The abbess was right—Hobbit didn’t want to talk. He sat by the window and made no sound, did not cast even a surreptitious glance at Spencer and Gabe. They sat down on the bed to appear less threatening to him, but that seemed to threaten him even more, because his body started twitching spasmodically until they stood up.
So they stood, and he sat, calmer, and looked out the window. When they asked him about Amy McFadden, he blinked but did not reply. When they asked him about Lindsey Kiplinger, his eyes welled up but he did not reply. When they asked him about Milo, he started to shake. When they showed him Milo’s picture, he started to cry.
Finally! Somebody recognized Milo! Oh, that sharp-thinking Lily.
But Hobbit cried silently. Spencer told him they would not leave until they got the information they needed. “We’re here because Amy has gone missing, Hobbit. Suspicion has fallen on this man, known to us only as Milo. What we need is for you to tell us who Milo is and what relationship he had to Amy.” This was as simple as Spencer could make it for the wreck sitting by the window. He waited for his answer, the silence stretching. Gabe had no patience; he was seething with frustration. He wanted to
threaten the answers out of Hobbit and be on his way. Gabe dealt with too many people in homicide with whom nothing but menace worked. But Spencer knew that each interrogation was different. You had to identify with the subject, and sometimes if that meant standing around in a convent until the sitting subject got comfortable enough with you to speak, so be it.
Gabe and Spencer paced. Hobbit didn’t like that. Spencer sat on the floor, lotus style, next to his chair. Hobbit seemed to like that a little better.
His hands in a teepee, sitting cross-legged, Spencer asked again, “Who is Milo, Jerry?”
Hobbit spoke his first coherent phrase of the day. “Hobbit’s my name.”
“Who’s Milo, Hobbit?”
It was five long minutes before Hobbit replied.
“The church said Milo was the anti-Christ.”
“The Native American Church?”
“Milo was thrown out of it.”
“Why did the church call Milo the anti-Christ?”
Silence.
Hobbit had clammed up. He did not make eye contact.
“I didn’t know the church followed Christian precepts,” Spencer said, calmly pressing his tense fingertips together.
Seven minutes passed. Spencer felt himself churning inside. Something was welling up in him, a little dervish snowballing into a scream in his throat. GET IT OUT!
As though obeying Spencer’s thoughts, Hobbit said in a quiet voice, “Yes, it follows Christian precepts. Which is why Asuncion took me. The church reads from the Bible, it incants Christ. It takes communion. Just not in the form you Catholics understand.”
Ah. So, surprisingly eloquent when pushed to speak. Ego, no ego, psychosis, no psychosis—language, like bike-riding, was not forgotten. “What form does it take then?”
After a long pause Hobbit said, “A different form.”
Gabe said, “A peyote form, perhaps?” Gabe was not sitting on the floor and his fingers were not pressed together but his fists were being clenched and unclenched. Spencer motioned to him to calm down.
“The peyote,” said Hobbit haughtily, “is the incarnation of God. Just as Christ came in the form of man and was resurrected after death as God Himself, so in the Native belief was God reincarnated as peyote. When we take peyote, we take in God. We are not supposed to do it for the visions. We do it for purification, as a form of communion—to be one with God. Through the peyote, we receive the body of Christ.”
“Hobbit, Hobbit,” said Spencer, himself growing impatient. “I don’t need your blasphemy, you explaining to me how mindaltering drugs are now the Eucharist. What I need is…”
Hobbit said, “I’m telling you why the shaman in Nogales said Milo was the anti-Christ. He said that Milo’s only belief was nonbelief. Rejection of belief. He said Milo was a nihilist.” Hobbit smirked. “And he didn’t even know us.”
“How did you and Milo know each other?”
“From high school.”
“What was his name before he was Milo?”
“His name had been Ben Abrams. But Ben Abrams died when we took our new form, and Milo was born, just as Jerry Clark died and Hobbit was born.”
Spencer and Gabe exchanged a look. Was the name Ben Abrams familiar in some way? His mind was reeling. He wished he had cell phone reception so he could call in the name before they continued the interview.
Hobbit said, “I was certain Milo was…” and stopped there, but Spencer hoped it was just a pause, and it was, because the boy said another word: “Dead.”
“Why did you think that?”
