Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (30 page)

Ramos shook his head no. Then he said, “We could chat online. That’s easier.”

“For you, maybe,” Clayton said with a smile. “It’s still quite a chore for me. I’m just now catching onto it. Maybe you could teach me about it.”

Ramos smiled back. It was the first time Ramos had smiled during the interview so far.

“So is it okay if I telephone you this evening, after you’ve gotten your sleep?” Clayton asked.

“Okay,” said Ramos, grinning in a way that made him look like an adolescent for another brief moment. “Call me after the sun goes down.” He laughed, a little harshly, as though he was as unaccustomed to laughter as to spoken conversation.

Ramos scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to Clayton. Clayton ignored his partner’s slight sputtering. He herded Nolan back down the stairs and out to the car.

“What’s this telephone call business all about?” Nolan demanded after they got into the car.

“I don’t think he’s comfortable being in the actual presence of people—carrying on a conversation in person,” Clayton explained. “He was all tightened up. And if we pushed on, we’d have wound up dealing with a lawyer who’d have shut him up for good. I want to take a crack at him by telephone.”

Nolan started the engine and drove off in silence. After a few minutes he asked, “So whaddya think? Did we just talk with a psycho?”

“He hasn’t gone after any airline moguls with a butcher knife lately, if that’s what you mean.”

“No. But do you think he had something to do with it?”

Clayton didn’t reply.

Maybe I’ll know after I talk to him.

*

After they returned to the division, Nolan sat grumpily at his desk. If Clayton thought he could get more out of the hacker by telephone, Clayton was probably right. Nolan just hated the wait.
“Call me after the sun goes down.”
What a stupid thing—like the kid was a vampire or something. He decided he’d better phone Marianne.

“Just wanted to let you know that Clay and I had an interview with a hacker this morning,” he announced when her answering machine picked up the call.

There was a click and Marianne came on the line. “Was it Auggie? Did you find Auggie?” she asked excitedly.

“It turned out to be … well, I’m not exactly sure what it turned out to be.”

“What happened?”

“Look, I’m sorry, but don’t get excited about it. It’s a complicated story and I’ll explain it to you tonight. But the guy we talked to is not the killer.”

“Is he Auggie?”

“It doesn’t make much difference, does it? This guy’s in a wheelchair and has been for years. He didn’t stalk Judson through the corridors of the Quenton Parks.”

“Couldn’t needing the wheelchair be an act?”

“We’re still checking that out. We’ll see if it’s consistent with DMV records. And we should be able to locate his medical records. We’re not finished with him yet. Clay is going to talk to him again this evening—by telephone. That’s what I wanted to call you about. I’m afraid I’m going to be late getting back to the house.”

“Well, just tell me what time you’ll be there to let me in.”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll tell you where the key is hidden.”

*

As soon as the sky began to darken, Clayton picked up the telephone and dialed the number Ramos had given him. Nolan was on another phone on the same line and a tape recorder was running. Clayton and Nolan were sitting at neighboring desks and were able to watch one another, able to exchange visual signals should the need arise. An answering machine came on the other end with no message, just a series of electronic beeps.

Clayton said, “This is Detective Clayton Saunders calling for Mike Ramos. Mr. Ramos, you said you’d be willing to talk to me after the sun went down.”

There was a click followed by the hollow sound of a speaker phone.

“Okay,” Ramos said. “I’m here.”

“Thanks for picking up,” Clayton said.

“You’re not alone on the line, are you?” said Ramos.

Clayton was slightly startled. He looked at Nolan. Nolan shook his head urgently, covering the receiver and whispering, “You are!”

But Clayton disobeyed.

“No, Mr. Ramos,” Clayton said. “My partner’s on the line, too.

“And you’re recording the call, right?”

“Yes,” Clayton said.

“That’s fine,” said Ramos. “Just as long as I know.”

Clayton breathed a sigh of relief that Ramos simply didn’t hang up on him. Clayton closed his eyes. In order to make this conversation really click, it would help to visualize Ramos the way Ramos wanted to he pictured. And immediately, an image came into Clayton’s mind. It was of a criminal mastermind from some old spy movie—a figure dimly visible behind a layer of bulletproofed glass, with a Venetian blind pulled down to cover his face. A fluffy white cat sat in this mastermind’s lap, and his voice was amplified over a loudspeaker.

