DiGrazia stopped himself and gave Shannon a long, thoughtful look. “You don’t look so good all of a sudden,” he said. “What’s wrong, sick or something? Jesus, you look like you’re falling apart right in front of me.” There was no warmth or empathy in his eyes, nothing but a cold detachment.
“Man, you’re white as a sheet,” DiGrazia continued after a long moment, his bare-fanged smile tightening. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost. Is that what’s troubling you, pal, ghosts around?”
Shannon didn’t say anything. He just turned and walked away.
DiGrazia watched as his partner made his way down the hallway. Shannon’s reaction was interesting. More than interesting. Even if he hadn’t had that dream he’d think so. And maybe even if he hadn’t gotten those twenty-year-old newspaper clippings sent to him-maybe even then…
That morning he had found an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch envelope against his apartment door. Stuffed inside were photostatic copies of newspaper clippings. The articles were twenty years old and detailed the murder of Shannon’s mother. He had read them halfway through before putting gloves on. Now the envelope and its contents were inside a plastic evidence bag locked away in his bottom desk drawer.
He hadn’t yet decided what to do with them. He would like to get them dusted for fingerprints because if there were any, and they matched Shannon’s, that would be that. Because if Shannon had left it for him, it would’ve been a cry for help; a plea to stop him before he killed again. Word had come down that physical evidence had cleared Shannon of the Roberson murder, but as he had reminded Shannon, Roberson hadn’t been stabbed in the mouth. The other two had. Just like Shannon’s mother.
And that dream he had…
DiGrazia almost never remembered his dreams, but this one he couldn’t get out of his mind. It was so damn real, so damn much like being pulled through a nightmare. Every god-awful detail of it.
In it DiGrazia had become aware of a presence nearby, a presence that seemed to have floated out of nowhere. As it moved towards him he could smell it as if it were real, he could just about taste it in his throat. It was worse than raw sewage. Worse than anything he had ever imagined. And it was so strong, so overpowering. ..
It was next to DiGrazia then. Without looking at it, DiGrazia knew that it was something obscene, something malignant. The smell, though, kept DiGrazia from facing it. Even if he could have, there wouldn’t have been much for him to see because it kept too close to him, most of the time right up against him as it whispered into his ear.
DiGrazia at times caught brief glimpses of it. He remembered seeing its mouth, a tiny slit that was more of a knife wound than anything else. The image of it stood out in his mind. Along with those hands; bloated, dead-white hands.
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.