Flashback

1.08 The People’s Republic of Boulder—Monday, Sept. 13

The motionless line of giant wind turbines ran along the entire visible span of the Continental Divide, from Wyoming in the north to beyond Pikes Peak a hundred and sixty miles south. The abandoned turbine-towers looked to Nick Bottom like nothing so much as a dilapidated, unpainted picket fence with each rusted picket post rising almost four hundred feet into the Colorado sky. A picket fence or—perhaps—a cage.

Growing up, Nick had loved looking at the high peaks and the snowcapped skyline of these peaks but in the past decades he’d learned to avoid looking west. Some scientist had estimated that the “greening” of the nation’s power system with wind turbines killed more than four billion migrating and night-flying birds a year. Nick always imagined huge heaps of bird carcasses at the base of these flaked and rusting turbines… back when they still worked.

The turbines had never generated enough power to earn their maintenance and upkeep, and the visible network of power cables laid across the snowfields and hard-rock face of the high peaks reminded Nick of the varicose veins on the mottled legs of a dying old man. The former EU had abandoned most of its uneconomical wind turbines just as the U.S., under its visionary new administrations, was pouring the last of its fortune into “green” technologies. The People’s Republic of Boulder now bought its actual power from one of the standardized-for-manufacture HTGC (high-temperature gas-cooled) reactors on the plains west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, but the city-republic’s official stance was that it still relied only on “green” power.

Nick wouldn’t have gone to the People’s Republic this afternoon to keep his appointment with Keigo interview subject Derek Dean if he’d had a choice. Given that choice, Nick would have gone back to his Cherry Creek cubie and spent hours flashing on conversations with Dara around the time of the first Oz interview six years ago. Perhaps he’d missed something she’d said at the time that would explain…

He didn’t have a choice.

Sato was driving and insisting on keeping the appointment. More than that, Sato had Nick’s next stash of flash in the backseat of the car and wasn’t going to release it to Nick until after the goddamned useless interview.

So Nick sat dumbly, not conversing with Sato, numbed by what Danny Oz had said about Dara being there during the Keigo interview, and stared at the approaching white metal cage bars of the once-proud Continental Divide.

The line of cars at the customs entrance for those heading northwest along Highway 36 to the People’s Republic was at least forty-five minutes long.

“You have your physical passport, Bottom-san?” asked Sato.

Nick nodded.

Sato swung the armored Honda into the empty far-left diplomatic lane, produced two black NIC Cards and their old hardcopy passports that the PRoB still demanded, and they were waved through the rest of the inspection gates in half a minute.

Everyone in Colorado enjoyed a love-hate, love-love, or pure hate-hate relationship with what was now the People’s Republic of Boulder. Nick’s father had held strong opinions on the place.

According to the grumblings of Nick’s state patrolman dad, in the 1960s the town of Boulder and its university had been one of the national loci for drugs, sex, outdoor sports, and total rejection of authority (assuming one’s parents kept paying one’s tuition and bills). Nick’s father liked to tell his son that these midcontinent refugees from the Summer of Love grew up, grew old—still with their graying ponytails, which Nick’s dad had called dork knobs—and passed laws.

Two decades before Nick was born, the salt-and-pepper-dork-knobbed Boulder city council passed draconian laws on the city’s growth, thus almost immediately doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling housing prices and driving any true middle class out of the city. Within fifteen years, according to State Trooper Bottom, Boulder was a comfortable and self-satisfied mixture of dork-knobbed trust-fund babies and louse-infected street people.

During the 1980s the city again deliberated deeply and—with the support of the anti-Reagan, anti-defense populace—passed resolutions declaring Boulder a “nuclear-free zone.” The upshot of that effort, Nick’s father had explained, was that in all the decades since then, not a single nuclear-powered aircraft carrier or submarine had tied up in Boulder.

In the 1990s, the same city council—the men’s long dork knobs and the women’s short, severe Phys Ed–instructor haircuts grew grayer but the faces remained largely the same according to Nick’s father—labored for months before deciding that there would and could be no more “pets” in Boulder, Colorado. Dogs and cats were to be entrusted to human “guardians.” The changes in licensing paperwork alone cost a fortune. In old dollars.

Also in the 1990s, about the time that Nick Bottom was in third grade, the investigation of the murder of a six-year-old child named JonBenét Ramsey in her home on Christmas Day was so botched by the police, district attorney, and other authorities that almost every city official who came in contact with the case lost his or her job. Nick’s father had been fascinated with the almost total ineptitude of the JonBenét Ramsey investigation. It showed, he’d later told his teenage son, that this Boulder metro area of almost two hundred thousand people definitely had not been ready for prime time. When the case was accidentally solved by an independent investigator more than twenty-five years later—after almost all the principals, family members, and suspects were dead—the answer to the mystery was as clear and obvious as it had been on the day the body was found.

Nick was sorry that his father hadn’t lived long enough to hear the solution. He thought that his old man would have appreciated the irony.

