by Wim Coleman
First, she needed to make a few preparations. She got in her car and drove to the local health food store. For fasting, she wanted lots of juices on hand, things like carrot and celery juice. Dilutions of fruit juices—grape and apple—would be useful, too. She filled her cart with such items and also rounded up a substantial supply of herbal teas. But most important would be the bottled water. Marianne picked up several gallons.
All in all, she figured this would give her enough liquids to keep her going for a week—that is, if all the juices stayed fresh in the fridge. She also picked up some cabbage, turnips, and collards to make a thin broth should she find herself becoming too weak to function. But it probably wouldn’t come to that—not for a while, anyway. She was a light eater to begin with, so she didn’t expect fasting to be particularly stressful.
She returned home, put away her groceries, and fixed herself a cup of aromatic herbal tea. It was far too early to log onto Insomnimania. It felt a little strange to be alone in her own home with nothing to do at the moment.
She paced around the house for a little while. The air was stale and lifeless, so she opened the front door and looked outside. Her tiny hillside yard was lit with the full warm glow of late afternoon California sunshine. Although nothing much was blooming just now, the garden seemed inviting. She put on a sweater and carried her tea outside.
Unlike the interior of her house, Marianne’s yard had a casual, natural look. It had been designed that way. Her landscape architect—a colleague at the office—had planted the entire space in terraced beds with drought-tolerant lavender and rosemary, together with roses, irises, coral bells, and other brilliantly flowering plants. He had revivified two orange trees and added two peaches and an avocado. Throughout much of the year, the garden flowered in lush profusion.
It was not the kind of landscape Marianne would have designed, and at first she had protested the idea. But her co-worker had been insistent, claiming that this sort of garden would be low-maintenance and would suit the climate. She finally gave him a free hand, and now she was happy with his work. Her garden had survived even when years of water rationing had turned Santa Barbara’s expensive grass lawns a uniform beige. And today, she found the crazy-quilt randomness of the garden quite charming.
In the distance, she could just see a reflection of light off the ocean. She sat down on a concrete bench and put the teacup and saucer on a low stone table in front of her. Marianne closed her left nostril with her forefinger and breathed in through her right nostril. Then she switched, closing the right nostril and breathing through the left. The right nostril felt clear—she could breathe through it easily, but the left was slightly clogged and congested.
She had learned during her meditating days that brain hemispheric dominance switched back and forth at regular intervals, and that nostril congestion could be used to determine which hemisphere was dominant at a particular moment. It was an ancient yoga insight that had more recently been confirmed by hard research. The connection between nostril and brain hemisphere was inverted, as it was for the rest of the body. The left nostril correlated with the right hemisphere, the right nostril with the left. The clearness in Marianne’s right nostril told her that the left, more rational hemisphere of her brain was currently dominant. She would need to activate her right brain to evoke an instinctive, nonlinear state of mind.
She closed her eyes. She began to inhale and exhale slowly, as she had been taught to do in a yoga class conducted by Japanese Buddhist monks with white robes and shaven heads.
“Exhale, counting to a certain number,” the monks had instructed her. “Then inhale, counting twice as high.”
She exhaled completely to a slow count of five. Then she inhaled as fully as she could to a slow count of ten. She maintained this slow alternation for some minutes. At first, images and preoccupations fluttered through her mind, making it hard to keep count. Faces drifted by—Nolan, Renee, Stephen, Evan, and of course, Auggie.
Worries about work, about her future with Nolan, about the great dilemma of Auggie—all these struggled and contended for her attention. She didn’t try to shove them out of her brain. She simply allowed them to pass with as little notice as possible. Without any acknowledgment or affirmation, the intruding thoughts and concerns soon vanished.
Her mind became empty, and she felt her whole body relax. She noticed, too, that her breathing became thinner and thinner until, at last, she couldn’t detect any breath at all. She was sitting in her garden in utter stillness, and she had stopped breathing altogether. It wasn’t as if she were holding her breath. She felt no such anxiety or discomfort. It was more as though any need for the air’s nourishment was suspended. She felt that she could sustain this breathless state indefinitely. This was not a new sensation for her. She had experienced it when meditating with the monks, and even during silent Quaker meetings when she was still a teenager. It was immensely peaceful.
She noticed, too, that she was staring at the teacup and saucer on the glass table—that she was raptly observing the late afternoon sun’s reflection on the flat, polished stone table and on the slightly curved, slightly wavering surface of the tea. She could see it quite clearly—and she was looking at it through closed eyelids. She remembered this effect, too, both from her yoga meditations and the silent meetings of her youth.
The Buddhist monks had a name for this seemingly numinous eyesight. They also had a name for her suspended breathing. Marianne couldn’t remember what those names were. All she knew was that this whole experience was very pleasant and very soothing.
She heard herself whisper.
“I’ll be ready.”
*
Nolan was heading back to the detective bay area after a walk around the block. He’d left the desk from sheer nervousness. He just couldn’t spend all afternoon sitting around waiting.
