Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (36 page)

Nolan and Clayton lowered their heads in abashed silence while Coffey droned on in a tone of mock lamentation.

“Ah, what happened to all the splendid protocols, the social preludes, the rites of passage of yesteryear? Whatever happened to bar mitzvahs, Presbyterian confirmations, that first shaving kit? Can you tell me? Whatever happened to all those precious and beloved rituals that bind a culture together? Whatever happened to high school graduation parties where you drank yourself sick for the first time in your life and puked your living guts up all over some total stranger’s living room carpet? Huh? And whatever happened to long, lingering, candlelit dinners and polite conversation before you fucked some hot-looking dame’s eyes out?

“And,” Coffey concluded, leaning forward across his desk with a terrifying snarl, “whatever happened to
knocking on doors before entering?”

“Sorry, sir,” Clayton said, without a trace of his earlier exuberance. “It’s just that we got a break in the Auggie killings.”

“Let’s hear it,” Coffey said, leaning back in his chair. Coffey took one more puff on his newly lit cigar and then put it out in a mug of cold coffee. Nolan realized that he’d never seen Coffey completely smoke a cigar all the way down to a stub. Maybe Coffey didn’t like cigars at all. Maybe Coffey just lit them up to disgust and intimidate people. Given Coffey’s calculatedly offensive manner, it seemed a plausible hypothesis.

And it works pretty well.

“It’s like this,” Clayton said, pulling out his notebook for ready reference. “A certain Lola Delaney lives across the street from a Catholic church in a seedier part of Omaha. On the night Howard Cronin was killed, she saw something suspicious—a black-clad character lugging something big and heavy out the front door of the church. He dumped it into the trunk of a slightly worse-for-the-wear Mercedes. Lola Delaney couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked like it was wrapped up in a plastic something-or-other with red stripes—a shower curtain, she thought it might have been.”

The captain’s eyes flickered with sudden interest.

“Do tell,” Coffey said.

Clayton continued. “Well, being a model citizen and all, Lola Delaney wrote down the license number of the Mercedes. She didn’t call the police right away, but the next morning she
did
go over to ask the priest if anything had been stolen from the sanctuary during the night. The priest, a certain Father Mark Lamberti, was a little surprised at Lola Delaney’s story.

“He told her that nothing had been stolen that he knew of. In fact, Father Mark had taken a lot of criticism for leaving the sanctuary unlocked around the clock—just like churches used to be in the old days. But before now there had been remarkably little in the way of late-night problems. Now, because of Lola Delaney’s story, he was starting to worry.

“This is where
we
came in, with our software reenactment of the Howard Cronin murder taking place in a Catholic church. With the cooperation of the archdiocese, the Omaha cops started talking to one priest after another, and before too long they got to Father Mark with his tale of a nocturnal visitor lugging some strange object out of his church. That led them to Lola Delaney with her description of the beat-up Mercedes and its license number. As it turned out, the car belongs to a local bank employee named Myron Stalnaker, which also happens to be the name of an Insomnimania member who appeared to have occasionally logged on as Auggie—a name
we
passed on to the Omaha cops.”

“Bingo,” Nolan heard himself murmur.

“Not so fast,” Clayton said. “It gets even better. With all this information, the Omaha cops had no trouble getting a warrant to search Myron Stalnaker’s home. They found a priest’s outfit just like the one Auggie was wearing in the simulated murder. They also found a ski mask made with white, red, and black acrylic yarn. It was knitted with a clown’s face—just like Auggie, only with a sad, downturned mouth.
And
they found a twenty-two caliber pistol, the same kind that was used to kill Cronin. Well, naturally, they arrested this Stalnaker guy. The gun was a match. And get this. The Omaha cops have invited us to come out and take part in the festivities. We’ll get to sit in on some of the questioning and ask a few ourselves.”

Coffey was smiling broadly now—the kind of undisguised supercilious smile that always made Nolan and Clayton extremely nervous.

“I must say, you’ve got my interest piqued, Saunders,” he said. “It’s quite a story so far. Go on. What happened next?”

Clayton looked crestfallen.

“What do you mean, sir?” Clayton asked.

“Oh, come on, Saunders,” Coffey said. “Don’t tease me like this. Tell me the rest of it. You’ve got me on the edge of my seat. I’m all ears.”