Into the twenty-first century, the Boulder city council could never restrain itself from taking sides on issues that had nothing to do with a medium-sized city: coming out in support of Nicaraguan Marxist rebels, officially opposing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, refusing to support state laws restricting marijuana and other drug use, harboring illegal Mexican immigrants as political refugees (although there was no place in the city for low-paid immigrants to live, so after the very public “harboring” they were always quietly ejected from the city limits), and finally going on record to say that the city of Boulder would not “collaborate” with any Republican president of the United States.

Of course, Nick knew that his father’s view of Boulder—even before it had declared itself an independent republic shortly after Texas did—wasn’t fair. Despite the graying dork knobs (who were mostly dead now anyway), Boulder had once been a thriving science center. The University of Colorado at Boulder, CU, had boasted an excellent science department and was one of the few universities in the world where students actually controlled orbital satellites. (That disappeared when America’s predominance in spaceflight and satellite technology was surpassed by the Japanese, Russians, Chinese, Indians, Saudis, the New Caliphate, and Brazilians.) A beautiful 1960 modernist glass-and-sandstone structure designed by I. M. Pei up near the Flatirons—the only building allowed in the greenbelt—had been built to house NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, pronounced “En-car.”

The revelations of hoaxes and totally false data sets in Anthropogenic Global Warming studies, confessed to by scores of scientists only after hundreds of billions of dollars and euros had gone down that rat hole, followed by more scandals that led to the collapse of the Global Carbon Trading Networks and that collapse’s contribution to the Day It All Hit The Fan, had finally resulted in NCAR’s budget being reduced by 85 percent. Their new headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, were much more modest.

And there had been the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, which for decades had brought scientists with international reputations to the city. Both the NCAR building high in the greenbelt and the Bureau of Standards complex of buildings were now leased by the Naropa Institute and its Rinpoche School of Disembodied Transpersonal Wisdom.

The Old Man missed the best of it, thought Nick as they approached the city near the foothills. For it had been since die-ought-if, the Day It All Hit The Fan, that the People’s Republic of Boulder had truly come into its own.

The fences and minefields and armed patrols and custom gates ran along the highest ridge three miles to the southeast of Boulder. As one descended into the valley beyond that last high ridge, the beauty of the city and its surroundings became more obvious. The hardwoods in the city were beginning to change color and the foothills along the giant sandstone slabs called the Flatirons were thick with green pines. The high peaks and damned wind turbines disappeared as one dropped lower toward the town. The air was cleaner and more clear than it had been in a hundred and fifty years.

No automobiles or powered vehicles of any sort were allowed in Boulder. Even the police cars and fire engines depended on bicycle power. Sato was directed to one of the underground parking garages that ran for two miles along the east-west line of Table Mesa Road. Parking was expensive since each slot was in its own bombproof cradle (and this after having to pass through two CMRI portals on the way in). From the garage, one could proceed into Boulder on foot, but since the metro area of about two hundred thousand people was almost twenty-eight square miles in size, most visitors opted for renting a city-owned Segway or—much cheaper—a bicycle, human-pulled rickshaw, pedal-yourself pedicab, or bicycle-pulled rickshaw. (Every time Nick visited the People’s Republic, he thought of how his old man would have enjoyed the irony of the city that couldn’t stand the thought of dogs and cats being degraded as “pets” having a transportation system based on human beings, mostly immigrants housed in city barracks, pulling rickshaws.)

Sato and Nick opted for a double-wide rickshaw pulled by two Malaysian men on bikes.

The ride was about three miles and Nick tried to relax as the rickshaw jolted up Table Mesa to Broadway, Broadway to Baseline, and Baseline west a half mile or so toward Chautauqua Park.

The Boulder Chautauqua had been there since 1898. Based on the idea of the original Chautauqua, in western New York, and part of the burgeoning Chautauqua Movement in the 1890s, it had been founded in Boulder by Texans who wanted a place with cottages, a dining hall, and a barn for lectures and musical events where they could escape the Texas summer heat. When Mark Twain lost his fortune through bad investments in a typesetting machine and took to the lecture circuit again just before he turned sixty, the circuit was mostly through Chautauquas around the nation. Many summer Chautauquas were mere tent cities, but a few such as the one in Boulder boasted permanent residences and large buildings for the educational, religious, and cultural lectures and courses.

This Chautauqua was perched on a grassy shelf above Boulder that backed against the greenbelt and a web of hiking trails. Nick had come up to Boulder with his parents when he was a little kid to hike those trails. It was still a popular hiking area for Boulderites, although occasional sniper attacks and a resurgence in the mountain lion population had somewhat reduced the number of hikers.

