by Elia Seely
I felt him playing with me. But what he said made me think about Lobsang’s worry over the sutras, and Choden’s insistence and efforts to begin to make a copy.
“Why did you mention Jerome Taschen?”
Rabten stood, stretching his arms. “Oh, no reason other than that he and Choden were acquainted and he’s been up here a lot. He’s quite knowledgeable about our particular lineage and also other esoteric schools of Buddhism. He lived in China for several years. He’d know about Sky Burial. But it’s just a suggestion that you talk with him, if you haven’t already.” Again, the brilliant smile, the glacier-blue eyes.
“We’ve spoken to him. Before we finish here, Rabten, can we confirm again your movements on Friday night and Saturday morning?”
“Of course. I went to meditation as usual in the evening, 7 p.m. And much later I became very ill and had to have Jampa drive me to the hospital in Gold Creek. I became sick with pain and vomiting around ten, I think, it was some time after I’d returned from meditation. At about midnight I woke Jampa—he was an EMT before he became a monk and is our on-site medic—and he thought maybe appendicitis, so he took me down to the ER. We stayed until early Saturday morning, maybe seven? The docs thought food poisoning. At any rate it wasn’t serious, and I was fine. Am fine.” He smiled and began to walk toward the door. “Anything else?”
“Not for the moment,” I said, finishing my notes and putting the notebook back in my bag. I followed him out the door and into the hall. He was quite tall, well over six feet. Of course, now I’d have to confirm the ER trip by hearing Jampa’s version of events. I thought of Margo, home soon from her art camp. Dan was instructed to call me here if there were any issues with Margo getting home. I really wanted to swing by and make lunch for all of us before heading back to the sheriff’s office.
I located Jampa in the infirmary, such as it was, bandaging up a young woman’s wrist. He confirmed his run to the ER with Rabten. “The guy was green,” he said cheerfully. “Sick as a dog.”
The next task was to find the two lay students who knew Horse. I saw Pema outside the kitchen building after finishing with Jampa, who told me they were probably at lunch. She led me into the dining room and scanned the tables. The two were eating together, luckily for me. Trying to be discreet, I approached and asked to speak to them both.
We talked in the sun outside the dining room. Lyle, the older of the two, confirmed that Horse, real name William, was a friend of his and had been hanging around a cabin on Two Dog. He did day work at the monastery sometimes in exchange for food.
“He’s kinda drifting,” Lyle said. “You know, finding himself.”
Whatever. Nice work if you could get it, I thought.
“Was he here on Thursday night?”
Lyle reflected and consulted his friend Benny.
“He was here,” Lyle said. “I thought it was Wednesday.”
“No,” Benny countered. “It was Thursday. Or was it Friday?”
We dithered in this way for a few more minutes. Neither could remember exactly when Horse had hitched up, but it was Wednesday or after. He stayed and worked somewhere and then left again after lunch. Neither saw him in the morning as they were at their own tasks. I thanked the two men and walked back down the road to the Bronco. Pema emerged just as I was opening the door to get in.
“Ms. O’ Connor!” she cried, “your son has just been on the phone and I have a message for you.”
I immediately felt a wrench in my gut. Dan would only call if something was wrong. I jogged over to meet her.
“What did he say?”
“He said that he had to go and get his sister from school because she was acting very strange and the teacher made him come. She’s at home but she’s not well. He’s worried.”
“Oh God,” I said. “Okay, I’m going now. Is he still on the phone?”
“No, I told him I’d run to find you and send you down.”
I debated calling him back, but it seemed best to just go. A sense of deja-vu overtook me. Dan’s accident yesterday, and now Margo—what could be wrong with her? If Dan was worried it might be serious. I’d radio down and have one of the guys go and check on them.
I jumped in the Bronco and called through to dispatch. Explained what Pema had said.
“Butch just got back from court,” Bill said. “I’ll ask him to go over.”
It took all the self-control I had to drive at a safe speed down the monastery road. Once I got to the highway, I drove like hell to get home.
