Trouble in Mind

by Michael Wiley

  Kelson jolted awake in his dark apartment. His heart beat as hard as if a man had just chased him through a warehouse of a hundred rooms. He sat up on the floor and, in a strange gift from his subconscious, felt a sudden rush of love for Bicho. There was no logic to the sensation, though he felt it as strongly as any love he’d ever felt. But a terrible guilt – for killing a seventeen-year-old – followed hard on the love.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said in the dark, and he pulled up a blanket and tried to sleep again.

  His phone woke him the next morning. One of the kittens was nestled against his mouth. The other seemed to be sleeping on his ear. He peeled them off, stumbled into the kitchen, and picked up the call.

  Greg Toselli was on the other end. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘just calling to check on you. I heard about the latest. You pinched Peters on the ass. His partner ain’t too happy about you either.’

  ‘The tennis player.’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah, right. Look, I’m giving you a heads-up. Whatever the hell you think you’re doing, Peters and Johnson get it. They know about the Percocet you took off Raima Minhas. They—’

  ‘What?’ Kelson said. ‘How?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I don’t know. I just hear what they’re saying. If you were partying with the lady, that’s your business, but I sure as hell hope you didn’t share your meds. ’Cause if you did, when toxicology comes back on her, you’re—’

  ‘For the pain,’ Kelson said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I take Percocet for the pain,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t tell me that,’ Toselli said. ‘Don’t say anything you don’t want others to know.’

  ‘I don’t party – not like that.’

  ‘Did you give it to her?’

  ‘No,’ Kelson said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘See, that’s right. Keep it like that.’

  ‘No, I really didn’t.’

  ‘Perfect. No man left behind, right?’

  When they hung up, Kelson swore at Toselli. Then he went into the bathroom and swore at the stranger in the mirror. Then he said, ‘Deal with it.’ He stared at his reflection as if it might tell him how. When it didn’t, he showered, dressed, and poured three bowls of cereal – a big one for himself, little ones with extra milk for the kittens. He put the kittens on the table, and they ate together.

  Afterward, he carried them into the bathroom where he planned to leave them during the day. The clutter of dishes and kitty litter would usually give him a needling headache, but his head felt fine – better than he could remember since the shooting. The kittens mewled at him. So he snapped a picture of them on his phone.

  Overnight, the rain had stopped, and, as Kelson drove to his office, the sky hung gray and low over the city. When he rode up the elevator, his office reassured him by looking exactly as he’d left it, as if not a particle of dust had shifted. Before strapping his KelTec under his desk, he checked the magazine, counting the rounds, rolling their weight in his hand, reloading, and snapping the magazine back into the gun. ‘Better than diddling with a paperclip,’ he said. ‘Better than wiggling a doorknob.’ He opened the middle desk drawer and gazed at the picture of Sue Ellen. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. He settled into his desk chair, then dialed Peters on his phone.

  ‘Whatever you think is true isn’t,’ he said, ‘except when it is – but it still isn’t what it seems.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Peters said.

  ‘Drugs. Beds. The storm drain. The whole thing.’

  ‘Look,’ Peters said, ‘I’m way too busy for whatever you’re ranting about. What do you need?’

  ‘Me?’ Kelson hadn’t thought about his own needs when he dialed.

  ‘I’m hanging up now,’ Peters said.

  ‘I need to know where Christian Felbanks’s parents are staying.’

  ‘Why would you need to know that?’ Peters said. ‘Why are you even calling me? Do yourself a favor and let me forget you.’

  ‘If Christian told anyone about the trouble he was in, it was probably Raima Minhas. But maybe he talked to his mom and dad too.’

  ‘You don’t think we’re asking them?’

  ‘I’m sure you are. But you guys sometimes get an idea in your heads, and it keeps you from seeing clearly or asking the right questions. You think you know the truth, but it isn’t – or it is but it isn’t—’

  ‘You’re digging a hole.’

