“Something for everyone to keep in mind.”
“Wasn’t all he left behind. Clothes. Books. LPs. Moped. Little bugger left his life behind. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Clean slate an’ all. His friends don’t know shite. Or his tutor. The university’s washing its hands. Cocked things up royal this time, Collie did.” Bertie sounded almost pleased.
“So based on what you’re saying, DCI Garfield’s point is valid. Collie not only abandoned his old life deliberately, he’s now trying very hard to make sure no one finds or follows him into his new one.”
“Looks that way.”
I stared at the lined yellow page before me. Still blank, except for a big question mark I must have drawn unconsciously. I circled it, over and over, pressing so hard that my Space Pen tore right through the paper.
“Then why the hell did someone put his license in my mailbox?”
“Yeah, well, that’s the big question, innit?”
He let the moment hang, the perfect move for an interrogator, fishing for a confession. His suspicion was misplaced, but understandable. I’d have done the same if our positions were reversed.
I was innocent, but for the second time this morning I felt guilty. My respect grew for the interview techniques of British detectives, on the Scotland Yard payroll and off.
Muted mumbles, as if he’d covered the phone.
“Hizzoner wants a word,” Bertie said.
“Wait. Bertie?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you scan a current photograph of Collie, and also the postcard, front and back, and e-mail them to me?”
Maybe the handwriting on my envelope would turn out to be a match with Colin’s, although I doubted it. Number one, it made no sense. Number two, block print is notoriously hard to compare, not to mention analyze.
“Yeah, sure. Anything else?”
There was, but for a moment I couldn’t bring it to the forefront of my sleep-deprived mind. Photo . . . postcard . . . My eye fell on the driver’s license.
“Does he have any tattoos or identifying scars? Anything specific for the missing-person’s sites?”
“Besides the scar on his left wrist? Cry for help, that. More of a scratch than a gouge. Don’t know about anything else. I’ll ask around.”
We said cordial enough good-byes, and he passed me over.
Scar on his left wrist, I wrote.
“Ten? I understand you’re up to speed.” Lord Purdham-Coote’s voice cracked with exhaustion. “DCI Garfield says he’ll call you again soon.”
“That’s good.”
“They’re quite certain Collie’s in Los Angeles. That he arrived safely, and he did not leave under duress. I’ve persuaded the Metropolitan Police to keep DCI Garfield assigned to the case for a few more days, but that’s as far as they’ll go. They’ve changed the priority grade from high to low, simply extraordinary, but there it is, which means almost no further allocation of resources. I was hoping for more, but . . .”
“I understand.”
“I don’t, but so be it. So you see, it’s down to you, Ten. I’ve wired the money. You should have it in your account by tomorrow.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Winnie and I are prepared to fly over there, if you think that might help. We can bring Bertie as well. Many hands, and so forth.”
“That’s not necessary.” That was all I needed—a trio of Brits to keep tabs on in addition to my Tibetan tribe.
But there was more. I chose my next words with care. “Sir, I must warn you, if and when I do locate Colin, the end result might not be to your liking. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Colin’s not a child anymore. There’s a big difference between ‘missing’ and ‘not wanting to be found.’ If he’s committed himself to a cause, there’s a good chance he won’t want to leave his new situation right away. And maybe not for a long time. Are you prepared for that?”
Lord Purdham-Coote’s breath was ragged.
“Just find my son,” he said, and hung up.
CHAPTER 26
I roused my computer and checked my e-mail. I hadn’t fully decided where Bertie fell along the spectrum between “highly competent” and “grossly incompetent.” His response to my request would serve as a simple but invaluable test.
As with so many things, I owed this insight to Lama Sonam. Years ago, I’d poured out my struggle to understand the behavior of my fellow human beings. So much of the time I felt like they were from Planet Earth and I was from Planet Ten. Their motives baffled me and their choices confused me. Who were they, really? Could I trust them? How could I know for sure? “Don’t overcomplicate things, Tenzing,” Lama Sonam used to say. “Look at their actions. What people do is who they are. And who they are is who you’re with.”
