Bad Thoughts (30 page)

      
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.
 
 

Chapter 35
 

      
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—”

      
“No, sorry chump, she’s dead as a doornail.”

      
“Then how’d they find out about you?”

      
Winters’s pale, rattlesnake eyes dulled a bit as he stared at Shannon.

      
“Damn you! Answer me!”

      
“You see, I don’t have to,” Winters said after a while, “but I’ll trade you. You tell me why you didn’t call any of your cop friends after speaking to my aunt and uncle, and I’ll tell you how I got careless.”

      
“I was waiting until I got back to Boston.”

      
“You’re lying. Even in your dreams you’re a little pissant liar. I think you were planning on keeping it a secret. I think you were going to try to track me down so you could enact your little lying pissant revenge on me. And to hell with all the innocents who would die in the meantime. And, Billy Boy, there would be plenty. Is that it?”

      
“Fuck you.”

      
“If you want to trade you have to trade fair. Is that it, Billy Boy?”

      
“Okay. That’s it. I was going to find you and then cut your fucking ugly head off just like I did your cousin. And then I’d have a pair of the god ugliest bookends on earth.”

      
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Winters said. “Except, I’m not keeping my end of the bargain. You see, I just keep taking from you. Taking and taking without giving anything back. I took your mommy and, for the most part, your daddy from you. I took your childhood, your career, and even your sanity. And I took that pretty bitch redhead you dream about. Oh yeah, earlier tonight, I took your dago cop partner.”

      
Winters nodded slowly, his face expressionless, his skin a grim, icy white. “That’s right,” he explained, “I got him tonight. I snuck up behind him. I think he smelled me at the last second but before he could completely turn around I had an ice pick in his kidney. And then we had some fun. A couple of hours of hard rock and roll.

      
“So come on,” Winters asked, “what’s left for me to take?”

      
“You sick piece of shit.”

      
“That’s not it,” Winters said, shaking his head with exaggerated pity. “That doesn’t even make sense. Why would I want to take a sick piece of shit away from you? Come on, think harder. It’s really pretty easy. Even for such a bright boy.”

      
“What do you want?”

      
“I want you to guess what I can still take away from you. I’ll give you a hint. It’s an old joke. Take my blank, please.”

      
Shannon didn’t say anything. Winters was only a few feet from him, his body bobbing up and down as if it were floating on the ocean. He wondered if he could end it right there, if killing Winters’s dream self would kill off his physical self. He wanted to try it more than he ever wanted to try anything. Winters seemed to sense what Shannon was thinking. He started to chortle, his slit mouth twisting into a smirk.

      
“You don’t want to try that, now,” Winters admonished softly, his singsong voice rising and falling with the bobbing of his body. “If you did, I’d have to break your fingers some more and you’d wake up screaming like a baby. Like last time.

      
“Anyway,” Winters added, “being such a bright bulb, you’ve probably guessed what’s left for me to take. If you woke up now you won’t be able to stop me. I’d just have to go ahead and take it. Tonight. Besides, if you could kill people off in their dream states, don’t you think I’d be doing it?”

      
Shannon took a step back. “Okay,” he said, “what do you want from me?”

      
“In a minute. Just so we’re clear, I’m talking about your wife. You know, take my wife, please. I’m with her right now. She’s all dressed up like a Christmas turkey. And I’ve got the carving knife.”

      
“Why do you think I care? She left me.”

      
“You care, Billy Boy. You don’t want her to end up like all the others, do you?”

      
Shannon found himself involuntarily shaking his head. “For the last time, what do you want?”

      
“The same as you. I want the two of us to get together tonight. Have a little dance. Make a little romance.”

      
Shannon agreed and Winters gave him the address where he had Susan.

      
“I’ll be watching you,” Winters warned. “Just like I can meet you in your dreams, I can watch you while you’re awake. If you speak to anyone, call anyone, I’ll know about it. And I’ll do things to her that I’ve only dreamed about. Imagine that, things that someone like me has only dreamed about. Then I’ll disappear. So don’t be stupid.”

      
Winters body floated off, floated until it became a small, white point. Floated off until there was nothing.

      
Turbulence jerked Shannon awake in his seat. For a brief heartbeat he could still smell the odor, for a bit longer he could taste it in his throat. He found himself gagging from it. The woman sitting next to him was eyeing him somewhat suspiciously.

      
“Are you okay?” she asked.

      
Shannon nodded and, when he could, he muttered something about having a bad dream. He found a pen and wrote down the address Winters had given him. He couldn’t afford to forget it. Then he fell back into his seat, feeling his heart skipping on him, racing away like a rabbit’s.

      
He knew Winters was with Susie. There was no doubt in his mind about it. The sonofabitch psycho had told him the truth. And he knew Susie would be kept alive until he got there. About watching him, Shannon knew that was true, also. As impossible as it sounded, he knew it was true. But if Winters were watching him, he wouldn’t be able to do things to Susie, he’d have to be concentrating his energies on Shannon. Unless he took occasional breaks, thinking that watching Shannon ninety percent of the time would be enough. Even still, Susie would be kept alive.

      
As much as he tried telling himself otherwise, he knew Winters had also told him the truth about DiGrazia. It fit together. Joe would’ve gone to pick up Susie after the case broke against Winters. Somehow Winters followed him and got to him—probably as he was opening the door to wherever he had Susan hidden. Or maybe the psycho found Susie first and waited for Joe. Anyway, Shannon knew it was true and knew Winters would’ve taken his time killing his partner. And he knew Winters would’ve forced Susie to watch.