by Paul Bishop
“Ginny?” Pagan got the waitress’ attention. “Can you leave us for a while?”
“No worries,” she said. Her accent was Australian, her smile filled with perfectly white teeth. She made one last adjustment to the bar and then ducked out through a set of swinging doors, which I assumed led to the kitchen.
I looked after her as the doors swung closed behind her.
“Don’t worry,” Pagan said. “We’re alone. Ginny’s a good girl. She’ll use this as an excuse to grab her surfboard.”
I knew Malibu was only a few miles away down a winding canyon road.
Pagan finished his tea and began messing with the milk and tea pot, building a refill. I took a long draught of my coffee and felt the caffeine run through me like electricity.
When he finished pouring, Pagan looked at me. “I’ve been searching for you, Randall, or someone like you, for three years.”
“What does that mean?” I hated myself for the sound of pleading in my voice.
Pagan pointed at the envelope on the table between us. “When you viewed the video what did you see?”
“I saw a tragedy unfolding, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes it was, but you didn’t answer my question. What specifically did you see?”
I swallowed. I knew what he wanted me to say, but I had kept this hidden for so long. This was my secret…My secret!
“It’s safe, Randall. You need to trust me.” Pagan’s voice was gentle and full of warmth.
I wanted to look up at him, but I stubbornly kept my head down – which made me pissed off at myself. I wasn’t in middle school. I was an adult…an LAPD detective for Hell’s sake…
Pagan got up and came around the table and pulled another chair up next to mine. He sat and took one of my hands in both of his. “You’ve never talked to anyone about this, have you?”
It was as if through the connection of his hands, I could feel his thought process racing. The emphasis in his voice changed to amazement. “You think your gift is a curse, don’t you?”
I looked up sharply. “It is a curse!” I could feel something inside me crumbling.
Pagan shook his head and gripped my hand tighter. Tell me what you saw on the video.”
I forced the words out. “Horner lied when he said he did it…”
“You saw the lie?” Pagan was calm, as if he already knew the answer.
“Yes…” I felt tears prick my eyes. I’d lived with this curse for so long.
“You are amazing, Randall!”
It was my turn to shake my head. “You don’t understand…”
“I do, Randall. Of course, I do. Everybody lies and you see them do it every time…parents, teachers, boyfriends, lovers, used car salesmen…you’ve seen them all lie – time and time again. Trust is an alien land to which you’ve been denied a visa.”
I was crying, tears rolling down my face, but I laughed. Pagan’s voice had changed as he delivered that last line, cutting me with his truth while balming me with his understanding. I sniffed and took back my hand from his. Pagan handed me a napkin and I wiped my eyes and gently blew my nose.
I knew I looked a wreck, but there was no judgment in Pagan’s countenance or body language. Part of me suddenly realized I was seeing Pagan’s genius at work up close and personal. He didn’t understand my pain, he felt it. I felt his empathy wash over and unburdened me.
“When did you first know you were different?” Pagan asked softly.
I couldn’t not answer him. “When I saw my dad lie to my mother when I was four. I called him on it and it created havoc – almost split them up. It was bad enough dad being a career Army officer and gone so often. But I was too young to know any of that.”
“Did your parents know you could see lies?”
“No. It scared me, so I kept it hidden.”
“And it has caused you no end of problems in relationships ever since.”
“You have no idea…”
“Actually, I do. I don’t see lies the same way you do, but I always know more about what somebody is saying than is good for any relationship.”
“But how do you know about me?”
“First, tell me how you see lies.”
“When people talk, I see colors.”
“You see auras?”
I shook my head. “No. Streamers connected to words. All pastels, except for lies. Lies are a deep purple.” I was feeling both scared and liberated at the same time.
Pagan nodded. “Do you know what you are?”
“Besides a freak?”
“You’re not a freak. Randall. You’re a synesthetes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Synesthesia means union of senses. It is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. You have a form of synesthesia, known as grapheme or color synesthesia.”
“How do you know this? Is it common? How did you know about me?” My head was spinning and I could hear myself jabbering. I was also flustered because I saw no purple of any hue tinging Pagan’s words.
“Slow down, Randall. Synesthesia is far from common. Color synesthesia is even rarer. As for how I know these things, I’ve spent a lifetime studying lying. I come from a race of people for whom lying is an art form, an acceptable way of life.”
Pagan reached across the table for his tea mug. “Horner’s death is on me. I maneuvered him into confessing. I knew his weaknesses and I used it against him without thinking about the consequences. I’m different from you. I have gifts – enhanced skills – but everything I know and do in an interrogation involves experience, information, awareness, knacks, and trickery – it’s all smoke and mirrors. I understand people. I can reach them on an empathic basis. But after Horner, I knew that to do what I do, I had to have a touchstone…a safety net to make sure I never make the same mistake again. You are that touchstone.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but I still don’t know how you found me.”
