and Guthrop and almost killed them?”

“That was self-defense.”

“Sure it was.” His eyes shifted back to meet Shannon’s. “Something else your old boss told me that I found troubling. That you had a history of blackouts while on the force.”

“I could explain that but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Why don’t you try me?”

“It’s not worth the bother. So where’s this leading to? Your department’s going to try to revoke my license?”

“Yeah. My boss will be requesting a hearing.”

“That’s fine. I’ve pretty much decided I don’t want to do this shit anymore. Are we done?”

“Not yet. There’s a thought around here that maybe you were involved with the victim. That you could be using these phantom Russians breaking into your apartment as a cover for what really happened.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous.”

“Maybe, but it will have to be looked into.” Daniels wavered, unable to meet Shannon’s stare. He curled his fingers on his right hand and gave the impression that he was studying his nails. “There’s another thought that maybe you’re still having trouble dealing with your rage. That you’d go to any length to harass True Light.”

“You really believe I attacked Emily?”

“I’m not saying what I believe. My boss, however, might be thinking along those lines. He also might be thinking you could’ve had a blackout and not even know what you did.”

“I didn’t have a blackout. I didn’t ransack my own apartment. And I didn’t attack Emily.”

Shannon waited for Daniels to say something. When he didn’t, Shannon laughed. He felt a tightness in his throat as he asked, “So what are you telling me? You want to arrest me?”

“No. I’m not doing anything until I see whether Emily Janney regains consciousness, and then hear what she has to say.”

Shannon lips pressed into a rigid smile. He nodded to Daniels and got to his feet. When he had his hand on the doorknob, he turned and asked, “What are you going to do if you find the two Russians I identified?”

“I’ll talk to them. But unless their prints are found in your apartment or we find someone who saw them there or I can find a connection between them and Paveeth, I’ll have to believe what they tell me.”

“So that’s it,” Shannon said.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t built a case yet against me for Carver and Gibson.”

“Give us time,” Daniels said. He tried to smile but it didn’t stick. “A word of advice, Bill, stay away from True Light.”

Shannon exaggerated a mock look of dismay. “But they’re the one true source,” he exclaimed. Then he got the hell out of there.

***

Shannon felt a sickish feeling in the pit of his stomach when he stepped into the ICU waiting area and saw the wetness around Susan’s eyes. It took a moment before he could find his voice and ask if there was news about Emily.

She shook her head, wiped some of the wetness away with her finger and motioned towards a TV that was hanging from the wall. “I was watching the ten o’clock news,” she said. “They had a story about a missing six year old boy who had gotten lost up in Pike’s Peak.”

Shannon took the seat next to her. “With everything going on today I forgot all about that,” he said. “I met Les Hasherford early this afternoon. He received a call when I was there about the missing boy. Have they had any luck finding him?”

“They just did. He had fallen into a ravine.”

“Is he alive?”

“He’s unconscious, but alive.”

“Was Les Hasherford responsible for finding him?”

She nodded, bit her lip.

“That’s interesting,” Shannon said. “When I saw him earlier he was having trouble slipping into that other world. I had the impression he couldn’t do it anymore.”

“They showed video of him from earlier in the day when he was leading the police. The poor man could barely walk. A police officer had to support him on one side. With his free hand he was holding a cup of coffee. They showed him several times drinking coffee.”

“Are you sure it was coffee?”

Susan shrugged weakly. Of course, Shannon knew the answer to that. Hasherford was antidoting himself so he could find the missing boy. Most likely he had poured cup after cup into himself until he was able to slip into the world of the dead and dying again.

“Maybe it won’t affect his health.”

“Maybe,” Susan said, unconvinced.

A news break came on. The boy was reported to be in critical condition, but the doctors were hopeful. According to one of them, if he’d been found any later he probably wouldn’t have survived. Susan blindly searched for Shannon’s damaged hand and held onto it. They sat like that until past midnight when a young resident came over to them and introduced himself as Dr. Leonard Cohen. He told them that Emily had regained consciousness. “She’d like to see both of you,” he said.

Cohen led them through the ICU to Emily’s room. She was propped up in bed, her head mostly shaved and a thick bandage wrapped around her skull. Her eyes looked swollen and her skin had a jaundiced tint to it. Both an IV and a morphine drip were attached to her arm, and other equipment monitored her blood pressure and heart rate. She looked so small lying there that Shannon almost didn’t recognize her. When she saw Susan, her face scrunched up into a mass of creases. “My head hurts,” she whimpered softly.

Susan was both crying and smiling brightly at the same time. “I know, Em.” She moved quickly to the bed and hugged her friend. Cohen nudged Shannon, told him he’d be back in five minutes and then Emily would need to rest.

The two women embraced for a minute, then Susan sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Emily’s shoulder.

“I bet I had you worried,” Emily said.

“You’d win that bet, Em.”

“You should’ve known it’d take more than a conk on my noggin to get rid of me.”

“Do you remember what happened?” Shannon asked.

Emily squinted over at Shannon and noticed him for the first time. “I got hit on the back of my head,” she stated, annoyed.

“I know. Did you see anything?”

She shook her head, winced. “I don’t remember much, except hearing somebody rustling around in your apartment when I came home from work. After that it’s all fuzzy.”

“How’d you get into my apartment?”

She stared at him as if he were dense. “With a key. How’d you think I got in?”

“You gave me back my key.”

She hesitated, smiling sheepishly. “I made a copy in case I ever lost your spare.”

“Hon, that’s enough interrogation for tonight,” Susan said to Shannon, then to Emily, “Em,” she said, “I’m so happy that you’re okay.”

“I know, Susie. I’m just going to have a headache for a couple of days, that’s all.”

Cohen had walked back into the room. He suggested that it would be best for Emily to rest. Susan gave her another hug and told her she’d be back visiting tomorrow.

“You mean today,” Emily said. “Already past midnight.”

“Today,” Susan agreed, her smile brighter than any Christmas tree.

***

During the ride back to the hotel, Susan rested her head against Shannon’s shoulder. She looked exhausted, too emotionally spent to talk. The skies lit up every few seconds as lightning flashed over the Flatirons. Rain started to hit the windshield.

By the time they got back to their room, Susan was out on her feet. Shannon helped her into bed and out of her clothes. He then sat on the floor and tried to meditate, but he couldn’t slow down all the noise in his head. Every time he closed his eyes thoughts would start bombarding him. The one that was most persistent and loudest was his wondering what the connection was between the two murdered students and that cult.

He knew he had no chance of sleeping. He wrote Susan a note, left it on his pillow and headed out to his car. Outside the skies had opened up and the rain was coming down in sheets. The lightning now seemed to be overhead, the thunder crashing around him. He drove to his apartment. When he arrived there he put on a sweatshirt and a pair of running shorts and headed outside. Within seconds he was soaked, the water adding pounds to his clothing. He started running as hard as he could. Within minutes he could feel the burn in his leg muscles and chest, but he kept pushing himself. At times lightning lit up the trees along his path as if bombs were being tossed, the thunder exploding next to him. He forced himself to keep sprinting at full speed and didn’t turn around until he was several miles from his apartment. On his way back he pushed himself harder. At times the rain hit him so hard in the face that he could barely breathe, his chest feeling as if it were about to explode in unison with the thunder going off around him, but he didn’t stop until he got back to his apartment building. There, he collapsed, hands on knees, and tried to suck in air through deep ragged breaths. He stayed paralyzed in that position for minutes before he could move. Then he went into his apartment and took a hot shower.

After changing into dry clothing, Shannon walked around his living room and put the books back on the shelves, all the while trying to keep his eyes off the gaping hole in the wall next to the closet. After that he straightened up the kitchen. When he went into the bedroom, he stood transfixed for a moment over the blood-stained carpet, then steeled his gaze away from it and started to pick up the papers and clothing that had been dumped out of the drawers and onto the floor. It took a while, but eventually he had the room straightened up. As far as he could tell, nothing was missing other than his computer and the surveillance tapes.

He went back to the living room, played a CD of Native American music by Carlos Nakai and sat cross-legged on the floor with his eyes closed. Running and straightening up the apartment had helped slow down his thoughts, but he knew his mind was still too active to get any sleep, and he saw no reason to go back to the hotel and risk waking up Susan. The repetitive beat of the drums helped relax him further and slow down the noise in his head. After a while he felt at peace and became aware of a stillness inside. It was a feeling he didn’t want to leave and he waited a long time before opening his eyes. When he did, he was surprised to see that it was ten past seven in the morning and that he’d been meditating almost three hours.

Outside, the sky had cleared up. The sun felt warm on his face as he looked out towards it. The only sign of last night’s storm were some branches that had fallen down. He walked to Juiced Up and met Eli at a corner table. The place was more crowded than usual with all the tables taken.

Eli gave him his typical deadpan stare, mentioned that Shannon looked refreshed. “I take it the thunderstorms didn’t keep you up.”

“Nope, not one bit. Your usual?”

Eli nodded, and Shannon went to the counter and bought a chai for his friend and a combination apple and carrot juice for himself.

“No coffee this morning, huh?” Eli asked, smiling.

“I think I got all that out of my system.” Shannon stopped to take a sip of his juice, then told Eli that his apartment had been broken into the other day and his neighbor attacked when she tried to investigate.

“Emily?”

Shannon nodded.

“Oh, Jesus,” Eli said. “I like that girl. Very spunky. I hope she’s okay.”

“I think she will be. She regained consciousness last night and outside of a fractured skull it doesn’t seem as if there was any significant damage. Susan had me give her a homeopathic remedy when I found her. I think it helped.”

“And you suspect the True Light cult is behind the break-in?”

“I’m pretty sure of it. I went there yesterday afternoon to talk to Melissa Cousins. They kept me waiting, and I think they used the time to send their Russian goons to my place.”

“What do the police think?”

Shannon took another drink of his juice. “Not worth talking about,” he said.

Eli nodded, his long face somber. “Before we get too far off subject, I’ve been thinking more about your lucid dream slash out-of-body experience the other day. You mentioned something about that girl responding with gibberish when you asked who killed her. By any chance do you remember what she actually said?”