“His injuries.” Hobbit shuddered.
Injuries, Spencer wondered. They would have to get to that. “Well, he’s not dead. What about him and Amy?”
“He and Amy were the center of it all.”
“Center of what?”
“Our little band of radical brothers and sisters. We went out to see the world that we had hoped to change.” He didn’t want to say any more.
“Amy as well as Milo?”
“Amy as much as Milo.”
“They were together?”
“Yes.”
Spencer showed him the picture of Milo again.
“You mean this pulverized, crazy-looking guy and regular, middle-class, attractive Amy were together?”
“He was our shaman. He didn’t always look like this, detective. Milo was superlative once.”
“With this hidden underneath?”
“No one saw it. Least of all Amy. She was completely under his spell. Her home life was a mess, she was wallowing, unfocused, not knowing anything. She was younger than us, I think. And Milo pulled her in good. He pulled her under his sway.”
Hobbit was becoming agitated. Spencer guessed Milo was like that with everyone, and Jerry Clark had been very much dominated by him also.
“Hobbit, what were you doing with your life on the road?”
“When Milo said go here, we went here. When he said listen to Bane, we listened to Bane. When he said, join ATWA—Air Trees, Water, Animals—we joined ATWA. Join American Nihilist Underground Society, we joined. When he said, learn about the Russian Nihilists, we learned. Read about Libertarian Communists, about Pentii Linkola, about rational humanists, we read. He said join the Native American Church, we joined the Native American Church. He said go to Nogales, we went to Nogales. We were free, young, exploring, we hated all that absolutist bourgeois morality shoved down our throats, and rejected that life. We believed in other things. And we followed Milo.”
“ATWA,” said Spencer slowly. “Isn’t that Charles Manson’s little Death Valley group?”
“And American Nihilist Underground Society,” said Gabe, “Isn’t that ANUS?”
“Whatever, man. We were experimenting.” Sensing derision, Hobbit fell mute and would not reply to any more questions.
Spencer frowned. Getting up off the floor, he sat on the white linen bed. Hobbit flinched, but Spencer didn’t move this time. “
Jerry
,” he said, “I know you don’t want me to call you that, and I know that you don’t want me to sit on your bed. But I’m out of patience. Open your mouth and speak to me. I’m not leaving until I know everything. Did you join the church so you could worship peyote?”
Hobbit shook his head in disapproval. “Don’t say peyote as if you’re spitting the word out. I told you, peyote is instrumental to the church. It is the god of the church.”
“Mmm. Doesn’t leave much room for actual God though, does it?”
“Yes it does. You become closer to Christ with—”
“What Christ, Hobbit? Christ didn’t teach nihilism, which seems to be what all of you learned so well.”
“What do you know about nihilism?”
“As a lapsed Catholic, I know something about Christ. He didn’t teach that life was pointless and all human values worthless. He was not a skeptic who denied all existence.”
“He did, however, call for the rejection of the established religious and moral practices at the time,” countered Hobbit.
“Yes—through
more
rigorous application of personal morals, not less rigorous!” Spencer almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Fidgeting impossibly, Hobbit spoke. “We wanted to achieve a new level of consciousness.”
“Stop it, Hobbit, stop this nonsense!” That was Gabe. “Nihilism, ATWA, ANUS, Bane—just cut the bullshit. You were on a headlong acid trip. Two years running around the country,
getting up to absolutely no good. We’re not your believing accepting nuns. What happened during your last peyote trip when you killed Lindsey?”
The twitching in Hobbit’s arms and torso became a convulsion. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head.
Spencer cast a troubled glance at Gabe. He said in a quiet voice, “Hobbit, were you all thrown out of the church with Milo?”
“We were with the Oklahoma Comanches for a long while. Sixty, seventy people. We sat around the fire, and the peyote was shared, and the amount each person was given was tiny. It wasn’t enough for Milo. So he got a great idea that we should go down to Nogales, Arizona, and have our own peyote hunt where we would find all the cactus we’d need just for the six of us.”
“What are you telling me?” said Spencer. “Peyote is not heroin.”
Or alcohol.
“It’s not addictive.”