Much farther to their right, beyond Canyon Road at the edge of this residential district, rose the high minaret of Masjid Ahl al-Hadeeth Mosque. Boulder’s prohibition on any structure taller than five stories was more than sixty years old, but the city council had waived that restriction for the Masjid Ahl al-Hadeeth and its minaret was three times the old legal building height. Local Muslims and the New Caliphate had shown their appreciation with major financial contributions to the city and by demanding that Boulder evict any and all Jews currently living within the city limits. The city council was taking the request under advisement (and Nick had seen the online Boulder Daily Camera blog editorials arguing that there were very few Jews in Boulder anyway, so little would be lost in honoring the Muslim request). Boulder had already allowed an exemption for all Boulder Muslims—their population was now up to around 15 percent of the total with more immigration welcomed by the city—not to be tried under Colorado laws but only under sharia should they be accused of a crime.

Sato interrupted Nick’s broodings by saying, “It’s a good thing that our Advisor diplomatic status allows us to keep our weapons.”

Nick grunted.

“You did not bring an extra magazine, did you, Bottom-san,” Sato said softly.

“My daddy taught me that if fifteen isn’t enough, another fifteen or thirty won’t help,” Nick said tersely.

Sato nodded. “Indeed. But those Government Motors geldings are hard to kill. Well, you should not need your weapon here in Boulder. It is the most peaceful city in Colorado, is it not?”

“One of them,” said Nick. Except for the huge rise in honor killings and of gays and lesbians having walls dropped on them.

Besides the occasional rickshaw or pedicab, the streets were filled with spandexed and heavily helmeted cyclists on featherlight bikes that cost a million new bucks or more. There were also joggers and runners everywhere—hundreds and thousands of joggers and runners, many in sweaty spandex but some almost nude and others totally nude.

“The People’s Republic seems to be a very healthy place,” Sato said. “Not modest, but healthy.”

“Oh, yes,” said Nick. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘Body Nazi’? Lots and lots of Body Nazis in the People’s Republic.”

Sato snorted what could have been a laugh. “ ‘Body Nazi,’ ” he repeated. “No, I have not heard that term before, but I believe it appropriate nonetheless.”

Joggers passed the rickshaw on the left and right, their fists and lean forearms pumping, their distracted gazes fixed on some distant but reachable goal of physical immortality.

With the foothills of Flagstaff Mountain looming, the rickshaw cyclists turned left into the broad-lawned and leafy expanse of the Chautauqua grounds. The huge auditorium higher on the hill loomed over the Arts and Crafts dining hall and other structures.

After Sato had paid off the two pedalers, Nick said, “What do you know about this place? Not Chautauqua, but the Naropa Institute that rents it most of the year?”

The big security chief shrugged. “Only what the telephone told me, Bottom-san. The university was founded in nineteen seventy-four by the exiled Tibetan tulku Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The name Naropa comes from an eleventh-century Buddhist sage from India. The university was officially accredited sometime in the late nineteen-eighties but unlike most religious universities in your country, it hasn’t really distanced itself from its larger Buddhist organization—Shambhala International, I believe.”

“Are you Buddhist, Sato?” Nick asked.

Sato stared until Nick got tired of seeing himself in the security chief’s sunglasses. Finally the big man spoke. “This way to the administration building, I believe. We’ll have to hurry or be late for our interview with Mr. Dean.”

“Our interview?” demanded Nick.

“I have interest in hearing what this gentleman has to say,” said Sato. “As chief investigator, you may, of course, ask all the questions, Bottom-san.”

“Fuck you,” said Nick. But he stayed away from the word motherfucker.

They hurried.

Nick had heard that the big wood-framed Chautauqua Auditorium, despite being little more than an oversized barn, had—for almost a century and a half—earned performing artists’ praise for its outstanding acoustics. When Nick had come here with his parents as a kid to watch and hear such twentieth-century marvels as Bobby McFerrin, the Chautauqua people had finally patched the roof—previous generations of audiences had been able to look up and see the moon and stars through the cracks and missing shingles—but one could still see the leaves of the trees and sky through gaps in the ancient wooden sidewalls. Now Naropa had rebuilt the walls so there was no view through them any longer.

The stage of the auditorium remained but the rest of the space had been altered for winter institute use, the ancient, rock-hard folding seats taken out and scores of low platforms set up to level the floor. On each platform were dozens of comfortable beds and each bed was ringed by a fortune’s worth of monitoring devices showing pulse, blood pressure, EEG, and the various spikes and sine waves of sleep. Men and women—it was sometimes hard to tell which because of the shaved heads—wearing saffron robes monitored the monitors. Nick guessed that the room held at least a thousand beds.

Nick instantly saw the place for what it was—an infinitely cleaner version of Mickey Grossven’s flashcave: a place where flashers who wanted to go long under the flash had someone to guard them and their belongings and make sure they didn’t stay under so long that their muscles atrophied or their digestive systems shut down from receiving only IV fluids. And where Mickey’s cave had a staff-to-sleeping-flasher ratio of about one to three hundred, the Naropa Institute must have had at least one hovering “expert” to each four bodies under the flash.

