Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (3 page)

“Well, it’s not so simple, unfortunately. The body has been taken for cremation already.”

“Already? But he only died last night. And wouldn’t she need a marriage certificate to be able to obtain the body?”

Ladarat knew that the marriage certificate would be essential in order for this woman to claim the body and receive a death certificate. She’d been involved in a terrible situation last year when a woman wanted to bring her husband’s body back to Vietnam to be buried at their home near My Tho. But the poor woman didn’t have a marriage certificate, so she couldn’t prove that they were married. Eventually the hospital monks had to intervene.

Now Wiriya looked grim. He smacked his solid hand down on the desk in front of him and looked at her with a new respect.

“I knew I was missing something. I knew something was wrong. She had the marriage certificate with her last night.” He paused. “You see?”

She didn’t. But then she did. Very clearly.

If your husband died suddenly, would you have the presence of mind to find your marriage certificate and take it with you? You would not. You would panic. You would call your family. You would do any one of a number of logical and illogical things. But you would not think to take your marriage certificate to the hospital with your newly deceased husband.

“So that means that the hospital has a copy,” she pointed out. “We’d need to keep a copy of the marriage certificate for our records.”

Wiriya was nodding enthusiastically now. “So at least we’ll be able to get her name. That’s good. That’s very good.” He smacked his palm on the desk again, for emphasis, but more gently this time. And he was smiling.

“Well,” he said finally. “This is progress. Perhaps it will be nothing, but maybe…”

He left the sentence unfinished, but Ladarat knew what he was thinking. Maybe, just maybe, they were on the trail of a murderer. They knew that she was out there somewhere, but she didn’t know that she was being pursued. That thought gave Ladarat energy and a sense of excitement she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

Being an ethicist was important work, of course. And satisfying. But it wasn’t… exciting.

“So you’ll do it?”

Ladarat started to say that of course she’d do it. But she hesitated. She was the ethicist, after all. And here she was offering to look through a patient’s records. Was that… ethical? She thought so, but…

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Good. And in the meantime, I will ask around… quietly. Perhaps there have been other suspicious deaths…”

They stood up to say their good-byes, and she thought Wiriya might have lingered just a little longer in her door than was absolutely necessary. But if she had to be completely honest with herself, she didn’t mind. She wasn’t sure whether that was because he was such good company, or whether it was simply the excitement of the investigation. Whatever the reason, she found that she was a little sad to see the door of her little office close behind him.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE AMERICANS

L
adarat Patalung did not have such conversations about murder every day. It was safe to say that such a conversation was an event and should be treated as such. It should be… marked somehow.

And what better way to mark such an event than with a snack? Just a small something. It was only midmorning. A sweet, perhaps.

No sooner had she reached this gratifying conclusion than her mind began to wander—entirely of its own accord—out the front door of Sriphat Hospital. Down the wide, grand stone steps, it went around the meandering driveway, and to the main entrance on Suthep Road. There, her mind explored the options for a snack that would be appropriate to the occasion.

In giddy anticipation, her hopeful mind wandered along the row of stalls that were reliably arrayed along the west side of Suthep Road. At the first cart there was
khao neow ma muang
—perhaps the simplest Thai dessert (
Khanom
)—slices of sweet, overripe mango on top of a small mound of sticky rice and drenched with rich coconut syrup. Or perhaps
khanom jark
—coconut meat and palm sugar wrapped in a palm leaf and grilled until the coconut and sugar were fused into an intensely sweet toasted candy. Or
khao neow dam
—black sweet sticky rice smothered in finely shredded coconut. Or…

She had just decided on
khao neow dam
as being a little more virtuous, when her mind’s wandering was pulled up short by a knock on her office door. Deeply disappointed, her mind hurried back up the hospital driveway, through the grand entry hall, and down to the basement, dragging its heels the whole way.

“Khun Ladarat?”

Oh dear. That was a voice she knew well. A moment later, the door opened and the face to which the voice belonged emerged in the gap, framed against the dark hallway beyond. Ladarat suppressed an instant of annoyance as she realized that her mind’s culinary wanderings had been so abruptly curtailed by her assistant nurse ethicist. She of all people should know that very few things are more urgent than
khao neow dam
.

Ladarat had just received permission this year to hire an assistant ethicist, and she’d selected Sisithorn Wichasak from more than a hundred applicants. Sisithorn was a new nurse who had just graduated from school two months ago. Young and gangly, she had no discernable social skills whatsoever. She favored big, round glasses; oversize clothes; and wide, open-toed sandals that emphasized her big feet and inelegant toes. Not that Ladarat was qualified to critique anyone’s sense of fashion, but she could think of a few pointers one might offer, if one could find the right moment.

In fairness, though, Sisithorn was exceptionally smart. She graduated at the top of her class at Kuakarun College of Nursing in Bangkok, and then she came here to Chiang Mai because she wanted to learn about ethics.

“Khun Ladarat—Khun Jainukul is here.” Her assistant was breathless with excitement over such an important visitor. “Will you see him now?”

Of course she would see Dr. Suphit Jainukul. The director of the Sriphat ICU was certainly more urgent than
khao neo dam
, and was not a man to be kept waiting. Nor was he a man who would generally come to visit her in this little basement office. So his appearance was strange indeed.

They greeted each other formally with
wais
—the traditional Thai greeting. A sort of half bow, with palms pressed together at chest level and brought up to the nose as the head was bent. Much more sanitary, by the way, than the Western tradition of a handshake. More sanitary, and more respectful.

