Pariah

by Thomas Zigal

  I remember, Nickie. His own rough voice was clear and unmistakable.

  Reliving those final hours, his thoughts leapt back and forth between a resolve to kill the little bastard who had filmed them making love and a desire to hold Nicole one last time. As the tape rolled on, his anger turned to guilt and regret. He couldn’t deny it any longer: they had been a good fit, two damaged souls struggling to fill the empty spaces within them. It was impossible to look at the woman on the screen without feeling a sense of longing and remorse.

  Like Dan Davenport, he had seen enough. There was no point in letting the tape run on like this, but he couldn’t bring himself to push the stop button. Nicole sat up in bed and lifted his face from her body, whispering something, raking her hands through his hair. He reached over to the remote control and turned up the volume to hear what she was saying. Do you remember how I like it? she asked him with a beautiful dreamy smile. She rolled onto her knees and elbows, reaching back to pull him into her, and in that moment Kurt understood how the author of those letters had known the intimate details of Nicole Bauer’s sex life. He had seen everything on tape.

  Chapter twenty-one

  I figure these boxes belong with you folks in Pitkin County,” Dan Davenport said as he escorted them to the parking lot. “I’ll git one of my men to write up a quick inventory. Be ready by the time you’re finished talking to the boy.”

  “I appreciate that, Dan,” Kurt said.

  “Tell you the honest truth, I don’t want to mess with it. We’ve got him on speeding and failing to obey—you and your D.A. can deal with the rest. I don’t want that crap sittin’ around my office.”

  When Kurt opened the door of the Pitco cruiser, Davenport gripped his arm and took him aside, facing the dark river so Muffin couldn’t hear his words. “Only one deputy has seen that tape besides myself, Kurt, and I’ve told him he’ll lose his job if he talks about it to anybody else, including his wife.”

  “Thanks, Dan. You’re a good man.”

  There was a shy smile hiding under the heavy mustache that had always made him look melancholy and serious. “You’d do the same for me, hoss,” he said.

  On their short ride to Valley View Hospital, Muffin’s silence grew into a hostile tension and Kurt realized he had to tell her something. “Dan was just being an old-fashioned gentleman,” he explained. “He doesn’t think a female employee ought to watch her boss make a fool of himself in a compromising situation.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said.

  “Trust me, this is different.”

  Muffin stared ahead into the late-night traffic. “So he’s covering for you. One good old boy doing a favor for another.”

  “No,” he said. “He expects me to do the right thing.”

  “Are you sure you know what that is?”

  She followed Davenport’s Jeep Cherokee down the main thoroughfare through the old shopping district, heading south again. Soon they turned off into a modest residential area where few house lights were burning now, shortly past midnight. The hospital looked out of place in the slumbering neighborhood.

  “You going to let me see the tape?” she asked as they pulled into one of the spaces reserved for police emergencies.

  “Better than that,” he said. “I want you to look at them all.”

  “Hah!” she laughed, rolling her eyes. “Two or three hundred porno tapes? So now I’m being punished for being a nosy girl.”

  He watched Davenport get out of his Cherokee and wait for them at the side entrance. “Divide them up with Linda Ríos,” Kurt said. “Just the two of you, nobody else.”

  “Why Linda? You figure Nicole can teach us a few moves?”

  He frowned at her. “I figure you and Linda will keep the information to yourselves, which is more than I expect from the guys,” he said. “Pull an all-nighter if you have to. We’ve got to see what else is on those tapes.”

  “Don’t you mean who else?”

  A parade of Nicole’s secret lovers. Husbands, men of position. Many of Aspen’s most prominent names. Was blackmail Lyle’s game? Monetary gain? Or was he in it for the sexual thrills?

  Muffin opened her door, letting the dome light shine on them. She wanted him to see her face clearly when she said what was on her mind: “You were a fool, Kurt.”

  He inhaled deeply, blew air through his nostrils in one quick burst. He didn’t disagree with her.

  “I’ve been told that ‘hiddens’ are a hot property on the Internet,” she said. “Better hope Lyle didn’t download your bare ass onto the World Wide Web.”