Their escort had just left them so Nick was free to say to Sato, “This is where Naropa has made its real fortune the last decade or so. Somebody on the Naropa board of directors decided that the Buddhist goal of ‘being present in the moment’ included having to relive that moment… all moments. The Naropa students here and at NCAR and the former Bureau of Standards building—I think there are about fifteen thousand such students who’ve come to Boulder and Naropa—are doing what they call ‘interior work.’ ”

“Based on Vajrayana teachings on finding and applying internal esoteric energies,” whispered Sato.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Nick. “It maxes out on the BQ meter.”

“BQ meter, Bottom-san?”

“Bullshit Quotient.”

“Ah, so.”

“The Naropa Institute’s also into your Japanese Tea Ceremony, faux-Christian labyrinth stuff, ikebana, healing crystals, out-of-body experiences, Druid ritual, and Wikkan ceremonies… that’s witchcraft to you, Sato-san.”

“Ikebana and the Tea Ceremony are worthy forms of meditation,” the huge security chief said softly. “But not, perhaps, in the hands of these charlatans.”

One of the saffron-robed medics came up a ramp to where Nick and Sato waited by the door. The man looked to be American but had the shaved head of all the teachers and students here. He put his hands together, bowed low, and said, “Namaste.”

Since no one in the group was from India, Nick replied with “How ya doin’?”

The monk or teacher or medic or whatever he was showed no irritation, but neither did he identify himself. “You are here to meet with Mr. Dean?”

“We are,” said Nick, flashing his Advisor’s black card badge. “Is he awake yet?”

“Oh, yes,” said the monk. “It has been more than three hours since his awakening from the Previous Reality. Mr. Dean has done his exercises, enjoyed his meal, and spent an hour with one of our transpersonal counselors reviewing his most recent Previous Reality experience.”

“So where is he?” asked Nick.

“In the contemplation garden to the rear of this building,” said the monk. “Would you wish me to escort you?”

“No, we’ll find him,” said Nick. “I’ll just look for a bald guy in an orange bathrobe.”

“Namaste,” said the bowing monk, hands together again.

“Later, reincarnator,” said Nick.

Nick and Sato reviewed notes as they walked out to the garden. It had rained a little in Denver before they left Six Flags, then let up during the drive up to the People’s Republic, but now more gray clouds were moving in low just yards above the sharp tops of the five sandstone Flatirons. But the day remained comfortably warm. Nick took off his sports coat and draped it over his shoulder.

Derek Dean had been a young millionaire exec in the last days of the Google empire. He’d lived in a world high above the messy post–Day It All Hit The Fan world that almost everyone else wallowed and struggled in. Dean had spent most of his adult life in New York penthouses, Malibu beach houses, armored limos, and private executive jets while having his own private bodyguards make sure that he was not disturbed. After his company’s last tech investment googled down the drain, Dean’s diversified investments and connections only made him richer.

Then, seven years ago, at the age of forty-five, Dean found religion. As far as Nick and the other Denver detectives could tell, Derek Dean had no connections with Keigo Nakamura or Keigo’s daddy before the video interview a day before Keigo’s murder. But Dean had been the only Total Immersion Naropa student that Keigo had chosen to interview on camera. He’d only been in Total Immersion a year at that point, but according to the interview with Dean that Nick had flashed on the night before, the exec was a true believer.

One had to be a true believer to pay for the Naropa Total Immersion soul-therapy. Flashback was cheap—a dollar for every minute to be relived—but the Naropa people insisted on using a more potent and sacred version of flashback that they called stotra.

Nick knew that there was no such thing as a more potent version of flashback. Flashback was flashback. Always and everywhere. It couldn’t be attenuated and still work and it couldn’t be improved upon. It was what it was.

But where street flash sold for $15 for a fifteen-minute flash, the same amount at Naropa cost $375.

So Derek Dean was under the flash for eighteen hours a day at $25 a minute. Beyond that, he was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the medical monitoring, for the special diet, and for the “spiritual counseling.”

And these were old dollars.

“Even a fortune of hundreds of millions would disappear quickly in such a quest for enlightenment,” Sato said softly as they approached the garden. It was a hedge maze, but the hedges were only four feet tall so the chances of becoming lost in the maze were low.

“And our friend is only seven years into the process of reliving his entire life,” said Nick. “He has thirty-eight years more to go under the Naropa version of the flash before he catches up to where he started the year before Keigo interviewed him.”

“Does he then have to relive the decades spent reliving?” asked Sato.

Nick glanced quickly, but the security chief’s expression was as stern and unchanging as ever. “That’s a good question,” said Nick. “Shall we ask him?”

“No,” said Sato. “As you might put it, Bottom-san, neither of us gives the slightest shit as to what the answer might be.”

Nick grinned despite himself and they entered the maze.