  ‘Right. I don’t want to point fingers, but when you first grilled me about Felbanks’s killing—’

  ‘Maybe you should stop there,’ Peters said.

  ‘So are you going to tell me where they are?’

  ‘You’re just a little deluded, right?’

  ‘Because I was thinking, they keep their daughter in a special home – and that costs money. And funeral expenses – that’s money too. They’re from Sioux City. Salt of the earth. The kind of people who put common sense above emotion. So even if their son died in the condo, why wouldn’t they stay there to save money? That’s what they would think.’

  Peters growled into the phone. ‘Stay away from them.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Kelson said, ‘that’s what I needed to know.’

  Kelson took his laptop from his desk and spent a half hour researching Christian Felbanks and Raima Minhas. Christian had graduated from the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois-Chicago twelve years ago and Raima a year after him. ‘Probably met there,’ Kelson told the computer. Raima seemed to have started working at Lakewood Pharmacy straight out of college, and Christian, who worked at a Walgreens in Sioux Falls for three years, joined her there when he moved back to Chicago. ‘Did he move for her?’ Kelson asked. ‘Or did it start when they began rubbing shoulders in their lab coats?’

  Felbanks’s Facebook and Instagram accounts had pictures of the couple together – at concerts, on the beach, at the skating rink in Millennium Park – but hers had pictures only of other women in saris or long blouses. ‘Trouble in the family?’ he asked one of the group photos, taken at a restaurant table. ‘Dad and Mom don’t like him? Do they even know about him?’ He jabbered on for a minute about honor killings and divided cultures and things he had little understanding of and had heard just enough about to be misinformed.

  Then he Googled their two names together and got a hit for a wedding-related site with the address www.raimaandchristiansayido.com. It linked to registries at Target, Crate & Barrel, and Macy’s, included pictures of the evening they got engaged, and offered information about the wedding itself, which they’d planned for the first weekend in June.

  Kelson needed to talk to the parents – Felbanks’s first, since they might leave for Sioux City at any moment.

  But as he got up to leave, there was a knock on the office door.

  He buzzed it open, and two men came in – one in his mid-twenties, the other around sixty – and Kelson guessed from their faces who they were. ‘Raima Minhas’s relatives, yes?’ he said, before either opened his mouth. ‘Her father?’ he said to the older one, who wore loose blue cotton pants and a zipped-up yellow windbreaker. ‘And her brother?’ he said to the other, who was thicker and wore blue jeans and a Chicago Bulls hoodie. Kelson smiled at them.

  The older one pulled a cheap revolver from under his windbreaker, the younger one a pistol from the front pouch in his hoodie.

  The younger one spoke with a British accent. ‘And you’re the asshole that killed her.’

  ‘That’s lovely,’ Kelson said, ‘though it makes me think you aren’t her brother. A cousin? From auld England?’

  ‘Shut up,’ the older man said.

  ‘Ah, you’re definitely the dad,’ Kelson said.

  The older man was sweating, and although he and his companion held the only guns, his hand shook as he aimed at Kelson.

  ‘Please,’ Kelson said, ‘have a seat. If you try to shoot me, you’ll probably hit each other. Those are lousy guns. Who—’

  ‘Shut up,’ the older man said again.

&nbs
p; ‘You make me nervous too,’ Kelson said, ‘and when I’m nervous, I talk. If you put down the guns, I won’t pull my own from under my desk and kill you. I’m thinking you’re here because of a misunderstanding, and I would hate to hurt you for it.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ the younger man said.

  ‘Ha,’ Kelson said, ‘I always tell the truth, chap. Will you please put down the guns?’

  The men shook their heads.

  ‘If you don’t, I won’t tell you what I know about Raima,’ Kelson said, ‘and I won’t find the person who really killed her.’

  The older man said, ‘Tell us something we don’t know.’

  ‘For example,’ Kelson said, ‘she planned to marry Christian Felbanks.’

  The man stared at him. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘She was growing a wedding braid. My wife reserved the Hilton banquet room. Do you think my own daughter would get married without my blessing?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Kelson said.