  Davenport cleared the interview with the attending physician and they proceeded through the maze of corridors to Lyle’s room. They found his parents fussing over him, rearranging pillows, adjusting the lighting. The deputy in the room sat reading a magazine, oblivious to their pampering ministrations.

  “Kurt!” said Marjie Gunderson, surprised to see him walk into the room. She was holding a sip bottle to her son’s blood-dried lips. “Don’t tell me they’re dragging you into this, too.”

  Kurt nodded. “Looks like Lyle’s got himself in some serious trouble,” he said, staring at the young man stretched out on the bed. His right leg was encased in a cast, suspended in traction; his face and arms bore the jagged gouge marks of broken glass. A bandage covered his forehead.

  “Should we get a lawyer, Kurt?” Gus Gunderson asked him. He was a tall rawboned man, mid-fifties, wearing paint-spattered bib overalls and a yellowing insulated underwear shirt rolled up past his flinty elbows.

  “Yes, you should, Gus,” Kurt said, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder. They were good people who didn’t deserve the grief their son was going to put them through. “Why don’t you and Marjie go make some calls while I talk to Lyle.”

  The Gundersons were reluctant to leave the room, but Kurt escorted them into the corridor, and Dan Davenport asked his deputy to find them a comfortable place to wait until the interrogation was over.

  “Well, young man,” Kurt said, returning to stand over the bed. “You’ve been a naughty boy.”

  Lyle closed his eyes, revealing large encircling bruises the color of ripe plums. “I’m blown,” he said in a groggy voice. “I need to sleep.”

  “I know you’ve already heard this from the Garfield deputies,” Kurt said, “but to make sure there’s no misunderstanding…” He recited Lyle’s Miranda rights.

  “Come back when I’ve got Johnnie Cochran,” Lyle mumbled with his eyes still closed.

  Kurt stooped closer and lowered his voice. “Your parents love you, Lyle. But you’re breaking their hearts,” he said, glancing at Davenport and Muffin standing next to each other on the other side of the bed.

  A hidden camera. Someone’s most private moments on tape. Kurt wanted to twist the little bastard’s suspended leg. How did such a well-loved child like Lyle Gunderson become a peeper?

  “Why don’t you get the whole thing off your chest?” Kurt said. “Dragging it out will only hurt your parents worse.”

  Lyle opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I didn’t steal the car,” he said. “Nicole let me use it whenever I wanted.”

  “I’m not concerned about the car right now, son. Let’s talk about the tapes.”

  The young man twirled a strand of long black hair around his finger. “Most of that stuff I bought off the Net,” he said. “If that’s against the law, I haven’t heard.”

  “It’s against the law to hide a video camera in somebody’s bedroom and take pictures of them,” Kurt said. “I think you know that.”

  Lyle moved his head, turning away from Kurt to stare at the zipper on Muffin’s parka. Dried blood matted the long strings of hair clinging to his thin neck. There was a small encrusted hole in his ear where one of the bead gems was missing.

  “What were you going to do with the tapes of Nicole Bauer?” Kurt asked him.

  Silence. A blank stare.

  “Who else did you show them to?”

>   Lyle wasn’t going to answer him.

  “What about Gahan Moss? Does that name ring a bell?” Kurt asked. “He’s into porn, too, isn’t he? You and Gahan have something worked out together?”

  The young man stubbornly held his silence.

  “You’re pretty messed up here, son,” Kurt said with a tight laugh, looking over the bandages and leg cast like a claims adjuster examining a wrecked car. “Broken bones, facial lacerations. Who were you running from?” he asked. “The law? Or was somebody else after you?”

  When Lyle didn’t respond, Muffin reached down and took his nicked chin in her hand, raising his jaw, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “If you’re working some kind of blackmail scam with those tapes,” she said, her fingers digging into his welted skin, “you’re gonna do time, lover boy. You have any idea how much fun it is in prison for a sweet-looking, sexy guy like you? Everything you’ve ever seen on those videos is going to happen to you, only you’ll be playing the girl.”