The change in Derek Dean was shocking. Nick had seen the man just hours ago while flashbacking the interview, but six years of Total Immersion had taken their toll. Dean had been slightly stocky six years earlier but very energetic, quick, and fit: the kind of country club tennis player who can give the resident pro a decent game. Now Dean had lost at least forty pounds. The once-strong and -florid face, almost always graced with a CEO’s confident smile during Nick’s first interview, was now gaunt and expressionless save for the vague, confused stare that Nick associated with Down syndrome children. Dean’s arms emerging from the loose saffron robe were skeletal stems with flaccid vestiges of muscles hanging loose beneath the bones. The formerly sturdy hands were now an old man’s extension of quivering and twitching sticks in lieu of fingers. Perhaps most disturbing to Nick were Dean’s fingernails, which were three inches long, curved, and piss-yellow.

Dean was sitting on a low bench between the hedge and gravel path, his haunted gaze firmly fixed on the rear door of the auditorium.

Nick sat down on the bench opposite and introduced himself. He did not introduce Sato or offer to shake hands.

“It’s almost time for me to go back… into… under… back,” mumbled Derek Dean in a brittle husk of a voice. “Almost time.”

“Do you remember me, Mr. Dean?” demanded Nick, sharpening his voice to get the man’s attention.

The unfocused gaze moved across Nick’s face. “Yes. Detective Bottom… they told me… Detective Bottom come to see me again. But it’s almost time to go, you see… to go back… you see.”

“We’ll keep it short,” said Nick, not disabusing the former exec of his mistake regarding Nick’s detective status. If Dean’s believing that he was still a cop would move the interview along, then so be it. Nick had identified himself only by name.

Dean had been a shaven-head acolyte six years ago, but Nick had seen photos of the exec with a full head of short, sandy-colored hair. His skin had looked tanned and healthy. Now Dean’s shaven skull was fishbelly white and pocked with small sores.

“Do you remember our earlier interview, Mr. Dean?” asked Nick, resisting the urge to snap his fingers to get the man’s attention.

The limpid but hungry gaze tore itself away from the auditorium door and tried to focus on Nick. “Yes, several weeks ago… yes, Detective. About that Japanese boy who just died. Yes. But you see, since then, Mrs. Howe has said I can work on the Alamo mural in the art room during recess. Did you know that Davy Crockett died at the Alamo?”

Sato made a grumbling interrogative noise.

Nick said, “Is Mrs. Howe your teacher, Derek?”

Dean beamed. He’d lost several teeth in the last six years, despite the fortune he paid for constant medical and dental care here at Naropa. “Yes, Mrs. Howe is my teacher.”

“What grade are you in, Derek?”

“I’m in third grade. Just beginning third grade. And Mrs. Howe said that Calvert and Juan and Judy and I can work on the Alamo mural in the art room during recess. We have enough crayons.”

“Can you remember what I asked you about the murder of Keigo Nakamura, Derek? Do you remember the questions I asked you last time?”

Dean frowned and for a moment seemed to be on the verge of tears. “That was weeks and weeks ago you were here, Detective Bottom. I’ve been so busy since.”

“I can see that,” Nick said.

“If you’re going to shed yourself of karma, you have to visit every moment it accumulated,” said Dean in a stronger, older voice. “Total Immersion is the only possible way to achieve full, mindful awareness in a soul-transformative way, Detective. My spiritual counselors help me reintegrate everything with insight.”

The man sounded like a student reciting something in a foreign language from rote.

“Mr. Dean, did you kill Keigo Nakamura?” said Nick.

“What… kill… a human person?” said Dean, his emaciated fingers going to his cracked lips and sunken cheeks. “Did I, Detective? Do you know? It would help if one of us knew for sure. Did I?”

“Why were you at Keigo Nakamura’s party the night of the murder, Derek?”

“Was I there? Was I really there, Detective? Reality is a relative term, you know. Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie might be dead… or maybe they’re still alive somewhere on a contiguous plane.”

“Why were you at Keigo Nakamura’s party the night he was murdered, Derek? Take your time to remember.”

Dean frowned theatrically and set his bony fist under his chin to show that he was thinking hard. After a minute he looked up and showed that gapped, childish smile again. “I was invited! I went because I was invited! And my teacher said that I could go and came with me.”

“Your teacher Mrs. Howe?” asked Nick.

Dean shook his head pendulously and for too long, like a drunk or an annoying child. “No, no, my teacher here at the institute. Shantarakshita Padmasambhava. We called him Art. Art had founded the Yogachara-Madhyamika and was a Great Soul and a great blessing to the institute.”

“Is Art still here? At the Naropa Institute, I mean.”

Dean looked around apprehensively. His hungry gaze returned to the rear door to the auditorium. “Is Shantarakshita Padmasambhava still here at the institute? Yes, of course he is.”

Nick glanced at Sato, who was making a note in his phone.

“Did you…,” began Nick.

“Shantarakshita Padmasambhava died some years ago,” Dean continued happily, “but he’s still here. Yes. This afternoon at recess, Mrs. Howe will let me work on the Alamo mural with Judy and Calvert and… and… and I forget who else. I’m sorry. I try to remember, I try so hard, but I forget.”

