by Wim Coleman
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Nolan said, showing his badge. “I’m Detective Grobowski with the Los Angeles Police Department. And this is Detective Saunders. Are you Mrs. Ramos?”
The woman nodded, showing no interest.
“We’re here to see Mike Ramos,” Clayton said. “Is he your son?”
“Mikey is sleeping,” she said, nodding. “He works late at night.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to wake him up,” Nolan said firmly. “We have to ask him some questions on a very urgent matter.”
The woman just stood there, looking as though her attention had simply wandered off. Nolan said, “Mrs. Ramos?” She turned and walked back into the house. Nolan and Clayton followed.
“Is anyone else at home?” Nolan asked.
“My husband is out,” the woman answered, without looking back.
The inside of the house was dim. The windows were overshadowed by foliage and partially covered by heavy drapes. But Nolan could see that the place was very clean and that the living room furniture looked quite new.
“He’s up here,” the woman said, mounting a staircase at the side of the room. Nolan and Clayton followed her up. When they reached the second floor, she walked down a short hallway and opened a door. “Miguel, despiértate,” she yelled into the doorway. Nolan could see that another flight of stairs, much narrower than the first, went up from there.
Although there was no sound of any kind from above, Nolan pushed past the woman and started upward. He could hear Clayton responding to her muttered protests. Carefully, Nolan moved up the stairway, his hand on his revolver. When he reached the door of the room, he waited for Clayton to catch up with him. Nolan edged carefully around the doorway, then relaxed at what he saw.
A fully-clothed, slender young man occupied a rumpled bed. His slight snore did not change as they entered. It looked to Nolan like the whole top floor of the house had been finished off to create this one large room. The ceiling rose to a peak in the center, following the roof line. Lining the low side walls were tables and desks cluttered with electronic equipment that reminded Nolan of the Insomnimania headquarters. Magazines and comic books were strewn about the bed and desks. A couple of soft drink cans littered a table next to the bed. A motorized wheelchair was also beside the bed.
Light filtered in through shades drawn over two dormer windows. At the far end of the room was a door. Casually looking over the place, Nolan noted a storage area with clothes hanging among bundles of cables, and also a large full bathroom set up for wheelchair access.
Mrs. Ramos shuffled into the room, giving the detectives a reproachful glance. She turned on a lamp and shook her son’s shoulder repeatedly until he emerged into resentful wakefulness. Then the slow, sturdy woman helped the young man into his wheelchair—an exercise they had clearly performed many times. Both the woman and the young man ignored offers of aid from the detectives.
Finally, Nolan found himself facing Mike Ramos. The woman collected the drink cans, gave the detectives one last sour look, and disappeared down the stairs. She still demonstrated no curiosity at all about the reason for their visit.
Small motors whirred as the slight young man turned his wheelchair around to face the detectives directly. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “just why are you disturbing my family and my sleep?”
Nolan could see that Mike Ramos was a bit older than he had first thought—at least in his mid-twenties. Asleep on the bed, Ramos had looked like an adolescent. Now he sat rather majestically in his chair and nodded his head solemnly at them. His dark hair fell limply across his forehead. His manner was polite. His diction was careful and somewhat stilted, although it did not sound like an accent. It was more as though Ramos was not accustomed to using spoken language. He simply wasn’t the kind of person who liked talking to anybody.
Nolan identified himself and his partner to the young man, whose expression did not change.
“Mr. Ramos,” Nolan said, “we want to ask you some questions about Insomnimania.”
The brown eyes stared back with a slight spark of interest. “Why Insomnimania?” the young man asked. “It’s an interesting network, but only one of many.”
“It’s expensive, isn’t it?” Nolan asked.
Ramos backed up in his wheelchair, putting slightly more distance between himself and the detectives. “Whatever you might guess from appearances here, I do make a pretty good income.”
“How do you do that?”
“I write custom programs for businesses. It’s all handled through a company here in town. They do the legwork. Obviously. They have some regular programmers in their office. I do the really difficult stuff for them. But it’s easy.”
“What’s the name of this company you work for?”
Ramos reached into a desk drawer and handed Nolan a brochure. “Complete Programming Services” was printed on the front.
“So you’re able to support yourself with this kind of work,” remarked Nolan.
“We all live comfortably, yes.”
“We?”
“I contribute to the support of my parents.”
“You’ve certainly made the most of your disability.”
“My disability, as you call it, has nothing to do with what I am today. I’d be doing exactly what I’m doing right now if could walk. I’d be living exactly as I’m living right now. In fact, I have all the physical access to the outside world that I want. I even have a van, but I very seldom drive it.”
Nolan detected no defensiveness in Ramos’ voice. He simply sounded as if he meant what he said. Indeed, he seemed so sedentary, so strictly cerebral by nature, that it wasn’t hard to believe him. He probably would have arranged his domain in just such a manner whether he could walk or not. He probably would have chosen to live on the top floor of this house and come down into the world of lesser mortals as infrequently as possible. Other people overcame similar detriments in order to participate fully in society, but Ramos was not interested.