Ping. The e-mail subject was “Collie photo and postcard.”
Bertie had come through.
My landline rang.
So had DCI Garfield.
“Hello?”
“Detective Norbu?”
“Yes, this is Ten.”
“You heard about the postcard.”
“Yes.”
DCI Garfield sighed. “We’re in a bit of a quandary over here. Now that the subject of our investigation has been in touch, technically this no longer qualifies as a high-risk case.”
“They’re sure the card is from Colin?”
“Yes. Mother and father both confirmed the handwriting. He wrote it, all right.”
“Maybe under duress?”
“Maybe, but highly unlikely. In conjunction with everything else, we’re taking it at face value.”
“How about the rest of his group—did you . . .”
“There were four others, just as you said. All from the UK, all young adults, mostly early twenties, like him, although Colin was the only son of a peer. Two females, two males. No red flags, none is on any of our watch lists. In fact, no one on the plane or in the cockpit set off any alarms, officially or otherwise.”
“Did you find out why they were coming here?”
“Not exactly. We looked into his companions’ backgrounds and made contact with a couple of baffled parents, an indifferent older brother, and one jilted sweetheart, but that’s it.”
“Not much to go on.”
“We did discover all five purchased one-way tickets. I don’t think they’re planning on coming back any time soon.”
Lost souls, I thought. Leaving mystified friends and heartbroken parents in their wake, wondering where they’d gone wrong.
DCI Garfield’s thoughts had followed a similar path.
“It’s sad, that. But not the end of the world. Chasing after some ersatz guru may be misguided, but it isn’t dangerous. It’s not ISIL we’re talking about here.”
I remembered the shiver of threat at the airport, and I wondered. But I kept that to myself. An attack of goose bumps doesn’t qualify as proof of anything more extreme than an active imagination.
I scanned my mental files to see if there was anything else I needed to ask. And found the obvious.
“Did you happen to find out anything about their leader?”
“Hang on, I’ve got it in a file here somewhere,” Garfield said. As I waited, my chest fluttered. Anxiety? Excitement? The outcome was up to me, and what I did with my breath. After two deep inhales and exhales, tingling anticipation enlivened my entire body.
I used the rest of the wait to open Bertie’s e-mail and click on the attachments.
The first scan was a photo of a smiling, fresh-faced Collie—much like the picture of him and his friend on Facebook. In fact, looking more closely, I was almost certain it was the same picture, only cropped. The extra hand dangling over Colin’s right shoulder sported a gold ring on the middle finger. If you looked closely, you could see the amber cat’s eye.
I opened the second attachment—three scans making up one PDF. I glanced at the first: a postcard—a color
photograph of the Hollywood sign. This version included matching palm trees and, for some reason, a fluttering American flag. They used to sell a hundred different varieties of this iconic image in postcard stands all over Los Angeles. I had sent one to Yeshe and Lobsang soon after I landed here, just about 15 years ago. But postcards were dated, soon to be obsolete. Nowadays people snapped selfies with the lettered sign arched over their shoulders and posted the results online.
“I found the file,” DCI Garfield said. “Let’s see what we’ve got . . . okay. The leader’s a female. Mid- to late thirties, give or take. Darkish complexion, maybe Indian, or even a Paki? Can’t tell from the CCTV photo. We caught her leaving some kind of musical gathering in Cambridge, along with our boy Colin.”
Female guru. Indian-ish, I wrote down.
The last page of the PDF was a scan of the back of the postcard. Colin had handwritten the message in his almost illegible scrawl. As I feared, there was no way to compare the handwriting to my envelope’s blocky anonymous print. I could barely decipher the actual words. Luckily I already knew the gist. I picked out fine, happiest I’ve ever been, and please don’t as I scanned the slanted cursive, mostly listening to DCI Garfield.
“Where in Cambridge?” I asked.