Chapter Nineteen
Butch called through on the radio after he arrived at my house, and we switched to a private channel. Margo was basically okay, he thought, but he was going to run her down to the hospital if I wanted to meet them there. Dan was fine but upset. He’d walked to school to get his sister and brought her back. He was a little whacked out from his pain meds, Butch said. Margo was sleepy and disassociated and talking to herself. Acting strange.
A million thoughts ran through my mind. Had Margo been assaulted? Was this a response to some trauma? But when, where? She’d walked to school for her art camp and made it there, obviously, and sometime in the next two hours had begun to act strangely enough for the teacher to call our home and ask Dan to come get her. But not urgent enough to call an ambulance. Okay. I breathed. Okay. She hadn’t had a seizure, because that would have been an immediate 911. Something was happening inside her little body and we didn’t know what yet. And poor Dan—he’d must have felt bad to take his meds after all. I couldn’t be mad at him, but I wouldn’t have left them if I’d known he was going to need his pain pills. Thank God Butch was there. I reached the outskirts of town and sped to the hospital for the second time in as many days.
I pushed through the ER doors, scanning the waiting area for Butch and Margo. He stood against the wall turning his old Stetson round in his hands. He came toward me as soon as he saw me enter.
“Butch—where is she? Is she okay? What happened?”
“She’s with the doc. They’re just going to observe her. But they think that she’s taken some kind of drug. Could she have gotten ahold of one of Dan’s painkillers?”
“No way. Dan won’t even take them. Although I guess he must have, after all. They were down in his room—weren’t they?” I had to think back. Maybe I had left them upstairs in the pharmacy bag. But they’d have a child proof cap. And she wouldn’t just take one. She wasn’t that kind of kid. “Dan took one, did you say? Maybe he left the bottle out … but I just can’t see it.”
“Dan’s pretty out of it. He didn’t say he’d taken one, but I assumed, from his demeanor. He wouldn’t have given her one, would he?”
“No, no. Not in a million years. He doesn’t like the things himself, as I said. His pain must be bad to have taken one in the first place. Can I see her?”
Butch nodded and said that he would get back to the office if I felt okay, as he had to be back in court soon. I thanked him, we parted, and I asked to see Margo. A nurse named Sally led me back to the emergency bed where my daughter lay. She looked tiny on top of the bed. Her breathing was noisy but regular. I sat next to her. She was hooked up to a heart monitor and I watched the peaks of her heartbeat. Dr. Ellis came in a few minutes after I’d been there.
“Well, Shannon, we meet again.”
I nodded, not really in the mood for jokes.
“She’s in and out of sleep—”
“Did she pass out?”
“No. She was more awake when Butch brought her in but then she fell asleep when we got her in here. She’s taken something, or been given something. One of Dan’s pills, maybe, or something else. We did a blood draw to find out. For now, she’s stable, I think she’ll come out of it just fine. May take a while, though. Leave her here until she does, to make sure she’s okay. I’d transfer her over to the hospital, but they don’t have a bed right now.”
“God, I can’t imagine Dan giving her one of his pills. He didn’t even want to take them himself. Ther
e’s no way. He’s really protective of his sister.”
“Well, no use speculating until we get the lab results back. That’ll be a little while. There’s nothing you can do here. Go home and make sure Dan is all right. I’ll call you when she starts perking up. We’ll look after her, I promise.” Dr. Ellis put a hand on my shoulder.
I didn’t want to leave, but Dan probably needed me, too. Always caught in the need to be at least two places at once, I finally decided that it wouldn’t do any good sitting watching Margo sleep. I left the ER and drove home, numb. I couldn’t think. My mind was a jumble of the day’s events mixed with absolute fear for Margo. What if she had brain damage? What if—but I couldn’t let myself go there. I had to calm down. As if this were a rescue situation. Calm, assess the facts, take appropriate action. I breathed deeply, counting up to three, back down to one on the exhale. A tip someone had taught me, way back when I was learning rescue. It helped; by the time I got home I felt a little calmer.
Dan lay on the couch, watching cartoons with the sound off. He looked pretty wrecked. He barely acknowledged me.
