Dave Zeltserman: Bad Thoughts

The familiar rancid smell had mixed with smoke and the combination stung Shannon’s eyes. He noticed the trash can laying on its side and the charred ashes that had spilled out of it. He had to step carefully to avoid the pieces of flesh and gore that littered the floor. The corpse had literally been torn to pieces. It looked like both a knife and hands had been used. Maybe even teeth.

Shannon made his way to the trash can, sifted through the ashes, but didn’t find anything useful. He returned to the body and knelt over it. The corpse’s suit jacket had been ripped to shreds and was soaked through with blood. He found a blood-smeared and ripped plane ticket receipt in the jacket’s inside pocket. Shannon held it up to the light but couldn’t make out the printed destination. He checked the dead man’s pants pockets and came up with a set of car keys. As he stood up he noticed for the first time that all the fingertips had been bitten off the dead man’s hands.

After leaving Dornich’s office, Shannon found a men’s room down the hallway. Another corpse lay on the floor. The body was that of a man in his seventies. His head had been crushed and he had been stripped to his underwear. One of the sinks was filthy, streaked with a mixture of blood and dirt. A pile of soiled paper towels littered the floor next to it. Shannon moved to the sink at the end and washed his hands and then tried to remove the blood droplets from his shoes and clothing. He got most of the blood off his shoes but only smudged it into his pant legs and coat.

The FBI had followed him to Dornich’s office building. He peered out the front door and saw their car still parked outside, the agents in it both looking bored.

The back exit of the building led to an adjoining parking lot. After a few tries, Shannon found the car that matched Dornich’s keys. In the trunk was a suitcase with an airline baggage tag still attached. The tag read NC.

North Carolina… Mornsville, North Carolina.

Shannon had parked his car in front of Dornich’s office building. He left it there with the FBI agents. Instead, he cut through a back alley, and then another office building and another alley before hailing a cab.

He was able to get a three-ten flight to Raleigh-Durham. While airborne he dozed off several times. There were no intrusions by Winters. No death. No pain. Just blissful nothingness.

The plane landed a few minutes after five. It was past dinnertime before he drove into Mornsville.

Malcolm Winters had the same chin, or lack of chin, as his son, Herbert. The rest of him, though, was different. Frail, hunched over, his eyes pained, his face sagging. His wife, Ethel, was a brittle thing of a woman. All wrinkles and bone. Step on her and she’d crack like a stick. The room they were in had a scrubbed, powdery smell. No hint of that familiar, rotting odor. Everything clean and in its place. Medical journals lined several book shelves.

“He left home when he was eighteen,” Mr. Winters explained.

Sitting was too much for Mrs. Winters. She popped off the floral-patterned sofa, her hands nervously pulling at each other. “Are you sure I couldn’t get you anything?” she chirped out in an unnaturally brittle voice.

Shannon declined. Mr. Winters took hold of his wife’s arm. Reluctantly, she let herself be guided back to the sofa.

“There was no way to know that he would do what he did,” Mr. Winters said. “We gave him a good home. We never hit him. We did everything you’re supposed to do.

“There was never any hint at all,” he said after a long pause, “except for that poor Chilton girl.”

Ethel Winters put a hand to her face as if she were about to weep. “There were all those animals,” she said.

“There were no animals!”

“Of course there were. Those stray dogs and cats-”

“How were we supposed to know he had anything to do with them?”

“You knew. We both knew. Just like we knew about little Marjorie Chilton.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Mr. Winters snapped back at his wife, his sagging face growing beet red. He turned back towards Shannon. “At the time, neither us had any suspicions about that girl. There was no reason for us to have had any. There were no reasons for anyone to have had any.”

Ethel Winters stared at her husband in stony silence before looking away, her lips pressing hard and virtually disappearing within her lined, wrinkled face.

“Of course, anyone can look back with hindsight… but how can anyone expect a thirteen-year-old boy capable of doing something like that? How could you think that of your own child?” Mr. Winters asked.

“He was only six when he started with the animals,” Ethel Winters said.

Mr. Winters ignored her. “If I had any idea that he had done those things to that little girl I would’ve had him committed. I wouldn’t have let him walk free. You have got to understand he was a quiet, introverted boy and people were suspicious of him because of that, and well, his appearance. He was unnaturally pale, almost an albino. And along with inheriting my chin…”

His voice trailed off as he lost himself in thought. Then, almost pleading, “I’m a doctor. If there were any indications of deviant behavior, of psychosis, don’t you think I would’ve picked up on it?”

“You ignored it,” his wife said.

“I didn’t ignore anything!”

“I can tell you firsthand he was as psychotic as they come,” Shannon said.

“I know you can,” Mr. Winters agreed, trying to smile. “I feel sick inside about what happened to you and your mother. I wish there was something I could’ve done to have stopped it. I’ve been wishing that for twenty years.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Shannon said dryly. “Do you have any other children?”

Mr. Winters shook his head, surprised.

“How about any friends who might’ve been with your son?”

Mr. and Mrs. Winters looked at each other. “We told the other detective all about that,” Mr. Winters said.

“About what?”

“About my brother Earl’s boy, Charlie. The two of them were together all the time as children. They left Mornsville together. Didn’t that detective tell you any of this?”

Shannon shook his head.

“God help us,” Ethel Winters murmured, “the two of them even looked alike. Ugly little bastards.”

Charlie Winters’s parents were both dead. Neither Mr. or Mrs. Winters had heard from their nephew since he left Mornsville with their son. “I told the police that he might’ve been involved with what happened to you and your mother, but I never heard anything more from them,” Mr. Winters said.

Before Shannon left, Mrs. Winters moved close to him, her bony hands touching his arm. “The FBI had told us they were investigating Herbert for other murders. They never found any, but I know there were others. God help me, I’m afraid to think how many there were.”

Shannon was able to get on a ten o’clock flight back to Boston. He dozed off quickly, almost as soon as he closed his eyes. Charlie Winters was waiting for him. Winters’s rotting, sickish odor was waiting for him.

“I know who you are, Charlie,” Shannon said.

“You’re a day late and a dollar short, bright boy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Winters smiled. A thin, diseased smile. “Everybody knows about me. They’ve been showing my picture on the news all night. As it turns out, you were the last to know.”

“You’re lying-”

“I wish I were. Sad to say I’m not. And even sadder, our special little relationship is coming to an end. After tonight.”

“Elaine must have recovered-”