He had run all his requisite errands for today, including his routine visit to Pritchard and Maisie, and he had a pile of paperwork to go through. But he’d had an awful time sitting still. He was going crazy wondering what was happening in Omaha at the moment. Would the cops there have any luck finding the murderer of the poor bastard in the shower curtain? Would the name of Myron Stalnaker that Nolan had given the Omaha detective be of any use to them?
The walk hadn’t particularly settled him, so he’d reluctantly come back.
Hell, maybe we’ve heard something from Omaha by now.
As he entered the squad room, a loud shriek rang out. Nolan saw Clayton standing at his desk halfway across the room. Clayton was waving his arms and jumping up and down. The whole squad room was staring at him.
“Waaaa-hoooooo!” Clayton screamed. “We got him! We got the bastard cold!”
Nolan trotted toward the ordinarily-quiet Clayton, who was dancing around the desk, throwing paper up in the air.
Nolan skidded to a stop in front of the desk.
“My partner’s having one of his manic spells,” he explained to the other detectives staring their way.
Clayton dropped into his swivel chair and spun around in it like a little kid trying to make himself dizzy.
“What?” Nolan asked.
“Oh, well, nothing much,” Clayton chuckled delightedly. “I don’t know what got into me. Guess I kind of got carried away. They just caught the Omaha killer, is all. They caught the murderous bastard—courtesy of us!”
“Hey, slow down,” Nolan said. “So we got a laugh, huh?”
“A laugh? We got a fucking guffaw! We’re bringing down the house!”
“That’s great. That’s really great.”
“What’samatter? Aren’t you excited?”
“Well, I wish you’d tell me how it happened.”
“Come on to Coffey’s office and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Wait a minute. You’re gonna tell Coffey before you te
ll me?”
“Don’t pull that hurt routine. I’m gonna tell the both of you at the same time.”
“Clay—”
“Hey, I got the news first, and I get to tell the boss first. I don’t need you standing behind me playing back-seat talker, interrupting me and correcting me from the get-go.”
“Come on. I’d never do a thing like that.”
“Shut the fuck up, willya? Clayton said. “Last one to the captain’s office is Darryl Gates.”
The two of them speed-walked through the bay area toward the captain’s office. Clayton threw open the door and charged inside, with Nolan in hot pursuit. They stopped dead in their tracks in front of Coffey’s desk. The captain didn’t show the slightest trace of surprise at their abrupt entrance. Instead, he quietly lit a cigar.
“Gentlemen,” said Coffey, slowly and sarcastically, “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here.”
Nolan shuddered with apprehension. Charging into the captain’s office unannounced was never a good idea. How could he and Clayton have both forgotten that?
“Well, I’ll tell you why I asked you to come,” Coffey said, maintaining a tone of ruthless irony. “I was just kind of sitting here, thinking about the good old days, the departed niceties of life, waxing elegiacal, as it were. And I thought it might be nice to have a couple of uncouth, hog-trough, pissant detectives here to sort of commiserate with me in my melancholy, deprived as I am of any respectable human company.”
Nolan and Clayton lowered their heads in abashed silence while Coffey droned on in a tone of mock lamentation.
“Ah, what happened to all the splendid protocols, the social preludes, the rites of passage of yesteryear? Whatever happened to bar mitzvahs, Presbyterian confirmations, that first shaving kit? Can you tell me? Whatever happened to all those precious and beloved rituals that bind a culture together? Whatever happened to high school graduation parties where you drank yourself sick for the first time in your life and puked your living guts up all over some total stranger’s living room carpet? Huh? And whatever happened to long, lingering, candlelit dinners and polite conversation before you fucked some hot-looking dame’s eyes out?
“And,” Coffey concluded, leaning forward across his desk with a terrifying snarl, “whatever happened to knocking on doors before entering?”
“Sorry, sir,” Clayton said, without a trace of his earlier exuberance. “It’s just that we got a break in the Auggie killings.”
“Let’s hear it,” Coffey said, leaning back in his chair. Coffey took one more puff on his newly lit cigar and then put it out in a mug of cold coffee. Nolan realized that he’d never seen Coffey completely smoke a cigar all the way down to a stub. Maybe Coffey didn’t like cigars at all. Maybe Coffey just lit them up to disgust and intimidate people. Given Coffey’s calculatedly offensive manner, it seemed a plausible hypothesis.
And it works pretty well.
“It’s like this,” Clayton said, pulling out his notebook for ready reference. “A certain Lola Delaney lives across the street from a Catholic church in a seedier part of Omaha. On the night Howard Cronin was killed, she saw something suspicious—a black-clad character lugging something big and heavy out the front door of the church. He dumped it into the trunk of a slightly worse-for-the-wear Mercedes. Lola Delaney couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked like it was wrapped up in a plastic something-or-other with red stripes—a shower curtain, she thought it might have been.”
The captain’s eyes flickered with sudden interest.
“Do tell,” Coffey said.
Clayton continued. “Well, being a model citizen and all, Lola Delaney wrote down the license number of the Mercedes. She didn’t call the police right away, but the next morning she did go over to ask the priest if anything had been stolen from the sanctuary during the night. The priest, a certain Father Mark Lamberti, was a little surprised at Lola Delaney’s story.
