In the Blood (13 page)

Two minutes later, the kitchen door opened to reveal a short, slender man in his mid twenties. He wore sandals, unpressed khakis and a T-shirt from the University of Alabama. His short black hair was arrayed in abbreviated spikes, like being hip, but having to temper it for the office. The soft angles of his round face were further softened by owlish eyeglasses. We did introductions, shook hands. Kiet Srisai was the owner’s eldest son.

“You a student at the U of A?” I asked, nodding at the shirt.

“A recent graduate. Architectural engineering. I’m working for a firm a couple miles from here. Father tells me you have questions about Thai fishermen down the coast.” His English was excellent and musical.

“The shrimpers near the border. The ones hit by the recent ‘caines.”

He nodded. “I knew the community, small, maybe a dozen families. They came here to the restaurant and grocery when in town. Very close-knit. They were scattered like leaves by the hurricanes. Some blew off to Texas, others to Louisiana. Others as far as California. Most will be near water, that’s all I can say. All they know is fishing.”

I again studied the name on the note page,
handed it to Srisai. “Such a long name,” I said. “Is that common?”

“It’s the Chinese influence. Native Thais tend toward simple, short surnames, like Srisai. Immigrants from China had to register a name with the government, a minimum of ten characters. But favored combinations of letters got taken. No duplication is allowed, so the names are increased in length to be unique. Many are over twenty characters long.”

Harry said, “And I’ve been trying for decades to get folks to spell Nautilus right.”

Srisai’s face went from affable to apologetic. “Also, and perhaps this will add to your burden, Thais often change their names. In Thailand, names have mystery and meaning. Thais are very superstitious. If bad luck befalls a person, they might change their name to change their luck.”

Harry frowned. “Getting blown out of job and home by a series of hurricanes might be interpreted as pretty bad luck. So the person we’re looking for under this name…”

Srisai nodded. “Might not be using that name. At least not fully.”

“Can you help at all, Mr Srisai?” I asked.

“The fishing community is very inwardly focused, Detective. They’re also viewed with suspicion by the locals – many look on them as interlopers and stealers of jobs. The fishing people have sometimes been the focus of overzealous law enforcement.”

“The kind that says, ‘We don’t need you here’?” Harry asked.

Srisai nodded, sadness in his eyes. “Yes. Thus your, uh, police ties might be a difficulty in getting people to come forward.”

I looked Srisai in an owlish eye. “Someone killed a man with a shark spear, Mr Srisai. A harpoon straight into the belly. The death was neither immediate nor pretty. A fire was started to hide the body. All we want is information.”

Kiet Srisai studied the name I had handed him. He folded the paper and put it in his wallet.

“I’ll put out the word. Our family is known and respected. People may respond if they know anything.”

I reached to the table and picked up the fortune cookie that had accompanied the meal. “So fortune cookies are in Thailand as well as China?” I asked Srisai.

“The cookie idea actually originated in San Francisco years ago, in Chinatown. It’s not a Thai tradition. But the, uh, natives seem to like the concept, so we…” Srisai smiled sheepishly, spread his hands.

“Give ‘em what they want,” Harry finished. He looked at me. “What’s it say, Carson?”

I slipped the paper strip from the broken cookie. Stared at the tiny writing.

Small steps will eventually take you a great distance.

Back at HQ, Tom Mason saw us as we walked into the detectives’ room with steps neither small nor large, and gestured us into his office. Tom was behind a metal desk as file-laden as ours, though he lined up the file edges better. Tom was in his mid fifties, rail-skinny, with a face as wrinkled and lugubrious as a basset hound. He was totally unflappable and spoke in a country drawl so slow that waiting for words was like watching cold molasses drop into a biscuit.

“You’re off anything with the baby snatcher involved, Harry,” Tom said. “You had direct involvement in the case, and killed the chief suspect. It’s over on the kid case for you.”

“Come on, Tom,” Harry complained. “I can still work the edges.”

“Procedure says it ain’t gonna happen, Harry. Anyway, here’s the case I need you guys to put to bed,” Tom said, holding up the morning
New York Times.
The biggest headline read,
Rev. Scaler
Found Dead in Church Camp. Details Pending Autopsy.

“The Scaler case?” I said. “It’s not a murder. The guy died of a heart attack while wearing panties upside-down.”

