Cole Perriman's Terminal Games

by Wim Coleman

  As the drug began to take effect, Marianne watched the others at the party with detached fascination as they exchanged stoned inanities. Then came a flood of dizziness and disorientation, and Marianne retired to the bedroom. She plopped herself down on the bed on top of everybody’s coats and jackets and stared at the window blind, which seemed to take on profoundly meaningful shapes.

  A curve along the edge of the blind became a vast, frozen mountain lake with a violent snowstorm blowing across it. The window lock, partially visible behind the blind, became a hunched, solitary figure trudging wearily across the lake, carrying some enormous burden. Marianne watched for what seemed like days, following the figure’s futile but heroic trek across miles of ice and snow. She could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, nor could she guess what burden the little lost being bore through that storm.

  Reality had split down the middle. Marianne was lying in a heap of clothes atop her own familiar bed while simultaneously observing a poignant drama in a strange, faraway world. In the middle of it all, the drug abruptly wore off. The window blind was only a window blind, and the lock was only a lock again. Marianne rose from her bed and looked at her watch with surprise. The effects had quit a good bit ahead of schedule, but the memory of the solitary ice traveler was still disturbingly vivid. What was this person she’d seen trudging determinedly through the snow trying to tell her?

  Marianne left Evan three weeks later. Her old life ended, leaving a strange blank where her new life was supposed to be.

  The design job that Marianne found in Santa Barbara offered her a real professional life for the first time. As for her personal life, she had thought that surely nothing could be less authentic than her years with Evan. But she had been wrong. Life became, if anything, more empty and purposeless than it was before. She had only wandered farther adrift into an icy inner landscape.

  The elevator doors hissed open at the sixth floor. Marianne started. She had almost forgotten about this morning’s bloody apparition. It had escaped her mind that she would have to confront it again.

  Marianne stepped off the elevator and forced herself to face the wall. It was perfectly, immaculately white. The screen and the yellow tape were gone. A small area rug covered the floor, and three potted palms sat on the rug. There was no sign of workmen or disarray of any kind.

  Marianne leaned over and reached through the plants, placing one finger on the wall. She jerked it back.

  The paint wasn’t even wet.

  She felt a deep tingle in her solar plexus. In an eerie and terrible way, the coat of paint only made that stain more visible, more palpable, more indelible. Whatever portion of the stain had proven impossible to scrub away was still behind there. It wasn’t just a redness. It was a bit of a man’s mortality. It was part of his corpse. And it was permanent now. It could never be removed.

  She looked down at the rug on the floor. If she moved a palm and looked under that rug, she would find a stain there, too.

  She thought back to her encounter with the cop that morning. Why had she fled from him? What had gotten into her?

  Marianne hurried down the hallway toward her room.

  *

  Nolan was getting ready to pay a visit to Apex Airlines. He had just put on his jacket and was starting to walk away from his desk in the tumultuous detective bay area when his phone rang.

  “Grobowski.”

  “I’m gonna do it,” snapped a man’s voice on the other end.

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard me,” replied the voice tensely. “I said I’m gonna do it.”

  What in the hell is this?

  Had someone on the switchboard blundered and transferred some sort of crisis call to Nolan’s desk? If so, who was he talking to? Some suicidal nut standing next to an open twelfth-story window? Or some psychopath holding a gun to a hostage’s head?

  “This is Lieutenant Nolan Grobowski,” Nolan said cautiously.

  “I know who I’m talking to.”

  “Then perhaps you would like to explain your situation to me.”

  “I already explained my goddamned situation. I’m gonna do it. What more do you need to know?”

  Nolan took a long, slow breath. What should he do now? Put this character on hold while he buzzed the switchboard to find out what this was all about?

  “You’ve got me at a bit of a disadvantage. Would you please tell me just what it is you’re going to do?”

  “I’m gonna retire. What the hell do you think?”

  “Retire?”

  “Yeah. I’ve put it off long enough. So what the hell are you gonna do about it?”

  Nolan’s mouth dropped open. Now he recognized that sharp, intense voice, however cleverly disguised …

  “Syd!” he exclaimed.

  “Who’d you think it was?”

  Nolan sank back into his chair. It was Syd Harper, Nolan’s field training officer from a decade and a half ago. “Crazy” Syd used to pull little stunts and pranks on Nolan fairly routinely, sometimes with the semiserious intent of simulating hypothetical on-the-job emergencies. Now Syd was the sheriff in a small town in Oregon, but Nolan still heard from him occasionally.

  “Syd, you sick bastard, you scared me half to death.”

  “You’re getting soft, Nol. Your instincts and reflexes’ve gone to mush. This is what happens when I’m not around to nip at your ass.”

  “So what’s this about retiring?”

  “I’m gonna do it.”

  “C’mon, Syd. You’ve been saying that ever since you moved up there.”

  “This time I mean it.”

  “I thought cops lived forever in that little paradise of yours.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. They get younger.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Insidious is more the word. You see, when I moved up here, I was fifty-four years old. But now I’m forty-nine. And I’m going on my forty-eighth birthday.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Don’tcha see? I’ll never reach retirement age at this rate. It’s now or not at all.”

