Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (40 page)

“What’s the Basement?”

“Auggie’s home.”

“I’ve never seen a ‘Basement’ in the maze.”

“It’s not in the maze.”

“Where is it, then?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only heard him mention it.”

Renee had turned away from her and was looking off into the sunset again. She spoke again, breaking the long silence.

“I wish I’d listened to you a long time back,” said Renee. “I wish I’d paid attention back when we were all doing drugs, playing around with reality. You told us that we’d better be careful, that we’d better
respect
what went on in our imaginations. Remember? I might be alive today if I’d only listened.”

“I don’t understand.”

Renee was quiet for a moment, then whispered, “You’ve got to be careful in these parts.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, right now, you’re just playing with your own head. You’re breaking yourself down into little ‘yous’ and ‘mes,’ and as long as you keep your perspective, that’s no problem. But all this sleeplessness and fasting can get risky if you’re not careful. If you let this machine—this world—play with your head, you could wind up in terrible danger.”

“How?”

“Somebody else out there wants to make you smaller. They want to make you a figment of
their
imagination—just like I am to you. You’ve got to be careful.”

What am I trying to tell myself?
Marianne tried to draw herself out of the illusion.
What kind of warning is this?
But another breeze brushed across her forehead, and the hint of moisture in the air almost made her cough. She reminded herself that she was still walking along the edge of sleep—indeed, that she had almost certainly gone
over
the edge by now. Her congestion probably came from forgetting to swallow.

“Are you talking about Auggie?” Marianne asked, starting to float off into sleepfulness.

“Just don’t let it happen.”

“I won’t,” said Marianne, hearing her own voice grow faint.

“You really are a lousy liar,” Renee said with a sigh.

*

When Marianne awoke, her head was tilted slightly to the right and back, leaning against nothing. Her body had found a self-supporting uprightness when she had dozed away. For a moment, she was careful to move nothing but her eyes. The room was bright from the early morning sunlight, making the light from the lamp on her desk seem impotently puny.

What time is it?

She began to roll her head slowly. Her bones and muscles popped and creaked, and an aching pain shot down around the edges of her spine. A visit to the chiropractor would soon be in order.

Her screen-saver’s marbleized patterns oozed across her computer monitor. Marianne reached forward and tapped her mouse. The screen-saver fell away to reveal the Insomnimania icon. The network had gone off for the day. She looked at her watch. It was seven o’clock.

How long have I been asleep?

It had to have been a couple of hours, at least. She had still been logged on to Insomnimania when she fell asleep—and Insomnimania went off at five o’clock. She was a little annoyed with herself. Two hours was much too long for one of her carefully-allotted catnaps.

Marianne stretched and yawned and got to her feet. She walked to the kitchen and, as a matter of pure habit, got ready to grind some coffee. But then she reminded herself of her moratorium on caffeine. Besides, she felt oddly refreshed and energized—as if she had slept for a good long time.

It would be many hours before Insomnimania came online again, and she had to find a way to pass the time. She decided it would be a good day to take a long walk by the beach—a
real
beach, not a virtual one. She went to her bedroom, put on some old clothes, and started to walk toward the front door. But on her way, she noticed that her computer was still on. Marianne walked over to shut it down, then stopped as she remembered part of her conversation with Renee the night before.

“Let’s not meet a next time, okay?”
Renee had said.

Marianne felt an overwhelming surge of sadness.

“All right, Renee,” Marianne whispered to the computer screen. “But I’ll miss you. I’ll always miss you.”

She gave the “shut down” command to her computer.

11011
RUNAWAY SHRINK

Nolan watched the desolate Nebraska plains roll by through the small window that partly overlooked the aircraft’s wing. Far below were patches of wintry whiteness here and there. But mostly, the land looked brown and barren. Even though the commercial jet was very fast, the impression was one of incredible slowness. Nolan felt a long, long way from California and Marianne.

“I don’t know what you think you’re looking at,” Gusfield said from the seat beside Nolan. “It goes on pretty much like that till you get to the Rockies. You could go completely crazy, meditating on the monotony of it all. As a certified shrink, I’d advise against it.”

Nolan looked at Gusfield. These were the first words he had spoken during the trip so far. Was he going to turn chatty all of a sudden?

