Bad Thoughts (22 page)

      
It told DiGrazia that he was who Shannon became when he blacked out. That he was the one in control when the two women were murdered. It—he—talked for a long time, his breath hot and fetid against DiGrazia’s ear. His voice becoming excited as he talked about the murders, about the horror each woman went through. The hotness of his breath was unbearable. He told DiGrazia that he appeared briefly in November. He asked DiGrazia to seriously consider how Shannon was able to find Janice Rowley’s body and whether Roper was a little too neatly packaged as her murderer. He promised there would be more murders. That he was just getting his second wind.

      
DiGrazia woke up with his heart pounding. He felt dirtier than he had ever felt in his life. It was as if that smell had somehow permeated through his dream and had gotten into his skin and his hair. For a brief heartbeat he could smell it and it sent his stomach reeling and him stumbling for the bathroom. After he was done he took a long shower, scrubbing himself raw. Later, he found a bottle of whiskey and tried to make sense of his dream.

      
He had just about decided it was nothing but his nerves, and maybe some resentment towards his partner. After all, he got his ass chewed off by Brady for keeping Shannon’s blackouts a secret. But when he found that envelope outside his door and read through the clippings, he began to look at the dream differently. And he couldn’t keep from thinking about the obvious. He couldn’t keep from replaying that dream. That god-awful dream . . .

* * * * *

      
DiGrazia made a decision about the evidence bag locked away in his desk. Later, he would check its contents for prints. If there were any and they matched Shannon’s, he’d nail his partner to a cross. He’d fucking skin him alive.

* * * * *

      
Shannon stood quietly in front of Dr. Ronald Chaucy’s office. His talk with DiGrazia had unnerved him and he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. He started to move away and then found himself opening Chaucy’s office door and walking in. Dr. Chaucy, a plump man of about fifty, had his eyes closed and his hands folded across his belly. The doctor had been working as a psychiatrist for the Cambridge Police Department for fifteen years, mostly doing prisoner evaluations, occasionally evaluating the competency of an officer. He opened an eye as the door closed behind Shannon and reluctantly pushed himself upright.

      
“Hello, Bill,” he murmured as he cleared his throat. His eyes bulged slightly from his round face. Thick layers of skin sagged under his jaw. “Martin told me you’d be coming around.”

      
“Sorry for interrupting your nap.”

      
“I was meditating.” Chaucy shrugged his rounded, stooped shoulders. “Why don’t you take a seat?” Chaucy turned towards his desk and picked a few papers from it. As he read through them, a frown pulled down his lips. He reached back to his desk and picked up a notepad and a pen.

      
“Martin filled me in somewhat,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you, Bill?”

      
Shannon sat across from the psychiatrist. “I’ll tell you, Ron, I really don’t know.”

      
“Tell me about your blackouts—are drugs or alcohol involved?”

      
“I was drinking heavily before it happened.” Shannon hesitated. “But I don’t think the booze had anything to do with it.”

      
“Uh huh.” Chaucy scribbled something into his notepad. “Why’s that?”

      
“I just don’t think so.”

      
“How often do you have these blackouts?”

      
“Once a year.”

      
Dr. Chaucy blinked several times. “What do you mean, once a year?”

      
“I black out every year around this time. I usually come out of it a week later.”

      
“Every year . . .” Some more scribbling. “Going back how far?”

      
“I don’t know, probably about ten years now.”

      
“You don’t remember when it first happened?”

      
“It’s been going on for ten years now.” Shannon tried to smile. “I kind’ve gotten used to it by now.”

      
“How frequently do you have these blackouts?”

      
“As I said, once a year.”

      
Chaucy pushed a hand across his face. When it passed over his mouth a deep scowl was left behind. “You have no memory at all during these episodes?”

      
“None at all.”

      
“And the duration’s usually a week?”

      
“Usually. Sometimes it’s a day or two longer, sometimes a day or two less. This last time it was less.”

      
Chaucy’s scowl deepened. His eyes glazed over as he stared at Shannon. “What’s behind these blackouts , Bill?”

      
“I don’t know.” Shannon forced a sick smile. A heavy weariness passed through him like a chill. All he wanted to do at that moment was find a place to lie down. “My mom was murdered February tenth. I was thirteen at the time and I discovered her body when I came home from school. My therapist thinks I black out to get through that day. I don’t know what I think anymore.”

      
“How was your mother murdered?”

      
“She died of asphyxiation.”

      
Chaucy was nodding slowly. A transformation had occurred. It was subtle, but obvious. Shannon realized the psychiatrist was now viewing him as some sort of specimen instead of as a colleague.

      
“What do you think you do during your blackouts?”

      
“I don’t know.”

      
“You must have some idea.”

      
“I really don’t know.” Shannon shrugged weakly. “What usually happens when a person blacks out?”

      
“What do you think happens?”

      
“I don’t know. Does another personality take over?”

      
“You think you have multiple personalities?”

      
“That’s not what I said. I was just asking what usually happens when people black out.”

      
Chaucy rested his notepad on his lap and brought his hands up to his chin, pushing his fingers together and forming an apex. His jowls drooped softly over the tips of his fingers. “Why do you think another personality is taking over when you black out?”

      
“I don’t—”

      
“Yes, you do, Bill,” Chaucy stated softly, expressionless, his eyes staring at Shannon as if he were a lab animal. “Do voices tell you about these other personalities?”

      
“Ron, I don’t hear any voices—”

      
“Or do you see them in your dreams?”

      
Shannon felt his heart drop to his feet. He tried to say something but couldn’t.