The former Google exec began to weep. Snot ran down his cleanly shaven upper lip.

“Juan,” said Nick. “Mrs. Howe said that you could do the mural with Judy and Calvert and Juan.”

Dean beamed and wiped the mucus away with the back of his hand. “Thank you, Detective Bottom.” The fifty-two-year-old giggled. “Bottom is a funny name. Do they call you Ass Boy at school, Detective?”

“Never more than once,” said Nick. He went over to the other bench, sat next to Dean, and grasped the man firmly by the shoulder. It was like grabbing pure, brittle bone. Nick knew that if he squeezed hard he would hear snapping sounds. “Mr. Dean, did you kill Keigo Nakamura or do you know who did?”

Dean raised his right hand to fondle Nick’s bare wrist. “I love you, Detective Bottom.”

Sorry that he hadn’t brought a second magazine of 9mm rounds, Nick nodded and said, “I love you, too, Derek. Did you kill Keigo Nakamura or do you know who did?”

“No, Detective, I don’t think so. But I will know!”

“When?”

Dean licked his lips and made a show of counting on his fingers. “I’m seven now… almost seven and a half. That only leaves… a lot of years… before I come back to when Keigo talked to me and died the next day. I’m sorry, Detective.” He began to weep again.

“Jesus Christ,” breathed Nick.

“A great teacher,” said Dean, brightening but not wiping away his tears or snot this time. “But not able to lead us on the true path to satori as quickly or surely as… say… Bodhidharma would.” He turned to look at Sato. The security chief was still using his stylus to write in his phone. “You’re Keigo’s friend Takahishi Satoh, aren’t you? I remember you from the day we recorded the interview.”

Sato grunted.

Dean suddenly jumped to his feet. His expression radiated pure joy through his tears. Two monks had come out of the auditorium’s rear door and were headed for the garden maze and Derek Dean.

Nick and Sato also stood. Nick said, “Do we need any more of this?”

Sato shook his head.

They watched as the two monks, each grasping an elbow, led Derek Dean back into the auditorium toward the waiting bed and IV drip. Dean turned once to wave good-bye, waving his entire forearm, palm flat toward them, the way a seven-year-old would.

Nick and Sato walked down the hill and around the dining hall to where several rickshaws and pedicabs waited, their owners squatting nearby or lounging on their backs in the grass. Across the acres of the Chautauqua Green, sunlight gleamed on circles of saffron robes and bald heads in earnest conversation or silent meditation.

“Grab us a double-wide cab,” said Nick. “I’ll check something in the admin building here and be back in a second.”

Nick ran uphill under the elms, but instead of going straight to the administration building, he reentered the auditorium and jogged down steps, checking beds as he went. The monks were just preparing to administer the intravenous flashback to Derek Dean when Nick leaned in between them and the skeleton in saffron.

“Sir,” the tall male monk said softly, “you must not interfere with…”

“Shut up,” said Nick. He grabbed Derek Dean by his saffron robe front with both hands and lifted him closer until their faces were inches apart. Nick could smell death in the older man’s breath and pouring from his pores.

“Can you hear me, Dean?” He shook the man. The rattling sound was not imaginary; it was Derek Dean’s loose teeth clacking together. “Can you hear me?”

The former exec nodded. His eyes were very wide.

“Did you meet my wife—Dara—either when Keigo was interviewing you or later, perhaps at the party?”

“Wife…,” Dean repeated.

“Focus, you worthless sonofabitch.” One of the monks reached to intervene but Nick shook him away as one would a child. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

Nick was holding up his phone with Dara’s photo filling the entire screen.

“No. I don’t think so.” It was a whisper.

“Be sure,” hissed Nick, holding the photo closer. “If I find out you’re lying to me, I swear to Christ I’ll come back here and kill you.”

Derek Dean’s gaze sharpened, focused on the photograph. “No, Detective, I have never seen that woman. But I would enjoy fucking her, if I did see her… which I haven’t. I don’t think.”

“I must protest,” cried one of the hovering monks. “We shall call security. We shall…”

“Go to hell,” said Nick. He dropped Dean back onto the crisp-sheeted bed, tucked his phone away, and left the auditorium.

It took less than a minute at the adjoining administrative building to get the information on Dean’s former teacher from a rather attractive bald young woman at the main desk. Evidently she hadn’t yet been alerted that Nick had just threatened to kill one of their paying Total Immersion students. Yes, she confirmed, Shantarakshita Padmasambhava had indeed been one of the outstanding teachers at the Naropa Institute. Eighty-four years old when he had accepted Mr. Derek Dean as an applicant for the Path of Total Immersion, the beloved Sensei Shantarakshita Padmasambhava had shuffled off this mortal coil three years ago. His ashes had been scattered from the top of Flagstaff Mountain looming above the Chautauqua campus.

Nick thanked the young woman with the shapely skull and healthy, tanned scalp and—for some reason he couldn’t explain even to himself—asked for her phone number. She showed a wide, white, sincere, perfect smile and put her palms together and said, “Namaste.”

