In the Blood (21 page)

“How about an adulterant?” Harry suggested. “A toxin in the junk.”

“I’d lean that way,” Clair said, “except the reactions suggest OD from all directions. But I’m going to no-comment the media until I get a forsure verdict.”

I looked across the street and saw reporters bunched up like runners at the start of the Boston Marathon, held back by uniformed cops. When the scene was released they’d run rampant.

“Carson?” Clair called to my retreating back.

I looked over my shoulder. “You’re looking better,” she said quietly, and hustled off to consult with her crew. I turned back to Harry. “If it’s all accidental OD’s, we’re off the hook. Clair seems to think that’s the way it’ll fry up. What next?”

“Back to our regular grind,” he said. “And that means Scaler. You were saying Fossie found some kind of number in Scaler’s office?”

“Stuck on the underside of his monitor.”

“Why not give the number a ring; see who answers? Probably best to use the clean phone.”

Our clean phone was a pre-paid cell we used when we wanted a call to be anonymous, not tipping off the recipient who was on our end. We mainly used it with skittish snitches. I pulled the phone from the cruiser, dialed. Four rings and pickup.

“Hello?” said a voice sounding both hesitant and oddly familiar.

“Who’s this?” I asked pleasantly.

“Who’s
this
?” the familiar voice on the other line responded.

I said, “I got this number from a friend who said I probably needed to call it.”

A beat. “What was the friend’s name?”

“He’s well known and doesn’t like his name used,” I said.

“Hmmmm,” the voice said. “Who were you wanting to speak to?”

We were both being cagey. I looked around while my mind raced for the next line. Across the street I saw Orville Ryan standing beside Chinese Red’s body with a cellphone at his ear. Ryan was frowning, like he was stymied.

“Ryan?” I ventured. “Is that you?”

I watched his mouth drop open. His eyes
scanned the street until finding me. We stared at one another over sixty feet of concrete. I watched Ryan’s lips move as the phone spoke.

“Hi, Carson. Fancy talking to you.”

“Did I just call your number, Orv?”

“You called Chinese Red’s cell, Carson. It started ringing in his pocket.”

I was putting in my fourteenth nervous pace lap around the forensics lab when Glenn Watkins rushed in with the test results. The implications made the test supersede all others that would occur today.

“No mistake,” Glenn said, snicking the results with a fingernail. “It’s a match. The blood on O’Fong’s shirt and pants is Scaler’s.”

“Scaler paid a black junkie prostitute to work him over?” Harry said.

“Blood doesn’t lie,” Glenn said. “These clothes must have been what O’Fong wore when whipping the Reverend.”

“Lawd, this case is a muthafucker.” Harry budgeted himself two spoken MFs annually and he’d just spent half his budget on Richard Scaler.

“There’s more,” Glenn said. “You know the water found in O’Fong’s digs in the Hoople?”

Harry nodded.

“Sea water. The same composition of sea water found on the floor at Scaler’s death scene. A second indication they were together.”

“But what’s the water mean?” Harry said. “You got any idea, Carson?”

But my mind was elsewhere. Scaler preaching as a child, bible in hand, mouth wide. The adult Scaler charging to and fro on the stage ranting about sin. A model-handsome black prostitute slapping Scaler’s fat ass with leather while the preacher twirled upside-down in red panties.

I started laughing: tears running, gut-lurching, red-faced laughter. Glenn watched open-mouthed.

“What’s wrong, Carson?” Harry asked.

“Scaler beat mousy Mama and it got his engine revved. He called his sex buddy, Chinese Red, and headed to Camp Sonshine for some butt-pluggin’ and whip lovin’. Muhhhh-muh-muuuh,” I moaned orgasmically, spinning in circles, pretending I had a gag in my mouth. “Muuuuh-Muuuuuuh. Muhhhhnnnnnnnnnn.”

I mimicked spitting out the gag. “Case closed,” I announced. “We can all go home.”

Which is exactly what I did. It was one p.m. and I figured I’d done enough. I stopped at the library on the way to pick up books on playing the flute, creating with mosaic, identifying creatures of the woodlands, and Bolivian cooking.

The following morning my still-on television woke me at seven. Though foggy with sleep, I performed my morning rituals, washing down my vites with Ginseng tea and downing a wheatberry salad I’d
bought at the health-food store on my way to the library. It appeared I’d purchased eight of them. Despite my sluggishness I felt stress-free and had a leisurely drive to work.

