Bad Thoughts (2 page)

      
“Of course she has. There have been times when she’s been stuck at work, or she has a hair appointment that’s running late, but not like this. She called before leaving work that she was going to pick something up for dinner and be right home.”

      
“Where does she work?”

      
“In Watertown. She’s an accountant. Here’s her business card.” Kyle Rowley took a card from his wallet and handed it to Shannon.

      
The card had Janice Rowley’s work address and phone number. Shannon put it down in front of him and considered Kyle Rowley for a long moment.

      
“How have you and your wife been getting along?” Shannon asked at last.

      
Rowley tilted his head to the side, shaking it slightly. His lips pulled into a thin smile.

      
“I need to ask you this.”

      
“This isn’t anything like that,” Kyle Rowley said, his voice tired. “My wife and I love each other very much.”

      
“There haven’t been any problems, no fights or anything?”

      
“No.” Rowley’s eyes shifted upwards to lock in on Shannon’s.

      
“If we were to ask around we’d hear—”

      
“You’d hear the same thing. That me and my wife love each other. That’s all you’d hear about us.”

      
Shannon took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, shook one loose, and looked at it for a long moment before pushing it back into place. He noticed DiGrazia staring at him from the corners of his thin, narrowed eyes.

      
“Could your wife be seeing someone else?” Shannon asked.

      
“No.”

      
“Is there the possibility—”

      
“No. Janice is not seeing anyone. There’s not even the possibility of it.”

      
“What about someone she works with?”

      
“I told you she’s not seeing anyone—”

      
“But you have suspicions, though.”

      
“What do you mean?”

      
“You had her business card ready for me. You obviously have suspicions about somebody there.”

      
Rowley thought it over. “I don’t think so,” he said. “You asked me where she worked. Anyway, I thought it could help to give it to you. Maybe somebody saw someone suspicious in the parking lot. Maybe somebody heard something. I don’t know. But that’s why I gave you her card. Janice is not seeing anyone.”

      
“How can you be so sure?”

      
“Because I know my wife,” Kyle Rowley said. “I know how we feel about each other.”

      
Something about Rowley being so cocksure of his wife bothered Shannon. Shit, half the cops he knew sooner or later found their wives in affairs. Stubbornly he kept at it. “If your wife is seeing someone I need to know about it—”

      
“She’s not seeing anyone. This is not anything like that.”

      
“What is this then?”

      
Pain pushed through the dullness in Kyle Rowley’s eyes. His entire face momentarily was flushed with it. “Janice was abducted,” he said. “Somebody took her. You realize that, don’t you?”

      
“Okay,” Shannon said, “let me be straight with you. What I realize is your wife is missing, either because she wants to be, because somebody did something to her, or because you did something to her. If we can rule you out then we can focus on the other two possibilities. Which means if your wife really was abducted, the quicker we can cross you off, the better the chance we’d have of finding her. Will you give us permission to search your apartment?”

      
“It’s not going to help at all—”

      
“I could get a warrant, but it would take time. I don’t think we want to waste time right now.”

      
Anger turned Rowley’s skin a soft purple. “This is ridiculous,” he started to argue, his jaw muscles hardening, “there’s nothing in my apartment that’s going to help you find my wife—”

      
“If you’re involved, you’re doing the right thing by stonewalling us,” Shannon said.

      
“I’m not trying to stonewall you,” Rowley said. “Goddamn it.” He shook his head. The color drained out of his face, leaving it the same unhealthy yellow it was before. “Do whatever you want as long as it gets you looking for Janice.”

      
“Are you willing to take a polygraph test?”

      
“I’ll take whatever you want me to take. Just find my wife.”

      
Shannon stood up. “I’m going to get you a pad of paper. I want you to write down any place your wife might have stopped off last night to pick up dinner. Any place you can think of. I want you to also write down anything unusual that might have happened over the last couple months, anything your wife might’ve said that seemed out of place—”

      
“Like what?”

      
“Like somebody coming on to her at work, or threatening her, anything like that. I also want you to write down everything you did from the time you left work yesterday to coming here this morning.” Shannon hesitated. “Do you have pictures of your wife?”

      
“I didn’t bring any. I can go home and get some.”

      
“That’s okay. Just give me your keys. While you’re writing down what I asked, Detective DiGrazia and I will search your apartment. I need to get a photo of your wife out on the wire. Do you give me permission to remove photos of her from your apartment?”

      
Kyle Rowley told Shannon to do whatever he needed to do and told him where they kept their photo albums. He took a pair of keys off a chain and handed them to Shannon. “Janice’s still alive,” he said. “I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. Don’t let her die. She’s my life. I don’t think I can make it without her.”

      
“I’ll do everything I can. I promise. I’ll be right back with that pad.”

      
DiGrazia, before leaving, put a hand on Rowley’s shoulder and told him to hang in there.

      
Out in the hallway DiGrazia remarked how he let Shannon do all the talking.

      
“Yeah, I noticed.”

      
“I wanted to give you every opportunity to form an unbiased opinion.”

      
“Thanks.”

      
“You thought there was something funny about him pointing us towards her coworkers?”

      
“No. I just wanted to ask him about it.”

      
“So what do you think,” DiGrazia asked, “is he genuine?”

      
Shannon thought about it. “What I think is we’ve got a woman in pretty bad trouble.”

* * * * *

      
Before leaving the precinct they stopped to talk with Brady. Forensics took a couple of partial prints off the steering wheel, nothing else.