Then the director straightened and took the seat that Khun Wiriya had just vacated.

As he did, Ladarat had an unobstructed view of the door, which was still open, framing the face of her assistant ethicist. Sisithorn looked at her expectantly.

“Khun Ladarat… is this a meeting for which I would be needed?”

“Needed?”

“To take minutes. To record.” She paused hopefully. “To… document important facts?”

Ladarat sighed. She knew she should be pleased to have such an energetic and ambitious assistant. And for the most part she was. But there were times when such motivation should be curbed. Indeed, in Thailand the word “ambition,”
tayur tayaan
, was often used to mean “overly ambitious.” And it was not generally used as a compliment.

But to be fair, would this be a meeting for which her assistant would be helpful? She glanced at the director, but his eyes were downcast, paying attention only to the iPhone that rested on a broad palm. He was clearly very worried about something. The director’s forehead, she noticed, was wrinkled with concern and lined like a page of sheet music. And his forefinger stabbed at his phone’s screen with an irritable energy that was most unusual for him.

“Perhaps…” Sisithorn persisted, “Khun Jainukul would like tea?”

The director glanced up and turned toward the door. He shook his head distractedly. “No, thank you, Khun.”

“Or a sweet? I can run to get
khao tom mud
. It will only take a minute…”

Again the director shook his head. “No, Khun. Perhaps another time.”

Oh dear. Whatever the director’s purpose here, it was certainly serious.

Dr. Jainukul always took tea. And anything else—sweet or savory—you’d put in front of him. He was a large man whose ruddy cheeks, shaved head, and plump fingers belied an indomitable strength of purpose and a deep commitment to his patients. In the ten years she’d known him, she’d seen many bureaucrats make the error of underestimating him.

Yet he did love his food, and especially sweets. And simple
khao tom mud
was his favorite. The national dessert of Thailand, it consisted of small packets of sticky rice and coconut milk and syrup, neatly wrapped in a triangular banana leaf. Ladarat had witnessed the director consume a half dozen with an expansive enjoyment that was contagious, and which reminded her just a little of her late husband, Somboon.

Not today, though. As this large, exuberant man refused Sisithorn’s offer without any interest, Ladarat knew something was very, very wrong.

She shook her head at Sisithorn, who also looked suitably concerned. To her credit, she, too, was alarmed by the director’s refusal of
khao tom mud
and accorded it the significance it deserved. Without another word, she backed out through the door, closing it gently behind her.

In the moment of silence after the director glanced up again, Ladarat drew her conclusions quickly:
The director is here to ask for my help.

And:
This request for help is making the director very, very uncomfortable.

“You have heard,” the director asked hesitantly, “about the tragedy of the Americans?”

He offered a weak smile and the rattling skeleton of a laugh that would have been inappropriate anywhere else. But in Thailand, a laugh is provoked almost as often by embarrassment or sadness or anger as it is by humor. Over the years Ladarat had had many opportunities to wonder at her strange culture that could produce such an anomaly.

Ladarat positioned her yellow pad in front of her, turning to a fresh page and hoping fervently that this page would not be as interesting as the last. She wrote today’s date. Then: “Americans. ICU.”

Then, the most important word she would write today: “Elephant.”

She nodded. Of course she had heard about the sad story of the Americans. A young man and his wife. They’d just been married down in the Gulf of Thailand, at a fancy resort on the island of Koh Samui. Then they’d taken their honeymoon by going trekking with elephants in the Golden Triangle, northwest of Chiang Mai.

On their first day in the forest, the elephant on which they’d both been riding just a few minutes earlier turned violent. It trampled the man, damaging his spine and badly damaging his brain. His new wife had been hurt, too, with a fractured pelvis and other serious injuries. Hoping to avoid a tourism debacle, the Thai Air Force had intervened, sending a helicopter into the deep forest to airlift them both back to the best hospital in northern Thailand—hers.

They’d arrived here two days ago, on Saturday. Since then, the wife had woken up, but the man had not. Ladarat had heard, in fact, that there was too much brain damage, and that he was brain-dead. Or close to it. So sad.

She wrote: “Husband? Wife?”

“The man,” Khun Suphit said. “He will not be waking up.” He shook he head sadly.

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

They both thought about this for a moment. It was Ladarat who broke the silence.

“How is the wife?” she asked.

Khun Suphit brightened, just a little. “She is doing better, I’m happy to report.” Although truth be told, he didn’t look at all happy.

“But emotionally, how is she doing? The knowledge of her husband’s condition must be a terrible shock, no?”

Ladarat had always believed that how you feel determines, in large part, how well you do medically. And she was convinced that doctors and nurses needed to attend to a patient’s emotional health at least as much as they attend to his physical health. The good Professor Dalrymple offered wise counsel on this topic, which she credited to an American physician named Dr. F. W. Peabody: “In order to care
for
a patient,” she admonished, “you must care
about
the patient.”

Ladarat looked up from her notes at the director, who, she noticed, had become strangely silent. He gave a short laugh that reminded her of the sound that a very old and faithful bicycle tire makes when it is deflated for the last time.

It was then that she knew why Khun Suphit was sitting in her office now. She knew why this important man had honored her by coming to her little office in the hospital’s basement. And why he looked so uncomfortable.

“You see,” he said slowly, “I’m not sure she knows about her husband.”

“You’re not sure? Ah, Khun Suphit, so you mean you’re not sure she understands what you’ve told her?” Ladarat was almost certain this was
not
what the director meant.