Omphalos

by Gerald Lynch

  “I don’t think it —”

  “Again, frame-by-frame this time.”

  And there is DeLint’s hand just gesturing really at Cynthia’s elbow — then like lightning coming up past the side of her head to brush back his own lank hair; DeLint follows her through the opening; and the padded door slams after Dr. Randome.

  “You’re right. But so what? Another old-fashioned gentleman.”

  All Kevin would risk was, “Again, frame-by-frame. Freeze on my say-so.”

  In a few of the final frames Kevin was sure Cynthia swoons slightly before disappearing; or it’s more of the slightest tremor through her body than a swoon.

  “Again. Check me on this too, Brigid. Does Cynthia brace herself ever so little against the jamb just as DeLint touches her and she’s stepping through?”

  “Uh…there, sure, I guess so. She was helping herself over the room divider’s high doorsill. So? How tall was your wife? Should I run it again?”

  “No. DeLint touched her, then she braced. You confirm?”

  “Yes. Eugene DeLint gently guided her through the doorway by the elbow, she needed to steady herself a touch. What of it?”

  “But you just said she touched the jamb to support herself as she stepped over the sill. He touched her just before she was actually stepping out. Why did she have to brace herself? No one else had trouble. Cynthia was short but not that short.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t follow, Kevin. DeLint somehow upset her, you’re saying? He said something? I’m running it again. I’m missing something.”

  “Please, run again, super-slow. And you’ve identified the door as the sort that’s inserted in a room divider. The Dome must have been sectioned at times with something like old-fashioned gym dividers. Neither I nor mighty MYCROFT knew that, partner. Good work.”

  “I hated gym class. I was always patronized there too.” But she was blushing with pleasure.

  As the vid ran like torture, Kevin eased into the memory of a sideshow hypnotist he’d once seen at a carnival, a middle-aged man, emaciated, unshaven, wearing grey dress pants as greasy as himself, and two-tone white-and-brown shoes. When he’d turned the plump female volunteer away from the audience he tapped her forehead and passed his hand down her face much as one closes the eyes of the dead. She’d then done a hilarious imitation of a chicken that morphed into old Mick Jagger dancing to a blasting “19th Nervous Breakdown.” Ewan Randome in the basement bathroom with him, reaching for ghost webbing on his forehead. Randome had only grazed him and he’d felt dizzy. Ewan had secretly been attempting to relax him. But Randome could have been forced to teach DeLint the technique. As Ewan had said, DeLint was a sorcerer’s apprentice.

  Ertelle was staring at a blue screen. “Why is Dr. Randome the last to leave DeLint’s Button?”

  Kevin’s raised eyebrows already showed that he was impressed. “Again, very good observation, Sergeant Ertelle. Dr. Randome was Mother DeLint’s tool, and she’d had him teach DeLint — the Widower — hypnosis techniques, suggestion, voodoo. And used Ewan to clean up the messes her Eugene made.” He did a quavering growl: “Always tidy the Dome after Eugene…uses it, Ewan, and don’t forget to secure the hatch when you leave.”

  Ertelle smile-frowned. “So you’re confident as ever this boob DeLint was your notorious Widower?”

  “I am. DeLint’s boobishness was part of his cover. A real psychopath, if mainly Mother’s creation. Just back up and look at those eyes when he laughs.”

  “Look at his eyes? That’s your evidence? To me, the real creepy characters are McNicol and this Anna Kynder, and Mother DeLint herself, or her ghost. And whatever you say, Dr. Randome looks way creepier than DeLint. Guys like Randome have always scared the pants off me.”

  “Keep your pants on, Sergeant Ertelle. Seriously, Brigid, don’t be deceived by appearances — that’s always key. I have plenty of suppositional evidence. As the Widower, DeLint used the hypnosis techniques taught him by Dr. Ewan Randome. I’m not saying that Randome knew DeLint was the Widower, of course not. Ewan, like Frank, like yourself, could have found himself in a position of ignorance and then incredible conflict. But if I find out that Frank or Ewan did know about DeLint the Widower, or even suspected him, then they will pay!”

  “If you don’t mean within the bounds of the law, Detective Beldon, I’ll pretend I never heard that.”

