Cole Perriman's Terminal Games

by Wim Coleman

  He sure talked a lot. So does Stephen.

  She realized that words had always dragged her out of that deep place of physical pleasure she could only reach through the sensation of touch. Would things continue with him like this? Would things continue with him at all?

  A little while later, they made love again, with the same simplicity and intensity. Then she drifted off to sleep in a deeper state of relaxation than she could ever remember experiencing.

  *

  Marianne’s head was nestled warmly on Nolan’s shoulder. He mentally replayed the events leading to this moment of shared quietness, marveling at how something so perfect could have happened so unpremeditatedly. When they had finished making love that first time, he had avoided asking the fatal question:

  “Was it all right for you?”

  He had avoided it this second time, too. On one hand, it seemed only considerate to ask. If there had been any attention she had missed or needed, he could he more careful, more aware in the future. On the other hand, asking would certainly seem vain or pushy, and Nolan wanted nothing more than for her to feel comfortable with him. He’d have to trust her to communicate with him in her own way.

  Their second lovemaking had seemed less turbulent but no less fulfilling. Thinking back, Nolan had no idea how long they had spent either time. Time had played no role whatsoever in the entire experience. How could something that remarkable happen without time passing at all?

  Now Nolan could feel little twitches of near-sleepfulness throughout Marianne’s frame. Soon came the first hint of a feathery snore. Nolan, too, drifted along the precarious edge of sleep. He felt the boundaries of his body blur, fading in and out of hers, and he vaguely imagined that he was actually experiencing her sensations—the grip of his own strong fingers on her delicate shoulder, the gust of his own warm breath sneaking across the back of her ear.

  There was a whispery eroticism about this drowsing union of minds and bodies that was easily as entrancing as their lovemaking had been. At last came a wave of silent warmth. Nolan felt himself vanish into Marianne’s slumbering body.

  10001

  CONTROL QUESTION

  Opening segment of the transcript of a polygraph test taken by Marianne Hedison in reference to the murder of Renee Gauld, 1:30 P.M., Thursday, February 3:

  Q: Is your name Marianne Hedison?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Do you live in Venice, California?

  A: No.

  Q: Aside from the events in question, have you ever deliberately caused serious bodily injury to another person?

  A: No.

  Q: Do you live in Santa Barbara, California?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Did you ever, for any reason, conceal yourself under the bed in Renee Gauld’s condominium unit?

  A: No.

  Q: Is this interview being conducted on a Thursday?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Did you ever, for any reason, conceal yourself in the bedroom closet of Renee Gauld’s unit?

  A: No.

  Q: Are there four people in this room?

  A: No.

  “I can’t believe this,” Stephen said. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Sit down,” Marianne said.

  “I don’t want to sit down.”

  “Can I fix you a drink?”

  “I don’t want a drink.”

  Stephen was furious. Marianne had never seen him furious before. As far as she could remember, she had never seen him in any state of high passion—unless she were to count sexual arousal, and she preferred not to.

  She was sitting on her couch, and he was standing in the middle of her living room. He looked terribly awkward. His feet were planted slightly more than shoulder’s width apart—a little too wide to maintain a comfortable center of gravity. His arms hung slightly outward, as if attached to strings. And his face was flushed with an unattractive shade of lavender.

  He could pace around, at least. That’s what angry people normally do.

  But the truth was, Stephen didn’t know how to be angry. He could cook a very good continental meal, he knew his wines, and his golf stroke was quite excellent even by Santa Barbara standards, but anger wasn’t in his repertoire. Marianne felt guilty for forcing him into something at which he wasn’t proficient.

  “Didn’t we talk about this?” he exclaimed, still standing square in the middle of the floor. “Didn’t I tell you not to cooperate with the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you’ve gone and taken both a DNA test and a lie detector test!”

  “The police needed my help.”

  “They needed your help! Yeah, damn right, they needed your help. They needed you to help them convict you of murder.”

  “They’re not going to convict me of anything.”

  “Marianne, they’re cops. You’re supposed to let them figure out ways to violate your basic constitutional rights. It’s their job. It’s what the taxpayers pay them to do. You’re not supposed to do it for them.”

  “Look, it’s done. It’s all over.”

  “It’s not over.”

  “What do you want me to do, take back my blood sample, take back my answers? I signed a release. That part’s done. Listen, it’s going to be all right.”

  “Not if you flunk.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m innocent.”

  “So what? Do you think those tests are perfect?”

  “Stephen, think a minute. Taking both tests actually helps my odds. What do you think the chances are of an innocent person flunking both a polygraph and a DNA matchup? If I fail one or the other, I’m no worse off than when I started. If I pass both of them, I’ll be out of the running and the police can get on with their work—and that’s all I want.”

