Bridge over Icy Water

by Jeff Isaacson

  13

  It was a new month. It was December. You know what that meant.

  Yeah, there was Christmas and all that, but that wasn’t what I was looking forward to.

  A new month meant a new girl’s night out. It was Alyssa’s turn to choose. That usually meant something a little wild, or at least more interesting than our usual fare.

  Where would it be this time? Something like the Thunder from Down Under? A world beer drinking tour where we had to walk around downtown, go into the next bar, and at least one of us had to order a beer that was from a country that we hadn’t sampled from yet?

  No, she insisted that Cirque du ‘Sota was so great that we needed to go there again!

  She had managed to score four free tickets for the show at the Northrup Auditorium at the University of Minnesota. It sounded like the free tickets were the result of her usual shenanigans.

  I must admit that I died a little inside when I found out that we were going to see the human hamsters again. Sure it was a new venue, but big deal.

  At least I didn’t have to buy a ticket.

  Plus, Alyssa offered to give me a ride there and back.

  I was looking forward to catching up with her on the way. And we were all meeting at the Loring Pasta Bar for dinner and drinks beforehand.

  At least that would be fun.

  Alyssa was stuck at work when the fated day arrived. I had wondered why Alyssa was going to leave work at the University of Minnesota to drive downtown and pick me up in the teeth of rush hour traffic. It would’ve been much more logical to have Hui pick me up if anyone was going to pick me up.

  Alyssa knew that I could easily just catch a bus or the green line. So it would be no big deal if she got stuck at work.

  And it was no big deal. I just wanted to have some time alone with my best friend in the world.

  I’d have no one to talk to without these extraordinary women.

  It’s amazing how little has changed in our friendships. Especially since we have such a huge amount of variability in our professional and family (or no family) life. We’ve only become closer since college.

  And every girls’ night out was a reminder of that. Hui, Maya, and I just ordered drinks until Alyssa finally made it, essentially from across the street. I was ravenously hungry by the time we ordered pasta.

  When it arrived I ate too much.

  So I sat through another dreadful Cirque du ‘Sota performance with a tummy ache. It was no different. The only thing that had changed was the venue. They balanced on a giant ball. They ran up a wall and dismounted with a flip.

  I yawned.

  I started to daydream. I started to think about Faith Nguyen.

  I used that time constructively. I tried to map out a precise timeline for everything that led up to her death.

  No doubt Reginald Capp had met Faith by the bathrooms in Club Canoodle, given her the death line, and stated that he would pick her up at the corner. So, on the advice of Reggie White, Faith had fled from David Sanborn into the aura of Reginald Capp.

  Faith Nguyen left Club Canoodle around eight. The night was still young. Presumably, she walked to the corner of Fifth and Marquette and got into a too black SUV that was full of softballs, camping gear, and sundry other sports implements.

  Reginald Capp and Faith Nguyen were together for hours presumably. Because Faith Nguyen disappears from the middle of the evening until about three in the morning.

  In that time, she ended up with the date rape drug and copious amounts of alcohol in her system. How?

  How do you force someone to drink?

  Maybe Faith was hypnotized from the beginning. Maybe Reginald Capp makes the statement about death because it’s a sign. Maybe it’s a sign of suggestibility if you’re willing to hop into a car with some random dude you don’t know because he fascinated you by approaching you with a statement of death.

  Maybe Reginald Capp used hypnosis almost right away on Faith. In fact, maybe he had been just about to hypnotize me until whoever was on the other end of the line on that phone call talked him out of it.

  It made sense. There was a power about Reginald Capp that was hard to put into words. He had a certain weird charm.

  He could be a world class hypnotist.

  And if he was, then we should all be worried. Maybe these neo-Nazis had stumbled onto something. Maybe they knew how to manipulate the minds of people. Even if it only worked on suggestible people, (or people rendered suggestible by alcohol) it was a frightening prospect. How could the suggestible fight back?

