Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (34 page)

In a matter of minutes, Marianne was browsing through a selection of Roman wall paintings, looking for an idea to set the appropriate tone for her client.

She stopped and smiled, contemplating the enormity of the system she was using. The computers controlling the images were on the other side of the country. The original design collections were located in several different states.

Nolan was right. I can do this kind of research from absolutely anywhere. Things really are going to work out for us.

*

Nolan now had at least two dozen books spread out on the table in front of him, all opened in various places, all offering varied and sometimes conflicting information on the nature of the trickster archetype. One thing was abundantly clear. All cultures had their tricksters.

Just like Auggie, these figures were pranksters, loafers, and rebels. But they were something more besides. They were divinities—quite literally gods. They were not merely to be mocked and laughed at (although those were appropriate reactions), they were also to be worshipped as the most powerful of spirits.

He read about mischievous Spiders, Rabbits, and Tortoises of African tribes, the Raven of the Inuits of the American Northwest, the Norse Loki, the Polynesian Maui, the Navajo Coyote, and the Kiowa Saynday. Many of those tricksters performed highly exalted cosmic functions. Many were generous, Promethean fire givers. Some were protectors of human beings. And several were named as the creator of the earth and all its people. Coyote and Saynday, in particular, were as renowned for their benevolence and power as for their stupidity and foolishness.

One scholar even went so far as to suggest that the ancient Hebrew Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian God or Jehovah, was possibly an imp and a trickster in his original incarnation—capricious, foolish, and unpredictable, and anything but the wise, kind, gentlemanly God of modern religion.

Even the tarot deck bore out these ideas. In the numbering of the trump cards, the Fool was a zero. This undoubtedly represented the Fool’s I.Q., but it was also a number of great power. After all, the discovery of the number zero had liberated mathematics, allowing humankind to contemplate the idea if not the fact of infinity. And the shape of a zero was a circle—an infinite thing without a beginning or end.

Nolan closed his eyes and his brain reeled.

So in the most primitive parts of our minds, we still conceive creation itself to be a wild, chaotic joke, the drunken dream of a baggy-pantsed, red-nosed clown god. And we humans—in all our civilized glory—are his vain and petulant White Clowns, sometimes worshipping Auguste, but more often railing against him.

And Nolan remembered a particular book of his youth—the wonder and awe he had felt while reading Melville’s
Moby-Dick.
Melville had portrayed the whiteness of his whale in much the same way as the tarot portrayed the zero of its Fool—as an awful, mute, unintelligible nothing that nevertheless contained the unutterable truth of absolutely everything.

Somehow, Nolan was sure that all this had to do with Auggie.

Nolan heard himself whisper words that, over all these years, he had not forgotten, could never forget …

“Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?”

*

That night, Elfie had barely gotten seated in Ernie’s Bar when Auggie appeared. He came to her table immediately and launched into an inquiry without any other greeting.

awgy>wher hav u ben?

l fy>i had 2 go out of town.

awgy>i loked 4 u evry nit. it wuzn’t vere nis uv u 2 jst disapeeer lik that.

l fy> i’m sorree awgy. it was a problem that cam up suddenly.

awgy>nex tim ples let me no. u cud jus lev a messaj.

l fy>i wil, i promis.

Apparently satisfied, Auggie sat down at the table and ordered drinks for both of them. Then he turned his attention to Elfie. Marianne relaxed and allowed the conversation to flow naturally.

After only a few moments of small talk, Auggie said, “I was hoping you’d be here tonight. I don’t want you to miss my performance.”

“What are you performing?”

“Another masterpiece. Another of my original dramas of life and death.”

Marianne froze. She saw again the haunting red blotch across the garlands and the sun. First in pixels and then in blood, the line of a drip following a curved edge. It seemed to her that whole minutes passed before Elfie could reply.

“You’re doing another snuff?”

Apparently her long hesitation was only in her own mind, because Auggie did not comment on it. “Yes. You will watch it, won’t you? I’m very proud of this one. It will happen in just a few hours, at one o’clock.”

Another snuff! Then someone is about to be killed. No, no, of course— someone
has been
killed.

“Then that means you’ve done it already,” Elfie said.

“Done it?”

Marianne jerked her mind back from thoughts of the other double killing, the cartoon of Renee and the real death.
Back off, Elfie. You won’t get anywhere if you accuse him of murder

“You’ve already made the animation?” Elfie asked.