      
“Of course,” Brady went on, “they’re most likely the victim’s, but we’ll check them. Bill, tell me about the husband.”

      
“He’s given us permission to search his apartment and he’s also willing to take a polygraph. I’ve set it up for one this afternoon. Do you want to be there?”

      
“I don’t think that’s necessary. Is he responsible?”

      
“I don’t know.”

      
“What do you mean you don’t know?”

      
Shannon shook his head. “I don’t have a feel yet, Martin. I really don’t know.”

      
Brady gave DiGrazia a questioning look, but DiGrazia cut him off. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” he said.

      
“You’re disappointing me,” Brady said to the two cops as they walked away from him.

      
Brady stood watching them, shaking his head, a dour look forming over his soft features. “And I’m not at all happy about it,” he said to no one in particular.
 
 

Chapter 2
 

      
Shannon only half heard his partner puffing as they made it up the three flights to Kyle Rowley’s apartment. He couldn’t help thinking about Rowley, about how certain Rowley was of his wife’s feelings. If it was Susie, could he say for sure she wouldn’t spend the night with another man? When they first got married he probably could’ve, but now he’d only give even money on what she’d do. At best, they were the same odds for whether he’d care . . .

      
As Shannon opened the door to Rowley’s apartment a smell stopped him; a rotting, sour smell that had assaulted him in his dream. It was fleeting, though, disappearing almost as soon as he breathed it in. Still, it unnerved him.

      
“Did you smell anything?” Shannon asked.

      
“What am I supposed to have smelled?”

      
“I don’t know. Something like bad body odor. Except worse.”

      
“Sorry, pal, I didn’t smell it. I’ll take the kitchen.”

      
The apartment was neat, orderly, no evidence of a recent struggle. Shannon found a picture of Janice Rowley in the living room. He picked it up and studied it. She was attractive, blond and petite with a nice, easygoing smile. There was something appealing about her smile, something warm and genuine about it. A cold numbness pressed against Shannon’s forehead as he stared at that smile. The woman in the picture was the same one from his dream.

      
He put down the picture and found a chair. He sat down until the coldness went away. Then he thought, what the hell. He couldn’t help what he dreamed about. He got up, found the clothes hamper in the hallway, dumped its contents onto the floor and started sifting through it, searching for any torn or bloody clothing. He was at the bottom of the pile when DiGrazia yelled out to him to meet him in the kitchen.

      
DiGrazia had a hard grin etched on his face as Shannon met him. “Notice anything?” he asked.

      
A drawer was opened showing a set of steak knifes. One of the knives was missing.

      
“Did you check the rest of the kitchen for it?”

      
“Yeah,” DiGrazia said, “it’s not here. So what do you think?”

      
“What am I supposed to think?”

      
“That maybe our guy stabbed her in the heat of the moment, that he then dumped her and the car, and fed us that abduction story.”

      
“They got wall-to-wall carpeting. I haven’t seen any blood stains.”

      
“He could’ve been lucky with the way she bled.”

      
Shannon was shaking his head. “If she arrived home at six and he showed up at the precinct at seven it wouldn’t have left him enough time to dump the body and the car and also clean up.”

      
“The car wasn’t discovered until this morning. He could’ve gotten rid of both her and the car after reporting her missing. He probably knew he’d be told to go home and wait.”

      
Shannon was shaking his head.

      
“What about the knife, then?”

      
“Knives get lost. It happens.”

      
“Come on.”

      
“If she was abducted,” Shannon said, “maybe the perp came back for it.”

      
“What do you mean?”

      
“He’d have her keys and her address. Maybe it struck him as an amusing thing to do—use one of her own knives on her.”

      
“You’re kidding, right?”

      
Shannon stared straight at his partner. “I don’t see any blood stains on the carpeting, I don’t see anything to indicate she was stabbed here. I don’t think we’re being conned. And one of the steak knives is missing.”

      
“Jesus Christ,” DiGrazia swore softly. “You got a twisted way of thinking.” He paused for a moment. “You see any point in getting the apartment dusted?”

      
“It’s cold outside. I’m sure our guy was wearing gloves. Assuming the knife wasn’t just lost.”

      
DiGrazia was scowling, a deep, hard scowl that creased the bottom half of his face. “If it’s working out that way, partner—”

      
“The knife could just be lost,” Shannon suggested without any real conviction.

      
“Shit,” DiGrazia swore. Then he stopped and gave Shannon a long, hard stare. “Is something wrong, partner? You don’t look too good.”

      
Shannon shook his head and muttered, “nothing” before heading towards the door. He wasn’t about to tell DiGrazia that he had seen the missing steak knife in his dream.

* * * * *

      
The story they got at Janice Rowley’s office was consistent; their missing coworker was happily married and was not looking for anything extracurricular. One of the accountants remembered her leaving shortly after five. Like the others interviewed, she seemed visibly shaken on hearing that Rowley was missing.

      
Shannon tried getting back to the extracurricular angle, asking whether there were any guys in the office who had a tough time taking no for an answer.

      
The woman just shook her head. “They’re accountants,” she said as if that explained the matter.

* * * * *

      
When they got back to the station Kyle Rowley complained about how long he had been sitting there waiting for them.

      
“I’m sorry about that, but we’ve been busy,” Shannon explained. “We’ve put a description of your wife out on the wire and we’re faxing her photo to every department in New England. We’ve also released the story and photos to the local stations and newspapers. If anyone’s seen Janice we’ll know soon.”