Trouble in Mind

by Michael Wiley

  ‘I told you before.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t book you for Dominick Stevens.’

  ‘Really?’ Kelson said. ‘You going to uncuff me?’

  ‘I kind of like you this way. I can pop you in the jaw anytime I want.’

  ‘Ha.’

  ‘Ha yourself. Just watch me.’

  ‘Anyway, the charges wouldn’t stick,’ Kelson said. ‘I used a metaphor when I said I would shoot him.’

  ‘A metaphor, huh?’ the detective said.

  ‘But I tucked my KelTec under my car seat – just in case.’

  ‘Ha,’ the detective said again, though he added, ‘but you do have self-control issues.’

  ‘Which is why you raced across the city and pulled Stevens into the safety of a squad car, even though you knew I didn’t kill Felbanks.’

  ‘If you hurt Stevens and I had a recorded message saying you planned to do it, everyone would stomp on my balls. Not really a metaphor. Tell me about this lady that came to talk to you.’

  ‘About thirty years old,’ Kelson said. ‘Maybe five-five. Short red hair, combed to the side. Are you going to uncuff me?’

  Peters shrugged. ‘What’s the connection between Christian Felbanks and Dominick Stevens?’

  ‘None that I see,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I see one,’ Peters said. ‘You. You and this lady you say is giving you information.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘I have no reason to think either way about it. It’s what you’ve told me – we’ll leave it at that.’

  ‘Does Stevens use Felbanks’s pharmacy?’

  ‘Different part of town,’ Peters said. ‘But I’ll check. Of course. I’ll tell you something that might interest you, though. The preliminary bloodwork on Felbanks came back positive for opioids. Enough to kill him. The gunshot was just frosting. The problem is – and I think you know where I’m taking this – the toxicology keeps you in the mix. Since your prints are on the pill bottles and all.’

  ‘We both know that was part of the setup,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I know that’s what you tell me.’

  ‘You really think I’m in this?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. And I blame you for that. You’ve said things that don’t make sense. You’ve told me lies.’

  ‘I’ve told you the truth, a hundred percent,’ Kelson said.

  ‘You embarrass yourself by saying that,’ Peters said.

  ‘I’ll always tell you the truth,’ Kelson said, ‘as much as I understand it.’

  Peters smiled like a man who’s heard it before. ‘Will you take a polygraph?’

  Kelson laughed at that, though Peters looked as if he might follow through on the pop to his jaw. ‘I don’t see what’s funny,’ Peters said. Then he unlocked the cuffs and kicked Kelson out into the cold rain – with a warning. ‘I don’t want to see you again unless I come looking for you. I don’t want to hear your voice unless I ask you a question.’

  Kelson said, ‘This woman, Jillian Prindle, or whatever her real name is – it isn’t over with her. She—’

  Peters said, ‘Shhh. Did I ask you a question?’

  ‘No,’ Kelson said. ‘No, you didn’t.’

  FOURTEEN

  Back in his car, Kelson retrieved his pistol from under the seat, released the magazine, fingered it, and snapped it back in place. He tucked the gun in his belt, took out his phone, and called the number the woman gave him.

  No one picked up. No voicemail asked him to leave a message.

  ‘What did I expect?’ he said.

  He turned on the car and watched the wipers smear rain across the windshield. ‘As if it was that easy,’ he said to them. ‘Still, I’ve got options. None of them good.’ He stared at the mirrored building from which Dominick Stevens ran his piece of the city. ‘Probably a good man. Probably forgiving. Probably will let this one pass.’ If Kelson turned off the wipers, the building would twist and distort in the runnels of rain. He left them on. ‘Yep, I have options. She sent me here for a reason. Of all places, here. Of all men, him. Paid me to come.’ He looked at the building, which seemed to gaze back like an opaque lens. ‘Hell if I know why. Hell if I know how to find out. Her move next. Again. Her move and my countermove. Still, I’ve got options.’ He looked at the wet street. ‘Only one of them good. Do something that makes me happy.’

  He shifted into drive, pulled from the curb, and did a U-turn.

