been self-inflicted. But there’s a lot that’s not clear here so I’m going to have to ask you to be patient, boss.”
“I’m always patient with you, Martins,” said Gisela, and she grinned at Helen and Anne. “I guess it’s the only way, huh?”
I let that one go. When you’re just a line supervisor, you let it go more often than you pick it up. Besides, my theory about her was already starting to amount to something: in front of other women Gisela liked slapping me down.
“As you may know,” I said, “Philip Osborne was gay and his two most recent books were both about atheism. In the last few years he’s managed to upset a lot of people. But everything I’ve read about him makes me think he gets a kick out of that. At first I wanted to dismiss what happened as a celebrity crack-up. But I was wrong. My friend Dr. Eamon Coogan, who is the emeritus Catholic archbishop of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, drew my attention to a number of recent homicides that display some interesting similarities. The other victims were also what you might call enemies of the conservative right: a senior consulting obstetrician, an evolutionary biologist, and a philosopher and cognitive scientist. But at present no connection has been established between any of these cases.”
“If the other three were relatively well known,” said Gisela, “and you’re arguing a connection, how come the newspapers haven’t done that? They’re usually not slow to spot a trend.”
“Because they all look like natural causes. But Coogan thinks there are circumstances that bear further examination and share common features with what happened to Osborne. And so do I.”
“Is there any other field office interested in investigating a connection?”
“No,” I said. “This will leave Houston as the office of origin.”
“If we take it on,” said Gisela. “Don’t jump the gun, Gil.”
She smiled at me, but that was the second time in five minutes that I’d been whipped. I wondered if Helen and Anne noticed it, too.
“All right. I’m still listening. But start here in Houston. With this Osborne guy. If any of this is connected, he’s what lets us buy the blinds.”
I knew to my cost that Gisela was a skilled poker player, although it was rare that she ever talked like one. But it seemed like another way of reminding me that she was holding all the aces in this meeting.
After setting out the facts as reported by the HPD officers who had attended the scene at the Hotel ZaZa, I described the visit I had made with Helen Monaco to the Harris County Psychiatric Hospital.
“Dr. Andrew Newman, the medical director, gave me a diagnosis of Osborne’s condition. The guy is in a catatonic state. He doesn’t move at all and appears to be in a frozen state of being that Newman thinks is psychological rather than neurological. Specifically, he thinks something induced an extreme fight-or-flight response—a stress response—that caused his adrenal hormones to kick in on a massive scale and induce a sympathetic nervous system dynamic. There’s a third strike after the fight-or-flight pitch: you freeze. You know, the rabbit caught in the headlights kind of shit. But humans do the same thing. And if that isn’t resolved, it builds up, sometimes really quickly, and you enter a shock state that is designed to protect you from something worse, perhaps. Usually you come out of it. Sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly. And in Osborne’s case it’s clear Dr. Newman doesn’t have the least idea if he’ll be like that for eighteen days or eighteen months.”
“So, what, is he just lying on a bed staring at the ceiling?”
“They keep him strapped on a bed for his own safety in case he does snap out of it all of a sudden. But like a piece of Play-Doh, Osborne’s body can be contorted into any posture, which he’ll maintain for several minutes, or until you move his limbs or his head in some other direction.”
I felt Helen
“I’m always patient with you, Martins,” said Gisela, and she grinned at Helen and Anne. “I guess it’s the only way, huh?”
I let that one go. When you’re just a line supervisor, you let it go more often than you pick it up. Besides, my theory about her was already starting to amount to something: in front of other women Gisela liked slapping me down.
“As you may know,” I said, “Philip Osborne was gay and his two most recent books were both about atheism. In the last few years he’s managed to upset a lot of people. But everything I’ve read about him makes me think he gets a kick out of that. At first I wanted to dismiss what happened as a celebrity crack-up. But I was wrong. My friend Dr. Eamon Coogan, who is the emeritus Catholic archbishop of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, drew my attention to a number of recent homicides that display some interesting similarities. The other victims were also what you might call enemies of the conservative right: a senior consulting obstetrician, an evolutionary biologist, and a philosopher and cognitive scientist. But at present no connection has been established between any of these cases.”
“If the other three were relatively well known,” said Gisela, “and you’re arguing a connection, how come the newspapers haven’t done that? They’re usually not slow to spot a trend.”
“Because they all look like natural causes. But Coogan thinks there are circumstances that bear further examination and share common features with what happened to Osborne. And so do I.”
“Is there any other field office interested in investigating a connection?”
“No,” I said. “This will leave Houston as the office of origin.”
“If we take it on,” said Gisela. “Don’t jump the gun, Gil.”
She smiled at me, but that was the second time in five minutes that I’d been whipped. I wondered if Helen and Anne noticed it, too.
“All right. I’m still listening. But start here in Houston. With this Osborne guy. If any of this is connected, he’s what lets us buy the blinds.”
I knew to my cost that Gisela was a skilled poker player, although it was rare that she ever talked like one. But it seemed like another way of reminding me that she was holding all the aces in this meeting.
After setting out the facts as reported by the HPD officers who had attended the scene at the Hotel ZaZa, I described the visit I had made with Helen Monaco to the Harris County Psychiatric Hospital.
“Dr. Andrew Newman, the medical director, gave me a diagnosis of Osborne’s condition. The guy is in a catatonic state. He doesn’t move at all and appears to be in a frozen state of being that Newman thinks is psychological rather than neurological. Specifically, he thinks something induced an extreme fight-or-flight response—a stress response—that caused his adrenal hormones to kick in on a massive scale and induce a sympathetic nervous system dynamic. There’s a third strike after the fight-or-flight pitch: you freeze. You know, the rabbit caught in the headlights kind of shit. But humans do the same thing. And if that isn’t resolved, it builds up, sometimes really quickly, and you enter a shock state that is designed to protect you from something worse, perhaps. Usually you come out of it. Sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly. And in Osborne’s case it’s clear Dr. Newman doesn’t have the least idea if he’ll be like that for eighteen days or eighteen months.”
“So, what, is he just lying on a bed staring at the ceiling?”
“They keep him strapped on a bed for his own safety in case he does snap out of it all of a sudden. But like a piece of Play-Doh, Osborne’s body can be contorted into any posture, which he’ll maintain for several minutes, or until you move his limbs or his head in some other direction.”
I felt Helen
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