Narcissism of Small Differences (eBook)

A Noir Detective Novel

Dennis Dorgan (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
294 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9228-4 (ISBN)

Infos

The Narcissism of Small Differences is a noir detective novel about the guiding influences of memory and the subconscious mind. It's also a story about how insignificant the differences are between the defenders of law and order and those who live in the world outside of it. And, while it is also a fast-paced police procedural, in the end this is the story of Conor Delaney, a man who can see into the dark. The story starts with a traumatized, ten-year-old Conor Delaney sitting at the kitchen table of Grandmother Raven, a powerful Ojibwe Midewikwe. Before he leaves her doublewide on the frozen shores of Lake Superior, she holds a ceremony for him, heals his trauma and dubs him Owl Eyes for his ability to see into the dark. As an adult, he is the head of Delphi Investigations and Research. In this role he ferrets out corporate misdeeds like bank fraud, money laundering and market manipulation. He will ultimately find that these corporate crimes are at the heart of his first murder case; one that the perpetrator of three gruesome murders forces him into. The police team he joins is headed by his good friend, Mel Thorogood, Assistant Police Chief. Another of his friends is Dr. Phil, a former Jesuit, psychologist and carney barker, who murdered six abusive priests. He is now a permanent resident at the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Delaney thinks him to be among the most moral men he knows. Dr. Phil is still a formidable forensic psychologist and profiles the killer as a malignant narcissist who may be a woman. He also lays to rest the notion of a serial killer. Mackey Stately is the City's crime boss and a close friend of Delaney's since childhood. He is pledged to help Delaney with this case. Other unconventional friends, including Henri Bouchard, his Ojibwe brother, help him bring this case to a conclusion. The journey to that goal is grounded in St. Paul, Minnesota, but also involves excursions through Belfast, Kansas City, Tulsa, St. Peter, Minnesota, and St Petersburg, Russia. But it is the journey into Delaney's subconscious mind and dreams that bring the investigation to its astonishing conclusion.

Textauszug

Prologue

He came into the doublewide like a bear ambling into its winter cave. “Grandmother, I heard Henri’s back. Is he here?”

“No, Eli, he’s still with the Winnebago family in St. Paul. They will send him back when they clear up this confusion. You just gotta be patient.”

“I’m doin’ that, but it’s hard, Grandmother. Who is this kid?” He sat heavily in the chair across the kitchen table from me. “He ain’t Ojibwe, so what’s he doin’ here?”

Grandmother Raven set a mug of coffee in front of him. “He’s ten years old, same as Henri. The state people will say they made a mistake, got them mixed up, but I think Manitou brought him here.”

Eli studied my face without looking into my eyes. I knew he must be, like the old woman, an American Indian – high, hard cheekbones, a long, single braid, dark complexion and piercing dark eyes. I wondered if he would scalp me. I didn’t care one way or the other, I just wondered.

“His face, it looks like an owl and them big grey eyes, they got mysteries in ‘em, don’t they? But what’s wrong with him?” he finally asked.

“Something scared him, scared him real bad. He has not said nothing since he came here two days ago. He just sits and stares at Gichi-Gami with those big owl eyes. I don’t know his story yet.”

“What you gonna do, Grandmother?” Eli asked. “Shouldn’t you send him back?”

“I told you, Manitou brought him here. Why do you think he is here?”

He looked at me again and, after a brief moment, said, “You a lucky kid, Owl Eyes, Grandmother Raven is a Midewikwe with great powers.” He stood and turned to Grandmother Raven. “If you gonna conduct a sweat for this kid you want me to build the lodge?” He paused and frowned. “That’s why I came here, isn’t it?”

Grandmother Raven raised one eyebrow and nodded toward the door.

As he left, she shifted her gaze to me. Sitting where Eli Bouchard had been only seconds before, she regarded me intently, staring fixedly, until all I could see were her deep brown eyes framed by a profound darkness, nothing else, not even her face. I heard her voice, strong and clear, saying, “I must learn your story. When I ask a question and your answer is ‘yes’, you will blink once. OK?”

I felt my eyelids, without my conscious consent, blink. Once.

“If your answer is ‘no’ you will blink twice. Go ahead, do that.” And my eyelids, despite my resistance, once again bent to her will. She then ordered me to blink three times if the answer were something other than yes or no; like ‘maybe’ or ‘I don’t know.’

We sat like that for what could have been two or three hours, or days, or just minutes; I don’t know. Time became elusive, like a shadow in twilight. She quickly asked question after question, with my eyes blinking rapid-fire responses. I don’t remember the questions or much of anything else other than those eyes. With them she drew out the memories of my young life and began pulling me back from the beckoning abyss of despair.

My story: I was born as a craniopagus twin, conjoined at the skull with my brother Cody.. Surgeons separated Cody and me in our tenth year. I survived the procedure, he did not. Or so it seemed.