“You work here at home?” Nolan asked.
“Always. I set my own hours. I sleep a lot during the day. Usually.” There was a moment’s silence. “I’m very good at what I do,” Ramos added.
“I’m sure you’re an excellent programmer, Mr. Ramos. In fact, we know that you actually programmed a participational area on Insomnimania called the Snuff Room. Baldwin Maisie said you originated it.”
“Yes. It was simple. I just made some of Insomnimania’s animation software available in a somewhat newer but still limited way. The Snuff Room is a standard feature now, available to all alters. Lots of different characters present snuffs there.”
“We’re particularly interested in one specific character—the clown named Auggie.”
“And what is Auggie up to these days?” Ramos asked blandly.
“That’s what we’d like to find out from you.”
“I see him on Insomnimania sometimes. I have very little to say to him.”
“Don’t play games with us, Mr. Ramos. We know that Auggie is your alter.”
“No, I am afraid you are mistaken. My alter is named Gargantua. Not Auggie.”
“We have reason to believe that you also log on as Auggie. That you were, in fact, logged on as Auggie just last night.” Nolan knew that last night’s connection had apparently been made from Chicago, and he didn’t know if Ramos had been logged on at all. But he wanted to push the issue a little.
“Why?” Ramos asked.
“Baldwin Maisie said it was you.”
“Why would he say that? I am sure they have records to show what my tag is. Sometimes in the past I have created other alters, but lately it’s just been Gar.”
“Gluggles,” said Nolan.
Ramos just stared back, making no response at all. Nolan felt more than a littl
e silly.
Clayton broke into the silence, “Auggie said that. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”
“Yes. It’s my little slang for the von Neumann bottleneck—my private way of saying, ‘Don’t get stuck in a rut,’ or ‘Have a nice day.’ I guess he learned that from me.”
“Who learned that from you?” Clayton asked.
“Auggie.”
“Don’t you mean the person who logs on as Auggie?” said Nolan.
“If you say so.”
“And who is that person?”
“I have no idea.”
The hacker stared back silently. His eyes were dark and expressionless. Nolan was getting impatient.
“Please remember, Mr. Ramos,” he said, “we may very well be able to show that, at the very least, you’ve used other people’s credit cards to log Auggie on. We can bring charges that would allow us to confiscate your equipment and disks and hold them as evidence.”
“I really don’t think you can prove any of that, Lieutenant,” Ramos said, “for the simple reason that it is not true. I’m not a teenage cracker playing with other people’s credit cards. However, I do know that in the past a number of hackers have had their property confiscated by law officers who had no idea what they were looking for or what they were taking. Those officers made fools of themselves and ended up being charged in a civil suit.”
“That happened to the Secret Service and the FBI,” Nolan said. “The law enforcement community has learned some things in the meantime, believe me. Even in our division, we have specialists who prosecute computer crime. These guys know their business.”
“Good. Then I won’t have to deal with a lot of utter stupidity. Please keep in mind that if you put me out of business, you will interrupt important work under legitimate contract. You will hold up operational changes in several large companies. It could cost them a great deal of money. You would certainly hear from some very unhappy CEOs.”
“We hope nothing like that will become necessary, Mr. Ramos,” Nolan said. He shifted awkwardly, aware that he was using the wrong tactics with the young programmer, but unsure how to proceed. “We’re here because two members of Insomnimania have been killed, and both of their murders were replayed by Auggie in the Snuff Room. This is a very serious business. We want to know the connection between these two murder victims and whoever is behind Auggie. We won’t hesitate to make an arrest if we find that you are involved in some way.”
“The simple truth is, I am not the one who creates Auggie’s Snuff Room scenes,” Mike Ramos said. “I am not the one who goes on Insomnimania as Auggie. And I do not know who does.”
Now the hacker looked strained and hostile. There was a whirring sound again as he turned his wheelchair a few inches to the left and then to the right. The equivalent of pacing.
“I really have nothing more to tell you gentlemen,” Ramos said. “If you wish to persist in questioning me, I think I should have my lawyer present.”
*
Standing there listening, watching Ramos, Clayton remembered his own exhausted hallucination a couple of weeks ago, when he’d thought he’d heard somebody shout at him in the detective’s bay—“Snap out of it!” The world was a place of sensory overload at times. Clayton often wished he could put up some kind of shield against the world around him.
Ramos is like that, too. Only he’s got an actual shield—one made out of networking cables and computer screens.
For a moment, Clayton actually envied Ramos. On a computer screen over the phone lines, Ramos could be whoever or whatever he wanted to be, and nobody could get close enough to him to contradict him. It was his world, surely more real to him than this attic room.Clayton sat down on the bed, putting his eyes level with those of the young man in the wheelchair. “It’s like going into a comic book, isn’t it?” Clayton asked Ramos.
“You mean Insomnimania?” Ramos turned to look at the black detective.