  Nolan laughed. That was Crazy Syd’s typical brand of logic.

  “Well, congratulations on your retirement, Syd. Invite me to your celebratory dinner, okay?”

  “Hold on just a minute. I’m calling in a little favor here. Remember all the brilliance and expertise I bestowed upon you back when you were an ignorant whelp of a snot-nosed dumb-ass rookie? Remember how I untaught you all that textbook crap you’d picked up at the academy? Remember how I single-handedly turned you into a dauntless, rampaging hound of justice, admired by men, lusted over by women, and feared by wrongdoers everywhere? You owe me for all that stuff, son.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “You know what I want. You’ve got to come up here and take over my job.”

  Nolan sighed. “Syd, we’ve been over this before. You know I can’t just pick up and move. Hell, I was born and raised here. My parents died here. And Louise. I’ve got roots.”

  “Roots? In L.A.? Don’t make me barf.”

  “I’m honored by the offer, Syd. I really am.”

  “Good. So accept it.”

  Nolan was quiet. He knew that Syd was absolutely sincere. And for some reason, Nolan didn’t quite want to give him a conclusive “no.”

  “Give me some time to think about it,” Nolan said.

  “Yeah, right. If I give you all the time you want, I’ll wind up seventeen again and have to go back to high school. Look, what have I got to say to persuade you? The fishing’s great up here. There’s a stream not a half hour away just swarming with rainbow trout and bass. I’m talking telekinetic fishing, Nol. You just look at the water and think positive thoughts and the fish come jumping o
ut.”

  “I don’t fish.”

  “Neither did I. That’s another insidious thing about this place. You do stuff you’ve never done before. So what’s your answer?”

  “I really need a little time to think it over, Syd.”

  “Brother. How long do you want?”

  “I don’t know. Whaddya say to a month? I’m up to my neck in that Judson killing. You probably heard about it.”

  “Yeah. Couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer guy.”

  “Right. We just want to find the killer so we can give him a humanitarian medal. But it looks like this perp’s the modest type who doesn’t want to bask in a lot of public glory. It’s a bitch of a case, Syd. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to wrap it up. I wish you were here to help.”

  “Well, I’m not there, and I’m sure not coming back. So wrap it up and call me. If I don’t hear from you in a month, I’m giving the job to Andy of Mayberry.”

  Syd hung up. Syd always hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Nolan held the receiver stupidly in his hands until the dial tone buzzed. Then he hung up, too.

  The truth was, Nolan was tempted to go. He had always imagined that law enforcement in a town like Syd’s was mostly a matter of an occasional stolen bicycle, a little vandalism from time to time, and a few loud parties. That was naive, of course. Nolan knew perfectly well that gangs and drugs were creeping into semi-rural communities like Syd’s. But it could be nothing like L.A.

  It would be nice to be someplace where my work at least counted for something, where it made some sort of real difference to somebody.

  Then he grumbled under his breath, “Damn you, Syd, it’s not like I didn’t already have enough on my mind.”

  Nolan stalked away from his desk.

  *

  Marianne drummed her fingers against the obnoxious end table with the curlicue edges. She leaned back against the headboard of her hotel room bed and cradled the phone receiver against her shoulder. She was waiting to be taken off hold. It had been at least three minutes now.

  Guess they’re not terribly anxious to receive phone tips. After all, it was only the murder of one of the country’s most famous tycoons.

  “Sergeant Wertsch here,” a voice said.

  Marianne felt her heart jump. “Sergeant, I … I believe I might have some information pertinent to the G. K. Judson killing,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  Marianne was silent. How can I explain it? She suddenly wished she’d written down all the details.

  “I belong to computer network called Insomnimania,” she explained uneasily. “It’s a recreational network with a number of different rooms.”

  “Rooms?”

  “Yes. Virtual spaces where you can engage in different kinds of activities. Do you understand?”

  “Go on.”

  “One of the rooms is called the Snuff Room. People act out murders there.”

  “Act them out?”

  Marianne took another deep breath. “Insomnimania users create animated cartoon characters. They’re called ‘alters.’ And in the Snuff Room, they make up cartoon skits that portray murders of one kind or another. Fictional murders, supposedly. It’s all a game, you see?”

  “Go on.”

  “At about midnight last night, I saw Mr. Judson’s murder acted out in the Snuff Room. At least I think it was his murder. I’m staying at the Quenton Parks Hotel and I’ve seen the crime scene. The stain on the wall was exactly like the one in the snuff.”

  “Are you saying that you witnessed Judson’s murder?”

  “No, I witnessed a reenactment of the murder.”

  “Who reenacted it?”

  Marianne felt overwhelmed by the weirdness of what she was about to say next.

  “A clown,” she said.

  “A clown?”

  “Look, it was a cartoon character. Named Auggie.”

  “Not a real person?”

  Marianne groaned. “Sergeant, I tried to make it clear that I saw this on my computer screen. Didn’t you understand that part?”