Shannon consulted his notepad and found what he had scribbled down after he had woken up from his dream. He read the words to Eli.

“I’m not sure that’s gibberish,” Eli said.

“After reading it out loud, I’m not sure either. I guess it could be Swedish? Maybe some words I picked up subconsciously from a movie?”

“It’s German,” a thin man with a goatee said. He was sitting at a neighboring table and drinking an espresso. “Mit vergnugen means ‘with pleasure’.” He smiled at Shannon and Eli, then turned back to his New York Times.

“That’s odd,” Eli said. “Why would she answer with pleasure when you asked who killed her?”

Shannon was staring at his notepad. “She actually said that when I asked her if she could give me a clue about the murders. But why would she speak German…”

He stopped cold as the answer hit him.

“What?” Eli asked.

“I know what it means,” Shannon muttered, distracted as he thought about what he was going to do next, “I don’t have time to explain now, but I’ll give you a call later.”

“Jesus, Bill, you can’t leave me hanging like this,” Eli sputtered, his long face growing beet red. Shannon stumbled out of his seat, barely aware of his friend’s protestations. He waved to him weakly at the door, then left the coffee shop and headed back to his apartment to pick up his car.

Chapter 15

As Shannon drove to the dead students’ apartment he kept thinking about Linda Gibson. The image of her from his dream had crystallized in his mind, and he could picture vividly the amused little smile that had cracked her face when she spoke those German words to him. At some point he must’ve heard the phrase in a movie and filed it away in his subconscious. Except-and the thought stopped him cold-for it to be something like that he would’ve had to’ve had that dream after he’d been in the apartment. Otherwise how would he have known what type of stereo speakers they had, if any at all? But he had that dream before he ever set foot in there. Maybe one of the newspapers had shown a picture of the inside of their bedroom. Maybe he had filed it away in his subconscious also…

Or maybe Eli was right.

Whichever it was, he decided he had more important things to focus on at that moment.

He still had the keys to the students’ apartment on him. When he arrived at the townhouse he slipped on a pair of latex gloves he took from his trunk, then unlocked the police padlock and the deadbolt and went to the bedroom. There he looked at the speakers mounted on both sides of the flat panel TV. German brand speakers. He removed the front of one of them. It came off easily. The guts had been removed, and sitting inside the empty casing was a stack of hundred dollar bills. He counted thirteen thousand two hundred dollars, then put the money back and slid the front cover back on. He was only mildly surprised when he slid off the front of the other speaker and found a video camera inside of it pointing towards the bed. A tape was still in the camera. He took it out and plugged it into a VCR by the TV.

The tape showed Linda Gibson and Taylor Carver having sex with Nirvana blasting away in the background. About ten minutes into the tape, a bang could be heard over the music. Carver and Gibson stopped what they were doing, both of them looking surprised as they craned their necks sideways to face the bedroom door. There was another bang, this one louder. Shannon guessed that the first one came from the front door of the apartment being kicked in, the second from the bedroom door being swung hard into the wall. Carver jumped off the bed then, clearly agitated. At that point he had moved outside the frame of the camera. Someone, probably Carver, yelled “what the fuck”, and that was followed by two thuds. They occurred almost simultaneously-the second one louder than the first. Linda screamed then, and scrambled off the bed. Before she was outside of the video frame, the barrel of an aluminum baseball bat caught her on the side of the face and she fell out of view. For thirty seconds the only sound was Nirvana blasting away. Then more soft thuds could be heard over the music. Many more. Some of them accompanied by blood spraying onto the bed and across the video frame. Then the thuds stopped. The music stopped also. After that nothing but silence, maybe for a minute, maybe two, then a loud crack-the sound of a baseball being hit out of the park. Shannon knew it wasn’t a baseball that had found the sweet spot on the bat.

His cell phone rang, jolting him back to the present. He stopped the video and saw that it was Susan calling him from the Boulderado.

“Hi darling,” she said. “I was surprised to see you gone when I woke up.”

“Yeah, I took off last night. I knew if I hung around I’d end up waking you.”

“What’s wrong, hon? You sound strange.”

“Nothing’s wrong, at least not what you think.” Shannon paused, then told her about finding a videotape showing Carver and Gibson being murdered.”

“They actually videotaped themselves killing those two students?”

“Not exactly. Carver and Gibson had a camera hidden in their bedroom. They were filming themselves having sex when the murders happened. The killings were for the most part off camera, and my guess, whoever did it had no idea the camera was there. Unfortunately, due to dumb plain luck the killer never made an appearance on the videotape.”

“Why would they use a hidden camera to videotape themselves?” Susan asked.

“Maybe only one of them knew the camera was there,” he said, but as he thought about the way both Carver and Linda acted while they were having sex and the way both of them played to the camera, he didn’t think that was true. So it was a good question, one that Shannon was beginning to have a hunch about. Something that could explain the money sitting in the empty speaker.

“Susie,” he told her. “I think I’m going to be busy most of the day. I probably won’t be able to see you until dinner.”

“Take your time. I’m going to visit Emily this morning, and I have some other things I’d like to do later. Hon, whether or not that videotape leads to the murderers, you should be proud of yourself for finding it. I’ll be looking forward all day to seeing you later.”

After they hung up, he rewound the tape to where Linda was hit across the face with the bat, then played it frame by frame to see if he could spot a reflection in the surface of the bat. He couldn’t find any. He fast forwarded the tape to the end and placed it back in the camera.

He pulled his latex gloves off, then called Daniels’ cell phone number and left a message suggesting where Daniels should look in the dead students’ apartment.

When he stepped out of the apartment, Maguire was waiting in the vestibule, his face unnaturally pale and his mouth not quite right. His voice sounded somewhat strangled when he told Shannon he thought he heard a woman scream in the neighboring condo.

Shannon put the padlock back in place, then made a decision as he reached for his car keys. “I need to go to Denver,” he told Maguire. “If you want to tag along, I’ll tell you about it.”

Maguire nodded. “Okay, sure.”

Shannon tossed him his keys. “You mind driving? I’ve got some calls to make along the way.”

***

They sat in a diner, Shannon with a plate of blueberry pancakes in front of him, Maguire still waiting for the corned beef hash and eggs that he had ordered. During the ride to Denver, Shannon squeezed in telling Maguire about the videotape he had found in between calls he needed to make and Daniels calling him back wanting to know how Shannon knew about the speakers. Shannon simply told the lieutenant he had a hunch about them and asked whether Daniels had found anything inside of them, at which point Daniels hung up. Now as he ate his pancakes, he checked his watch and saw it was only twenty-five past ten. He still had a half hour to kill.

Maguire’s hash and eggs were brought over. He played around with his food, then asked Shannon again about the videotape. “I still can’t get over that you found that tape,” he said. “When I heard that scream I almost called the police. You scared the shit out of me.”

“I should’ve given you a heads-up.”

Maguire took a small bite of his food, but seemed barely aware of it. “I still can’t get over a camera being hidden there.”

“Yeah, caught me a little by surprise too.”

“And it didn’t pick up a single shot of the killer? What a lucky sonofabitch.”

“It probably didn’t. It’s possible the FBI can process it and find a reflection somewhere. I don’t think they will, but it’s possible.”

Maguire pulled at his lower lip as he thought about it. “The whole thing’s unbelievable,” he said. “I guess we’ll be seeing some of that tape on the news, huh?”

Shannon shrugged. Even though it had been almost twenty-four hours since he had eaten anything solid, he didn’t have much of an appetite. He forced himself to finish off the pancakes knowing it was going to be a long day. Maguire appeared to have even less of an appetite, for the most part pushing his food from one part of the plate to the other, all the while shaking his head as if he still couldn’t believe a video camera had captured the murders-even if only partially.

***

Rude stood at the corner of East Colfax and Nineteenth Street where Shannon expected to find him. There was no mistaking him given the description Shannon had. Late fifties, bald, with a thick gray mustache, and hard rubbery flesh which hung loosely from his body the way it does when someone has lost muscle mass in a short time. A number of bluish-green tattoos showed on his skin, all of which gave the appearance of being deflated. Like tires that had the air taken out. The man stared blindly off into the distance smoking a cigarette.

Shannon drove up to him and got out of his car. Maguire stayed seated. “Rude?”

The man’s eyes shifted to meet Shannon’s. Before he could answer he broke into a violent coughing fit and hacked up something red that could’ve been a small piece of his lung. He wiped pinkish spittle off his chin with the back of his hand. Looking past Shannon, he asked in a weak, raspy voice, “Who wants to know?”

Shannon introduced himself. “A friend of yours, Max Roth, thought you might be able to help me.”

“Let’s see some ID.”

Shannon showed Rude his PI license. Rude’s eyes remained vacant as he glanced at it. He lowered his gaze to Shannon’s damaged hand. “How’d you lose those fingers?”

“Line of duty. I used to be a cop.”

“Yeah, thought I smelled cop on you. Who’s the boy scout in the car?”

“An intern I’m training.”

Rude accepted that. “He’s no cop. That’s for fucking sure.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and flicked what was left of it onto the sidewalk. He lit up a fresh one, nodding towards Shannon. “Max Roth, huh? Denver’s most famous PI thanks to that crap newspaper column, “The Roth Report”. I end up doing his dirty work and never get a fucking mention. Just like with the asshole before him, Johnny Lane. Ever hear of Lane?”

For the first time some life flickered in Rude’s eyes. Shannon nodded. “Yeah, I read about him.”

“Rotten sonofabitch,” Rude said, his eyes glazing over. “I hope they’re toasting his balls right now wherever he ended up.” He started making a wheezing sound, and Shannon realized the guy was laughing. The wheezing turned into another coughing fit and more pinkish stuff being spat out. Rude’s eyes shone as he looked at Shannon. “I got the big C,” he said. “In the lungs. According to the doctors I should be dead now. Bad enough I went through chemo, fuck if I’m going to live out my last days in a hospital bed. Not after spending three years in the jungles of Cambodia. So what the fuck you want with me?”

