A Fractured Peace

by Elia Seely

  “Steven,” I said, “you have the right to remain silent, but anything you say may be taken down in evidence and used against you in court. You have the right to have a solicitor present. You have the right to a phone call. Do you understand?”

  “Are you arresting me?” His eyes were wide; woolly hair mashed into weird shapes from sleeping and uneven stubble starting on his chin.

  “Those are your Miranda rights,” I explained. “Since we are officially questioning you in relation to this crime, you have rights. We aren’t arresting you. But we need some answers that I think you have.”

  “I don’t know anything! I told you!”

  “Steven, do you understand your rights as I have related them to you? Do you want a lawyer? We’re just going to talk. But if you want me to locate the public defender—it could take a while, but we can do it.” I fervently hoped he would not demand a lawyer. The public defender, a scrappy woman named Fiona, was probably in court anyway.

  Steven pulled at his hair. “Whatever. No. I don’t care.”

  “Do you understand—”

  “Yes, yes. I understand.” He averted his eyes to the wall, and he looked very much like he might cry. Though I was convinced he was a killer, I felt terrible for him. I just stopped myself from asking him if he wanted to call his mom.

  “Steven, are you aware of any petroglyphs around Gold Creek? Old Indian rock art?” At this point, only police and the killer knew the exact location where the body had been found. We had managed to suppress that information so far. I wondered if Rabten’s little story about Choden going to see petroglyphs was true or another red herring.

  “Huh? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just answer the question. Are you?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Were you aware of Choden’s interest in them?” I could feel Eli’s eyes on me, wondering where I was going. I wasn’t sure myself.

  Steven shrugged. “Yeah. I guess so. But I’ve never seen any. Not on monastery land anyway, which is where we’d mainly go hiking.”

  “Did anyone else know about some local petroglyphs, anyone that Choden talked to?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Steven, you need to be more specific. This isn’t a game. You aren’t some dumb teenager—you’re plenty smart, I know that. If you know something, tell us. Knock off the ‘seen nuthin’ know nuthin’ act.”

  Steven gave me the same look Dan does when I tell him to behave like a grown-up. He squirmed around in the chair and finally landed in defensive posture: arms crossed, legs splayed wide, head back. But the poor guy looked like a Muppet. I had a flash of doubt that he was our man. He’d have been an easy mark for Rabten, but he was just a kid, after all, and would he have had the ability to actually commit this crime?

  “Do you know if Choden had plans to go see some petroglyphs last Friday afternoon with someone? Did you go with him?”

  “I didn’t go anywhere Friday afternoon. I was at the monastery. I was working. Clearing a trail that goes up to the Buddha rock on our land. I had an argument with Choden Friday morning,” he said miserably. “I was trying to talk him out of his project to copy the sutras. He was pissing everybody off and even though I thought it was a good idea at first, I could see that now it wasn’t. So I was trying to tell him. And he just wasn’t going to listen. We weren’t really talking by Friday afternoon.”

  “Were you getting pressure from someone else to talk to him? Get him to desist?”

  Steven gave a half shrug. “No. Not really. Just I knew that Lobsang was furious about it and was going to get the Rinpoche to kick him out.”

  “Was Choden close to anyone at the monastery besides you?”

  Steven looked away.

  “Tenzin, maybe?”

  We waited. Eli’s pen poised over his notebook. The tape whirred.

  “Yeah,” he said at last. “Yeah, okay, he was. They were—you know.”

  “Can you be specific. For the tape, please.”

  An anguished look settled on Steven’s face. “He was in some kind of sexual relationship with Tenzin. Yeah. He didn’t tell me but I—I saw them. Kissing. And stuff. So, yeah.”

  At this point I didn’t need the gory details. “Was Tenzin worried that Choden would say something about this? To the Rinpoche, maybe?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t. I know that Choden got kind of weird about it, I mean, we didn’t talk about it, they didn’t know I’d seen them, but he got kind of weird around Tenzin and I think that he thought someone else might say something. But they don’t rat each other out. They stick together.”