  Then he zigzagged across the city until he reached the west branch of the Tree House Humane Society, located in a brown-brick building so small Kelson thought it could shelter no more than a pet mouse. ‘Or a gimpy ferret on a leash,’ he said. ‘Maybe a tank of tropical fish.’

  He parked a half block away and ran through the rain, ducking in through a black door.

  A man in a black T-shirt stood at the front counter. In the recesses of the building behind him, dogs barked.

  ‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ Kelson said to the man. He was dripping from the rain and filthy from lying in the street.

  The man looked at him sideways and said, ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I need some kittens,’ Kelson said, and smiled. ‘To go.’

  ‘I see,’ said the man. ‘They would be for yourself?’

  ‘My daughter,’ Kelson said. ‘She’d rather have a horse, but … you know …’

  The man gave him another look.

  Kelson caught his breath and said, ‘Can I start over?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘I would like to adopt two kittens.’ He explained that his eleven-year-old would take care of them with his help and the help of his ex-wife, who, he admitted, hated cats.

  The man said, ‘Your ex-wife is OK with this?’

  ‘No,’ Kelson said, ‘I thought I would surprise her.’

  The man sent him on his way.

  Fifteen minutes later, Kelson pulled up outside the downtown Anti-Cruelty Society, a complex big enough to house a circus. ‘More like it,’ he said. He sat in his car for several minutes, repeating out loud the words responsible adult, and then he went inside and adopted a pair of black-and-white kittens, sisters from a litter rescued off a restaurant rooftop. He answered the questionnaire honestly but smiled a lot and managed to keep from tangling himself in the truth or offering worrisome unsolicited information.

  He brought the kittens out in a carrier, along with a cat starter kit – food, bowls, a litter box. Then he gave himself a few verbal high-fives and drove straight to Nancy’s house.

  He was waiting at the street-side with the mewling kittens, which he’d let out of the carrier and were clambering up the seat backs and on to his shoulder with pin-like claws, when Nancy drove her minivan in behind him. Sue Ellen jumped out of the passenger side into the rain, pleased to see his car. Nancy got out, wearing medical scrubs. As had been the case a lot in recent months, she looked annoyed. And mean. ‘And sexy,’ Kelson said.

  He climbed out of his car, holding a kitten in each hand, and said, ‘Surprise!’

  Sue Ellen squealed happily, then stopped short and looked at her mother.

  Nancy didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile. The rain was making her mascara run.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘You’re the most irresponsible, the biggest—’ She couldn’t get the words out. ‘You’ve got to learn to control yourself. You can’t just do this to people.’

  ‘To you,’ Kelson said.

  ‘That’s right. To me. I have a life. I make my own choices. I don’t have the patience or energy for this.’

  One of the kittens mewled.

  Nancy stared at it ferociously. ‘Take them back.’

  Sue Ellen said, ‘I told Mom we talked about kittens this morning. I thought you were joking.’

  ‘So did I,’ Kelson said.

  She looked at him slyly. ‘Where’s the horse?’

  Kelson said to his ex, ‘What makes you think I’m offering them to you?’

  She gave him her yo
u’ve-forgotten-to-floss eyes. ‘You didn’t plan to leave them here?’

  ‘Well, I thought that made the best sense,’ he said, ‘since you’ve got the house – the space.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You don’t have to be smug,’ he said. ‘It’s not like you tricked me into admitting it. I’ll keep them at my apartment.’

  ‘Your building has a no-pets policy,’ she said. ‘Sue Ellen told me that too.’

  Sue Ellen gave Kelson a pretend pout. ‘You didn’t bring me a horse?’

  Kelson winked at her, which made Nancy angrier. He said, ‘If the neighbors complain, I’ll do what I need to do.’

  ‘That’s just cruel,’ she said. ‘Taking animals into your life and then—’

  ‘You’re making assumptions,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll find a new place to live.’

  ‘But who will take you?’ she said. ‘I mean, really, if anyone spends more than a minute with you, who?’ She walked up the sidewalk and went into the house.

  Kelson said to Sue Ellen, ‘Go with her. But come over tomorrow after school to visit the kittens – if she lets you.’