“Central Cambridge. Lovers Walk, just back of Humberstone Road. Some kind of warehouse that rents out space.”
“Did you . . .”
“Yes. Paid in cash, and the contact information was a fake address and a burner phone.”
“Too bad.”
“What else, let’s see, we did a little digging and discovered she just started touring recently. Still small potatoes in terms of followers, though to be fair they all start out that way, don’t they? She’s only been active a year or so. Here’s her name, though I’m sure it’s not her given name. Ready? Em, Ay, Aitch, Ay, Em, You, Dee, Arrr, Ay.”
As I jotted down the letters, my eyes landed on three words, just above Collie’s dashed signature . . .
Maha Mudra, I wrote.
“Maha Mudra,” Garfield said. “Ever heard of her?”
Jai Maha Mudra, I read.
I stared at the words.
“Yes. I have.” My head felt hollowed, from the inside out.
“Not much else to go on here,” Garfield continued. His voice grew faint, as if the handset was suddenly stuffed full of felt. But the felt was inside my brain. “Black hair. Got one of those red dealies on her forehead. She’s a looker, I’ll give her that.”
Looker, I wrote. Bindi.
Events of the past few days clustered around the stem of my brain like metal filings, though I still didn’t know who or what constituted the magnet. But the pieces were there: the flier outside Kim’s father’s apartment in San Diego—beautiful woman with long black hair, a red bindi, and the words Jai Maha Mudra. A beautiful woman with long black hair and a red bindi inside Ganden Gyatso, cornering Lola, using the child to send me a message. A Vyrus motorcycle, following, then passing me on the freeway, its rider of medium build and physically compact, with a long black braid streaming down his back.
Her back.
And there was something else, I was sure of it, but once again, I couldn’t access the source.
“You still there, Ten?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Just trying to put a few things together. You don’t happen to have a current location for this Maha Mudra, do you?”
“No. Not over here, anyway. We can’t figure out when or even if she’s spent much time in London, but she definitely wasn’t born and/or raised in the UK. She seems to be nomadic. And she’s careful with her digital footprint—doesn’t even have a website. Well, that’s about it from our side. I’ll send you the CCTV image, if you like.”
“Yes, that would be helpful.”
“As I’m sure Lord Purdham-Coote told you, we’re filing this under harmless for the time being. We did manage to keep the press off Purdham-Coote’s back, so there’s that.” DCI Garfield sighed. “The boy’s just following his bliss—isn’t that what they call it? He’s not the first to drop out of university, and he won’t be the last. So his Lordship’s out nine thousand quid—it’s a bloody shame, but it isn’t a crime.”
“No, I guess not,” I said.
“Anything changes, we’ll let you know. I’ll ask you to please do the same, if you would. All things considered, you’re a much better bet for establishing contact with Colin, as I told Lord Purdham-Coote. And Detective? You figure out the connection between you and that young man, I’d love to know what it is.”
“Of course.”
“Right then. I’ll be off.”
The connection was already there, although hard to explain. It originated in my near past, and continued to haunt me. Irena, Sasha’s grandmother, had worn a robe identical to Colin’s when she’d arrived at Bill’s doorstep with Mila. Weeks later she’d put a bullet through her brain, but not before pointing the gun at me and conveying a message, her eyes deranged with fanaticism.
He says to tell you. He’s coming.
A robe and a fanatic, they were my links to Colin Purdham-Coote the Third. If he was following the same spiritual leader as Irena had, he was on a treacherous path indeed, and I feared we were both pawns in the unfinished game of an unknown adversary. I didn’t know how yet, but I could feel the truth of it, deep in the marrow of my soul. Collie and I weren’t just linked, we were shackled.
He says to tell you. He’s coming.
And now, a second message, from another messenger: It’s time.
Dawn was close by, layers of darkness peeling off the night sky almost imperceptibly. I sat for some time, staring at the downloaded image of Colin’s face. He beamed back at me from the computer monitor, his eyes fervent with promise. “I have the answer! Come join me,” he seemed to say.
