by Susan Dunlap
We were at the end of the hallway, and I still hadn’t seen the guru’s room. Looking around for a door that could lead to a large comfortable room of the same ilk as Braga’s office, I asked, “Where is Padmasvana’s room?”
Chupa-da looked surprised. “Here.” He indicated the cell on his left. It was a copy of all the others except that it contained no picture of the guru. Instead, next to the sleeping bag was a pile of books.
I bent down. There were several volumes on Buddhism, plus an English-Bhutanese dictionary.
“Padmasvana was studying English so he could speak directly to his followers,” Chupa-da said quickly.
Picking up W. Y. Evans-Wentz’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead, I said, “This is a pretty difficult book to be learning from.”
“For most people, yes; for Padmasvana, no.”
Replacing the book, I glanced through the pile. Underneath the book was a newspaper clipping—“Felcher, Robert V., beloved son of Vernon Felcher and Elizabeth Grace Felcher of Visalia. Memorial services…” It was the obituary of the boy who had overdosed in the ashram.
I had heard about the incident when I had returned from vacation more than a year ago. There had been rumors that the ashram was a way station for Mexican drugs. When Bobby Felcher died, the department had turned the ashram inside out. Every possession of every resident had been checked. A handgun and two switchblades had been found, but no hint of drugs.
“Padmasvana was very distressed,” Chupa-da said.
“I can imagine.”
“No, I do not think so. He was not upset, because the young Penlop moved on to the next level of consciousness. Each of us has his karma. Padmasvana was concerned for the ashram. There was much publicity, in newspapers, on the television. That frightened people. It kept them away from the temple—people who would have been helped.” Apparently my skepticism showed, for Chupa-da hurried on. “Because of his actions, the young Penlop was guilty of denying this opportunity to others. Padma graciously chose to assume and expiate this guilt so the young Penlop would not carry it to his next incarnation.”
I said nothing. Suddenly, I felt very tired and sad. In those few minutes I had seen Padmasvana standing onstage I had been drawn to the man. His eyes, that caring expression, the sense that he was talking just to me, affected me as it had his followers. And I had seen the terror on his face as he clutched at the knife. I wanted more than a holy cover-up. I wanted to find the person who had come up though the trapdoor and coolly waited to stab Padmasvana.
Recalling that the altar was not at the center of the stage—where one would expect to find it—but at one side, directly over the trapdoor, I asked, “Who arranged the position of the altar?”
It took Chupa-da a moment to make the transition. He half smiled. “That is the task of the housemother, Leah deVeau,” he said, a bit too eagerly. “She is here in the ashram. I will take you to her.”
Chapter 4
BUT LEAH DEVEAU was under sedation. No chance of a coherent word for at least twelve hours. I had an idea I knew who she was—the gray-haired, red-robed woman in the front row of the audience who’d had hysterics when Padmasvana died. It was frustrating not to be able to interview her now, but there were other things to attend to.
Even though I had been off duty when the murder happened, this case would be mine. In Berkeley, the beat officer first on the scene is responsible for any crime committed on that beat, be it littering or murder.
There were changes in the wind, however. A homicide squad was being formed and soon they would take charge, officially, of all murder investigations. So this might be my last chance to handle a homicide, and I was determined to make the most of it.
I would get assistance from my fellow beat officers, and there would be patrol officers too new to have beats of their own—like Connie Pereira—assigned to help me, but the responsibility would be mine.
The patrol officers had rounded up the Penlops and begun the tedious process of questioning.
The red-robed boys squatted along the walls of the dining room like boxes waiting for the movers. Most of them had their eyes shut, but even in repose their hard, drawn faces recalled the drugs and violence of their earlier lives. Was that violence gone or merely submerged by the lack of sleep?
I stepped outside a minute and took several deep breaths of the damp November air. The devotees had gone now, and only the squeals from the radios broke the silence.
Sometimes still, the world I worked in seemed unreal. Some of the male officers had dreamed of being cops for years, but not me. I had gone to college, bummed around Europe and met Nat. By the time Nat and I had married, he had been accepted in graduate school at Berkeley, and I had started looking for the perfect job.
The search had dragged on. My family offered money. Nat’s family wrote about his working part-time. Nat began to suggest I was too particular, and I started to wonder if I was capable of finding any job.
At that juncture, the patrol officer’s exam was announced—women and minorities encouraged. I took it without hope. When I passed, it surprised me. It surprised everyone. And when I started the job, kept it and actually found I did it well, the surprise took on a warm glow.
But police work is hard on marriages, even the most stable and traditional, where wives are willing to wait up till shift ends and understand that overtime is part of the job. Nat had his own life at school, his own demanding hours. The strain was too great.
Still, when the break came, it left a gaping hole.
I was glad, now, when cases ran late.
Taking a final breath, I turned back toward the ashram. A cry came from the darkness behind me.
It wasn’t so much a cry as a howl, and it sounded like a baby. I shone my light to the left, across the grass and over the shrubbery. By the wall at the farthest point from both the temple and the ashram was a tepee, an Indian tepee!
