by Elia Seely
“Three little pigs,” Joe murmured.
I shot him a look but kept going. “Tenzin confirmed that Choden and Lobsang had that argument,” I nodded to Elijah, who had spoken to Tenzin first and gotten that lead. “He said that it was pretty heated. But he claims not to know anything and refuses to believe that anyone in the community did this. He says it’s not possible for a true Buddhist—especially a monk—to kill someone. I wondered about getting all those chopping tools tested with Luminol. I know that we’d have to get Jim back to do that, but that at least might give us the weapon.”
Butch nodded. “I’ll talk to him. We might have to take them to the lab in Fort Collins ourselves, though.”
“I could do that,” Bill offered. “When I’m not chained to the dispatch desk.”
“Tenzin claims he was at meditation and then his quarters both nights. No one saw him, he saw no one. After. But Lobsang confirmed that Tenzin was at the meditations at least, which of course corroborates Lobsang’s presence at the meditations too.
“Lobsang admits to his argument with Choden. Choden wanted to make a written copy of these Unfolding Lotus sutras and Lobsang was totally against it. He told me that the originals will disappear if a copy is made.”
Joe snorted, whistled the ‘Twilight Zone’ theme music.
I ignored him, as did everyone else.
“It’s like a superstition that probably had some purpose originally—to protect the sutras or the knowledge in them. Anyway, Lobsang fully believes that there must only be one copy or it all disappears. These sutras are really important to them. He told me a little bit about the vows they take as monks, one of which of course is not to kill anybody. He also felt it wouldn’t be possible for another monk to do such a thing. And, most interesting for us, maybe, I got the idea that Tenzin and Choden had an illicit thing going on. And the way Tenzin reacted in our conversation, it made sense, actually.”
“Queers and religious freaks, total sideshow.” Joe stood. “I got to follow up a situation out in west county, Butch. I’m gonna get out there. Nothing I got to contribute to this investigation and in my opinion it’s not worth trying to solve it. Anyway, detective Shannon here is on the case.” He grabbed his sheriff’s department ball cap from the hat stand and pushed open the swinging gate that opened out into the reception and dispatch area.
Butch followed him and the two stepped out into the hall. I hoped he was going to hassle Joe about his attitude. I sighed and looked at Bill and Elijah.
“Doesn’t help at all,” Bill shook his head. “Joe’s a good deputy in his way, but he’s got that narrow attitude. It’s unprofessional.”
Elijah stood and went to the big Bunn coffee machine. “When did you make this, Bill? Is it fit to drink?”
“When Fran came on. Fresh as you’ll find it, here.”
“Get me a cup too, would you Eli?” I asked. I felt deflated, like Joe’s exit had taken the wind out of my sails.
“What do you reckon, Shannon?” Bill asked. “Think one of these monks could’ve done it? You’ve spent the most time with them by now. I can’t pretend to understand the culture at all.”
“I don’t know. I mean, Lobsang was clear, they take over two hundred vows to become a monk and they have all these commitments. But he himself smokes cigarettes in secret, according to Rabten, which I’m pretty sure is breaking one of the vows. Maybe Tenzin was up to something with Choden, which is a big taboo. Rabten was the most realistic about it all, saying that most people can’t really keep the standard of the Buddha, and things get let go, and people just kind of do their best. But he felt like homicide would only be rationalized under the most extreme circumstances. I did find out something interesting about his alibi though.”
Butch came back into the room, mouth set in a tight line. His ’serious face;’ I wondered if he’d had words with Joe. But Butch wasn’t gossipy. Whatever passed between them would stay between them.
I continued with my story of Rabten’s hitchhiker and his trip to the ER on Friday night. “Kind of strange in and of itself,” I said. “I mean, the docs thought food poisoning, but they all eat the same thing. But, Jampa assured me the guy was really unwell. Anyway, I don’t know if one of the monks killed Choden. Lobsang is the only one with the hint of a real motive. And it would be a pretty big deal, a big vow to break, not to mention, of course, breaking the law. He seems fairly devout, so …”
“What if Choden was going to say something about this homosexual thing?” Elijah asked. “If it was happening, that would be a big deal too. So maybe Tenzin felt like he had to keep Choden quiet, but give him the ceremonial burial thing to make it better?”