  “The monks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because,” Steven said impatient now, flinging himself onto the table, “Rabten knew all about it, somehow, and Lobsang knew, and probably Jampa too. Maybe Tsewang wouldn’t be in on all their little things but the guys, yeah, stuck together. They were all up to something, you know? Jampa and his gambling, Tenzin and Choden—and I’m sure Choden wasn’t the first— Rabten’s psychic stuff—you know—”

  “Wait, wait. Let’s slow down,” I said. Eli scribbled furiously, though we had the tape. “What do you mean, Rabten’s psychic stuff?”

  “Look, when you meditate a lot, like these guys do, all the time, you get special powers. Psychic ability, whatever. It happens. It’s a thing. And it’s a phase you are supposed to pass through ‘cause it’s all a distraction by the ego. But Rabten was really into it. And he was, like, really good at it. He can see stuff, do stuff. And then the whole sutra thing—you were supposed to get even more powers if you could read them. Bigger ones that would let you do more.”

  I felt again the wave of overwhelm as I tried to wrap my head around what he was saying. I thought about Margo’s imaginary friends and spirits, seeing the Vajrapani, Rabten’s ability to know what was going on in my life. I couldn’t suppress a shiver.

  “But if psychic powers are bad, why would these holy books give you more?” Eli interjected.

  “If you could get to the level of understanding the sutras, and with the secret code, then you were supposed to be out of ego and above it and then use the powers for good. I guess. I don’t know,” Steven said again. “This is what Choden said. And he and Jerome talked about it, one time he was up there. They were really into it. If it was real. Wild stuff, like bi-location, telepathy, remote viewing. All that stuff.”

  “Choden didn’t tell you what the secret code was? He’d figured it out, you know. At least partially. Weren’t you in this together?” I tried not to think about what Jerome hadn’t seen fit to mention about these special powers when we’d met Wednesday night. He’d kept a few things back, too.

  “At first, yeah, we were in it together. But the more worried I got about it the less he told me. And it must have been really recent, if he’d cracked it. Or maybe Rabten told him, finally. I don’t know. He was in over his head. With the sutras, with Tenzin, with everything. He was tripping. The monastery life does that to you. I should know.”

  “You mean your mom?”

  Shrug. He turned his eyes to the wall.

  “Why have you kept all this to yourself, this whole week, when it could have helped your friend? Why would you keep secrets, unless you were involved somehow with Choden’s death?”

  Steven paled, but locked his eyes with mine. “Because I guess I thought that if you knew I knew all this stuff, you’d suspect me. Just like you do anyway. But I’m telling you, I don’t know what happened to Choden. I would never kill him—or anyone. I don’t believe in violence. And why would I? He was my friend! And now someone is trying to kill me and you don’t care.” He put his head down on his hands.

  We sat in silence. I had no idea what to do next, and since I didn’t, I just went for the big question.

  “Steven, did you kill Choden? Did you hope to stop him from his crusade and somehow things went wrong? An accident? And then did y
ou try to help his spirit by giving him the Sky Burial, to try to correct a moment of anger, or fear?”

  Steven slumped back in his chair. The air went out of him, like a sad, deflating balloon. Softly, he began to cry.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Interview suspended for a rest break, 1:13 p.m. Deputies O’Connor and Stewart leaving the room.” I pressed the stop button on the recorder. “Steven, can we bring you some water, something to eat? We’re going to give you a rest, okay?”

  Steven had stopped speaking after he started to cry. He hadn’t denied killing Choden again, he hadn’t protested that Rabten had made him do it, he had just slumped in the chair and quietly shaken with tears. A tougher investigator might have pushed him, but I didn’t think we’d get more out of him at the moment. We needed to recoup, figure out where to take the questioning next. I couldn’t figure out if he had done it, and just couldn’t bring himself to confess, or if he was protecting someone, or what. I could smell the sweat off of all of us, and the coffee had given me heartburn and my head hurt. I needed some air.