“Some of the pioneers went crazy when they first came out across these parts,” Gusfield continued ramblingly. “Stark, raving mad. They don’t teach that sort of thing in school. They sure didn’t show it in the John Ford movies. Nobody wants to impugn the pioneer spirit with an unsavory thing like madness. You see, the European mentality just wasn’t equipped for all this
space
. It was used to towns and hills and lots of boundaries of one kind or another. So when folks came out here and found themselves faced with miles and miles and miles of
nothing,
some of them went clean out of their heads. Today, we call it agoraphobia. But back then, those poor wanderers didn’t
even have a word for it. All they knew was that their souls were being destroyed. It’s bad enough when it’s cold like this, but when the hot prairie winds rush across these spaces in the summer—well, that’s when it’s really murder, even for people today.”

“You sure are a cheery bastard, Gusfield,” Nolan said.

“The Midwest makes you that way,” Gusfield said. “It’s part of my heritage to be a little on the depressive side. I’m often surprised not to be a whole lot worse—but then, I do a lot of Prozac. You see, those brave pioneer forebears passed their peculiar brand of madness down to their progeny.”

Nolan chuckled.

“Are you calling the Midwest a crazy place?” he asked.

“Yup.”

“I can’t say I agree,” Nolan replied, remembering his enjoyable if nondescript visit with the Kelseys the night before. “The good folks of Omaha strike me as completely sane and sensible.”

“And laid-back and hospitable, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Don’t you get it? That’s the insidious part. In the name of old-fashioned good sense, you can deny just about anything. You can be in genuine emotional
pain—
so
much pain that you develop ulcers, migraine headaches, heart disease, acne, the works. But good sense always dictates that your
feelings
have got nothing to do with your
life.
So you wind up in misery without your conscious mind ever finding out about it. There’s even a clinical term for it. It’s called alexithymia, which means ‘no words for feelings.’ It’s common in post-traumatic stress cases. And it’s sure as hell common in these parts.”

Nolan studied Gusfield’s scowling face.
Where does this guy get off talking about a whole region of the country this way? God help this guy’s patients. He’s gotta be crazier than they are.

A flight attendant came by with her stainless steel cart to ask whether Nolan or Gusfield wanted anything. Nolan ordered a cup of black coffee. Gusfield ordered a cup of plain hot water. When the attendant gave Gusfield his cup of water, he reached into his shirt pocket, took out a tea bag, and dunked it into the water. Nolan immediately recognized the pungent aroma.

“Gusfield,” Nolan said disapprovingly, “that’s marijuana.”

“Right,” Gusfield replied. “I’ve learned that the flight attendants get a little annoyed if you actually smoke the stuff on the plane. Hell, they don’t even allow tobacco smoke anymore. I’ve got more. Want a bag? It’ll really liven up your coffee.”

“You seem to be forgetting that I’m a cop.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re not supposed to admit to little vices like this. Well, I’m hoping all that changes when we get to California and become the bosom buddies I’m sure we’re meant to be. I’m looking forward to seeing you loosen up a little, let in a little of that California sunshine. And I’m hoping you’ve got a good stash in L.A. This stuff we get in Omaha really sucks.”

“I could read you your rights right now,” Nolan said.

“Nawww. We’re seven miles above the state of Nebraska. Not exactly your jurisdiction, right? So relax. Do you want a taste of this third rate weed or don’t you?”

“When we get to LAX, I’m gonna have to nail you, buddy.”

“Come on, Grobowski. You’re a
homicide
detective. Won’t your pals in narcotics get pissed off if you pull a drug bust? I mean, aren’t there union rules about that kind of thing?”

“I could call narcotics right now,” Nolan said. “And they could meet you at LAX with one of their stretch limos.”

Gusfield groaned. “Ah, Jesus, if you’re going to be an asshole about it, I’ll flush the rest down the toilet. But let me finish this cup, okay? It’ll keep me calm until we get to the Rockies. I’m not going to feel quite human until the Great Plains are safely behind me.”

Nolan and Gusfield stared at each other for a moment.