“Dano. What happened, buddy?”
I sat next to him and smoothed the blue blanket he had draped around him.
“Don’t know, Mom. She got sick on something.”
“Thanks for going to get her. She’s okay, she’s going to stay at the hospital awhile and sleep. Did you take your pain meds? Leave the bottle out, maybe? Dr. Ellis thought she got one of your pills by mistake.”
He shook his head. “Haven’t taken one.”
But he was clearly out of it. Would it just be his injuries, delayed shock? I didn’t think so.
“Where’s the bottle? Did you take something else, some Tylenol?”
He shook his head again. “Bottle downstairs. She didn’t get into that.”
I was really and truly bewildered. Dan acted like someone on drugs, and yet he hadn’t taken anything. Margo the same. Was there some weird flu bug taking hold? Some kind of food poisoning?
I stood up. “All right, bud. I’m just going to make some lunch for us. You hungry?”
He nodded.
I went into the kitchen. The remains of Margo’s lunch-making sat out: a jar of Jif and Smucker’s grape jelly, bread bag open. Dan had been eating a bag of Cheetos and there was a foil package of homemade brownies on the counter. By the looks of it, a few were missing. I had a grim aha moment and picked up a brownie and smelled it. Pot. One hundred percent sure, this was a pile of pot brownies, and my kids had eaten god knew how many.
“Dan, where did these brownies come from?”
His voice was faint and slurred with sleep. “Ginna made them.”
Chenno’s girlfriend. Dan must have seen her yesterday. “Did she give them to you?” I demanded, trying not to sound as furious as I felt.
“Kind of. Not really. I just took some. What’s the big deal?”
I went back around to the sofa and sat again. “Dan—seriously? Did you take these knowing they were pot brownies? I need to know if she gave them to you or if you just took them. And did you know? This is a big deal; I need you to tell me the truth.”
“Mom, I swear, I didn’t know. She’d just made them, and she said I couldn’t have one because they were hot. I came back later, before I left, and they were cut up on a plate, so I just took some. I didn’t know. I thought they were just regular, you know.”
“Did Margo take some for her lunch?” I was pretty sure she had.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess she did.”
“How many were in the package? Originally?”
“Don’t know. Mom, I—”
“Okay, okay,” I said soothing him. “I mean, it’s not okay that you’ve both made yourselves sick on pot brownies, but I understand that you didn’t know.” My thoughts raced. I went to the phone and called the hospital, relaying a message for Dr. Ellis. Then I wrapped the brownies back up and put them in a plastic bag. I was confiscating these, and I should go out to the MC right now and bust Ginna. Pot’s not legal, though of course we know there is plenty of it around. My pulse jumped with fury and I really wanted to blame Chenno. I had an excuse—as if neglecting his own kids wasn’t enough—to really and finally lay it on the line. But what would “it” be? Never see your kids again? I realized that a part of me wanted that to be true. To somehow have a reason, for them as well as me, to remove Chenno from their lives completely, and save them from the expectation and hope that he would ever, on his own, be a part of their future.
I hid the brownies in my room under a pile of clothes on my old brocade armchair. Then I went outside to water Margo’s as of yet still barren garden that she’d planted a couple weeks before. Life had gone from totally routine and a little bit boring to completely chaotic in the space of a few days. As I sprayed water on the hidden seeds, I berated myself for thinking that I could do this life alone, that I was a good cop, that I had made the right decisions. Maybe once the investigation was handed off, I could tell Butch I wanted to get back on dispatch. I’d have to eat crow from Joe, but it was a small price to pay for having a normal, regular schedule for my kids. Because who knew when a good man would come along, if ever, to help share the load? Dan was in the thick of high school, Margo was beset by strange imaginings and needed me so much. They both needed me. And if Chenno was really and truly out of the picture—well, on some kind of level the kids would feel that loss and I’d have to be there to make up for it, to make sure they felt safe, and that life was safe. I hadn’t had that, after my brother died, and I wasn’t going to let that be true for my kids. Get through the next few days. Make some better decisions. I breathed in and out, talking myself down, watering our little garden.