  Sue Ellen started up the sidewalk, then ran back to Kelson and gave each kitten a kiss on the head. She said to him, ‘Give the horse a kiss for me too.’ She ran up the sidewalk and went in.

  ‘Great kid,’ Kelson told the kittens.

  Then Nancy stuck her head out the door and said, ‘Take them to the pound.’

  So Kelson drove home to his apartment. He parked with the hazards on in front of the building, got out, and checked the lobby, then ran inside to the elevator with the cat carrier. He snuck down the hall, hushing the kittens, and fumbled his key into the lock. He stepped inside and yelled, ‘Goddamn it.’

  Not only was his bed turned down – though he always tucked in the sheets in the morning, smoothing them flat to prevent headaches – there was a woman in it. The pharmacist Raima Minhas lay with the sheet and blanket pulled to her knees. She wore a black bra and, as far as Kelson could tell, nothing else. She stared wide-eyed at the ceiling.

  ‘Hey,’ Kelson said.

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t move.

  Something else about her had changed from when he’d seen her before. Her long black braid was gone.

  He went to her, and he knew without touching her that she was dead.

  He touched her anyway, feeling for a pulse. Her skin had gone a long way toward cold. He wanted to move away from her as he’d moved away from Christian Felbanks in the condo, but he stayed close. She was clutching a prescription bottle, the label showing through her fingers. He leaned over her to read it.

  Percocet. Filled at Lakewood Pharmacy. The label made out to Samuel Kelson.

  FIFTEEN

  Kelson pulled the bottle from the woman’s fingers. He just wanted to read the label again, but now it had his prints on it – if they weren’t already planted there. He said, ‘Stupid. I’m an idiot. A stupid idiot.’

  He took the cat carrier back down to his car, moved the car to the parking lot, opened the pet-adoption starter kit, and put food in the carrier for the kittens. ‘Be good,’ he said, and cracked open a window.

  He knew from his time as a cop that if drug evidence can be found, it will be. So he took the Percocet to the street and emptied it into a storm drain. He peeled the label off the bottle, ripped it, and dropped the pieces into the drain too. In a minute, the rainwater would dissolve the pills. In another minute, the label would disintegrate. No matter if it didn’t, it all would wash away with the city dirt into an underworld even the most scrupulous detective would never visit.

  Kelson couldn’t make the plastic pill bottle vanish, but nothing would tie it to Lakewood Pharmacy. He wiped it clean and tossed it into the dumpster behind the building.

  Then he went back up to his apartment and called Dan Peters.

  Almost immediately, two patrol cops buzzed Kelson’s apartment, rode the elevator to his floor, and stood sentinel outside his door. One of them told him to wait at his kitchen table until the higher-ups arrived. When Kelson asked, ‘Are you here to keep me in or others out?’ the cop said, ‘No one comes or goes – that’s all they told me.’

  Then Detective Peters arrived with a partner – a dark-skinned, thick-legged woman with straightened hair. They moved around the apartment as if they already knew it, or knew places just like it, ignoring Kelson until he stated the obvious. ‘You’ve done this before.’

  The female detective mumbled, ‘A thousand times,’ and disappeared into the bathroom where she opened the cabinets.

  ‘I could object,’ Kelson said.

  Peters said, ‘Just try.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Kelson said. ‘After I called you, I checked the cabinets and closets.’

  That made Peters stop. ‘Did you touch her?’

  ‘Yep,’ Kelson said. ‘She’s been dead a couple hours anyway.’

  ‘What else did you put your hands on?’

  ‘I touched everything,’ he said. ‘I prepared for that one.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I knew you would ask.’

  The female detective returned.

  ‘He touched everything,’ Peters said.

  ‘It’s my apartment,’ he said. ‘I always do.’ He asked the other detective, ‘Who are you?’

  She gave him a blank stare. ‘Detective Johnson.’

  He offered to shake hands.

  She ignored him and started opening kitchen cupboards.

  ‘Don’t you think I would clean out anything that would get me in trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s surprising what some jerks overlook,’ she said.

  Twenty minutes later, two forensics cops came, repeated the steps the detectives had taken, and added more of their own. Peters and Johnson sat down at the kitchen table and asked Kelson to tell them exactly what happened – every detail.