“Gusfield, I don’t know what you’re up to,” Nolan said at last, “but my professional life’s a real mess right now. I’ve got two high profile L.A. murder cases I was really counting on solving while I was in Omaha, and now I’m just farther up shit creek than I was before. What’s more, I’ve got the meanest division chief west of the Mississippi on my ass. And now I’ve got a stoned psychiatrist hanging around my neck like some kind of albatross. Could you at least do me the simple courtesy of telling me why you’re so determined to make my life more miserable than it already is?”

Gusfield smiled broadly. “That’s what I like about you California guys,” he said.
“No denial.
If you’ve got a bitch or a complaint, you just come out with it, you lay it right on the line. No repression, no alexithymia, no politeness, no false Pollyanna optimism for
you,
no sirree. When you’re happy, you’re happy, and when you’re wretched, you’re wretched, no fooling around about it. You’re a very healthy man, Lieutenant Grobowski. You should congratulate yourself.”

“I do, Gusfield,” Nolan said. “I congratulate myself in my own, flaky, metaphysical, California kind of way. I congratulate myself every morning when I look in the mirror and say ‘I love you’ to myself in order to enhance my already blossoming self esteem. Now suppose you answer my question and tell me just why the fuck you’re going to Los Angeles? Why couldn’t you just settle for the MPD diagnosis and continue your career in Omaha?”

Gusfield took a long sip of his marijuana tea.

“Lieutenant, in light of your obvious ignorance, it’s necessary for me to fill you in on a few basic facts. At least ninety-seven percent of the thousand-plus known cases of MPD began with some sort of early childhood trauma—rapes or beatings, abuses of that sort. The poor defenseless kid develops another personality to serve as a buffer between himself and the pain. If the trauma continues, the kid might build up a whole society of selves living inside his brain—ten, twenty, thirty, or even more as the years pass on.”

“So?”

“So, I asked Stalnaker a lot of questions under hypnosis. After I got him checked into the hospital, I had a couple more sessions with him. Hell, he might have been the happiest kid in his neighborhood as far as I can tell. Auggie is no creation of a horrible childhood—it’s a ‘self’ he found in a computer game sometime during the last few months. Also, Stalnaker kept saying that Auggie isn’t
inside him.
Stalnaker sees himself as being
inside Auggie
—a ‘cell,’ remember? I’ve never heard of an MPD patient saying a thing like that.”

“So what do you think’s wrong with him?”

Gusfield shook his head. “He doesn’t strike me as a whole person. It’s more like doesn’t have
one
good personality to his name, let alone a whole bunch of them. So I’m looking at the whole picture. You see, MPD is a
dissociative
disorder—a state in which information doesn’t get integrated through the personality properly, in which personality itself is a nebulous concept. But it’s not the
only
dissociative disorder. There’s also psychogenic amnesia, psychogenic fugue, depersonalization disorder, and various and sundry kinds of possession states. Stalnaker seems to manifest bits and pieces of all them. He has fugue states during which he appears to do purposeful things—makes a ski mask, steals a priest’s duds—but can’t remember having done them, just notices the amnesiac loss of time during which they happened. His episodes of
being
Auggie
have
a dreamlike quality, and he has trouble distinguishing them from fantasy. And he often feels that his speech or actions aren’t under his own control. He probably experiences hallucinations, too—of external voices or imaginary companions. That’s just kind of a partial list.”

“Jesus,” murmured Nolan, his mind boggling with the complexity of it all.

“But I don’t believe Stalnaker is just some smorgasbord of dissociative disorders,” Gusfield continued. “No sirree. I think he’s part of something new and uncharted. I don’t think there’s anything like him in all the textbooks. And because I up and said so to the Omaha psychiatric brass, I got dumped off his case.”

“So how are you going to study Myron Stalnaker’s condition by coming to Los Angeles?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Detective Grobowski, because I’m gonna need your help. There’s one little thing I didn’t mention to those boneheads I used to work for. Oh, it’s on the audio tape, but they’ll be too stupid to know what they’re hearing. That’s because they never listened to you, Grobowski. And I did.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“The third time I got Stalnaker under hypnosis, he talked about the murder again. But this time he started describing it a little differently. He mentioned ‘all that blood on the wall.’ Now I knew there wasn’t any blood in the church, on the wall, inside the confessional, anywhere. So I stopped him and took him back over that part again. It turned out he was talking about the murder of G. K Judson.”