Chapter Twenty
I left Dan at three-thirty, trancing out on cartoons. He was just really, really, high, and only time would remedy that. I lived through the 60s and 70s after all and had plenty of experience with being stoned out of my gourd. Now that we both knew what was going on, we were both a little less freaked out. I had called the hospital twice; Margo still slept and I felt she was better there than home alone with her stoned brother while I met with the crew. I’d get to the meeting and be back as soon as possible. Mind scattered and body dragging, I got back in the Bronco and drove to the sheriff’s office.
Butch asked immediately about the kids after I arrived and then called the afternoon meeting to order. The whole crew was there and we gathered in the outer office. I hadn’t seen Joe for a couple of days, but he wasn’t off on a call so Butch asked him to be present for the meeting. Bill had volunteered to sit in too, as Fran was on for her usual swing dispatch shift. Our team is hopelessly tiny, just three day shift deputies and one retired, plus two volunteers who worked alternate nights; for a county the size of ours it wasn’t enough when something like this happened.
“Okay, let’s see where we’re at,” Butch said. “I’ve got information from Jim, and Shannon, you’ve got some new information for us too, right?”
I nodded in response to Butch’s question. “You go ahead. I’d like to hear what Jim’s been working on. I know he reached Choden’s people, because they called the monastery wanting to know what the hell happened.”
“Yes. He was able to get through to Choden’s work colleagues and they got in touch with his family. He’s not married, no children. Jim’s also gotten the details of how we’ll need to repatriate the remains when it comes to that. Of course, the family is itching to get him back. Kyle doesn’t feel there’s anything more the body can tell us; he can’t embalm it and once it’s out of the fridge at the morgue it will start to decay. So, he’ll have to be cremated and then sent home.”
“Maybe the monastery could do a ceremony or whatever,” Elijah offered. “That might feel good to the family and then they can do their own thing when the ashes are returned. Since he was a part of that community. A Buddhist.”
“Good idea, Eli,” I said.
Butch continued. “The latent prints picked up in
Choden’s room have yielded nothing from the state database, as we suspected. Jim said we’d have to fingerprint the lot of them up there and then work on finding matches. It’s up to us if we think that’s necessary. He’s pretty buried right now and really, his obligation to help us is limited to the analysis of the crime scene. Do we want him to go deeper into a search of any of the buildings? Obviously, we’ve got some serious staffing issues. CBI office in Fort Collins is understaffed and in the weeds—no investigator available for the foreseeable future—don’t know what happened to that promise for end of the week. So, I’ve been on the phone to the CBI’s Denver office to get some help. They are sending up an agent on Monday. Some big drug bust going down that has all their agents tied up ‘til then.”
“I don’t know what good it will do to fingerprint everyone up there,” I said. “No weapon we’re trying to match prints on, and the room definitely wasn’t the kill scene. Anyone could have been in the room for any legitimate reason. Who would go through all of that anyway? I’d like to confirm Jerome Taschen’s alibi and get him started on Choden’s personal papers and research. Although I can’t figure what these sutras have to do with the crime, they do keep coming up. I’ll go to Soo Long’s and Jerome’s motel after we’re done and talk to staff, see if we can narrow down who else might have seen him Thursday and Friday nights. And Ruby’s—he claims he was there on Friday night. I know Conn, the main bartender … with any luck he’ll remember Jerome being there.”
Joe sat with his arms crossed, sneering at me. I could tell he was only just holding back some snide remark.
“What?” I said, “You have something to say, Joe? Better ideas?”
He rocked back in his chair. “I don’t have nothing to say. You’ve got it all handled. You’re doing a great job.”
I wanted to punch him, but instead I took a couple deep breaths. Flipped the pages of my notebook.
“I talked to three of the monks again today: Tenzin, who works in the kitchen and has easy access to cleavers and knives and knows how to use them; Lobsang, the librarian, and Rabten, a teacher, who knew the victim the best, I’d say.”
