Dave Zeltserman: Bad Thoughts

“I’m not trying to stonewall you,” Rowley said. “Goddamn it.” He shook his head. The color drained out of his face, leaving it the same unhealthy yellow it was before. “Do whatever you want as long as it gets you looking for Janice.”

“Are you willing to take a polygraph test?”

“I’ll take whatever you want me to take. Just find my wife.”

Shannon stood up. “I’m going to get you a pad of paper. I want you to write down any place your wife might have stopped off last night to pick up dinner. Any place you can think of. I want you to also write down anything unusual that might have happened over the last couple months, anything your wife might’ve said that seemed out of place-”

“Like what?”

“Like somebody coming on to her at work, or threatening her, anything like that. I also want you to write down everything you did from the time you left work yesterday to coming here this morning.” Shannon hesitated. “Do you have pictures of your wife?”

“I didn’t bring any. I can go home and get some.”

“That’s okay. Just give me your keys. While you’re writing down what I asked, Detective DiGrazia and I will search your apartment. I need to get a photo of your wife out on the wire. Do you give me permission to remove photos of her from your apartment?”

Kyle Rowley told Shannon to do whatever he needed to do and told him where they kept their photo albums. He took a pair of keys off a chain and handed them to Shannon. “Janice’s still alive,” he said. “I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. Don’t let her die. She’s my life. I don’t think I can make it without her.”

“I’ll do everything I can. I promise. I’ll be right back with that pad.”

DiGrazia, before leaving, put a hand on Rowley’s shoulder and told him to hang in there.

Out in the hallway DiGrazia remarked how he let Shannon do all the talking.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“I wanted to give you every opportunity to form an unbiased opinion.”

“Thanks.”

“You thought there was something funny about him pointing us towards her coworkers?”

“No. I just wanted to ask him about it.”

“So what do you think,” DiGrazia asked, “is he genuine?”

Shannon thought about it. “What I think is we’ve got a woman in pretty bad trouble.”

Before leaving the precinct they stopped to talk with Brady. Forensics took a couple of partial prints off the steering wheel, nothing else.

“Of course,” Brady went on, “they’re most likely the victim’s, but we’ll check them. Bill, tell me about the husband.”

“He’s given us permission to search his apartment and he’s also willing to take a polygraph. I’ve set it up for one this afternoon. Do you want to be there?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Is he responsible?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

Shannon shook his head. “I don’t have a feel yet, Martin. I really don’t know.”

Brady gave DiGrazia a questioning look, but DiGrazia cut him off. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” he said.

“You’re disappointing me,” Brady said to the two cops as they walked away from him.

Brady stood watching them, shaking his head, a dour look forming over his soft features. “And I’m not at all happy about it,” he said to no one in particular.

Shannon only half heard his partner puffing as they made it up the three flights to Kyle Rowley’s apartment. He couldn’t help thinking about Rowley, about how certain Rowley was of his wife’s feelings. If it was Susie, could he say for sure she wouldn’t spend the night with another man? When they first got married he probably could’ve, but now he’d only give even money on what she’d do. At best, they were the same odds for whether he’d care…

As Shannon opened the door to Rowley’s apartment a smell stopped him; a rotting, sour smell that had assaulted him in his dream. It was fleeting, though, disappearing almost as soon as he breathed it in. Still, it unnerved him.

“Did you smell anything?” Shannon asked.

“What am I supposed to have smelled?”

“I don’t know. Something like bad body odor. Except worse.”

“Sorry, pal, I didn’t smell it. I’ll take the kitchen.”

The apartment was neat, orderly, no evidence of a recent struggle. Shannon found a picture of Janice Rowley in the living room. He picked it up and studied it. She was attractive, blond and petite with a nice, easygoing smile. There was something appealing about her smile, something warm and genuine about it. A cold numbness pressed against Shannon’s forehead as he stared at that smile. The woman in the picture was the same one from his dream.

He put down the picture and found a chair. He sat down until the coldness went away. Then he thought, what the hell. He couldn’t help what he dreamed about. He got up, found the clothes hamper in the hallway, dumped its contents onto the floor and started sifting through it, searching for any torn or bloody clothing. He was at the bottom of the pile when DiGrazia yelled out to him to meet him in the kitchen.

DiGrazia had a hard grin etched on his face as Shannon met him. “Notice anything?” he asked.

A drawer was opened showing a set of steak knifes. One of the knives was missing.

“Did you check the rest of the kitchen for it?”

“Yeah,” DiGrazia said, “it’s not here. So what do you think?”

“What am I supposed to think?”

“That maybe our guy stabbed her in the heat of the moment, that he then dumped her and the car, and fed us that abduction story.”

“They got wall-to-wall carpeting. I haven’t seen any blood stains.”

“He could’ve been lucky with the way she bled.”

Shannon was shaking his head. “If she arrived home at six and he showed up at the precinct at seven it wouldn’t have left him enough time to dump the body and the car and also clean up.”

“The car wasn’t discovered until this morning. He could’ve gotten rid of both her and the car after reporting her missing. He probably knew he’d be told to go home and wait.”

Shannon was shaking his head.

“What about the knife, then?”

“Knives get lost. It happens.”

“Come on.”

“If she was abducted,” Shannon said, “maybe the perp came back for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d have her keys and her address. Maybe it struck him as an amusing thing to do-use one of her own knives on her.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Shannon stared straight at his partner. “I don’t see any blood stains on the carpeting, I don’t see anything to indicate she was stabbed here. I don’t think we’re being conned. And one of the steak knives is missing.”

“Jesus Christ,” DiGrazia swore softly. “You got a twisted way of thinking.” He paused for a moment. “You see any point in getting the apartment dusted?”

“It’s cold outside. I’m sure our guy was wearing gloves. Assuming the knife wasn’t just lost.”

DiGrazia was scowling, a deep, hard scowl that creased the bottom half of his face. “If it’s working out that way, partner-”

“The knife could just be lost,” Shannon suggested without any real conviction.

“Shit,” DiGrazia swore. Then he stopped and gave Shannon a long, hard stare. “Is something wrong, partner? You don’t look too good.”

Shannon shook his head and muttered, “nothing” before heading towards the door. He wasn’t about to tell DiGrazia that he had seen the missing steak knife in his dream.

The story they got at Janice Rowley’s office was consistent; their missing coworker was happily married and was not looking for anything extracurricular. One of the accountants remembered her leaving shortly after five. Like the others interviewed, she seemed visibly shaken on hearing that Rowley was missing.