“I’ve studied the videos from hundreds of interrogations conducted by LAPD detectives – and those are aside from the thousands of interrogations I’ve watched from departments around the country and around the world. I’ve seen the videos of every interrogation you’ve done since getting to RHD. I watched them over and over because I could sense there was something different about how you responded when suspects talked to you. I finally realized what it was – you weren’t watching the suspect when you talked to them like every other good detective does, you were watching something else…something outside of the suspects. You were watching their words.”
I sipped at my half-forgotten coffee. I could feel something odd…I could feel Pagan feeling me – not tactilely, but emotionally.
“You’re an empath,” I said suddenly. “You say what you do is all smoke and mirrors, but it’s not. You’re an empath.”
Pagan gave a little shrug. “We all have guilty secrets, Randall. I know yours, and now you know mine. I’m not a full blown empath, but I have well over half of the thirty common traits and a good gaggle of the not so common.”
“How does that work?”
Pagan shrugged. “One example would be when somebody is angry. All most people hear are the angry words. I feel what is behind the anger, what the person is truly saying: I am scared, I am frustrated, I am insecure, I feel threatened.”
“You don’t hear those things, you actually feel them?”
“If it is indeed what the angry person is feeling. I can also tap into their rage as a physical experience.”
I was a little nonplussed. That all sounded a little scary. “So what happened with Horner?”
Pagan sighed. “Do you ever get tired of seeing lies and try to hide from your synesthesia?”
“I didn’t know it was called synesthesia, but I know what you’re talking about. Sometimes, I get so tired of all the purple lies coming out of people, I force my
mind to go cross-eyed and run all the colors together. Sometimes, I don’t want to know.”
Pagan reached out and took my hand again. It was as if he was picking up my every emotional vibe. “Some days,” he said, “I get tired of feeling what everybody else feels. I want to feel what I feel. My own negative emotions are the easiest to feel – anger, depression, discouragement. I was holding on to all those feelings of my own when I went in the room with Horner. I thought I didn’t need to feel Horner in order to get him to confess. I thought I’d put him through the paces and he’d roll right over.”
“And he did,” I said.
“Yes, because I manipulated him into it. He lied and I didn’t feel it because I was too burned out from feeling other people’s feelings and too busy feeling my own ball of anger.”
We were silent for a few moments as I processed. Pagan waited, but there was no weight to his waiting. He held my hand as if we were in some kind of Star Trekkie Vulcan mind meld – it was as if I could feel emotions and thoughts going both ways.
“That’s the reason for The Hacienda,” I said with dawning realization.
Pagan’s lips crept into a grin and his eyes sparked. “Got it in one, Randall. I am impressed. The Hacienda is a very positive, creative, environment. I can recharge here. The job surrounds us with nothing but angst and negativity. I had to find a balance. The Hacienda – and what we do here – gives me balance.”
I set the empty coffee mug in my right hand down on the table. “So, what now?”
Pagan released my left hand and stood up. His eyes were still sparkling and his irritating grin grew wider. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter 9
“The best liar is he who makes the
smallest amount of lying go the longest way.”
- Samuel Butler: The Way of All Flesh
“Most of the rooms up here are artist studios with a couple of soundproof music studios and a communal room mixed in.”
Pagan was giving me the tour of The Hacienda’s main building’s second floor. It was bright and airy with explosions of flowers and vines painted on the walls in many different styles.
“I have rooms on the other side of the clock tower. The Parkers have rooms over Tiki Joe’s. And this…” Pagan was acting like a magician revealing the startling end of an illusion as he opened the door to the left of the clock tower and entered a large space with exposed beams, “…is for you, if you want it…”
I felt my breath rush out of me. The space was larger than my apartment. There was a small kitchen area with sparkling appliances, a sitting area with a couch and easy chair on a large rug, a wide screen TV in easy viewing distance, and a futon-style mattress was hung like a hammock from the ceiling beams by a chain at each corner. A small set of steps on one side gave access to the bed, which looked uncannily like a flying carpet. Light cans were suspended dramatically here and there, and through an open door to a partitioned off area there was a bathroom. Wide round windows with views of gently rolling hills let in copious amounts of light.
Pagan put a hand on my shoulder, sensing my inability to speak. “This isn’t just for you, Randall. I need you close. Right now, we are in a honeymoon period of enlightenment. But we both know the darkness will soon descend. It’s the way of the job.”
I turned to face Pagan. “I can’t…” I ducked my head wishing my hair wasn’t in a ponytail so it could fall forward and hide me.
“Of course, you can,” Pagan said. He reached over and raised my chin with his hand. “You don’t have to hide anymore, Randall. You have come home. This is where you belong.”
I moved my chin away. “I have a home.”
“No. You don’t. You have a utility box where you stay. It isn’t a home.”
I could barely manage a grunt. Pagan’s truth pierced me and tore at me in a way the gangster’s bullet which tore the chunk out of my leg never could. I felt overwhelmed, yet I was also aware of Pagan reading and feeling my emotions.
“We have too much work ahead of us, Randall, for you to worry about moving. Don’t even think about it. It’s already in hand. Give me the keys to your apartment and put the rest out of your mind.”