“Yeah. It’s a whole new universe—freer than this one.” Clayton thought about his own kids talking about adventure fantasies. He tried to recapture a thirteen-year-old’s sense of wonder.
“Yes, you’re right. It is like going into a comic book,” Ramos replied. “An animated one. Except that Insomnimania is far more interesting than any regular cartoon.”
“How’s that?”
“Because you’re not outside the pages, not outside the screen. It’s a place you go and meet other people. Do you like Insomnimania?”
“I’m fascinated by it.”
“What’s your favorite place?” Ramos asked.
Clayton scrambled for an answer. He had spent very little time actually logged into Insomnimania. “I like Ernie’s Bar,” he said. “And I’d like to play around in the casino.”
“Aw, those are standard,” said Ramos. “They’re animated better on Insomnimania, but lots of game sites have places like that.”
“I haven’t had a chance to get to much of it,” Clayton replied. “What’s your favorite part?”
“Some of the games. ‘Chaos Syndrome’ calls for serious strategy. ‘Implicate Order’ is my favorite—linear logic doesn’t work in that space.”
Ramos looked as though he might continue, but then he suddenly backed his wheelchair a few inches—again moving away from the detectives. Watching the young hacker, Clayton said, “You know, what I’d really like to do is get out of your way right now, let you get your sleep, and phone you later. Would you agree to talk to me over the telephone for a little while?”
Ramos shook his head no. Then he said, “We could chat online. That’s easier.”
“For you, maybe,” Clayton said with a smile. “It’s still quite a chore for me. I’m just now catching onto it. Maybe you could teach me about it.”
Ramos smiled back. It was the first time Ramos had smiled during the interview so far.
“So is it okay if I telephone you this evening, after you’ve gotten your sleep?” Clayton asked.
“Okay,” said Ramos, grinning in a way that made him look like an adolescent for another brief moment. “Call me after the sun goes down.” He laughed, a little harshly, as though he was as unaccustomed to laughter as to spoken conversation.
Ramos scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to Clayton. Clayton ignored his partner’s slight sputtering. He herded Nolan back down the stairs and out to the car.
“What’s this telephone call business all about?” Nolan demanded after they got into the car.
“I don’t think he’s comfortable being in the actual presence of people—carrying on a conversation in person,” Clayton explained. “He was all tightened up. And if we pushed on, we’d have wound up dealing with a lawyer who’d have shut him up for good. I want to take a crack at him by telephone.”
Nolan started the engine and drove off in silence. After a few minutes he asked, “So whaddya think? Did we just talk with a psycho?”
“He hasn’t gone after any airline moguls with a butcher knife lately, if that’s what you mean.”
“No. But do you think he had something to do with it?”
Clayton didn’t reply.
Maybe I’ll know after I talk to him.
*
After they returned to the division, Nolan sat grumpily at his desk. If Clayton thought he could get more out of the hacker by telephone, Clayton was probably right. Nolan just hated the wait. “Call me after the sun goes down.” What a stupid thing—like the kid was a vampire or something. He decided he’d better phone Marianne.
“Just wanted to let you know that Clay and I had an interview with a hacker this morning,” he announced when her answering machine picked up the call.
There was a click and Marianne came on the line. “Was it Auggie? Did you find Auggie?” she asked excitedly.
“It turne
d out to be … well, I’m not exactly sure what it turned out to be.”
“What happened?”
“Look, I’m sorry, but don’t get excited about it. It’s a complicated story and I’ll explain it to you tonight. But the guy we talked to is not the killer.”
“Is he Auggie?”
“It doesn’t make much difference, does it? This guy’s in a wheelchair and has been for years. He didn’t stalk Judson through the corridors of the Quenton Parks.”
“Couldn’t needing the wheelchair be an act?”
“We’re still checking that out. We’ll see if it’s consistent with DMV records. And we should be able to locate his medical records. We’re not finished with him yet. Clay is going to talk to him again this evening—by telephone. That’s what I wanted to call you about. I’m afraid I’m going to be late getting back to the house.”
“Well, just tell me what time you’ll be there to let me in.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll tell you where the key is hidden.”
*
As soon as the sky began to darken, Clayton picked up the telephone and dialed the number Ramos had given him. Nolan was on another phone on the same line and a tape recorder was running. Clayton and Nolan were sitting at neighboring desks and were able to watch one another, able to exchange visual signals should the need arise. An answering machine came on the other end with no message, just a series of electronic beeps.
Clayton said, “This is Detective Clayton Saunders calling for Mike Ramos. Mr. Ramos, you said you’d be willing to talk to me after the sun went down.”
There was a click followed by the hollow sound of a speaker phone.
“Okay,” Ramos said. “I’m here.”
“Thanks for picking up,” Clayton said.
“You’re not alone on the line, are you?” said Ramos.
Clayton was slightly startled. He looked at Nolan. Nolan shook his head urgently, covering the receiver and whispering, “You are!”
But Clayton disobeyed.
“No, Mr. Ramos,” Clayton said. “My partner’s on the line, too.