“He said he read about it in the papers.”

“Yeah. Then he kind of slipped over into another story. ‘He pushed her under the water,’ Stalnaker said. ‘He cracked her head on the bathtub.’”

Nolan started laughing. “Gusfield, you’ve really screwed up,” he said. “Both of those were snuffs performed on Insomnimania. Auggie does these cute little cartoons of murders taking place. So do some other folks. Stalnaker saw Auggie’s snuffs, and that’s how he knew what happened.”

“Yeah. I saw the animation of the one that happened in Omaha. But there’s something I want you to hear. Was all this in the cartoon?”

Gusfield dug around in his briefcase, then pulled out a cassette player and a tape. He referred to some notes, then spun the tape in fast forward until he reached the part he wanted. Gusfield punched “Play,” and then Nolan heard Stalnaker’s quiet, dreamy voice …

Portion of a recording made by Dr. Harvey Gusfield of statements made by Myron Stalnaker under hypnosis, St. Genesius Medical Center, Saturday, February 12, 7:00
p.m
.:

Auggie was in a woman’s body and nobody paid any particular attention to her.… By the time all those people finally cleared out, Auggie was already hidden in the back of the closet. He was waiting just for the right moment to come out.

Nolan felt as though he had been shoved outside into the freezing air.

“How did he know about the closet?” he demanded, his voice harsh and angry. “How did he know the killer was a woman?”

“I was hoping it would mean something to you,” Gusfield said happily. “That’s the most coherent segment I have. Most of it is all scrambled together with this local thing or else it just breaks down into nonsense.”

“I take it you’ve got some kind of theory about Stalnaker’s condition,” Nolan said. “More than what you’ve tossed my way so far.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you think it might shed any light on our L.A. homicides?”

“Just possibly.”

“Care to share it with me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too half-baked yet. I want to polish it into something hard and perfect and exquisite before I show it to anybody.”

“If you know anything about the murders, you’d better tell me.”

“Why?”

“There is such a thing as obstruction of justice.

“Brother. You’re determined to bust me for one thing or another, aren’t you? Trust me, Grobowski. Before the day’s over, you’re going to learn a lot more about the Auggie killings than you know right now. You may not like what you learn, and it may not make your life any easier, but you’ll learn a whole lot.”

Nolan didn’t like the sound of this at all. It wasn’t that Gusfield’s tone was threatening or belligerent—just brutally honest. Nolan studied Gusfield’s expression.

What does he know that he’s not telling me?

Nolan noticed that Gusfield wasn’t discussing all those other people across the country who had also been connected with Auggie—people who, like Stalnaker, enigmatically denied being Auggie’s “users.” How many of them were experiencing just this sort of disorder? And how many of them had committed murder?

In the distant reaches of his own mind, Nolan could feel himself coming up with a theory of his own—a theory so strange that he didn’t quite dare let it surface into his consciousness …

“Maybe we can trade a few insights,” Nolan said.

“How do you figure?”

“It just so happens that I’ve done a little research into Auggie myself—what the clown represents, what he symbolizes. Do you want to hear it?”

Gusfield looked interested. “Shoot,” he said.

Nolan gave Gusfield a succinct rundown of what he had learned of Auggie’s origins as the “Auguste” of European circuses, of Auggie’s kinship to tricksters, imps, and mischievous creator spirits and deities throughout the ages, including Coyote, the tarot Fool, and even the Hebrew Yahweh.

“That’s really good info,” Gusfield said, with seemingly sincere admiration.

“You really think so?”

“Well, coming from a working-class stooge, it’s not bad.”

“Hey, I’ve got a college degree.”

“No kidding?”

“I almost became a lawyer. But I’m glad I didn’t. And do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because before the day’s over, I still might get a chance to slap the cuffs on you. And that’ll make my entire life as a cop worthwhile. All the dangers and trials and tribulations I’ve suffered through the years will suddenly pale into utter insignificance, and I’ll be able to retire from the Los Angeles police force a happy and fulfilled human being.”

“And people say shrinks don’t do folks any good.”