  ‘You cut off her braid.’ The younger man said it as if Kelson had reached down the front of Raima Minhas’s pants.

  ‘I didn’t touch her,’ Kelson said.

  The older man said, ‘Tell me what you know about her.’

  ‘OK,’ Kelson said, ‘I know she loved Christian Felbanks. So I know she wouldn’t have gone to another man’s apartment on her own, which means she didn’t go to mine. I know she seemed strong enough to resist one man who tried to force drugs on her, strong enough to resist me. I know – or at least suspect – she knew a secret about the drugs at the pharmacy where she worked. She implied it to me. I know she’s dead and I may have less reason than you to want to get whoever did it, but I still have a lot of reason. And, if you want the truth, maybe I’m partly responsible for her death since whoever killed her put her in my bed. If someone killed her to get at me, I’m truly sorry.’

  The older man seemed uncertain. His hand shook.

  The younger man lowered his gun a notch.

  Then the older man said, ‘No.’ And he pulled the trigger.

  Kelson misjudged the time he needed to grab his KelTec. But he was right about the man being a rotten shot.

  The bullet ripped past and sank into the wallboard.

  Kelson shoved his desk toward the men, knocking them back.

  He didn’t need to do even that much. At the sound of the gunshot, the older man looked stricken by what he’d done, as if waking from a nightmare to find a bloody screwdriver in his hands. The younger one dropped his gun on the floor.

  Kelson was furious. He touched the scar on his forehead. ‘Do you see this?’ he said. ‘This is what happens when someone who knows how to use a gun shoots at me – a kid who probably sucked on a pistol barrel instead of a pacifier. He probably killed a half dozen other men before he shot me. But he couldn’t kill me. And you – with your pathetic little guns and your pathetic shaking hands—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the older man said weakly.

  Kelson reached under his desk anyway and pulled out the KelTec. He gestured at the revolver still shaking in the man’s hand. ‘Put that down.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ the man said, the fact of what he’d done still blooming in his mind, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He put the revolver on the floor, and he started to cry.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Kelson said. ‘If you do that, you’ll get me going too.’

  But it was too late. Tears streamed down the man’s face, and he spoke disjointedly about his daughter – his child, his pride, his love, the greatest joy he’d ever felt, and now she was gone – which made Kelson think about Sue Ellen and how he’d feel if anything bad happened to her, and so tears streamed down his cheeks too, and the office filled with the sounds of the two men sobbing. Only Raima’s cousin remained dry-eyed, and he watched Kelson as if he’d gone crazy. Then Kelson came around his desk and hugged Raima’s father, and the father hugged him back.

  When they stopped crying, which took a long time since each could set off the other again, Kelson straightened his desk and once again asked the men to sit.

  This time they did.

  ‘Now, where were we?’ Kelson asked, dabbing an eye with a knuckle.

  The old man looked sheepish. ‘I was shooting a hole in your wall.’

  ‘Right. Let’s try again. My name’s Sam Kelson. And you are …?’

  ‘Jaipal Minhas,’ the older one said.

  ‘Amit Minhas,’ the younger one said.

  ‘He’s my brother’s son,’ the older one said.

  ‘Very good,’ Kelson said. ‘And why did you try to kill me?’

  ‘You killed Raima in your bed,’ the older one said. ‘The police detective said they also put you in jail for Christian.’

  ‘Dan Peters,’ Kelson said. ‘I didn’t kill your daughter, and I didn’t kill Christian.’

  ‘This is what you say,’ the man said. ‘Raima was a good daughter. How did this happen?’

  He looked as if he might cry again, so Kelson made a show of strapping his gun back under his desktop and asked, ‘Did she have problems with drugs? I worked in narcotics for eight years, and sometimes kids from good families—’

  The man interrupted him. ‘Not Raima, no. You must believe me – she was a good girl. Very clean.’

  ‘I believe that you believe that,’ Kelson said. ‘Did she talk to you about the pharmacy? Missing inventory? Shipments being tampered with? Thefts?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. She wouldn’t steal drugs.’