“I’m trying to find someone who sells porn tapes. The kind where one of the parties doesn’t know they’re being filmed.”

Rude sucked hard on his cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs before directing it out his nostrils. “Those are illegal. You could go to jail selling those.”

“That’s why I thought I could use your help.”

“Why you looking for them? You a perv?”

“I’m trying to figure out a double-murder that happened in Boulder.”

“The two college kids killed?” Amusement shone in his eyes. “They were making these types of videos?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Rude considered it, nodded. “Sure, I’ll help you. Two hundred bucks. Something else too.” He looked away, took another drag on his cigarette. “If you solve these murders and give a story to reporters, I want you mentioning I helped you. If your name goes in the paper, I want my name there too.”

“Deal.” Shannon counted out two hundred dollars and handed it to Rude. Rude rolled the bills into a wad and stuck it in his pants pocket without bothering to count it. He stopped to fill up his lungs with cigarette smoke, then made a call on his cell phone and talked briefly, giving Shannon’s name. He told Shannon, “Go to Sex Emporium on Colfax and Fourteenth. Look for a punk with long greasy hair named Starks. Likes to think he should be a movie star, but he’s nothing but a perv. Every voyeur tape he’s got he’s seen. If you’ve got pictures of those two college kids, he’ll know if they’ve made any.”

Rude looked away then, his eyes focusing on something too far off into the distance for Shannon or anyone else to see.

***

It wasn’t difficult picking out Starks. Aside from some old men and a couple of large farm boys walking around the sex shop, the place was empty except for a guy in his late thirties standing behind the counter who fit Rude’s description. He had a medium build, brown hair that fell inches past his shoulders and reasonably good looks that were ruined by dark, hollowed-out eyes. No matter how much he might want to look like a movie star, those eyes would be his downfall. Shannon approached him and asked, “Are you Starks?”

Something close to amusement flickered in the dark hollows of the man’s eyes. He smiled amiably at Shannon, “You the PI Rude sent over?”

Shannon nodded, showed him his license. Starks seemed satisfied with it. He nodded towards Maguire. “What about him-your friend along for the giggles?”

“I’m training him in the business.”

“Yeah, well, you and Junior PI follow me.”

Starks got out from behind the counter and led them to a backroom. “Okay, friend,” he said to Shannon. “Let me see who you’re interested in.”

Shannon handed him pictures of Carver and Gibson. Starks smiled pleasantly at them. “Oh, these two honeys,” he said. “Yeah, they’re very active in the types of films you’re asking about. I’m a big fan of their work. I should be able to get you a complete collection.”

Starks went through several boxes against the wall. It took him a while, but when he was done he raked his fingers through his hair to straighten it and handed Shannon a stack of DVDs. Shannon counted seven of them. “A hundred and seventy-five bucks a piece,” Starks said. “And worth every penny of it. All the chicks in these are absolutely gorgeous. Nothing but honeys.”

There were no titles on them, but each DVD cover showed pictures of either Linda with another woman or a threesome with Carver joining in. Shannon could feel his palms sweat when he recognized Melissa Cousins in one of the pictures. Another showed the same woman who had confronted him at True Light’s compound. Others looked familiar.

“Any idea how much money someone can make producing these?” Shannon asked.

“Not my expertise. I’m only the little guy in the chain who sells them. But there’s big bucks involved. A large market for these puppies, and for good reason. They’re more raw, more alive than X-rated productions. And as you can see, much more expensive. But after a while you get bored with the studio releases, so what are you going to do?”

Shannon nodded towards a monitor and DVD player in the room. “I’d like to look at them first before buying.”

Starks’ eyes glazed. He smiled at Shannon. “Yeah, sure, friend, if that’s what you’d like. I’d have to ask for a small rental fee. Thirty bucks per DVD. Cash only.”

Shannon was tapped out at a hundred and fifty cash. Maguire came up with the rest. Starks took the cash and gave both men an oily smile. “Knock yourself out, boys,” he said before leaving.

There were a couple of chairs by the monitor and DVD player. Shannon and Maguire both elected to stand. Shannon went through each DVD as quickly as he could, fast-forwarding through most of it and stopping only to try to recognize the women involved. They all started off the same, with Linda taking one of the cult members to the bed, the two women undressing, engaging in different sex acts, then later Carver joining in. Through all of it either heavy metal or grunge music blasted in the background. Nirvana and Metallica were used a lot. A few times instead of Carver, an ugly skinny kid with tattoos took his place. After a couple of times coming across this same kid, Shannon realized he was Carver’s brother, Randall.

As he fast-forwarded through the last of the DVDs, Maguire elbowed him. “Back it up a little and play it again at normal speed.” Shannon did, and he caught what Maguire had seen. The woman in the shot glanced towards a corner of the room and smiled vacantly. It seemed like an odd thing for her to do, as if she were subserviently acknowledging someone. Shannon went back through a couple of the other DVDs looking for the same gesture and found that all of the women in them did the same thing. He realized why. Paveeth must have been sitting off camera observing.

By the time he was finished viewing the DVDs, he had matched three women to the photographs Maguire had taken, and, along with Melissa Cousins, had recognized other women from his time in the True Light compound. He was also pretty sure he had seen the redhead that Eddie had described to him.

“Why do I now feel like scrubbing myself with sulfuric acid?” Maguire remarked.

“I don’t know, but save some for me.”

“Do you think any of the girls knew they were being filmed?”

“No.”

Maguire thought about that, his eyes dull as he shook his head. “I still can’t believe those two were making videos like that right next door to me.”

Shannon shrugged. Watching the DVDs didn’t leave him in much of a mood for small talk. He tried the door, found it locked and banged on it. Starks opened it and walked in. The two farm boys who’d been milling about the store followed behind him.

Shannon handed him the stack of DVDs and told him which one he wanted to buy. He needed one of them to prove the connection between Paveeth and the murdered students, and he chose one which didn’t feature Melissa Cousins but where he was able to recognize most of the women as cult members. Starks checked all the DVD boxes to make sure that nothing had been taken. Shannon asked him whether he took credit cards.

Starks smiled amiably and raked his fingers through his long hair. “Sorry, friend, these items are cash only. Can’t afford to leave any sort of paper trail. You understand.”

Maguire offered to go to a cash machine. Shannon gave him his car keys, and Starks opened the door to let him out. The next ten minutes waiting for Maguire were long ones. Starks, along with the two large farm boys stood silently smirking at Shannon, as if he were a member of their fraternity. And they smelled bad, Starks with his heavy musk cologne and the two farm boys smelling like onions and sweat. When Maguire returned with the money he was out of breath, a sheen of perspiration covering his face. Starks counted the money and stepped aside to let them pass.

When they got in the car, Shannon headed towards 36 West to take them back to Boulder. Neither of them seemed in much of a mood to talk. After about twenty minutes Maguire commented that it didn’t seem like Starks had any idea that the ‘two honeys’ were the college students who were killed.

“I don’t think he did either, which is just as well. Otherwise, he would’ve jacked up the price.”

There was another long period of silence before Maguire asked whether the DVDs would tie the cult to his neighbors’ murders.

“I’m hoping so. It pretty much shows that Paveeth, Carver and Linda Gibson were partners in making these films. I’m also now having second thoughts about whether the killers knew about the hidden camera. Paveeth would’ve known about it and so would his Russian muscle. It could explain why the killers were lucky enough to stay out of the video.”

Shannon’s cell phone rang. It was Susan. In a rushed breathless voice she told him she was in trouble. That she was at True Light’s compound.

A slow panic took over as Susan’s words made sense to him. He thought about the Russians being in his apartment, about them seeing pictures of Susan and knowing who she was. He could hear himself asking her to tell him what happened.

“I went back there. Now don’t get mad at me! I know I shouldn’t’ve but I wanted to get some of that incense so you’d be able to have it analyzed. Two men came into the cult-”

“Wait a minute. Describe them.”

“I think they were both cult members. They were both young, bald, wearing white robes.”

“Yeah, okay, I know who you’re talking about.”

“Bill, I think they were looking for me. It was the way they were staring at me. I’m not sure, but I think they might’ve had a picture of me. They selected some of the other women there to meet Vishna. Before I knew what was happening, they grabbed me also. They took our backpacks and pocketbooks from us and herded us into a van. The other women went willingly, but there was nothing I could do, it happened so fast and I was just dragged along with them!”

“Where are you now?”

“They separated me from the rest of them. I think I’m in the same room you were locked in. There’s no handle on the door. Thank God they didn’t search me, otherwise they would’ve found my cell phone, and thank God they’re making them so small these days! I’m scared, Bill-”

Shannon heard a door being opened, then Susan demanding that she be released. A vaguely familiar voice hushed her, telling her how much he’d been waiting to meet her. The phone went dead. Shannon realized the familiar voice was Dmitry’s.

He was fifteen miles from the True Light compound. Tossing Maguire his cell phone, he told him to call both 911 and Lieutenant Mark Daniels and tell them that his ex-wife’s been kidnapped and taken to True Light. He pushed hard on the gas pedal until his foot pressed against the floor of the car. The car jerked forward, accelerating until it topped out at one hundred and ten miles per hour. The traffic was light but Shannon still had to weave between cars, and at one point, squeezed between two trucks. He ignored both of their horn blasts and Maguire’s yelling, his knuckles a hard white as he gripped the wheel, his leg muscles straining to keep him in his seat. He didn’t let up on the accelerator until the True Light compound came into sight. There were no police cruisers there. He had beaten them to the place.

He skidded to a stop by the main gate, got out and found the. 38 snub nose in his trunk. Taking a running jump, he was able to get halfway up the metal fence and pull himself over. On the way down, he ripped his hand on the spike topping one of the posts but ignored it and raced to the side of the building where he knew the solarium was. A dozen or so women in white robes sat inside. A few of them noticed him and gawked. He shot one bullet through the glass pane to structurally weaken it. That got the dozen or so cult members inside screaming and scurrying from the area. Shannon shoved the revolver in his waistband, found a small boulder, maybe thirty pounds, and slammed it against the bullet hole. The pane shattered into a hard rain of jagged glass. Taking the gun in his hand, Shannon ran through the opening. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blur of motion, and dropped quickly to his knees. The larger stooge, Curly, tumbled over him as he ran to throw a haymaker and lay sprawled on the floor. Shannon flipped him over and grabbed him by the throat. Pieces of broken glass had sliced the stooge’s face up and he was bleeding from dozens of wounds. He also looked like he was about to go into shock.

