Midnight Grinding (29 page)

“I never thought we’d see one that beat the Rollins case,” he said, starting up the car. “But I guess I was wrong.”

***

The next morning Lowery and Taylor came in to find a message waiting for them. It was from a Doctor James Arendale. All the doctor said was that his call concerned Phillip Bomar. He had left his office address and requested that they see him as soon as possible.

When they arrived at Arendale’s downtown office, they were surprised to find the words “clinical psychologist” beneath his name on the door. They had just assumed that he was a physician of the body, rather than one of the mind.

Arendale was a tall, lean man with graying brown hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. He shook their hands, then motioned to two chairs located before his desk. “Please, have a seat.”

When they each had one, Doctor Arendale paused, then began to speak. “I am surrendering the restrictions of patient confidentiality on the request of Phillip Bomar’s parents. They felt it might assist you in your investigation if I were to clarify exactly who and what poor Phillip was.”

“So Phillip Bomar was a patient of yours?” asked Lowery.

“Yes,” for nearly twenty-two of his twenty-six years.”

“Was he mentally unstable?” asked Taylor.

“In a sense, yes. But in another sense…well, this is sort of difficult to explain. If I don’t phrase this very carefully, it might actually sound crazy and impossible to you.”

“In light of what we saw last night,” said Lowery, “I don’t think we’d consider anything crazy and impossible.”

The psychologist was silent for a moment, privately choosing his words. “Phillip suffered from a very rare mental/physical condition. He was a stigmachondriac.”

“A
what?”
asked Taylor. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that term before.”

“That’s because it is one of my own making,” said Arendale with a half-smile. He regarded the two homicide detectives opposite him. “Do you know what the phenomenon of
stigmata
is?”

“Sure,” said Lowery. “That’s when someone’s body plays tricks on them due to some devout belief, mostly of a religious nature. Like someone bleeding from the hands and feet in imitation of Christ’s crucifixion.”

“Correct,” agreed Arendale. “But there are some cases of non-religious stigmata as well. People exhibiting an inflamed handprint in remembrance of a childhood beating, or women exhibiting all the physical characteristics of pregnancy, simply because they believe it to be so.”

“And Phillip Bomar was like that?”

“To the extreme. Since the age of four, Phillip exhibited numerous episodes of stigmata. His mind and body were always at a constant war with one another. He could watch TV, see a child being beaten on a show, then dream about the incident and wake up with identical bruises. Once he had a nightmare of falling off a cliff and woke up screaming with a broken leg. He had to have a surgical pin implanted in his knee for that episode.”

“His parents were suspected of child abuse at first, but then I was called in. I kept him under clinical observation for a period of time. It was horrifying and, yes, I admit, professionally intriguing, to watch burns and abrasions appear on a body that had been assaulted only in the mind.”

“Was that the extent of Phillip’s phenomena?” asked Lowery. “Bruises and broken bones?”

“No,” said Arendale. “He could just as easily be tricked into thinking that he was suffering an illness, even a fatal one. Once a team of doctors even believed that he was suffering from advanced leukemia. But once I convinced Phillip otherwise, the symptoms of the cancer disappeared completely. And then there was the matter of the gunshot.”

“Gunshot?”

The doctor explained. “When he was a teenager, he and several of his friends went to see a movie, one of the Dirty Harry films I believe it was. When they left the theater and were walking down the sidewalk, a passing car backfired. The noise frightened Phillip. His mind kicked in, convincing him that a gun had been fired. He fell to the ground, bleeding from a large hole in his shoulder. When he was wheeled into surgery, they sutured a wound the exact size that a .44 magnum round would make. You see, his mind was convinced that he had been shot, and so his body reacted to the suggestion. He nearly died from that one.”

Lieutenant Lowery sat there quietly for a moment. “So what you’re saying is that Phillip was probably killed by his own mind and body?”

“Yes,” said Arendale. “If, in fact, it
was
Phillip Bomar’s remains you found.”

Taylor nodded grimly. “It was. We got a positive ID from the coroner this morning. The fingerprints on the surviving hand matched Bomar’s prints precisely.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Arendale. He sank back in his leather chair. “Tell me, exactly how did Phillip die? I haven’t been able to find out so far.”

Lowery didn’t think it would do any harm to tell him. “He was totally incinerated by some unknown catalyst. Do you believe it could have been self-generated?”

“Yes, I’m certain that it could have.”

“Tell me this,” he continued. “Could it have been suicide?”

Dr. Arendale shook his head. “No, that is out of the question. Phillip had problems, but he had a great zest and love for living. That was the main reason he survived such a chain of severe occurrences. Also, he had done much to insulate himself against experiencing his stigmatic tendencies.”

“What do you mean ‘insulate’ himself?” asked Taylor.

“Did you notice anything strange when you were in his apartment last night? Phillip did not own a television set. He purposely limited his exposure to TV programs, as well as newscasts. The violence he saw on television was potentially dangerous to him. He stopped going to movie theaters for the same reason. And he purified his musical tastes as well. You may have noticed that he listened only to classical music. Music with absolutely
no
lyrics. If he had listened to rock or rap music, the lyrics alone could have actually killed him.”

“Damn,” said Taylor beneath his breath. “Then the poor kid was like a walking time bomb. But only to himself.”

“I couldn’t have said it any better,” Arendale told him. “But Phillip took great pains to isolate himself from such influences. He was a computer genius and he worked at home, processing data for various corporations. He made quite a comfortable living at it, too. Incidentally, his only interests were listening to classical music and playing non-confrontational computer games. He didn’t even read books, afraid of what the printed word might conjure inside his psyche.”