  I realized that if that was the case I had to solve the mystery of Faith Nguyen. Unfortunately, I was at another dead end.

  And the cops were probably at the same dead end, likely frustrated by a score of lying Nazis.

  Meanwhile, possible Nazi hypnotic ability could have been spreading everywhere. Perhaps there were dozens like Reginald Capp just lying in wait. Just waiting for orders.

  A roar of applause jarred me from my reverie. I looked down from our balcony seats, first at the large mauve drapery, and then at the performers out to take bows.

  Hui, Alyssa, and Maya were applauding as frantically as everyone else. And I’m too Minnesotan to not applaud at something, even if I’m not interested in it. It’s just not nice. I may not have appreciated what they did out there. Really I may not have even appreciated the effort in the sense that said effort could’ve been directed toward something nobler, like figuring out a better energy storage solution for solar power or something. But the Cirque du ‘Sota performers were human beings who had tried, and that had to count for something.

  Everyone gets a trophy in Minnesota.

  The girls of the East Wing of Territorial Hall filed out slowly. Alyssa reminded me that she’d give me a ride home. We said our goodbyes to Hui and Maya.

  “Just wait up by the curb there,” Alyssa commanded. “I need to go through my building to get my car, and I can’t let anybody in who doesn’t work there after ten o’ clock.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  I waited out by the curb.

  I panicked!

  It was him! It was Reginald Capp!

  Was he following me? Did he somehow know that I’d be here? Was he back to finish what he had started with me?

  It didn’t seem that way.

  He didn’t seem to even see me as he cut across a yard holding a crusty half inch of snow. He walked behind me toward the Northrup Auditorium, toward that big, brick building with its long, symmetrical rows of windows. He walked right up to a side door, and he paced in front of it.

  A few snowflakes started to flutter down. The night sky was just one big obsidian cloud without even a sliver of a moon.

  I looked nervously back at Reginald Capp by that side door.

  All of a sudden the door opened! One of the Cirque du “Sota performers stepped out, still in her flimsy, gossamer costume in a bone chilling night.

  I was certain that she was Asian-American when I had seen her from afar. Now I realized that she was likely Asian and African-American. She was prettier close up too. She was a beautifully ultra-fit woman.

  But the most obvious thing about her that I had failed to notice onstage was her imperious mien. Her whole bearing and deportment was that of a queen. And I could feel that same power that existed in Reginald Capp in her. Except that she was much more powerful.

  The proof of her incredible power happened when Reginald Capp collapsed to his knees the moment that he saw her.

  She deigned to listen to whatever he had to say. Then she motioned for him to stand up like a queen bidding her court jester to dance for her amusement.

  Reginald rose and the two of them started walking along the edge of the Northrup Auditorium toward the rear of the building.

  I knew that I had to see what was happening. I left my post.

  I followed at a considerable distance. The two of them crunched over the crusty snow. I walked just behind them, parallel on the sidewalk.

&n
bsp; Fortunately, they walked into an open space between a dock door and another brick University of Minnesota building with what looked like a turret. And I saw them in a dark, almost alley right behind the Northrup Auditorium next to a sloping cement ramp with a handrail under the diffuse floodlight mounted about three stories above.

  I could see that Reginald was jabbering on and on. Eventually, she held out a solitary finger and placed it over his lips.

  Then they passionately kissed. Reginald went back for one more kiss.

  But she put that majestic finger over his lips again. She removed the other arm from what had been an embrace. And she pushed back.

  Even though she had pushed back with the force of a feather, Reginald rocked back as if he had just taken a punch to the face.

  He never recovered.

  He slumped over, crestfallen. His back was bent like an old time serf under the weight of the wheat harvest.

  He turned away from me. He shuffled off with the walk of a man defeated.

  I watched him until he disappeared.

  The performer turned toward me! I startled!

  I didn’t have to. She didn’t know me. She never looked directly at me anyway. She shivered and made her way back to that side door into the auditorium as quickly as she could.

