people coming around here bothering them. I’ll hang around and make sure when the Gibsons do arrive that they’d like to speak with you.”
“I’m impressed,” Shannon said. “Residents here seem to be getting top notch service from their police force.”
The cop ignored him and started towards his cruiser. When Shannon invited him to wait in his car instead, the cop smiled over his shoulder and told him he’d rather not.
“I’ll burn some gas and put the AC on,” Shannon offered. “You can wait in comfort and maybe fill me in a little on this family. And you’ll be helping out a former brother in blue. I was on the force ten years in Massachusetts.”
That slowed him down. Still smiling his pleasant smile he walked back to Shannon’s car.
“You’re not lying now about being a former police officer?”
“What do you think?”
He gave Shannon a hard look, then strolled to the other side and got into the passenger seat. “You said something about turning on the AC,” he said.
Shannon started the ignition, closed both windows and turned the AC on full.
“Again, Bill Shannon,” Shannon said as he offered his damaged hand.
“Eric Wilson,” the cop said as he shook hands. He nodded towards Shannon’s missing fingers, asked if that was why he’d left the force. Shannon told him it was.
“Happen in the line of duty?”
“Yeah, it did.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Wilson said with the utmost sincerity. “Always sorry to hear of an officer going down. Now, what you told me before about Russian mobsters, you were feeding me a line, weren’t you?”
“I wish I were. How about my turn to ask a question?”
“I have a few more if you don’t mind. Who hired you?”
“An interested third party.”
“And who would that be?”
Shannon sighed. “It doesn’t matter. They have a legitimate reason for being interested, and the only thing I was hired to do was find the person or persons who murdered Linda Gibson and Taylor Carver. That’s all I’m doing.”
“This interested third party isn’t a book publisher or movie producer? Or one of the tabloids?”
“Nope. There’s no chance I’d take a case like that.” Shannon showed his damaged hand. “I could get as many book and movie deals as I want from my own story. Ever hear of Charlie Winters?” He waited until Wilson nodded slowly, then went on. “My guess was that you had since Wichita was one of his killing grounds. If I remember right, he and his cousin butchered six people here close to thirty years ago. Charlie Winters is how I lost those fingers. I’m also the guy who killed him. And his cousin, Herbert, twenty years before that.”
Wilson’s smile faded. “Wow.” He took his sunglasses off, stared at Shannon with wide blue eyes. “I knew your name sounded familiar. And I do know about the Winters cousins. Everything that’s been written about them, actually, including all the FBI and police reports I could get my hands on.” Lowering his voice, he added, “One of the people they killed was my aunt.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t born yet when it happened. I never got a chance to know her.”
“I’m still sorry.”
He nodded solemnly. “If you don’t mind my asking, how old were you when you killed Herbert Winters?”
“Thirteen,” Shannon said, his voice sounding tight, unnatural. He cleared his throat and repeated himself.
Wilson rubbed his jaw. “The police report I read kept your name out, probably due to you being a minor at the time. But this explains why the other cousin, Charlie, went after you later.” Thin lines showed on his forehead as he tried to recall more of that report. “The two of them murdered your mother,” he said softly, more as a statement than a question. Shannon didn’t bother answering him.
“Oh my Jesus,” he muttered to himself. Then to Shannon, “Sir, I don’t know what to say about all this except that I’d truly like to apologize for giving you the hard cop routine earlier. I only wanted to make sure you didn’t come here to dig up dirt on Linda. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“There’s no need to apologize, and no need for sirs, either. It’s Bill, okay? And about your concern-that’s not going to happen. Not even a chance of it. You knew her pretty well?”
“Must be obvious from the way I’m acting.”
“That and it wasn’t an accident you showing up here ten minutes after I did. Someone at your station house filled you in about me.”
Wilson broke into a more genuine smile than the artificial pleasant one he had worn earlier. “Don’t be so sure. You’re right, of course, but I could’ve come just as easily as a result of a call from a concerned neighbor. At least if Sergeant Jameson weren’t screening them. A Dodge Neon sticks out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood, and people do pay attention here. More than likely, there’ve been a number of calls already made to the station about you.”
“I’ll remember next time to rent a Mercedes. Why don’t you tell me about Linda.”
Wilson breathed in a lungful of air, let it out in a loud burst. “She was a beautiful girl,” he said. “Maybe the most beautiful I’d ever known. There was something special about her.” He hesitated, added, “And sad too.”
“What do you mean sad?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, as if he were stuck. Like he was trying to remember someone’s name but couldn’t quite get it. “Not sad in that she’d mope around,” he finally said. “Just sometimes you’d catch a certain look in her eyes, especially when she didn’t think you were watching.”
Wilson got very quiet. After a while Shannon asked whether he had dated her.
“Back in high school. She was a freshman then, I was a junior.”
“You two keep in touch?”
“No. We stopped after she went off to college.”
“How about her family life?”
He hesitated. Then with his jaw set, he said, “It was good. Solid. Parents first rate.”
“You two went to a public high school?”
“Yes, we did,” he said, showing a quizzical smile.
Shannon waved a hand towards the stone Tudor in front of them. “These people are wealthy. Why didn’t they send their daughter to a private school?”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
Shannon shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.”
“First off, I’d say the Gibsons are more well-off than wealthy,” Wilson said. “And no, not all wealthy parents send their children to prep schools. Believe it or not, we have excellent public schools in Wichita-better than many of the private schools you can find on either coast.” With a slight smile, he asked, “What makes you think I’m not from a wealthy family?”
“Are you?”
“My dad’s a heart surgeon. He probably does as well as Mr. Gibson.”
“And you ended up a cop. I guess it shows how fucked up rich kids can get when you let them mix with lower middle class runts like me.”
Wilson laughed at that. “Yes sir. I turned out to be a bitter disappointment to Dad. But in a way it’s your fault. I didn’t decide to be a police officer until I found out about Charlie and Herbert Winters, about them being responsible for murdering my aunt.”
A silver Jaguar convertible had pulled into the cul-de-sac and slowed down to a crawl and as it approached the police cruiser. The driver was a blond woman in her late forties with too much makeup and skin that looked like it was wrapped too tight against her skull. Wilson hopped out of Shannon’s car and waved to her. Shannon got out also.
“Hello, Mrs. Gibson,” Wilson yelled to her.
The convertible came to a stop and the driver, with a sour look on her face, peered at Wilson. Slowly recognition hit her and she showed a crack of a smile.
“Is that you, Eric?”
