Dave Zeltserman - Bad Karma

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 When the video was originally made, someone had banged a baseball bat or something like that on the floor of Maguire’s apartment and it had gotten picked up.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?”