Shannon slapped him hard across the face. That brought his eyes back to life. His little mouth screwed up and he spat out that he would live his life in bliss.

Shannon slapped him again. “Where’d they take her?”

“Bliss!” the stooge yelled at him.

“Forget bliss, you’ll be lucky to get Centennial Prison. You tell me where they took her, or I’ll start knocking your teeth out. And Curly, that will make you a popular guy at Centennial.”

“Bliss!” the stooge yelled.

Shannon whacked his mouth with the butt end of the gun knocking out the stooge’s front teeth. He showed the stooge one of them, and the stooge’s mouth puckered up as if he were about to start bawling. “The dungeon,” he cried when he saw the gun lifted again. “They took her to the dungeon!”

“Where the fuck’s that?”

The stooge started bawling. Shannon slapped him again in the face, but saw it was useless. He wasn’t going to get anything more from him. As he stood up, he saw the smaller stooge watching from a distance, a tentative look on his face. Their eyes met and the stooge started running. Shannon chased after him. All around him women in white robes were wailing away. He pushed his way past them. The smaller stooge led him down a hallway he hadn’t seen before. Almost as if it were happening in slow motion, a panel in the wall slid open and Dmitry appeared. The Russian moved faster than he did, raising a. 45 caliber automatic and firing. Shannon threw himself to the floor. On his way down the bullet tore through his right shoulder. He landed with a thud, got his left arm stretched out in front of him and fired off two shots leaving red dots on Dmitry’s chest. The Russian looked curiously at the expanding dots, then his knees buckled and he fell dead.

Shannon’s shoulder felt like it was on fire. As if someone were jabbing inside of him with a red-hot poker. The room started to spin but he got to his feet and steadied himself, his right arm limp at his side, blood dripping down his fingers. He could feel a wet stickiness spreading down his body. He knew he was bleeding badly. Only half aware of it, he looked at his blood and gore splattered on the wall next to him, then pushed himself forward. He stepped over Dmitry’s body and went through the opening in the wall. This led him down a narrow corridor and into the dungeon.

He stood dazed for a second, not quite believing what he saw-it was like something out of medieval times. Manacles hung from the ceiling, swords, maces and other similar-type weapons were mounted on the back wall. Susan lay chained to a table in the middle of the room that was tilted at a forty-five degree angle. Her eyes were open and her head rolled slowly from side to side. She was out of it, obviously drugged. Standing next to her was a man wearing a black leather hood and nothing else. He was in the process of cutting off Susan’s clothing with a dagger. When he saw Shannon raise his gun, the man put the edge of the dagger to Susan’s throat.

“Put down gun,” he croaked out in a thick Russian accent, “or I cut her head off-”

Shannon shot him once in his left eye. The man fell backwards and the dagger clattered harmlessly to the floor.

“Susan, are you okay? Can you hear me?” Shannon yelled out. Her head rolled to face him, but there was no recognition in her eyes. He moved towards her, and only then noticed the tripod and video camera set up in the shadows of the room. Behind them Anil Paveeth sat in a chair, his face blank, his eyes darting from Shannon to the dead Russian on the floor.

Shannon pointed his gun at him and yelled for him to put his hands on his head. Paveeth complied. Keeping an eye on Paveeth, he made his way over to Susan. Both her ankles were manacled to the table, her wrists also manacled with her arms pulled over her head. Her shirt had been ripped open by the dagger. He pulled the fabric aside and saw that she hadn’t been cut. He put a hand to her cheek. Her skin felt cold.

“What did you drug her with?” The cult leader’s face looked small as it stared out from the shadows, his black eyes now darting from Shannon to the opening in the wall. “Rohypnol,” Paveeth said in a scared little boy’s voice.

Shannon examined one of the manacles. “Where are the keys?”

“I will give it to you.”

Paveeth started to stand. Shannon leveled the gun towards his chest. “Stay seated. I’ll get it from you.”

Paveeth lowered himself back down. Moving on pure adrenaline now and feeling his strength ebbing fast, Shannon made his way over to him. He transferred the gun to his dead right hand so he could take the key with his left. With his shoulder chewed up by a. 45 slug, he couldn’t raise his right arm but he still kept the gun level with Paveeth. He could see the thought cross the cult leader’s dark face. “You can try it,” Shannon said. “But I’ll get a shot off.” Paveeth sank lower in his chair and handed Shannon a key.

Shannon walked back to Susan, all the while keeping Paveeth in his field of vision. He tried calling the police on his cell phone, but was unable to get a signal to dial out on. Gritting his teeth and trying to ignore the red-hot pain pulsating through his injured shoulder and the coolness pushing through his skull, he worked on the manacles. It was awkward, though, using one hand, and he couldn’t get them unlocked.

“You look very pale,” Paveeth noted, his voice more of the lyrical sing-song that Shannon had heard earlier. “I think you have lost a great deal of blood. Why don’t you sit and I will unchain her for you.”

Shannon transferred the gun to his left hand and waved it at Paveeth. “Get over here and take these off her.”

Paveeth moved like a ghost in his yellow robe as he glided from his chair to the table. Shannon handed him the key, took several steps back to watch as Paveeth removed the manacles. Standing there, he fought to keep his mind clear and to keep the room from spinning any further. Pain from his shoulder radiated down his arm. It pulsated through his wrist, his hand, even in his missing fingers. With his gun hand he touched his side, feeling the stickiness and dampness of his shirt. He knew if he looked down he’d see that it was drenched in blood. He didn’t want to look down…

He stumbled.

Paveeth charged him then, striking him in his wounded shoulder. The pain exploded, blinding him, sucking the breath out of his lungs. He staggered while Paveeth clawed at his face with one hand and fought for the gun with his other. Shannon recovered enough to sweep his right leg around Paveeth and knock the cult leader off his feet. Paveeth fell to the floor, Shannon falling with him and landing hard on the cult leader’s chest. Paveeth was still grabbing for his gun hand. Shannon lifted his right arm as much as his injured shoulder allowed and punched Paveeth in the face. He did it again and again, each time only being able to lift his hand a few inches above the cult leader’s face before striking down.

Paveeth let out a whimper and quit his struggling. Shannon didn’t notice. As he stared at the cult leader’s face, the image dissolved into a sea of redness. He felt nothing but numbness as he lifted his fist the several inches his shoulder allowed and slammed it into Paveeth’s face over and over again. Then someone was pulling him off, and through the red haze he could see Maguire, his friend’s eyes like silver dollars as he took in the room.

“Jesus, Bill, you’re going to kill the dude,” Maguire was saying.

Shannon felt very cold then. So cold. He let himself be pulled off. Then he lay down. Consciousness flickered off and on. He was aware of being loaded onto a stretcher. Then nothing but blackness until he opened his eyes and saw Daniels staring at him with concern.

“How’s Susan?” he asked.

“She’s going to be okay.” Daniels tongue flicked out and licked his lips. “That. 38 snub nose… Wake up, Bill, goddamit, open your eyes! That. 38, you got it off one of the cult members here, right? Just nod your head, okay?”

Shannon nodded. The room tilted sideways and he fell into a deep blackness again.

When he opened his eyes, he felt groggy and his shoulder throbbed as if nails had been hammered into it. After a dazed moment, he realized he was in a hospital bed. His shoulder was heavily bandaged, so was his right hand, the one he ripped open on the fence. As he became more aware, he felt a small hand holding his undamaged hand. He moved his head to the side and saw Susan, her eyes and nose both red. She broke into a big lopsided smile. Then the dam burst open and tears streamed down her cheeks as she laughed and cried at the same time.

“Bill, I’ve been so worried about you.”

Shannon tried to ask her if she was okay, but his throat was too dry and his voice came out as a hoarse whisper. Susan fought back her tears and held up a glass of water. Shannon drank a little of it through a straw. He tried again, asking her how she was.

“I’m okay, Bill. They didn’t hurt me.”

“All I could think when I saw you tied up like that…”

“I know, hon. Please, don’t think about it. I’m fine, I really am.” She tried smiling. “Guess who came by and donated blood for you?”

Shannon didn’t say anything, his mind still too fuzzy to think clearly and guess the obvious.

“Eli. You have two pints of his blood in you now.”

“Shit. I’ve got blood from a Yankee fan coursing through me? Damn, he’ll try anything to bring me over to the dark side. He didn’t get me a Derek Jeter tattoo while I was out?”

Susan choked up as she shook her head, her eyes filling up with tears. The emotion was too much for her, and she started weeping again. Shannon watched helplessly, wanting to do something to comfort her.

“You lost so much blood, hon,” she said when she could, showing him the saddest clown smile he’d ever seen. “The doctors told me most people wouldn’t have made it, but you fought hard and you’re going to be okay. But I came so close to losing you.”

“You’re not going to lose me. Darling, you’re lucky, but not that lucky.” He winced. It felt like more nails were being hammered into his body. “My shoulder…”

“I know. It hurts. They had to reconstruct it. But they told me it should be as good as new someday. If you need to, you can press that button for more morphine.”

Shannon saw the button Susan was pointing out. He pressed it several times.

“What about Anil Paveeth -”

“They arrested him.” She brought his undamaged hand to her mouth and brushed her lips softly against it. “Let’s not talk anymore. Just close your eyes and rest for now.”

Shannon did as she asked. He felt Susan slide into the hospital bed next to him and drape his good arm around her while nestling her head against his shoulder. Her face was so wet with tears that it got his hospital gown wet, but he didn’t mind. Even with his wounded shoulder throbbing away, he felt at peace. With the morphine kicking in, he drifted off into something warm.