  He’d prepared for that too, so he focused on the kittens – how he’d snuck them through the lobby, into the elevator, and down the hall, how he’d stepped inside and seen Raima Minhas lying dead in his bed.

  ‘Kittens?’ Johnson said. ‘I don’t see kittens.’

  ‘They’re in my car,’ Kelson said.

  ‘How did they get there?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re too little to ride the elevator by themselves,’ he said.

  ‘You left your apartment after finding Raima Minhas?’

  ‘I didn’t give them the car key. They’re safe.’

  In less than a minute, he managed to annoy her as much as he annoyed Nancy in a good half hour or so – enough that Peters stared hard at her. ‘Keep cool, Venus.’

  ‘Really?’ Kelson said, ‘Venus?’

  ‘What the hell?’ she said.

  ‘Do you play tennis?’

  She looked at Peters as if to confirm what she was hearing.

  Peters told her, ‘Stay on track.’

  So Kelson jumped back in. ‘I took the kittens to my car. I could’ve put them in the bathroom, but they would contaminate the scene. When I came back upstairs, I called you.’ Then, to Venus Johnson, ‘No offense. I have a hard time with boundaries and categories. I sometimes forget and think I’m black too. Or Mexican. Then I look in a mirror and say, What’s up, white boy? or Hola, guero, or whatever.’

  Before she could react, Peters said, ‘Did you check the cabinets and closets before or after you took the cats to the car?’

  ‘After,’ Kelson said helpfully. ‘I came upstairs, called you, and then checked. I didn’t want anything like the setup at Felbanks’s apartment to happen again.’

  By the time Raima Minhas’s body went out on a gurney, and forensics stripped and bagged the bed sheets, it was almost midnight. After the last cop left, Kelson remade his bed, tucking in the edges and smoothing the top blanket until it looked like a calm sea. He brought up the kittens and told them, ‘This is your home now.’ He folded a blanket into a neat square and set it in a corner near the radiator.

 
Then he left the apartment and walked through the rain to the Golden Apple Grill.

  He ordered a hamburger and gave the waitress a recap of his kitten-buying experience and the discovery of Raima Minhas in his bed.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘I didn’t want to know all that.’ When she brought his food, she avoided eye contact. She never refilled his water. He had to signal her three times to order a slice of cherry pie.

  As he ate dessert, the restaurant sound system, which had piped in eighties hits throughout his dinner, started into an instrumental version of Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.’

  ‘Dammit,’ Kelson said.

  On the first night he had sex with Nancy, this song had played. Now, despite all that had happened over the past six hours, he felt … stirrings. On the long-ago date, he and Nancy had gone back to his apartment, turned on the radio, and as Joan Jett belted out her love for rock ’n’ roll, Nancy did a striptease. The thing was, as they admitted afterward, they’d both always hated the song. It would take more than a bullet in the left frontal lobe for Kelson to forget that striptease.

  In a recent session, Dr P had warned him that sounds, smells, and even tastes that had strong associations might trigger disinhibited behavior, especially at moments of stress. Sure enough, as he sat at the Golden Apple Grill, Kelson felt a powerful impulse to do a striptease like Nancy’s. ‘What the hell?’ he said, as he eyed the waitress with new interest. Sweating, he paid his bill and rushed out into the dark.

  SIXTEEN

  That night, Kelson laid his keys and phone on the kitchen counter and, unwilling to climb into the bed where he had found Raima Minhas, slept on the floor again.

  Although he surprised himself every time he looked in a mirror, in his dreams he knew himself well, and the self he knew had the unscarred forehead of an unwounded man. This time, he dreamed that Bicho chased him through a shadowy warehouse. The warehouse had hundreds of rooms, doors that opened into brick walls, and passageways that fell into an abyss. When Bicho trapped him in a last, shadowy room, Kelson ripped open a door that faced a wall. He pounded on the wall until he broke through, and he tumbled through the hole into a space that had no floor. He fell and fell, and Bicho plunged through the hole after him, into the dark, as if to kill or – it was unclear – perhaps save him.