I walked into the detectives’ room. Harry shot me a glance, picked up the ringing phone. I watched him open his desk drawer, scrabble through it, shove papers aside on his desk as I walked up.

“Paper,” he grunted, making the scratchy motion with his fingers.

I pitched him a notepad and he wrote a few lines, saying
uh-huh
and
gimme the name again
and finally “
I owe you one
,
Kiet.”

He set the phone down. “That was Kiet Srisai at the Thai restaurant. He’s got a name and place for a guy who might have owned the burned-down house. He’s over in Mississippi, just across the border.”

“I’m not driving all the way over there on my own.” I crossed my hands behind my head. “And you’re not allowed to deal with anything pertaining to the Bailes case. I’ll get the Dauphin Island cops to make the trip.”

Harry shot a look over his shoulder at Tom Mason’s office. Tom was on the phone, turned away. Harry lowered his voice and leaned close.

“I figure if we spend all our time on the way to Sippi and back talking about Scaler, that’s the case I’m on, right?”

Chakrabandhu Sintapiratpattanasai blinked lizard eyes at me and seemed as puzzled by the English language as I was by his name.

“No understand what you word say.”

We were on a no-name strip of beach in Mississippi, west of Biloxi. The land stretched from the water north for a hundred miles before there was anything that could be charitably called a hill. It was the billiard-table flatness that had allowed Katrina’s storm surge to steamroll the communities for miles inland. Sintapiratpattanasai was a short man, heavy and square, with jet-black hair glistening with pomade. Even though the sun was high, he wore a dark three-piece suit, his tie tight to his thick neck.

I put my badge wallet back in my pocket and tried rephrasing the question. “We’re trying to track down ownership of a piece of property. About a quarter acre that once had a house on it.”

Sintapiratpattanasai frowned. “Ay-ker? Prop-tee?”

I’d seen this act before and so had Harry. He pulled his handcuffs and nodded toward the Crown Vic.

“OK buddy, put out your hands so I can cuff them and let’s take a walk to the car.”

Mr S. startled back three steps, barked, “You from Mobile in Alabama. This Mississippi. You have no jurisdiction here.”

“That solves the language problem,” Harry said.

“We’re not here on any problem relative to you, sir,” I said. “We’re here about a property you own or owned.”

“Where this property?” he challenged.

I gave him the address.

“Own four houses there for years. I rent to fishermen, shrimp fishermen.” He wagged his head. “Tough bidness. Fishermen move when Katrina blow houses down in Alabama. I buy houses here now. Do rent.”

I’d seen Sintapiratpattanasai’s kind before. The archetypical slumlord, he’d buy houses or apartments on the cheap, fill them with poor like rabbits in a warren. Any repairs came late or never.

“What did you do with the house?” Harry asked.

“Sell.”

I heard a roar of heavy motorcycles to the north and craned my head to a pair of riders on Harleys burning hell-for-leather along the road. The bikers seemed to be looking our way.

I turned back to Mr S. “Who did you sell the place to, sir?”

“Man come, say he need place. I sell. This two month back.”

“What was the buyer’s name?”

“I think. I remember in a minute. Or I have written down.”

“Why did he need the place?”

“He like to fish. Not boat, but fish…” Sintapiratpattanasai jigged his hands as if casting a rod. “He was soon retire and fish all day long. Use house for fish house, fix up.” He paused and recalled the moment. “Ten thousan’ dollar, for that place? He either sucker or using somebody else’s money.”

“Did you use a lawyer, anything like that?” Harry asked, trying to find a paper trail. “Or handle the transaction at a bank?”

“Man gave me money, I sign paper saying house his. No big deal need banker. Banker is bullshit, take money to watch you sign paper.”

“You received a check?” I asked.

Sintapiratpattanasai held out his right palm and jabbed it hard with his left forefinger. “Fuck check. Cash money.”

I shot Harry a look. The transaction had all the signs of a street deal. Someone needed the property for a short time, paid for the privilege. But the deal was off the official books. The State would eventually find no taxes were being paid, check into things, but Sintapiratpattanasai had made his money, had a valid receipt, and the buyer had used the property and was long gone.