Clayton was silent.

“Wait a minute,” Coffey continued. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’ve
proven
that this Myron Stalnaker character was in L.A. when both Judson and Gauld were murdered. You’ve checked out Stalnaker’s plane reservations, his hotel bills, the works. You’ve found out that he hasn’t got a credible alibi for either of the murders. In fact, he’s got motive and opportunity up the wazoo. You’ve probably even got eyewitnesses that say he whacked both Judson and Gauld. And—oh yeah—you’ve documented that he got a
sex change
before coming to L.A., which is why the Gauld killing looks like it was done by a woman, and then he got his dick reinstalled when he got back to Omaha. It’s an open-and-shut case, right?”

Coffey leaned triumphantly back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. He appeared to be deliberately displaying the wetness under his armpits.

“So,” concluded Coffey. “Am I one hell of a guesser, or what?”

Clayton was seething now.

“With all due respect, sir,” Clayton hissed, “you’re being a total bastard about this.”

Nolan jabbed Clayton sharply with his elbow. Coffey only laughed.

“A bastard, huh?” Coffey said. “Well, it’s one of the prices of power—if you wanna keep a job like mine.”

“Captain, all Clayton’s saying is that we’ve caught
a killer,”
Nolan said.

“Right,” Coffey said. “An Omaha killer. What about our L.A. killer—or
killers?”

“They’re connected!”
Clayton exclaimed.

“How?” Coffey asked.

“Through
Auggie,”
Clayton said. “Through
Insomnimania.
Nobody’s saying the Stalnaker guy did all these killings. Maybe he did just this one. Maybe it’s a club or a conspiracy.”

“Or a cult,” Nolan suggested.

“Yeah,” Clayton said. “Maybe it’s some kind of Charlie Manson thing, only electronic.”

“A murder club?” Coffey snorted.

“Come on, Captain,” Nolan pleaded. “We’ve got to start using our imaginations here. I’ve done some research into this Auggie character. I’ve checked out everything he represents. He’s historical, mythic, archetypal. He could have a lot of symbolic value for a bunch of unhappy people looking for a leader or guru or something.”

“A cartoon?” Coffey snapped.

“Why not?” Nolan said. “Have you ever seen this network in action?”

“All we know for sure is that we’ve got a piece of the puzzle,” Clayton said. “Maybe it’s just a little piece, but it’s something. If Stalnaker belongs to a cult, he’ll probably blow the whistle on the whole outfit. Hell, for all we know, he’s the
ringleader,
and we’ve got things practically sewed up.”

The captain stared at the cup of cold coffee sitting in front of him—the same cup he had extinguished his cigar in just a few moments before. He looked like he was thinking of taking a sip from it.

It would be just like him to do something really gross like that. Just for effect.

“So,” Coffey grumbled. “What do we do next?”

“I guess the next stop’s Omaha,” Clayton said.

“Good idea,” Coffey said. “Grobowski, catch the next plane out. I want you there first thing tomorrow morning.”

“What is this?” Clayton said. “I’m not going, too?”

“No, you’re not,” Coffey said. “Somebody needs to stay here and do some real cop work.”

“But this is just like last time, with Chicago,” Clayton said.

“Call me a creature of habit,” Coffey said.

“Why does Nolan always get to do all the globe-hopping while I have to sit here and stare at my desk?”

“Because it’s the natural order of things,” Coffey explained gruffly. “It’s welded and hard-wired into the human condition, decreed from the time of the Big Bang itself. Nolan hates Midwestern weather, so I send him to the Midwest. You want to talk to this suspect so much you can taste it, so I’m keeping you the hell away from him. It’s my little way of keeping the two of you from getting all spoiled and complacent. One of these days you’ll thank me for it. Trust me. Now get the fuck out of my office.”

Nolan and Clayton trudged back toward their desks.

“Somebody ought to teach that prick some of those newfangled management tactics,” Clayton said. “You know the kind that makes employees feel happy and fulfilled about their work.”

“Fat chance,” Nolan said. “If there’s one thing Coffey hates, it’s good morale among the troops. Anyway, I’m sorry you don’t get to come, too.”

“And I’m sorry you’ve got to put up with the weather in Omaha.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m lucky that way,” Nolan said.

Nolan collapsed into his chair, mulling over his coming trip.

Too damn much geography.