  Stephen looked a little less angry now, but he still hadn’t budged from his position in the center of the floor. He looked at his hands for a moment, as if he had suddenly become aware of his inability to use them very expressively. Then he stuck them in his pockets. Marianne might almost have laughed if she didn’t feel so painfully sorry for him.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Marianne,” he said, talking more quietly now. “I left one message after another on your answering machine yesterday, and you didn’t call back.”

  “I was in L.A. I called as soon as I got back home.”

  “Don’t you ever call your machine to check your messages?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t. When I go out of town, I don’t like to lug my whole life around with me. Stephen, I really wish you’d sit down.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”

  “Why do you think I didn’t tell you? Look at yourself. Do you think I wanted to upset you like this?”

  She wished now that she’d simply lied about the whole thing. When she returned his calls, why hadn’t she just said she’d gone back to L.A. to wrap up all the work she’d left undone? Stephen would have been much happier if she’d lied, so why hadn’t she? Perhaps the unsettling experience of taking the polygraph test had left her disinclined to lie.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” she said. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you. But this is my problem. You’ve got to accept that. She was my friend.”

  Stephen looked at the floor, shuffled his feet slightly, then looked straight into Marianne’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I’m sorry she was killed. I know she meant a lot to you. But Marianne, I don’t understand what’s going on between us. I don’t understand what’s happening to our relationship.”

  Relationship?

  The word gave Marianne a sharp jolt. She was grateful to have the couch underneath her to hold her up.

 
Our relationship?

  It was an ordinary word, but Stephen had imbued it with all kinds of meaning—much more meaning than Marianne could possibly be comfortable with. She had never thought of herself and Stephen as having a relationship—at least not in the way he meant it. They were friends, chums, companions, occasional sex partners. Did this constitute a relationship?

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I’m talking about all this drama,” Stephen said. “Things used to be so simple when we were together.”

  Marianne sighed miserably.

  So that’s it. Inconvenience. Things have gotten inconvenient between us.

  She couldn’t blame him. Convenience was supposed to be what their friendship was all about. What business did she have bringing all this drama into his otherwise staid and pleasantly bland life?

  “Stephen, we’re doing a terrific job of upsetting each other,” she said. “I told you I’m sorry. I want to leave it at that. Can I get you a drink? Could we talk about something else? Would you like to sit down?”

  Stephen looked at her blankly for a moment.

  “You know where you can reach me,” he said at last. He picked up his jacket and left.

  Marianne sat motionless on the couch, feeling demoralized and unhappy. The scene with Stephen had just capped off an already unpleasant day.

  She shivered at the memory of the tests she had undergone that morning. She wondered if she would have volunteered for the polygraph if she’d known how disturbing it would be. The men conducting the test had wrapped Velcro around her fingers, a blood pressure pulse cuff around her arm, and something called a pneumographic tube around her chest, making her feel too constricted to think clearly, much less to feel confident of her own veracity.

  And then there had been those awful questions …

  “Have you ever deliberately caused serious bodily injury to another person?”

  That one had thrown her into such a panic that she might have fled the room if she hadn’t been solidly strapped down.

  What do they mean by “serious bodily injury”? What do they mean by “deliberately”? And what in God’s name can they possibly mean by “ever”? Am I supposed to search my whole life for the answer to that question right this second?

  But she had to answer the question on the spot with a simple “yes” or “no.” She said “no”—and had felt as if she were lying.

  After the test, Nolan had explained to her that this was a control question. She was supposed to feel vaguely dishonest about any answer she gave. Her physiological responses to the control question would tell the testers what her personal style of deception would look like on the graph. If she was innocent, her responses to questions about Renee’s murder would look very different from her response to the control question.

  This logic had struck Marianne as completely absurd.

  After that, it came as a relief that the DNA test required nothing more than the jab of a needle and the drawing of some blood.

  Chromosomes don’t get flustered by tough questions. Even if my physiological responses go berserk, I can count on my blood-cell nuclei to keep their cool.

  Still, the blood-taking was far from pleasant. And now she was faced with a suspenseful wait to learn the outcome of the tests. Would her own blood and body responses label her a liar? A lot was hanging over her.

  Aside from all of that, another set of questions had been lurking in the back of her mind. Now they demanded her attention.

  A woman? Why would a woman kill Renee?

  When she had heard that news, her immediate concern had been to avoid sidetracking the investigation, to give the police proof of the one thing she was sure of—that she had not killed her friend. Nothing else had even entered her mind. But now that she had time to consider it, Marianne felt shocked at the idea of a woman murdering Renee.

  My own chauvinism. After all, women did commit murder—although in smaller numbers than men. Why did she find it easier to picture a man attacking Renee?