  But Kevin was the one not hearing. “Before she knew what she was getting us all into, Kelly called in a favour and asked DeLint to help Bill out of some new scrape; it must have been serious criminal activity to require Omphalos help. Then she got DeLint to get Dr. Randome to try to help Cynthia through the Widower time, like she later got Ewan to help…me.”

  “I’m sorry, Kevin; slow me again, but I don’t follow. Or is this more evidence of withholding evidence from your partner?… Kevin?”

  Struggling Kevin heard but didn’t speak till he had control. “It was something towards the end of McNicol’s manuscript, about my late wife and Kelly having meetings with DeLint and asking for his help. For the life of me, though, I have no idea what Frank and Kelly and Cynthia could have been doing at Omphalos on the day this vid was made — the very day that we were denied the search warrant for Omphalos.”

  Ertelle rechecked the date. “Yep, August eighteenth, last year, the very day.”

  Kevin was still not listening. “Back up and take the best shot of the room’s divider, freeze on it… Good. Tight where the two halves of the divider meet, high magnification. More. Good. Now scan top to bottom at full spectrum; I want atoms of dandruff.”

  “That will take some time.” But she’d already signed, and the computer chortled away.

  TIME TO COMPLETE: 5 MINS. 27 SECS.

  “May I walk around?”

  “No.”

  “Aye-aye…partner.”

  He was unimpressed.

  The wait was nerve-wracking, then less so, then so drawn-out it was almost meditative, restful.

  Ertelle spoke calmly as the list scrolled: “There you have it, boss, ranked bottom-to-top and giving quantity and integrity: dust, pollen — pollen? — insect parts, skin flakes, the usual suspects, all desiccated as mummies — wait. Will you look at that, a big old analogue-style cam. Hey — secret surveillance! Most likely the recorder of this spooky show.”

  “Located where?”

  “Right at the top of the divider, disguised as a black bolt fixing the black rubber divider.”

  “Can you bring it closer?”

  “DeLint must have secretly been making duplicate records of everything.”

  “You think? I think the vid we’re watching is DeLint’s only recording. Dr. Randome suspects that the power-plant guy, that Jake Shercock, has been spying on everybody in Omphalos for years. I mistakenly assumed Ewan had succumbed to cryptovidaphobia. Wrong again, Detective Beldon. Anything else?”

  “Not much.” Ertelle spoke distractedly: “Or just enough photons coming through the divider crack for MYCROFT to re-imagine what’s immediately on the other side, but insufficient data even to speculate on what and where that other room actually is. But this business about the maintenance guy and Randome: you have been holding out on me again, Kevin, seriously.”

  “I just remembered, cross my heart. What’s MYCROFT say is immediately on the other side of the divider?”

  “Surprise-surprise: stacks of actual vid-tapes in those antique Bakelite cassettes and those old-style DVDs, the monster coins, packed a meter deep up against the divider, thousands of ’em! Must be an old storage room.”

  “Run HY —”

  “Wait, Mighty MYCROFT speaks further, or is willing to risk his rep with a spec, fifty-four-percent accuracy: beyond the immediate crush of ancient vid coins, more dunes of coins, it looks, more recent versions. Somebody had a surveillance fetish, that’s for sure. DeLint of course, given his idiotic pre
ening for the camera…or maybe your maintenance sure-cock man?”

  “Run HYPERSCAN on all the results so far, and this time particularly on the whole of the black rubber divider, not just the line of meeting.”

  “The whole thing? But we’ll be here till Christmas, Kevin! Shouldn’t we be talking to Anna Kynder, like, yesterday? Because she’s either an accomplice or her life’s in danger. To hell with Frank’s order to wait for him. DeLint’s murderer probably has no further need of Kynder too.”

  “I agree that Kynder’s an accomplice, since McNicol all but named her before offing himself. But not to worry, partner, we’ll get to her; she’s going nowhere without our being alerted.”

  Brigid puckered and signed the complex command by playing fingers on the knuckles of her left fist. MYCROFT commenced its painstaking, chortling work. After minutes it presented a funereal scroll of meaningless findings, thousands of items.