At some point he became aware again of the dull throbbing ache in his shoulder, and when he opened his eyes Susan was gone. He glanced sideways and saw Daniels standing to the side of him with his arms folded and his face set in a morose frown. When he noticed Shannon’s eyes had opened, he pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat down.

“Where’s Susan?” Shannon asked.

“She’s giving me a few minutes so we can talk privately.” Daniels forced a smile. “What a day yesterday, huh?”

“Yeah, what a day.” Shannon reached up and found the button controlling his morphine flow and pushed it several times. “What happened to the great almighty Vishna?”

Daniels smile turned hard. “He doesn’t look all that almighty now. You did a good job revealing what was behind the curtain, and an even better job bruising that sonofabitch up. I think you even knocked him out for a few minutes. If your shoulder hadn’t been shot up you would’ve killed him.”

“But you arrested him?”

“We will. Right now we’re holding him, and he’s giving the impression of cooperating with us. Your friend, Mike Maguire, told us about the porn films you found. That sex shop has been shut down and all the DVDs confiscated. The Feds are involved now.”

“Paveeth admitted to making those porn films with Carver and Linda Gibson?”

“Yeah, he has, but he’s denying any knowledge of their murders. Maybe when you get out you can sit in on some of the questioning.” Daniels lowered his voice, edged closer to Shannon. “He’s claiming he had nothing to do with that dungeon-that those Russians took over once Carver and Gibson were killed and started making their own films without his knowledge.”

“That’s bullshit. What did he think that dungeon was for?”

“Discipline.” Daniels shrugged in response to the look Shannon gave him. “His word, not mine.”

“Yeah, right, he was shooting the video when I went down there.”

“I know. I saw the video and it clearly shows that you acted in self-defense. No charges are going to be brought against you.”

“Thanks. What do you know about the Russians?”

“According to Paveeth, Carver brought them in to distribute their films. Supposedly they used the opportunity of Carver being killed to take a more active role in the operations. To hear Paveeth tell it, he was a virtual prisoner to them.”

“Any idea yet who they are?”

Daniels shook his head. “I’ve got a feeling the Feds do, but they’re not saying anything. My gut’s telling me that they’re part of some nasty international porn ring.” He paused, rubbing a thick hand across his jaw. “Bill, we found other videos they made. As sick as you can possibly imagine. These bastards were making rape and torture videos. In three of them they killed the girls. Those videos are enough to get Paveeth a lethal injection, but we’re keeping quiet about that for now. He’s trying hard to sell those two dead Russians down the river and pin the whole works on them and we’re letting him think we’re buying it, see if we can get more out of him about Carver and Gibson.”

A dull throbbing started behind Shannon’s eyes knowing what they had in mind for Susan. He asked whether one of the women killed was a redhead who could’ve looked like a young Meg Ryan.

Daniels thought about it and nodded grimly.

“She had tried to leave the cult,” Shannon said. “She complained to someone I know that Paveeth was a false prophet. I guess they found her. What about the other cult members?”

“A few of them scattered, including Alvin Guthrop. We’re looking for him now. Duane Sweenski’s here in the hospital. They’re trying to see how much of his face they can save. We’re going to be charging him with whatever we can when he gets out. We’re holding the women we picked up as material witnesses. Most of them are in pretty rough shape and being held here in the psych ward. I’ve talked to the DA and we’re going to consider them victims, regardless of where they were in the hierarchy.”

“What about Melissa Cousins?”

“She was one of them who was pretty messed up. She’s here now, but we’re letting her mother transfer her to a hospital back in Portland.”

“What’s been in the news so far?”

“We’ve caught a break on that. Thanks to that compound being so remote and True Light having stayed under the media’s radar we’ve been able to keep this quiet. We’ll be giving a press conference in the next few days after we’ve sorted everything out. You can get as much credit as you want or we can leave you out of it. Your choice.”

“Did you talk to Mike?”

“Yeah, I did. He doesn’t want any attention.”

“Neither do I. There’s a guy in Denver named John Rude. Credit him with giving you a key tip that led to you uncovering the porn ring.”

“Any truth to that?”

“Yeah, he helped me out. The guy’s dying of cancer, and for whatever reason, it’s important to him to get his name in the papers.”

The morphine had kicked in. Shannon let his eyes close. Daniels was saying something but his voice had become a soft drone. Before drifting off he realized what the police lieutenant was asking him. He wanted to know how he knew something was hidden in the speakers. He tried telling Daniels that Linda told him about it, but he realized that his lips weren’t moving. Then everything seemed to fade away.

It was hours later when he woke up again. Susan was with him. The surgeon who performed his shoulder reconstruction came in and explained to him what had been done. The doctor thought the surgery went as well as they could’ve hoped for, but they wouldn’t know how much strength and range of motion Shannon would get back until after nine to twelve months of physical therapy. Shannon drifted off again after that, holding Susan’s hand.

That evening Eli stopped by for a visit. His long face was more somber than usual and showed deep lines of worry along his forehead and around his eyes. They mostly made small talk, Eli trying to get his long body comfortable in one of the hospital chairs while Susan joined them, sitting next to Shannon on the bed while holding on to his hand as if for dear life. Shannon got a genuine smile out of Eli when he finally told him what the clue mit vergnugen meant.

“I told you that was more than a lucid dream,” Eli said.

“I’m beginning to think you’re right.”

“So why’d the idea of that upset you so much before?”

Shannon shrugged as much as his wounded shoulder allowed. “I think it was because when I finally had the opportunity to look for my mom and my old partner, Joe DiGrazia, I blew it. I couldn’t see past my case to what was really important to me.”

“Bill, you’ll have other opportunities. If you did it once you’ll be able to do it again.”

Shannon nodded halfheartedly. He felt Susan squeeze his hand harder. She changed the subject, asking Eli for ideas about where they could go on vacation once Shannon’s shoulder healed.

“Now that he’s got two pints of my blood in him, don’t be surprised if Bill wants to make a pilgrimage to Yankee stadium,” Eli said with a wry grin. “I’d also expect him to give up his vegetarian life style and start ordering pastrami on rye.”

“Vai is mir,” Shannon said.

Eli’s grin sharpened. “Where’d you pick up Yiddish?”

“No idea. Must be those two pints of your blood running through me.”

Eli hung around until Shannon’s eyelids started to droop, then he let himself be chased out by Susan but not before threatening to return the next day. The hospital had brought a cot into the room for Susan, but instead of using it she balanced herself on the edge of Shannon’s hospital bed, and with her arms and legs draped across him, settled in for the night. With Shannon it was more like a light switch being turned off. One moment he was barely conscious of Susan’s soft breath against his face, then nothing until the next morning when the nurse woke him to change the dressing on his shoulder. Susan’s face crumpled a bit when she saw what his shoulder looked like under all the bandaging, but she forced a brave smile for his sake.

Monday was a better day for him. He felt more alert, and while he had a persistent, dull throbbing ache in his shoulder, he didn’t have to resort to pumping in as much extra morphine as the other day. Keeping to his word, Eli returned later that morning bringing a wheatgrass-mint-pineapple juice for his friend. Susan left them to run some errands, and Shannon gave Eli the full story about what happened at True Light. As Eli listened, his long face grew ashen and an intense sadness overwhelmed his eyes. “What you and Susan have gone through, first with Winters, and now this. What a horror show. But it’s because of you that True Light has been shut down. All those girls who’ve been victimized there now have a chance. You did a lot of good but at some point you need to find peace for yourself.”

Shannon tried smiling. “Yeah, well, I’m going to have nine to twelve months where I’ll have no choice but to do just that.”

“You need more time than that, Bill. You’ve already suffered through enough violence for several lifetimes. I’m hoping you finally give up this PI work.”

“We’ll see,” Shannon said. “The damn thing might just be in my blood, though.”

“If that’s the case, then you should have no problem. Most of whatever blood you had you left behind at that fercockta cult.”

After Eli left, Maguire stopped by for a visit. His round face flushed a deep red as he recounted how he had rolled Shannon’s car to the gate so he could use it to boost himself over the iron fence surrounding True Light, then turned even redder when he talked about what he saw once he got inside the compound. “None of this has been in the news yet,” he told Shannon. “It’s like nobody fucking knows about it except us.” He hung around a little while longer, mostly talking about how good a team they made and how it would be a waste if the two of them didn’t go into business together when Shannon was up and around. He had brought several of his prized PI books with him and left them with Shannon. These included Hammett’s Red Harvest and two more recent books that he claimed were fucking amazing and brought the PI novel up to a whole new level: The Guards by Ken Bruen and The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis. Shannon told Maguire he’d read them and get back to him with his thoughts.

When Susan came back she had a package for Shannon from the university. Inside was Taylor Carver’s thesis. Shannon spent the afternoon reading it. The thesis was written as a fictional novel with an English Masters major named Culver as the protagonist. The “hero” hooks up with a beautiful but screwed-up freshman who was sexually abused by her father for years. Culver later befriends an out-of-work Indian chemical engineer. Over beers they cook up a scheme to have this chemical engineer start a cult which they’ll fund by making ‘voyeur’ porn films using the cult’s brainwashed members and Culver’s girlfriend, who Culver is able to manipulate by playing to her low self-esteem and her pathological need to degrade herself. In this fictional account, they end up opening hundreds of yoga studios in shopping centers around the country to fund the cult’s operations and line their own pockets, at which point Culver publishes a book detailing all this, making a mockery of suburban America and its bourgeoisie culture. The tone of the book was cruel and smarmy, and gave Shannon a good impression of what Carver was all about-a heartless sonofabitch who got off on showing the world how superior he was to everyone else. It also confirmed his thoughts about Linda Gibson. She had no chance in life, not after the way her parents abused her both sexually and emotionally. It left her too vulnerable to a predator like Carver. When he was done reading the thesis he had the urge to load himself up with more morphine, but resisted it. He knew if Paveeth had gotten his hands on Carver’s thesis, he’d have a good motive for wanting Carver dead. It could very well explain why Carver and Gibson were butchered the way they were.

That evening Eli came by for another visit, and later Emily stopped by. Her head was bandaged up, and she stood hands on hips, shaking her head sadly at Shannon.