Yes, that’s just the way he’d like me to see him. Hell, I wouldn’t mind playing that role myself.

Clayton also knew that he now had to call Ramos by the name of Zoomer. On the telephone—in the electronic world—Mike Ramos actually
became
Zoomer.

“Are you still there, Detective Saunders?” Zoomer asked.

“Yes, Zoomer. I’m still here.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Just to see if you can help set me straight on some things. I’m dumb about computers. That’s probably why I don’t understand Insomnimania. The only hackers I’ve met before are Maisie and Pritchard.”

“Those guys have both been around for a long time. But they went commercial and hit it big. They aren’t hacking now.”

“Are they good?”

“Pritchard’s the only wizard. Maisie’s canny but he’s not powerful. They’re both sloppy. I was surprised that they could make a universe and actually keep it running.”

“But you’re a good hacker?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I sure need your help. Maisie and Pritchard haven’t been able to figure this thing out.”

“What are you trying to figure?”

“Who’s logging on as Auggie? His membership information is phony.”

“Just pick up Auggie’s address when he’s on. That should be simple enough.”

“We’ve done that. But the results have been … inconclusive.”

“That’s odd.”

“It is, isn’t it? How could a hacker appear to be dialing out of someone else’s telephone?”

“Ah. You’re talking about major phone phreaking there. They’re either tapping into the line directly or you’ve got a supreme phone wizard on your hands. I’m afraid it’s not my area of expertise.”

“You can’t hack telephones?”

“Not the way you’re talking about. So Auggie’s doing that now?”

“We’re having a hard time figuring out just what Auggie’s doing,” Clayton said. “Can you tell us anything at all about how Auggie appeared in the first place? How did he get started?”

There was a moment of silence. When Zoomer began talking, it was nearly in a whisper.

“Tell me, Detective Saunders, how far back can you remember?”

Clayton wrinkled his brow. “Remember what?” he replied.

“Anything. How old were you when the earliest thing you can remember took place?”

Clayton was mystified at this turn in the conversation. “How far back can
you
remember?” Clayton replied.

“Real far,” Zoomer said, his voice trailing away as if he was talking to himself. “I can remember a long time ago, when I was just tiny, before I could even walk. My father bought me this little brown plastic wagon with little black plastic horses and little yellow wheels. One day, I left the wagon on the heating register—the one downstairs, right above the furnace. The furnace was on, and I crawled by in time to notice that the wagon was melting. Those little bright yellow wheels were losing their shape, starting to drip slowly through the metal grate, turning into a glistening liquid. I was tickled by how it looked. I laughed. It looked like something out of my grandmother’s oven. I thought my wagon was turning into some kind of glazed, delicious candy. I crawled across the register to get it. Then I cried out with shock and pain. My hands were severely burned. 1 remember how I wept, how I cried. I suppose it was the first time I ever felt really severe pain.

“Strange, isn’t it, how we cry over pain when we’re children? Adults rarely weep from physical pain. Oh, we complain or groan or gnash our teeth or scream, but we hardly ever weep. I didn’t weep when I received the injuries that crippled me. It’s different for little children. Can you tell me why?”

“No,” Clayton said softly.

“I think children cry from grief,” Zoomer continued. “They cry from the sadness of learning that there is such a thing as pain in the world.”

The hacker let forth a sad little laugh. “Most of us forget all our crying when we grow up. But I don’t forget. I am determined to maintain my sensitivity, my humanity. I refuse to be hardened. I am determined to remember what it feels like to grieve and weep for pain and lost innocence. That incident took place on the sixteenth of February, 1966. I was one year, seven months, and three days old.”

“You remember the date?” chimed in Clayton skeptically.

“Of course I don’t
remember
the date,” Zoomer replied. “I looked it up. You see, I had to be taken to the emergency room at the hospital. They had records. I suffered from second degree burns. I still have the scars.”

“What’s all this got to do with Auggie?” grumbled Clayton, sounding like an impatient kid.

