Dave Zeltserman - Bad Thoughts

“Is there anything about him you remember?”

“I’m sorry. There really isn’t. Except he seemed evil. That’s all I can picture in my mind. Just pure evil. It made my skin crawl when he walked by. And then I saw what he did to that poor girl.”

Shannon tried to question him, but the old man wouldn’t budge. If he had to guess on it, he’d say Liza Keenan’s murderer was big, but he couldn’t say for sure. He couldn’t narrow down the man’s age or what he was wearing. Only that he was white and that he was evil and that he smelled bad. Smelled bad enough that even he could notice.

Shannon sighed. “I need your name.”

That got the old man cackling. “What you need my name for?” he asked, showing a wide, toothless grin. “Nobody’s used it for over twenty years.”

“I still need your name.”

“Wouldn’t do you or anyone else any good. I don’t leave this block much, if you need to find me. Although, I don’t know what for. Since I already forgot everything I told you.”

Shannon met with Joe DiGrazia and filled him in on what he found. DiGrazia looked skeptical.

“You just left him?” DiGrazia asked.

“It wouldn’t have done any good bringing him in. He would’ve denied witnessing anything. Besides, he really didn’t. At least not so he could’ve given us a reliable description.”

“It was still sloppy police work.”

“Yeah, well, at this moment I’m not really a cop. And if we want to look at sloppy police work, let’s look at me being brought in for Liza Keenan’s murder. A couple of phone calls would’ve cleared me.”

DiGrazia looked thoughtful. “I’m not convinced you shouldn’t have been brought in,” he said at last. “I believe Susie about when you arrived home. I’m not sure if your therapist is being completely honest. I got a feeling she’s covering for you.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Shannon couldn’t tell whether DiGrazia was only trying to get a rise out of him. “There was no evidence I was involved with Keenan’s murder. If I was, from the photos I was shown, there should’ve been some blood evidence. A few minutes of real police work would’ve cleared me.”

DiGrazia shrugged. “It was still worth bringing you in. Something funny is going on with you. You might not have had anything to do with last night’s murder, but it still doesn’t clear you of the other two. Or explain why you had those articles of your mother’s murder hidden in your apartment. The ones you claimed you didn’t know you had. And it doesn’t explain what you were doing when you blacked out.”

Shannon shrugged. “Let’s look at what happened. There’ve been four murders, all presumed to have been committed by the same individual. I’ve already been cleared of two of the murders, but you and the FBI still keep trying to get me for the other two.”

“And we shouldn’t be?”

“No.” Shannon shook his head. “I think you need to go back to your original theory. That they all were committed by one person. If you do, and you accept the evidence that clears me of Roberson’s and Keenan’s murders, then you have to ask yourself why it seems like I’m being implicated.”

DiGrazia narrowed his eyes, lines along his jaw muscles hardening. “Yeah, why is that?”

“Because,” and Shannon couldn’t keep from showing a sick smile, “someone out there is trying like hell to implicate me.”

“And who’s that?”

“I don’t know. But he knows what happened to my mother. He planted those articles in my apartment. He had to have, ’cause I never saw them before.”

“You’re trying to tell me he broke into your apartment-”

“That’s right. And he’s committing these murders. Joe, he’s trying to frame me. I think what he really wants is to convince me I’m doing them.”

DiGrazia was drumming his fingers against the table. Frowning, he reached into his coat pocket and fumbled for a cigarette. “If that’s true, he has to know about your blackouts,” he said after he lit it up.

Shannon nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. He must’ve been watching me, waiting for when I’d black out this year. Which means he’s been keeping tabs on me over the years.”

DiGrazia stared long and hard at Shannon. “Dammit,” he swore. He flicked his cigarette on the floor and crushed it out with his heel. “Give me a description of your witness. I’m going to bring the sonofabitch in like you should’ve.”

At four in the afternoon Shannon received a call from DiGrazia.

“You sick bastard.” DiGrazia’s voice was strained to the point where Shannon wasn’t sure what was said. At least at first.

“What was that?”

“You heard me.” Then, his voice choking, “I found your witness. Goddamn it, I almost believed that crap you fed me. I actually almost believed it.”

“What are you so excited about? I told you he wouldn’t cooperate-”

“Yeah, you’re right about that. At least, not after the way you left him in that alley.”

“Joe, talk English to me-”

“Shut up. I don’t want you trying to talk to me again. We’ll talk later, but not now. Not until we got you dead to rights. Oh, Bill, one more thing, I wouldn’t wait up for Susie if I were you. We had a nice long chat before I called you. In English.”

It had been raining sheets of water all night. Three in the morning Pig Dornich received the call. A couple of uniforms found the abandoned station wagon in an alleyway in Dorchester. The car was stolen. She was in the trunk. Four of her front teeth had been pulled out of her mouth. Her tongue looked a half foot longer than it should’ve been, as if someone had pulled on it. As if someone had tried to yank it out of her…

That was twenty-one years ago. They never got anywhere with the murder. The victim was a prostitute and those types of deaths happen. Maybe not as brutal and vicious as this one, but they do happen. Dornich really hadn’t thought about it in years. At least, not consciously. But once he remembered it… what was done to her tongue…

But that was all twenty-one years ago.

His office desk was now covered with a collection of faxes, newspaper clippings, and old police reports. They traced a trail of unsolved murders leading from Boston, down the Eastern seaboard, snaking through Florida and Alabama, into Texas, and Arizona. The murders appeared random. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to any of them. Nothing outwardly that could link them together, yet they were all eerily similar. Almost as if the nature of their randomness was forced. As if they were purposely made to look unconnected.

Dornich felt a dryness in his mouth as he scanned the reports. In front of him were forty-three unsolved murders. He knew by the time he brought the trail to Sacramento there would be at least a half dozen more. Forty-three unsolved murders…

By eight o’clock he was finished. Fourteen more murders had been added to the list-the last one occurring in Los Angeles, four days before Shannon’s mother had been butchered. The total count had reached fifty-eight unsolved murders. Dornich had no doubt about who committed them. He couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed as he looked the list over. There were so many names on it.

He felt exhausted, but also somewhat exhilarated. Not bad police work for a pig. Not fucking bad at all. Before calling it a night he made a couple of more phone calls; first to North Carolina, then to book a morning flight to Raleigh.

Susie never arrived home, not even to pack her bags. After watching the six o’clock news, Shannon understood why. He could pretty much guess what DiGrazia told her. He could pretty much understand why she’d believe him.