“He told her that nothing had been stolen that he knew of. In fact, Father Mark had taken a lot of criticism for leaving the sanctuary unlocked around the clock—just like churches used to be in the old days. But before now there had been remarkably little in the way of late-night problems. Now, because of Lola Delaney’s story, he was starting to worry.
“This is where we came in, with our software reenactment of the Howard Cronin murder taking place in a Catholic church. With the cooperation of the archdiocese, the Omaha cops started talking to one priest after another, and before too long they got to Father Mark with his tale of a nocturnal visitor lugging some strange object out of his church. That led them to Lola Delaney with her description of the beat-up Mercedes and its license number. As it turned out, the car belongs to a local bank employee named Myron Stalnaker, which also happens to be the name of an Insomnimania member who appeared to have occasionally logged on as Auggie—a name we passed on to the Omaha cops.”
“Bingo,” Nolan heard himself murmur.
“Not so fast,” Clayton said. “It gets even better. With all this information, the Omaha cops had no trouble getting a warrant to search Myron Stalnaker’s home. They found a priest’s outfit just like the one Auggie was wearing in the simulated murder. They also found a ski mask made with white, red, and black acrylic yarn. It was knitted with a clown’s face—just like Auggie, only with a sad, downturned mouth. And they found a twenty-two caliber pistol, the same kind that was used to kill Cronin. Well, naturally, they arrested this Stalnaker guy. The gun was a match. And get this. The Omaha cops have invited us to come out and take part in the festivities. We’ll get to sit in on some of the questioning and ask a few ourselves.”
Coffey was smiling broadly now—the kind of undisguised supercilious smile that always made Nolan and Clayton extremely nervous.
“I must say, you’ve got my interest piqued, Saunders,” he said. “It’s quite a story so far. Go on. What happened next?”
Clayton looked crestfallen.
“What do you mean, sir?” Clayton asked.
“Oh, come on, Saunders,” Coffey said. “Don’t tease me like this. Tell me the rest of it. You’ve got me on the edge of my seat. I’m all ears.”
Clayton was silent.
“Wait a minute,” Coffey continued. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’ve proven that this Myron Stalnaker character was in L.A. when both Judson and Gauld were murdered. You’ve checked out Stalnaker’s plane reservations, his hotel bills, the works. You’ve found out that he hasn’t got a credible alibi for either of the murders. In fact, he’s got motive and opportunity up the wazoo. You’ve probably even got eyewitnesses that say he whacked both Judson and Gauld. And—oh yeah—you’ve documented that he got a sex change before coming to L.A., which is why the Gauld killing looks like it was done by a woman, and then he got his dick reinstalled when he got back to Omaha. It’s an open-and-shut case, right?”
Coffey leaned triumphantly back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. He appeared to be deliberately displaying the wetness under his armpits.
“So,” concluded Coffey. “Am I one hell of a guesser, or what?”
Clayton was seething now.
“With all due respect, sir,” Clayton hissed, “you’re being a total bastard about this.”
Nolan jabbed Clayton sharply with his elbow. Coffey only laughed.
“A bastard, huh?” Coffey said. “Well, it’s one of the prices of power—if you wanna keep a job like mine.”
“Captain, all Clayton’s saying is that we’ve caught a killer,” Nolan said.
“Right,” Coffey said. “An Omaha killer. What about our L.A. killer—or killers?”
“They’re connected!” Clayton exclaimed.
“How?” Coffey asked.
“Through Auggie,” Clayton said. “Through Insomnimania. Nobody’s saying the Stalnaker guy did all these killings. Maybe h
e did just this one. Maybe it’s a club or a conspiracy.”
“Or a cult,” Nolan suggested.
“Yeah,” Clayton said. “Maybe it’s some kind of Charlie Manson thing, only electronic.”
“A murder club?” Coffey snorted.
“Come on, Captain,” Nolan pleaded. “We’ve got to start using our imaginations here. I’ve done some research into this Auggie character. I’ve checked out everything he represents. He’s historical, mythic, archetypal. He could have a lot of symbolic value for a bunch of unhappy people looking for a leader or guru or something.”
“A cartoon?” Coffey snapped.
“Why not?” Nolan said. “Have you ever seen this network in action?”
“All we know for sure is that we’ve got a piece of the puzzle,” Clayton said. “Maybe it’s just a little piece, but it’s something. If Stalnaker belongs to a cult, he’ll probably blow the whistle on the whole outfit. Hell, for all we know, he’s the ringleader, and we’ve got things practically sewed up.”
The captain stared at the cup of cold coffee sitting in front of him—the same cup he had extinguished his cigar in just a few moments before. He looked like he was thinking of taking a sip from it.
It would be just like him to do something really gross like that. Just for effect.
“So,” Coffey grumbled. “What do we do next?”
“I guess the next stop’s Omaha,” Clayton said.
“Good idea,” Coffey said. “Grobowski, catch the next plane out. I want you there first thing tomorrow morning.”
“What is this?” Clayton said. “I’m not going, too?”
“No, you’re not,” Coffey said. “Somebody needs to stay here and do some real cop work.”
“But this is just like last time, with Chicago,” Clayton said.