  Eli took Steven back to the cell. He didn’t object to being locked in again; he said nothing. I felt like he’d given up, although how and why I didn’t know.

  Fran was avid for details but hid it moderately well. Butch still wasn’t back; he’d had to go out on a call Fran said, since Joe was way over in the west part of the county. I asked her to order some sandwiches for us, including some veggie ones for Steven. Then Eli and I went back into Butch’s office.

  “What the hell?” He asked me. “This case is getting weirder all the time. Now we have a band of criminal monks with psychic powers and they all have some kind of secret to keep? This is insane.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Look—I feel like it’s nuts too, but you have to know I think there’s something to what he’s saying. When I was talking to Rabten this morning, he—he knew that something had been going on with Margo. He asked me about her. In this creepy, threatening kind of way. And he made reference to a friend—a guy—I’d been out with. Nothing big, but no way he could know unless there is a bit of truth to these special powers.”

  “What the hell,” he said softly. “Really, like, come on. There must be some other explanation.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m just telling you what I experienced. What do you think is going on with Steven?”

  “I don’t know what’s up with the crying. I guess, maybe he did do it. But he’s scared to death of all of it. That much is clear.”

  “A few things came up for me. One, Jerome knew more about the supposed superpowers of these sutras than he told me. Which I find a little suspicious. Two, Steven’s never mentioned before that he was working on Friday afternoon; if he has an alibi that we can confirm, we’re back to square one.”

  Eli grimaced. “Did we jump the gun on bringing him in, yeah?”

  “Well, if we did, it’s too late now. Three, why was Steven so intent on dissuading Choden from his project? I mean, they were friends, but big deal if the Rinpoche kicked Choden out, right? It’s not like the guy was trying to defect or something. Not like Steven really had skin in this game. Other than they were gonna get superpowers together, or something. Four, did Choden really not talk to Steven about the thangka paintings and their role in the whole secret code thing? And if not, why not? Was Choden getting cagey, wanting to keep details to himself? Rabten—and I say this with skepticism—said that Choden was all about the academic accolades, the fame that would come if he was able to get the translation done. I mean, come on, it’s a freaking old book. About the Buddha. Not like it’s the discovery of kryptonite.”

  Eli collapsed into Butch’s chair. “Well, maybe Steven felt left out. Jealous. Maybe that’s why he did it. That was good, by the way. In there. Maybe it was an accident, an act of fury. And then he had to make it better. He hit him over the head, thought he’d killed him … and then … did the deed.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think Steven has the balls for this. He’s a kid. A lost kid.” I pulled my braid in frustration, pacing. “And finally—did someone come and stand over Steven’s bed last night, and if so, why? You know what? You know who I want to talk to now? Tsewang.” I smacked my hand on Butch’s desk. “If all these monks are really up to their necks in—in—sin or whatever the hell they call it, what does she know about it? Does she have anything to say about all this psychic superpower stuff? And then, I want to go straight to the Rinpoche. He’s gone for two days, but Tsewang isn’t.”

  “What about Steven? We can’t let him go. He’s crying for a reason, yeah?”

  “Of course. No, we’re not done with him. I was just thinking aloud.” The truth was, I was furious, could taste the bile in my throat. I felt outraged at the hoax that had cast all of these people under the spell of supposed deliverance, enlightenment, whatever they wanted to call it. “Though I have to say, Eli … I don’t know if he did it. But maybe he has an idea who did, and doesn’t want to say? Damn. I really thought he was our guy.”

  “Well—he might be still. But I don’t feel it either.”

  “We’ve got to find out if his alibi can be corroborated. If anyone saw him working, building that trail, sometime during the afternoon. I know the Subaru was gone by 2 p.m., because that’s when Tenzin wanted it. And we know that Choden was dead and dismembered by 4 or 5 p.m.”

  Fran tapped on the door. “Butch is on the phone. Will you take it?”

  “Yes, thanks.” I grabbed up the receiver, pressed the flashing button. “Shannon here.”

