Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (15 page)

THE VALUE OF
CHOIE
IN HANDLING SURPRISING NEWS

T
here was an
incident
,” Sisithorn whispered from behind her as Ladarat felt a tug on her left arm. She’d just emerged from yet another meeting to prepare for the inspection. That meeting had gone long and—even worse—now she had extra work to do. And now here was her assistant latched on to her elbow like a barnacle.

“It occurred in the
ICU
,” she said breathlessly as she steered Ladarat down the hall. “I’ve been waiting
forever
.”

For how many consecutive sentences could this girl speak in italics? Ladarat was mildly curious. Surely she couldn’t maintain these slanted syllables much longer?

And indeed she could not. Now Sisithorn paused as if to create suspense. She looked at Ladarat, wide-eyed, her pupils the diameter of Siam tulips behind her oversize round glasses.

But Ladarat had long ago learned that an imperturbable calm—
choie
—was the best way to meet any news that someone seemed to be holding back. If you express surprise or an intense need to know whatever is being concealed, that simply inflates the value of the information. Then it becomes impossible to say for certain whether that information truly was important. The best way to determine whether news is important is to assume it is not.

“Ah, really?” was all she said.

But Sisithorn’s enthusiasm wasn’t dampened. Still clutching Ladarat’s elbow, she steered them down the west hallway and Ladarat realized they were heading toward Kate’s room. The story would emerge in its own way, she knew, in its own time.

Sisithorn had been coming out of the ICU, she said finally, checking on the American, when she saw a commotion in the waiting room. Kate seemed to be hysterical. She was in a wheelchair, and she was being propelled down the hallway away from the ICU by her mother-in-law.

“She kept saying something about a ‘killer.’ But she wouldn’t explain.”

“A killer? In this hospital? Ah, Khun. This poor girl—she’s been through a great deal. Perhaps she is… confused.”

Sisithorn shook her head. “No, Khun, I don’t think so. I followed them, naturally,” she said.

“Naturally.”

“And I tried to talk with Kate. But it was only her mother-in-law who would tell me anything. And she said that Kate had been fine just a few seconds earlier. Her mother-in-law had been wheeling her down the hall, and Kate was chatting away. Then all of a sudden Kate just became agitated as they were proceeding down the hall about the time they entered the ICU.”

“But Kate didn’t see anyone to prompt this outburst?”

“The mother-in-law didn’t think so. Of course, when Kate began to cry, she said she stepped in front of the wheelchair and she saw the backs of several people they had passed in the hallway, but she couldn’t say which of them had make Kate upset.”

“So they were about to enter the ICU? Perhaps it was a… flashback?”

“I don’t think so, Khun. Remember you sent me to speak with her this morning? Well, I did, and we had a very long talk. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller were not there, so we spoke for more than an hour. She seemed very clear in her head. As if she were back to normal, you know?”

Ladarat nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t a flashback. But then what was it? Since obviously this outburst wasn’t prompted by a real killer, then what was it?

They had stopped outside Kate’s hospital room. The door was closed, but Ladarat and her assistant were whispering. Ladarat eyed the door nervously, in case it should open suddenly.

“She also seemed very strong this morning,” Sisithorn said. “Not just strong like a woman trying to wear a brave face, but truly strong. Deep down. She told me that both of her parents died when she was very young. And that she was put… in a home with other children’s parents?”

“Ah, foster care. It is not uncommon in the U.S.A.”

Sisithorn shook her head. She started to speak, but it was plain that there was nothing she could think of to say. The idea of placing a child with strangers was almost impossible to understand.

“Anyway, she did well and worked hard in school and went to a good college—Swarthmore—that is a good college? In the state of Philadelphia, yes?”

Ladarat nodded, thinking it would be best to leave the U.S. geography lesson till another time.

“So,” Sisithorn concluded. “She seems very strong. She has endured much tragedy in her life. This is very, very bad, certainly. But she is also very hard to… damage. I don’t think that bad memories of her time in the ICU would cause her to lose her head in such a way. Something must have happened.”

So whatever had made her hysterical must have been very bad indeed. But what?

Just then the door to Kate’s room opened. And a second later, it was obvious that they were not going to find out. Mr. Fuller was standing in the doorway, with meaty arms crossed over his big American chest. He didn’t even feign an attempt at a
wai
, even when Ladarat and Sisithorn offered their politest greetings. Instead he just began talking. Very quickly.

“I don’t know what kind of place this is, that you would let people wander the hallways who’d upset my daughter-in-law like that. Don’t you have any control over who gets in here? Or who wanders around? Is this a hospital? Or just some slum where anyone wanders in?”

He went on like this for a full minute, his big chest becoming even bigger as he talked, and his red face even redder. He was talking about security and “dangerous people,” and said in so many words that his daughter-in-law would be safer out on the street in New York than she was here.

It was impossible to get a word in without being rude. Fortunately, he was talking too fast for Sisithorn to follow, so she’d assumed the fixed, false smile of ignorance:
yim thak thaai
. That means roughly, “I don’t know what’s going on but I’m smiling anyway, because… well… it can’t hurt.”