“Of course. Everything has been prepared. But I wouldn’t say I had
done
it yet. You know it isn’t real until it’s presented. That’s when it happens—right before your eyes.”

“You didn’t tell me you were planning another one.”

“You weren’t here.”

Marianne forced herself to concentrate. She had to find out what Auggie had done.

“What’s this snuff about?” Elfie asked.

“You’ll have to wait and see.”

“Where does it take place? Who’s killed?”

“No, no, little Elfie. I’m not going to spoil it for you. You’ll have to wait, just like everyone else.”

Marianne geared herself up to have Elfie really prod the clown with questions. But at that moment, Auggie disappeared from the table.

Guess he didn’t want to talk about it.

She logged out of the bar and out of Insomnimania.

*

Nolan was sound asleep when the telephone rang. He picked it up groggily, and at first couldn’t understand what Marianne was trying to tell him.

“Are you listening? Auggie is putting on another snuff.”

“What? When?”

“Tonight. At one o’clock. He just told me about it.”

“Told you about it? You’ve been talking to him again?”

“Well, he was there in the bar. He spoke to me. I couldn’t just ignore him.”

“You know that’s dangerous. We talked about the passwords. You don’t want to attract that character’s attention to you.”

“Nolan, this is important. He just told me he’s putting on another snuff. You know what that means.”

“You think someone has already been killed?”

“That’s the way it was with Judson and Renee.”

“What did he say? What kind of person gets killed? In what kind of place?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I couldn’t get anything out of him.”

“I’d have been notified if something like that had happened—I mean another murder among the L.A. elite.”

“Maybe it hasn’t been discovered yet. You were in Renee’s condo when that snuff was played.”

They were silent for a moment. Then Marianne said, “Maybe it wasn’t even in Los Angeles.”

“Shit,” said Nolan. “I’d better phone the division.”

*

Well before one o’clock, Marianne logged Elfie back into Insomnimania. Nolan also had the network up on the little computer at his home, and Clayton watched over Kim Pak’s shoulder at division headquarters. Baldwin Maisie and Ned Pritchard had several kinds of recording software running and had put Insomnimania up on a large monitor.

*

Hugo, the Snuff Room’s master of ceremonies, finished his elaborate introduction of Auggie’s upcoming snuff. Then the familiar paintbrush splashed solemn shades across the screen—gray, black, and dark blue—creating a street scene punctuated by one weak yellow light. Organ music was playing, but the music was far from solemn. It was a jaunty, dance-like Bach fugue in a major key.

The figure of a jogger trotted across the stage with exaggerated motions, then turned toward an arched entranceway. The jogger opened one of a pair of double doors and danced through the opening.

Then the scene changed. Light streamed upon the jogger’s face from somewhere ahead of him. He walked forward a few steps, made a flourishing curtsey, then crossed himself. The point of view swung around again and the jogger could be seen from the side, kneeling in a pew.

*

In a church? Has Auggie killed someone in a church?
The idea seemed particularly appalling to Marianne.

*

As the figure knelt, different colored lights played across him. The camera angle turned again, and the jogger could be seen standing up and stepping into a booth.

“A confessional?” Clayton asked.

“That’s what it looks like to me,” Kim replied. “Anybody been killed in a Catholic church lately?”

“I sure haven’t heard anything about it.”

*

The jogger could clearly be seen inside his side of the booth, but the door to the priest’s side remained closed. With pantomime gestures timed to the music, the jogger poured out his tortured soul to the priest. But instead of offering him comfort, the unseen priest reached out with his hand and slapped the jogger sharply on the forehead.

The jogger looked surprised for a moment, but then continued his elaborate gestures of contrition. The priest’s hand appeared again, this time wielding a pair of pliers. The priest twisted the jogger’s nose vigorously.

After another round of confession, the priest’s hand battered the poor jogger’s head with a baseball bat. Despite the stars whirling around his head, the jogger continued his confession.

Then, as the fugue approached its climax, the priest’s hand appeared with a gun. A little flag announcing “BANG” popped out of the gun barrel. Little Xs crossed the jogger’s eyes, and he slumped dead in his seat.

The door to the priest’s side of the confessional opened, revealing Auggie himself decked out in a priest’s suit. As the fugue came to a close, Auggie winked at the audience, danced over to the dead jogger, and hastily wrapped him up in a red striped sheet. The jogger’s X’d eyes could be seen between two stripes.