  I shivered a little too. It was cold out there. But I didn’t know if the chill was from her and Reginald, the biting December air, or both.

  I heard someone honking their horn.

  It was Alyssa. She was parked illegally where I was supposed to be waiting for her.

  I ran over there.

  “What the hell were you doing?” Alyssa demanded.

  “I thought I saw someone that I knew,” I decided.

  Alyssa shook her head. The headlights bounced off of the edges of fat snowflakes and carved into the shapeless black beyond.

  Alyssa and I chatted the whole way home, but the whole time I was thinking about how I had finally figured it all out.

  I just knew that Reginald Capp and that woman from Cirque du ‘Sota were in cahoots. Reginald had picked up Faith. Reginald had got her drinking. Then Reginald had slipped her the date rape drug. Then, and this is why murders like Faith’s aren’t happening all over the country, that woman who had fell Reginald Capp with her mere presence hypnotized the young and very suggestible Faith Nguyen.

  There was good news in that. The neo-Nazis lacked hypnotism technology? Ability? Only this powerful woman could’ve convinced Faith to take that last lurch over the Third Avenue Bridge.

  That also meant that she was the mastermind. Reginald Capp was the underling.

  Reginald wasn’t very good at being a Nazi. This mixed race performer had completely mastered him.

  I just knew it was true.

  Again I considered going to the police. Again I realized how little the hard facts, the data supported what I intuitively knew to be true. I had seen Reginald Capp on his knees. I had seen him kiss a mixed race performer once. I had seen him go back in for a second kiss only to be rebuffed by a shushing finger.

  There was no, “Hey that was a great murder, wasn’t it?”

  Or, “Hey, you know what we should do again? Murder.”

  Or, “I can really get them drunk, drugged up, and suggestible, but boy howdy can you hypnotize.”

  No. There was none of that.

  I had no hard proof. None.

  My dilemma had changed but little. I sat in that car, half listening to Alyssa and sometimes talking without really paying attention to what I was saying, and though I had seen much, and inferred much more, I was completely without proof. And I had no hope of getting that proof.

  “Angie,” Alyssa snapped.

  I woke up and concentrated completely on her.

  “Angie, give me an answer that makes sense,” Alyssa demanded. “I asked you if you could babysit Toby (her dog) two weeks from Saturday for two days, and you told me that you like butterscotch.”

  “Of course I can babysit Toby,” I felt my face turning a little red. “Just bring him by before you leave.”

  By then we were at my building. We said goodbye and parted with a hug. I walked up to the front door and raced up to my unit.

  I fired up my laptop. I had to know.

  Lakita Howard. That was the name of the Cirque du ‘Sota performer who had been outside with Reginald Capp. That was the name of the hypnotist.

  At least I had made that much progress.

  I thought that might be the end of the line. So I began to furiously write what would become this book. I devoted almost every moment to it. I had an hour or two of meetings on weekdays, I ran on the treadmill in Milan or the Forbidden City, and I wrote.

  One afternoon, I was disturbed by the alert that I had set for news about Faith Nguyen. At first I was upset. I figured that it was only some modest update to the story or maybe even something about a different Faith Nguyen, but I was wrong.

  It was a big, hairy deal.

  And I was wrong about at least one thing. A man had just been arrested, charged, and confessed to the murder of Faith Nguyen. But he was not Reginald Capp or someone using Reginald Capp as a stage name. The man who had murdered Faith Nguyen was named Scott Olson.

  Scott Olson had introduced himself to Faith Nguyen as Reginald Capp. And in his own way, Scott Olson kind of was Reginald Capp. I don’t know if you recall that anti-hate group website and their writing about Reginald Capp. If you do, you’ll remember that the Reginald Capps (there were three with that stage name) basically just delivered speeches that were written by a then unknown neo-Nazi speechwriter. We knew who it was after the arrest. Because Scott Olson was that elusive Nazi speechwriter.