“A couple of geniuses we are,” she said. “Let ourselves be banged up and shot at by a couple of dumb thugs.”

Shannon couldn’t disagree with her. That night he had the nurse disconnect his morphine drip. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she tried telling him. “It’s too early for this.” Shannon told her he wanted to wean himself off of it sooner rather than later. He had a mostly restless night, but was able to doze off for several hours.

Pauline Cousins called him on his cell phone the next morning. She seemed genuinely surprised to hear that he was in the hospital. “Nobody I’ve been talking to at the Boulder Police mentioned a word to me about it,” she said. “I would’ve called you sooner but I’ve been running around like crazy the last two days trying to arrange for Melissa’s transfer.”

She stopped by shortly after her call, her face melting into a sad smile when she saw Shannon bandaged up. “I owe you so much for what you did for Melissa,” she told him. She took out her checkbook and asked how much he wanted. Shannon shook his head, told her that one of the perks of working for himself was being able to take on certain cases pro bono. “Besides, what happened at True Light intersected with another case which I’m being well paid for.” Pauline stood her ground, insisting that she pay him something, and Shannon suggested she could contribute to a fund for families of police officers killed in the line of duty that he’d set up in Joe DiGrazia’s memory. Without blinking an eye she wrote out a check for ten thousand dollars. On her way out she kissed Shannon on the cheek and told Susan that she had a good man.

“Don’t I know it,” Susan said.

After she left, Shannon realized he owed Devens a call. The lawyer seemed surprised to hear what Shannon was telling him. “There’s been nothing in the news about it,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Better than okay,” Shannon said, laughing sourly. “Already been pumped up with a fresh supply of blood and should be getting a new shoulder out of the deal.”

Devens’ voice sounded strained as he told Shannon he’d stop by at the hospital and talk further with him. “But that’s it, huh?” he asked. “The police are going to arrest this cult leader for the Carver-Gibson murders?”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

When he got off the phone, he lay brooding. Susan sensed his uneasiness. She kissed him hard on the mouth and told him she’d be back soon. While he waited Devens came by. The lawyer grimaced seeing him. “Christ, you look like hell,” he said, shaking hands with Shannon’s left undamaged one.

“Hearing compliments like that does wonders for one spirits.”

“I’m sure it does.” Devens pulled up a chair. “I talked with my assistant DA friend. They’re planning to give a press conference Friday night to fill in the media on what’s been going on at that cult. They’re going to leave Carver and Gibson out of it for the time being. As long as this Anil Paveeth is cooperating with them they want to give the illusion of not trying to tie him to the murders, but they do plan on charging him soon. This should put a stake in the heart of that lawsuit.” Devens took his wallet out and handed Shannon a check. It was for twenty-five thousand dollars. “I’ve explained the situation to my client and everything that you’ve done. He wants to pay you this as a bonus. This suit could’ve wiped him out, and anyway, the twenty-five grand was what he was expecting to pay in legal costs if this went to trial. At least it should help while you’re rehabbing.” Devens took a small gift-wrapped box out of his briefcase and left it on the table next to the bed. “A small gesture from me.”

The lawyer left. Shannon couldn’t help feeling a sense of uneasiness, as if something wasn’t quite right. He looked at the gift-wrapped box Devens had left behind. Even something as simple as opening that box was beyond his current capabilities, but he knew that wasn’t what was behind his uneasiness. He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. There was something else nagging at him. Something that didn’t quite fit with this Carver-Gibson-Paveeth puzzle.

Susan came back a short time later with a big grin across her face. Accompanying her was Eddie with his chess set. Eddie gave him a quick look up and down and asked what happened to his shoulder.

“I got shot.”

“By that cult you were asking about?”

“Yeah.”

“You on painkillers now?”

“Nope, off of them.”

“Good, you got no excuses then if you lose.”

They played five games with Shannon winning the first four, and the fifth ending in a draw. Eddie was beaming after the fifth game, taking the draw as a moral victory. After the games, Shannon told Eddie that the girl he’d been looking for was probably dead. “I’ll get a picture and see if you can ID her, but I think they caught up to her.” Eddie’s face darkened as he took in the news. “Boulder’s not the same town it used to be,” he said.

After Eddie left, Susan unwrapped the box Devens had left behind. It was one of his Navajo storytellers. Shannon couldn’t get over the feeling that the clay figurine was trying to tell him something.

***

Wednesday morning Shannon decided it was time to leave the hospital. Susan tried arguing with him that three days was too soon. “Hon, they want you here three weeks!”

Shannon was insistent, though-partly because of his uneasiness, but mostly because he didn’t want Susan cooped up in that hospital room any longer, and she wasn’t going to leave as long as he was there. One of the doctors tried to persuade him to stay longer, saw it was useless and instead worked out an arrangement for Shannon to come in each day to have his shoulder examined and his dressing changed. The doctor wrote him a prescription for Oxycontin, which Shannon tossed into the garbage on his way out.

Chapter 16

Daniels escorted Shannon to the interrogation room. Sitting around the table was Anil Paveeth, his lawyer, the DA of Boulder County and a couple of men who Shannon assumed were FBI. Paveeth with his bruised face and jail-issued denim clothing looked small sitting there and had lost all traces of the aura he’d had when Shannon first saw him in his private sanctuary. He also had the look of every scared con who was trying to cut himself a deal. When the ex-cult leader recognized Shannon he started to nod as if the two of them were close friends. Daniels asked his lawyer whether he had any problem with Shannon sitting in. The lawyer traded a few whispers with his client, then said it was okay with them. Daniels shook his head sadly at Paveeth, and said, “Anil, I know you’re saying that you want to cooperate, but I don’t think you’re being completely honest with us.”

“Where have I not been honest? I have told you everything I know.”

Daniels gave him a hard stare, then ignored him and signaled for the DA and FBI agents to join him outside, leaving Shannon alone with Paveeth and his lawyer.

Paveeth sat fidgeting in his chair, scratching himself as if he had fleas. He realized that and folded his hands in his lap. He tried smiling at Shannon. “I-I’m sorry about that woman,” he said, his eyes hopeful as if he were expecting Shannon to say something to let him off the hook for what had happened. When Shannon didn’t respond, Paveeth wilted more in his chair but went on, “There was nothing I could do to help her. Yuri and Dmitry demanded that I videotape what they were doing. I was helpless to go against them. If I did they would have killed me.”

“That would’ve been a shame. What were Yuri and Dmitry’s last names?”

Paveeth smiled apologetically. “I don’t know. I was never told that. Taylor found them.”

Shannon looked hard at Paveeth, then at his lawyer. “Have you had a chance yet to see the videos your client made?” he asked the lawyer.

“I don’t see how that is being helpful to the current situation,” the lawyer replied, clearing his throat.

The door opened and Daniels followed the DA and FBI agents into the room. He dropped a thick document on the table and stood shaking his head sadly at Paveeth. The ex-cult leader glanced at the document and watched Daniels with wide eyes.

“Anil, you’re not cooperating with us as promised.”

“I am so! How am I not cooperating?”

Daniels turned to Shannon. “Bill, do you think Anil’s been cooperating with us?”

“Not if he hasn’t told you about Carver and Gibson.”

“What about Taylor and Linda?” Paveeth broke in. “I’ve told you all about them!”

“Calm down, Anil,” his lawyer advised. He patted his client on the alarm. Paveeth was beside himself as he looked from Shannon to Daniels. “What haven’t I told you?” he demanded.

“Your motive for killing them,” Daniels said.

“Killing them? What are you talking about? Why would I want to kill Taylor?”

His lawyer stopped him, then mustered an indignant scowl as he turned on Daniels. “Where the hell’s this coming from? I thought we were here to discuss what happened at True Light!”

“I thought so too until we found out that your client had a strong motive for killing Taylor Carver.” Daniels picked up Carver’s thesis and opened it to near the end. He pointed out several highlighted passages for Paveeth’s lawyer to read.

“What the hell am I supposed to be reading?”

“A blueprint for everything that happened at True Light,” Daniels said.

“What are they talking about?” Paveeth asked his lawyer. “I never saw that document!”

The lawyer read the highlighted passages, then thumbed through the rest of the manuscript. “You must be kidding,” he said to Daniels.

“What is that document?” Paveeth demanded, his skin color paling to a muddled gray.

“It looks like a book your friend Taylor wrote,” the lawyer said.

“It explains how he was going to expose you,” Daniels said. “You got your hands on a copy, didn’t you, Anil? Is that why you sent Yuri and Dmitry to Taylor’s apartment?”

“Th-This is insane!” Paveeth sputtered. “I knew n-nothing about this book! And I never would’ve hurt Taylor. If Yuri and Dmitry went to their apartment, they did it without me knowing about it.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Shannon said. “After all, you like to sit in the corner and watch.”

Paveeth’s jaw dropped. He turned wildly from Shannon to Daniels to his lawyer. His lawyer held out a hand in a stop gesture to Daniels. “We’re done here,” he said. “We’re not going to give you any more chances to sandbag us.”

The DA spoke up then. “Among the other charges we’ve already discussed, we’re adding first degree murder charges for the deaths of Taylor Carver, Linda Gibson, Jane Lowenstein, Leslie Bishop and Candace Johnson. And rest assured that we will be seeking the death penalty.”

“This is ridiculous,” Paveeth’s lawyer argued. “We’re talking about a book, for God sake! And those other women-we’ve already explained how my client had no knowledge-”

“Save it,” the DA said. “I’ve got more than enough circumstantial evidence to convict on all charges. And if I were you I wouldn’t expect a break from a jury. I doubt one exists that could find your client sympathetic.”

Daniels opened the door and a couple of uniformed officers came in and had Paveeth stand while they cuffed his hands behind his back. As they took him from the room, he staggered like a fighter who’d been knocked out on his feet and had no clue where he was. His lawyer followed him out.