      
“What do they tell you, Bill? What do they tell you about Phyllis Roberson or Linda Cassen or Rose Hartwell?”

      
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Shannon pushed himself out of his chair. When Chaucy listed those dead women, Elaine Horwitz’s name popped into Shannon’s mind. A sense of urgency got him to his feet. “I have to go,” he said as he stumbled forward. “We can finish this later.”

      
Dr. Ron Chaucy looked alarmed. “Bill, please, sit down.” He started to get up but Shannon was already out the door.
 
 

Chapter 23
 

      
Charlie Winters had a nice, warm feeling inside as he lay curled up in the back of Elaine Horwitz’s metallic blue Saab. It had gotten overcast and a thin drizzle of freezing rain had started to fall. Winters knew she wouldn’t bother looking in the backseat. She’d notice him eventually, but not until it was too late. At least for her.

      
He inched his way up and peered out the side window before sinking back down. The layout was picture perfect. The car was parked behind the brownstone Horwitz had her office in. The lot was small—only four cars parked in it—and secluded from view. No witnesses, no one to hear her scream.

      
He lay back down and closed his eyes and listened to the soft patter of freezing rain against the roof of the car. It soothed him. As he relaxed, he visualized what was going to happen. He let it unwind frame by frame, like a movie playing out in slow motion. The clicking of high heels as Elaine Horwitz rushes from her building to get out of the raw weather. Door swinging open. Her sitting in the front seat, too preoccupied to bother looking around. A sock shoved in her mouth and Winters’s hand hard against her throat applying just enough pressure to squeeze the consciousness out of her. Then dumping her limp body into the trunk and hog-tying it with the quickness of a rodeo veteran. All told, no more than thirty seconds elapsing. Winters had done it enough times in the past to know how long it would take.

      
His hand inched into his jacket pocket and fingered an envelope containing strands of Shannon’s hair. Earlier in the day, he had visited Shannon’s apartment. The hair was taken from Shannon’s hairbrush. Later, much later, a few strands would be placed on Horwitz’s body. One or two gripped within her dead hand.

      
Slowly, he played out in his mind what was going to happen to the psychologist and it brought a genuine smile to his lips. As he lay in the back of the Saab he started to feel nostalgic. It was like when Herbie was alive and they would hide together in their victims’ cars. Most of them never bothered looking in back before getting in. The few that did, well, it didn’t help them any because there was never anyone around to hear their screams. And they never got a chance to scream for long.

      
Winters felt a heaviness pull at his eyelids. His body sunk deeply into the plush leather. It was four-thirty. Enough time for a little cat nap.

* * * * *

      
The sound of footsteps woke him. He stretched lazily and sniffed in the air, trying to smell his victim. The footsteps stopped, then someone talking. Two people talking. As he recognized the voices, he froze. From the position he was lying in he could see Shannon and Elaine Horwitz in the rearview mirror. They were less than twenty feet away.

      
Winters pushed the rear passenger door open and crawled out. A Honda was next to Horwitz’s Saab. He tried but couldn’t squeeze his thick body under it. To the right was a Dumpster. Keeping on his hands and knees he made his way over to it.

      
He pushed himself as close to the Dumpster as he could. From the Saab, with the lights on, he’d be seen. In his mind’s eye he imagined the headlights turning on and Shannon locking eyes on him from the passenger seat. Acting solely on instinct, he boosted himself up until he was hanging halfway over the open Dumpster and then fell in.

* * * * *

      
Shannon took an involuntary step towards the noise. “What was that?”

      
Horwitz appeared emotionally wrecked, her face drawn, her lips as bloodless as the thin layers of snow coating the ground. “What was what?”

      
“That noise. Something’s in there.”

      
“I don’t know. Either a raccoon or a cat. What difference does it make?” A sudden calm relaxed her features. The corner of her mouth pulled up slightly. “Bill,” she said, “this is pointless. I shouldn’t see you anymore as your therapist. I’m not up to it.”

      
“I still don’t understand why.”

      
“For one, treating multiple personality disorders is beyond my training. You need clinical help—a psychiatrist specializing in this area.”

      
“But you’ve been telling me you don’t think that’s my problem.”

      
“It doesn’t matter, you seem to think it is.”

      
“I don’t know.” Shannon was shaking his head. “What else could be happening to me when I black out?”

      
“Most people who suffer from extended memory lapses or blackouts do not have multiple personalities. Sometimes it’s physical, most often it’s caused by the subconscious needing to suppress certain memories. Multiple personalities are very rare.”

      
Elaine Horwitz stopped and gave Shannon an odd look, almost as if she were seeing him for the first time. “You’ve had these suspicions for a long time, haven’t you?”

      
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s . . . it’s just those dreams I’ve been having.” Shannon looked helplessly at her.

      
Dammit, Horwitz thought, not the wounded-deer look.

      
“All I know,” Shannon continued, “is that right now I’m hanging on by a thread and seeing you is one of the few things keeping me going.”

      
“Regardless of Freud, dreams don’t necessarily mean anything.” Elaine Horwitz let out a long sigh. “If I were to continue seeing you, I’d need you to be completely honest with me. You can’t keep holding things back from me.”

      
Shannon nodded weakly.

      
Horwitz felt her resolve melt away as she looked at him. For some reason she didn’t fully understand she felt her eyes starting to tear.

      
“I’m getting all wet out here,” she said, struggling to keep from crying and laughing at the same time. She grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Why don’t we go to Harvard Street, get some coffee and continue this?”

      
Shannon followed Horwitz to her car. As he opened the passenger door he only half noticed the envelope lying in the rain. Inside, Elaine Horwitz turned to him.