“Really?” Susan asked, her face scrunching up into a puzzled look. “That sounds kind of odd.”
Shannon smiled. “Not really. It turns out he’s from Boston and had an extra ticket for the game. He knew I was from Boston also so he invited me. And in this crunchy-granola town, how likely is it you’re going to find someone willing to take an extra ticket for a ballgame?”
“Sounds like a friendly guy.”
“Yeah, he is.” He winked at her. “You’d like him too. Passionate about his baseball. I just hope he didn’t kill his neighbors.”
Susan’s eyes widened. “You don’t think that’s possible?”
“I don’t think it’s very likely, but he did tell me there were some noise problems with them. Anyway, I should be able to cross him off quickly. I’m going to need to talk to more of the neighbors and see if any of them had problems also. But, as I told him last night, lesson two, leave no stone unturned.”
With a thin smile, she asked, “What’s that about no stones?”
“I’m schooling him in the art of being a detective. That was just one of the many pearls of wisdom I shared with him. By the way, I ran into Ed Poulet and Jimmy Mason at the game.”
“You’re joking?”
“Nope.”
“Of all the people from back home for you to run into,” Susan said, wrinkling her nose.
“It wasn’t bad. They acted as if we were long-lost pals.”
“I just bet they did!”
“They did. Believe it or not it was kind of nice seeing them, and in a way, it gave me some closure. Of course, I don’t think I’d want to make a habit out of it.”
“I hope not,” Susan said, laughing. “So what are your plans?”
“First, I want to cross my new baseball buddy off the list. Then talk to more people and see where it leads. Also, I’m thinking I’m going to have to take a trip to Kansas and visit the dead girl’s family.”
“If you have to go…”
“I’ll try to make it a one day trip. Maybe see if I can schedule it for tomorrow. With some luck I can fly out there and be back in time to take you out for a nice dinner.”
“Well, I guess as long as it’s a nice dinner,” she said, exaggerating her pout.
Shannon checked the clock on the wall and saw he still had twenty minutes before he was to meet Eli. The clock was one of the nice touches Susan had added-made from a ceramic plate that had been painted with a barnyard rooster on it. He gathered up the dishes and, after putting the tea kettle on for Susan, washed them and laid them out to dry. After the water boiled, he packed a tea ball with the Darjeeling brand that Susan liked and started steeping it in a cup of hot water.
He caught a glimpse of Susan watching him, her eyes half-closed, a warm and contented look relaxing her face.
“You meeting Eli this morning?” she asked.
“Yeah, I have to leave in a few minutes. Although seeing you like this, I’m thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be late again. And this time more than twenty minutes late.”
She laughed, showing the delicate soft curvature of her throat. “If only,” she said. “I have work I need to do, and my homeopathy group is coming over at eleven so I’ll be busy through lunch. But let’s plan a nice dinner together.”
Shannon nodded. He felt a dryness in his mouth as he watched the playful half-smile forming over her lips. “I don’t want to interfere with your work,” he said. “But would you mind asking one of your patients if I could meet with him? The one who acts as a psychic for the police, helping them find dead bodies?”
Susan thought about it, nodded. “I’ll ask him. But he never mentioned anything about being able to communicate with the dead, only about being able to see people as they’re close to death or have just died.”
“It’s all part of my ‘leave no stone unturned’ motto, and besides, these days being the crunchy-granola detective, I’m up for anything. I figure it can’t hurt.”
“Okay, Crunchy, I’ll call him today.”
“That’s Mr. Granola to you!”
That elicited a small wisp of a smile from his ex-wife.
Shannon brought Susan her tea, then reached down and gave her a long kiss, the palm of his damaged hand lightly tracing the outline of her jaw. On his way out, he checked his email and found a cryptic message from Professor Lester White that simply stated that Taylor Carver was of a cynical nature and his death did not come as much of a surprise. Shannon felt a pounding in his head as he stared at the message. He replied back, asking the Professor to please provide him with more details and for a list of other people for Shannon to talk to, especially those who shared the Professor’s view.
Eli made no attempt to hide his disappointment and it showed clearly on his long face. “I told you this type of work would affect your progress,” he complained, his New Jersey accent coming out in a loud nasal whine. “Not only couldn’t you make any progress with your out-of-body work, but you regressed with your lucid dreaming.”
They had a table by the front window, with Eli finishing off a lemon scone while working on his second chai, and Shannon still sipping his first Grasshopper-a combination of wheatgrass, pineapple juice and mint.
Shannon shrugged. “What got my mind racing was that little homework assignment you gave me to try to figure out why I’m still doing this detective work.”
A thin smile curved up the corners of Eli’s mouth. “Self-reflection’s always good,” he said. “Any conclusions?”
“Yesterday I had someone tell me detective work is in my blood. I think that’s part of it. I think also it’s partly because of Charlie Winters. In some ways I’m still searching to understand that twisted psyche of his better, and maybe this is helping to give me that insight. And I think part of it is to help people avoid being victimized by the Charlie Winters’ of the world. And there are other reasons-a lot of them, actually. All I know is for now I need to keep doing this work.”
“About detective work being in your blood, Bill, we all make our own destinies. It’s only in your blood if you want it to be. And about protecting the world against other Charlie Winters, he was an aberrant case-”
“I never told you this about Winters,” Shannon said, his eyes turning to stone as he interrupted his friend. “One of his last victims was a private investigator named Phil Dornich. Susan had hired him after my last blackout and disappearance to find me. He was a smart guy, at one point he was head of detectives for the Boston Police. Somehow he got a whiff of what Charlie Winters was doing. By himself, he built a case linking Winters to over seventy unsolved murders. Afterwards, the FBI took Dornich’s evidence and was able to expand it, linking that psycho to over three hundred killings over a ten-year period.”
“Jesus, I had no idea.”
“The FBI was able to keep it out of the HBO series.”
“I didn’t watch that,” Eli said. “These days the only thing I watch on TV is baseball.”
“Well, you didn’t miss much. I refused to give them permission to use my name, and they ended up making my character in the series a composite of several of the other cops involved. But the point of this is all you need is one Charlie Winters to create a world of suffering.”
Eli sighed. “This is damaging your progress, Bill.”
“I guess I’ll have to work harder to make sure that doesn’t happen. And I hope you’re still willing to work with me.”
Eli made a face. “What else am I going to do? Drop you? Just keep doing the exercises I gave you last night. Maybe something will sink in.”
Shannon nodded. He felt a jolt from his cell phone that had been put on vibrate, took it from his pocket and frowned as he read the caller identification information. “Mrs. Pauline Cousins, Portland, Oregon. I don’t know her.”
Eli shifted his chair so he was looking out the front window. Exaggerating an insulted look and letting a coolness chill his voice, he said, “Go ahead and answer it. I’ll just sit back, drink my chai and enjoy the many pleasant sights of Boulder. At least those that care to walk past me.”