  One reason, she realized, was the image in her mind of Auggie pushing Renee beneath the water—a loud, crass, vulgar, and utterly male clown. But why should she assume that the computer animation accurately portrayed the killer? Surely Marianne had never seriously believed that a man in baggy pants and bright red wig had actually killed Renee. So why couldn’t the killer have been a woman?

  Marianne kicked off her shoes and curled her legs up on the couch. She sat in a huddle, her arms wrapped around her body.

  Why would a woman kill Renee? Jealousy, perhaps? Was Renee having an affair with someone’s husband or lover?

  No hint of anything like that had come up during their last conversation. But would Renee have told her? Sure, Renee liked to talk about her relationships with eligible men, however fleeting they might be. But would she have opened up about something really illicit or dangerous?

  Not unless I’d asked.

  And if she had, Renee would have said yes or no, pure and simple. But Marianne hadn’t asked.

  She tried to focus on the single fact at her disposal. A woman had stalked Renee and drowned her. What kind of woman? Where was she now? What might she look like?

  Sturdy. She’d have to be strong, wouldn’t she, to hold Renee down?

  Marianne leaned her head back and closed her eyes tightly, trying to picture the woman murderer.

  Where? She must have been at the party.

  Marianne visualized a tall, heavyset woman in a dark dress—no, it was a silvery dress, metallic and hard-looking—a female warrior with dark eyes and short, severely styled hair. The woman was holding a glass of something …

  Scotch.

  Yes, Marianne was sure of it. The woman gazed around Renee’s living room in a proprietary way. No one seemed to know her, although someone occasionally stopped to speak with her. She exuded an aura of power. The other guests thought she was a casting director or a producer.

  Then the woman abruptly vanished from Marianne’s mind.

  The image simply wouldn’t stay in place.

  If I had gone to the open house, I could have met her. I could have asked her name. I could have seen through her terrible plan and forced her to leave.

  Marianne smiled sadly at the childishness of her fantasy—at the wishfulness of assuming that she could have sensed the woman’s malice. She sighed deeply. She hadn’t done very well by her friends lately. She had not helped Renee. And now she had hurt Stephen. She hadn’t meant to, but she had hurt him. And she shuddered at a new question.

  What if he knew about Nolan?

  But maybe that wouldn’t matter. All that really concerned Stephen was that things stayed simple between them. He probably didn’t care who Marianne got involved with as long as it didn’t bring any new drama between them.

  Convenience.

  That was what Stephen wanted.

  Only a short time ago ...

  (How long was it? A week? Two weeks?)

  … convenience had been all Marianne wanted, too.

  But that had changed. Convenience wasn’t enough for her now. She didn’t know what she wanted, but convenience wasn’t it. And that realization abruptly put a whole universe between her and Stephen. There was nothing to be done about it.

  And what about Nolan—this rough, charming man she had known for only a short time? What was going to happen between them now? Marianne closed her eyes and remembered waking up that morning with his warm body entangled with her own. She remembered her arm hugging his wide chest and her head resting on his shoulder. She remembered how her ear had grown numb from resting there so long. She remembered thinking that Nolan’s whole arm must have been numb where she had been sleeping on it.

  The memory made her smile. But at the same time, she felt an almost unbearable yearning to b
e with Nolan right this instant. The distance between them seemed intolerable. And what would happen when they saw each other again? Would the spark they had struck catch fire again, or would they treat each other like strangers?

  Would they see each other again?

  Marianne’s heart raced and she felt lightheaded. She also felt a dislocated kind of hunger—an emptiness in the center of her chest instead of in her stomach.

  I wonder how this would read on a polygraph?

  She imagined the interrogator asking one last question, and herself giving one last answer.

  Q: Are you falling in love with Lieutenant Nolan Grobowski?

  A: No.

  In her mind’s eye, the needles skidded all over the graph, creating a ludicrous array of zigzags before they tore the paper to shreds.

  She couldn’t stand this for another moment. She reached for the telephone and called Nolan’s extension at the division headquarters. The very second she heard his gruff “Hello,” her spirits soared.

  “Is this Lieutenant Nolan Grobowski of the L.A.P.D.?” Marianne asked in a slightly disguised voice.

  “Yeah, who is this?” Nolan asked tersely.

  “It’s me, you officious grouch,” Marianne replied.

  “Hey, I’m glad you caught me,” he said, sounding happy to hear her voice. “I was just getting ready to call you.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll bet you use that line all the time.”

  “No, seriously, I was.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, don’t get me wrong,” he said with a laugh. “It’s not because I miss you or anything …”

  “Me either.”

  “… although I do …”

  “Me, too.”

  “It’s just that I’ve got good news.”

  “Which is?”