police?”
“I will. I just need a little more information first.”
Susan called him back five minutes later. The phone number was registered to a Mary Connor in Medford, Massachusetts. Shannon called the number. The same woman who had told him she was Nancy Maguire days earlier answered.
“Is this Mary, Mary Connor?”
“Yeah, who’s calling?”
“Bill Shannon. I’m the investigator from Colorado who you pretended to be Nancy Maguire with.”
There was a long hesitation, then she said, “Look, I was trying to help Mike out, that’s all. He said you needed to talk to Nancy and he didn’t know where she was.”
“How about you? Do you know where she is?”“
“He told me she took off a couple of months ago. That’s all I know.”
The phone went dead. Shannon started the DVD again, turned the volume up, then left the apartment and knocked on Maguire’s door. After a minute or so, Maguire answered, his face very pale, his mouth and eyes not quite right. “Hey, buddy,” he said, “what’s going on in there?”
“Remember lesson three?”
Maguire shook his head.
“Never be satisfied until the case is closed.”
“Fuck, you’ve got a good memory. But I don’t getcha? This case is closed. I saw on the news they arrested that Indian dude and charged him with the murders.”
“They arrested the wrong guy.”
Shannon picked up on the slight hitch in Maguire’s mouth, but Maguire caught himself, forced a smile and shook his head. “I don’t know, buddy, it sounds like they got the right guy. But if you want to come up and talk about it, maybe we can come up with some ideas.”
“Sure.”
Shannon followed Maguire up the stairs. Maguire headed straight to the kitchen and took a beer from his fridge. He asked Shannon if he wanted one.
“Nah, I’ll skip it this time. The construction’s not as good here as I would’ve thought. That DVD sounds almost as if it’s playing right here instead of in your neighbors’ apartment.”
Maguire opened the beer bottle and took a healthy swig. “You could turn it off if you want.”
“I’ll leave it on. You play softball, don’t you, Mike?”
Maguire forced a smile. “Why, you looking to join a team?”
“Not really. I was just wondering, that’s all. I’m not going to ask to see your bat. I don’t want to give you any excuses to get your hands on it. But I bet you if I did I’d see one that you bought three months ago. The one you had before that you had to throw out, right?”
Another slight hitch showed around Maguire’s mouth. “Come on, quit joking around. This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not joking. We both know you killed your neighbors downstairs. Wait-don’t bother arguing. You’re not going to change my mind, and besides, my problem is I can’t prove it. I have no real evidence. I wish I did, but you’re probably going to skate on those murders.”
“Buddy, you’re not making any sense,” Maguire said softly, his voice strained. “You know I was at work until three in the morning the night they were killed.”
“That couldn’t have been too hard for you to get around. You borrowed someone else’s badge… No, that wasn’t it? Maybe you got lucky and left with a coworker your first time so you didn’t have to use your badge, then after killing those two kids you went back to work, waited until someone else was leaving so you could slip in again without it being recorded, and then hung around until three in the morning to give yourself an alibi.”
Maguire’s eyes shifted enough to tell Shannon that his second guess was what happened. Maguire realized it too and looked away.
“What kept bugging me,” Shannon said. “Was that of the three cult members you supposedly saw hanging around with Carver and Gibson, only one of them showed up on those DVDs. I kept wondering why that was, but the reason was pretty simple. You didn’t see any of them here. You told me that only to throw me off track, and it was only more dumb luck on your part that it ended up pointing the blame towards Paveeth. I’ve got to give you credit, you’ve had an amazing streak of dumb luck so far-especially not being picked up on that videotape. How am I doing so far?”
Shannon waited for Maguire to say something. When he didn’t, Shannon went on, “Your reason for wanting to tag along was to keep tabs on me, see how close I was getting, and of course, try to screw me up given the chance, maybe kill me if I got too close.”
Maguire took a long drink of his beer and drained it. When he faced Shannon again any resemblance to his former goofy self was gone. His face had become a hard white, his eyes as lifeless as a mannequins. “What’s the point of talking about this,” he said. “As you said, you have no evidence and the police have that cult leader. Why don’t you let this drop?”
“Why? Because you’re my good buddy from Massachusetts? Sorry, not a good enough reason. While I can’t prove you killed those two kids, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble proving you murdered your wife.”
Maguire’s eyes shifted up to meet Shannon’s. He lowered his beer bottle in his hand, holding it like it was a club. “You’re nuts. I didn’t kill Nancy.”
“Of course you did. I talked to Mary Connor. She told me how you asked her to impersonate your wife. I saw your apartment before. It hadn’t been cleaned in months. You probably didn’t clean it once since killing Nancy-at least not until a couple of days ago when I commented about it. What happened, Mike? She wouldn’t keep quiet about you being a double-murderer?”
Shannon waited for an answer. When he didn’t get one, he went on. “I’m sure when the police look into it they’ll find forensic evidence here. And they’ll find out about your wife disappearing off the face of the earth two months ago while you kept up the appearance that she was still living here. It’s more than enough to convict you of first degree murder.”
Maguire edged closer, the beer bottle held at his side. “You should let this drop,” he said.
Shannon laughed. “You’re going to attack me now? Mike, not a smart move on your part.”
Maguire crept closer, his face cautious as he moved. Shannon let himself be walked back into the living room. There was more room to maneuver there. He braced himself. Maguire swung out with the beer bottle and Shannon stepped away from it and kicked Maguire on the back of his knee with a solid roundhouse. Maguire fell to the floor, his knee collapsing under him. With the kick Shannon felt something rip in his shoulder. He also felt a warm stickiness start to spread down his arm and knew something was very wrong with his surgically reconstructed shoulder.
Maguire tried to get to his feet, couldn’t. A siren could be heard off in the distance. Shannon knew it was heading their way-that Susan must’ve called the police. Maguire heard the siren also and knew where it was heading. He looked up at Shannon. “They were killing me,” he said, his voice coming out a mile a minute as he tried to beat the police sirens. “Every night it was like that DVD you’re playing now. I was working twelve plus hour days and then I couldn’t even sleep at night because of their bullshit. I’d try asking Carver to turn it down, and he’d just turn the music louder and make more noise down there. Sometimes it would go on all night. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Work’s killing me, my wife’s killing me by moping around like a zombie twenty-four hours a day, and they’re killing me by not letting me have a second’s peace. I couldn’t sell the place. I didn’t have the money to get out from under the mortgage. So what the fuck was I supposed to do? What the fuck would you’ve done?”
“Something other than beating them to death with a baseball bat. And even if you flipped out with them and couldn’t help yourself, you were rational when you decided to kill your wife.”
The sirens were loud now. Shannon heard car doors slamming, then a police radio going on and officers talking. Someone pounded on the front door. Maguire turned from the noise back to Shannon. “Come on,” he pleaded. “Give me this one break. We could make such a great fucking team!”
Shannon left Maguire to go answer the door.
Shannon was admitted to the hospital later that evening and the next morning underwent surgery to repair his