  Scott Olson was also, of course, the man that I had hooked up with. Scott Olson was the Norwegian super soldier. Scott Olson was the man with the bag of soccer balls, pup tent, hiking gear, etc. in the back of his too black SUV.

  Scott Olson confessed because the evidence against him was overwhelming and damning. Some “brave citizen” had come forward with a cornucopia of evidence against Scott. (Ahem, Lakita Howard.) The police had an IV bag that had once held almost pure alcohol with Scott’s fingerprints all over it. If you’ll remember, Faith had an IV mark, but didn’t test positive for any intravenous drugs. I think that we had all assumed that Faith had such a high BAC at the time of her death because she had drank copious amounts of alcohol. Instead, she had been force fed alcohol intravenously. Scott had restrained her with ropes and forced the alcohol that Faith wouldn’t drink into her veins. The police also had the ropes that had been used to tie up Faith. One strand of rope had a small amount of blood from Faith on it and Scott’s fingerprints all over it. The police also had two remaining tablets of the same date rape cocktail that was in Faith’s system provided by this star witness. They had Faith’s purse which had never been found. Again, it was full of Scott Olson’s prints. They had obtained a search warrant for his car and found a small amount of Faith’s blood in there. (To think, I might have sat right on it.)

  It was an open and shut case. Except for one thing. I knew what the police didn’t know. I knew that Scott had a boss. He had a boss who had just turned him in. And I had to talk to him.

  Scott was at the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center awaiting trial. I wrote another letter to the jail. This one was very different. It went as follows:

  “Saw some interesting stuff between you and Lakita. Please let me know when I can visit.”

  That was the letter. It worked.

  .I wrote and wrote while I waited. But eventually the letter came. I knew it would.

  I went to visit Scott, knowing that this could be my only chance to nail down what happened. This might be my only chance to reach a conclusion to the story I was writing.

  I walked over that industrial tile, past the white block walls, past the handsy security, and up to the partition of glass flanked by a solitary phone the same way that I had when I talked to one of the corrupt owners of Club Canoodle in this sam
e jail. I sat down. I waited.

  Scott’s eyes darted like cockroaches as he walked toward me. Then he saw me, recognized me, and a wide grin spread over his face.

  He sat down on his side of the glass partition. He grabbed his telephone. I grabbed mine.

  “You just can’t leave well enough alone,” he chuckled. “Don’t you get it that it was just that night? You really are a stupid (racial slur).”

  “Why aren’t you saying anything about her?” I demanded.

  His mouth dropped open. His eyes grew wide.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about, (racial slur),” Scott replied.

  “Lakita,” I began. “She owns you.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Scott’s eyes darted again.

  “She set you up,” I insisted.

  Scott shrugged his shoulders.

  “You’re just going to sit there and take it?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Look here, (racial slur), you’ve obviously never been in love. Doesn’t surprise me. You’re not even very good in bed,” Scott sniped.

  “Love?” I laughed.

  Scott had the strangest expression come over his face. It was something like humility, something like peace, and something like…satisfaction.

  It made me wonder. Had I ever REALLY been in love? I mean was there ever a guy that I had dated who I would gladly forgive for betraying me with a kiss and then turning me into the police with enough evidence to put me in jail for life? I couldn’t imagine such a love. No, I had never been in love

  But Scott had been in that kind of love. Scott was still in that kind of love. It was his one thing to hold onto

  “I know what Lakita did,” I stated.

  Scott’s eyes darted again.

  “Hypnotism,” I said.

  Scott squinted for a moment.

  “Are you fucking serious?” he laughed uproariously. “You really are a dumb (racial slur). I’m done with this conversation. You got nothing. And you really believe in that? Hypnotism is some serious bullshit. Run along and play detective now, you (racial slur). Run along before they put you in the nuthouse.”

  Scott hung up his phone. He stood up. He was still laughing. I can still see him laughing as he walked up to the guard by the secure door and waited to be let back into the jail, into his cell. I watched all of this clutching the phone on my side of the glass partition. I hung it up. I felt like crying.