The car bomb that killed my parents exploded just four months after that procedure. It left me in a state of wild, manic fear, intensified by soul numbing grief.

My mother was a Belfast attorney who acted as a mediator during the Irish troubles of the ‘70s. We were in Minnesota to have the operation at Mayo clinic. She also had speaking engagements and meetings with the Irish community in St. Paul.

There were fanatics on both sides of that endless Irish civil war who wanted her dead. Her success at getting Protestant and Catholic women to talk with each other posed too great a threat to some ideal future of Ireland, so they turned to their dark side, as zealots must.

The three of us stopped at Mancini’s Restaurant in St. Paul on the way to the airport for our return flight to Belfast. That’s when the bomb was planted.

I learned later that a cop plucked me from the burning wreckage of the rental car and rushed me to Phelan Hospital. A week later a bureaucratic snafu kept Henri Bouchard in a foster home in St. Paul and delivered me to Grand Portage Indian Reservation and Grandmother Raven.

I felt my brother’s death even more keenly than that of my parents. Known only to the two of us, our physical condition led to our two streams of consciousness becoming intertwined. As a result, we knew each other’s every thought and even watched each other’s dreams. In the years we were bound together we also never felt what I came to know as the quintessential human experiences of loneliness and alienation. Later in life I sometimes wondered if we were the only human beings to ever have escaped those conditions.

When Cody died, followed so quickly by the violent death of our parents, my universe shattered. Now I knew loneliness, and alienation virtually defined my mental state.

It may have been days, but it seemed like only a few minutes after Grandmother Raven finished her interrogation, that Eli Bouchard returned to announce the readiness of the sweat lodge. It was now dark and a hard wind full of snow and cold was howling across the big lake and shaking the doublewide trailer. Grandmother Raven glanced at Eli and nodded to the doorway.

As he left she moved to the center of the kitchen. She closed her eyes and slowly raised her hands. The wind howled louder; the trailer convulsed and trembled. As she lowered her arms, three wizened old Indian men marched in and stood on each side and behind me. We seemed to glide out of the shuddering trailer and were met by four other old men. We were encased in an invisible wind and snow-free bubble. The eight of us slid smoothly into the sweat lodge. It was far larger inside than out and seemed immune to the wind raging outside. When we sat at the base of the circular lodge, I saw there were about a dozen others waiting for us. Near the entrance three men were beating on a circular drum and chanting in a strange language. The heat generated by the steam boiling off a mound of hot rocks in the center of the lodge was almost unbearable. Sweat immediately began seeping from every pore in my body.

Beside the drummers, there were two elderly women who shook some kind of rattles that had black bird wings attached to them. They rattled these intermittently, sometimes directly in someone’s face.

Every so often a man or woman in the group would stand and speak, always in that strange tongue. They would go on for, what seemed to me, a long time, but I didn’t mind. Time and place were no longer important to me. Then Grandmother Raven appeared.

Now covered with black feathers, she was bobbing and nodding with the rhythm of the drums. She and the drummers abruptly stopped on the same beat. With her eyes closed, she opened her feathery arms and issued a piercing, high-pitched keen that descended into a pulsating discordant canticle. Despite the heat, a shiver dashed up my spine.

The drummers soon began again and joined in her song, as a large open window appeared on one side of the sweat lodge. Through it I could see the naked back of a boy seated cross-legged on a sunny patch of grass. The old men who had escorted me into the lodge then stood and, one by one stepped through the window to speak to the boy. The first one laid a small fur parcel in front of him as he spoke: “I give you this gift – Wisdom. May you use it to guide all you do and use it to benefit all people.”

The second man did as the first had done, and said, “I give you this gift – Love. May you be devoted to all creation and share your love for it with all humankind.”

The third: “I give you this gift – Respect. May you treat all humanity with reverence and respect all who cross your path.”

The fourth: “I give you this gift – Courage. May you be brave enough to do good things even in the most difficult times.”

The fifth:, “I give you this gift – Honesty. May you be a person of integrity and truly honest in every deed and way.”

The sixth: “I give you this gift – Humility. From it may you know that you are not greater than, nor lesser than, but equal with everyone else.”

The seventh: “I give you this gift – Truth. May you always value authenticity, speak the truth and be true in all that you do.”

After each grandfather had presented his gift he returned to be seated near me. After all seven had returned, Grandmother Raven’s refrain intensified, the drumming grew louder and the light from the window grew brighter. The boy turned to look around the lodge and finally caught my eye.

Cody.

His window went black, then everything else did.

“Ms. Raven,” I muttered as I looked around for her. It was morning and I was back at the kitchen table. The hard sunlight glancing off the Lake Superior ice caused me to finally look...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.8.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-9228-0 / 1098392280
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-9228-4 / 9781098392284