“Sky Burial isn’t especially ceremonial,” I said. “From what I gathered from Rabten, it’s mostly just a practical way of disposing of the dead, but it’s been banned by the Chinese for many years. People do it in other cultures too, he said. He didn’t think that’s what was going on here, for what it’s worth. Nor did Tenzin, actually. But, they’re both white guys, so maybe they are missing something that you’d have to be Chinese or Tibetan to know about.”
“If you don’t think the monks, then who?” Butch asked.
I shook my head. “I honestly have no idea, Butch. Jerome seemed okay, but he could be involved, I guess. Again, though, what motive? And why dismemberment? It just seems like so much work, at the end of the day, when you could just kill the guy and be done with it. That’s what gets me.”
“It has to mean something,” Eli agreed. “Cause, like Shan says, why bother with that otherwise?”
The four of us batted ideas around without much enthusiasm for a few minutes. Bill finally shifted over to the dispatch desk to ask Fran a few questions. Elijah inquired after Margo and agreed to check Jerome’s Thursday alibi at Soo Long’s since he was headed over there to get dinner anyway. We agreed that he’d grab a bunch of food and meet me at my house so that he could hang out with Dan a little and so I could focus on Margo. I put checking Jerome’s Friday alibi on my list of things to do.
Butch and I finished our coffee in silence after Elijah left. I felt like maybe he had something to say to me but didn’t want to.
Finally, I left too; we’d reconvene in the morning to sort out the next steps in the investigation. The early evening light was fresh and the air scented. The slight breeze felt good on my face. I started the Bronco and rolled the window down. Tuned in the classic rock station that I could pick up in the evenings out of Fort Collins. Soothed my soul with Led Zeppelin as I drove back over to the hospital to get Margo. Ravens circled overhead as I passed by the little park in the center of town that abutted the swimming pool. I could hear the shrieks of kids from the pool. Tuesday night, family night. I should be there with Margo, enjoying the slide and teaching her to go off the diving board instead of hunting a killer. As soon as this case finished, we’d get back to normal. Have our summer. I’d get back on dispatch, figure things out.
When I turned onto the street that dead ended at the hospital, I saw a shape crossing the road. I thought a dog at first, but it was a coyote, loping silently away. He spared me a backward glance as he disappeared into the field that backed the hospital and the road. I knew from Naomi that coyote was considered a trickster in some Native American traditions, not an omen to ignore. I shivered, pressed the accelerator, and hurried on to get my little girl.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I’ve got you now,” Elijah said, “you’ve got to play one-handed. I’ll beat you for sure this time.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself, bro,” Dan said in return. “I’ll still crush you.”
The boys settled into an epic game of Space Invaders on the Atari. The radio played in the kitchen; Girl Power Hour on the local station, which meant anything from the Go-Gos to Emmylou Harris. I was tidying the kitchen again while Margo ran bathwater with Mr. Bubble. We were going to have a little quality girl time.
Elijah had agreed to be on call tonight, since someone had to be n
ow that our usual rotation had gotten disrupted by the case. We always had a regular deputy on call to provide back up for the volunteer deputies if necessary. The guys didn’t mind overtime since it meant extra money in their pockets and Joe and Eli were single anyway. Thursday it would have to be me, though. I had to pull my weight. My plan was to get Margo up to Naomi’s and let Dan do what he wanted—go up there or stay here.
“Mom! Come on! It’s ready.”
“Okay, Bear, you get in, I’ll be right there.”
I gathered Margo’s favorite towel—Barbie—from the hall closet and went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear the comforting noises of Dan and Elijah sparring over their game. God, it would be so nice to have a man around. Margo was happy about it too, I could tell.