“Did he have friends? A girlfriend perhaps?”

“No. Unfortunately, Phillip was something of a recluse. He had no social life whatsoever. He was afraid of loving another human being. He actually feared that rejection might cause something within him that could not be mended with steel pins or stitches.”

“So what you’re saying, doctor, is that Phillip’s death was due to no fault of his own.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Lieutenant.” The psychologist stared at Lowery and his partner somberly. “I believe in my heart that Phillip was murdered. Murdered by someone who knew precisely what he was. And, with that knowledge, used his own condition against him. Yes, someone murdered him, just as sure as if they’d shot him with a gun or stabbed him with a knife.”

***

On their way back to the office, the two discussed their meeting with James Arendale.

“Was he just being melodramatic?” asked Taylor. “Or was he on the money?”

“I think he’s on the right track,” said Lowery. “I’m actually beginning to believe that someone turned Phillip Bomar against himself and caused him to spontaneously combust.”

“Maybe Blakely has something for us in Forensics,” said Taylor.

He did. When they walked into the lab, Tom Blakely looked excited, the way he always did when he had discovered some particularly damning piece of evidence. “Just the guys I’ve been waiting for,” he said with a big grin on his face.

“Looks like you found something,” said Lowery.

“Several things in fact,” said Blakely. “From the crime scene, we’ve gathered that Bomar was sitting in front of his computer, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I was curious as to exactly
what
he was doing at the moment of his death,” said the forensics expert. “So I took the liberty of bringing his computer system to the lab. And look what I found in the CD-ROM drive after I pried the drawer loose.”

He handed them a CD-ROM in a protective evidence bag. Taylor read the title on the silver disk:
You Are There
…
Famous Disasters!

“So exactly what is it?”

“Well, as you know, I’m something of a computer buff myself,” said Blakely. “This is an interactive CD-ROM in which the participant experiences actual historical disasters, both natural and man-made.”

Lowery looked at Taylor, thinking the same thing. “Interesting. So what sort of disasters are on this disk?”

“Tornados, earthquakes, mostly stuff like that,” he told them. “But then there are others, like the crash of the Hindenburg and the atomic blast at Hiroshima.”

“Sounds like either one of them could have done the trick,” said Taylor.

“No, I believe it was another program entirely that killed Mr. Bomar,” said Blakely. He walked toward a computer in an adjoining office. “Step this way, gentlemen.”

“Talk about melodramatic,” said Lowery beneath his breath.

They watched as Blakely inserted the CD-ROM into the drive. “I’ve already programmed this into the system, so it’s ready to go.” A menu appeared on the monitor screen, displaying the choices available. Blakely used the mouse to click on the one he desired, then took them through the program. They found themselves following a line of several people dressed in pale blue coveralls with NASA patches sewn to the upper sleeves.”

“I think I know where this is leading,” said Taylor in amazement.

“In this particular program, you’re playing the part of a particular person who was supposed to be the first civilian teacher in space,” said Blakely. He followed the group with the aid of his mouse. Soon they had entered a chamber whose walls and roof were covered with electronic consoles. DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED? asked a box that appeared on the screen. Blakely clicked on YES and found himself strapped into a seat with the others similarly seated around him.

Lowery and Taylor waited breathlessly as the countdown came, followed by the lift-off. A clock in the corner of the screen counted off the seconds until the expected disaster took place. Then it happened. A burst of bright light flashed at the far end of the chamber, followed by a roaring rush of pure fire as the inhabitants were fully engulfed.

“Okay, we’ve seen enough,” said Ken Lowery. He felt as though someone had just sucker-punched him in the stomach.

“It was the explosion of the space shuttle
Challenger,”
said Taylor. “That was what incinerated Phillip Bomar?”

“I’d stake my reputation on it,” said the forensics expert.

“Well, that tells us
how,”
said Lowery. “That just leaves
who
and
why.
”

Blakely looked pleased with himself. “I believe I’ve figured that out for you, too.”

“You’re really earning your paycheck on this one, Tom,” said the police lieutenant. “What have you got?”

He handed them a five-page printout. “I found this on Bomar’s hard drive. It seems that he made a record of people he communicated with through the Internet on a regular basis. Just hold onto that and I’ll show you something else.”

They waited while he brought out a brown padded mailing envelope. “I found this in Bomar’s wastebasket. I believe the killer sent him the CD-ROM in this envelope.”

Taylor read the return address. ‘Rom Exchange.’ What’s that?”

“It’s a computer software exchange network,” said Blakely. “I’ve used it before. You can rent CD-ROM games from this company in Seattle. They have their own website on the net.”

“So does this murderer work for this Rom Exchange?”

“No. I think they forged a mailing label and sent Bomar this CD-ROM on the chance that he might use it.” Again, that look of smug satisfaction. “I peeled the mailing label away and found another one underneath. The name and address had been scratched out, but it didn’t take much work to lift the impressions from the envelope underneath.”

Lowery looked at the name and address that had been lifted from the mailing envelope, then looked at the Internet record. It was there, several dozen times in the past month.

The last entry was four days ago.

Susan Graham, 577 Oceanview Drive, Jacksonville, Florida.

“But what I want to know is how come Bomar even put the disk in his system and checked it out?” asked Taylor. “He must’ve known how dangerous it could be.”