  ‘I mean someone else,’ Kelson said. ‘Did she ever think someone—’

  ‘No, she was happy at work. She did nothing wrong.’

  ‘No one says she did, Mr Minhas.’

  ‘She died in your bed,’ he said. ‘The police say—’

  ‘In my bed, or somewhere else and then she was put there. But I get your point. Don’t worry too much about what the police think about her. They’re trained to think that way about everyone.’

  ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you think that way too?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Raima was a good child,’ the man said. ‘A good woman.’ Tears pooled in his eyes.

  The nephew said, ‘She told me the manager harassed her. He said things to her. He tried to touch her.’

  His uncle said, ‘That was nothing.’

  ‘She laughed it off,’ the younger man said. ‘She liked the job and didn’t want trouble.’

  ‘What did Christian think about that?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘It was nothing,’ the older man said again.

  ‘Christian wanted them to quit,’ said the nephew. ‘But Raima convinced him they wouldn’t find another shop where they could work together. She convinced him she could handle it.’

  ‘Did it ever get out of hand?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘No,’ the older man said, ‘everything was OK. Raima was happy.’

  They talked like that, around and around, and then Jaipal and Amit Minhas picked up their guns and shuffled out of the office.

  Thirty seconds after they got on an elevator to the lobby, the building security guard accompanied a cop to Kelson’s door.

  ‘We got a call,’ said the security guard, a fat guy everyone knew only as Steve. ‘Sounded like a gunshot.’

  ‘A lot of things sound like gunshots,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Including gunshots,’ Steve said. He looked into the office over Kelson’s shoulder. ‘You didn’t shoot a gun in here?’

  ‘Me? Never.’

  ‘Are you here alone?’ the cop asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You mind if I take a look?’

  Kelson let him take a look.

  The cop saw the desk, the chairs, the file cabinet. He didn’t look at the bullet hole. ‘No one’s hurt, then?’ the cop asked.

  ‘Not here.’

  SEVENTEEN

  A man wheeled a bicycle from the shop under Christian Felbanks’s
condo. The smell of garlic wafted from the Lebanese restaurant two doors away. On the sidewalk, pigeons pecked at a gray discarded piece of French bread. They looked as cold and bleak as the harshest winter. ‘Me too,’ Kelson said.

  He tried the handle on the street door to the condo. Locked. ‘Closing the barn door,’ he said, and he hit the button for Felbanks’s address.

  A man’s crackling voice answered through the intercom.

  Kelson introduced himself, and, after a moment, the man let him in.

  Jerry and Ann Felbanks were staying in their son’s place. But as if nervous about putting down more than feeler roots, they’d unpacked their suitcases only on to the living-room couch, making neat stacks of underwear and socks. They wore jeans and flannel shirts, and looked tired and uneasy, maybe scared. When Kelson said how sorry he was about their son, though, Jerry gave him a big handshake and Ann a small one, and when Kelson asked if Christian had told them of trouble at the pharmacy or elsewhere, Jerry answered with a firm but quiet voice that suggested he was used to talking in silent, wide-open spaces and being listened to.

  ‘Christian had a way with people,’ he said. ‘You’d call it charm. It could be hail and hell outside, and he’d see the good in it. The benefit. He never said a mean word. Never complained.’

  ‘So he never said anything about someone stealing?’

  ‘He wouldn’t. He liked to be your friend. Saw the good in people.’

  ‘Sounds like words in an obituary.’

  ‘We’ve been writing his,’ Ann Felbanks said.

  Her husband said, ‘The police say you found Christian.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you show us where?’

  Kelson didn’t want to return to the bedroom. ‘If it will help.’

  They went in. Curtains were pulled over the sliding door to the balcony, and the woman turned on the bedside light. Kelson showed them how their son was lying on the bed and, because she asked, where the pill bottles were on the night table and where Christian’s pants and shoes were on the floor.

  She touched the bed. ‘Too many losses.’