It was an ironic thing, too. After all, wasn’t the information age supposed to abolish geography altogether? Why wasn’t it possible to wire himself to Omaha, just like the computer files? Why did he have to spend hours riding in unreliable mechanical devices to cover the same distance? No, the information age hadn’t done away with time and distance. In fact, all it seemed to do was make the upcoming trip seem more onerous.

“At least they don’t have a fucking lake there,” he muttered, remembering Chicago.

*

Night had fallen. Marianne was sitting at her computer terminal, guiding Elfie through Insomnimania’s desktop maze and checking room after room for any sign of Auggie. So far, the clown was nowhere to be found.

The phone rang and she picked it up. It was Nolan.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Nolan said. “I’m at LAX.”

“LAX? Are you going someplace?”

“Naw, I just like to watch the planes take off at night.”

“Very funny. Where are you going?”

“Omaha.”

“Did they catch that man’s killer?”

“Looks like it. A certain Myron Stalnaker.”

“So what happens next?”

“I go there, I talk to the guy, I try to learn something. That’s about all.”

“Do you and Clay have any theories?”

“We’re starting to think it’s something like an electronic cult or gang.”

Marianne fell silent for a moment.

“Are you still there?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know, Nolan. The conspiracy thing feels wrong to me. I can’t say why. I just get the feeling that when Auggie kills, he acts alone.”

Nolan laughed. “Like Lee Harvey Oswald, huh?”

Marianne laughed, too. “Don’t make fun of me, Nolan. It’s just a feeling.”

“Come on, sweetheart. We know Renee was killed by a woman, and this guy in Omaha was killed by a man. Whoever Auggie is, he’s not doing these killings by himself.”

“Still, I can’t shake that feeling.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know him. I’ve spent time with him. He’s fascinating and he’s even compelling, and he does have fans and enthusiasts. But he doesn’t seem to have disciples or followers. If anything, he strikes me as very lonely.”

It was Nolan’s turn to be silent now.

“Are
you
still there?” Marianne asked.

“Yeah. You haven’t been meeting him again, have you?”

Marianne laughed again. “You’re not still jealous of that little
thing
I
had with him, are you?”

“Marianne, this is serious. He could be very dangerous if he ever finds out who you are or where you live. Promise me you haven’t been talking to him.”

“I promise,” Marianne said, feeling more than a little uncomfortable with her half-truth. No, she hadn’t talked to Auggie since her last meeting with Nolan—but that was only because she hadn’t been able to
find
Auggie.

“Promise me you
won’t
talk to him,” Nolan said.

Marianne couldn’t answer for a second.

“Well?” Nolan said.

“I promise,” Marianne finally said, hoping Nolan wouldn’t hear the guilt and tension in her voice.
The lie detector needle would have scribbled mountains.

“Good.”

“I can’t wait till this thing is over, Nolan,” Marianne said. “We’ve got so much to talk about, so many plans to make.”

“I know,” Nolan said. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“And I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

She hung up the phone and looked at the computer screen. Elfie was drifting northward through the maze toward the Casino del Camino, still moving out of the inertia caused by Marianne’s last nudge of her computer mouse. Marianne coaxed Elfie into the casino icon and pulled down the menu to select “who?” The names she read were familiar ones …

“sudopod, taser, wunderkind, hejhog, jazz …

No Auggie.

She began to move Elfie toward the Speakers’ Corner, but she had a gut feeling that she probably wouldn’t find him there, either. Of course, she could call Pritchard and Maisie and ask them if Auggie was logged in at all, but she didn’t want to talk to them about her activities. They’d be just as disapproving as Nolan.

I’ll just keep looking. I’ll keep looking all night, whether I find him or not.

And tomorrow she would fast on water and juices and stay awake as much as possible, allowing herself brief catnaps from time to time. She would do physical stretches and meditations and let her mind wander as little as possible. She would keep herself in a state of intuitive vigilance.

Right now, Marianne’s intuition sensed Auggie’s presence—even if he wasn’t to be found anywhere in the maze, in any of Insomnimania’s multifarious rooms. She felt a strange intimation of
another
labyrinth, another maze beneath this one—a whole world within Insomnimania that nobody but Auggie knew how to reach—not her, not even Pritchard and Maisie.

If only I knew my way inside. I could find him. I could find him right now …