“Did you keep a copy of the paper you signed?” Harry asked.

“I keep everything so no get fucked by US government.”

“Can we see the paper?” Harry asked.

“Come in office and I find.”

We followed the landlord to a large black Lexus parked in the shade of twin palms. He popped the truck to reveal a pair of orange crates stuffed with files.

“Your office?” Harry asked.

“I own forty-seven properties all down coast. I need to know who pays so no one get free ride. People try cheat me all the time. They don’t come to me, so I go to them.”

I pictured Sintapiratpattanasai driving his files from place to place, checking names, making sure the rent came in on time. If not, there would be penalties, surcharges, evictions. All quite legal.

Mr S moved to the crate tucked the farthest back in the truck. “These old files. Alabama. No more property in Alabama.” He snatched up a file, pulled out an envelope, found the receipt in question within the envelope. I took it and stared at the page.

“It’s freaking indecipherable,” I said. “It looks like a damn prescription. I can read ‘Kurt’, I think. But the rest? Mathews? Masters? Martinas?”

Harry took a look, shook his head.

“The receipt is built to show nothing but a transfer of money from someone to Mr S for a quarter-acre parcel and four hundred-square-foot
house, with six-foot-wide common access to a pier. Ten thousand dollars, paid in full.”

“You see my name, don’t you?” the landlord asked. “All right and legal bill of sale?”

“Clear as a bell,” Harry said.

The landlord started to tuck the page back into the envelope. Harry reached out and tapped the man’s wrist.

“We’d like a copy of the document, sir. Can we take it and return it after we inspect the page?”

The landlord went to the back door of the Lexus. “I make you copy.”

He opened the back door. A mini-copier was seat-belted on to the back seat, plugged into the outlet on the plenum. Beside the copier was a fax machine. On the other seat was a cooler. Lunch and supper, I figured, business on the fly. Sintapiratpattanasai pulled us a clear copy. It didn’t make the buyer’s name any more decipherable.

We followed him back to the trunk. He folded the receipt, and slid it into the creamy white envelope. Harry noted the saw printing on the envelope, grabbed it from the landlord.

“Did the buyer give you this envelope?” I asked. “Did it have the money inside?”

“Already spend money,” Sintapiratpattanasai said, suspicious of a shakedown. “Money all gone.”

“Did this envelope come from the buyer?” Harry repeated. “Answer the question.”

“Buyer man have money counted out and inside.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Harry said nothing. He simply passed me the envelope.

“No,” I said, closing my eyes, trying to blot out the outside, inside and everything in between. “This isn’t happening.”

It was a tithe envelope for Kingdom Church.

“A coincidence,” I insisted on the way back. “How many zillions of sheep did Scaler have in his flock? They’d all have tithe envelopes, right?”

“What are the chances of two outrageous cases connecting like that?” Harry countered.

Harry was driving. After finding the envelope I wanted to shut my mind off as my eyes watched treetops and power lines make fast shapes against the sky. We were in farm country: melon farms, cotton farms, timber farms, now and then the stretching green baize of a sod farm.

“Why would Kingdom Church buy a run-down house in the middle of nowhere, Harry? They’ve got a college, dorms, chapel, TV operation, three church camps, about a thousand acres scattered between Alabama and Mississippi. Why a quarter acre in the middle of bleak nowhere land?”

“To hide something.”

“A baby?”

He shot a glance over his shoulder. “Here’s the problem, Carson. I can’t work the Noelle case, just Scaler’s. But if they’ve turned into the same case…”

I pulled out my phone and dialed. “Mr…uh, Sinapir, Sentasipp…this is Detective Ryder. Stop the no-English riff. We spoke fifteen minutes ago. Did the cabin you owned have a harpoon or shark lance anywhere around?”

I listened, hung up. “There was a bunch of old crap in the shack, to use Mr S.’s words. Fishing rods, a lead anchor, a life vest, and what he called a rusty spear on hooks over the front door.”

Harry drove and thought for several seconds. “Maybe it’s the only weapon the cabin’s occupants have when someone shows up with bad intentions. Grab and stab.”

“Yeah, but if the person or persons with bad intent have a more developed arsenal, like guns, the spear-thrower’s just taken his one shot.”

“Forensics found footprints from the cabin to the pier, small, like a woman’s shoes.”