  “I’m gonna scream. May I stretch now?”

  “Stay nearby…please, Brigid. But you know, we too easily forget just how amazing it is, the work MYCROFT does for us. It’s moving through virtual space at the virtual speed of light, and we’re impatient of the time? Or forget speed — this analysis simply could not even have been contemplated back in the day.”

  THANK YOU, KEVIN. MAY I CALL YOU KEVIN? THE NUMBER ONE COMPLAINT OF OMPHALOS WORKERS — OF ALL WORKERS — IS NOT BEING APPRECIATED.

  Kevin shook his head, moistened a Panters in his mouth, and sparked the small cigar.

  Ertelle, still seated, covered the right side of her face with a blinkering hand. “You and MYCROFT, your own buddy vid. But whatever you say, oh apostate Luddite.” Then she did as she’d been doing whenever he lit up: lightly touched the sides of the monitor to stand and, bowing her head over its top, performed her critical cough-cough.

  He didn’t smile. He leaned in where she’d sat and signed at the holographic pause key; he thumbed back; signed Resume. With his smoke-stained left forefinger he accompanied the slowly scrolling item that had caught his attention, signed Pause. He called her back to the chair and held the cigar out at the end of his right arm.

  “What’s this?”

  “Item number 381. It’s organic. Let’s have a closer look.”

  The monitor displayed only a threadlike object, white and barely discernible against the speckled black of the magnified joiners that filled the screen.

  Ertelle said, “Some kind of fibre.”

  “Do the photo-molecular.”

  “Hmm: it’s a human hair.”

  “Source.”

  “DNA Scanbank?”

  He didn’t reply.

  Ertelle rested chin on breastbone as MYCROFT executed yet another complex function. Her breathing betrayed that she wasn’t relaxing.

  Kevin stared at the monitor, showed nothing, feared everything.

  Looking up, Ertelle made the complex placating observation more quickly even than MYCROFT’s super-learner algorithm: “No big deal, we already knew she was in the room.”

  “Give me orientation. Is the hair coming from or going into the room on the other side of that divider?”

  “Too deteriorated for an absolute, but seventy-eight percent coming from the other side.”

  He gripped the back of the chair: “Brigid, will you help me break into the Dome?”

  He was standing to her right, and she knew he was just holding on. “Of course. Only, like, how?”

  “I won’t lie to you, partner. My wife committed suicide about a month after that tape was made. Or what looked like suicide, as with all the Widower’s victims. I must know what she was doing in the Dome, on that day, only two days before leaving for Santa Barbara. And Frank. And Kelly. If there are answers to be had, material evidence, they’re waiting in the Dome, and on the other side of that divider. DeLint would not have had time, obviously, to clean up, cover up.”

  “But can’t you just ask Kelly what they were doing there? Or Frank?”

  “Yes, and I will, but not just yet. There’s too much at stake for us to be headed off by anybody, Frank and Kelly included.”

  “What about Anna Kynder?”

  “I’ve had someone watching her, and Frank has the man’s name. But we’ll be breaking the law by breaking into the Dome, Sergeant Ertelle. We can do it only from DeLint’s office. We’ll use some diversion on the guards by the elevator and hope for the best with the SWISS. Last chance, Brigid: call Frank and tell him that I said I couldn’t work with you.”

  “No.”

  “It may well cost you your career.”

  “Mike makes enough money teaching. Private security pays way more than the city anyway. Or I’ll join the new moms movement and stay home. Even if we have to adopt. Lots of options.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  “But what about those SWISS guards? I don’t like your hope for the best.”

  “We’ll figure something. Okay?… Okay, now go use your womanly wiles to learn what security’s up to, if Frank’s changed their orders or anything. Then wait for me at the cots…please, Brigid. If the guards are still on high alert, we could both use a rest for what’s ahead. What I’m going to do here is strictly private. I promise I’ll never keep anything relevant to the case from you again.”

  He absently lit another cigar, fairly chain-smoking now, and didn’t hold it away from her.

  She cough-coughed, again to no effect, and walked away without a word.

  He twigged and called after her: “Hey, it is you MYCROFT’s been imitating.” But she didn’t hear, and he didn’t look when the door closed behind her.