  Lyle jerked his head away. “Get the fuck out of my face!” he shouted, his hand groping awkwardly for the call button. “I want my parents back in here and I want a lawyer!”

  “Just tell us who else has seen the tapes,” Kurt said, “and we’ll let you get some sleep.”

  Lyle held his thumb to the call button, producing an obnoxious nonstop buzz. When Muffin wrestled it away from him he began to scream at the top of his voice. The nurse rushed in and tried to calm him, admonishing the police officers to leave the room while she administered a hypo full of tranquilizer. A few moments later, when Kurt looked in on him, Lyle was fast asleep.

  Dan Davenport excused himself to return to his office, leaving Kurt and Muffin to wend their way through the silent hospital in search of the cafeteria. Service had closed hours ago, but the glass doors were unlocked and the Gundersons occupied a table under lighting so dim it would have been difficult to read a newspaper. A clock hummed on the wall, the only sound in the room. The couple was drinking coffee they’d purchased from a machine. They appeared haggard and resigned, like prisoners awaiting their sentence. Kurt sensed that they hadn’t looked at each other or exchanged a word since the deputy had brought them here.

  “May we sit down?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” Gus Gunderson said with a sweep of his hand. His steel-gray hair was tied back in a ponytail, his strong jaw and chiseled features the source of Lyle’s own good looks.

  “Can I get anybody another coffee?” Muffin offered.

  They declined. Marjie Gunderson’s stricken expression revealed the bitter taste of everything they had endured tonight. “What’s going to happen to our son?” she asked.

  “I won’t lie to you, Marjie,” Kurt said. “He’s in trouble.”

  She lowered her eyes. Marjie Gunderson was a hefty woman with a large head and neck and a thick mane of hair colored equally auburn and gray. The quintessential Earth Mother, nurturing, amiable, passionate about her causes. She had taught sensitivity sessions at Star Meadow until the place had gone under. In spite of her New Age affectations, Kurt had enjoyed their occasional conversations at gallery openings and benefits. But at this moment, sitting in near darkness, clutching the paper cup, she seemed subdued, burdened, reduced by her anguish.

  “Sheriff Davenport told us there may be some additional charges,” she said, refusing to look at Kurt or Muffin seated across the table. “The videotapes they found in his trunk.”

  “That’s correct,” Kurt said. “We’ll have to review them all before we can determine the extent of the offenses.”

  “Did you know your son was into that sort of thing?” Muffin asked, her hands clasped in front of her on the table. “Has he been in trouble before?”

  The couple traded glances, their eyes darting quickly and then returning to gaze forlornly at the cold Formica. “Yes, Miss Brown, I’m afraid he has,” Gus admitted with a weary sigh. His small weak eyes swam like minnows behind the thick lenses of his black horn-rimmed glasses. Kurt wondered how he managed to create the intricate, finely wrought metal sculptures that had won him local acclaim.

  “There was a problem at college,” Marjie said.

  Gus lifted his chin and looked directly at Kurt and Muffin for the first time. “Some incidents at a girls’ dorm. Apparently he was hanging around outside their windows with a goddamned video cam.”

  “He was peeping,” Marjie said with an undercurrent of anger aimed entirely at her husband. “They caught him at it.”

  “When the campus police searched his room they found a closet full of porno tapes. And there was some smut on his computer that he’d got off the Internet.”

  “I suppose it could’ve been worse,” Marjie said, speaking to the tabletop. “They kicked him out of school but didn’t press criminal charges.”

  “I don’t know,” Gus said, shaking his head. “I thought they were pretty rough on the boy.”

  “You’re in denial, dear,” Marjie countered, irritation pinching her soft wide face. This sounded like an argument they had been having for quite some time. “What he did was wrong and he was lucky to get off that easy.”

  When bad things happen to good parents, Kurt thought. He tried to imagine how he would react if Lennon had done the same thing.

  “Has Lyle ever mentioned Gahan Moss?” he asked, still attempting to place the two of them together because of their video interests. “You know who I mean—Gahan Moss the musician. Do they know each other?”