They waited until they were out of the pedicab, in Sato’s car, out of Boulder, through and beyond the exit customs checkpoints, and over the ridge to where the People’s Republic was no longer in the rearview mirror before talking about things.

“Well, Sato-san,” said Nick, “did we just buy the biggest load of pure, unfiltered, overacted bullshit in the history of total bullshit answers, or is suspect Mr. Derek Dean well and truly too nuts to keep on our list of suspects?”

“If he is not too crazy now, Bottom-san,” said Sato, “he certainly will be by the time he enters… what do you call it here… sixth grade.”

Nick grunted. He hadn’t told the security chief about his final, brief interaction with Dean back at the totally immersed asshole’s auditorium bed.

“There is always the question of motive,” added Sato. “Mr. Dean appears to have had none.”

“No one we have on our suspect list appears to have had one,” said Nick, settling back in the car seat and closing his eyes. He had a headache that was pounding spikes of pain deeper with every beat of his heart.

“Someone had a motive,” Sato said sharply. “But I fail to see it with Mr. Dean. Our own investigations showed absolutely no cross-referencing between Dean and Keigo or Mr. Nakamura.”

“Dean was a corporate bigwig in the last days of a world empire of a corporation,” said Nick without opening his eyes. “Professional competition? Trade jealousies? Google made a lot of enemies before it was broken up and flushed.”

“No,” said Sato. “There is no record of any interactions—hostile or otherwise—between Mr. Dean when he was a relatively minor corporate officer and any of Mr. Nakamura’s interests. Should there have been some sort of corporate animosity, it is very unlikely that it would have extended as far down as Mr. Dean’s level. He was a player but, in all senses of the word, a very, very minor player.”

“Maybe he just took a dislike to Keigo when the boy interviewed him,” said Nick. Sato’s armored Honda had good shocks, but every bump on the worn, potholed, and poorly maintained highway sent more hard-driven nails of pain into his skull.

“Disliked him enough on first sight to kill him?” said Sato.

Nick shrugged. “It happens. I know the feeling myself. But in this case, perhaps Derek Dean did it for precisely the same reason that these roving flashgangs do—to give him something powerful, almost climactic and orgasmic, to flash on during his fucking Total Immersion therapy.”

“To flash on in forty-four years plus as many years added on due to the six hours a day out of flashback…,” began Sato.

“Eleven years extra,” said Nick. “He spends eighteen hours a day under the flash, six out… more or less. So, if he keeps with the chronological real-time flashing the way he’s going now, it would be fifty-five years until the murder would roll around again. He’d be ninety-seven years old.”

Sato grunted. “The odds then are low that there will be an orgasm involved if Mr. Dean makes it to that age. But Bottom-san, let us consider the possibility that Mr. Dean is flashing on the murder every day and that all that ‘Mrs. Howe is letting us do the Alamo mural’ was pure misdirection. The Naropa Total Immersion program would then serve as a wonderful alibi for a murderer who has to hide from the world.”

“Good point,” said Nick. “But although Derek might have been capable of faking the overdosing flashbacker’s idiocy, he wasn’t faking the physical decline. He was a dead man walking.” He opened his eyes and took the pain the light added, grateful that the low clouds hid the full hammerstroke of the sun.

“Shall we go straight to Coors Field?” asked Sato. He sounded eager.

“This afternoon?” said Nick. “No way. Take me home, please. You have the flashback vials for my preparation for the next interviews, don’t you?”

“In my briefcase,” said Sato. “But it is still relatively early. We could…”

“No, the light has to be better than this for Coors Field. It’s supposed to be clear weather tomorrow. We’ll wait until early afternoon when the slant of light will be right.”

“Why must the light be better, Bottom-san?”

“There’s no artificial light in the ballpark during the day,” said Nick.

“Yes?”

“The light should be to your best advantage,” said Nick. “Since you’re going to have to be my sniper-second.”

“Me? The detention center provides professional snipers.”

“For officers of the law and lawyers there by court order it does,” said Nick. “You and I have no more official business there than a family member.”

“Certainly the official status of the Advisor’s office…,” began Sato.

“Will allow me to provide my own sniper-second,” said Nick. “That’s you. How good are you with a long gun?”

Sato said nothing.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” said Nick.

“How can this be the case, Bottom-san?”

“There are thirty-some thousand rapists, thieves, thugs, and murderers in Coors Field,” said Nick. “If even half a dozen or so come after me at once—or if they pull me behind a girder or into one of their hovels and out of sight—you’re not going to be able to stop them in time. The sniper-second is really there to put the captured visitor out of his misery before the fiends and felons start having too much creative fun.”

“Ah, so,” said Sato. He did not seem overly horrified or displeased by the news.

Sato’s phone told them through the car speakers that a major IED blast had gone off at the Pecos Street and Highway 36 interchange and that all traffic was being diverted south on Federal Boulevard for the detour. Nick could see the smoke and dust rising ahead, just as it had from the Mousetrap explosion a few days—a few years—earlier.