“You’re quite the control freak,” I said. The words came out hasher than I expect, but Pagan appeared to absorb them without impact.
“You have no idea,” Pagan said. “You also have so much to learn.”
My hackles raised. “What do you mean?”
Pagan’s expression was neutral, but there was something shark-like moving beneath the surface. I became aware of the color of his words. The attached streamers waved like pastel ribbons – not a hint of purple.
Pagan was watching. He knew I was looking at his words. It was disconcerting. The streamers had been with me all my life. I had learned to keep them hidden from everybody. Pagan’s knowledge left me feeling raw and exposed.
“Knowing somebody is lying isn’t enough. You have to know what to do with the deceit,” Pagan said. “If you let me, I’ll teach you.”
“And I keep you from making a mistake?”
“From making another mistake,” Pagan said.
“Semantics,” I said.
“Not if you’re Michael Horner.”
I moved my attention from Pagan’s words to his face. There was pain there, but there was also acceptance and patience in the hollows and shadows below his eyes and above the sharp edges of his cheekbones.
“You and I are the same,” Pagan said, his gaze intent, his tone a mesmerizing silken caress. “We may come at the nature of truth from different perspectives, but neither of us can hide from it. Everybody lies. On average, seven times a day. Small lies, white lies, guilty lies, cheating lies, spin doctor lies, political lies, poker lies, industrial sized box store lies, and every one of them claws at us, jars us, disgusts us, and fills us with despair. Every lie, even the ones we speak ourselves, affects us. You and I are truth junkies, we crave its purity. We know it doesn’t exist, but we keep looking for it, expecting it.”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I felt like an awkward teenager, all elbows and knees and acne. Yesterday, I thought my biggest challenge was fighting back from a physical injury. Now, I felt I’d been dumped into an unwanted, yet somehow cathartic mental therapy. Walls of emotion inside me were raging, transmogrifying, changing too fast. I couldn’t keep up.
Pagan’s hands were on my shoulders, supporting me and guiding me down on collapsing legs until we were both sitting cross-legged on the floor.
In my head I saw images of Pagan in the interrogation room completely missing the truth of Michael Horner’s confession. It made my chest ache.
“There is no truth,” I said finally. “Only perceptions of truth.”
Pagan surprised me by laughing. His hands shook my shoulders lightly. His touch wasn’t romantic or sexual. It was accepting, and understanding, and connecting. I knew it was foolish, but I could feel his strength flowing into me. “Exactly,” he said.
There was a part of me wondering how he did it, how empathy flowed out of him, how a man I’d met only yesterday had the ability to bring my world into such an intimate and close focus.
“Society, religion, even science teach us truth is a fixed point from which there is no deviation.” Pagan continued. He lowered his hands from my shoulders to my elbows. “But anyone who believes truth is a constant has never stepped into an interrogation room. Truth as we use it in law enforcement is an abstract. It is battered and banged by limited resources into a recognizable shape easily swallowed by juries to produce an end game fitting a socially acceptable mishmash of plea bargains and negotiations, which we call, for lack of a more precise term, justice.”
“Are you saying the pursuit of truth is hopeless?”
“No. I’m saying it is the highest of all callings. Because of the gifts with which you and I have been cursed, we have the ability and the responsibility to pursue the truth. To go wherever the hunt leads. To get the truth, not confessi
ons flawed by the perception of either the subject or the interrogator.”
I shook my head. “Isn’t that what cops do?”
“You know it isn’t,” Pagan said. “It’s what cops should do, but most don’t have the skills. In the academy we train cops to write reports, to shoot guns, to drive in pursuits, to defend themselves physically, to use tasers and batons, to write tickets, and what the letter of the law says. What we don’t teach them is how to talk to people, how to relate to different cultures, different values, different upbringings, different moral compasses, yet those are the skills which are required for ninety-nine percent of the job.”
Pagan moved his hands into mine. Again there was a part of me that marveled at how I was losing myself in his enthusiasm, his focus, his…humanness.
“There are turning points in all of our lives.” Pagan’s voice had lowered and taken on a slight rasp. “You and I have a chance to make a difference. To fulfill our potential. To become together something greater than the sum of our partnership. It will be the most demanding thing you have ever done. I will push you, and try you, and make you angry, but I will always rely on you. I will always have your back.”
I took a deep breath. I tried a half-smile. “Do you go through this with all your wolves?”
Pagan smiled. “I told you I had been looking for you for a long time, long before I went into the interrogation room with Michael Horner. I need you, Randall.”
“How do you know it’s me you need?”
“Frankly, because you need me as well.”
There was a knock on the open door behind us. We both turned to see an emo, twenty-something, male with long hair dyed green and a wisp of a blonde goatee.
“What’s up, Arlo?” Pagan asked.
“Sorry to bother you,” Arlo said, his voice appeared not to have cracked when he hit puberty. “But you’re probably going to want to see this.” He held out what looked like and official LAPD crime summary report. Each LAPD area prepared one each morning covering the crimes in their jurisdiction from the day before and sent it in via email to the staff at each bureau HQ.