“Let me finish. You’ll understand. On the twenty-seventh of March, 1967, my father took me to a circus. In case you’re wondering, I got
that
date off an old newspaper microfilm. It was exactly one year and thirty nine days after my burning accident, and I was two years, eight months, and eight days old. I sat on my father’s lap in the front row. I had never seen a circus. At first, I loved it. I loved the sequined men and women defying natural forces with which I was still scarcely acquainted. I loved the many fine pets which were too big and fierce and noisy to take home. But I did not know what to think of the clowns. While the rest of the circus was wild and dreamlike, the clowns were so real, so ordinary—as if my aunts, uncles, and grandparents had decided to camp out in Neverland. I thought they had no business in that ring. I wanted them to go away.

“They did not go away. Two of them were particularly stubborn and persistent. One was a white-clad gentleman with great red buttons and a silly conical cap. He gave all the orders, and most of them were stupid orders. He acted just like my father or mother. He delivered his orders to a put-upon, battered fellow with a smashed derby and patched pants and a bright red nose. This lowly dark clown bungled the white clown’s instructions every way he could.

“I tried to ignore these two humdrum characters, but they kept coming closer and closer to the audience. The dark-clad, red-nosed clown began to pad along the front row in his outsized shoes, squirting child after child with the gigantic sunflower in his lapel. When I saw that he was coming my way, I squirmed and squealed, trying to escape my father’s idiotic grasp. I knew he was going to rip me away from my father and take me God knows where. I also knew that this was my father’s whole reason for bringing me to the circus. He wanted to get rid of me—to sell me like some kind of beast or slave to that ghastly world of the clowns.

“At last the clown arrived, and I stopped squirming and squealing. I guess my father thought I’d had a change of heart, that I now supposed the clown to be some sort of friend. But I was actually frozen with fear. I couldn’t even breathe. I could see the clown very clearly now. His face was inches away from mine, and he looked entirely different than he had before. In the ring, he seemed so bright, so primary, so loud and ghastly. But up close, I could see where his white, red, and black makeup was melted and smeared by sweat, revealing awful, wrinkled flesh underneath. I could see that his painted smile actually disguised an expression of unspeakable weariness and dread. And he smelled like death. Then came that geyser of water from his lapel, and I began to scream.

“I don’t remember what happened after that, but I’ve been told I didn’t stop screaming for hours, and that my father had to take me home. Nobody knew why. But
I
knew. The pain I had felt when I burned myself, the pain I thought I had left behind had pursued me, had sought me out. That pain had taken the form of the shabby and ragged clown.”

Zoomer was quiet for a moment, then concluded blandly, “So perhaps you understand now why I chose to give his shape to a cartoon killer.”

Clayton felt the shot of adrenaline in his body. “So what you’re telling me,” he said, as calmly as he could, “is that you created this clown—the most powerful character in the game. But you said that now he is
not
your alter.”

“That’s right,” Zoomer said.

“Of course you realize this sounds like a very naive ploy to escape becoming a murder suspect.”

“I realize that, yes. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Too unbelievable for me to make up. At least as unbelievable as the notion that I’m going around chopping people up. Of course, we murderers are a notoriously naive bunch.”

Clayton hesitated for a long moment. “So you don’t know who’s using Auggie now?” he asked at last. “Could you find out if you tried?”

Clayton could hear the whirring sound of the pacing wheelchair even over the telephone. Finally the young man said softly, “No.”

“But you haven’t tried to find out?”

“No.”

“Forgive me for saying so, Zoomer hut I find that a little hard to believe.”

“Why?”

“Well, by your own account, you’re a brilliant guy and one hell of a computer hacker. And here you go to all this trouble to create this terrific character who—how might you put it?—embodies all your childhood pain. But when somebody takes this character away from you, you don’t even try to take it back. You don’t even try to find out who’s responsible.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Zoomer said in a rather distant voice, “At first, there were just small peculiarities. Times when he almost seemed to be acting independently. For a while, I did think it was a challenge from some other hacker.”

Zoomer was silent for a few moments.

“Then what happened?” Clayton asked.

“One day when I was running him through his tricks in Ernie’s Bar, he ... drew away from me. He started acting on his own, speaking in a different voice. So I left him.”

“You left him” demanded Clayton.

“Yeah, I left him.”