“Eli is so nice, isn’t he mom?” she burbled. “Do you like him?”
“Honey, I’ve told you one million thousand times that I love Eli but he can’t be my boyfriend, okay? I work with him, and he’s way too young. But isn’t it great that he can be our friend?”
“Not one million thousand, mom. Don’t exaggerate.”
“Big words!” I tickled her a little and she squealed. She seemed herself again after her brownie ordeal, as did Dan. But I did want to talk to her about what happened.
I washed her hair with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, a smell I will always associate fondly with babies and my kids’ innocence. I put in the detangler and combed it out gently. We bantered a little and she told me a convoluted story about Miss Enso, the teacher of her art camp. They had been working on pottery again today when she had to leave. Here was my chance.
“So, baby—what happened today? I got a scare, I can tell you. You’re not in trouble, but I’d like to know about it.”
“Well,” Margo said, relishing her role as chief storyteller and star status, “Dan brought home these brownies from Dad’s that Ginna made and he had them out on the counter and I said could I have one and he said yeah. He ate one for breakfast and so did I, after my real breakfast. I had juice, toast, and milk, part of a balanced breakfast,” she said, mimicking the endless TV commercials justifying the ingestion of sugar cereals. She snuggled under the bubbles. “Then I made my lunch myself and Dan was just on the couch watching TV and then he said you better go and I said I AM going, and he walked out to the street with me and I went to camp.”
“So, you just ate one?”
“I had another one on my way to school because I was still hungry and you never make brownies and they were good. So, I had two. But they were little ones.”
I ignored the jibe—it’s true, I don’t bake—and asked what happened next.
“I got feeling all funny after a while. I was making a coil bowl, with lots of snakes of clay and then it was like they were real snakes and I just thought it was funny and I started to laugh and I couldn’t stop and then Miss Enso got me in trouble. I tried to be quiet and then I had to go out in the hall for ten minutes and when I came back it was fine, only my head was spinning like being on the merry-go-round.”
“Uh-huh.” I knew the stages well. “Then what?”
“Then I was just being quiet and thought I might get sick and fall down but I sat in the chair and then the ghosts came.”
Oh God, here we go, I thought. “Which ones? Were they scary or nice?”
She shrugged under the water and started making a bubble sculpture. I could tell from her shift in focus that it had freaked her out a little.
“I saw the man from the park. The one who got killed. He’s sad because he wants to go home and he can’t until you send him. You should let him go home, mama.”
I had not told Margo about Choden. Not anything. She knew that someone had died, that was it.
“What did he look like?” I tried to keep my voice only mildly interested. I stood and grabbed a nail file from a jar on the counter and sat back down on the toilet again. “Did he tell you anything interesting?”
“He looked kind of like Charlie Chan. Chan Clan,” she said, making karate chops through her bubble tower. “He said that they didn’t do it right, the cutting up thing. If they had he wouldn’t be a ghost but now he has to get ended the proper way so he can come back in a new body.”
I realized my mouth was hanging open and I clamped it shut. Though Margo had mentioned the “cutting up” in one of our little ghost chats before, she didn’t know Choden was Asian, and as far as I knew, hadn’t ever mentioned reincarnation before. If she even knew about that. I shivered.
“Did he tell you who it did the cutting up thing?” I couldn’t believe I was actually asking the question, like Margo was some kind of psychic crime solver.
She shook her head. “No. He was just really sad, because he wants to go home and his mom doesn’t have any other children. And now she has none. And then, I saw the blue fire man and asked him if he was Dan’s friend now and if he would be mine and he didn’t talk but he danced around and it felt okay, and then it was like I was inside a kaleidoscope and I think I fell over for a minute. Cause then Miss Enso was standing there and she looked funny and she said did I feel okay and I said not really ‘cause you told me not to lie about how I’m feeling. Then she said lay down on the carpet and I did and watched the patterns and it was animals and I saw a coyote and a bear and I went inside the bear’s body and then I was a bear too. It was cool, mom until I didn’t feel good and then my body didn’t work right and I got scared. And then Dan came, and then Papa Butch and then we went to the hospital. Then I don’t remember.”