Where? Join you where? But stare as I did, nothing stirred, much less floated to the surface. My brain, like his smile, remained fixed and frozen.
CHAPTER 27
I parked the Mustang in the Leonards’ driveway, walked around to the back. Sure enough, a steep set of flagstone steps led to a small stucco outbuilding. Eric’s office must have been part of the remodel. Trellises thick with jasmine vines lined both sides, their leafy stems bursting with tiny star-shaped flowers. I headed up. A hummingbird darted off, its throat a patch of scarlet. I pinched off a white bloom and held it to my nose. The sweetness barely registered.
I reached a small deck at the top of the stone risers. I was short of breath and dizzy, but not from the climb.
The office door consisted of vertical slats of worn timber in faded shades of blue, green, red, and yellow, repurposed from someone else’s place of refuge. Across the way, a concrete statue of the Buddha sat cross-legged on a wrought-iron stand. Both hands rested on his knees, palms up. Someone had placed a plump, homegrown rose in his right hand. The splayed pink petals were loose and starting to yellow at the edges. I added my tiny offering of jasmine.
The landing offered the same view of Griffith Park as the deck off their living room. I found the spot where the owls might be nesting. What had Eric said?
Bronson Caves.
A distant bird circled there, maybe a hawk, maybe a crow.
I had dressed up for my appointment. My dark blue Levis were clean and almost new, my white cotton shirt had all its buttons, and my brown lace-up shoes were polished. I sat on the bench, unlaced them, and lined them up with a pair of suede Hush Puppies.
A small bell hung from a twisted red rope to the right of the door. I gave the rope a slight shake. The bell jangled with a bright enthusiasm I did not share.
Eric opened the door smiling. His aquamarine shirt matched his eyes.
“You made it. Adina and I had a little bet going.”
“And?”
“Let’s just say I don’t have to do the dishes for a while.”
I stepped inside.
The office was a roomy, well-lit square. An oval rug of twisted yarns covered the floor. A striped
armchair faced its twin across a glass coffee table, as well as an overstuffed sofa covered with navy burlap. I eyed the sofa suspiciously.
An open laptop was asleep in the corner. Maybe a dozen wire-bound notebooks in different colors stood upright next to the laptop, propped side-by-side in a mesh metal basket. The far wall was all built-in shelving. I moved closer to take a look.
The recessed shelves were wall-to-wall books, interspersed with icons from every religious tradition. A carved Ganesh; a porcelain Saint Francis; a miniature oil painting of a mosque; a watercolor of Krishna. Even his carved wooden Buddha rubbed shoulders with a crucifix.
My eyes landed on a strange-looking tool with a tapered wooden handle, a silk ribbon tied in a bow midshaft. The dark blue head was shaped like the casings on our ritual handbells. Our name for it was tho-ba.
What was Eric doing with a vajra hammer?
“Is this what I think it is?” I said.
“An antique tho-ba,” Eric confirmed. “Adina gave it to me for our thirtieth, maybe my favorite present ever. Isn’t it something? And so apt. The vajra hammer’s purpose, as I’m sure you know, is to smash the evil dispositions that block liberation.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve yet to use it on a client.”
“Good to know.”
The books told a similarly eclectic tale: Bible; Koran; Bhagavad Gita; Torah; Mahāyāna; I am Thou; Be Here Now; Book of Mormon; Dao De Jing; Freud; Maslow; Erikson; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . . .
My head was starting to swim. I turned away.
“To quote Ram Dass,” Eric said, “‘I’m a generalist.’”
“A generalist,” I said. “I like that.”
“Adina would disagree. She believes it’s better to have both feet firmly planted in one boat. Although as I love to remind her, the boat itself has changed more than once over the years.”
I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“What happens now?”
“Take a seat,” Eric said. “Or not. Whatever you like.”
I lowered myself into the armchair.
“Water?”
The Fifth Rule of Ten Page 13