  Kevin had only one sad command left for MYCROFT, and he pecked it out using the virtual keys: Determine the original site of item 381. But in answer to each formulation he kept getting only the name CYNTHIA BELDON, each time like a heavier blow, and he wouldn’t command aloud or try ESPERHAND. Then he phrased the command correctly — body site — and the answer came trumpeting its reliability:

  PUBIS 97%.

  He knew he was going to throw up, so spent time with his head in a metal wastepaper can and his mouth open like a silent scream. Nothing came but black coffee, then dry heaves and dripping sweat. It was worse than his recurrent nightmare of being pursued in a tapering tunnel under a mountain. It was having to welcome into his life a whole new nightmare.

  He’d been more exhausted only twice before, at the “end” of the Widower, and after Cynthia’s cremation.

  By the time Ertelle snuck back in and quietly stretched out on her cot, he was lying on the other, turned away, pretending to sleep. Neither thought of sleeping, then both were snoring and deep in dreamlessness.

  Chapter 18

  “And what, may humble chief inquire, have most senior and respected detective inspector and most promising rookie cop been up to?”

  Frank was doing his Charlie Chan, which he’d not done in a decade. Frank was a bad actor.

  “We’re exhausted, humble chief,” Kevin said, swinging his feet to the floor and sitting up. “Been hard at it all night… Christ, is it really Tuesday already?”

  Frank quizzed Ertelle, who had taken her time sitting up, and now avoided his gaze.

  Frank held up a forefinger and squinted. “Ah-so!”

  “Funny,” Ertelle said to her long narrow feet, “that sounds like what Kevin’s always calling you.”

  Frank laughed too loudly, then worked overtime. “What mean hard at it all night?”

  “Yep,” said Kevin, “like a couple of rutting wildebeests, eh, Brigid?”

  Frank dropped the act, or that part of it. “It’s the glue that binds mixed-gender partners, not to say generations.” He headed to the windows and stared out. “I must assign more mixed teams.”

  Ertelle looked angrily at Frank’s back. “Not with Big Ot… I cannot believe I slept this long!”

&nbs
p; Frank placed his fingertips on the windowsill, didn’t appear to lean, yet they whitened round the first knuckles. “Hand over the missing McNicol evidence, Kevin. I’m disappointed in you.”

  Kevin stood and waited for Frank to turn around. It was as if Ertelle wasn’t not there. Kevin said, “There’s nothing in it, Frank. The rambling rant of a self-important fool. All about DeLint’s rise to power, well-known Omphalos history, but mostly about McNicol himself. So irrelevant I forgot it back at my place.”

  “And you never lock your door!”

  Ertelle’s brow went up.

  Frank continued: “For Christ’s sake, Kevin! Irrelevant? McNicol’s our prime! He’s the murderer!” Frank waited but got only Kevin’s gaze. “Do you know what I had to do to keep you from being arrested? Both of you! After he saw MYCROFT’s preliminary report on the scene at McNicol’s — the murder weapon, the missing evidence, the missing Detective Kevin Beldon! — the Crown prosecutor went ballistic! He immediately talked to the justice minister! He was taking the whole force off the case and handing it to the Mounties! Do you have any idea what that would do to m…to us? Or to hell with us! What about your young partner’s career?”

  Brigid whispered liltingly, “Ah-so.”

  Kevin upturned his wrists to be cuffed. “The missing evidence was all my doing, Brigid was with you.”

  Frank was checked. “What now?”

  Ertelle moved between them. “Anna Kynder, that’s what, and high time.”

  Frank was in controlled-boil mood. “Let’s go then; she’s just an elevator ride away. MYCROFT makes her chief accessory, maybe even accomplice. By the way, though neither of my great detectives asked: the scan of the machete shows DeLint’s blood, McNicol’s prints, and pollen from a Christmas cactus found only in Anna Kynder’s office. There’ll be more to come when the bot-boys finish their work, but that’ll likely be overkill.”

  Kevin said, “You’ve been keeping an eye on Kynder like I asked?”

  Frank looked uneasy, spoke more meekly: “I thought you said you had someone on it, some Sam-I-Am guy?”