“Wow, you are a perfect witness, Bear. Good remembering and telling. Thank you.” My voice remained steady but—my God! Dan must have told her about the dismemberment, although as far as I knew he didn’t know about that either. “Who told you about the cutting up thing? First, I mean. Dan?”
“No, it was the man who died. Well first it was TomTom. He told me, after you found the dead man. He was the one who told me first about the cutting up not working to make sure there’s no ghosts. He’s the one that tells me things sometimes. You know.”
I did know; I tried to discourage the imaginary friend thing because I found it weird, especially at her age, and didn’t want other kids teasing her. But mainly it unnerved me.
“Okay, so your invisible friend TomTom told you about the cutting up thing, and then the man today, he said it too? You didn’t hear it from someone like Dan or Butch or anyone else?”
Margo smoothed her bubbles. “Mom,” she said very patiently, “I already knew about the cutting up. The man I saw today is the man who got the cutting up and he is still a ghost because the person did it wrong, he said. But TomTom said it doesn’t matter because anyone who gets killed in a bad way can be a ghost. Get it?”
I did and I didn’t, but enough. Of course, getting really high would put her imagination on overdrive and give her some mild hallucinations. I had to put it down to that; only, I couldn’t, because there was no way for her to have known about the dismemberment. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach, and my heart flapped in my chest. I had no control over this ability of hers, and it made me really scared for her. I mean, what other terrible things might she learn to see and know?
“Time to get out,” I said and held out the Barbie towel. She stood, streaming bubbles, and we scooped them off pretending to shave her legs. I left her to get her own jammies on and brush her teeth. From the sound of the living room I could tell that Elijah had finally beaten Dan. The house felt so safe, so normal, and yet, with Margo’s strange prescient knowledge, it didn’t feel right at all.
I went back out into the kitchen. “Sounds like a victory for the old man,” I said.
“I crushed it,” Eli said, grinning.
God, he seemed such a kid, though of course he was twenty-eight—only ten years younger than me. I appreciated his willingness and ability to just hang with us.
“Whatever,” Dan said, smiling too. “I got a handicap here, playing one handed.”
“We better let Eli get go
ing, hey? He’s on call tonight. Unless you want to crash on the couch? You’d be welcome.”
Elijah considered. “You know, I might. I’m pretty beat. You don’t mind? Dan, you don’t need the couch?”
“Nah, I’ll sleep in my room. It’s cool.” He smiled big. I could tell he was happy to have Eli stay for the night. Not that he even thought about Eli and I hooking up the way Margo did. I’m sure Dan had not one thought about me and my sex life, and thank God. He just liked having another man around, and Elijah is the perfect age and type for a little hero worship.
“I’ll get you a blanket and pillow.” I said. “Dan—maybe hit the sack? Let’s let Eli get to sleep.”
Dan went to brush his teeth and I rummaged for a clean pillowcase and blanket.
“Thanks again for hanging out,” I said. “Dan loves it. He needs some men in his life, and his dad isn’t it.”
“No problem, Shan. He’s a good kid. He had a weird day and it’s been a hard week for him. I really don’t think he knew there was pot in those brownies. He only had two. He kind of liked it, said it made his shoulder feel better, but he didn’t like being so knocked out. We had a little pot talk, man to man.” Elijah smiled.
I leaned against the back of the couch. Eli sat and ran his hands through his hair. I thought about telling him about Margo but then decided not to.
“Did you get any alibi corroboration for Jerome Taschen at Soo Long’s?”
“Yeah. The waitress was the same one, remembered both him and Choden. And had Jerome’s check he wrote for the dinner in the deposit bag. Gave me the names of the teenagers who were there too, if you want to double check with them. I think his alibi is good, at least for Thursday. The waitress said he stayed for a while after Choden left and drank tea and read a newspaper. So, it’s not like he left right after and then went and got him.”