“First,” Tom said, “we don’t know anything for sure, right?”

I turned from the blinds. “Not a hundred per cent. Maybe ninety-nine point –”

“Secondly, it’s high-publicity, gonna get higher. You guys are the first team, and the city council and chief are gonna want me to tell them the first team’s on the case, right?”

“That’s just diddle-squat politics,” I groused.

“Playing diddle-squat politics is what keeps me in the corner office. Scaler’s yours for now. Find out who was with the Rev. in his final moments, get all this ugliness figured out.”

“Why?” I continued to protest. “It’s all gonna be kept under wraps. Half the politicians in Washington attended Scaler’s services and prayer breakfasts. Everyone knows Scaler’s support put Senator Custis in office and kept him there. You know what’ll finally come out: Scaler died of a heart attack while writing pietistic sermons at his church camp. The dom who beat Scaler’s butt will be threatened by one of Scaler’s lawyers and offered money by another. Stick and carrot. She’ll clam tight. Richard Scaler’s reputation will stay pure as the driven rain.”

Tom walked to his window. “You’re probably
right, Carson. But we’re gonna do our job because that’s what we do, right?”

I shrugged. We did our job all the time and nothing ever changed.

Harry chimed in. “What about the baby snatcher? I want to stay close.”

“You want to take it, Carson?” Tom asked. “You’ve been handling it so far. Or should I assign it to someone else?”

“Give it to Barret and Osborne. I’ll fill them in on what background we’ve got. It’s a freak thing. They’re all freak things these days.”

Tom said, “You don’t think the guy specifically targeted the boat kid?”

“Noelle,” Harry corrected.

I said, “There’s no way a brain-dead fuck-up like Bailes could have known which kid to pick. You got a half-dozen infants in the sick-kids ward, another dozen in the regular paed unit. Bailes called the kid a clone and a mutant in his rant, like maybe he saw
Star Wars
a few hundred too many times. Or maybe he thought the hospital was breeding them. You can’t get into a psycho’s mind, Tom. When Bailes got caught he made an I’m-a-tough-guy speech to the camera and tried to take the gravity elevator.”

“Carson’s right, Tom,” Harry said. “I can’t see how Bailes could have been looking for a specific kid. It had to be pluck’n’run, a random grab.”

“Give the goddamn case to Barrett and Osborne,” I said. “If we’re gonna pursue the Scaler investigation, we haven’t got time for –”

“I want the abductor case,” Harry repeated.

“It ain’t gonna happen, Harry,” Tom said, shaking his head. “The shooting, remember? Departmental rules are clear.”

Harry looked at me. “Carson? How about it? You can work Noelle’s case, right?”

“I’m working the Scaler case if that’s what Tom wants.
We’re
working the Scaler case.”

Harry’s eyes were no longer looking, they were pleading. I dropped my head, muttered something that must have sounded like surrender.

“OK,” Tom said, holding up his hand to indicate
discussion over.
“Carson’s got the baby snatcher case. But that can of worms isn’t high priority as long as Scaler’s in the air, no pun intended. That’s the case I need shed of right now.”

We left Tom standing at his window and hustled toward the garage; it was time to pick up our tack hammers and beat on the Great Wall of China, trying to reduce it to rubble. We climbed into the car. Harry looked my way.

“Thanks for taking Noelle’s case, bro. It makes me feel a lot better.”

I turned to my partner, pulled my mouth wide with my fingers, blinked my eyes and waggled my tongue. I said, “Gaaaaa. Gaaaaaaa.”

“Uh, what’s that mean, Carson?”

“What real choice did I have?” I said.

I dialed the college, got the general switchboard, was shunted to Tutweiler’s office. He’d been a long-time friend and business partner of Scaler’s. We figured he might have something interesting to say.

I asked the female voice when Harry and I could come and talk to the Dean, suggesting fifteen minutes from now would be a good choice. I heard her muffle the phone with her hand, talk to someone, Tutweiler, I supposed. She came back on.

“Dean Tutweiler can meet you tomorrow after lunch, say one o’clock? He has fifteen spare minutes and wants you to know he’s a firm supporter of the police.”

“I was thinking more like within the hour.”

“He’s very busy,” she said. “He’s having a difficult week.”