*

“Striped plastic?” Clayton wondered aloud. “A shower curtain or something like that?”

*

Then Auggie slung the wrapped body across his shoulder like a limp barber pole and turned toward the audience.

“Th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!” Auggie exclaimed.

And Auggie carried the corpse out of the scene.

*

Kim looked up at Clayton. “It was just like any computer game,” he said. “Hard to take it seriously. You think somebody was actually killed like that?”

“I’d put money on it,” Clayton answered.

*

Nolan closed his eyes and shook his head.

“A church,” he said. “It had to be a church.”

*

Marianne felt her flesh crawl with horror, as though she—rather than Elfie or Babylonia—had been the lover of the clown who had just committed murder before her eyes.

*

“He sure carries these things off in grand style,” Pritchard said with reluctant admiration. But as Pritchard turned in his swivel chair toward Maisie, he saw that his partner’s face had gone completely white.

“Hey, what’s the matter, fella?” Pritchard asked.

“I know who the victim was,” Maisie said.

“Then you’re thinking he really did somebody in?”

“Yeah.”

“Who was it, then?”

“Remember that time two or three days ago, when Auggie had that big argument with that monk character, what’s-his-name?”

“You mean Friar John?” Pritchard asked.

“Yeah. I think the friar got it.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Auggie always argues with his victims. And this snuff had a religious setting. Auggie argues with a friar, somebody gets killed in a church.” Then Maisie held his head in his hands. “Christ,” he said miserably. “We could have called him. We could have warned him.”

“Warned him of what?” Pritchard asked. “That some crazy clown disguised as a holy man was gonna whack him?”

“Well, it would have been something!” Maisie exclaimed.

“Baldy, it’s just one of your hunches.”

“Yeah. And are my hunches ever wrong?”

Pritchard was silent for a moment.

“Jesus,” he said.

*

Nolan got a phone call from Baldwin Maisie early Thursday morning.

“You guys watched the Auggie snuff last night, right?” Maisie asked, sounding very edgy.

“Yeah, we saw it.”

“Pritch and I think we might have ID’d the victim.”

“The
victim?”

“Not one hundred percent positively. But high probability.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“A guy in Omaha.”

“One of the users on our list was from Omaha.”

“Yeah, but the victim isn’t the same one. He
is
an Insomnimania member, though. Or was. You gotta understand, we don’t even know if this guy is really dead—we just have reason to think it might be him.”

Maisie sounded extremely upset.

“Okay, Maisie, calm down,” Nolan said. “Just give me what you have.”

“I’ll send you a file to look at. It’s part of the stuff we’ve been recording right off our own monitor. In fact, I’ll send you a copy of the snuff, too. You can compare them yourself and see what you think.”

“Why send it over? We can come and pick it up.”

“Stay where you are. My computer will send it right to your computer.”

Nolan was embarrassed at his momentary lapse into a pre-cyberworld mentality. “I’d better let you talk to Kim Pak.”

By the time the Insomnimania files came through the electronic mail, Nolan, Clayton, and Coffey were all hovering behind Kim’s desk. First they saw a typed message—a name and address in Omaha. Then Kim extracted the two animation files and ran them. In the first, Auggie was in Ernie’s Bar, arguing with a monk. The second file was the snuff they had watched the night before—Auggie dressed as a priest, shooting the jogger, wrapping up the body in red-striped plastic, and carrying it off.

“At least there’s a religious connection,” Nolan said. “And we do know that Auggie quarrels with his victims. Maisie might be on to something here.”

Coffey growled. “Guess I’ll call Omaha. This is gonna take some explaining, though.”

Coffey disappeared into his office. After a few minutes he came out with a sour expression on his face.

“I talked to the Omaha police chief,” he said to Nolan. “Now I’ve got a Lieutenant Michael Kelsey, homicide division, on the line. It’s gonna be up to you to convince Kelsey that we’re not a bunch of total loony tunes out here. If you get past Kelsey, have Pak talk to someone there about sending the files out.”

Nolan got on the phone and found himself talking to Lieutenant Michael Kelsey of Omaha.

“So what’s going on out there in La-La land?” inquired Kelsey in a heavy Midwestern drawl. “Are you guys getting nasty karmic vibes from Omaha or some other such Shirley MacLaine New Age channeling kind of stuff?”

Nolan sighed. He explained as simply as he could that they had some information regarding Omaha members of a computer network—information that suggested a murder might have taken place in Omaha.