Dara, who is reading in bed, closes her book and says, “Nick, how is the investigation going?”

He closes his car magazine but keeps his finger in place for a bookmark. “In circles, kiddo. None of it makes any sense.”

“Well, it’s early days, as the British used to say.”

“Yeah.”

He expects her to go back to her reading—Thomas Hardy—but she keeps the book shut and looks at him. “There’s no danger for you in this investigation, is there, Nick?”

Surprised, he looks her straight in the eyes and says, “None at all. Why should there be?”

“It’s political, Nick. I hate anything involving politics, much less with the son of a famous Japanese industrialist or whatever the hell he is.”

“Nakamura’s people are cooperating,” says Nick. “What danger could there be for a police officer?”

Dara rolls her eyes. “There’s always some danger, damn you. Don’t treat me as if I just fell off the turnip truck or just married a newbie patrolman without knowing the lay of the land.”

Nick shakes his head and grins. “I like that verb.”

“What verb?”

“Lay. As in, to be laid, to get laid.”

The hovering Nick is surprised. Do they make love this night? He’s never flashed on this time before—had had trouble even finding an entry point for the thirty-minute flash—and has no idea whether they ended the evening with sex. He’d only barely remembered the conversation.

It’s Dara’s turn to shake her head. She’s not amused and not distracted. “They’re not going to send you back to Santa Fe, are they?”

The torn abdominal muscles of six-years-ago Nick Bottom flinch and tighten at that question even as the gut of the now-Nick also tightens in fear.

“No,” he says seriously, looking into her eyes again. “There’s no chance of that, Dara.”

“You said there was a suspect or potential witness or something down there…”

“Not so important that Captain Sheers or the department’s going to risk one or both of their chief investigating detectives,” interrupts Nick. “New Mexico’s more hostile territory than three years ago when… than three years ago. We’ll phone the Santa Fe sheriff’s office and have him or her get what we need.”

Dara is looking dubious. She’s set Thomas Hardy on the bedside table.

“I swear, kiddo,” says Nick. “I’m not going back to Santa Fe. I’d resign first.”

“Good,” says Dara, smiling for the first time. “Because I think I’d shoot you first.”

He tosses his car magazine aside and puts his arm around her.

Fifteen minutes later, coming up and out of the flash, Nick wonders how he ever could have forgotten the lovemaking of that evening.

It wasn’t quite 10 p.m. when Nick came up out of that flash. He had no intention of using the vials he’d received from Sato to flash on Delroy Brown or any other suspect’s interview. He was planning the next six or eight hours in terms of finding every conversation he could with Dara on what she was doing for ADA Harvey Cohen, hunting for any clue as to why they might have been at Six Flags Over the Jews the day of Keigo’s interview with Danny Oz.

Nick knew that he couldn’t restrict this investigation—his real investigation now—to flashback sessions. He’d have to go interview Dara and Cohen’s former boss, District Attorney Mannie Ortega, and probably have to ask his old partner K. T. Lincoln for help in getting access to files.

The thought of seeing K.T. again—of having to ask her for help—made Nick’s insides hurt.

And, he realized, he’d have to get rid of Sato so that he could interview DA Ortega, K.T., and others. He had to know more about the auto accident that had killed his wife. He had to know more about what she and fat, balding Harvey Cohen were doing before that accident.

The phone chirped.

Without identifying himself, Hideki Sato asked, “What do you think about the Santa Fe trip, Bottom-san? Tomorrow after Coors Field or later in the week?”

Nick waited until his insides unclenched a bit before answering. “Whenever Mr. Nakamura’s plane or helicopter is ready.”

“Plane?” said Sato. “Helicopter? There is no plane or helicopter.”

“Bullshit,” said Nick. The fear was rising in him like a terrible tide, making his arms and legs feel weak. “I saw you fly away from the roof of my building here in one, remember? That silent, stealthy Sasayaki-tonbo whisper-dragonfly or whatever you called it. And Keigo took one of his daddy’s corporate choppers down there six years ago.”

“The skies between here and Santa Fe were not so dangerous six years ago,” said Sato. “Mr. Nakamura has no aircraft tasked for this trip. The company’s insurance carriers would not allow it.”

“Then how the hell are we supposed to get there?” shouted Nick. He hadn’t meant to shout.

“Two vehicles. Armored and weaponized. Four extra security people.”

“Blow me,” said Nick.

“I shall set the trip for Wednesday,” said Sato.

Not trusting his voice, Nick broke the connection. His hands were trembling too much to prepare the flashback vial or to concentrate on the entry point.

Padding over to his dresser, Nick poured three fingers of cheap Scotch and drank it down in two gulps.

When the trembling in his fingers abated some, Nick prepared a half-hour vial. He’d go back to a favorite time with Dara to clear his mind before doing more searching through the time after Keigo’s death and before hers.