  Gus shrugged. “I think Lyle has been to some parties at the Magic Mushroom House,” he said. “Most college kids in Aspen have been up there at one time or another.”

  “God only knows what goes on in that place,” Marjie said.

  “Oh, right,” Gus said with a pained smile. “Like we haven’t had some parties of our own, dear.”

  A child of Aquarius, Kurt thought. Lyle had grown up around his share of tomfoolery.

  “You’ve never seen Lyle and Gahan Moss together?” he asked.

  They shook their heads in unison. “No,” Gus said, perplexed by the line of questioning.

  Marjie dragged a huge flannel-lined poncho from the back of her chair and settled it around her shoulders, bundling against the chill white surfaces of the room. “Lyle has always been a serious child, Kurt,” she said. “He didn’t make many friends growing up, even though the town was full of wonderful kids. I mean, it was Aspen, for crying out loud. Everybody was special.”

  “We tried to work it out ourselves,” Gus said glumly. “We did everything we could to make him happy.”

  Marjie looked as if she were going to cry. She reached over and laid her hand on her husband’s. “We didn’t know what was wrong, but we knew he needed professional help,” she said. “Our son has been in therapy since he was fourteen.”

  “I still don’t know what’s in that boy’s head,” Gus said, squeezing his wife’s hand, looking away.

  “We thought he was doing better,” she said, her voice growing husky, trembling. “We thought that business in Portland was behind him. Dr. Westbrook convinced us that Lyle had worked through it.”

  “Westbrook?” Kurt said.

  She gazed at him with tears sparkling in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Wonderful man. He’s been Lyle’s therapist since the beginning. What’s it been, hon—eight years now?”

  Gus nodded.

  “I don’t know where we would be without Jay,” she said with an admiring smile. “Gus and I have gone through some counseling with him ourselves.”

  Kurt looked at the I Ching ring still lodged on his finger. Muffin was staring at it, too, noticing the ring for the first time. “Dr. Jay Westbrook,” he said half to himself, slowly curling his fingers into a fist. “Let me guess. That’s how Lyle got his job with Nicole Bauer.”

  Marjie didn’t hesitate. “Yes, it was,” she said. “Lyle was lying around the house, watching TV all day, feeling sorry for himself. Dr. Westbrook’s been trying to get him to do something with his life. He thought th
e job would give him a sense of purpose.”

  “What did his job entail?” Muffin asked.

  “Keeping house,” Marjie said with an indifferent shrug. “Cleaning, grocery shopping. A little cooking on the side. Lyle’s always had a domestic streak. And he’s mechanically inclined.”

  Especially proficient in the field of video technology, Kurt thought. Installation, maintenance, upgrade.

  “He adored the Bauer woman,” Marjie said, shaking her head sadly. “I’m sure it’s her death that’s got him so strung out. He’s not like this, Kurt. Running from the police? He’s just not himself.”

  The Gundersons didn’t know yet that their son had been secretly videotaping the woman he adored. Kurt would wait another day, after the thorough review of the tapes, before informing them. They had suffered enough for one night.

  “Kurt,” Gus Gunderson said, straightening his bony shoulders, showing a sudden strength in his gaunt face. “He might be twenty-two years old but the god-awful truth is he’s still a little boy living inside his head.”

  Tears were streaming down Marjie’s face. “He’s all we’ve got,” she said.

  Her husband slipped his long arm around her shoulders. “Please do his mother and me a favor,” he said. “If he has to serve time in jail, bring him back to Pitkin County. We know you’ll keep an eye on him for us.”

  In that moment Kurt thought of his own son and how much he loved him, and how something like this would devastate him, too. He thought about his dead father, how different they had been and how his lack of ambition had disappointed the old man. In the end the only thing that mattered was that you stood by each other, holding hands in the darkness. And he had done that at his father’s deathbed.

  “I’ll do what I can, folks,” he told the Gundersons. “If you don’t have a lawyer yet, I know a few names. Let’s make some phone calls.”