Dave Zeltserman - Bad Karma

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.