Had I not just left the ashram cells, the tepee might have looked strange, but in comparison with those narrow cubicles its ten-foot diameter seemed spacious. As I walked toward it, the cries grew louder.
“Hello,” I said, trying to make my voice heard over the baby’s noise. “Hello!” Then I lifted the tepee’s flap and stared. Inside it looked like a suburban tract-house bedroom—down to the pink-and-white crib and the makeup mirror on the dressing table.
“I’m Officer Smith,” I said to the woman who stood by the crib clutching the baby.
“I don’t give a damn who you are. Go away.” She was in her early twenties, with long sandy hair, a tense set to her mouth and a sequin-trimmed cowboy outfit. It sparkled in the light. The baby was wrapped in a blanket, and all I could see were a few dark hairs.
“There’s been a murder here.”
“Yeah, don’t you think I know? You think it’s been silent tonight? Why do you think this kid’s screaming, huh?”
At that, the baby started up again.
I waited till the cries subsided a little. “Has an officer talked to you?”
“Nah, they just tramped by.”
“Okay.” I took out my pad. “Why don’t you start by telling me who you are?”
She plopped the baby in the crib. “Look, I don’t want to start anything now. It’s after midnight.”
I took a breath. “Like I said, this is a murder investigation. You don’t have a choice of answering or not. The only choice is how difficult you want to make it.”
When she didn’t respond, I softened my voice and said, “It’s after midnight for me, too, you know.”
Still she gave no reply. She glared, pulling her tweezed eyebrows tight over a pair of deep-set brown eyes. Her nose was straight, a bit too long, and her mouth pursed. She might have been attractive—not pretty—had her face not been scrunched up in anger.
“What’s your name?”
“Heather. Heather Lee.”
“And your child’s?”
“Preston Lee. I named him after a jockey. I like horses.” She aimed her glare at my
face, waiting for my reaction. I displayed none.
“And you’re one of Padmasvana’s devotees?”
“A Penlop? Hell, no.”
“Well, what are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“I can see that. Why do you live here?”
“They let me. You can’t pitch a tepee just anywhere, you know. You got all these rules and ordinances and health and safety codes, and—”
“Who let you?”
“Rex.”
“Why?”
“I asked.”
“Heather! Why is Braga allowing you to stay here?”
“I told you.”
I was getting nowhere. But this was a question I could take up with Braga. I glanced around the tepee. The sides looked sturdy, the poles—twelve in all—had been sunk solidly into the yard, and an inner canvas hung from them halfway down. The only light came from a marble oil lamp on the dressing table next to the crib. The table also held a mirror, bottles of makeup, nail polish, eyeliner, rouge—what any college girl might have on a dresser. Beside it was a portable radio, and hanging from the support pole were dresses, skirts, leather slacks—all of them expensive. I wanted to ask about them, but instead I said, “Where were you tonight?”
Her face had softened in my silence, but now the scowl returned. “Here.”
“In the tepee?”
“Yeah.”
“All evening?”
“Yeah, all evening. Where do you think you go with a kid that age?”
“You sure you weren’t at the ceremony?”
“Listen, lady, if I was in there, with him”—she pointed to the sleeping infant “everyone would have known. And they would remember.”
“You could have been there without him.”
“I wasn’t.”
I could check that against the patrol officers’ list of the members of the audience. I decided not to take the interview any further tonight. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said. “I want to talk to you then.”
“Yeah, sure. I’m not going anywhere. The days of folding your tepee and stealing into the night are gone.”
I headed back across the lawn toward the main building. Now the lights were out. I walked to the front. Leaning against the door was Howard, my fellow beat officer.
Seth Howard was his full name, but for him the “Seth” seemed superfluous. To one and all, Howard was Howard. A six-foot-six redhead, he looked like the archetypal Irish cop, right down to the grin. For any other cop, that quasi-humorous expression would have caused problems. But no one pushed Howard too far.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. Our shift had been over for nearly two hours.
“I heard you had a murder on your hands. I just finished a pile of dictation and I thought I’d see how come you got this one, when you’re supposed to be off duty, yet.”
I stared, trying to divine his motivation: professional interest or more?
Howard’s beat covered the same area as mine—a square mile south of the campus inhabited by students and street people, and noted for its petty break-ins and drug traffic ranging from the sale of nickel bags to six-figure cocaine deals. We had handled a lot of drugs—too much. We’d both been glad when the word came down to lay off small-time marijuana. But murder was another thing. We didn’t have many of those—maybe twenty a year in the whole city. And heading a murder investigation could look very good on an officer’s record, particularly an officer who had visions of someday becoming chief. Like Howard. Like me. We had joked about our common ambition, but there was too much at stake for it to be entirely a joke. Beneath that superficial levity, I was keenly aware of our rivalry—he the cop’s cop and me the woman cop in a city that prided itself on advancing minorities.
“I was at the ceremony when the guru was stabbed,” I said.
“What?” Howard’s curly red eyebrows rose. “You turning religious?”
“No. I know virtually nothing about Buddhism. A friend took me. She said it would be a good experience.”
“Well, it will have been if you catch the killer before the Sunday papers go to press. If you let it go longer than that, it could be a very bad experience. There was a batch of reporters here when I arrived.”