“Not as difficult as his boss, ma’am,” I said, hanging up. I heard that drumming in my head again, like my irritation had developed a soundtrack.
I frowned at Harry. “We have an appointment for tomorrow. Let’s go confirm it now.”

We passed the boundaries of the college minutes before coming to its buildings, the border denoted by plastic strips flapping from pine poles in the ground: surveyor’s stakes. A billboard-sized sign proclaimed we’d hit Elysium, after a fashion, providing a twenty-foot-long artist’s soft-edged rendering of the institution in the near future, a cityscape of architectural splendor and curving streets embracing dormitories for tens of thousands of the faithful. A white cross was displayed in the upper-right-hand corner of the signage like a beaming sun.

It took us another half-mile to get to the college, a cluster of boxy concrete buildings. As we drew close I saw a large white tent awning near a hole in the ground: the site of last week’s groundbreaking ceremony. Students, faces scrubbed and backpacks tight with books, wandered by. No one wore jeans or tanktops or miniskirts. I attended college in the early 90s, briefly at the University of South Alabama, then, more seriously, at U of A. Those venues seemed a world distant from this quiet campus.

We followed signs to the administration building, took an elevator to the top floor, entered an anteroom, behind it a wide room with a round cerulean desk at the end, making the receptionist look as if she were stuck in a big blue inner tube. We walked fifty feet of fancy parquet flooring.

The receptionist was in her late thirties, a bit chubby, with a small and pretty face beneath a swirling tower of golden hair.

“Can I he’p you gennulmen with –”

“Mobile Police,” I said. “We need to see Dean Tutweiler.”

“Uh, I’m sorry, but he’s not in his office.”

“But he’s in the building, right?” I said. “Or nearby?”

“Uh, yes, I think.”

I nodded toward the open door at her back. “We’ll wait inside his office, ma’am. Thanks.”

The office was more akin to a CEO’s sanctuary than a religious academic’s lair, though a massive podium in the corner held a huge leather bible, a purple bookmark tucked into some pithy passage. Turning back I heard approaching footsteps outside, followed by Tutweiler speaking as though giving dictation to be chiseled into granite tablets.

“Call the PR people and tell them to meet me at 11.45. No, make that 11.50. In the Mary Baker Eddy room. Tell them to start working up a statement on the school’s position vis-a-vis the enemies of Christianity and Truth. Richard’s enemies. They know the drill.”

Scaler veered from his receptionist and into the room, tall and dark and splendidly suited in the thin-lined black of a banker. He saw us and his eyes darkened at foreigners in his sanctum sanctorum.

“Can I help you?”

I remained seated and flipped open my ID wallet. “I’m Detective Ryder with the Mobile Police Department and this is –”

Tutweiler shot a not-subtle glance at his watch. “Can it wait, officers? I’ve got a meeting with the board and the faculty advisors group. The donors committee. Right now I’ve got to return a call to
People Magazine.
” He turned away, reached across his desk and lifted the phone. It was a fancy one with a shitload of buttons. I wondered if one of them was reserved for God.

“Please have a seat, sir,” Harry said, using his quiet voice. It’s about as deep as the Marianas Trench with the timbre of Thor’s hammer striking a small planet. “I promise this will be fast and easy and you’ll be back on track in a brief while. Is that all right?”

Tutweiler didn’t look like he was going to break into song, but he set the phone down and took the chair behind the desk, more a throne, actually, red velvet with gold leaf over embossed wood, the high back a carving of Adam and Eve holding hands in Paradise. They looked like adolescents. There was no serpent in sight.

Tutweiler angled his throne and leaned his head back, the better to display his imperious profile, half Caesar, half Heston. Harry said, “We’re trying to find out about Mr Scaler’s last few days and if you can help us with –”

“
Reverend
Scaler was his title. You could also use
Doctor
Scaler, another of his titles.”

I looked up. Tut was definitely getting on my nerves. “Reverend Scaler had an MD?”

Tutweiler narrowed an eye my way. “A PhD.”

“Impressive. From where?”

“The Southwestern Arkansas Institute of Bible Studies.”

“Forgive me for not recognizing the school, sir,” I apologized. “Is it an accredited institution, like, say, the Harvard Divinity School?”

Tutweiler’s jaw clenched. “The Southwestern Arkansas Institute holds the highest possible accreditations, those from God.”