  “Yes, you made it very clear,” Sergeant Wertsch said. “Would you give me your name, ma’am, along with some information as to how we can reach you?”

  Marianne did so.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Sergeant Wertsch said. “We’ll give you a call if we need any more information.”

  “Wait a minute!” Marianne exclaimed. “I don’t think you understand. Somebody in Insomnimania seems to have known a great deal about Mr. Judson’s murder. Doesn’t that interest you at all?”

  “Any information pertaining to Mr. Judson’s murder interests us a great deal. Thank you very much for your help, Ms. Hedison.”

  The line went dead. Marianne miserably hung up the phone and leaned back on her pillow.

  A bust. A complete, unequivocal disaster.

  She felt her face flush. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed at having made a blithering idiot of herself. After all, she was next to anonymous. But she had failed to convey her shock at the similarities between the crime scene and the Snuff Room skit, and this failure truly disturbed her.

  What’s the matter with me? Why did I panic with that other cop—What’s-His-Name—right there at the scene?

  She felt lousy about this failed phone call. Couldn’t she have been more forceful, more persuasive, more clear? Why did she have to sound like a complete nut case? And what was she going to do now? Call up Sergeant Wertsch again and demand his undivided attention? Or go confront the detectives on the case?

  She couldn’t prove what she had seen on the computer monitor, and she still only half-believed it herself. Wasn’t it possible that she had dreamed or hallucinated at least part of it? She was chronically tired these days. She was usually in a truly exhausted state by the time she logged onto Insomnimania. Maybe the idea that a real-life murder and a computer-simulated murder were somehow the same was another chimera—like that traveler on the ice.

  Besides, Renee was on Auggie’s trail now, and she would undoubtedly get to the bottom of this mystery. Marianne was sure of one thing. If their situations were reversed, Renee wouldn’t have let the cop on the phone treat her like a crackpot, and she wouldn’t have run away from a detective at a crime scene. Renee was more intrepid than Marianne—and certainly more worldly.

  Hell, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is more worldly than I am. This is what happens when you live in Santa Barbara for a couple of years. You lose your capacity to act decisively in weird situations.

  Marianne had freed herself of Evan and of an aimless life that had never truly been hers. But her recurring glimpses of that figure on the ice and this little incident with the police both suggested that she had not yet come into her own. That was one of the reasons Renee made me feel sad …

  She looked at her watch. It was five-thirty.

  Well, no time to brood. I’ve got just enough time to grab some food before the conference starts …

  *

  “So did you talk to the folks at the airline?” Clayton asked Nolan when the two of them met at their facing desks to talk over the day’s activities.

  “Yeah,” Nolan said tiredly. “So far, everybody’s playing it just like the guys we talked to yesterday. They say Judson was here to make a few brief remarks and give a plaque to some V.P. for setting some kind of regional record. Then they were all going to play a little golf. Just an excuse for Judson to come to La-La Land. They say he doesn’t spend much time in Chicago in the winter. That part I can believe.”

  “We got any kind of profile on him at all? Other than official stuff?”

  “The people in L.A. claim not to have known him real well—not personally. A little gossip is all. They say he screwed around a lot.”

  “I guess you�
��ll learn more in Chicago.”

  Nolan nodded. He sat down, removed his shoes, and began to rub his feet.

  “So what’s the word from your pals?” Nolan asked.

  Clayton frowned. He got a sour taste in his mouth from just thinking about his small circle of informants—a motley collection of pushers, pimps, addicts, gang members, and petty thieves. He’d never gotten used to the idea of letting those scum run free in exchange for what was usually an inconsequential trickle of information. “They aren’t my ‘pals,’” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “When’re you gonna stop saying that?”

  “I said I’m sorry. What do they know?”

  “Not a damned thing.”

  “Are they holding out?”

  “There’s no reason they’d know anything about Judson unless he was mixed up in drug deals or shuffling funds. The only reason they’d hold out is if he was big-time Mafioso. They all swear they never heard of him.”

  “You believe them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So we still ain’t got a laugh,” Nolan observed.

  “Nope. Not even a giggle.”

  Nolan slipped his shoes back on. “I’m going on home to read over some reports about Apex. Then I’m turning in early. My plane goes out at six a.m.”

  Clayton nodded. “Be sure to wear your mittens and earmuffs.”

  “Yeah, and fuck you, too. See you next week.”

  Nolan padded away through the detective bay area. Clayton sat quietly for a moment. He was not looking forward with pleasure to the report he was going to have to write concerning today’s work.

  Clayton heard an audible moan of discouragement across the aisle. He turned and saw Sergeant Rudolph Wertsch, who had just hung up the phone at his desk. The blond, Aryan-looking, crew cut-sporting rookie had been assigned to take phone tips concerning the Judson case. Clayton had noticed that Wertsch, while never being exactly uncivil, never really made eye contact with him, either. Well, he wasn’t the only one like that on the job.

  Whiter than white. God save me from having one of these types for a partner someday.