But Ladarat was getting most of the message. It seemed that he thought that someone had done, or said, something to their daughter-in-law. This, despite the assurances of his wife, who, Sisithorn promised, had seen no one.

Could Sisithorn have been wrong? Perhaps, but unlikely. Certainly her English was good enough to understand such a key fact.

And of course they wouldn’t be able to talk to the wife, who presumably was back there in Kate’s room. They’d never squeeze by those broad American shoulders.

This harangue was not helpful, but what to do? The American was causing a disturbance in the hallway, and a group of passing nurses edged away, smiling woodenly as they surreptitiously watched the American. Now the American was at risk of doing or saying something embarrassing, which she should try to prevent if she could.

So she waited patiently for a break in his tirade and interjected smoothly, “Of course, you are right. We will ask security to watch carefully, and perhaps they could speak with Kate when she is able?”

The American nodded, perhaps uncertain what this ready agreement meant.

“That is good. I’m sure that Kate is too tired to have visitors right now, so we’ll come back.” She offered a
wai
and Sisithorn followed suit.

She was surprised to see the American assay a clumsy attempt at a
wai
himself. Hands clasped as the Catholics pray, it looked more like an attempt at isometric calisthenics than a formal demonstration of respect. As a
wai
, it as an abject failure. Yet he was to be commended for trying. Wondering at the oddness of Americans, she took Sisithorn firmly by the elbow and led her down the hallway the way they had come.

They’d walked perhaps twenty meters before her assistant spoke up.

“Wouldn’t it have been helpful to talk with Kate?” she asked. “Surely we’d need to find out who she saw. What can security do without some sort of description?” She thought for a moment as they waited for the elevator. “We don’t even know whether she saw a man or a woman.”

“He wouldn’t have let us talk with her,” Ladarat pointed out.

“But how can you be sure? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Because he was angry. And he felt as though he should have been there to protect his daughter-in-law, but he wasn’t.”

“So… he is making up for that by protecting her now? From us?”

“Exactly so.” Perhaps that didn’t make sense, but Ladarat had a strong feeling. And her feelings were often right.

“So what do we do? We have no idea who this person is. Or whether there even is a real person. Maybe it was just a… hallucination.”

“Perhaps,” Ladarat agreed. Perhaps it was. But she didn’t think so. She was pretty sure Kate had seen someone, or something. And they wouldn’t begin to determine what that was until they talked with her. So there was no point in speculating about it now.

It was only as the elevator doors were opening that she realized what had registered in her mind. Gripped in Mr. Fuller’s right hand had been a few pages of white paper, rolled into a cylinder. The relentless pressure of his meaty fist had begun to crumple it in the middle like a soda can. Those pages could have been anything, but Ladarat had a strange feeling that the big American had been reading the translation of his son’s medical records.

She was tempted to go back to see if he had questions. That, after all, was their job. She hesitated, thinking, as Sisithorn stepped into the crowded elevator. But even if it was their job, he was too upset right now. Sisithorn looked at her strangely.

“I forgot something,” Ladarat said simply. “We’ll meet later.” And the elevator doors closed.

She turned away from Kate’s room and headed toward the other end of the hall. She had declined the elevator because there was something much more simple she needed to do. She needed to take the stairs.

Smiling, Ladarat turned left and pushed through the door that led to the stairwell. She paused on the sixth-floor landing as the door swung shut behind her, enjoying the quiet. Of course the stairwell was empty. Thais never take the stairs.

And yet… this particular stairwell was not quite empty. Just below her, Ladarat could hear the soft padding of rubber soles on the concrete steps. Those soles, and the feet to which they were attached, seemed to be moving quickly. Very quickly.

Ladarat saw a man’s left hand on the railing of one flight as it turned the corner, then it disappeared. A moment later, it reappeared, attached to an arm that extended from a freshly creased white short-sleeved shirt. And on that arm was a familiar, oversize gold watch. Ladarat barely had time to consider where she had seen such an arm recently when the face of the young man who was a new father peered up at her quickly. Then his face disappeared and his feet seemed to redouble their efforts to move as quickly as possible.

A REPORT FROM THE CHIANG MAI MEDICAL RECORDS CRICKET LEAGUE

A
few minutes later, down in the basement, Ladarat tapped lightly on the door to Panit Booniliang’s office in the rear of the medical records department. She had never been back here before, because she had always met the director of medical records at the front desk, from which he guarded his domain. But this afternoon there had been a pleasant young man stationed in Khun Panit’s usual place.

She’d been taken aback at first—his resemblance to Panit Booniliang was so strong. It was as if the good director had lost forty years in a day. But of course, he was Khun Panit’s nephew, Chaow (which meant “quickness of mind”) Willapenna. Usually he worked in the far back, filing X-rays. But today he’d been promoted to the front desk.

Farang
could never appreciate the Thai penchant for nepotism, but it made a world of sense. If you hire someone from your family, you know exactly who you are getting. There are no surprises. And if there was one thing you could say for certain about Khun Panit, it was that he hated surprises. Which was why this conversation was likely to be uncomfortable. At least, it would be if her hunch was correct.

Panit Booniliang came to the door and gave her a deep
wai
, which she returned. Surprised at the sudden escalation in formality, she took a seat as he closed the door behind her. This was indeed strange.