The DA stood up, shook Shannon’s undamaged hand and thanked him for what he had done. “I hear you’re the guy who cracked this wide open. I’m going to see if my office can do something for you.” One of the FBI agents nodded to Shannon on his way out, the other stopped to shake his hand also. “I’ve read the Charlie Winters’ case file. Very impressive work, very impressive here also. If you have any thoughts on joining the FBI, give me a call.” The agent handed him his card, and Shannon saw that he was a regional director. He told him he’d give it some thought. After the FBI director walked out, Daniels and Shannon were left alone in the room. Daniels gave Shannon a hard grin. “You’re not actually thinking of joining them?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve gotten used to not wearing a suit the last five years.”

“As a detective first grade, you could dress as casually as you’d like.”

“Is that an offer?”

“Well, no, I can’t make an offer, but I could certainly talk to my boss about you. We could use someone like you in the department.”

Shannon pointed to his right hand. “Problem is, I’m still disabled.”

“We could work around it. So what do you say? You want me to talk to my boss?”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve got nine to twelve months to think about it. Let me tell you then.”

“But the answer’s going to turn out no, huh?”

“I can’t tell you right now. We’ll see.”

The two men walked quietly through the station and to the adjoining parking lot so that Daniels could drive Shannon back to his apartment. Neither man spoke during the ride, Shannon deep in thought, Daniels suspiciously glancing over at his passenger every few minutes as he drove. By the time he pulled up to Shannon’s apartment building, he had lost all patience.

“Alright, spill it,” he demanded. “What the hell’s on your mind? You’re going to try to tell me that Paveeth didn’t kill those two students? Is that what the fuck’s going on?”

Shannon shook his head. “Something just doesn’t add up.”

“Goddamn it, Bill! We’ve got the sonofabitch dead to rights. The guy’s a manipulator, he can put on a good act and play the innocent victim when he wants to, but he’s the guy behind all this. He didn’t know about Carver’s plans? My ass he didn’t!”

Shannon waved it away. “This is probably nothing more than the last couple of days catching up to me. You ever have that incense analyzed?”

“FBI’s doing it now. According to our buddy, Paveeth, he did doctor the incense and add a mild hallucinogenic, along with mixing in his own sweat-I guess for the pheromones. We’ll see if the FBI finds anything else.”

Shannon left the car and gave Daniels a short nod. Susan was waiting for him in the apartment. Concern showed in her eyes as she asked how his shoulder was. She had him take off his shirt so she could check to see if the wound had started bleeding.

The apartment was for the most back to where it had been. The landlord had already patched the wall by the closet and repainted the living room, while Daniels had recovered his computer for him from the True Light compound and Susan had placed a small throw rug over Emily’s blood stain. That night they heard on the news that Les Hasherford had been found dead in a Colorado Springs motel. According to the medical examiner he’d been dead for several days with the cause of death apparently being heart failure. The maid went three days without touching his room because of a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door. The story reported how Hasherford had helped police only a few days earlier locate a missing boy who was in critical condition at the time he was found, but had since recovered from a head trauma and been released from the hospital. A police spokesman credited Hasherford with saving the boy’s life

Shannon could see that the story affected Susan, but she had already cried herself out over the last few days. That night she held him tightly, and at times he could feel her small body sobbing silently and tearlessly.

The next couple of days dragged by slowly for him. He tried reading the PI novels Maguire had left him, and while he agreed with Maguire’s assessment of them, there was something nagging at the back of his mind that kept him from fully appreciating them. Susan sensed something was bothering him, just as he could sense her sadness over Les Hasherford’s death. They tried to comfort each other, but there was a small hole in both of them that they couldn’t quite fix.

Eric Wilson called him Thursday afternoon from Wichita to tell him that French officials had spoken with Linda’s younger sister, Gloria, and that Fred Gibson had been arrested earlier that day for child abuse and rape. Wilson seemed relieved when Shannon was able to tell him that an arrest was pending for Linda Gibson’s murder. “Do you think they have the right guy?” Wilson asked. “I hope so,” Shannon said, but his words sounded hollow to him.

Kathleen Tirroza called him that same night. She’d heard through the FBI grapevine what had happened and wanted to make sure he was okay. “Once again, right in the middle of it. Damn, you’ve got more lives than a cat!” she said, sounding a bit drunk. Her comment brought an involuntary smile to his lips since Kathleen, with her almond-shaped eyes and slender athletic body, always reminded him of a cat. “Yeah, but I think they’re being used up,” he told her. “And I keep leaving little pieces of me behind with each one.” That sobered her up. She asked him to save one of his lives for September 27th so he could drink a toast at her wedding. Before hanging up, she mentioned that she had no luck identifying his Russian. “If his records exist, they’ve been moved to classified files I don’t have access to.”

Friday morning he met Eli at Juiced Up. His shoulder felt well enough for him to walk the five blocks from his apartment without too much discomfort. When he sat down across from his friend, Eli gave him a quick look and mentioned how it would be understandable if he were suffering from depression after what he had gone through.

“I’d have to think seeing Susan tied up like that would’ve flashed you back to Charlie Winters. And you were almost killed. That’s got to be a tough thing to come to grips with.” He hesitated, then added, “Bill, even though it was in self-defense, you still killed two men. Maybe you should consider counseling?”

“About killing those two thugs, I’d feel worse right now if it had been two rats. The world’s better off without them, and I’m fine with what I did. As for Susan, yeah, it affected me seeing her like that, but I can deal with it. I know she’s safe now, and I know that I can get past my anxiety about her being harmed.”

“What is it then?”

Shannon shrugged. “It doesn’t add up that Paveeth was involved in killing those two students,” he said. “And I can’t figure out a way to make it add up. He knew about the hidden video camera. He wouldn’t have left that tape behind-not with the chance of it showing one of his cult members performing on it. I can’t imagine him leaving thirteen thousand dollars behind either.”

“Maybe he didn’t know about the money hidden in the other speaker,” Eli said.

“He’d know something was hidden in it. No, I just can’t see this. Whoever went to the apartment-him or the Russians, they would’ve cleaned out what was in those two speaker cases.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Paveeth’s going to get the death penalty for those three snuff films regardless of whether he gets convicted of killing Carver and Linda Gibson. I could just let it rest.”

“You could. But then whoever killed those two students would get a free pass.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t feel that bad about Carver.”

“But what about the other one?”

A weariness set in around Shannon’s eyes. He shrugged weakly. “I guess I’m going to have to start over from square one and see what I’ve missed.”

***

Later that afternoon Shannon had a fight with Susan about driving by himself. She was absolutely furious with him.

“How can you do that, Bill? How are you going to control the wheel with one hand? And what if your stitches rip open? Why don’t you let me drive you?”

“I can’t. Not where I’m going. Susie, everything’s going to be fine. We’re both on edge right now, that’s all.”

She stood staring at him, her mouth moving as if she were chewing gum. “Do what you want,” she said at last. “I already had to think once this week about going to your funeral. I can’t deal with that again. If you make me, that’s it, we’re through.”

She left the room. Shannon stood frozen for several long minutes, then took his car keys and headed out to Loveland.

***

Both Randall Carver and Buttercup were waiting outside the house for him. Buttercup was on her back with her legs in the air while Randall scratched her belly with the toe of his boot. When Shannon pulled up, Buttercup stayed frozen in her position for a few moments, then sniffed in the air, sneezed and flipped herself onto her feet. She stared at Shannon through yellow eyes, but didn’t make a sound. Randall walked over to his car.

“I don’t know why you want to see me,” he complained.

“How about getting in the car and I’ll tell you.”

He eyed Shannon suspiciously and asked him what happened to his shoulder.

“I was shot. Come on, get in.”

Randall hesitated for a moment, but got into the passenger seat. “Ma’s furious with you,” he said. “The police came yesterday. She knows you don’t work for no People magazine. So who do you work for, that guy we’re suing?”

“It doesn’t matter. Your lawsuit’s dead. Why’d you lie to me before, Randall?”

He stared blankly at Shannon while he made sense of his question, then gave a screw-you look and reached for the passenger door handle. “Fuck this and fuck your questions. I don’t have to answer to you. I’m leaving.”

“That’s fine. Leave if you want. It means I’ll talk to the police instead. But you did lie to me. About how often you saw Taylor. And about the porn films you made with your brother.”

He sat back in his seat. “I never made one of those,” he said stubbornly.

“Come on, Randall, I saw them. The ones you made with Linda and those girls from the cult.”

There was no reaction. Nothing but confusion in Randall’s face. Shannon sighed. “You’re going to tell me you didn’t know he was filming you with those girls?”

Randall shook his head slowly. “I didn’t know nothing about it.” He broke into an ugly smile revealing badly receding gums. “You got one of them? It’d be cool to see it.”

Shannon gave him a hard look and decided he really didn’t know about the films. “Why’d you lie to me about the last time you saw your brother?”

Carver’s expression turned sullen. “I couldn’t tell you in front of Ma. She’d want to know what I went there for.” When he saw Shannon’s reaction, a light turned on in his dull eyes realizing what Shannon had been fishing for. “Man, that is so lame,” he said. “You thought I killed Taylor ’cause I found out he was filming me? If that’s what they teach you at Private Eye school you got punked. With the nice-looking hoes Taylor got for me, he could’ve filmed me all he wanted. You think I care?”

Randall showed Shannon a big toothy smirk, got out of the car and laughed softly as he walked back to his house. Even Buttercup stared at Shannon with a look that could only be described as pity.

For the next fifteen minutes Shannon thought about giving up. It would be so damn easy. He certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep over Anil Paveeth being wrongly convicted of those murders. But the problem was he kept thinking of Linda Gibson, thinking about everything she had gone through, how she was basically used and disposed of like trash. As much as he wanted to just go home to Susan and give the case up, he knew he couldn’t. Instead he went back to the scene of the crime hoping to find some inspiration there.