“It’s not…” Hobbit paused. “But…everybody is different. The cactus just helps you see what’s inside
you
but what you cannot see on your own. The mara’akame, or the shaman, said that the visions you have when you take peyote are the visions you bring with you. And those visions are quite something. We all became enarmored of ourselves, we saw beautiful things, magnificent things, ourselves as eagles, as dolphins, as leopards. If you have never taken it, I highly recommend it.”
Spencer rolled his eyes in exasperation. “You know what, thanks for the advice. But I’ve got all the visions I can handle at the moment. Get on with it. You went to Nogales, and then?”
“That’s when Milo was thrown out of the church. He wanted to go for the hunt immediately, and he wanted to know where to go, but the mara’akame told him not everyone could go, not everyone was deemed worthy of freshly-found cactus. So the shaman, who was in contact with Tatewari, or the grandfatherfire, and who seemed wise and calm, said we had to wait, but Milo didn’t see it that way. He wanted to go the next day. That’s when the shaman deemed him not worthy. He said that Milo’s visions had nothing to do with becoming one with God, with
‘finding his life.’ He didn’t trust what Milo saw inside himself. He thought what was inside Milo should not be brought out. He said Milo was corrupting the peyote, he was not embodying the Creator’s heart. He said the contempt for all mankind inside Milo had no place in the Native American Church.”
Spencer appraised Jerry grimly. “Did Milo have contempt for all mankind?”
Hobbit didn’t answer. “We were all told to leave, there would be no peyote hunt, no more dance for us.” He was distraught as he spoke. “Milo went into a rage, and in a fit of this rage, he forced the shaman to take us into the desert at dusk to hunt for peyote.”
“
Forced
the shaman?”
“Yes. Took him against his will into Mexico. What is that called?”
“Aggravated kidnapping.”
“Urn. I thought so.”
“Did the police get involved?”
“I don’t know. This is the first time I’m talking about it. I don’t know if they got involved. I don’t remember everything that happened before, and nothing after. Didn’t the sisters tell you how long I’ve been here?”
“Five years.”
“Yes. Just the beginning of my penance, detective.”
“Penance?”
“Look, we were young and stupid, and unfortunately we made some irreversible mistakes. We got so involved in our philosophies, in our anarchic travels, in the things that the drugs helped us see clearer, better. So for one depraved flinty twirl of our free will, we forced the shaman to help us find the peyote in Mexico. We thought the church owed us that. We thought we could handle the peyote. Milo told us we could. He was extremely forceful, Milo; he was
our
mara’akare. He was like our peyote. He could convince the angels out of heaven. So we took the shaman and drove out into the northwestern Mexican plateau,
not too far from here, and spent the early evening before the sun set hunting peyote. Have you ever seen peyote?”
“No.” Spencer had seen other things though,
single malt, rare and magnificent from Speyside.
“It’s quite a thing to find it. A few miles south of Tubutama, we walked through the barren trees and the shrubs and in a matter of half an hour found a cluster of hundreds of them. Like tiny light-green pumpkins, each with a little white flower on top. It’s quite a sight. The shaman said to take only what we could carry in our hands, a few at most. But we brought sacks, and could carry everything. We took it all. The shaman said we were perverting, subverting the will of God.” Jerry lowered his head. He wasn’t looking out the window anymore, but at his gnarled hands. “After we got what we wanted, we let the shaman go—Milo wanted to kill him, but Amy talked him out of it. The shaman warned us when he was freed, he said, oh, the hubris of man, you think you can control the uncontrollable, the forces you don’t understand—but they will control
you.
”
Spencer got a chill down his spine on this hot day. He wished for a dusty breeze off the pampa grassland brush.
“We drove up north to the Superstition Mountains, a four-hour drive—”
Spencer interrupted. “Why so far? Why all the way to Phoenix?”
Hobbit smiled. His teeth were black. “Superstition, detective. We drove the
Superstition Freeway
, we went deep into the hills, in the night, along an unpaved trail called Massacre Grounds, and we had ourselves an all-night peyote dance. We built a fire, we broke apart the peyote and ground up its insides and caught its liquids in adobe crocks, we chanted and sang, and danced and prayed. We played the drums and the gourds, we confessed our sins, we worshipped…but I think back to it now, there was a point when all of us knew there was no return for us, and when we tried to turn away, it was too late.”