I glanced around. The complex was deserted now.
“Pereira gave them a statement and directed them to the hospital,” Howard said. “Then she let the rest of the guys go.”
“Good. Did Braga clear out, too?”
“Him, too. His toupee was wilting.”
“Damn. More questions have come up since I left him.”
“You want to wake him? He only lives a few blocks away.”
I considered the prospect for a moment. Heather’s tepee rights would keep. “No.”
“I’ve still got some work to do at the station,” Howard said, resting one large freckled hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you clear up your dictation and then invite me to your place so you can tell me about this murder that I’m not going to get to investigate? I’ll bring the liquid of your choice.”
I hesitated, then said, “Make it Stolichnaya and you’re on, but it’ll take me a while.”
As he glanced around my studio apartment looking for a place to sit, Howard’s eyes rested momentarily on the right half of the room, which contained only my sleeping bag, a heap of books and a lamp resting on the floor. He settled on a wooden chair by the table. “Your husband got the furniture, huh?”
“I got the car. Neither was worth the fight. But the liquor cabinet’s in good shape. What can I get you?”
He proffered a paper bag. “I brought your vodka, but you can give me bourbon if you have it.”
“Bourbon it is.”
Suddenly, it seemed disturbing having Howard here in my apartment, my sanctuary after the house with Nat had become a place I dreaded. Here, there were no surprises, no footsteps on the path foretelling the arrival of Nat and hours of bitter words or silences so tense every creak of the floorboards seemed to reverberate. No man had been here before.
Howard took the glass, positioned one ankle on his knee and leaned back. He’d changed out of uniform to a red plaid shirt that clashed with his hair. But it fit better than the regulation tan shirt.
“About your case …?” he asked.
“It’s an odd one. I mean, for me. I’ve seen bodies before, but I’ve never seen someone stabbed. … And that look of horror when he knew he was going to die…” My hand tightened on my glass.
The report that the lab had rushed to me had cleared up little. There were no prints save Padmasvana’s, the remnants of his vain attempt to pull the knife from his chest. The knife itself was a cheap decorative item, but according to the report, the blade was five inches long, and it had been sharpened recently. The handle was the same length, gilded aluminum, and on it had been scratched a symbol that looked like a tick-tack-toe box with the extensions on the left and the top missing.
“Anyway,” I went on, “there are plenty of people who could have done it: Braga; Chupa-da, the guru’s assistant; Heather Lee; one of the Penlops. Any of them could have climbed up through that trapdoor and stabbed Padmasvana.”
“Or anyone else on the grounds,” Howard added. “It’s lucky there’s a high wall around the complex. At least that limits the suspects to people already there.”
“Right. According to Pereira’s report, the two Penlop boys at the main entrance swore no one left. The lab report didn’t turn up anything to suggest anyone climbed the wall.”
“It’s not a wall you’d want to tackle; I had a look. It’s ten feet high, smooth on the sides and jagged on the top.”
I took another swallow of my drink. It was smooth and strong. “So who gains by Padmasvana’s death?”
Howard sipped at his own drink, then set the glass down, his lantern chin jutting out as he considered the question. “What have you come up with so far?”
“First I thought of Braga, but there’s no way he gains. He admits the gate was
six hundred. Three ceremonies a week. Nearly two thousand. Not a fortune, but not bad. But once the guru’s gone, so is business.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Huh?”
He held out his glass. “More bourbon will unlock the answer.”
I got the bottle and set it on the table.
“The death of a leader,” Howard said as he poured, “can be a real plus for a movement. Take Christianity, for example. Handled properly, with good PR, Braga could get a lot of mileage out of the guru’s demise.”
I swallowed the rest of my drink; it was an angle that hadn’t occurred to me. “You’re probably right; but Padmasvana would be a hard person to do without. He was very charismatic.”
“All the better for the organization.” Howard leaned back. “They’ve still got pictures. They’ve got memories. If he attracted people as much as you say—and I believe you, Jill; you’re not one to get carried away—then they’ve got a lot of good memories working for them, memories that will only get better with time.”
“Sure. Okay, Braga stays suspect. But what about the others?”
“The woman in the tepee?”
“Who knows? I don’t even know who she is or why she’s there. She doesn’t show any interest in the activities. And I can’t imagine Braga being touched by charity.”
“Maybe she’s got something going with him. That baby has to belong to someone.”
“It’s kind of an awful thought. Braga’s so sleazy.”
“There’s a lid for every pot.”
When I looked up, Howard grinned. “It’s an old Howard saying,” he explained, “handed down from Howard to Howard. An heirloom.”
“No comment.”
“Okay,” he said. “What about the guru’s assistant? Is he going to get promoted?”
“I don’t know if the succession moves that way or if a whole new leader has to be found.”
“Or maybe there will just be disciples.”
“Right. But there’s certainly a chance Chupa-da could benefit. Farfetched, perhaps, but not to be ruled out.” I sat staring out the window. The moon was full. I could make out the shadow of the hedge in back of the yard. “I don’t seem to be getting any further.”