***

With everything that had happened on Saturday, he never told the police about buying one of the DVDs, or had a chance to turn it over to them. He had it with him now in the dead students’ apartment. Fortunately, the police still hadn’t released the apartment as a crime scene, otherwise the place would’ve been emptied out by Eunice Carver. He plugged the DVD into the player by the TV, turned up the volume to the level he imagined it was recorded at, then sat down in the same chair Paveeth had most likely used. He closed his eyes and listened to the DVD, hoping to get a better feel for what went on in that apartment when they made those videos. The damn thing was loud with Metallica blaring away. Carver also made a lot of noise when he joined in. Shannon was thirty minutes through the DVD when he heard a banging noise in the background. At first he thought Maguire was banging on the floor above him, but after stopping and restarting the DVD he realized the sound came from the DVD. When the video was originally made, someone had banged a baseball bat or something like that on the floor of Maguire’s apartment and it had gotten picked up. He went back through the DVD to find where the banging first started and timed it. It continued until the DVD ended, lasting twenty-seven minutes.

Shannon called Susan, read her the phone number Maguire had given him for his wife, and asked if she could get on the computer and do a reverse phone number lookup. Her tone had been icy when she first answered, but worry melted away whatever frost had been in her voice. She asked him what he wanted the number for.

“I think I’ve got this figured out,” he told her. “Christ, the guy just about told me why he killed them. He uses a baseball bat and I’m too dense to make the connection. I’ve got a question about Medhorrinum types. Can you tell me more about their tempers?”

“The thing with Medhorrinums is intense passion. They can have that in their tempers also.”

“So they can just fly off the handle and go into a blind rage?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Susie, call me back after you look up that phone number.”

She told him she would, her voice tense. “Bill,” she added. “If you suspect something maybe you should call the police?”

“I will. I just need a little more information first.”

Susan called him back five minutes later. The phone number was registered to a Mary Connor in Medford, Massachusetts. Shannon called the number. The same woman who had told him she was Nancy Maguire days earlier answered.

“Is this Mary, Mary Connor?”

“Yeah, who’s calling?”

“Bill Shannon. I’m the investigator from Colorado who you pretended to be Nancy Maguire with.”

There was a long hesitation, then she said, “Look, I was trying to help Mike out, that’s all. He said you needed to talk to Nancy and he didn’t know where she was.”

“How about you? Do you know where she is?”“

“He told me she took off a couple of months ago. That’s all I know.”

The phone went dead. Shannon started the DVD again, turned the volume up, then left the apartment and knocked on Maguire’s door. After a minute or so, Maguire answered, his face very pale, his mouth and eyes not quite right. “Hey, buddy,” he said, “what’s going on in there?”

“Remember lesson three?”

Maguire shook his head.

“Never be satisfied until the case is closed.”

“Fuck, you’ve got a good memory. But I don’t getcha? This case is closed. I saw on the news they arrested that Indian dude and charged him with the murders.”

“They arrested the wrong guy.”

Shannon picked up on the slight hitch in Maguire’s mouth, but Maguire caught himself, forced a smile and shook his head. “I don’t know, buddy, it sounds like they got the right guy. But if you want to come up and talk about it, maybe we can come up with some ideas.”

“Sure.”

Shannon followed Maguire up the stairs. Maguire headed straight to the kitchen and took a beer from his fridge. He asked Shannon if he wanted one.

“Nah, I’ll skip it this time. The construction’s not as good here as I would’ve thought. That DVD sounds almost as if it’s playing right here instead of in your neighbors’ apartment.”

Maguire opened the beer bottle and took a healthy swig. “You could turn it off if you want.”

“I’ll leave it on. You play softball, don’t you, Mike?”

Maguire forced a smile. “Why, you looking to join a team?”

“Not really. I was just wondering, that’s all. I’m not going to ask to see your bat. I don’t want to give you any excuses to get your hands on it. But I bet you if I did I’d see one that you bought three months ago. The one you had before that you had to throw out, right?”

Another slight hitch showed around Maguire’s mouth. “Come on, quit joking around. This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking. We both know you killed your neighbors downstairs. Wait-don’t bother arguing. You’re not going to change my mind, and besides, my problem is I can’t prove it. I have no real evidence. I wish I did, but you’re probably going to skate on those murders.”

“Buddy, you’re not making any sense,” Maguire said softly, his voice strained. “You know I was at work until three in the morning the night they were killed.”

“That couldn’t have been too hard for you to get around. You borrowed someone else’s badge… No, that wasn’t it? Maybe you got lucky and left with a coworker your first time so you didn’t have to use your badge, then after killing those two kids you went back to work, waited until someone else was leaving so you could slip in again without it being recorded, and then hung around until three in the morning to give yourself an alibi.”

Maguire’s eyes shifted enough to tell Shannon that his second guess was what happened. Maguire realized it too and looked away.

“What kept bugging me,” Shannon said. “Was that of the three cult members you supposedly saw hanging around with Carver and Gibson, only one of them showed up on those DVDs. I kept wondering why that was, but the reason was pretty simple. You didn’t see any of them here. You told me that only to throw me off track, and it was only more dumb luck on your part that it ended up pointing the blame towards Paveeth. I’ve got to give you credit, you’ve had an amazing streak of dumb luck so far-especially not being picked up on that videotape. How am I doing so far?”

Shannon waited for Maguire to say something. When he didn’t, Shannon went on, “Your reason for wanting to tag along was to keep tabs on me, see how close I was getting, and of course, try to screw me up given the chance, maybe kill me if I got too close.”

Maguire took a long drink of his beer and drained it. When he faced Shannon again any resemblance to his former goofy self was gone. His face had become a hard white, his eyes as lifeless as a mannequins. “What’s the point of talking about this,” he said. “As you said, you have no evidence and the police have that cult leader. Why don’t you let this drop?”

“Why? Because you’re my good buddy from Massachusetts? Sorry, not a good enough reason. While I can’t prove you killed those two kids, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble proving you murdered your wife.”

Maguire’s eyes shifted up to meet Shannon’s. He lowered his beer bottle in his hand, holding it like it was a club. “You’re nuts. I didn’t kill Nancy.”

“Of course you did. I talked to Mary Connor. She told me how you asked her to impersonate your wife. I saw your apartment before. It hadn’t been cleaned in months. You probably didn’t clean it once since killing Nancy-at least not until a couple of days ago when I commented about it. What happened, Mike? She wouldn’t keep quiet about you being a double-murderer?”

Shannon waited for an answer. When he didn’t get one, he went on. “I’m sure when the police look into it they’ll find forensic evidence here. And they’ll find out about your wife disappearing off the face of the earth two months ago while you kept up the appearance that she was still living here. It’s more than enough to convict you of first degree murder.”

Maguire edged closer, the beer bottle held at his side. “You should let this drop,” he said.

Shannon laughed. “You’re going to attack me now? Mike, not a smart move on your part.”

Maguire crept closer, his face cautious as he moved. Shannon let himself be walked back into the living room. There was more room to maneuver there. He braced himself. Maguire swung out with the beer bottle and Shannon stepped away from it and kicked Maguire on the back of his knee with a solid roundhouse. Maguire fell to the floor, his knee collapsing under him. With the kick Shannon felt something rip in his shoulder. He also felt a warm stickiness start to spread down his arm and knew something was very wrong with his surgically reconstructed shoulder.

Maguire tried to get to his feet, couldn’t. A siren could be heard off in the distance. Shannon knew it was heading their way-that Susan must’ve called the police. Maguire heard the siren also and knew where it was heading. He looked up at Shannon. “They were killing me,” he said, his voice coming out a mile a minute as he tried to beat the police sirens. “Every night it was like that DVD you’re playing now. I was working twelve plus hour days and then I couldn’t even sleep at night because of their bullshit. I’d try asking Carver to turn it down, and he’d just turn the music louder and make more noise down there. Sometimes it would go on all night. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Work’s killing me, my wife’s killing me by moping around like a zombie twenty-four hours a day, and they’re killing me by not letting me have a second’s peace. I couldn’t sell the place. I didn’t have the money to get out from under the mortgage. So what the fuck was I supposed to do? What the fuck would you’ve done?”

“Something other than beating them to death with a baseball bat. And even if you flipped out with them and couldn’t help yourself, you were rational when you decided to kill your wife.”

The sirens were loud now. Shannon heard car doors slamming, then a police radio going on and officers talking. Someone pounded on the front door. Maguire turned from the noise back to Shannon. “Come on,” he pleaded. “Give me this one break. We could make such a great fucking team!”

Shannon left Maguire to go answer the door.

***

Shannon was admitted to the hospital later that evening and the next morning underwent surgery to repair his reconstructed shoulder. The following Tuesday he took a codeine tablet and accompanied Susan to Les Hasherford’s funeral. There were more people there than Shannon would’ve expected. After a while he realized that most of the mourners were the parents and other relatives of the children Hasherford had helped save. He recognized the parents of the boy who’d been rescued recently in Colorado Springs. At the grave site when the minister gave Hasherford’s eulogy and talked about the gift he had and how he used it so unselfishly, Susan wept. Shannon put his left arm around her and held her tight to his side. He knew why that got to Susan as much as it did. She knew as he did that it was far more than being unselfish, that he had sacrificed himself to save that last child.

After the funeral, Susan took him back to the hospital and he stayed two weeks before his doctor released him. He didn’t put up any resistance during that time-one look from Susan told him he’d better not even think about it. Eli visited him a lot, so did Eddie to play chess. Daniels came by once.

Whatever distance he had briefly felt with Susan had vanished. As she drove him back from the hospital, she turned the wrong way on Pearl Street and headed towards the Boulder mall instead of their apartment.

Shannon raised an eyebrow at her. “And where are we going?”

She showed him a sly smile but didn’t answer until she pulled into the Boulderado Hotel parking lot. “Last time we were here you didn’t get a chance to enjoy it. Besides, we have some unfinished business.”

Susan had arranged for the same suite they had before. After they checked in and were alone, Susan opened her bag and took a couple of pom-poms from it. Shannon tried replicating Eli’s deadpan stare, knew he was failing miserably with it. “And where’d you get those?”

Susan couldn’t keep the smile from her face. “These were nothing. Wait ’til you see the cheerleader outfit!”

The next couple of days Shannon spent part of the time reading the Zane Grey collection, and the rest of it with Susan and her pom-poms.

Content

Bad Karma

Dave Zeltserman Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16