  “I found the clothes,” Butch said, excited. “Garbage bag inside a paper bag. Victim’s clothes and a pouch thing with some money and his passport. Bloody pants and t-shirt, and a towel. Our man went prepared. I had a call-out, but I’m on my way to the County yard—Jim’s there now, earlier than we thought—so he can see what we can find on the clothes. Levi’s, 32” waist, 36” inseam—tall thin guy—and a green t-shirt, size L, with ‘Free Tibet’ written on it and a flag. Victim’s clothes smaller: khaki cotton drawstring pants, plain white boxers, and a plain white t-shirt. Not much blood—rubbed off from the others once they were in the bag I’d say. Our killer undressed him before he dismembered him.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, mind whirring. Steven was tall, but not tall enough for thirty-six length jeans, I didn’t think. Still, we’d have to check.

  “What’s happening on your end? Did you get Steven in?”

  “Yeah, we’ve been questioning him. It’s getting complicated … we’re taking a break. He was getting pretty upset.”

  “No confession?”

  “No, no. It’s a lot to explain. We’ve got to check on some alibi info that he’s just given us. I’d like to keep him here; he’s in the cell actually. With his agreement. When will you be back?”

  “Soon as I can get onto Jim. Soon.”

  We ended the call and I looked at Eli. “Butch found the clothes. I don’t think they’re Steven’s.” In fact, in my mind, those jeans would fit two people: Rabten or Jerome. “He’ll be here soon, he’s taking them over to Jim.” I made a tight circle around the room. “Okay. You call the monastery and track down any possible alibi witness for Steven. There’s no time to go back up there—you’re going to have to use all your charm on Pema to find out if he was working and if anyone saw him. And I want to ask Tsewang to come down for another interview. She might refuse, but it’s worth a try. Be honest, tell her we really need her help. I’m going to go another round with Steven. See if I can get him to talk to me. Be the mother he never had.”

  Eli nodded and picked up the phone, dialed the number we’d written on a card on the evidence wall. I went back out. Fran was just unloading the sandwiches onto the spare desk in the outer office. I grabbed Steven’s and my own, got two Cokes from the mini-fridge that sat under the coffee maker, and went back to the interview room. Our nice picnic set up, I went and got Steven from the cell.

  Chapter Forty


  Steven had settled a bit—he was no longer crying, at least—and he gobbled up the food like he hadn’t eaten in a week. I ate with him to be friendly, though my stomach felt both hollow and leaden at the same time. When he’d got both the sandwiches into him and was working on the Coke, I put my food aside and set the tape recorder going again. He re-stated his name and it seemed he had himself under control.

  “Where’s the other guy?” he asked.

  “Just following up some things,” I said, trying for pleasant and unconcerned. Like I hadn’t asked him if he’d killed his friend less than an hour ago.

  “Let’s get back to Friday afternoon, last week, between, say, lunch and 4 p.m. Can you remember exactly what you were doing? You said you were building trail?”

  “I had lunch as usual. I think around noon or so. Jerome was there, and Lobsang. Maybe some others. We ate and then I went to my room to read for a little while. Two of my roommates came in and out: Lyle, and a guy named Billy. My room has four bunks in it. At one the lunch period ends and we’re supposed to go back to our work assignment. I went and got some tools and went up to the trail that leads to the Buddha rock. It’s just a painted rock,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “But it’s a nice short hike to a view of the mountains to the east. There was a tree down that I was removing. Cutting up into pieces. Bringing back down for firewood. It was a hassle, really, ‘cause I had to push the wheelbarrow all the way up there, and then cut this tree up with this like, tiny battery chainsaw that doesn’t even work.” He glanced at me and went back to talking at the wall.

  “Anybody working with you? See you up there?”

  “Well, I was supposed to have some help, but I didn’t. But I had to sign out the chainsaw from the maintenance supervisor. He saw me when I went and got it.”

  I felt the air in the room go flat. Credit to Steven, he didn’t look smug at all. He didn’t realize that this one witness could give him an alibi; he didn’t know, unless he was the killer, of course, the exact times that we were looking at for Choden’s disappearance and death.